There had been pain on Jillan’s face. That was the worst.

“Well,” she had said in a quiet tone, “I can pretty well guess it’s you. That’s something. And I can tell you it’s me, but I guess you won’t believe that.”

“I’m not one of them,” Paul had said next, and shifted uncomfortably, arms about his knees, while both of them looked at him. “I can swear to you I’m not. There was—there was, remember, this bar on Fargone where we used to meet. The man there had this bird, remember, this live bird—”

“Named Mickey,” Jillan said.

“Lived on frozen fruit,” Rafe had said himself, remembering the creature, the curiosity, the small reminder there were worlds, that Earth was real somewhere.

—Their captors would be interested in that; homeworld; center of origin. A chill went up Rafe’s unprotected back.

“There’s one double of you,” he had said to Paul. “Maybe more of us. But just stay there. On your side. Please.”

“He was a pretty thing,” Jillan said at last, “that bird.”

“He bit,” Paul said.

“Don’t blame him,” Jillan said. “I’d bite too, being stared at.” She hunched her shoulders, looked around, dropped the subject altogether.

“Wish I had a beer,” Rafe said.

“Downer wine,” said Paul. “You know I bet it got that last bottle.”

“Couldn’t have come through that spin.”

“Bet it did. Bet Rafe’s got it. They gave him everything.”

“Can’t share with him,” Rafe said, playing the small game, talk-talk, anything to fill the silence; but he mourned the wine he could never touch.

Paul frowned, who had never seen what they described to him, the place where they walked through furniture and walls or his living self’s offered hands.

And Paul’s disbelief comforted him, one small confirmation that seemed least likely to be contrived.

But maybe it’s smart enough to do that,Rafe thought, growing paranoid. Maybe it’s got all the twitches down.

He did not know the alien’s limits, that was all. He stared at his sister and his friend and could not believe in either of them.

And abruptly they were gone.

He leapt up.

In light, in a tunneled hall of nodes and gossamer-on carpet.

His living self lay there on the floor, in a nest of blankets and disordered clothes.

“Rafe,” he said.

There was no response. The living body looked sorrowfully small, tight-curled among the blankets. He walked over and squatted down, immune to heat and cold himself, put out a hand—living habits were hard to break—to the sleeper’s shoulder. “Rafe,” he said, with great tenderness, because somehow, some-when, and not because they were identical, he had come to love his other self, to think of him as brother, and to have a little pride in himself—without modesty—because of this steady, loyal man. “Rafe, wake up. Come on. Come out of it.”

The sleeper moved and groaned in pain.

It was a doppelganger—one of them at least. Rafe stared at it leaning above him with the light shining through its body, then struggled to sit up and heave his naked back against the wall.

“What do you want?” he said, in what of a voice the hoarseness left.

“You’re hurt. It hurt you.”

“Some.” Rafe shut his eyes. The light wanted to fuzz. He opened them again, discontent, for the ceiling light interfered and blurred out part of the doppelganger’s form. They were only holograms, the alien had said. And other things he clamped his jaws upon.

The manner was not Kepta, he thought. Or it was Kepta playing still more bitter jokes, with that anguished, frightened look.

“I’m all right,” he said to it, to him. “Just a little sore.”

“What in God’s name did it want? What did it do to you?”

“Just a look-over. A workout. I don’t know. It hurt. That was incidental, I think it was. How are you?”

The doppelganger laughed, not a pleasant, happy laugh, but one of irony, all the answer it gave him.

“How’s Jillan and Paul?” he asked it then. “Paul still not speaking to me?”

A shadow touched the eyes. “Paul’s better now.”

Better now.He drew an uneasy breath. Which one are you?“I really wish,” he said, “you’d back off a bit. The light is in my eyes.”

The doppelganger reached; he flinched, twitched back. “You’re scared,” it said. “Scared of me.”

“Who are you?”

“Me. Rafe. It’s used my shape with you. Has it?”

“Yes. It has. Ourshape, friend. You know about that?”

“What did it do?”

“Its name is Kepta. He or she. I don’t know.” Rafe’s voice cracked. “Maybe you could say.”

The doppelganger shook its head solemnly, its eyes locked on his own. “It got me too. It used Jillan’s shape. I’ve seen something using Paul’s. And it hurt.”

“It copied you.” It made sense then, in a tangled skein of threads. “That was copy-making, friend. Now it’s got three versions of me and you. Four, counting the original.”

“Me; the one it made from me; you—”

“It got me,” Rafe said. “That’s how I know. Mine’s four. I saw the machines—” The voice cracked again. His joints felt racked. “Plays havoc with the nerves. Goes all through your body. Copies everything.”

“Why? For God’s sake, what’s it doing with us?”

“It wants different versions. You’ve grown.” He thought now he knew which one it was; there was no way to be sure, only to guess. He guessed. “You’re not me, not the way you were; I’m not that me either. It just took a new impression. That’s all. It’s going to let me go, it says.”

“Let you go. Where?”

“Says Paradise.”

“How’d it know that? How much does it know?”

“Like names and places?” He stared into the doppelganger’s face, and thoughts came to him, knowing this self, its need to know—

—its own condition. To know what it was. The doppelganger had no idea, he suspected; no idea at all what he really was, or where.

“It’s got access to everything,” Rafe told it carefully. “It has my mannerisms; yours; my turns of speech; everything I know. Like names. It wants to know a star the way we name it. It’s got a map in my head; it just overlays that on the charts it knows. So it knows Paradise, Fargone, knows everything—”

“Mickey.”

“What Mickey?”

“The bird in that Fargone bar.”

“I guess it does. I’d forgotten. I guess it could remember. Probably has better recall than I do.”

“Jillan remembers it, really well.”

“Meaning it’s got us all.”

“I don’t know,” the doppelganger said, hugging himself round the knees. “I don’t know. What’s it up to? You figure that?”

“It says it doesn’t matter. Kepta. Kepta’s what it calls itself. It says—” His voice gave way again. “—says it’s got no military aims. That it could take our speciesout. The whole human race. Says it’s not interested.”

The doppelganger stared at him.

“I think,” Rafe said, “maybe it could, near enough as wouldn’t matter. Its tech is—way ahead. Got circuits, memory storage, stuff I can get around; it’s mechanical, like that. But the power it throws around, the way its computers work—” He shut his eyes while he swallowed; it hurt. “I don’t know comp’s insides; you know that; we just run the things. But this ship’s got tricks we don’t. That’s a fact. Doesn’t even hurt to say. It runs through our heads all it likes, digs up everything it wants. Think of trying to defend our space from one of us who’d just inherited this whole ship and aimed it at humankind. If we wanted to—we could be real trouble, given what this has. And it is trouble. Knows every target. Every ship.” He blinked. Tears spilled, a wetness at outer edge of his right eye. “Amazing what’s not classified. Can’t be, can it? Where worlds and stations are—any human knows the star names, and God help us, we know the charts. Any human knows how to run machines; so it knows what we’ve got. And what we don’t have. That too.”

“How many of it are there?”

“That’s a real good question, isn’t it? It says I. That’s all I know.”