They walked side by side, he and Kepta, into that vast empty node where many halls converged silent: his footfalls on the padded floor made no great sound. Rafe heard only the whisper of his clothing, his own deepened breaths. Kepta made no sound at all, except to talk to him from time to time down the winding hall:
"Tired?" Kepta asked.
"Does that matter? You pushed me along this way once, with the lights. What were you after, then?”
"Reactions," Kepta said.
He strode on a few more limping steps. "Like now?”
A few steps more. "No," Kepta said. "Now I know exactly what you'll do.”
He looked at Kepta, but Kepta did not, seemingly, look his way.
"You're limited," Rafe asked him, the question flashing to his mind, "to one vantage point? To that shape? Those eyes?”
"No," Kepta said again.
"Physically-where are you?”
Silence.
"Makes you nervous? You scared, are you, to answer that?”
Silence still.
They came into the dark, warted heart of the huge meeting of corridors. Light came from home-corridor at their backs, a soft glow that lit the whole floor ahead in a dim gray succession of ripples and hummocks, stalagmites and lumpish stalactites afflicted with gossamer-shrouded warts and protuberances. There were no echoes. No sound. The carpet drank it up. "Can't afford lights here?" Rafe jibed at Kepta, trying to learn, by whatever questions Kepta would answer. "You don't like light, that it? Or don't you need it?”
Lights flared, illuminating a vast chamber, a craziness of lumps and hummocks and tunnels on a mammoth scale; lights died and left him in dark again, as suddenly.
Kepta was gone.
"Kepta?" He faced wildly about, flash-blinded, helpless, stumbling on the uneven floor. "Kepta?”
"First passage on your left," a voice said, close by him. The gold-glowing image resumed. "Just checking. I'm a little narrow-focused in this shape; a great deal of me is doing other things, and now and again I like to take a little look behind the eyes, so to say. That's right, this way. Not far now.”
His heart pounded. He rubbed at his eyes trying
to get his vision back, stumbling on the uneven floor, staying with Kepta in a winding course around the prominences. They skirted around a jutting protuberance of the wall and passed one black corridor opening. The next acquired dim light, showing gray and green no different than otherwhere.
"This way," Kepta said.
He matched Kepta's drifting pace. The way narrowed into a twisting gut, went from gossamer-green to bald glistening plastic in a green that deepened to livid unpleasantness.
Narrower still, and brighter-lit. "O God," Rafe said, and balked. Metal gleamed. Clusters of projections like insect limbs lined the chamber which unfurled from beyond the turning-some arms folded, some thrust out in partial extension, things to grip and bite, extensors armed with knives.
"Come on," Kepta said. "Come ahead. That's right. No sense running now.”
"It's still there," Rafe Two said. They had tried the unseen barrier now and again, when one and the other of them grew restless in their dark confinement. He went back and sat down while Jillan and Paul had their own go at it, Paul with violence, which did no good, but it satisfied some need, and Rafe averted his face and rested his chin on his arm, knee tucked up, staring into the dark beyond the invisible wall.
Now and again there were sounds. The thing that wailed had become familiar, still dreadful when it came, but it seemed by now that it would have done something, attacked if it could or if it had the desire.
"Shut up," he told it when it came.
Paul and Jillan sat down again, Paul last, who cast himself down and hung his hands between his knees, to look up again with a bleak, sullen stare.
He was being patient, was Paul, amnesiac, wiped of everything recent, even the remembrance that he was dead. They had had to tell him that all over again, and Paul had sat and listened, and objected. Perhaps he thought they were crazy; perhaps he believed it. Whatever Paul believed, he was quiet about it all.
Because Jillan was calm, Rafe thought; because he and Jillan accepted it and explained matters gently as they could. He detected the cracks in Paul's facade, the little signs of tension, the occasional sharp answer, the increasingly worried look on Paul's face when they failed to retaliate for his gibes. They were shielding him; Paul realized it. Jillan protected him-being merchanter-born, tough in spacer-ways, with a spacer's tolerance of distances, infinities, time and thinking inside-put. She was the stronger here. So was he.
Jillan and me, Rafe thought, and Paul, on the other side, cut off from her. From me. He's trying-so hard to keep himself together in Jillan's sight, up to her measure of a man-We joke; we seem to take it light; it's like salt in all his wounds.
