I have to do it again and again, just to get the right to die my own way, safe and sure that the door will open wide and Dad and Crys will be there and here it comes again. I know. I’m trying to come with you, but it keeps pulling me back. I’m sorry. Someday. Soon.
Look at me. That’s not my body so thin and white. Don’t push. I’m going back.
“Ready to transfer.” Baker pushed the button again.
Maybe I’m almost getting used to this. Or maybe Kinney is taking me over and making me as crazy as he. When he takes over completely, will I die like this? Dropping forever toward the door, endlessly down a corridor-pit? There he falls again, Kinney, pushing Crys and Dad out of the way, begging me to follow him, telling me it’ll be all right, that he loves me as much as her and that was why he did it but I don’t believe him.
“What is your name?” the computer inquired.
“What? Oh. Jord Baker. Don’t you think that’s getting pretty useless? Both of us know about the other.”
“I need to keep track. You both have your… idiosyncrasies. Stand by for engine firing.” The tug of acceleration startled him, but he eased into the cushions and waited until weightlessness returned.
“Cloning tank and lifeship on visual,” it said. “Ready to be taken onboard. However-telemetry from the unit indicates a dysfunctional state.”
“What do you mean?” Baker unstrapped and retracted the control panels.
“The clone is apparently dead. All power to the cloning tank has been shut down-”
Baker sped to the docking bay, took the controls, and remote-piloted the lifeship back into Circus. He cycled the atmosphere and waited impatiently by the airlock.
“Come on.” Come on! The airlock slowly opened.
Pulling the cloning unit out of the ship, he opened the tank without inspecting it and peered inside at clean emptiness.
“Nothing! The unit must’ve failed right after we cast it off. Unless it went through a cleansing cycle-”
“The waste unit is empty. Now close the lid and look at it.”
Baker did so and read the frantic words knifed into the black plating.
WANDERER-I STOLE YOUR PRIZE
“What does that mean?”
“The ship that attacked us around Beta Hydri. The pilot called Virgil ‘Wanderer.’ ”
“How did he find us?” Baker tried to control the near-screech in his voice, digging his finger into the padded rim or the cloning tank.
“The pilot challenged us to appear here sometime in June, Twenty-Two Twenty-Three. According to best estimates, it is now January of Twenty-Two Twenty-Four.”
“Then why the hell did you go to Tau Ceti?”
“It was the next star on our tour-much closer to our sun type than Epsilon Eridani and also closer to similar star types Eighty-Two Eridani and Sigma Draconis.”
“You knew! And now he’s got Delia!”
“Free will doesn’t mean I have to consider every-” “Start looking for her. How big a Bernal sphere is it?”’
“How did you know it was a Bernal sphere?”
Baker paused, then said, “More memory overlap. He had all sorts of corpses in the control room, right?”
“Yes.”
“Have you found him?” Maybe if I can retrieve all of Kinney’s memories I won’t be consumed. Maybe I can pick him away bit by bit.
“He may be lying in wait for us,” the computer said. “I have all defenses online, lasers set in spiral tracking. A Bernal is such a large target, though, it would take a long time to wipe out every weapon or control center by purely random shots. He would be able to destroy us if he wanted to, merely by turning on his lasers before he transferred out to us.”
“Straight, so we’re dead. Now try and find him.”
“There is an object about four kilometers in length exactly twenty-three degrees ahead of the lifeship in the same orbit.”
“Prepare shuttle two for launching. I’m going to transfer over there and take a look.”
“Jord-we can always clone another-”
“He can’t have her! Brennen can’t-” The name shocked Baker. “Brennen? The madman is Brennen?”
“The other madman, yes.”
“I’m going in.” He loaded the shuttle with laser gloves, rifles, and packets of explosive. From the armory, he removed a small fission cylinder charge and secured it in the back of the shuttle.
“Weren’t you interested,” he asked, “in how Brennen can survive the Valliardi Transfer?”
“Perhaps he achieved a dysfunctional mental state similar to Virgil’s.”
“That’s what I intend to find out before I blow him to bits. Maybe I’ll learn how to handle Kinney. Now let’s move it!” He slithered into a pressure suit, jumped in the cockpit and strapped down to the pilot’s seat. In a few moments, the shuttle drifted away from Circus Galacticus.
“Your velocities are not yet matched, so I shall transfer you to a distance of ten thousand kilometers and you can move in from there.”
“Why don’t I fire my rockets here so I’ll be matched and drifting toward him already when I appear?”
“Fire them twenty-three degrees in from the tangent.”
He did so, brought the craft up to a safe speed, then shut down all systems but those of his own suit and those of the transfer unit. He pushed the button and vanished from space.
