Ruins (Pathfinder Trilogy) (3 page)

But animals came and went all the time here, Rigg could see. One in particular had been in and out of this grove several times in the past few hours. He recognized its path.

“We have a friend here,” said Rigg.

The others looked around, startled.

“Our feathered friend,” said Rigg. “The beast that led us into the past and through the Wall.”

“I thought he went crazy when we popped back into the present and the Wall came back,” said Loaf.

“He’s not in the Wall anymore. He came here. He’s been going up to the trees. Tree to tree.”

“He didn’t look like a climber to me,” said Loaf.

“Or a bark-eater,” said Umbo.

“We wouldn’t know
what
he looked like,” said Olivenko. “There aren’t any like him in the modern world.”

“He can’t have gotten far,” said Rigg. “He was here not half an hour ago.”

“You know we only have that Vadesh’s word that the water’s not safe,” said Olivenko.

“He can’t lie,” said Umbo.

“And who told us that he can’t?” asked Olivenko. “‘Hi, I can’t possibly lie to you.’ Isn’t that the first thing a liar would say?”

“He’s just like Father,” said Rigg, “and Father never lied to me.”

“He didn’t exactly open up and bare his soul to you, either,” said Loaf.

“He didn’t tell you about me,” said Param.

Rigg started to answer. “He did when he was . . .” But then he realized that Father hadn’t been dying, he had just been hiding behind a fallen tree, pretending to be trapped under it. Lying to Rigg.

Rigg covered his eyes with one hand. “I still live in the world
he built around me. All his teachings and talk, and I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t.”

“Welcome to adult life,” said Loaf.

“I’m not an adult,” said Rigg.

“Really?” said Umbo. “Well, I think when you’re in charge of yourself, you’re an adult.”

“Oh, right,” scoffed Loaf.

“Plenty of full-size grownups don’t do half as well as me and Rigg, thanks,” said Umbo.

Again Rigg wanted to know what Umbo had found. What he had in his pocket.

They heard a snorting noise from three rods away. Quietly they spread out to surround it. Rigg looked at Umbo and rolled his eyes. None of the others knew how to walk stealthily. Not that they had to. The beast was making so much noise it couldn’t have heard them.

It was indeed the beast with the barbed feathers, and it was hitting the side of its head against a tree, then scraping the same area on the bark. As Rigg got closer, he could see that he had mud on that side of his head.

Not mud. The thing that looked like mud was actually another creature in its own right. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see its tiny faint path moving through the air right along with the barbfeather’s path the whole time it had been in the woods.

Loaf and Umbo, who had both dealt with animals, were much closer to it now; Olivenko and Param were hanging back. They were city people.

“Don’t get too close,” said Rigg.

“What’s it got on its face?” asked Loaf.

“My guess is it drank from the stream,” said Umbo.

“I think so too,” said Rigg.

“You mean it picked up that parasite? That facemask thing?” asked Olivenko.

“Whatever it’s got on its head, it’s alive. A separate creature. With its own path.”

“Every time the beast smacks it or scrapes at it,” said Umbo, “it gets bigger. Spreads more, I mean. There’s a strand of it going into the poor beast’s ear.”

“So all the barbfeather’s efforts to get rid of it are actually helping it attach more firmly,” said Rigg.

“What a clever evolutionary ploy,” said Olivenko. “Facemasks that could make use of the beating and scraping would have a better chance of survival.”

“Maybe all the fear and aversion allow the facemask to find the right parts of the brain to attach to in order to get control,” suggested Rigg.

“You sound so excited,” said Param. “Has anybody noticed what this means?”

“That Vadesh wasn’t lying about the parasite, you mean?” asked Loaf. “That’s obvious.”

“I mean that we’re totally dependent on Vadesh for our drinking water,” said Param.

“You know,” said Umbo, “I’m thinking we ought to be able to find a place to slink back through the Wall and just figure out how to stay alive in our own wallfold.”

“Let’s see,” said Loaf. “A land with one dangerous parasite, or a place where thousands of soldiers will be looking for us and everybody else will be happy to turn us over to them in exchange for a reward.” He made weighing motions with his hands.

