Days of Bitter Strength

of gifts and stones

Where did it all begin? When was the first step taken on that downward path that led to Armageddon? Perhaps it was on that fateful June day in 2043 when President James B. Griffin, last of the sixty two presidents of the United States of America, was assassinated while attending a baseball game at Chicago's Comisky Park.

The collapse of the 69 States of the American Empire that followed and the subsequent disintegration of the allied Western economies brought a decade of chaos. What had begun as "The Pacific Century" was quickly renamed "The Century of Blood" - a period in which the only stability was to be found within the borders of China. It was from there - from the great landlocked province of Sichuan - that a young Han named Tsao Ch'un emerged.

Tsao Ch'un had a simple - some say brutal - cast of mind. He wanted to create a Utopia, a rigidly stable society that would last ten thousand years. But the price was high. In 2062 Japan, China's chief rival in the East, was the first victim of Tsao Ch'un's idiosyncratic approach to realpolitik when, without warning - following Japanese complaints about Chinese incursions in Korea - the Han leader bombed Honshu, concentrating his nuclear devices on the major population centres of Tokyo and Kyoto. When the dust cleared, three great Han armies swept the smaller islands of Kyushu and Shikoku, killing every Japanese they found, while the rest of Japan was blockaded by sea and air. Over the next twenty years they would do the same with the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido, turning the "islands of the gods" into a wasteland while the crumbling Western nation states looked away.

The eradication of Japan taught Tsao Ch'un many lessons. In future he sought "not to destroy but to exclude" - though his definition of "exclusion" often made it a synonym for destruction. As he built his great City - huge, mile-high spider-like machines moving slowly outward from Pei Ch'ing, secreting vast, tomb-white hexagonal living sections, three hundred levels high and a kilometre to a side - so he peopled it, choosing carefully who was to live within its walls. As the City grew, eo his servants went out amorg the indigenous populations he had conquered, searching among them for those who were free from physical disability, political dissidence or religious bigotry. And where he encountered organised opposition, he enlisted the aid of groups sympathetic to his aims to carry out his policies. In Southern Africa and North America, in Europe and the People's Democracy of Russia, huge movements grew up, supporting Tsao Ch'un and welcoming his 'stability' after decades of chaos and suffering, only too pleased to share in his crusade of intolerance - his "Policy of Purity".

Only the Middle East proved problematic. There, a great Jihad was launched against the Han - Moslems and Jews casting off centuries of enmity to fight against a common threat. Tsao Ch'un answered them as he had answered Japan. The Middle East and large parts of the Indian sub-continent were reduced to a radioactive wilderness. But it was in Africa that his policies were most nakedly displayed. There, the native peoples were moved on before the encroaching City and, like cattle, they starved or died from exhaustion, driven on by the brutal Han armies. Following historical precedent, City Africa was re-seeded with Han settlers.

In terms of human suffering, Tsao Ch'un's pacification of the globe was unprecedented. Contemporary estimates put the cost in human lives at well over three billion. But Tsao Ch'un was not content merely to eradicate all opposition, he wanted to destroy all knowledge of the Western-dominated past. Like the First Emperor, Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, twenty-four centuries before, he decided to rewrite the history books. Tsao Ch'un had his officials collect all books, all tapes, all recordings, allowing nothing that was not Han to enter his great City. Most of what they collected was simply burned, but not all. Some was adapted.

One group of Tsao Ch'un's advisers - a group of Scholar-Politicians who termed themselves "The Thousand Eyes" -persuaded their Master that it would not be enough simply to create a gap. That, they knew, would attract curiosity. What they proposed was more subtle and, in the long term, far more persuasive. With Tsao Ch'un's blessing they set about reconstructing the history of the world, placing China at the centre of everything - back in its rightful place, as they saw it. It was a lie, of course, yet a lie to which everyone subscribed... on pain of death.

But the lie was complex and powerful, and people soon forgot. New generations arose who knew nothing of the real past and to whom the whispers and rumours seemed mere fantasy in the face of the solid reality they saw all about them. The media fed them the illusion daily, until the illusion became, even for those who worked in the Ministry responsible, quite red and the documents they dealt with, some strange aberration - a mass hallucination, almost a disease that had struck the Western peoples of the great Han Empire in its latter years. The officials at the Ministry even coined a term for it - "racial compensation" - laughing among themselves whenever they came across some clearly fantastic reference in an old book about quaint religious practices or races of black - think of it, Nack\ - people.

Tsao Ch'un killed the old world. He buried it deep beneath his glacial City. But eventually his brutality and tyranny proved too much even for those who had helped him carry out his scheme. In 2087 his Council of Seven Ministers rose up against him, using North European mercenaries, and overthrew him, setting up a new government. They divided the world - Chung Kuo - among themselves, each calling himself T'ang, "King". But the new government was far stronger than the old, for the Seven made it so that no single one of them could act on any major issue without the consensus of his fellow T'ang. Adopting the morality of New Confucianism they set about consolidating a "peace of ten thousand years". The keystone of this peace was the Edict of Technological Control, which regulated and, in effect, prevented change. Change had been the disease of the old, Western-dominated world. Change had brought its rapid and total collapse. But Change was alien to the Han. They would do away with Change for all time. Their borders were secured, the world was theirs - why should they not have peace and stability until the end of time? But the population grew and grew, filling the vast City and, buried deep in the collective psyche of the European races, something began to stir - some long-buried memory of rapid evolutionary growth. Change was needed. Change was wanted. But the Seven were against Change.

For more than a century they succeeded and their great world-spanning City thrived. If a man worked hard, he could climb the levels into a world of space and luxury; if he failed in business or committed a crime he would be demoted - down toward the crowded, stinking Lowers. Each man knew his place in the great scheme of things and obeyed the dictats of the Seven. Yet the pressures placed upon the system were great and as the population climbed toward the forty billion mark something had to give.

It began with the assassination of Li Shai Tung's Minister, Lwo Kang, in 2196, the poor man blown into the next world along with his Junior Ministers while basking in the imperial solarium. The Seven - the great Lords and rulers of Chung Kuo - hit back at once, arresting Edmund Wyatt, one of the leading figures of the Dispersionist faction responsible for the Minister's death. But it was not to end there. Within days of the public execution of Wyatt in 2198, the Dispersionists - a coalition of high-powered merchants and politicians - struck another deadly blow, killing Li Han Ch'in, son of the T'ang, Li Shai Tung, and heir to City Europe, on the day of his wedding to the beautiful Fei Yen.

It might have ended there, with the decision of the Seven to take no action in reprisal for Prince Han's death - to adopt a policy of peaceful non-action, tvuwei - but for one man such a course of action could not be borne. Taking matters into his own hands, Li Shai Tung's General, Knut Tolonen, marched into the House of Representatives in Weimar and killed the leader of the Dispersionists, Under Secretary Lehmann. It was an act almost guaranteed to tumble Chung Kuo into a bloody civil war unless the anger of the Dispersionists could be assuaged and concessions made.

Concessions were made, an uneasy peace maintained, but the divisions between rulers and ruled remained, their conflicting desires - the Seven for Stasis, the Dispersionists for Change - unresolved. Amongst those concessions the Seven had permitted the Dispersionists to build a starship, The New Hope. As the ship approached readiness, the Dispersionists pushed things even further at Weimar, impeaching the tai - the Representatives of the Seven in the House - and effectively declaring their independence. In response the Seven destroyed The New Hope. War was declared.

The five year "War-that-Wasn't-a-War" left the Dispersionists broken, their leaders dead, their Companies confiscated. The great push for Change had been crushed and peace returned to Chung Kuo. But the war had woken older, far stronger currents of dissent. In the depths of the City new movements began to arise, seeking not merely to change the system, but to revolutionise it altogether. One of these factions, the Ping Tiao, or "Levellers", wanted to pull down the great City of three hundred levels and destroy the Empire of the Han.

Among the ruling council of the Ping Tiao was a young Hung Mao, or "European" woman, Emily Ascher. Driven by a desire for social justice, Emily orchestrated a campaign of attacks on corrupt officials designed to destabilise City Europe. But her fellows on the council were not satisfied with such piecemeal and "unambitious" methods and when the new Dispersionist leader, DeVore, offered them an alliance, they grabbed it against her advice.

Once a Major in Li Shai Tung's Security service, Howard DeVore was instrumental in both the assassination of Li Han Ch'in and the "War" that followed. Based on Mars, he sent in autonomous copies of himself to do his bidding, using any means possible to destroy the Seven and their City. The House of Representatives, the Dispersionists, the Ping Tiao - each in turn was used then discarded by him, cynically and without thought for the harm done to individuals. Aided by a network of young Security officers he had recruited over the years, he fought a savage guerrilla war against his former Masters, his only aim, it seemed, a wholly nihilistic one.

Yet the Seven were not helpless in the face of such assaults. Tolonen, promoted to Marshal of the Council of Generals, recruited a giant of a man, Gregor Karr, a "blood" or to-the-death fighter from the lowest levels of the City, the "Net", to act as his foil against DeVore and the Dispersionists. Karr was joined by another low-level fighter named Kao Chen - one of the two assassins responsible for the attack on the Imperial solarium that had begun the struggle.

For a time the status quo was maintained, but three of the most senior T'ang died during the War with the Dispersionists, leaving the Council of Seven weaker and more inexperienced than they'd been in all the long years of their rule. When Wang Sau-leyan, the youngest son of Wang Hsien, ruler of City Africa, became T'ang after his father's suspect death, things looked ominous, particularly as the young man seemed to delight in creating turmoil among the Seven. But Li Yuan, inheriting from his father, formed effective alliances with his fellow T'ang, Wu Shih of North America, Tsu Ma of West Asia and Wei Feng of East Asia to block Wang in Council, outvoting him four to three.

Even so, as Chung Kuo's population continued to grow, further concessions had to be made. The great Edict of Technological Control - the means by which the Seven had kept change at bay for more than a century - was to be relaxed, the House of Representatives at Weimar reopened, in return for guarantees of population controls.

For the first time in fifty years the Seven began to tackle the problems of their world, facing up to the necessity for limited change, but was it too late? Were the great tides of unrest unleashed by earlier wars about to overwhelm them?

8

It certainly seemed so. And when DeVore managed to persuade Li Yuan's newly-appointed General, Hans Ebert, to secretly ally with him, the writing seemed on the wall.

Hans Ebert had it all; handsome, strong, intelligent, he was heir to the genetics and Pharmaceuticals Company, GenSyn -Chung Kuo's largest manufacturing concern - but he was also a vain, amoral young man, a cold-blooded "hero" with the secret ambition of deposing the Seven and becoming "King of the World", an ambition DeVore assiduously fed. While Ebert turned a blind eye, DeVore began to construct a chain of fortresses in the Alpine wilderness at the heart of City Europe, preparing for the day when he might bring it all crashing down. But that was not to be. Karr and Kao Chen, aided by a young lieutenant, Haavikko, uncovered the plot and revealed it to Marshal Tolonen, whose own daughter, Jelka, was betrothed to Hans Ebert. Tolonen, childhood companion of Ebert's father, Klaus, went straight to his lifelong friend and told him of his son's betrayal, allowing him twenty-four hours to deal with the matter personally.

Hans, meanwhile had been instructed by Li Yuan to destroy the network of fortresses. His hands tied, he did so, then returned to face his father. Klaus would have killed his only son, but Hans' goat-like helper - a creation of his father's genetic laboratories - killed the old man. Hans fled the planet and was condemned to death in his absence.

Li Yuan, it would seem, was saved. Yet the seed of destruction had been sown elsewhere, in the infatuation of his cousin Tsu Ma for Li Yuan's beautiful wife, Fei Yen. Their brief, clandestine affair was ended by Tsu Ma, but not before the damage was done. Fei Yen fell pregnant. Li Yuan was at first delighted, but then, when Fei Yen defied him and, late in her pregnancy, went riding, he destroyed her horses. She left him, returning to her father's house. There, alone with him, she told him that the child she was carrying was not his. Devastated, he returned home and, after his father's death, divorced Fei Yen, thus preventing her son - born two days after his coronation - from inheriting. The rift, it seemed, was final. He married again that day, taking three wives, determined to put the past behind him.

But time casts long shadows. Just as the brutal pattern of the tyrant Tsao Ch'un's thinking was imprinted in the restrictive levels of his great world-spanning city, so the blight of those twin betrayals - by his wife and by his most trusted man, his General, Hans Ebert - was imprinted deep in Li Yuan's psyche. A darkness settled within the young T'ang, leading him to pursue new and quite radical solutions to his City's problems -solutions like the Wiring Project.

As civil unrest proliferated and control gradually slipped from the Seven, as the lower levels of their great Cities slowly fell into the hands of the Triads and the false Messiahs, so the temptation to control the civilisation by other means grew. For Li Yuan there had long been only one solution. All of his citizens would be "wired" - a controlling device placed in every adult's head so they might be tracked and, if necessary, destroyed. It was a vile solution, but no viler, perhaps, than the alternative - to see the great Cities melt away and the rule of the Seven at an end.

As if to emphasise that necessity, new opposition groups sprang up one after another - the violently terrorist Yu, the North American-based Sons of Benjamin Franklin, the Black Hand, and many more, each wishing to destroy what was and replace it with their own vision of what a society should be. The demand for Change became a mad scramble for power. Yet still the Seven maintained control ... of a kind.

In the Summer of 2208, Wu Shih, T'ang of North America, decided to draw the dragon's teeth, arresting the Sons and incarcerating them, refusing to give them up to their powerful fathers until a guarantee of good behaviour was signed and sealed. He got his way, but in doing so sealed his own fate, for it was now only a matter of time before his City would fall. In seeking to stem the Revolution, he had merely fed its flames. When the Sons emerged from their fifteen-month imprisonment they had been hardened by the experience. Under the leadership of Joseph Kennedy, the latest scion in that long and prestigious line, they formed the New Republican Party, determined to bring about a political sea-change and to wrest power from the hands of the Seven.

Within the Seven the internecine fighting had worsened, and when the T'ang of Africa, Wang Sau-leyan, attacked Li Yuan's floating palace and killed his wives, war between them seemed inevitable. But lack of proof and fear of even greater chaos stayed Li Yuan's hand. The Seven were divided as never before, yet still the Cities stood. Even so, the experience had once again scarred Li Yuan deeply and served to throw him ever closer to his fellow T'ang, Wu Shih and Tsu Ma. Between the three of them, perhaps, they might yet rule strongly and wisely. The unthinkable - the destruction of the age-old rule of Seven and its replacement by a strong triumvirate - was now openly discussed.

But Li Yuan's greater schemes had once again to be set aside in the face of trouble in his own City. The death of DeVore's earthbound copy - pursued and finally killed by the giant Karr - left a power vacuum in the lower levels, a vacuum soon to be filled by one of DeVore's erstwhile allies, the albino Stefan Lehmann.

Lehmann, estranged son of the one-time Dispersionist leader, fled to the icy Alpine wastes after the fall of DeVore's fortresses. It was from there he returned in the spring of 2209, hardened by the experience, and set about making a name for himself in the lowers of City Europe, infiltrating the cut-throat world of criminal activity and ruthlessly climbing the ranks of the Triad brotherhoods until, in a massive campaign in the summer of 2210, he defeated the combined forces of the five great Triad lords and became the White T'ang, Li Min -"Brave Carp" - sole ruler of the European underworld.

At that single instant Li Yuan might have acted to crush Lehmann, for the albino's power was weak after his efforts. But Li Yuan - emotionally shattered by the death of his wives and the depth of division that had been revealed among the Seven -failed to take advantage of the situation. Li Min, the "Brave Carp", survived and began to consolidate his dark and brutal empire in the lowest levels of Li Yuan's City.

On Mars the real DeVore, learning from the failures of his first "embassy" to Chung Kuo, was planning a new assault upon the Seven - preparing a new range of genetic copies, subtler and more deadly than the last. Even there, among the nineteen cities of the Martian Plains, unrest had reached fever pitch and needed only a single incident to trigger violent revolution. Yet when it came, it was from an unexpected direction.

Hans Ebert, much changed after his great fall from power, had found himself on Mars, in DeVore's employ as a humble sweeper in one of his huge genetic factories. Wearing a prosthetic mask to conceal his features, Ebert had slowly refashioned himself, motivated by a deep aversion for the creature he had once been. However, pushed beyond his limits, he killed a man, placing himself once more in DeVore's power. Fastening on the opportunity, DeVore planned to use him in a scheme to destroy Marshal Tolonen emotionally by kidnapping Tolonen's daughter, Jelka - on Mars on her way back to Chung Kuo - and marrying her to Ebert. But Ebert refused to take part in DeVore's schemes and, aided by a lost race of Africans, the Osu - descendants of the early settlers of Mars - he helped release Jelka even as the cities of Mars burned.

As the cities of the Martian Plain had fallen, so too might those of Earth - of Chung Kuo, the great Han Empire - for there too it needed but a single incident to trigger violent change. And of the seven great Cities of Chung Kuo, the most powerful - North America - was also the most vulnerable. Rumours of a lost American Empire - thrown over by the Han - were rife, and old and young alike had begun to clamour for a return to past glories. Wu Shih, Tang of North America, saw this and, much concerned, strove to control the leaders of the new movements - particularly Joseph Kennedy, who seemed to embody the spirit of the age. But for all his power, Wu Shih did not have it all his own way.

One of those facing him in North America, and standing in stark contrast, was Emily Ascher. Smuggled out of City Europe when the Ping Tiao movement disintegrated and given a new identity - as Mary Jennings - she met one of the Sons, Michael Lever, and became his wife. That marriage made her rich beyond all dreams, yet riches of themselves meant nothing to her. She was still driven by a vision of Change, and now began to pursue it by other means, playing Conscience to the great North American City and taking on the role of "Elder Sister", determined to alleviate the suffering in the lower levels of her adopted City. Ranged against her, however, were other forces with different agendas: the Old Men - Michael Lever's father Charles foremost among them -with their insane pursuit of Immortality; Wu Shih with his desire for stability at any cost; and Joseph Kennedy, whose crusading zeal had been effectively neutered by Wu Shih. All in all, it was a recipe for disaster, and disaster eventually overtook them in the winter of 2212 - though not from any of these sources.

Wu Shih might have survived Emily's "Elder Sister" campaign; he might even have survived Joseph Kennedy's on-air suicide; but when one of the orbital factories - its systems' refurbishments long overdue - fell from the sky into the midst of his City, he could not ride out the political storm that followed. Wu Shih died, attacked in his own imperial craft, while his great City burned.

Many got out - Michael and Emily among them - but billions perished when North America fell, and the dark shadow of that fall etched itself deep in the minds of those that remained. Tsao Ch'un's dream of stability - of a Utopia that would last ten thousand years - once so solid and unchallengeable, was coming to an end.

For some time, the actions of the young T'ang of Africa, Wang Sau-leyan had created divisions among the Seven, particularly in Council, where all important decisions were made. In the autumn of 2213, however, division tipped over into open warfare. Wang's direct assault on his fellow rulers at one of their ceremonial gatherings - an attempt that almost succeeded, with two of his cousins killed and another badly wounded - brought a swift reprisal. Li Yuan's dream of a ruling triumvirate finally came about - though in darker circumstances than he envisaged - when he, Tsu Ma and Wei Tseng-li, the new Tang of East Asia, sent their armies into Africa to destroy Wang Sau-leyan's power.

The death of the odious Wang closed one chapter of Chung Kuo's history, yet it could not stem the headlong tide of Change. In the seventeen years since Li Shai Tung's Minister, Lwo Kang, had been assassinated in the Imperial solarium, all respect for the Seven had drained away. Li Yuan sought to reverse this tendency by giving the people greater representation in government and - in the war against Wang Sau-leyan -by creating peoples' armies, but it was not enough. The great House of Representatives at Weimar spoke only for those with money and power and then only on a limited range of matters, for real power remained firmly in the hands of the Seven. And all the while, a number of other factors - the corruption of officials, the constant nepotism, the vast disparity in wealth between those at the top of the City (First Level) and those in the Lowers, the ever-increasing population - only served to stoke the great engine of popular discontent.

