Fretting about it would not relieve his ignorance or allow him any insight into what it would be like, and how he would deal with it. There was a very good chance—the ship’s computer had implied as much several times—that in trying to make any of these possible jumps, Noxon would find himself stranded outside the rational universe and never be able to get back. If this happened in the cold of empty space, his last moments would be mercifully brief. And he would not spend them wishing he could have saved Garden—if he failed and died, it would no longer be his responsibility.

Only if he failed but lived would he need to regret whatever mistakes he might be about to make that would lead to that failure.

Not a productive line of thought.

But as he walked from Larfold to Ramfold, he gradually lost interest in all the thoughts that he had wanted to think, and by the time he reached the Wall, he was weary of the journey. He even got to the point where he started speaking now and then to the twenty mice embedded in his clothing and in his small pack of tools and supplies. They must have been getting bored, too, because they answered now and then. Not that there was any real attempt at conversation. They might be sentient beings with a lot of human genes in common, but they were definitely not of the same village or the same tribe as Noxon. They had little in common, except this mission.

It was no problem for Noxon to pass through the Wall without one of his erstwhile human companions. The computers did not bother distinguishing between the two Riggs, so they were both exempt from the rule. He knew that the ships’ computers monitored the Wall continuously, and when he entered Ramfold, that meant the expendable Ramex would be alert to his presence. So in the midst of the Wall he spoke aloud. “I’d like the flyer, please, Father.”

Since he had had no itinerary, being content to eat whatever came to hand as he traveled, as he emerged from the Wall he had no idea where in Ramfold he might be, except that he was near the eastern Wall somewhere well to the north of the latitude of Aressa Sessamo. This was wild land, where various villages and tribes lived in an uneasy relationship with the central government. Never conquered and never assimilated into the Stashiland culture, these people paid, not taxes, but tribute. And not very much of that, because they were poor.

Or at least they made themselves seem poor when the emissaries of the Sessamids or the taxmen of the People’s Revolutionary Council came for a visit. Who knew? A few of their people spoke Stashi; nobody from Stashiland spoke their language.

Except Noxon, since he had passed through the Wall and had all possible human languages instilled in him.