Lowering my eyes, I look at my display, cabbage leaves playing the role of papyruses. It's all here. The clues. The key to your identity. All I have to do is put everything together. And that's what I do for a living.

Cathy Mitchell. Electronic nonentity. you are identical in appearance to Catherine Michelle Anderson Moore, dead for the past fifteen years, and to Scarlet.

Scarlet. The new piece in the puzzle. Who is she? What is she?

What are you?

And who is it who killed you? It could have been a robot like the one who nearly killed me. Yes, that would fit. Floating robots leave no footprints. A robot could probably dodge into the canal, too, vanishing without a trace. And that would fit with your memories of a dark spheroid form, the memories I had touched in your head as you died.

But the robot is just the means. not the true killer, only the murder weapon. So who?

Someone rich, if he can afford killer robots, someone with influence, with contacts in Mainlaw, perhaps in the Mainframe itself. Someone who placed that S&T hound in Mainlaw's databanks to get anyone who tried to access the file detailing the investigation into your death. Someone who doesn't want an investigation.

I have a feeling that McVie's death wasn't accidental, that maybe someone communicated to Orlev that he might have a similar accident if he continued the investigation. Maybe he was bribed, paid to forget the whole thing. I think whoever is behind this decided to keep the investigation file in Mainlaw's databanks as bait to lure me into the jaws of the S&T hound. Me, or anyone else who showed too much curiosity concerning your death and the investigation, and who didn't accept Orlev's friendly advice to forget about the whole thing.

So who could it be?

The key clue is your looks, I think. Your appearance, or rather the way it completely matches that of Catherine Moore. Moore. She committed suicide, but her husband is still alive. Her husband. Edmund Moore. The leaves around me shift and display a biography my comportable has constructed.

Edmund Moore was born on earth, some forty three years ago, in a bad neighborhood in Pittsburgh, USA. Father was a mechanic. Edmund was brilliant, excellent grades, earned a Mainframe scholarship, got to the academy, graduated with top honors, became an engineer in Mainframe's biotech branch, data- processing department. worked on an incredible range of projects, navigation systems for spacecraft, Venus terraforming, business software, security programs... promoted to executive, then chief executive of the biotech branch, head executive for the martian sector, and most recently, a senior member of the board of executives. That means he has incredible authority with practically no responsibility. A senior membership is what Mainframe execs get after a lifetime of faithful service, the business world equivalent of the garden of Allah. Moore must really be a prodigy to get there before he reached sixty. And this senior membership makes him wealthy, powerful and influential enough to be the person behind all of this.

So my money's on Moore.

I give Jupiter one last look before I plug out, finding myself back at Yakamurta's. My throat is dry, my mouth sticky and my stomach complainative. I fold my comportable and return it to the case. Consulting my watch, I find that Scarlet has been behind the metal door for slightly less then two hours. I get up and give the door a shy rap. Yakamurta answers through the intercom.

"Yes?"

"When will you be finished?"

"Thirty minutes"

"Have you got anything to drink or eat?" I ask.

"Other door leads to toilet and kitchen. Help yourself." He answers, without irritation. Apparently the good doctor is used to patients accompanied by hungry thugs who can't allow themselves to visit the local Gulliver Jones. I move towards the kitchen, an extremely clean place whose second hand fridge seems well stocked with a few basic provisions. I set about constructing some sandwiches, then eat one, wrap the rest in cleverly provided shrink-wrap, and put them in my case. After a quick toilet stop, I get back to the waiting room.

Ten minutes later, the surgery door opens, and Scarlet emerges with Yakamurta. I get a good look at her: She still bears an astounding resemblance to you, but she looks tougher. Her eyes are drained of softness, cold replicas of yours. She wears a black T-shirt and leathers and bright red boots, their color matching the nail-polish on the nails of her bare hand. The left hand is gloved in black leather, and the arm is clean, with only a small white bandage to mark the site of her wound.

"How are you feeling?" I ask.

"Functional." She answers.

"Would you like something to eat?" offers Yakamurta.

"No, thank you." She answers "We must go."

"I made a couple of sandwiches." I say.

"Great." She smiles. You had a smile like that. I liked it.

She nods to Yakamurta, who bows in return, and we leave. We make our way swiftly back to the car. This time, she gets into the driver's seat. She reaches for the back seat, and finds a leather jacket there, the color of fresh blood. She puts it on, then takes out the keys and reaches towards the ignition. But she hesitates. Her hand moves away from the switch and she turns and looks at me.

"I think it's time for us to compare notes, Pat. I had Yakamurta check you out on his computer. He says that you're an informerchant from earth, who's been on Mars for around eighteen months, Mars time. Now, from my contacts I know that you're interested in the investigation Mainlaw was conducting into the death of one "Cathy Mitchell". What exactly is your interest in the case?"

"She was my girlfriend." I say "I discovered her body, just a couple of minutes after the murder. I reported it, and I hired the officers to investigate. When they were unwilling to continue the investigation, I tried to do it myself."

"I found out that she was the genetic duplicate of a woman called Catherine Moore, who died fifteen years ago. I believe you, too, are a duplicate of that woman. I believe that that woman's husband is the man who killed Cathy. I believe he made both of you." I pause, look into her eyes "I think you're clones."

She meets my gaze firmly, but she sees no malice in my eyes.

"Yes" she says. "You're right. Do you want me to tell you the things you don't know?"

I nod "I started this investigation, and I'm going to see it to it's end."

"I'll tell you, then. Catherine Michelle Anderson Moore was married to Edmund Moore, The Mainframe executive, for two years. Two years which must have been pretty miserable for her, because she committed suicide."

"But Moore wouldn't let her die. He loved her too much, in some sick way, to bear losing her. So he resurrected her. He had recordings of her memories. He was a biocybernetic genius and he had all the money he would ever need, so he made a clone of his wife, and gave it her memories, expecting it to love him. But the clone hated him. So he made another. And when that one wouldn't love him, he made another, and then another. And those which wouldn't love him like he wanted, he made into sexual slaves. He toyed with them. For fifteen years he's been torturing his wife's memory. But he wasn't torturing some ghost, he was torturing live, flesh and blood girls! Children trapped in the bodies of women, who have known no other real existence but his sadistic reality!" The concentrated intensity of her rage makes me flinch. Behind the jade, her eyes are afire.

I say nothing, and she continues "Moore kept us in his estate, two kilometers clockwise up the coast of Mere Hellas. The place is like a fortress, but some of us managed to escape."

"Cathy?" I say.

She nods "She escaped five weeks before me. With Moore's reach extending far into the Mainframe, there was no way she could leave the planet, so she just ran as far as she could and hid. When I escaped, I tried to find her, but I had worries of my own. The first time I heard of her was when I got word through my contacts that she was murdered."

I close my eyes. "Why did he kill her?" I whisper.

"He needed her to disappear. When she ran away, she betrayed him. He wasn't going to take her back. She knew it. So he killed her. And he plans to kill off or pay off anyone who knew her. He's probably already gotten her body out of Mainlaw's custody, and he can erase that investigation file any time."

She touches my chin, forces me to look into her eyes "He's not going to give up, Pat. His reach is great. He can bend any portion of the Mainframe to his will. He sees all it sees, hears all it hears. The Mainframe monopolizes all space travel, controls the law, banks, Information systems. And Moore controls the Mainframe. She and I have escaped his home, but now the whole planet is our prison. He's after me, and now he's after you. We have nowhere to run from him and nowhere to hide." In her quiet, controlled tones, I sense the mounting of a terrible rage, frightening in it's intensity.

"So Moore is going to kill you and me just like he killed Cathy. What are we going to do? What can we do?"

She looks at me. her eyes flow with a green fire.

"We are going to kill him."

The sky is bleeding with the first light of dawn as we leave Wells city limits. Before leaving town, Scarlet had driven us to another underground lot where we had switched to another car which had been already waiting there. Another precaution Scarlet had taken to avoid detection. Her planning was through and here resources formidable - I wonder how she could have acquired so much with so little, when Cathy had barely earned a living. But Scarlet is silent. he drives with a quiet ferocity, her uneasiness betrayed only in the roughness of her masterful driving.

