Aite Chp. 8

	As Kyle approached the checkout counter at the supermarket, the 
cashier leaned over to look at the baby in the perambulator, smiling. When 
she saw the baby, she lost the smile, startled. "Why's that thing on the 
baby's head?"
	"It's a sun visor. For light sensitivity." Kyle had bundled the baby 
from head to toe in winter clothes, and purchased a plastic visor to cover 
the child's face, so the deformities wouldn't be seen. ISO would be looking 
for a man with a deformed baby.
	"Oh," the cashier said, and began ringing up Kyle's purchases. "I'm 
really glad to see a man who takes care of his baby, you know? Most men 
stick the woman with all the work. The baby's mother must be real happy to 
have you around."
	"The baby's mother is dead," Kyle said in a glacial voice.
	"*Oh*. Oh-- I'm terribly sorry--"
	"Just tell me how much I owe."
	She finished ringing him up. "$13.57."
	He handed her a twenty, waited for his change, put the grocery bags 
into the pram in front of the baby, and said, "Don't pry into what doesn't 
concern you." And left.
	He had altered his own appearance-- cut his hair short and dyed it a 
nondescript brown, applied plastics and colored lenses to change his 
features and eye color, all to make himself as plain and boring-looking as 
possible. ISO and Galactor both knew he was a disguise artist-- they would 
look for him under different guises. They might even guess that he would 
make himself look very average. But it wouldn't matter-- the whole point to 
the disguise was that he was unnoticeable. Even people looking for him 
would barely notice him. How did you look for average people, after all? In 
addition, he'd gone to upstate New Jork, where he'd never been in his life. 
Earlier, he'd withdrawn two-thirds of the money in his and Jay's joint 
account in the form of several dozen bank checks, cashed the checks in 
different locations, and then taken the cash and opened a bank account with 
it under a false name. As a result of all this maneuvering, there was no 
discernible paper trail between the old bank and the new. 
	Every precaution he knew of to take, he'd taken-- and as a disguise 
artist and former spy, he was pretty sure he knew them all. Neither 
Galactor nor ISO was going to find him. He was sure of it.
	Kyle pushed the pram down the street, heading home. His false papers 
weren't sufficient to get a job with, and anyway, with the baby to take 
care of, he couldn't take the risk of a job. Not that he wanted one. Jobs 
dealt with people, and he couldn't bear that, right now. He was tired unto 
the soul, and had decided to temporarily opt out of the human race. The 
money would hold for several months-- his needs and the baby's were few. 
All the fewer because he wasn't eating much. His weight was dropping from 
lack of appetite, and since the Change always left him underweight for male 
form, it was likely to become a health problem fairly soon. But he just 
didn't care.
	Inside, he first unpacked the baby, removing its winter gear and visor 
and changing it. Today, for some obscure infant reason, it was a female. 
The shock of being washed down there as he changed it caused it to change 
sex, extending a penis and closing up its vagina. There was a neat trick. 
His life might have been a lot easier if he'd been able to Change that 
fast. Kyle examined the baby's face, looking for the changes there. The eye 
sockets had separated to a degree, though they were still too close. Ears 
had sprouted, along with golden fuzz, and the club fists had become webbed 
fingers. The nose, however, was still deformed.
	"Bad nose," Kyle said. "I'm going to poke that bad nose. Poke poke 
poke."
	If he stopped and thought about it, he sounded ridiculous. The voice 
he used in speaking to the child was a high-pitched version of his natural 
voice-- as his Katse voice had been. He didn't use the manic edge or the 
nasalization, but it *still* sounded like Berg Katse was blathering in baby 
talk. On the other hand, he didn't usually think about it. Kyle generally 
avoided thinking about anything, nowadays.
	He put away the groceries with the baby cradled in one arm, switching 
arms frequently as it was a heavy baby and he was understrength. He sang to 
the baby as he worked, nonsense songs he had heard over the course of a 
lifetime, or the songs the women who'd adopted him out of the institute had 
sung. He talked to the baby as well. "This is a microwave. It heats our 
baa-baas. Can you say 'microwave'? Of course not. You're only a month old, 
you weird little critter. You won't be able to say 'microwave' for at least 
another year, will you? This is the fridge-- say 'fridge.' This is where we 
put our baa-baas when we're not drinking them." And so forth. If silence 
fell longer than a moment, he started to think, and he didn't want to 
think. So he babbled at the baby, and the baby babbled back in nonsense 
baby syllables.
	He wandered around the apartment with the baby, pointing out such 
objects as the television, the couch and the rug for the thousandth time. 
When the baby began to fuss, he warmed up a bottle for it in the microwave, 
tasted it to be sure it wasn't too hot, and then fed it, singing stupid 
songs. When it grew sleepy, he rocked it until it dropped off, put it in 
its bassinette, and began cleaning an already immaculate apartment.
	Since he had fled ISO, this had been Kyle's life. Caring for the baby 
and obsessive cleaning. And often mindlessly watching music videos. Other 
forms of vegetation required too much mental involvement-- even sitcoms 
demanded that you remember the characters' names. Even game shows required 
remembering the rules. Reading or watching a drama was far too much work. 
His world had narrowed down to include only himself and the baby with no 
name.
	Sometimes he cried when he held it, and sometimes he told it bitter 
stories about his own life and declared to it that he and it were alone 
against the world. "You don't need anyone else. I'll be your mother *and* 
father." Sometimes he broke down sobbing, apologizing profusely that he 
couldn't breastfeed it. Sometimes he tried to devise names for it, and 
rejected them all-- he didn't need to name the baby as long as he and it 
were alone together. They both knew who he was talking to.
	But most of the time he was just numb. When he'd been in Galactor, 
he'd often suffered severe depressions, at least until he'd started taking 
the drugs that kept him "up" all the time. He'd even been diagnosed by Vail 
Djannis as a manic-depressive, which he'd chosen to refuse to believe at 
the time. But those depressions had been wallows of sadness and self-pity, 
full of suicidal tendencies and the desire to destroy anything that got in 
his way. He had still been able to *feel*. Now, for the most part, he felt 
nothing. He was immersed in the sort of boredom where he was not only not 
doing what he wanted to be doing, but he couldn't even imagine there being 
anything at all he might want to do. The baby was the only thing he cared 
about. He did enjoy taking care of it-- the only thing he enjoyed anymore. 
When it was asleep, and he couldn't talk to it or play with it, he tried to 
do mindless work to keep his mind empty.
