Warp and Weft

an Urda story
(c) 1997 by Sara ...

I met her in the Unicorn Grove. We were all gathered for a Ritual. She was the first pregnant woman I'd ever seen. Only one really. As I watched she got more and more pregnant. I guess I knew that birth hurt, Dworkin'd taught me about sex. I don't understand why it had to hurt her tho, she's a 'Shifter. It was there, before the Ritual, that I found my first hint of what I am. A menu came up in my head, the outside world disappeared, to get rid of it I had to choose. I checked out Help: words, information about me, scrolled up in front of my eyes.

Well, actually it was about my third hint but it's the only one I got immediately. I'd figured out this system of telepathy based on genetics, people's relationships to each other, me in the middle of cables that hang in my head. I tested it out and called Hump. The next time I tried this message flooded through me. It wasn't addressed to me, it was a general; broad band. I'll never forget the phrasing '... this message brought to you through the miracles of genetic engineering and my Unique Report Delivery Apparatus....'. I didn't really make the connection until I saw that menu in my head later and then when I went home to be dismantled and Dworkin changed my acronym again. The message was sent sometime between the Second and Third Waves. There hasn't been one since, I keep expecting another.

I'm not a child, tho I look like one and I'd been allowed to think that I was. I even have memories of a childhood spent with Dworkin at the Cave. I'd always kinda thought of the Pattern as a brother.

Who expects to find stuff like that in your head? I never did quite get used to it. I liked the cables a whole lot, and being a communications nexus. It comforted me, them being there, running them through the fingers of my mind.

Andelia never forgave me for turning to Deirdre about this. I wanted an older Amberite's help, I figured that Deirdre'd have to've seen more weird stuff than Del. I let her into my head and triggered the Menu again. She watched as I showed her what I'd seen. Back then words were still a comfort. Just having someone in my head was a comfort. I miss it.

Deirdre did tell me never to use my self-destruct sequence. This stuck with me, almost like a compulsion, at times it's been a great help, at others a hindrance. I think now that I was 'sposed to self-destruct, that I failed because I didn't. I thought that a 65% estimated success rate would be high enough odds. I had been so determined not to fail my creator.

It still bothers me that as soon as she thought I was out of earshot Deirdre took a poll on whether Dworkin abused/abuses me. I'm not a child, I never was. I'm a tool, an azi. I can't be abused.

The Ritual went pretty well until the whole mutual cursing between Deirdre and Clarissa. I tried to help, not understanding what was taking place before me. I ended up unraveling Clarissa from reality! Teridias, Brand, Fiona, Bleys would have followed. Blood and words each have a power, deadly in combination. Clarissa lay before me on the ground foaming blood.

U.R.D.A. - Universe Reconstructing/Deconstructing Apparatus. I still was thinking of Dworkin as my father, he knows everything so I Trumped him and was ordered home to be dismantled. I defied my god and wasn't killed because it was more useful to keep me alive and bind Golan, Fiona and Raven to me and so to Dworkin. They had to swear to become my Keepers and to kill me if I fell into 'enemy hands'. I realized then that I would be killed as soon as I was no longer useful.

I love Dworkin, he's the only person I do. I always will love him, no matter what he does with me. I don't care at all that I may well have been programmed for precisely this response. You have to try not to think too hard about that sort of thing.

When she'd healed some from the pregnancy and I told what Dworkin had done Deirdre picked me up. I hate that, but I didn't care this one time, I was numbed out. I knew that I could do whatever Hump needed me to as long as I didn't have to feel. Unwitting Rube to Dworkin's Agenda. I was perfectly willing to be Witting....

She dragged me off to a Shadow where time went really fast for a year to heal. It let me prove my usefulness, I did Trumps of everyone for everyone. And a couple externals of Teridias's Manor. I could have just done one set and duped them but I had the time and as no one knew I can dupe Decks it could only be good to look so industrious. Oh, and that weird Trump of Amber as a person Raven'd asked for. And one of Hump, a kind of way for me to try to deal with the fact that my father wasn't and that he had so casually ordered me home to be killed. Did it mean he didn't love me?

