He was distracted, and was grateful for it, by Nandi Paradivash lowering himself carefully down beside him. "I see you are awake." He spoke far more slowly than Paul remembered from their first meeting. In fact, this Nandi seemed quite different from the mercurial character with whom he had sailed through Xanadu—hard and dry, as though some crucial petrifaction had occurred. "I am glad to see you again, Paul Jonas."
"And I'm glad to see you. I never got the chance to thank you for saving me."
"From the Khan's men?" Nandi showed him the phantom of a smile. "They actually caught me, but I escaped. It is much like an adventure game, this life, eh? But all too dangerous, both to the body and the soul."
"Nothing around you is true, but the things you see can hurt you or kill you," Paul quoted. "That was the message I was given—I think I told you. And you did save me, in the most important way. You told me what was really going on. Then I didn't have to be afraid I was losing my mind."
Nandi slowly eased himself into a lotus position, being careful with his burned legs. The scarred flesh brought back Paul's own last hours in the temple so strongly that for a moment he thought he might be sick.
Nandi did not seem to notice: his eyes were on the riverbank. "God will protect us from evil men. They will live to see their works cast down." He turned to Paul. "And their works have been cast down, haven't they? I have been told of what happened to the Grail Brotherhood's ceremony of immortality."
"Yes. But somehow it still doesn't feel like we're winning."
After they had sat in silence for a little while, Paul suddenly said, "You know, you were right. About the Pankies."
Nandi frowned. "Who?"
"That English couple. The man and woman who were with me when you and I first met. You told me they weren't what they seemed." He related the strange happenings in the catacombs beneath Venice, when for a moment the Twins and the Pankies had confronted each other as though looking into a mirror, and how Sefton and Undine Pankie had turned away and vanished. "But that still doesn't explain them," he said.
"Early versions, perhaps," Nandi offered. "A release that was superseded by a later, improved product. But someone forgot to delete the original version."
"But there have been others, too," Paul said, remembering Kunohara's world. "I met a pair who were insects, but they didn't care about me either. They were obsessed with something they called the Little Queen," A memory prickled him. "And the Pankies were looking for their imaginary daughter."
"A common thread in both versions, no doubt," Nandi said. "Martine told me you know the originals."
Paul was taken aback at the thought that people were discussing his ugly secrets, his imperfectly remembered life—it was his life, after all, wasn't it?
But it's everyone's mystery, he reminded himself. Everyone here is in terrible danger.
"Yes, I suppose I do, but I don't remember everything even now." It was there again, a shadow at the edge of his thoughts, a dim perception of something he did not want to know better. "But why should there be different versions doing different things? Why are some of them after me, hunting me, and others don't care?" Again the Venetian catacombs loomed in his memory, the mirrored pairs facing each other as he and poor Gally and the woman Eleanora watched.
"Perhaps they're simply programmed differently." Nandi didn't seem to see much purpose in speculating, but Paul was trying to remember something else, something Eleanora had told him, or showed him. . . .
"My God," he said suddenly, "they are just copies." He sat up straight, ignoring the sharp pain across the ribs. "Eleanora—she was a real woman who lived in the Venetian simworld—she showed me her boyfriend, this Mafia fellow who had built the world for her in the first place. He was dead, but the Grail people had made a copy of him while he was still alive. I think it was an early version of the Grail process. He was real—he could answer questions—but he was also kind of an information loop, kept forgetting what had been asked, said the same things over and over. What if the Pankies and the other versions of the Twins are like that?"
"You are bleeding," Nandi said quietly.
Paul looked down. His sudden movement had opened the shallow cuts on his chest; blood was running freely, soaking through the dirty jumpsuit.
"Jonas, what are you doing?" Florimel was striding toward him. "Martine, he's bleeding again."
"She can't hear you," Nandi said. "She's at the bow of the ship."
"Help me get him cleaned up."
"I'm all right, really." But Paul did not resist as Florimel opened the front of his jumpsuit and began cursingly to fumble at the sopping strips of cloth Martine had applied.
"T4b?" she called. "Where are you? Find me something I can use to make more bandages. T4b?" There was no answer. "Damn it, Javier, where are you?"
"Javier?" asked Nandi as he helped Florimel peel Paul's jumpsuit down to his waist.
Paul was irritated—they weren't life-threatening wounds, and the idea now blazing in his head felt important. Many copies, some less perfect than others. . . .
I am a broken mirror, she had told him. A broken mirror. . . .
"You took your time, Javier," Florimel said as the boy finally approached. "Did you find some cloth?"
"Isn't any." He darted a glance at Nandi as though more fearful of him than of Florimel's anger.
"Javier . . . Javier Rogers?" Nandi asked.
"No!" said T4b harshly, then stiffened and looked down at his feet. "Yeah."
"You know each other?" Florimel looked from one to the other.
"We should," said Nandi. "It is because of the Circle that Javier is here."
Florimel turned on the youth. "Is that true?"
"Oh, fenfen," he said miserably.
The way they were all gathered around the boy, Paul thought, it was hard not to think of an inquisition. But T4b, his face damp with sweat and teenage embarrassment, did not make a very convincing martyr.
"What else have you lied to us about?" Florimel demanded.
"Didn't lie about nothing, me." T4b scowled. "Ain't duppie. Just didn't tell you, seen?"
"You don't need to justify your faith, honey," Bonnie Mae assured him.
"He kept no dangerous secrets from you," said Nandi. "We recruited many like him, promising young men and women of belief. We gave them information, some education, and we gave them equipment. This is a war we are fighting, after all, as you people should know better than anyone. Were you not recruited yourselves by someone whose motives are far less openly stated than ours?"
"Are you working for Kunohara as well?" Florimel asked T4b. Paul thought she seemed unusually upset. "Was Martine right about that too?"
"No! Don't got nothing to do with that Kuno-whatsit, me." He looked like he was about to cry. "And I never did nothing wrong to you either. Just didn't tell you . . . about the Circle."
Paul looked at Martine, but she seemed to be listening with only part of her attention. "What did you mean when you said 'men and women of belief?" he asked Nandi.
"We are a group bound together by our belief in a power greater than mere humanity," Nandi said. "I made no secret of that when you and I met."
"But Javier. . . ?"
The boy looked sullen when he realized everyone was looking at him once more. "I'm born again, me. Jesus saved me."
"There you go," said Bonnie Mae. "Don't be ashamed of the path you've chosen. 'Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness,' as Jesus said on the mountain, 'for they shall be filled.' Nothing wrong with a hunger for righteousness." She turned to the others. "This boy has found his way through Christ. Does that offend you? What about me, then? Is there something wrong with loving God?"