	Eventually night fell. The baby had wakened by that time. Kyle fed it, 
changed it again, and read it stories until it grew sleepy again. Then he 
took it to bed. His own sleep patterns were erratic-- he slept when the 
baby slept, with unpleasant vague dreams, and could not seem to sleep 
longer. It comforted him, having the infant's small warmth next to him when 
he slept. He no longer cocooned himself, having lost the habit from months 
of sleeping with Jay. Instead, he now lay flat, with one hand near the 
baby, to make sure it was all right. He would wake up many times a night, 
when the baby stirred, and fall back asleep, to drift through unpleasant 
dreams that rarely turned into full-blown nightmares.
	Tonight was one of those rarities.
	**He was floating in space, but the stars were eyes, looking down at 
him. His naked form exposed for all the eyes to see, his strangeness. Space 
was like an ocean, and he kicked through it, trying to swim to cover, to 
hide-- but one pair of eyes followed him. Burning red, narrow eyes, blazing 
into him. They bored down into him, and he found himself lying spread out 
on a table, like a frog in a high school biology lab, with huge nails 
through his limbs pinning him down. The eyes hovered above, powerful and 
mesmerizing. He squirmed, trying to get free, knowing in terror what was 
about to happen, as a face took shape around the eyes, a face like a burst 
of flame, the face of Sosai X--**
	Gasping, Kyle awoke.
	The baby woke too, startled by Kyle's jerk to wakefulness, and began 
to cry. Kyle sat up and took it in his arms, rocking it. The dream had 
terrified him, enough so he wanted to crawl into the covers and hide like a 
turtle, and in the face of that the warm reality of the baby was very 
comforting.
	"It was only a bad dream," he told the child, more for his sake than 
its. "Only a bad dream, baby. Sosai's never going to find us. It wasn't 
real."
	While he was awake and thinking about it, he got up, changed the 
baby's diaper and his own sweat-soaked nightgown, and fed the baby a bottle 
while he made himself hot chocolate. It had the soothing effect he so 
desperately needed. By the time he'd finished the chocolate, the baby was 
asleep and he was ready to drop off himself.
	That morning, however, he awakened early and uneasily, feeling there 
was some reason why he should be worried. Something he should fear, but 
what? Why? Out of nervousness, he programmed Dr. Nambu's home phone number 
into the phone, since it would of course be past midnight in Utoland now. 
If he needed help... Why would he need help? What was he afraid of?
	Berg Katse had always had the instinctive ability to sense when 
something bad was going down. Kyla had not, or at least had never 
manifested it. Kyle thought about that, wondering if his unease had to do 
with his instinct for danger, and if so what was triggering it. He didn't 
really believe in psi powers, at least not the precognitive type, but he 
*did* believe in hunches-- his intellect had always operated far more 
heavily on intuition and flashes of insight than on steady trains of logic. 
Only, to get a hunch he had to have *some* data input, at least. What was 
it he sensed that was spooking him?
	The baby stirred, still asleep. Kyle picked it up and put it in the 
bassinette, as he didn't like leaving it in his bed when he wasn't there-- 
he was always afraid it would roll over and fall out of bed. It was an 
amazingly strong baby, with the ability to support its weight on its tiny 
arms and push itself up even at this tender age, and it did in fact have 
the ability to roll itself over and fall out of bed... He paced. He had no 
appetite for breakfast. He thought about sneaking out of the house, to see 
what he could see, but couldn't make himself. He was too afraid of what 
might be out there.
	Kyle castigated himself for that. How stupid could he be? If there 
*was* something out there, he had to know what it was, or how could he 
protect himself and the baby? Hiding under the bed and hoping it went away 
was not a solution. He opened the sliding door to the fire escape, and 
forced himself to peer outside and look around.
	For several minutes, he saw nothing. He was thinking about climbing 
down the fire escape to look around the other side of the building when he 
saw a black van ambling along the street. By craning his head, he could 
determine that it was parking in front of the building. A moment later, he 
saw three men in pale blue business suits and sunglasses come around the 
side of the building. Rapidly Kyle retreated from the fire escape as he saw 
them approach it and situate themselves under it. Everything about them 
screamed "gangster", and they were packing weapons.
	He shut the glass door, and went to the door of his apartment. By 
listening, he could tell that two men were coming up the stairs.
	Too late, Kyle made the intuitive leap. The dream last night. Sosai's 
eyes. Sosai and he had once had a telepathic link of sorts. He had always 
had to activate it himself by calling for help, and there were range 
limits-- it had never occurred to him that Sosai could find him with it. 
Now, though, with Galactors-- and he was sure they were  Galactors-- coming 
up his stairwell after him, it was obvious. The range limits could be 
circumvented if Sosai had a nexus in the area. *They must have a base 
around here*, he thought, close to panicking.
	What could he do? He didn't have a gun. He could escape through a 
window and go down the side of the building, but not with the baby, and 
they had blocked off the stairs and the fire escape. The door to the roof 
had been locked when he'd checked two weeks ago, and while it *might* be 
unlocked now, going up to check would put him in a dead end if it wasn't. 
That had to be a last resort. He was halfway around the world from anyone 
who might help him. Despair nearly overwhelmed him. 
	Instincts far older than his current persona, as old as a lifetime, 
cut in. He was still terrified, but now the terror was at a remove, and 
there was a computer running in his brain, calculating at high speed the 
best way out. Deal with the baby first. The Galactors could not be 
permitted to take the baby. He ran into the bedroom, grabbed the 
bassinette, and shoved it. The baby, startled, began to wail. "I'm sorry," 
Kyle whispered as he shoved the bassinette into the bathroom, locked the 
door, and shut it as he left. The Galactors wouldn't waste time breaking 
down the door to get at the baby if he kept them sufficiently occupied, and 
besides, the bathroom was supposed to be soundproof. 
	Then he ran for the phone, punching the memory button for Nambu's 
number. The processing of the international exchanges seemed hideously 
slow, and Kyle's heart slammed wildly in the silence waiting for a Utoland 
line. The phone finally rang once, twice. Three times. *Answer, damn you 
Nambu, answer!*
	A sleep-groggy voice. It was 2 AM in Utoland, or something like that. 
"Nambu here."
	"This is Kyle, turn on the recorder, this is an emergency. I'm in 
Saracuse in New Jork State at 1515 E. Bookman St, there are Galactors on my 
fire escape, I locked the baby in the bathroom but they've come for me, get 
somebody out here as quickly as possible *please!*"
	"I'll dispatch the Science Ninja Team right away. How long can you 
hold them off?"
	"I-- *shit!*" The door slammed open, and two men with machine guns 
burst in. Kyle threw the phone at them and dove under the bed.
	"Fuck, he's going for a weapon!" one of them shouted. Kyle heard a 
"click".
	"Asshole! Orders are to take him alive. From Sosai himself."
	"Yeah, but you don't *know* how tricky that bastard is. I say nail him 
*now*!"
	"And have Sosai nail your balls to the wall. No thanks. Hey, Katse! My 
friend here wants to blanket this entire room with his machine gun. You've 
got exactly 30 seconds to come out from under that bed with your hands over 
your head and no tricks, or he blows you away."