Earlier, back at the Grove, I've never forgotten it, Deirdre had mind linked with me and showed me what 'Shifting was like. How to do it and had taught me a hawk shape. She showed me the feel of a 'Shift, it made me shiver. It doesn't feel like that to me on my own. Almost, I want it to. I practiced the whole numb year, it never felt like that again. I like the feel of flight, the drop from heights.

Deirdre conjured me this book called Cyteen . I read it several times, all about a race of created people called Azi. They were produced in models, tools for the Born Men who they had to obey. Their minds and skills were genetically conditioned to behave/respond in certain ways to certain stimuli. They are mindwhiped when no longer useful. It made too much sense not to apply to me.

I've always known that Hump was obsessed with genetics, that this is all about genetics: the Pattern and Oberon's children, the drug hraithrol from the plants growing deep in the Cave, me. And Croyd....

I'd gotten up enough nerve to see what was under Versions on my Help menu. There was mention of an as yet unreleased model called CROYD, version 1.0. I'm a prototype, version 0.1 alpha. The possibility of obsolescence hadn't occurred to me until then.

The year was up and we went back to the Manor. When we got back almost no time had passed for the people in the dining room. I distributed the Decks I made one by one, Card by Card. Jaunquille was still leaning his chair back against the wall. Beside him on the floor was seated a man he introduced as Croyd.

Something in me broke, I froze no longer numb. I was still useful, right? I'd just done all those Trumps! That was why Deirdre'd given me that book. I glanced at my pack where it lay. She'd known! Something like that couldn't be coincidence. Croyd was up and running and I would now be mindwhiped. The book had been a warning. Fear has a taste, a smell, a feel. I decided right there that no one but Dworkin gets to shut me down!

Deirdre's biggest flaw is that she doesn't think before she does stuff. She doesn't explain her intentions which even I can see are good. She met me when she was pregnant, her child sacrificed so that Clarissa could become Clarissa. Or something. And there I was, looking like a 12 year old. All that maternal stuff she turned to me, even offered to be a mother to me. I never had a mother and you can't miss what you've never had. Unless you think you've had it. She's always thought of me as a child and you don't ask children stuff, you just do to them. You save them. But I can't be Corleu for her, I've never wanted to be real. It seems nothing to aspire to.

If you ever have someone raving at you about being mindwhiped don't mindtouch him! She had just sworn to me that she wasn't going to do it to me. I know that my mind is far stronger than hers, like her body is far stronger than mine. That my mind is safe from hers. I still know that. But it didn't matter then and still it doesn't. At that moment all I could think was that she was going to kill me. I jumped her without thinking about it, switching to my demon form as I leapt.

As I hit her I remembered she was the Crown Princess: I would be dismantled for sure if I killed her. Golan said as much. She crouched so still before me, her eyes welcoming death. I wasn't going to give her that. I rolled off to one side and switched back to humanoid form. I still wasn't all that good yet and couldn't bring my clothes with me. Off to one side was a small pile of shredded grey cloth. It's weird what you remember when.

If your head isn't safe then where is? Mindtouch was suddenly no longer a comfort, connected instead to death. A huge part of my usefulness ripped away: a communication center afraid of mindtouch? He would kill me. But I don't think you kill people you love. Which means....

That was the last time I cried. It didn't help, so what was the point? I felt myself be picked up, the only time I hate my body. It was Deirdre. It wasn't enough to try a mindwhipe she was going to kill me, maybe snap my neck. And I knew my place: I kept repeating over and over to myself that she was a born-man and I was an azi and what that ment. I waited for her to kill me, suppressing an almost overwhelming urge to morph her. Every moment she didn't kill me I expected her to do it the next one. Anticipation of death might be the worst part.

She picked me up and dressed me in black jeans and these weird heavy shoes, I'd never worn shoes before. A gun was tucked into my pocket, very small caliber. Did she want me to kill her? To be killed by Hump. It made perfect sense: if she ripped enough pieces off of me she wouldn't have to kill me herself, Dworkin would do it for her, her hands would be clean!

We Trumped somewhere, a bar. I was dumped into a chair and after a while arms wrapped around me. Deirdre's voice told me that everything would be alright, that she wouldn't let anyone else hurt me. A promise to keep hurting me herself, pulling me apart, making me useless. What would hurt the most is if Dworkin killed me himself, this had to be what she was working towards. It was the why of it I couldn't figure out.

