The Broken Wheel

He frowned and ran on silently, knowing that he had to get closer to them, to make sure he was right, because if they had taken prisoners it was something he should know; something he could use. He had agreed with Gesell beforehand that there would be no prisoners, but Gesell wasn't to be trusted.

The bridge was up ahead, the corridor on the far side of it cleared by his men earlier. But how had they found out about it? He had told Gesell nothing. Which meant they had a man inside his organization. Or had paid someone close to him for the information. Even so, they didn't know about the safe. Only he knew about that.

They were much closer now. He could hear them clearly now. Three—no, four—voices. They had slowed down as they came near the bridge, cautious now, suspicious of some kind of trap. The next turn was only twenty ch'i ahead. From there he would be able to see them clearly. But it was risky. If they saw him . . .

DeVore slowed, then stopped just before the junction, hunched down, listening again. They had paused, perhaps to send one of their number ahead of them across the bridge. He waited; then, when he heard the call come back, he put his head around the comer, keeping low, where they'd not expect to see anyone.

He took it all in at a glance, then moved back sharply. Five Ping Tiao and eight bound prisoners. As he'd thought. They weren't in uniform, but he could tell by their mustaches and the way they tied their hair that they were officers. Such things were a sign of rank as unmistakable as the patches on the chests of their dress uniforms.

So. Gesell was taking prisoners. He would find out why, then confront the man with the fact. It would be fun to hear what excuse he would give. Meanwhile his man on the far side of the bridge could follow them, find out where they took their captives.

He smiled and was about to turn away when he heard footsteps coming back toward him.

"Go on across!" a voice called out, closer than before. "Quick now! I'll meet up with you later."

DeVore took a deep breath and drew his gun. He looked at it a moment, then slipped it back into its holster. No. He would need to be quiet. Anyway, a knife was just as effective when it came to killing a man.

He looked about him quickly, wondering whether he should hide and let the man pass, then decided against it. He was almost certain he hadn't been seen, so he would have the element of surprise.

As the footsteps came on, he flattened himself against the wall. Then, as the man turned the comer, he reached out and pulled him close, whirling him about and pinning him against his chest, his right hand going to the man's throat, the knifes blade pressed tight against the skin.

"Cry out and you're dead," he said softly in his ear.

"Turner . . ." It was a whisper of surprise.

"Shen Lu Chua," he answered quietly, tightening his grip on the Han. "What a surprise to meet you here."

The Ping Tiao leader swallowed painfully, but he held his head proudly, showing no sign of fear. "What are you doing here?"

DeVore laughed softly. "You forget who holds the knife, Shen Lu Chua, Why is Gesell taking prisoners?"

"You saw? . . . Of course."

"Well?"

"You think I'd tell you?" Shen sniffed. .;

"It doesn't matter. I know what Gesell intends."

Shen's mocking laughter confirmed it. This was his idea. And Gesell knew nothing of it. Which in itself was interesting. It meant there were splits in their ranks, divisions he could capitalize upon. But why be surprised? They were human, after all.

"You know nothing . . ."

But DeVore had stopped listening. Hugging Shen closer, he thrust the tip of the knife up through the Han's neck, into the cavern of his mouth, then let him fall. For a moment he watched Shen lie there, struggling to remove the blade, small croaking noises coming from his ruined larynx; then he stepped forward and kneeling over the man, tugged the head back sharply, breaking his neck.

HUNG MIEN -LO sat at the desk in his office, the small, desk-mounted screen at his side lit with figures. Standing before him, his head bowed, was the Master of the Inner Chamber, Sun Li Hua.

"You summoned me, Chancellor Hung?"

Hung Mien-lo glanced at Sun, then continued to tap in figures on the keyboard.

"You took your time, Master Sun."

Sun kept his head lowered. "I am a busy man. There was much to organize for my master."

Hung sniffed. "And which master is that, Sun?"

Sun smiled faintly. "The same master we both serve."

Hung Mien-lo raised his head and stared at Sun, then laughed and turned the screen about so that it faced the man.

"Do you recognize these figures, Master Sun?"

Sun raised his head for the first time, studying the screen. Then he looked back at Hung, his expression unchanged. "Those look like the household accounts, Chancellor."

"And so they are. But they're wrong. They've been tampered with. And not just once but consistently, from what I can make out." He touched the pad to clear the screen, then sat back, smiling. "Someone has been milking them of quite considerable sums these last four years."

Sun met his gaze openly. "And?"

Hung nodded, admiring the man's coolness. "And there are only three men who could have done it. I've questioned the other two, and it's clear that they are innocent. Which leaves you, Master Sun. Your family has prospered greatly these past four years."

"Are you accusing me of embezzlement, Chancellor Hung?"

Hung Mien-lo smiled. "I am."

Sun stared back at him a while, then laughed. "Is that all? Why, if every official who had massaged his accounts were to be arrested, the Seven would quickly find themselves short of servants."

"Maybe so. But you have been caught, Master Sun. I've evidence enough to have you demoted to the Net."

Sun looked back at him, untroubled, his smile intact. He recognized the big squeeze when he saw it. "What do you want, Chancellor? What's the real reason for this meeting?"

"You think I have an ulterior motive, is that it, Master Sun?"

There was movement in Sun's squat face; then, uninvited, he sat down, his features set in a more serious expression. "We are realists, you and I. We know how the wind blows."

"What do you mean?"

Sun sat back, relaxing, his face filled with sudden calculation. "We have been fortunate, you and I. Events have moved strongly in our favor this last year. We have risen while others have fallen away. Our families are strong, our kin powerful."

"So?"

Sun's lips were smiling now, but his eyes were still cold and sharp. "What I mean is this. We should be allies, Hung Mien-lo. Allies, not enemies."

Hung Mien-lo leaned toward him, his expression suddenly hard, uncompromising. "And if I say no?"

For the first time a flicker of uncertainty crossed Sun Li Hua's face. Then, reassuring himself, he laughed. "You would not be talking to me if you had already decided. You would have had me arrested. But that's not your purpose, is it? You want something from me."

But Hung was glaring at him, angry now. "Have you no ears, man? No understanding of the situation you are in?" He shook his head, astonished. "You have dared the ultimate, Sun Li Hua. You have killed a T'ang. And even the merest whisper in some ears of your involvement would bring about your certain death."

"You have no proof. . ." Sun began, then saw that what Hung had said was true. Such a thing needed no proving; it was enough that suspicion existed. And then he understood what Hung Mien-lo had been getting at, why he had raised the matter of the embezzled funds. Demotion to the Net would make him vulnerable. Would place him beyond the protection of law and kin. He stared at his hands a moment, sobered. There was nothing he could do. Hung Mien-lo held all the cards.

He bowed his head. "What do you want?"

Hung Mien-lo studied Sun Li Hua a moment, savoring his victory. For some time now he had wanted to humble the man, to pull him down from his high horse. Today, forced by the Prince to act, he had taken a gamble, had wagered that what he'd guessed about Sun and the old T'ang was true. And had won. But that was only the start. The next step raised the stakes considerably. This time he gambled with his life.

Thus far his hands had been clean. Thus far others had accomplished all he had wished for, as if on his behalf. But now . . .

He took a deep breath, studying the man, making certain in his own mind that this was what he wanted. Then, calmly, his voice controlled, he answered Sun.

"I'll tell you what I want. I want you to kill again. I want you to kill the new T'ang, Wang Ta-hung."

emily ascher's face was dark with anger, her nostrils flared, her eyes wide, glaring at Gesell. She stood face on to him, her hands on her hips, her chin tilted back challengingly.

"Go on! Confront him with it! 1 bet the bastard denies it!"

Gesell's chest rose and fell violently. The news of Shen's death had shaken him badly. Things had been going so well. . . "You're sure?"

She made a sharp, bitter sound of disgust. "It was his knife. The blade with the pearled handle. The one we confiscated from him when he came to see us that time."

"I see . . ."

She leaned closer, her voice lowered to a whisper. "Then you'll kill him, neh? As you said you would if he double-crossed us?"

Gesell shuddered involuntarily, then nodded. "If it's true," he said softly. "But he'll deny it."

"Then you'll know it's true."

"Yes . . ." He turned and looked across to where the albino was standing, watching their exchange. "Where is he?" he demanded, his voice raised for the first time since they had come up in the elevator.

"He'll be here," Lehmann answered coldly.

"And if he's not?" Ascher said softly at his side.

"Then we die here," Gesell said, not looking at her, returning the albino's cold stare.

In the distance there was the stutter of small-arms fire, then a muffled explosion that made the floor shudder beneath their feet. The armaments had been shipped out more than fifteen minutes before. It was time to get out. But they couldn't. Not until Turner was here.

Gesell spat, then turned away, pacing up and down slowly, looking about him at

the men and women gathered in the corridors nearby. "What's keeping him?" he muttered angrily. He could see how tense his people were, how quickly they had caught his mood. Under his breath he cursed Turner. Emily was right. They should never have gotten into this.

Then, as he turned back, he saw him.

"Well," he said quietly, glancing at Ascher. "Here he is now."

DeVore spoke briefly to the albino, then came across. "You're ready?"

Gesell shook his head. "Not yet. I want some answers."

"About Shen Lu Chua?"

Gesell laughed briefly, surprised by his audacity. "You're a cool one, Turner. What happened?"

DeVore was staring back at him, his whole manner candid, open. "I killed him. I had to. He attacked me."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I tried to explain to him why I was there, but he gave me no chance."

"No . . ." Gesell looked to Ascher, then back at DeVore. "I knew Shen. He wouldn't do such a thing."

"You knew him?" DeVore laughed. "Then I guess you knew he was smuggling out eight prisoners? Senior Security officers."

Gesell felt Ascher touch his elbow. "He's lying . . ."

DeVore shook his head. "No. Ask your man Mach to check on it. Shen's sidekick, Yun Ch'o, has taken them to an apartment in Ottersleben. Level Thirty-four. I think you know the place."

Gesell tensed. Maybe Turner was bluffing, stalling for time. But that made no sense. As he said, it was easy for Mach to check. In any case, something else was bothering him. Something Turner hadn't yet explained.

"They tell me they found the body down at One-twenty. Even if it's as you say and Shen was double-crossing us, why were you down there?"

He stepped back sharply as DeVore reached into his uniform jacket. But it wasn't a weapon DeVore drew from his inner pocket. It was a map. Another map. DeVore handed it across to him.

"It was too good an opportunity to miss. I knew it was down there. I'd seen it, you see. Years ago."

Gesell looked up at him again, his mouth open with surprise. "Bremen . . . Gods! It's a Security diagram of Bremen."

"A part of it. The rest I've sent on."

"Sent on?" He was about to ask what Turner meant when one of his messengers pushed through the crowded corridor behind him and came up to him, almost breathless. He made the man repeat the message, then whirled about, facing DeVore.

"There's a problem."

"A problem?" DeVore raised his eyebrows.

"It seems we're trapped. The last of the bridges has been blown."

"I know. I ordered it."

"You what?"

"You heard. We're not going out that way. That's what they're waiting for, don't you see? They'll have worked out what we've done and they'll be sitting there, waiting to pick us off in the side corridors on the other side of the bridge. But I'm not going to give them the opportunity. I've craft waiting for us on the roof." DeVore glanced at the timer inset into his wrist. "We've less than five minutes, however, so we'd best get moving."

Gesell glanced at the map, then looked back at Turner, astonished, the business with Shen forgotten. "You've transporters?"

"That's what I said. But let's go. Before they work out what we're up to."

"But where? Where are we going?"

DeVore smiled. "South. To the mountains."

CHAPTER THREE

Connections

wANG SAU-LEYAN stood before the full-length dragon mirror in his dead father's room watching his own reflection while his brother's maids dressed him.

"You should have seen them! You wouldn't believe how offended they were!" He laughed and bared his teeth. "It was marvelous! They're such hypocrites! Such liars and schemers! And yet they fancy themselves so clean and pure." He turned and glanced across at the Chancellor, his mouth formed into a sneer. "Gods, but they make me sick!"

Hung Mien-lo stood there, his head lowered. He was unusually quiet, his manner subdued, but Wang Sau-leyan barely noticed him; he was too full of his triumph in Council that afternoon. Dismissing the maids, he crossed to the table and lifted his glass, toasting himself.

"I know how they think. They're like ghosts, they travel only in straight lines. But I'm not like them. They'll have prepared themselves next time, expecting me to be rude again, to trample on their precious etiquette. They'll meet beforehand to work out a strategy to deal with my 'directness.' You see if they don't. But I'll wrong-foot them again. I'll be so meek, so sweet-assed and polite they'll wonder if I've sent a double."

He laughed. "Yes, and all the time I'll be playing their game. Undermining them. Suggesting small changes that will require further debate. Delaying and diverting. Querying and qualifying. Until they lose patience. And then . . ."

He stopped, for the first time noticing how Hung Mien-lo stood there.

"What is it, Chancellor Hung?"

Hung Mien-lo kept his head lowered. "It is your brother, Excellency. He is dead."

"Dead? How?"

"He . . . killed himself. This afternoon. An hour before you returned."

Wang Sau-leyan set the glass down on the table and sat, his head resting almost indolently against the back of the tall chair.

"How very convenient of him."

Hung Mien-lo glanced up, then quickly looked down again. "Not only that, but Li Shai Tung's armory at Helmstadt was attacked this afternoon. By the Ping Tiao. They took a large amount of weaponry."

Wang Sau-leyan studied the Chancellor's folded body, his eyes narrowed. "Good. Then I want a meeting with them."

The Chancellor looked up sharply. "With the Ping Tiao? But that's impossible, Chieh Hsia . . ."

Wang Sau-leyan stared at him coldly. "Impossible?"

Hung's voice when it came again was smaller, more subdued than before. "It will be ... difficult. But I shall try, Chieh Hsia."

Wang Sau-leyan leaned forward, lifting his glass again. "Make sure you do, Hung Mien-lo, for there are others just as hungry for power as you. Not as talented, perhaps, but then, what's talent when a man is dead?"

Hung Mien-lo looked up, his eyes meeting the new T'ang's momentarily, seeing the hard, cold gleam of satisfaction there. Then he bowed low and backed away.

KAO CHEN STOOD in the corridor outside the temporary mortuary, his forehead pressed to the wall, his left hand supporting him. He had not thought he could be affected any longer, had thought himself inured to the worst Man could do to his fellow creatures; yet he had found the sight of the mutilated corpses deeply upsetting. The younger ones especially.

"The bastards . . ." he said softly. There had been no need. They could have tied them up and left them. Surely they'd got what they wanted? But to kill all their prisoners. He shuddered. It was like that other business with the hostages— Captain Sanders' young family. There had been no need to kill them, either.

He felt a second wave of nausea sweep up from the darkness inside him and clenched his teeth against the pain and anger he felt.

"Are you all right, sir?"

His sergeant, a Hung Mao ten years Chen's senior, stood a few paces distant, his head lowered slightly, concerned but also embarrassed by his officer's behavior. He had been assigned to Kao Chen only ten days before and this was the first time they had been out on operations together.

"Have you seen them?"

The sergeant frowned. "Sir?"

"The dead. Cadets, most of them. Barely out of their teens. I kept thinking of my son."

The man nodded. "The Ping Tiao are shit, sir. Scum."

"Yes . . ." Chen took a breath, then straightened up. "Well. . . let's move on. I want to look at their dead before I report back."

"Sir."

Chen let his sergeant lead on, but he had seen the doubt in the man's eyes. All of this looking at the dead was quite alien to him—no doubt his previous officers hadn't bothered with such things—but Chen knew the value of looking for oneself. It was why Tolonen had recruited Karr and himself, because they took such pains. They noticed what others overlooked. Karr particularly. And he had learned from Karr. Had been taught to see the small betraying detail, the one tiny clue that changed the whole picture of events. "Here it is, sir."

The sergeant came to attention outside the door, his head bowed. Chen went inside. Here things were different, more orderly, the bodies laid out in four neat rows on trestle tables. And unlike the other place, here the bodies were whole. These men had died in action; they had not been tied up and butchered.

He went down the first of the rows, pausing here and there to pull back the covering sheets and look at a face, a hand, frowning to himself now, his sense of "wrongness" growing with every moment. Finally, at the head of the row, he stopped beside one of the corpses, staring down at it. There was something odd— something he couldn't quite place—about the dead man.

He shook his head. No, he was imagining it. But then, as he made to move on, he realized what it was. The hair. He went closer and lifted the head between his hands, studying it. Yes, there was no doubt about it, the dead man's hair was cut like a soldier's. Quickly he went down the row, checking the other corpses. Most of them had normal short hair, styles typical of the lower levels; but there were five with the same military-style cut, the hair trimmed back almost brutally behind the ear and at the line of the nape. "Sergeant!"

The man appeared at the doorway at once. "Bring me a comset. A unit with a visual connection."

"Sir!"

While he waited he went down the line again, studying the men he had picked out. Now that he looked he saw other differences. Their nails were manicured, their hands smooth, uncallused. They were all Hung Moo, of course, but of a certain kind. They all had those gray-blue eyes and chiseled features that were so typical of the men recruited by Security. Yes, the more he looked at them, the more he could imagine them in uniform. But was he right? And, if so, what did it mean? Had the Ping Tiao begun recruiting such types, or was it something more ominous than that?

The sergeant returned, handing him the comset, then stood there, watching, as Chen drew back the eyelid of the corpse with his thumb and held the machine's lens over the eye, relaying an ID query through to Central Records.

He had his answer almost immediately. There were six "likelies" that approximated to the retinal print, but only one of the full-body descriptions fitted the dead man. It was as Chen had thought: he was ex-Security.

Chen went down the line, making queries on the others he had picked out. The story was the same: all five had served in the Security forces at some point. And not one of them had been seen for several years. Which meant that either they had been down in the Net or they had been outside. But what did it signify? Chen pressed to store the individual file numbers, then put the comset down and leaned against one of the trestles, thinking.

"What is it, sir?"

Chen looked up. "Oh, it's nothing, after all. I thought I recognized the man, but I was mistaken. Anyway, we're done here. Have the men finish up then report to me by four. The General will want a full report before the day's out."

"Sir!"

Alone again, Chen walked slowly down the rows, taking one last look at each of the five men. Like the other dead, they wore the Ping Tiao symbol—a stylized fish—about their necks and were dressed in simple Ping Tiao clothes. But these were no common terrorists.

Which was why he had lied to the sergeant. Because if this was what he thought it was, he could trust no one.

No. He would keep it strictly to himself for the time being, and in the meantime he would find out all he could about the dead men: discover where they were stationed and under whom they had served.

As if he didn't know already. As if he couldn't guess which name would surface when he looked at their files.

NAN HO, Li Yuan's Master of the Inner Chamber, climbed down from the sedan and returning the bow of the Grand Master of the Palace, mounted the ancient stone steps that led up to the entrance of the summer palace.

At the top he paused and turned, looking back across the ruins of the old town of Ch'ing Tao. Beyond it the bay of Chiao Chou was a deep cobalt blue, the gray-green misted shape of Lao Shan rising spectacularly from the sea, climbing three li into the heavens. A thousand li to the east was Korea and beyond it the uninhabitable islands of Japan.

It was a year since he had last visited this place—a year and two days, to be precise—but from where he stood, nothing had changed. For his girls, however, that year had been long and difficult, a year of exile from Tongjiang and the Prince they loved.

He sighed and turned back, following the Grand Master through. This was the smallest of the T'ang's summer palaces and had laid unused since his greatgrandfathers days. It was kept on now only out of long habit, the staff of fifty-six servants undisturbed by the needs of their masters.

Such a shame, he thought, as he made his way through the pleasantly shaded corridors into the interior. Yet he understood why. There was danger here. It was too open, too hard to defend from attack. Whereas Tongjiang . . .

He laughed. The very idea of attacking Tongjiang!

The Grand Master slowed and turned, bowing low. "Is anything the matter, Master Nan?"

"Nothing," Nan Ho answered, returning the bow. "I was merely thinking of the last time I was here. Of the crickets in the garden."