He got up, paced, for Paul's sake, to be human. Pushed at the wall.
"Give it up," Paul said.
He sat down again, slumped, elbows on knees.
So maybe it helped, giving Paul a way to seem calm and in control.
"Got any ideas?" he asked Paul then.
Paul was silent a long time. "Just thinking," Paul said, "that we don't eat, don't sleep, don't get tired-wonder how long it takes a mind to unravel, sitting still. Wonder if it's listening. Or if it's just gone off and forgotten us, this alien you met. Wonder if we're all crazy. Or you are. And we sit here glowing in the dark.”
Rafe laughed. It was conscious effort. He remembered-a thing that turned him cold; a meeting Jillan had not known; that Paul assuredly had not; and for a moment he was the one pretending cheerfulness. It had hurt; it would happen again, he thought, for no reason, for nothing that made sense.
"Sooner or later," he began dutifully to answer Paul; but something caught his eye, a light far out in the dark.
"Something's out there," Jillan said, scrambling to her feet as he did. "Something's coming”
It moved in that rapid way things could here. Paul got to his feet and Jillan held to him, steadying him by that contact.
It whipped up to the barrier, a human runner.
Paul.
Doppelganger's doppelganger. It stared, stark and wide-mouthed, glowing like themselves, and with one strangled cry of grief, it spun and ran away, diminished as rapidly as it had come.
"What was that?" asked Paul, remarkably calm, considering the horror in his eyes.
Rafe turned and looked at him, far from calm himself-considered this second Paul-shape that had materialized inside the barrier with him and Jillan.
Jillan too, he remembered-the arms that had gripped him with more than human strength-
He set his back to the phantom wall, facing both of them, their united, guarded stare.
The pain-O God, the pain!
Rafe screamed while he had breath, while he had the strength. But it was too deep and too long, too thorough, pinned him between breaths and held him dying there until air began the long slow leak back into his lungs. Then the cycle ran round again.
And over again.
"There," said Kepta's vast slow voice after all eternity. "There. That's over now." And there was dark a time.
"Try to move," it said.
Rafe moved; he would have done anything it told him, not to have the pain. He kept moving and thrust aching arms under him, took the strain of muscle-stretch across his aching ribs, his belly, trying constantly to find some position that did not hurt and discovering fresh agonies at every shift.
"Easy," Kepta said out of that vast haze of his senses, awareness of light, machines that hummed and moved, having him as a mote in their cold heart. A metal arm moved at his face, thrust a tube into his mouth with persistent accuracy, shot a dose of tepid water down his throat. Other arms
moved spiderlike about him and closed about his arms, click-click. He was past all but the vaguest fear. He let his limbs be moved because gentle as it was he had resisted once and found no limit to its strength. Click-click. It faced him about and held him upright as he sat on the table,
"Over, then?" His voice was a ragged croak, his throat raw from screaming. "Over?”
"All done," Kepta said, taking shape in front of him. "Rest a bit.”
He was willing; the spider arms stayed still, like a cradle behind him. He leaned his head back, his feet dangling off the edge of the machinery. For a moment he blurred out again, head resting against the arms, heart still laboring, while the tears leaked from his eyes and the sweat slicked his skin.
"Where is it?" he asked then, meaning the thing that he had birthed. He had some proprietary curiosity; it had cost him so much pain.
"Here," Kepta said, "here in the machine.”
"You mean you'll give it a body.”
"No," Kepta said, and rested a ghostly hand on a large hummock that rose with several others to form the table, the base of several of the arms. "It has one. In here. Do you want to know how it works? Your template of a moment ago exists now. It will never know more than you knew when it was made. Always when I call it up it will be at the same moment.”
Rafe shook his head and shut his eyes, feeling everything slide into chaos, not wanting this.
"So I can always recover that point," Kepta said, "at need. A point of knowledge-and ignorance." Eyes slitted, till Kepta was a golden blur: "You still going to let me go?”
"Oh, yes." Kepta moved among the machinery, through one lowered metal arm. "You asked about bodies. This one” Kepta laid a hand on his own insubstantial chest. "You assume there's some substance to it, somewhere. There's not. It's a pattern. You want Jillan? I can call up that template. Or Paul. Or one of several of you.”
