Voyager In Night Part 17

"What-make? Make what?"

It whipped through their substance with one narrowing of its legged coils. Rafe screamed, becoming part of it, and Jillan- The pain reached him. His vision divided, be came circular, different from his own, and he owned many legs- -view of skies like running paint, lightnings, repeated shocks, the sound of thunders never ceasing- Forgone swinging in ceaseless revolution;' Lindy's dingy boards; the oncoming toad-shaped craft and the merchanter John Liles- Got to destruct, destruct, destruct All those kids and lives- A thousand of them, Rafe- -self-abandonment- It's dumping!- Jillan's voice, reprieve, with his finger on the b.u.t.ton, the red b.u.t.ton that was a ship's last option- Cool and calm: It's dumping, Paul- We're here, Rafe said, calmer and calmer now.

We're-wherever we've gotten to. Take it easy, Paul; easy- The pain had stopped. Worm eased from their body. Their hearing picked up multiple sound from somewhere, like wind rushing; there was-if they opened their eyes-too much sight, though the universe was black; and the knowledge ripped one way and the other like tides, memories viewed from one side and the other, shredded, revised.

-walkwalkwalk- Some one of the multiple brain chose movement: Rafe, Paul thought; Paul tried to cooperate. There was progress of a kind.

Awkward trifaced thing maneuvering into Paul's way. There was humor in that self-image, even in extremity: that was Rafe-mind, steady and self-amused.

/ love you, Paul thought to their amalgamated self over and over again', without reservation, without stint; and got it back, Rafe-flavored. He wanted Jillan too; felt her fear, her reserve against all their wants: it was all too absolute.

Me, she insisted, me, myself, I, I, I even while she moved her limbs in unison with them. There was pain in that.

"We need you," Paul whispered, desperate. He knew, of a sudden, knew what privacy in Jillan this union threatened. She shielded them from her own weapons, from rage, from resentment, every violence.

"You're our defense, Jillan; Rafe's our solid core; me-I go for him when I can get at him. But I need what you've got-all of it, hear-no secrets, Jillan-love."

"No one needs all," Jillan flung back at them both. "But that was always what you asked."

It stung, it burned. It took them wrathfully inside itself and taught them privacy.

jVo one, thought Jillan-mind, with a ferocity that numbed, no one can ask myself of me.

Our shield, Paul whispered to Rafe, in the belly of this amalgam they had become. Give way. Give up for now. Let Jillan have her way.

There was outrage left: memories of Fargone docks, of Welfare and Security.

You asked it. That was Rafe, in self-defense.

/ never asked. You made up your own mind what I should be.

His arm was broken. He had never talked. He never would.

There was terror (Jillan now) in the dark, hiding there, dodging a drunken s.p.a.cer who had a yen for a fourteen-year-old, a kid without ship name to-defend her-she eluded him, hurled invective at him; shook, afterward, for long, stomach-wracking minutes.

Grandmother had a number (Paul-mind, in self-defense) which all lab-born had.

"Why don't I?" he had asked, wanting to be like this tranquil model of his life. He touched the number, fascinated by it. He could see it forever, fading-purple against Gran's pale mine-bleached skin, against frail bones and the raised tracery of veins under silk-soft skin. It was one with the touch of Gran's hand, the softest thing he knew; but she had wielded blasters, shoved rock, had a mechanical leg from a rockfall in the deep. Her eyes, her wonderful eyes, black as all the pits, her mouth seamed and sere and very strong: the number brought back that moment.

"You don't want one," his mother said, harshly, as harshly as she ever spoke to him. "Fool kid, you don't want one of those."

"Your gran's lab-born," a girl had said once, seven and cruel as seven came, the day his gran had died. "Made her in a tank. That's what they did. Bet they made a dozen."

He had cried at the funeral; his mother did, which rea.s.sured him of her humanity.

But perhaps, he thought even then, she was pretending.

"None of her d.a.m.n business," Jillan-mind insisted of that seven-year-old, with a great and cleansing wrath; and Rafe was only sorry, gentler, in his way. "Stupid kid," he said. There was no doubt in them of humanity; the memory grew clean, purged; "She loved you," Rafe-mind said, confusing his own half-forgotten s.p.a.cer mother with the daughter of lab-born gran. He knew; Jillan knew; there was no doubt at all in them, why a woman would work all her life and hardly see her son-to leave him station-share, the sum of all she had, her legacy. Merchanters knew, who had bought a ship with the sum of their own years.

