“I know, first, that I am not a clone!” Blue Nomun took a step toward Handsome Nomun, servos whirring, powerful hands grinding into fists.
“Yes, yes,” interrupted the last Nomun, in a voice that shook with fear. This Nomun carried no distinguishing mark; he wore no jewelry, his clothes were nondescript, his hair was cut in no particular style. “This is all very interesting. But even I know at least one thing: someone intends to punish us! Why? Because someone knows we’re impostors.”
“Whoever brought us here intends our destruction; nothing could be more obvious,” said False Nomun.
NOMUN TURNED AWAY from the jungle and looked out over the sea. Its surface was like polished iron; not a ripple disturbed the reflection of the great red sun that touched the horizon. A kilometer to the east he saw an island; after a moment he decided it must be another memwort. Its terminal beach trailed away to the north. It grew south like a chain of bright beads, each node taller and more lustrous, until it crested in a glistening cone, around which blue lightning flared, though there were no clouds.
When he looked back at the sun, it was half gone, but now he saw shapes moving slowly against the red disk, growing larger.
“Look,” Nomun said. “What are they?”
Blue Nomun turned and stared. “Breathboats,” he said. “We are on Coal then. I thought so.”
Nomun watched the boats drift closer.
There were three of them. The masts seemed impossibly high and delicate, ten times the length of the craft. The sails were a transparent glimmer against the sunset sky, thousands of square meters of monomol film spread to the imperceptible breeze. Each hull seemed a dark fleck riding at the bottom of a glorious soap bubble. Nomun had seen this loveliness before–of that he was sure. Still, there were no meaningful echoes in this whisper of memory.
The others watched the breathboats with varying degrees of tension.
“Perhaps our captors arrive,” said Handsome Nomun.
“Should we take refuge in the jungle?” asked Soft Nomun. “Who knows what they plan for us?”
“That would not be advisable,” said Blue Nomun in pedantic tones. “The ‘jungle’ growths are, in fact, the exposed ganglia of the memwort. Should you stumble against the wrong synapse in the dark, you might well be trapped in an irreversible fugue.”
Scar Nomun spat, just missing the toe of Nomun’s boot. “Coal. A rich man’s playworld. Whoever collected us seems less formidable already.”
Jade Nomun looked at Scar Nomun without expression, but his eyes glittered. Pump Nomun released a soft musical sigh, and his fingers tapped idly at the keyboard of his chempump. False Nomun clenched his jaw and made no sound, but sweat filmed his face, despite the coolness of the air. Young Nomun waited with a small smile on his lips.
NO ONE SPOKE again until the sun was gone and the breathboats had drawn close. The nearest coasted to a stop just fifty meters off the beach. Soft light bathed its decks and lit the sails, transforming them into a cloud of glowing mist against the darkening sky. A pale-haired handsome woman seemed to be the captain; she stood in a pulpit on the foredeck, directing with silent gestures dozens of spidery mechs. When the mechs had feathered the sails to her satisfaction, an anchor splashed ripples into the flawless surface of the sea. The other boats anchored nearby.
Men and women clustered in small groups along the near rail. They wore fashionably eccentric garments and privacy masks. Their languid postures spoke of pleasant expectation. Nomun felt a chill. What did they wait for?
False Nomun’s teeth began to chatter. Suddenly he ran forward into the sea, kicking up a spray in the shallows. “I’m sorry, I meant no harm,” he cried, just before he smashed into an invisible barrier. A spot of violent yellow light flared at the contact point, a tone almost too low to be heard throbbed out, and False Nomun was flung on his back. He floated motionless.
“Ah...,” Young Nomun said, and made a disgusted face before trotting into the water. Nomun hesitated a moment, then followed. Together they dragged False Nomun onto the beach, where he coughed and gagged and started to breathe again.
“Idiots,” said Scar Nomun.
“Indeed,” said Jade Nomun. “But at least we know we’re not meant to leave the island.”
“The memwort,” corrected Blue Nomun.
“Yes, of course, the memwort,” said Jade Nomun. “Now. What part do
“Tell us,” said Scar Nomun. “They look to be your sort.”
For an instant Jade Nomun’s carefully casual face slipped, and Nomun saw another face underneath, bloody and inhuman, older and more loathsome than Scar Nomun’s simple brutality. But Jade Nomun recovered his smile and said, “Yes, they are, aren’t they?”