Because the facemask picked up subtle nuances he would normally have missed, Rigg could trust his judgment more than he used to, when it came to discerning whether people were telling him the truth. He became mostly convinced that Ram Odin meant what he was saying, whether it was true or not.

“So if we skip Janefold,” said Rigg, “where next?”

“Anywhere else. When I said this was the only one I’d resist your visiting, I meant it.”

“Singhfold,” said Rigg.

“An intriguing one. The only wallfold where the crater from the ship’s impact is the most level ground. Singhfold is mountainous, with lots of valleys and a huge range of cultures.”

“Are the individual tribes very small? That usually implies that the culture isn’t going to rise very high.”

“There is a broad, well-watered coastal plain where some pretty high civilizations have risen and fallen. But most of the people, most of the time, have lived in those isolated valleys. Shall we give it a go?”

“I reserve the right to come back to Janefold. To do it last.”

“Whenever you go there, Rigg,” said Ram Odin, “you’ll do it last.”

What Rigg thought was: I’ll go back in time, to when the colony in that wallfold was young, and so were the diseases that infest them. Because people who live in the constant immanence of sudden, miserable death by an invisible hand—it has to change them.

And if we ever have to protect ourselves against the people of Earth . . .

“Ram Odin,” said Rigg. “All this information about Janefold was available to the Odinfolders, right?”

“I kept a few secrets, but not that. Yes, they knew.”

“And the mice can move things remotely, through space and time. Things as small as DNA molecules.”

“Those are big molecules.”

“They’re still molecules,” said Rigg.

“That’s how Umbo was made. By genetic manipulation conducted remotely, by the mice.”

“So the mice that were boarding the Visitors’ ship, the ones that Umbo and Param warned the Visitors about—they could have gotten their diseases from Janefold.”

“You don’t know if a disease is virulent unless you test it,” said Ram Odin. “Janefold is by far the best disease laboratory in the world.”

Rigg chuckled at himself. “I wasn’t sure if Umbo and Param were right about the mice being sent to Earth to wipe out the human race. Where would they get such a disease? And I didn’t believe you, though I didn’t disbelieve you, either. About Janefold.”

“But combine the two doubts, and . . . certainty?” asked Ram Odin.

“Not certainty. But a major shift in my view, yes.”

“So you’ll stay away from Janefold. For real this time, not just an empty promise to placate me?”

“The mice got their species-wrecking plague from somewhere.”

“Oh, you might go farther,” said Ram Odin. “They probably enhanced it, and tested it in some of the villages.”