Now I meet Kinney face to face, in a way. If I can die just one more time I may be free to die on my own. Just one more fall, one more reach toward the door that never opens-
His breath rattled in his head. His fingers gripped the fore-mounted meteor laser. Far ahead of him, something glinted on and off with insistent regularity. Slowly it grew in apparent size. Baker watched for any sign of defensive action.
At the thousand kilometer mark, he hit the braking rockets, hoping their chemical flare would not be too noticeable. Here goes nothing.
The Bernal sphere revolved on its axis, but held no alignment on the star it orbited. Its solar mirrors and power panels lay in disarray, pointing in all directions. Baker let his shuttle drift slowly closer. At ten kilometers he carefully scanned the habitat for power usage.
Nothing. And it would take at least two minutes to power up a laser even if he had his solar panels aligned. We’d have been hit by now if he were planning to ambush us.
He hit full power and zeroed in on the docking port at the tip of the axial tower that supported the mirror array. From his experience with Fadeaway, he was now familiar with the layout of such habitats. He braked and drifted into the open hatchway. Loading a supply pack with explosives and the fission device, he donned a laser glove and slung a rifle over his shoulder.
All right, Dante, here I come.
He jumped across to the airlock and manually sealed the door behind him. It would not pressurize. He laid a charge against it, opened the outer hatch again, set the fuse and jumped outside. A bloom of metal shards, air, and chunks of shattered plastic blew outward. He waited until the shrapnel expended its momentum ricocheting around inside the airlock, then sped through the opening into an evacuated corridor.
Can’t go voiding every passageway to get around. Dee might be in one of them.
On the next set of pressure doors, he used his hand laser to cut away the forward seals enough to fill the small chamber with atmosphere. The inner set of doors opened easily. He kept his pressure suit on, but switched the respirator off and opened the mask to the outside. The air smelled stale and cloyingly sweet. When he saw why, he sealed the mouthpiece and resumed using internal oxygen.
Dead bodies lay scattered about the corridors, floating in the zero-gee axial section of the long polar tower, sprawled about in the gravity areas. Most of them had died by obvious or likely suicide. Some had killed one another in orgiastic violence.
He climbed inward toward the command center, hand over hand through a narrow tube, leading with his laser glove. He floated before the hatch. Partially ajar, it swung inward under the force of his shoulder. He hung back, waiting, then tossed a detonator from one of the charges inside the room. It exploded with a loud crack.
No reaction. Straight, here I come.
Baker kicked into the control center, raising the rifle as soon as he had cleared the hatchway. Only the seated dead greeted him. He spun around. Nothing but more mummies. Only one seat lay empty, its control panel as dark as the others.
Damn.
Keeping one hand on his rifle, Baker powered up the control station from the emergency batteries. Using what vid links still operated, he checked the tower portion of the habitat. Most of the compartments were open to space. Only the central shaft held atmosphere all the way through to the sphere itself, which appeared to be intact. That it still held an atmosphere surprised Baker more than the strange perspectives caused by the shifting beams of light reflected from the skewed mirror array.
I’ll never find him like this.
He searched the control station and adjoining compartments until he located a functional flying harness. Strapping it on, he rocketed down the axial tube toward the habitat sphere, making his way through hatches and airlocks. He shot through a final opening; the surface dropped away from him in all directions. He was inside the cavernous main enclosure of the habitat.
It was like no place he had ever been before. Larger by far than Fadeaway, Bernal Brennen was a nightmare of brown, dead, blasted farmland and blackened, burnt-out ruins. Light shifted about in crazy, seemingly random fashion. Looking at the arctic circle windows, Baker saw the reflected image of the star Tau Ceti first describe an arc, then jump several degrees, trace an ellipse, then appear here and there until it repeated the sequence.
He aimed the jet pack toward the center of the axis. Still weightless, he noted that the rotational rate of the sphere was slow-it probably imparted only a lunar gravity equivalent at the equator. Shadows and patches of light skipped, bent and skittered over the landscape as in some deathly monochrome kaleidoscope. Everywhere he looked lay white ash, gray land, and blackened buildings. He closed his eyes to the madly shifting light and cut his motor.
Now what, Sky King?
He switched on his outside microphones and turned them up to full amplification. The soft sounds of stillness reached him. Then something rustled. Somewhere, no farther away than the sphere’s radius of eight-tenths of a kilometer, a woman screamed.
Baker turned his head, trying to get a binaural fix. He found the task impossible. He opened his eyes and tried to see.
