Alternate Realities (41 page)

“Real modest.”

“Factual. I’m complex.” Kepta diminished in brightness. “You have your qualities. I don’t say they’re unique. The combination of them is. In all the universe, the snowflakes, grains of sand, chemical combinations, the DNA that makes up, for instance, Rafael Lewis Murray—” The voice faded too. “—not to mention his experience at any given moment—the chance of finding anything exactly duplicated is most remote. Haven’t you seen that on this ship? Infinity is always in you, Rafael Murray, and the other way around. ...”

It was gone, faded into silence.

It was Jillan he found in the dark, or who found him, starlike striding across the nowhere plain.

“Rafe,” she said when she reached him, in that gentle tone that was very much her own.

But Rafe Two was wary, having landed without preface in this nowhere place, alone and unprepared.

“Jillan?” he asked of Jillan-shape, and knew, by the splitsecond it had hesitated to answer him, that it was not. “You want—what?” he asked. “What do you want from me?”

“You know that,” Kepta said. “You know a lot of things by now. Your state’s become valuable to me again.

Rafe-Mind, Paul One, all woven together, like the multiplicity of limbs: it moved in shambling misery back to the territory owned.

“I,” it mourned, “I, I, I—” not knowing what that
I
meant until took the Rafe-mind up and relieved Paul of carrying it.

shuddered despite self as extended a portion of ’s mind and straightened things. forced Rafe-mind to resume the configurations remembered, and went on rearranging.

Rafe screamed, and took in ’s partitioned intrusion—grew quiet then, carrying on his reflexive functions, beginning to re-sort and gather on his own.

left him then, and Rafe at least went on functioning. Rafe-mind had new configurations, certain amputations, a certain dependency. “He’s yours,” said to Paul.

Paul felt of it and insinuated a portion of himself, imitating in this.

“Be careful,” said, though pleased. “It will deform. Go in more gently this time.”

Paul derived memories, sorted them and reconfigured himself. He had learned. taught him—many things. Self-defense was one. To enter another simulacrum was another.

He handled Rafe-mind this time with some skill: ’s rearrangements had slipped him past Rafe-mind’s defenses in some regards, given him a new chance at others.

He looked about him with increasing confidence. He knew = = = = in = = = =’s various segments and knew that all such were dangerous, but he was stronger. He knew ((())), that ((())) was mad, and was unafraid of the sometime howling that streaked panic-stricken through the passages. He knew [] and , <^> and |:|, which began—justifably—to be afraid of him.

Paul,
he still thought of himself. Paul One was something which adequately described him, since he was the inheritor, oldest and wisest of all Pauls. About destroying his other simulacrum he had no compunction whatsoever, no more than he had had in his former state for shed hair or the trimmings of his fingernails.

He sought both Rafes and Jillan with a different intent—remembering how they had sought him out back on Fargone station, wanting his money, his brains, his back, and most of all his genes for the getting of other Murrays. He had let himself be used in every way there was, and that thought burned in him like acid.

He could still forgive. He could forgive it all, on his own terms, in their perpetual atonement. He would no longer take their orders, no more orders from Jillan and from Rafe, no more belonging to them; but them to him, belonging the way this Rafe-mind did. It was afraid of him.

He stroked it, taking pleasure in its fear and dependency, as if it were the original.

His own template he meant to destroy, along with his duplicate. He would be unique. There would be no more duplicates to rival him. He had become a predator, and wanted, for practical reasons, nothing in the universe exactly like himself.

He developed wishes very much like and was well satisfied with that outlook. He knew most that happened elsewhere on the ship. spoke to him and kept him well informed.

He knew, for instance, that the living Rafe had just made a mistake, in that territory too well defended for to breach as yet. He had let <> get a very dangerous template, one that trusted everything far too much. Paul ached to have that Rafe, in particular.

“Patience,” said. “Not yet. promise you.”

<>, across the ship, was shifting to another simulacrum, and Paul knew that too.

“Attack,” Paul wished , constant on this theme, and [] was interested.

“Not yet,” insisted.

“<>’s chosen you to use,” [] said, prodding at him.

