Alternate Realities

by C. J. Cherryh

  <> could not keep from the controls long. There would be distractions. <> knew.

  “Aaaaiiiiiii!” ((())) wailed, irreverent of boundaries, passed <> and hid, pathetic in ((()))’s disturbance. But ((())) had never been particularly self-restrained before ((())) slipped from sanity. “Aiii,” ((())) mourned, in short, painful sobs, “aiii, aiii.”

  “Accurate,” said <>.

  “Jillan,” Rafe said, unable to touch her—he reached, that was all that he could do; and every movement hurt his sprains. “You’re sure that you’re all right?”

  “Sure,” she said in a hoarse small voice. “Rafe—how do you know it’s me?”

  A chill went over him. “Your asking makes it likely,” he said after a moment. “Doesn’t it? It’s you. Question is—how far down the line?”

  “You know, then.”

  “I know,” he said.

  She ran a hand through her hair, disturbing its disorder, blinked at him; at the ones insubstantial like herself. “Paul? Rafe?”

  “What?” Rafe Two answered.

  “You know—both of you—about the copies that exist—”

  “I saw my double,” Paul said. “Didn’t all of us?”

  “That question’s always worth asking,” she said to Paul. “Didn’t all of us?” Her eyes came back to Rafe, haunted. “You know what dawns on me? That even I don’t know which I am. It copied me. Which one left? Which stayed? It’s all academic, isn’t it? That copy’s back there, and if it’s awake, it’s scared as I’d be. Doing everything I’d do, thinking every thought, because it is—me. I am there. And here. That’s the way it works.”

  “For God’s sake, Jillan—”

  “Rafe, I talked—talked—I’m not even sure of that ... to something that calls itself Kepta; it’s in charge. There’s more than one.”

  “You’re sure of that.”

  “It said there were a lot of passengers. A lot. And, Paul—Paul, that copy of you we saw—one of them’s got it. Got one of you, Rafe. This Kepta says they’ve gotten—damaged somehow. That they’re maybe—dangerous.”

  “Jillan,” Rafe Two said, sharp and brittle. “Jillan, save it. Our brother’s not involved in this. He’s leaving.”

  “Leaving?”

  “Tell it to me,” Rafe said to her, hearing things that made far too much sense. Jillan looked afraid, glancing from one to the other of them. Paul’s face was stark with panic. “How—dangerous?”

  “What’s this about leaving?” Jillan asked him; and when he said nothing, looked at Rafe Two.

  “It’s given him a chance,” Rafe Two said. “It’ll take him to Paradise, a capsule of some kind, a signal—it’ll drop him off.”

  “You believe that?” Jillan asked, looking round at him.

  “What did Kepta say to you?” Rafe persisted in his turn.

  “It’s the best promise we’ve got,” the doppelganger said in his, crouching there, hands loose between his knees. “It says it’s moving on, going elsewhere. No more concern with the whole human race. Wants to drop off our living component, it does. Maybe before his food runs out. I don’t know why. I don’t care. I’ve told Rafe I’d just as soon he was out of here.”

  “Rafe,” Rafe said, “mind your business. Jillan, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” she said, tight and quick.

  “Don’t give me nothing. It’s got—what, the first of Paul? The one that ran. And me. Which me?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head, with panic in her eyes. “I’ve no idea.”

  “Early or late copy?”

  “I don’t know. It didn’t tell me that.”

  “It’s not your business,” Rafe Two said. “You’re leaving. You’re getting off this ship.”

  “It’s got to get there first.” Rafe felt his heart beating double time, looked from one to the other of them, Jillan, Rafe—Paul, whose panic was all but tangible.

  “You take any ticket out of here you’ve got,” Jillan said. “Look—Rafe: you’re only one of you. You understand? I’m not alone. Paul’s not. You’re still with us. You’ll be with us—in duplicate.”

  “She’s right,” his doppelganger said, putting out his hand as if to touch his arm. “You’re superfluous—aren’t you? You take any way you can off this ship. We’ve already settled that.”

  Rafe sat still, staring at all of them, wiped his hand across his lip.

  “He’s right,” Paul said from over by the wall, in a small and steady voice. “You’re the one that’s really at risk. Get out if you’ve got a choice. We want you to do that. We want to know you’re safe.”

