At the mention of the baby’s death, Leaky’s tears came afresh. “I can’t believe I told you,” she said. And then, “I can’t believe I went so long and never told you.”

“You’ve told me now,” said Loaf. “So hear me out. We might still have a baby, though it’s perilous, because it’ll look like me. But if you want to risk adding to the ugly in the world, then let’s see if the problem was me. But if the problem is an old injury of yours, then that’s the way it is.”

“But the facemask could have cured it.”

“It’s not a cure if it kills you,” said Loaf. “If you aren’t still my Leaky, then I don’t want you to have my babies. And as long as you are my Leaky, then I’m happy whether we have babies or not.”

She flung her arms around him and wept even more, and finally Umbo did the thing he should have done in the first place, and skipped into the future by a few hours.

They were lying on the ground. Leaky was nestled next to Loaf, his arm around her. She was asleep. Of course Loaf noticed Umbo’s return, but he raised a finger to signal silence. Umbo nodded, walked quietly away.

He took a long walk, and after a while the city came into view. The great empty city with its sad empty towers made of fieldsteel, which never weathered, never wore away. Would the fieldsteel outlast the great burning when all life on Garden was ended? Would they remain as the sole remnant of human life here? No, there were other monuments—the Tower of O was also of fieldsteel. And there were nineteen craters and upthrusts scattered around the world, where starships had crashed deliberately into the crust and changed the planet’s speed of rotation, lengthening the day and adding more debris to the Ring in the sky that made it so no clear night on Garden was ever fully dark.

That’s all we leave behind us. A few buildings and nineteen deformations of the land.

“Have you come for your facemask?” Vadeshex emerged from the door of the building where he had first served them water.

“For a drink, I suppose,” said Umbo. “And water for the ­others, though I didn’t bring their water bags.”

“I anticipated that,” said Vadeshex. “Being an old friend of the family, so to speak, I thought to welcome Leaky to Vadeshfold with some refreshment, food and drink. But she isn’t with you.”

“We ran into a messenger. From the future.”

“Then the messenger was you.”