"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 whi
le 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."
Chapter Seven
There was no one. Where Paul had been in their confinement, was suddenly no one, in the time it took to blink, the way it had taken Rafe; and Jillan Murray lurched to her feet all in one wild motion, stifling the outcry-no good, no good to yell. The dark was absolute, featureless, soundless; she stood sense-deprived and still, bereft of everyone.
"Jillan," said a female voice. Her own doppel-ganger blinked into green-gold glow in front of her, naked flesh a little bony about the ribs.
"That you?" she said, all cold. "That you, self?”
"No," her own voice came back to her, from mirror-image lips.
Her knees wanted to shake. If she tried to run they would fail. "My turn, is it?”
It stood still, with a pensive, frowning look which slowly changed as if thought were going on behind the eyes and arrived at puzzlement. "It feels as if," it said, "you get some satisfaction from my coming round to you."
"Huh." She laughed.
"Very bitter satisfaction. You were really afraid of being discounted in favor of the men in this situation. It's a very confused feeling.”
Her skin felt like sweat she could not shed. This is crazy, she thought. Should I run?
Strong, Rafe had said. And: It got me. Got me in ways unspecified.
"Anger," the doppelganger said, "that comes through.”
"That doesn't take mind-reading. Where am I? Where are we? Dammit, why?”
The doppelganger's head came up a bit, a centering of the eyes, her eyes, beneath an untidy fringe of bangs.
"Take a walk with me.”
"Like hell.”
It blinked. "You did ask for answers.”
"You can tell me what I asked. Right here.”
And Paul was there, behind the doppelganger, lying still and helpless on the dark immaterial floor. He vanished as quickly. "Creation and uncreation," the doppelganger said. "That's what you are. No more, no less.”
She was shaking. Pockets, she thought extrane-ously, wanting somewhere to put her hands; her hands missed pockets, touched only naked skin. "So, well," she said, "is that trick supposed to mean something?”
"Not in terms you're used to thinking of. Life and death are valueless. You're here. Your body's long since gone. But you're still living. So was that. Now it's gone. Want it back again?”
It was. It vanished. "Dead again," it said. "Or gone. However you define it.”
She swung at the doppelganger.
She was on the floor, loose-jointed, with the memory of blinding pain, sound, shock that ached in the roots of her teeth; and it stood just out of reach. It squatted down, arms on knees.
"Doesn't it occur to you," it said, "that I could just turn you off?”
Jillan got an elbow under her amid her shivering, pushed up, sat, as far as half squared her with its eyes. She glared at it, and nothing occurred to her, nothing in clear focus, but a dim, small fear that if she hit it again she would get the same hard shock. She had done no damage to it. None.
It sat there, a long, long moment. "Your mind's different," it said. "Self-preservation . .. differently defined. I've seen you through Rafe's eyes. Your mind is shocked at his simplicity. So is Rafe-mind, to know you so thoroughly. Devastated.”
"Shut up!”
"That's your strength," it said, this double of herself, this thing with shaggy, disordered hair and infinity in its eyes. "Rafe-mind wouldn't have attacked me bare-handed for anything but one of you. He's afraid to die. So are you. But you have died, haven't you? He's afraid because he's got so much to lose-you, and Paul-even his own double. He's full of fears like that. His universe is you and Paul, quite simply; and that ship he's lost. Himself, of course; but he's sure I'd retaliate on you. He can't conceive of the universe without him in it; can't conceive of your survival if he didn't exist. Responsibi
lity for the whole universe. That kind
of thinking's very remote in you. . . . Not that you don't care," it said, settling crosslegged to the floor. "Just that you don't think in terms of being anything but alone. Not universal like Rafe; just solitary. The men take care of you; they look for nothing from you, so you think. You'd defend them if you got the chance. But you expect no chances, for you, or them. On the other hand you've died once, you think; and that didn't impress you much. It didn't affect you. You've still got yourself; and that's your universe.”