To be honest, these were not problems which had begun with the City - such things were millennia-old long before the first mile-high segment of Tsao Ch'un's world-spanning megalopolis was eased onto its supporting pillars - but conditions within the City exacerbated them, and while the rich continued to prosper, the poor grew daily poorer and more hungry. | Something had to give. r Indeed, something would give. Yet, behind the struggle for power - that age-old battle between the haves and have-nots -was another, far greater struggle for the imagination, and for the very soul of Mankind: the "War of the Two Directions", a war that would ultimately centre upon a pair of individuals who, in their work and lives, would embody entirely different approaches to existence.

Those two were Ben Shepherd and Kim Ward, the former the most talented artist of his time, the latter the most gifted scientist. Growing up during these years of dramatic change, their work came to represent a level of creative life which, for more than a century, had been harshly suppressed by the Seven. The world into which they were born was culturally sterile: its science was at a standstill, filling in gaps in old research and perfecting machines developed centuries before;

its art even worse, having returned to principles more than 1500 years old. Its scientists were technicians, its artists artisans. Coming into this climate of creative atrophy - a climate carefully nurtured by the Edict and the "Rules of Art" - Ben and Kim could not help but be revolutionary.

Ben Shepherd, the great-great grandson of the City's architect, was born in the Domain, an unspoilt valley in England's West Country. There, in those idyllic surroundings, was nurtured his fascination with mimicry, darkness and "the other side" which was to culminate eventually in his development of a wholly new art form, the Shell. Over the years he would shamelessly draw upon his own life - the death by cancer of his father, the lost love of a young woman named Catherine, and his complex sexual relationship with his sister, Meg - weaving these elements together to create a powerful tale.

Kim Ward, on the other hand, was a product of the Clay, that dark land beneath the City's foundations. Rescued from that savage hell, he spent the formative years of his early youth in State institutions, surviving that brutal regime through an astonishing quickness of mind and a matching physical agility. His innate talents recognised by Berdichev, Head of the great SimFic Corporation and a leading Dispersionist, Kim was bought and then, almost as casually, discarded when Kim's darker side - rooted in his experiences in the Clay - emerged after one particularly provocative incident when he badly hurt another boy.

Fortunately Berdichev was not the only one to recognise Kim's unique intellectual talents and he found an unexpected benefactor in Li Yuan, who, when Ward emerged from a long period of character reconstruction, gave him both his freedom and the wherewithal to begin his own Company in North America. But that was not to be. The Old Men, seeing in Kim the means of achieving their dream of Immortality, deliberately set about destroying his business venture, hoping to force his hand. But Ward would not serve them.

Kim had other dreams, among them that of marrying the Marshal's beautiful daughter, Jelka. But Tolonen would not permit the match and sent his daughter away on a tour of the colony planets. Kim, devastated, swore to wait until she came of age and signed a seven year contract as a Commodity slave with the SimFic Corporation in a deal that would make him fantastically rich. And while he waited he would pursue his other dream - his vision of a great Web, first glimpsed in the dark wilderness of the Clay.

Shepherd and Ward, Shell and Web - the two were antithetical, representing in many ways those very things over which Li Yuan and DeVore had fought for so long -the "Two Directions" facing Mankind.

Ben's Shell was the image of inwardness, a body-sized sensory-deprivation unit designed to replace objective reality with a subjective experience that was more powerful than real life. Unlike reality, however, its very perfection was as seductive and consequently as addictive as the most lethal drug, its perfection a form of death by separation - a withdrawal from the world.

The Web, on the other hand, was the very symbol of outwardness, a vision of an all-connecting light: quite literally so, for Kim's Web was conceived as a means of linking the very stars themselves.

The safety of the past or the uncertainty of the future? Inwardness or outwardness? Connection or Separation? These choices, like the perpetual Yin and Yang of the ancient Tao itself, would determine Chung Kuo's future. Yet the shadows cast by past events would also play their part.

Back in the Summer of 2203, Li Shai Tung called together his relatives, his advisors and his closest friends, to celebrate the betrothal of his son, Li Yuan, to the Princess Fei Yen. But while outwardly he smiled and laughed, secretly the old T'ang had misgivings about the match. Fei Yen had been his murdered elder son's wife and, though the marriage had never been consummated, it felt wrong - an affront against tradition - to let his younger son, now heir, step into his dead brother's shoes so blatantly.

That same day, his son received two special gifts. The first was from Li Shai Tung's arch-enemy, DeVore. It was a wet chi set, a hardwood board and two wooden pots of rounded stones. Such a gift was not unusual, yet whereas in a normal wet chi set there would be one hundred and eighty-one black stores and one hundred and eighty white, DeVore had sent three hundred and sixty one white stones. Stones carved from human bone.

Symbolically the board was Chung Kuo, the stones its people. And white . . . white was traditionally the Han colour of death. DeVore was telling Li Shai Tung that he would fill the world with death.

But there was a second gift, this time from the Marshal's daughter, Jelka. Her betrothal present to Li Yuan was a set of miniature carved figures: eight tiny warriors - the eight heroes of Chinese legend, their faces blacked to represent their honour.

Shocked by the symbolic message of the first gift, Li Shai Tung was delighted by the second. A bad omen had been overturned. There would be death, certainly, yet there would also be heroes to fight against its final triumph.

Yes. It was written. When the board was filled with white, then, finally, would the eight black heroes come.

And so it transpired. When DeVore finally returned, at the head of a vast army of copy selves, it was Hans Ebert and the Osu - eight black heroes - who faced him and, aided by the Machine, a benign Artificial Intelligence, defeated the great arch-enemy. The mile-high city was destroyed, the rule of the Seven effectively ended. Li Yuan, for once totally indebted to his servants and allies, was forced to promise to build a new world, different and more humane than the old. But that was ten years back . . .

PROLOGUE: WINTER 2225

abandoned in whiteness

"The cold night drum. Its arrow points to dawn.

In the clean mirror I see my haggard face.

Outside the window, wind startles the bamboo.

I open the door. Snow covers the whole mountain.

The sky of falling flakes quiets the paths and the big courtyard is abandoned in whiteness.

I wonder whether you're like old Yuan An in his house, locked away inside, and calm?"

-Wang Wei,

"Winter Night, Facing the Snow,

Thinking of the Lay Buddhist Hu"

8th Century ad

abandoned in whiteness

It was Ta Hsueh, the Time of Great Snow, and in the hutong of Kuang Hua Hsien paper lanterns hung outside every house. Among the dim-lit, crowded thoroughfares people were preparing for the festival. Charms had been pasted to doorways beside small strips of red and gilt paper bearing the character fu -"happiness". People stopped to talk or called cheerfully to each other as they passed, "Ni hao?" and 'Tsai chiea'"

Waddling along the narrow passageways, Bara Horacek could feel the weight of the child in her swollen belly pressing down against her bladder. If she wasn't home soon she would piss herself. Breathless, she paused, leaning heavily against the greasy watt, nodding as two of her neighbours hurried by. She winced as a pain stabbed through her lower abdomen. It would be just her luck if her waters broke, with Vilem gone to his mother's and the boys staying with friends. She should never have let Vilem talk her into having another child, not at her age, but with the new legislation going through he had argued that there might never be another chance, and so ...

The pain grew. For a moment Bara closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, trying not to groan, not to cry out. It wasn't due. The baby wasn't due . . . Not for six weeks yet. But she knew that feeling. Home - she had to get home.

As the pain faded she walked on, each step jolting her stomach as if she'd been kicked there. Oh gods, she thought, feeling the sticky wetness on her thighs and trying to keep calm. What if it's a miscarriage? What if. ..

She pushed the thought from her, concentrating on the simple business of getting back to the house. How far was it now? A hundred?- a hundred and fifty paces? But each step now seemed a gargantuan effort, the space between each step a small eternity. Eight steps. Nine. A tenth. And then time slowed as the pain returned, enlarged, fiercer than before.

She cried out and almost fell. Two men from a nearby stall hurried to her aid, holding her up, their Han faces pushed dose, anxious for her.

"Is it coming?" one of them asked. "Can you feel the baby coming?" Bara nodded, uncertain. Too old, she thought. I told Vilem I was too old ...

"Fetch a blanket," one of her neighbours, an old Han woman, shouted, taking charge of things. "Get her on her back. The child wiB, be here any moment."

Bara let herself be laid onto a blanket between the stalls. There was a crowd of fifty or sixty gathered about her now, a small sea of curious faces, mainly Han, but she was beyond caring.

"Tett VUem ..." she said weakly, trying to talk over the babble of voices. "TeU him ..." And then the pain came again, like a huge black wave, taking her breath.

It's dead, she thought, despair gripping her. My child is dead.

Someone had removed her sodden knickers, exposing her, but it didn't matter. AH that mattered now was the pain and those small brief moments between the pain. Someone was gripping her hands from behind, someone else holding her knees up, her legs apart, but she was scarcely aware of it, all she could feel, all she knew, was the urgency inside her, the burning, tearing desire of the dead thing within her to get out into the world.

She groaned as if she'd been impaled, the shock of the breeching making her nerves sing in agony.

"Come on," someone said encouragingly. "You're almost there."

Sweat blinded her, distorted what she saw. Faces swam before her - goggle-eyed, staring faces filled with horror, as if what she were pushing from her was deformed, a hideous monstrosity.

She imagined it, a slick, black scaly thing with burning eyes, and whimpered with fear. No, she thought. Don't let it come out. Don't. . .

"Push," the old Han woman whispered at her ear. "Come on now, Bara. One last push and it's there."

She tried to hold back, but it was impossible. Her muscles pushed. There was a scream - her own, she realised - and then an easing of the pain, a sense of absence. There was a babble of voices and then, above them all, the cry of a chUd - a robust and healthy sound.

"It's a boy," the old Han woman said, bundling it up and thrusting it at her. "Afine, healthyboy. The gods have smiled on you, Bara Horacek."

Bara tried to shake her head, to say she didn't want it, but the child was in her arms, its dear blue eyes staring up at her as if it knew already what she was thinking.

Dead, she thought. You're dead. But the child stared back at her, its very existence a denial, its strange perfection sending a chill through her. Behind it, like a white hole in the blackness of the sky, the unfamiliar moon shone down.

Dead, am I? those eyes seemed to say, mocking her. Well see how dead I am.

Haifa world away, in a tiny room dose to the southern wall of Li Yuan's great European city, an old man stood over the dead body of his teenage wife, his shoulders hunched, his face in his hands, weeping. There was the sound of a child crying somewhere in the cold and Hi-furnished apartment, an awful, insistent sound that had not stopped for an hour. The old man shuddered and half turned his face, a flash of anger, of bitterness making his lip curl. He would silence the child. Would kill it for what it had done.

He went through, then stood there over the cot, staring down at the naked, kicking form. A girl . . . As if the gods hadn't mocked him enough! If it had been a boy. . . but no, his wife had suffered and died merely to bring a girl into the world. And what use was a girl? Would she sweep his grave after his death?

Would she carry on his father's line? No. Wett, he would have none of it. He would say she was stillborn.

He lifted the pillow and placed it firmly over the child's face, closing his eyes and pressing down, anger giving him the strength to overcome any misgivings he had. The sudden silence was like a relief and as the child ceased struggling he eased the pressure then slowly lifted his hands and backed away.

The pillow . . .

He stood there, unable to move, then, with a tiny shudder of aversion, he went to the cot and removed the pillow. The child lay still, almost peaceful, it seemed, and for the briefest moment, looking down into her still and tiny face, he felt a pang of regret. She was so like her mother. So like his darling Tian. Then, turning away, pushing that brief flicker of pity from his heart, he went through to tend to his dead wife.

When the Registry Official came an hour later the old man was still sitting there, staring blankly at the wall, his wife's hand cold and stiff within his own. The official looked about him, taking it all in at a glance, then, with a nod to the man, stepped through the bead curtain into the bedroom.

The child was dead, he could see that at once. And a good thing, too, he thought, writing a brief note on his report. What good was a newborn daughter without a mother to look after her? This way, at least, the old man was free of all burdens. He could buy a new wife, have sons, and no worries about the new birth quotas. No, it was for the best, all things considered.

He went back and stood over the seated man. "Did you give the child a name, lao jea^?"

The old man looked up at him, expressionless. "ChuangKuan Ts'ai," he answered tonelessly. Coffin-filler.

The official swallowed, then left blank the appropriate box on his form. There were procedures for cases like this. They would allocate a number back at the office - something for the Oven Man's records. All that remained was for someone to come and remove the bodies.

"I’ll leave you now, lao jen," he said, bowing respectfully. "If there's anything I can do . .."

But the old man wasn't listening. He was staring down into the pale and vacant face of his young bride, his deeply-lined cheeks wet with tears.

Too bad, he thought, unclipping the form and placing it at the bottom ofthepHe, checking to see where his next call was. It was usually the husbands who snuffed it first, and rare was the young bride who missed the old bastard. But this . . .

He shrugged and turned away. It was as they said: Life was cheap, flesh plentiful. The old man would get over his loss. Why, with a new young wife in his bed he would have forgotten aU about this one in three months!

He dosed the door, nodding to himself, thinking of the evening ahead. Shit, maybe he'd call and tell his wife he was working late. Maybe he'd go see that woman down on Chang Un Avenue who had been so good to him last week after her husband had passed on. A woman had her needs, after all, and his wife . . .

He snorted, then walked on. His wife could hang herself for aU the good she was. Her and her two good-for-nothing brothers. Why, if it wasn't for him, they'd all be eating air!

Families . . . they were nothing but trouble. He saw plenty in his line of work - why, he made twenty, often as many as thirty, calls a day and always it was the same: those who survived either loved too much or too littie. The lucky ones were the dead. They, at least, could sleep easy.

At the corner of the alleyway he tore off the completed slips and, walking on a bit, posted them through the Oven Man's door, then carried on towards the crossway. That too could be said for the dead - they helped keep the living lit and warm. He chuckled, amused by the thought, elbowing his way through the crowd by the transit station, then stepped inside.

Here's to the dead, he thought, giving an imaginary toast as the doors of the northbound transit hissed shut and the carriage began to slide along the rails. And to young Chang Kuan Ts'ai, he added soberly, for being no bother to anyone . . .

Vflem stood by the door, cradling his son, a proud paternal grin lighting his features. Bara stared at him from where she lay in her bed, trying to share his happiness, but there was nothing. She kept trying to find something in herself- some trace of the love, the deep-rooted affection she had felt for her first two sons - but there was nothing, only that strange coldness, that sense of wrongness bordering upon aversion that gripped her every time she looked at her new-born son.

"We'll call him Josef," Vilem said, nodding decisively. "Josef ... like his great-grandfather. Josef Horacek. It's a good name, neh? A strong name for a strong littie boy!"

She nodded, but all she felt was a numbness. A name. . . why, she'd not even considered a name . . .

"You want to hold him again?" Vilem asked, offering the child to her.

"No ... wo ... you hold him a while longer. Get him to sleep forme, won't you?"

She rolled over, onto her side, uncomfortable to be lying like that, but not wanting to see Vilem with the child. Not wanting to see him smile the way he did when he looked at the boy, or hear him laugh the way he laughed.

Why couldn't the child have died? she found herself thinking, and felt guilt slice through her.

Maybe it would pass. Maybe it was just the circumstances -the shock of giving birth there in the alleyway between the stalls. Yes, maybe that was it. Maybe if she slept it would all be all right.

There was a noise, a gentle snuffling from the child, like the inarticulate mumbling of a drunk. At the sound of it she felt a shiver flash down her spine; felt her whole body go cold, her nerves tingle with aversion.

I hate him, she realised with a shock. My own son . . .

She could hear VUem pacing back and forth, cooing softly to the child.

What was wrong with her? What in the gods' names was wrong with her? Was she HI? Was that it? She dosed her eyes, trying to shut it all out, to forget and start anew, but it wouldn't go away.

Josef. . Josef Horacek. It was a good name - as Vilem said, a strong name -yet for some reason the mere thought of it made her shudder convulsively and curl up tightly into a ball, hugging her empty stomach.

Dead. He should have been born dead.

Maybe. But it was too late now. He had escaped. He had kicked and fought his way out into the world. And no one -neither she nor all the gods - could put him back inside.

The crates were stacked to one side of the courtyard where the two delivery men had left them. Beside them, on a trestle table by the gate, were the blue undercopies of the delivery notes. There were fourteen of them this morning - nine adults and five children. It was less than usual. Even so, it would still take him a good while to burn them all, and there were two more lots to come before the day was out.

The Oven Man slurped down the remains of his soup, set the bowl aside, then stood, yawning and stretching his arms. He might as well get these done now, then he could log them in the book and get a few hours of shut-eye before the next delivery.

He was a big, severe-looking man in his forties, his chest broad, his upper arms heavily muscled from years of doing what he did. His name was Yao, like that of the legendary monarch -Cho Yao, in full - but so few called him that these days that he had almost forgotten it himself. Those that didn't shun him -those who, through their calling, had to deal with him - called him Lu Nan Jen, "Oven Man". The rest. . . well, the rest had littie to say. They merely stared at him sightlessly, grinning their eternal grins.

He went across and began, hauling the first of the crates from the top of the nearest stack. The crates were shaped like narrow baths, with two long ridges moulded into the base so that they could be slid onto the runners. They were made of semi-opaque ice - the same lightweight superplastic from which the great City itself had once been made - back before the war with the White T'ang. A thin seal of toughened plastic covered the top of each, allowing a dear view of the occupant.

The first was an old woman, Mu Too according to the printed label. Her body was shrivelled and tiny like a child's, her face puckered into an expression of surprise, as if Death had crept up on her from behind. He set her down before the oven door, then took the gloves from the hook on the side and slipped them on.

As he pulled back the heavy door, light spitted into the room. He had stacked and lit the furnace an hour earlier and the heat from it was fierce. With a practised ease, he lifted the crate and swung it onto the parallel tracks, giving it a gentle, almost tender shove. There was a brief darkening of the light and then a sudden flare. He shouldered the door dosed and, wiping his brow, turned to get another crate.

Turned. . . and stopped. There was a sound. A whimpering. He frowned, certain he'd made a mistake, then heard it again, dear and unmistakable.

"Kuan Yin . . ." he muttered, then hurried across, beginning to search through the crates.

It took only a few moments to find where the noise had come from. It was a child, a newborn. He shook his head, astonished. In all his years . . .

He looked about him, then went through to the kitchen, emerging a moment later with a knife. He wouldn't be able to cut through the toughened ice itself, but it was just possible that he might prise it loose along the edge where it had been heat-bonded. He slid the knife back and forth, then felt the plastic give with a sigh, wrinkling back as if it were consumed by flames, leaving only the label.

He shivered and threw the knife down, then reached inside. As he did the child opened its eyes and put its arms up to him.

"Gods . . ." he whispered, cradling it awkwardly against his chest, amazed by the living warmth of it. "Kuan Yin preserve us..."

There was no printing on the label, only three handwritten characters - Chuang Kuan Ts'ai - "fitting up the coffin".

He frowned, angry suddenly, wanting to go at once and confront the Registry Official, to curse him for his carelessness. . . then he stopped, pondering the situation.

The child was dead. Officially dead. The forms were signed, the paperwork filled out. If it had not cried out just then he would have fed the crate into the Oven's mouth.

"Dead," he said, surprised by the strangeness of the word in his mouth, then held the child out, away from him, studying it. It was a pretty little thing, a faint wisp of dark hair covering its scalp. If it had been his . . .

He took a long breath. No one knew. No one but him. He could kill the child or save it. And if he saved it?

Slowly he drew the child back towards him, cradling itgentiy, tenderly against his chest, then looked down into its face, conscious of its dark eyes staring back at him.

"Well, little Chuang," he said softly, a smile lighting features that had never before that moment smiled. "Now what are we to do with you?"