We ride a dusty asphalt track through the bizarre martian landscape, death valley painted in indian blood. The road followed the canal until it reached the sea, and now it winds itself through hills and canyons, and the sea moves in and out of view. When the sun rises, we are driving along the beach. Waves the color of wine wash over vermilion sands. In the east, the sun climbs from the depths, like a bright pearl on a cushion of tangerine velvet, and climbs into a cherry sky still stained in mauve. In the north, I see the heavy contours of magenta thunderheads. In Scarlet, I see only the rain.

We are going to kill someone.

I am going to participate in premeditated murder. Not only premeditated, but planned, devised. Scarlet has complete floorplans, elaborate timetables, reconnaissance photographs. She has concocted schemes, she has purchased equipment, expensive and state of the art. She has acquired contacts, purchasing people. All this requires a lot of money. And she had none. She had escaped Moore penniless, and, in a city where she did not even legally exist, she has grown rich. She does not tell me how. She doesn't need to. It requires little imagination to figure out how a girl with only her looks and mind and will has earned the means for her revenge. She has plotted, stolen, bribed, blackmailed, whored and risked death for one goal.

To kill a man.

And I can not deny her. Not because his death is the only thing that may save me from death, but because in the face of her determination, confronted by the intensity of her naked rage, Her undiluted Hate, I am helpless. Weak. Inadequate.

She will avenge your death, I tell myself. She will avenge your life, the tortures Moore has inflicted upon you. I can't convince myself. I don't feel a need to avenge you or myself upon Moore, not anymore. Any desire for vengeance I may have is small and petty when compared to the inferno of her hate.She makes it seem very insignificant, irrelevant. All I feel is the numbness of grief. Sometimes I look at her and I think I feel nothing. I am empty, and you live on only in my memories and in her face and in her fury.

She is going to kill a man named Edmund Moore and I am going to help her.

We arrive in a tiny resort town called Cape Minerva. Built like a crescent on the beach on the beach of the bay, the town is a tourist attraction because of the coral reefs, fantastic formations built by genetically engineered Mars-compatible Polyps. However, we have arrived in the off season. We drive slowly through empty streets, flanked by white buildings and rows of palms. Scarlet parks and has us leave the car on a desolate broadwalk where brightly colored signs mark the sites of closed shops and eateries, frequented only by seagulls. Scarlet removes her boots and leads me down to the beach. Without gesturing, she focuses my attention on a hill at the edge of the bay, which reaches into the sea. On the hill is a large four storied mansion, surrounded by a large garden, most of which is hidden behind a high stone wall.

"Moore's estate is over there." She says. She avoids looking at it.

"It's landscaped to deny access from the beach, or the sea - unless you're a very good swimmer. It has it's own small beach. The only access is by the driveway or by airship - although the winds are kind of rough. Surveillance systems are state of the art. He has cameras up there." She gazes up at the rosy sky lit by imperial sol and it's retinue, four daytime space-mirrors, the false suns of Mars.

"In orbit. a favor from Mainframe. He can spot anything larger then a seagull which approaches. The grounds themselves are practically littered with cameras, both normal and infra-red, as well as passive radars and laser alarms. They are patrolled by robot watchdogs, similar to the robot assassins you are familiar with. Ten of them. Inside he has charged-field sensors and cameras monitored by an advanced AI program, which can instantly alert any of up to five security robots. Human staff is rather small. Five. All of them with some combat training."

She stops, waiting for my comments. I scan the mansion. It projects an atmosphere of opulent decadence and high class professionalism. "So you want me to use my comportable, break into the house's security system and defuse it? looks tough to me."

A white smile adorns her face "It'll be a stroll in the park. I got stuff which'll break down Moore's system and subvert it, easy as walking. Hell, my software can do the work even without human help. I didn't count on you in my original plan, remember?"

"So let's say I enter the system and subvert it, nullifying the cameras and deactivating the interior defenses. You'll still have to get past the robots and the guards."

"I can handle it."

We go back to the car, and she drives us to a closed amusement park. We find a shaded parking spot (hidden from high- altitude cameras) under a rainbow colored plastic canopy. Scarlet opens the booth. She takes out several unmarked metal cases. She opens the first one. It contains a dull black comportable deck. It is of a configuration unknown to me, but seems impressive.

"Custom job?" I ask

She nods. "Black market korean copy of an Olivetti prototype, not yet out. SPK-18 improvement, very user friendly. The software is what's hot, however. A penetration program called Wormclaw-4, it was smuggled from earth two months ago. A collector's item, limited edition, It's got Pact military defense and detection countermeasures, but the core is part of an Intruderprobe program." She smiles when she sees the look on my face. "Told you I got good stuff?"

She closes the case quickly and opens another one. I recognize military communications equipment.

She identifies each device for me "Multioperation communicator, with tight beam option and scrambler. Transmitter dish. You will use this equipment to link up to the network and reach Moore's system, as well as to keep in touch with me. I'll be wearing a transmitter/receiver."

"Where's our center of operations going to be?"

"Over here." She signals me to follow her.

We approach the amusement park. It is surrounded by a two meter high wire fence, and the gates are tied together with a loop of chain, held with by a heavy lock. Scarlet takes a key from her pocket, passes it through the lock and pushes the gates open. she leads me past derelict stalls and dusty coin-operated rides, bright colors cracked in the corners of fiberglass horses, elephants and lions.

We reach a nondescript locked shack beside a vandalized video arcade. The door is heavy, rusting metal covered in peeling white paint, and has no handle. Scarlet stands a step back from the door, and peels the sable glove from her left hand. She reaches for a scratched finger-lock under the hole where the handle should be, and touches it with her middle finger. She twists her finger and kicks the door open. I follow her into a dark, cool and musty room. The walls are rough concrete, but the floor is worn, practically smooth, and covered in dust.

Scarlet claps her hands, and neon tubes on the ceiling flicker to life. Their harsh white light seems to violate the room, and I see half of it is filled with dust coated junk, rusting and peeling corpses of arcade machines, broken chairs, radios, televisions, simulators and bicycles. In one corner of the other half is a table draped with a stained rag, upon which rest a rust streaked self heating kettle, a tin box and a television. Beside the table is an old armchair, covered in cracked leather. On the wall it faces I see that someone has taped a yellowing torn-out centerfold. On it, ballpoint pen scribblings deface the comely curves of a nude painted green.

"Let's get the stuff from the car."

She leaves without looking if I will follow. I walk to the car and she hands me two cases. I grab my briefcase, and hold it awkwardly under my left arm as I carry the two cases. She seals and locks the car, then follows me with the third crate nestled under her right arm and the rifle slung over her left shoulder. In the store room, she sweeps the table clear, revealing it's scarred wooden surface. She begins unpacking and setting up the equipment, doing it in a swift and correct manner despite my clumsy attempts to help.

"You'll sit here." she says, as she begins unpacking the third crate. "The radio will access the network for you automatically, and from there you can get into Moore's systems."

She takes a dark green coin from the third crate, brushes away the hair from her forehead and peels away a thin layer of plastiskin with her crimson nails. That's one of the standard locations for a forehead interface. She places the coin upon it. It gleams in the neon and sticks in it's place.

"My transmitter/receiver." She says "I was going to use it to monitor the comportable. Once you put on the intertrodes and verbalize the access code, you'll have access to my senses, and you'll be able to transmit messages to me."

She looks at me. "You're going to get a pretty intimate look at me. I think I have the right to get one at you."

She looks like a hindu divinity, sculptured in ivory in your likeness, but with a third eye of jade. She extends a hand which would not shame any arm of Shiva, and I can not deny her request. I place my hand in her porcelain fingers. She examines my face, sinking her eyes into mine's like sacrificial daggers of jade. My eyes are soft and colorless. She sees through them. Deliberately, she moves closer, and gently kisses my cheek. I feel her tongue touch my skin, reminding me of your kisses. Then she kisses me on the lips. Her mouth tastes like strawberries and her tongue is a sword sheathed in satin. I hunger for her, but I do not dare to touch her. I barely dare to caress her fingers with my captive hand. Only my tongue is daring, thrilled with the rediscovery of a familiar pleasure. Her taste makes me forget that she is not you. When she pulls away, I yearn for more and am ashamed. She is not you, I tell myself. But my tongue does not believe me.

She raises my hand to her lips. I am filled with a dread mingled with hungry anticipation. First she kisses the back of my hand. Then she extends her tongue and slides it smoothly towards my central finger.

An image of you, lying in your blood comes to my mind.

Her tongue skirts my fingernail, and begins descending the soft whorls which make up my fingerprint.

