Alternate Realities

by C. J. Cherryh

  I heard laughter at my back; and not laughter at all, but a very bitter sound, unlike us. I looked back past Percy and Lynn, at Vivien.

  “Percy,” I pleaded, “Lynn, come on—someone stop them.” I headed for the door, knowing everything amiss.

  XIII

  This night a rumor wildly blown about

  Came, that Sir Modred had usurp’d the realm

  And leagued him with the heathen. . . .

  ... Gawain, surnamed The Courteous, fair and strong,

  And after Lancelot, . . . a good knight, but therewithal

  Sir Modred’s brother, and the child of Lot,

  Nor often loyal to his word ...

  Iran, and was too late for the lift. But Gawain was not: he and Lance were headed topside together, in what state I hated to imagine. Percy and Lynn came running after, and caught me up by the time the lift, empty, had come down again.

  “Modred’s his partner,” Percy said, meaning Gawain’s, meaning where loyalties lay. Lynette said nothing; it was like that between them, I thought, while the lift shot us up topside: that Percy and Lynette worked together, were together, that while it was Gawain most often Lynette bedded with—blithe and light Gawain—it was Percivale who worked with her, close, close as ever we could be; like Modred and Gawain.

  The door opened and let us out: I ran, but Lynette and Percy ran faster, for the doors where already we heard shouting.

  The doors were closed. Locked. Of course, locked. Modred knew his defenses.

  “Open up,” Lance shouted, and slammed the sealed door with his fist. But he was staff: he had no right to command the crew. And Gawain stood there doing nothing to help until Lynn and Percy came running up ahead of me. “Order him to open,” Lance asked of them, and Lynn: “Modred,” she called. “Modred—” But gently, reasonably.

  From inside, no answer.

  “Ask him,” Percivale asked of Gawain. “He’ll listen to you.

  “I doubt it,” Gawain said. And so there we stood, the several of us—oh, it was terrible the look of us, of Lance and Gawain face to face and glaring at each other—

  “It can’t happen,” I said, tugging at Lance’s arm. “O Lance, go and fetch my lady. He’ll listen to her. Please. We’re what we always were. We can’t have changed; and he can’t. O run, run and tell her. Modred’s not well.”

  He yielded backward to my tugging at him—like tugging at a rock, it was; but I put myself between the two of them—him and Gawain. Too proud to back very far: I saw Lance’s eyes. “Percy,” I said, “go.”

  And Percy ran. The lift had worked again, down the corridor. Vivien was there, and I could see she was satisfied ... O the malice, the bitter, bitter malice that her makers never put into her, but the place had given her, and the ruin of all she was.

  “What,” she said, “has he shut you out then?”

  “Be quiet,” Gawain said. “We don’t need you here.”

  “Modred,” Lynette called, gently, using the com by the door. “Modred, are you all right in there?”

  “He’s gone over the brink,” Lance said. “Modred, come out of there. We’ve sent for my lady. She won’t be amused.”

  Silence from the other side.

  “Maybe something has happened to him,” I said, fearing more and more. “We aren’t right to think the worst of him.”

  “He hears us,” Lance said. “His partner knows what he’s doing. I’d bet on it.”

  I looked at Gawain, whose beautiful face was flushed with anger, whose eyes had no little of fear: Lance could beat him, and there was no doubt of that.

  “Wayne,” Lynette said, “you covered for him? You knew?”

  “Should I let you kill yourself and the rest of us?”

  Lance reached out very deliberately and took Gawain’s arm, brushed me aside as if I had not been there. “We have orders,” Lance said.

  And might have said more, but Percy came hurrying back to our relief. “She’s coming,” Percy said, “my lady and Griffin—” He stopped, transfixed at this sight we made, this laying on of hands that we had never done to each other. But we had nerved ourselves to fight, and had nothing of substance to fight but each other. Lance let Gawain go, further argument abided. And down the hall came Griffin and my lady, in their nightrobes, Griffin with his hair wet from the bath, my lady all a flurry of loose blonde hair and laces and her eyes—oh, my lady’s eyes, so full of fright. She knew, she knew how wrong we had gone: but Griffin’s face was ominous, all threat and anger. He came right through us, punched the com button, slammed his great fist on the door.

