Iris

a soft breeze. Let us die in beauty, it said, and thunder rumbled, lightless, in the distance.

They watched the castle, silent, waiting, spread out in afighting formation, preferring to brood somberly and let Centrum make the first move. A long time passed, and it did not. Nothing moved except for the halo of orbiting machines, and the castle came no closer. Finally, exhausted, they sat in a half circle on the ground, wanting to plan but having no will. John Cornwell sat with forearms around upfolded knees and gazed at the bleak castlescape, his mind a cool tunnel of emptiness. By chance, Axie sat cross-legged by his side, reading from a small book she had produced. Almost like the old days, he thought, in the real world. Have I yet really examined my motives for doing all this? Probably not. We think we know ourselves, then life takes in its belt another notch and we feel the pinch. Time to go on another involuntary diet. He sighed and looked at the woman.

She sat still, reading, and her eyes looked tired. He wondered why the program allowed such an appearance and decided that it probably fitted right into the composite. The sentence, 'Appearances can be deceiving,' came to him, and he sighed. Her head drifted slowly around, tracking to return his stare. She smiled faintly at him, a drawn, wry look, and said, 'It's all too much, isn't it, John?' He surprised himself by feeling startled and felt a certain layering returning to his thoughts. 'Oh, I don't know,' he said offhandedly. 'I'm handling it, I think. I like to be grounded in what we call reality. Here that's meaningless.'

Her smile widened to a skeptical grin.

'Really.' He felt a pulse of self-annoyance. 'It's too unreal to not handle.' Her grin faded and she turned her gaze to the castle again. 'OK. . . . But it was real when the monsters tried to eat us, and I think what's coming is going to be a lot worse.' He shook his head. Try not to consider anything as real, he told himself. He remembered a time when he had briefly tried dream control, finally concluding that, even if he felt he was in control of the dream, it was simply part of the dream structure and in no way indicated actual ability to influence the outcome of the dream. Was this like that? Was the illusion of free will here simply part of the program? He couldn't tell, of course. Is that what madness is? He wanted to think aboutthe real world, real life, as if this were no part of it. 'Tell me something,' he said, 'about the binding that you have been feeling since we've been here.'

Axie glanced at him, then went back to her contemplation of the immense, structured pile of stone. 'It's hard to quantify, and I'm not sure I even want to try. The feelings that dominated our lives before were a form of blindness. Now we see.'

John wanted to laugh but managed to control himself. Febrile nonsense once again! Always couched in the same occult ways. Did they have nothing inside them but theories of life? Everyone seemed to engage in modeling behavior at some point! He threw himself on his back, preferring to watch the unreal-seeming sky, staring into the strange disk of night directly above. A simulacrum is better than nothing, I suppose. But he wondered if it really was. And just how far does that idea extend? Are my self-images real? I don't have any way to challenge them. He stopped it there and drifted back into that long cool tunnel where his thoughts liked to live.

Time passed and their energies cycled up. Time struck hard, though the vista of day's end remained unchanged before them. The moments waxed into being and arrived one by one. The eight made camp on their hill, weapons sheathed, and waited to act. There was nothing else they could do. Armies? They had none. It was obvious that Bright Illimit lacked a will to populate this wilderness with creatures of its own. Larger weapons, though perhaps of greater symbolic importance, could not be more powerful than Tem's missile weapon. For whatever reason, Demogorgon did not extend his ideas further.

The blackness at zenith was growing, and all of the world was dimming. Some tried to sleep but could not. Finally, muttering a great oath, Krzakwa stood and shouldered his blunt launcher. 'This is getting ridiculous,' he said, set the controls for maximum range and effect, and hit the firing trigger. The projectile flared away, leaving a thin, curving trail ofsmoke in its wake. It struck the wall with a shower of sparks, molten metal dripping down the stones to spatter on the ground. The motion of things seemed to slow and the breeze gradually died down. The point of impact slowly brightened, throwing shadows behind them on the hillside. The spark grew, its color shifting upward, the wavelengths of the light shortening. It hit violet, searing holes upon their motionless retinae, and it came. The blob of light suddenly expanded into a great globe, outlined in brilliant shock waves. The sky turned a garish blood red and, for a moment, everything was still. They waited, then it exploded. White light shut off the world with a glare and the wave front rolled over them soundlessly, throwing them all to the ground. It ended with equal suddenness, as they knew it would, and the castle in the twilight land was back, a hole blown in its walls beneath a small, billowing mushroom cloud. Things came roaring out of the cloud, attacking them.

They came at them fast, swept-wing creatures with tails of bright blue fire and staring malevolent eyes, pinpoints of dark, glowing crimson. The eight stood again together as the assault force went into a wingover and dive, a strafing run. There seemed to be no time to do anything but gape. The first winged being swept over them, guns stuttering a staccato roll. Streaks of tracer white stained the air and it was gone by. Little explosions marked the hillside, turf and earth thrown from little craters, and Demogorgon suddenly staggered, pierced by a dozen flaming rounds. He fell to the ground, gasping, and lost all touch with the battle. Another being made its run over the little group, rattling off a story of mayhem and blood.

Demogorgon lay on the grass face down, isolated from the inner world and drifting away into gray nonexistence. He wanted to run slides of all times past, to have his little death experiences and be done with it all, but the electronic lifelines held on and would not let him go. He was compelled to go on thinking, to call out in his pain.

What should it be? Yes: Brendan, if you are anywhere now, if you can hear me, please help. We are here for you.

A roar of rage tore the sky back into daylight and green eyes flamed, a frosty thunder that stopped the world. A hand swelled above their heads, immense, swatting the flying things from the air, crushing them back into an electronic nether place, ignoring their little cries of strident dismay. It struck at the walls of the castle, folding them back in upon themselves, tearing away at Centrum's outermost circuits, blinding Mother Ocean's God in the process.

Night fell suddenly and then more; the world went black and they moved on, transported and healed.

They ran down the dark corridors of Centrum's mind, surrounded by a glowing pool of liquid light that kept pace