Iris

'Odds of failure are calculated at 1:2027.048.'

Brendan felt himself relax. All things considered, the chances of it working were pretty good. This would be something to see indeed. 'OK. We'll begin our preparations immediately.'

'Very well . . .'

'Wait a minute!'

'Input Queue NMI received. Proceed.'

'Why are you doing this? I thought just being in control of a Bright Illimit-dominated Centrum would be enough for him.'

'Long-term survival under those circumstances would have been a chancy thing. We mean to revive the mission. Enough submodules of Centrum itself survive to make that decision imperative.'

'I see.' He thought about it. It was probably a wise choice; Demogorgon would be giving himself a good reason to go on existing. And fantasies grow best in the hothouse climate of real adventure. 'How long do we have?'

'Depending on the condition of the Uplink command system and how much rewrite the light-off procedures take, forty-seven hours, plus or minus eighteen minutes.' Brendan could have laughed—a week ago he would have.

They would have to get Deepstar reassembled more or less overnight. 'I'd still like to speak with Demo.'

'At the moment, impossible. Call me on this wave interface after the light-off procedures are up and running. We may be able to manage it then. End transmission.'

'Good-bye.'

The ruby light pulsed once, then went out, and the world within Iris withdrew from his grasp.

Brendan walked across the moor by the pool, his feet drifting, lightly touching the surface, propelling himself along with a minimum of effort, immersed in the complexities of now and then. Things had changed, and with them himself, and with him the others. Are the changes great ones? Do I really feel different? Do they? What have we all become? Something new? I wonder. Are we really different or is this just another masque? Perhaps we are just fooling ourselves, rationalizing away any responsibility for feeling any pain, our own and that of each other. I know now that I am capable of lying to myself. I saw that facility in other people all along, and saw it in myself . . . but I thought I was different. I thought that, so long as I recognized the capacity for self- deceit in myself, it was all right to do it. The lies and fantasies were OK, just as long as I recognized them for what they were and paused every now and again to laugh at myself, to be embarrassed at my own silliness. Perhaps I was right, and this is just that little refreshing pause, that little sense of the 'I' in me being renewed.... Or maybe I'm still lying to myself. Again. He walked on, immersed in a steep practicum of rumination, considering himself, both the natural being and the thing revealed by a forced march through his own past. I always used the memories, he mused, to wash away the terrors of any current hour that had grown too dense, too strong for me to handle easily. I reviewed myself mercilessly. He snorted, mirthless laughter emerging from his nose to echo in the silent, ersatz land. I did nothing of the sort! I used my memories in a self-serving way to absolve myself of any feeling I might have had about anything. Is that bad? Perhapsnot. A human being must have a means of survival, at all costs. Perhaps my greatest flaw lay in my lack of generosity toward others. They needed their lies and it was small of me to sneer at them. How much of that was unnecessary flaw and how much grew from my own needs? Did I serve a useful function in the midst of the others? I wonder if I really needed to . . . who am I to judge and who are they to judge me? Would I be happy in an existence divorced from all human needs, left to float my own way in a solitary jungle of thought?

He stood still for a while, drifting to a slow stop. Do I really need to consider myself as relating to other people, or is this all foolishness, self-torture? Maybe I've been right all along. Perhaps I should go with my old feeling, continue as I always have until death eats me up. Another bit of snide self-derision at that. No sense letting that poetic imagery louse up a fine bit of introspection. Those sorts of conventions are the ways people begin lying to themselves, whenever they find it necessary. He felt like remembering then, and did, wondering if all the quietness, the need to forgive and forget and move on, were just a slow healing process, a recovery from the shock of his long fall through Centrum. When I emerge, will I be what I was before? What will that be? Am I sane or mad? Does it matter?

Memory struck.

Brendan Sealock stood atop the barrier wall of the Summit Garden of Prometheus Tower, the thousand-meter- high monad that stood astride St. James, looking out across the world, his land, hair blowing in the wind, fluffing it out so that each strand found a new position. He was barefoot, clad in a pair of blue bathing trunks and a white tank top emblazoned with the scarlet logo of Blood Street Skull, the music ensemble whose partisans had been terrorizing Long Island for the last few weeks. The wind was cool and pleasant, in a summery sort of way.

From here, from this vantage point, the world should have been green and beautiful, but it was ugly. The great towers ofthe eastern boroughs of New York Free City stood high in the west, growing out to meet him, steel and plastic monstrosities that glittered in the morning sun, throwing back rays of light, little flashes to catch his eyes. To the north, on the Connecticut shore, the low, sprawling outriders of a lawless Boston Megalopolis glared at him, layer upon endless layer of repulsive, antique buildings. In the south, the Atlantic Ocean was steel gray, and dead. The surface winds were calm and the sea was a worthless mirror.

There was a distant, echoing rumble from the northeast, and Nantucket Cosmodrome threw up a small rocket