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“He’d just wait for another day. You plan on spending your life watching her?”
“Maybe I’d have a talk with him. He’s bigger than me but with the facemask I’m a match for anyone.”
“A match? How would such a fight end?”
“I wouldn’t have any qualms about killing a murderer.”
“But when you do it, he won’t be a murderer yet.”
“Even if he hasn’t done it yet, he built that house with space behind the wall to hide a corpse.”
“I’m surprised the stink of putrefaction didn’t bring them.”
Rigg shook his head. “The body wouldn’t have rotted yet when they went searching. And people avoid a house under construction that hasn’t been offered yet. I would have to actually go to that time to know whether the house was finished at the time, but I’m guessing not. I think he took her to a house that only had the walls up to ground level, say, and he said, ‘I’m building this for you, say you’ll marry me,’ but after she went missing, he still had months of work to do on it. So they’d think he hadn’t asked a girl yet, and the girl he wanted was one of the ones of age. If he was smart, he’d wait until a likely girl accepted another man’s house, and then stop his own building. So nobody would think he built the house for Onishtu.”
“What you’re really saying,” said Ram Odin, “is that you prefer to kill this man. You think he deserves to die. And I agree—today, even after all these years, he deserves whatever penalty these people put on a rapist and cold-blooded murderer. But when you go back in time, Rigg, he won’t be a murderer.”
“No, he’ll just be a man planning murder.”
“But at that point, he still might not do it. He might even believe that he won’t really do it, even as he hollows out that space for her body.”
“It doesn’t matter. I know he does it.”
“You know, from here, that he did it. But when you’re there, do you see his future path?”
“Of course not.”
“You can’t just go killing people because you know they’re going to do something terrible.”
“Explain to me why not,” said Rigg.
“Because until he does the murder, he doesn’t deserve to die.”
Rigg shook his head. “But I know.”
“But justice doesn’t know,” said Ram Odin. “Look at it the other way. In your own life, when you did something stupid and wrong, Umbo would appear to you and warn you not to do it after all. So you were constantly undoing your own actions and trying something else. So . . . did you do those bad things, or didn’t you?”
“The me-that-was did them, but I didn’t.”
“Should you be punished for your misdeeds? How many times did Umbo and Loaf try to break into that bank to get the missing jewel back? Are they thieves?”
Rigg shook his head.
“And why not? Say it, Rigg Sessamekesh.”
“Because they didn’t actually do it. The realities in which they did are gone.”
“And the reality in which this man killed Onishtu also doesn’t exist, at the time you plan to kill him.”
“It’s not the same.” Rigg understood his point, but he couldn’t doubt the reality of what he knew about this man. And how much more valuable Onishtu’s life was than any justice owed to her murderer.
“Fine,” said Ram Odin. “I see you’re not convinced, but I don’t mind, because that’s not my real argument.”
“You have another?” Rigg almost laughed. “A stronger one?”
“Yes,” said Ram Odin. “If you save her, will she never die?”