Paul One ran, raced into the dark, sobbing at what he had seen: himself; himself possessing Jillan and Rafe and he-himself watching helplessly from outside-
At last he found Rafe again, his own Rafe, beaconlike in the nowhereland, that shape that was Rafe and not, something blurred and larger, far larger.
"I know what you found," Rafe said. "I knew you would." And Rafe himself blurred further, into outlines vast and dark. "I knew it would hurt. Paul”
"Was it me?" he asked. "Was that my real body?”
"No," it said. "Only another duplicate.”
There was no more system of reference, nothing human left. It took him in its changing arms, took him to its heart, whispered to him in a voice still human though the rest of it was not.
"You don't have to be afraid. I won't hurt you, nothing will ever hurt you while I have you. You can't trust what you see, that's the first thing you have to learn. You want to be safe. But I can make you strong. You won't be afraid of anything. You want to know how this ship works? I'll tell you. Anything you want to know. That version you just saw? Nothing. Nothing. Another copy off your template. I have to tell you how that works, that next. The templates.”
"I recorded you," Kepta said, waving a hand past the mounded protrusions beneath all the array of shining spider arms, "not just the outward form, but at every level, in every function and structure-everything. The template's as like you as if you'd been spun out in bits, down to the state and spin of your particles: that's how exact it is ... all uncertainties made definite, paniculate memory, frozen in the finest definition matter can achieve. We just-play it out again. Call it up in memory and let it integrate. The visible manifestation, the body-a very simple thing: just light, quite apart from the more complex patterns. An image conceived off the template and maintained by quite inelegant means: the computer knows its shape, that's all, and revises it moment by moment by the direction of the program; but that program that animates it-that's quite another thing.”
"It reacts," Rafe said. "It thinks”
"That's the elegance. It does.”
"You've turned them to machines.”
"No. Contained them in one. They react; they think; they think they move. They're programs, if you like, smart programs that can learn and change, that get input they interpret in the same way they always did, or they think they do, that eyes work and mouths make speech, and muscles move. The body-is merely light, for passing convenience. It changes in response to signals the programs give. It can't input. But on other levels, in the purest sense, the programs can input from each other, can imagine, tend to perceive what they expect like smells and textures. Illusions, if you like. But they aren't. The programs aren't. They grow, and change, get experience, change their minds. They stay up and running until someone shuts them down.”
Rafe shook his head. The words writhed past, heard, half-heard. He hung there in the spider arms, looked at the machines, the mocking image of himself. "One large memory," he said past unresponsive lips, "one hell of a large memory, that thing. Wouldn't it be?”
"Oh yes, quite large.”
"Runs all the time.”
Kepta lifted his head in a curious way, his own mannerism thrown back at him, half-mocking, half-wary.
"I threaten you," Rafe said, and found it funny, hanging there, naked, in the steel, unyielding hands. "Do I? Suppose I believe that's how you do it, suppose I believe it all-There's still the why of it. You want to tell me why? And you still want to tell me you're putting me out of here?”
"Why's not relevant. Say that I wanted the template. That's all. When I call it up and it talks to me, it won't know a thing of what we've said; won't know what it is. It'll be the you that walked in here of his own free will. That's the one I'll deal with. Why tell you anything? The template won't remember. You'd have to tell it what you've learned. And you'll be safe away from it.”
"Why?" he asked again. "Why let me go?"
"I said. It's easy. You're worried, aren't you? You're worried about your life, theirs-the whole species. That's why you don't really think I'll turn you out. You think of ships. Military. I understand this concept of yours, this collective of self defense. You think I've come to learn all I can; that I'm in advance of others who'll come to harm all your kind. No. I'm unique.”
"Then come in. Come into some human port and talk like you're civilized.”
The mirror-image blinked. "You don't really want that.”
"No," he said, thinking again, thinking at once of Endeavor, magnified a hundred-fold, O God, some major port-
"There'll just be yourself returning," it said. "The military will check records, put you together with the Endeavor business. You'll be answering a lot of questions. That's all right. Tell them anything you like. I'll be long gone from Paradise.”
"Where? To do what?”
"You're worrying again.”
"Are you afraid? Afraid of us?”
