NETFEED/NEWS: Middle East Unified At Last

(visual: Jews and Arabs demonstrating at Western Wall)

VO: Palestinians and Israelis, enemies for so long, have at last found common ground—in hatred of the UN's management of the Jerusalem Protectorship.

(visual: Professor Yoram Vul, Brookings Institute)

VUL: "The only thing that could bring these people together, it seems, was someone trying to stop them from killing each other. It would be ironic if it were not so sad, but now we have eleven more UN peacekeepers dead in the Hashomaim Tunnel bombing, and the most common thing you hear is, 'What do you expect—it's the Middle East!' "

Renie could only stare helplessly, first at the thing she had thought of as Ricardo Klement, then at her long-lost companions. She had never expected to see them again, yet here they were—but like Renie and !Xabbu they only stood, frozen and confused, and where there should have been rejoicing there was only more mystery. And fear, she realized. I'm frightened again, but I don't even know why.

"What . . . what's a Nemesis?" Renie asked.

"It is a machine—a piece of code." She had never heard Martine Desroubins sound so flatly miserable. "It was sent to find Paul Jonas, I think. I met it when I was Dread's prisoner. In all the confusion after that, I don't believe I ever told you." Martine turned to the inhuman, handsome face that the real Ricardo Klement had intended to wear for eternity. "And what do you want now?" she said bitterly. "Jonas is dead. That should make you happy—as happy as something like you can be."

"Oh, no!" Renie raised her hand to her mouth. "Not Paul."

"Yes, Paul," said Martine.

"But how did it turn into that Grail guy?" asked Sam Fredericks. "We saw him come alive . . . at that Ceremony thing."

"And what's with the ugly blue monkey?" With his feet on the ground, T4b had regained a little of his confidence.

"I saw it take another's form before," Martine said, "It imitated a corpse. One of Dread's victims. It did something similar with Klement, I imagine—perhaps it merely took Klement's empty virtual body before the Ceremony even began."

Renie could not bear to hear her friend sound so helpless. She wanted to go and put her arms around her—around all of them, Sam, Florimel, even T4b—but could not ignore the feeling in the air, a cloud of anxiety like an impending storm. She was almost afraid to move.

As she looked over the familiar and unfamiliar faces, she suddenly recognized the tall young man with the whipcord muscles.

"Oh, my God," she whispered to !Xabbu. "Isn't that . . . Orlando?"

The long-haired youth heard her, even from some distance away, and gave them a quick, light smile. "Hello, Renie. Hi, !Xabbu."

"But you were . . . dead, weren't you?"

He shrugged, "It's been a pretty interesting day."

The man in the wheelchair had not moved. He hovered a few paces from the Klement-thing, his eyes narrowed. "You are Nemesis, then. You heard what was said and I think you understood—Paul Jonas is dead. What do you want with the rest of us?"

Sellars. Even after all this time, Renie recognized his voice. How strange, that he should look like that. If he looked like that. She suddenly felt a fierce homesickness for the real world, for things that felt and looked the way they were supposed to, that didn't change from second to second.

The thing cocked its head at Sellars, then slowly wheeled to survey the others. "Nothing," it said at last. "I am here because I was . . . called. Were you not called, too?"

"Called?" Renie asked. "Called to what?"

The thing in Ricardo Klement's body did not answer, only turned its flat stare back to the rows of glowing cells.

The others, cautiously at first, then with increasing confidence as Nemesis showed no signs of hostility or even interest, moved past the thing toward Renie and !Xabbu. As Sam Fredericks reached her, Renie found her eyes filling with tears again.

"I haven't cried like this since I was a baby," she said, laughing as she hugged Sam. "I can't believe we're all here—all together again."

"Oh, Renie! Look!" Sam turned back to grab Orlando and pull him toward them. The barbarian sim looked embarrassed, as though his resurrection from death had been some prank that he now regretted. "He's alive! Can you believe it?" Sam giggled wildly. "And you are, too! We looked for you—everywhere! But you were just utterly gone."

For long moments it was chaos, but a happy chaos, despite the weirdness of the setting. Even T4b came forward and allowed Renie to put her arms around him.

"Chizz you're not dead," he allowed, stiff and embarrassed in her embrace. "And the little bushy man, too."

After more hugs and tears and even a couple of introductions, accompanied by a flurry of questions and half-answers, most of which left Renie feeling even more confused about what had happened—the Other had destroyed itself, it seemed, and had taken Jongleur and maybe even Dread with it—she made her way to Martine, who had hung back from the general gathering. Renie wrapped her arms around her friend, but was dismayed by the woman's passive resistance.

"It's been bad for you," she said. "Oh, Martine, at least we're alive. That's something."

"It is a great deal," the other said quietly. "I am sorry, Renie. I am very happy to see you well—happy for you, and for !Xabbu, too. Pay no attention to me. I . . . I am crippled. The end was . . . very bad."

"It was bad for !Xabbu, too," Renie said. "I thought I'd lost him."

Martine nodded and straightened; for the first time in a while Renie thought she saw in the woman's posture something of the companion she knew. Martine gently broke free, squeezed Renie's arm, then walked past her to !Xabbu. A moment later they were in whispered conversation.