Part One - Spring 2232

china on the rhine

"Orchids in spring and chrysanthemums in autumn: So it shall go on until the end of time."

- Honouring The Dead, Li Hun, 2nd century bc "Under conditions of peace the warlike man attacks himself."

- Beyond Good And Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886

CHAPTER-1

days of ease

Tom stood at the prow of the imperial barge, one hand shielding his eyes against the sun's glare, the other gripping the rail as he looked south. It was stiflingly hot and traffic on the Rhine was heavy, but all gave way before the golden barge and the great banner which hung limply in the air above its prow.

He gazed up at it. Once, so his father said, the Ywe Lung would have flown, the great wheel of seven dragons circling snout to tail, their eyes forming a seven-starred hub at the centre, but those days were long past. For ten years now this new flag had flown throughout the great northern city - a red dragon, emblazoned across a full white moon, like a bloodied eye staring out from the starless black.

Tomorrow, for the first time, he would meet the owner of that dragon, the great T'ang, Li Yuan himself. Tomorrow, when they docked at Mannheim, on the marbled shore before the San Chang, the imperial palace, he would step down and ritually embrace his father's oldest friend.

A heavily-laden junk was passing thirty yards to port, its sails furled, its engine chugging softly. Its dozen or so crew members - shaven-headed Han - stared curiously, almost insolently, back at him, knowing from his Hung Mao face that he was not one of the imperial family.

He looked beyond them. Crowds packed the embankment everywhere he gazed, drawn by the passing of the T'ang's own vessel: young and old, male and female, their bare-arsed children - round-faced and endlessly identical - propped up before them on the long stone wall. The people, the unending masses of the people.

Tom frowned. He had lived all his life on the river, on the shore of the peaceful Dart, but this was different. This huge winding waterway could swallow up a thousand Darts. Nothing in his sixteen years could have prepared him for this. No, not for the masses that packed its banks for hundreds of miles to either side, nor for the endless rows of identical one-storey houses with their high grey walls and their orange-red terracotta-tiled roofs.

He closed his eyes, searching - for that brief moment searching in his mind - for Sampsa, but for once there was no second presence in his head. He sighed and glanced down at his hands where they gripped the rail. It was as his mother said: he had grown too insular, too self-enclosed.

He half-turned, looking to where his father's women sat on the upper deck, ensconced in huge, cushioned chairs, a pale silk awning shading them. Catherine, wearing a dark green dress that matched her eyes, stared languidly into space, as if in trance, her flame red hair let down despite the heat. Beside her his mother slowly fanned herself, her own dark, lustrous hair gathered in a tight bun at her neck. As he watched, a steward brought iced drinks then, bowing, backed away.

He studied them, surprised once again by the strength of feeling - that strange bond of familiarity - which linked him to them. They had had the worst of it these past six months while his father had been away. Not that life was hard in the Domain - far from it - yet he had seen how much they missed his father's presence. As if the place were empty without him.

Empty . . . The idea made him realise just how fortunate they were to have the Domain; how tranquil his existence was. In their slow progress up-river they had passed through the crowded hutong of the northern city and he had glimpsed something of the people who inhabited that endless systems of canals and narrow alleyways. So different those lives were, so circumscribed. Alone in his head, watching them, he had begun to reflect upon his own existence. Had he been born within that sprawl, his life might well have been one of endless misery, endless struggle. He would have been but another mute, another face to be fed. As it was he had a name. Useless as his tongue was, he was still a Shepherd, and that counted for something in this world. Yet what was he to do with it? Was he to follow his father's example? Or was there something better for him to do? Something linked, perhaps, to what he'd newly seen?

He sighed, his thoughts grown vague, and turned back, staring out at the crowded shore again. Here, half a day's sail from Mannheim and the San Chang - the Imperial Palaces -the river's banks were dominated by the factories of the four great Companies - SimFic, GenSyn, MedFac and NorTek -each massive complex surrounded by sprawling warrens of cramped workers' houses, all of it constructed in the traditional Han style his father had first envisaged a dozen years ago.

The thought made him smile, for this was his father's world, grown from his head, just as surely as the old world had been the dream of Old Amos Shepherd, two centuries before. This was Ben Shepherd's world: his dream of China on the Rhine.

Tom laughed silently, wondering if anyone else thought that strange, or whether he alone understood just how deeply - how profoundly - his father had changed, had subverted, history. The fiction - that sensory network of lies his father had presented to the world as The Familiar - had now become reality.

But so it was. It was the way of men to make their dreams into realities. Heaven or Hell, it did not matter. Such was the species' glory . . . and its curse.

Tom stared at the web-like shape of the great NorTek complex and sighed, wondering what Sampsa was doing at that moment, wishing he could see through his eyes. Even now Ward, Sampsa's father, was up there in space somewhere, preparing to test-fire his lasers. And if they worked . ..

If they work, then another dream begins.

For a moment he wondered about Ward. He had seen the man so often - working, playing and at rest - but still he did not fully understand what drove the Clayborn, no more than he understood his own father. SimFic had bought the ailing European arm of the great NorTek Corporation and given the gutted company to Ward. And it had proved a wise move. These days the city was full of Ward's subtle inventions, put out under SimFic's licence. It was hard to think of a single aspect of modern life that was untouched by his clever mind. Yet what Tom knew - knew because he had seen, through Sampsa's eyes - was that Ward himself thought such innovations trivial, a waste of time and talent.

What Ward wanted, that he knew. Ward wanted to link the stars - to lay a great web of light between those distant burning points. But why he wanted that - what dream had spawned that mad desire - he did not know.

And my father?

He tapped the rail softly with his fingers, then turned, making his way across to join the women.

What did his father want? What drove him in the way that Ward was driven?

Darkness, came the answer. My father is in love with the.

darkness.

Opposite poles they were, Kim and Ben. Like twin planets, circling, orbiting each other, the force of attraction and repulsion between them balanced perfectly.

Like Sampsa and me, he thought, and briefly he pictured _r meeting Sampsa, physically touching him. How would that feel? To touch someone who for so long had been a presence in your head, a window through which you'd seen so many things.

In two days he would know. On Wednesday evening, at the banquet, they would finally come together.

Emily stood by the embankment wall, holding Ji up so he could see, staring out past the child's shaven head as the great barge slid by in the middle of the river. It was a huge boat, its broad gold-painted hull splendidly adorned with dragons and other mythical beasts, its antique superstructure like a miniature palace. As it passed, a ripple of awe passed through the watching crowd. This was Majesty. This was evidence of nnwer - nower bevond their wildest dreams. Emily watched the young man turn from the rail and felt a momentary twinge of regret: regret for a life she had chosen to abandon. But such regret was brief; was more for the man she'd left - for Michael Lever, her once-husband - than for the luxuries she'd chosen to renounce.

She turned her head, taking in the marvelling faces of the two older boys and smiled warmly. No, given the choice again, she would change nothing. Given the choice she would be right here, right now, despite the heat, the flies, despite the smell of unwashed bodies, the ever-present stench of decay. Here at least she had a role to play. Here she could do something real.

She spoke softly to the older boys: "Pei, Lao, fetch the cart. We'd best be getting back."

With obedient nods, the two boys turned from the spectacle of the barge and scampered barefoot to where the loaded cart was parked against the wall and, one pushing, one pulling, turned it so they could manoeuvre it down the narrow alleyway.

She helped Ji down, then went across, taking over from Lao, who put a hand out for young Ji to take.

"Master Lin will wonder where we've got to," she said cheerfully, looking about her at the boys who were watching her closely. "He'll be pacing the compound, asking himself why we are so late."

Ji frowned, his big eyes troubled. "Will he be angry, Mama Em?"

She laughed gently. "Is Master Lin ever angry? No. But he will worry until we are home. You know how he always worries."

It was no more than the truth - a truth she often reminded the boys of - yet for once she realised what that meant and understood at the same time just how fortunate she was. Someone to care for you: that was all you ever needed in this life. Someone who worried when you were not back on time.

And these boys . . . they understood that too. For they had once been lost, abandoned by the greater world. They knew what it was like to have no one care; to have no one worry whether they lived or died, let alone were late.

She smiled and began to push the heavily-loaded cart, Pei straining beside her to match her efforts, ignoring the buzz of insects in the afternoon heat. And as she pushed, she looked at what they had collected. Broken things, Thaf s all they ever brought Lin. Broken, discarded things. And he would mend them. She could see him now, sorting through the spread contents of the cart and stooping to pick up this and examine that, his mind already calculating how to make them good again.

Like the boys.

It had been her idea originally. There had been so many of them, after all. Thousands of them, lost or abandoned after the great city's fall. A thousand million orphans, it had seemed, and no one to care. She had seen little Chao crying hopelessly in the ruins and had taken him home to Lin.

That was the start of it. Now they had eight of them. Boys who were cared for. Boys who would now make something of themselves in this world, thanks to her and Lin.

And that, surely, is true richness, she mused, thinking of the golden barge and all it represented. Against that even the most lofty T'ang ought to count himself the lowest pauper.

Only now did she understand. Only now, in her fiftieth year, grey hairs among the black, had she finally made sense of things.

"We did well today, didn't we?" Lao said, beaming at her.

She smiled back at the ten-year-old. "We did, Lao Chan. Master Lin will be very pleased. It would not surprise me if there were seconds tonight."

"Really!" Young Ji's eyes lit up like lanterns. "And will there be cake, Mama Em?"

She laughed, brushing away a persistent fly. "Maybe not cake, young Ji, but we'll see, eh?"

They went on, laughing, happy, talking all the while, making their way through the bustling market square then cutting through the crowded back-alleys. As ever, friends and well-wishers called to them as they passed. Emily returned their greetings warmly, the certainty of knowing she belonged here filling her, taking away the tiredness in her limbs.

It had been a long day.

As they came into Ch'in Shao Street, the lamps at the far end of the road were being lit. Stalls were being packed away, while others - food stalls mainly - were being set-up for the evening ahead. Their compound was halfway up on the right, the doors open as ever, the span of the low brick arch broken by Lin's hand-painted sign reading tso tso chia - "Make Do House". Seeing it, she smiled. It was Lin's idea of a joke, yet it was also his philosophy. Making do - it was what they did best.

Sending young Ji ahead to pull the doors right back, they manoeuvred the cart across, bumping it over the raised stone step and into the outer yard.

At once they were surrounded by the rest of the boys.

"Mama Em! Mama Em!" they cried, beaming at her, their hands reaching out to touch her.

"Chao . . . Han Ye... let us through now!" she cried, mock-stern, her laughing eyes giving her away. "Haven't you boys work to do?"

"We've finished it, Mama Em," the eleven-year-old Chao said, coming alongside her. "We were waiting for you, Mama Em. We . . ."

"Pei, get the doors!" she said, gesturing toward them, then looked back at Chao. "You what, Chao?"

"We got a letter, Mama Em," Chao said, excitement shining from his eyes. "From the Big House."

"The Big House? You mean from the Merchant, Tung Wei?"

Chao nodded. "From his First Steward, Liu Yeh. He says he has something for us. He says you must call. Tonight."

"Tonight?" She frowned, then heaved the cart into motion again as the inner doors swung open. Beside her half a dozen of the boys strained to help her push it across the cobbles. "And what does Papa Lin say?"

A figure appeared in the opening ahead, tall and grey-haired, his face disfigured on one side. "Papa Lin says where have you been, Mama Em? The boys are hungry."

She looked up from the cart and smiled. "And you can't cook?"

"Oh, I can cook all right," Lin answered, stepping back as they squeezed the cart through the narrow space, "but then how could I mend? And mending's what I'm best at."

"Then we must teach the boys to cook, Papa Lin."

He considered that, then nodded. "A good idea, Mama Em. And who knows, maybe some of them will find positions in one of the big houses."

"Who knows?" she said, looking up at him and smiling as she pulled the cart to a halt.

"So what have we?" he said, poking through the pile, picking out things and setting them aside. Behind him, she saw, the two work benches had been cleared in preparation.

"Bits and bobs," she said, uttering the words she always uttered.

He looked up at her and smiled, then continued with his work. "I take it you went to see the Imperial barge."

"How did you know?"

"Oh, I know you, Mama Em," he said, not looking up from where his hands were busy working through the pile. "Besides, young Ji has been talking about nothing else for days now, and I knew you'd not disappoint him."

She looked down at the infant at her side and smiled, resting her hand on his head. "I guess not."

"So, Ji," Lin said, taking a chipped blue and white chung from the left of the pile and frowning at it, "what was it like?"

Ji glanced at Emily, then answered his adopted father. "It was wonderful, Papa Lin. Solid gold, it was."

"Solid gold, eh?" Lin looked back at Ji and nodded gravely, as if awed, then looked past him at Emily and winked. "And yet it floated. That is a miracle, neh?"

"A miracle," Ji agreed, his eyes widening as he took in what Lin had said. "And there was a prince - a Hung Mao prince -standing at the very front of the boat, holding on to the neck of the dragon. He had long, black hair and a nose like a great hunting bird."

"Like a bird, eh?" Lin said, nodding once more. "That must have been Shepherd's son."

"Sheh-pud?" Ji frowned, not recognising the name.

Lin looked to Emily once more. "Something big is happening, Mama Em. They say people are coming to Mannheim from all over. The spaceport has been closed to normal traffic and there's talk that ships have been coming in from Africa and America."

"America?" She stared at him, astonished. "But I thought.. ."

"The times are changing," he said, setting the chung aside and stepping across. "Fan Sheng-chih was here earlier and he was saying that the word from the palace is that the prince is about to take a bride."

"What would Old Fan know?" she said dismissively. "Why, if one were to believe one tenth of what he says!"

"Maybe. But for once I think he might be right. Rumours are buzzing about like flies on a corpse right now, and that would not be so were there not something behind it all. Besides . . . you saw the barge."

She nodded. She had indeed seen the barge. And as for the rumours - well, she'd heard enough to convince her that something was happening.

Lin turned back to the cart and began to sort through it once more, setting down items on the table at his side. "Old Fan says the garrisons up-river are on alert."

"Uh-huh?" But this time she didn't query it. No, for she'd heard the same, from one of her friends whose son was in the Schwetzingen barracks.

"So what do you think, Mama Em?" Lin said, lifting a threadbare doll from the pile. "Is it a bride for the prince, or is it something else?"

"Master Thomas?"

The voice came from outside in the corridor. Tom sat up, then turned slowly on the narrow bunk, staring across the cabin toward the part-opened doorway.

"It me, Master Thomas. It Yun."

A face poked round the door - the face of the young Third Cook, the left side of his face pocked like gritted stone. It was an unashamedly ugly face but the almond eyes were bright.

Tom raised an eyebrow in mute query.

Yun stepped inside and, closing the door behind him, turned, holding out his hand.

Tom edged forward. It was a tiny black cassette, no bigger than an old-fashioned snuff-box - a Stim. He reached out and took it, turning it in his hand, studying the embossed logo - the symbol kuei, "casket", enclosed within a hexagon - then made to give it back.

"No," Yun said. "It for you. You must try. You like. I guarantee."

Tom looked at him dubiously. Only one thing was certain where Yun was concerned - whatever it was, it was illicit and it was probably trouble. If there were any scams on board, Yun was at the centre of them. He might only be seventeen - less than a year older than Tom - yet he seemed ancient in the ways of the world.

Tom stared at the Stim a moment, then shrugged and put it on the bedside table.

Yun smiled, satisfied. "What you do tonight?"

Tom shrugged. Nothing. He was doing nothing, as ever.

"You come with me? Meet my family?"

Tom stared at him, surprised, then nodded.

"Good. After we dock. You wait hour, then meet. At stern gangplank. My friend Chan on duty. He no see us slip past, neh?"

Tom almost smiled at that. Fine, but he would have to find some excuse; feign illness, perhaps.

Yun beamed, showing uneven, yellowed teeth. "I see you then. In meantime you be good boy, eh, Tom? Very good boy."

He sat there after Yun had gone, staring at the cassette. He knew what it was - at least, he thought he knew - but did he really want to know? For a moment longer he hesitated, then jumped down and rummaged through his trunk, searching for the special trim-line headset his mother had bought him for his last birthday. Maybe it wasn't a Porn-Stim, after all. Maybe it was a SportStim or an EduStim and Yun was just teasing him. But what if it was?

His hand closed on the headset's casing. He swallowed, then went across and drew the latch on the door. Back on his bed, he pulled on the headset and lay back.

If it is .. .

With trembling fingers he fed the Stim into the slot. There was a soft accepting hum and then the visor slid down, moulding itself over his eyes and cheeks like a mask.

Suddenly, vividly, he was there.

She was tall and willowy, her skin pale, her long black hair flowing loosely down her naked back. At first she was standing with her back to him, but as she turned he saw she was Hung Mao; saw - with a small ripple of surprise - that her breasts were full, her nipples stiffly erect.

He shivered, his mouth suddenly dry.

"Hello," she mouthed, smiling at him, her dark, hazel eyes seeming to recognise him. "It's been a long time since you came to see me. Where have you been, you naughty boy?"

Nowhere, he wanted to say, I've been nowhere, but she was speaking again, moving towards him as she did, leaning over him so that he could smell her lightly perfumed skin.

"You should come and see your Aunt Lucy more often, you know. It's very . . ." He felt her brush against him, soft as silk, and shuddered, conscious of the growing stiffness at his groin, " . . .unfilial of you."

Part of his mind wondered what was unfilial about not visiting this woman whom he did not know, but mainly he was conscious of the sudden, overwhelming warmth of her as she eased herself onto his lap, her legs wrapped about him.

So real she felt. And if he were to place his hands on her. . .

He moved his hands, even as, in the Stim, ghost hands reached out to cup her firm, warm buttocks and draw her down onto him, groin to groin. For a moment the doubleness confused him. The trick, they said, was to relax and let the Stim do all the work. He let his real hands fall back onto the bed, Kis ghost hands stroking the soft, firm flesh of the woman's back, his lips moving to her breast to lick and kiss the firm bud of her nipple.

And even as he did, he felt something give beneath the insistent stiffness of his penis and he was inside her, her softness breached.

He groaned silently, his whole body going into spasm, and still the Stim went on, her movements against him seeming to milk him, to draw him up out of himself into a darkness he had never known.

For the briefest instant his mind went outward, searching for connection ... for Sampsa. Then, feeling a great wash of shame, of self-loathing, he reached up and ripped the mask from his face, throwing it aside.

There was a familiar patch of wetness at his groin. Sitting up, he took a long, slow breath.

Ashamed, yes, but part of him had wanted it; had longed for it to continue.

For a long time he sat there, his chin pressed against the balls of his clenched hands, staring at the discarded Stim. It was still running. So what was she doing now? What was he doing to her?

No, he said silently, but the instinct of curiosity was strong. He wanted to know.

He climbed down and picked the headset up, examining it, then sat again on the edge of the bed, closing his eyes, feeling the soft reverberation of the unit against his palms.

What was she doing now? What was he doing to her?

He lifted it and put it on again. Suddenly, vividly, he was back there with her.

She was crouched now on the floor, head down, her arms spread, her buttocks exposed to him, and he was pressed against her, thrusting into her from behind, each movement agonisingly slow, the stiffness of his ghost penis coaxing his real one back to life.

He could smell the animal musk of her and hear the soft, wicked grunt she made with every thrust of his. That smell, those noises - somehow they triggered something in him: something dark and primeval. Unconsciously he mimicked the movements of the Stim, moving his groin slowly, sensuously, as if she were really there in the empty air before him.

"Yes," she was saying now. "Yes, my naughty boy. That" s it. Oh gods, that's it!"

His movements quickened, more urgent suddenly as she pressed back against him.

"Yes," she was saying. "Fuck me. Come on now. Fuck me hard. Yes . . . that's it. Harder now. Harder . . ."

He seemed close, very close, then suddenly he was aware of another presence in the Stim. Somewhere close by, a door had opened and someone had stepped into the room. There was a tingling presence somewhere at the back of his head.

Someone was standing right behind him - a big man in a black, full-length cloak. He stood there, glowering, his left hand holding a vicious-looking bull-whip.