"Responsibility. You have this tendency-to make yourself the center, the focus. Jillan and Paul you're responsible for them; if your species died, you'd be more responsible than I who killed them. An interesting concept, responsibility-and within your context, yes, you could become that focus. I could wipe out your kind, based on what you know. And on what you don't. You couldn't fight me. Your ships can't catch me; my weapons are beyond you; there's just no chance, if I were interested. I'm not. So you're not the center, are you? That's a great loss to you . . . that your kind will live on without your responsibility. Could it even be-that you're not responsible for other things? Or that your friends are not in your universe at all?”
"What becomes of them?”
"They're not your responsibility.”
He flung himself for his feet. The arms prevented that.
"You're not necessary. You go to Paradise. You tell them what you like. Tell them everything you've seen. They'll be interested. Of course they will. You'll be famous of your kind-in certain ways. Very important. You'll certainly be the focus then. Won't you?”
Imagination filled it in-official disclaimers, the military swarming over him and his capsule like bees-Hallucination, they'd say, for general consumption. . . . "Damn you," he said to Kepta, shivering.
"Not my responsibility," Kepta said. "Not at all. I'll be gone. Nothing to fear from me; there never was. But you don't want to believe that. It takes something away from you." The spider-arms relaxed, the grip yielded. "Your clothes are there. I think you might be cold.”
He moved, on his own, crawled off the sweating, plastic surface. Everywhere about him was the stench of his own fear. He tucked his clothing to him and held onto it. "I stink," he muttered at it. "I want a bath. I'm going back to Lindy, thanks.”
Kepta would stop him, he thought; would move the arms again. But they all retracted with one massive snick of metal, clearing him a path.
"A machine could carry you," Kepta said.
"I'll walk.”
It hurt. Every movement hurt, however slow. Every thought did, in this trap that he was in. He limped toward the exit from this place, the way he had come in. He cherished the pain, that it filled his mind like needful ballast, filled cracks and crevices and darknesses and took away the need to think. Tears ran down his face, and he could not have said whether they were true tears or only a welling up of too much fluid; he was beyond all analyses.
<> destroyed the Rafe-simulacrum that <> wore and expanded past its limits with relief. <> had already absorbed everything that surfaced in Rafe-mind, all the suppositions, all the facts, all the emotive feeling. <> felt a lingering distress.
There was a time of adjustment afterward, there must be, in which <>'s human experiences and O's own flowed past each other in comparison, and <> kept them all. <> was interested for various reasons, but one reason assumed priority, that <> was due for challenge-indeed, had, to a great extent provoked it, seeing opportunity.
More, there was additional use in Rafe-mind for </> had worn it. Ancient and unbending as </> was, </> had slipped into it, and this was worth interest. It was always well, under any circumstances, to know just what </> was about.
And if </> had found some congruency to </> self in Rafe-mind, then <> was interested.
"Is it pleasant?" <> taunted </> across the width of the ship. </> had no answer, </>' had taken a shape much more like </>'s own configurations, and the Paul-mind nested in it.
<> was thunderstruck.
"See," said <->> in an undertone of distress as <-> came slipping up to O's presence. "See, o> said as much. So did ((())). Even ((())).”
"Quiet," said <>, losing all amusement, and having searched the tag ends of Rafe-mind to account for the disaster, decided finally that Paul Gaines was, in this simulacrum, more than slightly warped.
Paul-mind, Rafe-mind informed <>, was stationer, and that meant a wealth of things. It meant a life style; it meant groups; and security; and comfort if one could get the value-items to exchange for it-which was one motivation for human ships moving constantly in transfer of materials from collection to consumption (but not the sole motive of those who ran those ships). This thread led to comprehensions. Paul-mind was not like Rafe. Paul Gaines wanted to be contained in something, in anything. Space frightened him; strangeness did; but what provided him comfort was never strange to Paul.
And there Paul sat, in </>'s heart, nested, protected and surviving.
<> was, to admit it, utterly chagrined.
Paul has other qualities, the Rafe-memories said. Rafe-mind called it bravery, and attached whole complexes of valuations to that word. Not group-survival over individual, though that was part of it. Not retaliation simply, though it might manifest in that; or equally well, by its negative. Not self aggrandizement, either, though it could be that; or equally well self-denial. The term attached to valuations of person-the affirmation of some ideal species-type, <> judged.
Rafe-mind was not sure it itself possessed this quality; but it desired it. To evidence that it did possess it, Rafe tried not to be disturbed.