That's a step forward, Renie thought, pleased to see some animation in Martine's face. She could not think of a better ear for a heartsick person to find.

"Just a moment." Florimel's voice cut across the other voices, loud and sudden. "I am as glad as anyone to have this reunion, but we were promised answers." She pointed at Sellars, who had been watching the gathering with a gentle, avuncular smile. "Well? I want to get out of this . . . false universe. I want to be with my daughter. If, as you say, her condition will not improve, at least I can see her, touch her. Why are we still here? What do you want to tell us?"

It took Renie a moment to understand what Florimel meant about her daughter, then a spasm of nausea gripped her. Stephen—does that mean he won't get better either? She couldn't bear to think about it. After all this time, all that they had suffered . . . it wouldn't be fair. "No," she said aloud. "That can't be."

"I did not say that," Sellars declared. "I have no idea what will happen to the children in comas. All I said was that I could not promise they would get better. But the reason for the coma is gone."

"Because the Other is dead." Florimel's brisk, hard tone could not hide the anxiety beneath.

"Yes."

"But the system is still functioning," said the man who had introduced himself to Renie as Nandi something-complicated-with-a-P—the man from the Circle, as she thought of him for convenience. The one who had helped Orlando and Sam get out of the Egypt-world. "Thus it must still be . . . using those poor children. Sucking their lives like a vampire. That is why it must be destroyed."

"Please wait until you understand everything,'" Sellars told him. "Florimel is right. The time has come for the rest of the explanation." He let his chair float a little higher in the air so that all could see him. "First off, I told you that there is a new operating system, one created with the help of TreeHouse technicians and others—a much more conventional operating system. The network no longer requires a linked network of human brains to function. Of course, it is not quite so dramatically realistic either, but that may improve. . . ."

"So because the last survivors of the concentration camp are soon to be free or dead, should the camp itself remain open?" Nandi was scornful. "Become a holiday retreat, perhaps?"

"It is a more difficult question than that," Sellars replied. "Children's brains were being used to run this system, but the ones victimized are not those we sought. The brains used to supplement and expand the processing power of the Other were those of the unborn—of fetuses, or perhaps even cloned brains. I have not discovered the whole truth yet, but I will. There is a near-infinity of information to sift, much of it hidden or deceitful. The Brotherhood did their best to hide their tracks,"

"What exactly are you saying?" Renie asked. "Do you mean that my brother Stephen isn't part of the system? Or just that he isn't . . . in the system? That he isn't one of the children in the simulations, for instance."

"He was never part of the system, not in the way we thought. Nor was Florimel's daughter or T4b's friend."

"Fenfen!" snapped T4b. "Heard Matti, me. Heard 'im like he was standing there."

"But all the signs pointed here, to this network!" Florimel said angrily. "What are you trying to tell us? That we were deluded? That we have suffered all this, watched friends die . . . for a coincidence?"

"Not at all." He let his chair drift a little closer to her. Behind him, Ricardo Klement—No, Nemesis, Renie reminded herself, whatever the hell it is—settled himself . . . itself . . . on the floor, gazing intently up at the gleaming walls as though in some fabulous art gallery. "The network," Sellars went on, "—or more specifically, the Other—was certainly to blame for their comas. But only in the same way that the Other convinced all of you that you couldn't leave the network without suffering terrible pain. As I explained, the poor, lost creature we called the Other was a freakishly powerful telepath. Mind-reader, mind-controller—he was something of both. The mind-reading—the actual remote connection to a human brain—was the freakish part. But once contact could be made directly into the nervous system, everything else was probably relatively easy. After all, that is how I managed to control the boy Cho-Cho's speech centers and talk to you."

"Talk, talk, that's all you do—but what are the answers?" growled Florimel. "Why is my daughter in a coma?"

"Let me explain, please. It is not a simple story, even the little of it I have discovered.

"Despite his arrogance and megalomania, I had wondered all along whether even Felix Jongleur would take the risk of exposure that would come from putting thousands of children into comas to complete his machine. And in fact, he did not. He and his minions were not satisfied with the Other—it was too powerful, too untrustworthy. So even while they built their system around it, while they told the rest of the Grail Brotherhood that everything was working perfectly, they were looking for possible substitutes, other telepaths and wild talents that might be able to replace the Other. They concentrated on children, both because they would be easier to mold to the system, and because they would physically last longer. One such discovery was the man you knew as Dread, although Jongleur found a very different use for him.

"They had many different programs in place to sift through children and test them, private schools and clinics like the Pestalozzi Institute, which they also used to educate the Other, if such a term can be used for such an inhuman practice. And there were places like the virtual club called Mister J's—the spot where I first met Renie and !Xabbu—which were a sort of preliminary screening device, meant to sift out the few interesting prospects from the millions of ordinary children. Two of Jongleur's lieutenants were in charge of this project, although Jongleur himself carefully watched over everything."

"Finney and Mudd," Martine said. "The men who chased Paul."

"Yes, although I doubt those were their real names. From what I have seen, they seem to have had a very unsavory background." Sellars frowned for a moment.

"But those children—my brother!" Renie said. "Why are they in comas?"

"Because Jongleur underestimated the Other. His own body stolen, the Other was given the whole of a fantastically complicated network to be his new body—but Jongleur and his minions did not understand the Other's ambition. More importantly, they did not understand his humanity . . . and his loneliness.