"Ah . . ." The Grand Master's eyes glazed over, the lids closed momentarily; then he turned back, shuffling slowly on.

The two girls were waiting in the Great Conservatory, kneeling on the tiles beside the pool, their heads bowed.

He dismissed the Grand Master, waiting until he had left before he hurried across and pulled the two girls up, holding one in each arm, hugging them tightly to him, forgetting the gulf in rank that lay between them.

"My darlings!" he said breathlessly, his heart full. "My pretty ones! How have you been?"

Pearl Heart answered for them both.

"Oh, Master Nan . . . it's so good to see you! We've been so lonely here!"

He sighed deeply. "Hush, my kittens. Hush now, stop your crying. I've news for you. Good news. You're leaving this place. Two weeks from now."

They looked up at him, joy in their faces, then quickly averted their eyes again. Yes, they had changed, he could see that at once. What had the Grand Master done to them to make them thus? Had he been cruel? Had there been worse things than that? Well, he would find out. And if the old man had misbehaved he would have his skin for it.

Sweet Rose looked up at him hopefully. "Li Yuan has asked for our return?"

He felt his heart wrenched from him that he had to disappoint her.

"No, my little one," he said, stroking her arm. "But he wishes to see you." One last time, he thought, completing the sentence in his head. "And he has a gift for you both. A special gift. . ." He shivered. "But he must tell you that. I come only as a messenger, to help prepare you."

Pearl Heart was looking down again. "Then she will not have us," she said quietly.

Connections 65

He squeezed her to him. "It would not be right. You know that. It was what we spoke of last time we were here together."

He remembered the occasion only too well. How he had brought them here in the dark of night, and how they had wept when he had explained to them why they must not see their beloved Prince again. He swallowed, thinking of that time. It had been hard for Li Yuan, too. And admirable in a strange way. For there had been no need, no custom to fulfill. He recalled arguing with Li Yuan, querying his word to the point where the Prince had grown angry with him. Then he had shrugged and gone off to do as he was bid. But it was not normal. He still felt that deeply. A man—a Prince, especially—needed the company of women. And to deny oneself for a whole year, merely because of an impending wedding! He shook his head. Well, it was like marrying one's dead brother's wife; it was unheard of.

And yet Li Yuan had insisted. He would be "pure" for Fei Yen. As if a year's abstinence could make a man pure! Didn't the blood still flow, the sap still rise? He loved his master dearly, but he could not lie to himself and say Li Yuan was right.

He looked down into the girls' faces, seeing the disappointment there. A year had not cured them of their love. No, and nor would a lifetime, if it were truly known. Only a fool thought otherwise. Yet Li Yuan was Prince and his word was final. And though he was foolish in this regard, at least he was not cruel. The gift he planned to give them—the gift Nan Ho had said he could not speak of—was to be their freedom. More than that, the two sisters were to be given a dowry, a handsome sum, enough to see them well married, assured the luxuries of First Level.

No, it wasn't cruel. But neither was it kind.

Nan Ho shook his head and smiled. "Still... let us go through. We'll have some wine and make ourselves more comfortable," he said, holding them tighter against him momentarily. "And then you can tell me all about the wicked Grand Master and how he tried to have his way with you."

CHUANG LI AN , wife of Minister Chuang, lay among the silken pillows of her bed, fanning herself indolently, watching the young officer out of half-lidded eyes as he walked about her room, stopping to lift and study a tiny statue or to gaze out at the garden. The pale-cream sleeping robe she wore had fallen open, revealing her tiny breasts; yet she acted as if she were unaware, enjoying the way his eyes kept returning to her.

She was forty-five—forty-six in little over a month—and was proud of her breasts. She had heard how other women's breasts sagged, either from neglect or from the odious task of child-bearing, but she had been lucky. Her husband was a rich man—a powerful man—and had hired wet nurses to raise his offspring. And she had kept her health and her figure. Each morning, after exercising, she would study herself in the mirror and thank Kuan Yin for blessing her with the one thing that, in this world of Men, gave a woman power over them.

She had been beautiful. In her own eyes she was beautiful still. But her husband was an old man now and she was still a woman, with a woman's needs. Who could blame her if she took a lover to fill the idle days with a little joy? So it was for a woman in her position, married to a man thirty years her senior. Yet there was still the need to be discreet, to find the right man for her bed. A young and virile man, certainly, but also a man of breeding, of quality. And what better than this young officer?

He turned, looking directly at her, and smiled. "Where is the Minister today?"

Chuang Lian averted her eyes, her fan pausing in its slow rhythm, then starting up again, its measure suddenly erratic, as if indicative of some inner disturbance. It was an old game, and she enjoyed the pretense; yet there was no mistaking the way her pulse quickened when he looked at her like that. Such a predatory look it was. And his eyes, so blue they were. When he looked at her it was as if the sky itself gazed down at her through those eyes. She shivered. He was so different from her husband. So alive. So strong. Not the smallest sign of weakness in him.

She glanced up at him again. "Chuang Ming is at his office. Where else would he be at this hour?"

"I thought perhaps he would be here. If I were he . . ."

His eyes finished the sentence for him. She saw how he looked at her breasts, the pale flesh of her thighs showing between the folds of silk, and felt a tiny shiver down her spine. He wanted her. She knew that now. But it would not do to let him have her straight away. The game must be played out—that was half its delight.

She eased up onto her elbows, putting her fan aside, then reached up to touch the single orchid in her hair. "Chuang Ming is a proper Lao Kuan, a Great Official. But in bed . . ." She laughed softly, and turned her eyes on him again. "Well, let us say he is hsiao jen, neh? A little man."

When he laughed he showed his teeth. Such strong, white, perfect teeth. But her eyes had been drawn lower than his face, wondering.

He came closer, then sat on the foot of the bed, his hand resting gently on her ankle. "And you are tired of little men?"

For a moment she stared at his hand where it rested against her flesh, transfixed by his touch; then she looked up at him again, her breath catching unexpectedly in her throat. This was not how she had planned it.

"I . . ." But his warm laughter, the small movements of his fingers against her foot, distracted her. After a moment she let herself laugh, then leaned forward, covering his hand with her own. So small and delicate it seemed against his, the dark olive of her flesh a stark contrast to his whiteness.

She laced her fingers among his and met his eyes. "I have a present for you."

"A present?"

"A first-meeting gift."

He laughed. "But we have met often, Fu Jen Chuang."

"Lian . . ." She said softly, hating the formality of his "Madam," even if his eyes revealed he was teasing her. "You must call me Lian here."

Unexpectedly he drew her closer, his right hand curled gently but firmly about her neck, then leaned forward, kissing her brow, her nose. "As you wish, my little lotus . . ."

Her eyes looked up at him, wide, for one brief moment afraid of him, of the power in him; then she looked away, laughing, covering her momentary slip, hoping he had not seen through, into her.

"Sweet Flute!" she called lightly, looking past him, then looking back at him, smiling again. "Bring the ch'un tzu's present!"

She placed her hand lightly against his chest, then stood up, moving past him but letting her hand brush against his hair, then rest upon his shoulder, maintaining the contact between them, feeling a tiny inner thrill when he placed his hand against the small of her back.

Sweet Flute was her mui tsai, a pretty young thing of fifteen her husband had bought Chuang Lian for her last birthday. She approached them now demurely, her head lowered, the gift held out before her.

She felt the young officer shift on the bed behind her, clearly interested in what she had bought him; then, dismissing the girl, she turned and faced him, kneeling to offer him the gift, her head bowed.

His smile revealed his pleasure at her subservient attitude. Then, with the smallest bow of his head, he began to unwrap the present. He let the bright red wrapping fall, then looked up at her. "What is it?"

"Well, it's not one of the Five Classics . . ."

She sat beside him on the bed and opened the first page, then looked up into his face, seeing at once how pleased he was.

"Gods . . ." he said quietly, then laughed. A soft, yet wicked laugh. "What is this?"

She leaned into him, kissing his neck softly, then whispered in his ear. "It's the Chin P'ing Mei, the Golden Lotus. I thought you might like it."

She saw how his finger traced the outlines of the ancient illustration, pausing where the two bodies met in that most intimate of embraces. Then he turned his head slowly and looked at her.

"And I brought you nothing . . ."

"No," she said, closing the book and drawing him down beside her, her gown falling open. "You're wrong, Hans Ebert. You brought me yourself."

THE eighth BELL was sounding as they gathered in Nocenzi's office at the top of Bremen fortress. Besides Nocenzi, there were thirteen members of the General Staff, every man ranking captain or above. Ebert had been among the first to arrive, tipped off by his captain, Auden, that something was afoot.

Nocenzi was grim-faced. He convened the meeting and came swiftly to the point.

"Ch'un tzu, I have brought you here at short notice because this evening, at or around six, a number of senior Company Heads—twenty-six in all—were assassinated, for no apparent reason that we can yet make out."

There was a low murmur of surprise. Nocenzi nodded somberly, then continued.

"I've placed a strict media embargo on the news for forty-eight hours, to try to give us a little time, but we all know how impossible it is to check the passage of rumor, and the violent death of so many prominent and respected members of the trading community will be noticed. Moreover, coming so closely upon the attack on Helmstadt Armory, we are concerned that the news should not further destabilize an already potentially explosive situation. 1 don't have to tell you, therefore, how urgent it is that we discover both the reason for these murders and the identity of those who perpetrated them."

One of the men seated at the front of the room, nearest Nocenzi, raised his hand.

"Yes, Captain Scott?"

"Forgive me, sir, but how do we know these murders are connected?"

"We don't. In fact, one of the mysteries is that they're all so very different—their victims seemingly unconnected in any way whatsoever. But the very fact that twenty-six separate assassinations took place within the space of ten minutes on or around the hour points very clearly to a very tight orchestration of events, wouldn't you say?"

Another hand went up. Nocenzi turned, facing the questioner. "Yes, Major Hoffmann?"

"Could this be a Triad operation? There have been rumors for some time that some of the big bosses have been wanting to expand their operations into the higher levels."

"That's so. But no. At least, I don't think so. Immediate word has it that the big gang bosses are as surprised as we are by this. Two of the incidents involved small Triad-like gangs—splinter elements, possibly trying to make a name for themselves—but we've yet to discover whether they were working on their own or in the pay of others."

Ebert raised his hand, interested despite himself in this new development. He would much rather have still been between the legs of the Minister's wife, but if duty called, what was better than this?

"Yes, Major Ebert?"

"Is there any discernible pattern in these killings? I mean, were they all Hung Moo, for instance, or were the killings perhaps limited to a particular part of the City?"

Nocenzi smiled tightly. "That's the most disturbing thing about this affair. You see, the victims are mixed. Han and Hung Moo. Young and old. And the locations, as you see"—he indicated the map that had come up on the screen behind him— "are scattered almost randomly. It makes one think that the choice of victims may have been random. Designed, perhaps, to create the maximum impact on the Above. Simply to create an atmosphere of fear."

"Ping Tiao?" Ebert asked, expressing what they had all been thinking. Before the attack on Helmstadt it would have been unthinkable, a laughable conclusion, but now . . .

"No." Nocenzi's certainty surprised them all.

"At least, if it is Ping Tiao, they're slow at claiming it. And in all previous Ping Tiao attacks, they've always left their calling cards."

That was true. The Ping Tiao were fairly scrupulous about leaving their mark— the sign of the fish—on all their victims.

"There are a number of possibilities here," Nocenzi continued, "and I want to assign each of you to investigate some aspect of this matter. Is this Triad infiltration? Is it the beginning of some kind of violent trade war? Is it, in any respect, a continuation of Dispersionist activity? Is it pure terrorist activity? Or is it— however unlikely—pure coincidence?"

Captain Russ laughed, but Nocenzi shook his head. "No, it's not entirely impossible. Unlikely, yes, even improbable, but not impossible. A large number of the murders had possible motives. Gambling debts, company feuds, adultery. And however unlikely it seems, we've got to investigate the possibility."

Ebert raised his hand again. "Who'll be coordinating this, sir?"

"You want the job, Hans?"

There was a ripple of good-humored laughter, Ebert's own among it.

Nocenzi smiled. "Then it's yours."

Ebert bowed his head, pleased to be given the chance to take on something as big as this at last. "Thank you, sir."

Nocenzi was about to speak again when the doors at the far end of the room swung open and Marshal Tolonen strode into the room. As one, the officers stood and came to sharp attention, their heads bowed.

"Ch'un tzu!" Tolonen said, throwing his uniform cap down onto the desk and turning to face them, peeling off his gloves as he did so. "Please, be seated."

Nocenzi moved to one side as the Marshal stepped forward.

"I've just come from the T'ang. He has been apprised of the situation and has given orders that we are to make this matter our first priority over the coming days." He tapped his wrist, indicating the tiny screen set into his flesh. "I have been listening to your meeting and am pleased to see that you understand the seriousness of the situation. However, if we're to crack this one we've got to act quickly. That's why I've decided to overrule General Nocenzi and assign each of you two of the murdered victims."

Hoffmann raised his hand. "Why the change, sir?"

"Because if there's any pattern behind things, it ought to be discernible by looking at the facts of two very different murders. And with thirteen of you looking at the matter, we ought to come up with something pretty quickly, don't you think?"

Hoffmann bowed his head.

"Good. And Hans ... I appreciate your keenness. It's no less than I'd expect from you. But I'm afraid I'll have to tie your hands somewhat on this one. That's not to say you won't be coordinator, but I want you to work closely with me on this. The T'ang wants answers and I've promised him that he'll have them before the week's out. So don't let me down."

Ebert met the Marshal's eyes and bowed his head, accepting the old man's decision, but inside he was deeply disappointed. So he was to be tied to the old man's apron strings yet again! He took a deep breath, calming himself, then smiled, remembering suddenly how Chuang Lian had taken his penis between her tiny delicate toes and caressed it, as if she were holding it in her hands. Such a neat little trick. And then there was her mui tsai—what was her name?—Sweet Flute. Ah yes, how he'd like to play that one!

He raised his eyes and looked across at Tolonen as General Nocenzi began to allocate the case files. Yes, well, maybe the Marshal would be in command nominally, but that was not to say he would be running things. Russ, Scott, Fest, Auden—these were his men. He had only to say to them . . .

The thought made him smile. And Tolonen, glancing across at him at that moment, saw his smile and returned it strongly.

IT WAS well after ten when Chen arrived back at the apartment. Wang Ti and the children were in bed, asleep. He looked in on them, smiling broadly as he saw how all four of them were crowded into the same bed, the two-year-old, Ch'iang Hsin, cuddled against Wang Ti's chest, her hair covering her plump little face, the two boys to her right, young Wu pressed close against his older brother's back.

He stood there a moment, moved, as he always was, by the sight of them; then he went back through to the kitchen and made himself a small chung of ch'a.

It had been a long day, but there was still much to do before he could rest. He carried the porcelain chung through to the living room and put it down on the table, then moved the lamp close, adjusting its glow so that it illuminated only a tight circle about the steaming bowl. He looked about him a moment, frowning, then went across to the shelves, searching until he found the old lacquered box he kept his bashes and ink block in.

He put the box down beside the chung, then went out into the hall and retrieved the files from the narrow table by the door, beneath his tunic. He paused, then went back and hung his tunic on the peg, smiling, knowing Wang Ti would only scold him in the morning if he forgot.

Switching off the main light, he went back to the table and pulled up a chair. Setting the files down to his right, he sat back a moment, yawning, stretching his arms out to the sides, feeling weary. He gave a soft laugh, then leaned forward again, reaching for the chung. Lifting the lid, he took a long sip of the hot ch'a.

"Hmm . . . that's good," he said quietly, nodding to himself. It was one of Karr's. A gift he had brought with him last time he had come to dinner. Well, my friend, he thought; now I've a gift for you.

He reached across and drew the box closer, unfastening the two tiny catches, flipping the lid back.

"Damn it. . ." he said, starting to get up, realizing he had forgotten water to mix the ink. Instead, he reached for the chung again and dipped his finger; using the hot ch'a as a substitute. He had heard that the great poet Li Po had used wine to mix his ink, so why not ch'a? Particularly one as fine as this.

He smiled, then wiping his finger on his sleeve, reached across and drew the first of the files closer.

Today he had called in all the favors owed him, had pestered friend and acquaintance alike until he'd got what he wanted. And here they were. Personnel files. Income statements. Training records. Complete files on each of the five men who had died at Helmstadt. The so-called Ping Tiao he had checked up on. Their files and two others.

He had gone down to Central Records, the nerve-center of Security Personnel at Bremen. There, in Personnel Queries, he had called upon an old friend, Wolfgang Lautner. Lautner, one of the four senior officers in charge of the department, was an old friend. They had been in officer training together and had been promoted to captain within a month of each other. Several times in the past Chen had helped Lautner out, mainly in the matter of gambling debts.

Lautner had been only too happy to help Chen, giving him full access to whatever files he wanted, even to several that were, strictly speaking, off limits. All had gone smoothly until Chen, checking up on a personnel number that had appeared on several of the files, came up against a computer block.

He could see it even now, the words pulsing red against the black of the screen. INFORMATION DENIED. LEVEL-A CODE REQUIRED.

Not knowing what else to do, he had taken his query direct to Lautner, had sat there beside him in his office as he keyed in the Level-A code. He remembered how Lautner had looked at him, smiling, his eyebrows raised inquisitively, before he had turned to face the screen.

"Shit. . ." Lautner had jerked forward, clearing the screen; then he had turned abruptly, looking at Chen angrily, his whole manner changed completely. "What in fuck's name are you doing, Kao Chen?"

"I didn't know—" Chen had begun, as surprised as his friend by the face that had come up on the screen; but Lautner had cut him off sharply.

"Didn't know? You expect me to believe that? Kuan Yin, preserve us! He's the last bastard I want to find out I've been tapping into his file. He'd have our balls!"

Chen swallowed, remembering. Yes, he could still feel Ebert's spittle on his cheek, burning there like a badge of shame. And there, suddenly, he was, a face on a screen, a personnel coding on the files of three dead ex-Security men. It was too much of a coincidence.

Chen drew the chung closer, comforted by its warmth against his hands. He could still recall what Ebert had said to him, that time they had raided the Overseer's House, the time young Pavel had died; could remember vividly how Ebert had stood there, looking to the west where Lodz Garrison was burning in the darkness, and said how much he admired DeVore.

Yes, it all made sense now. But the knowledge had cost him Lautner's friendship.

He lifted the lid from the chung and drank deeply, as if to wash away the bitter taste that had risen to his mouth.

If he was right, then Ebert was DeVore's inside man. It would certainly explain how the Ping Tiao had got into Helmstadt Armory and stripped it of a billion yuan's worth of equipment. But he had to prove that, and prove it conclusively. As yet, it was mere coincidence.

He began, working through the files again, checking the details exhaustively, page by page, looking for something—anything—that might point him in the right direction.

He had almost finished when he heard a movement on the far side of the room. He looked up and saw young Wu in the darkness of the doorway. Smiling, he got up and went across, picking up the five-year-old and hugging him to his chest.

"Can't you sleep, Kao Wu?"

Wu snuggled into his father's shoulder. "I want a drink," he said sleepily, his eyes already closed.

"Come . . . I'll make you one."

He carried him into the kitchen, dimming the light. Then, one-handed, he took a mug from the rack and squeezed a bulb of juice into it.

"Here . . ." he said, holding it to the child's lips.

Wu took two sips, then snuggled down again. In a moment he was asleep again, his breathing regular, relaxed.

Chen set the mug down, smiling. The warm weight of his son against his shoulder was a pleasant, deeply reassuring sensation. He went back out, into the hallway, and looked across to where he had been working. The files lay at the edge of the circle of light, facedown beside the empty chung.

It was no good; he would have to go back. He had hoped to avoid it, but it was the only way. He would have to risk making direct inquiries on Ebert's file.

