Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card
“Umbo,” said Rigg. “I’m the demon.”
Umbo looked at him with a little anger showing. “That’s not even close to being funny.”
“Come on, didn’t you say we used to play at being the W.S.?”
“The what?”
“The Wandering Saint.”
“How are we going to get the blessing if you ridicule this place, and him, and all he did for travelers?”
Now Rigg began to see why Father had warned him never to come up against a man’s religion. “Nothing makes people angrier than finding out somebody thinks they’re wrong about how the universe works.” It had been a mistake to try to tell Umbo anything. “Sorry,” said Rigg.
“No you’re not,” said Umbo. “You weren’t even joking. Do you really think that you’re a demon?”
“I’m thirteen years old, and I’m just ordinary.” Then Rigg walked out of the shrine, to show that he thought the discussion was over. If Umbo refused to drop the matter, then this idea of traveling together wasn’t going to work.
Umbo stayed inside the shrine for a while, then came out, acting a little huffish as he gathered up his few things. Clearly he was ready to go, and was marking time until he could say what he needed to say.
Rigg was about to tell him that it was all right, Umbo could go back home and Rigg would continue his journey alone. But Umbo spoke first. “You’re not ordinary.”
“Is that good or bad?” asked Rigg.
“I’m sorry I got so angry. I’ve just never—nobody ever says a bad thing about the Wandering Saint. And nobody calls him the ‘W.S.’”
Rigg wasn’t going to play this game—the apology that was really just a continuation of the argument.
“Believe what you want,” said Rigg.
“I was thinking I should leave you. Go back home before you bring down a curse on us.”
Oh, so the W.S. has the evil eye now, thought Rigg. But he didn’t say anything.
“I don’t know if it’s safe to travel with you if you’re going to mock him like that,” said Umbo, and he sounded afraid as well as angry. “But then I remembered how your father talked about saints and demons, back when he was teaching me . . . things. So you were only talking like your dad.”
Rigg remembered now that Father had taken Umbo out on walks in the woods or through the fields. Not recently, but when they were both about eight or nine. And Father was teaching him?
“For what it’s worth, I wasn’t mocking,” said Rigg, “I was realizing something.”
“That you’re a demon?” said Umbo scornfully. “I know you’re not.”
“No, I realized that the demon in the Wandering Saint story wasn’t a demon at all,” said Rigg. “So I’m not a demon, but I’m the person who did the things that the demon in the story supposedly did—and before you start getting mad at me again, you watched me do it.”
“The Wandering Saint was hundreds of years ago,” said Umbo. He was barely containing his impatience.
“I’m not lying, and I’m not joking,” said Rigg. “When I was trying to save your brother, the reason I couldn’t do it was because this man appeared. I was jumping to try to get to your brother, and suddenly there he was.” There was no reason to complicate things by trying to explain about the paths and how for the first time ever they turned into people. “I fell into him and it knocked him into the water.”
“I didn’t see anything like that.”
“I know you didn’t,” said Rigg. “I’m not saying you saw him—he was in the past. I’m saying you saw me do the things the demon does in that story.”
“So he’s there hundreds of years ago, and you’re there a couple of days ago, and you bump into him and knock him into the water?”
“Exactly,” said Rigg, ignoring the tone of mockery in Umbo’s voice. “The water swept him over the edge, but he caught himself on the very same rock where Kyokay was hanging on. Kyokay in the present, and him in the past, and they overlapped. His hand was completely covering Kyokay’s hand.”
Umbo rolled his eyes and jammed his hat on his head, sausage and all.
“Why not wait to make up your mind until you hear me out?” said Rigg. “Even if you don’t believe me, I know it happened, and if you believe in saints and demons and curses, which I think are impossible, why not consider the possibility that I saw and touched a man from the past at the same time I was trying to get past the man so I could grab your brother’s arm?”
“‘Consider the possibility,’” Umbo echoed. “You really do sound like your father.”
“And was my father stupid or a liar, so that you have to reject anybody who sounds like him?”
Umbo’s face suddenly changed. “No,” he said. “Your father wasn’t stupid. Or a liar.” He looked thoughtful.
“So I had to get past this man’s hand so I could save Kyokay. I pounded on his hand. Then he grabs my other arm and I can see he’s going to pull me over—I mean, he outweighed me by about twice, it’s not like he could have held on to me and dragged himself up on the rock. So I pried up his fingers. Two fingers. So he’d let go of me.”
“I knew I saw you trying to pry up Kyokay’s hand!” said Umbo, angry again.
“You did not!” cried Rigg. “You saw me making a prying motion but you never saw me holding on to Kyokay’s fingers because I never touched him. I couldn’t! The W.S. was in the way! It was his fingers I was prying—fingers that you couldn’t see because he was still trapped back there in the past.”
“You just don’t know when to stop, do you,” said Umbo.
“I’m telling the truth,” said Rigg. “Believe what you want to.”
“The W.S.—the Wandering Saint was three hundred years ago!” Umbo shouted at him.
“Father warned me not to tell anybody anything about what I do,” said Rigg. “And now I see why. Go home. I’m done with you.”