For that reason Rafe had walked the corridor to the lab, while paradoxically the remnant of Rafe-mind <> still retained, recognized this act for what it was, that Rafe might comply and intend at the same time to make violent resistance, the moment Rafe had the chance.
Rafe-mind called this second concept dignity.
<> thought of it as self-preservation, but remembered it was, perhaps, strategy as well, that Rafe did this thing for all the group he perceived as his.
Responsibility.
And what group does Paul belong to? <> wondered, having information about the words Old Man, and ship, and an arrangement <> found disturbingly accusatory.
<> was Old Man too; <> had such a group. They were the passengers. Responsibility, Rafe would say again. <> felt no such thing. But to be the focus of loyalty, that appealed to <>.
</> would appropriate this Paul Gaines. There was no likelihood that </> would not, having no such thing as loyalty </>self.
Easier, <> thought, if Paul had met some segment of = = = =. Desire for containment, indeed. The Cannibal could have provided that, had <> not intervened. "Mad," said <•>, nesting close to <>, which <> sometimes permitted. "Pity him, <>.”
"Paul would find <-> quite disturbing," <> said. "So would all of them.”
"<"> know that," O> said. And, extraneously, as <-> often spoke: "<-> know bravery.”
O> had a certain skill, to dip into <>'s mind without leaving anything behind, not a unique talent, by any means. It was <>'s nature, and the ship's. "It is not-” <> said, and named a concept in O>'s terms.
"It feels like that," <*> said. "O> would have walked down that hall.”
"Of course <-> would," <> said, unsurprised. "For somewhat skewed reasons. It is not-” and <> named that word again, which neither Rafe-mind nor Jillan-mind (which <> also had) possessed the biological reflexes to understand.
"Go," <> said to <->, "and tell </> that </> need not skulk about. It's merely </>'s paranoid suppositions that <> would interfere.”
"</> supposes that <> can't," <•> said. "</> said to tell <> so.”
<> sent a pulse through the ship, violent enough to touch any sense. "So much for can't," <> said, and went off to keep a thing for which the Rafe-mind had no complete word, but promise was close enough.
Rafe Two sat, tucked up against the dark, invisible wall; and Jillan and Paul kept to their side of the containment. They stared at one another. That was all that was left to do in the limbo they were in.
"I have to explain," Rafe had said, taking that position from some time ago, "what happened to me." He spoke quite calmly, quite rationally, thinking of his back against an interface that something might pierce very unexpectedly; his face toward”I'm not sure what you are," he had said to them. "That Paul that came up to us, that's not the only double that exists. There was you too Jillan. It got me. Strong, really strong. It took me to that place, that” He did not like to remember it. "I don't know what it did; it hurt. Like the first time. Maybe it did some adjustment. Maybe-maybe it did something else." Suppositions about that had tormented him thus far; he did not fully trust himself. "I'm telling all of it, you see. I just don't know what it did to me. But it used you to get at me. Now I don't know what I'm locked up with. Just let's keep to our own sides of this place awhile.”
There had been pain on Jillan's face. That was the worst.
"Well," she had said in a quiet tone, "I can pretty well guess it's you. That's something. And I can tell you it's me, but I guess you won't believe that.”
"I'm not one of them," Paul had said next, and shifted uncomfortably, arms about his knees, while both of them looked at him. "I can swear to you I'm not. There was-there was, remember, this bar on Fargone where we used to meet. The man there had this bird, remember, this live bird”
"Named Mickey," Jillan said.
"Lived on frozen fruit," Rafe had said himself, remembering the creature, the curiosity, the small reminder there were worlds, that Earth was real somewhere.
-Their captors would be interested in that; homeworld; center of origin. A chill went up Rafe's unprotected back.
"There's one double of you," he had said to Paul. "Maybe more of us. But just stay there. On your side. Please.”
"He was a pretty thing," Jillan said at last, "that bird.”
"He bit," Paul said.
"Don't blame him," Jillan said. "I'd bite too, being stared at." She hunched her shoulders, looked around, dropped the subject altogether.
"Wish I had a beer," Rafe said.
"Downer wine," said Paul. "You know I bet it got that last bottle.”
"Couldn't have come through that spin.”
"Bet it did. Bet Rafe's got it. They gave him everything.”