She screamed again. Baker heard a thick, heavy voice shout, “I find you, remember that! Then you find out. Can’t hide the rest of your life here!”
From his aerial vantage, he saw a white figure stumble across a half-plowed field and dive under a bush. It looked for all the world like a scabrous Delia Trine, naked and filthy. He craned his neck to watch the bush pass under him, but the field suddenly entered a patch of darkness and he lost his bearings.
Time to get a closer look.
He braked until he hung motionless along the axis. The sphere rotated about him in a majestic, dizzying pirouette. Changing his position, he fired the jet pack for one second. The engine kicked him off axis, allowing the rotating winds of Bernal Brennen to influence him. Drifting slowly down from his lofty height, Baker encountered the gentle pressure of moving air that pressed him in a spinward direction. Even so, he still moved across the surface at a fast clip when he reached half a radius altitude. He readied the laser rifle and looked about him as he cut across patches of dark and light. Starshine lanced in at odd angles, occasionally blinding him.
“Hey, you!” the deep voice growled. Baker looked behind and below him to see a hairy, naked man climb out of a ravine shaking his fists. He slowly turned and powered upward and back, gaining altitude until he hovered a few hundred meters above the man. He could not remain weightless and be motionless relative to the sphere’s inner surface. He maintained power, which gave him the feeling of weight, of hanging from his jet pack.
“Dante!” he bellowed down on his outside speakers. “Jord Baker here. How did you survive the Valliardi Transfer?” A cloak of blackness fell across the area. A square of light passed through it, returning daytime.
“Made me die and die!” the filth-encrusted man shouted. “Punishment from God for not killing Wanderer. He gets dirty death for straying. I found his prize. Stole her from him!”
“I’m taking her back!” Baker answered, firing a blast at the naked man. He yelped and fell down, grasping the bloody hole in his left calf.
Baker tried to become oriented enough to find where Delia’s clone had hidden. The jigsaw starlight flashed back and forth across him, pounding in his head like glowing fists. Then he heard a buzz and a whine that dropped in pitch.
Out of fuel. I really need this crap.
He began falling, slowly, tangentially to the point at which he had been hovering. Since the atmosphere was rotating with the faster rate of the sphere’s inner surface, the breeze again wafted him spinward, urging him toward relative motion with the surface and greater acceleration rates.
He brushed a treetop, shattering the dead branches. It slowed him enough-rather, imparted more of the sphere’s motion to him-that when he hit the dusty square of a dead lawn, he rolled and bounced without much damage. He retrieved his rifle, discarded the depleted flying harness, and sought his bearings. A kilometer spinward and north of the equator, a slender figure jumped from a bush and into a house. He ran toward it, trying to maintain his footing despite the constantly shifting shadows.
He passed a pathway intersection to see Brennen running unsteadily toward him, favoring one leg. He raised his rifle and fired at the other leg. The man screamed and stumbled, pawing at his hip. Dust flew up around him, then darkness enveloped the scene.
“I get you, Hunter!” Brennen cried from the shadows. “I give you dirty death for pain!”
Baker smiled and said, “I’ll give you a clean one.”
Out of breath, his bones aching, the pressure suit at full dilation to evaporate sweat, Baker approached the house. A dry, shriveled body hung from the tree in front of it, a faded note pinned to its rotting jumpsuit. Baker strode past it and kicked open the door.
“It’s all right. Come on out,” he said. “You don’t have to hide. I’m here to help you.” I wonder how much of that she understood. She’s only a clone. How long could he have had her, anyway? Half a year, if he arrived when he said he would. Maybe much longer, if he wanted to case the system first.
Footsteps stamped down the back stairs. He raced into the sudden night to see her disappear down a path. He looked over the small hillock and caught sight of her when a square beam of light arced across the farm.
“Hold it! Stop. I’m not like him!”
She tried climbing a terrace. He bounded after her and seized her by the waist, pulling her down on top of him.
Up close, she looked truly filthy. Dust and scars covered her naked body. Her hair hung in matted clumps. Her breasts were black and blue, as were her wrists and thighs. She tried scratching at him with nails split and broken to the quick.
“Leggo,” she screamed, her voice a high-pitched imitation of the hairy man’s speech. “Gotta runaway.”
“You’re safe and you’re coming back with me. I’ve got someone waiting for you.”
“Not I!” she screamed, looking about her. “I tried hurt You.”
“No you didn’t.”
She pounded against his chest. “Not You,” she said, pointing to her groin. She pointed away from them. “I! I!”
Brennen and she were the only ones alive. “You” and “I” were the only names he needed to use, so she learned those names and he was too crazy to bother correcting her. “You”-he pointed at her-“and I”-he pointed down the pathway toward the figure of the other man, gripping his legs and whimpering.
