The Broken Wheel

The look of him reminded her of something in Nietzsche, from the section in the Zarathustra called "The Dance Song." She said the words softly, tenderly, her voice almost a whisper.

To be sure, I am a forest and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness will find rosebowers too under my cypresses.

And he will surely find too the little god whom girls love best: he lies beside the fountain, still, with his eyes closed.

She shivered and looked down the length of their bodies, studying the differences that gender made between them. The fullness of her breasts and hips, the slenderness of his. The strangeness of his penis, so very different in rest, so sweet and harmless now; all the brutality, the lovely strength of it dissipated.

She felt a warmth, an achingly sweet tenderness rise up in her, looking at him, seeing how vulnerable he was in sleep. Unguarded and open. A different creature from his waking self. She wanted to kiss him there and wake that tiny bud, making it flower splendidly once more.

Meg closed her eyes and shivered. She knew what they had done. But there was no shame in her, no regret.

She loved him. It was quite simple. Sisters should love their brothers. But her love for him was different in kind. She loved him with more than a simple, sisterly devotion. For a long time she had loved him like this, wholly, without barriers.

And now he knew.

She got up, careful not to disturb him, and put on her gown. For a moment longer she stood there, looking down at his sleeping, perfect form; then she left him, returning to her room.

And as she lay there, her eyes closed, drifting into sleep, her left hand pressed softly against her sex, as if it were his.

"How's my invalid?"

Beth Shepherd set the tray down on the floor, then went to the window and pulled back the curtains, letting the summer sunlight spill into the room.

Meg opened her eyes slowly, smiling. "I'm fine. Really I am."

Beth sat on the bed beside her daughter and parted her hair, examining the wound. "Hmm. It looks all right. A nice clean cut, anyway." For a moment she held her hand to Meg's brow, then, satisfied that she wasn't feverish, she smiled and began to stroke her daughter's hair.

"I'm sorry . . ." Meg began, but her mother shook her head.

"Ben's told me what happened. It was an accident, that's all. You'll know better in future, won't you?"

Meg nodded. "If it weren't for Ben . . ."

Beth's fingers hesitated, then continued to comb Meg's thick, dark hair. "I'd say that made you even, wouldn't you? A life for a life."

Meg looked up at her, then away. "No. It was different. Totally different. He risked himself. He could have died."

"Maybe. But would you have done less?"

Meg hesitated, then answered quietly. "I guess not." She shivered and looked across at the glass case that held her shells. "You know, I can't imagine what it would be like here without Ben."

Beth smiled. "Nor I. But anyway, have your breakfast. That's if you feel like eating."

Meg laughed. "I'm ravenous, and it smells delicious."

Beth helped Meg sit up, plumping pillows behind her, then took the tray from the floor and set it down on her lap. There were grapefruit and pancakes, fresh orange and coffee, two thick slices of buttered toast and a small pot of honey.

Meg ate heartily, watched by her mother. When she was finished, Beth clapped her hands and laughed. "Goodness, Meg! You should fall in the water more often if it gives you an appetite like that!"

Meg sighed and lay back against the pillows, letting her mother take the tray from her and set it aside. Beth turned back to her, smiling. "Well? Are you staying in bed, or do you want to get up?"

Meg looked down, embarrassed. "I want to talk." "Okay. What about?"

"About you, and Father. About how you met and fell in love." Beth laughed, surprised. "Goodness! What brings this on?" Meg colored slightly. "Nothing. It's just that I realized I didn't know." "Well... all right. I'll tell you." She took a deep breath, then began. "It was like this. When I was eighteen I was a pianist. I played all the great halls of the world, performing before the very highest of First Level society—the Supernal, as they call themselves. And then, one day, I was asked to play before the T'ang and his court." "That must have been exciting."

"Very." She took her daughter's hand and squeezed it gently. "Anyway, that night, after the performance, everyone was telling me how well I'd played, but I was angry with myself. I had played badly. Not poorly, but by my own standards I had let myself down. And before the T'ang of all people. It seemed that only your father sensed something was wrong. It was he, I later found out, who had arranged the whole affair. He had seen me perform before and knew what I was capable of.

"Well. After the reception he took me aside and asked me if I'd been nervous. I had, of course. It's not every day that an eighteen-year-old is called to perform before one of the Seven. But that wasn't an excuse. I told him how ashamed I was at having let the T'ang down; and to my surprise and chagrin, he agreed with me. Right there and then he took me into the T'ang's own quarters and asking Li Shai Tung's forgiveness for intruding, made me sit at the piano again and play. 'Your best, this time, Elizabeth,' he said. 'Show the T'ang why I boasted of you.' And I did. And this time, with just your father and the T'ang listening, I played better than I'd ever played in my life."

"What did you play? Can you remember?"

Her mother smiled, looking off into the distance. "Yes. It was Beethoven's Sonata in F Minor, the Appassionato.. It was only when I had finished that I realized I had just committed a capital offense."

Meg's mouth fell open. "Gods! Of course! It's a prohibited piece, isn't it? Like all of Beethoven's work! But what did the T'ang do?"

Beth looked down at her daughter and ruffled her hair. "He clapped. He stood up and applauded me. Then he turned to your father and said, 'I don't know what that was, Hal, and I don't want to know, but you were right to bring the girl back. She's in a class of her own.' " "And?"

"And for a year, nothing. I thought your father had forgotten me, though I often thought of him and of what he had done for me that evening. But then, out of the blue, I received an invitation from him, asking me to come and visit the Domain."

Meg sat forward eagerly. "And that's when it all happened?"

Beth shook her head. "No. Not at all. I was flattered, naturally, but such a request was impossible to comply with. I was only nineteen. It was six years before I would come of age, and my mother and father would have forbidden me to go even if I had asked them."

"So what did you do?"

Beth laughed. "I did the only thing I could. 1 sent him an invitation to my next concert."

"And he came?"

"No. What happened next was strange. My father called on me. I hadn't seen him in over six months; and then, the day after I'd sent the note to Hal, there was my father, larger than life, telling me that he'd arranged a husband for me."

Meg's mouth fell open a second time. "A husband?"

"Yes. The son of an old friend of his. A rich young buck with no talent and as little intelligence."

Meg clutched her mother's hands tightly. "And you said no. You told your father you were in love with Hal Shepherd and wanted to marry him. Is that right?"

Beth laughed. "Gods, no. I had no say in it. Anyway, I wasn't in love with your father then. I quite liked him. He was handsome and intelligent, and I felt a kind of , . . affinity with him. But beyond that nothing. Not then, anyway. What I didn't realize, however, was that your father had fallen in love with me. It seems he had spent that whole year trying to forget me, but when he heard about my engagement, he went mad and challenged my intended to a duel."

Meg blinked. "He did what?"

"Yes," Beth laughed delightedly. "An old-fashioned duel, with swords."

"And?" Meg's eyes were big and round.

"Well. . . My father was horrified, naturally. My fiance wanted to fight, but Hal had something of a reputation as a swordsman and my father was certain he would kill my future husband. He asked Hal to call on him to try to sort things out."

"And they came to an arrangement?"

Beth leaned forward. "Not straight away. Though that's not the story my father told. You see, I listened secretly from the next room when they met. My father was angry at first. 'You can't have her,' he said. 'If you kill this man, I'll arrange a marriage with another.' 'Then I'll kill him, too!' Hal said. My father was taken aback. 'And I'll find another suitor. You can't kill them all.' But Hal was determined. His voice rang out defiantly. 'If I have to, I'll kill every last man in Chung Kuo! Don't you see? I want your daughter.' "

Beth laughed, then sat back, her face suddenly more thoughtful, her eyes gazing back in time. Then, more quietly. "Gods, Meg. You don't know how thrilling it is to be wanted like that."

Meg watched her mother a moment longer, then looked down, giving a small shudder. "Yes . . . And your father gave in to Hal?"

"Gods, no. He was a stubborn man. And a mercenary one. You see, he'd found out how much Hal was worth by then. All this was a kind of play-acting, you understand, to put up the price."

Meg frowned, not understanding. ^;

"He wanted a dowry. Payment for me."

Meg made a small noise of astonishment.

"Yes. And he got it, too. He threatened to stop Hal from marrying me until I was twenty-five unless he paid what he asked."

"And did he?"

"Yes. Twice what my father asked, in fact."

"Why?"

Beth's smile widened. "Because, Hal said, my father didn't know the half of what he had given life to."

Meg was silent for a while, considering. Then she looked up at her mother again.

"Did you hate your father?"

Beth hesitated, a sadness in her face. "I didn't know him well enough to hate him, Meg. But what I knew of him 1 didn't like. He was a little man, for all his talent. Not like Hal." She shook her head gently, a faint smile returning to the corners of her mouth. "No, not like your father at all."

"Where's Ben?" Meg asked, interrupting her mother's reverie.

"Downstairs. He's been up hours, working. He brought a lot of equipment up from the basement and set it up in the living room."

Meg frowned. "What's he up to?"

Beth shook her head. "I don't know. Fulfilling a promise, he said. He said you'd understand."

"Ah . . ." Shells, she thought. It has to do with sheik.

And memory.

BEN SAT in a harness at the piano, the dummy cage behind him, its morph mimicking his stance. A single thin cord of conduit linked him to the morph. Across the room, a trivee spider crouched, its program searching for discrepancies of movement between Ben and the morph. Meg sat down beside the spider, silent, watching.