He looked down, beginning to understand the danger he was in. And not just himself. If Ebert were DeVore's man, then none of them was safe. Not here, nor anywhere. Not if Ebert discovered what he was doing. And yet, what choice was there? To do nothing? To forget his humiliation and his silent vow of vengeance? No. Even so, it made him heavy of heart to think, even for a moment, of losing all of this. He shivered, holding Kao Wu closer, his hand gently stroking the sleeping boy's neck.

And what if Lautner had taken steps to cover himself? What if he had already gone to Ebert?

No. Knowing Lautner, he would do nothing. And he would assume that Chen would do nothing, too. Would gamble on him not taking any further risks.

Achh, thought Chen bitterly; you really didn't know me, did you?

He took Wu to his bed and tucked him in, then went through to the other bedroom. Wang Ti was awake, looking back at him, Ch'iang Hsin's tiny figure cuddled in against her side.

"It's late, Chen," she said softly. "You should get some sleep."

He smiled at her and nodded. "I should, but there's something I have to do."

"At this hour?"

Again he nodded. "Trust me. I'll be all right."

Something about the way he said it made her get up onto one elbow. "What is it, Chen? What are you up to?"

He hesitated, then shook his head. "It's nothing. Really, Wang Ti. Now go to sleep. I'll be back before morning."

She narrowed her eyes, then, yawning, settled down again. "All right, my husband. But take care, neh?"

He smiled, watching her a moment longer, filled with the warmth of his love for her, then turned away, suddenly determined.

It was time to make connections. To find out whether Ebert really was in DeVore's pay.

outside it WAS DARK, the evening chill, but in the stables at Tongjiang it was warm in the glow of the lanterns. The scents of hay and animal sweat were strong in the long high-ceilinged bam, the soft snorting of the animals in their stalls the only sound to disturb the evening's silence. Li Yuan stood in the end stall, feeding the Arab from his hand.

"Excellency . . ."

Li Yuan turned, smiling, at ease here with his beloved horses. "Ah . . . Master Nan. How did it go? Are my girls well?"

Nan Ho had pulled a cloak about his shoulders before venturing outdoors. Even so, he was hunched into himself, shivering from the cold.

"They are well, my Lord. I have arranged everything as you requested."

Li Yuan studied him a moment, conscious of the hesitation. "Good." He looked back at the horse, smiling, reaching up to smooth its broad black face, his fingers combing the fine dark hair. "It would be best, perhaps, if we kept this discreet, Master Nan. I would not like the Lady Fei to be troubled. You understand?"

He looked back at Nan Ho. "Perhaps when she's out riding, neh?"

"Of course, my Lord."

"And Nan Ho ..."

"Yes, my Lord?"

"I know what you think. You find me unfeeling in this matter. Unnatural, even. But it isn't so. I love Fei Yen. You understand that?" Li Yuan bent and took another handful of barley from the sack beside him, then offered it to the Arab, who nibbled contentedly at it. "And if that's unnatural, then this too is unnatural . . ."

He looked down at his hand, the horse's muzzle pressed close to his palm, warm and moist, then laughed. "You know, my father has always argued that good horsemanship is like good government. And good government like a good marriage. What do you think, Nan Ho?"

Master Nan laughed. "What would I know of that, my Lord? I am but a tiny part of the great harness of state. A mere stirrup."

"So much?" Li Yuan wiped his hand on his trouser leg, then laughed heartily. "No, I jest with you, Master Nan. You are a whole saddle in yourself. And do not forget I said it." He grew quieter. "I am not ungrateful. Never think that, Master Nan. The day will come . . ."

Nan Ho bowed low. "My Lord . . ."

When Nan Ho had gone, Li Yuan went outside, into the chill evening air, and stood there, staring up into the blackness overhead. The moon was low and bright and cold. A pale crescent, like an eyelid on the darkness.

And then?

The two words came to him, strong and clear, like two flares in the darkness. Nonsense words. And yet, somehow, significant. But what did they mean? Unaccountably, he found himself filled with sudden doubts. He thought of what he had said to Nan Ho of horsemanship and wondered if it were really so. Could one master one's emotions as one controlled a horse? Was it that easy? He loved Fei Yen—he was certain of it—but he also loved Pearl Heart and her sister, Sweet Rose. Could he simply shut out what he felt for them as if it had never been?

And then?

He walked to the bridge and stood there, holding the rail tightly, suddenly, absurdly obsessed with the words that had come unbidden to him. And then? And then?

He shivered. And then what? He gritted his teeth against the pain he suddenly felt. "No!" he said sharply, his breath pluming out from him. No. He would not succumb. He would ride out the pain he felt. Would deny that part of him. For Fei Yen. Because he loved her. Because . . .

The moon was an eyelid on the darkness. And if he closed his eyes he could see it, dark against the brightness inside his head.

But the pain remained. And then he knew. He missed them. Missed them terribly. He had never admitted it before, but now he knew. It was as if he had killed part of himself to have Fei Yen.

He shuddered, then pushed back, away from the rail, angry with himself.

"You are a prince. A prince!"

But it made no difference. The pain remained. Sharp, bitter, like the image of the moon against his inner lid, dark against the brightness there.

chen SAT there , hunched over the screen, his pulse racing as he waited to see whether the access code would take.

So far it had been easy. He had simply logged that he was investigating illicit Triad connections. A junior officer had shown him to the screen then left him there, unsupervised. After all, it was late, and hardly anyone used the facilities of Personnel Inquiries at that hour. Chen was almost the only figure in the great wheel of desks that stretched out from the central podium.

The screen filled. Ebert's face stared out at him a moment, life-size, then shrank to a quarter-size, relocating at the top right of the screen. Chen gave a small sigh of relief. It worked!

The file began, page after page of detailed service records.

Chen scrolled through, surprised to find how highly Ebert was rated by his superiors. Did he know what they thought of him? Had he had access to this file? Knowing Ebert, it was likely. Even so, there was nothing sinister here. Nothing to link him to DeVore. No; if anything, it was exemplary. Maybe it was simple coincidence, then, that Ebert had served with three of the dead men. But Chen's instinct ruled that out. He scrolled to the end of the file, then keyed for access to Ebert's accounts.

A few minutes later he sat back, shaking his head. Nothing. Sighing, he keyed to look at the last of the subfiles—Ebert's expenses. He flicked through quickly, noting nothing unusual, then stopped.

Of course! It was an expenses account. Which meant that all the payments on it ought to be irregular. So what was this monthly payment doing on it? The amount differed, but the date was the same each month. The fifteenth. It wasn't a bar invoice, for those were met from Ebert's other account. And there was a number noted against each payment. A Security Forces service number, unless he was mistaken.

Chen scrolled back, checking he'd not been mistaken, then jotted the number down. Yes, here it was, the link. He closed the file and sat back, looking across at the central desk. It was quiet over there. Good. Then he would make this one last query.

He keyed the service number, then tapped in the access code. For a moment the screen was blank and Chen wondered if it would come up as before— INFORMATION DENIED. LEVEL-A CODE REQUIRED. But then a face appeared.

Chen stared at it a moment, then frowned. For some reason he had expected to recognize it, but it was just a face like any other young officer's face, smooth-shaven and handsome in its strange Hung Moo fashion.

For a time he looked through the file, but there was nothing there. Only that Ebert had worked with the man some years before, in Tolonen's office, when they were both cadets. Then why the payments? Again he almost missed it, was slow to recognize what was staring him in the face, there on the very first page of the file. It was a number. The reference coding of the senior officer the young cadet had reported to while he had been stationed in Bremen ten years earlier. Chen drew in his breath sharply. DeVore!

He shut the screen down and stood, feeling almost light-headed now that he had made the connection. I've got you now, Hans Ebert, he thought. Yes, and I'll make you pay for your insult.

Chen picked up his papers and returned them to his pocket, then looked across at the central desk again, remembering how his friend Lautner had reacted, the sourness of that moment tainting his triumph momentarily. Then, swallowing his bitterness, he shook his head. So it was in this world. It was no use expecting otherwise.

He smiled grimly, unconsciously wiping at his cheek, then turned and began to make his way back through the web of gangways to the exit.

Yes, he thought. I've got you now, you bastard. I'll pin your balls to the fucking floor for what you've done. But first you, Axel Haavikko. First you.

CHAPTER FOUR

Thick Face, Black Heart

DEVORE stood there on the mountainside, the lifeless bodies of the two alpine foxes dangling from leather thongs at his back, their fur smeared with blood. In his left hand he held the crossbow he had killed them with, in his right the two blood-caked bolts he had pulled from their flesh.

It was an hour after dawn and the mountains below him were wreathed in mist. He was high up where he stood, well above the snow line. To his left, below him, the mountainside was densely wooded, the tall pines covering most of the lower slopes, stretching down into the mist. He laughed, enjoying the freshness of the morning, his breath pluming away from him. Surely there was no better sight in the world than the Alps in high summer? He looked about him; then, slipping the bolts into the deep pocket of his furs, he began to make his way down, heading for the ruins of the castle.

He was halfway down when he stopped, suddenly alert. There had been movement down below, among the ruins. He moved quickly to his right, his hand reaching for one of the bolts, hurriedly placing it into the stock and winding the handle.

He scrambled behind some low rocks and knelt, the crossbow aimed at the slopes below. His heart was beating fast. No one was supposed to be out here at this hour . . . not even his own patrols.

He tensed. A figure had come out and now stood there, one hand up to its eyes, searching the mountainside. A tall, thin figure, its angular frame strangely familiar. Then it turned, looking up the slope, its predatory gaze coming to rest on the rocks behind which DeVore was crouching.

Lehmann . . . DeVore lowered the crossbow and stood, then went down the slope, stopping some ten or fifteen ch'i from the albino, the crossbow held loosely in his left hand.

"Stefan! What in the gods' names are you doing here?" -

Lehmann looked past him a moment, then looked back, meeting his eyes. "Our friends are getting restless. They wondered where you were."

DeVore laughed. "They're up already, eh?" He moved closer, handing the foxes over to the albino. "Here . . . hold these for me."

Lehmann took them, barely glancing at the dead animals. "I wondered where you went to in the mornings. It's beautiful, neh?"

DeVore turned, surprised, but if he hoped to find some expression of wonder in the albino's face, he was disappointed. Those pale pink eyes stared out coldly at the slopes, the distant peaks, as if beauty were merely a form of words, as meaningless as the rest.

"Yes," he answered. "It is. And never more so than at this hour. Sometimes it makes me feel like I'm the last man. The very last. It's a good feeling, that. A pure, clean feeling."

Lehmann nodded. "We'd best get back."

DeVore laughed coldly. "Let them wait a little longer. It'll do that bastard Gesell good."

Lehmann was silent a moment, his cold eyes watching the slow, sweeping movements of a circling eagle, high up above one of the nearer peaks. For a while he seemed lost in the sight, then he turned his head and stared at DeVore penetratingly. "I thought he was going to kill you over that Shen Lu Chua business."

DeVore looked back at him, surprised. "Did you?" He seemed to consider it a moment, then shook his head. "No. Gesell's far too cautious. You know the Han saying p'eng che luan tzu kuo ch'iao?"

Lehmann shook his head.

DeVore laughed. "Well, let's just say he's the kind of man who holds on to his testicles when crossing a bridge."

"Ah . . ."

DeVore studied the albino a moment, wondering what it would take to penetrate that cold exterior and force a smile, a grimace of anger, a tear. He looked down. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps he was as empty of emotions as he seemed. But that could not be. He was human, after all. There had to be something he wanted. Something that kept him from simply throwing himself from the cliff onto the rocks below.

But what?

DeVore smiled faintly, detaching himself from the problem, and looked up to find Lehmann still staring at him. He let his smile broaden as if to make connection with something behind—far back from—the unsmiling surface of that unnaturally pallid face.

Then, shaking his head, he turned, making his way across to the tower and the tunnels beneath.

THE PING TIAO LEADERS were waiting in the conference room, the great window wall giving a clear view of the slopes. Outside the light was crisp and clear, but a layer of mist covered the upper slopes. Even so, the view was impressive. One had a sense of great walls of rock climbing the sky.

DeVore stood in the doorway a moment, looking in. Six of them were gathered in the far left corner of the room, seated about the end of the great table, as far from the window as they could get. He smiled, then turned, looking across. Only one of them was standing by the window, looking out. It was the woman—Gesell's lover—Emily Ascher.

He went in.

Noticing him, two of the men made to stand up, but Gesell reached out to either side, touching their arms. They sat back, looking warily between Gesell and DeVore.

"Turner . . ." Gesell greeted DeVore bluntly, his whole manner suddenly alert, businesslike.

"Gesell . . ." He gave the slightest nod of acknowledgment, then went to the window, staring outward, as if unconscious of the woman standing at his side. Then he turned back, smiling. "So?"

While he'd been gone, his lieutenant, Wiegand, had shown them around the base, letting them see the mask—the surface installation—while giving no hint of the labyrinth of tunnels that lay beneath.

Gesell glanced at Mach, then looked back, a faint sneer on his lips.

"You want me to say I'm impressed—is that it, Shih Turner?"

"Did I say that?"

Gesell leaned forward, lacing his fingers together. "No. But you're very much a product of your level. And your level likes to impress all those beneath it with the grandeur of their works."

"That's true enough. And are you impressed? Are my works grand enough for you?"

DeVore kept his words light yet challenging, concealing his distaste for the man. Arrogant little bastard. He thought he knew everything. He was useful just now, admittedly—a key to things. But once he'd unlocked a few doors he could be discarded.

He waited for Gesell to respond, but it was Mach who answered him.

"It's very pretty, Shih Turner, but what's it all for? The enemy is in there, in the City, not out here in the Wilds. I don't see the point of building something like this."

DeVore stared back at Mach, then nodded. How astute of you, he thought. How clever to penetrate so far with just one look. But you haven't seen it all. You haven't seen the great hangars, the missile silos, the training halls. And because you haven't, you've no idea what this really is. To you this seems a mere shadow of Bremen, a great fortress designed with only one thought in mind: to protect itself against attack. But this is different. My aim is not to defend my position here but to attack my opponents. To cut their lines and penetrate their territory. "So you think all this a waste of time?"

He saw how Mach looked to Gesell, then lowered his head slightly, letting Gesell take charge again. That concession was further confirmation of what he already suspected. The ideas, the very words the Ping Tiao used—these belonged to Mach. But it was Gesell who held the power. Gesell to whom Mach demurred when his words had to be turned into actions, Gesell leaned forward. "Wasteful, yes. But not a total waste. You seem beyond the reach of the Seven here, and that's good. And I've seen how your men fight. They're well-trained, well-disciplined. In that respect we could learn from you." DeVore hid his surprise at Gesell's candidness. "But?"

Gesell laughed and looked about him. "Well, look at this place! It's so cut off from the realities of what's going on. So isolated. I mean, how can you know what's happening—what's really happening in the levels—when you're so far from it all." DeVore was smiling. "Is that what you think?"

He clicked his fingers. At once a panel slid back overhead and a bank of screens lowered itself into the room: screens that showed scenes from a dozen different levels of the City. Turning back, DeVore saw how impressed they were despite themselves.

"What do you want to see?" he asked. "Where would you like to go in the City? My cameras are everywhere. My eyes and ears. Watching and listening and reporting back. Taking the pulse of things."

As he spoke the images changed, moving from location to location, until, when he clicked his fingers a second time, they froze, all twelve screens showing the same image.

"But that's Shen Lu Chua's man, Yun Ch'o . . ." Gesell began, recognizing the figure below the camera.

"It's Ottersleben," said Mach quietly. "Level 34. He must have taken this earlier."

DeVore studied them, saw how Mach looked down, as if considering what this meant, then looked back up again, watching as a dozen images of himself led a dozen Ping Tiao assault squads in the raid on their comrade Yun Ch'o's apartment. Beside him, Gesell was leaning forward, fascinated by the unfolding action. He saw the brief fight, saw Yun Ch'o fall, mortally wounded; then watched as the eight hostages—the eight Security officers Turner had told them would be there—were led out into the corridor. When it was over Gesell looked back at Turner, smiling tightly.

"That was clever of you, Turner. A nice trick. But it doesn't mean much really, does it?"

"Like the T'ang's ear, you mean, or the map of Helmstadt?" DeVore laughed, then moved closer. "You're a hard man to convince, Shih Gesell. What must I do to satisfy you?"

Gesell's features hardened. "Show me the other maps. The maps of Bremen."

"And in return?"

But before Gesell could answer, the woman, Ascher, interrupted him.

"You're talking deals here, but it's still a mystery to me, Shih Turner. If you're so powerful, if you can do so much, then why do you need us? This base you've had built, the raid on Helmstadt, the killing of Wang Hsien—any one of these things is far beyond anything we could do. So why us?"

Gesell was glaring at her angrily. DeVore studied the Ping Tiao leader a moment, then half turned, looking back at the woman.

"Because what I can do is limited."

She laughed coldly, staring back at him, her dislike unconcealed. "Limited by what?"

"By funding. By opportunity."

"And we have those?"

"No. But you have something much more valuable. Your organization has potential. Vast potential. All this—everything I've patiently built over the last eight years—is, as Shih Mach so rightly described it, inflexible. Your organization is different. It's a kind of organism, capable of vast growth. But to achieve that you need to create the best climate for that growth. What we did yesterday was a beginning. It raised your public profile while giving you considerable firepower. Both things strengthened you considerably. Without me, however, you would have had neither."

Gesell interrupted. "You're wrong. You needed us."

DeVore turned back. "Not at all. I could have taken Helmstadt on my own. You've seen my men, Shih Gesell. You've even remarked on how good their training and discipline is. Well, I've a thousand more where they came from. And a thousand beyond them. No, I asked you to join me yesterday because such a relationship as we must forge has to be reciprocal. There has to be give and take. I gave you Helmstadt. As, in time, I'll give you Bremen. But you must give me something back. Not a great thing. I'd not ask that of you yet. But some small thing to cement our partnership. Some favor 1 might find it difficult to undertake myself."

"A small thing?" Gesell was staring at him suspiciously.

"Yes. I want you to kill someone for me. A child."

"A child?"

DeVore clicked his fingers. The images on the screens changed; showed a dozen separate portraits of an adolescent girl, her ash-blond shoulder-length hair loose in some shots, tied in plaits in others. Her straight-boned slender figure was caught in a dozen different poses, dressed casually as if at home, or elegantly in the latest First Level fashions.

"But that's . . ."

"Yes," DeVore said, looking up at the screens. "It's Jelka Tolonen. Marshal Tolonen's daughter."

JELKA HAD JUST FINISHED her exercises when her father entered the exercise hall. Her instructor, Siang Che, seeing him, bowed then backed away, busying himself at the far end of the gym.

She turned, hearing a different tread, then laughed, her young face breaking into a great beam of a smile. "Daddy! You're back early!" She ran across, reaching up to hug him to her. "What's up? I didn't expect you until the weekend."

"No," he said, smiling down at her, lowering his head to kiss her brow. "I'd almost forgotten . . ."

"Forgotten what?"

Tolonen put one hand on her shoulder. "Not here. Let's go through to your rooms. I'll talk to you once you've changed, neh?"

He stood there, looking about her room while she showered. It was not a typical young girl's room. Not by any means. In a box in one comer were flails and batons, practice swords, chucks and staffs, while high up on the wall was a brightly colored painting of Mu-Lan, the famous warrior heroine, dressed in full military armor, her expression fierce as she took up a defensive pose. Old maps and charts covered the front of the built-in wardrobes to the left, while to the right most of the wall space was filled with Jelka's own hand-drawn designs—machines and weaponry, their ugly purpose disguised somehow by the sleek elegance of her pen.

An old armchair to one side displayed a touch of luxury, heaped as it was with colorful silk cushions, but her bed was spartan, a simple dark-blue sheet covering it. Beside it, beneath a half-length mirror, was her study desk, a wei chi board set up to the right, books and papers stacked neatly on the left at the back. He went across and looked, interested to see what she was reading.