“No!” shouted Umbo. “Don’t do this!”
Rigg forced himself to calm down. “I’m not doing anything,” he said. “I told you a true story, you think I’m lying, and I don’t see how we can travel together after that.”
“What you said about your father,” said Umbo. “Warning you not to tell people about what you do.”
“Right, well, I don’t do anything.”
“Yes you do, and you have to tell me.”
“I don’t tell things to people who believe I’m a liar,” said Rigg. “It’s a waste of breath.”
“I’ll listen, I swear I will,” said Umbo.
Rigg couldn’t understand why Umbo had suddenly changed—why he was now so eager to hear. But Umbo seemed sincere. Almost pleading.
He could almost hear Father saying, “You don’t have to answer someone just because he asks you a question.” And so Rigg replied as Father had taught him to—with another question. “Why do you want me to tell you?”
“Because maybe you’re not the only one with a secret your father said never to tell anybody,” said Umbo softly.
“So are you going to tell me yours?” asked Rigg.
“Yes,” said Umbo.
Rigg waited.
“You first,” said Umbo, even more softly. Like he was suddenly very shy. Like Rigg was dangerous and Umbo didn’t want to offend him.
But Father had known a secret of Umbo’s, one that he had never told to Rigg. So maybe that meant Father would approve of Rigg trusting Umbo.
“I see paths,” said Rigg. “I see them wherever any person or animal has ever gone. And that’s not really it, either. I don’t see them, not with my eyes, I just know where they are. They can be on the other side of a bunch of trees or behind a hill or inside the walls of a house, and I can close my eyes and the paths are still there.”
“Like . . . a map?”
“No. Like . . . streams of dust, strings of dust, cobwebs in the air. Some of them are new, and some old. Human paths are different from animal paths, and there are colors, or something like colors, depending on how old they are. But it means that
Umbo’s eyes were wide, but he said nothing. No mockery now, no accusations.
“Up there at the top of Stashi falls, just as I was trying to get to your brother, everything changed. All of a sudden it was like the paths slowed down. I hadn’t ever realized they were moving, but when they slowed down I could see that the paths were not something the people left behind as they passed—they were the people, and I was seeing into the past. Only everything had always moved so fast that I didn’t realize it.”
“Everything slowed down,” said Umbo.
“Or my mind sped up,” said Rigg. “Either way, the paths became people doing the same motions, over and over. Except when I looked at one of them, concentrated on him—then he did it just the once. I figured he wasn’t real. Just a vision of the past, like the paths I see. I walk right through them all the time. So I lunged at the stone—and I hit him and knocked him off. He wasn’t a dream after all, he was solid and real. Solid enough that I could knock him down, pound his hand, pry up his fingers. I didn’t know how to get rid of him. And Kyokay died while I was trying.”
Umbo sank to the ground. “Do you know why time slowed down? Why the paths turned into people? Into the Wandering Saint?”
Rigg shook his head, but even though he didn’t have an explanation, Umbo seemed to believe him now.
“I did it,” Umbo said. “You might have saved Kyokay, except time slowed down and that’s why the Wandering Saint appeared.” His face twisted with anguish. “I couldn’t see him. How could I know that I was making him appear?”
Now Rigg understood why Umbo had started to believe him. Umbo’s secret, the one that Father had told him never to tell, was a strange gift of his own. “You had something to do with that slowing down of time.”
“Your father noticed me doing it,” said Umbo. “When I was little. That’s why he came to the shop so often. He talked to me about what I could do. It used to be I could only slow down time around myself—you know, when I wanted to keep playing for a while longer. I guess what I was really doing was slowing down time for everybody else, or speeding it up for me, but I was little, and what I saw was that everybody else started moving really slowly and I had time to do whatever I wanted to do. It could only last a few minutes, but your father knew what I was doing somehow, and he gave me exercises to do so I could learn how to control it. So I could slow time down exactly where I wanted it to slow, and nowhere else. When I was running up Cliff Road and I was out of breath and exhausted and I caught a glimpse of Kyokay falling, I . . . slowed him down. I mean, I practically stopped him.”
“Father never said anything about you,” said Rigg. “I mean, about you having a . . . thing like that.”
“He was a man who could keep a secret, wasn’t he?”
Like never mentioning that Rigg’s mother wasn’t even dead—yes, he could keep a secret all right.
“But this explains it,” said Rigg. “Why I don’t remember anything about this W.S. I mean, I don’t understand it, but it at least makes some kind of weird sense. I was the one who was in the story. Until you slowed time and I knocked the man off the rock, he probably never fell at all. But once it happened, then the past changed for everybody else. Now everybody knew the stories of the W.S.—except me. Because I was the one who was there with him, and I did it. So my past wasn’t changed. I don’t remember it, because to me it didn’t happen until yesterday.
“Excuse me while I stab myself in the eye with a stick,” said Umbo. “None of this makes any sense. I mean, I was there, too.”
“But you didn’t slow down time for yourself,” said Rigg. “You didn’t touch the man, and I did. Why else does this shrine exist to honor a man I never heard of, only you say everybody knows about the Wandering Saint and his story. But I remember doing everything the demon supposedly did. So because I was the one who made the change, I can still remember how it used to be, and everyone else remembers how it is now.”