“They’re only looking for me and Param,” said Rigg. “Why don’t the rest of you go back?”

“And leave us here alone?” Param didn’t even try to conceal the panic in her voice.

“They’d still catch us,” said Loaf. “And then torture us till we told them where you were. And since they wouldn’t believe the truth . . .”

“I was just saying that you don’t
have
to stay here,” said Rigg. “I didn’t claim it would be perfectly safe.”

“What do we do about this poor animal?” asked Param.

Rigg looked at her in surprise. “Do?”

“It’s in so much distress,” said Param.

“Of course it is,” said Rigg. “It’s got a parasite sticking to its head that’s trying to invade its brain.”

“Well, we brought it here,” said Param.

“I suppose we did,” said Rigg. “But it’s
from
this world and, if Vadesh is telling the truth—and about these facemask things he seems to be—then the parasites are natives here, just like old barbfeather. So if we hadn’t pulled him to
now
to run into this parasite, he might just as easily have had exactly the same thing happen to him back then.”

“Except that the world was just about to end for him anyway,” said Loaf. “Our ancestors were about to wipe him out along with all his cousins, right? We
saved
him.”

“I can see now that he ought to be grateful,” said Param.

“Look, if you gave him a choice between parasite on his face and dead, what do you think he’d choose?” asked Rigg.

“Look what he actually
is
choosing,” said Umbo.

Param nodded but she clearly didn’t like it. “Life,” she said.

“Animals that don’t cling to it no matter what don’t survive long enough to make babies,” said Olivenko. “We don’t want to die.”

“Then how do you explain suicides?” asked Loaf.

“I don’t,” said Olivenko.

“Wasn’t Father’s death a kind of suicide?” asked Param.

It took Rigg a moment to realize that even though Param was his full sister, she wasn’t talking about the man
he
had called Father—the Golden Man, the Wandering Man, the machine called Ram, who had trained her and Umbo and Rigg in how to use their time-altering talents. She was talking about their real father, whom Rigg had never met: Father Knosso, who had passed unconscious through the Wall on a boat, and then was dragged from the boat and drowned by some kind of manlike sea creatures in another wallfold.

“It wasn’t suicide,” said Olivenko angrily. As a young scholar in the Great Library he had been Knosso’s friend and assistant. “He didn’t intend to die.”

“No,” said Param. “But he knew he might, and he threw his life at it as if nothing else mattered. Not me, certainly.”

“He loved you,” said Olivenko.

“But he loved his experiment more,” said Param.

The barbfeather, Rigg noticed, had stopped beating and scraping its face against the tree. It was turning its gaze toward
each one of them who spoke. And it didn’t just turn the eye that wasn’t covered by the facemask. It turned as if it had two good eyes. As if it could still see
through
the thing.

In the silence after Param’s last few bitter words, the barbfeather trotted straight toward Rigg.

“Rigg!” shouted Umbo.

“It’s coming at you!” warned Loaf.

Rigg reached out his hand and the barbfeather stopped and sniffed it. “He wasn’t
charging
at me,” said Rigg.

“Keep your hand away!” said Umbo. “Do you want the facemask to jump over to you?”

“Vadesh says they can only attach in water. And not after they’ve already attached to . . . something.” Rigg had almost said “somebody.”

“So we’re believing everything he says now?” asked Umbo.

“He didn’t lie about the facemasks,” said Rigg. “He might be lying about some things, but he’s not lying about that. And he didn’t follow us here, either, or try to prevent us from leaving. Maybe all he really did was lead us to safe water.”

“Staying suspicious is what keeps me alive,” said Loaf. “That survival instinct, you know?”

“I’m for suspicion, too,” said Rigg. “But at some point you have to place your bet and let it ride.”

The barbfeather was still sniffing his hand.

“I think he smells himself on my hand,” said Rigg. “That’s the hand I held against his back as we went through the Wall.”

“And there’s no reason he should fear the smell of humans,” said Olivenko.

The barbfeather abruptly turned its head, pressing the facemask against Rigg’s fingers. Rigg recoiled at once.

“Look at your hand!” shouted Umbo. “Is anything sticking to it?”

“What do you think, that the facemask just made my hand pregnant?” asked Rigg.