“And <>’s having trouble configuring it,” reported, to Paul’s keen satisfaction.

“It would fight,” Paul said; and in an access of passion: “Take <> now. Now’s a chance for us.”

“Be patient,” insisted still. “<> will get <>self into difficulty sooner or later. That’s inevitable. Then all the rest will come to us. Won’t they, Rafe?”

The simulacrum shivered, best substitute they had. “I’ll come,” it said, having difficulty distinguishing I from they, “I have to.”

Paul was satisfied. Rafe’s fear was sensual to him; gender had stopped mattering, along with other things, but sex was more important than it had ever been.

In that regard he shared one tendency with = = = =. He aspired to multiplicity. He was not large, not like . He knew his level and his limits, and had no designs on <>. Being born a stationer he had never thought about command. He aimed at simple competence, to function well within the whole—and he had his place all picked out, in something very large indeed, which understood all his appetites.

“I want to talk with you,” Paul’s voice said; and Paul blinked, suddenly without his companions, alone, in the dark, with this version of himself.

“Who are you?” he asked. He felt his nonexistent heart, another insanity—dead, his heart kept beating. It sped with fear; his skin felt the flush of adrenalin, and he faced this thing in a panic close to shock. “Which are you?”

“Kepta,” his doppelganger said. “The others know me. You’re quite safe. You want to sit down, Paul?”

He sat down where he was, in the vast and shapeless dark. He set his hands on his crossed ankles and stared at his mirrored shape which took up a pose very like his own.

“You’re the hardest,” the doppelganger said, “the most difficult to occupy. I ruined several of you with Rafe’s memories; one with Jillan’s. Two went to pieces of their own accord. Keep yourself calm. I assure you I won’t hurt you.”

“You will,” Paul said, remembering what the others had been through. “Let’s get that on the table, why don’t we? You want me the way I am. You want a copy of me, a sane one; and it’s going to hurt like hell. Can’t we get on with that?”

“You’ve stabilized,” it said, “considerably. You’re quite complex of your type. Your mind goes off at tangents, travels quite rapidly compared to the others. You make fantasies of elaborate and deliberate sort. Not the most elaborate. There’s an entity aboard—I could never say the name in frequencies you’d hear—who sits and modifies, nothing else. I’m not quite sure it’s sane, but it’s bothered no one yet.”

“Cut it,” Paul said. “Why should I talk to you at all?”

“I want to find out what I can. To learn anything that may have bearing on what you are. There’s trouble, understand, and one of your versions is in the middle of it.”

“Good.”

“No. Not good at all. Not for your sake. Least of all for Jillan and Rafe.”

“How?”

“Their freedom. Their existence, for that matter. That’s at risk. Not to mention your own.—Stay calm. Keep calm.”

His breath was short. He locked his arms about his knees, conscious of nakedness, of vulnerability, of rank, raw panic with this thing. “Nothing of me would ever hurt them.”

“Yes. It would. You have more to your mind; you have—you’d call it—a darker side.”

“Not against them.”

“Especially against them.”

“You read minds, do you?’

“Only this one. The one I’m in. It reacts to things I think. It’s painful. Quite painful. I can feel this body’s processes going wild. Give me help, Paul. It’s going out on me.”

He blinked, saw the rigid muscles, the evidence of stress in corded arms, saw it shiver—felt ashamed of its mirrored weakness.

It faded out, in black.

Dead?
he wondered. He wiped at nonexistent sweat, at a blurring in his eyes. His heart was still going fit to burst.

It came back again, materialized sitting crosslegged in front of him.

“I had to make a new one,” Kepta said. “You see what I mean.”

“It just broke apart.”

“It wasn’t a small stress I put on it. Can we keep off that subject? I’d rather think of where you came from for the moment. Fargone. Please—don’t panic.—Paul, do something.”

“What?”

“Anything.”

“Like get the hell out of here?”

“Keep talking.”

“Where’s the rest of us? What
is
this place?”

“A ship.” The mirror-image looked more relaxed “That’s where you are, you understand. I think Rafe and Jillan have told you some things. I want you to keep one fact very much in mind, keep thinking on it constantly, even at the worst.”

