Sellars gave a disconsolate shrug. "I see no other way. No one person has the right to decide such a thing, and we do not have time for a more measured approach."

Kunohara made a disgusted noise. "So a committee of weary, uninformed amateurs should decide the fate of an entirely new form of life?"

"Just a minute," said Orlando. "If we're really going to vote on this, who gets to vote? Just the grown-ups?"

"We will certainly consider you and Sam part of the group," Sellars said quickly. "You have proved yourselves beyond doubt."

"Wanna vote!" screamed several of the Wicked Tribe. "Vote! We vote go home, no more talk talk talk!"

"You little ones get down right now," snapped Mrs. Simpkins. "Don't think I can't catch you!"

"And these are our only choices?" Renie turned to !Xabbu, who was silent but clearly troubled by all he had heard. "Is that what we're supposed to decide?" She wanted to hear what his unique perspective made of all this. "Right this second we have to choose between . . . killing them and letting them go? Between something like genocide and the risk that our own species will be wiped out?"

"There are no such decisions," !Xabbu said slowly. "This I know—those are the boxes that people make so that they will not be frightened by complicated choices. The world has many paths."

"That might be true if we had more time." Sellars was beginning to sound weary again, and more than a little frustrated. "Please! We do not know how long until they . . ."

"Stop!" The startlingly loud voice echoed through the cavern even after everyone had fallen silent—the not-quite-human voice of Nemesis. "I . . . we . . . I do not understand all your words." The thing in Ricardo Klement's body still could not make the face express emotion, but Renie thought there was something increasingly human in its voice. "I do not understand, but I can sense that you are upset and fearful about those who are coming. About the next."

"The next what?" Sam whispered loudly to Orlando.

"You must hear . . . they must talk. Then some understanding will be. Perhaps." Nemesis was reaching for words. Renie found it chilling, but in some weird way, exciting as well. It really did want to communicate. It was only a piece of code, albeit a complicated one, but it seemed to be doing something for which it could not have been programmed,

So it's not just the creatures that Sellars and the Other made, Renie thought. The lines between people and not-people are definitely going to get more blurry, no matter what. Like T4b, she felt like her brain was about to blow up. Jesus Mercy, does that mean we're going to have to consider every piece of accounting gear and office equipment a citizen?

"We cannot talk to them." Sellars sounded sad, but angry, too. "They are information life. The very idea is pointless—even if they were able to speak words we could hear, they would be beyond our understanding, as we are beyond theirs. They are more different from us than we are from plants."

"No." Nemesis lifted a hand in a strange, unreadable gesture, then pointed at the helpless blue thing cradled in its other arm. "We heard these processes from . . . from far away. We split ourselves."

"Who is we?" Sellars demanded.

Kunohara was smiling broadly, "This is fascinating!"

"I . . . I am Nemesis—but I am not all of Nemesis. I was created as a tracking procedure, but I could not perform my original function. The network was too large and diverse, and the anomaly in this place, this secured portion of the operating system, was too strong. I was . . . we were . . . very confused. So I . . . we . . . split into three subversions so that we might cope with the network's unexpected complexity and still have a chance of completing our original task."

The thing sounded quite natural now, Renie thought. She'd had mathematics lecturers who sounded less human.

"I am only one part of the original," it said. "I am Nemesis Two." It lifted the Blue Baby, which made a strange, mewling sound. "Here is a . . . representation of Nemesis One, which was . . . made nonfunctional by a logic problem. I was able to protect myself against that problem, and my function was not disrupted as I pursued my own investigations. I found Nemesis One here, broken and discarded within the operating system code.

"But there is also another part of me . . . of us. . . ." The blank Klement stare looked from face to face, but the eye contact only emphasized how inhuman it still was. "Nemesis Three pierced the anomaly and found these processes," it explained, "—the growing of these next ones. It has been with them for many cycles. Now we will all be together. We will speak. We will speak together."

"What is this supposed to mean to us?" Sellars sounded worried, even fearful, which made Renie's pulse beat faster—how much time did they have? "Yes, you can speak to us," Sellars said, "but you are human-created code. These . . . creatures . . . are not even remotely human."

Nemesis nodded awkwardly. "Yes, we will speak together."

"Together. . . ?" Sellars asked, puzzled, but even as he spoke the lights in the walls began to flicker. Renie had to raise her hands before her eyes to keep from being sickened by the eerie strobing effect.

Something was forming next to one of the walls, a vertical agglomeration of light. It was not the blankness of empty virtual space that Renie had seen Sellars use to disguise himself and the boy Cho-Cho, but a rippling, pulsing overlap of types and textures of light, a thickening of light, almost, which swiftly took on a faceless, mostly human shape.

Everyone stared at the apparition in anxious silence.

"Is that one of the things we gotta six?" T4b finally asked weakly. Renie thought he did not sound like he planned on trying. In fact, he sounded like he wanted to be somewhere else. She sympathized strongly.

"No," said Nemesis. "That is our other . . . self. The last part. Nemesis Three. It has been with the anomaly and its processes for many cycles, just as I have been with you human arrangements for many cycles. We will combine our knowledge. We will speak together." Nemesis Two lifted the Blue Baby. Renie gasped as the ugly little thing suddenly flowed out of its hands like something poured horizontally and was absorbed by the shape made of light, which began to gleam with additional azure tones. Then, as they all stared in numbed surprise, the Klement form stepped toward the light-being and flowed into it as well. When the absorption was finished, the shining thing looked a little more human.

But not much, Renie thought weakly. !Xabbu's hand was holding hers and she was glad of it.

They . . . sense you. The voice came from nowhere, but it was as disturbingly flat as the Klement-thing's. They wait. They wish to be free.

"Demons," cried Nandi in outrage. "You have created demons, Sellars, and now we are to bargain with them?" He turned and whispered something to Bonnie Mae Simpkins, whose eyes were closed and whose lips were moving in what Renie supposed was prayer.

They . . . the next ones . . . wish to be free, the bodiless voice said again. Now that we have brought them what they needed. They understand that they must go as the First People went.

"The First People?" Renie felt !Xabbu stiffen beside her. "Isn't that out of your stories. . . ?" she asked him.

The All-Devourer has gone, droned the weird Nemesis voice, but this is not their place anymore. They wish to go, taking the stories that have given them . . . understanding. Like Grandfather Mantis and Rock Rabbit, like their child Rainbow and his wife Porcupine, they will go on to another place. This is not their place anymore.

"What a thing," !Xabbu said in quiet amazement. "What a thing this is."