“They might have more than one way of reproducing,” said Umbo. “Vadesh said they were adaptable.”

“Maybe it makes babies on the surface of its skin,” said Param, “and rubs them off on you.”

“Or on tree bark,” said Olivenko.

Rigg considered this. “It felt dryish and a little rough. Like unglazed clay pots. And there is truly, absolutely nothing on my hand. Now let’s get back to the spot we picked and prepare some food.”

“What do we do about this . . . this . . . what did you call it, Rigg?” asked Param.

“Barbfeather. Just a descriptive name. And we’re not going to do anything about it.”

“What if it follows us to our camp?” she asked.

“If it lies down, don’t snuggle up to it,” said Rigg. “Those feathers really are barbed.”

“That’s it?”

“What do you want me to do, Param, kill it?”

“Isn’t that what you and your father—I mean Ram—isn’t that what you did with animals?”

“We killed the ones whose fur we could sell,” said Rigg. “Do
you
want a coat made out of that?”

“Gloves,” said Loaf. “I think Leaky could use gloves like that—for punching some of our customers who drink too much and won’t leave the roadhouse quietly.”

They left the barbfeather and set about making camp. But soon it joined them again. Their provisions were meager, but they had been on the road for a while and they were used to them. Rigg offered some of his food to the beast. It sniffed and then wandered away. “Must not smell like anything edible to him,” Rigg said.

“Doesn’t
taste
like anything edible to
me
,” said Olivenko.

“Wonder how that barbfeather would taste,” said Loaf, “if we could talk him into climbing into a stewpot for us.”

“I don’t think our bodies could make much use of his meat,” said Rigg, “even if we could keep it inside long enough to digest it.”

“Pretty image while I’m eating,” said Param.

“I had no idea you were so fussy,” said Rigg, with a grin. Param rolled her eyes.

“Why couldn’t we eat it?” asked Umbo.

“When they were testing me to see if I should get access to the library,” said Rigg, “I met a scientist in Aressa Sessamo who was separating out the plants and animals that came to this world with our ancestors—which is most of them—and the ones that evolved here, which is only a few. Every single one of them, Father and I had already identified as plants and animals that we can’t eat. Even dead, only certain carrion eaters will go after them. It’s as if we had two separate ecologies twined together. Father called them ‘mildly toxic’ and my guess is he knew.”

“So maybe that parasite can’t use our bodies either,” said Olivenko.

“But Vadesh says it can,” said Rigg.

“And yet you touched it,” said Param.

“Tomorrow let’s go back in time,” said Rigg. “When we’re rested and fresh. Come on, we passed through the Wall today. People tried to kill you and Umbo not that many hours ago, Param! Can’t we get some sleep?”

But when they finally cleaned up supper, laid out their dosses, and took up their sleeping positions, with Loaf on first watch, Rigg couldn’t sleep. Because as soon as he knew what the facemask’s path looked like, he began to find the same kind of path riding along with humans ten thousand years ago. Vadesh was telling the truth—humans
had
been infested with facemasks.

And the more of them Rigg followed, the more certain he became of a pattern. At first the facemasks had been rare and were never inside the city. Then they came along with humans when they approached the city in large groups. It looked to Rigg like war, or raiding parties.

But abruptly, about five hundred years before the city emptied out, all the facemasks were
inside
the city, and the only human paths without facemask paths traveling with them were outside the city—again in raiding parties.

The conclusion was obvious to Rigg. Halfway through the history of humans in this city, the ones infested with the facemask parasite became the possessors of the city, and the uninfected people were the ones who lived outside.

And the tallest buildings were not built until the city belonged
to the infested ones. Rigg knew this because none of the human paths rose up into the sky inside those towers until the relatively newer ones, the ones with facemask companions.

This is a city whose greatest buildings were erected by people with parasites embedded in their brains.

Now
that
was something Vadesh might have told them, if he were actually obeying the command to tell them everything. Which meant that he was deceiving them. He must have found some logical loophole in the orders Rigg had given him. Or maybe there
was
no deep law that required him to obey the first humans to pass through a Wall.

Eventually, exhaustion won and Rigg slept.