“Yeah! I. Who?” She nodded at him.
“Jord.”
She tugged at his arm. “Fast, Jord and You. We hide. Hide!”
Baker felt his consciousness slipping away at the sound of the word. He jerked his head back, screaming. “No!”
Her damned voice was all I needed to free myself was a single word and now I’m no longer watching but-
“Delia!” “Who?” Virgil spun around, witnessed the insane display of light and darkness cascading about, and trembled. Carnival! And Death Angel has been through all the rides.
A howl caught his attention. He saw Brennen in the pathway and shouted, “Mad Wizard! You brought me here?”
“No,” the woman said, tugging at his arm. “You take Jord and hide.”
“I’m Virgil,” he said, pointing toward his heart.
“No. I tried”-she made an explicit gesture-“to You.”
“No, you didn’t-” wait, wait. Something that just happened when the dead man was… Right. She’s all screwed up, confused by Master Snoop’s light show.
“Mad Wizard”-he pointed at the man-“I won’t get You. Virgil will protect You now.” He pointed at his chest. “Virgil.”
“Virgil, Jord. We go.” She ran off, her thick, matted hair slapping against her back. She led him toward the equator.
Poor dirty Death Angel. Take you out of Mad Wizard’s house and back to Circus. “This way,” he said, leading her up the curving meridian pathway. “It’s easier.”
“No,” she pleaded. “I live there. I take You there!”
“I is Mad Wizard. Call I Mad Wizard.”
She looked at him, frowned, and said, “I is Mad Wizard. Mad Wizard live there?”
“Yes. But Mad Wizard is hurt-” he pointed back to the path. Brennen had managed to crawl to a utility cart.
“Mad Wizard gone?” She pointed toward the small cart bumping across the cluttered pathway toward another meridian.
“Don’t worry. He’ll have to get out and climb after a bit anyway. And even in low gravity, he’s got two bad legs.” The dead man inside me is good with a rifle. “I can get-Virgil can get You away from Mad Wizard.”
Her eyes brightened and she nodded. “Take You away!”
They ran up the pathway, passing dead men, women, and children. Children die the worst. They have the imagination, but not the means or skill. Most must have just starved to death or been killed. Maybe by Mad Wizard.
He looked across to the neighboring meridian. Brennen had abandoned the cart, but his powerful arms possessed enough strength to propel him at a fast clip up the side of the sphere toward ever-decreasing gravity. Virgil disconnected his rebreather.
“Death Angel, follow me! Mad Wizard wants to get somewhere fast!”
The air stank, dry and stale. The humidifiers and treatment units had broken down years before from disrepair. The woman reeked of unwashed flesh and greasy hair. He ignored the assault of odors, ignored the confusing flashes and beams of misguided light and concentrated on climbing the steepening hill, following the retreating Brennen.
Nearing the north pole, almost weightless, I watch her fall back, Coriolis taking her stomach by the inner ears and twisting. And Mad Wizard speeds up where muscle counts. Death Angel grabs my leg to drag me down but I pull her up with it and we’re through the hatch.
“Where you going, Mad Wizard?” he yelled down the axial tube. “You think I can’t catch you?”
“You got her she’s mine!” the voice called back.
Virgil reached into his pouch and withdrew a stun grenade. Twisting into position as he hurtled down the circular passage, he heaved the activated ball of plastic explosive toward the fleeing man. “You want Death Angel? Take Nightsheet!” Virgil shouted. His own velocity added to that of his throw; the charge sailed past its target in a few seconds and kept going. Brennen watched it whiz past and desperately tumbled to stop his own forward momentum.
Virgil and the clone hit a solid wall of air. Like swallows in a hurricane they stopped, blasted backward by the explosion. In an instant, the force had spent itself and Virgil grabbed at a support brace.
“Delia!”
He saw her sprawled farther down the tube, her leg caught in a hatch recess. He clambered toward her.
“Wanderer, Hunter” Brennen’s nearing voice wheezed. Virgil spun around. A ripped, bruised body floated slowly past him, one leg broken and gyrating in bloody circles. Brennen glared at him with eyes demonically red from broken veins. Hoarsely, he asked: “Why you make the Black One cradle me?”
Virgil hovered face to face with the shattered industrialist for a moment. Brennen’s face, seen up close, revealed lines of worry, fear, and-finally-insanity. Virgil felt that if he could have watched that map over time, he might have some clue to his own future.