A transparent casing covered the back of Ben's head, attached to the narrow horseshoe collar about his neck. Within the casing a web of fine cilia made it seem that Ben's blond hair was streaked with silver. These were direct implants, more than sixty in all, monitoring brain activity.

Two further cords, finer than the link, led down from the ends of the collar to Ben's hands, taped to his arms every few inches. Further hair-fine wires covered Ben's semi-naked body, but the eye was drawn to the hands.

Fine, flexible links of ice formed crystalline gloves that fitted like a second skin about his hands. Sensors on their inner surfaces registered muscular movement and temperature changes.

Tiny pads were placed all over Ben's body, measuring his responses and feeding the information back into the collar.

As he turned to face Meg, the morph turned, faceless and yet familiar in its gestures, its left hand, like Ben's, upon its thigh, the fingers splayed slightly.

Meg found the duplication frightening—deeply threatening—but said nothing. The piano keyboard, she noted, was normal except in one respect. Every key was black.

"Call Mother in, Meg. She'd like to hear this."

The morph was faceless, dumb; but in a transparent box at its feet was a separate facial unit—no more than the unfleshed suggestion of a face, the musculature replaced by fine wiring. As Ben spoke, so the half-formed face made the ghost-movements of speech, its lips and eyes a perfect copy of Ben's own.

Meg did as she was told, bringing her mother from the sunlight of the kitchen into the shadows of the living room. Beth Shepherd sat beside her daughter, wiping her hands on her apron, attentive to her son.

He began.

His hands flashed over the keys, his fingers living jewels, coaxing a strange, wistful, complex music from the ancient instrument. A new sound from the old keys.

When he had finished, there was a moment's intense silence, then his mother stood and walked across to him. "What was that, Ben? I've never heard its like. It was . . ." She laughed, incredulous, delighted. "And I presumed to think that I could teach you something!"

"I wrote it," he said simply. "Last night, while you were all asleep."

Ben closed his eyes, letting the dissonances form again in his memory. Long chordal structures of complex dissonances, overlapping and repeating, twisting about each other like the intricate threads of life, the long chains of deox-yribonucleic acid. It was how he saw it. Not A and C and G Minor, but Adenine and Cytosine and Guanine. A complex, living structure.

A perfect mimicry of life.

The morph sat back, relaxing after its efforts, its chest rising and falling, its hands resting on its knees. In the box next to its feet the eyes in the face were closed, the lips barely parted, only a slight flaring of the nostrils indicating life.

Meg shuddered. She had never heard anything so beautiful, nor seen anything so horrible. It was as if Ben were being played. The morph, at its dummy keyboard, seemed far from being the passive recipient of instructions. A strange power emanated from the lifeless thing, making Ben's control of things seem suddenly illusory: the game of some greater, more powerful being, standing unseen behind the painted props.

So this was what Ben had been working on. A shiver of revulsion passed through her. And yet the beauty—the strange, overwhelming beauty of it. She shook her head, not understanding, then stood and went out into the kitchen, afraid for him.

BEN FOUND HER in the rose garden, her back to him, staring out across the bay. He went across and stood there, close by her, conscious more than ever of the naked form of her beneath the soft gauze dress she wore. Her legs were bare, her hair unbraided. The faintest scent of lavender hung about her. "What's up?" he asked softly. "Didn't you like it?"

She turned her head and gave a tight smile, then looked back. It was answer enough. It had offended her somehow.

He walked past her slowly, then stopped, his back to her, his left hand on his hip, his head tilted slightly to the left, his right hand at his neck, his whole body mimicking her stance. "What didn't you like?"

Normally she would have laughed, knowing he was ragging her, but this time it was different. He heard her sigh and turn away, and wondered, for a moment, if it was to do with what had happened in the night.

She took a step away, then turned back. He had turned to follow her. Now they stood there, face-to-face, a body's length separating them. "It was . . ." She dropped her eyes, as if embarrassed.

He caught his breath, moved by the sight of her. She might have died. And then he would never have known. He spoke softly, coaxingly, the way she so often spoke to him, drawing him out. "It was what?"

She met his eyes. "It was frightening." He saw her shiver. "I felt . . ." She hesitated, as if brought up against the edge of what she could freely say to him. This reticence was something new in her and unexpected, a result of the change in their relationship. Like something physical in the air between them. "Shall we walk? Along the shore?" She hesitated, then smiled faintly. "Okay."

He looked up. The sky was clouding over. "Come. Let's get our boots and coats. It looks like it might rain."

An hour later they were down at the high-water level, their heavy boots sinking into the mud, the sky overcast above them, the creek and the distant water meadows to their left. It was low tide and the mud stretched out to a central channel which meandered like an open vein cut into a dark cheek, glistening like oil whenever the sun broke through the clouds.

For a time they walked in silence, hand in hand, conscious of their new relationship. It felt strange, almost like waking to self-consciousness. Before there had been an intimacy, almost a singularity about them—a seamless continuity of shared experience. They had been a single cell, unbreached. But now? Now it was different. It was as if this new, purely physical intimacy had split that cell, beginning some ancient, inexorable process of division.

Perhaps it was unavoidable. Perhaps, being who they were, they had been fated to come to this. And yet...

It remained unstated, yet both felt an acute sense of loss. It was there, implicit in the silence, in the sighs each gave as they walked the shoreline.

Where the beach narrowed, they stopped and sat on a low, gently sloping table of gray rock, side by side, facing back toward the cottage. The flat expanse of mud lay to their right now; while to their left, no more than ten paces away, the steep, packed earth bank was almost twice their height, the thickly interwoven branches of the overhanging trees throwing the foot of the bank into an intense shade. It could not be seen from where they sat, but this stretch of the bank was partly bricked, the rotting timbers of an old construction poking here and there from the weathered surface. Here, four centuries before, French prisoners from the Napoleonic Wars had ended their days, some in moored hulks, some in the makeshift jails that had lined this side of the creek.

Ben thought of those men now. Tried to imagine their suffering, the feeling of homesickness they must have felt, abandoned in a foreign land. But there was something missing in him—some lack of pure experience—that made it hard for him to put himself in their place. He did not know how it felt to be away from home. Here was home and he had always been here. And there, in that lack of knowledge, lay the weakness in his art.

It had begun long before last night. Long before Meg had come to him. And yet last night had been a catalyst—a clarification of all he had been feeling.

He thought of the words his father had quoted back at him and knew they were right. Ultimately, no one can extract from things, books included, more than he already knows. What one has no access to through experience one has no ear for.

It was so. For him, at least, what Nietzsche had said was true. And he had no access. Not here.

He was restless. He had been restless for the past twelve months. He realized that now. It had needed something like this to bring it into focus for him. But now he knew. He had to get out.

Even before last night he had been thinking of going to College in the City. To Oxford, maybe, or the Technical School at Strasbourg Canton. But he had been thinking of it only as the natural path for such as he; as a mere furthering of his education. Now, however, he knew there was more to it than that. He needed to see life. To experience life fully, at all its levels. Here he had come so far, but the valley had grown too small for him, too confined. He needed something more— something other—than what was here in the Domain.

"If 1 were to . . ." he began, turning to face Meg, then fell silent, for at the same time she had turned her head and begun to speak to him.

They laughed, embarrassed. It had never happened before. They had always known instinctively when the other was about to speak. But this ... it was like being strangers.

Meg shivered, then bowed her head slightly, signaling he should speak, afraid to repeat that moment of awkwardness.

Ben watched her a moment. Abruptly, he stood and took three paces, then turned and looked back at her. She was looking up at him from beneath the dark fall of her hair.

"I've got to leave here, Meg."

He saw at once how surprised she was; how much it meant to her. There was a momentary widening of her eyes, the slightest parting of her lips, then she lowered her head. "Ah . . ."

He was silent, watching her. But as he made to speak again, she looked up suddenly, the hurt and anger in her eyes unexpected.

"Why? Is it because of last night?"

He sighed and shook his head. "It has nothing to do with us, Meg. It's me. I feel constrained here. Boxed in. It feels like I've outgrown this place. Used it up."

As he spoke he stared away from her at the creek, the surrounding hills, the small, white-painted cottages scattered among the trees. Overhead, the sky was a lid of ashen gray.

"And I have to grow. It's how I am." He looked at her fiercely, defiantly. "I'll die if I stay here much longer, Meg. Can't you see that?"

She shook her head, her voice passionate with disagreement. "It's not so, Ben. You've said it yourself. It's a smaller world in there. You talk of feeling boxed in, here, in the Domain. But you're wrong. That's where it's really boxed in. Not here. We're outside of all that. Free of it."

He laughed strangely, then turned aside. "Maybe. But I have to find that out. For myself." He looked back at her. "It's like that business with memory. I thought I knew it all, but I didn't. I was wrong, Meg. I'd assumed too much. So now I've got to find out. Now. While I still can."

Her eyes had followed every movement in his face, noting the intense restlessness there. Now they looked down, away from his. "Then I don't understand you, Ben. There's no hurry. Surely there's no hurry?"

"Ah, but there is."

She looked up in time to see him shrug and turn away, looking out across the mud toward the City.

