Jade Nomun looked at Scar Nomun without expression, but his eyes glittered. Pump Nomun released a soft musical sigh, and his fingers tapped idly at the keyboard of his chempump. False Nomun clenched his jaw and made no sound, but sweat filmed his face, despite the coolness of the air. Young Nomun waited with a small smile on his lips.
No one spoke again until the sun was gone and the breathboats had drawn close. The nearest coasted to a stop just fifty meters off the beach. Soft light bathed its decks and lit the sails, transforming them into a cloud of glowing mist against the darkening sky. A pale-haired handsome woman seemed to be the captain; she stood in a pulpit on the foredeck, directing with silent gestures dozens of spidery mechs. When the mechs had feathered the sails to her satisfaction, an anchor splashed ripples into the flawless surface of the sea. The other boats anchored nearby.
Men and women clustered in small groups along the near rail. They wore fashionably eccentric garments and privacy masks. Their languid postures spoke of pleasant expectation. Nomun felt a chill. What did they wait for?
False Nomun’s teeth began to chatter. Suddenly he ran forward into the sea, kicking up a spray in the shallows. «I’m sorry, I meant no harm,» he cried, just before he smashed into an invisible barrier. A spot of violent yellow light flared at the contact point, a tone almost too low to be heard throbbed out, and False Nomun was flung on his back. He floated motionless.
«Ah...,» Young Nomun said, and made a disgusted face before trotting into the water. Nomun hesitated a moment, then followed. Together they dragged False Nomun onto the beach, where he coughed and gagged and started to breathe again.
«Idiots,» said Scar Nomun.
«Indeed,» said Jade Nomun. «But at least we know we’re not meant to leave the island.»
«The memwort,» corrected Blue Nomun.
«Yes, of course, the memwort,» said Jade Nomun. «Now. What part do they play?’’ He gestured at the passengers.
Tell us,» said Scar Nomun. «They look to be your sort.»
For an instant Jade Nomun’s carefully casual face slipped, and Nomun saw another face underneath, bloody and inhuman, older and more loathsome than Scar Nomun’s simple brutality. But Jade Nomun recovered his smile and said, «Yes, they are, aren’t they?»
«I will speak to them,» said Handsome Nomun. He approached the edge of the water and called out in his rich voice. «Aboard the vessel. Who are you?»
There was no response, though some of the passengers nudged each other.
«We’re castaways,» said Handsome Nomun, strain marring his rounded tones. «Can you take us off?»
Laughter floated across the dark water, and Handsome Nomun clenched his fists.
«They don’t care,» said Soft Nomun, in a small voice. «They must be the ones who brought us here.»
No, Nomun thought. That isn’t tme.
They’re only watchers. He wondered how he could know this, when he knew so very little.
The black water swirled and broke, as Dead Nomun emerged from the sea.
The captain of the nearest breathboat pointed her spotlight at the killmech, and in that white brilliance they could see every detail of its chassis. It was twice Nomun’s height, armored with some dull red ceramet alloy, painted with stylized white bones. The braincase bore the detailed image of a rotting head. Nomun recognized the decayed features as his own.
As it came up the beach they drew back to the edge of the jungle. Someone on one of the boats followed their retreat with another spotlight, as though they were all players on a glittering stage. Several of the Nomuns slapped at their hips, as if reaching for missing weapons.
Dead Nomun knelt smoothly beside the corpse, rolled the body onto its back–a movement that seemed almost gentle. It turned its black photoreceptors on the Nomuns, and Nomun was struck by a sudden irrational perception: that the killmech felt a cold mechanical regret.
A shining vibroscalpel emerged from the tip of its right index finger. The killmech took the corpse by its hair and separated the head from the body with one precise slash. It removed a thick transparent bag from a storage niche in its thigh, and dropped the head into the bag. As it stood, it attached the bag to a clamp on its chestplate. The head lolled there, an upside-down trophy.
Nomun noticed that Dead Nomun’s chest was fitted with ten clamps.
Dead Nomun took a step toward them, then another.
The Nomuns recoiled, backs against the crumbling crystal forms that marked the boundary between the dead beach and the living body of the memwort. As if some group instinct had seized them, half of the Nomuns sidled to the left, half to the right. The killmech accelerated toward the closer, left-hand group, which gave ground. Those in the right-hand group, in which Nomun found himself, attempted to make an end run past the killmech, but it responded with frightening speed, blurring across the open space to confront them.
«Too fast for an unaugmented human. Cheating,» hissed Scar Nomun. His living eye was wide with rage.
«Back,» the killmech said, in a thin monotone. It pointed to the jungle.
Nomun retreated immediately into the crystal, not pausing until he was ten meters inside the jungle’s boundary. At a tall fractured pylon, he turned and watched as the others decided to follow. One by one, they did, until only False Nomun and Soft Nomun remained on the beach.
False Nomun trembled at the very edge of the jungle, caught between two terrors. Soft Nomun stood his ground, as if he could not make himself believe in the reality of the mech. «No!» Soft Nomun’s voice quivered with outrage, not fear. «No,» he repeated. «I won’t go. This isn’t right. You can’t force me; I’m Nomun.»
Dead Nomun approached Soft Nomun, moving with smooth precision. «Then you must die,» it said. It extended the vibroscalpel slowly, as if giving Soft Nomun as much time as possible.
Soft Nomun’s face was a formless darkness in the glare of the spotlights when he turned to appeal to the others. «Wait,» he said. «Don’t leave. We’ll be lost in the jungle, no one will be able to find...» His speech was interrupted by a small gurgling sound. Nomun crouched back into the blackest shadow; watched as Soft Nomun’s head tipped forward and fell from his neck. The killmech caught the head before it could hit the ground. A moment later, Soft Nomun’s head, face frozen in horrified surprise, swung from the second clamp on the killmech’s chest.
False Nomun stared at the kicking corpse, then made a choking sound and fled into the jungle.
The beach was empty, except for the killmech and the two headless corpses. The lights from the breathboats swept back and forth, and Nomun wondered if the spectators had found the performance entertaining.
He could sense the others in the jungle; he felt connected to them by their hatred and srrspicion, though he felt none of that himself. His mind still held nothing but his identity, but that seemed to be growing stronger.
The killmech took a step toward the jungle and stopped. «Listen, all,» it said, in an amplified voice that shook the jungle and set the crystal to chiming. «Listen, all. You are required to transit this node before daylight. Food and water will be waiting at the internode beach. This device,» the killmech pointed to itself with a huge thumb, «will not molest you unless you attempt to return to the terminal beach, or fail to emerge on the internode before the sun clears the horizon.» The killmech paused, and the skull moved slowly from side to side. Nomun had the sudden notion that the killmech could see each of them, and when the dead eyes rested on him, he shuddered.
It spoke again. «All who remain on this node at daylight will die.»