Iris

'What's going on?' asked Vana, turning to look at the others. Tem shook his head, pale face beaded with droplets of cold sweat. 'I think Bright Illimit's routines are looking for some image we can deal with.'

'Yes,' said Ariane. 'It's trying to find an average for all of us. . . .' They fell silent and watched. The shapes before them coalesced, forming into a huddled, glowing mass, an insensate pool of light gathered in the middle of the soft, padded floor. Things began to appear in the light, vaguely humanoid images that spilled onto one another, mixing together as a mass of indistinct limbs and bodies. They shifted and changed rapidly as the program picked up imagery, first from one controlling mind, then another. Abruptly, the picture sharpened into focus, jumping out at them like a dense holograph. There were a hundred human beings jumbled together motionless on the floor. They were huddled in endless arrays of sexual poses, every conceivable posture and position, like some alien Karnak wrought in three-dimensional, fleshlike stone. They remained still, for the moment showing no sign of life; then the first one moved.

A being from the center of the group stirred and, with his motion, the others breathed, a sudden sighing from a hundred manlike throats. The man, for he was clearly male, arose and stretched. Separated from the generalized mass of the group, posing before them, they could see him clearly now. The shape was generally humanoid, all of the parts were more or less present, but there seemed to be a lack of fine detail. The skins were pallid, the dull bone white of institutional walls, and everywhere there was a lack of flexion lines. The fingers were smooth; likewise the elbows and knees. His brow was empty of feature and his face was without the character lines that help distinguish human beings. Their hair, also white, was undifferentiated, a shapeless mass meant to indicate where hair would go. They were cartoons brought to life. A female Seedee arose to stand beside the man and they could see that she too was crude, as if adapted from a paleolithic statuette.

Their eyes opened, reddish orange, dully glowing coals.

'A touch of humanity,' murmured Demogorgon, 'and a strong flavor of alienness. Good work.' The two Seedees walked slowly forward to stand before them while the others hung back and watched, motionless and silent. The two groups examined one another for a drawn-out moment; then the male being spoke. 'I am called Seven Red Anchorelles,' he said. 'You are the aliens?' Krzakwa smiled softly. 'I guess we are,' he said.

7red nodded slowly and exchanged glances with the woman. In their featurelessness, they seemed to communicate. He turned back to the humans. 'We know you're here to destroy the ancient Mind, what you call Centrum . . .'

'Wait a minute!' said Cornwell. 'We don't want to . . .' 7red held up a pale hand, silencing him. 'It doesn't matter what you intend. That is what you have come to do. We want to join you.'

'Why?' asked Krzakwa flatly, his voice echoing from the hardening stone of the chamber. 'That'll mean the end of you all.'

Cooloil spoke for the first time, her voice portrayed as a rich, deep flow of liquid syllables. 'We know that. We don't care. This has gone on long enough. Our people have never been free, and if we cannot be free, we would as soon cease to exist.'

The humans could find no reply to this, each buried in his own secret responses. Cornwell found himself recalling his feelings as he'd emerged from his first submergence into the world of Centrum, when they'd followed Sealock's fleeing soul down into the depths. 'Poor bastards, indeed,' he murmured, and,

'Join us, then. We'll do what we can.'

The Seedee reached forward and grasped his hand, touching him only fleetingly, while the others pressed forward, animated by an eagerness to begin.

Achmet Aziz el-Tabari was in Montevideo, in Tupamaro Arcology so far from Paris, to meet with his technical adviser for the first time. He walked through the cool, dark, quiet hallways, thinking of what it could mean. Brendan Sealock. He rolled the name around, considering its feel. It was an ordinary- seeming sort of name, a Sean Smith-like Anglo-Irish pastiche, but the syllables had a rolling dignity to them that was unusual. It sounded like the name of an impressive man and he wondered what sort of figure would be attached to it. He smiled. Probably a typical sort of brain-worker: short, skinny, stuttering. A hundred years ago he would have had rotten teeth and thick glasses. This character would probably smell bad. The vital statistics had been sparse. Born in the Deseret Enclave Complex thirty-two years ago, moved to New York Free City when eighteen, and spent the rest of his life at NYU. Typical. Some kind of theoretical design engineer working for MCD. A high-caliber type. Unlimited Comnet access.

That puzzled him a little. When he'd applied to Comnet for professional assistance in designing the Illimitor World, he'd been expecting to get a list of good programmers, preferably people working right in Paris, where he could easily visit them in person. He liked to work closely with the craftsmen he hired. You never knew when some sexy flesh might wander by. After his request, Comnet had asked for a set of specifications, so he'd sent in a precis of what he wanted the program to do. Astonishingly, there had been a wait of several minutes, then the unit had sent him one name, Brendan Sealock, and a single-digit TY-com address. Weird.

Whoever heard of a one-number address? Not only that, but why had Comnet referred him to a design engineer? The world held millions of top-quality programmers, many of them—hell, most of them —working in artistic fields. Surely the program wasn't so difficult that it would require new hardware! The idea was beginning to disturb him.

He arrived at the correct door and announced himself. He stood in front of it, staring at his own eye level, waiting for a person to appear. The door slid open and he was gazing at a chest. Demogorgon gasped and took a sudden step backward. The man was huge! At least a hundred kilos, close to a hundred and ninety centimeters tall. He looked upward from a broad, heavily muscled body into a face marked by unreconstructed scars. Details began to force themselves on him. At some point the man's nose had obviously been broken, and his eyes were dark green, sunk into shadows beneath heavy brows. His hair was a reddish-blond