An uncertain look crossed Red Katrin’s face. "I’ve downloaded them both," she said hesitantly, "and I’m not certain that the Dark and Fair Katrins are quite the same person. Or ever were."
Not the same-of course he knew that. Fair Katrin was not a perfect copy of her older sib-she had flaws, clear enough. She had been damaged, somehow. But the flaws could be worked on, the damage repaired. Conquered. There was infinite time. He would see it done.
Question "And how do your sibs differ, then?" he asked. "Other than obvious differences in condition and profession?"
She drew her legs up and rested her chin on her knees. Her green eyes were pensive. "Matters of love," she said, "and happiness."
And further she would not say.
Davout took Fair Katrin to Tangier for the afternoon and walked with her up on the old palace walls. Below them, white in the sun, the curved mole built by Charles II cleaved the Middle Sea, a thin crescent moon laid upon the perfect shimmering azure. (Home! home!, the waters cried.) The sea breeze lashed her blonde hair across her face, snapped little sonic booms from the sleeves of his shirt.
"I have sampled some of the Silent One’s downloads," Davout said. "I wished to discover the nature of this artificial tranquility with which he has endowed himself."
Fair Katrin’s lips twisted in distaste, and her fingers formed a scatologue.
"It was… interesting," Davout said. "There was a strange, uncomplicated quality of bliss to it. I remember experiencing the download of a master sitting zazen once, and it was an experience of a similar cast."
"It may have been the exact same sensation." Sourly. "He may have just copied the Zen master’s experience and slotted it into his brain. That’s how most of the vampires do it-award themselves the joy they haven’t earned."
"That’s a Calvinistic point of view," Davout offered. "That happiness can’t just happen, that it has to be earned."
She frowned out at the sea. "There is a difference between real experience and artificial or recapitulative experience. If that’s Calvinist, so be it."
Yes Davout signed. "Call me a Calvinist sympathizer, then. I have been enough places, done enough things, so that it matters to me that I was actually there and not living out some programmed dream of life on other worlds. I’ve experienced my sibs’ downloads-lived significant parts of their lives, moment by moment-but it is not the same as my life, as being me. I am," he said, leaning elbows on the palace wall, "I am myself, I am the sum of everything that happened to me, I stand on this wall, I am watching this sea, I am watching it with you, and no one else has had this experience, nor ever shall, it is ours, it belongs to us…"
She looked up at him, straw-hair flying over an unreadable expression. "Davout the Conqueror," she said.
No he signed. "I did not conquer alone."
She nodded, holding his eyes for a long moment. "Yes," she said. "I know."
He took Katrin the Fair in his arms and kissed her. There was a moment’s stiff surprise, and then she began to laugh, helpless peals bursting against his lips. He held her for a moment, too surprised to react, and then she broke free. She reeled along the wall, leaning for support against the old stones. Davout followed, babbling, "I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-"
She leaned back against the wall. Words burst half-hysterical from her lips, in between bursts of desperate, unamused laughter. "So that’s what you were after! My God! As if I hadn’t had enough of you all after all these years!"
"I apologize," Davout said. "Let’s forget this happened. I’ll take you home."
She looked up at him, the laughter gone, blazing anger in its place. "The Silent One and I would have been all right if it hadn’t been for you-for our sibs!" She flung her words like daggers, her voice breaking with passion. "You lot were the eldest, you’d already parceled out the world between you. You were only interested in psychology because my damned Red sib and your Old one wanted insight into the characters in their histories, and because you and your dark bitch wanted a theory of the psyche to aid you in building communities on other worlds. We only got created because you were too damned lazy to do your own research!"
Davout stood, stunned. No he signed, "That’s not-"
"We were third," she cried. "We were born in third place. We got the jobs you wanted least, and while you older sibs were winning fame and glory, we were stuck in work that didn’t suit, that you’d cast off, awarded to us as if we were charity cases-" She stepped closer, and Davout was amazed to find a white-knuckled fist being shaken in his face. "My husband was called The Silent because his sibs had already used up all the words! He was third-rate and knew it! It destroyed him! Now he’s plugging artificial satisfaction into his head because it’s the only way he’ll ever feel it."
"If you didn’t like your life," Davout said, "you could have changed it. People start over all the time-we’d have helped." He reached toward her. "I can help you to the stars, if that’s what you want."
She backed away. "The only help we ever needed was to get rid of you!" A mudra, har-de-har-har, echoed the sarcastic laughter on Fair Katrin’s lips. "And now there’s another gap in your life, and you want me to fill it-not this time."
Never her fingers echoed. Never. The laughter bubbled from her throat again.
She fled, leaving him alone and dazed on the palace wall, as the booming wind mocked his feeble protests.
"I am truly sorry," Red Katrin said. She leaned close to him on the porch swing, touched soft lips to his cheek. "Even though she edited her downloads, I could tell she resented us-but I truly did not know how she would react."
Davout was frantic. He could feel Katrin slipping farther and farther away, as if she were on the edge of a precipice and her handholds were crumbling away beneath her clawed fingers.
"Is what she said true?" he asked. "Have we been slighting them all these years? Using them, as she claims?"
"Perhaps she had some justification once," Red Katrin said. "I do not remember anything of the sort when we were young, when I was uploading Fair Katrin almost every day. But now…" Her expression grew severe. "These are mature people, not without resources or intelligence-I can’t help but think that surely after a person is a century old, any problems that remain are her fault."
As he rocked on the porch swing he could feel a wildness rising in him. My God, he thought, I am going to be alone.
His brief days of hope were gone. He stared out at the bay-the choppy water was too rough for any but the most dedicated water-skaters-and felt the pain pressing on his brain, like the two thumbs of a practiced sadist digging into the back of his skull.
"I wonder," he said. "Have you given any further thought to uploading my memories?"
She looked at him curiously. "It’s scarcely time yet."
"I feel a need to share… some things."
"Old Davout has uploaded them. You could speak to him."
This perfectly intelligent suggestion only made him clench his teeth. He needed sense made of things, he needed things put in order, and that was not the job of his sib. Old Davout would only confirm what he already knew.
"I’ll talk to him, then," he said.
And then never did.
The pain was worst at night. It wasn’t the sleeping alone, or merely Katrin’s absence: it was the knowledge that she would always be absent, that the empty space next to him would be there forever. It was then that the horror fully struck him, and he would lie awake for hours, eyes staring into the terrible void that wrapped him in its dark cloak, while fits of trembling sped through his limbs.