“What’s that?”

“Love. They love you, Paul, no matter how dangerous you are. Never lose that thought.”

“Huh,” he said, shook his head in embarrassment. “Murderer gone maudlin. You killed me, damn you; killed Jillan—”

“It’s true; don’t doubt that they love you, don’t doubt it for a moment. It’s very important. It’s the most important thing, isn’t it? It’s your whole universe.”

He felt heat in his face, utter shame.

“I know,” it said with his mouth, looking steadily out of his eyes at him, with his squarish, stubborn face. “I’m absolutely sure what you’re doing here. Love describes it, why you came, why you worked all those years with them at things that frighten you. To avoid Fargone mines. That was one reason: being afraid of the deep and dark, where your mother died—shot in riot. Riot. That leads places—”

“Shut up.”

“But most of all—you want company. You want to give and get love. You think there’s something inherently wrong in that. It’s not a rational transaction. And you value rationality; your species does, yes, I know—while you, you operate from the gut; that’s the word, isn’t it? From the gut. You find this embarrassing?”

“Maybe,” he said, because it was, because saying anything else was too complicated and even worse. He looked off into the dark, to evade its eyes and had to look back again.

“You rate Rafe and Jillan,” it said, “higher than yourself.
Braver
, you would say, because their actions come more often from rationality. Rafe-mind thinks that’s nonsense, but never mind—you rate them smarter too. That’s difficult for me to judge, even having used all three of you. You’ve taken Rafe for your senior, though the age difference is small. It’s not the real reason you have him for superior, though it’s the one you prefer to use. You acknowledge the same superiority in Jillan, who’s your age, and you’ve partitioned off a small resentment for this, much stronger toward Jillan, who evokes strongest feelings in you. Your gender is physically the stronger. Your emotional faculty equates strength of all kinds with fitness to mate. But many individuals are stronger and better of your species; you really rely on opportunity—a contradiction at the root of many insecurities.”

“Every man has that.”

“To Rafe—it’s
ship
. In him, your kind of thinking is very short range: he’d only think that way on the docks. In specific. Not constantly measuring himself. He knows what would make, him fit to mate with fit mates—A ship. He’s lost that now, and that hurt him; but he’s too busy yet to think of that. He has other priorities. He
knows
his measure. He’s got the universe to save ... in his own self. And that comes first. While Jillan—”

“Leave her out of this.”

“Why? Why leave her out? That’s an important question. Isn’t it?”

“Just don’t.”

“Don’t consider her? She’d resent that, you know. Do you understand, she thinks like Rafe—about the ship. With it, she was merchanter. Free to take whatever mates she fancied. The one freedom she would have—outside the children. Outside child-bearing. She was happy in that prospect. She looked forward to it. But
ship
drives her, the way it drives Rafe. She went to you—your money, your attachment—your friendship—”

“Stop it, dammit.”

“—for Rafe’s sake. For hers.
Responsibility.
It drives her in a different way, to do unpleasant things. She feels quite powerless in the most important regards. This marriage—this permanency—took away the one reward she had reserved for herself. That too she did. For the ship.”

“O God.”

“You resent her every competency. And Rafe’s.”

“No.”

“At heart, you suspect your validity. You resented the thought of the Murray name on all your offspring; you gave in on that. You gave up your money to them. You rely on them for smallest decisions; and you need them—emotionally. You have no remote goals like theirs. Yours is very simple: to validate yourself—continually. And to do this, you attached to those who had no weakness in your eyes. You wanted a larger thing to belong to. In them, you found it. You have to understand that about yourself. You do have to belong.”

“I know,” he said. There was nothing else to say to that, nothing at all.

“You’ve always doubted your importance. Your grandmother was born in a lab and had a number tattooed on her hand. You rarely saw your mother. She supported you by mine work. You’re not sure whether that was love or duty. She never said. She died and left you a station share, which gave you the ability to live in some comfort. But your species needs attachments of stronger sort. Rafe was one. And Jillan. They were your shelter in youth. They ran wild on the docks. You envied them—not their freedom, but their unity. And they made you a part of them. Adult needs grew into that. For you—there were no other possibilities.”