"Aiyar the woman cried, moving away, her flesh suddenly, disappointingly separate from his. "The gods help us, it's your Uncle!"

"What's going on here?" the man asked, his voice heavy with threat. "Is this what you get up to when I'm away?"

No, he wanted to answer, fear making his heart hammer, this is the first time. But the man didn't want an answer. He leaned close, glowering, his face muscles twitching with anger.

"You've been bad, both of you. Very bad. And you know what happens to bad people, don't you?"

He took a step toward them and cracked the whip. Tom could feel its passagein the air close by his face then jumped as it connected with the soft flesh of the woman's haunches.

Her cry was one of fear, but also pleasure.

The man threw off his cloak. Beneath it he was naked, his penis stiff and long.

"Very bad," he said again, but this time he smiled. He stroked the whip slowly along the length of her spine, then, stepping closer, reached down and, gripping her brutally beneath the chin, lifted her face until it was level with his groin.

It went on, darker and yet darker until, towards the end, Tom threw the headset off once more, sickened and shaken, unable to believe that one human could treat another in that manner. And he ... he too had been a part of it, aiding and abetting, hurting the woman, using her, some small dark part of him enjoying it.

He was sheened in sweat, his thin clothes clinging to him damply. Twice more he had come, the stickiness at his groin reminding him of his compliance with the illusion.

So that's it, he thought, glad that Sampsa was not there to share his guilty shame. So that's how things are in this world. That's what happens in the darkness of their rooms.

And was that his fate? To share in that wickedness?

He stood, looking about him, as if uncertain that he really was back among real things, for it seemed that everything was suddenly doubled - that behind each and every thing he saw lay a darker, unseen presence.

Maybe that's what my father sees. Maybe thaf s what he's after.

And if it was?

Tom shivered violently. Then, not knowing what else to do, he went to the washroom and, throwing off his clothes, stepped beneath the shower, keeping his hand on the control pad until the flow fell icy cold.

The public bath-house dominated the small square just off the main marketplace of Weisenau Hsien. Like most district bath houses it was a big square building with a two-tier, red tile roof pitched steeply in the northern style. An eight ch'i high wall surrounded it, unbroken on three sides, while broad steps ran the length of its porticoed and impressive front. Like many of the buildings in Weisenau it looked old, its grey-white surface weathered as if by age, yet like much else here the appearance of antiquity was false. Nothing in the northern city was older than a dozen years.

As twilight fell and the sky darkened, so a stoop-backed servant stepped from the inner shadows carrying a flickering taper and, slotting it into the end of a long-handled stave, set about lighting the six oil-filled lamps that stood on tall poles in front of the building.

Earlier, the bath-house had been filled with noise; with the slap of the masseur's palms against oiled flesh, the hiss of water poured on hot coals, with voices loud and soft, echoing back from the vaulted ceilings, with the soft pad of naked feet on tiles and the dull splash and indrawn gasp as one or other moved from the heat into cooler water. Now, however, the baths were almost empty.

Almost.

At the far end of the great bath, beneath the dim, mist-shrouded illumination of a hovering glow-globe were four figures. Three of them luxuriated on the broad, shelf-like steps, their naked bodies half-submerged, the fourth sat on the edge of the bath, his feet dangling idly in the heated pool.

Just now the eldest of the four - Su Ping, the Hsien L'ing, or District Magistrate of Weisenau, a solid-looking Han in his sixties with grey hair and a neatly-trimmed beard - was talking.

" . . .what I don't want is to find us in the grasp of some avaricious Junior Minister, lining his pockets while our brother here" - he indicated the young man seated close by - "is kept waiting outside the door."

"My elder brother speaks wisely," Su Chun said from beside him, languidly wiping a hand across his sweat-beaded brow. "Yet there are ways we might ensure Su Yen receives fair treatment, neh?"

Su Ping stared at his twin - younger than him by a mere eight minutes - and narrowed his eyes. "I want no violence, brother. The risks . . ."

"Are negligible," Chun said quietly, laying his hand on his brother's arm. "You worry too much, Eldest Brother."

"And rightly so. Am I not Hsien L'ing? If word got back to my masters ..."

"No trail will lead to your door, brother, I promise you. Besides, if we choose our man correctly . . ."

Ping sat forward, suddenly alert. "You know such a one?"

Chun looked about him, his smile quietly confident. "Do you trust me, Eldest Brother?"

The faintest flicker of uncertainty passed across Ping's face. He hesitated a moment, then nodded.

"Good. Then leave this matter with me, neh? What you do not know will not harm you."

"If you say so, brother." Yet Su Ping remained uneasy. As well he might, for though they were twins, the brothers' lives had followed very different paths.

Their mother had been a sing-song girl, a common men hu, who, finding she had suddenly not one but two mouths to feed, had chosen to give up one of her children for adoption. They had been pretty babies and it had not been difficult for her contacts to find a childless couple from the Mids. They had chosen Ping and taken him up-level. Chun, identical in every way, had stayed behind, to grow up in the brothel with his mother. So the fates had decided.

It might have ended there, but eight years ago, Su Chun, passing through the district on his way to deliver a package to a "friend" in Mainz, had stopped for a bite in the marketplace of Weisenau and - to his astonishment - had glimpsed, seated in splendour in an official sedan, his double. After making his delivery, he had come back and, once he'd established without doubt that this was the twin his mother had so often talked to him about, had returned a week later with his half-brother, Su Yen.

That day had been a great one for the Su family and the celebrations had gone on long into the second week of their reunion. But Su Ping was a cautious man, and though family feeling was strong in him, he had his twin checked out -discreetly, of course, making sure no word of it got back to Su Chun.

What he discovered worried Su Ping greatly. He had always tried to be a good and honest man, and his official record was, if undistinguished, also unblemished. His brother, in contrast, had been in and out of trouble all his life, and while no definite proof existed, word was that he was linked at the highest levels to the great brotherhoods, the Triads, which organised almost all of the major criminal activity in the city.

Put briefly, Su Ping had been faced with a dilemma. Should he carry out his official duties and expose his brother for what he was - a minor tong boss, stealing and killing to his masters' orders? Or should family obligation override such considerations?

The fact that Su Chun was, in almost every sense, a stranger to him, made it curiously worse. If he had known Chun all his life, if he had shared his twin brother's fortunes and been made to face the same harsh choices, would he still have been the same good man he was? Or would adversity have shaped him just as it had shaped Chun?

In the end, he decided to do nothing; to simply watch and wait and try to do his duty to both government and family. And thus far he had succeeded. But now there was this other matter - this matter of Su Chun's political ambitions for their half-brother Yen.

Su Ping pulled himself up, half out of the water, onto the top step, then turned and gestured with his hand. At once a servant hurried up and handed him a towel. Su Ping pulled it about his shoulders, then stood, looking down at the fourth of them there.

"Will you share a chung of ch'a with me before you retire, Rung Chia?"

Kung Chia turned his close-shaven head slowly and looked up at the Hsien L'ing, a lazy smile on his face.

"Forgive me, but not tonight, Su Ping. I have other things to do."

"Ah . . ." Su Ping stared a moment at his Wei - his Captain of Security - then shrugged. "As you wish. Su Chun . . . Su Yen. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, brother," Su Chun answered softly, his half-lidded eyes studying Kung Chia thoughtfully.

As the doors at the far end slammed shut, Su Chun lifted himself a step and leaned forward. His words, like the faint light from the glow-lamp, were shrouded in secrecy.

"Thank the gods the old fool's gone. Now listen, and listen carefully . . ."

Tom forced his way through the packed crowd in the narrow street and grabbed Yun's arm, pulling him back.

The young Han turned, surprised. To either side of them people pressed close, the noise, the physical presence of them overwhelming, the strong scent of exotic spices spilling from the shops to either side, filling the warm night air.

"S'Okay," Yun said, answering Tom's unspoken query. "We almost there."

Yes, thought Tom, for once frustrated by his inability to speak, but where is "there"?

They had walked for almost an hour, through busy thoroughfares and narrow hutong where whole families crouched before cheap trivees, past long rows of food stalls and soup kitchens, past endless hawkers with their trays of wares, and cripples - some blind, some lame - who'd called to him from where they lay, rattling their cups and moaning piteously. And always there were the children, the endless unwashed, unwanted children. He had seen sights and smelled scents he had never experienced before, but now he was tired. Tired, and just a little apprehensive.

Where are we? he wondered, wishing Sampsa were there in his head to reassure him. Where in the gods' names are we?

"Come on," Yun urged. "Two minutes and we there."

Tom sighed, then walked on, following close, knowing now that he should never have agreed to come.

The backstreet opened out into a square. Beyond it, beneath an ornate arch decorated with coiled dragons, was a park. Tom looked about him, frowning, trying to place himself, but it was impossible. Even with his perfect memory it was hard to know precisely how far he'd come or what directions he had taken. If he had studied a map of the district beforehand it might have been different, but he'd never thought. . .

Again he sighed, more heavily this time. How close was the river? How far was he from the barge?

And how much danger am I in?

He slowed, looking up at the arch as he passed beneath it. Yun had walked on - was disappearing into the darkness beyond. Tom hurried to catch up, then slowed, catching his breath.

Why, it's beautiful. . .

Just ahead, beyond the courting couples and the old men strolling along the milk-white gravel path, the land fell away -the grass slope silver-black beneath the moon - to a canal.

Yun turned to him and called. "Come on! We here!"

Tom walked slowly down the path, between the whispering willow. trees in the moonlit evening's warmth, entranced. Directly ahead of him, the path ended in a curved white bridge. The lamps on the bridge shone brightly, reflected in the water. But his eyes were drawn beyond that, to the right. There, less than fifty ch'i from the bridge, drawn up in ranks of two against the far bank, a line of old-fashioned junks were moored, their decks lit with brightly coloured lanterns.

He walked down onto the bridge, stopping beside Yun who was leaning on the polished balustrade, watching as a tiny rowboat crossed the space between them and the moored lantern-boats.

As the craft came closer, Yun hailed it.

"Lao Wen!"

The rower - an old Han, grey-bearded and bent like an ancient tree - glanced up. He gave a single, decisive nod, then, digging his right oar deep into the water, slowly turned the boat toward the shore.

"Quickly," Yun said, turning to Tom and taking his arm. "We go meet him."

They went down to the bank and, while Yun held the gunwale, Tom climbed in, clambering behind the old Han as Yun pushed off and jumped into the swaying boat.

Tom sat, staring at the back of the old man's shaven head. Was this where Yun's family lived? And the old man . . . was he an uncle? If so, did all of Yun's family smell as bad? Tom looked past him to Yun, hoping to take some cue from his face, but Yun was turned away, looking back at the retreating bridge.

Slowly the boat came about until they were heading directly for the first of the lantern-boats. As they slid past into the shimmering, coloured water-passage between the two lines of boats, Tom could hear voices - high-pitched female voices -and, from within one of the cabins, the sound of a Chinese lute, ap'ip'a. There was laughter and the sweet scent of perfume.

He leaned past the old man, seeking Yun's eyes. This time Yun beamed back at him.

"You like?"

Tom grinned and nodded. He liked.

Suddenly Old Wen lifted both oars, letting the rowboat slide smoothly between the high-sided lantern-boats. As it slowed to a halt, he dug the right-hand oar deep into the flow and turned the boat about, bringing it close in against the side of one of the outer boats, then reached up to grasp a securing rope. A short rope ladder led up. Yun pointed, indicating that Tom should climb it, and stepped past Old Wen, placing something in his palm as he did, then held the bottom of the ladder taut as Tom climbed.

As Tom poked his head up over the side, it was to be met with a unexpected sight. There, playing cards at a silk-covered table on the deck, were four young Han women. Seeing Tom emerge, they set their cards down and leaned in toward each other, giggling. There was a brief exchange - too low for Tom to catch - and then one of them came across, even as Yun climbed up alongside him.

"You, boy!" she said, facing him arrogantly, the faintest smile on her lips. "You want fuck?"

He looked to Yun, bewildered, but Yun was laughing -looking past him at the young girl and laughing quietly.

"Tie Ning!" he said, scolding her. "You must treat our guest much better, okay? Tom here is ch'un tzu. Great man."

He extended his arms as if to describe a huge figure of a man, then reached out to touch Tom's arm.

"Choose one, Tom. Go on."

Tom stared at the girl, then back at Yun, not understanding.

"What matter with your friend?" Tie Ning said, a petulant expression settling on her face. "He dumb or something?"

Yun stepped past Tom, taking the young girl's arm and placing his head close to hers to whisper.

Freed from her fixed stare, Tom was able to see her properly for the first time.

Her clothes were curiously old-fashioned, like something from a trivee costume drama, the full length dress made of a cheap ersilk that was brightly coloured and diaphanous in places. Her long, black hair was done up in a bun, fixed with ribbons and wires, while behind her right ear she wore a salmon pink paper chrysanthemum. In the coloured lantern-light her face seemed pale, almost ghost-like, the bones fine, the eyes large. A pretty face, but worn, mistrustful.

He looked about him, taking in details, noticing for the first time how it all connected. And slowly, very slowly, it dawned on him. Laochu, they were. Sing-song girls. And the boat - the boat was one of the "flower-boats" he'd read of in his father's books - a floating brothel. He looked down, blushing fiercely.

There was a sudden waft of perfume then he felt the girl's fingers brush against his arm.

"Forgive me, Master Thomas," she said softly, giving a small curtsey, her head lowered, demure suddenly, all arrogance gone from her - like an actress changing roles. "If I had known . . ."

She could not help herself. Placing a hand to her mouth, she giggled. Behind her, at the table, the others joined in. Tom looked up, seeing how she was watching him, sympathetic suddenly and curious. Unable to prevent himself, Tom smiled.

"That better, neh?" she said, letting her hand rest gently on his shoulder. "You okay. Yun vouch for you. He say you nice boy."

She turned, clicking her fingers, then looked back at him. "We find you nice girl, neh?"

Some part of him, remembering the Stim - the awful, degrading feel of it - wanted to draw back, to refuse what was being offered here, but the sheer proximity of her, the warmth, the perfumed smell of her, was like a trigger, freeing him from restraint.

For the briefest moment he was confused, uncertain. He looked to Yun.

"It okay," Yun said, as if he sensed Tom's hesitation. "This one on me, neh? You choose which girl you like. She do whatever you wish. Suck your cock all night, if make you happy!"

The spell dissolved. Tom looked about him, seeing it all for what it was; seeing how cheap the girls' silks were, how the shabbiness of the boat was masked by the coloured light from the lanterns. It was a web, a sticky web, there to rob him of his senses. He shook his head, No, he thought. Not like this. I want . . .

From one of the nearby boats he heard, once more, the music of thep'ip'a. He turned, looking toward the sound, listening.

It was a song he knew - the nostalgic "Like Waves Against Sand". For a moment he held himself perfectly still, enchanted by the music, his eyes half-lidded, in a trance, then felt a touch upon his arm.

Yun was standing next to him. He leaned close, speaking to Tom's ear. "You want meet her, Tom? You want meet girl who make music?"

Tom hesitated, then gave a single nod.

Yun laughed, relieved. "Okay. You follow me. As I say, all paid for. Anything goes. You hear me, Tom? Anything goes."

But Tom could hear nothing. Nothing but the clear notes of the ancient lute, carrying across the water from the nearby boat, like waves lapping against the shore of his consciousness.

The day was done, the boys were all asleep, the insect nets pulled across the open fronts of the stalls. Standing there in the cobbled outer courtyard, in the faint light cast by the lamp above the compound gate, Emily looked about her, listening to the soft snores of her boys, conscious of the unfamiliar vastness of the open sky above.

She looked up. The moon was bright and almost full, the sable sky dusted with stars.

It was beautiful. So peaceful. And this place . . . She smiled to herself. She had never thought she could feel so content, so satisfied with life. To want nothing but this - to need nothing beyond this - that surely was fulfilment.

It hadn't always been so. More had died in the first few years after the city's fall than in all the wars that had gone before; maybe nine-tenths of the population, from disease and starvation. DeVore had indeed unleashed the Four Horsemen, and when they were done, a great mountain of bones had filled the southern lands. Here in the north things had been better, but only just.

Emily remembered those times vividly. She had only to smell the sickly-sweet scent of slightly rotting meat and it all came back to her with a nightmare clarity. The rotting bodies, the big-wheeled death carts stacked high with lifeless bodies, the sight of hundreds, thousands, driven mad by despair; the awful sense they'd all had that this was somehow the judgement of the gods. And maybe that was why they'd made a go of it these past ten years - because of that memory: a memory etched deep within the consciousness of those who had survived. The city was a far better place to live these days. There were exceptions, of course - mainly the great urban centres like Frankfurt and Berlin, where the Triads had reestablished themselves - but in the suburbs, among the genteel poor, life was good. There was crime, certainly - such things were universal, after all - but it was mainly petty stuff, the exception rather than the rule, and generally one could trust one's neighbour.

The paranoia of that great World of Levels had been ended, washed away in a great tidal wave of blood and suffering.

And now, without doubt, they had a new chance; and not just for some, but for everyone. There was room enough, food enough, work enough for all. Each passing month saw an improvement in their lot. Her boys were fed and educated. If they were sick, there was enough to pay for a doctor to call, if a doctor was needed. Times were good. The best she'd known them.

The thought made her feel... No, there was no word for it. This little island of being, this sanctuary, had become the focus, the epicentre of her life. Having this, she wanted nothing else - neither riches nor revenge. For her, time had ended, the circle had closed. She could live her life like this and be content, knowing that in dying she had fulfilled her destiny, her fate.

Before this she had been restless, discontented. She had sought constantly to fill the raging void within her - that same void that had been inside them all when they were yet prisoners of the World of Levels. But now that world had gone, vanished like some evil dream conjured from the dark.

Now they were free to begin again, to live as they'd been meant to live, with their feet on solid earth, their faces open to the sky.

A long way she had travelled to be standing here, by many and diverse paths. She had been a terrorist, a ruthless political killer with a price on her head, and then - in another life, it seemed - the wife of a great Company head; a Great Lady with a mansion and a thousand servants. Yet here she was, rooted, finally rooted in this place they had made their home.

Home. The very word seemed strange. For she had never had a home before, only a succession of places she had stayed.

She looked about her, smiling, knowing how lucky they had been to get this place. At first they had been forced to rent rooms in shared apartments in Mainz, making do in cramped, unsatisfactory conditions, but then one of the local merchants - a nice old man named Ho Chang - had heard of their circumstances and offered them this compound. They'd not thought they could afford it, but the rent he'd asked for was ridiculously low, and so they had moved here. That had been three years back, and though the old man was dead now, his daughter let them stay under the terms they had agreed with her father.

"Emily?"

She turned, surprised to find Lin at her shoulder. "Yes?"

"I thought you'd gone."

Emily laughed softly. She had been on her way out to the merchant's house, but that had been ten, fifteen minutes ago. "I was thinking."

"Thinking?" He came round and stood before her, his disfigured face revealed in the lamp's soft light. She studied it, then reached out to touch his right cheek. Lin looked back at her unselfconsciously, letting her fingers trace his skull's deformity. It had never worried him. Unlike most others she had met, he seemed to have no sense of self, only a feeling for those he might help. It was why she loved him. Why she had stayed with him all these years.

"It's enough, don't you think?" she said quietly, letting her hand fall away. "All this . . ."

Lin nodded, his eyes half-smiling, then answered her softly, using the words of the ancient sage, Lao Tzu.

"The nameless uncarved block is but freedom from desire. And if I cease to desire and remain still, the empire will be at peace of its own accord."

She sighed. "Would that it were so simple, neh?"

"But it is, Mama Em. Men have but to realise it, that is all. They struggle so. They . .." He shook his head, then laughed softly. "But you must go now. Steward Liu will be waiting for you."

"Then I will not keep him waiting any longer." She touched his arm. "Take care of my boys, neh, Papa Lin?"

"I will. You know I will."