  “Modred,” he said. “Enough of this nonsense. Get this door open.”

  And more silence. I found myself with my hands clasped before my mouth, like praying. O Modred, I thought, Modred, you can’t, you can’t defy him. O Lance, O Gawain, do something.

  “Modred!” Griffin yelled, another slam of his fist.

  And my lady slipped past and leaned up to the com. “Modred. You know my voice.”

  A delay. “Yes, lady Dela.” Like himself, it was, all quiet and untroubled as Pass the salt, please.

  “Modred, I want this door open.”

  “In a moment, my lady.”

  In a moment. O Modred. Something shivered through me. We had all gotten very still, even Griffin. My lady looked distraught and then gathered herself.

  “What are you doing, Modred?”

  Silence.

  “Modred, what do you think you’re doing?”

  Silence. A long silence. “That program of his—” Griffin said. “That program he wanted to use—”

  “Modred,” lady Dela said. “I want this door open right now. I want you to shut down what you’re doing and come out here. No argument.”

  A longer silence.

  “We’ll have to get the cutters,” Griffin said.

  “Modred. Did you hear that? Are we going to have to do the Maid damage on account of you? Open the door.”

  It opened, so unexpected it jolted all of us—whisk! and he was standing there facing us across the bridge, a black figure against the comp lights and the screens that showed nothing they had not showed before.

  “Get him out of there,” Griffin said, and Lance and Percy moved in, took Modred’s arms—nothing. No countermove. Modred gave way to them and would have let them take him out now, but Griffin barred the way, and the rest of us, and lady Dela.

  Griffin put his hand in the middle of Modred’s chest and stopped him face to face. “What have you done?” Griffin asked.

  “Discover that,” Modred said, “sir.”

  “Modred,” Dela said—not angry, not anything but stunned. Modred looked at her then, and even he had to feel something: we’re made that way. It had to be pain all the way to the gut, every psych-set torn. But Modred had no nerves. His expression hardly varied. “My lady Dela,” he said equably, “I’ve sent it out, all of it.”

  “Contacting that thing?”

  “It’s done.”

  “And what did you get from it,” Griffin asked. “Anything?”

  “I was working on that. If you’ll let me continue—”

  I don’t think he even understood it was effrontery.

  “Not likely,” Griffin said.

  “How could you do a thing like this?” Dela asked. “Who gave you leave? Did I?”

  “No,” Modred said.

  “And what have you sent out? What have you told it?”

  “Mathematics. Chemistry. Our chemistry ... in symbolic terms.”

  “Then it knows what we are,” Griffin said.

  “As well as I could state it.”

  “Get him out of here,” Griffin said. “Lock him somewhere.”

  “Sir,” Lance said. “Gawain knew.”

  Griffin looked at Gawain, and Gawain’s face went white.

  “Then we’ll be talking to you as well,” Griffin said.

  “Sir,” Gawain breathed and bowed his head.

  Griffin looked about at all of us the
n, and I felt my bones go cold. “Get him out,” Griffin said then and Lance and Percivale took Modred past me without argument from Modred. I stood, close to blanking, knowing what I had done.

  “Staff’s dismissed,” Griffin said. “Go about your business. We’ll straighten this mess up. Now. Out. Crew stays.”

  I fled, down the corridor after Vivien, disheveled as I was. My bones ached, somewhere inside the terror and the confusion: we had worked ourselves until we staggered with exhaustion, and now this—this, that was somewhere at the bottom of it my doing.

  I went down and washed and put on clean clothes, because I knew there was no hope of sleep, Our night was over before it had started.

  “See,” Vivien said, “how organized it all is. No one knows what’s afoot.” She looked up and about her, where the noise continued, maddening, lifted her hands to her ears as if that could give a moment’s relief. “They lost all our chances days ago.”

