Nomun sat up. “Perhaps.” He looked out at the breathboats. Observers crowded the decks; they waited in silence.
A furtive sound from behind claimed his attention. Jade Nomun had revived; his forearm was locked across Young Nomun’s throat. The two fell to the ground, struggling.
Nomun sighed. He was abruptly weary, almost too weary to act. But he got to his feet anyway, trudged across the sand.
Young Nomun’s movements were weakening; he looked up at Nomun with desperate eyes. Jade Nomun’s gaze was blind, his teeth were bared in a painfully wide grin. Tendons stood out on his neck like wire. He wrenched at his forearm and laughed when Young Nomun made a small gagging sound.
“Stop,” Nomun said. “Stop it, if you want to live.”
Jade Nomun laughed again, eyes incandescent with triumph. “I live now!” He rolled Young Nomun under him and ground his face into the broken diamonds.
Nomun kicked him, felt ribs break. But Jade Nomun’s grip didn’t slacken. “Oh well,” Nomun muttered, and reached down to curl his hand around Jade Nomun’s chin. He felt the life surging under the skin. He dropped his knee onto Jade Nomun’s neck, jerked upward at the same time. Jade Nomun’s neck broke, his head rotated without resistance. His eyes fastened on Nomun, burned for an instant longer, then went dull.
Young Nomun pulled free and lay gasping on the sand.
When the killmech moved in to take its trophy, he turned away, stumbled to the edge of the water. He waited there, until the sun was well clear of the horizon, staring at the nearest breathboat. The Nomuns there seemed like inconsequential ghosts and he ignored them.
The pale-haired captain came on deck; when she saw him, she smiled brilliantly and waved.
“Behind you,” Young Nomun rasped. Nomun turned, to see Dead Nomun. The killmech was very close; in one metal hand it held some sharp gleaming object. Nomun leapt away, a convulsive movement and fell backward into the water.
“No!” he shouted. “Get back.” But the mech waded into the sea, and jabbed the weapon against his neck, before he could flounder away.
“You ordered this, Master,” it said. It took his arm, helped him from the sea. He saw that the ‘weapon’ was a drug injector. “An antidote, Master. For a mnemonic block.”
He searched his mind and found just one new memory. It swam into focus.
FOUR DAYS AGO, before the other Nomuns had begun their dying, he had opened his eyes to find his head gloriously empty. The blonde woman had lifted the inductor harness away and handed it to one of the men who stood near.
“Are you eased now, Nomun?” she had asked with a small smile. “Nomun; that’s your name, that’s all you will remember, after I give you this.”
She held up an injector. “A mnemonic block. You ordered me to give it to you, before we moved you and the other Nomuns around to the terminal beach.”
Nomun looked around. The men all had the same face, hard, cold, determined. His face.
“Your brothers, Nomun. Flesh of your flesh. But they do not bear your name. That’s important to you.” The woman no longer smiled; some unhappy emotion crossed her smooth face. “You asked me to say these things, and then make you forget them, until you emerge from your little war. If you ever do. Do you understand at all?”
“No.”
“I’m not surprised,” she said. “No one else understands. But listen: You’ve just given a hundred and thirty years of ugly memory to a biostorage device. All you have left are the skills of your body and your name.” She caressed his cheek with cool fingers, smiled again, sadly. “Though not till your memories were ugly; this I know, because we’ve shared some sweet ones. But anyway. This is how you bear your life–you told me to say it just that way. I don’t know why it can’t, stop there, but it can’t or so you say.” She sighed. “In a little while, we’ll take you to the other end of the memwort and lay you on the sand with nine of your clones. Clones who’ve taken the name; you’ve collected them over these last few years.”
He had become uneasy, watching the injector. “I really don’t understand at all. Wait...perhaps I’ll change my mind.” He tried to rise; strong hands pressed him back, though not roughly.
“No. I have your orders, Nomun. You warned me that you might suffer an attack of sanity, after the memories were gone. Were it up to me, I’d take you back to the boat, but your killmech and your brothers would not permit it. So you’ll go, you’ll risk your life among those animals who wear your face.”
“Why? Do you know?”
She leaned forward, caressed his cheek, and then the injector hissed. “Because you’re a great fool,” she had said, with bitter affection, tears pooling in her eyes.
NOMUN SIGHED. YOUNG Nomun stood beside him, watching the launch arrow across the water toward the beach. The pale-haired woman stood in the prow, face glowing.
“Will I live?” Young Nomun asked.