The City. It was a constant in their lives. Wherever they looked, unless it was to sea, that flat, unfeatured whiteness defined the limits of their world, like a frame about a picture or the edge of some huge encroaching glacier. They had schooled themselves not to see it. But today, with the sky pressed low and featureless above them, it was difficult not to see it as Ben saw it—as a box, containing them.

"Maybe . . ." she said, under her breath. But the very thought of him leaving chilled her to the bone.

He turned, looking back at her. "What were you looking for?"

She frowned. "1 don't follow you."

"Before the wave struck. You were about to tell me something. You'd seen something, hadn't you?"

She felt a sudden coldness on the back of her hand and looked. It was a spot of rain. She brushed at it, then looked back at her brother.

"It was a shell. One I'd never seen before. It was attached to the rock but I couldn't free it with my fingers. It was like it was glued there. A strange, ugly-looking shell, hard and ridged, shaped like a nomad's tent."

More spots of rain fell, distinct and heavy. Ben looked up at the sky, then back at her. "We'd best get back. It's going to fall down."

She went to him and took his hand.

"Go," she said. "But not yet. Not just yet."

He leaned forward, kissing her brow, then moved back, looking at her, his dark green eyes seeing nothing but her for that brief moment. "1 love you, Megs. Understand that. But I can't help what I am. I have to go. If I don't. . ."

She gave the smallest nod. "I know. Really. 1 understand."

"Good." This time his lips touched hers gently, then drew away.

She shivered and leaned forward, wanting to kiss him once again, but just then the clouds burst overhead and the rain began to come down heavily, pocking the mud about their feet, soaking their hair and faces in seconds.

"Christ!" he said, raising his voice against the hard, drumming sound of the rain. For a moment neither of them moved; then Meg turned and pointing to the bank, yelled back at him.

"There! Under the trees!"

Ben shook his head. "No. Come on! There's half a day of rain up there. Let's get back!" He took her hands, tugging at her, then turned and, letting her hands fall from his, began to run back along the shore toward the cottage. She caught up with him and ran beside him, laughing now, sharing his enjoyment of the downpour, knowing—suddenly knowing without doubt—that just as he had to go, so he would be compelled to return. In time. When he had found what he was looking for.

Suddenly he stopped and, laughing, throwing his hands up toward the sky, turned his eyes on her again. "It's beautiful!" he shouted. "It's bloody beautiful!"

"I know!" she answered, looking past him at the bay, the tree-covered hillsides misted by the downpour, the dour-looking cottages on the slope before them.

Yes, she thought. You'll miss this in the City. There it never rains. Never in ten thousand years.

CHAPTER SIX

Compulsions

THAT NIGHT he dreamed.

He was floating above a desert, high up, the jet-black lavatic sands stretching off to the horizon on every side. Tall spirals of dust moved slowly across the giant plain, like fluted pillars linking heaven and earth. A cold wind blew. Over all, a black sun sat like a sunken eye in a sky of bloodied red.

He had come here from dead lands, deserted lands, where temples to forgotten gods lay in ruins, open to the sky; had drifted over vast mountain ranges, their peaks a uniform black, the purest black he'd ever seen, untouched by snow or ice; had glided over plains of dark, fused glass, where the image of his small, compacted self flew like a Doppelganger under him, soaring to meet him when he fell, falling as he rose. And now he was here, in this empty land, where color ended and silence was a wall within the skull.

Time passed. Then, with a huge, almost animal shudder that shook the air about him, the sands beneath him parted, the great dunes rolling back, revealing the perfect smoothness of a lake, its red-tinged waters like a mirror.

He fell. Turning in the air, he made an arrow of himself, splitting the dark, oily surface cleanly. Down he went, the coal-black liquid smooth, unresistant, flowing about his body like cold fire.

Deep he went, so deep that his ears popped and bled. His lungs, like flowers, blossomed in the white cage of his chest, bursting, flooding his insides with a fiery hotness. For a moment the blackness was within, seeping into him through every pore; a barrier through which he must pass. Then he was through; freed from his normal, human self. And still he sank, like a spear of iron, down through the blackness; until there, ten miles beneath the surface, the depths were seared with brightness.

The lake's bed was white, like bone; clean and polished and flat, like something made by men. It glowed softly from beneath, as if another land—miraculous and filled, as bright as this was dark—lay on the far side of its hard, unyielding barrier.

He turned his eyes, drawn to something to his left. He swam toward it.

It was a stone. A dark, perfect circle of stone, larger than his palm. It had a soft, almost dusted surface. He touched it, finding it cool and hard. Then, as he watched, it seemed to melt and flow, the upper surface flattening, the thin edge crinkling. Now it was a shell, an oyster, its circumference split by a thin, uneven line of darkness.

His hand went to his waist; he took the scalpel from its tiny sheath, then slipped its edge between the plates. Slowly, reluctantly, they parted, like a moth's wings opening to the sun.

Inside was a pearl of darkness—a tiny egg so dark, so intensely black, that it seemed to draw all light into itself. He reached out to take it; but even as he closed his left hand about the pearl, he felt its coldness bum into his flesh then fall, like a drop of heaven's fire, onto the bed below.

Astonished, he held the hand up before his face and saw the perfect hole the pearl had made. He turned the hand. Right through. The pearl had passed right through.

He shivered. And then the pain came back, like nothing he had ever experienced.

Ben woke and sat upright, beaded in sweat, his left hand held tightly in his right, the pain from it quite real. He stared at it, expecting to see a tiny hole burned through from front to back, but there was no outward sign of what was wrong. It spasmed again, making him cry out, the pain unbelievable—worse than the worst cramp he had ever had.

"Shit!" he said under his breath, annoyed at himself for his weakness. Control the pain, he thought. Learn from it. He gritted his teeth and looked at the timer on the wall beside his bed. It was just after five.

He must have damaged the hand, getting Meg out of the water.

When the pain subsided he got up, cradling the hand against his chest, and began to dress. It was more difficult than he had imagined, for the slightest awkward movement of the hand would put it into spasm again, taking his breath. But eventually it was done and quietly he made his way out and down the passageway.

The door to Meg's room was open. Careful not to wake her, he looked inside. Her bed was to the left against the far wall, the window just above her head. She lay on her stomach, her hair covering her face, her shoulders naked in the shadow, her right arm bent above the covers. The curtains were drawn, the room in partial darkness; but a small gap high up let in a fragment of the early morning sun, a narrow bar of golden light. It traced a contoured line across the covers and up the wall, revealing part of her upper arm. He stared at it a moment, oblivious of the dull pain in his hand, seeing how soft her flesh seemed in this light.

For a moment he hesitated, wondering if he should wake her.

And if he did?

He shivered, remembering how she had come to him in the night, and felt that same strong stirring of desire. Though it disturbed him, he could not lie to himself. He wanted her. More now than before. Wanted to kiss the softness of her neck and see her turn, warm and smiling, and take him in her arms.

The shiver that ran up his spine was like the feeling he had when listening to an exquisite piece of music or on first viewing a perfect work of art. But how so? he wondered. Or was all art grounded in desire?

The fingers of his damaged hand clenched again. He took a sharp intake of breath against the pain and leaned his shoulder against the doorpost. It was the worst yet and left him feeling cold and weak, his brow beaded with sweat. He would have to have it seen to today. This morning, if possible. But first there was something he must do.

He went down and unlatched the door that led into the garden. Outside the air was sharp, fresh, the sky clear after the rain. Long shadows lay across the glittering, dew-soaked grass, exaggerating every hump and hollow, making the ground seem rutted and uneven. The roses were beaded with dew, the trestle table dark and wet.

He was still a moment, listening to the call of birds in the eaves above him and in the trees down by the water. It was strange how that sound seemed always not to breach but to emphasize the underlying silence.

The pain came again, more bearable this time. He braced himself against it, then, when it was fading, lifted the injured hand to his face. There was the faintest scent of burning. A sweet, quite pleasant scent. He pressed it against his cheek. It was warm. Unnaturally warm.

Cradling the hand against his chest, he stared out across the lawn toward the shadowed bay. The tide was high. Sunlight lay in the trees on the far side of the water, creeping slowly toward the waterline.

He smiled. This much never changed: each day created new, light flying out from everything, three hundred meters in a millionth of a second, off on its journey to infinity.

He went down, across the lawn, and onto the narrow gravel path that led, by way of an old, rickety gate, into the meadows. The grass here was knee high, uncut since his father had left three months earlier, the tall stems richly green and tufted. He waded out into that sea of grass, ignoring the path that cut down to the meandering creek, making for the Wall.

There, at the foot of the Wall, he stopped, balanced at the end of a long rib of rock that protruded above the surrounding marshland. The Wall was an overpowering presence here, the featureless whiteness of its two li height making a perfect geometric turn of 120 degrees toward the southeast. It was like being in the corner of a giants playbox, the shadow of the Wall so deep it seemed almost night. Even so, he could make out the great circle of the Seal quite clearly, there, at the bottom of the Wall, no more than thirty paces distant.

Ben squatted and looked about him. Here memory was dense. Images clustered about him like restless ghosts. He had only to close his eyes to summon them back. There, off to his left, he could see the dead rabbit, sunk into the grass. And there, just beyond it, his father, less than a year ago, looking back toward him but pointing at the Seal, explaining the new policy the Seven had drawn up for dealing with incursions from the Clay. He turned his head. To his right he could see Meg, a hundred, no, a thousand times, smiling or thoughtful, standing and sitting, facing toward him or away, running through the grass or simply standing by the creek, looking outward at the distant hills. Meg as a child, a girl, a woman. Countless images of her. All stored, hoarded in his mind. And for what? Why such endless duplication of events?

