rasped! in her throat and grew deeper.
The madness wanted to close in again, but something, some indefinable factor from deep within, was holding it at bay. The fingers of her right hand continued in their course,following the well-marked route of an old, familiar trail. She stroked slowly, gently, feeling the little ridge that marked the beginning of the bulbous end, touched the little hole gently, and backed away from an unexpected tenderness. She squeezed hard and moved more quickly, felt the skin of her face tighten, then grow slack. The forces from within made her gasp against her will, uncontrollable. How odd, how odd... Muscles deep within her body suddenly clenched, nausea closing in. Oh, she gasped, wondering if she'd somehow injured herself. The thing tightened and tightened ... it pulsed and she felt a strong surge of warmth rush away from the center of her body, reaching out to her extremities in a fraction of a second. Another pulse followed on the heels of the first and she felt a sensation a little like urination. The warmth increased, making her flush. The pulses went in rapid waves, tearing her mind apart, and she felt puddles of hot wetness forming on her stomach.
Her mind came back with a sickening rush, bringing with it a feeling of tiredness, of collapse. She felt like a suddenly punctured balloon. It was over, almost as if it had never happened. She felt strange, horrid. She lay there, staring at the ceiling, her thoughts fragmented and unreal. Who am I, where am I, and why? It was all too terrible for rational contemplation. Do I deserve to think?
She sat up and looked around. Oh, God . . . for some reason they had put her in Demogorgon's room. His effects surrounded her on every side. She looked at all his things and felt warm, comfortable. Somehow, they made her feel calm. She got up and began to walk around aimlessly, and after a while her wet stomach began to feel cold.
She stood in front of his full-length antique mirror and looked at herself, at the alien reflection in the mirror.
At him . . .
She stared at the slim, dark man in front of her, his face mimicking her most usual expression, his brow taking on the lines that had always creased hers. Her thought furrows were reborn. How did this happen? She thought she knew. Theexplanations had been made. She was intelligent and could piece the story together on her own. She shook her head and Demogorgon's head made the same moves in return, an instant response. She touched the mirror and he reached out to her. . . . She burst into tears and watched him cry unashamedly before her gaze.
What is my name? she wondered. Li-jiang. No Jana. No Achmet Aziz el-Tabari. No Demogorgon. Those people are all dead. She stared at the curdled semen still sticking like cold glue to her skin, shining at her eyes, mocking her. Something far within felt like laughing.
Slowly, she turned and walked out the door of her chamber, still naked, to walk the halls of the CM, seeking an unneeded, unheralded absolution. And to give it forth in lieu of honor. . . .
Reluctantly, with a numb dread that actually felt like friction against his shoulders and neck holding him back, John moved to the chair that he used for composing and sat. He rolled back the headrest and lay his head back, looking blankly at the ceiling. Every part of him recoiled from the idea that he could actually go back to music after all that had happened—deep inside he felt the total inadequacy of the medium—and, further, he felt somehow that using the pain that filled him for the task would somehow be trivializing it, and himself in the process.
A quick, almost abstract vision appeared in his head, accompanied by a riveting, stirring sensation of deja vu. It was blue above, green below, with an almost sourceless yellow light everywhere in between. He was tumbling, moving across the soft, perfect lawn, enchanted with the new concepts of himself and the world and the joyous intermingling of the two. It was his earliest memory. He couldn't have said when, or where it was, or who had been there, for he seemed to be alone, out of time. And then the second memory, in a room at night, the impossibly bright face of the three-quarter moon staring in at him, scaring him beyond his little ability to reason, hanging there, a specter or icon so far removed from what heunderstood as to reduce the world and himself to symbols in the dark misunderstanding.
The memories passed. He thought he understood something of what it all meant. Calling up his overlays, he began with a first note.
Vana, Harmon, and Ariane sat in the latter's room, talking far into an ersatz night of their own making. Their flesh needed a comforting touch, a renewal of contact, but still they held off, filled with questions without answers and a formless dread that had no name.
Prynne sprawled bonelessly on the bed, his arms and legs lying in the positions to which they had fallen, listening, without speech, without ideas. The time within Centrum had made him whole, but it had also left him empty. He knew himself for what he was now, and knew that he would never go beyond those limits. It was enough. It had to be.
Berenguer sat cross-legged at his feet, looking at the other woman. 'What does it all mean, Ariane?' She laughed at the age-old question, a soft sound, giving them some sense of the destruction that had been wrought upon her. 'Mean? It means nothing, Vana. The changes that have been made in us are all illusory. We're still the same, we just see each other more clearly now. Brendan's still what he always was ... I just never knew it before.' She laughed again, a harsher, bitterer sound. 'I called him a god once! I was in love with what I thought was the depth of his soul. It's not there and never was. I loved what I thought I saw, and
'for we have each other.' She stretched slowly before them, watching theradiance of her beauty grow in their eyes. 'And Demogorgon will always live on in our hearts.' Because she said it, for the moment it was so.
Axie and Tem were having dinner together, enjoying one of his lesser creations. They tasted it and praised the
