Alternate Realities

by C. J. Cherryh

  “How many of it are there?”

  “That’s a real good question, isn’t it? It says I. 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. Naïve 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. Jillan, Paul, 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.”

  VII

  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 doppelganger 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 fall. “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 extraneously, 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. Responsibility 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.”

  “Sure,” she said. An icy worm crawled somewhere at her gut. “You got anything to do besides this? Let’s see your face, why not?”

  “You don’t like me using this shape. Your brother’s—your husband’s; that you can tolerate. This bothers you.”

  “I hate your guts. Surprising?”

  “And now you’re scared. Something’s got inside.”

  She was. She stared at the thing eye to eye and it had her own most determined look.

  “Go to hell,” she said.

  “Your strategy is self-defense. Around that you arrange your priorities. I understand this.”

  It had made her angry. It had made her afraid. It had indeed gotten through. Stupid, she thought, stupid to debate this thing. That it had her, that it lived inside her head, made her afraid not to listen to it, and that was a trap. She shut that worry down, assumed its own crosslegged pose in mockery. “Suppose we see your face. The way you really are.”

  “Clever,” it said.

  “I shut you off, didn’t I?”

  It smiled, her own most wicked smile. “Shut me down cold,” it said.

  “That brain reacts—mirror image to mine.”

  “When it’s on the same track. Think of children.”

  Back in her lap. She went off her balance, confused.

  “You don’t like the idea,” it said. “Rafe’s upset you didn’t live to have the kids he wanted so, he’s upset and ashamed he’s upset, and won’t mention it to you because he thinks in the first place you’re grieved at losing that chance and secondly that you’d think it affects his care for you. I know. I felt it quite distinctly.”

  “Thank him for me,” she said hoarsely. “Spare him my opinions.”

  “You did. Spare him that, I mean. Your sex bears the young, with some pain; more than that—the time. You bear one at a time; there had to be several. It meant going to Ajax, being absent from everything you valued, for a long period of your lifespan; it meant inactivity; it meant kids’ noise and helplessness, which you don’t like; it meant pretending for years and years that you were happy when you weren’t, because your misery would affect the men, and cause them pain, and affect the kids, and ruin all the rest of the years you had left to live. Everything Rafe’s worked for—depends on you. And you hate it.”

  “Don’t tell them that.”

  “This is the center where no one comes. Death can’t affect it. This is the strategy: silence, and to strike from this place where nothing can come. This virtue. This anger that sustains you. You know your limits. You cherish no illusions. But I’m here.”

  “Welcome in,” she said, staring through it. “Now there are two of us. You want a fight? I’ll give you one.”

  “Yes,” it said. “I know. But I would win. I have, before. I destroyed that version of you. It was no longer whole.”

  “Fine,” she said: There was a knot in her throat that made talking painful. “That was kind of you.”

  “Humor,” it said.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I want your help,” it said.

  She looked at it, a sudden shortening of focus, a centering of hate. “Do you?”

  “You don’t fully understand,” it said, “what these versions are. They’re alive.”

  “That one was?” She moved her eyes where Paul had lain, unconscious on the floor. “You killed it? You want my help?”

  “He. That version died in his sleep, without pain. He can die—infinitely often. No,” the doppelganger said, lifting her hand. “That wasn’t a threat. I’m explaining what you are. You have a certain integrity, right now. You’re unique, much more flexible than the template I have in storage. You’ve learned. That version of Paul I twice destroyed—never waked after the wreck. The one I sent you to keep you content, that one was from the same template; and it came to consciousness with you all settled in your state. You brought it—gently up to date; it’s more stable as a consequence. Paul, you know, doesn’t like shocks. He relies on you in these circumstances. He needs your flexibility. Your expertise as spacers, greater than his own. Oh, I know—you’re lost. That’s why the first Paul ran off. He leaned on you and you didn’t provide the prop. So he leaned on himself. And he ran.”

  “O my God.”

  “No, indeed you didn’t get the same Paul back. And you did, in one important sense. The one you have now is healthier. He still belongs to you. The other one, the one that ran, has diverged—considerably. You thanked me for destroying your damaged selves. But Paul’s first copy was damaged too. It’s not a Paul you’d understand. And a stray version of Rafe exists, that’s gone way off. Rafe has his weaknesses. That’s why I’m talking to you. The stable one. The one with the solid core. The only one it hasn’t got. Yet.”