“Mad Wizard,” Virgil whispered. “You think you can be God just because you can die; I fixed you because you didn’t know your limitations.” Brennen continued to drift back toward the habitat’s main sphere. He raised his voice to reach the receding figure. “Wizard, Nightsheet takes people like you easy. Mad Wizard!” He turned back to the woman above him. “Come on.”
She breathed in shallow whimpers, her eyes closed.
Death Angel hangs by her foot, bent and purple in the hatch. Why is everyone so hurting, Death Angel? Even you.
He pulled her broken foot free and tugged her toward the docking bay. Setting her inside the nearest lock with full pressure, he looked for a space suit for her. When he found one, he cursed. Mad Wizard you went too crazy. Why’d you empty all the air tanks and break the rebreathers? Now I can’t get her through the vacuum. Or-wait.
Virgil remembered something from his past not his own.
The dead man did something once. Breathed his own suit air that lasted him long enough. She breathes so lightly in her marrow slumber.
He stuffed her into the pressure suit and made certain that it shrank down evenly. Sealing her up, he let her float while he connected his headgear, leaving hers open for the moment.
Airlock’s half blown. Must have been the dead man’s work, straight. How to get Mad Wizard away from me for good? Kill him? What if Nightsheet has other plans for him? Then send him to Master Snoop. Go now.
He raced back to the command area-passing the unconscious Brennen at the end of the axial tube-and powered up the habitat’s Valliardi Transfer. Typing in a command, he waited until the computer announced that a course had been calculated. He requested a ten-minute delay before transference and pressed the command entry button. For an instant he considered setting the fission bomb with a fifteen minute delay. Instead, he defused it and fastened it and his waist pack to the command seat.
There, Mad Wizard, he thought, heading back to the airlock, go back to Pluto and scare them. Maybe they’ll settle for taking you apart to find out why you survive transfers. They’ll get a wrong answer because you’re insane and I’m not not not not… well, not exactly.
“Not not not not not not not,” he muttered as he sealed the clone up completely and pulled her inside the airlock. He pointed his hand and fired the laser, blowing a finger-sized hole in the hatch. A hiss filled the room, bringing with it a wind that whistled through the outer door. He fired again. The wind blew stronger, the hiss grew louder. Both gradually decreased to stillness and silence. He opened the hatch and rushed his barely human cargo through the airless passageways. She only had the air inside her helmet to sustain her, but it was all she needed.
He strapped her into the seat next to him and powered up the shuttle. He locked down the hatch and pressurized the cockpit and only then opened her headgear.
Still breathing. Good. Death Angel, you fight your master well. One minute. We go.
He eased the spacecraft out of the docking bay and ran the engine up to full power for an instant. They drifted away from Bernal Brennen. The huge sphere and shaft receded slowly to less awe-inspiring dimensions. When it suddenly vanished, he blinked his eyes twice.
So that’s what a transfer looks like from the outside. Goodbye, Mad Wizard. Sate their curiosity in twelve years. Now I’m free.
He calculated approximate return coordinates to Circus and transferred.
Finally Death Angel is dying beside me. She heads down the corridor with me, but then she becomes Jenine, her body whole, forgiving me and asking me through the hole at the end of the corridor. Yes, Jenine, I’ll follow you. Don’t let me go back. Please-
“No!” The space he was in looked very much like the space he had left. Except that a tiny point of light slightly ahead and to starboard grew in brightness and diameter.
Why can’t I ever go beyond? What lies there? Light? Peace? New life? Circus flies up to me, Ben chattering through the roar that’s surrounding me now. I ease the shuttle inside the small hole in wall of steel and aluminum…
Then I pull her out and take her to our playroom…
Gently he removed the pressure suit to inspect her dirty, abused body. He cut her hair to shoulder length. He washed her and placed her into the boxdoc. Its silver surgeons mended her ankle and soothed her other ills, which the machine displayed on a scrim: intestinal parasites, squamous-cell skin cancers, respiratory disease, ulcers, and several different bloodstream infections.
“Virgil,” the computer said. “You have been here an hour and you have not told me what happened at Bernal Brennen.”
Ben, can’t you see I’ve got no time for your ciphers? “Brennen had her. I took her back and sent him to trans-Plutonian orbit where I figure the Belters will pick him up. Maybe they’ll find out why he could survive the transfer.” And divert Master Snoop away from me, maybe. “What did the dead man in me do while I was away?”
The computer took some time to consider the possible interpretations of the question before answering, “He was in therapy with Delia.”