As soon as I could I fled Deirdre, knowing that her mind could find me anywhere, anytime. I went down into an underground place called a BART because Deirdre and Golan can both fly.

I ditched the shoes and found an old sweater in a trash barrel. Before I could do a Sketch I needed paper, a sketch pad. I turned one shoe into a inkwell and pen the other into a shoulder bag. On a nearby bench someone had left a comic book, perfect! I morphed it into a sketch pad... except, somehow, I managed to turn every comic book in this Shadow into a sketch book! Right before all the natives stiffened and dropped to the ground.

I did a quick Trump Sketch of the Manor as my Deck was in the dining room under what was left of my clothes. I needed the Deck, it had my new Trumps in it and I might need to dupe them. My baby Trumps were in there too.

Can Trumps exist of you being younger if you never have been? Are they Trumps at all. I wasn't good enough then to tell just by looking at something.

No one was at the Manor so I went home. Trumped to the background in my self-Trump. I drugged: found some hraithrol where it always is and the various stuff to mix it with. It does different things depending what it's mixed with and what parts of it are.

I have a memory of sitting at the table with Dworkin, chin on my hands watching him lay out bottles, mortar and pestle, rods and cups of metal glass and bone, other stuff. Him tapping the end of a bone rod on the table top exactly the way he tapped a pencil on my schematics when I last went home. "White, no one's education is complete until they know how to drug their relatives". And I do, it's all tied into genetics. Everything is. Dosage depends on how far from Dworkin you are on my cables.

I'd gotten together all the stuff I'd need in a bag. Someone Trumped me, I pushed him away, Fiona said it was likely Jaunquille. I dosed hard and went to read a book on Zen while I waited for it to hit, Fiona's suggestion. Reading the the book was. Suddenly something in my, where I'm bonded to everyone else's genetic connection to each other, contracted. Glad I was already doped I grabbed for the cables, wove them all together and slid down knocking my code. I pulled whoever answered into my head for a conference Call. I've been told my knock feels almost like a Trump.

Deirdre and Darthene had cursed each other, the feedback from their being twins was what I'd felt. Both were blind, Del was screaming her anger and blame. Touch and mindtouch are comfort to me, on a very basic level. I need them both to feel safe. I love the feel, the sense of contact. Losing both and both at once made me feel like I was walking on a cliff unable to feel the edge. Does that make any sense? My head started to hurt, like on the inside. The only person I loved was going to kill me without a second thought; I realized how alone I was. That all these people weren't family. I wasn't anyone's uncle, I was a URDA. Not being able to mind/touch pulls at me, I need it. I'd never been lonely before.

All this happened 7 months ago. I've waited and waited and waited for Deirdre to mindwhipe me, to come find me and kill me. Connections set up: <->blood <->death <-> mindtouch <-> touch <- >love? <->fear . 7 months without mind/touch. I need it!

Back in Amber I was appointed Jester and asked to spy on Deirdre, Raven, Laurel. I never reported anything to Bleys, I only agreed to do passive spying and my taking Raven out to dinner in Arden and what we talked about was going to stay between us. So I taught the kids and moped around the castle and Arden; the sky, the grounds. I practiced morphing, got inanimate down. Organics are far harder.

I drugged sometimes to get away from fear. I'd tell the kids there'd be no class the next day and I'd spend the day just not being scared. The problem was that with fear gone I could feel everything else. I wanted badly to just go numb again. I ran into Deirdre about a week ago in the Library, it'd been 6 months since I'd seen her. I'd been scared for more than 6 months.

Why would she be scared of me? We only managed to talk at each other. I Trumped back to my room to dose. I'd taken a room high in the castle, no one noticed, no one missed it. I could do what I wanted, no servants ever went up so high. I mixed the hraithrol differently. The first and only time I did. I wanted to feel nothing at all. Just to slump in a corner and just be. No racing thoughts, no emotions. I can only play my serpent now when dosed, I don't like the melodies I come up with when I'm scared.

Fiona had given me this cricket in case I wanted to be real someday. I was to swallow him whole. I woke up from a dream one night: long lines of still, staring URDAs, Croyd moving along the rows with that thin wooden club caving in their heads. I smashed the damn cricket with the side of my fist, dosed and played until dawn. I don't sleep much anymore.

