Alternate Realities (48 page)

“Do you understand?” it asked again. (Another gliding move. Rafe-mind moved them back, but not far enough. It gained.) “Dangerous,” it said, “to move without looking. Where’s Cannibal? Where’s Worm? Are you sure?”

“Don’t look,” Paul whispered, shivering in their heart. “Don’t be tricked.”

“You’ve been ill-advised,” Rafe-voice urged, smooth, so very smooth. “Even death—can be remedied. Your copies are exact, down to the very spin of your particles. Your cellular information. Would you be reconstituted? I can do that much.”

Paul caught the breath he did not have, felt limbs that were not real—instincts yearned after life and breath, after humanity—

“No,” Rafe said. Just—
no
, unreasoning, suspicious. He was twelve again, dockside; the hand held out the coin, too large a coin for simple charity....
No
—from Jillan-mind, brittle-hard, plotting how to run.
Nothing’s free; not from this thing—”

“Look out!”
cried Paul.

The serpent-shape was quicker. Its vast body slammed down in front of them, turning about them, surrounding them with its coils.

“You just lost your chance,” it said.

“Lost,” Marandu whispered, fading. “They’ve failed.”

“Let me go to them!”
Paul cried. “Let me try!”

“Against a Kepta-form?” Marandu drew itself away, retreating in its dimness. And then it stopped, turned, gazing at them with Jillan’s calm face. “Bravery. Yes. I know.”

It shimmered out.

“Paul!”
Rafe cried.,

Then all his ghosts were gone.

Marandu with them. And the lights went out.

Disaster. <> had felt it, not unanticipated. <> felt <^>’s fear. It shivered through that portion of <^>self that remained partitioned outside Jillan-shape. There was irony in this: Jillan-mind was darkly stubborn, and <^> was trapped in that fierceness.

discovered that too. Discovered other things.

“O God,” Rafe Two murmured, arrived on that darkling plain. “What
is
that thing?”

“The others called it Worm,” Marandu said.

It came snuffling and limping toward them, tattered and missing legs among its segments. “Run,” it called to them multi-voice; and in other voices: “Fight.”

Then they saw the other thing, a thousand times its size.

“My friends,” it saluted them like thunder, rearing up to stare down at them with Rafe’s haggard face.

“Friends, hell,” Jillan said.

“It will take you,” Marandu said, a faint and fading voice.

“Damn you,” Rafe yelled at Marandu, snatched to hold it by the arm. “Don’t leave us—”

Marandu steadied, grew brighter then. “I’m very old,” it said, as if that were some grounds for its desertion. “Oldest of all but one.”

“So fight it,” Jillan said. “Where’s your guts?”

And Paul: “Help us. We don’t know what to do.”

There was silence. The serpent-glow flowed closer. It had Rafe’s voice, a whisper that murmured like the sea, but spoke no human tongue.

“Run! Fight!” Worn gibbered; but it did neither. Worm stayed, limping aimless circles on missing legs. “Help! Help! Help!”

“Marandu!” Paul cried.

The slim Jillan-body shuddered, once. “I will take you in,” Marandu said. “Partitioned—I can’t—”

Jillan-shape broke apart in shimmer. A larger glow appeared, folded about them, an order, a structure, a body vaster than their own.

Worm was in it, snuffling.

Move
, the impulse came, or something very like the command to legs and limbs.

“Go with it,” Rafe tried to say, at least he willed himself to say. He could stretch very far if he wished: or that was Marandu’s thought.

<>
was dying.
<>
knew distress at that. The crew had already passed. “Ship,”
<>
said, tried to say, “go home.”

But Ship could not/would not hear. The Collective had betrayed
<>,
implanting instructions
<>
could not override.

<>
died and remembered it when
<>
woke, with Ship long underway.

FIND. REPORT.
<>
obeyed, until
<>
had calculated that transmission scatter was too much, and the years too many, and nothing mattered any more but
<>
self.

<>
traveled. It was all
<>
had left.

<>
made
<>
self for company.
<>
sought other goals.

<>
took on passengers.