They progressed; limbs began to work.

Rafe's suffering in this a stray thought from Paul, shame, before the man who was so G.o.dlike perfect, feeling his horror at the shambling thing they had become.

Shut up, Jillan said, severe and lacking vanity, as she had killed it in herself years ago (too great a hazard, on the docks, to look better than one had to, to attract anything but, maybe, work. One had to look like business; and be business; and mean business; and she did.) Use what you've got. (Rafe-mind, whose vanity was extreme, and touching, in its sensitivity).

You can't get pregnant, Jillan hurled at him, ultimate rationality; and caught his longing, his lifelong wish for some woman, for family- Vanity serves some purposes, Rafe-mind thought, recalling it was his smoothness, his glib facility with words that got them what they had: he had bent and bent, so Jillan never had to-A room in a sleepover, an old woman gave it to me-I took even that. Even that, for you- She felt the wound, shocked. Her anger diversified, became a vast warm thing that lapped them like a sea.

Mine, she thought of them, and saw Paul-shape ahead of them. Wailing went about them. Worm nudged their flanks, little jolts of pain too dim to matter.

"Paul," Worm said, slithering about them, round and round; and the creature before them lingered, murkish in its light. Limbs came and went in it. The face changed constantly.

Chapter Ten.

"You're a copy," Rafe said to Marandu/Jillan's faded image.

"Yes," Marandu said. The hands, drawn up to the breast, returned to human pose; Marandu/Jillan grew brighter and more definite, with that unblinking G.o.dlike stare.

"Computer-generated," Jillan said in self-despite.

"Or we are the computer," Marandu said, turning those too-wise eyes her way. That stare, once mad, acquired a fearsome sanity. "We're its soft-structure. Its enablement. We're alive individually and collectively. We've been running, and growing, for a hundred thousand years. That's shiptime. Much longer-in your referent. That we're part.i.tioned as we are was accident. It's also kept us sane. It provides us motive. In a hundred thousand years, motive's a very important thing."

"And the enemy," said Paul. "The enemy: what is it?"

"It's Kepta, of course," Marandu said. "It's Kepta Three."

"Be careful," <> said to <>'s counterpart: had come very close now, to the center where <> had invested Oself. "You know what <> can do."

At this hesitated. "Fool," said. "Make another <> and watch it turn on <>. did."

"It was <>y nature then," <> said. "Perhaps O've grown."

"Only older," returned, gaining more of <>'s territory. extended a filament of self all about the center, advanced Paul-mind and = = === in their attack. The pa.s.sengers huddled far and afraid, in what recesses they could, excepting ((())), who had forgotten who had killed ((())), long ago; excepting ent.i.ties like [], who ranged themselves with . "O've grown older and less integrated, <>. Give up the center."

" are long outmoded," <> said in pro-foundest disgust. "<> learn; <> change. Come ahead and discover what <> have become."

shivered then, in the least small doubt. circled and moved back.

"Attack," [] raged, the destroyer of []'s own world. "Take it!"

But delayed, delayed to think it through in Paul-mind. had fallen once before into that trap, <>'s mutability.

Therefore used Paul-to learn what <> might have gained from O's latest acquisitions; to be certain this time that 's strength was equal to the contest. <> collected things of late. <> modified Oself in disturbing ways, and was not what <> had been.

circled farther back, with more and more agitation, sent out more and more of 's allies to scour the perimeters.

" want the strangers," said. " want everything in them."

Hunger was very like that felt; and self-doubt; and hate, that too. even felt these things in human terms, experimentally.

"This time," <> said, "<> fed a warped copy." And suddenly doubted whether 's theft had indeed been 's own idea or half so clever as had thought.

turned back.

"Where are going?" [] howled, ravening at 's back. "Coward!"

<> was far from confident. <> huddled in the control center, realizing a serious mistake. <> had, in a taunting lie, revealed too much of 's vulnerability; and went to solve that problem.

had realized the key to 's previous defeats.

"Call it a very long time ago," Marandu said, "a very long time ago . . . this ship set out from home. Trade, you might call it; but it's always a mistake to try to translate these things. Call us a probe. Or a sacrifice." The hands drew up again, knotted like prayer beneath the chin; the body drew up in midair and drew toward the floor, legs folding, fetal-like. "Go. Go ... go. The-. .. . There is no word in this brain for that. But that was why.

Life, you might say. To sample-everything. Exchange. Trade. Commerce ... of a kind."