	Kyle had been trying to see if he could lift the bed. He knew he 
shouldn't be physically strong enough, but he also knew that he'd pulled 
some impossible stunts in his life by tapping into a well of berserker 
strength. It wasn't working, though. He was too rational, despite his 
terror-- and anyway, the only times he'd ever gone berserk had been during 
the Change. Scratch that idea. Machine gun bullets would quickly rip the 
bed to shreds and hit him, and the fact that X had given orders to take him 
alive didn't necessarily mean anything-- the trigger-happy man out there 
didn't sound like he cared, and besides, the Condor had been under orders 
to take him alive, too.
	He had wanted to try to hold out long enough for a hope of rescue. 
That was probably impossible. The only alternative he could see at the 
moment was to do as they said.
	"All right," he called from under the bed. "I'm coming out. Don't 
shoot."
	"He'd never surrender that easily," the trigger-happy one said. "He's 
up to something, I tell you!"
	"Maybe he's mellowed since ISO brainwashed him. How the hell should I 
know? Orders are to take him alive."
	Kyle came out from under the bed with his hands up in the air. "Over 
to the wall," the order-obeying one, who was the taller of the two, said. 
"Hands behind your head."
	The two of them frisked him. "We ought to do a strip search," the 
shorter man said. "No telling what he's hiding."
	"Yeah, *you* do it then. I'll cover."
	With a gun at his head, Kyle stripped obediently, thinking that it was 
a good thing Galactor hadn't tracked him down when he was still female. 
Galactors would cheerfully rape male prisoners at a base, but they rarely 
raped men in the field; women, they'd rape anywhere. The paranoid Galactor 
searched him carefully, including a cavity search-- he must have served 
under Katse. If Kyle was still Katse, the man's paranoia would be 
justified, but Kyle hadn't seen the need to be a walking arsenal until now, 
when it was too late. *If I get out of this, I'm going to start carrying 
personal weapons again.* Kyla had been too much of a pacifist to carry 
weapons, and Kyle had been too depressed to think of it. The depression was 
gone now. There was nothing like the terror of imminent capture, torture 
and/or death to wake one up.
	"He's clean," the shorter man said disbelievingly.
	"Told you so. Get your clothes on. Sosai wants to see you." This was 
to Kyle, who obeyed. He could hear the baby wailing, despite the 
theoretically soundproof walls of the bathroom-- but that might be his 
sensitivity as a parent. The Galactors didn't appear to have noticed.
	After he was dressed, they hustled him outside, where the two 
Galactors that had staked out the fire escape joined them. They all got in 
the van. Kyle was handcuffed, and his feet were shackled to a seat in the 
back of the van, with two gun-toting Galactors on either side of him and 
the paranoid man in the back, watching him with mirrors. They were taking 
no chances. It was almost funny, seeing how they were so geared up to deal 
with a threat that more or less didn't exist. Kyle was out of practice, and 
had spent too long in a depression lately to think that he could fight his 
way out of the situation-- not now.
	Not yet, anyway.

	Joe's bracelet beeped at him. He didn't mind-- he had been 
unsuccessfully trying to get to sleep for an hour. Time was he could just 
drop off... He didn't want to think about why not. "G-2 here."
	"Joe." It was Nambu. "We've located Kyle. He's in the city of Saracuse 
in New Jork State, America, and he's under attack by Galactors. I'm 
mobilizing the team."
	"On my way!"
	Joe leapt out of his trailer and ran to the car, which he unhitched 
from the trailer and started up. He drove toward the usual rendezvous 
point, transforming to Bird Style as he went.
	*Galactors attacking...* Before reason reasserted itself, all he could 
think of was Kyla, as she had been, at the hands of those bastards. *Kyla, 
I'm coming, hang--* And then he remembered that it wasn't Kyla who was in 
danger. Kyla didn't exist anymore. *Why should I be so upset? Why would I 
give a shit for *that* bastard?*
	The New God Phoenix loomed over. Joe slowed, allowing Ryu to do the 
pickup. This ship, stupid as it looked on the outside, had a much more 
efficient internal construc-tion-- a tube took Joe directly from the hatch 
of his car to the bridge, without him having to crawl all over the ship.
	As he stepped out of the tube, Ken glanced over at him. "Glad you 
could make it," he said mildly.
	"There a reason why you thought I wouldn't?"
	"Considering your opinion of the person we're rescuing, yes."
	"We can't let Galactor get their hands on him," Joe said, surprising 
himself. "If they want him dead that's one thing, but if they force him to 
go back to Galactor-- he knows too damned much. We've got to rescue him, 
whether we like it or not."
	Ken nodded. "Yes. Dr. Nambu said the same thing."
	Jinpei spoke up. "That wasn't all Dr. Nambu said, aniki."
	Ken shot Jinpei a look. "I think Joe and I are both well aware of the 
alternatives," he said.
	"What alternatives?" Joe asked. "I missed this."
	"Ah. Well, it took a little extra time to pick you and Jun up, because 
the rest of us were sleeping over at base. Dr. Nambu gave us our orders 
while we were on our way."
	"What are our orders, Ken? Exactly?" Jun inquired.
	"Well. As you know, we're to do everything in our power to rescue Kyle 
Samonetti and his child. Chances are, though, by the time we get there, 
Galactor will already have them. We're to save the baby, of course, 
whatever it takes. We're also to track down Kyle and do our best to save 
him.
	"If, however, we *can't* save him-- either because they've brainwashed 
him back to being Katse, or whatever-- he's too dangerous to let live. 
We're to make sure, if he's Katse, that he doesn't come back."
	"Sensible," Joe said. 
	He suddenly thought of Kyla, crying in his arms because the Galactors 
had killed the agents she'd sent. He remembered telling her of his own 
confusion, of how his continued amnesia upset him, and heard her answer 
again. "Be grateful for it. There's nothing worth remembering back there. 
God, if I could only forget again..."
	The memory closed off his throat for a second, and he turned away. 
*Ky, you were so beautiful... why did you have to change, to Change? Why 
couldn't things have stayed the way they were? If I'd never remembered...* 
He hardened his heart. *Kyla's dead.* "Ken."
	"What?"
	"If it's Katse... let me do it."
	"Joe..."
	"I owe that much to Kyla. It's what she would have wanted."
	Ken nodded, reluctantly. "Yes, she would have... but I want to make 
sure you don't go jumping the gun. Don't kill unless you're absolutely 
*sure*--"
	"I know. I *can* tell the difference between Kyle and Katse, you know. 
Otherwise he'd be dead already."
	"All right."

