His curl was still curled wrong. She looked more closely at his face as he leaned toward Kippie, gasping, "Sweetie-bug."
There was a small scar beneath his left eye. The tiniest, most insignificant scar, but it had never been there before.
"Poor Bass, he looks so tired," the Kippie on the Wall seat said. "See how his face looks thinner when he's tired? I wonder if she notices it."
Dell said, "After all, Bass has worked hard today, Kippie."
Bass's face was indeed thinner. Thinner face, small scar that hadn't been there before, curl that curled wrong—what did it mean?
Suddenly she realized the image on the Wall wasn't Bass. She corrected herself. He was a different Bass. He wasn't the one she had shot, but his almost identical double.
She stared at her daughter, who looked more like Kippie each time she assumed another of her characteristics or poses. There were hundreds of young people wanting to be Bass or Kippie, hundreds of young men combing their hair the way Bass did, smiling as he did, learning to use their eyes as he did. And if the time should come when a new Bass was needed, there he was, hundreds of him.
She frowned. Undoubtedly they had several doubles waiting conveniently nearby to perform if something should happen to one of the stars.
She felt a choking in her throat. It would be as impossible to kill all the Basses and Kippies as it would be to break every Wall in the world. There was no way to get rid of them, no way to make people listen to what was happening. No way to prevent humanity from watching itself to extinction.