Incarnadine sparks begin dancing up my spine, ascending to my limbic system.

And then, suddenly, I'm standing all alone in the rain, staring at your blank face, My finger an impotent violation between your cold, silent lips. It looks stupid, rude. I take it out.

She slides my fingertip up her palate.

She seals her rowanberry lips around my finger's second joint.

I can't take my finger out.

With a finger stuck in her mouth, she somehow looks solemn, almost holy.

Our interfaces interlock.

We touch.

I don't know what to expect. I wait with closed eyes for her to enter my mind. But she does not. Instead, she sucks me in through my finger. Devouring my mind with a rubineous hunger, she inhales my essence like a wisp of smoke.

She takes me inside of her.

She holds me helpless in coils of fuchusia, under the minute examination of her fiery jade, and takes me apart.

I feel her distrust, her caution. All her life has been shaped by pain. She is the creation of love turned to hate. She will trust nothing close enough to hurt her. Under the alabaster face she bears the pain distorted visage of medusa.

I lay still in her, as she prods my soft entrails with a glowing red poker.

Silently, I feel her rake my fragile cortex with cruel caution.

Her eyes penetrate my brain like nails of crucifixion. I drink in their pain deeply.

She hesitates. Then, with grim resolve, she impales me, driving her inquest to my core. She plows through a sea of crushed remembrance.

My memories flow to the surface, wash all over me, filling her. I bleed them.

Birth (out of the warm darkness into the harsh, cold light) - Mom (gentle eyes in a stern face) - School (tedium and pressure) - Frog (grotesque and fragile, small wet emerald) - Dad (strong hands and weary eyes) - Hopalong (A name. Whose?) - The Academy (lectures and girls) - Scams (Hurried whispers in solemn halls) - Roger (freckled smiles and a nervous voice)...

The memories start to flow faster, I lose control, they dissociate into phrases and images, nearly random, but each a peek into a segment of my linear history (more or less).

Space - Mars - rust-red - Expelled - Sorry - Don't lose hope - Hi Score - teach you the trade - Spy - Fleming - Detective - Holmes - Industrial espionage - highest bidder - Good Job - Money - Car - Archaeology? No sweat. - Find of the century, man! - Martian Kings! - Eavesdrop - Chat - bug - break in - Not Decent - Not Legal - Quit - Beats the hell out of an office job - Quit - Go Freelance - Regret this - never, not me - Go suck eggs - Scrambled - Not Stirred - Hi Score - Screw up, hey? - Don't worry - Plenty work for kid like you - Computers - Comportable - No, not a cowboy - Compjockey - It's Okay - Simple - No, Not a spy job - Just a matter of putting together all these little pieces - Lovely pieces - Just lying around - Waiting - A guy with brains - Not an Office job - Try your luck out here, Mate.

Mate - Loved one - Wife (?) - Lover - Cathy - Tent - Douglas - Never give up - Never sell out - Such strength - strength is beauty - Love beauty - Love Cathy.

Cathy - Lovely Cathy - Legs. Long and smooth legs. soft Thighs. Ass, Buttocks, Back, Shoulders, so smooth and strong, so delicate and fragile. Hair like sunshine and breasts like snow and nipples like strawberries and eyes like jade. So pure, so strong, just like Scarlet. Strength. Strength folded inside elegant mystery. Beauty to drive men mad. Beauty like Scarlet: In Blood red dead.

Scarlet. Alive like Cathy. Cathy.

The pink coils loosen. The eyes blink. All around me I feel her withdraw. I want her to stay close, but she moves away. Softly, like a ring of cigarette smoke, like a candle's flame, she blows me out.

I open my eyes. My balance is shaky, and I sway as she pulls my finger out of her mouth. With slow, ritualistic movements she stands and kisses me once on the lips, without entering my mouth. Then she steps back and regards me with the beatific look of a nun. I look back, admiring her in the silence of the moment.

Then she says "Let's eat" and steps out. I follow her, briefcase in hand, and find her at the carousel, waiting for me in it's shade, sitting on a horse with a gleaming white fiberglass coat and gilt harness. She smiles and gestures at a brown horse with a silver harness beside her. We make a meal of the rest of the sandwiches I made at Yakamurta's. The sun is high above, a big bright diamond sliding like a tear across the flesh- colored sky, past bruise-purple clouds. It's almost noon now. The mind-interface must have taken over an hour. I watch Scarlet as she eats, see the sunlight and the breeze play with her hair. She chews absent-mindedly, a frown on her brow, her eyes slowly roaming the empty park grounds, scanning the dirt on the gaudy plastics, the dust streaked carnival lights, strung above passageways of asphalt and red sand in necklaces of black wire and bright glass, like funeral wreathes.

"Something will probably go wrong." She says, the sandwich frozen inches from her mouth.

"There are some emergency precautions I've set up, just in case." She turns and looks at me.

I stop eating, wait for her to elaborate.

"I've planted a bomb not far from here. It's not going to harm anyone, but when it goes off, All electrical power to Cape Minerva will be cut. It's radio activated. The transmitter will set it off automatically if my broadcast signal is cut off, or deactivated. It'll turn off the lights and the security cameras at Moore's place, but not his computers."

"Doesn't Moore have an emergency generator?"

"Yes, but it should take about five minutes to kick in."

"That's not much time for you to act in."

She turns away, rests her eyes on the ground, where the wind has formed a tiny red sandstorm beside the carousel.

"No, it's not. But I'm used to acting fast."

Back at the control-room, Scarlet moves aside some junk to reveal a coolbox filled with soft drinks. I have to smile. This tough girl, sort of Cathy imitating Eastwood, acting out the macho mythos, complete with leathers and guns, knife in her coat, driving like a maniac's, and she doesn't have beer. The tough girl doesn't drink. The tough girl doesn't smoke. Girl. She still is, I remind myself.

"How old are you?" I ask.

"Two" Her smile is warm, amused whiteness. "Going on three."

I nearly choke on my coke "How?"

"It takes eighteen months to grow one of us. When he pulls us from the vat, we're around sixteen years old, physically. Then he uses memory-matrices to program us. He has a matrix he recorded of Catherine, a short while before she died, but he hasn't been feeding most of us with all of it. Catherine hated him, and so do clones with all of her memories. Not that any of the rest really love him, not like he wants, anyway. It drives him nuts. "

She was silent. My curiosity overwhelmed my sense. "How... Tell me about how it is living there. I mean..."

She puts down her drink. Her eyes are not focused on me but rather on the door, or on some spot in space.

"I was born with the memories of Catherine Anderson. But not with all of them - with an edited version. From what I figured out, Moore had censored most of her early love life, and also mangled her memories of her relationship with him. So I was a bit more innocent then her, a bit more naive. 'Purer'. But with Catherine's memories I thought I was her. A nice all american girl. Upper middle class parents, only child. Heavy social conscience. An intellectual. Studying for a degree in social science, intent on marrying someone handsome and rich.

Suddenly, I find myself on Mars. Younger then before, at the home of a guy I always considered a nerd back at college. He's older then I remember him. He says Catherine's dead, and I'm a clone with her memories. Only I have amnesia, must have been a malfunction. I forgot that he and I were married. I forgot that he had promised me immortality through cloning. I forgot that I had accepted.

He lied to me.

So I was confused, and in unfamiliar surroundings. He helped me to 'adjust'. I lived in a lovely room in his mansion, which was big enough to be a hotel. I could only move freely in parts of it, because he told me that in other parts he conducted 'experiments' and stored 'equipment'. And there were areas which didn't seem interesting, just basements and servants' quarters. So I wasn't particularly curious. And life was good. The house had a big computerized library of books, films and simulations. It had a magnificent private beach, and I soon got used to windsurfing on red water. He had a lovely garden, and stables. I would ride for hours along the beach with him, or through the wilderness outside town. The house itself was amazing, and Moore was also nicer then I remembered. Worldly. Clever. Witty. Attentive. He used to take me out in the evenings, to Wells, to restaurants, nightclubs. He even took me on an airship cruise.

He was good. He nearly got me to fall for him.

But after a time, I began to see his lies, the cracks in the facade. Something inherently paranoid in me, and, I guess, in Catherine and all her replicas, made me check out what he was doing when he wasn't with me, and what was going on in the basements and other places he said were 'Off-Limits' to me. I discovered he had an elaborate security system, and that made me even more suspicious. I found ways to foil it. I still had his trust, then, and he still believed I was unaware of his secrets.