"He discovered his power could be extended through electronic communications over a distance. Part of that power was a hypnotic effect—something the Other himself probably never understood, any more than the rest of us spend much energy considering our own vision or sense of balance. You all being trapped here is a perfect example. He wanted all of you to stay in the network. He was fascinated with you, for some reason—I watched him watching you, almost following you. . . ."

"It was because of a story," Martine said in a raw voice. "About a boy in a well."

"Ah. Well, I hope you will explain that to me later." For the second time in an hour, Sellars appeared startled. "But I should finish this story first.

"The Other was interfacing with your minds directly, without you even realizing it. And at some level his wish to keep you, to hold onto you, translated into a direct plea planted in your subconscious. You could not go offline. Whether by pain or by the apparent disappearance of your neurocannular connections, you believed yourselves prevented, and it was so."

"But that Other thing truly sixed now, right?" T4b asked anxiously. "We could go now. To our caves—home, like?"

"Yes. But after I finish this explanation there is something very important I need from you—now, with you all gathered together."

"Yeah? Thinkin' about it," T4b said. "Keep talkin', you."

"So you're saying that the children like my brother were held here the same way?" Renie asked.

"No. They were never truly here, not like we are. Instead, they were . . . and are, for all I know . . . in comas simply because the Other made it happen—perhaps even by accident.

"I am guessing here, but I imagine that when the Other finally discovered how to move beyond the constraints of the Grail network, he reached out through Jongleur's own information web, then discovered Jongleur's ongoing search for suitable child-talents and infiltrated that as well, extending his powers all the way out into places like Mister J's. When the Other reached through that machinery and discovered the children on the other end—perhaps the first children he had been exposed to since the Pestalozzi Institute experiments, decades earlier—he must have been very excited. He tried to . . . examine these children, perhaps tried to communicate with them. I'm sure they resisted. You have all encountered the Other. He could not help the way he was, but that did not make him any less terrible, less frightening."

Like a huge thing in the depths of the ocean, and me swimming, helpless, Renie thought. Like a killing frost. Like Satan himself, banished and lonely. . . . "Yes," she said. "Oh, God, yes, we remember."

"Just so." Sellars nodded. "Faced with the resistance of a struggling, terrified child, my guess is that this psychologically malformed but powerful creature screamed out his own telepathic version of a command—'Be still' And so they became . . . still. But since he did not understand what he had done, he did not release them again when he was finished examining them."

"Examining them?" Florimel sounded outraged. "What does that mean, 'examining them'? What did it want?"

Sellars gave a half-shrug. "To make friends. There is no understanding this without remembering that the Other was himself essentially an abused, isolated child."

Martine moved uncomfortably, seemed about to say something, but remained silent.

"For friends?" Renie looked around at the others to see if she was the only one who didn't understand. "That's . . . I don't know. Hard to believe. It did all that to them, almost killed them . . . because it wanted to meet some new friends?"

"You misunderstand me. I did not say 'meet,' I said 'make.' He wanted to make friends—literally. I believe that the Other wanted more than anything to be with other children like himself—or like the child he imagined himself to be. He studied real children so he could duplicate them within the network—surround himself with companions to ease the solitude."

"So all those fairy-tale children like the Stone Girl and all the others we met here in the heart of the system. . . ." Renie tried to reason it out. "They're just . . . imitations? Made-up children?"

"Yes. Cobbled together from his studies of real children like your brother, combined with the Other's memories—perhaps his only happy memories—of things Martine and other children had once taught him, rhymes, stories, songs. And I suspect there were more than just the fairy-tale creatures—that other invented children either escaped the Other's private place here or were created outside the sanctuary for some reason and never brought in. They wound up scattered throughout the Grail network—not human, but not part of the system either."

"Paul Jonas called them 'orphans,' " Martine said softly, "although he did not understand what they were. His young friend Gally must have been one of them."

"Orphans," Sellars said. "An apt term—especially now. But all of them would have been based at least in part on what the Other found in the minds of real children. That is why some of them retain memories, seem to have had some kind of prior life."

"So . . . my Eirene is not on this network. . . ?" Florimel spoke slowly, as if just waking. "She has never been on this network?"

"No. And as to whether the Other's post-hypnotic suggestion will now disappear, too, I can't say." Sellars shook his head grimly. "I wish I could, Florimel. If we are very lucky, your daughter and the other Tandagore children were only comatose because the Other retained some kind of continuous, reflexive mental grip on them, perhaps even by direct contact—through hospital lines, monitoring equipment, who knows? But I simply cannot guess what might happen now. We could study for years, I think, and never fully understand the Other."

"So we don't know if they'll wake up?" Renie could not keep the bitterness out of her voice. "After all this. . . !"

"We do not." He spoke carefully. "But perhaps there is more we can do to help them. Perhaps we can use the knowledge we have gained in some kind of therapy. . . ."

"Oh, yes, therapy!" Renie bit her lip to keep from saying something that would lead her on into screaming and cursing. !Xabbu put his arm around her shoulders. She closed her eyes, suddenly sick of the place, the lights, everything.