	The apartment itself was in decent condition. The bedroom, however, 
showed signs of a struggle, with a broken phone on the floor. Of Kyle 
himself, there was no sign. "Shit," Ken muttered. "I knew it was too much 
to hope for, that he'd be able to hold them off, but still..."
	Joe frowned. Was that a baby crying? He focused his attention-- yes. 
In the bathroom. God *damn* it! Joe ran to the bathroom door.
	"Joe! What're you doing?"
	"Can't you *hear* it, Ken? The baby. Somebody locked it in here." He 
was about to kick in the door, but thought better of it-- he didn't know 
where the baby was, in relation to the door. Instead, he ripped out the 
doorknob, stuck his hand in the hole he'd left, and diddled the locking 
mechanism. He shoved open the door.
	The baby was gasping, the sort of exhausted cry an infant produces 
when it's been crying for so long it's given up hope. Joe looked down at 
the tiny thing, and noticed how different it looked, after such a short 
time. It was still deformed, but much less so. Maybe they'd been right, and 
it *would* be normal when it grew up. *My child*, he thought, and then, 
remembering what Nambu had said-- "any sex you want it to be; it's a 
shapechanger"-- thought, fiercely, *My *son**. He took his son in his arms, 
awkwardly. "Don't cry, buddy," he said, rocking it slightly. "Daddy's here. 
Don't cry."
	Jun came back from investigating for clues, and saw Joe holding the 
baby. "Oh, poor thing..."
	"He's not quieting down," Joe said worriedly. "Jun, am I holding him 
wrong or something?"
	"No, that looks fine. He's probably hungry. And scared, too. Where was 
he?"
	"In the bathroom, in his bassinette."
	"Right," Ken said. "Dr. Nambu said Kyle said that was where he was."
	"There ought to be formula in the fridge for him," Jun said.
	Ken cleared his throat. "Did you find anything?"
	"Yes. One of the apartment's tenants saw the Galactors arrive and 
leave with Kyle. He didn't go with them voluntarily-- they had several 
machine guns aimed at him. The woman got down the license plate of the van, 
and noticed that it was a black '14 American Motor Co. Joe, go feed that 
baby, why don't you?"
	"What do I do? Just get a bottle out of the fridge and give it to 
him?"
	Jun sighed. "No, you-- Ken, could you come with me while I help Joe 
take care of his baby? It probably needs to be changed, too."
	"Yeah, he does," Joe agreed, wrinkling up his nose at the smell.
	"Well, I'll show you how to do it. I used to help Matron take care of 
the babies at the orphanage-- it's not that hard."
	"Where are Ryu and Jinpei?" Ken asked.
	"Still looking. I left them to try to figure out where the van went 
after I heard a baby crying. Since I know you menfolk are incompetent with 
babies--" She smiled.
	"Hey, so I didn't grow up in an orphanage, ok? So sue me."
	"What direction did the van leave in?" Ken asked, as Jun located the 
supplies and showed Joe how to change a diaper.
	"Uptown. Uh, Joe-- this isn't a boy."
	"It's either. Dr. Nambu said that whatever I raise it as, that's what 
it'll be when it grows up. I want a boy, so I'm saying he's a boy."
	"If you say so. What a smell!" She directed her next comments to the 
child himself. "What a stinky baby! Stin-kee!" The baby, who had finally 
stopped crying, at least temporarily, gurgled something. "And so profound!" 
Jun laughed.
	Ken called Nambu. "We've got the baby. Kyle was kidnapped in a black 
AMC van, license plate JRT 347, heading uptown. Can you alert the police 
departments to keep an eye out for it?"
	"Certainly."
	They talked as Jun and Joe diapered, fed and played with the baby, 
until it was at last restored to good humor. Jinpei and Ryu came in with a 
report on the route the van had taken for six blocks, at which point they'd 
lost the trail.
	"All right," Ken said. "This is the plan. We'll try to track down that 
van-- the Doctor wasn't very hopeful about our chances, though. So what 
we're going to do is this. Rumors run thick in Galactor, and if Berg 
Katse-- or a person they perceive as Katse-- is captured as a traitor, most 
of Galactor is going to know it very shortly, I don't care how hard Gel 
Sadra tries to cover it up. We're to infiltrate Galactor and try to pick up 
on the rumors."
	"Suppose we can't find him before there's an attack, and we have to go 
fight?" Ryu asked.
	"At least one of us will have to stay behind looking for him while the 
rest of us deal with the threat."
	"That'd be me," Joe said.
	"Joe?" Ken turned. "You'd want to stay out of action, looking for 
Kyle? That doesn't sound like you."
	"It makes sense, Ken. It's part my fault he left ISO in the first 
place-- *not* that I'm apologizing. I did the only thing I *could* do. But 
it means I owe him. If it's still Kyle, I owe it to him to get him out of 
there. And if it's Katse-- we've got unfinished business, me and him."
	"Right," Ken said. "Okay, people, let's follow that van."

	Guards brought Kyle to the Audience Chamber.
	Gel Sadra was there, but Kyle barely registered her. X's image had 
changed-- instead of the flame creature that had ruled Katse's life, X had 
taken a form like a hologrammatic Rorschach blot-- but it didn't matter. 
The moment he was inside the chamber, Kyle felt the power from X's nexus, 
overwhelming him. The air crackled with energy, an energy he had once 
defined as God. Once, this power had cushioned him, guiding and protecting 
him. To face it now, turned against him, was almost more than he could 
bear. Kyle had to fight off a terrified desire to throw himself prostrate 
to the ground and beg forgiveness.
	*KATSE. I AM DISAPPOINTED.*
	Simple words, but they carried with them more power to affect him than 
Kyle had imagined. He had not met X again since his death. Kyla's decision 
to turn on X had been based on conscience and guilt; she had hardly 
remembered what X had been like. Now Kyle remembered *why* he'd never 
dreamed of opposing Sosai, how Sosai had ruled his life completely. X 
saying he was disappointed-- was like one's father disowning one, or God 
turning His face away. Kyle wanted to plead forgiveness, to make excuses, 
to beg his way back into X's good graces-- even though he knew X was evil, 
even though he hated the alien.
	"Are you going to kill me?" he asked in a tiny voice, unable to speak 
with any strength.
	Gel Sadra laughed sadistically. "Slowly. Slowly, and *very, very* 
painfully. *If* you don't obey Sosai-sama."
