“Long live me, anyway,” Toby answered. He had taken a few hits from the vaporizer and was feeling strange but still scared.

Something big hit the black lake and threw up a dark geyser in snarled fingers.

“We’ll make it!” Shibo shouted.

She had to because other people were trying to talk to him. Their voices came down from the sky, but by the time they reached him they were whispers.

Instead of breaking into droplets the black waters squared out into planes. “Let me do it,” Shibo called. She smashed the panes into showers of glinting mica shards. “See?”

—and he was in the open, rolling down a hill. He cracked his knee on a rock and inhaled dust. Choked. Gasped. This was real, no dream. He looked back up the slope and saw the tall grass mashed down where he had been lying in a bath of his own sweat. Something had made him get up and stumble and fall out here, exposed. He scrambled back up as fast as he could.

On the way up his knee hurt more than his arm or ribs. That was a good sign as long as the knee wasn’t damaged. He found the place where he had been lying. It was damp and smelled bad.

His knee was getting better, though. He walked a little unsteadily to a stream and cleaned himself off for the first time in—two? three?—days. Hard to tell. His inboard monitor told him, 2.46 days in all. Impossible to tell here with the light coming and going like fitful weather. He wondered how all the forest had adjusted to this erratic pace.

For a while he just lay beside the stream without any energy for more. A solid fact sat in front of him and would not let him rest. He knew what had to be done now and that Quath had been right. Shibo had kept him from seeing it. The way she had kept him from registering other things. Amusing him with interior spectacles that got more and more frantic.

The damage and repair had undermined some part of her somehow. At least for now. Which meant he had to do it now or later he would think of something else that needed doing or maybe get distracted by a gimpy joint or a funny itch and then he would never do it. Maybe not for the rest of his life.

He crawled back in a shaded hole and got out his field kit. The tools were not made for this job. They had socket and groove faces, tiny insert arms and variable-geometry drivers, but nothing specialized. And he had to work behind himself. Operating by feel, sitting up when he wanted to lie down.

You do not want to do this.

He did not answer her. The small adjustable tips were hard to get right. His fingers were blunt and clumsy. He dropped one tip and had to fish it out of the dirt and clean it off. No way to even keep all the instruments lined up properly.

I have done so much for you. You and I work together. Your female side integrates with mine.

The tip ends would not come right. He lined them up and inserted them into the butt of the axis tool. The fit was not perfect but it would do.

I have so much more to teach you. If you will only give me time. I can give excellent advice on how to deal with this place. You are alone. You need me.

Reaching behind his head was hard. He braced himself with his nearly useless left arm. The spreading ache in it told him that this was not a great idea. His Faces working the repairs sent little warning spikes up into his cerebral cortex. Lances of aggrieved pain/anger, like the emotions of insects. But there was nothing else to do.

We can have so much fun together! I’ve shown you my past. My whole world. Isn’t that enough?

“Don’t want your world.”

He gritted that out through clenched teeth. She was talking faster and faster as he got the sleeve fitted into his spinal slot. Images shot through him now. Ruins in purple shadows. Mech carcasses sprawling across a field on Snowglade. Tastes of spicy hot dishes, smells of fresh spring, laughter heard pealing down a stony hallway.

He cut the skin away from the slot to get more room. He had to operate by feel alone now. The pictures running in his eyes were clipped, speeded up, flickering with demented haste.

You are betraying your father. He put me here. It was to guide you. To help you! And you turn against me, throw me—

He popped the slot open. Poked into the micros. The racing images got ragged, spotty.

A Personality can’t live chip-encased for long. You know that. I will shrink. Parts of me will evaporate! I will shrink back down into an Aspect unless I am aired, used.

The tools were not right and he could not be sure he would not damage the chip. This slot had been double-decked to take a Personality. The readers were jammed to a one-molecule-thick layer around the chip. There was a way to take the readers out without stripping them but that was impossible without a lot more gear than he had, even if he could see what he was doing.

You can’t! I’ve done so much for you. The whole female side of your personality—I’ve brought it out. Made you much more mature.

“Yeasay. I’m so mature I’m stuck here alone and banged up and no Family to help me pry you out.”

I didn’t make you do all those things. You can’t escape the guilt of running away from your father. It wasn’t my doing!

He felt carefully. It seemed like he had got the tips in right but it was hard to tell. They had to fit just so in the crowded receivers at the socket rim.

Please! I won’t do any remembering or thinking without you approving it. I just, you don’t know what it’s like, I had to—

He tried one. Tugged gently on the end and the tip caught against the socket and held. He did not know what would happen if he got only part of the chip out. She was firm-integrated with him through the hard circuitry at the base of his skull. Could he get the chip free and not leave part of her with him? He did not know.

I’ll do anything you want!

No point in waiting. He took all the tips in a tight grip and breathed deeply.

Wait! Please!

For a long, hard moment he could not move. She had his muscles locked and he felt her sleeting anger slam into him full force.

She had been a wonderful woman once and living on like this had made her into something else. Carrying a Personality was far harder than an Aspect, but something else had happened between them. Something about her and him, the imponderable mix of people. Not the fault of either, maybe, just a fact.

He did not know if the true Shibo could ever come back again in a Personality but that was not the point now, and in a flash of close contact between them he told her that, not in words but in pangs of sharp remorse.

Two heartbeats. Then her reply.

Her fury battered against him. His right hand shook. Fingers went numb. Hard to hold the tips in them. His breath caught.

She moved fast, trying everything. His sphincter clenched, balls ached. Jumpy nervous energy wormed across his skin. His chest froze up. Hand jangling, thumb askew, muscles rock-hard.

He made himself relax his right hand and let the wrist go free. In the backlash of the muscles he reversed the tension against her and moved.

He jerked the tools out at all four quadrants. They came free.

No you can’t I love you love Killeen love all of you don’t make me stop please please I can’t can’t can’t can’t can’t can’t

His hand brought the tips around all bright-bloody and with skin caught in them. Like a single muscle his body shivered. A violent jerking, throwing off a sheen of droplets. Lungs heaved as if he had been under water a long time.

The moist forest around him lay at the end of a long shadowy tunnel and purple flies buzzed in halos around the tunnel walls.

Closing, far away. Sliding dark.