"Can't share with him," Rafe said, playing the small game, talk-talk, anything to fill the silence; but he mourned the wine he could never touch.
Paul frowned, who had never seen what they described to him, the place where they walked through furniture and walls or his living selfs offered hands.
And Paul's disbelief comforted him, one small confirmation that seemed least likely to be contrived.
But maybe it's smart enough to do that, Rafe thought, growing paranoid. Maybe it's got all the twitches down.
He did not know the alien's limits, that was all.
He stared at his sister and his friend and could not believe in either of them.
And abruptly they were gone.
He leapt up.
In light, in a tunneled hall of nodes and gossa-mer-on carpet.
His living self lay there on the floor, in a nest of blankets and disordered clothes.
"Rafe," he said.
There was no response. The living body looked sorrowfully small, tight-curled among the blankets. He walked over and squatted down, immune to heat and cold himself, put out a hand-living habits were hard to break-to the sleeper's shoulder. "Rafe," he said, with great tenderness, because somehow, somewhen, and not because they were identical, he had come to love his other self, to think of him as brother, and to have a little pride in himself-without modesty-because of this steady, loyal man. "Rafe, wake up. Come on. Come out of it.”
The sleeper moved and groaned in pain.
It was a doppelganger-one of them at least. Rafe stared at it leaning above him with the light shining through its body, then struggled to sit up and heave his naked back against the wall.
"What do you want?" he said, in what of a voice the hoarseness left.
"You're hurt. It hurt you.”
"Some." Rafe shut his eyes. The light wanted to fuzz. He opened them again, discontent, for the ceiling light interfered and blurred out part of the doppleganger's form. They were only holograms, the alien had said. And other things he clamped
his jaws upon. -
The manner was not Kepta, he thought. Or it was Kepta playing still more bitter jokes, with that anguished, frightened look.
"I'm all right," he said to it, to him. "Just a little sore.”
"What in God's name did it want? What did it do to you?”
"Just a look-over. A workout. I don't know. It hurt. That was incidental, I think it was. How are you?”
The doppelganger laughed, not a pleasant, happy laugh, but one of irony, all the answer it gave him.
"How's Jillan and Paul?" he asked it then. "Paul still not speaking to me?”
A shadow touched the eyes. "Paul's better now.”
Better now. He drew an uneasy breath. Which one are you? "I really wish," he said, "you'd back off a bit. The light is in my eyes.”
The doppelganger reached; he flinched, twitched back. "You're scared," it said. "Scared of me.”
"Who are you?”
"Me. Rafe. It's used my shape with you. Has it?”
"Yes. It has. Our shape, friend. You know about that?”
"What did it do?”
"Its name is Kepta. He or she. I don't know." Rafe's voice cracked. "Maybe you could say.”
The doppelganger shook its head solemnly, its eyes locked on his own. "It got me too. It used Jillan's shape. I've seen something using Paul's. And it hurt.”
"It copied you." It made sense then, in a tan gled skein of threads. "That was copy-making, friend. Now it's got three versions of me and you. Four, counting the original.”
"Me; the one it made from me; you”
"It got me," Rafe said. "That's how I know. Mine's four. I saw the machines” The voice cracked again. His joints felt racked. "Plays havoc with the nerves. Goes all through your body. Copies everything.”
"Why? For God's sake, what's it doing with us?”
"It wants different versions. You've grown." He thought now he knew which one it was; there was no way to be sure, only to guess. He guessed. "You're not me, not the way you were; I'm not that me either. It just took a new impression. That's all. It's going to let me go, it says.”
"Let you go. Where?”
"Says Paradise.”
"How'd it know that? How much does it know?”
"Like names and places?" He stared into the doppelganger's face, and thoughts came to him, knowing this self, its need to know-
-its own condition. To know what it was. The doppelganger had no idea, he suspected; no idea at all what he really was, or where.
"It's got access to everything," Rafe told it carefully. "It has my mannerisms; yours; my turns of speech; everything I know. Like names. It wants to know a star the way we name it. It's got a map in my head; it just overlays that on the charts it knows. So it knows Paradise, Fargone, knows everything”
"Mickey.”
"What Mickey?" "The bird in that Fargone bar.”
"I guess it does. I'd forgotten. I guess it could remember. Probably has better recall than I do.”
