Alternate Realities

by C. J. Cherryh

  He was humiliated more that he had been willing to sell himself, for what she gave away.

  And he did not tell Jillan about that night. He did not tell it even to Paul.

  “The time has come,” <> said, and made two simulacra. “Wear this,” <> said to <^> of Jillan-shape. “<^>’ll find things in common with her.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Paul said to Rafe’s question. “I don’t—”

  And there were two more of them: a fourth Rafe; a third Jillan standing there, in front of the EVA-pod that reflected them and the hall askew in its warped faceplate.

  A pair of them, with that deep-eyed stare. There was horror in newcomer-Jillan’s eyes.

  “Kepta,” Paul said, guessing.

  And: “Kepta,” said Rafe, getting to his feet as the rest of them had, “dammit, let Jillan be!”

  “Call him Marandu,” Kepta said of the anxious Jillan-shape beside him. “That was something like his name. He doesn’t quite describe him. But she doesn’t do it either.”

  “More games.”

  “No,” Kepta said. “Not now.” Jillan/Marandu had hold of Rafe/Kepta’s arm. Kepta shook off the grip and walked aside with a glance upward and about as if his sight went beyond the walls. “It’s quiet out there now. It won’t be for long. It’s moving slowly, expecting traps.”

  “What are you here for?” asked Jillan One.

  “You,” Kepta said, and turned a glance at Paul; “It’s time.”

  “Leave Jillan here,” Paul said.

  “Which one?” it asked him, and sent a chill through his blood. It faced him fully. “You choose. A set of you will stay here safe. A set of you will face it. Likely the encounter will ruin that set. Which?”

  “None of them,” Rafe said. “Leave them alone.”

  “It won’t,” Kepta said, and looked back at Paul. “I sent a full set here—to keep the promise; I brought them early so that they would have some contact with the oldest. Continuity. That’s as much as I could give. Now it’s time, and no time left. Four to stay and three to go. Shall I choose? Have you not discovered difference?”

  “I’ll go,” Paul said. He cast a look at his doppelganger, poor bewildered self, standing there with its mouth open to say something. “No,” it protested. “No. It’s why I was born, isn’t it?”

  Then things seemed clear to him, clear as nothing but Jillan had ever been. “Take Jillan and Rafe of the new set,” he said, “and me, of the old.” He looked straight at his doppelganger as he said it, proud of himself for once. “I know what the score is.”

  And the dark closed about him.

  “No!” he heard Rafe’s hoarse shout pursuing them. He felt a hand seek his in the dark—Jillan’s. Felt her press it hard. He trusted it was the latest one, as he had asked. “You did the right thing,” Rafe Three said—unmistakably Rafe, clear-eyed and sensible, as if he had drawn his first free breath out of the bewilderment the others posed. “What now?”—for Rafe was not senior of this group.

  They were gone, just gone, and there was silence after. Rafe stood helpless between Rafe Two and Jillan; and Paul’s hours-younger self, his substitute, whose look at Jillan was apology and shame.

  She just stared at that newborn Paul, with that dead cold face that was always Jillan’s answer to painful truths.

  “What’s happening out there?” Rafe Two asked. “What’s happening?”

  “War,” said that Paul, in a faint, thin voice. “Something like. That Paul that changed—it wants the rest of us. And he’s got to stop it. Paul has to. The real one. The one I belong to. The one I am.”

  “It can make more of us,” Jillan said. “It can keep this thing going—indefinitely.”

  “It won’t,” Paul Three said, “It won’t take the chance. It said it wouldn’t risk the ship. Kepta’s words.”

  “It—” Jillan said; and: “O God!”—her eyes directed toward the tunnel-length.

  Rafe spun and looked, finding nothing but dark; and then the howling sound raced through the speakers, leaving them shivering in its wake.

  made haste now, sending tendrils of self into essential controls. encountered elements of <>, which had expected, but <>’s holdouts were growing few. There had been major failures. <>’s resistance collapsed in some areas, continued irrationally in others.