At the very front of the table, facedown beside her comset, was a copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, the Ping Fa. He picked it up and read the passage she had underlined:

If not in the interests of the state, do not act. If you cannot succeed, do not use troops. If you are not in danger, do not fight.

He smiled. Ten thousand books had been written on the subject since Sun Tzu first wrote his treatise twenty-five hundred years before and not one had come as close to capturing the essence of armed struggle as the Ping Fa. He set the book down again, then studied the wei chi board a moment, noting how a great spur of black stones cut between two areas of white territory, separating them. There were other books piled up on the desk—the San Kuo Van Yi, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Tseng Kung-liang's Wu Ching Tsung Yao, his Essentials of the Martial Classics, and the Meng Ke among them—but what took the Marshal's interest was a small floppy, orange-covered volume tucked away at the back of the desk. He reached across and pulled it from the pile.

It was an ancient thing, the cover curling at the edges, the paper within yellowed badly. But that was not what had caught his eye. It was the words on the cover. Or, rather, one word in particular. China.

He stared at the cover for a time, frowning. He had not heard that term—not seen it in print—in more than forty years. China. The name that Chung Kuo, the Middle Kingdom, had had before Tsao Ch'un. Or at least, the name it had been called in the West. He leafed through the book, reading at random, then closed it, his pulse racing. Islam and Communism. America and Russia. Soviets and Imperialists. These were lost terms. Terms from another age. A forgotten, forbidden age. He stared at the cover a moment longer, then nodded to himself, knowing what he must do.

He turned, hearing her in the next room, singing softly to herself as she dressed, then forced himself to relax, letting the anger, the tension drain from him. It was a mistake, almost certainly. Even so, he would find out who had given this to her and make them pay.

"Well?" she asked, standing in the doorway, smiling across at him. "Tell me, then. What is it?"

She saw how he looked down at the book in his hands.

"In a moment. First, where did you get this?"

"That? It was on your shelves. Why, shouldn't I have borrowed it?"

"My shelves?"

"Yes. It was in that box of things you had delivered here three weeks ago. My amah, Lu Cao, unpacked it and put it all away. Didn't you notice?"

"She shouldn't have," he began irritably. "They were things General Nocenzi had sent on to me. Things we'd unearthed during the Confiscations. Special things ..."

"I'm sorry, Father. I'll tell her. But she wasn't to know."

"No . . ." He softened, then laughed, relieved that it was only that. "Did you read any of it?"

"Some." She smiled, looking inside herself a moment. "But it was odd. It presented itself as a factual account, but it read more like fiction. The facts were all wrong. Almost all of it. And that map at the front. . ."

"Yes . . ." He weighed the book in his hand a moment, then looked up at her again. "Well, I guess no harm's done. But listen. This is a forbidden book. If anyone were to find you had read even the smallest part of it . . ." He shook his head. "Well, you understand?"

She bowed her head. "As you wish, Father."

"Good. Then this other matter . . ." He hesitated, then gave a short laugh. "Well, you know how long Klaus Ebert and I have been friends. How close our families have always been."

She laughed. "Shih Ebert has been like an uncle to me." Her father's smile broadened momentarily. "Yes. But I've long wished for something more than that. Some stronger, more intimate bond between our families." "More intimate . . ." She stared at him, not understanding. "Yes," he said, looking back at her fondly. "It has long been my dream that you would one day wed my old friend's son."

"Hans? Hans Ebert?" Her eyes were narrowed now, watching him. "Yes." He looked away, smiling. "But it's more than a dream. You see, Klaus Ebert and I came to an arrangement."

She felt herself go cold. "An arrangement?" . -

"Yes. Klaus was very generous. Your dowry is considerable." -

She laughed nervously. "I don't understand. Dowry? What dowry?" ^!

He smiled. "I'm sorry. I should have spoken to you about all this before, but I've not had time. Things were so busy, and then, suddenly, the day was upon me." The coldness melted away as a wave of anger washed over her. She shook her head defiantly. "But you can't. . ."

"I can," he said. "In fact, there's no question about it, Jelka. It was all arranged, ten years ago."

"Ten years?" She shook her head, astonished. "But I was four . . ."

"I know. But these things must be done. It is our way. And they must be done early. Hans is heir to a vast financial empire, after all. It would not do to have uncertainty over such matters. The markets . . ."

She looked down, his words washing over her unheard, her breath catching in her throat. Her father had sold her—sold her to his best friends son. Oh, she'd heard of it. Indeed, several of her school friends had been engaged in this manner.

But this was herself.

She looked up at him again, searching his eyes for some sign that he understood how she felt; but there was nothing, only his determination to fulfill his dream of linking the two families.

Her voice was soft, reproachful. "Daddy . . . how could you?"

He laughed, but his laughter now was hard, and his words, when they came, held a slight trace of annoyance.

"How could I what?"

Sett me, she thought, but could not bring herself to say the words. She swallowed and bowed her head. "You should have told me."

"I know. But I thought. . . well, I thought you would be pleased. After all, Hans is a handsome young man. More than half the girls in the Above are in love with him. And you . . . well, you alone will be his wife. The wife of a General. The wife of a Company Head. And not just any company, but GenSyn."

It was true. She ought to be pleased. Her friends at school would be jealous of her. Green with envy. But somehow the thought of that palled in comparison with the enormity of what her father had done. He had not asked her. In this, the most important thing she would ever do, he had not taken her feelings into consideration. Would he have done that if her mother had been alive?

She shivered, then looked up at him again.

"So I must marry him?"

He nodded tersely, his face stem. "It is arranged."

She stared back at him a moment, surprised by the hard edge to his voice, then bowed her head. "Very well. Then I shall do as you ask."

"Good." He smiled tightly, then glanced down at the timer at his wrist. "You'd best call your amah, then, and have her dress you. It's after eleven now and I said we'd be there by one."

She stared at him, astonished. "This afternoon?"

He looked back at her, frowning, as if surprised by her question. "Of course. Now hurry, my love. Hurry, or we'll be late."

Jelka hesitated, watching him a moment longer, seeing how he looked down at the book in his hand as if it were a mystery he needed to resolve; then she turned and went through into the other room, looking for Lu Cao.

"Well, what is it?"

Auden took Ebert to one side, out of earshot of the two guards. "I think we may have stumbled onto something."

Ebert smiled. "What kind of thing?"

"A link. A possible explanation for what happened the other night."

Ebert's smile broadened. "How good a link? Good enough to make me late for an appointment with the Minister's wife?"

Auden returned the smile. "I think so."

They went inside. The/ prisoner was a Han. A young man in his late twenties. He was well-dressed and neatly groomed but sweating profusely.

"Who is this?" Ebert asked, as if the man had no existence, no identity other than that which he or Auden gave him.

"He's a close relative of one of the murdered men. The victim was a merchant, Lu Tung. This is his third cousin, Lu Wang-pei. It seems he depended on Lu Tung for funds. To repay gambling debts and the like."

Lu Wang-pei had bowed his head at the mention of his name, but neither of the officers paid him the slightest attention. His eyes followed them as they moved about the room, but otherwise he was perfectly still. In this he had no choice for he was bound tightly to the chair.

Ebert looked about him at the sparsely furnished room. "So what have you found?"

"Forensic evidence shows that the bomb was hidden inside a package—a present delivered to Lu Tung's apartments only minutes before the explosion. It seems that our man here delivered that package."

"I see. So in this case we have our murderer?"

"Yes and no. Wang-pei had no idea what he was delivering. That's not to say he wasn't culpable in some small degree, because he did agree to deliver it." "For someone else?"

Auden smiled. "That's right. For three men. Business rivals of Lu Tung's, so they claimed. It seems they bought up our friend's gambling debts, then offered to wipe the slate clean if he'd do a little favor for them." "The package." "Exactly. They told him they wanted to frighten his uncle. To shake him up a little."

Ebert laughed. "Well. . . And so they did!"

"Yes," Auden looked down momentarily. "And there it would end, were it not for the fact that Wang-pei here didn't trust his new friends. He secreted a camera on himself when he went to make his collection. Here."

He handed the flat 3-D image to Ebert, then watched as his initial puzzlement changed into a smile of enlightenment. "DeVore . . ."

Auden nodded. "Yes. But it was the two at the front Wang-Pei dealt with. They did all the talking."

"And who are they?"

"One's an ex-Security man. Max Wiegand. A good man, it seems. He had an excellent service record."

"And the other?"

"We couldn't get a trace on him. But look at the pallor of his skin. He looks albinic. If so he might be wearing contact lenses to disguise the color of his eyes."

"Hmmm . . ." Ebert handed back the flat. "And what does our man here know?"

"Nothing much. I think he's telling the truth. I've checked on the gambling debts. I'd guess it happened exactly as he told us."

Ebert nodded, then turned, looking directly at the Han for the first time since he'd entered the room. "All right. Leave him with me a moment. I'll see whether we can find out anything more."

When Auden had gone, Ebert walked over and stood directly in front of the Han, looking down at him contemptuously.

"As far as I'm concerned, Shih Lu, I couldn't care a shit if you Han butchered one another until the corridors ran red. If that was all that was at stake here I'd let you go. But it's not. You made a mistake. A fortunate mistake for me. But for you . . ."

He lashed out viciously, catching the Han across the nose. Wang-pei drew his head back, groaning, his eyes wide with shock. Blood ran freely from his nose.

"Tell me the truth. What's your connection to these men? When did you first start working for them?"

Wang-pei began to shake his head, but Ebert hit him again; a stinging blow across the ear that made him cry out, his face distorted with pain.

"I never saw them before . . ." he began. "It's as I said—"

The third blow knocked him backward, the chair tilting out from under him. Ebert followed through at once, kicking him once, twice, in the stomach. Hard, vicious kicks that made the Han double up, gasping.

"You know nothing, eh? Nothing! You fuck-head! You pissing fuck-head chink! Of course you know nothing!"

He kicked again, lower this time. The Han began to vomit. Ebert turned away, disgusted. Of course he knew nothing. DeVore was not that stupid. But he had slipped up this time. He should have kept out of it. Should have let his two henchmen do all the front work.

The door beside him opened. ••••'

"Are you all right. . . ?"

He looked across at Auden, smiling. "I'm fine. But this one's dead." **

Auden stared back at him a moment, then nodded. "And the guards?"

Ebert looked back at the Han, his smile broadening. "They saw nothing. Okay? You deal with them, Will. I'll recompense you."

The Han lay there, wheezing for breath, his frightened eyes staring up at them imploringly.

Auden nodded. "All right. But why? After all, we have the link."

"Yes. And we're going to keep it, understand me? I want DeVore. I want to nail him. But I want it to be me. Me. Understand? Not some other bastard."

Auden looked down, his expression thoughtful. "I see."

"Good. Then I'll leave you to tidy things up. I've kept the Minister's wife waiting far too long already."

CHEN WAS WAITING for Haavikko when he came out of the Officers Mess. He hung back, careful not to let the young Hung Moo spot him even though he could see that Haavikko was the worse for drink. He smiled bitterly. Yes, that was in the file, too, along with all the brawling, the whoring, the gambling, and all the other derelictions of duty.

But that was as nothing beside the fact of his treason. Chen felt a shiver of anger ripple through him and let his hand rest momentarily on the handle of his knife. Well, he would cut a confession from him if he had to, piece by tiny piece. Because if Haavikko was behind the butchery at Helmstadt . . .

He stopped, moving in to the side. Up ahead of him Haavikko had paused, leaning against the wall unsteadily, as if about to be sick. But when a fellow officer approached him, he turned quickly, his movements exaggerated by drunkenness, letting out a string of obscenities. The officer put his hands out before him in apology, backing away, then turned and walked off, shaking his head.

Chen felt the bile rise again. Haavikko was a disgrace. To think what he might have become. And to waste it so ... He shook his head, then began to move again, keeping the man in sight.

Twenty levels down he watched as Haavikko fumbled with the combination to his door, then slumped against the wall, making three attempts at it before he matched his eye to the indented pad. Then Chen was moving quickly, running the last few ch'i as the door began to iris shut.

Haavikko swung round, his bleary eyes half-lidded, his jacket already discarded, as Chen came through into the room.

"What the fuck ... ?"

Chen had drawn his knife, a big knife with a wickedly curved blade that glinted razor-sharp in the overhead lights. "Haavikko? Axel Haavikko?"

He saw the flicker of fear in the young man's eyes as he staggered back and almost fell against the bed.

"What . . . what you want?" The words were slurred, almost incoherent.

"I think you know . . ." Chen began, moving closer. But suddenly Haavikko was no longer awkward, his movements no longer slow and clumsy. Chen found himself thrown backward by the man's charge, the knife knocked from his hand by a stinging blow. But before Haavikko could follow up, Chen had rolled aside and jumped to his feet again, his body crouched in a defensive posture.

Haavikko was facing him, crouched, his eyes wide, watching Chen's every movement, all pretense at drunkenness peeled from him. He swayed gently, as if about to attack, but it was clear to Chen that that was not Haavikko's intention. He was waiting for Chen to go for his knife, which lay just behind him by the door. It was what he himself would have done. Chen gave the slightest nod, suddenly respectful of the man's abilities. No one, not even Karr, had ever been fast enough to knock his knife from his hand.

"Well?" Haavikko said, clearly this time, the word formed like a drop of acid. "What do you want?"

Chen lifted his chin in challenge. "I'll tell you what I want. I want answers."

Haavikko laughed bitterly. "Answers? What do you mean?" But there was a slight hesitation in his eyes, the smallest trace of fear.

"I think you know more than you're letting on. I think you've done one or two things you're ashamed of. Things that aren't even in your file."

Chen saw how he blanched at that, how the skin about his eyes tightened.

"Who sent you? Was it Liu Chang"

"Liu Chang? Who's that?"

Haavikko snorted in disgust. "You know damned well who I mean. Liu Chang, the brothel keeper. From the Western Isle. Did he send you? Or was it someone else?"

Chen shook his head. "You've got me wrong, Lieutenant. I'm a soldier, not a pimp's runner. You forget where we are. This is Bremen. How would a pimp's runner get in here?"

Haavikko shook his head. "I'd credit him with anything. He's devious enough, don't you think?"

Who? he wondered, but said, "It's Chen . . . Captain Kao Chen."

Haavikko laughed sourly, then shook his head. "Since when did they make a Han captain?"

Slowly Chen's hand went to his jacket.

"Try anything and I'll break your neck."

Chen looked back at him, meeting his eyes coldly, his fingers continuing to search his pocket, emerging a moment later with his pass. He threw it across to Haavikko, who caught it deftly, his eyes never leaving Chen's face.

"Back off... Two paces."

Chen moved back, glancing about him at the room. It was bare, undecorated. A bed, a wardrobe, a single chair. A picture of a girl in a frame on the tiny bedside table. Haavikko's uniform tunic hung loosely on the door of the wardrobe where he had thrown it.

Haavikko looked at the pass, turned it in his hand, then threw it back at Chen, a new look—puzzlement, maybe curiosity—in his eyes.

Chen pocketed the pass. "You're in trouble, aren't you, Haavikko? Out of your depth."

"I don't know what you mean." /

"Oh, I think you do. Your friends have dumped you in it this time. Left you to carry the dan." Haavikko laughed scathingly. "Friends? I've no friends, Captain Kao. If you've read my file, you'll know that much about me."

"Maybe. And maybe that's just another pose—like the pretense of drunkenness you put on for me earlier."

Haavikko breathed deeply, unevenly. "I saw you earlier, when I went into the Mess. When you were still there when I came out, I knew you were following me."

;, "Who were you meeting?"

"I wasn't meeting anyone. I went in there to find something out."

Chen narrowed his eyes. "You weren't meeting Fest, then? I noticed that he entered the Mess just before you. You used to serve with him, didn't you?"

Haavikko was silent a moment, then he shook his head. "I wasn't meeting Fest. But yes, I served with him. Under General Tolonen."

"And under Major DeVore, too."

"I was ensign to DeVore for a month, yes."

"At the time of Minister Lwo's assassination."

"That's so."

Chen shook his head. "Am I to believe this crap?"

Haavikko's lips formed a sneer. "Believe what you like, but I wasn't meeting Few* If you must know I went in there to try to overhear what he was saying." >

"Are you blackmailing him?"

Haavikko bristled. "Look, what do you want? Who are you working for, Captain Kao?"

Chen met the challenge in his eyes momentarily, then looked about the room again. Something had been nagging at him. Something he didn't realize until he noticed the lieutenant's patch on the tunic hanging from the cupboard door. Of course! Haavikko had been the same rank these last eight years. But why? After all, if he was working for Ebert. . .

Chen looked back at Haavikko, shaking his head, then laughed quietly.

Haavikko had tensed, his eyes narrowed, suspicious. "What is it?"

But Chen was laughing strongly now, his whole manner suddenly different. He sat down on the bed, looking up at Haavikko. "It's just that I got you wrong. Completely wrong." He shook his head. "I thought you were working for Ebert."

"Ebert! That bastard!" Then realization dawned on Haavikko. "Then . . ." He gave a short laugh. "Gods! And I thought. . ."

The two men stared at each other a moment, their relief—their sudden understanding—clouded by the shadow of Ebert.

"What did he do?" Chen asked, getting up, his face serious, his eyes filled with sympathy. "What did he do to you, Axel Haavikko, to make you destroy yourself so completely?"

Haavikko looked down, shivering, then met Chen's eyes again. "It's not in the file, then?"

Chen shook his head.

"No. I guess it wouldn't be. He'd see to that, wouldn't he?" He was quiet a moment, staring at Chen sympathetically. "And you, Kao Chen? What did he do to make you hate him so?"

Chen smiled tightly. "Oh, it was a small thing. A matter of face." But he was thinking of his friend Pavel and of his death in the attack on the Overseer's House. That, too, he set down against Hans Ebert.

"Well. . . What now, Kao Chen? Do we go our own ways, or is our hatred of him strong enough to bind us?"

Chen hesitated, then smiled and nodded. "Let it be so."

THE REST of the Ping Tiao leaders had gone straight to the cruiser, clearly unnerved at being out in the open; but the woman, Ascher, held back, stopping at the rail to look out across the open mountainside. DeVore studied her a moment, then joined her at the rail, for a time simply doing as she did—drinking in the sheer grandeur of the view.

"The mountains. They're so different..."

He turned his head, looking at her. She had such finely chiseled features, all excess pared from them. He smiled, liking what he saw. There was nothing gross, nothing soft about her: the austere, almost sculpted beauty of her was accentuated by the neat cut of her fine jet-black hair, the trimness of her small well-muscled body. Such a strong lithe creature she was, and so sharp of mind. It was a pity. She was wasted on Gesell.

"In what way different?"

She continued staring outward, as if unaware of his gaze. "I don't know. Harder, I suppose. Cruder. Much more powerful and untamed than they seem on the screen. They're like living things . . ."

"They're real, that's why."

"Yes . . ." She turned her head slightly, her breath curling up in the cold air.

He inclined his head toward the cruiser. "And you . . . you're different, too. You're real. Not like them. This, for instance. Something in you responds to it. You're like me in that. It touches you."

Her eyes hardened marginally, then she looked away again. "You're wrong. We've nothing in common, Turner. Not even this. We see it through different eyes. We want different things. Even/from this." She shivered, then looked back at him. "You're a different kind of creature from me. You served them, remember? I could never do that. Could never compromise myself like that, whatever the end."

"You think so?"

"I know."

He smiled. "Have it your way. But remember this when you go away from here, Emily Ascher. I know you. I can see through you, like ice."

She held his gaze a moment longer, proudly, defiantly, then looked back at the mountains, a faint smile on her lips. "You see only mirrors. Reflections of yourself in everything. But that's how your kind thinks. You can't help it. You think the world's shaped as you see it. But there's a whole dimension you're blind to."

"Love, you mean? Human understanding? Goodness?" He laughed shortly, then shook his head. "Those things don't exist. Not really. They're illusions. Masks over the reality. And the reality is like these peaks—it's beautiful, but it's also hard, uncompromising, and cold, like the airless spaces between the stars."

