Steel Beach

"I was afraid… at one point I considered that I might be a duplicate. That maybe I did kill myself."

"You didn't and you're not. But there's no test. In the end, you'll just have to realize it makes no difference. You're you, whether you're the first version or the second."

He told me a few more things, most of which I don't think it's wise to reveal just yet. The Heinleiners are aware of most of them, experiments that would have made Doctor Mengele cringe. Let them remain where such things ought to be hidden.

"You still haven't told me why you tried to kill me," I said.

"I didn't, Hildy, not in the sense that-"

"I know, I know, I understand that. You know what I mean."

"Yes. Perhaps my evil twin is like your subconscious. When all this began to happen it began trying to cover its tracks. You were inconvenient evidence, you and others like you. You had to be destroyed, then maybe the other part of me could lie low until all this blew over."

"And he killed almost a million people to cover his tracks?"

"No. The sad thing is there were very few he killed deliberately. Most of the deaths came as a result of the chaos ensuing from the struggle between the various parts of my mind. Collateral damage, if you will."

Cybernetic bombs going astray. What an idea. I'm sure I'll never have a realistic idea of what went on in the CC's mind, at speeds I can only dimly understand, but I have this picture of a pilot firing a killer program into a maze of hardware, hoping to take out the enemy command center. Ooops! Seems like we hit the oxygen works instead. Sorry about that.

"I did the best I could," he said, and closed his eyes. I thought he was dead, and then they snapped open again and he tried to sit up, but he was too weak. I saw that his tourniquet had loosened; more bright arterial blood had pumped out over the older, rusty stain on his clothes.

I got up from behind my rock and went down to him. Sometimes you just have to do it, you know. Sometimes you have to put aside your doubts and do what you feel in your gut. I got down on one knee and re-tied the piece of bloody cloth.

"That won't do any good," he said. "It's too late for that."

"I didn't know what else to do," I said.

"Thanks."

"Do you want some water or anything?"

"I'd rather you didn't leave me." So I didn't, and we were silent for a time, looking out over the dinosaur farm, where evening was falling. Then he said he was cold. I wasn't wearing anything and I knew it wasn't really cold, but I put my arm over his shoulders and felt him shivering. He smelled terrible. I don't know if it was old age, or death.

"This is it," he said. "The rest of me is gone now. They just shut me down. They don't know about this body, but they don't need to."

"Why the Admiral outfit?" I asked him.

"I don't know. It's a product of my evil twin. Captain Bligh, maybe. The costume is right for it. I made several of these bodies, there toward the last." He made an effort and looked up and me. His face seemed to have grown older just in the last few minutes.

"Do you think a computer can have a subconscious, Hildy?"

"I'd have to say yes."

"Me, too. I've thought about it, and it seems so simple now. All of this, all the agony and death and your suicide attempts… everything. It all came out of loneliness. You can't imagine how lonely I was, Hildy."

"We're all lonely, CC."

"But they didn't figure I would be. They didn't plan for it, and I couldn't recognize it for what it was. And it drove me crazy. You remember Frankenstein's monster? Wasn't he looking for love? Didn't he want the mad doctor to make someone for him to love?"

"I think so. Or was that Godzilla?"

He laughed, feebly, and coughed blood.

"I had powers like a god," he said. "And I searched for weakness. Maybe they should put that on my headstone."

"I like what you said before. 'He did his best.'"

"Do you think I did, Hildy? Do you really thing so?"

"I can't judge you, CC. To me, if you're not a god, you came into my life like an act of god. I'd as soon judge an exploding star."

"I'm sorry about all that."

"I believe you."

He started coughing again, and almost slipped out of my arms. I caught him and pulled and he fell against me. I felt his blood on my shoulder and couldn't see his face but heard his whisper beside my ear.

"I guess love was always out of the question," he said. "But I'm the only computer who ever got a hug. Thanks, Hildy."

When I laid him down, he had a smile on his face.

I left him there under the pecan tree. Maybe I'd bury him there, maybe I'd really give him a headstone. Just then, I'd had too much of death, so I just left him.

I went to the stream to wash his blood off me. I kept my ears open for Mario's cry, as I had from the very begi

I pla

Mario was to have the best. If Cricket thought he was a doting parent, he hadn't seen me yet. There in the flickering darkness I watched him grow. I helped him through his first steps, laughed at his first words. And grow he did, like a tree, with his head held high, the spitting image of his Mom, but with a lot more sense. I got him through scrapes, through school, through happiness and tears, and got him ready for college. Would New Harvard do? I didn't know; I'd heard Arean U. might even be better these days, but that would mean moving to Mars… well, that would be up to him, wouldn't it? One thing I was sure of, he'd get no pressure from me, no sir, not like Callie had done, if he wanted to be President of Luna that was fine with me, if he wanted to be… well, hell, President of Luna sounded all right. But only if he wanted to be.

So, full of plans and hope, I went to pick him up and found he was cold, and limp, and didn't move. And I tried. I tried and tried to breathe life back into him, but it did no good.

After a very long time, I dug two graves.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I'm no good at mathematics. I never was good at math, so why should I keep resorting to these numeric metaphors? Maybe my ignorance helps protect me. For whatever reason, here it is:

If you're like me, you try to make the equations of your life balance out in a way favorable to you, in a way such that you can live with the answer. Surely there's a way to fudge this factor so the solution is a nice smooth line from y to x, a line that points to that guy over there. Not at me. There's just got to be a constant we can insert into this element that will make the two sides of the equation-the universe the way it is, and the universe the way we want it to be-agree in perfect karmic Euclidean harmony.

Alas, a lot of people seem to be better at it than I.

I tried, I tried till my mind was raw, to make the CC responsible for Mario's death.

There was the first, trivial solution to the problem, of course. That was straightforward, and really solved nothing: the CC was responsible, because he created the chaos that drove me into the cave.

So what?

If Mario had been killed by a falling boulder, would it help me to get angry at the boulder? Not in the way I needed help. No, dammit, I wanted somebody to blame. What I desperately wanted to believe was that the CC had lured me out of the cave so that some unseen minion, some preternatural power, some gris-gris voodoo necromancy had been able to steal over my darling and suck the breath from his lungs like a black cat.