How did you anticipate all this? Demogorgon whispered. It seemed impossible, even knowing, as he had always known, that the depth and feeling of this man were greater than most others were willing, in their shallowness, to suspect.
The doppelganger smiled shyly, an incongruous expression on the craggy features of a devil. He did not, it said. The power to heal all wounds is within me, more so than my brethren only because my creator was skilled at this particular craft. Someone is always the best at something. Heal all wounds . . .
They smashed apart, aflight on the ends of retreating rays, lost to each other on the edges of the expanding universe.
Demogorgon screamed, the death cry of hopelessness. There is a way!
Temujin Krzakwa reached out and seized control from the processor submatrix, driving them upward into light and life, and the Illimitor World shut down behind them, going dark.
John and Beth sat together under the CM dome, looking out across the landscape. Beth seemed subdued, unable to say quite what was occupying their thoughts. Finally the former spoke. "I'm sorry about what happened earlier, Beth. Idon't think I really understood what was going on. I didn't mean it the way ..."
The woman shrugged and smiled slightly, a faint twisting of her pale lips. "Don't worry about it. I didn't really know what you were asking." She stood up and walked a little way away from him, then turned to look back. "We never were sure of each other, even in DR, were we?" John stared at her, trying to fathom what had happened to her in the last few days. "I don't know. Maybe Downlink Rapport isn't so all-encompassing as I thought. You'd think it would be, but . . ." She nodded. "Yes, you'd think that, wouldn't you? But our separable selves aren't the totality of us." She shook her head slowly and looked away again. "Listen to me! I ought to be laughing and so should you. We use big words to hide our confusion."
"Everyone does, Beth." He tried to think, to force some kind of coherent idea out, but nothing would come. "What're we talking about right now?"
"If you don't know, well . . . Hell. Maybe I don't know either." She came back and sat at his side again. "I came up here fired with an enthusiasm, a will to bring you back to me, to make you become one of us again. Now that I'm up here I find that I don't know what to say. Despite my old resistance to DR, I always followed your lead, lagging a little way behind. I'm really not used to thinking for myself." She got up suddenly and walked to the ladder leading down. "I'll talk to you again later...." John stood up, calling, "But wait ..." She was, however, already gone. He turned back to his chair and drifted into it. The conversation had not only been less than satisfactory, it had been nonexistent. I've got to do something, he thought. The contents of a million conversations, with an unending number of people, came back to haunt him, but they were all sophomoric, useless. I spent too much time making up too many stupid ideas. Thinking and feeling aren't the same and I always knew that. Neuroelectrical patterns . . . Maybe that's what she meant. He got up again and went below, filled with acts of conscience, pursuing no goal.
Demogorgon sat with the mindless body of Brendan Sea-lock, surrounded by his maelstrom of equipment and circuitry. "I can get you back, Brendan," he whispered softly. "With a little help, I can find the way!" He put his hand on the body's chest. The flesh was still warm to his touch, as if the man would wake up in a moment and things would be as they had been. . . . No, not that way. Better. The door crackled open and Krzakwa came in. He took in the room's tableau and said, "What are you doing?"
Demogorgon looked up. "Thinking, I guess. What did you think of our little trip?" Shrugging, the Selenite said, "Well . . . that's the way GAM programs are supposed to work. I just never ran across one that was quite so poetic before. I suppose I should congratulate you for making a thing like that."
"Me? But Brendan's the one who did all the programming for Bright Illimit! I just gave him my generalized ideas."
That brought a narrow grin. "You have a typical misconception of what programmers do, Demo. Without software, the machines are useless. Everyone knows that; but without ideas, there's no software either. Brendan just took your ideas and expanded them to a logical final form." He paused, rubbing his hand in among the hair of his beard, seeming to ruminate. "It's like doing a bronze sculpture. The artist comes up with an idea, maybe roughs out the moldwork in wax, then a craftsman comes along, finishes the mold, and casts the statue itself. The two work together because, without either one, there is no final work of art."
The other turned to stare back at the body. "So . . . You're probably right, but he . . ." The Arab stood up to face Krzakwa. "This isn't what I wanted to talk about, Tem! Who the fuck cares who made what part of Bright Illimit? It's what we can do with it now that matters. . . ."
"I know, I caught some of what you were thinking before we resurfaced. I don't know if I understand what you meant, but it was the germ of an idea. . . ."
Demo's anger was supplanted by a look of desperation. Hesat down again. "Just a germ. I'll tell you about it and you tell me if it'll work."
Krzakwa pulled up another chair and sat down opposite him, caught up in the somberness of his mood. "OK. What, then?"
"Look. These things are called Guardian Angel Monitors because they're supposed to follow you around, keeping you from getting hurt in Comnet. I knew about that, but why the Redux part?" The other started to speak, but Demogorgon held up his hand. "I know! I looked the word up, it means a return or a recovery, like getting better after an illness, right?"
"Yes." Krzakwa nodded and, seeing that an amplification was awaited, went on. "If a GAM fails in its primary duty, the Redux is supposed to hook you back out before the various components of your personality can dissolve into the circuitry. If these programs didn't exist, on-line discharge wouldn't be a rare phenomenon and no one would be able to use Comnet."
"OK, so it gets you back from inside the machinery. Why didn't Brendan use such a thing?"
"He did. Me." Tem looked away. "We didn't realize Centrum would be as capable as it turned out to be. I lost my grip on him and couldn't go in after him because I had no lifeline on me."
"We know where he is, don't we?"
"Maybe. In Centrum, sure, but he came apart right at the end. That thing that we experienced as a loss of consciousness was him dissipating into Centrum's data control nexi . If we could find all the pieces, reintegration would still be more than a little difficult. We . . . might get most of him back, even now, but he'd never be the same again. The Brendan that went in is surely as dead as the Seedees." Demogorgon looked down into his lap, where his fingers were twisted together into an agonizing double fist of frustration. "Shouldn't we try?"
"How? Can you tell me?" Krzakwa felt a sense of intentional cruelty in that statement. Creative or not, ideas or not, the artist just wasn't competent in this area of technology. Taking a deep breath, he looked up. "Yes, I can." He stood and paced over to the body, not looking away. "Part of Brendan is in here still, the parts that made him act so bad all the time. They were the reptilian parts, the hard-wired brain-person that was a soulless monster. A lot more of him is locked up in Centrum. Those were the illusory conscious parts, the mind-thing in all of us that says 'I' and thinks of itself as the whole being, even though it isn't. The rest of him is in Shipnet. . . ." Krzakwa sat back in his chair, bewildered. "What the hell are you talking about?"