  “It. What—it?”

  “This ship has a lot of passengers. One of them.”

  “And who are you?”

  “Kepta. Kepta’s what to call me.”

  “You’re in charge?”

  “Captain would be close. I’m going to copy you again. It’s the best defense. That there’ll be one version of you neither naive nor—if things go wrong—corrupt. It will hurt, Jillan. It’s not my choice. It’s just your nature.”

  It was gone.

  And the pain began.

  “ knows,” said = < + > = = <-> = =. “ knows <>’re disarranged.”

  <> was not surprised at the Cannibal’s report. <> stayed quiet now, digesting what <> had learned, while in the lab, with another part of <>’s mind, <> was quite busy.

  “Move us,” said <^>, anxiously, from elsewhere in the ship. <^> feared the Cannibal and stayed far away. “Move us from this place. Others of this species may come.”

  “No,” <> said, “not yet.”

  <^> raged and wept, fearful for <^>self. <^> was very old, and very fond of <^>self, besides being slightly mad, and <^> skulked off, with |||000||| slinking after in growing despair.

  “ knows what <> have done,” <^> said again, turning back.

  “ knows,” said another, unexpected voice. It was self, had ventured to the limits of ’s security, that line across which <> did not go. This intrusion into <>’s affairs was purest insolence, demonstrating ’s strength; but demonstrating impotence as well: had met a limit could not pass.

  But brought a companion who had no such disabilities. <> saw this. “Paul,” <> addressed Paul One, which hung back, twined with crippled Rafe-mind, the one that had worn. Paul had acquired new pieces, shadow-limbs, extensions in the dark, at least three arms, maybe four; and legs as well.

  The Paul-mind said something, garbled like itself. “. ... fear,” came out. “jillan rafe bastard want come now ...”

  “Not very articulate,” <> said. The template <> was making was complete. With deliberation <> released the subject, dismissed her out of reach and fronted ’s vexation with insouciance.

  Gentle, human arms were about her, light shone above her, and for a moment Jillan believed in both implicitly, having no wish to move at all, only to be, and not to think.

  “Jillan,” Paul’s voice called. His fingers touched her face, brushed back a stubborn lock of hair—he often did that small thing, of mornings, to wake her up. Tears leaked between her lashes; but the pain was gone, just gone, as if it had never been, hard even to remember now. She opened her eyes and blinked at Paul’s face, at two of Rafe’s, one of the twins like Paul, dimmed by the lights; the other, Rafe’s living self.

  Her men, she thought, exhausted. All three of them safe, here among Lindy’s pathetic pieces. She sat up and held to Paul’s shoulder, hung on it like a drifter to a hold in null, and gazed at both her brothers, the living and the one neither live nor dead.

  “You all right?” Rafe asked, a rusty, painful sound.

  “What happened to your voice?”

 
“Had a bad while,” he said. “Over now. I’m not hurt. You?”

  She nodded. Her mind felt adrift in fragments. There was too much, too much they did not know. She tightened her grip on Paul’s bare shoulder and drew a deep and shaky breath. “I’m all right,” she said. “You know somebody named Kepta?”

  “Yes,” said her living brother in that strained, hoarse voice. “I know him.”

  “Him.” The mental shift made her think again. “Her. It. Whatever. Whatever it really is.” She slid her hand down to Paul’s and clenched its solidity. “I’m all right. You?”

  “Fine,” Paul said. “Fine,” said Rafe, her Rafe, the one the light shone through. She felt a chill—how be sure it’s them, mine, not something else?—as if the floor were falling away, the gossamer-carpet floor her body could not feel. She stared at them and froze a moment, then drew her limbs under her and sat apart, pulling her hand from Paul’s, resting her forehead on her knee.

  “Destroy all of them,” [] said, one of ten of []kind, one of a chorus of voices, hundreds of outraged protests which <> ignored, occupied as <> was. Paul-mind had retreated, with , to that place where was firmly in charge.

  It was too late to recover Paul One, <> knew. Paul One was quite, quite beyond any reason. More, he had gained a certain wariness, which indicated that his immunity against shutdown was increasing.