He shuddered, then turned, looking back at the cottage, thinking how ageless it seemed in this early morning light. He looked down, then rubbed the back of his left hand with his right, massaging it. It felt better now, more relaxed, which made him think it was some form of cramp. But did machines get cramp?

He breathed deeply, then laughed. And what if we're all machines? What if we're merely programmed to think otherwise?

Then the answer would be yes, machines get cramp.

It was strange, that feeling of compulsion he had had to come here. Overpowering, like his desire for Meg. It frightened him. And even when it was purged, it left him feeling less in control of himself than he had ever been. Part of that, of course, was the drugs—or the absence of them. It was over a week now since he had last taken them. But it was more than that. He was changing. He could feel it in himself. But into what? And for what purpose?

He stared at the Seal a moment longer, then looked away, disturbed. It was like in his dream. The bottom of the lake: that had been the Wall. He had sunk through the darkness to confront the Wall.

And?

He shivered. No, he didn't understand it yet. Perhaps, being what he was— schizophrenic—he couldn't understand it. Not from where he was, anyway. Not from the inside. But if he passed through?

He stared at the Wall intently, then looked down. And if his father said no? If his father said he couldn't go to College?

Ben got to his feet, turning his back upon the Wall. If Hal said no he would defy him. He would do it anyway.

"Again, Meg. And this time try to relax a bit. Your fingers are too tense. Stretch them gently. Let them feel for the notes. Accuracy is less important than feeling at this stage. Accuracy will come, but the feeling has to be there from the start."

Meg was sitting beside her mother at the piano. It was just after nine and they had been practicing for more than an hour already, but she was determined to master the phrase—to have something to show Ben when he returned.

She began again. This time it seemed to flow better. She missed two notes and one of the chords was badly shaped; yet for all its flaws, it sounded much more like the phrase her mother had played than before. She turned and saw Beth was smiling.

"Good, Meg. Much better. Try it again. This time a little slower."

She did as she was bid, leaning forward over the keys. This time it was note-perfect and she sat back, pleased with herself, feeling a genuine sense of achievement. It was only a small thing, of course—nothing like Ben's achievement—yet it was a start: the first step in her attempt to keep up with him.

She looked around again. Her mother was watching her strangely.

"What is it?"

Beth took her hand. "You're a good child, Meg. You know that? Nothing comes easy to you. Not like Ben. But you work at it. You work hard. And you never get disheartened. I've watched you labor at something for weeks, then seen Ben come along and master it in a few moments. And always—without fail—you've been delighted for him. Not envious, as some might be. Nor bitter. And that's . . ." She laughed. "Well, it's remarkable. And I love you for it."

Meg looked down. "He needs someone."

"Yes. He does, doesn't he?"

"I mean . . ." Meg placed her free hand gently on the keys, making no sound. "It must be difficult being as he is. Being so alone."

"Alone? I don't follow you, Meg."

"Like Zarathustra, up in his cave on the mountainside. Up where the air is rarefied, and few venture. Only with Ben, the mountain, the cave, are in his head."

Beth nodded thoughtfully. "He's certainly different."

"That's what I mean. It's his difference that makes him alone. Even if there were a hundred thousand people here, in the Domain, he would be separate from them all. Cut off by what he is. That's why I have to make the effort. To try to reach him where he is. To try to understand what he is and what he needs."

Beth looked at her daughter, surprised. "Why?"

"Because he's Ben. And because I love him."

She reached out and gently brushed Meg's cheek with her knuckles. "That's nice. But you don't have to worry. Give him time. He'll find someone."

Meg looked away. Her mother didn't understand. There was no one else for Ben.

No one who would ever understand him a tenth as well. Not one in the whole of Chung Kuo.

"Do you want to play some more?"

Meg shook her head. "Not now. This afternoon, perhaps?"

"All right. Some breakfast, then?"

Meg smiled. "Yes. Why not?"

they WERE IN the kitchen, at the big scrubbed-pine table, their meal finished, when there were footsteps on the flagstones outside. The latch creaked, then the door swung outward. Ben stood in the doorway, looking in, his left arm held strangely at his side.

"That smells good."

His mother got up. "Sit down. I'll cook you something."

"Thanks. But not now." He looked at Meg. "Are you free, Megs? I need to talk."

Meg looked across at her mother. She had been about to help her with the washing. "Can I?"

Beth smiled and nodded. "Go on. I'll be all right."

Meg got up, taking her plate to the sink; then she turned back, facing him. "Where have you been . . . ?" She stopped, noticing how he was holding his left arm. "Ben? What have you done?"

He stared at her a moment, then looked toward his mother. "I've damaged the hand. I must have done it on the rocks." He held it out to her. "1 can barely use it. If I try to it goes into spasm."

Beth wiped her hands, then went to him. She took the hand carefully and studied it, Meg at her side, her face filled with concern.

"Well, there's no outward sign of damage. And it was working perfectly well yesterday."

Ben nodded. "Yes. But that stint at the piano probably didn't help it any."

"Does it hurt?" Meg asked, her eyes wide.

"It did when I woke up. But I've learned how not to set it off. I pretend the problem's higher up. Here." He tapped his left shoulder with his right hand. "I pretend the whole arm's dead. That way I'm not tempted to try to use the hand."

Beth placed his arm back against his side, then turned away, looking for something in the cupboards. "Have you notified anyone?"

He nodded. "Two hours ago, when I came in from the meadows. They're sending a man this afternoon."

She turned back, a triangle of white cloth between her hands. "Good. Well, for now I'll make a sling for you. That'll ease the strain of carrying it about."

He sat, letting his mother attend to him. Meg, meanwhile, stood beside him, her hand resting gently on his shoulder.

"Why was the keyboard black? I mean, totally black?"

He turned, looking up at her. "Why?"

Meg shrugged. "It's been playing on my mind, that's all. It just seemed . . . strange. Unnecessary."

Beth, kneeling before him, fastening the sling at his shoulder, looked up, interested in what he would say.

He looked away. "It's just that I find the old-style keyboard distracting. It preconditions thought; sets the mind into old patterns. But that all-black keyboard is only a transitional stage. A way of shaking free old associations. Ultimately I want to develop a brand new keyboard—one better suited to what I'm doing."

"There!" Beth tightened the knot, then stood up. "And what are you doing?"

Ben met her eyes candidly. "I don't know yet. Not the all of it, anyway." He stood, moving his shoulder slightly. "Thanks. That's much easier." Then he looked across at Meg. "Are you ready?"

She hesitated, wondering for a moment if she might persuade him to listen to the piano phrase she had learned that morning, then smiled and answered him softly. "Okay. Let's go."

IT WAS LATE morning, the sun high overhead, the air clear and fresh. They sat beneath the trees on the slope overlooking the bay, sunlight through the branches dappling the grass about them, sparkling on the water below. Above them, near the top of the hillside, obscured by a small copse of trees, was the ruined barn, preserved as it had been when their great-great-great grandfather, Amos, had been a boy.

For two hours they had rehashed the reasons why Ben should leave or stay. Until now it had been a reasonably amicable discussion, a clearing of the air, but things had changed. Now Meg sat there, her head turned away from her brother, angry with him.

"You're just pig stubborn! Did you know that, Ben? Stubborn as in stupid. It's not the time. Not new."

He answered her quietly, knowing he had hurt her. "Then when is the time? I have to do this. I feel I have to. And all the rest. . . that's just me rationalizing that feeling. It's the feeling—the instinct—that I trust."

She turned on him, her eyes flashing. "Instinct! Wasn't it you who said that instinct was just a straitjacket—the Great Creator's way of showing us whose fingers are really on the control buttons?"

He laughed, but she turned away from him. For once this was about something other than what he wanted. This was to do with Meg, with her needs.

"Don't make it hard, Megs. Please don't."

She shivered and stared outward, across the water, her eyes burning, her chin jutting defiantly. "Why ask me? You'll do what you want to anyway. Why torment me like this, when you know you've decided already what you're going to do?"

He watched her, admiring her, wanting to lean forward and kiss her neck, her shoulder. She was wearing a long nut-brown cotton dress that was drawn in below the breasts and buttoned above. The hem of it was gathered about her knees, exposing the tanned flesh of her naked calves. He looked down, studying her feet, noting the delicacy of the toes, the finely rounded nails. She was beautiful. Even her feet were beautiful. But she could not keep him here. Nothing could keep him. He must find himself. Maybe then he could return. But for now . . . "Don't chain me, Meg. Help me become myself. That's all I'm asking." She turned angrily, as if to say something, then looked down sharply, her hurt confusion written starkly on her face.

"1 want to help you, Ben. I really do. It's just. . ."

He hardened himself against her, against the pity he instinctively felt. She was his sister. His lover. There was no one in the world he was closer to and it was hard to hurt her like this, but hurt her he must, or lose sight of what he must become. In time she would understand this, but for now the ties of love blinded her to what was best. And not just for him, but for the two of them.

"Keep me here, Meg, and it'll die in me. It'll turn inward and fester. You know it will. And I'll blame you for that. Deep down I'll come to hate you for keeping me here. And I never want to hate you. Never."