The basement was a gate to a wonderland. Huge rooms filled with holographic scenery. Twisting passages, some of them leading to parts of the garden or the beach I never knew existed. Huge pools, and water-slides, and mirror-mazes... I got in quite easily. What I found there was shocking. I found clones. Girls, like me. Just like me. Most of them spent most of their time out of their skulls, tripping on hullucinatory interact. One of them was curled up in an old fashioned four-poster bed, wearing a white lace wedding gown and reading Fairy Tales. Another spent the whole day eating and throwing up, trying to make herself bloated and ugly.

They were his rejects, my predecessors. Copies which didn't match the perfection of the original. He had cast them out, locked them away in an underworld of madness, buried them.

I couldn't get out. He had built the place without exits. At least, no exits I could find then. I tried to talk to my fellow clones, but they were each locked up in her own private world, and none of them seemed to talk sense. He found me there, when he came down at night to play. It took him a while to identify me among the rest, but when he did, my nightmare began.

We lived in the underground apartments, all together and all alone. Few of my sisters were coherent enough to talk. One of them was violent, Psychotic. I still had access to the movies, simulations and books. I could play in the pool, or muck around with the holographic scenery. But I couldn't leave. At night, Moore would come down to play. He usually toyed with one or two of us during his visits. Other times he staged mass degradations."

She falls silent, and regards me quietly. "Last chance to quit, Pat. The console can run on automatic."

"Impossible. Moore has set the Mainframe against me. The only way to get it off my back is to rewire his system. Hey, it's the only way to get the 'Frame off your back. You need me."

She accepts my explanation, allows me to take refuge in my rationalizations.

"You want to go to sleep now? I don't plan to begin until around three o'clock in the morning. We'll both need plenty of rest before then."

"Yeah, sure. where do I sleep?"

"Where ever you can find some space. I've got a sleeping bag in the booth." She tosses me the carkeys.

The sleeping-bag, once I fetch it, looks very comfortable, but there is only one of it.

"No problem." She says "I can sleep on the chair."

I argue. Finally, she is convinced to leave the chair to me and use the sleeping bag herself. I watch her pull off her jacket and boots and crawl into the bag. She looks cute.

The chair is slightly uncomfortable, but I am used to sleeping on chairs, on desks. I curl up my raincoat into a pillow, and sleep, uneasily. My dreams are disturbing, fragmented, incoherent, filled with images of rain and robots.

"Showtime soon." She wakes me with a whisper. "Gotta prepare."

She clears herself a working space on the floor, spreads a tablecloth she dug out of the table's drawer upon it, and sits down, crosslegged. She opens the third crate and begins arraying her tools of death about her. I watch her, fascinated.

"So where's all this military hardware from?" I ask.

"While I was living at Moore's, I learned of an ex-trooper business rival of his who had Mainlaw connections, which he used to prevent the confiscation of his 'war-time souvenirs'. I also found out that this man's sexual tastes were a bit too exotic to be satisfied on the open market. So when I was in Wells, I contacted him. I offered him my goods. I threatened him with a little subtle blackmail. He's a decent sort, really. paid me for my services with loans of hardware and with the memory interacts I needed to use this stuff."

"And, yes," She adds "I did have this stuff checked out carefully. Nothing here has been tampered with or set to malfunction in a crucial moment. My supplier may be a prevert, but he's a loyal prevert."

She lifts a gun, begins dismantling it, but my curiosity is still not satisfied. I have too many questions to ask her.

"What were you planning to do after you killed Moore?"

She looks up from the gun, fixes her eyes on mine firmly.

"Nothing."

It takes me a moment to realize fully what she means. Chilled, I reach for the comportable board.

"Pat?"

I turn. She gives me an odd look, nervous, disquieting.

"Pat, when you let me look inside you...I saw...You loved Cathy, I saw that. But there was...I saw...I saw myself..." Her voice trails off for a moment. She doesn't know how to say what she wants to say. Finally, she looks directly at me and asks:

"Pat, do you love me?"

For a moment I see you on her face, and a child looks at me through eyes of jade. I realize that my answer is terribly important to her. I think carefully. She is a mistreated, homicidal clone with the emotional experience of a child, a blackmailer and a whore with a killer's training and your face. I have known her for less then twenty four hours, and she is probably going to die in the next twenty four. I am probably also going to die. A zen story leaps suddenly to mind, about a man hanging on a vine on the side of a cliff. There's a ravenous man eating tiger above him, and a ravenous man-eating tiger below him, and a mouse is gnawing away at the vine, when he sees a luscious red strawberry growing within reach...

"Yes."

I crouch beside her and put my arm around her shoulders. She wraps her arms around my neck, and I look into at her face. I see shyness, and an honest, innocent curiosity, and a warmth which touches me inside. Tough girl before a suicide mission and all she needs is a hug. Our embrace grows tighter. She slides back, graceful as a cat, her crossed legs unfold from beneath her and extend forward as we lower ourselves onto the tablecloth on the cold, concrete floor. She sheds her jacket and shirt like a snake shedding old skin, peels off her leathers, extracts me from my suit like a seed from it's pod. Weapons of destruction lie in a circle all around us, like alien numerals on an archaic clockface, marking out the time we have left. Beneath me Scarlet is smooth and strong, soft and hard, she knows what she wants and I give it all to her. I caress a familiar body with my hands, warm and alive with a frightening vitality, but my eyes see only you, still and cold by the canal, your life trickling out of your pale lips. I remember your silent mouth as I kiss away the fear from her warm satin lips. She tastes like strawberries and smells of metal. I lick a salty drop on her cheek and I don't know if its mine or hers. Scarlet's jade eyes are reflected in mine, and both are filled with a human kind of rain. I can see my end from here, but before I die, I make love to you once more, one last time. And this time, I will get to say goodbye.

It is over too quickly. I lie on the floor, dazed and cold, a grenade pressing hard into my back from below. She gets up in one fluid motion, reaches for her panties, pulls them on. I ignore the painful grenade and the cold floor for a moment, spellbound by her movement. Then I too get up, and begin searching for my own clothes. I dress clumsily, keeping my eyes on her. She bends down, straightens the tablecloth, tidies the assorted military toys spread about the floor, then pulls on her leather jeans. She sits down, still naked from the waist up, and picks up a roll of adhesive tape and several small instruments I can not identify properly. Communication devices? medical tools?

I watch as she places one of those instruments, a piece of thin black plastic, five centimeters below her left breast and tapes it in place. Each of the small devices is taped in turn onto her pale and perfect body in some place, sometimes with my assistance, until her torso resembles that of an intensive care patient.

"This is a pulse/respiration monitor, that's the broadcast unit I need to keep in touch with you, that's the scrambler..." She points at each of the devices in turn, explaining it's function. She does it in such a straight faced manner, I can't help but laugh. She smiles at me. "It does look a bit ridiculous, doesn't it?"

"Well, you would look good with ashtrays stuck to your body, but yes, it does look a bit ridiculous."

Her face becomes serious as she pulls her T-shirt back on. "funny-looking or not, this stuff is vital for the success of our mission. Don't forget that."

She spends the next two hours cleaning and checking, calibrating and loading. I engross myself in the comportable, acquainting myself with the elaborate software, running checks, tuning... I lose myself for a while in the perfect and complex geometries of digital data displays, each one with a distinct color, shape, texture...

Her hand on my shoulder shatters my meditations. I fumble to remove the intertrodes, turn to look at her.

"Hour of the wolf." She smiles.

She wears her tight leather jeans and a clean T-shirt, both in ebony. Her boots are a maroon leather, knee-high and concealing knives in hidden sheaths. Under her right breast, a holster is strapped, it's contents hidden under her jacket, which is the color of fresh blood. A small back-pack is slung across her back, containing a medical kit, wire-cutters, extra ammunition and assorted other useful items. A red bandana conceals her third eye, and holds her pale blond hair in place to prevent it from getting in her eyes. Behind her ear, what looks like a large drop of dried blood is the only sign of her many bioware memory interacts. The porcelain fingers of her bare hand are nested in the grip of a customized officer-model assault rifle with grenade launcher attached. Beauty bearing death.

Avenging ghost.