Orlando broke the startled silence. "That still doesn't explain me. Why am I here? Maybe if you've got super-hypnosis power you can tell someone, 'Be in a coma!' or 'Feel like you're on fire if you go offline!' and it works, but you can't just tell somebody who's dying, 'Don't be dead.' Sorry, but they wouldn't even try that in a Johnny Icepick flick."

"We have not had much chance to talk, you and I," Sellars told him, "but I suspect you guess the answer already, Orlando. You have received the same kind of virtual mind as the Grail Brotherhood were expecting for themselves." He turned briefly to look at the Nemesis thing, which still seemed lost in some deep meditation. "And a body, too, like that one meant for Ricardo Klement, which was . . . borrowed, instead. But yours was constructed for you by the Other, just as he did for Paul Jonas—he may have been using some version of the Grail process on you the entire time you were in the system, letting your own brain build itself a virtual duplicate. He did follow you closely, Orlando, that I know for certain. Perhaps he felt some unspoken . . . affinity to you. To your illness, your struggle."

Orlando shook his head. "It doesn't matter. Dead is dead, and that's what I really am."

Before Sam Fredericks or anyone else could protest, they were distracted by a sudden movement from the Nemesis creature, who stood.

"The next ones are almost ready," Nemesis said. "I have a . . . feeling, I think it would be called. That I . . . desire waiting to end. Is that a feeling?"

"What's that fenpole talking about?" growled T4b. "What 'next ones'?"

Renie, who had been present for the Klement-thing's first groping explorations of language, could not help feeling disturbed that it now seemed to think it was having feelings, too.

"What it is talking about is the last part of these long explanations," Sellars said. "The reason we are here—and my most shamed confession." He extended his thin arm to indicate the honeycomb of lights. The gleam of it was less now, as though the fires were banked, but its bizarre potentiality still set Renie's nerves twitching. Sellars seemed oddly nervous, too. "These are the Other's true children."

"What—another abomination?" Nandi from the Circle spoke lightly, but Renie heard a flash of real rage.

"But this can't be them," Sam Fredericks said indignantly. "All those teddy bears and Bubble Bunnies and things like that, the ones that didn't get killed, they were still up there like half an hour ago, up at the top of the pit. How did they get here?"

"They are not here. These are something different. Please bear with me a little longer, Sam," Sellars asked her. "Just a little longer.

"Most of you do not know my true story, but I will spare you all the details now. I have certainly talked enough already, and there is much more that must be said, and quickly."

Sellars hurried through an explanation of the PEREGRINE project and its tragic ending. Renie found herself almost overwhelmed. Is there no end to these strange stories? she wondered. How much more can we absorb?

"So there I was—the only survivor," Sellars told them.

"An embarrassing secret kept under military house arrest for decades. Because of my bizarre communications capabilities I was not allowed to use the net, but I managed to trick my captors, upgrading myself until I could easily access the world's telecommunication infrastructure without them even guessing.

"But even with all the world's data resources at my fingertips, I grew bored. As bored men will do, I sought diversion. I have always liked to grow things. So . . . I grew things.

"Because my original purpose was to be the focal point of a multibillion dollar starship, and because I was so completely filled and transfigured by micromachinery, I had been given a complement of internal antiviral programs that were, for the time, the absolute state of the art. No computer viruses were to be allowed to destroy my very expensive functions, since in space I would be far beyond repair or replacement. I was given the newest and most effective sort of self-ordering antibodies—coded creations that could adapt and grow within my information system. But as time moved on in the real world, the net's own viruses became just as adaptable, which prompted programmers to create a whole new evolutionary round of antivirals.

"It fascinated me. Like most prisoners, I had nothing but time, so I began to experiment. I had little internal storage to speak of—that is the one way I have never been able to upgrade myself suitably—so to contain my experiments I had to find and use large-scale storage sites I could reach through the net—unused memory belonging to governments, corporations, educational institutions.

"This was dangerous foolishness, of course. I realize now how bitter and disaffected I must have been. The original antivirals from my own system were considerably more powerful than even what was in use in the mainstream net twenty years later. Put into direct competition with advanced viruses, they quickly became something even more exceptional, which provoked the viruses in turn into new adaptation. And as indicated by the very fact that I had reached these locations of unused memory through the world's communication system, if something went wrong with my protective arrangement, my . . . creations . . . could find their way off, out into the world grid.

"When I was only in the initial generations, this would not have been so much of a problem. Things as complex and dangerous were already all over the net. But as I refined my experiments—my games, as I carelessly thought of them—I forced up the cycle time, so that thousands of generations were breeding every week. The things I had created fought, experimented, changed, and replicated, all within my artificial information-world. Evolution shoved them forward in paradigmatic leaps. The adaptations were sometimes quite startling.

"One day, some ten years ago now, I found that several strategic approaches—different creatures, in a sense, but all sprung from the same shared root—had developed a symbiotic relationship, become a kind of super-creature. This is one of the things that happened on the long road to animal life in the real world—we have arrangements in our own cell structure that were once completely separate organisms. I began to realize what I was risking. I had created the beginnings of something that might conceivably become another true life-form—perhaps even a rival life-form. Information-based, as opposed to the organic life which has been the standard here on Earth, but life nevertheless. My games were clearly no longer just an amusement."

"You made . . . life?" Renie asked.