“What sort?”“I recorded the proceedings.”“Play it back.”He watched and listened. So Jord’s afraid he’s nothing. Nothing but a dead man. Why is Death Angel talking about killing me? DuoHypno? Why did I fall for that? No! The dead man is fouling me up! Messing my resistance to Duodrugs. Hide? But I can’t hide. Not for sure anymore. Jackal? Jackass! Listened too long. Now I’m back. Back here. Baker.
He switched off the scrim and smiled. He glanced at the boxdoc, seeing the body inside, and asked, “When will she be ready?”
“The bone is already set and welded. It will be stato-braced with a portable electro-healing pack and she should be ready for zero-gravity activity by tomorrow. Her other problems- ulcerated wounds, vitamin deficiencies, capillitic seborrhea, and some other minor nuisances-will all be cleared up by that time.”
“What about the other body?”
“It has been ground down, the RNA and picotechs centrifuged out.”
Such a calm pronouncement. Just like some other computer must have announced that my own body had been pulped and leeched.
He wiped the dirty sweat from his forehead and transferred it to his thigh. “All right. Brainwipe this one while she’s in there and administer the juice.”
“Affirmative.” A series of posts extended from the inside walls of the machine, reaching toward the clone’s head. They touched and remained in contact. The electrodes withdrew ten minutes later.
“Brainwipe complete,” the computer said. “No brain activity other than autonomic functions.”
“Administer the picotechs whenever you deem it safe.”
“Affirmative.”
Baker drifted to a corner of the medical bay and slept.
He awoke hours later and washed, shaved, and ate.
Feels good to do normal things again. Now back to the abnormal.
“Is she awake yet?”
“No,” the computer answered. “I administered the transfusion fourteen hours ago. Her integration will probably be much faster in this clone because it was a brainwipe who had been more than marginally aware. The neural paths are built up, but uncircuited. She is healthy, though there is no telling when she will awaken.”’
“Can I take her out of the boxdoc?”
“Yes, you may.”
Baker made his preparations. First, he overrode the computer’s independent ability to actuate the Valliardi Transfer, leaving only its calculative function.
“That’s so we don’t have to go through any surprise transfers,” he said in response to a question from the computer.
“What if we are attacked?”
“By whom? You told me that Brennen was on its way back to the Solar system. And it would take more than twelve years for a psychfighter to make it out here. Is there any life on Tau Ceti’s planet?”
“On the fifth planet there exists life forms that have reached a stage of development not quite capable of space flight.”
“Primates?”
“Phytoplankton.”
“No threat there. And space is vast enough that no one else will find us. I just don’t want you killing me again for any reason.”
“Do not think I have any emotions that might be bruised.”
Baker closed up the circuit cabinet and returned to the medical bay with the equipment he had rescued from the airless recreation room.
He bolted a chair next to the bed in the psychometric bay. He arranged the buckles and straps around it and bolted them to the frame. Then he welded a support to the back of the chair and fastened a five-liter bag of intravenous nutrients to it.
Returning to the boxdoc, he gagged Delia, lifted her out, then carried her to the next room and strapped her into the chair, inserting the needle in her arm and taping it to her wrist. He strapped down to the bed and waited. Sleep soon overcame him.
A muffled cry woke him from a dream. Delia writhed before him, her neck length hair swirling about her in short arcs. Her hands, fingernails carefully trimmed all the way back, wrestled with the straps at wrist and elbow. Her legs kicked, but her pink scarred flesh only turned redder against the straps at ankle and calf. She breathed in angry snorts, her abdomen pressing hard against the wide belt cinching her midriff. She could not look away from him because of the brace holding her head in position; she could only close her eyes. Saliva drenched the gag that pulled her lips back and blocked her tongue.
“Calm down, Dee, and listen.
“You’re going to get rid of Kinney and you’re not going to trick me again. I don’t know how bad the pentabarbitol messed up your memory, but I think there’s enough of you left, am I right?”
She sat still for a moment, then nodded as best she could.
Baker smiled. “And the memories of the clone-are they with you?”
She tried to shrug. Her eyes glistened. She looked at him like a wounded animal.
“I just want to be cured, Dee. I just want to make sure that when I die, it won’t be like a picture fading in the sun; my mind, my self eroding bit by bit until I forget I exist. That’s why I turned on you. I want to die as a whole person, not as someone else’s dimming memory. For what we had back on Earth, do this. I could threaten to kill you and rebuild you a thousand times until you do what I want. I could and would do it. Don’t make me. Cure me. Then I’ll be Jord for good.”
Teardrops broke away from her eyes and drifted like jewels in front of her.
“I may be in a different body, but I’m Jord. We were lovers once. My death changed that, but I’m alive, see? We can have it all again. We don’t even have to transfer ever again. There’s a habitable planet here that we can use the engines to reach.”
