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And the Riggs are both deeply and permanently connected to the alien facemask, making them by some reckonings only half human, and by other reckonings not human at all.
So only Ram Odin, of all the four, is a pure man; yet he is weakest of them all.
Far away, in another wallfold, Rigg’s sister Param and Rigg’s friend Umbo also have power over the flow of time, and are also working to save the world of Garden from the Destroyers. But it is these four in Vadeshfold who among them have control over a starship; it is these four who know that a version of Ram Odin is still alive; and it is these four who must now decide what each of them will do in order to save the human race on Garden.
For the one thing that never changes is that, despite many attempts to reshape history by the manipulation of time, the Visitors come from Earth, see what the human race has become in the nineteen wallfolds of Garden, and then send the Destroyers to blast all nineteen civilizations into oblivion.
The Conversation:
“The biggest problem we have is ignorance,” said Rigg Noxon. “We don’t know what causes the people of Earth to decide to destroy our whole world.” Though in fact the biggest problem he was having at the moment was the realization that he was capable of killing someone in cold blood.
It was the other Rigg who had actually done the killing, but Rigg Noxon knew that they were the same person. If Rigg had not come back and prevented the killings, Noxon would certainly have done just what Rigg did. Only now, because he hadn’t taken those actions, both Noxon and Rigg continued to exist as separate people with nearly identical pasts.
Am I a killer, because I know I could and would commit murder? Or am I innocent, because something prevented me from doing it? After all, the person who prevented me was myself. A version of myself.
The killer version.
“Which is why your friends have to allow the mice from Odinfold to go back to Earth with the Visitors,” said Ram Odin.
“They’re deciding whether to stop themselves from warning the Visitors about the stowaway mice,” said Rigg-the-killer.
Ram Odin shook his head. “Why is it up to them? You go back and prevent them from giving warning.”
“They had good reason for preventing the mice from getting aboard the Visitors’ ship,” said Rigg-the-killer. “The mice weren’t going back to find out what happened. They were infected with a disease which was no doubt designed to wipe out the human race on Earth.”
“When you say ‘no doubt’ it means that there is reason to doubt,” said Ram Odin. “People only say ‘no doubt’ when they know they’re making a judgment based on insufficient information.”
“They don’t have facemasks,” said Rigg Noxon. “They can’t hear the mice or talk to them. They can’t ask.”
“You can hear them,” said Ram Odin. “You can ask.”
“We don’t necessarily believe the mice,” said Rigg-the-killer. “They already killed Param once. Our goal is to save the human
race on Garden, not provide mousekind with a depopulated Earth for them to inherit.”
“There are too many players in this game,” said Ram Odin.
“The mice were planning to take several billion of them out of the game entirely,” said Rigg-the-killer.
“Not all the players are equal,” said Ram Odin. “Make a decision and make it stick.”
“You’ve been alone with the expendables far too long,” said Rigg Noxon. “You think because you can play God with other people’s lives, you have a right to do it.”
“You think,” added Rigg-the-killer, “that because you’ve been doing it for so long, you’re fit to do it.”
“Power is power,” said Ram Odin. “If you have it, then it’s yours to use.”
“The sheer stupidity of that statement,” said Rigg-the-killer, “makes me wonder how Garden struggled along for eleven thousand years with you in control.”
“A child lectures an eleven-thousand-year-old man,” said Ram Odin.
“There are thousands of examples in history,” said Rigg-the-killer, “of people with power who used it in ways that ended up destroying their power and, usually, a whole lot of innocent people, too.”
Rigg Noxon listened to his other self and realized: Having killed Ram Odin changed him. Rigg Noxon would not have treated Ram that way—as if his statements were worthless. Rigg Noxon would have tried to take them into account. Rigg Noxon would have spoken as youth to adult. But Rigg-the-killer must still be full of anger toward Ram Odin, who had, after all, tried to kill Rigg first.
We lived exactly the same life until a few minutes ago, for me; a few weeks or months ago, for Rigg-the-killer. But we are different people.
“So you leave the decision up to Umbo and Param,” said Ram Odin.