She was silent a moment, as if thinking about what he had said. Then she turned back to him. "I must go. But thank you for letting me see this."

DeVore smiled. "Come again. Anytime you want. I'll send my cruiser for you." She studied him a moment, then turned away, the smallest sign of amusement in her face. He watched her climb the steps and go inside. Moments later he heard the big engines of the cruiser start up.

He turned and looked across toward the snow-buried blister of the dome. Lehmann was standing by the entrance, bare-headed, a tall, gaunt figure even in his bulky furs. DeVore made his way across, while behind him the big craft lifted from the hangar and turned slowly, facing the north. "What is it?" he asked.

"Success," Lehmann answered tonelessly. "We've found the combination." He let his hand rest on Lehmann's arm momentarily, turning to watch the cruiser rise slowly into the blue, then turned back, smiling, nodding to himself. "Good. Then let's go and see what we've got."

Minutes later he stood before the open safe, staring down at the contents spread out on the floor at his feet. There had been three compartments to the safe. The top one had held more than two hundred bearer credits—small "chips" of ice worth between fifty and two hundred thousand yuan apiece. A second, smaller compartment in the center had contained several items of jewelry. The last, which made up the bulk of the safe's volume, had held a small collection of art treasures— scrolls and seals and ancient pottery.

DeVore bent down and picked up one of the pieces, studying it a moment. Then he turned and handed it to Lehmann. It was a tiny, exquisitely sculpted figure of a horse. A white horse with a cobalt-blue saddle and trappings and a light-brown mane and tail.

"Why this?" Lehmann asked, looking back at him.

DeVore took the piece back, examining it again, then looked up at Lehmann. "How old would you say this is?"

Lehmann stared back at him. "I know what it is. It's T'ang dynasty—fifteen-hundred years old. But that isn't what I meant. Why was it there, in the safe? What were they doing with it? I thought only the Families had things like this these days."

DeVore smiled. "Security has to deal with all sorts. What's currency in the Above isn't always so below. Certain Triad bosses prefer something more . . . substantial, shall we say, than money."

Lehmann shook his head. "Again, that's not what I meant. The bearer credits —they were payroll, right? Unofficial expenses for the eight garrisons surrounding the Wilds."

DeVore's smile slowly faded. Then he gave a short laugh. "How did you know?" "It makes sense. Security has to undertake any number of things that they'd rather weren't public knowledge. Such things are costly precisely because they're so secretive. What better way of financing them than by allocating funds for nonexistent weaponry, then switching those funds into bearer credits?" DeVore nodded. That was exactly how it worked.

"The jewelry likewise. It was probably taken during the Confiscations. I should imagine it was set aside by the order of someone fairly high up—Nocenzi, say—so it wouldn't appear on the official listings. Officially it never existed; so no one has to account for it. Even so, it's real and can be sold. Again, that would finance a great deal of secret activity. But the horse ..."

DeVore smiled, for once surprised by the young man's sharpness. The bearer credits and jewelry—those were worth, at best, two billion yuan on the black market. That was sufficient to keep things going for a year at present levels. In the long term, however, it was woefully inadequate. He needed four, maybe five times as much simply to complete the network of fortresses. In this respect the horse and the two other figures—the tiny moon-faced Buddha and the white-jade carving of Kuan Yin—were like gifts from the gods. Each one was worth as much— and potentially a great deal more—as the rest of the contents of the safe combined.

But Lehmann was right. What were they doing there? What had made Li Shai Tung give up three such priceless treasures? What deals was he planning to make that required so lavish a payment?

He met the albino's eyes and smiled. "I don't know, Stefan. Not yet."

He set the horse down and picked up the delicate jade-skinned goddess, turning it in his hands. It was perfect. The gentle flow of her robes, the serene expression of her face, the gentle way she held the child to her breast—each tiny element was masterful in itself.

"What will you do with them?"

"I'll sell them. Two of them, anyway."

Yes, he thought, Old Man Lever will find me a buyer. Someone who cares more for this than for the wealth it represents.

"And the other?"

DeVore looked down at the tiny, sculpted goddess. "This one 111 keep. For now, anyway. Until I find a better use for her."

He set it down again, beside the horse, then smiled. Both figures were so realistic, so perfect in every detail, that it seemed momentarily as if it needed only a word of his to bring them both to life. He breathed deeply, then nodded to himself. It was no accident that he had come upon these things; nor was it instinct alone that made him hold on to the goddess now. No, there was a force behind it all, giving shape to events, pushing like a dark wind at the back of everything. He looked up at Lehmann and saw how he was watching him. And what would you make of that, my ultra-rational friend? Or you, Emily Ascher, with your one-dimensional view of me? Would you think I'd grown soft? Would you think it a weakness in me? If so, you would be wrong. For that's my strength: that sense of being driven by the darkness.

At its purest—in those few, rare moments when the veil was lifted and he saw things clearly—he felt all human things fall from him, all feeling, all sense of self erased momentarily by that dark and silent pressure at the back of him. At such moments he was like a stone—a pure white stone—set down upon the board; a mere counter, played by some being greater than himself in a game the scale of which his tiny human mind could scarcely comprehend.

A game of dark and light. Of suns and moons. Of space and time itself. A game so vast, so complicated . . .

He looked down, moved deeply by the thought, by the cold, crystalline-pure abstraction of such a vast and universal game.

"Are you all right?" Lehmann's voice lacked all sympathy; it was the voice of mechanical response.

DeVore smiled, conscious of how far his thoughts had drifted from this room, this one specific place and time. "Forgive me, Stefan. I was thinking . . ."

"Yes?"

He looked up. "I want you to track the woman for me. To find out what you can about her. Find out if it's true what they say about her and Gesell."

"And?"

He looked down at the jade-skinned goddess once again. "And nothing. Just do it for me."

SHE KEPT HER SILENCE until they were back in Gesell's apartment. There, alone with him at last, she turned on him angrily, all of her pent-up frustration spilling out.

"What in the gods' names are we doing working with that bastard?"

He laughed uncomfortably, taken aback by her outburst. "It makes good sense," he began, trying to be reasonable, but she cut him off angrily.

"Sense? It's insane, that's what it is! The surest way possible of cutting our own throats! All that shit he was feeding us about his inflexibility and our potential for growth. That's nonsense! He's using us! Can't you see that?"

He glared back at her, stiff faced. "You think I don't know what he is? Sure he's trying to use us, but we can benefit from that. And what he said is far from nonsense. It's the truth, Em. You saw his setup. He needs us." ,-

She shook her head slowly, as if disappointed in him. "For a time, maybe. But as soon as he's wrung every advantage he can get from us, he'll discard us. He'll crunch us up in one hand and throw us aside. As for his 'weakness'—his 'inflexibility¹—we saw only what he wanted us to see. I'd stake my life that there's more to that base than meets the eye. Much more. All that 'openness' he fed us was just so much crap. A mask, like everything else about our friend."

Gesell took a long breath. "I'm not so sure. But even if it is, we can still benefit from an alliance with him. All the better, perhaps, for knowing what he is. We'll be on our guard."

She laughed sourly. "You're naive, Bent Gesell, that's what you are. You think you can ride the tiger."

He bridled and started to snap back at her, then checked himself, shaking his head. "No, Em. I'm a realist. Realist enough to know that we can't keep on the way we've been going these last few years. You talk of cutting our own throats . . . well, there's no more certain way of doing that than by ignoring the opportunity to work with someone like Turner. Take the raid on Helmstadt, for instance. Dammit, Emily, but he was right! When would we ever have got the opportunity to attack a place like Helmstadt?"

"We'd have done it. Given time."

He laughed dismissively. "Given time . . ."

"No, Bent, you're wrong. Worse than that, you're impatient, and your impatience clouds your judgment. There's more at issue here than whether we grow as a movement or not. There's the question of what kind of movement we are. You can lie to yourself all you want, but working with someone like Turner makes us no better than he. No better than the Seven."

He snorted. "That's nonsense and you know it! What compromises have we had to make? None! Nor will we. You forget—if there's something we don't want to do, we simply won't do it."

"Like killing Jelka Tolonen, for instance?"

He shook his head irritably. "That makes good sense and you know it."

"Why! I thought it was our stated policy to target only those who are guilty of corruption or gross injustice?"

"And so it is. But what is Tolonen if not the very symbol of the system we're fighting against."

"But his daughter . . . ?"

He waved her objection aside. "It's a war, Emily. Us or them. And if working with Turner gives us a bit more muscle, then I'm all for it. That's not to say we have to go along with everything he wants. Far from it. But as long as it serves our cause, what harm is there in that?"

"What harm . . . ?"

"Besides, if you felt so strongly about this, why didn't you raise the matter in council when you had the chance. Why have it out with me? The decision was unanimous, after all."

She laughed sourly. "Was it? As I recall we didn't even have a vote on it. But that aside, I could see what the rest of you were thinking—even Mach. I could see the way all of your eyes lit up at the thought of attacking Helmstadt. At the thought of getting your hands on all those armaments."

"And now we have them. Surely that speaks for itself? And Turner was right about the publicity, too. Recruitment will be no problem after this. They'll flock in in droves."

She shook her head. "You miss my point. I ..."

She would have said more, would have pursued the matter, but at that moment there was an urgent knocking on the door. A moment later Mach came into the room. He stopped, looking from one to the other, sensing the tension in the air between them, then turned to face Gesell, his voice low and urgent.

"I have to speak to you, Bent. Something's come up. Something strange. It's . . ." He glanced at Emily. "Well, come. I'll show you."

She saw the way they excluded her and felt her stomach tighten with anger. The Ping Tiao was supposedly a brotherhood—a brotherhood! she laughed inwardly at the word—of equals. Yet for all their fine words about sexual equality, when it came to the crunch their breeding took over; and they had been bred into this fuck-awful system where men were like gods and women nothing She watched them go, then turned away, her anger turned to bitterness. Maybe it was already too late. Maybe Turner had done his work already as far as Bent Gesell was concerned; the germ of his thought already in Gesell's bloodstream, corrupting his thinking, silting up the once-strong current of his idealism, the disease spreading through the fabric of his moral being, transforming him, until he became little more than a pale shadow of Turner. She hoped not. She hoped against hope that it would turn out otherwise, but in her heart of hearts she knew it had begun. And nothing—nothing she nor any of them could do—could prevent it. Nothing but to say no right now, to refuse to take another step down this suicidal path. But even then it was probably too late. The damage was already done. To say no to Turner now would merely set the man against them.

She shivered, then went into the washroom and filled the bowl with cold water. While she washed her face, she ran things through her mind, trying to see how she had arrived at this point.

For her it had begun with her father. Mikhail Ascher had been a System man, a Junior Credit Agent, Second Grade, in the T'ang's Finance Ministry, the Hu Pu. Born in the Lows, he had worked hard, passing the exams, slowly making his way up the levels until, in his mid-thirties, he had settled in the Upper Mids, taking a Mid-Level bride. It was there that Emily had been born, into a world of order and stability. Whenever she thought of her father, she could see him as he was before it all happened, dressed in his powder-blue silks, the big square badge of office prominent on his chest, his face clean-shaven, his dark hair braided in the Han fashion. A distant, cautious, conservative man, he had seemed to her the paradigm of what their world was about, the very archetype of order. A strict New Confucian, he had instilled into her values that she still, to this day, held to be true. Values that—had he but known it—the world he believed in had abandoned long before he came into it.

She leaned back from the bowl, remembering. She had been nine years old. Back then, before the War, trade had been regular and credit rates relatively stable, but there were always minor fluctuations, tenths, even hundredths of a percentage point. It was one of those tiny fluctuations—a fluctuation of less than 0.05 of a percent—that her father was supposed to have "overlooked." It had seemed such a small thing when he had tried to explain it to her. Only much later, when she had found out the capital sum involved and worked out just how much it had cost the Hu Pu, did she understand the fuss that had been made. The Senior Credit Agent responsible for her father's section had neglected to pass on the rate change and to save his own position, had pointed the finger at her father, producing a spurious handwritten note to back up his claim. Her father had demanded a tribunal hearing, but the Senior Agent—a Han with important family connections—had pulled strings and the hearing had found in his favor. Her father had come home in a state of shock. He had been dismissed from the Hu Pu.

She could remember that day well, could recall how distraught her mother was, how bemused her father. That day his world fell apart about him. Friends abandoned him, refusing to take his calls. At the bank their credit was canceled. The next day the lease to their apartment was called in for "Potential Default." They fell.

Her father never recovered from the blow. Six months later he was dead, a mere shell of his former self. And between times they had found themselves demoted down the levels. Down and down, their fall seemingly unstoppable, until one day she woke and found herself in a shared apartment in Level, a child bawling on the other side of the thin curtain, the stench of the previous night's overcooked soypork making her want to retch.

Not their fault. Yes, but that wasn't what she had thought back then. She could still recall the sense of repugnance with which she had faced her new surroundings, her marked distaste for the people she found herself among. So coarse they were. So dirty in their habits.

No, she had never really recovered from that fall. It had shaped her in every single way. And even when her aversion had turned to pity and her pity into a fiery indignation, still she felt, burning within her chest, the dark brand of that fall.

Her mother had been a genteel woman, in many ways a weak woman, wholly unsuited to the bustle of the Lows; but she had done her best and in the years that followed had tried in every way to keep the standards that her husband had once set. Unused to work, she had broken with a lifetime's habits and gone looking for work. Eventually she had found it, running a trader's stall in the busy Main where they lived. The job had bruised her tender Mid-Level sensibilities sorely, but she had coped.

Emily shuddered, remembering. Why do you do it? she had asked her mother whenever she returned, tearful and exhausted, from a day working the stall. The answer was always the same: For you. To get you out of this living hell. It was her hard work that had put Emily through college; her determination, in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, that had given Emily her chance. But for what? To climb the levels again? To take part in the same charade that had destroyed her father? No. She was set against that path. Secretly—for she knew that even to mention it would hurt her mother badly—she had harbored other dreams.

She had joined the Ping Tiao eight years ago, in its earliest days, just before the War. Back then there had been a lot of talk about ultimate goals and keeping the vision pure. But eight years was a long time to keep the flame of idealism burning brightly; especially when they had had to face more than their fill of disappointments. And all that time she had been Bent's woman, his alone, fired by his enthusiasm, his vision of how things might be. But now things had changed. Now it was hard to say whether those ideals still fired them or whether, in some small way, they had become the very thing they once professed to hate.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror, trying, as she so often did, to get beyond the surface of each eye and see herself whole and clear. So hard to do, it was. So hard. She looked down again, shaking her head. There was no doubting it—her fall had opened her eyes to the evil of the world, a world in which good men and women could be left to fester in the shit-heap of the lower levels while the corrupt and the unscrupulous wallowed in undeserved luxury high above them. A world unfit for decent beings. No; and she would never feel at ease in the world while such moral discrepancies existed.

She sighed and turned from the bowl, drying her face and upper arms. So maybe Bent was right. Maybe she was just being silly about the Tolonen girl. Maybe it would help bring this rotten pile crashing down. And yet it didn't feel right. No. Because it wasn't Jelka Tolonen's fault, either, that she had been born into this world of levels. And so long as she had no proof that the girl was anything other than a pawn of circumstance, she would not feel happy undertaking such a task. Not for herself, let alone for a bastard like Turner.

Besides, what was his motive? Why did he want the General's daughter dead? Was it as he said, to weaken the General and thus undermine the T'ang's Security forces? Or was it something personal? Some slight he'd suffered at the General's hands?

She shivered again, remembering the moment on the mountainside beside Turner. To think that he thought they had something—anything—in common! She laughed and felt the laugh turn sour, recalling his words.

Love, you mean? Human understanding? Goodness? Those things don't exist. Not really. They're illusions. Masks over the reality. And the reality is like these peaks—it's beautiful, but it's also hard, uncompromising, and cold, like the airless spaces between the stars.

Well, maybe that was how he saw it, but the truth was otherwise. It was as she had said: he was lacking a dimension, lacking, essentially, any trace of basic human feeling. The Han had a saying for the behavior of such men, Hou lion, hei hsin—"Thick face, black heart"—and it was never more true than of Turner. Only in his case Thick Face, Black Heart had reached its ultimate, where the face is so thick it is formless, the heart so black it is colorless. His nihilism was pure, untempered by any trace of pity. And that was why they should not be working with him; for while their paths might coincide for a time, their aims were diametrically opposed.

In time they would have to fight the man. That was, if he had not, in the meantime, robbed them of the will to fight

THE MUl TSAl BOWED deeply, then backed away two paces, holding the door open for him.

"Major Ebert. Please, come in. My mistress offers her apologies. She is afraid she will be late."

The girl kept her head lowered, as if from politeness, but a faint flush at her neck and cheeks betrayed her embarrassment at being left alone with the young Major.

"Oh? Not ill news, I hope."

"I believe not, Excellency, but she was summoned urgently. She knew you would understand."

Ebert moved past her slowly, turning to keep his eyes on her. Yes, she was a pretty young thing. Sixteen, seventeen at most. He could see the shape of her breasts beneath the thin silk of the dress she wore, the fullness of her hips. She was a peach. An absolute peach, ripe for the picking.

He moved closer. "How long will your mistress be?"

She turned to face him, her eyes averted. "She said she would not be long, Excellency. Fifteen minutes, perhaps. Twenty at the most. Her husband . . ."

She fell silent, looking up at him, surprised. Ebert had moved closer, taking her left hand in his own, while with his other hand he held her breast.

"Good," he said, smiling. "Then come. There's time for other things, neh?"

The linen cupboard was in the next room—a tiny chamber in itself, wide drawers and rows of silk chi poo, full-length elegant formal dresses arrayed in a rainbow of stunning colors to either side. He had noticed it on his previous visit, had seen the cushioned floor and thought how nice it might be ...

He pushed the girl down, onto the cushions, laughing softly, enjoying the way she looked back at him, a strange wantonness in her dark eyes.

Afterwards they lay there, the soft hiss of their breathing the only sound in the silence. The scent of their lovemaking was mixed deliciously with the faded perfumes of the dresses ranged on either side above them, a sweet, musky smell that, with the warm presence of her naked body beneath him, made him stir again.

She laughed softly, then turned her head to look at him. "That was nice . . ."

"Yes. . ." He let out a small, shuddering breath. Maybe he'd offer to buy her from Chuang Lian . . .

He felt her stiffen, then draw back from him, and opened his eyes. Then he heard the sound. It came from the other room. The sound of rustling silks.

"Gods. . ." the girl whispered anxiously, searching for her dress. But Ebert was smiling. Had they been at it that long, then? Or had the Ministers wife come back earlier than expected? He pulled his trousers up over his knees, then climbed to his feet, beginning to button himself up.

The girl had pulled the dress over her head and was fumbling at the fastenings. Ebert turned to her and put his finger against his lips; then reaching past her for his belt, he pushed her back into the linen cupboard and closed the door.

Fastening the last button, his belt in his hand, he went out into the other room.

"Lian, my love . . ."

She turned, clearly not expecting him, momentarily embarrassed by her state of half-undress. Then, with a laugh, she let the garment fall from her and, her breasts exposed, put out her arms to welcome him.

"Quickly," she said, drawing him down onto the bed, her hands fumbling with the buttons of his trousers. "Gods, I've missed you . . ." She looked up at him, her eyes filled with an unnatural agitation.

"Slowly . . ." he said, pushing her down, amused by the strange urgency of her actions. "What's up, my darling? Why so tense?"

She paused, then looked away, shuddering with disgust. "Of all the times . . ." She looked back up at him, uncertain whether to say; then she looked down again, sniffing, her hands reaching out to take his. "It was my husband. He doesn't ask for me often, but when he does . . ."

Ebert laughed. "So the old man still fucks you, eh?"

He saw the brief flare of anger in her eyes. Then she relented and laughed. "He tries. But it's like trying to fuck a goldfish . . ."

"Hmmm . . ." He thought of the girl, crouched still in the linen cupboard, and felt a little shudder of desire wash through him. "And you wanted a pike . . . ?"

