Ugliness flowed back. His own darkness, like a wave: his desire to hurt- -Rafe wept and begged. He savored that, felt a thrill of s.e.x- "That"s me," Paul said, accepting it, treading on his pride, stripping off all the coverings, revealing all the darks. "Don"t be shocked, Jillan; I did warn you, I told you the best I knew-don"t leave me, Rafe. Don"t. O G.o.d, don"t-break"

Paul One writhed; sought Jillan-mind with its hate; sought Rafe. Kill, it raged. Have you-all It was too much; too strong; too mad. "No!" Rafe pulled them back, dodged aside, for the Can nibal loomed up: "Back!" Worm shrieked, and plunged between, tangled its black body with that pale one.

"Worm!" Rafe cried, and Paul dodged again as Worm came flooding back from the Cannibal"s a.s.sault. Worm"s substance was in ribbons. It was missing legs in great patches all down its length; it limped and moaned. But the Cannibal ran, wounded too, ran until it met a thing which took shape out of the dark, a Devourer far larger than itself.

"Paul," that thing said, in a voice far too small and human for its size. Cannibal merged with it; it looped closer to gather Paul One"s misshapenness against its glowing side.

"There," it said, contentedly; "there." And lifted up its face to them.

"Rafe" Paul said. A shudder went through his/their flesh; he felt Jillan"s horror: Rafe Three"s own dismay.

It was vast. It kept lifting up and up, serpentlike, and the eyes of Rafe-face stared down at them. Beauty-it had that too, Rafe"s gone to cold implacability. "I"ve won," it said; and Paul-Rafe wailed as it sank unwilling into the serpent"s glowing side. "There"s nothing more to fear."

"No!" Worm wailed. "No, no, no, no"

"Hush," the whisper thundered. "Worm-worm, they call you. Do you know, Worm, what that is? For shame, Paul, to give him a name like that."

"Kepta?" Paul asked. "Is that you?"

"Yes," it said. "Of course I am. Come here."

They reached the great hall, the noded dark. Things gibbered as they ran, voices howled through the overhead, chittered, roared like winds where no winds existed. Rafe kept running, stumbling, fell flat and scrambled up without pause, holding his aching side.

His ghosts stayed with him. Perhaps Marandu was one: he could not tell. There was no light but their bodies, no guidance but their hands that reached impotently to help his weakness. "Where?" Rafe Two asked him, "where now, Rafe?"

"Hallway," he gasped, "third to the left of ours"

"This way," Rafe Two said, at home in dark, or not truly needing eyes. Rafe gathered himself, sucked a pain-edged breath and ran, staggering with exhaustion.

A Jillan-image materialized in the dark ahead, blazing gold. "Stop!" she/it said. An arm uplifted in a gesture human as the image and as false.

Rafe Two slowed; Rafe ran, experienced nothing but a flare of light and image, stumbled his way on blind in the dark of the pa.s.sage, reeling from wall to wall. A glow pa.s.sed him, gave him fitful light, became Jillan before it faded out.

He sprawled, hard, in the shimmer of insubstantial arms that tried to save him; he clawed his way up, sobbing, and kept going. His ghosts were with him again, Jillan, all; they went about him, a glowing curtain, a cloud. He fell again, a third, a fourth time on the hummocks of the floor. He tasted blood, was blind, phosphenes dancing in his eyes.

"Look out!" Jillan cried and waved him off, her body out in front of him. He reached out his hands, facing darkness beyond her.

White, sudden light blazed from the ceiling nodes. It lit the room of knives, arms that moved, snicked in unison toward him all attentive, in the lumpish barren plastic of the center he had sought.

"Kepta!" he shouted, backing, for things that gripped and things that cut were still in drifting motion toward him, traveling in extension he had not guessed. "Kepta! Stop!"

They kept coming. More unfolded out of recesses of the wall.

"Kepta!"

Jillan-shape materialized there among the knives, flung up arms, opened its mouth and yelled something a human throat did not well stand.