	*YES. I HAVE PROMISED GEL SADRA YOU TO KILL, IF YOU DEFY ME. I 
UNDERSTAND SHE HAS CREATED A SPECIAL DEVICE TO TEAR YOU TO BITS SLOWLY. I 
KNOW YOUR PAIN THRESHOLD, KATSE, AND I KNOW THAT YOU CAN SURVIVE LONG HOURS 
UNDER TORTURE. YOU WOULD BE SCREAMING FOR HOURS BEFORE YOU DIED.* 
	Kyle was lightheaded from terror. He couldn't handle pain. Death he 
was willing to face, but not pain. X continued. *HOWEVER, I AM WILLING TO 
GIVE YOU ANOTHER CHANCE. I KNOW THAT YOU WERE TAKEN INTO NAMBU'S 
CONFIDENCE, SO CERTAIN WAS HE THAT THE BRAINWASHING HELD. BETRAY HIM, 
KATSE. TELL ME THE IDENTITIES OF THE SCIENCE NINJA TEAM, AND I WILL LET YOU 
LIVE, AND WORK TOWARD YOUR OWN REINSTATEMENT.*
	This was it. This was the test of whether he was truly someone new, 
someone who could deserve love, or if he was merely Berg Katse with a 
civilized veneer. Why did it have to be torture? He would have gone to a 
quick death willingly enough. But he was so afraid of pain...
	*Nambu used me. Jay hates me. Ken always figured I'd do this anyway. 
Why not betray them? It's only what they'd expect*. "Yes," he whispered.
	*YES, WHAT?*
	"The Ninja Team--" He stopped. "Gatchaman--"
	*"If I ever revert, Ken, I want you to kill me. I'd rather die than be 
Berg Katse again..."*
	*"Kyla's my wife. I don't give a damn who she used to be."*
	*"I was thinking of holding a baby shower for you..."*
	He saw Joe's face, as it would be. *"I was right, you bastard, you are 
Katse. Sell us out to save your own skin, did you? I should have killed you 
after you Changed!"*
	*You should have, you should have, my love...*
	"No," he said, shaking his head, close to fainting from fear. "N-no, I 
w- I won't tell you. Go ahead. K-kill..." He couldn't speak. *Oh, Jay, will 
you love me if I die for you? Tell me please, will you forgive me now?*
	*AMAZING,* X commented dryly. *AN OVERRIDE PROGRAM.*
	"May I kill him now, my lord Sosai-sama?" Gel Sadra asked in a parody 
of sweetness.
	*NOT YET. SOMEONE HAS REPROGRAMMED HIM. I WANT TO TRY TO DEPROGRAM HIM 
FIRST.*	
	Sudden outrage strengthened Kyle against the fear. "I'm not a 
computer!" he shouted. "You can't just program and reprogram me-- I'm a 
human being!"
	*NO. YOU ARE NOT AND NEVER WERE. YOU ARE A GEMINI LINKAGE-- A 
MALLEABLE, PROGRAMMABLE HUMANOID MODULE, CONSTRUCTED FROM HUMAN DNA. I 
BUILT AND PROGRAMMED YOU AND THREE OTHERS TO TAKE ON FUTURE ROLES OF MY 
CHOOSING.*	
	"No," Kyle said. "I'm not-- I *chose* to join you, when I did-- and 
*I* choose to reject you now--"
	*YOU CAN'T CHOOSE ANYTHING. YOU JOINED ME BECAUSE I HAD PROGRAMMED YOU 
TO DO SO. YOU TURN ON ME NOW BECAUSE OF ISO'S PROGRAMMING. UNDER THE PROPER 
STIMULUS, THE ORIGINAL PROGRAM WILL RESURFACE.*
	"No! I'll *never*--"
	*YOU WERE ABOUT TO GIVE IN BEFORE YOUR OVERRIDE PROGRAM TOOK OVER.*	
	"That wasn't a program! That was--"
	*For Jay. Because I loved Jay. But why do I love Jay-- no, Joe-- when 
he hates me? Why do I care what he thinks?*
	*Why did I ever?*
	*Why is it that I know now that Sosai is evil?*
	*Did Dr. Kymel program me?*
	*I'M SORRY THIS IS NECESSARY, KATSE. BUT YOUR INITIAL PROGRAMMING WAS 
HARSH, AND SO TOO WILL THIS BE. GEL SADRA!*
	"Yes, Sosai-sama?"
	*GIVE HIM TO THE MEN. PICK MEN WHO SUFFERED UNDER KATSE'S RULE, AND 
TELL THEM THEY ARE NOT TO KILL OR SEVERELY INJURE HIM. WITHIN THOSE 
LIMITATIONS, THEY MAY DO AS THEY LIKE.*
	"*Yes*, Sosai-sama." Gel Sadra's face lit with an unholy sadistic 
smile. "It will be my pleasure."
	She turned to Kyle. "Don't you wish you had obeyed Sosai when you 
could, now? You're going to suffer. You're going to suffer *terribly*. This 
is going to be great fun!" She laughed.
	Seeing Gel Sadra's hideous gloating strengthened Kyle's resolve. *That 
sadistic grinning thing was what I was. What Sosai wants to turn me back 
into. I won't, no matter what they do. I'll die first.*
	Then the men were summoned, and instructed, and the resolve almost 
died.

	Two days so far.
	The van had disappeared into thin air, like most Galactor vehicles 
managed to do. The team *had* located a Galactor base in upstate New Jork, 
several miles out of Saracuse, and Ken, Joe and Ryu had infiltrated it. Jun 
and Jinpei stayed on the outside, continuing a more direct search-- 
nowadays Galactor didn't recruit women anymore, and they were wary of 
children after the last time Jinpei had snuck in. 
	Nobody at this base knew anything about the capture of Berg Katse, 
although they did know he'd turned traitor. Ken managed to find the 
location of three more bases connected with this one. "We'll split up," he 
said. "Joe, you take the one down south. Ryu, west. I'll take the one in 
the north."
	So now Joe had insinuated himself into a new Galactor base. Things 
were moving fast by undercover standards-- often it took several days to 
infiltrate and transfer between bases-- but not nearly fast enough for Joe. 
He was consumed by the need to find Kyle as quickly as possible. The longer 
it took, the more likely he would break, and then...
	Joe didn't quite know why he was so desperate to find Kyle. Well, 
yeah, he did. He didn't want Katse being reborn. The idea of killing Katse 
didn't bother him, but the idea that it would be necessary at all, that 
Katse would come back, scared him witless.
	*Suppose he comes back and I can't get to him in time? I killed that 
bastard once... but he got me, too. I was careless. But so was he. If he 
decides to be careful this time around, I may never get a clear shot at 
him.*
	*And then Ky would *really* be dead.*

	Theoretically, Galactor made no allowance for human emotion. Your 
feelings were supposed to be zero, and you weren't supposed to care if a 
father or brother or son died, much less a friend. Galactors weren't even 
supposed to *have* friends. In practice, it had never entirely worked this 
way-- even Katse himself had had a soft spot in his heart for a few people, 
such as his protégée Selina Marriochio and his sometime lover André 
Sordonne. The legions of fathers, brothers, sons and buddies who had died 
when Katse had abandoned an exploding mecha or a base were matched by 
legions of fathers, brothers, sons and buddies who were left alive, nursing 
a secret hatred for Katse, who routinely lived when all others died.
