“I will speak to them,” said Handsome Nomun. He approached the edge of the water and called out in his rich voice. “Aboard the vessel. Who are you?”
There was no response, though some of the passengers nudged each other.
“We’re castaways,” said Handsome Nomun, strain marring his rounded tones. “Can you take us off?”
Laughter floated across the dark water, and Handsome Nomun clenched his fists.
“They don’t care,” said Soft Nomun, in a small voice. “They must be the ones who brought us here.”
The black water swirled and broke, as Dead Nomun emerged from the sea.
THE CAPTAIN OF the nearest breathboat pointed her spotlight at the killmech, and in that white brilliance they could see every detail of its chassis. It was twice Nomun’s height, armored with some dull red ceramet alloy, painted with stylized white bones. The braincase bore the detailed image of a rotting head. Nomun recognized the decayed features as his own.
As it came up the beach they drew back to the edge of the jungle. Someone on one of the boats followed their retreat with another spotlight, as though they were all players on a glittering stage. Several of the Nomuns slapped at their hips, as if reaching for missing weapons.
Dead Nomun knelt smoothly beside the corpse, rolled the body onto its back–a movement that seemed almost gentle. It turned its black photoreceptors on the Nomuns, and Nomun was struck by a sudden irrational perception: that the killmech felt a cold mechanical regret.
A shining vibroscalpel emerged from the tip of its right index finger. The killmech took the corpse by its hair and separated the head from the body with one precise slash. It removed a thick transparent bag from a storage niche in its thigh, and dropped the head into the bag. As it stood, it attached the bag to a clamp on its chestplate. The head lolled there, an upside-down trophy.
Nomun noticed that Dead Nomun’s chest was fitted with ten clamps.
Dead Nomun took a step toward them, then another.
The Nomuns recoiled, backs against the crumbling crystal forms that marked the boundary between the dead beach and the living body of the memwort. As if some group instinct had seized them, half of the Nomuns sidled to the left, half to the right. The killmech accelerated toward the closer, left-hand group, which gave ground. Those in the right-hand group, in which Nomun found himself, attempted to make an end run past the killmech, but it responded with frightening speed, blurring across the open space to confront them.
“Too fast for an unaugmented human. Cheating,” hissed Scar Nomun. His living eye was wide with rage.
“Back,” the killmech said, in a thin monotone. It pointed to the jungle.
Nomun retreated immediately into the crystal, not pausing until he was ten meters inside the jungle’s boundary. At a tall fractured pylon, he turned and watched as the others decided to follow. One by one, they did, until only False Nomun and Soft Nomun remained on the beach.
False Nomun trembled at the very edge of the jungle, caught between two terrors. Soft Nomun stood his ground, as if he could not make himself believe in the reality of the mech. “No!” Soft Nomun’s voice quivered with outrage, not fear. “No,” he repeated. “I won’t go. This isn’t right. You can’t force me; I’m Nomun.”
Dead Nomun approached Soft Nomun, moving with smooth precision. “Then you must die,” it said. It extended the vibroscalpel slowly, as if giving Soft Nomun as much time as possible.
Soft Nomun’s face was a formless darkness in the glare of the spotlights when he turned to appeal to the others. “Wait,” he said. “Don’t leave. We’ll be lost in the jungle, no one will be able to find...” His speech was interrupted by a small gurgling sound. Nomun crouched back into the blackest shadow; watched as Soft Nomun’s head tipped forward and fell from his neck. The killmech caught the head before it could hit the ground. A moment later, Soft Nomun’s head, face frozen in horrified surprise, swung from the second clamp on the killmech’s chest.
False Nomun stared at the kicking corpse, then made a choking sound and fled into the jungle.
The beach was empty, except for the killmech and the two headless corpses. The lights from the breathboats swept back and forth, and Nomun wondered if the spectators had found the performance entertaining.
He could sense the others in the jungle; he felt connected to them by their hatred and suspicion, though he felt none of that himself. His mind still held nothing but his identity, but that seemed to be growing stronger.