Her eyes met his, all pretense gone from them suddenly. But all he could see was how lined she was, how old; how her breasts sagged, her flesh folded upon itself at neck and stomach. He shivered, thinking of the mui tsai, of the taut silken surfaces of her young flesh, then leaned closer, kissing the woman's cheek and neck, closing his eyes, trying to imagine that it was Sweet Flute he was kissing. But the scent of her was different—old and faded like her flesh, her powder sickly sweet like the scent of a corpse.

He moved back, shuddering, all desire suddenly dead in him. She had just come from her husband; was unwashed from the old man's feeble groping. The thought of it made his stomach churn. He could see her under him, the old man's wrinkled, emaciated buttocks tightening as he came.

And was he to take his place now? To be the man her husband clearly couldn't be?

"What is it?" she said, her eyes narrowed, her whole body suddenly tensed.

"I. . ." He shook his head. "I'm tired, that's all. I..." He fished for an excuse, then remembered the Han he'd beaten earlier. "I've been on duty thirty hours. Something urgent came up and I had to see to it. A number of Senior Company men were murdered . . ."

She swallowed and looked down. "I heard . . ."

He looked at her, suddenly disgusted, not only by her but by his involvement with her. And when she reached out to touch and hold him, he drew back sharply from her.

He saw her draw her hand back, then, her face wrinkling, lift it to her nose. Her mouth fell open; she jerked her head up and glared at him, her eyes black with anger. "What's this? Is this what you mean by duty!" She nodded her head exaggeratedly. "Oh, I understand it now. You've been screwing my mui tsai, haven't you? You've been having fun here while I've been on my knees before my husband . . ."

He laughed, delighted by the image that came to mind. "On your knees, Madam Chuang?"

There was a dark flash of fury behind her eyes; she swung her hand at him, trying to slap his face, but he caught it easily and threw her back down onto the bed. Oh, he could fuck her now. Could do it to her in anger. To humiliate her. But from desire?

"What if I have?" he taunted her. "What if I tell you that your mui tsai fucks like a dream? That she's ten times the woman you are, eh?"

She had bared her teeth. "You're a liar. She's only a girl. . ."

He sneered at her. "You think you were hot, eh? Is that it? You think you could make me come just thinking about what you did to me, eh? Well, let me tell you, Madam Chuang . . . you weren't so good. I've had much better below the Net. Clapped out old singsong girls who'd do it for a single yuan!" He saw how she started to answer him and put his hand brutally over her mouth. "No ... it was simply the thought of fucking a Minister's wife. Of shitting in his nest. It amused me. But now I'm bored. I've had enough of you, old woman. Your haggard old frame bores me."

He stood, fastening himself, pulling his belt about him, watching her all the while, contempt burning in his eyes. He could see now how weak she was, how frail under that brittle carapace of hers. She thought herself so hard, so sophisticated, but she was just a spoiled little girl grown old. Tediously old.

"I'll bury you . . ." she said quietly, almost hissing the words through her teeth. "You can smile now, but I'll destroy you, Hans Ebert. Your name will be shit by the time I'm finished with you."

He laughed dismissively. "And yours? What will your name be worth, Madam Chuang, if the truth came out? How would you hold your head up in company if it were known what appetites you harbored inside that ancient, wizened skull of yours?"

"You bastard . . ." She shivered and drew the blanket up about her breasts. "I'll have you, Ebert. See if I don't."

He went to the door, then turned, looking back in at her crouched there on the bed. "You'll have me?" He looked down, laughing; then looked back at her, his face suddenly hard, uncompromising. "You'll have me?" He shook his head, then laughed: a cruel, dismissive laugh. "Go suck on your husband's prick!"

two HOURS later , Klaus Stefan Ebert, Head of GenSyn, stood on the front steps of his family's mansion, his broad hand extended to his old friend, Tolonen. The Marshal had become a gray-haired stiff-mannered old man in the fifty-odd years Ebert had known him, the uniform a second skin; but he remembered a simpler, less-daunting fellow, the gay companion of his adolescence.

The two men embraced, the warmth of their greeting overriding the formality of the occasion. This was more than politics. They grinned at one another and slapped each other's back.

"I'm glad," said Tolonen, tears brimming in his eyes.

"And I," responded Ebert, holding him at arm's length and smiling fiercely into his face. "This is a day to remember, Knut. Truly a day to remember!"

Jelka stood there at the bottom of the steps, a tall, willowy girl of fourteen with long straight ash-blond hair and beautiful blue eyes. She was no longer the child Ebert remembered so vividly. Now she was not far from womanhood.

Ebert smiled and nodded. She would make his son a perfect bride.

His son, Hans, stood behind him at the top of the steps, a tall twenty-eight-year-old, broad-shouldered yet lithe of build. He was considered extremely handsome by those who dictated taste in the Above; and as heir to the mighty GenSyn Empire, he was rated the most attractive unattached male in City Europe.

Hans barely looked at his bride-to-be. There was time enough for that. He stood there, at ease, his dress uniform immaculate, his short blond hair styled fashionably with a double pigtail. He watched the two men embrace and recognized the significance of all this, his role in it. The Marshal was like a second father to him, his Commanding Officer.

It was a perfect match. Strategically, logically, it was the obvious thing to do; and when his father had suggested it, ten years ago, he had agreed at once.

As he stood there he imagined the power he would one day wield, not merely as his father's son, but as Commander of the forces of the T'ang. He had dreams. Dreams he could not share. And they began here.

He looked at his intended—the child. She was studying him: looking at him with a critical eye, as if to sum and dismiss him. He glared at her, then relented, remembering, letting his face form into a smile, as if the first were only mischief.

He looked her up and down. She possessed the unformed figure of a girl. Pretty enough, but not a woman. Not a patch on the women he knew, anyway.

He smiled and looked away. Still, he would arrange things. Make life pleasant for himself. A wife was not a jailer, after all.

They went inside, Jelka bowing her head, her cheeks flushed, as the contracts were presented and endorsed by all parties.

He signed, then straightened, looking across the table at her. In three years he would be her husband. Three years. But who knew how things would be in three years time? And the girl? In three years she would be seventeen. Again he smiled, remembering the mui tsai. And you, my little one? he wondered, looking across at the Marshal's daughter. What will you be like on our wedding night? Are you the frigid, nervous type, or is there fire in your loins? His smile broadened, seeing how she looked away, the color deepening at her neck. Yes, well, we'll see. And even if you prove a disappointment, there will be others—plenty of others—to sweeten my nights.

And in the meantime maybe he would buy the mui tsai. After all, it wasn't every woman who could make love like that. Gifted, she'd been. He turned, taking the Marshal's offered hand, smiling back fiercely at the two old men. Yes, he would buy the mui tsai. And later, when her temper had cooled, he would go and see Madam Chuang again, and make it up with her.

JELKA SAT at her father's side, sipping at her bowl of ch'a, conscious of the stifling opulence of the room. She looked about her, feeling an unease that had nothing to do with her personal situation.

, She shuddered and looked down. The Eberts flaunted their wealth, displaying it with an ostentation she found quite tasteless. Ornate Ming vases rested on hideous plinths, heavy, brutal things in garish colors. In recesses of the curiously shaped room, huge canvases hung in heavy gilt frames, the pictures dark, suggestive of blood.

Across from her, Hans's two sisters were staring at her with an unconcealed hostility, the youngest a year or so older than Jelka, the oldest in her early twenties. She tried not to look at them, knowing they saw her only as a rival. More disconcerting was the creature serving them; a goatlike being, grown in GenSyn's vats. She shivered when its pink-eyed stare met her own and in a deep but toneless voice, it asked if she would like more ch'a. She looked at its pinched, three-toed hand and shook her head, noting the fine silk of its cuffs, the stylish cut of its trousers.

She had the oddest feeling of being in a dream, unreality piled upon unreality. Yet this was real. Was the reality of power. She looked at her future husband and saw him with a clarity that almost overwhelmed her. He was a tall young man, taller than her father, and handsome. Yet there was a cruelty, an arrogance in his handsomeness that made her shudder. She could see his pride, his intense sense of self-importance, in the way he held his head, in the cold indifference of his eyes.

Even so, it didn't reach her yet; didn't touch or move her. Three years was a long time. She could not imagine how she would feel three years from now. This much—this ritual of contracts, of pledges and vague promises—seemed a small thing to do to satisfy her father.

She smiled, looking at her father, sensing his pride in her. It pleased her, as always, and she reached out to hold and touch his arm. She saw how old man Ebert smiled at that, a tender, understanding smile. He was cut from a different cloth than the rest of his family. Beside him his wife, Berta, looked away, distanced from everything about her, her face a mask of total indifference to the whole proceeding. A tall, elegant woman, hers was a cold, austere beauty: the beauty of pine forests under snow. A rarefied, inhuman beauty.

With that same clarity with which she had seen the son, Jelka saw how Berta Ebert had shaped her children in their father's absence. Saw how their cold self-interest was a reflection of their mother's.

She held her father's arm, feeling its warmth, its strong solidity, and drew comfort from that contact. He loved her. Surely he would allow nothing that would harm her?

On the way over he had talked to her of the reasons behind this marriage. Of the need to build strong links between the Seven and the most powerful of the new, commercial Families. It was the way forward, and her union with Hans would cement the peace they had struggled hard to win. GenSyn had remained staunchly loyal to the Seven in the recent War and Li Shai Tung had rewarded them for that loyalty. Klaus Ebert had taken over mining contracts on Mars and the Uranus moons as well as large holdings in three of the smaller communications companies. Her marriage would make this abstract, commercial treaty a personal thing. Would make it a thing of flesh and blood.

She understood this. Even so, it seemed a long way off. Before then she had to finish her schooling, the rest of her childhood. She looked at Hans Ebert dispassionately, as if studying a stranger.

She turned in her seat, her cup empty, to summon the servant. It came to her without a word, as if it had anticipated her wish, bowing to her as it filled her cup. Yet before it moved back into the shadows of the room it looked up at her, meeting her eyes a second time, holding them a moment with its dark, intimate knowledge of things she did not know.

Jelka turned her head away, looking past her father, meeting the eyes of her future husband. Blue eyes, not pink. Startlingly blue. Colder, harder eyes. Different...

She shuddered and looked down. And yet the same. Somehow, curiously, the same.

WANG SAU-LEYAN raised the silk handkerchief to his face and wiped his eyes. For a moment he stood there, his well-fleshed body shaking gently, the laughter still spilling from his lips; then he straightened up and sniffed loudly, looking about him.

Behind him the tomb was being sealed again, the rosewood litter carried away. Servants busied themselves, sweeping the dirt path with brushes of twigs, while, to one side, the six New Confucian officials stood in a tight circle, talking quietly among themselves.

"That was rich, Heng, don't you think?" Wang said, turning to face his Chancellor, ignoring the looks of displeasure of his fellow T'ang. "I had visions of my brother getting up out of the casket to chastise the poor buggers!"

"My Lord . . ." Heng's face was a picture of dismay. He glanced about him at the gathered T'ang, then lowered his head. "It was unfortunate . . ."

"Unfortunate!" Wang's laughter rang out again. "Why, it could only have happened to Ta-hung! Who else but my brother would find himself thrown into his own tomb!" With the last few words Wang Sau-leyan made a mime of the casket sliding into the tomb.

It had been an accident. At the top of the steps, one of the bearers had tripped and with the balance of the casket momentarily upset, the remaining bearers had lost their grip. The whole thing had tumbled down the steps, almost throwing out its occupant. Wang Sau-leyan, following close behind, had stood there at the tomb's mouth, doubled up with laughter. He had not stopped laughing since.

Throughout the ceremony, he had giggled, oblivious of the astonished looks of the officials.

Now, however, his fellow T'ang were exchanging looks, appalled by his behavior. After a moment the oldest of them, Wei Feng, stepped forward.

"What is this, Wang Sau-leyan? Have you no feelings for your dead brother? We came to honor him today, to pay our respects to his souls as they journey on. This laughter is not fitting. Have you forgotten the rites, Wang Sau-leyan? It is your duty—"

"Hell's teeth, Wei Feng, I know my duty. But it was funny. Genuinely funny. If he had not been dead already, that last fall would have killed him!" Wang Sau-leyan stared back at his fellow T'ang momentarily, then looked away. "However . . . forgive me, cousins. It seems that I alone saw the humor in the moment."

Wei Feng looked down, his anger barely contained. Never in all his years had he seen anything like it.

"There are times for humor . . ."

Wang's huff of disgust was clearly disrespectful. He moved past Wei Feng as if the older man weren't there, confronting the other T'ang.

"If my brother had been a man to respect I would have shown him some respect, but my brother was a fool and a weakling. He would never have been T'ang but for the death of my elder brothers." Wang looked about him, nodding his head. "Yes, and I know that goes for me, too, but understand me, cousins. I'll not play hollow tongue to any man. I'll speak as I feel. As I am, not as you'd have me seem. So you'll understand me if I say that I disliked my brother. I'm not glad he's dead. No, I'd not go that far, for even a fool deserves breath. But I'll not be a hypocrite. I'll shed no false tears for him. I'll save them for men who deserve them. For men I truly love. Likewise I'll keep my respect for those who deserve respect."

Tsu Ma had been staring past Wang while he spoke. Now he looked back at him, his face inexpressive, his eyes looking up and down the length of Wang Sau-leyan, as if to measure him.

"And yet your brother was T'ang, Wang Sau-leyan. Surely a T'ang deserves respect?"

"Had the man filled the clothes . . ."

"And he did not?"

Wang Sau-leyan paused, realizing suddenly what dangerous seas he had embarked upon. Then he laughed, relaxing, and looked back at Tsu Ma.

"Don't mistake me, Tsu Ma. I speak only of my brother. I knew him well. In all the long history of the Seven there was never one like him. He was not worthy to wear the imperial yellow. Look in your hearts, all of you, and tell me that I'm wrong. In all honesty, was there one of you who, knowing my father was dead, rejoiced that Ta-hung was T'ang?"

He looked about them, seeing the grudging confirmation in every face.

"Well, let us keep our respect for those that deserve it, neh? For myself I'd gladly bow to any of my cousins here. You are men who have proved your worth. You, indeed, are T'ang."

He saw how that mollified them and laughed inwardly. They were all so vain, so title-proud. And hypocrites, too; for if the truth were known they cared as little for Ta-hung as he. No, they had taken offense not at his denigration of his brother but at the implied mockery of his brother's title, for by inference it mocked them also. As for himself. . .

He moved through, between their ranks, bowing to each of them as he passed, then led them on along the pathway and up the broad marble steps into the ancient palace.

As for himself, he cared not a jot for the trappings of his title. He had seen enough of men and their ways to know how hollow a mere title could be. No, what he valued was not the title "T'ang" but the reality of the power it gave him; the ability to say and do what he had always dreamed of saying and doing. The power to offend, if offense was what he wished. To be a T'ang and not have that was to be as nothing—was to be an actor in a tiresome play, mouthing another's words, constrained by bonds of ritual and tradition.

And he would not be that.

As the servants made their way among his guests, offering wine and sweetmeats, he looked about him again, a faint smile coming to his lips as he remembered that moment at the entrance to the tomb.

Yes, he thought, it was not your fate to be T'ang, Ta-hung. You were designed for other things than kingship. And yet T'ang you became.

Wang smiled and took a cup of wine from a servant, then turned away, looking out through the window at the walled garden and the great marbled tablet of the tomb at its center.

It was unfortunate. He had not disliked his brother. Despised him, maybe— though even that was too strong a word for the mild feeling of irritation he had felt—but not hated him as he had his father and his two oldest brothers. However, Ta-hung had had the misfortune of being born before him. As a younger brother he would have been no threat, but as T'ang he had been an obstacle, a thing to be removed.

He sipped at his wine and turned his head, looking across at his Chancellor. Hung Mien-lo was talking to Tsu Ma, his head lowered in deference. Smoothing things over, no doubt. Wang looked down, smiling, pleased by his morning's work.

It was true, he had found the accident genuinely amusing, but he had grasped at once that it was the perfect pretext for annoying his fellow T'ang—the perfect irritant; and he had exaggerated his response. He had seen how they bridled at his irreverence. And afterward it had given him the opportunity to play the bluff, honest man. To put his heart upon his sleeve and flaunt it before them. He took a deep breath, then looked up again, noting how their eyes went to him constantly. Yes, he thought. They hate me now, but they also admire me in a grudging way. They think me crass but honest. Well, let them be mistaken on both counts. Let them take the surface-show for the substance, for it will make things easier in the days to come.

He turned again, looking back at the tomb. They were dead—every one of them who had been in the room that day he had been exiled. Father and mother, brothers and uncles. All dead. And he had had them killed, every last one.

And now I'm T'ang and sleep in my father's bed with my father's wives and my father's maids.

He drained his glass, a small ripple of pleasure passing through him. Yes. He had stopped their mouths and closed their eyes. And no one would ever again tell him what he could or couldn't do.

No one.

TWO HOURS LATER, Wang Sau-leyan sat in his father's room, in the big, tall-backed chair, side-on to the mirror, his back to the door. He heard the door open, soft footsteps pad across the tiles.

"Is that you, Sweet Rain?"

He heard the footsteps pause and imagined the girl bending low as she bowed. A pretty young thing, perhaps the prettiest of his father's maids.

"Chieh Hsia?"

He half-turned, languid from the wine he'd drunk, and put his hand out.

"Have you brought the lavender bowl?"

There was the slightest hesitation, then, "I have, Chieh Hsia." "Good. Well, come then. 1 want you to see to me as you used to see to my father." Again there was the slightest hesitation before she acted. Then she came round, bowing low, and knelt before him, the bowl held delicately in the long slender fingers of her left hand.

He had seen the film of his father's final evening, had seen how Sweet Rain had ministered to him, milking the old man into the lavender bowl. Well, now she would do the same for him. But no one would be watching this time. He had turned off the cameras. No one but he would know what he did within the privacy of his bedroom walls.

He drew the gown back from his lap, exposing his nakedness. His penis was still quite flaccid.

"Well, girl? What are you waiting for?"

He let his head fall back and closed his eyes, waiting. There was the faint rustle of silks as she moved closer, then he felt her fingers brush against his flesh. He shivered, then nodded to himself, feeling his penis stir between her fingers. Such a delicate touch she had—like silk itself—her fingers caressing the length of him slowly, tantalizingly, making his breath catch in his throat.

He opened his eyes, looking down at her. Her head was lowered, intent on what she was doing, the darkness of her hair held up with a single white-jade pin.

"Is this how you touched my father?"

She glanced up. "No, Chieh Hsia. But I thought. . ."

And still her fingers worked on him, gathering the whole of him up into that tiny nexus of pleasure, there between his legs.

"Thought what?" he said after a moment, the words barely audible.

She hesitated, then looked up at him again, candidly this time. "Every man is different, Chieh Hsia. Likewise their needs . . ."

He nodded slowly. Gods, but it was delightful. He would never have dreamed that a woman's hands could be so potent an instrument of pleasure.

Her eyes met his again. "If the T'ang would prefer, I could . . . kiss him there."

He shuddered. The word "kiss" promised delights beyond imagining. He gave a tiny nod. "Yes. I'd like that."

He heard her set the bowl down and let his head fall back, his eyes close, then felt her lift him to her lips. Again he shivered, drawn up out of himself by the sheer delight of what she was doing. For a while, then, he seemed to lapse out of himself, becoming but a single thread of perfect pleasure, linked to the warm wetness of her mouth, a pleasure that grew and grew . . .

He didn't hear the door open. Nor did he hear the second set of footsteps pad almost silently across the tiles toward him. But a movement in the girl in front of him—the slightest tensing of her left hand where it rested on his knee—made him open his eyes suddenly and look up, his gaze going to the mirror.

Tender Willow was almost upon him, the knife already raised in her right hand. At once he kicked out with his right leg, pushing Sweet Rain away from him, and lurched forward, out of the seat.