  “Shut up,” I said, zipping my clean jacket and pulling my hair from the collar. “If you’re so efficient, go back to your lab.”

  Oh. Cruel. Viv turned such a look on me that was hate and terror at once.

  “Or do something outside yourself, Viv. Be something larger than you are. Think how to protect that lab of yours. Come up with something. Help us, for once.”

  “Elaine the fair.”

  “Don’t be trapped by it. By the tape. You don’t have to be. Oh, Viv—”

  “Percy talks about God,” she said. Gleaming behind the hate in her eyes was outright terror. “‘He found God,’ our Percy says. And what kind of thing is that for one of us? What’s for me? You’ve all gone mad ... and Percivale’s gone and Modred—What of this wouldn’t have happened without you? I think it’s funny. Oh, it’s a fine joke, Elaine.”

  “Hush, be still.”

  “What, be still? Me, who could work miracles in that stupid tape ... Let me do one enchantment and I’d be out of here, let me tell you, sweet Elaine.”

  “Couldn’t it be we?” I asked. “It’s always I, isn’t it?” I went for the door. Stopped, hearing uncharacteristic silence at my back.

  She might have been upset, I had thought. But there was that terrible anger on her face, a sullenness unlike Modred’s nerveless quiet.

  “He talks about God,” she said. “We’re all rather above ourselves, aren’t we? Like Modred.”

  She had stopped caring for living. That was the way she had coped with the shocks. I saw that suddenly, and it made me cold. She jumped from attacking Lynn to attacking Modred, to Griffin, to whoever had tried to do anything to change what was. Most of all she had me to blame, when the threat had gotten to the lab and the tape had gotten to her: that was twice she had had her functions shaken apart—and now there was just the tape, and her own defenses.

  Percy talking about God and Modred turning on us—and Lance and Gawain at odds....

  O God help us, I thought, which was unintended irony. We’re all lost in Dela’s dream.

  And in it we faced our war.

  They were busy on the bridge, Percy and Gawain and Lynette and Griffin and my lady Dela—there was nothing I could do there. They were busy trying to figure out what Modred had done on the bridge; but Modred was very good and I doubted they could find it at all if Modred had taken pains to hide it.

  And Lance guarded the small room down the corridor which was a small cabin we had used on other voyages, where he had found to put Modred, I reckoned. Lance stood there, against the wall by the door, not moving, and looked tired beyond reckoning. “I can get a chair for you,” I offered. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “I’m well enough,” he said, “but I’d like the chair, thanks.”

  I brought it, out of Dela’s rooms, and set it down for him. He sank into it, with shadows round his eyes, with his big shoulders bowed. There was nothing anywhere to be happy about ... and still that hammering continued.

  I knelt down, took Lance’s hand and looked up at him, which was the only way I could have his attention on me. It was focused elsewhere until then—somewhere insubstantial, maybe, on my lady, on our prospects. On what craziness brought him to lay hands on Gawain. I had no idea. His thoughts had grown complex, and they had never been that before. But he saw me because he had to, and his fingers tightened a little on my hand, cold and loose in mine until that.

  “We’ve done all we can do,” I said. “Lance—it’s still all right. He can’t have done us that much harm. Let me talk to him, can I? I always could talk to him. I might make sense of him.”

  “You don’t know what might be in his head.”

  “I know you’ll be right outside,” I said in all confidence. His eyes flickered—it was a touch of pride, of what his shadow was. He wanted so much—so many things. For him a little praise was much.

  “I think,” he said, “he got nothing at all to eat or drink yesterday: he might want that.”

  Break Modred’s neck he might; but cruelty was not in Lance. He thought of such things. I nodded.

  “I think he might,” I said, and got up and went off about that, while Lance kept his watch at the door.

  So I came back from the dininghall stores with a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and Lance got up and let me through the door. Just a moment he stayed there, while Modred got up from the bed where he had been sitting, but Lance said nothing, and Modred said nothing, until Lance had closed the door.

