“Think, Rigg. When Umbo and Param prevented those plague-infected mice from boarding the Visitors’ ship, they made the decision that saving human life on Garden was not worth wiping out human life on Earth. There’s actually a limit to what they would allow the mice to do in order to save our world.”

“Noxon’s going to take mice with him.”

“Not plague mice, Rigg,” said Ram Odin. “I’m telling you that yes, you can prevent the destruction of Garden and yes, in the process there may be people you have to kill or cause not to exist in order to prevent the death of a world. But you try to make as little change as possible. You don’t just decide that to save this one girl, you can wipe out innocent children and make it so their lives never happen.”

Rigg just sat there, not really thinking, because he knew that he wasn’t going to prevent Onishtu’s death after all, but he hated himself for listening to Ram Odin, and he now felt as ashamed as if he had stood at the door and watched the murder and had done nothing to prevent it. Because that was pretty much how things stood. He had the power to stop the rape and murder, and he wasn’t going to stop it, and it hurt.

“Rigg,” said Ram Odin. “I’m only urging you to follow the course you and Umbo have followed all along. Minimal change. All the things you did affected mostly yourselves, and nobody else’s life was going to be all that changed by it. And you were contained within Ramfold, so nothing you did could possibly transform any of the other wallfolds. Noxon and Param went off by themselves to practice chronomancy, so they wouldn’t go back in time where it might change the course of the Larfolders’ lives. And in Yinfold, you didn’t prevent the adulterous pair and you didn’t even tell on them. In fact, you covered up their betrayal so that greater evil wouldn’t come from it.”

“Adultery is not the rape and murder of a child.”

“I know that,” said Ram Odin. “And so do you. I’m talking about the principle of minimal change.”

“To be able to stop it, and choose not to, that makes me complicit.”