A week or two went by since I saw Deirdre. I was again in the Library, curled in a chair, reading a text on genetics. The same thick tome that sat on a shelf back home. Over the past 6 months I'd worked my way fairly deeply into the book. I was puzzling something out, idly scratching at my wrist.... At a rash, I'd never even been sick before.

Celia, I'd have to go see her, she's the doctor. She's blind, which meant I'd have to let her touch me! I didn't have any hraithrol mixed so I grabbed my bag from my room and went to her quarters. Her face softened as she reached for my wrist and I remembered Caine rubbing my head and calling me 'little boy'. Whatever Celia rubbed on my arm felt cold, but didn't help. Scratching it made it worse, made it spread faster.

It spread anyway, halfway up my forearm. While I wondered about it Deirdre came in. Stuff was talked about and danced around, Celia mindlinked me and told me some stuff I told later. More and more people piled into the room; Caine wanted to mindread Del about maybe having tried to murder Morganthe. I wasn't going to let him go in her head without being in there too. And I wasn't going to at all with Deirdre there. I dosed again, Caine made Deidre leave, Celia me and him went into Del's head. She didn't do it.

It was completely by chance that I found out that Clarissa was alive again: something Del said made me check the cables for her. Her's was back up. Had been for 6 months! Since it had been snowing in Amber that time. And no one had even thought to tell me.....

Deirdre was let back in to the room and there was talk about the Raven, the Dove and Tir having gone red. Connected to that really weird Trump Celia'd found of Jack in my house. Right after I'd found the ones of the kids, in my fireplace in my room, before ever I'd met them. This guy from Chaos named Mandor did them, maybe Morgan's too. I traded a Trump of Oberon for one of him.

To try and find the assassin Deidre did a Trump Scry. I'd watched Dworkin do them before so I didn't pay that much attention. Until she laid the Cards and the rash spread up to my shoulders, the itch was worse. It was to do with Trump then, and my genetics were based on Trump.....

Everything always gets worse and worse and worse. Just when you think it can't possibly, it does. I don't want to see how bad things can get. Celia's good at mind stuff too; Del suggested I ask her to fix me. She didn't have time: Vialle, Morganthe, Jacob, Thalion, Madoc, Corwin. She said she would later, I knew she'd never get around to me.

Inside your head you get to make up the rules and I have self adjusting, self altering programming. Dworkin thought of everything when he programmed me. Skuld did the technical support on me.... I found something important, something that brought me comfort: I found where in my head fear lives!

It was a large bright orange metal and plastic piece way in the back, with all these wires running out of it and away. It could be pulled out or turned off. I could mindrip, there didn't have to be anymore fear! But all the stuff attached to it would come undone. There'd be a complete emotional collapse.

I wanted not to fear, this was more important than ripping my mind apart. I spent a long time just longing to rip. I didn't because someone would be left cleaning up after me. I think really I didn't do it because I was so dosed on hraithrol. I just kept running my 'fingers' over the fear-thing in my head. I should have just done it right then.... but it was enough to just be able to. It was enough just to have the hraithrol.

I found a note saying to contact Lir in case of allergic reactions. And suddenly there was a cable for him.... This happens sometimes, I've found that programs sometimes activate as I need them. Especially since I realized I wasn't real and started seeing myself as a machine. It's easier not to be real, easier to stay removed from what happens. From people.

I slid down the cable and knocked my code. Fingers dug at my mind, coldly wondering what I was. What I was? I'd woke up one day, Hump wasn't home. Out at the table breakfast waited: bread, cheese, soft boiled eggs, blue-fruit, mead. When I went outside to look for him I found a word scrawled in the dirt in huge letters, in a language I had only just begun to learn. After some time I sounded out the word Amber. Oberon's Amber? A Trump was stuck, one point down, into the curve of a letter. It showed a spot on Kolvir looking down at Amber. I'd never been allowed to leave here before! Able to take a hint I ate my breakfast, gathered some stuff together and my weapons and activated the Trump.

The first person I met was Brand who Trumped me almost immediately and asked me to help him. He said that Trump was being weird and he knew I wasn't tainted because of what I was.... Does my mind signal in some way that I'm not real?