“Rigg,” said Umbo, “I don’t know why I decided to ask you to let me travel with you. Talk about this all you want, but I did not need to find out that I caused Kyokay’s death by stopping time. Do you get that? That’s the only change I care about!”
“I know,” said Rigg. “Me too.” But as soon as he said it, he knew it wasn’t true. Somehow the combination of their gifts had changed the world. Because they were ignorant of what was going on, it had prevented him from saving Kyokay. But the solution to ignorance was obvious. They had to do it again so they could figure out how it worked.
Rigg took Umbo by the arm and started leading him—no, almost dragging him—toward the road.
“By the Wanderi—” Umbo began. “What are you doing?”
“We’re going to the road. The Great North Road. The place is thick with paths. Every one of them is a person. It isn’t just a few like right there at the edge of the cliff. It’s hundreds of them, thousands if we go back far enough. I want you to slow down time so I can see them. I’m going to prove to you that I’m not making any of this up.”
“What are you going to do?”
“See whether we can do this thing on purpose.” When they got to the highway, Rigg walked out into the middle of the road. “Do you see anybody?”
“Just a crazy guy named Rigg.”
“Slow down time. Do it—for me, right here. Slow it down.”
“Are you insane?” asked Umbo. “I mean, I know you’re insane, one way or another. Because if people become solid when I slow down time, you’re going to get trampled to death by ten thousand travelers.”
“I think the only one who gets solid is the one I’m concentrating on,” said Rigg. “Slow me down.”
“So you turn people solid just by concentrating on them?”
“While you’re slowing them down, yes,” said Rigg. “Or at least I think that’s how it worked. Here, I’ll leave the food by the side of the road, so if I do get trampled, you can have all of it.”
“Wow, thanks,” said Umbo. “Dead friend, free lunch.”
“Are we still friends?” asked Rigg. “Even though we remember the past so differently? I never played Wandering Saint with you—we played hero games, that’s what I remember. But at least we both remember playing something together, right? That means we’re still friends.”
“Yes,” said Umbo. “That’s why I’m here with you, fungus-head, because I’m your friend and you’re my friend and by the way, I have very clear memories of your playing Wandering Saint with me and Kyokay because you did all these death scenes of the bear and the wolf and everybody the Wandering Saint defeated. That happened. So there is some version of your life where you lived in a world where the Wandering Saint was respected by everybody.”
“You’re right, this is complicated,” said Rigg. “It’s like there are two versions of me, only I’m the wrong one—I’m here in the world with a W.S., even though I never lived in it, and the me who did live in it, he’s gone.”
“Like the me,” said Umbo, “who lived in the world with your hero games, whatever they are.”
“Slow down time for me,” said Rigg. “Let’s just do it and see.”
“Kyokay got killed by doing crazy stuff on an impulse. Think this through, Rigg. Don’t stand in the middle of the road. Come to the edge. There have to be fewer people here at the edge.”
“Right,” said Rigg. “That’s good, that’s right.” He walked out of the middle of the road and then looked back at Umbo. “Now.”
“Not while you’re looking at me,” said Umbo.
“Why not? What happens, your pants fall down?”
“You weren’t looking at me when I did it up on the cliff,” said Umbo. “And shouldn’t you be watching the road so that nobody bumps into you?”
“Umbo, I can’t look both way
“You’re going to die.”
“Maybe,” said Rigg. “And maybe my body will just disappear in our time here and I’ll show up as a mysterious corpse in the past. Maybe I’ll be the Magical Dead Kid and they’ll build a little temple for me.”
“I really hate you,” said Umbo. “I always have.”
“Slow down time for me,” said Rigg.
And, just like that, with Umbo glaring at him, it started to happen. Umbo hadn’t waved his hands or muttered something like the magicians did when traveling players came to town.
Rigg deliberately kept his eyes out of focus—it was pretty easy, considering what came into view when time slowed. The middle of the road was so full of blur that Rigg was grateful he had moved to the edge. Because here the blurs became more individual, he could see people’s faces. Just glimpses as they blurred past, but he finally picked one man and watched how he hurried, looking neither left nor right. He seemed to be a man of authority by his attitude, and he was dressed opulently, but in an outlandish costume whose like Rigg had never seen before.
At his hip, his belt held a scabbard with a sword in it. On the other side, the side nearer to Rigg, a sheathed knife had been thrust into his belt.
Rigg fell into step beside him, reached down, snatched the knife and drew it out. The man saw him, reached out immediately to grab him or take back the knife—but Rigg merely looked away and focused on somebody else, a woman, and at the same time he called out to Umbo, “Bring me back!”
Just like that, all the blur people became mere paths of light, and Rigg and Umbo were alone on the road.
Rigg was still holding the knife.
Now he could see that it was quite a lavish thing. Fine workmanship in the metal of the hilt, with jewels set in it that seemed the equal in quality of any of those Father had left for him, though they were smaller. And the thing was sharp-looking; it felt wicked and well-balanced in his hand.