She met his eyes, her own moist with unshed tears. Then she turned and came to him, holding him, careful not to hurt his damaged arm, her head laid warmly, softly, on his right shoulder.

"Well?" he said after a while. "Will you support me against Father?"

He noticed the slight change in her breathing. Then she moved back away from him, looking at him intently, as if reading something in his face. "You think he'll try to stop you?"

Ben nodded. "He'll make excuses. The uncertainty of the times. My age." "But what if he's right, Ben. What if it is too dangerous? What if you are too young?"

"Too young? I'm seventeen, Meg. Seventeen! And apart from that one visit to Tongjiang, I've never seen anything other than this; never been anywhere but here."

"And is that so bad?"

"Yes. Because there's more to life than this. Much more. There's a whole new world in there. One I've no real knowledge of. And I need to experience it. Not at secondhand, through a screen, but close up."

She looked down. "What you were saying, Ben, about me chaining you. I'd never do that. You know I wouldn't. And I can free you. But not in there. Not in the City." She raised her eyes. "This is our place. Right here, in the Domain. It's what we've been made for. Like the missing pieces of a puzzle." She paused, then, more earnestly: "We're not like them, Ben. We're different. Different in kind. Like aliens. You'll find that out."

"All part of Amos's great experiment, eh?"

"Maybe . . ." But it wasn't what she had meant. She was thinking less of genetic charts than of something deeper in their natures, some sense of connection with the earth that they had, and that others—cut off" by the walls and levels of the City—lacked. It was as if they were at the same time both more and less advanced as human beings: more primitive and yet more exalted spiritually. They were the bridge between heaven and earth, the link between the distant past and the far future. For them, therefore, the City was an irrelevancy—a wrong direction Man had taken—and for Ben to embrace it was simply foolish, a waste of his precious .time and talents.

Besides which, she needed him. Needed him as much—though he did not see it yet—as he needed her. It would break her heart to see him go.

"Is that all?" he asked, sensing she had more to say.

She answered him quietly, looking away past him as she spoke. "No. It's more than that. I worry about you. All this business with morphs and mimicry. I fear where it will take you."

"Ah . . ." He smiled and looked down, plucking a tall stem of grass and putting it to his mouth. "You know, Meg, in the past there was a school of thought that associated the artist with Satan. They argued that all art was blasphemy, an abrogation of the role of the Creator. They claimed that all artists set themselves up in place of God, making their tiny satanic palaces—their Pandemoniums—in mimicry of God's eternal City. They were wrong, of course, but in a sense it's true. All art is a kind of mimicry, an attempt to get closer to the meaning of things.

"Some so-called artists are less interested in understanding why things are as they are than in providing a showcase for their own egotism, but in general true art—art of the kind that sears you—is created from a desire to understand, not to replace. Mimicry, at that level, is a form of worship."

She laughed softly. "I thought you didn't believe in God."

"I don't. But I believe in the reality of all this that surrounds us. I believe in natural processes. In the death of stars and the cycle of the seasons. In the firing of the synapses and the inexorable decay of the flesh. In the dark and the light."

"And in the City, too?"

He smiled. "That, too, is a process; part of the natural flow of things, however 'unnatural' it might seem. The City is an expression of human intelligence, which, after all, is a natural thing. It's too easy to dismiss its artificiality as an antithesis to nature, when it really is an attempt to simplify and thus begin to understand the complexity of natural processes."

"And to control those processes."

"Yes, but there are levels of control. For instance, what controls us that makes us want to control other things? Is it all just genetics? And even if it is, what reason is there for that? We've been asking ourselves that question since DNA was first isolated, and we're still no closer to an answer."

She looked away sharply, as if suddenly tired of the conversation. "I don't know, Ben. It all seems suddenly so bleak. So dark."

Again he misread her comment, mistook its surface content for its deeper meaning. "Yes," he said, staring out across the water. "But what is darkness? Is it only a space waiting to be filled? Or has it a purpose? Something other than simple contrast?" "Ben . . ." He looked back at her, surprised by the brittle tone she had used. She was looking at him strangely. "Yes?"

"What about us? How do we fit in with all these processes?"

"We're a focus, a filter . . ."

But she was shaking her head. "No. I didn't mean that. I meant us. You and me. Is that just process? Just a function of the universe? Is what I feel for you just another fact to be slotted into the great picture? Or is there more to it than that? Are there parts of it that just don't fit?"

Again the bitterness in her voice surprised him. He had thought it was resolved between them, but now he understood: it would never be resolved until he was gone from here.

"Three years," he said. "That's all I'll need. You'll be, what, seventeen—my age now—when I come back. It's not long, Meg. Really it isn't."

She stood, moving away, then stood at the edge of the trees, above him, her back turned.

"You talk of dying if you stay. But I'll die if you go. Don't you understand that, Ben? Without you here it'll be like I'm dead." She turned to him, her eyes wide with hurt and anger. "You're my eyes, my ears, the animating force behind each moment of my day. Without you, I don't exist!"

He gave a short laugh, surprised by her intensity. "But that's silly, Meg. Of course you exist. Besides, there's Mother . . ."

"Gods! You really don't understand, do you?"

There was that same strange, unreadable movement in her face; then, abruptly, she turned away, beginning to climb the slope.

Ben got up awkwardly and began to follow her, making his way between the trees, careful not to knock his useless arm; but she was running now, her whole body leaning into the slope as she struggled to get away from him.

At the edge of the trees he stopped, wincing from the sudden pain in his hand, then called out to her. "Meg! Stop! Please stop!"

She slowed and stood there, just below the bam, her back to him, her head lowered, waiting.

Coming to her, he moved around her, then lifted her face with his good hand. She was crying.

"Meg. . ." he said softly, torn by what he saw. "Please don't cry. There's no reason to cry. Really there isn't."

She swallowed, then looked aside, for a moment like a hurt four-year-old. Then, more defiantly, she met his eyes again, bringing up a hand to wipe the tears away.

"I love you," he said gently. "You know that."

"Then make love to me again." •

He laughed, but his eyes were serious. "What, here?" - . ;

She stared back at him challengingly. "Why not?"

He turned her slightly. From where they stood they could see the cottage clearly down below.

She turned back, her eyes watching him closely, studying his face. "All right. Up there, then. In the bam."

He turned and looked, then nodded, a shiver passing down his spine.

She reached down, taking his good hand, then led him up the slope. At the bam door she turned, drawing him close, her arms about his neck. It was a long passionate kiss, and when she pulled away from him her eyes were different. Older than he remembered them, more knowing. A stranger's eyes.

She turned and led him through. Inside, the barn was filled with shadows. Bars of sunlight, some broad, some narrow, slanted down from gaps between the planks that formed the sides of the barn, creating broken veils of light from left to right.

"Quick," she said, leading him further in, "before Mother calls us in for lunch."

He smiled and let himself be led, thrilled by the simple pressure of her hand against his own.

"Here," she said, looking about her. A barrier of wooden slats formed a stall in the far left-hand comer, a space the size of a small storeroom, filled waist-high with old hay. The warm, musty smell of the hay was strong but pleasant. Light, intruding from two knotholes higher up, laced the shadows with twin threads of gold. Meg turned and smiled at him. "Lie down. I'll lie on top of you."

He sat, easing himself down onto the hay, feeling it yield beneath him, then let his head fall back, taking care not to jolt his hand. Lying there, looking up at her, his left arm still cradled in its sling, he felt like laughing.

"Are you sure this is such a good idea?"

Her smile, strange, enigmatic at first, widened as she slowly undid the buttons at the front of her dress, then pulled it up over her shoulders. Beneath the dress she was naked.

Ben felt his breath catch in his throat. "Meg . . ."

She bent over him and eased the sling from his arm, then straddled him, the soft, warm weight of her pressed down against him as she began to unbutton his shirt.

Meg's face lay but a short space from his face, her lips slightly parted, the tip of her tongue peeping through, her eyes concentrating on her busy fingers. But Ben's eyes were drawn to her breasts, to the hard, provocative shapes of her nipples.

He reached up and cupped her left breast in his hand, feeling its smooth warmness, then eased forward until his lips brushed against the budlike nipple.

Meg shuddered, her fingers faltering a moment. Ben drew back slightly, looking up into her face once more. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted more fully, reminding him fleetingly of one of those ancient paintings of religious ecstasy. He shivered, then leaned forward again, drawing the breast back to his mouth, his tongue wetly tracing the stiff brown berry of the nipple, teasing it with his teeth and lips and tongue, conscious of Meg pressing herself down into him with each small motion.

He lay back again, ignoring the dull pain of the reawakened pulse in his hand, watching as her eyes slowly opened, smiling back at him.

For a while he lay there, letting her undress him. Then she climbed above him again, the smooth warmth of her flesh against his own making him shiver with anticipation.

"Close your eyes . . ."

He lay there, letting her make love to him, slowly at first, then, as the ancient rhythm took her, wildly, urgently; her hands gripping his shoulders tightly, her face changed, unrecognizable, her teeth clenched fiercely, her eyes staring wildly down at him. In it he saw a reflection of the agony he was suffering from his damaged hand. That lay beside him, quivering, the fingers clenched tight, trapped in a prolonged spasm that was as painful as her lovemaking was delightful. Faster and more furious she moved, until, with a shudder that brought on his own orgasm, she arched her back and cried out, forcing herself against him as if to breach him: as if to press through the flesh that separated them and become him.