  Other passengers, such as |:|, declared neutrality and retreated to the peripheries.

  Paul, meanwhile.... wielded Paul/Rafe like an extension of self.

  The variant minds of the simulacra were the gateway, reckoned. <> had invested very much of <>self in the intruders, which had proved, in their own way, dangerous.

  The passengers were mobilized, as they had not been in eons. There was vast discontent.

  “<> has lost <>’s grip,” whispered through the passages, everywhere. “<> has been disorganized. am taking over. Step aside. Neutrality is all ask—until matters are rectified.”

  “Home,” said one of [], with the ferocity of desire. [] forgot that []’s war was very long ago, or that []’s species no longer existed, and whose fault that was. But they were all, in some ways, mad.

  Kepta joined them, a Rafe-shape with infinity in its eyes. It stood before them in the featureless dark, and Paul faced it in a kind of numbness which said the worst was still coming; and soon.

  He was, for himself, he thought, remarkably unafraid; not brave—just self-deprived of alternatives.

  “It will be there,” Kepta said, turning and pointing to the dark that was like all other dark about them. “Distance here is a function of many things. It can arrive here very quickly when it wants.”

  “What’s it waiting for?”

  “My extinction,” Kepta said, “and that’s become possible. You must meet it on its own terms. You must stand together, by whatever means you can. You will know what to do when you see it, or if you don’t, you were bound to fail from the beginning, and I will destroy you then. It will be a kindness. Trust me for that.”

  And it was gone, leaving them alone; but a star shone in the dark, a murkish fitful thing. Rafe pointed to it; Paul had seen it already.

  “Is that it?” Rafe wondered.

  “I suppose,” said Paul, “that there’s nothing else for it to be.”

  “Make it come to us,” Jillan said. “Get it away from whatever allies it has.”

  “And what if its allies come with it?” Paul asked. “No. Come on. Time—may not be on our side.”

  They advanced then. And it moved along their horizon, a baleful yellow light.

  IX

  They waited; that was what they were left to do, prisoners of the corridor, of Lindy’s scattered pieces, of Kepta’s motives and the small remnant of former realities.

  “I can’t,” Rafe Two mourned, having tried to will himself away into the dark where Paul had gone; and Rafe himself looked with pity on his doppelganger.

  “That’ll be Kepta’s doing,” Jillan said. She sat tucked up in a chair that phased with her imperfectly, near Paul, loyally near their relict Paul, whose face mirrored profoundest shame.

  “I tried too,” Paul Three said, in a hushed, aching tone, as if he were embarrassed even to admit the attempt. “Nothing. It’s shut down, whatever faculty we had.”

  “You were outmaneuvered,” Rafe said. “He’s a little older than you.”

  “Not much,” Jillan said to Paul on her own. “Hours. But a few choices older. He knew, that’s what. He’d had time to figure it out; and he was way ahead of us. He got us all.”

  There was a glimmering of something in Paul Three’s eyes. Resolve, Rafe thought. Gratitude. And something he had suddenly seen in that other Paul Gaines, the look of a man who knew absolutely what he was doing.

  Rafe Two picked that up, perhaps. Perhaps envied it; their minds were very close. That Rafe got up and turned his back as if he could not bear that confidence.

  Why not me? The thought broadcast itself from Rafe Two’s every move and s
hift of shoulders. He walked away, partly down the corridor. Why not choose me? I was best. Oldest. Strongest.

  Responsibility.

  “Don’t,” Rafe said. “Stay put.”

  “I am,” Rafe Two said, facing him against the dark, with bitterness. “I can’t blamed well get anywhere down the hall, can l?”

  And then there was a Jillan-shape at his back, glowing in the dark.

  “Rafe,” Rafe said, and Rafe Two saw his face, their faces, if not what was at his back. Rafe Two acquired a frightened look and turned to see what had appeared behind him in the corridor.

  The light retreated before them, continually retreated.

  “I guess,” Rafe said, not breathing hard, because they could not be out of breath, or tired, nor could what they pursued, “—I guess it’s not willing to be caught.”