She closed her eyes and clenched her fists. Her breaths came in short sobs.
“We’re the only ones left,” he said. “Everyone we know died in the Earth-Belt wars, and it’s years after that. It’s Twenty-Two Twenty-Four, Dee. More than a century. We’re all alone. Get rid of Kinney and we can live and die together.”
Her sobbing grew audible. Her hands unclenched and fluttered weakly. Her chest trembled.
“Say you’ll help me.” When she nodded her head, he said, “Thank you, Dee. Push your jaw forward. The gag is knotted around the brace and it’ll loosen if you tug at it like that.” After several minutes of tearful effort, she tugged at the gag and it untied, drifting free.
She looked at him with the sorrowful eyes of a little girl. “I’m sorry, Jord,” she said. “Hide.”
“Bitch!” He shrieked and lunged against his belts.
The bitch tricked me and I can see me sink away-and- I see Death Angel lashed before me and I feel the dead man burying down and I know now what he wants. Why he’s been hurting Death Angel, why I’m here. All his memories come, now. I’ve crossed and touched him. He wants to die. I’ll show him dying.
This is dying.
“Virgil!” Delia cried as he unstrapped from the table. “Jord’s trying to drive you under permanently. You’re in control now. I couldn’t let him do it. I… I lo-It wouldn’t be right.”
“I’ll show him, Death Angel. Don’t worry.”
He bounded away from her, out of the room.
“Virgil-No!”
The roar becomes too much. Death Angel you foiled the final plan of Master Snoop. He almost got my mind. My me.
He raced toward the prow of the ship like a human missile.
Dead man you wanted death you’ll get it. I can die a million times. How many can you survive?
He lunged at the console and started pushing buttons. There. Random number generator locked in. Are you watching, dead man, as I watched you? This is galactic roulette. Round and round the numbers go and where we transfer-
He pressed the button when it lit.
Nobody knows.
Like rubber stretching, the walls bend away and grow thin. I see the corridor open, twisting somehow, different. Maybe this time. Maybe this time I’ll go. Happy, with mother and father and Jenine urging me through.
No!
The viewing port before him turned deep violet. The glow of a sun filled the entire screen. Throwing his hands up to cover his eyes, he punched the transfer button again.
Jenine and the lady in white grow impatient. They argue with me, pointing at my naked body standing at the console. They plead, and I tell them I want to but I can’t seem to-
“No!” he screamed, looking out the port at a place where no star shone. The darkness terrified him even more than blazing suns. He jabbed the button.
Out of black into black. The lady calls, urging me into the doorway as a lover, as a friend. I want to go along but Something pulls me back. I almost see it this time. It has to fight harder to pull me-
“Back!”
“Cease transferring,” the computer thundered. “I cannot override. We are in danger of transferring into matter!”
“More darkness than light in the sky!” Virgil cried. “More void than value. Forward!” He shoved his finger into the button again and again.
I’m back and the corridor is dim. No one greets me. Now it is all mine. I run down it and almost reach the door. My fingers scrape the handle and something grabs me and throws me back.
The spaceship sped through a cluster of stars at a velocity that made them streak like meteors. He slammed a fist against the console.
Out of Nightsheet’s flame arcade into cool darkness.
I have to crawl uphill to the door this time. I grasp it and it creaks open. I almost see who seizes me and pulls me down, back into the Circus where I see vast swirls of gas and dust all around me. Reds, yellows, purples, blacks, they boil and snake
and I die again, feeling my heart stop, my blood seize, my muscles
brake. Please free me. Doesn’t death mean an end anymore?
No. I return again and float in the center of a ring of flame encircling two suns in a fiery bolo. I leave and feel myself shoved through a tiny hole that doesn’t exist and I’m falling toward the door. I swan dive, then look behind me to see something white and blinding lasso me and pull me up into the world.
“Why?” An explosion rocked the spacecraft. Virgil pressed the button. Nothing. He whirled around.
Out of the wall it comes, silver and gold, swinging its fist at my head and I just watch it connect and I spin and it bends over me and raises me and pushes me. I can’t move anything but I can watch. Back to the playroom it takes me, Ben’s personal strongarm. I knew they lurked in the walls and now I’ve seen one.
Death Angel sits there wide-eyed, her mouth open. The roar is too strong for me to hear what chokes from inside her. She looks at me, jaw slack and eyelids fluttering like captive moths.
Ben’s robot climbs back inside the walls with Master Snoop and I reach for the bruise on my head. Red comes off on my fingers, matching the red on Death Angel’s ankles and wrists. I move toward her. Ben babbles something in my ears but the roar is too great.