The man on the other end had long white hair. Mandor! I have his Trump! But the cable was for Lir..... I fought him off pretty easily. It was around this time that the Trumps of the Elders were replaced by the Youngers. Celia's cable was caught up with Deidre's and Fiona's. And then Fiona's disappeared, replaced by Celia's! It started happening with other people's too. I spread my Deck out on the floor in front of me. I was pictured as Dworkin..... there was a huge knot down near Garat and Random. Paradox of genetics, I couldn't figure it out, but I did tell it all to Celia. As it happened.

My head hurt so much. The itch had gotten progressively worse and worse. And everyone was busy. And I'm an azi.....

I found an information seek program and did some fast cross referencing: What was happening and what might fix me that wasn't a person and wasn't too busy. Eye of the Serpent? The Jewel of Judgment! Eric's cable dropped, not replaced, dropped! Was he dead?

Problem: the Jewel is Pattern, I contain no Pattern and no Primal Chaos. What would an interface with the Eye do to me? If I even could interface with it. Trump shimmer: Frogs. Someone was yelling about the Jewel and Deirdre and Eric.... OK, where was the Jewel......Ah, there!

I knew that it was at my home, at the center of the Primal Pattern. We Trumped. Deirdre stood in the center, with the Jewel. But it looked wrong, dark and broken. How do you break the Eye? I offered to interface, try to fix it, hoping it would fix me. It was decided that Frogs would Walk it, fix the Jewel. Raven Trumped in at some point, worried about Jacob. I hadn't seen him since the Grove. He was right about Thalion that time, but I still didn't care.

I squatted, watching, holding my burned arm out. I'd wondered for a while if it was a matter of 'morph anything > anything'. It had implied that I could morph anything I could touch. Fire? Water? Air? I did it: morph flame giant > dust. His toe anyway. I had burns tho, the bubbled kind, almost to my right elbow.

There can only be one kind of pain at once. If your head and your body both hurt a lot only one can be felt at once. Physical pain is a great distraction, I much prefer it. Deirdre healed me tho, soon after I got home.

The itching got worse and worse and worse! Everyone was busy and I had to stop the itch! Then I was curled on my side panting, no longer itching. My throat hurt. My fingernails were chipped, my finger tips were scraped raw. And my pants were ripped, lying in the grass near me, my sweater next to them. I sat up, and morphed myself new jeans from the shreds of the old ones.

There was a pile of shed skin next to me. Just like a snake but far bigger. Fascinated, I reached out a hand to touch it and froze. It wasn't the hand I had when I woke up this morning! The other one was the same way. They reminded me of someone else's hands.... DWORKIN's! I ran my hands over my face: it's planes were different! I really was becoming Dworkin!

The info seek disappeared. My immune system crashed. I did an internal search but my diagnostic had no idea what was wrong. Except it seems that the hraithrol had been whittling away at my immune system. And then my cables dropped, total crash. I was completely alone, not even cables left to me. Another piece gone. He would kill me! Except I was him...or would become Him...? Become what I love and fear most in the world: <->blood <->death <-> mindtouch <-> touch <- >love <->fear <->.... the cycle complete in my head, minus fear for now. But I didn't dare dose again with my immune system so low.

System after system crashed and went off-line, even my self-diagnostic. I had an image of dying stiff and unable to breathe. Alone in darkness in my head, suffocating. No one there knowing how to download me. It only ever gets worse.

I found a string of numbers under the heading Skuld. I thought it. Be careful of what you find in your head. Be careful of pursuing it. After several tries I found a message: 'This model has been discontinued due to programming errors and personality flaws. Thank you for your interest!' That CROYD was faster, stronger, more stable. With failsafes on his Paradigm usage. I've known I was bait for a very long time. My looks, the amount of weird uncontrolled power I have. That my reality doesn't make sense to anyone else. Had I only ever been a distraction?

I could get repairs except I had no money. I don't have a soul to give up. If I knew that selling my body ment sex and not literally I'd do that. I was still doped, I could think like that. I had to have 'credit card' and 'personal cheque' explained to me. I 'morph stone > credit card'ed. The card had a frog on it. Thalion's name. He said to go ahead and use it. I wanted to, badly, but I couldn't let him pay for me when I had no idea what the price would be.