Tung Wei's mansion was fifteen minutes walk, on the far side of the district. Tenth bell was sounding as she stood before the massive gates, waiting to be admitted.

Steward Liu had given them many things in the past, broken household things which would otherwise have been simply trashed, but it was rare for him to send for her.

As the smaller door within the gate creaked open she stepped forward, expecting Steward Liu's clean-shaven head to duck out beneath the lintel, but it was not Liu Yeh. The man who faced her was much younger than Liu, with a full head of black hair and the number six embroidered on the ersilk patch he wore at the centre of his chest; moreover, he was scowling.

"What do you want, old woman?"

"I . . ." Disconcerted by his manner, she fumbled in her jacket for the letter Liu Yeh had sent, then realised she had left it on the table in the inner courtyard. "Forgive me, I..."

Abruptly, he stepped forward and shoved her, sending her off-balance. "Be off with you! Now! Before I call the guard!"

She stared at him, shocked. Behind her a small crowd of passers-by had begun to gather. "But Liu Yeh said . . ."

Eyes glaring, he shoved her again, sending her sprawling. "Be gone! We'll have no beggars here!"

There was a murmuring from the crowd. A single voice called, "Leave her be!"

In answer, the servant made a gesture, as if he were going to cuff each one of them in turn with the back of his hand. "On your way, you rabble! Clear the street, or I'll turn the hose on you!"

He turned, looking to where Emily lay on her back looking up at him, then hawked up a gobbet of phlegm and spat into the dust beside her.

"Beggars . . ." he muttered, a sneer of distaste on his face, then turned and, slamming the door behind him, went inside.

Slowly Emily got to her feet, hands reaching to help her and brush her down.

"Who the fuck does he think he is?" one of them - an old fellow she recognised as a stallholder from Lung Chi Lane said, handing her a cloth to wipe her hands.

She turned, nodding her gratitude, and, biting back her anger, smiled at him. "Why, surely you know, lao jen? Our friend is Number Six. He is a big man in Tung Wei's mansion."

They laughed at that, but their laughter was uneasy, for all there remembered how it had been back in the World of Levels. There was not one there who did not recall the constant petty slights and humiliations heaped on them by their supposed "betters".

Looking about her, Emily felt a shadow fall on her. At core these people were still afraid. Fear lay at the back of their new found freedom: a deep-rooted fear that this was but a dream - a brief dream of open skies and happiness - and that soon they would wake, to find this new world vanished like the old. And then?

She sniffed, then wiped her hands and handed back the cloth. "Thank you," she said softly, smiling at him again, then, looking about her. "Thank you all."

There were nods, looks of understanding and sympathy, and then, unwillingly it seemed, the crowd began to disperse.

Emily turned, staring at the door, wondering for a moment if the young man had been carrying out Liu Yen's orders, whether this were some subtle ploy to remind her of her relationship to Liu Yeh's master, then, with a shrug, she moved away, making her way back to the compound, the full moon shining brightly high above.

The music had stopped. Tom stood there on the plank bridge between the boats, staring down at the surface of the water a dozen ch'i below. To his right, where the lantern-light fell, it seemed both strange and magical, a shimmering, ever-changing mask, yet here between the boats it was simply dark. He could see oil in the water, the floating detritus of the town washed up against the grimy hull.

So it is, he thought, feeling a sudden disenchantment. Yet the music still intrigued him: intrigued because it was so unexpected, here in this setting.

"Tom?"

He looked up, meeting Yun's eyes, then, realising he had been there some while, moved quickly on, jumping down onto the deck. As he did a young man - a liumang, or "punk", by the look of him - stepped out from the cabin further down the deck. He approached them slowly, like a lizard, his eyes the merest slits in his face, his knife drawn. For a moment it seemed as though the situation would get ugly, but a brief, murmured exchange between Yun and the punk seemed to settle things. The liumang stepped aside, then, slipping the knife back into his belt, he waved them through. Yun went quickly through, yet as Tom passed the liumang leaned close, sniffing him suspiciously, like a dog getting the scent of an intruder.

Questions. Suddenly he was full of questions. And no Sampsa to answer them. No Ben.

Tom ducked beneath the lintel, pulling the small, glass-panelled door closed behind him, then turned, looking into the room, conscious at once of the heavy scent of perfume in the musty air.

It was a long, low-ceilinged room, two small lanterns, hung from a beam to his left, casting a sickly pink glow over everything. To his right, a couch rested beneath a long window, over which cane blinds had been drawn. Beside it was a low table, on which were placed a silver cigarette box and a folded ladies' fan. A patched silk curtain - was it blue, green? the lamplight made it hard to tell - concealed the far end of the room. From behind it came the faintest rustling, silk upon silk.

He looked to Yun, a query in his eyes. His companion smiled and beckoned him on.

She there, Yun mouthed. You wait. I go.

He wanted to stop him; wanted, despite his burning curiosity, to back out of there and return to the barge. But it was too late. He heard the door creak open then close behind him.

Slowly he crossed the room, conscious of the noise each footfall made. The bare planks had been swept, but here, at the centre, a colourful rug had been spread. He stared down at it, noticing how stained and threadbare it was. Like all else here, it had the air of fallen elegance.

Again the faintest rustling came from behind the screen.

For an instant he felt the urge to step across and tear the curtain aside, but the memory of the music stayed his hand. He looked around, wondering briefly if it hadn't perhaps been a trick, after all; if that beautiful music hadn't been artificially produced. There was no sign of any instrument Besides, this place . . .

He laughed inwardly. What had he been imagining? That he would find some pearl, some jewel of a girl in a place like this? No. For there were only whores here. Pleasure girls. Girls who would do anything if the price were right.

He turned away, meaning to leave, then stopped, hearing the curtain move on its runners.

"You want to go, Mister?"

He stood there a moment, undecided. The voice was not as common as he'd expected.

"Well? Don't you want to look at me before you make up your mind? I'm a nice girl. I'll treat you well."

Words formed in his mind. 7 want. . .

What do you want? he asked himself suddenly, as if it were Sampsa in his head and not himself.

I want to know where that music came from?

He turned, not knowing what to expect, telling himself, even before he saw her, that he would go once he had seen her face.

He looked. For a long time he stood there, studying her, drinking in the sight of her, surprised - beyond all imagining surprised - by just how beautiful she was. And young, too. Younger, perhaps, than himself.

"Well?" she asked finally, the faintest smile on her glistening red lips. "You like me? You want to stay all night?"

I want...

Slowly he raised his right hand and, placing his forefinger to the tip of his tongue, shook his head.

"You're dumb? Is that what you're trying to say?"

Tom nodded.

She stepped closer, taking his hands in hers. "I'm sorry. I'd have liked to know all about you. What you do. Where you come from. I like to know such things. But we can be friends anyway, neh? You come and sit with me. I'll talk, you listen. Okay?"

Okay, he answered in his head, the sweet jasmine scent of her, intoxicating now that she was so close, the feel of her tiny hands in his making him feel strange, unreal.

He looked down at where their hands were linked and thoughtlessly began to caress the backs of her fingers with his thumbs. For the briefest moment he waited for the doubled sensation of the Stim, for that abrupt transition as the guide-track switched in to control his muscles, but there was nothing this time - only the singular response of his own nerve-ends.

"That's nice," she said, a new softness in her voice. "You're very gentle."

He looked up, meeting her eyes, seeing how openly they smiled back at him, surprised by that.

You're real, he thought, strangely awed by that; yet even as he thought it, he knew how ridiculous it was. Of course she was real. Cut her and she would bleed, kiss her and . . .

"Well?" she said for the third time. "Shall we sit down? Or do you want to fuck me straight away?"

The straightforward manner in which she said it took his breath. But why should he be surprised? It was as he'd told himself only a moment earlier: however beautiful she seemed in this half-light, however "different", the girl was still a whore, a sing-song girl. Anyone could have her, no matter how fat or ugly, old or foul of mind they were. What he was as a man meant nothing here, only the money he brought. No, he was not to fool himself: this was not romance, this was trade.

He looked away, troubled.

Removing her hands from his, she reached up and turned his face gently, her fingers warm on his cheek and neck, making him look at her again.

"What is the matter?" she asked, her eyes trying to read him. "Don't you like the way I talk?"

He sighed, then shrugged.

"Would you like me to play for you, perhaps?"

She saw how his eyes lit at that and smiled. "You'd like that, yes? Maybe you heard the music on the other boat and you thought, who is that girl playing the p'ip'a? And maybe you thought you'd like to see that girl, neh?"

He nodded.

"Good." She seemed excited now that she understood. "You sit down there while I get ready, okay?"

She made her way across, then turned, a new look - of curiosity - in her eyes.

"You have a name?" She gestured to her hands. "You spell it with your fingers, maybe?"

He signed for her, straight forefinger to forefinger, forefinger and thumb looped, then the vee of thumb and forefinger linked to forefinger and middle finger.

"Tom? You're called Tom, right?"

He nodded.

She smiled. "That's a nice name. Tom suits you. I'm glad now you have a name. I'll not have to call you Mister all night."

For the first time since he'd stepped into the room he smiled. All night. .. The words took on a whole new meaning, a whole new sense of promise.

He watched her cross the room, conscious suddenly of the scent of her - not of her perfume, but of her - and of each silken, whispering sound her body made within its clothes. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he was alive to her. It was like waking.

As she disappeared behind the curtain, he looked about him once again, seeing this time a dozen tiny details he had passed over the first time he had looked - things he had seen but not seen. Reaching out he lifted the fan and unfolded it, studying the picture cut into the scented wood.

It was a town, an ancient Chinese town, with boats on the river and a bridge. He smiled and put it back, then sat back, waiting, looking about him, his eyes - like his father's eyes -recording everything, unable to forget.

The curtain twitched back, the girl stepped out, carrying the lute as if it were a child.

He could see at a glance that it was an ancient instrument - a real collector's piece - and wondered how she, a young whore on a flower-boat, had managed to afford it.

It was beautiful, its pear-shaped sound-box tapering delicately into the long neck, the ivory tuning pegs jutting out like the display feathers of some strange and elegant bird. Its four strings - tuned a-d-e-a - were of the finest gut. Looking at it, he had no doubt that it was from this instrument that the sounds he'd heard had come.

She sat, facing him on the sofa, crossing her legs, thep'ip'a held upright against her, her right hand curled about the sound-box, the fingers of her left resting loosely against the upper frets. For a moment she seemed almost to doze, her head tilted, resting against the neck of the instrument, then she looked up at him again and smiled.

"What do you want me to play? High Mountain, Flowing Streams? Crescent Moon at Dawn?"

He shrugged. For once it did not matter. He just wanted to see her play. She smiled as if she understood, then, wordlessly, she began, the notes spilling clear and pure into the air.

He watched her, entranced. As she played so she seemed to caress the instrument like a lover, her whole being lost in the ancient melody, her fingers moving expertly, the bright red nails plucking the strings with faultless ease. He looked to her face, conscious that for that moment he did not exist for her. Her mouth had fallen moistly open, her eyes stared distantly away, as if she was somewhere else, lapsed out, beyond this mundane world of deals and betrayals.

He shivered violently then reached out to touch her . . .

The tune died. Slowly she looked to him, her dark eyes vague, part of her still there in that timeless realm. She gave a little shudder as if loath to return, then, her eyes focusing again, she smiled.

"Well?"

He smiled and nodded. Then, reaching out, he took her hand. She lay the lute down carefully, and, never once relinquishing his hand, moved closer, kneeling by his side. ' He caressed her cheek, her hair, then leaned closer to inhale a long, deep breath of her. That made her laugh; made her look up at him.

"You like that smell?"

Again he nodded.

Slowly her face changed, became more serious. She tilted her head, her lips falling open once again and, as if compelled, he put his mouth to hers, sinking down into the warmth, the sensual darkness of her kiss.

He felt her hands move softly to his neck, caressing his skin, sensed the growing stiffness at his groin, but for that instant it seemed he was entirely detached from that, his whole self focused into the meeting of their lips, the whole of him poured like molten metal into that single point of contact. Such gentle, moist surrender it was; such shivering, sensational delight. The wires of his nerves sang, as if a massive sensory link had suddenly opened between the surface of his lips and the deeper levels of his brain.

He pressed hungrily at her, his face forcing hers back, a sudden, animal savagery taking him. His hands tore at her clothes, ripping them from her back as he pushed her down. But his urgency was matched by hers. She grunted, her face mirroring the lust he felt, encouraging him. As he lifted her skirt her hands tore at his clothes, freeing him. For a brief moment she held him back with her left hand, the fingers pressed against his inner thigh, while with the other she gently traced the length of his swollen penis.

He groaned, wanting at that instant to thrust right through her, to pin her to the floor and stab at her time and time and time again, but still her left hand held him while her fingers stroked and caressed his shaft - those same long fingers which had coaxed the ancient melody from the air.

She was smiling now; a lascivious, animal smile of lust. "You like that, Tom? You like that?"

Again he groaned. It was unbearable, utterly, hideously unbearable. His penis hurt it was so hard, the skin so tight it seemed that at any moment it would burst. He pushed at her, trying to reach her, but still she held him, her strength matching his own.

She whispered, her breath hot against his neck.

"That's the secret, Tom. Don't you understand that? It's like the music. You have to want it. Want it beyond anything you've ever wanted. Only then is it any good. Only then . . ."

He groaned again, then suddenly, unbelievably, he was inside her, his hardness breaching her softness, her body pressing up against his, the hot wetness of her, the sensation of her flesh against his own exploding like a dark star in his head, blinding his senses. Mindlessly he thrust at her, again and again and again until, with a broken cry that was half sheer agony and half pure bliss, his body arched.

"Yes!" she said breathlessly. "Yes! Yes, my love, that's iff'

The spasm made him jerk like a dying man, his face grimacing in unseeing agony above hers, his arms locked stiff either side of her head, his teeth gritted as, with one final violent thrust he buried his pulsing seed deep within her.

"Jeee-eee-arghh\"

The sound - savage and inchoate - came from deep within, from a part of him that wasn't chained to silence.

Slowly, very slowly, he relaxed.

"That's it . . ." she said softly, gently stroking his back, caressing his tensed and naked buttocks. "That's it, my darling boy. You see? You see now what I meant?"

At this late hour, the massive hangar-like building that was Mashhad fast-track terminus was echoing empty. The crowds that had packed the station earlier had dispersed, some home to their quarters in the Warlord's sprawling mountain capital, others to their various destinations in distant East Asia and the neighbouring West Asian states. One name alone remained now on the destination board: Krasnovodsk.

In five minutes, that too would be gone and the station would be closed, its gates locked. Even now the guards were checking their timers, the last few late travellers boarding hastily, hauling their luggage up onto the narrow walkway that ran alongside the carriages.

As the three-minute warning hooter sounded, Eva gripped her brother tightly, then giving him a brave smile, urged him on board. They had said their goodbyes earlier, though whether they were temporary or final, neither knew.

"Take care, Alan," she said, steeling herself not to cry, not to let him down at the final moment. "And if you hit trouble, remember - save yourself, not the shipment."

He sniffed deeply, then nodded. "I shall, my darling Eva. Be assured I shall."

He turned to go, yet as the one-minute hooter sounded, he stepped back and hugged her one last time. Then, quickly, he climbed up onto the running board and hauled himself inside. And not a moment too soon. With a loud hiss the doors slid shut, the bolts falling into place with a soft double-clunk. Pressing his face to the window, he began to wave.

Slowly, very slowly, the fast-track pulled away, accelerating all the while, heading north toward the Gonbad Gap, then on to Ashkhabad. There it would stop to pick up passengers before travelling on north-west to Krasnovodsk on the south-eastern shore of the Caspian Sea.

"The gods protect you," she said softly, as she waved him out of sight. "And pray we'll meet again, sweet brother."

It was after two when she returned to her quarters in the palace, surprised to find the main lights on, guards everywhere. Arriving at her rooms, it was to find a young lieutenant going through her shelves and cupboards.

"What is it?" she asked him, suspecting the worst, but he was apologetic.

"Forgive me, Nu Shi Calder," he said, turning and bowing to her, "but I have my orders. We have been told to search the palace thoroughly. It seems a few things have gone missing from the Warlord's collection. Important things."

She swallowed but said nothing, gesturing that he should carry on. Besides, he would find nothing now.

"What has gone missing?" she asked after a moment.

He glanced at her. "I'm afraid that's confidential. But there's a hell of a stink about it. It seems security was breached at the highest level. Hu Wang-chih was livid when he heard."

"Yes . . ." She could imagine. Her heart was pounding now. She hadn't gambled on them finding out so soon.

"Do they know who it was?"

The young officer shrugged, then carried on his work, pulling things down from the shelf and shaking them, then putting them back in a desultory fashion. "No one can say for sure. It seems the security cameras were broken. But I'd put good money on it being one of the guards."

"Ah. . ."She hesitated, controlling herself again, then asked. "Why's that?"

"Because they had access."

"Ah," she said again. Yet others had had access too, herself among them. But then, Hu Wang-chih trusted her implicitly. After all, it was she who fed him, shaved him, bathed him, even - from time to time - slept with him.

She shivered, then, hearing the click of booted footsteps in the corridor outside, turned.

"Lieutenant Stocken?"

The young officer turned, then straightened up, facing the newcomer. "Yes, sergeant?"

"Are you finished here, sir?"

Stocken looked about him then nodded.

"Then you are to report to the Main Courtyard." The sergeant turned, looking to Eva. "You too, Nu Shi Calder. Warlord Hu has summoned the whole household to attend."

"Attend? What for?"

The sergeant smiled grimly. "For the executions."

"Ah . . ." And now the full significance of what she'd done tonight hit her. And, as she followed the two young soldiers out and down the corridor, heading for the Main Courtyard, her mind went out to her brother. He'd be in Ashkhabad by now. Unless something had happened. Unless they'd stopped and searched the train.

The four guards had been shaven and beaten. Dressed only in their loincloths, their hands bound behind them, the livid marks of the lash striping the pale flesh of their backs, they knelt beneath the arc lights of the Main Courtyard as the palace household slowly gathered.

The local Warlord, Hu Wang-chih, stood close by, his chest bare, glistening in the light, the leather whip in his right hand, a spiked glove on his left. He had administered the beatings himself, and though none of the four had confessed, there was little doubt that one of them was guilty.

As the last few people arrived, Hu looked about him and, raising his voice, began to speak.

"You all know why we're here, so I won't waste words. Simply this. If you work for me, here in the palace, I must be able to trust you. I must be able to count on you absolutely. These men . . ." he gestured with the whip, not deigning to look at the kneeling men, " . . .these insects, rather, betrayed that trust. They stole from me, and I will not tolerate that kind of behaviour in my household, understand me?"

There was nodding from all around, a faint murmur of agreement.

"Good. Then bear witness. For if I find any of you - any of you - behaving similarly, this will be your fate."

He turned and nodded to his Chief Executioner, who smoothed a gloved hand over his masked face, then stepped forward, hefting his axe.

Watching from thirty ch'i away, just to the right of Warlord Hu, Eva felt a shiver of fear run through her. Not for the poor guards, but for herself; for her immortal soul. For she knew they were innocent. Knew without fear of contradiction that they had done nothing wrong.

Not that that meant a thing now. As the axe swung back then fell, she heard herself cry out. But she was not alone. All about her, others looked on with fear in their eyes.

Yes, and that was why she'd had to act. To end this.

Maybe, she told herself, forcing herself to watch - to fix this in her memory. But she would have to live with this, knowing that she had killed these men, as surely as if she'd swung the axe herself.

The blade glinted and fell, glinted, fell.

As the last blow fell a shuddering sigh passed through the watching crowd. For a moment no one moved. Then, at some unseen, ungiven signal, they began to disperse, back to their rooms, their stations in the palace.

She sighed, then looked across. Warlord Hu stood there, breathing deeply, staring at the headless corpses where they lay toppled, ungainly in death. Then, as if waking from a trance, he turned and, seeing her, smiled, beckoning her across.

