Toby touched the man and saw that it was his grandfather. Abraham’s head stirred and he blinked up at Toby. “I . . . too late.”
“What’s wrong? How—” Toby tore the covers back and Abraham’s body was shrunken, pale, with purple blotches all down both sides. He could see no wounds but the skin was diseased somehow.
“What did this to you?”
“I . . . running down.”
“How’d you get here? Are the others . . .”
Toby’s voice trailed off as he saw the vacant despair in the face he had so often seen as flinty and confident. He looked away.
“I . . . no help for me. I . . . not real . . . Abraham . . .”
“What? Where are the others?”
“Not . . . with . . .”
Toby shouted to a nurse, “This man needs treatment!”
The nurse came over and took a small reading device out of his smock pocket and said nothing. He turned Abraham’s head and unlocked a small square patch right above the spinal column. With the reader pressed against the open fleshmetal portal he thumbed in an inquiry and apparently took the reply through his sensorium. “Progressive. Can’t stop deterioration like this even if I had the gear.”
Toby said hotly, “What’s ‘progressive’ mean and why—”
“This’s a copy. They have a big error rate, most of ’em. Run down fast.”
Toby blinked. “But he’s my, my—”
“Don’t waste your time on it.”
Toby opened his mouth and said nothing. The Abraham lay like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The eyes roved.
Toby caught the sleeve of the nurse as the man turned away. “How can anybody make—that?”
“I heard there’s a place kinda near. Not in this Lane but only one transition away.”
Toby breathed in little fast gasps and tried to think. “Why would anybody . . . ?”
“Easy way to get a job done, if you got the tech.”
“What job?”
“Ask it.”
The nurse walked away impatiently. The woman next to Abraham was still sweating and grunting but nobody was paying any attention to her. Toby licked his lips and said to the man on the bed, “I . . . you were . . . made?”
“Copy. To search . . . for you.” The face of his grandfather looked back at him but the mouth was slack and there was none of the sharpness in the eyes.
“Who made you?”
“Re . . . storer.”
Toby remembered when he and his Family had entered the esty. A long time ago. They had gotten into a legal wrangle and Abraham had wanted to find out what happened to a woman they had read an inscription about, on an ancient wall in a Chandelier. She is as was and does as did. She might have been in a place they called the Restorer. If somehow that place had a template or something . . .
Toby could not imagine how that was possible. When they were in open space aboard the Argo the Magnetic Mind had spoken of Abraham, but where was he? Stored in a vault?
“That place copied my grandfather into . . . you?”
“I woke . . . knowing some of his memories . . . my memories. To seek you. They told me . . . that.”
A pustule popped on the Abraham’s shoulder. Toby watched something dark and slimy ooze out and scorch the ghostly white skin. He could smell the acrid burnt flesh. The man did not react.
“Why?”
“Need you . . . complete the triad.”
“Who made you?”
The eyes became veiled. No answer. Toby could not tell if this man, this thing, was trying to lie to him or was just stupefied. He grabbed the man and there was a ripping sound as Toby pulled his head up from the webbing that had been feeding him nutrients. “Who?”
“Humans.”
“Which humans?”
“Humans.”
“What Family?”
“Humans.”