  “If that’s the case,” said Jillan, “we don’t have a prayer of taking it.”

  “Unless it’s willing to catch us,” Paul said. “Maybe it’s counted the odds and doesn’t like three of us at once. I’ll go forward. Maybe that will interest it.”

  “You can bet it will,” Jillan said, and caught his arm. She was strong; strong as he: that was the law of this place; and he was going nowhere, not against her, not by any means against the two of them. Rafe stepped in his way and faced that distant light in his stead.

  “You!” Rafe yelled at it. “Lost your nerve? Never had it in the first place?”

  “That’s one way,” Paul said. “Let me tell you about that thing. It knows it’s a coward. It lives with that real well. It knows all kinds of things about itself. That’s its strength.”

  “You’re wrong,” Jillan said. “If it’s you it’s not a coward.”

  “Let’s say it’s prudent,” he said. “Let’s say—it knows how to survive. If we split up—it’ll go for one of us. Me, I’m betting.”

  “Me,” said Jillan. “I’m the one it doesn’t have.”

  “It’s scared of you,” Paul said with a dangerous twinge of shame. “I really think it is.”

  “What’s that mean?” Jillan asked.

  “That. Just that. It is. Keep pressing at it.” He walked farther with them. The light they pursued grew no brighter.

  “Ever occur to you,” Jillan asked then, “that we’re being lured—ourselves?”

  “Where’s Kepta?” Rafe demanded of the uncounseling dark, the void about them. “Dammit, where is he? He could be more help. What’s he expect of us?”

  “Kepta’s saving his own precious behind,” Jillan said. “We’re the delaying action. Don’t you figure that?”

  But they kept walking, kept trying, together, since he could not persuade them otherwise. “Think of something,” Paul said. “That’s me we’re chasing. It knows every move I’d make. Think of something to surprise it.”

  “It knows us,” Jillan said, a low enthusiastic voice. “Too bloody well. It’s not taking the bait.”

  “Kepta?” Rafe Two asked, facing Jillan’s shape that strode toward him; but even while he asked it he kept backing up until he was within Lindy’s limits, until he had Rafe beside him, and true-Jillan and Paul Three. There was something very wrong with that Jillan-shape, something very much different from Kepta in its silence, the curious unsteadiness of its walking.

  “Kepta?” Rafe himself asked it, at his side, half-merged with him.

  “Maranduuuu,” it said, this puppetlike Jillan-shape, “Marandu, I—”

  “Stay back from us.” Rafe Two held out a forbidding hand, making himself the barrier, remembering in a cold sweat that it could touch him, if not the original, that he could grapple with it if he had to—but he had wrestled Jillan-shape before when it was Kepta and he knew his chances against that strength. “Keep your distance. Jillan, Paul, get Rafe back. Get him back!”

  “Safe,” it said. Its hands were before it, a humanlike gesture that turned into one chillingly not, that tuck of both hands, against Jillan’s naked breasts, like the paws of some animal. One hand gestured limply. “Safe. Kepta sent—” Eyes blinked, as if it were sorting rapidly. “Me,” it decided. “Me. Marandu. To defend you.”

  “Do your defending from there,” Rafe Two said, hand still held out, as if that could stop it.

  invaded another center of the ship, dislodging a few of the simpler passengers, who wept; and one complex, ||||, who sent out a strong warning pulse.

  did not counter this, or attack. The entity was not capable of aggression, but of painful defense. offered |||| choices. In time |||| redefined the necessities of ||||’s situation and wandered away.

  That was the first layer of <>’s defense about the replication apparatus. It went altogether too quickly, tempting to imprudent advance on the chiefest prize: the inner circle, the computer’s very heart.

  So guessed where <> had centered <>self: would have done so. <> was there, wound about the replication apparatus and possessing every template there was. It was necessary to advance against that center sooner than had intended, and knew raw terror, approaching this place.

  There were doomsday actions that <> could take.

