Iris

now? he wondered.

He stood and began to move around the room, feeling faint, as if he were mildly ill. The world seemed removed a considerable distance from him, too far away for him to reach out with a caress. He stood looking down at Ariane. Onceagain, her loose clothing was disarrayed, exposing her to his gaze. He felt like laughing. Had she always been like this, a careless person with all her secrets let out for all to examine? He didn't know. All the memories were there, clearer than they had ever been, but their content seemed somehow changed. He looked at the others, one by one, assessing them bleakly, until he came upon the still form of Demogorgon.

He felt a sense of remote loss. The dark face was filled with life, as if it might awaken in only moments to beg him once again. The Arab was almost pretty in his stillness. Brendan brushed the dark hair away from the man's dry brow and shook his head slowly. His emotions were curiously diminished, as if put away from him for good. Perhaps I am better off this way, a madman in whom none can detect the insanity. Another thought: I am dead. They failed to bring me back. He found it impossible to care. The others began to stir and awaken, their eyes popping open like mechanical things. They rose gently, disengaging themselves from the machine with little regret. Sealock watched them from heavy-lidded eyes, looking for some response that exceeded his own, but found none. They were all equally drained. Perhaps it was a natural thing, and all concerns were needless.

He looked down at the still form and said, 'So I live again, and this one dies.' Cornwell came across the room to stand before him, looking into his face. 'Yes,' he said, 'and Jana too is dead— frozen.'

Jana? Dead? Brendan felt a long moment of confusion, then the light and meaning of it all struck at him and he burst out laughing.

The others were staring at him as if he had truly gone mad. Still giggling fitfully, Brendan sank down on the couch beside what was left of Demorgorgon, muttering to himself, trying to catch his breath. ''He died that others might live . . . 'Unrequited love burns fierce in the hearts of men . . .'' His laughter roared forth again, echoing in the closed room, and tears of mirth squeezed out of his eyes, oozing like oil in the low-g drag across his cheeks. 'Oh, I can't stand it!' hecried, pointing a finger at the motionless form. ' 'This was the noblest Roman of them all!' '

He stopped laughing then, gasping for breath. He sniffled, wiping his nose on the back of a sleeve, rubbing his hands across a dampened face. 'Oh, Christ . . .' He picked up the still body and clutched it across his chest like a huge rag doll, grinning at the others. 'What a prize bunch of assholes we are!' Cornwell felt rage welling up from within him, a conflagration fueled by all that he'd been through, the things that he thought had happened to them all. 'Nothing's changed then,' he snarled. He stalked over to Sealock and stood before him, fists balled up and planted heavily on his hipbones. 'You haven't changed, have you? Nothing affects a bastard like you! You're self-contained, aren't you? What happens is meaningless if it hasn't happened to you!'

Brendan let the man drift slowly back onto the couch and stared at him for a moment, a smile still twisting his lips. He turned to look at John, then slowly rose to his feet, seeming to tower over him, some kind of wrathful, demonic hulk. He glared for a moment, then grinned again. 'Oh, I've changed, all right, kiddo,' he said softly, 'and so have you. Think about it.' He waved a hand to take in the other six. 'We've changed because we had to, whether we're capable of realizing it or not. It's these strangers who haven't changed. While we were being burned in our own special crucibles, our little private hells, they were being cemented into their present form, forever.'

'What're you talking about?' whispered Cornwell, but he had a horrible inkling of what was meant and, so, what was coming a short distance down the line.

'How can you be like this, Brendan?' cried Ariane. 'For God's sake, he died for you!'

'Did he?' Brendan sat again and slowly drew the fingers of one hand across the man's smooth face.

'Bullshit. He just wrote himself the best closing scene he thought he'd ever have. He knew I wouldn't let him down . . .'

'You . . .' Ariane stopped, choking, and her face slowlydarkened. She tried to speak again, failed, and then burst into tears and fled from the room. Vana glared at him, spat, 'You bastard!' and went after her. Prynne followed them, wordless.

Axie stood in the silence, seeming almost to smile. 'It's all meaningless, isn't it? Why would they expect you to change? You weren't there with us. You missed it all!'

Brendan's grin broadened. 'I did, didn't I? But you're wrong. You all are. Demogorgon didn't die for me; he just went out the way he wanted to, and in so doing got his own way at last. 'Do a little something for me, just this once!' '

The woman shook her head, keenly feeling the loss of Beta-2 understanding. But underneath her shrunken awareness there was a new note of order—harmony—that kept her on course. Enfolded in this new structure, Brendan's face was somehow there, like a pistil in a flower, but the man standing before her was not this Brendan. Before her was a horrible distortion. 'That may be your illness,' she said softly, looking at the floor. 'It seems you have always been incapable of understanding anyone except in the limited vocabulary by which you define yourself.'

Brendan smiled faintly at her. 'That may,' he said, 'be what you want to believe.' Axie stared at him through eyes that seemed for a moment to have become empty holes through her face into some darkness beyond, then she turned and left.

Beth followed the other woman through the door, her face streaked by unnecessary tears. John watched her go and felt benumbed, longing but unwilling to follow. Foreknowledge kept him in his place. Temujin, catapulting