Alternate Realities (33 page)

“We aren’t dead!”

“Let be,” Rafe said, hating his own tendencies to push a thing. Paul hated to be pushed.

“We’re us-prime,” Jillan said. “That’s what we are.” She came and squatted near him, looking at him closely for the first time, her hands clasped together on her knees, her knees drawn up. “I wish you could lend me a blanket, brother.”

“I wish I could,” he said. “Are you cold?” That she should be cold seemed to him the last, unbearably cruelty.

She shook her head. “Just the indignity of the thing. I tell you, when we meet what did this to us, when we meet them, I’ll sure insist on my clothes back.”

“I’ll insist on more than that,” he said.

“You’ve already met it!” Paul shouted, over by the wall. “
That’s
Rafe—the one like us! Ask it where we are. Ask it what kind of jokes it likes to play, what it’s up to, where it came from, what it wants from us!”

“I’m alive,” Rafe said.

“He’s the one that bleeds,” said his doppelganger, from close by. “Look at his face. He’s the one that survived the wreck. Not a mark on any of the rest of us—is there?” Rafe Two squatted down nearby, elbows on his knees. “At least,” he said to Jillan’s wraith, “you’ve got title to a name. Rafe and I—we aren’t the same anymore, not quite. We split. He’s been alone and I’ve been chasing you, and on that reckoning we get less and less in step, while you—you
are
his sister, much as mine; you took up where the other left off—permanently. And so did you, Paul. That’s why it seems to you you’re still alive. But I can tell myself apart from him. I’m Rafe who found that one lying unconscious on the floor; and he’s the one who met himself face to face awake. Different perspectives. Dead’s meaningless to you. You’re not that Jillan Murray; you’re her hypothesis, you’re what she would have done—being met with that place where we woke up. You’re not that Paul Gaines. You’re just living your present on his memories—the way I split off from his, and did things different than he did.”

Paul came slowly away from the wall, stood there and shook his head. “I won’t give in to this. You’re wrong.”

“At least,” Rafe said, “sit down. Sit down. Please.”

“It’s dark out there,” said Paul, as if it were a matter of petulant complaint.

“Rafe said,” Rafe answered him. “Stay here. Please.”

Paul came and joined them, farthest away, crouched on the floor and plucked disinterestedly at a shred of gossamer he failed even to touch.

“We’re interested in the same things, aren’t we?” Rafe said. “We’re still partners. We need to find out where we are. And I love you,” he added, because it was so, and he had not said it often enough. He remembered what he was talking to, but it was as close as he could come. “I do love you two. ...”—To convince himself, he thought.

“I know,” Jillan said. Her eyes were dreadful, as if they saw too much. “I know that, Rafe.”

“Nothing for me,” said Rafe Two, who sat by him mirrorlike, arms about naked knees. “You see what it is to be surplus? Better to be dead. At least there’s appreciation.”

“Shut it up,” Rafe said. “I always had a bad sense of timing. I won’t put up with it from you.”

“Stop it!”
Paul said.

“It’s like being schizophrenic,” Rafe said, looking at the floor, pulling with his fingers at another loose bit of gossamer that refused to tear. “It’s really strong, this stuff.”

“What are we going to do?” Jillan asked.

“I don’t see any profit in sitting still,” Paul said. “Do you?”

“What do you suggest? It—they—whatever—whatever, runs this place knows where
we
are. When it gets bored, it’ll find us.”

Paul glared at him.

“I don’t want to sit here,” Jillan said.

“There’s the corridors,” said Rafe Two. “We could try to go as far as we can. As far as we can stay with each other.”

“We could try that,” Rafe said.

The outsiders moved slowly down the corridor which had been allotted to them and there was, immediately, throughout the ship, a focusing, of attention.

“They’re a hazard,” [] said. [] had tried them once, but <> had interfered in no uncertain terms and [] kept respectful distance.

“Let them go,” said <^>. <^> was constantly disposed to gentleness. It was part of <^>’s madness, forgetting <^>’s heredity.