Sellars shrugged. "At the time, it was highly debatable. There are some who think that anything that is not organic cannot by definition be alive. But what I had created . . . or to be accurate, what evolution in information space had created . . . fulfilled all the other criteria.

"It is possible that what I should have done then was to destroy these nascent life-forms. I had many sleepless nights, and have had many since, wondering about my choice to keep them. You will perhaps think a little better of me when you remember that the military had taken my health and my freedom away from me. I had already been a captive for something like forty years. All I had were these . . . creations of mine. They were my entertainment, my fixation—but also my posterity. I thought that if I could get them to a point where I could prove what I believed was happening, I could reveal it to the world. The government and the military would find it very difficult simply to discredit or kill someone whose experiments were being examined by scientists all over the globe.

"So I did not destroy them. Instead I searched for a more secure place to keep them, to allow them to continue their evolution where they would have almost no chance of escaping into the world information matrix. After a long search, I discovered a huge amount of unused memory in a shielded, private system—a staggeringly large system.

"It was, of course, the Grail network, although I knew nothing of that at the time. Through a variety of complicated ruses I obtained a clearance into the unfinished system, created a hidden subsystem that would siphon off memory and juggle the figures to hide that fact, and moved my experiment there—an electronic Ararat on which my ark could find safe harbor, if you'll excuse a rather ripe metaphor."

"You used the Grail Brotherhood's network to store your electronic life-forms?" Nandi from the Circle asked. He seemed more bewildered than angry. "How could you have done anything so mad?"

"What do you expect from someone who thought he could play God?" said Bonnie Mae Simpkins in disgust.

"I have given the only justification I can," Sellars said. "And I admit it is a poor one. I had no idea of what the Grail Brotherhood was or what it intended, of course—the network was not labeled "For Evil Purposes Only." And I was not entirely sane in those days. But what happened next did much to sober me.

"Because of course, when I next looked in on the progress of the experiment, I found my evolutionary hothouse empty. The creatures, if I can give that name to things without bodies, things which existed only as representative numbers in a complex mathematical model, had vanished. In fact they had been adopted, but I had no way of knowing that at the time.

"In a panic, I reconfigured my Garden, my network of information-sifting gear, to monitor for any sign that the evolving creatures had escaped into the world grid. At the same time I began to study the people who owned the immense facilities from which I had purloined the small corner in which the data-creatures had been hidden, from which they had escaped . . . or been removed. From that point on, the story I told you back in Bolivar Atasco's world is the truth. I found out what the Grail Brotherhood was doing, or at least began to suspect. I saw that the secrecy and remoteness of their network was meant not to protect industrial secrets, but to hide something far larger and more bizarre. Slowly, I was drawn from the search for my own lost experiment into a genuine horror at the activities of the Grail Brotherhood—always linked to my own worry of what such ruthless people might do, even by accident, with my experimental creations. You know the rest of the tale. To a large extent, you are the rest of the tale."

"And so you've brought us here to gloat?" Nandi said,. He turned and jabbed a hand at the banks of glowing, cell-spaces in the rock walls. "Because clearly these are creations. I can guess what happened. The Other found them and kept them. It nurtured them, as it nurtured the almost-children it had made for itself." He shook his head in disgust. His voice softened, but there was a hardness in it that made Renie even more uncomfortable. "It does not matter that a horrible thing behaved that way because it was itself tortured. We can understand, but not excuse—'Love the sinner but hate the sin,' I believe my Christian comrades say. And even if this abomination around us was created out of something like love—although that, I think, does not describe your part in this, Sellars—that does not make it right. These . . . creatures . . . are the thing we in the Circle felt, the great wrongness. I understand that now. You want us to wonder and applaud, but I tell you instead that they must be destroyed."

To Renie's surprise, Sellars did not argue. "Your viewpoint deserves to be heard," he said. "That is why you are here. We have a terrible choice—no, you have a terrible choice, all of you. But not me. I have forfeited my right to decide."

"What are you talking about?" demanded Bonnie Mae Simpkins. "Forfeited? Decide what?"

"Just what Mr, Paradivash was speaking of," Sellars said with a sort of restrained courtesy. "He was correct. The Other found them, took them, nurtured them here within his own secret recesses. And now the Other's children have reached what he believed—or at least sensed—was a final evolutionary fitness. So desperate was he that they should live that I think he hung on in terrible agony and fear much longer than he would have wished.

"But in return for his help preserving this place, and thus preserving all of your lives, I promised the Other I would do my best to help his information-children survive his death." Nandi began to say something, but Sellars held up his hand. "I did not promise to protect them after that."

"Sophistry," Nandi scoffed.

Sellars shook his head. "Listen to me, please. This is important. The Other intended his children to have total freedom. At the moment they are contained in this internal system environment like eggs in a nest, but once they are born out into the network I think there will be no containment. They will inevitably find their way out into the larger net. They will live in it like fish in the ocean. Will they be hostile to us? I doubt it. Indifferent? Quite possibly, even likely. Since their needs will be noncorporeal, they will probably live in a sort of symbiotic relationship with us—no, not with us so much as with our technology, because that will be the medium in which they live." Sellars cleared his throat. He seemed embarrassed, even awkward.