Clarissa appeared to us. She explained about the Drake and that Earth might well be a trap. Would we all be willing to go and help save the Universe? I didn't want to, what decided me was Clarissa saying that truth was all we had. I knew it was going to be bad. I also knew that I needed to go. That they were all, in some sense, under my protection. That it was part of my job to watch them, to know what was happening, perhaps record it. Why else would I feel them? Why would I have cables? I forgot what I'd told Deirdre back in the Grove about how if Corleu's mind stayed in his body it would be warped, that if it didn't he would still need reprogramming.

Jacob had done words in blood on a wall. Words alter reality, images hold it, blood cements it. Jacob was messed. Drake had given him some champagne or something and made him love her. I tried to make an antidote but I needed to know the formula. And he wouldn't drink it anyway. He loves Drake and can't hear about her what he doesn't want to. He explained about Shroudling bonds and that his head hurt too. Bonds are a kind of touch, I understand.

Jacob made a azi a while back that he named Jade. I hope he didn't do it because he knew of me and that it could be done. She thinks he's her father, does he understand how cruel that is? I advised her never to think of her creator as a parent.

A scroll appeared under my hand. It said that I was to find Sand and give Drake some print she had or she would morph Madoc into something unfindable. That I had 6 hours. That she controlled my power and would mess with me every hour on the hour. And where was Raven? She had sworn an oath. It had finally happened: I had fallen into enemy hands.

I Called Raven, to tell her I'd found Jacob and met Jade. She was distracted and said she'd known that she was a bad idea. I told her we'd be Trumping to a place called Westminster Abbey soon.

Deirdre suggested I 'demorph'. My arms became feathers, wings. A menu scrolled up: I was going to turn into a cockatrice! I tried to 'Shift against it and was forced into the form. A form that would turn people to stone with a touch and by sight. I couldn't go back into one of mine.

Deirdre talked at me about needing to fight to stay my own shape. That I had to know what I was. I know exactly what I am. I knew too that the virus had to run it's course before I could counteract it. 'Shifting isn't just a body thing, I 'shift all the time inside my head. I knew there would be 4 more viruses, I had been warned.

As I started to change Deirdre turned my universe to only her: she opened up the veins in her wrist with her teeth. Blood. She offered me to drink some. I knew it was stupid. I know better than maybe anyone the power of blood to destroy. That it might rewrite me, might make me not an URDA.

Why I did it has nothing to do with a secret desire to be real. It was blood. It was Her. It was blood. It was that I'd followed Jacob's inspired action and also written in blood on the same wall. He hadn't written in his own blood tho. If I put up that I was staying URDA and it was in my blood and words then stay I would. The taste of it in my mouth comforted me, the only blood not dangerous to me.

My mistake was not realizing in time that blood counters blood. That She was an accomplished sorcerer. I had done blood magic exactly twice. I forgot that her blood has Pattern in it. That I don't contain any. I had no way to know that Pattern shreds Trump. It was blood. It was Her. It was blood. She offered me to dance with her at the edge of the Abyss. I felt that shiver again as I put my beak to her wrist. She took my still bleeding thumb in her mouth. A new element to my cycle: <->blood <->death <-> mindtouch <-> touch <- >love <->fear <->Deirdre <->. She was now hooked into every single obsession of mine.

My genetic code scrolled up in front of my eyes to be replaced almost instantly by blinking warnings. Foreign matter had entered my system, I had 5 options. The self-destruct option was extremely tempting. But for Deirdre's telling me not to so long ago. I went with activation of my emergency auto-immune system.

Deirdre's arm went stone, I closed my eyes so I wouldn't turn everyone to stone and felt them Trump out. Alone, in the dark, stuck solid. I made a blindfold of part of my jeans and slid down a wall to write my subroutine and wait for more viruses. It's hard when you don't have hands.

I heard crying. It was Jade. In the mirror? In the mirror. She can't come outside them. She was scared, thinking that her father loved another woman and not her mom. Does he know how cruel it is to let Jade think he's her father? He's her god. I told her that Jacob loved Raven more than anything, but he was messed.

