Halo

and into a pool of icy water.

"Shit," she said, now soaked completely through, and crawled

out of the shallow pool onto the dry rock surrounding it.  In very

dim light she saw two pedestals with the figure of a bison atop

each, carved in bas-relief out of wet clay.

She looked up to see a figure emerge out of darkness at the

cave's other end.  He was at least eight feet tall, with antlered

head and a face made of light; the water seemed to dance around

him.  They stood facing each other, and she felt herself go weak

at the giant magical presence.

He said, "I'm waiting."

"For what?"

"For you to choose."

"Choose what?  What kind of test is this?"

"Not a test, just a fork in reality, where you will turn down

one road or another."

"Where do the roads go?"

"No one knows.  Each road is itself a product of the choices

you make while on it.  One choice leads to another, one choice

excludes another; one pattern of choices excludes an infinity of

patterns."

"I don't like such choices.  I don't want to exclude

infinity."

"Too bad."  The figure raised a stone knife; the dim light

glinted on its myriad chipped faces.  "You choose, I cut.  You

choose the right hand, I cut off the left; you choose the left, I

cut off the right."

"No!"

"Oh yes, and then your hands grow backboth left or both

right, the product of your choice.  And one choice leads to

another, so you choose again."

Lizzie found herself weeping.

He said, "Choose:  reach out a hand."

She looked at her hands, both precious, thought of all the

richness that would be lost with either one.  Then, puzzled, still

weeping, she asked, "Which is which?"

He laughed, his voice booming through miles of caverns and

tunnels in the rock, carrying across more than thirty thousand

years of human history; he whirled in a kind of dance, the waters

fountaining up around him, chanted in unknown syllables, then

leapt toward her and grabbed both wrists in his great hands and

said, "You will know in the choosing.  Which will it be?"

"I won't choose."

"Then I will take both hands."

"No!" she yelled out in the moment that she extended a hand,

having chosen, and saw the stone knife fall.

#

Diana stood in the living room of her apartment at Athena

Station.  She stood in two times at onceshe was a young, blind,

woman; she was an older, sighted one.

The sighted woman looked around; she had never seen this

place other than in holos, and she felt the touch of a peculiar

emotion for which she had no name:  the return of the almost-

familiar.  The blind woman was unmovedshe carried the apartment

in her head as a complex map of relations and movements, and the

visual patterns this other self saw had no relevance for her.

She put her hands on the touch-sculpture in the center of the

floor, the work of a blind sculptor named Dernier, then closed her

eyes and felt its familiar rough texture and odd curves let her

hands trace a form other than the visual.

Behind her Jerry's voice said, "Diana."  She turned to him,

and there he stood as he had more than twenty years agohe was

younger than she'd ever have imagined, and beautiful, and filled

with the same desire as she.

Blind and seeing, young and old, Diana went across the room

to him, but he held up a hand and said, "Stop.  If you come to me

now, then you take up an obligation that you can never put down."

"I can't let you die."

"I have lived long past any reasonable reckoning; I am dead."

"I can't leave you dead."

"Can you stay with me in the unreal worlds, forever?  Until

the city stops turning or its animate spirit dies?  Until one or

the other of us disappears, caught in some freakish storm or

catastrophe?  Until one self or the other or both are dissipated

in time?"

(Something prompted her, then, counselled her, asking in an

unspoken voice, Do you think rationally about such an election

adding and subtracting the credits and debits and settling upon

that which is most to your advantage?  Or do you use some organ of

choice beneath the purview of consciousness and the articulate

self?  Saying, Remember, mind is a make-shift thrown together out

of life's twitching reflexes, and over it consciousness darts to-

and-fro, unfailingly over-estimating its own capabilities and

reach; thinking itself proper arbiter or judge.  Choose as you

wilclass="underline"   what will be, will be.)

And she said, "Yes, I can stay with you."

There was one more question:  Jerry asked, "Why would you do

this?"

All her life's moments funneled into this one.  Her voice

light, final inflection upward, the older, sighted woman said:

"Oh, for love."

"Well, then"

#

Gonzales stood next to her on the endless plain, HeyMex next

to him, then Lizzie.  The Aleph-figure and Jerry hovered above

them, and a voice came from the suspended figures:  "Diana, wake

for a few moments.  Tell everyone to come here who can, and we

will do certain things."

Before she could ask for clarification or question the

voice's intent, she heard herself say these words, then saw

Toshi's face in front of her and heard him ask, "What things?"

Sitting up on her couch, she said, "Save a life, build a world,

redeem an extraordinary self."

"Indeed," Toshi said.

She lay back down and was once again among the unreal worlds.

They gathered on the endless plain, coming in quickly, one-

by-one:  first one twin, then another, then Stumdog, the Deader

(her white hair streaked with red, crying, "Blood party"), Jaani

23, the Judge (huge and hairless, looming over them all), the

Laughing Doctor, J. Jerry Jones, Sweet Betsy, Ambulance Driver, T-

Tootsie  all of the collective who could be spared.

The Aleph-figure and Jerry still hovered, with light storms

bending and breaking around them in crazy patterns of reflection,

refraction, diffraction; phosphorescing and luminescing, dancing

an omniluminal photon jig.

All were there who would be there, so it began.

#

Patterns more complicated and colorful than any Gonzales had

ever seen filled all creation.  Rosette and seahorse and seething

cloud, nebulosities on the brink of determinate form, cardioid

traceries of the heart  the patterns wrapped around him until he

became a fractal tapestry, alive, every element in constant

motion.  He put his hands together, and they disappeared into one

another, then something urged him to keep pushing, and he did so

until he entirely disappeared

And felt the stuff of Jerry's past and present mingling in

him, seemingly at random, from the store of memory and capacity:

throwing a particular ball under a particular blue sky, yes, and

catching it, but also ball-throwing and catching themselves, the

solid presence of muscular exertion coupled to the almost-occult

discriminations required to make an accurate throw or a difficult

catch

As it later became known, each of them received portions of

the vast fluent chaos that manifested "Jerry," dealt to them by

Aleph according to principles even it could not articulate.  What