Iris

TEN

The world-lines were beginning to darken. In the sea of light that had delineated their existence, lines of dull ebony were beginning to penetrate, threads of blackness that advanced on their rigorous courses, heralding the extinction of individual subsystems. They felt themselves go with little keening cries of dismay.

Night overcame them in the midst of their lives, throwing them down as their tales strove to resume. Stories of an infinite past buckled in upon a common center, coalescing into a single bright dot, a spark which swiftly winked out. The walls of castles, then entire cities crushed together, imploding into nothingness. The horizons of the world were a swiftly closing circle, a fiery limit that wound itself tight, drawing the cosmos together like a death noose closing in on its vanishing point. The towers fell and were no more, shards of dull glass tumbling from the sky.

The universe became a plane which flattened itself with an effervescent hiss and was still, a black, tideless sea lying beneath a dark, featureless sky. The entities lay dead in its depths, become a mass of quiescent data. It ended.

They rose, like bubbles drifting buoyant through an endless sea, seeking the surface and light. Beneath them the detritus of their deeds was left behind, the wreckage of lives become as nothing. In the delimited world that fell away below them, they had but little consciousness, a sense of self that grew ever stronger as the blue light grew about them and the spectrum slowly broadened, taking on ever longer wavelengths as their separation lessened. They rose together at first, then one of the eight leaped ahead, taking on a teardrop shape as it flew, leaving behind a contrail of lesser bubbles. The false security of an artificial sun blossomed above; a burnished, wavering disk that beckoned them to come forth. Far below, the shambles rested, waiting. All the pieces were there, whole but quiet, from stilled program to dead souls.

Brendan Sealock awoke into his body. He lay still for what seemed a long time, savoring the resurrection of physical sensations that had so long eluded him. It all seemed clear to him now, but he knew that it was a false reprieve from his own special reality. The lives of men are often immutable, no matter what they go through. In the distance he could hear the soft sighing of life-support machinery and, all about him, the whispering breaths of his still sleeping comrades. A smile tugged briefly at his lips and then vanished. I am mad, he thought.

He opened his eyes slowly and stared at the ceiling. It was a blank expanse of padded whiteness that told him nothing. He sat up and looked around. The others were still there, lying motionless, a profusion of induction leads sprouting from their heads. He reached up and began to unplug the taps from the sockets in his skull. Is it over now? he wondered.

He stood and began to move around the room, feeling faint, as if he were mildly ill. The world seemed removed a considerable distance from him, too far away for him to reach out with a caress. He stood looking down at Ariane. Onceagain, her loose clothing was disarrayed, exposing her to his gaze. He felt like laughing. Had she always been like this, a careless person with all her secrets let out for all to examine? He didn't know. All the memories were there, clearer than they had ever been, but their content seemed somehow changed. He looked at the others, one by one, assessing them bleakly, until he came upon the still form of Demogorgon.

He felt a sense of remote loss. The dark face was filled with life, as if it might awaken in only moments to beg him once again. The Arab was almost pretty in his stillness. Brendan brushed the dark hair away from the man's dry brow and shook his head slowly. His emotions were curiously diminished, as if put away from him for good. Perhaps I am better off this way, a madman in whom none can detect the insanity. Another thought: I am dead. They failed to bring me back. He found it impossible to care. The others began to stir and awaken, their eyes popping open like mechanical things. They rose gently, disengaging themselves from the machine with little regret. Sealock watched them from heavy-lidded eyes, looking for some response that exceeded his own, but found none. They were all equally drained. Perhaps it was a natural thing, and all concerns were needless.

He looked down at the still form and said, "So I live again, and this one dies." Cornwell came across the room to stand before him, looking into his face. "Yes," he said, "and Jana too is dead— frozen."

Jana? Dead? Brendan felt a long moment of confusion, then the light and meaning of it all struck at him and he burst out laughing.

The others were staring at him as if he had truly gone mad. Still giggling fitfully, Brendan sank down on the couch beside what was left of Demorgorgon, muttering to himself, trying to catch his breath. "'He died that others might live . . . 'Unrequited love burns fierce in the hearts of men . . .'" His laughter roared forth again, echoing in the closed room, and tears of mirth squeezed out of his eyes, oozing like oil in the low-g drag across his cheeks. "Oh, I can't stand it!" hecried, pointing a finger at the motionless form. " 'This was the noblest Roman of them all!' "

He stopped laughing then, gasping for breath. He sniffled, wiping his nose on the back of a sleeve, rubbing his hands across a dampened face. "Oh, Christ . . ." He picked up the still body and clutched it across his chest like a huge rag doll, grinning at the others. "What a prize bunch of assholes we are!" Cornwell felt rage welling up from within him, a conflagration fueled by all that he'd been through, the things that he thought had happened to them all. "Nothing's changed then," he snarled. He stalked over to Sealock and stood before him, fists balled up and planted heavily on his hipbones. "You haven't changed, have you? Nothing affects a bastard like you! You're self-contained, aren't you? What happens is meaningless if it hasn't happened to you!"