"Eva!" he called, a strange note of excitement in his voice. "Come, see to me!"

Tom woke to find the room in moonlit darkness, the girl beside him in the bed, asleep, her naked body turned from his, facing the window. For a moment he lay there, perfectly at peace, remembering.

After that first time, she had taken his hand and led him to her bed. There she had made him stretch out on his front while she massaged his back and sang to him in a soft, lilting voice; old songs in her native dialect - songs he did not recognise. Then, when he was aroused once more, she had made love to him a second time, on top of him in the half-dark, her every movement silken, like a warm wind on a summer's day, or like the gentle flow of water through a sunlit meadow. Again she played him, like an instrument, coaxing him, rousing him, slowing him when his passion grew too much, her hands, the smallest motion of her body seeming to control him, until their sweating bodies seemed to melt into a single force, driving on and on, the pleasure mounting until, with a single cry, they merged in blissful darkness.

They slept and woke much later. For an eternity, it seemed, they had lain there face to face, toying with each other, fingers on flesh, mouths meeting in the merest brushing touch, their eyes locked gaze to gaze, as if to look away would break that sensual spell.

Remembering that - remembering the sheer intensity with which he had stared into her eyes - Tom shuddered. He had never guessed. Nothing he had read or seen or experienced had prepared him for this night. Nothing. It was like being born again. Like . . .

No, there were no likes for this. This was itself - unique and incomparable. And the girl. . .

He exhaled a shivering breath. He was in love. Unbelievably - inexcusably, perhaps, for what could come of it? - he was in love. In love with a sing-song girl, a whore, whom any man could have.

A girl whose name he did not even know.

He turned his head slightly, looking at her, seeing the way the silvered light lay softly on her back, picking out in chiaroscuro the ridged bones of her spine, the curve of her naked buttocks, the sweet fold and flow of her legs.

He closed his eyes, his peace disturbed. Sampsa? he called, but his head was empty. It would be another day at least before he could talk to his friend.

Okay. So what was he to do?

Nothing, he answered, playing Sampsa's part. You can do nothing, for she's a whore and you . . . you are a Shepherd.

Maybe. Yet his father had defied convention more than once. Two wives he had, one stolen and one his sister. So maybe . . . just maybe he could buy the girl. Or marry her.

He could almost hear his mother's laughter. How old are you, Tom? she'd ask, staring at him as if he'd lost his senses. Sixteen? Just sixteen? A tu2you seriously think you know what's best for you?

No, even to contemplate it was a kind of madness. Yet to think of not seeing her again - to think of leaving her here and living out his life, knowing she existed in the world - filled him with despair.

It had been so sweet.

He stretched out his hand, meaning to touch her, to wake her and make her somehow understand, then drew his fingers back.

No. It was impossible. Impossible.

He turned and slipped from the bed, careful not to wake her, then bent down, searching in the darkness for his tunic. Finding it, he pulled it over his shoulders, then went to the cabin door.

He climbed up onto the roof of the boat, expecting to find Yun there, maybe, or the punk, but there was no one. All was quiet, the lanterns dark. Only the moon shone down, huge and pale in the night sky. Tom stared at that great white circle for a time, wondering where exactly Sampsa was in relation to it, then looked away, a sigh escaping him.

And what would Sampsa say when he knew? What would he think? For this would surely change things between them: would make things . . . different.

He went to the front edge of the cabin's roof and sat, hunched into himself. The night was warm. A soft breeze blew in from the darkness, tickling his chest. In the distance, beyond the darkened urban sprawl, lay the high-rise towers of Frankfurt Hsien, warning lights winking from their upper storeys. He watched them absently a moment then looked away.

He ought to leave. Now, before she woke and found him gone. He ought to chalk this down to experience and move on. But he was loath to move on. Something special had happened here tonight. Something unexpected. And the girl had known that too. He had seen it in her eyes that final time, felt it in the gentle kiss she'd planted on his brow before she turned from him to sleep.

No matter that she was a whore, she was a person too, with needs and the desire for love. If he took her from here . . .

He drew back, trying to see it clear, to think it through the way Sampsa would have thought it through.

Why now? he called to him across the emptiness. Why did you have to go away from me now?

Yet if he hadn't, if Sampsa had been in his head throughout, seeing it all, sharing it, would he ever have fallen? Would he have even taken the first step?

No. He knew that for a fact. Sampsa's absence from his head may have made him vulnerable, yet it had also made him free.

Nothing will ever be the same again, he thought, letting a sigh escape him. Nothing.

There was a noise; the creaking of a board. Tom turned sharply. It was Yun. The young Han smiled apologetically then came across, crouching beside Tom.

"So, Tom, how did it go? You fuck her good, eh? You give her what for?"

Tom reached out and took Yun's arm, then pulled at it sharply. There was a startled yelp, a splash. A moment later a slick head broke the surface of the water, gasping.

"What the fuck?"

Tom stood and turned. It was time to go.

Chuang Kuan Ts'ai stood in the Oven Man's garden, beyond the shadow of the high brick walls, her round, hazel eyes wide as she watched the flickering patch of crimson dancing in the sunlight. So red it was - so vividly, startlingly red.

"Hu t'ieh," she murmured beneath her breath, the habit of silence strong in her. "Hu fieh ..."

She took a slow, careful step, like a cat dosing on its prey. Yet she had no thought of capturing the tiny, dancing creature. No. Let it go free. Let it fly to another garden and delight some other child the way it had delighted her.

Slowly, like a flower opening, her seven-year-old face budded in a smile. Hu t'ieh . . . like in the story Uncle Cho had told her, about the old man who had dreamed he was a butterfly - hu t'ieh - and when he woke could not say whether he had been a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or was now a butterfly dreaming he was a man.

She watched it settle on a leaf, red against green, resting in the midday heat, seeming to soak in the brilliant sunlight, as if recharging itself.

Another step, and another; then, crouching, her eyes on a level with the leaf, she stretched out a finger, slowly, careful not to startle it. Surprisingly it did not fly off, but alighted on her finger, soft, light, ticklingly light.

A tiny shiver of delight passed up her spine as it slowly dosed and opened its wings. She drew her hand back until the tiny creature rested only inches from her face, its compound eyes staring back at her as if understanding the sudden awe in her eyes.

"Hu t'ieh/' she whispered, naming it again, her breath making its gossamer wings shimmer. "Hu t'ieh."

Slowly she turned it, trying to make out the mirrored design on its wings, then caught her breath in surprise, recognising the logo from the trivee adverts she had seen. A capital G with a smaller S inside.

GenSyn. The butterfly was GenSyn.

For a moment longer it rested there, barely moving, its wings stretched open, the tiny solar panels soaking up the sunlight, then, with a lifting, fluttering movement that perfectly mimicked the flight of a butterfly, it launched itself into the sunlight, dimbing up out of the Oven Man's garden, its camera eyes sending back a constant stream of images.

Young Chuang watched, feeling a sudden, overpowering sense of disappointment. Then, conscious that Uncle Cho would soon be home, she went back inside to set the table and begin to make the tea.

Josef had seen it there two days ago; had seen the lao jen take the heavy plastic container and set it down beside another at the back of the shop, the distinctive marking - the bright yellow casing with its skull and crossed-bones warning sign in black - catching his eye. Even then he had known he would be back. It was just a question of time. Of time and careful planning.

For a whole afternoon he had sat on the bank opposite the quayside shop, watching the comings and goings, his feet dangling idly in the water while he thought it through. Now, as his head broke the water's surface and his hands sought the slick stone steps that led up into the back of the shop, he knew exactly what to do.

The front of the shop was dosed, the security shutters pulled down, the lao jen at his lunch. For an hour the coast was dear. He had only to avoid being seen.

He crouched low in the water, keeping to the deep shadow by the watt. Out on the river the heat beat down. It was the hottest part of the day and the whole world seemed to doze. On passing boats the sailors lounged or listlessly went about their duties. No one had eyes for the boy crouched in the water by the wall.

The back door was locked, of course, but that was no problem. Josef was good at picking locks. He had been doing it since he was four. Besides, there was always the ventilation hatch above. He was small enough and lithe enough to climb through there if need be.

It proved unnecessary. The lock gave easily and he was in, the door dosed to a tiny crack behind him. Inside it was dark, the scent of herbal preparations strong. All around him he could sense the shadowy shapes of the great cupboards, their tiny drawers - row after row of them - reaching up right to the ceiling.

Feeling his way along, he found the counter and dimbed up, perching himself beside the till. For a moment he rested, getting his breath, looking about him as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark. He had no interest in the money - at least, not in this money - yet it was necessary to take it. To make it seem that there had been a proper robbery.

Smiling, he took a sealed plastic packet from inside his sodden shirt and popped the neck, spilling its contents onto the counter. It held four things: two gloves, a small clear plastic storage jar with a screw-on top, and a badge - a school-badge from the Seventh District School.

Quickly he slipped on the gloves and, ringing up a sale, opened the ancient till, taking out all of the high-value notes and chips.

These he placed inside the packet. He fondly patted the box-like note-tracer beside the till, then dimbed down, going over to where the two containers sat side by side against the watt. He tried the right-hand one first. It was heavy, dearly futt, the seal unbroken. He set it down and lifted the other. It was much lighter. He put it down, then reached in his pocket and set the storage jar down beside it, unscrewing the top. Taking great care, he lifted the container once again and tilted it slowly, pouring the smallest amount into the jar.

Satisfied, he sealed the top again and put it back beside its fellow. No one would know. They would think money the motive for this burglary. He popped the top back on the jar, making sure it was secure, then went across and slipped it into the packet, along with the money.

And now the badge. He looked about him, seeing it as the investigating officer would see it, and dropped it on the floor beside the till.

Four minutes had passed, no more, as he removed his shirt and, holding the re-sealed packet in one hand, mopped behind him with the sodden rag, removing the print of his feet on the erwood floor.

At the back door he waited, listening, hearing a laden barge chug by, then slowly, very slowly, opened the door a fraction, widening the crack until he could see the far bank dearly. No one.

Quickly he slipped out and onto the steps. In an instant the lock was sprung, the door secure again, and he was in the shadows by the watt, neck-deep in the oily water.

As he rested there, getting his breath again, a rat swam by. He smiled. What he had in the jar would have killed the little bastard and a few dozen more besides, but it wasn't rats he was after.

No, and as he pushed out into the river's sluggish flow he chuckled to himself, thinking through the next stage of his plan.

CHAPTER-2

BUTTERFLY VISION

I Ye, Pel K'ung's Chief of Security, rested one gloved hand lightly on the operative's shoulder then leaned across him, studying the picture on the screen.

"She's a pretty young thing," he said softly, pointing to the screen, watching as the child's eyes slowly widened in realisation of what she held. "What sector is that?"

"Hochheim," the operative answered, a faint, apprehensive quaver in his voice. "Approximately two U from the river."

"Ah", I Ye said, nodding to himself, then watched the image break up momentarily as the bug-cam lifted from the girl's hand. For a moment he saw her standing there in the centre of the walled garden, her face turned up to him as she followed the butterfly's erratic flight, then she was gone.

"I can give you a precise position, if you want, Colonel," the operative said, his fingers hovering, waiting to punch in a superimposed map-grid.

"No," I Ye said, straightening. "I was curious, that's all."

They had "bugs" all over the Northern City now, the tiny, mimic life-forms programmed to carry out overlapping search patterns. It wasn't perfect - the losses from birds and other scavengers alone had proved extremely costly - but it was better than using men. This way, at least, their enemies remained unalerted. This way, perhaps, they had a chance of finding what they were looking for.

He moved on, looking from screen to screen along the row, seeing a dozen snapshot images. As he came to the end he heard the guard at the door come to attention with a crisp click of his boots and turned to meet the eyes of the Chancellor, Heng Yu.

"Well?" Heng Yu asked, without preliminaries. "Have we got him yet?"

"Nothing," I Ye said, taking a step towards the Chancellor then bowing low, acknowledging his superior status. "We know he's here, though. Our man in Mashhad said he left there yesterday evening."

Heng glanced at the screen nearest him, then met I Ye's eyes again. "What if he's been delayed?"

"Then we'll keep looking, Master Heng, even if it takes five, ten days. My men will not stand down until they've found him."

A faint smile flickered on Heng Yu's face, then he nodded. "Good, Colonel I. Our Mistress would expect no less of you."

Mention of Pei K'ung brought an instinctive response from I Ye. He snapped to attention and lowered his head. "You may tell our Mistress that I shall inform her the moment there is any news."

Heng Yu stared at the Chief of Security as if at an unwanted cockroach in the palace kitchens. "No, Colonel I. You will inform me. You understand? Our Mistress is not to be disturbed right now. She is very busy."

Yes, and we all know what she's busy at, I Ye thought, keeping his face a blank. Fucking young serving boys two at a timel "As you wish, Master Heng," he answered unctuously. But again Heng Yu was quick to correct him.

"No, Colonel I. As I instruct."

Outside the Operations Room, Heng Yu paused then turned, snapping his fingers to summon his First Secretary.

The young man hurried across, head bowed. "Master?"

"Has our man been despatched?"

"Yes, Master."

"Good. If we hear from him I want you to let me know at once, whatever I am doing."

"Master?"

"You heard me, Fen Chun. Now go and see to the arrangements. I have an audience with the Empress."

"Master."

As the young man hurried away, Heng Yu let out a long breath. So much was happening just now that this other matter threatened to be... now how had Shepherd put it? Ah yes, the straw that broke the camel's back.

He hurried on down the broad, high-ceilinged corridor, heading for the Empress's palace, ignoring the guards who abased themselves at his approach, lost in his thoughts.

It had been pleasant having Shepherd here these past few months. Pleasant and enlightening, for there were few men who knew as much, few who saw so clearly or thought so deeply as Ben Shepherd. Indeed, the more time he spent in Shepherd's company, the greater the esteem in which he held him. If any man in Chung Kuo was fit to be Emperor, Shepherd was that man. Or so he held in the privacy of his thoughts, for to utter such a thing aloud would be clearly treasonous, however much it echoed his Master's own oft-expressed sentiment.

The greater world saw Shepherd merely as an artist - a great one, admittedly, but still an artist, with an artist's disdain for worldly matters - but he knew better. If the great Yellow Emperor had been reborn in the form of a man, then Ben Shepherd would have been that man, for he saw men and their doings with a god-like clarity that stripped them to the bone. Not only that, but he could formulate policy better than any councillor, yes, and penetrate the motives behind each courtly twist and turn.

Most important of all, in the twelve weeks he had been here, he had managed to bring Li Yuan out of his shell.

Out of it, yes, and straight into another, Heng Yu thought, both amused and faintly disturbed by the insight.

But what was good for Li Yuan wasn't necessarily good for Pei K'ung. The Empress, after all, was a proud woman and had grown use to her husband giving her a free rein on internal affairs. Since Shepherd had been here, however, Li Yuan had taken greater interest in events, and she had been forced to put up with his constant queries. Not that he had changed a word of any document she had put before him, just that. . . well, to put it mildly, Pei K'ung did not take kindly to being questioned about her motives, not even by her husband.

Coming to the end of the corridor, Heng swept through the great doors and down the broad stone steps into the Central Gardens. On the far side of a narrow lawn, beyond a stand of ancient-looking willows, lay Pei K'ung's palace - a low sprawl of grey stone buildings, their steep-pitched red tile roofs gleaming in the late morning sunlight, the whole surrounded by a high stone wall studded with guard towers. Approaching the West Gate Heng Yu slowed, rehearsing what he was going to say.

Unfortunately ...

No. Start again. Pei K'ung did not believe in misfortune, only in failure and incompetence.

It is with regret. . .

Better, but still too apologetic. He could imagine the tightening of her neck muscles, the sudden hardening of her face.

Forgive me, Mistress, but it seems the bastard has fucked up...

Yes, that was it. Blame another. Deflect her anger with his own. Let some other poor sod catch the fallout.

Maybe so. But this once he was far from happy with the tactic, for this once the poor sod who had "fucked up" was a good friend of his. Yes, and a loyal ally, come to that. And such men were rare in life; rarer yet in the hostile, back-biting atmosphere of court.

True, Heng thought, but what choice have I? If I take the blame for this, she'll have my balls. Or worse, my job.

And if she had his job, then all of his friends would suffer, not just one. All in all, it was a devil's bargain, but he ought to have been used to that: his life these days was, after all, a spider's web of deceit and ill-wrought compromises.

Above the gate a camera swivelled, focusing on him. Two guards, clutching lantern guns and wearing the emerald green of the Empress's own force, stepped back, waving him through, their bowed heads acknowledging his status, yet from here on his high rank meant nothing. Within these walls, Pei Rung's word alone was law.

He crossed the enclosed courtyard then stepped inside, into the comparative darkness of the West Corridor. Halfway along, where a smaller corridor intersected it, stood Pei K'ung's Private Secretary, Ming Ai, waiting between two torch-bearers, his five assistants at his back like shaven-headed gargoyles.

The sight of them made Heng Yu's stomach tighten with a mixture of aversion and apprehension. Eunuchs, they were, with all the spite and petty jealousy of their kind; all the suppressed anger and resentment. It had been Pei K'ung's idea to resurrect the ancient practice, and it had not been long before Ming Ai and his shadows had secured their icy grip upon the Empress's Court. Just as Heng Yu was within Li Yuan's palace, so Ming Ai was here. But whereas he could roam the empire as he wished, Ming Ai was confined within these walls, imprisoned, as it were; a half-man, ruling only the microcosm of an empire. Such certain knowledge of one's limitations could and surely did warp a man's soul. It was with that thought in mind that Heng Yu stopped before Pei K'ung's Secretary and, bowing his head, greeted him.

"Ming Ai . . ."

"Master Heng," Ming answered, no tone in his surprisingly deep voice, no warmth to his expression. "My Mistress is awaiting you."

As Ming Ai turned, so his assistants parted before him, forming up behind Heng Yu as they made their way down the corridor that led to the Great Hall, the flickering torchlight on their jet black cloaks, the sickly-sweet stench of their perfume making Heng Yu feel as if he was within some dark and nasty dream.

How many have come this way in fear of their lives? he wondered, forcing himself to ignore the nausea he felt, keeping his eyes directed straight ahead lest he glimpse one of them smirking at him.

It was a place of shadows. Both within and without.

Ahead, a locked double door barred their way. Stepping up to it, Ming Ai took a thick black iron rod from within his cloak and hammered on the upper panel. From inside a female voice - distinct and clear - answered.

"Enter!"

As the doors eased back, Heng Yu knelt and lowered his head, touching his brow to the floor three times. He crawled forward into the doorway and repeated the ritual, then walked across the stone floor of the massive room, bent almost double, until he was before the massive desk. There he prostrated himself again, completing the k'ou t'ou. Behind him, Ming Ai and his shadows remained on their feet, unbowed before their Mistress.

A mistake, he thought, not for the first time, for to exempt such scoundrels from showing their respect surely gives them a sense of self-importance they ought not to possess. And from such tiny seeds grow great oaks of ambition. All should bow low or none. It is the only way.

As Heng Yu straightened, he glanced at the Empress where she sat behind the desk, ink brush in hand, writing busily. She had aged this past year. What had been plain in her had now grown ugly. Her long nose had thickened coarsely; her mouth, once pleasant, was now thin-lipped and drawn, and her chin, never the most pleasing of her features, now seemed absurdly angular, as if something forged of iron moved beneath that thin covering of flesh.

Ugly, yes, but that outward show was not the worst of it, for she had grown mean and vindictive these past twelve months. She had grown old not in wisdom, as the sages supposedly did, but in bitterness. That was not to say she was a stupid woman; far from it, for if a single person could be said to have held the Empire together these past ten years it was Pei K'ung. But what had once been political virtues - her stubbornness, her ruthlessness, her desire to succeed at any cost - had, in the last few months, become liabilities. In short, she had become a monster.

