She covered her face with her hands. “You think Mark has – what do you say? – a split personality.”

“‘Multiple-personality disorder’ is the current catchphrase, unless they changed it again while I wasn’t looking.”

She grabbed his biceps. “I’m a fantasy, then? I don’t exist?”

“Mu,” he said evenly. “Zen negation. That question was never asked, the way the roshi Joshu unasked the question of whether a dog has Buddha nature. Was it a fantasy that shattered Colonel Nguyen’s.45-caliber manhood into a zillion pieces? Is it a fantasy that’s about to pinch my arms in half?”

“Oh,” she said. She let go and stepped back. “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe it’s time you quit hiding behind apologies. Where’s Mark, right this instant?”

She placed a hand between her breasts. “Inside.”

“All right. When you’re not here, where are you?”

“Inside… Mark.”

“That’s right. So, is Mark unreal?”

“No.”

“Are you?”

“But, Mark is the real one. He becomes us”

“Bullshit.”

She shut her mouth.

“Mark is the baseline personality, as he calls himself What’s the difference? You don’t lose your consciousness when you’re inside him, now, do you? I know he hears the voices of all of you. Once in a while he even speaks in them.”

She hung her head, felt the tears drip from her eyes. “That’s true.”

“So you never don’t exist. It’s just that sometimes you have no physical reality. Visible, anyway – I sure as heck am not pretending to understand the mechanics of your coming and going.

“Look, child. You are real, you are here. How can it matter where you really came from, or what you’re doing here? You’re a fact. And if you let brooding about an unanswerable question like who you really are – and who on Earth can ever wholly answer that question, anyway? – if you let that dissolve you, you are going to leave a whole lot of people who depend on you sinking without a life preserver.”

She began to tremble. He put his arm around her. She stiffened, then stopped fighting the contact and melted against him.

“Isis. Isis, do you feel me?”

She went rigid. Belew held her, firm but not constricting. His left hand was a bandaged stump again; he’d been up to tricks, which was why the government-owned mine site was available for the rebels to hold a press conference in.

“Isis, where are you?”

Eric?

“Accept no substitutes.”

Eric, what’s happening to me?

“An attack of conscience, maybe?”

I’m doing the right thing.

“Really? Then where’s all that grief coming from? All that guilt? I can feel it there, down inside you, surging like a black, stormy sea.”

You really are a poet, Eric.

“I’m the voice of your conscience, hon. Do you feel good about what you’re doing?”

Yes

“Then why do you weep so, my love? You’re helping the exploiters, the bigots. The ones who want to see us burn, to see our joker flesh blacken and shrivel from our bones”

She felt an image begin to form in her mind, an image bright with flame. She pushed it down.

“What? You’re fighting me? Can’t you bear to see the truth?”

I won’t be manipulated anymore. Not even by you. No matter how good your reasons are, I won’t have it.

The glow came back, persisted, grew. She shook her head, fighting. Her body began to tremble uncontrollably. Flashes of light were stabbing in her head, themselves threatening to white out the dream Eric was trying to force into her mind.

“You can’t run forever, baby. You can’t hide. Just as your ragtag reactionary lynch mob can’t play keep-away with us and the People’s Army forever. We will win. We are righteous.”

“Why won’t you come back where you belong?”

She turned her head aside, vomited all over Belew’s arm. “Isis, what’s happening to you?”

“What’s happening to me?” she screamed.

Belew wrapped both arms around her and threw himself sideways, dragging her off the trail. The two went rolling and bouncing down the mountainside.

Chapter Forty-two

Moonchild got a soft-slippered foot into Belew’s gut as she rolled onto her back, pulled him over her and launched him into the night. Then she caught herself, stopped rolling.

She got to all fours. Her arms and legs were shaking so hard, it felt as if she would fly apart. She vomited again.

She heard brush stir. Belew was coming back. She had no idea why he was assaulting her. Perhaps his conservative machismo was driving him to rape. She tried to get up, to fight or flee, but her body would not respond.

Then his arms were around her again. Go away! she wanted to shriek. But she could not produce words.

A whistling of wind, a stinging inrush of debris, and it was Mark huddling in Belew’s arms, shivering violently.

“Now you see what I was up to?” the spy asked softly. “I thought you might still consider that transition a private matter.”

Mark spat to clear his mouth. “What happened, man? The change never hit me that hard before!”

“Moonchild’s having an existential crisis, in a way the Existentialists never dreamed of. Her emotional state made the transition bad. Also -” he shook his head – “it was as if something else was eating her, as if she was listening to something from far away, that was riling her up more.”

Mark tensed, forced himself to relax. He knows too much. He sees too much. Can I trust him?

Do I have any choice?

You always got a choice, bunky, J. J. Flash finished for him. Mark made himself shake his head. “I don’t remember anything about that, man,” he said, “just that she was upset.” As always the lie tasted like copper in his mouth. He’d always hated the taste of lies.

Belew stood up, helped him to his feet. “How are you handling it?”

“I… I don’t know.” That tasted of truth. “I’m gonna have to sort this out”

To the north the sky lit, silhouetting the hunchbacked peak they had just skirted in white. A moment later a rumble reached them, through the ground and cold air. The sound and lights went on and on, pulsing irregularly.

“Air-strike!” Mark cried. He tensed to run.

Belew touched him lightly on the arm. “No. It’s okay. Sov-bloc planes don’t fly at night. It’s artillery.”

He stood for a moment to watch the display. “Our unbiased, impartial media friends ratted us off to the People’s Army. What did I tell you?” He preened his mustache with a thumb.

“I know it’s bad of me…” he said. His teeth were white beneath his well-tended brush. “But is it too much to hope a few of them got caught in the barrage?”

Torches sent strange, misshapen shadows chasing each other between tents and bunkers like imps in a Bosch painting. Jokers swarmed around the two men making their way into the belly of Fort Venceremos, half-naked, sweat-slimed, painted or scarred when they weren’t feathered or scaled or otherwise disfigured by the wild card.

“Aces, aces, let’s get in their faces,” chanted a joker. He brandished a torch in a fist covered all over with short bristles.

“I hear you, man,” another jeered. “Aces are just nats with some spice.”

“Just meat, man.”

“Gimme six.”

“You wave that fucking torch in my face anymore,” said the man in white, “and you’ll fucking eat it.”

He was about medium height, beefy in shoulder and chest. His tight-fitting white suit had the black hood thrown back at the nape. His dark hair was short. His eyes were green, dangerous, and not on the same level. His face seemed to have been assembled from whatever parts were to hand in a bin. He walked with a hitched and swaggering gait.

They came to the parade ground, passing between poles. He tossed a thumb at the white-bleached human skulls that topped them. “I kind of get behind your decor, though.”

His partner just lumbered silently at his side. He was taller by a head. From the mask that hid his face to his pointy-toe cowboy boots he was dressed entirely in black. Except for the white straw cowboy hat with the peacock feather in the band, of course.