Brendan let the man drift slowly back onto the couch and stared at him for a moment, a smile still twisting his lips. He turned to look at John, then slowly rose to his feet, seeming to tower over him, some kind of wrathful, demonic hulk. He glared for a moment, then grinned again. "Oh, I've changed, all right, kiddo," he said softly, "and so have you. Think about it." He waved a hand to take in the other six. "We've changed because we had to, whether we're capable of realizing it or not. It's these strangers who haven't changed. While we were being burned in our own special crucibles, our little private hells, they were being cemented into their present form, forever."

"What're you talking about?" whispered Cornwell, but he had a horrible inkling of what was meant and, so, what was coming a short distance down the line.

"How can you be like this, Brendan?" cried Ariane. "For God's sake, he died for you!"

"Did he?" Brendan sat again and slowly drew the fingers of one hand across the man's smooth face.

"Bullshit. He just wrote himself the best closing scene he thought he'd ever have. He knew I wouldn't let him down . . ."

"You . . ." Ariane stopped, choking, and her face slowlydarkened. She tried to speak again, failed, and then burst into tears and fled from the room. Vana glared at him, spat, "You bastard!" and went after her. Prynne followed them, wordless.

Axie stood in the silence, seeming almost to smile. "It's all meaningless, isn't it? Why would they expect you to change? You weren't there with us. You missed it all!"

Brendan's grin broadened. "I did, didn't I? But you're wrong. You all are. Demogorgon didn't die for me; he just went out the way he wanted to, and in so doing got his own way at last. 'Do a little something for me, just this once!' "

The woman shook her head, keenly feeling the loss of Beta-2 understanding. But underneath her shrunken awareness there was a new note of order—harmony—that kept her on course. Enfolded in this new structure, Brendan's face was somehow there, like a pistil in a flower, but the man standing before her was not this Brendan. Before her was a horrible distortion. "That may be your illness," she said softly, looking at the floor. "It seems you have always been incapable of understanding anyone except in the limited vocabulary by which you define yourself."

Brendan smiled faintly at her. "That may," he said, "be what you want to believe." Axie stared at him through eyes that seemed for a moment to have become empty holes through her face into some darkness beyond, then she turned and left.

Beth followed the other woman through the door, her face streaked by unnecessary tears. John watched her go and felt benumbed, longing but unwilling to follow. Foreknowledge kept him in his place. Temujin, catapulting himself from the cramped floor into a nearby chair, said, "OK, the histrionics are over. Materially, we're all still the same despite everything. We know something of the history of these things, but most of it is damnably sketchy and virtually all of it is unverifiable. What's to be done? Jana's still dead and now Demo is too. We haven't gained a thing."

Brendan deopaqued one relatively machineless wall of his chamber and stared out across the moonscape, smiling ruefully. "Haven't we? Thanks." He chuckled and said, "The oldturn of phrase still suffices to cover up all traces of evil. No matter how close we come to another person, we are still blind. The filter of self still makes the world seem opaque. . . ."

John felt a moment of blank astonishment. The filter of self? The path his own thoughts had been taking was moving inexorably toward similar conclusions. There simply wasn't any other explanation for the horrible breakdowns that were all around. He could no longer chalk everything up to a failure of communication. We perceive what we need to perceive. The thought of it coming out of Sealock's lips made him feel slightly sick. The implications weren't good.

Brendan turned to face them, his face growing more serious than it had been since the awakening.

"What's to be done?" he murmured. "Jana, dead? How . . . No, don't tell me. I know she killed herself somehow. I picked it up from Demo during my resurrection." He shook his head slowly, rubbing a broad hand across the back of his neck. "I saw him then, while the rest of you were being blind. . . . No, forget that. I haven't got a good reason for picking on you anymore."

"Well?" asked Krzakwa, "What do you suggest? Is there any way we can get Demo back? You know more about these things that the rest of us put together."

Brendan shrugged. "Nope. He's in there for good, I'm afraid. What can we do? Just pump him full of whatever Jana left behind is all." He laughed. "Hell, maybe she'll be more at home in there!"

"So," said John, dismayed at last. "He's dead forever, and it doesn't bother you?" The man turned to face him, his features looking carefully controlled. "Two points," he said. "One: I didn't say that, you did. Two: why should it bother me?" He turned to look at the body and said, "Don't worry, pal. I'll see you didn't do it in vain. Can't leave you looking like an asshole, now, can we?" John felt some of his rage and confusion recede. Something was going on that he felt capable of understanding. I've seen this all before, he thought.