But ranged all about the perimeters, gathering others of ’s disposition: there were many such aboard. There were two or three fiercer, but none more devious, except maybe the segments of = <-> = = <+> = that grew longer with every cannibalistic acquisition. = <-> = = <+> lg = had fifteen other segments, currently at liberty, and it was a question where these were or what the whole matrix thought, breaking apart and sending segments of itself everywhere in search of information.

laughed to self, loving chaos, seeing opportunity.

Trishanamarandu-kepta
devoted only a part of <> ’s mind to this maneuvering. There were other things to occupy <>’s mind, a wealth of things the little ship had given up, records, names.

Of the simulacra themselves, three templates existed, which were deliberately dissociated in fragments.

From those templates <> integrated three temporary copies.

Rafe waked, aware of nakedness, of dark, of Paul and Jillan close beside him.

He wept, recalling pain, got to his knees and shook at Jillan’s bare shoulder. “Jillan,” he said.

The eyes opened, fixed. Jillan began to tremble, to convulse in spasms, to scream long tearing screams.

“Jillan!” Rafe yelled, trying to hold her. Paul was awake too, trying to restrain her and evade her blows.

These were temporary copies, easily erased, and served as comparison against which <>’s own symbol systems could be examined.

<> tried one on. It proved difficult, and retreated into gibberish; <> shut it down.

There remained Rafe and Jillan. The one called Rafe seemed the easiest of entry. The most stable seemed Jillan, and <> shut Rafe-mind down for the moment, to consider Jillan’s, which bent and flexed and made defensive mazes of its workings—giving way quickly and then proving vastly resilient.

“Rafe,” Jillan cried as they waked together in this dark place, and Rafe stared at her, leaning backward on his arms, seeming unable to do more than shiver. “There was—” he said, started to say, and cried out and fell back.

“Rafe!” she cried, and shook at him, but he was loose as if someone had broken him, and then he went away, just vanished, as if he had never been.

“Rafe!”
she screamed at the vacant air, at the ceiling, and the dark.
“Paul!”
She scrambled up and threatened the invisible with empty hands and great violence.

It would fight, this Jillan-mind. <> learned that. The passengers who hovered near to witness this were profoundly disturbed.

“<> is taking risks again,” whispered in far recesses of the ship. “One day <> will miscalculate. Remember = = = = before = = = = turned cannibal? <> did not foresee that either.”

<> ignored these whispers, being occupied with <>’s insertion into the Jillan-mind.

Who are you?
Jillan-mind asked <>. She wept; she fought the intrusions and when she no longer could do that she took in the flood with the peculiar strength she had and started trying to bend it to her shape.

She looked at , which had come to hover near, and bent <>’s thoughts to notice the observer in the dark.

“I don’t trust that one,” she declared, and <> laughed for startlement, in the rest of <>’s mind, which went on seeing things from outside, and managing <>’s body, and doing the other things <> did in the normal course of <>’s existence.

Then <> moved in Jillan-mind abruptly and without gentleness. <> brushed aside defenses and began to take what <> wanted. Jillan screamed at <> in anger and in pain and finally, because <> filled all the pathways of her mind at once and ran out of storage, the scream changed character and reason.

<> meddled with this state for a moment, adjusting this, tampering with that. <> had known already that the storage was not adequate and now <> formed strategies, knowing the dimensions of what <> had. The pain went on, while <> probed connections and relationships.

Jillan stabilized again, regarded the dark and welcomed it with fierce enthusiasm and hunger.

<> erased her then abruptly, for she had gotten far from the template, and ceased to be instructive. Or safe. In any sense.

<> made a second, fresher copy. <> could do that endlessly, in possession of the templates <> had made.

<> began again, with a surer, more knowing touch.

“Is it worth it?” <*> asked, straying close. “Let this creature go.”

<> turned the Jillan-face toward <*>’s undisguised self and felt a jolt of horror and of sound.

“That was unkind,” <> said, and destroyed her yet again.