He looks like his dog messed in our garden, Renie thought. When what he's really saying is, "Oops, I may just have set the human race up for extinction."

"But I must be honest, must point out all the possibilities," Sellars continued as if he had heard her unspoken fears. "Indifference or even symbiosis does not guarantee cosurvival. It could be they will grow far beyond us. It could be that whether they care about us or not, the day will come, as it has for many other species on this planet who shared our environment, when there is no longer room for both."

"Slow down," said T4b. "This blows up my head, me. Sayin' that these Christmas lights are alive? Gonna take over the planet? Six 'em, clear. Gotta six 'em."

"That seems to be the other alternative," Sellars admitted. "We have only minutes to make a decision. Or you do. As I said, I have brought this to be through my own foolishness and selfishness. I do not have the right to vote on their fate."

"Vote?" said Nandi. "What is there to vote on? You admit these things are a threat to all human life. They are a picture-perfect example of the results of human arrogance—of what happens when men try to take on the powers and privileges of God. Look at the Grail Brotherhood! They did the same thing and they reaped death as their reward. Yet you say we should vote on this matter, as though it were some . . . village dispute."

"Seen up close, democracy is a dreadful thing," quoted Florimel sourly. "Who said that? Oh, yes, Jongleur. Before he was exploded into free-floating molecules."

"This is not an argument about the worth of democracy," Nandi protested. "This is an argument about applying schoolbook civics to the fate of the Earth!"

"No, the fate of humanity," said Martine quietly. "They are not the same thing at all." Renie doubted if anyone else heard her.

"I realize it is not an easy question," Sellars began. "That is why. . . ."

"I feel them!" Nemesis began pacing up and down beside one wall of lights. Renie thought he looked like a caricature of an expectant father—a stunningly peculiar expectant father, at that. Why the hell is that thing so excited? she wondered, even as she felt her skin tightening with anxiety. The lights did seem to have changed, as though some low-level pulse now made their glow less steady. What's his interest in this whole thing?

Before she could ask about this small but unexplained detail, another figure suddenly appeared from out of nowhere at the center of the gathering.

"I am so sorry I could wait no longer," Hideki Kunohara said to Sellars. Renie was not the only one to gasp in surprise, Kunohara wore a formal black kimono and a slightly loopy smile. "I was listening in on your discussion, trying to be patient until my turn came, but I feared I might miss this spectacular event."

"But . . . you're dead!" a shocked Florimel pointed out. "Your house collapsed."

"They are not the same thing at all," Kunohara said cheerfully, and winked at Martine. "And the loss of my house served your purpose, did it not? You and your friends made your escape, didn't you? So perhaps something more like gratitude is in order." He paused, then made a swift little bow to Florimel. "Forgive me. I do not mean to be insulting. I am pleased to see you survived. It is just that time is short." He turned to survey the rows of lights, his expression exalted, almost feverish. "Wonderful! Any biologist in the world would trade ten years of his or her life to be present for this!" He paused, suddenly angry. "Take a vote about whether to let it happen or not? Madness." He looked critically at Sellars. "Would you really agree to such a stupid exercise?"

Sellars gave a disconsolate shrug. "I see no other way. No one person has the right to decide such a thing, and we do not have time for a more measured approach."

Kunohara made a disgusted noise. "So a committee of weary, uninformed amateurs should decide the fate of an entirely new form of life?"

"Just a minute," said Orlando. "If we're really going to vote on this, who gets to vote? Just the grown-ups?"

"We will certainly consider you and Sam part of the group," Sellars said quickly. "You have proved yourselves beyond doubt."

"Wanna vote!" screamed several of the Wicked Tribe. "Vote! We vote go home, no more talk talk talk!"

"You little ones get down right now," snapped Mrs. Simpkins. "Don't think I can't catch you!"

"And these are our only choices?" Renie turned to !Xabbu, who was silent but clearly troubled by all he had heard. "Is that what we're supposed to decide?" She wanted to hear what his unique perspective made of all this. "Right this second we have to choose between . . . killing them and letting them go? Between something like genocide and the risk that our own species will be wiped out?"

"There are no such decisions," !Xabbu said slowly. "This I know—those are the boxes that people make so that they will not be frightened by complicated choices. The world has many paths."

"That might be true if we had more time." Sellars was beginning to sound weary again, and more than a little frustrated. "Please! We do not know how long until they . . ."

"Stop!" The startlingly loud voice echoed through the cavern even after everyone had fallen silent—the not-quite-human voice of Nemesis. "I . . . we . . . I do not understand all your words." The thing in Ricardo Klement's body still could not make the face express emotion, but Renie thought there was something increasingly human in its voice. "I do not understand, but I can sense that you are upset and fearful about those who are coming. About the next."

"The next what?" Sam whispered loudly to Orlando.

"You must hear . . . they must talk. Then some understanding will be. Perhaps." Nemesis was reaching for words. Renie found it chilling, but in some weird way, exciting as well. It really did want to communicate. It was only a piece of code, albeit a complicated one, but it seemed to be doing something for which it could not have been programmed,

So it's not just the creatures that Sellars and the Other made, Renie thought. The lines between people and not-people are definitely going to get more blurry, no matter what. Like T4b, she felt like her brain was about to blow up. Jesus Mercy, does that mean we're going to have to consider every piece of accounting gear and office equipment a citizen?