He/they/she and Worm ... participated in a body that had more limbs than they had collectively. They were old; and badly scared; and knew too much.

They/
<^>
were victims of
<>
self, helpless in their voyage. Passengers multiplied.
<>
took them in.
<> changed
and grew complex and made other selves.

<^>
shuddered, gazing at

in memory.

But one of <^>’s new-gained segments was of different mind.

Ship,
he thought, with vast, vast desire. He was structure; Paul was complexity; and Jillan—Jillan was going at that thing, possessed for once of strength and size and a wrath stored up for years.

swooped and struck.

They/Marandu moved, lancing through the patterns of the ship, darting this way and that at transmission speed, being here and there with electron lunacy.

“Aiiiiiieeee!”
Worm wailed, and discovered <((( them)))>self alive, to ((()))’s total startlememt.
“Aiiii-ya!
”

was in pursuit, was on them, through them.

“Hate you,” one thing said, collectively; Cannibal was tangled with it and it lusted, that was all that filled its mind.

And They/Marandu/Worm; no-failure, not-now—beyond clear thought, beyond reasoning, except that they were still alive, like Worm, who had been a pilot once, and hurled ((()))’s skill into their evasions in the patterns.

“Aiiiieeeiiiiii!”
Worm cried, going to the attack.

A red world lay in Marandu’s past, much loved betrayer—for that memory, Marandu fought.
“Lindy!”
Rafe yelled, and felt Jillan and Paul distinctly at his side. Their own focus was a little ship, a hope, pilot-skill and stubbornness ... no world to love at all, only Fargone’s hell.

A wall loomed up at them, Rafe-face amid it, howling as they merged.

<> was amazed.

Bravery, <^> had said. It was.

<> moved, with that same electron-swiftness as took <^> in.

<> dived after, rummaged through almost-congruencies, started ripping things into order in ’s distorted substance.

Merged—with <>’s own mad self; and <^>; and sucked up disordered bits of other things.

Worm—retreated, whimpering.

Cannibal fled, outclassed.

Only Paul One stood, howling rage at <>.

And two others of itself surrounded it, denying divisions.

Two more joined with Rafe-mind, such of it as remained. It clung to them.

One cast herself amid it all, discovering loyalties beyond herself. Her double chose another target.

<^> rode this last particle, straight to ’s heart.

<<<^/they + +>>> became <<^they>>.

Became<<^>>.

Then <>.

A shock went through the ship, a long silence.

Something very old had passed.

The passengers began at last to move. Certain ones fled for different refuges, old alignments having become impolitic, unsafe.

Worm danced, quite solemnly, for ((())) had gained a name. ((())) had become like Kepta in this, even if ((())) was Worm. ((())) had regained sanity; and pride; and glared from ((()))’s five eyes at Cannibal, who found it safer to retreat.

[] fled, precipitate.

<*> shivered, in deep mourning for <^>; for <^> had remembered <^>’s savagery at the last, and become quite sane.

<> stretched throughout the ship-body, taking all territories, all systems.

Trishanamarandu-kepta
came to fullest awareness, and looked about <>’s surroundings as <> had when <>’s voyage began.

And at what <> had retained within-the-shell. That too.

Rafe put out his hands in the dark. His fingers met the extended arms, hard metal, rigid. He tried to feel his way backward amid this maze. Razor steel sliced his back in more places than one. His questing hands met the same no matter where he turned.

“Kepta,” he said aloud, quite calmly; “Kepta—” Patiently. “I want the light back, Kepta; at least give me the light.”

Kepta might have lost; might have won; the blades might start to move of a sudden and dice him down to something disposable.

“I want the light!”
he cried.

Light blazed. He jerked, hit his back and arm against the knives and froze at the sting of wounds. The glittering arms were starkly poised about him, a web of razor steel and claws.

Rafe-shape phased in. “I’ve won,” it said.

“Who—won?”

“Kepta. Me.”

“
Which
of you?”

“Ah. Marandu told you.” Rafe/Kepta moved through the metal arms, through the razors, coming clear to view. “The original. Myself. The one who brought you here.”

