Iris

himself from the cramped floor into a nearby chair, said, 'OK, the histrionics are over. Materially, we're all still the same despite everything. We know something of the history of these things, but most of it is damnably sketchy and virtually all of it is unverifiable. What's to be done? Jana's still dead and now Demo is too. We haven't gained a thing.'

Brendan deopaqued one relatively machineless wall of his chamber and stared out across the moonscape, smiling ruefully. 'Haven't we? Thanks.' He chuckled and said, 'The oldturn of phrase still suffices to cover up all traces of evil. No matter how close we come to another person, we are still blind. The filter of self still makes the world seem opaque. . . .'

John felt a moment of blank astonishment. The filter of self? The path his own thoughts had been taking was moving inexorably toward similar conclusions. There simply wasn't any other explanation for the horrible breakdowns that were all around. He could no longer chalk everything up to a failure of communication. We perceive what we need to perceive. The thought of it coming out of Sealock's lips made him feel slightly sick. The implications weren't good.

Brendan turned to face them, his face growing more serious than it had been since the awakening.

'What's to be done?' he murmured. 'Jana, dead? How . . . No, don't tell me. I know she killed herself somehow. I picked it up from Demo during my resurrection.' He shook his head slowly, rubbing a broad hand across the back of his neck. 'I saw him then, while the rest of you were being blind. . . . No, forget that. I haven't got a good reason for picking on you anymore.'

'Well?' asked Krzakwa, 'What do you suggest? Is there any way we can get Demo back? You know more about these things that the rest of us put together.'

Brendan shrugged. 'Nope. He's in there for good, I'm afraid. What can we do? Just pump him full of whatever Jana left behind is all.' He laughed. 'Hell, maybe she'll be more at home in there!'

'So,' said John, dismayed at last. 'He's dead forever, and it doesn't bother you?' The man turned to face him, his features looking carefully controlled. 'Two points,' he said. 'One: I didn't say that, you did. Two: why should it bother me?' He turned to look at the body and said, 'Don't worry, pal. I'll see you didn't do it in vain. Can't leave you looking like an asshole, now, can we?' John felt some of his rage and confusion recede. Something was going on that he felt capable of understanding. I've seen this all before, he thought.

Some time later Sealock and Krzakwa were in the chamber alone with the electronically supported body of Demogorgon and the cryogenic capsule containing the ice-encrusted remains of Jana Hu. The Arab's head was festooned with leads and Brendan had finished drilling into the dead woman's skull, installing deeply embedded brain-taps and scanners into the ruined tissue. It had been a bloodless operation, free of gore. What was left of her, brittle and harder than iron, looked less than human, more or less inorganic. Having been frozen very slowly, Jana did not even look like a statue. Her face looked like the broken ice on an expanded and refrozen stream.

'Think it'll work?'

Brendan shrugged his answer. 'We'll get something. If she's lucky, it'll be enough to give her an intact sense of self and enough to combine successfully with the lower functions that Demo left behind when he went into Centrum.'

The Selenite nodded. He had begun to learn. The supposed lower functions were actually the majority of what made up a human mind: the autonomic systems that took care of life and the emotional generators and consciousness mediators of the brain stem. Even above that the human soul was hard-wired in. All the neurolinguistic patterns were built in, add-ons though they might be. Of all the little habit patterns that so many people mistook for 'personality,' only the highest cortical functions, the parts of the mind that mistook themselves for the total 'I,' could be stripped off and sent elsewhere. That was, it seemed, the heart of what made Comnet work the way it did. That was the part of Demogorgon that had become embedded in whatever still functioned within Centrum and it was the part of Jana that they were trying to save. Is he still alive in there? Krzakwa wondered, feeling detached. And what will it be like for her? To be invaded by alien emotions . . . and then to find out that you were the invader. People from all centuries past had thought about the horror of being invaded and dispossessed by a dybbuk. Why did no one wonder about how the monster felt?

He caught a fleeting glimpse of what he'd seen in Sealock,then, a recollection from the memories that Centrum had made public property. That was how it felt, perhaps. He felt a small surge of pity for the man. He'd been exposed before them all. Yet they all had, seemingly, seen each other's selves during the final battle. He had been operating on a kind of automatic pilot since coming back, not acknowledging the changes in him, but he had changed.

Sealock was grinning at him. 'I don't have to be hooked up to you to read your thoughts,' he said, 'I can see it written on your face. If I thought you all understood what you'd seen, I might be a little worried, embarrassed or something. None of you did. Having your faces rubbed in an endless sea of vaginas made a pretty good shield for me. I came out of there with a rich haul.' He turned to face the machinery. 'Let's get this done.'

'All right. One thing . . .'

Sealock looked at him questioningly, eyebrows slightly raised.

'What you said about not letting Demogorgon down. Is this what you meant?' That brought a merciless grin. 'Nope.'