Umbo listened to Loaf and Leaky as they planned the journey to get Leaky a facemask of her very own. He had misgivings, but there was no point in arguing with them. They were going to go, and they needed Umbo because the way Rigg set up the rules, they could only go through the Wall if two of them were together. Two, that is, of the original party, which had included Umbo and Loaf, but not Leaky.

“The good thing about a journey to the Wall right now,” said Loaf, “is that nobody’s looking for us yet.”

“I’m still not used to this,” said Leaky. “You say half the kingdom is looking for you, because you escaped from this General Citizen and then helped the queen’s daughter and Rigg escape from the People’s Revolutionary Council, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

It was only then that Umbo realized that their journey might not be such an easy thing. “I know another thing that hasn’t happened yet,” said Umbo.

“Your beard?” said Loaf.

“Rigg hasn’t taken command of the ships yet. That won’t happen for a year, almost. So if we go to the Wall now, the ships’ computers won’t know to let up on the Wall.”

“What’s a computer?” asked Leaky.

“If I understood it,” said Loaf, “I’d tell you. Whatever it is, it talks but the voice comes out of nowhere, and if it feels like it, it tells you things you need to know. But not enough things you need to know.”

“Did you hear me?” asked Umbo.

“I’m thinking about that,” said Loaf. “And I think what we’ll do is go to the Wall, and then you take us into the future, after the queen and General Citizen have left, and you’ll take us through then. That’s after Rigg’s order, isn’t it?”

“But I can’t do that,” said Umbo. “Go into the future.”

“You do it all the time,” said Loaf. “When we all went back to watch the battle between the bare humans and the facemasks, you took us all into the future.”

“No,” said Umbo. “I stayed in the future and brought you all back to me. I was the anchor.”

“But when you went to the Visitors’ ship, that was years in the future.”

“And I didn’t do that,” said Umbo. “Param did. When she slices time, she can take us into the future very quickly. By thousands of tiny little skips. Then I brought us back to the past in one big leap. That’s just what each of us can do.”

“Rigg skips into the future, doesn’t he?” asked Loaf.