“More games.”

“No,” Kepta said. “Not now.” Jillan/Marandu had hold of Rafe/Kepta’s arm. Kepta shook off the grip and walked aside with a glance upward and about as if his sight went beyond the walls. “It’s quiet out there now. It won’t be for long. It’s moving slowly, expecting traps.”

“What are you here for?” asked Jillan One.

“You,” Kepta said, and turned a glance at Paul; “It’s time.”

“Leave Jillan here,” Paul said.

“Which one?” it asked him, and sent a chill through his blood. It faced him fully. “You choose. A set of you will stay here safe. A set of you will face it. Likely the encounter will ruin that set. Which?”

“ Noneof them,” Rafe said. “Leave them alone.”

“ Itwon’t,” Kepta said, and looked back at Paul. “I sent a full set here—to keep the promise; I brought them early so that they would have some contact with the oldest. Continuity. That’s as much as I could give. Now it’s time, and no time left. Four to stay and three to go. Shall I choose? Have you not discovered difference?”

“I’ll go,” Paul said. He cast a look at his doppelganger, poor bewildered self, standing there with its mouth open to say something. “No,” it protested. “ No.It’s why I was born, isn’t it?”

Then things seemed clear to him, clear as nothing but Jillan had ever been. “Take Jillan and Rafe of the new set,” he said, “and me, of the old.” He looked straight at his doppelganger as he said it, proud of himself for once. “I know what the score is.”

And the dark closed about him.

“No!”he heard Rafe’s hoarse shout pursuing them. He felt a hand seek his in the dark—Jillan’s. Felt her press it hard. He trusted it was the latest one, as he had asked. “You did the right thing,” Rafe Three said—unmistakably Rafe, clear-eyed and sensible, as if he had drawn his first free breath out of the bewilderment the others posed. “What now?”—for Rafe was not senior of this group.

They were gone, just gone, and there was silence after. Rafe stood helpless between Rafe Two and Jillan; and Paul’s hours-younger self, his substitute, whose look at Jillan was apology and shame.

She just stared at that newborn Paul, with that dead cold face that was always Jillan’s answer to painful truths.

“What’s happening out there?” Rafe Two asked. “What’s happening?”

“War,” said that Paul, in a faint, thin voice. “Something like. That Paul that changed—it wants the rest of us. And he’s got to stop it. Paul has to. The real one. The one I belong to. The one I am.”

“It can make more of us,” Jillan said. “It can keep this thing going—indefinitely.”

“It won’t,” Paul Three said, “It won’t take the chance. It said it wouldn’t risk the ship. Kepta’s words.”

“It—” Jillan said; and: “O God!”—her eyes directed toward the tunnel-length.

Rafe spun and looked, finding nothing but dark; and then the howling sound raced through the speakers, leaving them shivering in its wake.

</> made haste now, sending tendrils of </>self into essential controls. </> encountered elements of <>, which </> had expected, but <>’s holdouts were growing few. There had been major failures. <>’s resistance collapsed in some areas, continued irrationally in others.

Other passengers, such as |:|, declared neutrality and retreated to the peripheries.

Paul, meanwhile.... </> wielded Paul/Rafe like an extension of </>self.

The variant minds of the simulacra were the gateway, </> reckoned. <> had invested very much of <>self in the intruders, which had proved, in their own way, dangerous.

The passengers were mobilized, as they had not been in eons. There was vast discontent.

“<> has lost <>’s grip,” </> whispered through the passages, everywhere. “<> has been disorganized. </> am taking over. Step aside. Neutrality is all </> ask—until matters are rectified.”

“Home,”said one of [], with the ferocity of desire. [] forgot that []’s war was very long ago, or that []’s species no longer existed, and whose fault that was. But they were all, in some ways, mad.

Kepta joined them, a Rafe-shape with infinity in its eyes. It stood before them in the featureless dark, and Paul faced it in a kind of numbness which said the worst was still coming; and soon.

He was, for himself, he thought, remarkably unafraid; not brave—just self-deprived of alternatives.

“It will be there,” Kepta said, turning and pointing to the dark that was like all other dark about them. “Distance here is a function of many things. It can arrive here very quickly when it wants.”

“What’s it waiting for?”

“My extinction,” Kepta said, “and that’s become possible. You must meet it on its own terms. You must stand together, by whatever means you can. You will know what to do when you see it, or if you don’t, you were bound to fail from the beginning, and I will destroy you then. It will be a kindness. Trust me for that.”

And it was gone, leaving them alone; but a star shone in the dark, a murkish fitful thing. Rafe pointed to it; Paul had seen it already.

“Is that it?” Rafe wondered.

“I suppose,” said Paul, “that there’s nothing else for it to be.”

“Make it come to us,” Jillan said. “Get it away from whatever allies it has.”

“And what if its allies come with it?” Paul asked. “No. Come on. Time—may not be on our side.”

They advanced then. And it moved along their horizon, a baleful yellow light.

IX

They waited; that was what they were left to do, prisoners of the corridor, of Lindy’s scattered pieces, of Kepta’s motives and the small remnant of former realities.

“I can’t,” Rafe Two mourned, having tried to will himself away into the dark where Paul had gone; and Rafe himself looked with pity on his doppelganger.

“That’ll be Kepta’s doing,” Jillan said. She sat tucked up in a chair that phased with her imperfectly, near Paul, loyally near their relict Paul, whose face mirrored profoundest shame.

“I tried too,” Paul Three said, in a hushed, aching tone, as if he were embarrassed even to admit the attempt. “Nothing. It’s shut down, whatever faculty we had.”

“You were outmaneuvered,” Rafe said. “He’s a little older than you.”

“Not much,” Jillan said to Paul on her own. “Hours. But a few choices older. He knew, that’s what. He’d had time to figure it out; and he was way ahead of us. He got us all.”

There was a glimmering of something in Paul Three’s eyes. Resolve, Rafe thought. Gratitude. And something he had suddenly seen in that other Paul Gaines, the look of a man who knew absolutely what he was doing.

Rafe Two picked that up, perhaps. Perhaps envied it; their minds were very close. That Rafe got up and turned his back as if he could not bear that confidence.

Why not me?The thought broadcast itself from Rafe Two’s every move and shift of shoulders. He walked away, partly down the corridor. Why not choose me? I was best. Oldest. Strongest.

Responsibility.

“Don’t,” Rafe said. “Stay put.”

“I am,” Rafe Two said, facing him against the dark, with bitterness. “I can’t blamed well get anywhere down the hall, can l?”

And then there was a Jillan-shape at his back, glowing in the dark.

“Rafe,” Rafe said, and Rafe Two saw his face, their faces, if not what was at his back. Rafe Two acquired a frightened look and turned to see what had appeared behind him in the corridor.

The light retreated before them, continually retreated.

“I guess,” Rafe said, not breathing hard, because they could not be out of breath, or tired, nor could what they pursued, “—I guess it’s not willing to be caught.”

“If that’s the case,” said Jillan, “we don’t have a prayer of taking it.”