"All ready?" I ask. She closes her jacket, it's leather covering layers of kelvar ballistic cloth, it's many pouches bulging with ammunition and explosives, and nods.

"And you?" I put on the intertrodes and wave my assertion. She puts the rifle aside for a moment, wraps her arm around me, and kisses me a farewell kiss. I savor her scent and her taste one last time, and then she picks up the gun, opens the door, and steps out into the darkness of the stillborn dawn.

I lock the door behind her and sit down. I turn on the sensory input switch on the comportable and slip into a world of geometries. Through my transmitter, I bounce off satellites and mesh into the local data network. My console translates it all into sights and textures.

The software encircles me like a suit of armour, and guides me with wondrous accuracy through quicksilver streets streaming with data. It handles like an expensive sportscar, quick and sure, filling me with a rapture of power. I reach Moore's databases in the space of nine heartbeats. They are huge, incredibly complex spirals, standing out like alexandrian lighthouses amid the small and simple local private and public databases. Wormclaw-4, superior to anything I've ever used in my life, scrutinizes them with eyes written by an anonymous criminal genius, and maps out their defenses in an elaborate and detailed tactical display.

Before my eyes, the abstract representation of Moore's databases unfolds, like a flower bud blossoming before my eyes, the ruthlessly dense helix spreading out in petals of cold blue, like butterfly wings fresh out of the chrysalis, forming a wondrous jungle of ice and moon shadows. I marvel at what this landscape shows me of Moore's computer systems. His databases are as well defended as his home. They are built like a fortress, in modular segments, each wrapped in it's own heavy defenses, and connected to the others only by specific entrance codes. It's like a string of pearls encrusted in ice, each segment glowing with densely packed, concentrated information, blinding like stars, obscured by the refractions of their own light in the surrounding ice. But somehow, my comportable can see into the heart of each brilliant bead, and it has managed to identify a whole cluster of security programs. It indicates my first target: Perimeter and garden security.

The defensive blockading and filtering programs are thick with details, webs of computer logic compacted into hard crystal, and most of them are of a design unlike anything I have ever seen. They are either specially-commissioned programs ordered by Moore, or his own work. Tough stuff, the sort of target no one but a professional compjockey would dare to try and hit. But Scarlet said this program I'm using could do the entire job on automatic. I'm about to find out if that's true.

Looking at the tactical display, I find Wormclaw-4 has already spotted some booby traps, dangerous neurally interactive routines ready to spring deadly surprises, which it has marked in bright red. And there are also S&T hounds, of a design similar to the one I ran across in Mainlaw's databanks. They must be Moore's personal creations. I see them frozen in place like prehistoric horrors embedded in glaciers, ready to pounce at the slightest thawing of the ice. One of them ate through my toughest military defenses and nearly fried my brain. My comportable informs me that, given time, these hounds could eat even through Wormclaw-4's defenses. But they will have to detect it first, and its detection countermeasures are incredible. For all intents and purposes, My software is invisible.

I wait a bit before my attack, hoping maybe my comportable will discover more. I decide to give it another minute and check on

"Scarlet." I verbalize. The stainless and finely focused reality, created by my comportable to stimulate the vast amount of data it touches, vanishes. There's a moment of disorientation as I shift from my body to hers. She's running. I feel it in her lungs. It is dark, and she is running, rifle in hand, through shadowed streets, past whitewashed houses and parked cars and palm trees dark against the dark and angry sky.

"Red?" I whisper

"Hey. Pat?"

"Just checking. I'm about to go in. How are you doing? weather looks bad."

"I did notice the sky, Pat. I'm counting on rain. With this cloud cover, the orbital cameras are practically blind. Now, please remember, once you get into the security system, you relay all camera data to me. I want to know where those robots are going to come from."

"Roger, kid. I'll give you a call In around four minutes, OK? Good luck, Scarlet."

I'm back in the computer network. I give the tactical one last look, then check the strategic routines, and charge.

Motes of golden light drop from my main body, advanced scouts, they hit Moore's system's early warning devices. In the tactical they impact like flares. In actual display, they enter Moore's system like inconspicuous little bits of data which confuse his sensors as the main offensive program moves into position. Invisible and fast, Wormclaw-4 glides across the surface of Moore's system, searching for weaknesses in the seamless dark blue structure. Chills crawl down my spine as we pass so close to a S&T hound I can feel its cold malignancy on my skin. But it does not notice our passage, and Wormclaw has already found its entrance. A route used by the security system to exchange data with the orbital cameras. We hover, watching what looks to me like a dance of colored dots on a smooth blue panel. My program is up to something, I know. I hear my comportable hum, The radio linked to it begins to buzz, click, change settings, sending out a signal twisted to imitate a scrambled one. The comportable suddenly flashes an indicator circle around one of the dots I see on the blue panel, identifying it for my benefit as ours. It's a Trojan routine, something which mimics some of Moore's material nearly perfectly, but carried a minor bit of crucial tampering.

Wormclaw seems to be monitoring the Trojan somehow. I count twelve heartbeats, when it suddenly leaps into action, fast as a striking cobra. The Blue panel vanishes, And no sooner is it gone then we plunge into the breach. Scarlet's program moves fast, very fast, and it moves unerringly, never losing sight of the program's tender heart which lies inside this maze of ice blue software like a spider in the center of a barbed wire web. The intruderprobe penetration routine is at work now, a program designed to penetrate the brains of an alien machine, It cuts through Moore's more mundane software like a razor. It's complex, more complex then anything I have ever seen, and The comportable seems to have trouble representing its actions visually. It writhes like an amoeba, seeming to flow all around anything it attacks, weakening portions of the defenses by isolating them, then flowing through them, telling them it is friendly, part of the system, just going through. And It's doing this in so many places simultaneously...

As we plunge through Moore's defenses, going through them as if they were not even solid, moving as if we are swimming in syrup, a multitude of virus subversion routines, emerald locust, branch off the main assault body and swarm around the cracks we have left in the defense array. they fill the cracks and begin to crawl into the wounded defenses, entering them and subverting them, deadening their pain, dulling the sensations of assorted alarm mechanisms like the anesthetic saliva on a mosquito bite, erasing the tell-tale signs of our passage. Wormclaw dives through the crystalline defenses like a stone, leaving no ripples in its green wake.

Three minutes later, I hit nerve. Not defense programs, but actual non-hostile software. I got through. My programs secure the perimeter as I charge forward, exploring the intricacies of Moore's "Perimeter and garden security" system. It's not as complex as I may have feared. I locate the nerve center, and send my viruses to enter and gain control of it.

mapping out the security program, my virus routines install override options in key points, enabling me to divert and revise commands and data as they flow from one point to the other. I study the material inputted into the system. The amount of information It's getting is mindboggling: images recorded by nearly fifty automatic cameras, both outside the perimeter and on the grounds, images received from the orbital cameras (ten different images, all showing the same mass of clouds from various angles), information from heat-sensors, charged-field detectors, laser scanners and patrolling robots. All this data is collected and processed by a program which gives out a fully detailed description of the area surrounding the house and the external perimeter, a description so accurate, it can tell me exactly how many birds are found in each tree in the garden.

My subversive software copies this data-processing program, then re-routes all the raw data directly from it's point of origin to my copied program, which processes the data, allowing me to see the action properly, while a loop I set up keeps feeding the original data-processing program out-of-date information I take from the 'Perimeter and Garden Security' system's memory banks. An army could now picnic on Moore's front lawn without his computer noticing it.

For my benefit, my comportable displays the processed description as a small-scale model of Moore's home and it's environs: A tiny, beautifully crafted dollhouse, painted in bright and lurid primary colors, The guardian robots represented by tiny beads of light floating mere millimeters over a neon green lawn. I check and find that there is one man at the main entrance, sitting inside an inspection booth watching television, while two robots float behind the gate, watching the driveway.

My comportable's integral timepiece informs me it has been four minutes and twelve seconds since I last talked to

"Scarlet."

There is sand underneath her boots. She's moving along the beach. Something is odd with her sight. she's wearing ultra- violet goggles. Above her, the sky is covered completely by massive clouds, ripe to burst, their outlines etched in the darkness with cobweb thin purple lines. It's drizzling, but the wind isn't strong, and Scarlet is running, so she keeps warm, although the fingers of her bare hand on the rifle's trigger are cold, as are her nose and cheeks. Moore's mansion is about eight minutes running ahead of her, four minutes of that uphill . She has the choice of climbing the cliff and then a three meter wall, or running up the driveway, entering through the gate and fighting a guard and two robots.