"Jillan remembers it, really well.”
"Meaning it's got us all.”
"I don't know," the doppelganger said, hugging himself round the knees. "I don't know. What's it up to? You figure that?”
"It says it doesn't matter. Kepta. Kepta's what it calls itself. It says” His voice gave way again. "-says it's got no-military aims. That it could take our species out. The whole human race. Says it's not interested.”
The doppelganger stared at him.
"I think," Rafe said, "maybe it could, near enough as wouldn't matter. Its tech is-way ahead. Got circuits, memory storage, stuff I can get around; it's mechanical, like that. But the power it throws around, the way its computers work” He shut his eyes while he swallowed; it hurt. "I don't know comp's insides; you know that; we just run the things. But this ship's got tricks we don't. That's a fact. Doesn't even hurt to say. It runs through our heads all it likes, digs up everything it wants. Think of trying to defend our space from one of us who'd just inherited this whole ship and aimed it at humankind. If we wanted to-we could be real trouble, given what this has. And it is trouble. Knows every target. Every ship." He blinked. Tears spilled, a wetness at outer edge of his right eye. "Amazing what's not classified. Can't be, can it? Where worlds and stations are-any human knows the star names, and God help us, we know the charts. Any human knows how to run machines;
so it knows what we've got. And what we don't have. That too.”
"How many of it are there?”
"That's a real good question, isn't it? It says /. That's all I know.”
"Easier if it were.”
"Easier to what? Fight this thing?”
"Got nothing better to do," the doppelganger said. "Maybe it's going to do everything it said, let you go, just go its way and let human space alone. If it does, that's fine. If it doesn't-well, we're still here, aren't we? We'll fix it.”
"It can shut you down.”
"So," the doppelganger said with a small, worried shrug. "There's several of us, aren't there?”
"One of us” Rafe felt a new and spreading chill. "Rafe, there's five of us.”
"How, five?”
"Versions. Me. One before I waked. That made you, but it still exists. Naive as it ever was. There's you; that's three. There's the version of you it just got. Four. There's the me it recorded, the stupid one that walked into that lab and lay down where it said, and let itself be recorded because it had no way to know”
"No way to stop it either.”
"But that's five. You see what the difference is. Mindsets. Number one's straight out of the wreck, shaken up and scared; two's me, who's been through everything; three's you,-we're oldest, seen the most. Four's you without this meeting; five's me who was willing to lie down in that machine and hoped I'd get out It can take any branch of us it likes. Live in it. Watch it work. Twist it any way it likes.”
"You mean it's not just a mask it wears," the doppelganger said, his brow knit up in worry, in far too little worry.
Rafe stared at him. Tell him? he wondered. Tell him what he is? He knew his own limits, how much truth he could bear. Sorry, brother, you're repeatable. Jtilan, Paid, them too.
"Maybe it'll really let you go," the doppelganger said at last. "I hope it does.”
"You're lying," Rafe said. "You need me.”
The doppelganger shook his head. "No. I want you out of here. With all the rest that means. That it's not interested in us. That it won't attack.”
"And what becomes of you, then? You don't die, man. You can't. What happens to you?" He wished at once he had never said it. He saw the fear it caused, the sudden freezing of mirror-Rafe's expression.
The doppelganger shrugged then. "That is a problem, isn't it?" He dropped down to sit flat against the floor, against the illusion of it-
-because he expects a floor, Rafe thought.
"But it's our problem," the doppelganger said. "Not yours. For one thing you can't very well tell it no. For another-let's just get you out of here, if we can. You can get hurt. Call it sympathy pains, if you like. Self-preservation. Something of the sort. Just take our surviving substance out of here, first chance you get. What's it going to do, walk into Paradise Station with you?”
"Capsule with a beeper.”
The doppelganger frowned. "Chancy."
"Scares me too. But it was the best you could think of.”
"Don't make jokes like that.”
"Sorry. But it's true.”
The doppelganger slumped, arms against his knees. "At least it's not going inside Paradise," he said.
"At least. There's that to be grateful for." He leaned back against the wall, tucked the blanket up about his arms. "You don't think you can trust Jillan-or Paul.”
"I don't know which copy I'm dealing with," the doppelganger said in desperation. "It sent me here. Without warning. Rafe, it's got them both."