What was worse, she had come to despise her husband; to consider him a weak man, incapable of action. Not that she said as much - not openly, anyway, for who could tell what might get back to Li Yuan - but Heng could read between the lines of what was said. She thought this new society a sham, the promises Li Yuan had made to Ebert after the war unnecessary compromises. She thought they had given too much away; that they were pampering their citizens. What she wanted was the return of the old ways; the old certainties of levels and hierarchies. Indeed, if the truth were told, she was driven by a far greater desire: the desire to take back what was lost - to reunite Chung Kuo under a single ruler. This, he was certain, was her life's goal, the very pinnacle of her ambitions.

A monster.

Heng lowered his eyes, lest she look up suddenly and read his thoughts there in the wrinkled tablet of his face. The question was, did she know? Had she the slightest inkling of what she had become?

No, he answered silently. For true monsters do not analyse themselves. What self-knowledge his Mistress had once possessed had slowly atrophied, like an unused limb, and now it hung, limp and ignored, against her back.

Behind him Ming Ai cleared his throat.

Yes, Heng thought, and there's another sign. For those who rule are not like other men and women. One should judge them not by their own actions but by the actions of those that surround them - those whom they choose to carry out their will.

Men like Ming Ai and I Ye and the odious Chu Po.

He shuddered inwardly at the thought. That, at least, was a small mercy - that Pei K'ung's favourite was not here this morning. Only last week he had felt like striking the young rogue for his impertinence. Why Pei K'ung allowed him such free rein with his tongue the gods only knew, for she had many other lovers beside him. Or maybe that was Chu's role - to be a goad to such as he.

"Well, Heng?" Pei K'ung asked, setting down her pen and looking across at him, her eyes like dark beads in her long pale face. "Have we found him yet?"

Heng Yu remained kneeling, knowing he had not been told to stand. "Not yet, Mistress. But Colonel I is scouring the city for him. His men will stay on shift until they have located the man."

If his own man did not find him first. . .

"Ah . . ." Pei K'ung stood and came round from behind her desk, standing over him, the flowing folds of her dark green, almost black, silk robes whispering against the stone flags of the floor. Her voice, so unyielding before, now softened. "And the other matter?"

Heng Yu swallowed. "Forgive me, Mistress, but the bastard has fucked up!"

Unexpectedly she laughed.

He looked up at her, astonished. "Mistress?"

She stared back at him, her long, heavily-lined face giving nothing away, then gestured for him to rise. He stood, wrong-footed and confused by her lack of anger, watching as she crossed the room to a table where a number of scrolls were laid out.

"Come here, Master Heng," she said, studying one of the scrolls. "I think you'll find this interesting."

As he came close, she turned and handed him the scroll. Her eyes were strangely amused.

Bowing low, he took the scroll and unfolded it.

"I wondered how you would break the news, Master Heng."

He nodded distractedly, then looked up, startled. "But this is . . ."

"Jia Shu's confession." She said tonelessly, taking it back from him.

"But if you knew . . ."

Her smile faded like winter sunlight. "A little test, that's all."

He lowered his head, chilled by the abrupt change in her mood. She was not normally so volatile.

Pei K'ung stared at the scroll thoughtfully, then looked to Heng once more. "So what are we to do?"

"Do, Mistress?"

"Do," she repeated emphatically. "My husband is planning something and I want to know what it is. You assured me that your friend Jia was in a position to find out for me, but it seems Jia was careless. Now my husband has been alerted and it will prove even more difficult to discover what he's up to. So ... what do you suggest?"

The cold tone of threat in her voice was unmistakable. Heng Yu met her eyes briefly then glanced to the side where Ming Ai stood with his arms folded across his chest, smiling at his rival's discomfort.

For a moment Heng"s mind was a blank. What could he do? He had tried everything! Then, from nowhere, he had his answer.

"I shall ask him, Mistress."

"Ask him?" she laughed scornfully. "And you think Li Yuan would tell you?"

Heng lowered his eyes. It wasn't quite what he'd meant, but if that was what she thought. He shrugged. "I am, after all, the Tang's First Minister. If he cannot trust me . . ."

"Can 7 trust you?"

"Mistress!" He fell to his knees, his forehead touching the cold stone floor beside her long silk shoes. "You have my undying devotion. As the gods are my witnesses . . ."

"Pah!" She turned away, her every movement stiff, expressive of a barely-controlled frustration. Seeing it, Heng Yu smiled inwardly. She was a dangerous woman, there was no doubting it - a veritable viper of a woman - and yet she was also, in this single matter, deeply vulnerable. For almost a decade now she had ruled the San Chang - the three Imperial palaces - at Mannheim with an iron grip. For ten long years she had been the all-seeing, all-knowing presence behind it all. But now her husband had woken like a dragon from his slumber and was planning something - something neither she, nor he, the Tang's First Minister, knew anything about.

It's Shepherd's doing, Heng thought, convinced that no one else could have pulled off such a thing right under the Empress's nose. But what was he up to? What could possibly warrant such secrecy?

He heard his own words echo in his skull. / shall ask him, Mistress. Of course! He would go to Shepherd's quarters later on and ask him.

And if he won't tell me?

Then he would have discharged his duty. For if Pei K'ung's spies could not unearth this secret, then what chance had he, except, perhaps, by such directness?

He lifted his head; saw she was watching him, a faint scowl on her lips, her hazel eyes half-lidded, cold as a corpse's.

"There is another matter, Master Heng."

"Mistress?"

"Here," she said, handing him a second paper. He got up slowly, then unfolded the document. For a time he was silent, reading, then he looked to her again. "Taxes, Mistress?"

"Why so surprised, Master Heng? We have discussed the matter often enough, surely?"

"But Mistress. . ." He tried to collect his thoughts, to muster arguments against what he knew she was about to say, but she raised a hand. Immediately he fell silent.

"You know how often my husband has argued for this. How it is his dream to reunite the lands his ancestors once ruled. Well, it is time to begin the realisation of that dream. To give it substance."

He stared back at her, seeing the steel in her, the hard, unyielding core that lay behind the ageing flesh, and knew no argument would shift her. So she had decided at last -made up her mind to raise an army and retake the East. Well, he was not surprised. It was merely the timing of the thing. If they imposed taxes now, before the hardship of the winter . . .

"You have something to say, Master Heng?"

Heng Yu shook his head. "Not at all, Mistress. If you feel the time is right."

"I do. So please take that to my husband and have him place his signature to it."

He stared at the document a moment then folded it and slipped it into the inside pocket of his cloak. "I shall do so at once, Mistress."

"Good. Then you may go."

"Mistress!"

Li Yuan had dried himself and was pulling on his shirt when his Master of the Inner Chambers, Nan Fa-hsien appeared in the doorway. Seeing his old friend's son, Yuan smiled.

"What is it, Master Nan?"

Nan Fa-hsien lowered his head respectfully. "You have a visitor, Chieh Hsia. Master Heng is at the door, requesting audience."

"Master Heng . . ." Li Yuan gave a single nod, surprised. Heng was not due to see him for another two hours. "Has something happened?"

"I do not know, Chieh Hsia. He seems . . . troubled."

"I see." Li Yuan turned, studying himself in the full-length mirror, drawing a lock of dark hair aside with his fingers. Satisfied he turned back, facing his young servant. "Tell Master Heng I shall see him in a moment. Oh, and Fa-hsien. . ."

"Yes, Chieh Hsia?'

"See if you can't find out what"s been happening with the royal barge. I understand there's been trouble of some kind."

"At once, Chieh Hsia."

As Nan Fa-hsien hurried away, Li Yuan looked about him, checking he had not forgotten anything. For ten years now he had attended to himself within these rooms, letting no servant bathe or dress him, living more simply than he'd once lived, taking the time to read and think and write. Now, after long preparation, he was ready to take the reins up once again; to take what he'd learned these past ten years and use it. To refashion his kingdom in the same way he had refashioned himself.

Pulling on a thin silk cloak of Imperial yellow, he went through the anteroom and into his study. There, on the far side of the room, Heng Yu was waiting, his head lowered patiently. Yuan glanced at him then sat behind his desk.

"Well, Master Heng?" he asked. "What brings you here so early in the day?"

Heng came across and, bowing once, laid the scroll on the table before him. "It is from the Empress, Chieh Hsia. I promised her I would deliver it at once."

"I see." He smiled back at Heng Yu, ignoring the scroll. "And how is my wife?"

"She is in good health, Chieh Hsia. She sends her best wishes."

"And that little band of thieves and ruffians she calls her servants?"

A smile flickered briefly on Heng Yu's lips then was gone. "They thrive, Chieh Hsia."

"Yes," Li Yuan said acidly, "as cockroaches thrive after some great disaster." He stared at Heng a long moment, then. "And the banquet, Master Heng? Are the preparations proceeding well?"

"Very well, Chieh Hsia. Everything is being done to the letter of your instructions."

"Good. Then you may leave me, Heng Yu."

Heng Yu looked up, meeting his eyes. "But I thought. . ." He gestured toward the scroll. "I thought you might wish to read it, Chieh Hsia."

"And so I shall, Master Heng. Tomorrow. Now ... is there anything else?"

"No, Chieh Hsia."

"Then go. I have much to do."

Heng Yu bowed and backed away. When he had gone, Li Yuan let out a long breath. He was not usually so abrupt with his Chancellor, but this morning he had other things on his mind.

Picking up the scroll, he tucked it into his pocket then left the room, hurrying down the corridor towards the guest suite where Shepherd had set up his workshop.

As he paused before the massive double doors, he could hear the sound of Shepherd singing to himself within. Waving the guards aside, he pushed back the door and looked inside.

Ben was sitting at a piano on the far side of the room, making shapes with his hands on the keyboard as he sang, but from the piano itself came no sound.

Li Yuan closed the door then turned.

Ben smiled, beckoning him closer. "You want to hear?"

He nodded. At once strange chords filled the room - an awful, hollow sound, like the sound of eternal suffering.

He winced and looked down at Ben's hands, noting that all the keys were black.

"It's a symphony," Ben said, his fingers stopping suddenly, the final chord freezing, echoing in the air, chill as the north wind itself. "A symphony for the dead."

Of course, Li Yuan thought. What else could it be?

He turned, looking about him, realising suddenly just how tidy the workroom was. In the corner the shiny black casing of the shell was covered by a dustcloth.

"Whafs up?" He asked, puzzled. "I thought. . ."

"I've finished," Ben said, standing and pushing the keyboard aside.

"Finished?"

"The demonstration tape. If s done."

Li Yuan felt his mouth turn dry, his heart begin to hammer in his chest. "Done?" he said, so quietly he hardly heard himself.

"Yes. You want to experience it?"

He hesitated. Now that the moment had come - now that the thing was finally done - he wasn't sure. If this was as real, as powerful as Ben claimed, then . . .

Then what? he asked himself, conscious of Ben's eyes upon him. Am I so weak a man that a mere tiLusion - however powerful - could sway me from my senses? Hasn't that been the point of all my studies - of these long years of meditation - to make myself a stronger, more self-reliant man?

Yes, he answered, hearing the word sound clearly in his skull. Yet what if he failed this test?

Steeling himself, he nodded.

"Good," Ben said, taking his arm and leading him across to the shell. "Strip off. I'll help connect you."

The operator sat back, rubbing his eyes, tired - bone-tired -despite the drugs he'd taken to keep himself awake. On the screen before him images danced as the bug-cam fluttered through the air, then focused again as it settled. He reached out, meaning to take a swig from the lukewarm chung of ch'a beside his console, then froze, suddenly alert. "Sir!"

The urgent tone in his voice made the Captain turn from where he was talking to his lieutenant and hurry down the line of operatives until he stood behind him.

"What is it, Haller?"

"There, sir. Look!"

The Captain leaned past him, studying the frame. The bug-cam had settled on a roof overlooking a narrow, dusty alleyway, its high, yellow-brown walls marked here and there with bright red graffiti. Halfway along, alone in the mid morning sunlight, was a man - a Hung Mao in his early twenties with neat-cut ash-blond hair. He wore the simple brown pau and slip-ons of a common labourer, and a casual observer might have thought him just that, but his refined features and the sophisticated cut of his hair gave him away, as did the slim black case he carried beneath his right arm. In the frozen frame he was glancing up, giving them a clear view of his face.

The Captain grunted. "Enhance."

At once a square formed about the man's face and that section was enlarged to fill the screen. The Captain studied it a moment, then nodded. "Run a retinal scan. Let's see if it matches."

The operative punched in the instruction then sat back. A moment later two sets of figures came up left and right on the screen, overlaying the enhanced image of the face. Both sets of figures were identical.

The Captain turned, calling to his lieutenant. "Thomas. Go and wake the Colonel . . . nowl"

"Sir . . ."

But he had barely turned when I Ye appeared in the doorway, pulling on his jacket.

"Have we got him?"

The Captain snapped to attention. "It's him, all right. He's in Bockenheim, sir, three li west of Frankfurt Central."

"Good..." I Ye grinned, showing uneven teeth, then nodded savagely. "Okay. Let's get the bastard!"

Calder set the case down on the table, clicked open the twin catches, then turned it about, so that the obscenely fat Han behind the desk - the club's owner, Tung Po-jen - could see its contents.

"Is this genuine?" Tung asked, reaching out to take the tiny, yellow-gold cassette.

"If it isn't, it's as good a fake as you'll find anywhere."

The Han grunted, then ran his fingers over the Ywe Lung -the Moon Dragon - embossed into the face of the case. "So what does your Master want for this?"

"Two hundred and fifty thousand."

Tung laughed coldly. "Too much. A hundred and no more."

Calder reached out and took the cassette back. "Then it's no deal."

The fat man leaned across the desk angrily. "And if I were to tell Security?"

Calder smiled politely. "Then my Master will have lost a loyal messenger and you - well, you will have lost the chance to get very - and I mean very - rich."

Tung sat back slowly, his eyes narrowed, staring out the open window at the busy street below. Two hundred and fifty was a lot, twenty times more than he'd ever paid for a single cassette, and he would have to borrow heavily to finance it. But maybe it was worth it this once - that was, if this really was what his contact claimed it was.

"It'll take time. I mean, to get the funding together."

"What can you give me now?"

Tung pulled open a drawer to his left and rummaged through, then threw a pouch down onto the table. The messenger set the cassette down and picked up the pouch. Untying its neck, he spilled twelve ten-thousand yuan chips out onto the table. Taking a tiny black machine from his pocket -the CoinMak logo prominent on its slimline casing - he slipped one of the chips inside to check its authenticity. At once the machine's display glowed green. Satisfied, he gathered up the chips and pocketed them, leaving the pouch where it lay.

"Okay ... for now. But I want the balance in two days."

"And if my customers like this?"

The young man smiled. "Then we get you more. Lots more." He reached out and stroked the yellow-gold casing fondly. "Just as many as you want."

Tung Po-jen sat there after Calder had gone, staring at the cassette, tracing with his fingertips the embossed Imperial logo on its casing, his heart pounding with an excitement he hadn't felt in years.

This was it! This was the break he'd been waiting for! And this - if it were real - would be his passport to a life of unimaginable riches.

But he would have to be clever, very clever indeed, if he were not to end up dead. For though the rewards were phenomenal, the dangers were just as great. The mere possession of this was, after all, a treasonable offence. And then there were his trading rivals to consider, the brotherhoods to mollify, officials to pay off. No, he had a long way to go before he could relax and enjoy the benefits, yet to have come this far was something. More than something.

A smile came slowly to his lips, creasing the folds of his flesh, splitting his face until, throwing his head back, he laughed, long and loud.

He could see now how he'd do it. Knew, instinctively, who he should contact, who involve in this, sharing the risks -financial and personal - that accompanied the venture.

He knew, for instance, just how important it was to disseminate this as widely - and as anonymously - as possible: to spread it so widely and so quickly that it would be impossible for the authorities either to stop its circulation or trace its origin. Only that way would he be safe. Only that way could he make it a financial success.

And, as fortune would have it, one of those he would need was here right now, downstairs in the main gaming room.

Tung Po-jen grinned fiercely, then, snatching up the cassette, hauled himself up out of his chair and through the door behind him, squeezing his way down the narrow back stairs and along the dimly-lit corridor, pushing roughly past the two minders stationed there.

"Lock the outer doors!" he shouted back at them as he disappeared through the bead curtain. "And make sure you let no one in unless I say!"

On the other side of the curtain was a small room, as poorly lit as the corridor outside, its four baize tables empty of customers. As Tung Po-jen crossed the room, the barman, to his left, looked up at him, then lowered his eyes quickly, busying himself cleaning glasses.

Tung glanced at the man suspiciously, then pushed through the door that led to the main gaming room. As he stepped into the room heads turned at nearby tables. There was a lull in the conversation.

"Master Tung!" someone called from a table to his right. "Come! Join us!"

Tung Po-jen went across, squeezing between the tables. Stopping before one of the tables, he bowed low - or as low as his massive girth would allow - then straightened, grinning down at the three men - well-built, middle-aged Han with the muscle-tone of fighters - who sat about the table casually, young, scantily-clad house girls in their laps.

"Ch'un tzu . . ." Tung said, his pleasure at seeing them, for once, quite genuine. "I am honoured that you have chosen to frequent my humble establishment. Our fare is of the very simplest, I'm afraid, but if there is anything - anything -1 can do for you?"

The two men seated either side of the table stared back at him with a cold suspicion, saying nothing, but the man at the centre - a high-ranking Triad member named Chao Ta-nien and known to all as "Slow Chao" because of his legendary quickness with a knife - eased the girl from his lap then sat forward, smiling back at him.

"That is most kind, Master Tung. But we have been made most welcome already. Most welcome indeed."

Tung nodded nervously. "Good. That is... good." He licked his lips, unsure quite how to broach this subject. It had seemed so simple, sitting there upstairs, but now that the moment was upon him he hesitated, his courage suddenly failing him. What if he were wrong? What if he couldn't trust Slow Chao? What if Chao's bosses thought this too good a deal to share with anyone else?

Then again, only he, Tung Po-jen, knew where these came from. Only he had the contacts. And if he played this right - if he could involve not just one but several of the brotherhoods -then maybe this would work.

Maybe. For a moment longer he hesitated, watching Chao's face, noting how the other waited, as if he knew Tung had something to offer him. Then, finally, knowing that if he did not take this first step he would have wasted all his money on something he could not use, he forced himself to speak.

He leaned towards Chao Ta-nien, his voice a whisper. "I... have something to show you, Master Chao. In private."

Slow Chao raised an eyebrow, amused. "Something . .. interesting?"

Tung Po-jen could feel the tension in his neck muscles and his back and straightened up, forcing himself to relax. He nodded then stood back. "If you would come through into the viewing room?"

He saw how the other two looked to Chao Ta-nien, saw the look he gave them, the slight crinkling round the eyes, like the delicate touch an experienced horseman gives his mount to still it, and felt a tiny ripple of fear pass through him. He walked a deadly tightrope here.

"Lead on, Master Tung," Chao said, standing, his smile serene, almost urbane as he stepped around the table.

Inside the soundproofed viewing room he made sure Chao was seated comfortably, then locked the door and, seating himself behind the projector, slid the cassette into the machine.

For a moment there was nothing. For an instant Tung Po-jen found himself wondering if he'd been duped; if even now Calder was heading back to Mashhad, laughing quietly to himself, twelve ten-thou chips the richer for having delivered a blank tape to a greedy fat man who hadn't even had the sense to check the goods before he'd paid for them!

Risks . . . While he'd been thinking of all the other risks, the most obvious of all had slipped his mind.

Then, with a startling vividness, the screen lit up.

Tung caught his breath. It was herl It really was her. Or so like her it made no difference. There, glimpsed through a delicate silk hanging, on sheets of bright red satin, was Li Yuan's first wife, the young Fei Yen. She lay on her side, her sleeping silks rucked up about her legs, one hand curled beneath her face, one covering her breasts.

Tung stared and sighed, affected by the beauty of her, something about her - the innocence of her supine figure, perhaps; the lack of artifice - breaching his jaded shell.

Chao Ta-nien, just below him in the darkness, was sitting forward now, watching the screen intently.

