"You're saying I tried to escape. And I didn't make it." She glanced at the two Vaffas. Their expressions were unreadable.

"That's it exactly. You were planning it from the moment you realized you were not going to be executed."

"I guess there's no sense not admitting it, is there?"

"No, there isn't."

I'm afraid, she thought, but didn't care to say it. He might have it written down somewhere. She felt something building in her, something that had to find release. She welcomed it, even if it meant her death. She was going to rip the skin from his face, expose the flayed bone, and crack it with her teeth. She was going to kill him. She looked at the ground while the bloodlust built in her. She was about to spring...

She was looking at two bare feet. Her eyes went up a pair of legs, past hairless genitals, and a flat chest to a bald head. The knees were bent, the arms slightly away from the sides. Her lips were pulled away from fashionably stained teeth. She wanted Lilo to attack. One of the Vaffas had moved between Lilo and Tweed before the thought even began to form in Lilo's head. The anger drained away to a hard knot in her stomach. Vaffa relaxed a little.

"She knew where to be," Tweed was saying. "Do you see that?"

"Yes, I see."

"You are predictable, Lilo."

"I see that, too."

"Would you like to hear what has happened to you? You're four months out of date, you know."

"I guess I'd better."

I had been foolish. I saw it now, how ridiculously easy the escape had been.

They had taken me on survival training in the Amazon disneyland, three hundred square kilometers of climate-controlled tropical rain forest twenty kilometers below Aristillus. It was in the back country, the part the public never sees, where the rain falls all day and the clothes rot off your back in the suffocating humidity.

We were on our way home through the public corridors. There was only one guard this time; Vaffa had been called away at the last minute. I had stolen the skin sample I needed from Mari's workshop. I was watching for an opening. The guard looked away—

I bolted through the crowd. In two seconds I was invisible. In thirty seconds I was two levels down and a thousand meters east on a crosstown slidewalk, doubling back. I passed customs with the skin sample in my palm, boarded a train to Clavius.

The car stopped for an override signal. Thirty minutes later the door sighed open at a familiar station. I wondered what they would do to me.

Vaffa stood there, the woman, the face I had come to know so well. I looked down at the dark metal thing in her hand, then back at her bared teeth. I still didn't understand.

Lilo retched helplessly. She had long since emptied her stomach, but she continued to be sick. Mari held her as she knelt on the grass above the mess of bile and vat fluid she had brought up, while Tweed put the pictures away.

"Vaffa is rather direct," Tweed said. "As I told you a long time ago, they are useful." He glanced at the two. Lilo saw the look, and wondered for a moment if he might be a little afraid of them, too. "Are you able to go on?"

She sat back on her heels. There was Vaffa, the woman who had shot someone who looked just like Lilo and then held up the bloody body with the face and chest caved in for someone to take a picture. Her face moved only when she blinked.

"There's more?"

"I'm afraid so. You don't give up easily. If you did, you wouldn't be the kind of person I'm looking for."

"And more pictures?"

"Yes. You must see them."

"Let's get it over with."

I had been foolish.

I saw it now, and prayed forgiveness from my two earlier incarnations. I had thrown away their deaths by my failure. It didn't seem likely that I would be given another chance.

And the cost: Mari, Mari...

Perhaps Tweed would not bring me back again. Or if he did, maybe he wouldn't tell me about Mari and my shame.

Vaffa appeared at the door to my room. I welcomed him.

Tweed had lit another of his cigars. He blew a cloud of smoke, and Lilo saw the female Vaffa edge a step away from him. Her nose twitched.

"The first time, you bolted," he said. "You saw the chance I had arranged for you to see, and you took it." The elk, which turned out not to have been a hallucination, had entered the clearing and was cropping the grass behind Tweed. Lilo watched the light refract from the antlers as Tweed talked. She did not want to think.

"The second time you had learned, but not the lesson I want you to learn. You had decided to be more careful. I presented you with the same opportunity, and you wisely turned it down. You were going to make your own escape this time."

"What did I do?"

"Now we come to the point of this whole distasteful exercise. I will not tell you how you tried to escape. Can you see why?"

Lilo tried to think about it, but it did her no good. All she knew was that she felt trapped. Nothing made sense.

"All right. I don't expect you to absorb all this at once. It will take some getting used to. What I want you to try to understand is that you did your very best to get away from me. You had no help this time. You planned for two months, and to all appearances you were cooperating with me. You came up with a plan. What you must understand is that it was the best plan you will ever come up with." He thundered the words. Everyone looked at him; they could not help it. He could be a powerful speaker when he wished to be.

"That's what the demonstration with the script was meant to point out to you. I have seen you revived twice now. You reacted exactly the same each time. You had no choice; you can only be what you are. You started off each time with memories identical to the day you were last recorded, right here in this clearing. You became a slightly different person each time. The original Lilo was foolish, she didn't think it out far enough, and she paid for it. The second was very crafty. She killed Mari, and came as close as you will ever—"

"She what?"

"You heard me."

Mari was at her side. "Lilo, don't get—"

Lilo recoiled from the woman in horror. "No! I couldn't have. I could have killed... that," she pointed to the paired Vaffas. "I could have killed either of those things. But not Mari."

"I didn't say there was no remorse," Tweed said. "Vaffa says you seemed relieved when he killed you."

"Lilo, I don't hold it against you," Mari said. "I know it sounds strange, but I got to know you... I got to know you twice now. I like you. You did what you thought you had to, and you waited until I'd had a recording taken. I only lost a few days. The Boss told me it was painless, you didn't make me suffer."

"That's true," Tweed said. He was studying Lilo.

"But I just can't believe..."

"You must. And know this, too. I know you now. There are signs I can look for, things you will not be able to hide from me. If I see them, I will know you are following the script. You, on the other hand, will never be sure." His fat fingers, ticking off the arguments, were like the bars of a cage closing around her.

"I'll leave you to think about what I've said. When you've decided if you'll cooperate, come and tell me. It's your choice, and I want a firm decision from you this time, not the lies you told me at the institute. I've spent enough time and energy on you already."

He left, trailing the male Vaffa behind him like a faithful dog. Lilo and Mari were left virtually alone, as the other Vaffa seemed to have forgotten about them. Lilo watched her as she tried to coax her snake down from a tree, then scrambled up a vertical trunk to join it.