"What's up, Pat?"

"We are now in command of garden and perimeter security." I say "It's just that the robots don't know it yet. There's two of them at the gate, and the watchman is watching TV in his booth."

"Good. What about the rest of the robots?"

"Eight of them, moving along various routes through the grounds. I'll give you a visual." I concentrate on the graphic description of Moore's garden my comportable gives me, sending it's image to her through our link.

"Okay. You'll open the gate?"

"You're taking the gate? What about the guards?"

"I can handle that with your help. Once I'm inside, make me invisible to their cameras."

"I'm way ahead of you, red. You'll be as invisible as a black cat in a coalshed. The security programs are watching reruns."

"Wait. what about the early warning systems up the road?"

"Even the early warning systems along the road won't see you."

"Great. Now, Wormclaw will go for the house security system. see if you can find Moore, will you?"

"Sure, kid. I'll check back with you in, say, six minutes, Okay?"

"Right."

She keeps on running. The rain falls harder. As I repeat the code-word, returning from inside her skull to the computer network, I hear the rumble of thunder.

I return to a world of computerized holograms. As predicted, Wormclaw-4, having successfully entered and subverted 'Perimeter and Garden security' begins to search for an opening to 'House security'. It locates a lightly screened passage from one security program to the other in eighteen seconds, and then spends nearly half a minute convincing it that the entire fearsome Wormclaw program is just some information about the garden's sprinkler system which must be relayed to the house's fire extinguisher controls. Eventually, the passage allows us to flow through, and we climb the next rung on Moore's spiral security ladder, as a glowing pearl, which my comportable has marked 'house', grows larger then the sun, until it engulfs me.

As the simulated image expands, it becomes more diffuse, and what seemed a single object is revealed to be an immense network of multicolored dots linked with lines of purest white, a model of some gigantic molecule. And as the dots and the lines grow larger, They gain shape and definition, until eventually, I find myself in a bizarre landscape, a vast mesh of branching logic, where each junction is itself a cluster of tree-like schematics. This is Moore's house security system. It is much more complex then the system in charge of outdoor security. At it's heart, there is a minor artificial intelligence, filled with tangled intersections like stars at the heart of a galaxy, it is something which is roughly at the mental level of a dog, a dog with a flawless memory, speed-of-light thoughts, and endless patience. Judging that it is impossible to carefully subvert this AI the way it has subverted the exterior security program, Wormclaw decides to incapacitate it. The system's outputs are cut off one by one. It is not going to be able to give out an alarm. It is not going to be able to command the interior defense robots. I watch the immense size and complexity of the AI, and I see Wormclaw, small and puny in comparison, disabling it, like a rat gnawing away the eyes of a paralyzed elephant.

As the AI floats adrift in the imaginary computerized space, helpless as a clump of drifting seaweed, I branch out subversive tentacles, accessing the house's sensors. I feel out the layout of the house, sense the subterranean levels stirring with buried secrets. I focus cameras like newborn eyes, and when I open them, all at once, Moore's mansion is stripped of its secrets, reduced to a dollhouse with walls of glass.

With more eyes then you could find on the tail of a peacock, I look. Switching from camera to camera, I see bedrooms and bathrooms, dining halls and guest rooms and all the rest of the architectural features which are found in all the houses of the affluent. And I see more. Everywhere in the images which flash by me, I see the marks of insanity. There is something twisted in this house, something born of pain and hate, something dark and cancerous which is screaming through all the tiny cracks in the veneer of normalcy which coats this house, demanding release.

I see a library, where cut businessmen's ties are pinned in a glass display case like butterflies, strange trophies of a corporate hunter. I see a scarred mercenary washing dishes in a kitchen where all of the walls are covered with wedding pictures. I see dimly lit corridors, where robots, like tireless, mouthless eunuchs, glide above red mock-persian carpets, past padded doors, soundproofed and locked. I see pools shaped like hearts, fed by waterslides like arteries. I see an indoor garden, where rose bushes and a neatly mowed lawn are tended by a beetle- like robot, in the light cast by halogen lamps. I see a maze of mirrors and glass, where wind blows in from the outside, filling the passages with inhuman wailing voices. And then I see my first clone.

I'm looking at a very large room, as big as a dance hall or a theater, without windows or doors, its walls, ceiling and floor all covered with mirrors, giving a sense of infinite space. The center of the room is dominated by a pool, round and also mirrored. The mirrors form a seamless surface of silvered glass, broken only at irregular intervals by illumination panels, which curves to match the curves of floor and pool, producing concave and convex mirrors, distorting shape like in a funhouse arcade. In the center of the pool, on a transparent plastic inflated mattress, lies a blond girl in a bikini swimsuit. I know how she looks like before the camera zooms in. She lies very still on the mattress, but she's awake. From a face identical to your's, her jade-green eyes cast terrified wild looks all around her, and all she can see is herself.

I find the next clone in a room with pink and white walls, small, cosy, warmly lit by elegant candelabra. It's filled with pretty pink and white furniture, the sort you would find in a young girl's room. Toys and dolls and stuffed animals are strewn all around. The clone lies in a four-poster bed, wearing a white gown, reading Beatrix Potter with a pink bunny tucked under one arm and the thumb of the other stuck firmly in her mouth.

Next I see a dining room. Two clones are sitting by the table, eating ice-cream with chocolate fudge and cream from china plates with silver spoons and drinking milkshakes from crystal glasses. I can see the remnants of the previous courses on various other plates, each offering at best only half-eaten: Doughnuts with icing, hamburgers, frankfurters, brownies, chocolate mousse, chocolate cake, lemon marangues, eclairs, pitchers of soft-drinks, and platefuls of french fries, covered with red spatters of ketchup.

The image changes. This room is bare of furniture, except for a single orthopedic easy chair, upon which sits the clone. She is skeletally thin, her eyes are closed, and her head is wired to a simulator unit beside her chair. she wears a dirty knee- length T-shirt and a catheter reaches underneath it. Her left arm is strapped to the chair and a needle in her vein connects her to a drip-feed tube. There is a stack of simulator plaques six inches thick inside the simulator unit, and it's set for automatic replay.The unit clicks as it finishes playing one plaque, then shifts it from the bottom of the stack to the top and begins to play the next one. The clone's free hand clenches into a fist, and beneath their lids, her eyes move, looking at the familiar landscape of never-never land, as she lives through an endless series of soap operas.

In a hurry, I switch cameras more rapidly, leafing through the images.

Camera 27. On a comfortable leather chair, her legs tucked in underneath her, a frightened clone sits, scribbling notes with a broken and chewed pencil. The elegant ghostwriter on the desk before her is untouched, unactivated.

Camera 28. a clone is running scared, through a jungle of holograms, but the treadmill she's on leads nowhere.

Camera.... enough.

I remember Scarlet said she was going in through the front. I shift to the perimeter and garden security system and search for the program which enables automatic operation of the gate. I find it. Ever industrious, Wormclaw-4 has installed an override option, so opening the gate should be no problem. I have looked inside the walls you built around your private little hell, Moore, and now I'm going to open the door and let your sins be burned away by a purer hellfire.

"Scarlet."

She's going up hill, not on the driveway exactly, but beside it, she scurries across the mass of shattered red rocks which flank the driveway from both sides. In the dark, her red and black clothes blend in to their surroundings well. Her lungs and muscles are beginning to feel sore, but she is too filled with the adrenalin of excitement to care. Before her, Moore's home looms, a haunted house with walls of neon purple.

"Hello Pat. Well?" She whispers between breaths.

"Wormclaw got into the house security system alright, and the modifications it did to the outside security program are working okay. I got a look inside, but I didn't spot Moore."

"What about the gate?"

"It will open when you command."

"Great. In around two minutes, I'm going to shoot a grenade in there. Open the gate as it hits."

"Right. See you then, Scarlet."

Back in the machine, I can see scarlet, her approach detected by cameras along the driveway, a pink stick figure crawling up the hill towards the neon dollhouse in my comportable. But while the eyes of Moore's security system can see her, it's brain is blindfolded. That works okay. I check the gate. It will open. Everything's okay. Two minutes of working time to kill. Might as well use it to find Moore's major databanks.