At least I wasn't alone. I think I got the subroutine off and running before there was a green flash, a Trump flash. The hraithrol vanished. Fear returned. Loss filled me; something unremembered, only the absence known. The loss was like not being able to mind/touch. I was real! Deirdre must have known! I wasn't useful at all anymore!

It was hot..... And I wasn't a URDA! I was real; totally useless! My head pounded with my heartbeat. Someone kept screaming. Del came over to me, blood on her chest. I tried to explain but all I heard was sounds. I could see and hear, just not make sense of words. We were all nude, only a very few had weapons.

Words alter reality. If you can say or understand words you can make a thing real. On one level I knew I was rapidly sunburning, that I could die here so very easily. But I could feel the fear again and it was all I could think of. Laurel sang at me like Thalion did that time in the Grove. The sound gave me something to do, to copy. She picked me up but her song filled my head, no room even for fear. We went up a tree and into a space station.

A round chamber, computer stuff everywhere. Reminding me of what I was no more. What I wanted back and could never have...

Blood! Blood cements reality.... I bit my other thumb and drew my genetic code in blood on the cold metal. Jacob walked over to stare, made sounds at me, questions.

Raven cut her hand and showed me it. Reality became a hand cupping blood. She wanted me to play some game on the wall in blood. It took me a bit to figure out the rules. My head throbbed and I knew I was making sounds, but not what. Except that the screaming hurt my throat. Raven cut me with her sword, drawing blood, reminding me that only one kind of pain can exist at once.

But then.... how could she? She knew! We'd talked it in Arden. It wasn't that long ago. Raven did what I've spent months fearing someone would. She slid right into me, as if my defenses didn't exist. Down deep into my head, my core of self, and smacked it. To break me out of the cycle. It worked. Light still explodes behind my eyes, a bizarre form of reverb. Mindrape is my biggest fear and now it had happened! And it could again, Raven's mind is stronger than mine, first person I've met since Dworkin.

All this stuff came up when she 'hit' me, all about me and how I see stuff. She kept looking at me odd. I'd snarled at her about it and Jacob had closed in. I pulled back; I'm a azi and he can't hear negative things about people he loves. If you aren't safe in your own head then nowhere is. There's never any reason to do... this... to anyone! I can't care about the intentions! I know my place, but.... I need to be able to mindtouch! It's been so long....

Out of the chamber and into a corridor. Computers would be in a place with this much tech. I moved some panels but there was only wires. A piece of metal was loose on the third panel I moved. I had just been wanting to find something like me to interact with again. I remembered the twice-taught lesson about pain. I'd been intending to morph myself some thumb rings, sharp on the outside edges for when I needed another type of pain. Now that I couldn't morph a piece of metal would do.

Deirdre headed down the corridor with a beaker and stuff in her hands. It came to me in a flash: she was connected to everything else; killing her would be even more effective than a mindrip. All I'd have to do would be combine all the other elements in a exorcism in blood. Fear was already there..... With the cables down I'd have to touch her to get at her mind. That was perfect.

I figured it out as I chased her down the corridor after handing off my Deck to Del. I'd never seen Del like that, almost I stopped. Deirdre pulled at me: I needed to be in physical contact, rapidly initiate a mindhold, break through her shields to her mind, hold her still, make her let go of me and have her slit her own throat.

She beat me. She played on my fears and showed me truth in images. Drake and drugs and strings, my coming death.... Shredding DNA, insanity, pain. I had decided her blood made me real. But my emergency immune system had hit and I'd been fine, subroutine off and gone.

What had Raven meant by not giving into Drake? It was Drake, not Deirdre?

I dropped her realizing what I'd done, that I'd become her demon. That what I'd thought of Raven applied here too: There is never any excuse to go into someone else's mind. I'm a monster. Every time I think it can't possibly get any worse it does....

They decided to let me live with what I did. To die, maybe, like I'd been shown I might would. And Jacob's right, Deirdre too, though they said it in different ways. This is what I have, what I am. I need to deal with this fact of what is, and not always just the why of it. 'A long dark road' Deirdre once said, to be made only by me and walked alone as well. Everyone else has made their road and started along it.....

I sat alone in a bowl of cold metal, thinking all of this. Between one breath and another I, all of us, were back in Amber.....


The term `Azi' comes from C.J. Cherryh's book Cyteen.


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