  “ advise <> against such measures,” said from a safe, distance to the core. “They are ultimately destructive. Surplus copies of——” ( used a pronoun collective of the ship and passengers) “would complicate matters. Get out of there. Give up. promise will replicate <> when have won the ship, when things are secure.”

  And in <>’s infuriating silence:

  “<>,” said, “have not always kept the promises make?”

  “Are not one that <> kept?” came the answer, faint and deceptively far away. “<> regenerated in our last such impasse. <> did as <> said. Give up,” <> added, a hubris that astonished , “and <> will show this mercy one more time. The struggle is inconclusive again. There is,” <> added further, “always another time.”

  laughed in outrage. “ will amalgamate these newcomers with <> when copy <>, since <> are so defensive of them. will add <^> and lump all y enemies together.”

  “Do this,” <> whispered, no louder than the whisper of the stars against the ship-sensors, loud as the universe, “do this and regret it infinitely. Reciprocation, . Remember that. don’t have the keys <> have. always have to resurrect <>. <>’ve changed the keys; <>’ve been doing it all through <>y waking. <> learned—from ur old trick.”

  This was likely truth. <> was fully capable of altering the ship. But disdained the warnings and pressed forward, urging ’s other parts to advance as well.

  Paul/Rafe was one. He was afraid, in aggregate. He trembled, constantly keeping his enemy in sight, but constantly assailed with doubts.

  He was in space, the, stars about him, nothing for reference.

  He looked about for Lindy, but there was nothing there.

  So Rafe-mind fought him still, deep within his structure, having saved back some shred of itself for this. It fed Paul self-doubts.

  Fargone station’s deepest ways, and it was not Security after Rafe Murray this time; it was another kind of force.

  No one freelance-smuggled with the likes of Icarus, no one crossed the moneyed interests that ran what they liked past customs; and if they caught him, if they saw his face—

  So Paul fought back, and drove Rafe-mind into shuddering retreat.

  Rafe made a mistake, a wrong turn in docks he had known all his life; but a stack of canisters against the wall became a maze, became a dead end, and cut off his retreat.

  “Got you, you bastard, “ said the first of the four that filled the aisle between the towering cans.

  He did not defend himself. It was not wise to antagonize them further. He only flung up his hands and twisted to shield himself as best he could, let them beat him senseless in the hopes they would be content with that, private law privately enforced, the kind they might not want Fargone authority involved in.

  They did a thorough
job. They knew, from his lack of defense or outcry, that he would not be going to authorities to make complaint; that he had something to lose that way more than they could do to him. And in that frustration they took their time about it.

  “Where’s the other one?” they asked him over and over, knowing they had chased two, but he had diverted them his way. He never answered them about Jillan, not a syllable.

  That was not the kind of thing Paul had hoped for. The memory died, quickly; but Rafe-mind stayed intact, locked into that moment with deliberate focus, with a certain satisfaction, the same he had shown the smugglers from Icarus.

  I, Paul kept thinking, until it was himself who had been betrayed and Rafe had done it. So he warped all such memories.

  Rafe wept, believing it at last.

  No police, he had thought, dragging himself away with a broken arm that, finally, had cost him and Jillan four months’ savings for the meds. He evaded the police, passers-by, all help. There were questions that way; there was Welfare always ready to take charge of them and assign them a station job or send them to the mines to pay for Welfare help, forever, no hope of ships, no way out of debt for all their hopeless lives. A broken arm, the other things they did—that was small coin for freedom; and he must not talk, never complain, no matter what they did.

  “I fell,” he told the meds, three days after, when the arm got beyond their care, and Jillan made him go.

  There were inconsistencies. At times he thought that Paul had helped them; at others it seemed that Paul was destitute as they, which he had not remembered.

  Rich, always rich, Paul Gaines, superior to him, clean and crisp in his uniform, station militia, sometimes Security—

  Was it Security, then? Was it the police and not Icarus crew that had found him in the corridors that day and left him bruised and bleeding among the canisters for outbound ships?