Diaspora

Yatima said flatly, "You know that's not true. What do you think's going to happen to you? Pain? As soon as the tags stop coming, the whole illusion will dissolve." Ve was trying to be reassuring, but ve struggled to imagine what it must be like: some kind of intrusion of the world into Inoshiro's icon? It was confusing enough when the interface adjusted vis own icon's symbol to the actual posture of vis gleisner body—but that was more like playing along with the conventions of a game; there was no deep sense of violation…

Inoshiro said, "They'll let me live with them. I don't need food, I don't need anything they value. I'll make myself useful. They'll let me stay."

Yatima stepped back over the border; the drone broke free and retreated, buzzing angrily. Ve knelt down beside Inoshiro and said gently, "Tell the truth: you'd go mad within a week. One scape, like this, forever? And once the novelty wore off, they'd treat you like a freak."

"Not Liana!"

"Yeah? What do you think she'd become? Your lover? Or yet another parent?"

Inoshiro covered vis face with vis hands. "Just crawl back to Konishi, will you? Go lose yourself in the Mines."

Yatima stayed where ve was. Birds squawked, the sky brightened. Their twenty-four hours expired. They still had one more day before their old Konishi-selves awoke in their place-but with each passing minute, now, the sense of polis life moving on and leaving them behind grew stronger.

Yatima thought of dragging Inoshiro over the line, and instructing the drone to pluck ver from vis bode. The drone wasn't smart enough to understand anything they'd done; it wouldn't realize it was violating Inoshiro's autonomy.

And that idea was disturbing enough, but there was another possibility. Yatima still had the last updated snapshot of Inoshiro's mind, transmitted in the restaurant in the early hours of the morning. Inoshiro wouldn't have sent it after ve'd made up vis mind to stay—and it Yatima woke that snapshot inside the polis, it wouldn't matter what happened to this gleisner-clone…

Yatima erased the snapshot. This wasn't quicksand. This wasn't anything they'd foreseen.

Ve knelt, and waited. The tags from vis knees reporting the texture of the ground became an irritating, monotonous stream, and the strange fixed shape forced upon vis icon grew even more annoying—perhaps because they both mirrored vis frustration so well. Was this how it had started, for Inoshiro? If ve stayed here much longer, would ve begin to identify with vis own map of vis own gleisner body?

After almost an hour, Inoshiro rose to vis feet and walked out of the enclave. Yatima followed ver, sick with relief.

The drone landed on Inoshiro's neck; ve reached up as if to slap it away, but stopped verself. Ve asked calmly, "Do you think we'll ever come back?" Yatima thought about it, long and hard. Without the unrepeatable allure which had brought them here, would this place, and these friends, ever again be worth eight hundred times more than all the rest?

"I doubt it."

Part Two

When Paolo woke and joined ver in the scape, Yatima said, "I'm trying to decide what we should tell them. When they ask why we came after them."

Paolo laughed grimly. "Tell them about Lacerta."

"They'll know about Lacerta."

"As a blip on a map. They won't know what it did. They won't know what it meant."

"No." Yatima gazed at Weyl, at the center of the blue shift. Ve didn't want to antagonize Paolo with questions about Atlanta, but ve didn't want to shut him out either. "You know Karpal, don't you?"

"Yes." Paolo accepted the present tense with a faint smile.

"And wasn't he on the moon, running TERAGO "

Paolo said coldly, "He did everything he could. It wasn't his fault the whole planet was sleepwalking."

"I agree. I don't blame him for anything." Yatima spread vis arms, conciliatory. "I just wondered if he'd ever talked about it. If he ever told you his side of things."

Paolo nodded grudgingly. "He talked about it. Once."

4

LIZARD HEART

Bullialdus observatory, Moon

24 046 104 526 757 CST

2 April 2996, 16:42:03.911 UT