Afterward he lay still, the pain in his hand ebbing slowly. Meg lay across him, sleeping, her dark hair fanned across his chest. Two small bands of light lay across their shadowed bodies like golden ribbons joining their flesh, striping them at chest and hip, tracing the contours of their expired lust.

Ben looked down the length of their bodies, studying the play of shadow within shadow, noting where flesh seemed to merge with flesh. The scent of their lovemaking filled the tiny space, mingling with the smell of old hay. It seemed part of the shadows, the dust-specked bands of light.

He closed his eyes, thinking. What had she meant by this? To show her love for him? Her need? Perhaps. But needs were of different kinds. She had been wrong earlier. Though she thought so now, she would not die for missing him. She would wait, as she always waited, knowing he would be back. But he—he had to go. He would go mad—literally, mad—if he did not leave this place. Each day now it grew worse. Each day the feeling grew in him, feeding his restlessness, stoking the fire of dissatisfaction that raged in his belly.

Out. He had to get out. Or "in" as she preferred to call it. Whichever, he had to get away. Far away from here. Even from those he loved.

"Ben . . . ! Meg . . . !"

The calls were muted, distant, from the slope below the barn. Meg stirred and lifted her head slowly, turning to face him.

"What's that?"

He smiled and leaned forward, kissing her nose. "It's all right. It's only Mother calling us in. It must be lunchtime."

"Ah . . ." She started to relax again, then pushed herself up abruptly, suddenly awake. "Only Mother!"

"Mind—" he said, wincing at the pain that shot up his arm where she had bumped into his hand.

Her face was all concern. "Oh, Ben, I'm sorry ..."

Then they were laughing, clutching each other, Ben's hand held out to one side as he embraced her. And outside, more distantly, moving away from them now, the call came again.

"Ben . . . ! Meg . . . !"

BETH STOOD in the gateway at the bottom of the lower garden, relaxed, her apron tied loosely about her dress, waiting for them. She had let her hair down and she was smiling.

"Where were you?" she said as they came up to her. "I was looking everywhere. Didn't you hear me calling?"

Meg looked away, but Ben went straight to his mother. "We were in the barn," he said casually. "It was warm in there and musty. We were talking, then we fell asleep. We must have missed you calling."

"I see," she said, smiling, ruffling his hair.

"I'm sorry," he said, falling in beside her while Meg walked on ahead. "Lunch isn't spoiled, I hope."

Beth smiled and shook her head. "I wasn't calling you for lunch. It's your father. He's home."

Meg turned. "Daddy . . ." Then, without a further word, she raced up the slope and disappeared inside the house.

Ben walked beside his mother, taking her arm. "Is he okay?"

"What do you mean?"

Ben stopped, looking at her. Her voice had seemed strange, her answer too defensive. His query had been politeness, but she had taken it for something more meaningful.

"What's wrong with him?" he asked.

Beth looked away. "I don't know. He seems much older, somehow. Tired." She shrugged.

"Perhaps it's overwork. Things have been bad in there."

"Yes . . ." She smiled wistfully. "Maybe that's it."

They walked on. Up ahead, from inside the cottage, they could hear Meg's squeals of delight. Then she appeared, cradling what looked like a tiny, animated fur hat. She thrust the bundle at Ben.

"Isn't he just adorable?"

Ben held the kitten up to his face, meeting its strange, alien eyes. "Hello there, Mog. I'm Ben."

Meg took the kitten back at once. "Don't hurt him. And it's not Mog. It's Zarathustra."

"Of course." Ben reached out and rubbed the kitten between the ears, then moved past Meg into the doorway.

His father was sitting just inside, in the deep shadow of the hallway. Seeing Ben, his face creased into a smile.

"Ben! How are you, lad?"

"I'm fine," he answered, moving inside, feeling his mother's hand on his shoulder. "And you, Father?"

"I've been busy. Run ragged, you might say. I feel like I've put the whole world to rights these last few days."

Hal Shepherd sat back in the tall-backed, armless chair, his arms stretched wide in a gesture of expansiveness. The old fire still burned in his eyes, but Ben could see at once that he was ill. He saw the lines of tiredness and strain, the redness at the comer of his eyes, the way his muscles stood out at his neck when he spoke, and knew it was more than simple fatigue.

"The kitten's beautiful. What is it? GenSyn?"

Hal shook his head. "No, Ben. It's a real kitten. We confiscated its parents from Madam Moore the day the warrant was signed for her husband's arrest. It seems there are a few cats left in the Wilds. Moore must have smuggled it in through quarantine for her."

"Or bribed his way."

"More likely . . ." Hal took a deep breath—awkwardly, Ben thought—then smiled again. "I brought something back for you, too, Ben."

"A dog?"

Hal laughed, for a moment almost his old, vital self. "Now that would be something, wouldn't it? But no, I'm afraid not. Although I've a feeling that, as far as you're concerned, you. might find it a lot more interesting than a dog."

"What is it?"

Hal's smile remained while he studied his son; as if this was a sight he had not expected to see again. Then with a brief glance past him, at Beth, he said, "It's downstairs. In the cellar workrooms. I've rigged one of them up ready for you to try."

Ben frowned, trying to work out what his father meant, then he understood. "It's a pai pi! You've brought back a pai pi!"

"Not one, Ben. Eight of them."

"Eight!" Ben laughed, astonished. "Christ! Where did you get them? I thought they'd all been destroyed years ago. They've been banned for more than sixty years, haven't they?"

"That's right. But there are collectors among the Above. Men who secretly hold on to banned technology. These were found in the collection of a First-Level Executive."

Ben understood at once. "The Confiscations . . ."

"Exactly. The man was a Dispersionist. We were going to destroy them; but when I told Li Shai Tung of your interest, he signed a special order permitting me to take them out of the City. Here in the Domain, you see, the Edict has no power. We Shepherds can do as we wish."

"Can I try one now?"

Beth, her hand still on Ben's shoulder, answered for her husband. "Of course. Meg and I will get dinner ready while you're downstairs."

Meg, coming in from outside, protested. "That's unfair! Why can't I join them?"

Hal laughed. "Well . . . Ben might be a bit embarrassed."

"What do you mean?" Meg asked, cuddling the struggling kitten under her chin.

"Just that it's a full-body experience. Ben has to be naked in the harness."

Meg laughed. "Is that all?" She turned away slightly, a faint color in her cheeks. "He was practically naked when he was working with the morph."

Hal looked at his son, narrowing his eyes. "You've been using the morph, Ben? What for?"

"I'll tell you," Ben said, watching Meg a moment, surprised by her sudden rebelliousness. "But later. After I've tried the pai pi."

the cellars beneath the cottage had been added in his great-greatgrandfather's time, but it was only in the last decade that his father had set up a studio in one of the large, low-ceilinged rooms. Beneath stark artificial lighting, electronic equipment filled two-thirds of the floor space, a narrow corridor between the freestanding racks leading to a cluttered desk by the far wall. To the left of the desk a curtain had been drawn across, concealing the open space beyond.

Ben went through. The eight pai pi lay on the desk, the small, dark, rectangular cases small enough to fit into the palm of his hand. He picked them up, one at a time, surprised by the weight of them. They looked like lozenges or like the "chops" executives used to seal official documents, each one imprinted with the logo of the manufacturing company. Pai pi—the name meant, literally, "a hundred pens"— provided full-body experiences, a medium that had blossomed briefly in the earliest days of the City as an entertainment for the very rich. The cassettes themselves were only the software, the operational instructions; the hardware stood off to one side.

Hal pulled back a curtain. "There! What do you think?" The couch was a work of art in itself, its curved, boatlike sides inlaid in pearl and ivory, the dark, see-through hood shaped like the lid of an ancient sarcophagus. At present the hood was pulled back, like a giant insect's wing, exposing the padded interior. Dark blue silks—the same blue-black the sky takes on before the dark— masked the internal workings of the machine, while depressed into the padded silk was a crude human shape. Like the instruments of some delicious mechanism of torture, fine filaments extended from all parts of the depression, the threadlike wires clustered particularly thickly about the head. These were the "hundred pens" from which the art form derived its name, though there were only eighty-one in actuality. When the machine was operational, these input points fed information to all the major loci of nerves in the recipient's body.

"It's beautiful," said Ben, going close and examining the couch with his fingers. He bent and sniffed at the slightly musty innards. "I wonder if he used it much?"

It was a deceptively simple device. A tiny, one-man dream palace. You laid down and were connected up; then, when the hood was lowered, you began to dream. Dreams that were supposed to be as real as waking.

He turned, facing his father again. "Have you tried it out?"

"One of the technicians did. With permission, of course."

"And?"

Hal smiled. "Why don't you get in? Try it for yourself."

He hesitated, then began to strip off, barely conscious of his father watching, the fascination of the machine casting a spell over him. Naked, he turned, facing his father. "What now?"

Hal came up beside him, his movements slower, heavier, than Ben remembered, then bent down beside the machine and unfolded a set of steps.

"Climb inside, Ben. I'll wire you up."

Fifteen minutes later he was ready, the filaments attached, the hood lowered. With an unexpected abruptness it began.

