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“</> 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. “Passage 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 ru
“Where are you going?” Jillan cried.
“Controls,” Rafe gasped, springing perilously from lump to hump of the uneven floor. “ That’swhere 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 God, the knives—
Station dock; manifests—Lindy got on toward her loading withRightwise and a Fargone 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-Ca
“Come ahead,” Paul-voice taunted them from the other side, a god-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 Ca
“—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.”
Ugliness flowed back. His own darkness, like a wave: his desire to hurt—
—Rafe wept and begged. He savored that, felt a thrill of sex—
“That’s me!” Paul said, accepting it, treading on his pride, stripping off all the coverings, revealing all the darks. “Don’t be shocked, Jillan; I did warn you, I told you the best I knew—don’t leave me, Rafe. Don’t. O God, don’t—break—”
Paul One writhed, sought Jillan-mind with its hate; sought Rafe. Kill, it raged. Have you—all—all—all—
It was too much; too strong, too mad. “No!” Rafe pulled them back, dodged aside, for the Ca
“Worm!” Rafe cried, and Paul dodged again as Worm came flooding back from the Ca
“Paul,” that thing said, in a voice far too small and human for its size. Ca
“There,” it said, contentedly; “there.” And lifted up its face to them.
“Rafe—”Paul said. A shudder went through his/their flesh; he felt Jillan’s horror: Rafe Three’s own dismay.
It was vast. It kept lifting up and up, serpentlike, and the eyes of Rafe-face stared down at them. Beauty—it had that too, Rafe’s gone to cold implacability. “I’ve won,” it said; and Paul-Rafe wailed as it sank unwilling into the serpent’s glowing side. “There’s nothing more to fear.”