	Gel Sadra had had no trouble finding a cadre of such men to set on 
Kyle.
	For two days, he had been beaten, raped, tortured and humiliated. They 
had strict instructions on how much damage they could cause him, and they 
never exceeded their limits. But their instructions gave them plenty of 
leeway, and they were very creative about exploring new possibilities.
	The most horrible thing about the torture, though, was that it was in 
a sense justified. He *had* abandoned men that these men cared for to die. 
Some of his torturers had been directly abandoned or betrayed by him, and 
had suffered pain and disfigurement as a result. What they did to him was 
no worse than things he'd done to a hundred victims of his own-- they were, 
in fact, kinder to him than he as Berg Katse would have been in their 
position, though more out of a failure of imagination on their part than 
the desire to be merciful.
	Kyle couldn't help himself. He'd never done well with pain. Every 
skill he'd ever developed had been geared to avoiding it. He struggled, he 
screamed, he wept with pain and begged for mercy. If they'd asked him 
anything then, he would have told them. They didn't ask.
	After close to two days of almost constant torment, they left him 
alone, to sleep as best as he could amid the pain. Actually, he slept 
readily and deeply, being thoroughly exhausted-- they hadn't let him sleep 
in close to 48 hours. When he woke, in a dark room, he found they'd also 
left him food, disgusting and foul stuff, but he was starving. He ate it.
	Some time later the door to his cell opened. Kyle cringed back on his 
cot, terrified of the looming shapes in the door. The lights went on. The 
first thing he registered was four bulky Galactors standing behind a 
wheelchair, and he whimpered, thinking the men were here to continue the 
torture. Then he saw the woman in the wheelchair. With her arms slack at 
her sides and a strange mechanical collar around her neck, linked by wires 
to her chair, without her customary white makeup and with her hair cut 
short, he failed to recognize her for a second. But only for a second.
	"*Selina?*" Disbelievingly. Had she come to save him or hurt him more? 
"What are you doing in a wheelchair?"
	"Don't you recognize your own handiwork, Katse-sama?"
	Her voice was uncharacteristically bitter, and her gaze 
uncharacteristically direct, a challenging stare.
	"What do you mean?"
	"You sent the Science Ninja Team to destroy my base. On the day I'd 
decided to leave Galactor. You'd asked them to take me alive, so I could be 
brainwashed, just like you. They weren't very careful about it, though."
	*Oh my God-- They didn't tell me they--* "Did *they* cripple you?" he 
asked, horrified.
	"They dropped a wall on me when they blew up my base. I was carrying 
three children to safety-- children they ended up stealing from me. A wall 
caved in on me. I survived in an air pocket, and I Changed-- but the 
process began and ended while I was still trapped under the wall. When they 
dug me out, I was paralyzed from the neck down. Apparently something got 
rewired wrong during the Change. There's nothing organically wrong with 
me-- my spinal cord simply doesn't work." Her voice was trying to be 
matter-of-fact, as it usually was, but it was failing. The bitterness, the 
anger and anguish, came through clearly. "I don't know whether it's 
permanent or not, but it's likely to be. Gel Sadra wants me dead, because I 
don't play her games, and with me paralyzed and helpless like this, she'll 
find an excuse eventually and I won't be able to get away. You've written 
my death warrant."
	"But-- that was four months ago. Can't you Change again and heal it?"
	"I *can't* trigger the Change. I'm not like you. My two forms are too 
genetically similar."
	"I--" He looked away. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean--"
	"You didn't mean for me to be paralyzed. I know. You wanted me to join 
you. It never occurred to you to simply *ask?*" He hadn't seen such emotion 
in Marriochio since she was an abused 11-year-old, sobbing in his arms. "I 
was ready to abandon Galactor, because you weren't there anymore. I was 
loyal to *you*, Katse-sama, to you, not Galactor. I'd have gladly turned 
coat and gone to work for ISO if you'd asked me-- I would have followed you 
anywhere. Instead, you destroyed my life work, kidnapped my children and 
crippled me. And you tell me you're *sorry?*"
	"I *am* sorry. I thought the Temple of Science-- I thought, even if 
you defected, it would keep operating. So I wanted them to capture you and 
destroy it, so your successor couldn't destroy it."
	"There *would* have been no successor! I was absolute ruler of the 
Temple for two years. If I'd given the order, *all* of us would have 
defected. Katse, Gel Sadra didn't even know where our base *was!* And by 
the time Sosai realized we were a danger, we could have relocated--" There 
were tears in her eyes. "Thirty-eight years' worth of data was stored 
there. Seven years of it data I was personally involved in collecting. We 
couldn't save a tenth of it." She did not sob-- her voice was intense, 
anguished but firm-- but tears welled out of her eyes and trickled down her 
face. "That was all I lived for, science. That and you. I *loved* you, and 
you-- you destroyed everything I had."
	"You-- what?"
	"Yes. I loved you. You were the one who said 'our emotions are zero', 
weren't you? How could I tell you? I couldn't tell myself. You were the 
golden, wonderful being I'd always dreamed of, the one who saved me from my 
foster parents, who fulfilled my wildest dreams. I was just a poor ugly 
Italian peasant. I waited for you to notice me, and you never did, so I 
realized you never would."
	"I-- you went around with that white makeup, and those clothes, trying 
to minimize your own sexuality. I assumed you didn't want to be noticed."
	"Not by anyone but you. So I was a fool, then. I thought you had some 
abilities normal people didn't, to see through facades like that. And when 
you didn't, I thought it was because what was under there wasn't worth 
seeing through to. I locked my desires away where not even I could see 
them, and found the only fulfillment I could in serving you and doing 
research." She blinked rapidly and turned her head back, pressing it back 
against the cushions in a futile attempt to wipe her eyes. "I could forgive 
your serving ISO, easily. I was never overly loyal to Galactor myself. But 
I would have defected for you, I would have betrayed Galactor for you, and 
instead you betrayed me. I can't forgive that." She smiled, a twisted and 
bitter smile, full of grief turned into self-mockery. "Perhaps I should 
thank you. I've realized a lot of things about you and about me since you 
did that. I finally saw that I was living for a ghost, for a dream of you. 
And you were never worth it. It wasn't *only* my fault you never saw 
through my facade, Katse-sama. Maybe I was never as ugly and worthless as I 
thought I was. Maybe that was you."
	Guilt threatened to overwhelm Kyle. Even as Kyla, even when she'd 
worked for what she'd thought was right, she'd brought destruction and 
pain. He remembered how happy and proud she'd been that she'd been able to 
bring the Temple of Science down, how she'd only seen it as a strike at 
Sosai X. It had never occurred to her what she'd be doing to Selina.