He was walking in a park, the solid shapes of trees and buildings surrounding him on every side. Overhead the sky seemed odd. Then he realized he was inside the City and the sky was a ceiling fifty ch'i above him. He was aware of the ghostly sense of movement in his arms and legs, of the nebulous presence of other people about him, but nothing clear. Everything seemed schematic, imprecise. Even so, the overall illusion of walking in a park was very strong.

A figure approached him, growing clearer as it came closer, as if forming ghostlike from a mist of nothingness. A surly-looking youth, holding a knife.

The youth's mouth moved. Words came to Ben, echoing across the space between them.

"Hand over your money or I'll cut you!"

He felt his body tense, his mouth move and form words. They drifted out from him, unconnected to anything he was thinking.

"Try and get it, scumbag!"

Time seemed to slow. He felt himself move backward as the youth lunged with the knife. Turning, he grabbed the youth's arm and twisted, making the knife fall from his hand. He felt a tingle of excitement pass through him. The moment had seemed so real, the arm so solid and actual. Then the youth was falling away from him, stumbling on the ground, and he was following up, his leg kicking out, straight and hard, catching the youth in the side.

He felt the two ribs break under the impact of his kick, the sound—exaggerated for effect—seeming to fill the park. He moved away—back to normal time now— hearing the youth moan, then hawk up blood, the gobbet richly, garishly red.

He felt the urge to kick again, but his body was moving back, turning away, a wash of artificial satisfaction passing through him.

Then, as abruptly as it began, it ended.

Through the darkened glass of the hood he saw the dark shape of his father lean across and take the cassette from the slot. A moment later the catches that held down the hood were released with a hiss of air and the canopy began to lift.

"Well? What do you think?"

"I don't know," Ben answered thoughtfully. "In some ways it's quite powerful. For a moment or two the illusion really had me in its grasp. But it was only for a moment."

"What's wrong with it, then?"

Ben tried to sit up but found himself restrained.

"Here, let me do that."

He lay back, relaxing as his father freed the tiny suction pads from the flesh at the back of his scalp and neck.

"Well. . ." Ben began, then laughed. "For a start it's much too crude."

Hal laughed with him. "What did you expect, Ben? Perfection? It was a complex medium. Think of the disciplines involved."

"I have been. And that's what I mean. It lacks all subtlety. What's more, it ends at the flesh."

"How do you mean?"

"These . . ." He pulled one of the tiny suckers from his arm. "They provide only the vaguest sensation of movement. Only the shadow of the actuality. If they were somehow connected directly to the nerves, the muscles, then the illusion would be more complete. Likewise the connections at the head. Why not input them direct into the brain?"

"It was tried, Ben. They found that it caused all kind of problems."

"What kind of problems?"

"Muscular atrophy. Seizures. Catalepsy."

Ben frowned. "I don't see why. You're hardly in there longer than three minutes."

"In that case, yes. But there were longer tapes. Some as long as half an hour. Continual use of them brought on the symptoms."

"I still don't see why. It's only the sensation of movement, after all."

"One of the reasons they were banned was because they were so addictive. Especially the more garish productions, the sex and violence stims, for instance. After a while, you see, the body begins to respond to the illusion: the lips form the words, the muscles make the movements. It's that unconscious mimicry that did the damage. It led to loss of control over motor activity and, in a few cases, to death."

Ben peeled the remaining filaments from his body and climbed out.

"Why were the tapes so short?"

"Again, that's due to the complexity of the medium. Think of it, Ben. It's not just a question of creating the visual backdrop—the environment—but of synchronizing muscular movement to fit into that backdrop."

"Nothing a good computer couldn't do, surely?"

"Maybe. But only if someone were skilled enough to program it to do the job in the first place."

Ben began to pull his shirt on, then paused, shaking his head. "There were other things wrong with it, too. The hood, for instance. That's wrong. I had a sense all the while of the world beyond the machine. Not only that, but there was a faint humming noise—a vibration—underlying everything. Both things served to dis-tance me from the illusion. They reminded me, if only at some deep, subconscious level, that I was inside a machine. That it was a fiction."

Hal went over to the desk and sat, the strain of standing for so long showing in his face. "Is that so bad, Ben? Surely you have the same in any art form? You know that the book in your hands is just paper and ink, the film you're watching an effect of light on celluloid, a painting the result of spreading oils on a two-dimensional canvas. The medium is always there, surely?"

"Yes. But it doesn't have to be. Not in this case. That's what's so exciting about it. For the first time ever you can dispense with the sense of 'medium' and have the experience direct, unfiltered."

"I don't follow you, Ben. Surely you'll always be aware that you're lying inside a machine, no matter how good the fiction?"

"Why?" Ben buttoned the shirt, pulled on his pants and trousers, and went over to his father, standing over him, his eyes burning. "What if you could get rid of all the distractions? Wouldn't that change the very nature of the fiction you were creating? Imagine it! It would seem as real as this now—as me talking to you here, now, you sitting there, me standing, the warm smell of oil and machinery surrounding us, the light just so, the temperature just so. Everything as it is. Real. As real as real, anyway."

"Impossible," Hal said softly, looking away. "You could never make something that good."

"Why not?" Ben turned away a moment, his whole body fired by a sudden enthusiasm. "What's preventing me from doing it? Nothing. Nothing but my own will."

Hal shrugged, then looked back at his son, a faint smile of admiration lighting his tired features momentarily. "Perhaps. But it's not as easy as that, Ben. That little clip you experienced. How long do you think it was?"

Ben considered. "Two minutes. Maybe slightly longer."

Hal laughed, then grew more serious. "It was two minutes and fourteen seconds, and yet it took a team of eight men more than three weeks to make. It's a complex form, Ben. I keep telling you that. To do what you're talking about, well, it would take a huge team of men years to achieve."

Ben turned, facing his father, his face suddenly very still. "Or a single man a lifetime?"

Hal narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"I mean myself. My calling. For months now I've been experimenting with the morph. Trying to capture certain things. To mimic them, then reproduce them on a tape. But this ... these pai pi ... . . they're the same kind of thing. Stores of experience. Shells, filled with the very yolk- of being. Or at least they could be."

"Shells ... I like that. It's a good name for them."

Strangely, Ben smiled. "Yes. It is, isn't it. Shells."

Hal studied his son a moment longer then looked down. "I had another reason for showing these to you. Something more selfish."

"Selfish?"

"Yes. Something I want you to help me with."

"Ah . . ."

The hesitation in Ben's face surprised him. "There's something I have to ask you first," Ben said quickly. "Something I need from you."

Hal sat back slightly. So Beth was right. Ben was restless here. Yes, he could see it now. "You want to leave here. Is that it?"

Ben nodded.

"And so you can. But not now. Not just yet."

"Then when?"

Again, the hardness in Ben's voice was unexpected. He had changed a great deal in the last few months. Had grown, become his own man.

"Three months. Is that so long to wait?"

Ben was still a moment, considering, then shook his head. "No. I guess not. You'll get me into Oxford?"

"Wherever you want. I've already spoken to the T'ang."

Ben's eyes widened with surprise.

Hal leaned forward, concealing his amusement, and met his son's eyes defiantly. "You think I don't know how it feels?" He laughed. "You forget I was born here, too. And I, too, was seventeen once, believe it or not. I know what it's like, that feeling of missing out on life. I know it all too well. But I want something from you in return. I want you to help me."

Ben took a breath, then nodded. "All right. But how?"

Hal hesitated, then looked away. "I want to make a pai pi... a shell. For your mother. Something she can keep."

Ben frowned. "I don't understand. Why? And what kind of shell?"

Hal looked up slowly. He seemed suddenly embarrassed, awkward. "Of myself. But it's to be a surprise. A present. For her birthday."

Ben watched his father a moment, then turned and looked back at the ornate casing of the machine. "Then we should make a few changes to that, don't you think? It looks like a coffin."

Hal shuddered. "I know . . ."

"We should get workmen in . . ." Ben began, turning back, then stopped as he saw how his father was staring down at his hands. Hands that were trembling like the hands of a very old man.

Ben's voice was almost a whisper. "What's wrong?"

He saw how his father folded his hands together, then looked up, a forced smile shutting out the fear that had momentarily taken hold of his features. "It's nothing. I ..." He stopped and turned. Meg was standing just behind him. She had entered silently.

"The man's come," she said hesitantly.

"The man?"

Meg looked from one to the other, disturbed by the strange tension in the room; aware that she had interrupted something. "The man from ProsTek. He's come to see to Ben's hand."

"Ben's hand?" Hal turned, looking across at Ben, then he laughed. A brief, colorless laugh. "Of course. Your mother said."

Ben's eyes didn't leave his father for a moment. "Thanks. Tell Mother I'll be up."

She hesitated, wanting to ask him what was wrong, but she could see from the look of him that she was excluded from this.

"Ben?"

Still he didn't look at her. "Go on. I told you. I'll be up."

She stood there a moment longer, surprised and hurt by the sudden curtness in his voice. Then, angered, she turned and ran back down the space between the racks and up the steps.

At the top of the steps she stopped, calming herself. Hal had said no. That was it! And now Ben was angry with her, because she didn't want him to go either. Meg shivered, her anger suddenly washed from her; then, giving a soft laugh of delight, she pushed the door open and went through.

