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The meeting broke up then, and they all made their way to the Ramfold flyer. Rigg ended up bringing up the rear, and as he reached the bridge leading from the ship to the tunnels beyond, he found Umbo waiting for him.
“Hi,” said Umbo.
“I think everything’s worked out pretty well,” said Rigg.
“I told Ramex to tell Vadeshex to tell Noxon that I saved Kyokay’s life. He’ll want to know, right?”
“Too bad you won’t tell him yourself,” said Rigg. “It’s a pretty amazing story. You’re the only real hero among us now.”
“Except Square. And when I watch you fighting the Destroyer—”
“Wasn’t me,” said Rigg.
“Was too,” said Umbo. “But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I just—seeing Noxon with the girl. With Deborah.”
“It would have to be a blind girl to fall in love with that ugly face of his,” said Rigg.
“I’ve got Param, and you know that I’ve been in love with her all along. And Noxon looks really happy with her—she really seems to care about him.”
“Looks like,” said Rigg. “But look, Umbo, if you’re worried about me, don’t. I’ve seen a lot of wallfolds. I’m thinking of going back to one of them, maybe. I met some people. Some places where I might want to live.”
“Really?” said Umbo. “Because I was kind of hoping you’d find some nice girl and hang around with me and Param. We’ve made a pretty good team, when you think about it.”
“Had our ups and downs.”
“I don’t want to get sickening about this, but I was hoping you’d stay. You’re my best friend, Rigg, even though I was a real pain in the butt for a while.”
“But I’ll still be here even if I go,” said Rigg. “I mean, Noxon’s me, right?”
Umbo shook his head. “Yes. I know. You’ve seen most of Garden, he’s been to E
arth, and I’m just—”
“You’re just King-in-the-Tent, and married to my sister,” said Rigg. “You know that wherever I go to live, I’ll come back and visit whenever I want. I’ll be married and have kids and I’ll get up from dinner and say, ‘I’m going to take a walk,’ and then I’ll get in the flyer, come visit you for a week, and then get back home a few minutes after I left.”
“Sounds like a decent plan,” said Umbo. “I hope that’s all we ever have to do with our timeshaping, once the war is over. No more saving the world. No more changes to make.”
“That’s the best plan,” said Rigg. “It worries me, that these powers are loose in the world. We were clumsy enough, and dumb enough, but it all worked out pretty well. What if some of our descendants are, I don’t know, kind of awful. What if there’s somebody like Haddamander. Or Hagia. Or—or Tegay. You know what I mean.”
“Param and I have talked about that. We even debated about whether or not we should even have children. But here’s what we came up with. The mice brought us together, at the peak of our abilities, to save Garden and then, it turns out, to save Earth and everybody. But now our kids will marry people who aren’t timeshapers, and their kids will dilute the genes even more. Maybe when the human race doesn’t need saving, this ability will fade out, weaken, or become like our abilities were, before we put them together. You seeing paths. Me slowing people down, or speeding them up, or whatever. Just little things. Interesting but not scary. Not world-changing. That’s what we think.”
Rigg thought about that for a few moments. “I really like that idea,” he said. “I hope it’s true.”
“We can also try to raise our kids to be really decent people.”
“That’s a good idea, too, though children become whatever they want to be,” said Rigg.
“I know it’s crazy, Param and I both thought it was insane when I first suggested it, but now we think it might be true. I mean, I think it is true. That the human race was really determined not to be destroyed. And so it first got the Odinfolders to think up a machine that could send back the Future Books. And each time through history, humanity kept gathering its strength, and finally, between the Odinfolders and the mice and whatever genes were floating around in Ramfold, plus Ramex raising you and training me and Param—the human race needed us, and so it made us. And now it’s all worked out. So . . . it doesn’t need anybody to have our abilities anymore.”
“I’ll have to think about that for a while,” said Rigg. “It sounds too good to be true. But then, sometimes good things are true.”
“So Param and I aren’t going to worry about the future. I mean, yes, we’ll try to govern well and plan things so that there’s a good chance of Ramfold having peace and freedom and prosperity and all that. But when we die, it won’t be our job anymore. We don’t have to deal with all of history. We’re going to allow ourselves to make mistakes without always going back to fix them. We’ll do what regular people do—we’ll fix them after the fact. No more miracles. Just . . . life. Just doing our best, and living with the consequences.”
Rigg heard this with relief. He hadn’t realized that these were exactly the questions that had tied him up in knots for a long time. “You know, Umbo, that’s the smartest idea I’ve heard in a long time.”
“Kind of surprising, I know,” said Umbo. “I mean, hearing it from me.”
“Not surprising at all,” said Rigg. “I’m going to try to think of it that way. Because your plan, it’s the only path that leads to something like a normal life. Toward, you know, being happy.”
