Alternate Realities (45 page)

“Kepta?” Rafe himself asked it, at his side, half-merged with him.

“Maranduuuu,” it said, this puppetlike Jillan-shape,
“Marandu,
I—”

“Stay back from us.” Rafe Two held out a forbidding hand, making himself the barrier, remembering in a cold sweat that it could touch him, if not the original, that he could grapple with it if he had to—but he had wrestled Jillan-shape before when it was Kepta and he knew his chances against that strength. “Keep your distance. Jillan, Paul, get Rafe back. Get him back!”

“Safe,” it said. Its hands were before it, a humanlike gesture that turned into one chillingly not, that tuck of both hands, against Jillan’s naked breasts, like the paws of some animal. One hand gestured limply. “Safe. Kepta sent—” Eyes blinked, as if it were sorting rapidly.
“Me,”
it decided. “Me. Marandu. To defend you.”

“Do your defending from there,” Rafe Two said, hand still held out, as if that could stop it.

invaded another center of the ship, dislodging a few of the simpler passengers, who wept; and one complex, ||||, who sent out a strong warning pulse.

did not counter this, or attack. The entity was not capable of aggression, but of painful defense. offered |||| choices. In time |||| redefined the necessities of ||||’s situation and wandered away.

That was the first layer of <>’s defense about the replication apparatus. It went altogether too quickly, tempting to imprudent advance on the chiefest prize: the inner circle, the computer’s very heart.

So guessed where <> had centered <>self: would have done so. <> was there, wound about the replication apparatus and possessing every template there was. It was necessary to advance against that center sooner than had intended, and knew raw terror, approaching this place.

There were doomsday actions that <> could take.

“ advise <> against such measures,” said from a safe, distance to the core. “They are ultimately destructive. Surplus copies of——” ( used a pronoun collective of the ship and passengers) “would complicate matters. Get out of there. Give up. promise will replicate <> when have won the ship, when things are secure.”

And in <>’s infuriating silence:

“<>,” said, “have not always kept the promises make?”

“Are not one that <> kept?” came the answer, faint and deceptively far away. “<> regenerated in our last such impasse. <> did as <> said. Give up,” <> added, a hubris that astonished , “and <> will show this mercy one more time. The struggle is inconclusive again. There
is
,” <> added further, “always another time.”

laughed in outrage. “ will amalgamate these newcomers with <> when copy <>, since <> are so defensive of them. will add <^> and lump all y enemies together.”

“Do this,” <> whispered, no louder than the whisper of the stars against the ship-sensors, loud as the universe, “do this and regret it infinitely. Reciprocation, . Remember that. don’t have the keys <> have. always have to resurrect <>. <>’ve changed the keys; <>’ve been doing it all through <>y waking. <> learned—from ur old trick.”

This was likely truth. <> was fully capable of altering the ship. But disdained the warnings and pressed forward, urging ’s other parts to advance as well.

Paul/Rafe was one. He was afraid, in aggregate. He trembled, constantly keeping his enemy in sight, but constantly assailed with doubts.

He looked about for
Lindy
, but there was nothing there.

So Rafe-mind fought him still, deep within his structure, having saved back some shred of itself for this. It fed Paul self-doubts.

No one freelance-smuggled with the likes of
Icarus
, no one crossed the moneyed interests that ran what they liked past customs; and if they caught him, if they saw his face—

So Paul fought back, and drove Rafe-mind into shuddering retreat.

That was not the kind of thing Paul had hoped for. The memory died, quickly; but Rafe-mind stayed intact, locked into that moment with deliberate focus, with a certain satisfaction, the same he had shown the smugglers from
Icarus
.

I
, Paul kept thinking, until it was himself who had been betrayed and Rafe had done it. So he warped all such memories.

Rafe wept, believing it at last.

There were inconsistencies. At times he thought that Paul had helped them; at others it seemed that Paul was destitute as they, which he had not remembered.

Rich, always rich, Paul Gaines, superior to him, clean and crisp in his uniform, station militia, sometimes Security—

Was it Security, then? Was it the police and not
Icarus
crew that had found him in the corridors that day and left him bruised and bleeding among the canisters for outbound ships?

Things muddled in his mind, defense collapsing.

“Paul,” he murmured, and felt the invasion of his mind, the superfluity of limbs which worked against his will.

“They’re there,” Paul whispered to him. It seemed that he could see the folk of
Icarus
far across the dark. “There they are.”

“Crazy,” Rafe whispered back; and in a paroxysm of effort: “Paul—you
died
.”

“Good,” Paul said, quite satisfied with his state. “They’re Icarids, Rafe. Aren’t they? Let’s go do something about them, why don’t we?”’

The legs moved.

“No,” Rafe cried, “no, no, no.”

And Paul enjoyed it. It was a weapon, Rafe’s fear, and he had mastered it.

They were no nearer than they had ever been on that dark and starless plain, the horizonless void which felt like nothing to their feet. The glow moved steadily, changing angles as they did, as if some invisible line connected it and them.

“It’s leading us,” Rafe said, glancing aside as he said it; and Paul agreed the same heartfrozen moment that
something
turned up in their midst, all black segmented coils and legs glowing yellow, at their joints as if light escaped. It towered among them, in nodding blind movements of its head.

“Aaaiiii!”
it wailed.