  The voice lingered. Paul’s body was gone. All of them were, suddenly, as if they had never been. There was only the corridor, the remnants, the pieces of Lindy.

  “That’s not enough!” Rafe shouted, in his ruined whisper of a voice. He looked up at the warted, serpentine ceiling, the trail of lights and raised his fists at it. “Kepta—” His voice gave way, beyond audibility. “Kepta,” he tried again “Kepta, send them back!”

  There was a passing wail, loud, devastatingly loud. He clapped his hands over his ears until the worst of it had gone.

  Then was silence, long silence. He sat down, aching, in the vacant chair at Lindy’s console. He passed his hands over controls, the few that worked, and looked at the starfield vid gave him.

  He knew where he was now. He had confirmed Altair, and Vega burning bright, the two great beacons of the dark near human space, virtually touching from this perspective. The myriad, myriad others, the few wan human stars. Sol ... was out of field.

  That way? he wondered. Is that the direction it means to go? Is that what it’s telling me? He could see Paradise, a dim, common star, nothing much, the kind mankind preferred.

  He switched on the com. “Kepta,” he said, patiently, watching lights flicker, reckoning it might be heard. “Kepta, you want to talk to me?”

  No answer.

  He bowed his head on the console, looked up finally at the vid. Nothing changed. Inertial at 1/10 C. Drifting, after jump, in some place off human routes.

  No one would find them. God help whoever did. God help the whole species if someone did.

  He wiped at his eyes, his cheek resting against the metal console. To leave this place—to let it take Paul and Jillan on—

  To let it have himself, in infinite series, erasing what it liked, keeping what it wanted until he was whatever Kepta chose—

  “Kepta, talk to me.”

  And after a long while of silence: “Kepta, you want to discuss this?”

  “I don’t think,” someone said behind him, “you’d recognize my voice on that radio.”

  He spun the chair about, wincing with sore ribs and joints, blinked at the dimming of the lights, at Jillan standing there.

  “Don’t do that.” His hoarseness betrayed him, cracked in his disturbance.

  “Come up behind you?” Kepta asked in Jillan’s fair clear tones.

  “Her.”

  “Use this shape, you mean? It was convenient. Most recent, even more than yours. I don’t like to partition off more than I have to, or struggle with a mind too long out of date.”

  “You going—where? Vega, maybe? Somewhere near?”

  “Might,” Kepta said. “Might not.”

  “You won’t say.”

  “I don’t know,” Kepta said. “I haven’t decided that. Is that why you called me?”

  “Jillan said—there was trouble on the ship.”

  “There may be.”

  “Look, are we going to Paradise?”

  “I told you that we were.”

  “What trouble?”

  “I don’t see it concerns you.”

  “Dammit—I want to know.”

  Jillan’s eyes looked up at him, with Jillan’s innocence, beneath a fringe of disordered hair. “What difference can it make?”

  “I’m not going. I’m not leaving this. I want to know.”

  “Not leaving the ship
?”

  “No more than you ever meant me to.” His voice broke down. “You set this up. Didn’t you?”

  “No. But between this mind and your own—I figured that you’d stay.”

  He gazed at his sister’s shape, untouchable, something it hurt even to curse “You always right?”

  “No. That would be unbearable. Besides—we need only delay your trip. We can settle this thing, if you’ll cooperate. Then I’ll take you to Paradise. Or anywhere you like. We’ll make it reciprocal. I get your wholehearted assistance. You name your destination. I’ll take you there. Reward. We do share that concept.”

  “Paradise is good enough.” His voice broke down, came out small and diminished, and he hated it. Jillan, his eyes kept telling him. The mind inside was half hers at least, knowing him with her thoroughness, memories shared from infancy, childhood, all their lives. “What do you want—another copy? That help?”

  “It might. But taking it so soon might weaken you considerably. It might even kill you. And I won’t.”

  “I don’t mistake that for sentiment.”

  The Jillan-figure paused, its hazel transparent eyes quite earnest. “No,” it said. “Disadvantage outweighs advantage. Trans-species, transactions can be explained like that, in motiveless simplicity. Advantage and disadvantage. Facts and acts. True reasons, trans-species, rarely make full sense. Even basic ones. Suffice it to say I can use this simulacrum; I just partition. It takes very little attention. On the other hand, if you tried my mind—it would be the other problem. You’d probably not wake up: large box, small content.”

  “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 da
rk. 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.