Knives stopped then, frozen in mid-extension, a forest of metal, perilous limbs in which Jillan-shape stood immaterial.

Rafe stood shivering, perceived a dance of light as his own ghosts hovered round him as close as they could get, demolishing themselves on his solidity and reforming.

"Tell Kepta I want to talk with him," Rafe said.

"Kepta won"t," Marandu said. His female hands tucked up again like paws. "Go back."

"Because I"m substance? Because I"m alive, with hands to touch this place?"

"Substance," said Marandu among the knives, "is dealt with here."

"Rafe," Paul pleaded with him. "Rafe-stay alive. Get out of here."

"It"s threatened," Rafe said. He was shivering. They could not feel as much, but the shivers ran through his limbs. O G.o.d. It"s going to hurt "I"m standing here, Kepta-hear me? I"m not moving. I"m not going to move." "Kepta advises you," Marandu said-and Ma-randu"s eyes were far-focused, vague and full of dark "advises you"

The thing loomed up serpentlike, seductive in its implacability, the serenity of Rafe-face become una.s.sailable and vast.

"Lie," Worm cried, and writhed and looped its wounded coils aside. "Lie, lie"

"Are you lying?" (Paul).

"Examine me," it said, this thing with Kepta"s name. It extruded a shape from its side, the agglomeration of Paul One. Paul One wailed, writhed as Worm had done. A glowing coil materialized and took it in again. "Come close. See _me as I am."

"Go to h.e.l.l," said Jillan Murray-Gaines, through the amalgam of their lips. "Or are you already in residence?"

"Humor," it said. "h.e.l.l. Yes." It laughed, gentle as a breath. "I appreciate the reference. So would the pa.s.sengers. I"m Kepta. There are dozens of us. We create one another-in endless cycles." It slid closer, and it seemed dangerous to move at all now; but Rafe-mind did, veteran of the docks. They slipped backward together.

"Do you understand?" it asked again. (Another gliding move. Rafe-mind moved them back, but not far enough. It gained.) "Dangerous," it said, "to move without looking. Where"s Cannibal? Where"s Worm? Are you sure?"

"Don"t look," Paul whispered, shivering in their heart. "Don"t be tricked."

"You"ve been ill-advised," Rafe-voice urged, smooth, so very smooth. "Even death-can be remedied. Your copies are exact, down to the very spin of your particles. Your cellular information. Would you be reconst.i.tuted? I can do that much."

Paul caught the breath he did not have, felt limbs that were not real-instincts yearned after life and breath, after humanity- "No," Rafe said. Just-no, unreasoning, suspicious. He was twelve again, dockside; the hand held out the coin, too large a coin for simple charity. . . . No-from Jillan-mind, brittle-hard, plotting how to run. Nothing"s free; not from this thing- "Look out!" cried Paul.

The serpent-shape was quicker. Its vast body slammed down in front of them, turning about them, surrounding them with its coils.

"You just lost your chance," it said.

"Lost," Marandu whispered, fading. "They"ve failed."

"Let me go to them!" Paul cried. "Let me try!"

"Against a Kepta-form?" Marandu drew itself away, retreating in its dimness. And then it stopped, turned, gazing at them with Jillan"s calm face. "Bravery. Yes. I know."

It shimmered out.

"Paul!" Rafe cried.

Then all his ghosts were gone.

Marandu with them. And the lights went out.

Disaster. <> had felt it, not unantic.i.p.ated. <> felt o>"s fear. It shivered through that portion of o>self that remained part.i.tioned outside Jillan-shape. There was irony in this: Jillan-mind was darkly stubborn and was trapped in that fierceness.

discovered that too. Discovered other things.

"O G.o.d," Rafe Two murmured, arrived on that darkling plain. "What is that thing?"

"The others called it Worm," Marandu said.

It came snuffling and limping toward them, tattered and missing legs among its segments. "Run," it called to them multi-voice; and in other voices: "Fight."