"Why?" Jillan insisted to it; "hush," Rafe said, afraid of losing that tenuous truth, of breaking whatever held it to them.

"No translation," Marandu said. "There's never translation of motives; only of acts."

"What happened?" asked Rafe.

A long pause. "An incident. A copy of me existed as precaution. When I died, when the crew did, when the ship was without orders, it activated me."

"Me?"

"I was Kepta then. Division came later."

"What happened then?"

"I kept going. I kept going. Kept transmitting, as long as seemed profitable." Marandu's female mouth jerked. The hands drew up. "Pa.s.sage of time-negates all motives. Survival is still intact. So is curiosity." Jillan-shape flickered, brightened again and the eyes were set far, far distant. "Difficulty" Marandu said in a voice that moved the lips but scarcely. Sweat glistened on its lip, on its brow beneath the ragged fringe of hair; the legs settled crosswise; hands came down on knees; the shape hovered in midair, naked, dim and glistening with perspiration.

"Marandu," Paul said.

"Difficulty," the voice hissed again.

"Where?" asked Jillan.

"Your duplicates."

"Send me to them," Rafe Two said. "Let me help them!"

The eyes which had rolled up came down again and centered. "Kepta is threatened," Marandu said. The sweat rolled in illusory beads. "The enemy has gained a vital point."

"Paul" Paul said.

"Not yet," Marandu said. The hands were clenched. "Not yet."

Rafe clenched his own hands, stared at it in helplessness. "What's it doing? What's Kepta up to?"

"Holding what's essential."

"What's essential?" he flung back at it, but it answered nothing, only sat there, pale and drawn. "Marandu, what's essential?"

"Controls," Rafe Two said.

"The computer." Rafe turned, empty-handed, pushed himself off from the control panel and ran, ran in desperation down the hall.

"Rafe!" he heard-his doppelganger's voice.

"Rafe!" Jillan's or Jillan/Marandu's; and a shape leapt into being beside him, a running ghost-Paul, racing along by him in a confused blur of light. Jillan was there, or Marandu; and his doppelganger, half-merged with him.

"Where are you going?" Jillan cried.

"Controls," Rafe gasped, springing perilously from lump to hump of the uneven floor. "That's where it has to be, what it has to have-I've been there. I know"

The knives, he was thinking as he ran, remembering that he was flesh, remembering the arms and blades in that center of the ship. O G.o.d, the knives- Station dock; manifests-Lindy got on toward her loading with Rightwise and a Forgone agent wanted to make a fuss, small, dim man with a notepad, a checklist, suspicions.

"Where's your form B-6878?" he asked.

Rafe searched, desperately, through the sheaf of authorizations.

The clock ticked away, meaning money, each second that loader was engaged. Money and life. All their years had bought- "Careful," Paul Two said, "careful" for they had come very near that misshapen thing. Worm hovered round them, and Paul-shape shambled, sidling round them in a green-gold glow that spread along the horizon.

"-is there," Worm whistle-moaned at their backs. "Danger-danger-danger!"

"Look!" Rafe cried; and their conjoined, rotating sight discovered a new glow at the opposite side, a thing like Worm, but more horrible, whose white-glowing segments were interspersed with lumps and legged things. Some of them had mouths and others, eyes.

"Eater," Worm gibbered. "Can-Can-Cannibal."

"Come ahead," Paul-voice taunted them from the other side, a G.o.d-voice, Paul's deeper tones underlain with Rafe's.

"Fight," howled Worm, hovering behind them. "Coward," it sobbed to itself, over and over again, in half its voices.

Paul One flickered nearer and nearer, growing incrementally in their sight. He opened his/their arms. "Rafe," it said. "Jillan."

"Run," Rafe-voice screamed within it. "Run-!" "Come on," Paul-mind challenged that shambling thing. He stood firm. Jillan braced herself. "You've caught me; now take me in."

"Look out!" Worm cried; and it was Rafe-mind turned them quick enough: the Cannibal-horror rushed past them in flank attack as the amalgam struck from the other side.

"-an accident," the Welfare man said, "-in the belt. ..."

"Shut up!" Jillan cried, had cried that day, before he could say the words. Eight years old-she knew, knew what Welfare came to say- But: "Brother," Rafe Three said, meaning his battered other self, that thing that hung in rags from the monster's side. "O brother" with the stinging salt of tears.

And Paul: "Listen to me" he told his twisted self, with sorrow that gathered up Jillan-mind and Rafe and all. "Oh, no. You've got it wrong, my friend."