"We cannot talk to them." Sellars sounded sad, but angry, too. "They are information life. The very idea is pointless—even if they were able to speak words we could hear, they would be beyond our understanding, as we are beyond theirs. They are more different from us than we are from plants."

"No." Nemesis lifted a hand in a strange, unreadable gesture, then pointed at the helpless blue thing cradled in its other arm. "We heard these processes from . . . from far away. We split ourselves."

"Who is we?" Sellars demanded.

Kunohara was smiling broadly, "This is fascinating!"

"I . . . I am Nemesis—but I am not all of Nemesis. I was created as a tracking procedure, but I could not perform my original function. The network was too large and diverse, and the anomaly in this place, this secured portion of the operating system, was too strong. I was . . . we were . . . very confused. So I . . . we . . . split into three subversions so that we might cope with the network's unexpected complexity and still have a chance of completing our original task."

The thing sounded quite natural now, Renie thought. She'd had mathematics lecturers who sounded less human.

"I am only one part of the original," it said. "I am Nemesis Two." It lifted the Blue Baby, which made a strange, mewling sound. "Here is a . . . representation of Nemesis One, which was . . . made nonfunctional by a logic problem. I was able to protect myself against that problem, and my function was not disrupted as I pursued my own investigations. I found Nemesis One here, broken and discarded within the operating system code.

"But there is also another part of me . . . of us. . . ." The blank Klement stare looked from face to face, but the eye contact only emphasized how inhuman it still was. "Nemesis Three pierced the anomaly and found these processes," it explained, "—the growing of these next ones. It has been with them for many cycles. Now we will all be together. We will speak. We will speak together."

"What is this supposed to mean to us?" Sellars sounded worried, even fearful, which made Renie's pulse beat faster—how much time did they have? "Yes, you can speak to us," Sellars said, "but you are human-created code. These . . . creatures . . . are not even remotely human."

Nemesis nodded awkwardly. "Yes, we will speak together."

"Together. . . ?" Sellars asked, puzzled, but even as he spoke the lights in the walls began to flicker. Renie had to raise her hands before her eyes to keep from being sickened by the eerie strobing effect.

Something was forming next to one of the walls, a vertical agglomeration of light. It was not the blankness of empty virtual space that Renie had seen Sellars use to disguise himself and the boy Cho-Cho, but a rippling, pulsing overlap of types and textures of light, a thickening of light, almost, which swiftly took on a faceless, mostly human shape.

Everyone stared at the apparition in anxious silence.

"Is that one of the things we gotta six?" T4b finally asked weakly. Renie thought he did not sound like he planned on trying. In fact, he sounded like he wanted to be somewhere else. She sympathized strongly.

"No," said Nemesis. "That is our other . . . self. The last part. Nemesis Three. It has been with the anomaly and its processes for many cycles, just as I have been with you human arrangements for many cycles. We will combine our knowledge. We will speak together." Nemesis Two lifted the Blue Baby. Renie gasped as the ugly little thing suddenly flowed out of its hands like something poured horizontally and was absorbed by the shape made of light, which began to gleam with additional azure tones. Then, as they all stared in numbed surprise, the Klement form stepped toward the light-being and flowed into it as well. When the absorption was finished, the shining thing looked a little more human.

But not much, Renie thought weakly. !Xabbu's hand was holding hers and she was glad of it.

They . . . sense you. The voice came from nowhere, but it was as disturbingly flat as the Klement-thing's. They wait. They wish to be free.

"Demons," cried Nandi in outrage. "You have created demons, Sellars, and now we are to bargain with them?" He turned and whispered something to Bonnie Mae Simpkins, whose eyes were closed and whose lips were moving in what Renie supposed was prayer.

They . . . the next ones . . . wish to be free, the bodiless voice said again. Now that we have brought them what they needed. They understand that they must go as the First People went.

"The First People?" Renie felt !Xabbu stiffen beside her. "Isn't that out of your stories. . . ?" she asked him.

The All-Devourer has gone, droned the weird Nemesis voice, but this is not their place anymore. They wish to go, taking the stories that have given them . . . understanding. Like Grandfather Mantis and Rock Rabbit, like their child Rainbow and his wife Porcupine, they will go on to another place. This is not their place anymore.

"What a thing," !Xabbu said in quiet amazement. "What a thing this is."

"But there is no place for them to go," Sellars pointed out wearily. "They might become a threat to us, even if they do not intend that or even understand it. We cannot release them into the net."

No, the voice said solemnly. Not to the . . . net. Out. They will go . . . out. On the sky-river. The sky-river-of-light. They feel it. It is in your control. Let them go.

"They're talking about your stories," Renie said breathlessly, still agog. "Your stories, !Xabbu! How did they learn them?"

He looked stunned, but something else was at work, too, something in his features that Renie could not read. She took his hand again.

Nemesis turned toward her and !Xabbu. Yes. Your explanations were heard. Before, the next ones did not know why they were, what they . . . meant. Then Nemesis Two heard you speak of Rainbow's shoe-piece and all was understood. We told the next ones of you and your explanation and they wished to know more. The operating system gave them your knowledge of what is and what is meant to be. Now they know. Now they can live.