It was not a moment too soon. Tender Willow's knife missed his shoulder by a fraction, tearing into the silken cushioning of the chair, gashing the wooden beading. Wang turned quickly, facing her, twice her weight and a full ch'i taller; but still the girl came on, her face filled with hatred and disgust.

As she thrust the knife at him a second time, he moved forward, knocking her arm away, then, grabbing her neck brutally, he smashed her head down into the arm of the chair, once, then a second time. She fell and lay still.

He stood there a moment, his breath hissing sharply from him, then turned and kicked out at Sweet Rain again, catching her in the stomach so that she wheezed, her breath taken from her. His face was dark now, twisted with rage.

"You foxes . . ." he said quietly, his voice trembling. "You foul little bitches. . ."

He kicked again, catching the fallen girl fully on the side of the head, then turned back and spat on the other girl.

* "You're dead. Both of you."

He looked about him, noting the broken bowl and, beside it, a single white jade pin, then bent down and recovered the knife from the floor. He straightened up, then, with a slight shudder, walked to the door and threw it open, calling the guards.

PART 2 | AUTUMN 2206

Shells

Between the retina and the higher centers of the cortex the innocence of vision is irretrievably lost—it has succumbed to the suggestion of a whole series of hidden persuaders.

—arthur koestler, The Act of Creation

That which we experience in dreams, if we experience it often, is in the end just as much a part of the total economy of our soul as is anything we "really" experience: we are by virtue of it richer or poorer.

—friedrich nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

CHAPTER FIVE

The Innocence of Vision

BEN CAME UPON the cottage from the bay path, climbing the steep slope. At the lower gate he turned, looking back across the bay. New growth crowded the distant foreshore, masking where the fire had raged five years earlier. Only at the hill's crest, where the old house had stood, did the new vegetation end. There the land was fused a glassy black.

The tall seventeen-year-old shook his head, then turned to face the cottage. Landscott was a long low shape against the hill, its old stone walls freshly whitewashed, its roof thatched. A flower garden stretched up to it, its blooms a brilliant splash of color beside the smooth greenness of the lawn. Behind and beside it other cottages dotted the hillside, untenanted yet perfectly maintained. Shells, they were. Part of the great illusion. His eyes passed over them quickly, used to the sight.

He looked down at his left hand where it rested on the gatepost, conscious of a deep, unsatisfied itch at the join between the wrist and the new hand. The kind of itch you couldn't scratch, because it was inside, beneath the flesh. The join was no longer sore, the hand no longer an unaccustomed weight at the end of his arm, as it had been for the first year. Even so, something of his initial sense of awkwardness remained.

The scar had healed, leaving what looked like a machined ridge between what was his and what had been given. The hand itself looked natural enough, but that was only illusion. He had seen what lay beneath the fibrous dermal layer. It was much stronger than his right hand and in subtle ways, much better—far quicker in its responses. He turned it, moving it like the machine it was rather than the hand it pretended to be, then smiled to himself. If he wished, he could have it strengthened and augmented, could transform it into any kind of tool he needed.

He let it fall, then began to climb again, crossing the gradual slope of the upper garden. Halfway across the lawn he slowed, then stopped, surprised, hearing music from inside the cottage. Piano music. He tilted his head, listening, wondering who it was. The phrase was faltering at first, the chords uncertain. Then, a moment later, the same chords were repeated, confidently this time, all sense of hesitation gone.

Curious, he crossed the lawn and went inside. The music was coming from the living room. He went to the doorway and looked in. At the far side of the room his mother was sitting at a piano, her back to him, her hands resting lightly on the keys.

"Mother?" Ben frowned, not understanding. The repetition of the phrase had been assured, almost professional, and his mother did not play.

She turned, surprised to see him there, a slight color at her cheeks. "I. . ." then she laughed and shook her head. "Yes, it was me. Come. I'll show you."

He went across and sat beside her on the long benchlike piano seat. "This is new," he said, looking down at the piano. Then, matter-of-factly, he added, "Besides, you don't play."

"No," she said, but began anyway—a long introductory passage, more complex than the phrase she had been playing; a fast passionate piece played with a confidence and skill the earlier attempt had lacked. He watched her hands moving over the keys, surprised and delighted.

"That's beautiful," he said when she had finished. "What was it?"

"Chopin. From the Preludes." She laughed, then turned and glanced at him, her eyes bright with enjoyment.

"I still don't understand. That was excellent."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that." She leaned back, staring down at the keyboard. "I'm rather rusty. It's a long while since I played."

"Why didn't you play before now?"

"Because it's an obsession."

She had said it without looking at him, as if it explained everything. He looked down at her hands again, saw how they formed shapes above the keys.

"I had to think of you and Meg. I couldn't do both, you understand. Couldn't play and look after you. And I wanted to bring you up. I didn't trust anyone else to do the job."

"So you gave up this?"

If anything, he understood it less. To have such a gift and not use it. It was not possible.

"Oh, there were plenty of times when I felt like playing. I ached to do it. It was like coming off a drug. A strong, addictive drug. And in denying that part of me I genuinely felt less human. But there was no choice. I wanted to be a mother to you, not simply a presence flitting through your lives."

He frowned, not following her. It made him realize how little he knew about her.

She had always been too close, too familiar. He had never thought to ask her about herself, about her life before she had met his father.

"My own mother and father were never there, you see." Her hands formed a major chord, then two quick minors. It sounded familiar; yet, like the Chopin, he couldn't place it.

"I was determined not to do to you what they did to me. I remember how isolated I felt. How unloved." She smiled, reaching across to take his right hand—his human hand—and squeeze it.

"I see."

It awed him to think she had done that for them. He ran the piece she had played through his memory, seeing where she placed emphasis, where she slowed. He could almost feel the music. Almost.

"How does it feel to be able to do that?"

She drew in a long breath, looking through him, suddenly distant, her eyes and mouth lit with the vaguest of smiles; then she shook her head. "No. I can't say. There aren't the words for it. Raised up, I guess. Changed. Different somehow. But I can't say what, exactly."

For the first time in his life Ben felt something like envy, watching her face. Not a jealous, denying envy, but a strong desire to emulate.

"But why now?"

"Haven't you guessed?" She laughed and placed his right hand on the keyboard. "You're usually so quick."

"You're going to teach me."

"Both of you," she answered, getting up and coming behind him so that she could move his arms and manipulate his hands. "Meg asked me to. And she wouldn't learn unless you could, too."

He thought about it a moment, then nodded.

"What was that piece you were playing when I came in? It sounded as if you were learning it for the first time, yet at the same time knew it perfectly."

She leaned closer, her warmth pressed against his shoulder, her long dark hair brushing against his cheek. "It wasn't originally a piece for piano, that's why. It was scored for the string and woodwind sections of an orchestra. It's by Grieg. 'Wedding Day at Troldhaugen.' " She placed her hands on either side of his own and repeated the phrase he had heard, then played a second, similar one.

"That's nice," he said. Its simplicity appealed to him.

"You came back early," she said. "What's up? Didn't you want to go into town?"

He turned, meeting her eyes. "Father called. The T'ang has asked him to stay on a few days."

There was a brief movement of disappointment in her face. It had been three months since she had seen Hal.

"A few more days," she said quietly. "Ah well, it'll soon pass." Then, smiling, she put her hand on his arm. "Perhaps we'll have a picnic. You, me, and Meg. Like old times. What do you think?"

Ben looked back at her, seeing her anew, the faintest smile playing on his lips and in his eyes. "It would be nice," he said. But already his thoughts were moving on, his mind toying with the possibilities of the keyboard. Pushing things further. "Yes," he added, getting up and going over to her. "Like old times."

THE next MORNING found Ben in the shadowed living room, crouched on his haunches, staring intently at the screen that filled half the facing wall. He was watching one of the special Security reports that had been prepared for his father some months before, after the T'ang of Africa's assassination. It was an interesting document, not least because it showed things that were thought too controversial, too inflammatory, for general screening.

The Seven had acted swiftly after Wang Hsien's death, arresting the last few remnants of opposition at First Level—thus preventing a further outbreak of the war between the factions in the Above—but even they had been surprised by the extent of the rioting lower down the City. There had been riots before, of course, but never on such a widespread scale or with such appalling consequences. Officials of the Seven, Deck Magistrates among them, had been beaten and killed. Security posts had been destroyed and Security troops forced to pull out of some stacks in fear of their lives. Slowly, very slowly, things had died down, the fires burning themselves out; and in some parts of the City—in East Asia and North America, particularly—Security had moved back within days to quell the last few pockets of resistance. Order had been restored. But for how long?

He knew it was a warning. A sign of things to come. But would the Seven heed it? Or would they continue to ignore the problems that beset those who lived in the lowest levels of the City, blaming the unrest on groups like the Ping Tiao?

Ben rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. To the respectable Mid-Level citizenry, the Ping Tiao were bogeymen, the very type and symbol of those destructive forces the War had unleashed; and MidText, the Mid-Level media channel, played heavily upon their fears. But the truth was otherwise.

The Ping Tiao had first come into the news eighteen months earlier, when three members of their faction had kidnapped and murdered a Mid-Level administrator. They had issued pamphlets claiming that the Administrator was a corrupt and brutal man who had abused his position and deserved his fate. It was the truth, but the authorities had countered at once, depicting the dead official as a well-respected family man who had been the victim of a group of madmen; madmen who wanted only one thing—to level the City and destroy Chung Kuo itself. As the weeks passed and further Ping Tiao "outrages" occurred, the media had launched a no-holds-barred campaign against the group, linking their name with any outbreak of violence or civil unrest. There was a degree of truth behind official claims, for the tactics of the Ping Tiao were certainly of the crudest kind, the seemingly random nature of their targets aiming at maximum disruption. However, the extent of Ping Tiao activities was greatly exaggerated, creating the impression that if only the Ping Tiao could be destroyed, the problems they represented would vanish with them.

The campaign had worked. Or at least, in the Mid-Levels it had worked. Farther down, however, in the cramped and crowded levels at the bottom of the City, the Ping Tiao were thought of differently. There they were seen as heroes, their cause as a powerful and genuine expression of long-standing grievances. Support for the terrorists grew and grew; and would have continued growing but for a tragic accident in a Mid-Level creche.

Confidential high-level sources later made it quite clear that the Ping Tiao had had nothing to do with what was termed "the Lyons Canton Massacre," but the media had a field day, attacking the Ping Tiao for what they called its "cowardly barbarism and inhumanity."

The effect was immediate. The tide of opinion turned against the Ping Tiao overnight, and a subsequent Security operation against the terrorists resulted in the capture and execution of over eight hundred members of the faction, most of them identified by previously sympathetic friends and neighbors.

For the Ping Tiao those few weeks had been disastrous. They had sunk into obscurity. Yet in the past few days they seemed to have put that behind them. Fish emblems—the symbol of the Ping Tiao—had been seen everywhere throughout the levels, painted on walls or drawn in blood on the faces of their victims.

But the authorities had hit back hard. MidText, for instance, had played heavily on old fears. The present troubles, they asserted, were mainly the result of a conspiracy between the Ping Tiao and a small faction in the Above who financed their atrocities.

Ben froze the tape momentarily, thinking back to what Li Shai Tung had said— on that evening five years earlier—about knowing his enemy. It was on this level, accepting at face value the self-deluding half-truths of the MidText images, that Li Shai Tung had been speaking. But these men—terrorists and Company men alike—were merely cyphers, the scum on the surface of the well. And the well was deep. Far deeper than the Seven dared imagine.

He let the tape run. At once the babble began again, the screen filling once more with images of riot and despoliation.

Vast crowds surged through the lower levels, destroying guard posts and barriers, wrecking storefronts and carrying off whatever they could lay their hands on. Unfortunate officials were beaten to death in front of the camera, or bound and doused in petrochemicals before being set on fire. Ben saw how the crowd pressed in tightly about one such victim, roaring their approval as a frail, gray-bearded magistrate was hacked to death. He noted the ugly brutality in every face, and nodded to himself. Then the image changed, switching to another crowd, this one more orderly. Hastily made banners were raised on every side, demanding increased food rations, a resumption of state aid to the jobless, and an end to travel restrictions. "Pien hua!" they chanted in their hundred thousands, "Pien hua!"

Change.'

There was a burning indignation in many of the faces; in others a fierce, unbridled need that had no outlet. Some waved long knives or clubs in the air and bared their teeth in ferocious animal smiles, a gleam of sheer delight in their eyes at having thrown off all restraints. For many this was their first taste of such freedom and they danced frenetically in time with the great chant, intoxicated by the madness that raged on every side.

"PIEN HUA.' PIEN HUA! PIEN HUA! PIEN HUA!"

Ben watched the images flash up one after another, conscious of the tremendous power, the dark potency that emanated from them. It was primordial. Like some vast movement of the earth itself. And yet it was all so loosely reined, so undirected. Change, they demanded. But to what?

No one knew. No one seemed capable of imagining what change might bring. In time, perhaps, someone would find an answer to that question, would draw the masses to him and channel that dark tide of discontent. But until then, the Seven had been right to let the storm rage, the flood waters rise unchecked; for they knew the waters would recede, the storm blow itself out. To have attempted to control that vast upsurge of feeling or repress it could only have made things worse.

Ben blanked the screen, then stood, considering what he had seen. Wang Hsien's death may have been the catalyst, but the real causes of the mass violence were rooted much deeper. Were, in fact, as old as Man himself. For this was how Man really was beneath his fragile shell of culture. And not just those he had seen on the screen, the madness dancing in their eyes, but all of Mankind. For a long time they had tried to fool themselves, pretending they were something else, something more refined and spiritual, more godlike and less animalistic than they really were. But now the lid was off the well, the darkness bubbling to the surface once again.

"Ben?"

He turned. Meg was watching him from the doorway, the morning sunlight behind her throwing her face and figure into shadow, making her look so like his mother that, momentarily, he mistook her. Then, realizing his error, he laughed.

"What is it?" she asked, her voice rich and low.

"Nothing," he answered. "Is it ready?"

She nodded, then came into the room. "What were you watching?"

He glanced at the empty screen, then back at her. "I was looking at Father's tapes. About the riots." She looked past him. "I thought you weren't interested."

He met her eyes. "I'm not. At least, not in the events themselves. But the underlying meaning of it all—that fascinates me. Their faces—they're like windows to their souls. All their fears and aspirations show nakedly. But it takes something like this to do it, something big and frightening. And then the mask slips and the animal stares out through the eyes."

And the Ping Tiao, he thought. I'm interested in them, too. Because they're something new. Something the City has been missing until now. A carp to fill an empty pool.

"Well. . . shall we go out?"

She smiled. "Okay. You first."

On the lawn beside the flower beds, their mother had spread out a picnic on a big red-and-white-checked tablecloth. As Ben came out into the open she looked across at him and smiled. In the sunlight she seemed much younger than she really was, more Meg's older sister than her mother. He sat beside her, conscious of the drowsy hum of bees, the rich scent of the blooms masking the sharp salt tang of the bay. It was a perfect day, the blue above them broken here and there by big slow-drifting cumuli.

Ben looked down at the picnic spread before them. It all looked newly created. A wide basket filled with apples lay at the center of the feast, their perfect, rounded greenness suggesting the crispness of the inner fruit. To the left his eye was drawn to the bright yellow of the butter in its circular white-china dish and, beside it, the richer, almost-honeyed yellow of the big wedge of cheddar. There was a big plate of thick-cut ham, the meat a soft pink, the rind a perfect snowy white, and next to that a fresh-baked loaf, three slices cut from it and folded forward, exposing the fluffy whiteness of the bread. Bright-red tomatoes beaded with moisture shared a bowl with the softer green of a freshly washed lettuce, while other, smaller bowls held tiny radishes and onions, peeled carrots, grapes and celery, red currants and watercress.

"It's nice," he said, looking up at his mother.

Pleased, she handed him a plate. A moment later Meg reappeared, carrying a tray on which were three tall glasses and a jug of freshly made, iced lemonade. He laughed.

"What is it?" Meg asked, setting the tray down.

"This," he said, indicating the spread laid out before them.

Meg's smile faded slowly. "What's wrong? Don't you like it?"

"No," he said softly, reassuringly. "It's marvelous." He smiled, then leaned forward, beginning to transfer things to his plate.

Meg hesitated, then poured from the jug, handing him the cold, beaded glass. "Here."

He set his plate down, then took the glass and sipped. "Hmm . . ." he said appreciatively, his eyes smiling back at her. "Perfect."

, Beside him his mother was busy rilling a plate for Meg. She spoke without looking at him.

"Meg tells me you've been reading Nietzsche."

, He glanced across at Meg. She was looking down, a faint color in her cheeks. : "That's right." He sipped again, then stared at the side of his glass intently.

His mother turned her head, looking at him. "I thought you'd read Nietzsche."

"I did. When I was eight."

"Then I don't understand. I thought you said you could never read a thing twice."

He met her eyes. "So I thought. But it seems I was wrong."

She was silent a while, considering, then looked back at him again. "Then you can forget things, after all?"

He shook his head. "It's not a question of forgetting. It's just that things get embedded."

"Embedded?"

He paused, then set his glass down, realizing he would have to explain. "I realized it months ago, when Father quoted something from Nietzsche to me. Two lines from Ecce Homo. The memory should have come back clearly, but it didn't. Oh, it was clear enough in one sense—I could remember the words plain enough. I could even see them on the page and recall where I was when I read them. But that was it, you see. That's what I mean by things getting embedded. When Father triggered that specific memory, it came back to me in context, surrounded by all the other ragbag preoccupations of my eight-year-old self."

Ben reached out and took a tomato from the bowl and polished it on his sleeve; then he looked up at his mother again, his face earnest, almost frowning.

"You see, those lines of Nietzsche's were interlaced with all kinds of other things. With snatches of music—Mahler and Schoenberg and Shostakovich—with the abstract paintings of Kandinsky and Klee, the poetry of Rilke and Donne and Basho, and God knows what else. A thousand intricate strands. Too many to grasp at a single go. But it wasn't just a case of association by juxtaposition. I found that my reading, my very understanding of Nietzsche, was colored by those things. And try as I might, I couldn't shake those impressions loose and see his words fresh. I had to separate it physically."

"What do you mean?" Beth asked, leaning forward to take a grape from the bunch.

"I mean that I had to return to the text. To read the words fresh from the page again. Free from all those old associations."

"And?" It was Meg who asked the question. She was leaning forward slightly, watching him, fascinated.

He looked down, then bit into the tomato. He chewed for a moment, then swallowed and looked up again. "And it worked. I liberated the words from their old context."

He popped the rest of the tomato into his mouth and for a while was silent, thoughtful. The two women watched him, indulging him as always, placing him at the very center of things. The tomato finished, he took a long sip of his lemonade. Only then did he begin again.

"It's as if my mind is made up of different strata. It's all there—fossilized, if you like, and available if I want to chip away at it—but my memory, while perfect, is nonetheless selective."

Ben laughed and looked at his sister again. "Do you remember that Borges story, Meg? Tunes the Memorious'—about the boy with perfect recall; confined to his bed, entrapped by the perfection, the overwhelming detail, of past moments. Well, it isn't like that. It could never be like that, amusing as the concept is. You see, the mind accords certain things far greater significance than others. And there's a good reason for that. The undermind recognizes what the conscious intelligence too often overlooks—that there is a hierarchy of experience. Some things matter more to our deeper self than others. And the mind returns them to us strongly. It thrusts them at us, you might say—in dreams, and at quiet moments when we least suspect their presence."

"Why should it do that?"

Ben gave a tiny shrug. "I'm not sure." He took an apple from the basket and lifted it to his mouth. "But maybe it has to do with something programmed into us at the genetic level. A code. A key to why we're here, like the cyphers in Augustus's journal."

As Ben bit deeply into the apple, Meg looked across at her mother and saw how she had looked away at the mention of Augustus and the journal.