“You’ll have to wait,” Rafe said, in their trek through endless corridors of endless green-gossamer and lumpish contours. Nothing had changed. They discovered nothing but endless sameness. He sank down, resting his back against the wall, and shut his eyes—opened them again for fear of finding himself alone, but the images stayed with him. They had sat down as if they needed to, Rafe Two foremost, always closest to him. He heaved a breath, felt his bruised ribs creak, felt thirst and hunger. Tears leaked unwanted from his eyes, simple exhaustion, and horror at the sameness and the sight that kept staring back at him.

Ghosts. Solemn Rafe; Jillan being nonchalant; Paul glowering—they frightened him. He could not touch them. He could not hug them to him, ever again. He knew those looks—Paul’s when he had an idea and would not let it go, Jillan’s when she was on the edge, and tottering.

“Come on,” he said, “Jillan. Swear. Do something. Don’t be cheerful at me.”

Her face settled into something true and dour. She looked up at him, thinking—

—thinking what? he wondered. Seeing aliens behind his eyes? Or feeling her own death again?

“You all right?” he asked.

“Sure, sure I’m all right,” Jillan said, and looked about, redirecting what got uncomfortable. “Whatever designed this place was crazy, you know that?”

“Whatever keeps us here sure is,” Rafe Two said.

“It’s kept me alive,” Rafe answered the doppelganger. He wiped at his mouth, looked up and down the windings of the corridor—they had gone down this time, if the large chamber had been up. “That it leaves me alone, you know, is something encouraging.”

“There’s another place,” said Rafe Two. “It’s dark, and nothing, and if that’s its normal condition, that thing’s nothing like us at all.”

“It’s playing games,” Paul said; and Rafe looked at him with some little hope—
it
, then; Paul had stopped throwing that
it
at him, had perhaps reconceived his situation. “There’s no guarantee it has a logic, you figure that?”

“It’s got math; math’s logic,” Jillan said.

“A lunatic can add,” Paul said, gnawing at his lip. “I don’t get tired. You’re sweating and I don’t get tired.”

“Dead has advantages, it seems,” Rafe Two said.

“Shut up!”

“Try thinking,” Rafe said, shifting to thrust a leg between his doppelganger and Paul’s image. “Try thinking—how we go about talking to this thing. It tried to talk to us. Back there—at Endeavor, it made an approach. Maybe taking us was a mistake in the first place.”

“Come on,” said Jillan harshly. “It knew we were there, knew how small we were. We couldn’t support jump engines. It damn well knew.”

He blinked at his sister, felt the sweat running in his eyes, mortality that she was beyond feeling. “I’ll find a way to ask it,” he said. Of a sudden he wanted to cry, right there in front of them, as if the jolt had just gotten through to him, but all he managed was a little trickle from his eyes and a painful jerk of breath. “I’ll tell you this. If it turns out the way you think and you can’t get your hands on it, I’ll get it. I’ll go for it. You can believe I will.”

“I’ve thought of something else,” said Rafe Two.

“What’s that?”

“That offending it might turn us off. That it can do that anyway when it wants.”

“What he’s saying,” Jillan said, “is that it has us for hostages. And maybe it’s not being whimsical with us. Maybe it’s looking to learn—oh, basic things. Like how we build; what our logic’s like—”

“—from
Lindy
’s wire and bolts,” Rafe scoffed. “Lord, it’ll wonder how we got to space at all.”

“—our language; our little computer, simple as it is—”

“—how our minds work,” said Paul. “They’ll start prodding at us. They’ve kept us too—you figure that, Rafe? They’ve gone to a lot of trouble.”

“It still could be,” Rafe said, “what you might say ... humanitarian concern. Maybe they panicked and bolted and we were an unwanted attachment.”

“How long were you awake?” Paul asked. “I
died
.” His voice went faint; the muscles of his insubstantial face shook and jerked with such semblance of life it jarred.
“I am dead.
Isn’t that what you’ve been insisting? I remember what it did. I remember the pain, Rafe. And it wasn’t any damn humanitarian concern.”