  “You haven’t had anything to eat,” I said.

  “Thank you.”

  As quiet as before, as precise and proper, his thin hands clasped before him.

  “Modred, why did you do a thing like that?”

  He shrugged. “Thank you for the food,” he said. I had not set it down. He meant I should leave, that was clear.

  “Doesn’t it hurt?” I asked. “Haven’t you got any nerves at all?”

  “If they make the bridge across, they might be right or wrong. But they don’t know. And it’s reckless.”

  Modred—to talk about recklessness, after what he had done. I set the tray down. “Then why won’t you talk to them, tell them what you’ve done?”

  “I don’t see that it makes any difference.”

  “You don’t see. When did you see everything?”

  Another shrug. No one attacked Modred. I stared into that dark-bearded face that frightened born-men and tried not to think of the tape, of that other Modred.

  “Modred, please talk to them.”

  “The program isn’t locked,” he said. “They’ll have had no trouble accessing it.”

  “You could have asked permission.”

  “I did.”

  It was so. I knew that he had done that again and again.

  “And if I’m wrong,” he said, “there’s Lynette’s way; but if she’s wrong—there’s nothing left, is there?”

  “You might be right. And if you are, come back, beg their pardons, talk to them.”

  He shook his head, walked over matter of factly and investigated the tray I had brought. “Thanks for the food. I hadn’t time yesterday.”

  “Why won’t you talk to them?”

  He looked up at me. There was a hint of pain, but he looked down again and unwrapped the sandwich, looking only tired.

  “Modred.”

  A second time he looked up at me. “They will never listen—to me—even when they should. Reason won’t work, will it—not against what a born-man wants to believe. I’ve seen that before now.”

  “Do you understand—what it was in that tape Percy found in the locker?”

  “Entertainment. A fancy. The logic on which this ship exists.”

  And the Maid was for him—the reason he existed. So it had gotten through to him. There was no reason in it. Modred had not even the nerves to be afraid: he was only trying to think it through and coming out with odd sums. He took a bite of his sandwich, a sip of the coffee. “It was kind of you to come,” he said.

  “If you could explain to them—”

  “I
have explained to master Griffin. I don’t think he really understands. Or he looks at my face and stops listening.” His brow furrowed. “I’ve exhausted reason. There’s nothing else but what I did.” A second sip of coffee, and absently he turned his back on me and walked away.

  “Modred, look at me. Don’t be like that.”

  He turned back again. “I don’t precisely understand what kind of reasoning it is. Only that I’m not trusted. And that Griffin commands this ship.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “But do you think he’s right?”

  That was the logic that divided us ... We went by other things; and Modred only on his reckonings.

  “I’m still following original instructions,” Modred said. “To get us out of this. Vivien has the right idea and none of you will listen to her either.”

  “You said it can’t be done.”

  “I said there was no escaping the mass. I said other things no one heard.”

  “You mean talking to that thing.”

  “It’s not attractive. It’s dangerous. You don’t like things like that. I know.”

  “You left Gawain in trouble on your account.”

  “Gawain did as Gawain chose to do.”

  “Then you’re not alone. You can’t say no one believes in you.”

  “Or the tape chose for him. He’s my ... brother ... in the dream. It’s a very dangerous thing, to see one’s whole existence, from beginning to end, isn’t it? I’m Modred. And not to be trusted. Even if I have the right idea.”

  The door opened, abruptly. Born-men do such things, without a by your leave. It was Griffin.

  “I’ll see you now,” Griffin said, “in the dining hall. Now.”

  And Griffin left, like that, leaving the door open and Lance standing there.

  I was afraid suddenly, seeing the look on Modred’s face, that was stark frustration—a born-man could do terrible things to us; there were all our psych-sets. There was all of that.

  Modred set the tray and cup down, click, mostly untasted, and straightened his shoulders and walked out, past Lance without a look or a word. Lance followed him directly. I hurried after—knowing nothing else to do and nowhere else to go.