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“And what will you teach me?” asked Param.
“How to do it backward,” said Noxon. “Because that’s the direction I need to move, too.”
Param shook her head. “I skip time, I don’t change directions.”
“That’s my point,” said Noxon. “What if, when you disappeared, you could slice your way backward in time? When Umbo and I . . . and Rigg . . . when we jump in time, we skip over everything in between. I . . . and Rigg . . . we can see the paths, and the facemask lets us see them as people in motion. Extending backward in time. But they’re always moving forward. So when I attach to them, I attach in the direction they’re going. I need to know how to go upstream. How to slide backward in small increments, and you need to learn the same. I’m hoping we can help each other.”
Param shook her head again. “I can’t do anything like that.”
“We know you can’t,” said Rigg. “That’s what ‘learning’ means. Now you can’t; with work, maybe someday you can.”
“And what will you be doing while Noxon and Param are working on doing new impossible things?” Olivenko asked Rigg.
“I’m planning to go through the other wallfolds, one at a time, and see what they have. We’ve seen Ramfold, Vadeshfold, Odinfold, and Larfold. Fifteen to go.”
“And then what?” asked Olivenko.
“Then I’ll have some kind of idea about what will happen if we bring down the Wall.”
Loaf chuckled. “I can imagine General Citizen and the Sessamoto army trying to make war against the mice of Odinfold.”
“I can also imagine Ramfolders spreading into Vadeshfold and having an infestation of facemasks,” said Olivenko. “Not the fancy versions you and the Riggs have. The original, devastating, bestial ones.”
“That’s an argument right there in favor of never bringing down the Wall around Vadeshfold,” said Param.
“Not that we don’t find the three of you lovely as wildflowers,” said Umbo.
“I’m a lot prettier than Rigg and Noxon,” said Loaf. “My facemask has had time to grow to fit my original face.”
“That doesn’t always lead toward prettiness,” said Olivenko with a smile that showed he was merely putting Loaf’s own irony into open words.
“So you’re appointed to judge all the wallfolds?” Umbo asked Rigg.
“I’m not judging anything,” said Rigg. “I’m going to go and find out and then we can talk again.”
“And by ‘we’ you mean you and Noxon?” asked Umbo.
“Here we go again,” murmured Param.
“I mean me and you and Loaf and Olivenko and Param, with plenty of advice from the expendables and the ships’ computers,” said Rigg. “Though you don’t have to come to the meeting.”
“And what’s your plan for me?” asked Umbo.
Loaf put out a hand. “Don’t answer him, Rigg. If you have a suggestion, he’ll resent you for trying to boss him around. And if you don’t, he’ll complain that you think he has nothing to contribute.”
Loaf’s words stung, especially because a moment’s self-examination told Umbo that this was precisely how he would have reacted to anything Rigg mig
ht have said.
“I’m the one who has something useful for Umbo to do,” said Loaf. “It’s time for me to go home to Leaky and show her what’s become of me. Give her a chance to decide what to make of my facemask, and whether I’m still the man she married.”
“What do I have to do with that?” asked Umbo. He hated the resentful sound of his own voice.
“If I have you with me, you can swear that it’s really me behind this mask,” said Loaf. “You can show that you accept me as myself, and by being there at all, you’ll prove I didn’t wander off and abandon you and Rigg—because if I come back without you, that’s what she’ll accuse me of.”
“It isn’t just your wife,” said Param. “What will all the other people in your town think of you?”
“They’ll think of me the way they think of burn victims who lived and are now covered with horrible scars,” said Loaf. “They’ll scream and run away for a while, and then, because I’m bigger than they are, I’ll beat the crap out of anybody who thinks they can drive me out of town, and then they’ll get used to me.”