I give Wormclaw the instructions. It asks Moore's computer the questions, reading it's answers in the wrinkles written in the system and the fluctuations in the flow of information through them. On my tactical display, a gameplan blackboard frozen in the upper left corner of my field of vision, it describes Moore's actual databanks in eloquent diagrams. The security systems, for all the details they handle, are insignificant in comparison. The databanks are enormous, bloated, segmented oroborous worms, wrapped in defensive cocoons which seem a mile thick. I see the paths linking them with the security systems, tiny roots extending from the spiral dragon to it's tiny symbiote. I see Wormclaw follow those paths, struggling to swim through the sluggish sap which clogs them. In the top of the tactical window, a message flashes:

     - Penetration estimated in 14.54 minutes -  

I have a quarter of an hour until I will be able to work. Until then, I've got someone to watch.

"Scarlet."

She's crouching not far from the gate, her rifle aimed towards the robots standing behind it, dark outlines wreathed in ultraviolet, visible behind the translucent screen. I watch her lock the aiming mechanisms on one robot, feel her finger squeeze the grenade release trigger. I follow the grenade's flight through her eyes.

I open the gate.

The grenade hits its target.

Suddenly, a sun explodes. The ultraviolet lenses protect her eyes from most of the blast, but On my graphic display, a white nova bright flare flashes.

Before the light fades, Scarlet is already up and running. The ghost-reflexes of a trained veteran soldier, flowing through her brain from her memory-interactive bioware, take command of her. Her trigger-finger interface transmits mental commands to the rifle's computer, switching it to automatic rapid laserfire mode. Pulses of crimson light flash from the muzzle, slicing in half the still blinded robot who was fortunate enough to avoid annihilation by grenade, igniting the booth where the watchman is just now sitting up from before his TV set.

Gun blazing, she passes through the gate. A last burst of riflefire kills the watchman with his hand still on the door of his booth. She sprints up the gravel covered driveway, then leaves it fifty meters before it reaches the house, running across the well-mowed lawn, past marble statues and trimmed hedges and beds of roses. A robot, having noticed the explosion at the gate, floats towards her, but is confused by the fact that the garden security program doesn't seem to be able to see her. Scarlet cuts it down in it's confusion.

"Lure them somewhere I can hit them, Pat. One grenade can save me a lot of headaches if you could just tell them to stand together..."

I try it, telling all of the remaining robots through Moore's security program to converge on the gate, which has been breached. I give them the position of an imaginary intruder. Scarlet crouches behind an elephant-shaped hedge. They enter view, four of them moving together from around one corner of the house, glistening balls of rainslicked chrome and matte black, glowing in strange shades of ultraviolet. Scarlet lets them get close, then lets fly a grenade. It explodes between them, throwing all of them through the air. One hits the lawn, a smoking wreck, then bounces twice before rolling to a stop. The second one does likewise, while the third not only bounces on the lawn but also makes quite a mess of one of Moore's rosebeds. The fourth robot never hits the ground, but instead smashes into a marble bust, knocks it from it's pedestal, then floats around, disoriented, just long enough to get hit by Scarlet's laserfire.

The comportable informs me, and through me her, that the other three garden-robots are closing in from three different directions. Scarlet doesn't wait for them. Breaking cover, she begins a mad dash through the gardens, running around the house. She's heading to the patio. One robot comes towards her, lasers blazing, but she reacts instantly. guided by her computerized combat reflexes, she leaps aside, rolls to the cover of a rose bush, and returns fire. She hits the robot, disabling it, but not before it has fired a laser beam through her right leg. I feel the sharp pain, feel a panic building, feel her force it down. She examines her leg, sees the laser has pierced her muscle and part of her bone. But it isn't too serious. The laser has fused shut the small blood vessels it cut, so there is no blood, no danger of infection. Her ultraviolet sight enables her to see the outline of the bone through her ghostlike limb. It is not broken, and there are no bone splinters to worry about. She tries to move the leg. It hurts, a lot. The other robots are closing in, coming around the corner of the house.

She crawls to face them, readying her rifle. They appear, floating through the rain, swaying slightly in the wind, bobbing like Jack-O'lanterns on water, their infra-red eyes shining. Scarlet shoots a grenade. The blast hits her in the face like a slap, and one of the robots is engulfed in a bright fireball. The other one, however, has been thrown clear, and now rushes towards her, spewing forth ruby-red death. Her reflexes kick in, taking me and her as well by surprise. She dodges, moves, rolling in a manner I have never seen before, kicking with her healthy leg and pushing with her arms, she rolls through a rain of crimson fire, over the grass which burns all around her, until she reaches the cover of an oak, a gnarled and bloated tree aged at an unnatural rate by chemical manipulation. There she huddles behind the oak as mental commands flash to her gun through her trigger finger. The robot floats closer, scarring the tree with laserburns.

Scarlet pulls the trigger. A grenade shoots out, whizzes past the tree and through the air, moving faultlessly towards the hovering robot, smashing into it's optical sensors and exploding.

"Heatseeker." mumbles Scarlet as she watches the glowing fragments of the shattered robot rain down on the lawn and the roses. she unzips a pocket in her jacket and pulls out a hyperdermal pad. She draws a knife from her boot, cuts a slit in her right trouser leg, and slips the pad in, sticking it just above the laser wound. In less then a minute, the endorphin enters the blood stream and takes affect. leaning on the oak, she stands up. There is no pain as she continues her walk towards the patio.

"Scarlet"

Must find Moore. I felt it in her bones. That is the objective of this entire suicidal attack. Not wrecking his robots. Not breaking into his databases. Not freeing the clones. Killing Moore. But first she needs to find him, and she needs me to guide her.

With eyes of glass and steel, I look. I don't find him upstairs, in the rooms which form the mask of normalcy stretched taut over his madness. He must be downstairs. In the tunnels and libyrinths where insanity reigns.

I see a clone kneeling in a shrine before an altar bedecked with crosses and plastic flowers, praying fervently to a stained glass madonna. I see an empty hall dominated by a phletora of trampolines. I see automated kitchens, abandoned storerooms, empty bathrooms and toilets. I see Moore's illegal cloning laboratories, the cold and sterile rooms of your birth, Cathy. Unidentified scientific equipment fills the white-walled chambers. I make out various electronic scanners, microscopes, micro-surgery devices, freezers, centrifuges, cabinets of chemicals, computer terminals, several things resembling fish- tanks, strange vats and incubators molded from plastic in rounded, organic shapes. The laboratories are all deserted, although some of the equipment is still activated. I see wind- haunted corridors and tunnels leading to the beach, to the surface, to the unknown. I see eccentricity, I see madness. And I see evil.

The room is directly beneath the one where I observed the girl of mirrors. The ceiling is one-way glass, and I can see, above me, The clone in the swimsuit upon her mattress, floating on the pool. This room is also large, but darkened. The walls are padded, covered with a smooth black fabric. The only light is heavily filtered and comes from above. The entire room looks black at first, but then I see, in the center of the darkness, A shape. A bed, black, with two red cushions upon it. And people. Two women. Both of them are you. One of them is naked, stretched across the bed, tied up with black bonds, and gagged. The other clone, kneeling beside her, wears black mesh stockings, a leather skirt and a silk blouse. There's a choker-necklace around her throat, she is holding some sort of metallic instrument, maybe electrical, and she's using it to...

I look away, but the sight I have just seen stays with me, as if it was frozen in my mind's eye. Something in this scene catches my attention, not something emotional, something rational. It doesn't fit the pattern. The other clones exhibit self-destructive, slightly masochistic tendencies, but not one of them seems to be sadistic. Except this one, victimizing herself in a darkened hall (where the hell are the light enhancers on that camera?) Suddenly, I know where Moore is.

I look back at the image and I see him. He emerges from the invisibility of the deep shadows, darkness made flesh. He is immaculately dressed, in a navy blue pinstriped suit, with white shirt, burgundy tie and gold pin. his hair is black and wet and combed backwards slick as oil. He has a thin, nervous build, and skin smooth and taut with unnatural youth. His eyes, pin-prick pupils of the darkest midnight black set in pools of china blue, are fixed on the bed. He approached the clothed girl and strokes her hair, as she thrusts brutally with the metal implement in her hands, evoking a scream of instinctive pain from her victim, a scream empty of any emotion but despair.