	"I hope you hold out against them, I do," Selina whispered, her voice 
full of love turned to hate. "Because I want Gel Sadra to kill you. And if 
by some chance the Ninja Team or someone rescue you first, remember this-- 
next to Nambu, I am the foremost scientist on this planet. ISO could have 
had it all, everything I've ever done, if you asked. You lost it all. Tell 
Nambu that, and see how happy it makes him." She turned to go, pressing her 
head to one side of her collar brace to move her chair.
	The hatred and pain in her voice struck at Kyle. He remembered the 
brilliant, quiet child he'd met, that night dining with her father, who'd 
been a career Galactor of equal rank to his at the time. He'd been 
impressed with her mind, and told Sosai, who told him to recruit her. When 
he'd come back, he'd found her in the garage, naked and covered with mud. 
Her father had raped and beaten her and thrown her in there to suffer the 
Change, the same Change he went through every year, and he'd seen himself 
in her. He had only been 18, 19, something like that-- not entirely 
corrupted by Galactor yet. He'd still been capable of feeling for a child 
as she clung to him sobbing. Even as part of him was embarrassed by her 
display, desperate to push her off, another part had wanted to protect her 
as no one had protected him. He'd poisoned her in the end, of course, the 
way he'd poisoned everything he touched, and when he was finally given an 
opportunity to take her and heal the damage he himself had done, he had 
*crushed* her, literally as well as figuratively.
	"Selina," he whispered.
	Selina turned her head back to him. "What?"
	"Selina, don't stay in Galactor. It was never any place for you. 
You'll only get hurt again. Go somewhere else and start your life over. 
You're intelligent enough to do anything you like."
	"I have nowhere to go," she said. "ISO and Galactor are the only ones 
who do advanced science, and science is my life. Should I go to ISO? They 
crippled me. I'll stay in Galactor.
	"Besides, in my condition I can't exactly run away, can I?"
	This time, she left.
	"I'm sorry," he said miserably, after she'd gone. *I did love you too. 
Like the little sister I never had. But I'm poison to what I love. Look 
what I did to Emmett Howell. Look what I did to Fiona Carparthian. Look 
what I did to Jay.*
	*You should never have loved or trusted me, Selina. No one can trust 
me. Not even me myself.*

	Four days, and Joe was a live wire. He was in yet another base, trying 
to act casual as he picked up on the rumors. There weren't any.
	He, Ken and Ryu must have hit ten bases by now between them. They'd 
been lucky, in that sense. It would end up being useful that they knew the 
location of so many bases, and after this was over they could hit them all. 
But they hadn't found Kyle yet. There *was* a rumor that Katse had been 
captured, but no one knew where he was. Joe was beginning to suspect that 
Kyle'd been taken to Mobile HQ, wherever *that* was.
	He was also beginning to suspect he'd never see Kyle, Kyla, Katse, or 
any other aspect of that changeable being ever again, alive or dead.
	*They could've already broken him. Probably have. He's got no pain 
tolerance. For all I know, Sosai X might be able to just get into his head 
and flip a switch, and boom! Katse's back. He knows us better than anyone, 
now, except for Dr. Nambu and us ourselves. He could be plotting some 
impossibly complicated plan to kill us all, based on what he knows-- and 
he'll *know* to stay out of my way.*
	*My fault. I married the creature. I brought it into the team--*
	*Bullshit. I had *amnesia.* So did she. She wasn't a creature or a 
monster or a terrorist then, she was just Kyla. I had no reason not to 
marry her.*
	*Dr. Kymel's fault. She should have stopped it. She should have known 
what would happen if we fell in love, and then regained our memories. If we 
were lovers, and then went back to war as enemies. She should've known.*
	*And she just wanted us to be happy. *Bull*shit.*
	*If any of the others die because of Katse, I really will kill her.*

	By the time he found the knife, he didn't care that he'd made them 
suffer any more.
	After Selina's visit, there had been several hours by himself, alone 
in a sea of guilt. Even when he tried to do good, he destroyed. Selina was 
no innocent, but what she was, he had made her, and then he had destroyed 
her for it. When his tormentors returned that night, he had almost welcomed 
them, feeling he deserved to be punished.
	That feeling had lasted maybe five minutes. He hadn't sufficient guilt 
to warrant this. He had tortured dozens of others like this, yes, but he 
didn't care anymore. He didn't care if he deserved it, he wanted it to end.
	Since they couldn't cause more harm to him than a simple beating would 
bring, they had to be creative. He could handle being beaten, if he had to. 
He'd been beaten before, countless times-- he didn't like it, but it was 
something he was experienced at handling. Being raped was worse, but he'd 
dealt with that before, too. When they did things like running house 
current through the most sensitive regions of his body or dropping a soap 
and alcohol solution into his eyes, *that* he couldn't handle. He wanted 
out, whatever it took.
	They made him perform obscenely humiliating acts to avoid torture, and 
then they tortured him anyway. He didn't feel guilty anymore. Pain brought 
terror, yes, but also anger. How dared they do this to him? To *him?* Who 
did they think they were? He stopped hoping for rescue and started planning 
his escape, his natural resilience finally reasserting itself. Then he 
found the knife under his mattress.
	Who put it there? Who cared? It was his ticket out. He hid it behind 
himself as he cowered when three of them came into his room, and as soon as 
the first was close enough he leapt forward and stabbed the man in the 
throat. The man dropped his gun, and he caught it and sprayed the other two 
men with it before they quite understood what was happening. He retrieved 
the knife, and stuck it in the waistband at his hip. Then he shoved the 
door open and rushed out, carrying the gun.
	There were men in his way. He shot them without a second thought, and 
retrieved their guns when he had time, so he never ran out of ammo. This 
base was new, but certain principles applied to all Galactor bases, and he 
had designed enough of them to be able to thread his way through the maze. 
If his calculations were correct, he'd end up coming out in a control 
center, and from there he could find Gel Sadra's escape tunnels and get 
out. They'd be keyed to her brainwaves, but he knew how to jimmy the locks.
	Then he came out in the control center-- but there were others here 
before him. He was surrounded by men with guns. Gel Sadra stood behind the 
men, and a small cluster of men guarded a woman with a child. X's voice 
boomed. *BERG KATSE. STOP!*
	That voice still had the power to affect him. It brought him up short, 
and in the shattering of his focus he saw where he was and what he'd been 
doing clearly, for the first time. No, not what he'd been doing-- who he'd 
been. He had gunned down a dozen men, or more, with no thought. Without a 
moment's regret, without any more emotion than anger that they were in his 
way.
