“Easier if it were.”

“Easier to what? Fight this thing?”

“Got nothing better to do,” the doppelganger said. “Maybe it’s going to do everything it said, let you go, just go its way and let human space alone. If it does, that’s fine. If it doesn’t—well, we’re still here, aren’t we? We’ll fix it.”

“It can shut you down.”

“So,” the doppelganger said with a small, worried shrug. “There’s several of us, aren’t there?”

“One of us—” Rafe felt a new and spreading chill. “Rafe, there’s five of us.”

“How, five?”

“Versions. Me. One before I waked. That made you, but it still exists. Naïve as it ever was. There’s you; that’s three. There’s the version of you it just got. Four. There’s the me it recorded, the stupid one that walked into that lab and lay down where it said, and let itself be recorded because it had no way to know—”

“No way to stop it either.”

“But that’s five. You see what the difference is. Mindsets. Number one’s straight out of the wreck, shaken up and scared; two’s me, who’s been through everything; three’s you,—we’re oldest, seen the most. Four’s you without this meeting; five’s me who was willing to lie down in that machine and hoped I’d get out—It can take any branch of us it likes. Live in it. Watch it work. Twist it any way it likes.”

“You mean it’s not just a mask it wears,” the doppelganger said, his brow knit up in worry, in far too little worry.

Rafe stared at him. Tell him?he wondered. Tell him what he is?He knew his own limits, how much truth he could bear. Sorry, brother, you’re repeatable. Jillan, Paul, them too.

“Maybe it’ll really let you go,” the doppelganger said at last. “I hope it does.”

“You’re lying,” Rafe said. “You need me.”

The doppelganger shook his head. “No. I want you out of here. With all the rest that means. That it’s not interested in us. That it won’tattack.”

“And what becomes of you, then? You don’t die, man. You can’t. What happens to you?” He wished at once he had never said it. He saw the fear it caused, the sudden freezing of mirror-Rafe’s expression.

The doppelganger shrugged then. “That is a problem, isn’t it?” He dropped down to sit flat against the floor, against the illusion of it—

—because he expects a floor,Rafe thought.

“But it’s our problem,” the doppelganger said. “Not yours. For one thing you can’t very well tell it no. For another—let’s just get you out of here, if we can. You can get hurt. Call it sympathy pains, if you like. Self-preservation. Something of the sort. Just take our surviving substance out of here, first chance you get. What’s it going to do, walk into Paradise Station with you?”

“Capsule with a beeper.”

The doppelganger frowned. “Chancy.”

“Scares me too. But it was the best you could think of.”

“Don’t make jokes like that.”

“Sorry. But it’s true.”

The doppelganger slumped, arms against his knees. “At least it’s not going inside Paradise,” he said.

“At least. There’s that to be grateful for.” He leaned back against the wall, tucked the blanket up about his arms. “You don’t think you can trust Jillan—or Paul.”

“I don’t know which copy I’m dealing with,” the doppelganger said in desperation. “It sent me here. Without warning. Rafe, it’s got them both.”

VII

There was no one. Where Paul had been in their confinement, was suddenly no one, in the time it took to blink, the way it had taken Rafe; and Jillan Murray lurched to her feet all in one wild motion, stifling the outcry— no good, no good to yell.The dark was absolute, featureless, soundless; she stood sense-deprived and still, bereft of everyone.

“Jillan,” said a female voice. Her own doppelganger blinked into green-gold glow in front of her, naked flesh a little bony about the ribs.

“That you?” she said, all cold. “That you, self?”

“No,” her own voice came back to her, from mirror-image lips.

Her knees wanted to shake. If she tried to run they would fall. “ Myturn, is it?”

It stood still, with a pensive, frowning look which slowly changed as if thought were going on behind the eyes and arrived at puzzlement. “It feels as if,” it said, “you get some satisfaction. from my coming round to you.”

“Huh.” She laughed.

“Very bitter satisfaction. You were really afraid—of being discounted in favor of the men in this situation. It’s a very confused feeling.”

Her skin felt like sweat she could not shed. This is crazy,she thought. Should I run?

Strong,Rafe had said. And: It got me. Got me—in ways unspecified.

“Anger,” the doppelganger said, “that comes through.”

“That doesn’t take mind-reading. Where am I? Where are we? Dammit, why?”

The doppelganger’s head came up a bit, a centering of the eyes, her eyes, beneath an untidy fringe of bangs.

“Take a walk with me.”

“Like hell.”

It blinked. “You did ask for answers.”

“You can tell me what I asked. Right here.”

And Paul was there, behind the doppelganger, lying still and helpless on the dark immaterial floor. He vanished as quickly. “Creation and uncreation,” the doppelganger said. “That’s what you are. No more, no less.”

She was shaking. Pockets, she thought extraneously, wanting somewhere to put her hands; her hands missed pockets, touched only naked skin. “So, well,” she said, “is that trick supposed to mean something?”

“Not in terms you’re used to thinking of. Life and death are valueless. You’re here. Your body’s long since gone. But you’re still living. So was that. Now it’s gone. Want it back again?”

It was. It vanished.

“Dead again,” it said. “Or gone. However you define it.”

She swung at the doppelganger.

She was on the floor, loose-jointed, with the memory of blinding pain, sound, shock that ached in the roots of her teeth; and it stood just out of reach. It squatted down, arms on knees.

“Doesn’t it occur to you,” it said, “that I could just turn you off?”

Jillan got an elbow under her amid her shivering, pushed up, sat, as far as half squared her with its eyes. She glared at it, and nothing occurred to her, nothing in clear focus, but a dim, small fear that if she hit it again she would get the same hard shock. She had done no damage to it. None.

It sat there, a long, long moment. “Your mind’s different,” it said. “Self-preservation ... differently defined. I’ve seen you through Rafe’s eyes. Your mind is shocked at his simplicity. So is Rafe-mind, to know you so thoroughly. Devastated.”

“Shut up!”

“That’s your strength,” it said, this double of herself, this thing with shaggy, disordered hair and infinity in its eyes. “Rafe-mind wouldn’t have attacked me bare-handed for anything but one of you. He’s afraid to die. So are you. But you havedied, haven’t you? He’s afraid because he’s got so much to lose—you, and Paul—even his own double. He’s full of fears like that. His universe is you and Paul, quite simply; and that ship he’s lost. Himself, of course; but he’s sure I’d retaliate on you. He can’t conceive of the universe without him in it; can’t conceive of your survival if he didn’t exist. Responsibility for the whole universe. That kind of thinking’s very remote in you. ... Not that you don’t care,” it said, settling crosslegged to the floor. Just that you don’t think in terms of being anything but alone. Not universal like Rafe; just solitary. The men take care of you; they look for nothing from you, so you think. You’d defend them if you got the chance. But you expect no chances, for you, or them. On the other hand—you’ve died once, you think; and that didn’t impress you much. It didn’t affect you. You’ve still got yourself; and that’s your universe.”

“Sure,” she said. An icy worm crawled somewhere at her gut. “You got anything to do besides this? Let’s see your face, why not?”