I close my eyes and clench my teeth. I think of this lunatic with his eyes of black ice. I think of the clones, the things he does to them, the things he makes them do. I think of you in his hands, and of how he killed you rather then let you escape him. And I mutter a name, like an oath of vengeance. Her name.

"Scarlet"

stands on a marble terrace. To her left, stairs lead down to a swimming pool, it's surface alive with the impacts of raindrops. Beyond the pool is the edge of the cliff, and beyond the cliff, the turbulent waters of Mere Hellas, the vaguest suggestion of pink tinging the point where they meet the sky. To her right, the house looms, a luxurious summertime residence, it looks dark and ominous in the rain. Scarlet walks towards it, past rain-soaked beach umbrellas and wet deck-chairs, she reaches a screen of glass. Beyond the screen, she sees little even with her ultraviolet goggles.

But I see more. Through interior cameras which, unlike their subterranean counterparts, are fitted with light amplification equipment, I look at an empty living room, pale blue sofas, low tables of glass, thick persian rugs. The pictures on the walls are an odd collection, several framed canvases, expensive originals by twentieth century artists, side by side with neo- cubistic escheresque holograms.

Scarlet breaks the glass, Kicks aside the shards, enters the room crunching glass fragments under her boot heels into the rug. She pulls the ultraviolet goggles off and looks about, then heads swiftly for the exit. She moves through the next room, a small hall with walls covered by antique canvases, past several closed doors, to a stairway. She goes down.

I locate the five house-robots. Four of them are above, on the upper floors and the ground floor. The security program will not alert them and they will remain on their own floors unless commanded otherwise. The one downstairs is heading for the stairway. I alert Scarlet. As for the house inhabitants, I detect three of them in levels above her. One of them is at a window on the third floor, looking towards the gate. Two others are on the ground floor, moving towards the living room where Scarlet had entered. But where is the fourth of Moore's servants?

The person unaccounted for is, according to Scarlet, a martian woman, Moore's cook. I check all the house's cameras, but I can't find her. Is this her day off or something? Could she be somewhere out of the cameras' view? She has no reason to hide, unless...

Scarlet is at the foot of the stairs. There's a corridor leading both left and right. There's a robot lurking behind the corner at the right end of the corridor, shooting at her whenever she tries to move out of the shelter of the stairway. It will takes her ten seconds to select a heatseeking self-propelled grenade, fire it and demolish the robot, but she doesn't want to advertise her exact location to the rest of the household.

For a moment I catch a glimpse of the near-hysterical fear beneath her cool competent facade, as she searches the military memory she has inserted in her head for a solution to her problem. I taste her excited relief when she comes up with an answer. She digs what feels like a grenade out of one of her pouches, depresses a hard stud in it's surface, then tosses it into the corridor.

I feel the heat on her skin as the robot's laser flashes, tracking the flying object, hitting it with the accuracy only a machine would possess.

My camera in the basement corridor is blinded by the intense flash as the flare bursts. For a moment the shadowy corridor becomes the brightest place on the planet.

She moves through the heat, a marine's reflexes using her perfect nervous system to move an athlete's body. The robot is still shooting when she hits it, but it's shooting blind.

There is a moment of light and heat, and when it is over, she's standing beside a metal husk with molten circuitry. Her hair is slightly singed and her jacket is spattered with dark spots where the laser caused the ablation of parts of it's protective layers.

"Pat?"

"You're alright, red. There's people coming down the stairs now. They'll be here in about 13 seconds."

Hurrying back to the staircase, she fumbles around in her grenade pouch, chooses one, depresses a stud on it and shoves it beneath the bottom stair. Then she runs away from the stairway and ducks around the corner the robot had lurked behind.

"Four seconds, Scarlet, Two..." I count. Leaving her for a moment, I watch them with cameras, Moore's two servants/bodyguards, as they walk down to their doom. They move carefully and quietly, one, then the other. They have laser carbines shaped like submachineguns. One is a black, massive earthman, the other a spider-like spacer with skin like parchment. Both move like special forces operatives.

The spacer is twenty stairs up, pointing his gun towards the bottom of the stairs. The earthman runs past him, gun at the ready.

He makes it to the third step.

He is barely a meter away when the grenade goes off.

The phosphorous grenade.

My cameras are ready this time.

When the bottom step of the staircase gives birth to a fireball, my cameras are not blinded. They adjust to the light. I can see everything.

I am very lucky to be seeing the action only through a computer.

I don't smell a thing.

The earthman dies quickly. I don't think he even had time to understand what happened. All that remains of him is a skeleton covered in soot.

The spacer's skin burns like paper. He screams a lot. His gun's grip has melted, it's stuck to his hand.

I can't watch anymore. I tried. I forced myself. But I can't anymore.

A green rectangle appears suddenly before my eyes. I switch from the cameras to Wormclaw and it's tactical displays and find that it has penetrated the databases, Moore's computerized memory banks. I ride through the worm tunnel my program has dug in the great husk, along the cracks and flaws in the armour of digital defenses coating the succulent data, until I reach my destination. Here I begin to earn my keep. Although Wormclaw was not intended to penetrate a record-keeping system, it has done so admirably. But it is up to me and my own specialized software to sort through this sea of information. It is up to me to search for any references to me, to Scarlet, to the entire cloning project, and is is up to me to erase them. Moore dies tonight, and he will carry with him to the grave the secret of the clones' existence and his vendetta against me.

This is premeditated murder.

It's kill or be killed.

It's Scarlet's murder. Not mine. The blood ( Man walking down the stairs bursts into flames. I watch his skin burn, his flesh melt, his bones char ) is on her hands. I only handle the computers. The paperwork. Like a vulture.

I load my own data-management programs onto the comportable, then set them to work. It's going to take time, and my supervision isn't needed initially, so...

"Scarlet."

She's walking swiftly over crimson carpeting, rifle at the ready. The corridor is wide here, with alcoves along the walls where small bonsai plants are placed, on high wooden pedestals. The door at the end of the corridor leads, according to my computer, to the chambers where the clones are housed.

"Pat?" she whispers.

"Here."

I feel her breath as she sighs in relief. "What's the situation?"

"Of the three people upstairs, we have one dead, one wounded, and a third, a short blonde woman who is currently too busy with the wounded guy to hassle you. I can't find the cook anywhere. want me to unlock this?"

"Please."

I give wormclaw a command, and it disconnects the alarm for the door, then unlocks it. Scarlet prods the door open cautiously with her foot. I switch to the camera on the other side of the door and see her enter. The corridor is very similar to the previous one. There are more of the small alcoves on both sides of the corridor, and between them are doors, padded with red leather.

"Pat, did you manage to find Moore?" she asks.

"Yes. He's in a big dark room, directly underneath one with a pool and walls all covered in mirrors. Do you know how to get there?"

"Not really. I know where..."

She doesn't have time to finish her sentence. From the niche in the corner of her eye, I catch sudden movement. There is no bonsai in this alcove. A person slams into her, knocking her to the floor. Strong brown fingers grip her rifle, pulling it from her grasp. The assailant is a woman, tall, skinny, skin the color of a nut, eyes like a cat, hair short and red, wearing a light blue jumpsuit, and brandishing a blade nearly as long as her forearm. But disarming Scarlet took too much of her concentration for her to use the knife properly. It didn't pierce Scarlet's jacket. My girl grabs the hand with the knife with her right, letting go of the rifle (It won't shoot without her thumb imprint on the grip). The hand which held the rifle goes down to her boot as Scarlet twists her knee in between the martian's body and hers, then kicks, throwing her opponent off of herself. The brown woman knife-arm contorts, twisting free of Scarlet's hold, and she rolls free, then jumps to her feet. Scarlet is on her feet, knife in hand, before the woman has a chance to take advantage of her prone position. The two women face each other, lock eyes, jade meeting gold.

The martian woman is older then Scarlet, but she is a Drylander in an oxygen rich atmosphere, as I can see from her slow, shallow breathing and her wild eyes. She moves like a dancer and she must feel on top of the world right now, drunk on oxygen. That might be her only weakness right now, because in this air, she's faster and stronger then most, her knife and height give her a longer reach, and she's less tired and encumbered then Scarlet.

The drylander seems to realize her advantage. An ivory smile cracks her wrinkled brown face. She takes half a step forward and extends the movement into a swing of her machete. The move is fast, but Scarlet has sidestepped it before it was even completed, moving away.

She's using the wrong tactics. She's the one with the shorter knife, she should move closer!