As the camera panned back, Tung took in the sight of the Imperial bedroom. The bed, at the centre of the room, was huge, its scrolled lion's feet embedded in the floor, its four ornate posts adorned with carved dragon and phoenix motifs inlaid with gold leaf. On two of the walls hung expensive silks depicting scenes of Imperial splendour. The floor was white marble, the walls panelled with dark wood. Through an open lattice window could be glimpsed the lush green of the palace gardens at Tongjiang. A faint breeze moved the fine lace curtain gently.

There was a sound, the opening of a door below the camera viewpoint. Fei Yen stirred and, turning slightly, opened her eyes.

"Yuan? Is that you?"

The camera turned, focusing on the doorway.

Tung shivered, his mouth fallen open. Despite himself he was awed - awed that he, a mere trader, should be given this glimpse of how a Son of Heaven lived. His mouth had gone dry, his hands were trembling now.

Aiya! he thought, as Li Yuan came into view; not the Li Yuan of the regular media-casts but a much younger, a more gauche-looking man, not yet nineteen. The gods protect me for what I'm doing here!

Li Yuan crossed the room, the camera trailing him, then stopped, the back of his head just below the camera. He was wearing a satin sleeping robe, golden cranes - symbolising immortality - embroidered into the pale blue material.

"Fei Yen," he said softly, "I thought you were asleep."

Tung watched, his heart in his mouth, as the young prince sat beside her on the bed, his hand resting gently on her ankle. Unbidden, Tung's penis rose within his silks and pressed hard against the cloth. He shivered, then reached down to hold himself, unable to tear his eyes from the unfolding images.

As Fei Yen raised herself on one elbow, her silks fell back, revealing her perfect, unblemished breasts, their nipples stiffly erect.

Tung groaned softly, his hand moving slowly against the cloth.

"I missed you, Yuan," she said. "I didn't think you'd come."

"I've been busy," he answered, his hand moving gently up her leg beneath the silk, his face moving towards her until their lips met in a kiss.

As they broke from it she moved back, staring at him, then took his hand and placed it on her breast.

"No more words," she said, shrugging the silk from her shoulders. "Show me how much you missed me. Show me. . ."

She gave a little gasping sigh as his fingers touched her, her lips opening to show clenched, pearl-like teeth. There was a faintest flush at her neck now and as his fingers continued to caress her, she let a tiny groan of pleasure escape her.

"Gods . . ." Tung said, close suddenly to orgasm. He had never seen a woman so beautiful, so ... desirable. And as she lay back, exposing herself to her husband almost wantonly, the soft dark mound of her pubis pushing into view, Tung came, his huge frame shuddering, making the projector tremble faintly, the image blur, even as, on the screen, the young prince slipped from his silks and, naked as a babe, climbed between those silken, inviting legs.

Ben reached across Li Yuan's naked figure, releasing the last of the pressure pads from the side of his head. Free at last, Li Yuan sat up, scratching distractedly at his chest and neck, a faint red stippling showing where the attachments had been made. He shivered, as if the air in the room were cold, then turned his head slowly, looking up at Ben. His eyes seemed vague, unfocused.

"Well?" Ben asked, resting both hands on the side of the shell.

"It's powerful," Li Yuan said, meeting Ben's eyes - something resembling clarity returning to his own. "Like . . . well, like sorcery."

Ben laughed. "And Fei Yen?"

"Was different," Li Yuan said, frowning. "More . . ."

"Welcoming?"

"Yes." Li Yuan swallowed, pained, then looked down. "If s how it should have been. How. . ." He fell silent, then shook his head. "Destroy it," he said. "I. . ."

Ben studied him a moment, then leaned across and pressed ERASE.

Li Yuan stared at him, surprised. He had just wiped the best part of four months' work.

Ben smiled. "I have it here," he said, tapping his forehead. "So if you don't want it. . ."

Li Yuan shook his head, then, letting Ben take his arm to help him, hauled himself up out of the shell. Taking a silk wrap from the side, he drew it about him then turned to face Ben again.

"Do you recall the first time we met? At the betrothal ceremony?"

"The sketch?" Ben nodded then walked across and, taking a sketchpad from the table at the side, came back and rested it against the edge of the shell. Taking a charcoal stick from his shirt pocket, he began to draw, each stroke, each blurring motion of the thumb, mimicking to perfection what he had done on that day thirty years before.

"Uncanny," Li Yuan said finally, clearly awed by this exhibition of Ben's eidetic memory. "I have the original still, on the wall in my study."

"Then here's its twin." And, smiling, Ben handed it to him. "Do you remember what was said?"

Li Yuan nodded. "I remember thinking that you were some kind of magician. You seemed to conjure the image from the air, as if you merely traced over what was already there."

"And so I did." Ben laughed, then grew serious again. "You could call it my curse, I guess - to be forever giving form to what already exists up here." Again he tapped his forehead.

Li Yuan watched him, understanding coming slowly to his eyes. "Yes, and you were right, too, that day."

"About the Lord Yi?"

Li Yuan smiled. The picture Ben had drawn for him that day - the same picture that he even now looked at - was of the great archei, Shen Yi, and his battle with the ten birds in the/w sang tree. In the legend, the ten birds represented the ten suns which threatened Mankind with their intense heat. The Lord Yi, by shooting nine of them from the Heavens, had saved Mankind. But the Lord Yi was also an usurper who stole many men's wives. Not only that, but his own wife, Chang-E had stolen the herb of immortality and had fled to the Moon where, for her sins, she had been turned into a toad whose dark shadow could be seen against the full moon's milky whiteness.

It took no Wu - no wise diviner - to make the parallel between himself and the Lord Yi, nor between Fei Yen and Chang-E. Any tavern philosopher might do the same over a bulb of sour beer.

"You knew my marriage to Fei Yen would fail, didn't you?"

Ben shrugged. "I knew."

"I should never have married her."

"You had no choice. You were obsessed."

"Yes . . ." Li Yuan nodded again, then laughed. "Yes, if s strange, isn't it? How little choice we have in such matters. If s as if we're . . . well, programmed somehow. The merest scent of her, the way she'd turn her head . . ."

He stopped. Ben was watching him, capturing him, like a camera that missed nothing; that saw both what was external and what was deep within.

"I've changed."

"I can see," Ben said, smiling, offering - for once - no criticism.

Li Yuan looked down, for that one brief moment uncertain, then looked back again. Ben was still watching him, those dark green eyes no less intent than when he'd first looked into them thirty years before.

"You know what I want, then?"

Ben nodded.

"And the rest of them?"

"Will do exactly as you say. Even Pei K'ung." Ben's smile reappeared momentarily. "Every shadow needs something between it and the sun."

Li Yuan frowned. "You think there'll be trouble with Pei K'ung?"

Ben leaned forward and plucked the unsigned edict from Yuan's pocket and unfurled it.

"Pei K'ung is trouble. But she can be harnessed."

Li Yuan stared at Ben expectantly, making no attempt to take the document back. "Do you think she knows what we're up to?"

Ben, studying the document, shook his head. He flicked through it quickly, then, with a faint moue of amusement, handed it back.

"Games," he said. "Distractions."

"Maybe," Li Yuan answered, "but they'll serve their purpose, don't you think?"

"They'll serve the Oven Man, certainly. But purpose . . ." Ben shrugged, then went to the window, looking out across the gardens. "What do you think our purpose is, Yuan?"

Li Yuan shrugged. "To have children. To . . ."

Ben turned, suddenly impatient. "No. That's not what I mean. What's our purpose. Our chemical, physical, spiritual purpose? To put it as succinctly as possible - why the fuck are we here? What Great Test are we a part of? And whose?"

Li Yuan was quiet a moment. Ben's outburst had taken him aback. "I didn't think you believed in gods."

"Gods, no. Divine Chemists, yes." His smile now was impish. "This universe of ours was devised by someone with a Chemist's mind, a Chemist's obsessive care for detail. The human side . . . well, Chemists aren't interested in all that, are they? That's why that side of things is such a mess."

Ben laughed. "That's why you're still hung up on your dead brother's wife after all these years. Why I'm still fucking my sister!"

Li Yuan made a small noise of surprise, then,, despite himself, began to giggle.

"Perverse, isn't it?" he said, after a moment.

"No more than the usual run of things," Ben answered, coming across to him and holding his arm briefly. "Did you know my son's a mute?"

Li Yuan nodded, embarrassed by the conversation's turn.

'"God's Judgment' Meg calls it. As if God - if he existed -could be bothered with such pettiness."

"And you?" Li Yuan asked. "What do you think?"

"Me? I think Tom's happy. I think . . . well, as far as the greater world's concerned, I think it's a blessing that one of us Shepherds can't speak!"

Tom shaded his eyes with his hand, staring down the street, trying to make out what was happening up ahead. He knew where he was now. The river was straight ahead, just there where the taller buildings began, and the barge - if it was still where it had been moored the night before - was no more than ten minutes away by foot. But something was going on. At the end of the street they had set up security barriers. Armed soldiers in full riot gear were stopping people from going through.

He wondered what it was. A gang killing? A political assassination? Anything, it seemed, was possible here. Now that he had seen it with his own eyes he understood his father's fascination with it - understood why Ben spent so much time away from home.

And the girl? He sighed. The girl was like a dream. Amidst all this - all of the bustle and strangeness of the great Han city - she seemed ... well, impossible.

He patted his jacket pocket. His ID was still there. Yes, and the tiny present she had given him. He smiled, remembering, then began to walk toward the barrier.

The tape ended. Slowly the lights came up again. Tung Po-jen shivered, aware of the warm stickiness at his groin. Chao Ta-nien was sitting forward in his seat, half in trance, his chin resting on one hand, then he sat up and turned to look back at Tung.

"Was that real?"

Tung nodded. "From the Imperial library itself."

Chao raised an eyebrow. "From Tongjiang? I thought the palace was burned down."

Tung shrugged. He knew nothing of such matters. "Here," he said, handing Chao the cover, then watching as the Red Pole studied the embossed imperial symbol, his fingertips tracing the great wheel of dragons.

He looked to Tung again.

"And is this it? Or can you get more of these?"

Tung felt his pulse begin to race. "How many do you want?"

"Ah. . ." Chao stood, then came across, leaning past Tung to eject the tiny tape from the machine. "My Master will be pleased with this gift."

"Gift?" Tung stared at Chao Ta-nien open-mouthed. This was a turn he had not anticipated. "But I thought. . ."

"You think my Master's friendship is lightly bought, Tung Po-jen?"

Tung swallowed, then shook his head.

Chao touched his arm, smiling, then proceeded to slip the tape into the case and pocket it. "My Master will be delighted he has such a good friend, Tung Po-jen. He will no doubt wish to help you, neh?"

Slowly Tung relaxed. It wasn't what he'd planned, but maybe it wasn't so bad. After all, Chao's Master, Ice Man Chung, was reputedly a fair man.

Chao stared at the box thoughtfully, then shook his head. "It's powerful, don't you think, Tung Po-jen? Men would pay a great deal to set their eyes on this." He looked to Tung, his eyes narrowed. "How much did you have to pay?"

"Two fifty," he said, beginning to sweat.

"Two hundred and fifty thousand. . ." Chao considered that, then nodded. "That must have left you short, Tung Po-jen."

"I. . ." Tung swallowed, then nodded.

"That's a shame. Perhaps we can arrange a loan."

"A loan?" Tung stared at Chao, his heart sinking, all of the excitement - the joy - he had been feeling earlier, drained from him in an instant. So it was to be like this. He would borrow Triad money, at Triad rates, to finance the venture, and the Triads would take the profits. Which left him what? The risk. And maybe enough to live on.

"I had hoped . . ."

"Hoped?" Chao Ta-nien laughed. "Hoped for what, Tung Po-jen? Did you think a thing like this could be kept in the hands of one man . . . even so big a man as yourself?" Chao took the tape from his pocket and shook it at Tung. "No, Tung Po-jen, this is bigger than either of us. This .. . why, this is like a bomb waiting to be detonated, a virus waiting to be spread. We shall make money, certainly, and my Master will make sure you have your share, but do not look beyond that, my well-fleshed friend. Some men are born to be riders, others . . ." he looked at Tung scathingly, "others to be grooms."

He slipped the tape away once more. "Be content, Tung Po-jen. And be reassured. You did well to think of me first. I shall not forget it. Nor will my Master."

After Chao had gone, Tung sat there, staring at the empty screen. "Shit!" he said finally, slamming one huge, well-padded hand down onto the machine's casing. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"

He had played it totally wrong. He had been far too hasty. He should have seen the tape, had it copied, put the original somewhere safe. Then he should have got in three, maybe four different parties. As it was . . .

Tung huffed in exasperation. Gifts, loans .. . and all that shit about riders and grooms. Well, fuck them! He felt like packing up and getting out - to Africa maybe. That would teach Chao Ta-nien to be such a prick. Yes, and serve his Boss, Ice Man Chung, a lesson too.

Maybe, but they would find him eventually. And when they did ...

Tung let out a long, frustrated breath. No. They had him by the bollocks and they knew it. He'd take the risks and they'd make the profits. Just as they always did.

Unless ...

There was a sudden, urgent rapping on the door. Tung heaved himself up out of the chair as the door crashed open. It was one of his bodyguards. "Master Tung," he began, alarmed, "they're . . ."

There was a shot, a second shot. The man grimaced and then slumped across the row of seats beside him. From the darkness beyond him a soldier stepped into view, in full riot gear, his visor raised, his gun pointing in at Tung.

"Okay, fat man, raise your hands where I can see them. And don't even think of trying anything."

Tung Po-jen opened his eyes with a start.

"What happened?"

"You died."

"Died?" Slowly Tung focused his eyes. The stranger -1 Ye? was that his name? - was staring down at him, his thin lips twisted in amusement.

"We almost lost you. Your heart gave up on you. Not surprising, neh? Being so fat must have put a great strain on it. But we brought you back."

Tung tried to move. He couldn't. He just felt numb. Then, like the tide rushing in across a vast, empty beach, he felt the pain return. He groaned.

"It hurts, doesn't it, Tung Po-jen? But that's only the beginning. We like to make things easy for you ... at first."

A second face appeared beside I Ye's - a doctor's by the look of it. Tung saw the glint of a hypodermic gun as it was passed from one to the other.

"You see this?" I Ye said, holding the hypodermic closer so he could see it clearly. "It's something new. Something they developed in America. It could extend your life by forty, maybe fifty, years." The smile broadened, became a grimace. "Just think of it, Tung Po-jen. All that time stretching away in front of you, and every second of it you would be in pain. Such pain as you could not imagine."

Tung closed his eyes. I died, he thought. The gods help me, I died and this bastard brought me back.

"What do you want?" Tung whined, despair flooding him, knowing that he'd said this once before; certain now that nothing he could tell this cunt would ever satisfy him. "You know all I know. I've told you everything."

"Everything?"

"Everything."

It was true. The pain had loosed his tongue as expertly as it had loosened his bowels. All the shit had come out - every last bit - even that part about him fucking his infant sister.

"Again," I Ye said, bringing his face closer, his stinking breath in Tung's face, his fingers gently caressing Tung's balls then slowly closing on them like a vice.

Tung screamed.

"Good," I Ye said, as if some hurdle had been successfully negotiated. "From the beginning. From when you were first contacted by the messenger."

Tung lay there, sheened in sweat, his limbs trembling uncontrollably, wishing he were dead again, that voice - that awful, insistent voice - echoing inside his skull.

"But you know . . ."

This time the pain was excruciating. He blacked out. A moment later he opened his eyes with a start.

"What. . .?"

But he knew what had happened. He hadn't died. He had lived. And now an eternity of pain stretched out before him. He was one of the eternally damned, chained to the rock of punishment, in Hell, never to be released, never to be allowed surcease. And what had he done to deserve this?

I gazed upon the Son of Heaven making love to his brother's wife. I saw him plant his seed in her. Saw his buttocks shudder, the movement in her face.

He had glimpsed Heaven, and for that he was condemned to Hell. He groaned once more; a deep, despairing groan.

"Again," I Ye said, smiling sweetly down at him as he pressed the hypodermic to Tung's upper arm. "Again."

Heng Yu was hurrying towards his next appointment, taking a short cut through an untenanted part of the Eastern Palace. He was late. He was always late these days. If he had been twins he would still have had too much to do, and as it was .. .

"Master!"

He turned, surprised. A guard - a member of Pei K'ung's own elite - had stepped from the shadows and now stood there, head bowed. Heng took a step back, away from the man, noting from his chest-patch that he was a Captain. He sensed something wrong - something very wrong - but tried to keep his voice calm. Beneath nis cloak, his right hand slid onto the handle of his dagger.

"What is it, Captain?"

"Forgive me, Chancellor," the man began, keeping his distance, aware, it seemed, of the threat he posed, here in this silent corridor. "I mean you no harm."

"You are a long way from your Mistress's palace," Heng said, still tense, not yet certain whether he could trust the man.

The Captain nodded. "I was greatly torn, Excellency. My orders . . ."

Heng frowned. "Go on."

"It is about the prisoner, Excellency."

"Prisoner? What prisoner?"

"The man we took. In the raid. I had orders to report at once to Marshal Karr."

Heng Yu stared at him, not understanding. "Forgive me, Captain, but what has any of this to do with me?

The Captain swallowed then bowed his head. "It's just that Colonel I has given countermanding orders. And as the Colonel is my immediate commanding officer . . ."

Some small glimmer of light began to dawn in Heng"s mind. "And this prisoner. . . was he taken in connection to the matter of the missing Imperial tapes?"

The Captain snapped to attention, his boot heels clicking smartly together. "Excellency!"

"Ah. . ." Now he understood. "I see." He sniffed, then gave a single decisive nod. "Okay. You go now, Captain. Say nothing of your meeting with me. I will see to the matter personally. And Captain . . ."

"Excellency?"

"Your action today will not be forgotten. The T'ang has great need of loyal friends, neh?"

"Excellency!" The Captain bobbed his head then turned, disappearing into the shadows.

Heng Yu took a long breath. He was sweating. For a moment he had thought it was an assassination attempt But this. . . this could prove equally important. If Colonel I was countermanding orders then it gave him the opportunity to break the man - to demote him and humiliate him. 7f he had countermanded orders.

He was still late - more than twenty minutes late now - but it would have to wait. This was far more urgent.

Smiling to himself for the first time that day, Heng Yu turned and, half walking, half running, retraced his steps, heading back to Pei K'ung's palace.

I Ye's guards had tried to stop or delay him. Several of Ming Ai's eunuchs had also interceded, trying to keep him from the cells, but his threats had seen to them. Pushing the last of them aside, Heng Yu grasped the iron handle and swung the door back.

The cell was small and stank of shit and burned flesh. Instinctively, Heng put the cuff of his cloak to his face, covering his mouth and nose.

A single lamp illuminated the manacled body on the table. A single glance told Heng Yu that he was too late. The man was dead, slit open from chin to balls, his entrails scooped out and placed into a large enamel bowl that stood on the floor to one side. At a sink in the corner, I Ye stood washing, scrubbing the blood off his hands and arms.

"Ah, Chancellor," he said, smiling into the mirror. "I was on my way to see you."

Heng shivered. How such a man had ever risen to power was a mystery to him. "Is it true?" he asked, lowering his cuff, the stench making him grimace with distaste. "Did you countermand Marshal Karr's orders?"

I Ye turned, the water from his arms dripping red, his face expressing puzzlement. "Countermand the Marshal's orders? I am afraid I do not follow you, Master Heng."

Heng coughed, then straightened up, trying to act as dignified as possible in the circumstances. "You knew the orders, Colonel I. The Marshal was to be informed at once."

"And so he was. I sent my equerry to see him in his office. Unfortunately, he was not there."

"Not there?"

"It seems he was at home with his family. However, a sealed note was delivered to his office. I am sure he will receive it when he returns."

Heng Yu stared at I Ye for a full thirty seconds, seeing how the man's smile became fixed, then shook his head. "You are an ambitious man, Colonel I."