"But why Nietzsche?" Meg asked, after a moment. She could not understand his fascination with the nineteenth-century German philosopher. To her, the man was simply an extremist, a fanatic. He understood nothing of those purely human things that held a society together—nothing of love, desire, or sacrifice. To her mind, his thinking was fatally flawed. It was the thinking of a hermit, a misanthrope. But Man was a social species; he did not exist in separation from his fellows, nor could he for longer than one human lifetime. And any human culture was the product of countless generations. In secret she had struggled with the man's difficult, spiky prose, trying to understand what it was Ben saw in him; but it had served only to confirm her own distaste for his thought.

Ben chewed the piece of apple, then smiled and swallowed. "There's an almost hallucinatory clarity about his thinking that I like. And there's a fearlessness, too. He's not afraid to offend. There's nothing he's afraid to look at and investigate at depth, and that's rare in our culture. Very rare."

"So?" Meg prompted, noting how her mother was watching Ben again, a fierce curiosity in her eyes.

He looked at the apple, then shrugged and bit again.

Beth broke her long silence. "Are you working on something new?"

Ben looked away. Then it was true. He had begun something new. Yes, she should have known. He was always like this when he began something new— fervent, secretive, subject to great swings of mood.

The two women sat there, watching him as he finished the apple, core and all, leaving nothing.

He wiped his fingers on the edge of the cloth, then looked up again, meeting Meg's eyes. "I was thinking we might go along to the cove later on and look for shells."

She looked away, concealing her surprise. It was some time since they had been down to the cove, so why had he suggested it just now? Perhaps it was simply to indulge her love of shells, but she thought not. There was always more to it than that with Ben. It would be fun, and Ben would make the occasion into a kind of game, but he would have a reason for the game. He always had a reason.

Ben laughed and reached out to take one of the tiny radishes from the bowl. "And then, tomorrow, I'll show you what I've been up to."

warfleet COVE was a small bay near the mouth of the river. A road led toward it from the old town, ending abruptly in a jumble of rocks, the shadow of the Wall throwing a sharp but jagged line over the rocks and the hill beyond. To the left the land fell away to the river, bathed in brilliant sunlight. A path led down through the thick overgrowth—blackberry and bramble, wildflowers and tall grasses—and came out at the head of the cove.

Ben stepped out onto the flattened ledge of rock, easing the strap of his shoulder bag. Below him the land fell away steeply to either side, forming a tiny, ragged flint-head of a bay. A shallow spill of shingle edged the sandy cove. At present the tide was out, though a number of small rockpools reflected back the sun's brilliance. Low rocks lay to either side of the cove's mouth, narrowing the channel. It was an ancient, primitive place, unchanged throughout the centuries; and it was easy to imagine Henry Plantagenet's tiny fleet anchored here in 1147, waiting to sail to Jerusalem to fight the Infidel in the Second Crusade. Further around the headland stood the castle built by Henry Tudor, Henry VII, whose son had broken with the papacy. Ben breathed deeply and smiled to himself. This was a place of history. From the town itself the Pilgrim Fathers had sailed in August 1620 to the new lands of America, and in June 1944 part of the great invasion fleet had sailed from here— five hundred ships, bound for Normandy and the liberation of Europe from Hitler and the Nazis.

All gone, he thought wryly, turning to look at his sister. All of that rich past gone, forgotten, buried beneath the ice of the Han City.

"Come on," he said. "The tide's low. We'll go by the rocks on the north lip. We should find something there."

Meg nodded and followed him, taking his hand where the path was steepest, letting him help her down.

At the far edge of the shingle they stopped and took off their shoes, setting them down on the stones. Halfway across the sand, Ben stopped and turned, pointing down and back, tracing a line. "Look!"

She looked. The sun had warmed the sand, but where they had stepped their feet had left wet imprints, dark against the almost white, compacted sand. They faded even as she watched, the most distant first, the nearest last.

"Like history," he said, turning away from her and walking on toward the water's edge.

Or memory, Meg thought, looking down at her feet. She took a step then stopped, watching how the sharp clarity of the imprint slowly decayed, like an image sent over some vast distance, first at the edges, then—in a sudden rush—at the very center, breaking into two tiny, separate circles before it vanished. It was as if the whole had sunk down into the depths beneath the sand and was now stored in the rock itself.

"Here!" he called triumphantly. She hurried over to where he was crouched near the water's edge and bent down at his side.

The shell was two-thirds embedded in the sand. Even so, its shape and coloring were unmistakable. It was a pink-mouthed murex. She clapped her hands, delighted, and looked at him.

"Careful when you dig it out, Ben. You mustn't damage the spines."

He knew, of course, but said nothing, merely nodded and pulled his bag round to the front, opening up the flap.

She watched him remove the sand in a circle about the shell, then set the tiny trowel down and begin to remove the wet hard-packed sand with his fingers. When he had freed it, he lifted it carefully between his fingers and took it to one of the rockpools to clean.

She waited. When he came back, he knelt in front of her and, opening out the fingers of her right hand, put the pale, white-pink shell down on her palm. Cleaned, it looked even more beautiful. A perfect specimen, curved and elegant, like some strange fossil fish.

"The hedgehog of the seas," he said, staring at the shell. "How many points can you count?"

It was an old game. She lifted the shell and staring at its tip—its "nose"— began to count the tiny little nodes that marked each new stage on the spiral of growth.

"Sixteen," she said, handing the shell back.

He studied it. "More like thirty four," he said, looking up at her. He touched the tip of the shell gently. "There are at least eighteen in that first quarter of an inch."

"But they don't count!" she protested. "They're too small!"

"Small they may be, but they do count. Each marks a stage in the mollusk's growth, from the infinitesimally tiny up. If you X-rayed this, you'd see it. The same form repeated and repeated, larger and larger each time, each section sealed off behind the shellfish—outgrown, if you like. Still growing even at the creature's death. Never finished. The spiral uncompleted."

"As spirals are."

He laughed and handed her back the shell. "Yes. I suppose by its nature it's incomplete. Unless twinned."

Meg stared at him a moment. "Ben? What are we doing here?" His dark-green eyes twinkled mischievously. "Collecting shells. That's all." He stood and walked past her, scanning the sand for new specimens. Meg turned, watching him intently, knowing it was far more complex than he claimed; then she got up and joined him in the search.

Two hours later they took a break. The sun had moved behind them and the far end of the cove was now in shadow. The tide had turned an hour back and the sea had already encroached upon the sands between the rocks at the cove's mouth. Ben had brought sandwiches in his bag and they shared them now, stretched out on the low rocks, enjoying the late afternoon sunlight, the shells spread out on a cloth to one side.

There were more than a dozen different specimens on the bright green cloth— batswing and turitella, orchid spider and flamingo tongue, goldmouth helmet and striped bonnet, pelican's foot, mother-of-pearl, snakeshead cowrie, and several others—all washed and gleaming in the sun. A whole variety of shapes and sizes and colors, and not one of them native to the cold gray waters of the English south coast.

But Meg knew nothing of that.

It had begun when Meg was only four. There had been a glass display case on the wall in the hallway, and noting what pleasure Meg derived from the form and color of the shells, Hal Shepherd had bought new specimens in the City and brought them back to the Domain. He had scattered them by hand in the cove at low tide and taken Meg back the next day to "find" them. Ben, seven at the time, had understood at once; but had gone along with the deception, not wishing to spoil Meg's obvious enjoyment of the game. And when his father had suggested he rewrite his great-grandfather's book on shells to serve the deception, Ben had leaped at the opportunity. That volume now rested on the shelves in place of the original, a clever, subtle parody of it. Now he, in his turn, carried on his father's game. Only two days ago he had scattered these shells that lay now on the cloth.

Seagulls called lazily, high overhead. He looked up, shielding his eyes, then looked back at Meg. Her eyes were closed, her body sprawled out on the rock like a young lioness. Her limbs and arms and face were heavily tanned, almost brown against the pure white of her shorts and vest. Her dark hair lay in thick long curls against the sun-bleached rock. His eyes, however, were drawn continually to the fullness of her breasts beneath the cloth, to the suggestive curve of leg and hip and groin, the rounded perfection of her shoulders, the silken smoothness of her neck, the strange nakedness of her toes. He shivered and looked away, disturbed by the sudden turn of his thoughts. ... • , So familiar she was, and yet, suddenly, so strange.

"What are you thinking?" she asked softly, almost somnolently. The wind blew gently, mild, warm against his cheek and aim, then subsided. For a while he listened to the gentle slosh of the waves as they broke on the far side of the great mound of rock.

Meg pulled herself up onto one elbow and looked across at him. As ever, she was smiling. "Well? Cat got your tongue?"

He returned her smile. "You forget. There are no cats."

She shook her head. "You're wrong. Daddy promised me he'd bring one back this time."

"Ah," he nodded, but said nothing of what he was thinking. Another game. Extending the illusion. If their father brought a cat back with him, it too would be a copy—GenSyn, most likely—because the Han had killed all the real cats long ago.

"What are you going to call him?" She met his eyes teasingly. "Zarathustra, I thought."

He did not rise to her bait. Zarathustra was Nietzsche's poet-philosopher, the scathingly bitter loner who had come down from his mountain hermitage to tell the world that God was dead.

"A good name. Especially for a cat. They're said to be highly independent." She was watching him expectantly. Seeing it, he laughed. "You'll have to wait, Meg. Tomorrow, I promise you. I'll reveal everything then."

Even the tiny pout she made—so much a part of the young girl he had known all his life—was somehow different today. Transformed—strangely, surprisingly erotic.

"Shells . . ." he said, trying to take his mind from her. "Have you ever thought how like memory they are?"

"Never," she said, laughing, making him think for a moment she had noticed something in his face.

He met her eyes challengingly. "No. Think about it, Meg. Don't most people seal off their pasts behind them stage by stage, just as a mollusk outgrows its shell, sealing the old compartment off behind it?"

She smiled at him, then lay down again, closing her eyes. "Not you. You've said it yourself. It's all still there. Accessible. All you have to do is chip away the rock and there it is, preserved."

"Yes, but there's a likeness even so. That sense of things being embedded that I was talking of. You see, parts of my past are compartmentalized. 1 can remember what's in them, but I can't somehow return to them. I can't feel what it was like to be myself back then."

She opened one eye lazily. "And you want to?"

He stared back at her fiercely. "Yes. More than anything. I want to capture what it felt like. To save it, somehow."

"Hmmm . . ." Her eye was closed again.

"That's it, you see. I want to get inside the shell. To feel what it was like to be there before it was all sealed off to me. Do you understand that?"

"It sounds like pure nostalgia."

He laughed, but bis laughter was just a little too sharp. "Maybe . . . but I don't think so."

She seemed wholly relaxed now, as if asleep, her breasts rising and falling slowly. He watched her for a while, disturbed once more by the strength of what he felt. Then he lay down and, following her example, closed his eyes, dozing in the warm sun.

When he woke the sun had moved further down the sky. The shadow of the Wall had stretched to the foot of the rocks beneath them and the tide had almost filled the tiny cove, cutting them off. They would have to wade back. The heavy crash of a wave against the rocks behind him made him twist about sharply. As he turned a seagull cried out harshly close by, startling him. Then he realized Meg was gone.

He got to his feet anxiously. "Meg! Where are you?"

She answered him at once, her voice coming from beyond the huge tumble of rock, contesting with the crash of another wave. "I'm here!"

He climbed the rocks until he was at their summit. Meg was below him, to his left, crouched on a rock only a foot or so above the water, leaning forward, doing something.

"Meg! Come away! It's dangerous!"

He began to climb down. As he did so she turned and stood up straight. "It's okay. I was just—"

He saw her foot slip beneath her on the wet rock. Saw her reach out and steady herself, recovering her footing. And then the wave struck.

It was bigger than all the waves that had preceded it and broke much higher up the rocks, foaming and boiling, sending up a fine spray like glass splintering before some mighty hammer. It hit the big tooth-shaped rock to his right first, then surged along the line, roaring, buffeting the rocks in a frenzy of white water.

One moment Meg was there, the next she was gone, Ben saw the huge wave thrust her against the rocks, then she disappeared beneath the surface. When the water surged back there was no sign of her. "Meg!!!"

Ben pressed the emergency stud at his neck, then scrambled down the rocks and stood at the edge, ignoring the lesser wave that broke about his feet, peering down into the water, his face a mask of anguish, looking for some sign of her.

At first nothing. Nothing at all. Then . . . there¹. He threw himself forward into the water, thrusting his body down through the chill darkness toward her. Then he was kicking for the surface, one arm gripping her tightly.

Gasping, Ben broke surface some twenty feet out from the rocks and turned onto his back, cradling Meg against him, face up, her head against his neck.

At first the waves helped him, carrying him in toward the rocks, but then he realized what danger he was in. He turned his head and looked. As the wave ebbed, it revealed a sharp, uneven shelf of rock. If he let the waves carry them in, they might be dashed against that shelf. But what other option was there? If he tried to swim around the rocks and into the cove he would be swimming against the current and it would take too long. And he had little time if he was to save Meg. He would have to risk it.

He slowed himself in the water, trying to judge the rise and fall of the waves, then kicked out. The first wave took him halfway to the rocks. The second lifted them violently and carried them almost there.

Almost. The wave was beginning to ebb as he reached out with his left hand and gripped the ledge. As the water surged back a spear of pain jolted through his arm, making him cry out. Then he was falling, his body twisting round, his side banging painfully against the rock.

For a moment it felt as if his hand were being torn from his arm, but he held on, waiting for the water to return, his artificial fingers biting into the rock, Meg gripped tightly against him. And when it came he kicked out fiercely, forcing himself up onto the land, then scrambled backward, pushing desperately with his feet against the rock, away from the water, Meg a dead weight against him.

Ignoring the pain in his hand, he carried Meg up onto a ledge above the water and put her down, fear making his movements urgent. Her lips and the lobes of her ears were tinged with blue.

He tilted her head back, forcing her chin up, then pinched her nose shut with the finger and thumb of his left hand. Leaning over her, he sealed his lips about her open mouth and gave four quick, full breaths.

Ben moved his head back and checked the pulse at her neck. Her heart was still beating. He watched her chest fall, then, leaning forward again, breathed into her mouth, then, three seconds later, once more.

Meg shuddered, then began to gag. Quickly he turned her head, allowing her to bring up seawater and the part-digested sandwich she had eaten only an hour before. Clearing her mouth with his ringers, he tilted her head back again and blew another breath into her, then turned her head again as she gagged a second time. But she was breathing now. Her chest rose and fell, then rose again. Her eyelids fluttered.

Carefully, he turned her over, onto her front, bending her arm and leg to support the lower body, then tilted her chin back to keep the airway open. Her breathing was more normal now, the color returning to her lips.

Ben sat back on his heels, taking a deep breath. She had almost died. His darling Meg had almost died. He shuddered, then felt a faint tremor pass through him like an aftershock. Gods! For a moment he closed his eyes, feeling a strange giddiness, then opened them again and put his hand down to steady himself.

Below him another wave broke heavily against the rocks, throwing up a fine spray. The tide was still rising. Soon they would be cut off completely. Ben looked about him, noting from the length of the shadows how late it was. They had slept too long. He would have to carry her across, and he would have to do it now.

He took a deep breath, preparing himself, then put his arms beneath her and picked her up, turning her over and cradling her, tilting her head back against his upper arm. Then he began to climb, picking his way carefully across the mound of rocks and down, into shadow.

The water was almost waist deep and for the first twenty or thirty feet he lifted Meg up above it, afraid to let the chill get at her again. Then he was carrying her through horseheads of spume little more than knee deep and up onto the shingle.

He set her down on the shingle close to where they had left their sandals. She was still unconscious, but there was color in her cheeks now and a reassuring regularity to her breathing. He looked about him but there was nothing warm to lay over her, nothing to give her to help her body counter the shock it would be feeling.

He hesitated a moment; then, knowing there was nothing else to be done before help arrived, he lay down beside her on the shingle and held her close to him, letting the warmth of his body comfort her.

MEG WOKE before the dawn, her whole body tensed, shivering, remembering what had happened. She lay there, breathing deeply, calming herself, staring through the darkness at the far wall where her collection of shells lay in its glass case. She could see nothing, but she knew it was there—conch and cowrie, murex and auger, chambered nautilus and spotted babylon, red mitre and giant chiragra—each treasured and familiar, yet different now; no longer so important to her. She recalled what Ben had said about shells and memory, sealed chambers and growth, and knew she had missed something. He had been trying to say something to her; to seed an idea in her mind. But what?

She reached up, touching the lump on the side of her head gingerly, examining it with her fingers. It was still tender, but it no longer ached. The cut had been superficial and the wound had already dried. She had been lucky. Very lucky.

She sat up, yawning, then became still. There was a vague rustling, then the noise of a window being raised in Ben's room. For a moment she sat there, listening. Then she got up, pulled on her robe and went softly down the passage to his room. Ben was standing at the window, naked, leaning across the sill, staring out into the darkness.

Meg went to him and stood at his side, her hand on the small of his back, looking with him, trying to see what he was seeing. But to her it was only darkness. Her vision was undirected, uninformed.

She felt him shiver and turned her head to look into his face. He was smiling, his eyes bright with some knowledge she had been denied.

"It has something to do with this," he said softly, looking back at her. "With dark and light and their simple interaction. With the sunlight and its absence. So simple that we've nearly always overlooked it. It's there in the Tao, of course, but it's more than a philosophy—more than simply a way of looking at things—-it's the very fabric of reality."

He shivered, then smiled at her. "Anyway . . . how are you?"

"I'm fine," she answered in a whisper.

She had a sudden sense of him. Not of his words, of the all-too-simple thing he'd said, but of his presence there beside her. Her hand still lay there on the firm, warm flesh of his back, pressing softly, almost unnoticed against his skin. She could feel his living pulse.

He was still looking at her, his eyes puzzling at something in her face. She looked down at the place where her hand rested against his back, feeling a strange connective flow, stronger than touch, aware of him standing there, watching her; of the tautness, the lean muscularity of his body.

She had never felt this before. Never felt so strange, so conscious of her own physical being, there, in proximity to his own. His nakedness disturbed her and fascinated her, making her take a long slow breath, as if breathing were suddenly hard.

As he turned toward her, her hand slipped across the flesh of his back until it rested against his hip. She shivered, watching his face, his eyes, surprised by the need she found in them.

She closed her eyes, feeling his fingers on her neck, moving down to gently stroke her shoulders. For a moment she felt consciousness slipping, then caught herself, steadying herself against him. Her fingers rested against the smooth channels of his groin, the coarse hair of his sex tickling the knuckles of her thumbs.

She looked down at him and saw how fierce and proud he stood for her. Without thinking she let her right hand move down and brush against his sex.

"Meg . . ." It was a low, desirous sound. His hands moved down her body, lifting her nightgown at the waist until his hands held her naked hips, his fingers gently caressing the soft smoothness of her flesh. She closed her eyes again, wanting him to go further, to push down and touch her, there where she ached for him.

"Meg . . . ?"

She opened her eyes, seeing at once the strange mixture of fear and hurt, confusion and desire in his eyes.

"It's all right. . ." she whispered, drawing him to her, reassuring him. She led him to the bed and lay there, letting him take the gown from her.

It hurt. For all his gentleness, his care; it hurt to take him inside her. And then the pain eased and she found she was crying, saying his name over and over, softly, breathlessly, as he moved against her. She responded eagerly, pressing up against him again and again until his movements told her he was coming. Trembling, she held him tighter, pulling him down into her, her hands gripping his buttocks, wanting him to spill his seed inside her. Then, as his whole body convulsed, she gasped, a wave of pure, almost painful pleasure washing over her. For a time she lapsed from consciousness; then, with a tiny shudder, she opened her eyes again. They lay there, brother and sister, naked on the bloodied bed, their arms about each other. Ben slept, his chest rising and falling slowly while she watched its movement closely. She looked at his face, at his long dark lashes, his fine, straight nose and firm, full lips. A face the mirror of her own. Narcissistically, she traced the shape of his lips with her fingers, then let her hand rest on his neck, feeling the pulse there.