Then they saw the other thing, a thousand times its size.

"My friends," it saluted them like thunder, rearing up to stare down at them with Rafe"s haggard face.

"Friends, h.e.l.l," Jillan said.

"It will take you," Marandu said, a faint and fading voice.

"d.a.m.n you," Rafe yelled at Marandu, s.n.a.t.c.hed to hold it by the arm. "Don"t leave us"

Marandu steadied, grew brighter then. "I"m very old," it said, as if that were some grounds for its desertion. "Oldest of all but one."

"So fight it," Jillan said. "Where"s your guts?"

And Paul: "Help us. We don"t know what to do."

There was silence. The serpent-glow flowed closer. It had Rafe"s voice, a whisper that murmured like the sea, but spoke no human tongue.

"Run! Fight!" Worn gibbered; but it did neither. Worm stayed, limping aimless circles on missing legs. "Help! Help! Help!"

"Marandu!" Paul cried.

The slim Jillan-body shuddered, once. "I will take you in," Marandu said. "Part.i.tioned-I can"t"

Jillan-shape broke apart in shimmer. A larger glow appeared, folded about them, an order, a structure, a body vaster than their own.

Worm was in it, snuffling.

Move, the impulse came, or something very like the command to legs and limbs.

"Go with it," Rafe tried to say, at least he willed himself to say. He could stretch very far if he wished: or that was Marandu"s thought.

<> was dying. <> knew distress at that. The crew had already pa.s.sed. "Ship," <> said, tried to say, "go home."

But Ship could not/would not hear. The Collective had betrayed <>, implanting instructions <> could not override. *

<> died and remembered it when <> woke, with Ship long underway.

FIND. REPORT. <> obeyed, until <> had calculated that transmission scatter was too much, and the years too many, and nothing mattered any more but Oself.

<> traveled. It was all <> had left.

<> made Oself for company. <> sought other goals.

<> took on pa.s.sengers.

He/they/she and Worm . . . partic.i.p.ated in a body that had more limbs than they had collectively. They were old; and badly scared; and knew too much.

They/ were victims of Oself, helpless in their voyage. Pa.s.sengers multiplied. <> took them in. <> changed and grew complex and made other selves. shuddered, gazing at in memory.

But one of "s new-gained segments was of different mind.

Ship, he thought, with vast, vast desire. He was structure; Paul was complexity; and Jillan-Jillan was going at that thing, possessed for once of strength and size and a wrath stored up for years.

swooped and struck.

They/Marandu moved, lancing through the patterns of the ship, darting this way and that at transmission speed, being here and there with electron lunacy.

"Aiiiiiieeee!" Worm wailed, and discovered self alive, to ((()))"s total startlement. "Aiiii-ya!"

was in pursuit, was on them, through them.

"Hate you," one thing said, collectively; Cannibal was tangled with it and it l.u.s.ted, that was all that filled its mind.

Fargone docks- And They/Marandu/Worm; no-failure, not-now beyond clear thought, beyond reasoning, except that they were still alive, like Worm, who had been a pilot once, and hurled ((()))"s skill into their evasions in the patterns.

"Aiiiieeeiiiiii!" Worm cried, going to the attack.

A red world lay in Marandu"s past, much loved betrayer-for that memory, Marandu fought. "Lindyl" Rafe yelled, and felt Jillan and Paul distinctly at his side. Their own focus was a little ship, a hope, pilot-skill and stubbornness ... no world to love at all, only Fargone"s h.e.l.l.

"Aiiiiieeeeeeyaaa!"

A wall loomed up at them, Rafe-face amid it, howling as they merged.

<> was amazed.

Bravery, had said. It was.

<> moved, with that same electron-swiftness as took in.

<> dived after, rummaged through almost-congruencies, started ripping things into order in "s distorted substance.

Merged-with <>"s own mad self; and ; and sucked up disordered bits of other things.

Worm-retreated, whimpering.