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Umbo tried to keep from thinking, Rigg can’t do what I can do. But the effort not to think it was nothing more than another way to think it, while feeling even more guilty and frustrated.
He made the jump forward to the exact time he wanted. To Loaf and Leaky, he would have been gone only an hour.
He walked to the roadhouse door, opened, came in
side. “Well, I’m back,” he announced.
Loaf and Leaky looked up from behind the bar, where Loaf was putting away glasses and mugs on the highest shelf.
“Took you long enough,” said Loaf.
“Sorry,” said Umbo.
“Well, did you save him?” asked Loaf.
“Mostly,” said Umbo. “Pulled him out of the water before he drowned. His arms were—no, his legs were broken.”
“You can’t remember the difference?” asked Loaf. “Remind me not to let you tend to my injuries.”
“That’s my job,” said Leaky.
“The first time, he broke his arms. The second time, it happened a little differently. He landed legs-first, so those are what broke.”
“So you didn’t interfere with events until after everybody thought he had died in the water.”
“The first time I was so stupid I carried him home before Rigg and I had even left town, and that wrecked everything. So I had to do it over.”
“Well, now that that’s done,” said Leaky, “Let’s set out for the Wall.”
“Give the boy a chance to rest,” said Loaf.
“He’s only been gone an hour,” said Leaky impatiently. Then she gave a sheepish grin. “I haven’t had as long as you two to get used to how things work now. He’s been gone for weeks, hasn’t he?”
She said it to Loaf, but spoke it while looking Umbo up and down. “Not a very cleanly expedition, it would seem,” she said.
“I haven’t done much clotheswashing.”
“You never do.”
“I keep thinking I’ll just jump back to a time when they were clean.”
Loaf glowered. “That really doesn’t make sense.”
“It was a time-shifting joke,” said Umbo. “I don’t have many people I can tell those to.”
“Lucky them,” murmured Loaf. “We’ll leave for the Wall in the morning.”
“One tiny problem,” said Umbo. “We can’t go through the Wall now.”
“Rigg set it up so any two of our group can go through,” said Loaf. “That’s how we got back here to Ramfold.”
Umbo shook his head. “Rigg hasn’t set it up that way yet. And Vadeshex hasn’t even met us. We don’t want to arrive with you wearing that facemask. Who knows how differently he’d act if he already knew he would succeed.”
“So we do have to wait,” said Loaf.
“Not necessarily,” said Umbo. “We have two choices. One. We can go back in time to before the Wall was made. Two. We can skip forward to right after we passed through on the way here.”
Loaf looked at Umbo for a split second and then began a low chuckle. “You sly barbfeather,” he said. “You’ve learned how to make forward jumps.”