“Either of you could have done that.”

“Either would be me. But both my copies are gone, dissipated.”

“Keep away from me!” And—
Either would be me
—sank in. He stared at it, finding the razor points at his back more comforting than its presence.

“Anxious still? It’s your doing, you know: all three of you. Yourself, for instance—It never could quite break you down, not while Paul was there. Not while there was any vestige of him. That’s your secret, your one secret. Responsibility. My double worked so hard keeping you alive. Mistake. And Paul: Paul One always trusted reason: and he couldn’t withstand it when he met it face to face in Jillan; he couldn’t bear that—or her solitude.”

“Where are they? Are they all right?”

“Jillan, now,” it said, inexorable. “Jillan was the crux. Marandu knew. She gave him—sanity. He was once very fierce—Marandu was, in certain causes. He’d forgotten all of them. And Worm—they called him Worm—he has affinity for you: nibbled up a bit of you, in your other form, as if he’d found one of his own missing bits.”

“Kepta—where are they?”

Rafe/Kepta’s face showed—it seemed—disappointment in him. A ghostly hand lifted, motioned to the center of the place, among the arms. “Come on, Rafe. Lie down. You’ll sleep now. I’ll keep my promise. We’ll go to Paradise.”

“I had to erase them, Rafe. I had no choice.”

“
You—
” He dodged past the arms, the blades, half-blind.

Snick-snick
—Arms moved in unison. Clamps seized his limbs and held, irresistible.

“Damaged,” Kepta said. “They were irrevocably changed. What would you have wanted me to do?”

Rafe wept. He shut his eyes and turned his head; it was all the movement left him.

“I’ll bring them back,” Kepta said.

“Damn you—” He rolled back his head, heaved uselessly against the unflexing arms. The strength went out of him. Resistence did, and gathered itself up again.

“They’ll be new again,” Kepta said. “You understand. What happened to them—won’t ever have happened—to
them
. The templates are clean of that. I do have charity.” The arms clattered and retracted,
snick!
“You can harm them, far more than I ever could. Do you understand that?”

“No,” he protested—everything.

“Not make them again?”

He wiped his eyes, hung there, his arms about the metal limb. It was cold. There was, for him, sensation; heat and cold; touch, taste; all the range of senses. “For what?” he asked. “What do you make them for in the first place?”

“Should I not?”

“You talk—” He caught his breath, caught his balance, straightened and walked over to sit on the smooth plastic bed amid the humps, the nodes, in the shining forest of the limbs, where it wanted him. “You talk about Paradise. Leaving me there. Forget that. I’m not leaving them to you, to make into what you want. Take me with them. Hear?”

“They’d object,” Kepta said. “I know them very well.”

“Damn you.” He shuddered, lifted up his arm, flesh and bone. “You want to strip me down to what they are? Do that. At least I could touch them then.”

“But you can. You already have. You’re not thinking straight. Don’t you know one Rafe-template’s
you
? In every respect—he’s you. You’ve already had your wish. He can touch them; be touched; touch
me
; do all the things you’d do. Dead, alive—that makes no difference. The only decisions are selfish ones.”

He wiped his eyes a second time, bleak and blank and knowing insanest truth.

“Think about it,” Kepta said. “There are choices.”

“What am I leaving them to? Where are you taking them?”

“Vega, maybe; you mentioned that. Altair. They interest me. Places that have names—are so rare in the universe.”

He looked at the doppelganger. His pulse picked up with hate. “Truth, Kepta. Once, the truth.”

Motives—”’

“—won’t make sense.
Make
them make sense. I want to know.”

“Say that I travel,” Kepta said. “And they will.”

“For
what
?”

“Don’t we all,” asked Kepta, “travel? Who asks why?”

“I do.”

“That is worth asking, isn’t it? We are kindred souls, Rafe Murray.”

“I know. There’s pain. I never promised you there wouldn’t be. I never promised them. Do you want them back? Now?”

He was paralyzed, yes and no and loneliness swollen tight within his throat. He shook his head, found nothing clear.