At last, here was my nemesis, my Moriarty, walking beside me in the dark corridor, shivering with both dread and shame in her dark eyes. How long did this secret personality alternation go on before Ritu finally grew suspicious, then fully aware of her gangster other half?

Was that why she first decided to hire me? In order to have Beta’s expert adversary on retainer? Finding her missing father probably had little to do with it, at first. Not till Yosil Maharal was found dead on the highway.

And yet, there had to be more of a connection than that.

Shaking my head, I found it hard to concentrate because of sheer emotion. Because by this point I was positively boiling with anger!

Ritu had known what was going on — the potential for extreme danger — by the time we set out together Tuesday evening. So why didn’t she warn me? All those hours and days in the desert, then underground, and never once did she mention the pressure that must have been building up inside her. The clutch of demon’s eggs that she carried, ready to hatch as soon as there was an opportunity.

Damn her selfish, self-centered -

Something in my attitude may have crossed the short space between us. Or maybe the fierce reality of our situation tore away Ritu’s last illusions. For whatever reason, after minutes of silent walking my companion spoke at last.

“I’m … so sorry, Albert,” she whispered.

Glancing at her face I could see what tormented courage it took to form that simple apology. Yet I was in no mood to let her off the hook so easy. Because we both knew what Beta would do — what he had to do — in order to survive.

If Ritu got away now, she might finally acknowledge the gravity of her condition and seek cloistered refuge at a hospital resort while Beta’s supply of secretly cached ditsicles slowly expired, their memories growing ever more useless and obsolete. Under expert therapy, her secondary personality would be summoned forth, challenged, forced to justify itself or else face drastic treatment.

Even if denial set in again and Ritu avoided getting help, I’d surely report the situation to both her employer and her personal physician. Anyway, with or without therapy, Beta would be washed up as a criminal mastermind. Because notoriety would subject Ritu Lisabetha Maharal to ongoing scrutiny by the World Eye … by free networks of amateurs who’d never let her dittos out of sight. Not for years to come. Underworld figures hate that sort of illumination. They find it hampering, as we learned in the years following the Big Heist.

To avoid that, Beta couldn’t let either of us go free. He must find a way to keep Ritu prisoner, a slave to this weird reproduction cycle forever — a kind of self-rape that would have given me utter willies, if I weren’t even more worried about myself.

Because my old foe Beta had no reason to keep me alive at all.

Trying to fit the pieces, I thought, Beta must’ve been the one who tried to kill me with that missile strike on my home. Did he realize I was hot on the trail of …

… but that makes no sense! Wasn’t a copy of Aeneas Kaolin nosing around the Maharal house, late on Tuesday? He was skulking about, looking for stuff while eager to avoid being caught in the act by Ritu’s gray.

And it was Kaolin who shot at Ritu and me, as were drove through the desert.

He must have grown wise to the link between Ritu and Beta, maybe even earlier than she did.

Was he the one “taking over” Beta’s operations?

I remembered my first meeting with Ritu and her boss in that fabulous Yugo limousine. They had both seemed united and sincere about hiring me to help find the missing Professor Maharal. Under the surface, each of them must have also been thinking about using my expertise to help control the Beta persona … and maybe to exploit it …

But all that changed by Tuesday evening. Something spooked Aeneas. Was it the prion attack at Universal Kilns? Or maybe something else, having to do with Ritu’s father.

That could explain why he sent one of his platinums to attack us on the highway. Ritu and I were both disguised as grays. Kaolin might have thought that I was making an alliance with Beta, and we were both on our way to rendezvous with -

My mind was thrashing about, grabbing threads from all directions. But before these floundering thoughts could coalesce into a new picture, I abruptly noticed something far more pressing. Something offering a ray of hope that our luck had changed.

On the left appeared a branching passageway. A possible way out.

This smaller tunnel cut backward at a sharp angle, close to the one we had been following till now. My impression — it seemed aimed toward another part of the nearby military base we had just departed. Professor Maharal must have had more than one target when he delved for hidden treasure down here, helping himself to a nation’s hoard of secret, high-tech marvels.

This new hole looked even more dank and narrow than the first. But it offered a slim chance and I took it without hesitation, grabbing Ritu’s arm and tugging her after me.

She made no complaint, coccooned again in her blanket of passive resignation. No wonder Ritu could be bullied around by a figment of her own imagination, I thought — admittedly a churlish remark. How strange that the aggressive, stronger-willed part of her was suppressed, only to be released through dittoing. She must have had a strange childhood.

Progress grew difficult. This tunnel was much rougher and so cramped that we had to stoop much of the time. Less effort had been taken to flatten the floor, as if the builder didn’t expect to need this passage very long. Glowbulbs were fewer and most seemed to have been shot out in recent fighting. Fragments of robotic cockatrice guardians lay everywhere, mingling with pools of recently dissolved golem slurry. Surrogates of clay and silicon had waged a brief, bitter struggle down this narrow lane.

Were there survivors? More important, were they still tuned to avoid injuring beings made of flesh? Or did such legalistic distinctions matter anymore?

I lost track of time and distance. (My implant wasn’t working down there, of course.) Still, a sense of hope grew as Ritu and I hurried. We must be getting near the base again — whatever part of it Yosil spent so many golem-years digging to reach. Once inside, I’d waste no time making that phone call -

Suddenly, I tripped over something in the shadows, stumbling past a squishy obstruction. A body groaned and reached for me with massive arms, but I managed to jump out of the way. And the supine battle-golem couldn’t pursue because three quarters of it had been blown away.

That was the good news.

The bad news: now Ritu and I were on opposite sides of the crippled warrior-doll, which turned what was left of a smoldering head to peer at us at us before it asked -

“Making a break for it, Morrissss?”

The raspy, slobbery voice wasn’t too bad, for someone with just half a face. Most dittos would disintegrate after such injuries, their Standing Waves unraveling like spun candy in a thunderstorm. But gladiatorial models are sturdy.

“You don’t want to go that way.” The head nodded in the direction I had been heading.

“Why not?” I asked. “Were the defenses too strong, Beta? Couldn’t blast your way through?”

The fractured figure shrugged. “No, we made it. But Yossie had already grabbed the stuff. He’s holding out in his lab. I shudder to think what he plans to do with—”

“Whoa! What are you talking about? Maharal is dead!”

A dry chuckle. “You think so?”

I spat to get rid of a sudden foul taste. “The police coroner was thorough. Yosil Maharal died in that car wreck. And by now any ghosts would have—”