"What are they talking about, this river of light?" Florimel demanded of Sellars. "The blue river, that's part of the network. You already said they can't be trusted to stay on the network."

"Not just river of light," Martine said. "Sky-river-of-light, it said." She turned to the man in the wheelchair. "You know what that is."

Sellars looked at her, his eyes suddenly wide. "The cesium lasers—the boosted databeams to the Other's satellite. One end is still operating, even though the J Corporation tower and the satellite are gone." He was suddenly excited. "They can ride the laser, of course they can—they're just data, after all!"

"To what?" asked Kunohara. "Out into cold space forever, into death? That is no solution."

"They won't die," Sellars said. "They're information. As long as the light travels, they'll be there. If they intersect some useful medium—a magnetic field, perhaps, even crystalline structures in an asteroid—they'll have a home. And if the light travels long enough and they continue to evolve, they may be able to propagate themselves in some way we can't even imagine!"

"You seem to think this solves everything," Nandi said. "But it does not. These things have no right to be. They flout God's will."

"Could be right, him," T4b added, but not in the firmest of voices. "Maybe God only wants people that wear clothes, seen? People with bodies, like."

Nandi ignored T4b's dubious support. "I will fight you, Sellars. You have no right. . . ."

He was stopped by Bonnie Mae Simpkins' hand on his arm. "Can we be so sure?" she asked.

"Sure? What do you mean?"

"That we know God's will." She looked at the others, then at the glowing figure. "If I had met this thing back on Earth, I'd have been sure I'd seen an angel. . . ."

"It is no angel!" Nandi said indignantly.

"I know. But I'm just showing how far beyond me this is. Beyond any of us. How can folks like us know what God intends?" She spread her hand as if to catch the glowing, pulsating light. "Maybe we're not here to stop this, but to see God's work and marvel!"

"You cannot believe that." Nandi pulled his arm away.

"I can . . . and I can also believe what you say, Nandi. And that's the problem. It's too darn big." She looked around, her face solemn. "All this . . . how can we judge? We came to this place to save the children. But aren't these children, too? Maybe . . . maybe God means these creatures . . . these children . . . to be our children. All of ours. Do we know His will so well? Do we have the right to kill them?" She made a funny little noise, a gasp, a sob. "Even if he didn't know it, my Terence gave his life to save them. And I think . . . I think he would have been proud of that."

To Renie's astonishment, the Simpkins woman was crying. The lights were blurring, blurring. For a moment, she thought the birth was already happening, until she realized that the woman's tears had called up her own.

"I say let them go." Bonnie Mae Simpkins was struggling to get out her words. "I say let them go . . . and Godspeed."

They can wait no longer, the Nemesis voice said, something almost like tension in the inhuman tones. Will you set them free?

"Can you even make it happen?" Orlando asked Sellars. There was a yearning sound in his voice that Renie did not quite understand.

"I can." Sellars' eyes were distant, distracted; he was already at work. "The laser array on Jongleur's end was destroyed, but the Telemorphix end is still functioning—and with the new operating system in place, the uplink isn't being used for anything. it's just pointed out at where the Other's satellite was."

"Must we still vote?" asked Kunohara. He looked around eagerly. "Who would destroy these wonderful things?"

For a long moment nobody spoke. Nandi Paradivash looked at Bonnie Mae, his expression grief-stricken, strange. He turned to T4b. "Will you desert me now, too?"

Javier Rogers could not meet his eye. "But . . . but maybe she's right," he said quietly. "Maybe they're really children, them." He turned to look at the glowing cells and his thin face was splashed with light. "Youth pastor used to say, 'Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God.' Doesn't sound like killing them, seen?"

Nandi made a quiet noise of despair and turned his back.

"Do it," urged Orlando. "They have as much right as I do—more, maybe."

Sellars lowered his head and closed his eyes.

The Nemesis creature stirred. It is time, it said. We will go with them. We have . . . changed. And the glowing triune body disappeared.

"Tell them we send our blessing with you all!" shouted Bonnie Mae Simpkins.

The light flared, became deeper, stronger. The individual cells on the walls abruptly dissolved into a cloud of radiance, diffuse but shot with sparkling points of fire. Renie could make no sense of it—there were colors she felt she had never seen before.

"The First People," !Xabbu whispered beside her, a halting, trancelike tone to his voice. "They go on."

The cloud of light coalesced, swirled, seethed with uneven brilliance. For a moment Renie was drowning in the sea of stars again, then the cloud came together into a single point, leaving the cavern all in shadow. Behind her someone gasped. That single point glowed, faded, glowed again, a pulse of light so fierce that even though it was tiny, Renie could not look straight at it. Then with a rush of explosive energy that she felt all through her body, it stretched in an instant into a line of diamond gleam and leaped to the black sky far overhead, glittering, flowing. It lasted only a heartbeat, then it was gone.

They've left us, she realized. Now we don't matter anymore. They do.

But as she stood in the near-dark, surrounded by the sound of her companions breathing, a few even sobbing, she suddenly thought of her own father—her complaining, irritating father, who had nevertheless given her everything he knew how to give.

Or maybe we'll meet them again someday, she thought, and was surprised to discover she was crying again. Out there, somewhere, some time. And maybe they'll remember us.

Maybe they'll even remember us kindly.