	Kyle moaned, beginning to shake. That hadn't been Kyle Samonetti who'd 
made that escape. Kyle was a pacifist. He would kill if he had to-- but not 
unthinkingly, not without emotion. Reaction hit him, and he almost threw 
the gun from him in disgust, starting the convulsive motion before reason 
reasserted itself and he grabbed it back before quite releasing it. The 
weight of the thing, the feel of the metal, was horrible to him now, but it 
might still mean the difference between life and death. He looked around 
him.
	There were men in a circle around him, armed with machine guns. Behind 
the circle was Gel Sadra, towering head and shoulders over the men in front 
of her, laughing obscenely. A small cluster of men next to her guarded a 
terrified Asian woman, who was clutching a baby. There was also a device of 
some sort behind Gel Sadra, but Kyle couldn't see it clearly.
	*EXCELLENT, KATSE. I KNEW THAT IF YOU SUFFERED ENOUGH, YOUR TRUE SELF 
WOULD COME TO THE FOREFRONT. YOUR PERFORMANCE GRATIFIES ME.
	*ONLY ONE MORE THING, KATSE, AND I WILL GRANT YOUR FREEDOM. ONE MORE 
TASK, AND YOU NEED NEVER SUFFER AGAIN.*
	The woman was pushed forward, whimpering, until she was inside the 
circle. *KILL HER FOR ME, KATSE. KILL HER AND THE CHILD. PERFORM THIS LAST 
TASK, AND I WILL FORGIVE YOU. OTHERWISE I SHALL HAVE TO HAVE GEL SADRA 
DESTROY YOU. DON'T DISAPPOINT ME AGAIN, KATSE. KILL THE WOMAN!*
	One more thing, and he would be free? No more pain? It was her or him. 
The Galactors would kill her and the baby anyway. He raised the gun.
	The woman moaned, and tried to step back, trembling violently. The 
child in her arms began to wail.
	*A baby... My baby, where's *my* baby?*
	*My God, what was I about to do?*
	This time Kyle did throw the gun from him, in horror, with trembling 
hands. He couldn't trust himself. Pain and fear had activated all his 
survival instincts, screaming at him to sacrifice anything to live, and 
those instincts belonged to Berg Katse. He was on the verge of losing his 
soul again. "Kill me then, I won't do it, I won't!" he shrieked, babbling 
in terror.
	*I DOUBT YOU WOULD SAY THAT IF YOU TRULY UNDERSTOOD WHAT YOU FACED. 
GEL SADRA, DEMONSTRATE THE MACHINE.*
	"Yes, Sosai-sama." A pair of guards flanked Kyle, pushing him forward 
until he could clearly see the machine. It had a table with adjustable 
cuffs, to bind someone Kyle's size spread-eagled onto it. Above that was 
the device itself, a series of wheels that could be lowered or 
repositioned. Each wheel bore on it many tiny serrated blades, running 
across the wheel perpendicular to its curve. As the wheel turned, each 
blade would bite into flesh, digging a long scrape or cutting away a piece 
of flesh, and then roll away from the body as the next blade came into 
place.
	Gel Sadra related all this in loving detail. "The blades are dull, 
except for the tips of the serration, to cause maximum pain while cutting," 
she said gloatingly. "When I tested it on captives, I found that I could 
slowly cut all the way to the bone, bit by bit, and then by repositioning 
the wheel, moving it forward a bit at a time, I could remove all the flesh 
on the leg in about an hour. With proper drugs, the victim stays conscious 
the whole time. If you position the blades so you don't encounter any major 
arteries, you can shred the legs and arms to bits in a little under four 
hours without the victim dying or losing the ability to feel pain. They 
usually go into shock when we start on the genitals, but Sosai tells me 
that you're tougher than that-- you won't ever go into shock at all. You'll 
be alive and conscious for hours. Since we can't get through bone too 
easily, we can even do your face and chest without hitting any major 
organs-- you probably won't die until we start in on your stomach and rip 
it to bits. And we'll do that last. I think I can make you last for six or 
seven hours. Conscious the whole time." She smiled, horribly. "Would you 
like to reconsider your decision?"
	Kyle had gone dead white. *I can't face that. I can't. I can't.* 
Anything was preferable to what Gel Sadra described. Anything at all. His 
too-vivid imagination pictured the dull razors slowly ripping into his 
flesh, and he moaned.
	*JUST KILL THE WOMAN AND CHILD, KATSE. KILL THEM, AND YOU WON'T HAVE 
TO FACE THE MACHINE. YOU'LL GO FREE.*
	Free. He would go free. No pain. Kyle took the knife out with 
trembling hands, and stepped toward the whimpering woman. 
	*She'll die anyway. Sosai would never let her live. Does it matter 
whether I kill her and the child or the Galactors gun them down?*
	He took another step, and hesitated. *Yes, it matters.*
	*How many times will this happen? Another innocent dead, and another, 
and another, until I've talked myself into justifying the deaths of anyone 
who gets in my way. And then it'll only be a short distance until I rain 
fire on 50 million more.*
	He couldn't trust himself. It was that simple. If he killed now, the 
killing would never stop. It had happened before. When he'd first joined 
Galactor, he had never killed except in self-defense, and the fact that 
he'd done even that much shocked and horrified him. There had been one 
justifiable murder, and another, until he was killing routinely, until he 
was killing for pleasure.
	*I can't kill her. If I do, I fall, and millions will die at my hand. 
It's not a question of my life or hers, it's a question of millions. I have 
to die.*
	*Fuck the millions!* His hand clenched on the knife. *They're going to 
torture me! I *can't* face that, I can't...*
	He took another step. *I can control it. Kill her, fake Sosai out, let 
him think he's converted me, and run home when I get the chance...*
	*But then there'll *be* no home, but here. Jay'll be the enemy again. 
How could I convince him that I haven't reverted, when I can't convince 
myself? I'd have to stay here, locked into Katse's life again...*
	*Would that be so awful? I could rule the world. I could pay Gel Sadra 
back for this. Who gives a shit what Jay thinks? I don't need anyone.* He 
raised the knife and took another step. The baby wailed louder, perhaps 
sensing its mother's terror.
	*But my baby... How many innocent children will die?*
	*Who gives a damn? Why *should* I care about innocents? What did they 
ever do for me?*
	*But Jun was going to throw me a baby shower... Jay loved me, until he 
remembered who I was...*
	*Who I'm becoming.*
	He looked at the knife, at the terrified young woman and the crying 
baby.
	*No, Sosai. I couldn't bear it if I gave them reason to hate me again, 
and live without love all my life... I will kill no innocents for you. But 
I won't die screaming, either. There's another way. *
	He turned the raised knife around and plunged it into his throat.
	There was a moment of bright pain, but it didn't hurt nearly as much 
as Joe shooting him had. Sosai was shouting, but the words were mush. The 
world drained into darkness.
	*Jay, will you love me now?...*