“Get
back
,” Jillan cried, hauling at his arm. “Run, for God’s sake, run! Paul! It can’t catch us—”

It did. Shock numbed his nonexistent bones, ached in his joints as it roiled into him and out again. “Paul!” Jillan yelled; she and Rafe came back to distract it from him, darting this way and that.

“Help,” came a strange multiple voice, choruslike, as it pursued their darting nuisance to it. “Help, help, help—”

“Look out!” Paul cried, for Jillan misjudged: he flung himself at it as Rafe did, as she screamed.

It hit like high voltage: the beast itself yelped and writhed aside. All of them screamed, and then was silence.

Paul froze ... in the numbness after shock, the fear that Jillan and Rafe were likewise crippled—all these things applied. Most, it was the voice, the dreadful voice that wailed at them and stole wits with its frightfulness. “Help,” it kept saying, and its forward end nodded up and down serpentlike, like something blind. It made a whistling sound. “Rafe? Rafe?
Fles-sh-sh
.”

“O God,” Jillan, breathed, moving then, tugging backward at their arms. “Get back, hear me—
get back
. It’s nothing we can handle, not this thing—”

“Lonely,” it said, snuffling; it had the sound of a ventilation system, a periodic sibilance. “F-f-flesh-sh. Rafe—lonely.”

“Don’t!” Paul cried, for it had encircled them, leaving them nowhere left to run. And to nothing at all, to the betraying, light-less air:
“Kepta! Help!”

“Can’t,” it said, snuffled, in its myriad of voices. “Name—can’t—
Aaaaiiieee!”

“It’s that howler-thing!” Jillan cried.

“Aaaaaaee,” it said. The head swayed back again and aimed toward the dark. “Came to this ship. We. Long time—long—Crazy, some. Rafe-mind ran.”

“What,
ran
?” Rafe Three asked it.

“Fight,” it said, blind head questing. “Fight.” The voices entered unison. “—go with. Fought once. Paul—” The head nodded off toward the star, the glow along the horizon, that seemed nearer now.

“What are you?” Paul asked.

“Fought once,” it said, which seemed the sum of its identity. It started off, in pursuit of the ebbing light.

Dead
, Paul reminded himself.
You’re already dead. Quit worrying. Time’s short.
And he wished that death was all.

“Come on,” he said to Jillan and Rafe Three, because he saw nothing else to do. He started walking in the wake of the looping creature, which humped and zigged its way through the dark like some great sea creature aswim in the murk, with graceful fluidity.

Rafe was by him; he never doubted his constancy; and Jillan at his other side, never faltering.

The star grew in their sight.

Worm came circling back to them when the will-o’-the-wisp they chased had begun to shine globular and planetlike in the dark.

“Paul,” Worm named that light. “Rafe. Pain.”

“Take us there,
” Rafe Two demanded, of that Jillan-shape that had come to them. “Take us there, you hear me? If you want your enemies fought, then, dammit, let us out of here!”

And the shadow-eyes turned from regarding the wall, came back to them, so full of secrets that a chill stirred all through Rafe’s own all-too-substantial bones.

“You,” Jillan yelled at Jillan-shape, “answer, will you? Why do you keep us here?”

“For his defense,” it said; Jillan/Marandu in a far, soft voice. “For yours.”

“Kepta cares,” Rafe Two said in heaviest bitterness. “I’m sure.”

“For his defense,” it said again, making different sense than before.

“For
Kepta’s
?” Rafe asked, himself. “Is that the game?”

“Game.” The thing stood there with that infinity-look, god/goddesslike in stillness. “That’s not what to call it. The ship is at risk. We’re all at risk. There are always quarrels. Some would like to sleep. Some find that more comfortable. Time wears—on some. But we go on doing what we were set to do.”

“What?” Rafe asked. He stood behind Rafe Two’s shoulder, dodged round him, to the fore as if he were solid, out of courtesy. “
What
were you set to do? What are you up to?”

“Some passengers never ask,” Marandu said. “There’s one, for instance, completely without curiosity. It doesn’t dream either. But it knows a lot of things. It can’t dream because it can’t forget. Different approaches to consciousness.”

“Stop the nonsense,” Jillan snapped at it. “You’ve got your fingers in my mind right now. You can guess what I’d ask; so answer it.”

“Where the others are?” A blink. “But you
don’t
know that. You think you’re physical. So do they.” It cast a disturbed look at Rafe. “You know. Kepta knows you know. You saw the apparatus. You ought to have told them.”

A chill like ice came over him, foreknowledge of harm.

“What’s it mean?” Rafe Two asked. “Rafe, what’s it saying?”

“You don’t have physical bodies,” Rafe said. He turned his shoulder to the intruder, to look instead at them. “Patterns, Computerlike. Simulacra. You’re not physical.”

“What do you mean?” Jillan asked. “Make sense, Rafe.”

“I’m making the best I know.”

“We’re
here
,” Jillan said.

“Position in the ship,” said Jillan/Marandu, “is simultaneous. You only control a small priority. Kepta’s, mine—is virtually universal in the circuitry. Size—is illusory; distance is; all these things—are what you choose to manifest. What I choose—in your shape.”

“You mean we’re bloody
programs?
” Rafe Two cried, and with a wild, despairing look: “Rafe?”

“You’re real,” Rafe said. “You go on living, changing. You always knew that. Is a separate body so important?”

“Oh, damn,” Rafe Two breathed, and shook his head.
“Dammit
, twin.”