“Damage report: Ship transferred into asteroid belt surrounding massive infrared source. Transfer unit in six-oh-five defeat. Vernier pitch controls damaged. We cannot maneuver or transfer out of orbit. Human assistance required for repairs.”
Death Angel is limp as I unstrap her. She watches through eyes that echo hollow in my gaze. She says something and I strain to hold back the roar. It parts and I hear a complex cipher.
“I’m killed,” she said. “I’m killed. I died there again and again and they tried to comfort me by the entrance but this man kept sending me back. I wasn’t done, he said like a school teacher. I’m done. I’m done.”
She grows all firm in my hands and hits me on the head. I spin away from her and watch her bundle up and scream, her body studded with sweat diamonds.
She screamed again, whipped her head savagely around her, and ran her hands all over her body in a frenzied attempt to wipe away the perspiration. Trembling fingers clutched for the instrument table and pulled her to it. An electrosurgical knife glinted silver in her hand.
Virgil screamed and plunged toward her, seizing her wrist. She tried to drive the knife into her chest anyway. Virgil cursed and cried at the same time.
“Stop, Death Angel! Stupid, stupid to die like that when I can rebuild you. Waste of time!” He winced as the misguided blade sizzled through his shoulder, cutting a shallow groove in his skin. He twisted his arm around to knock the weapon from her hand. It sparked and crackled against a bulkhead.
He grabbed both her wrists. She tried to slash him with her nails.
“Let me die!” she pleaded, kicking at him. He twisted about at the waist, grappling her legs with his. Furious teeth snapped at his arm.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry I made you die. Tried to kill Jord, is all. Don’t go crazy, Delia. Death Angel mustn’t die.”
“Have to!” she cried, pulling back and freeing an arm. He caught it before she could deliver a blow to his neck. He pulled her arms as far away from each other as he could. Their faces were inches apart, but still they shouted.
“I can die and die. Why can’t you? What’s wrong? All of you given up to Nightsheet?”
“Death, death-the Reaper Man.”
“Reaper, Nightsheet-all one. We’ve beat him and can keep doing it.”
“No!” She tried to squirm free from the grip of his legs. Her thighs slipped between his, then held fast.
“Don’t make me, Death Angel. Don’t make me-”
“No!” She kicked her legs about, but he tightened his thighs against hers and wrapped his legs around her calves. She moved against him, rubbing against him, trying to wriggle loose. Her head swung at him, lashing him with her hair.
Death Angel stop! Something’s going wrong. I want you to stop struggling but I don’t.
“Virgil. Please. Kill me!” She twisted into him, running her flush skin against his. He held her tighter.
“I can’t kill you. I-I want-t-to-”
“Cut into me, Virgil!” She moved her legs under his, lashed him again with her hair.
“No!” he shouted. He released her legs, let go of her arms. She clung to his shoulders and wrapped her legs around his thighs.
“Please. Cut me deep, Virgil, so deep. I want you to stab into me. I want to feel your blood inside of me.”
He screamed a scream that sank into a powerful sob and clutched her to him. Death Angel moves madly against me and it’s so much what I want but how could I ever tell her when I didn’t even know my most hidden of secret codes. And she cracked it before I cracked hers. I move inside her and the room twists and grows dim and I and I and I see her here and what she’s done and I’ll show her what it’s like to trick me.
Baker grabbed her throat and squeezed. She stared at him, her eyes drifting and refocusing every few instants. “You won’t trick me again, Dee. I’ll tear you apart and rebuild you.”
I’ll be careful to kill you just enough so the boxdoc can save you, bitch. I won’t choke you to death death Death Angel make him let go!
She breaths deep and pulls closer, murmuring and stroking me. I smell her hair against me, wet with her. Nightsheet’s mistress huddles against me and wants me and takes me as I take her and and and I’ll punch her enough to make her think twice twice twice I’ve blacked out and she’s changed toward me. The dead man’s hurting her. Get him back. Get him down. Move faster. Ride away from him on the wings of Death Angel. Wrap me in your wings and take me away from dying and dying and dying dying dying, die die die die!
“Die die die die!” Every word was an angry thrust inside her. She gasped and whimpered.
Die die don’t die don’t Die Die don’t die don’t don’t-
“Don’t,” cried Virgil. “Don’t-” You make me die inside, Death Angel pretty Death Angel lovely Death Angel goddess of darkness and freedom from hurt and care and want and death most of all from death my life goddess my-mine, made you mine and I’m yours all yours my goddess.
Virgil shuddered and stopped moving. Delia held him close and let her tears wet his neck.