THE HAND LAY on the table, filaments trailing from the precisely severed wrist like fine strands of hair. It was not like the other hand. This one shone silver in the light, its surfaces soft and fluid like mercury. Yet its form suggested heaviness and strength. Meg, staring at it from across the room, could imagine the being from which it had been cut: a tall, faceless creature with limbs on which the sunlight danced like liquid fire. She could see him striding through the grass below the cottage. See the wood of the door splinter like matchwood before his fist.

She shuddered and turned, looking back at the man kneeling at Ben's side. As she looked he glanced up at her and smiled: a polite, pleasant smile. He was a Han. Lin Hou Ying, his name was. A tiny, delicate man in his sixties, with hands that were so small they seemed like a child's. Hands so doll-like and delicate, in fact, that she had asked him if they were real.

"These?" He held them up to her, as if for her appraisal. Then he had laughed. "These hands are mine. I was born with them. But as to what is real. . ."

He had almost finished removing the damaged hand by now. As she watched, he leaned close, easing the pressure on the vise that held the hand, then bent down and selected one of the tiny instruments from the case on the floor beside his knee. For a moment longer he was busy, leaning over the hand, making the final few adjustments that would disconnect it.

"There," he said, finally, leaning back and looking up into Ben's face. "How does that feel?"

Ben lifted his left arm up toward his face, then turned it, studying the clean line of the stump. "It's strange," he said, after a moment. "The pain's gone. And yet it feels as if the hand's still there. I can flex my fingers now and they don't hurt."

Lin Hou Ying smiled. "Good. That's a sure sign it was only the unit that was damaged. If you had twisted it badly or damaged the nerve connections it might have been more difficult. As it is, I can fit you with a temporary unit until the old one is repaired."

"That thing there?"

Lin glanced across. "Yes. I'm sorry it's so ugly."

"No. Not at all. 1 think it's quite beautiful."

Meg laughed uncomfortably. "No. Shih Lin's right. It's ugly. Brutal."

"It's only a machine," Ben answered her, surprised by the vehemence, the bitterness in her voice. "It has no life other than that which we give it."

"It's horrible," she insisted. "Like the morph. Like all such things."

Ben shrugged and looked back at Lin Hou Ying. "Does it function like the other one?"

The small man had been studying the hand in the vise, probing it with one of the tiny scalpels. He looked up, smiling.

"In certain ways, yes; but in others it's a vast improvement on this model here. Things have changed greatly in the last five years. Prosthetics among them. The response time's much enhanced. It's stronger, too. And in that particular model"— he indicated the hand on the table with a delicate motion of his head—"there's a remote override."

Ben stared at it a moment, then looked back at Lin Hou Ying. "Why's that?"

Lin stood and went across to the carrying case that stood on the floor beside the table. Earlier he had taken the hand from it. "Look," he said, taking something from inside. "Here's the rest of the unit."

It was an arm. A silver arm. Ben laughed. "How much more of him have you?"

Lin laughed, then brought the arm across. In his other hand he held a control box. "Some of our customers have lost far more than you, Shih Shepherd. The arm is a simple mechanism. It is easy to construct one. But a hand. Well, a hand is a complex thing. Think of the diversity of movements it's possible to make with a hand. Rather than waste our efforts making a single unit of hand and arm together, we decided long ago to specialize—to concentrate on the hands. And this"—he handed Ben the control box—"controls the hand."

"Can I?"

Lin lowered his head slightly. "As you wish, Shih Shepherd."

For a while Ben experimented, making the fingers bend and stretch, the hand flex and clench. Then he turned it and made it scuttle, slowly, awkwardly, like a damaged crab, on the table's surface.

Ben set the box down. "Can I keep this?"

Lin bowed his head. "Of course. And the arm?"

Ben laughed, then looked across at Meg and saw how she was watching him. He looked down. "No. Take the arm."

Just then the door at the far end of the room opened and his mother came in, carrying a small tray. Behind her came the kitten, Zarathustra.

"Refreshments, Shih Lin?"

The small man bowed low. "You honor me, nu shi."

Beth started to put the tray down on the table beside the silver hand, but as she did so, the kitten jumped up on the chair beside her and climbed up onto the table.

"Hey..."

Meg made to move forward, but Ben reached out, holding her arm with his right hand. "No. Leave him. He's only playing."

His mother turned, looking at him.

"There," he said, indicating a small table to one side of the room.

He watched her go across and put the tray down, then looked back at the kitten. It was sniffing at the fingers of the hand and lifting its head inquisitively.

"Don't. . ." Meg said quietly.

He half-turned, looking at her. "I won't hurt it."

"No," she said, brushing his hand aside and moving across to lift the kitten and cradle it. "He's real. Understand? Don't toy with him."

He watched her a moment, then looked down at the control box in his lap. Real, he thought. But how real is real? For if all I am is a machine of blood and bone, of nerve and flesh, then to what end do I function? How real am I?

Machines of flesh. The phrase echoed in his head. And then he laughed. A cold, distant laughter.

"What is it, Ben?"

He looked up, meeting his mother's eyes. "Nothing."

He was quiet a moment, then he turned, looking across at the Han. "Relax a while, Shih Lin. I must find my father. There's something I need to ask him."

HE FOUND HAL in the dining room, the curtains drawn, the door to the kitchen pulled to. In the left-hand corner of the room there was a low table on which were set the miniature apple trees the T'ang had given the Shepherds five years before. The joined trees were a symbol of conjugal happiness, the apple an omen of peace but also of illness.

His father was kneeling there in the darkened room, his back to Ben, his forearms stretched out across the low table's surface, resting on either side of the tree, his head bent forward. He was very still, as if asleep or meditating; but Ben, who had come silently to the doorway, knew at once that his father had been crying.

"What is it?" he said softly.

Hal's shoulders tensed; slowly his head came up. He stood and turned, facing his son, wiping the tears away brusquely, his eyes fierce, proud. "Shut the door. I don't want your mother to hear. Nor Meg." Ben closed the door behind him, then turned back, noting how intently his father was watching him, as if to preserve it all. He smiled faintly. Yes, he thought, there's far more of me in you than 1 ever realized. Brothers, we are. I know it now for certain.

"Well?" he asked again, his voice strangely gentle. He had often questioned his own capacity for love, wondering whether what he felt was merely some further form of self-delusion; yet now, seeing his father there, his head bowed, defeated, beside the tiny tree, he knew beyond all doubt that he loved him.

Hal's chest rose and fell in a heavy, shuddering movement. "I'm dying, Ben. I've got cancer."

"Cancer?" Ben laughed in disbelief. "But that's impossible. They can cure cancers, can't they?"

Hal smiled grimly. "Usually, yes. But this is a new kind, an artificial carcinoma, tailored specifically for me, it seems. Designed to take my immune system apart piece by piece. It was Shih Berdichev's parting gift."

Ben swallowed. Dying. No. It wasn't possible. Slowly he shook his head.

"I'm sorry, Ben, but it's true. I've known it these last two months. They can delay its effects, but not for long. The T'ang's doctors give me two years. Maybe less. So you see, I've not much time to set things right. To do all the things I should have done before."

"What things?"

"Things like the shell."

For a moment Ben's mind missed its footing. Shells . . . He thought of Meg and the beach and saw the huge wave splinter along the toothlike rocks until it crashed against her, dragging her back, away beneath the foaming surface, then heard himself screaming—Meg!!!—while he stood there on the higher rocks, impotent to help.

He shivered and looked away, suddenly, violently displaced. Shells . . . Like the stone in the dream, the dark pearl that passed like a tiny, burning star of nothingness through his palm. For a moment he stared in disbelief at where his hand ought to have been; then he understood.

"What is it, Ben?"

He looked up. "I don't know. I've never . . ."

He stopped. It was like a wave of pure darkness hitting him. A sheer black cliff of nothingness erasing all thought, all being from him. He staggered and almost fell; then he was himself again, his father's hands holding his upper arms tightly, his heavily lined face thrust close to his own, the dark green eyes filled with concern and fear.

"Ben? Ben? What is it?"

"Darkness," he whispered. "It was like . . ."

Like what? He shuddered violently. And then the earlier thing came back to him. Shells . . . Pai pi. That was what his father meant. And that was why they had to make one. Because he was dying. Yes. It all made sense now.

"Like what?" his father asked, fleshing the thought.

"Nothing," he answered, calmer now. "The shell. I understand it now."

"Good. Then you'll help me sketch things out for the team?"

Ben frowned. "Team? What team?"

The pressure of Hal's hands on Ben's arms had eased, but he made no move to take them away. "I've arranged for a team of technicians to come here and work with us on the shell. I thought we could originate material for them."

Ben looked down. For a long time he was silent, thoughtful. Then he looked up again. "But why do that? Why can't we do the whole thing?"

Hal laughed. "Don't be daft, Ben."

"No. I'm serious. Why can't we do the whole thing?"

"Didn't you hear me earlier? It would take ages. And I haven't got ages. Besides, I thought you wanted to get away from here. To Oxford."

"I do. But this . . ." He breathed deeply, then smiled and reached up to touch his father's face with his one good hand. "I love you. So trust me. Three months. It's long enough, I promise you."

He saw the movement in his father's face; the movements of control, of pride and love and a fierce anger that it should need such a thing to bring them to this point of openness. Then he nodded, tears in his eyes. "You're mad, Ben, but yes. Why not? The T'ang can spare me."

"Mad . . ." Ben was still a moment, then he laughed and held his father to him tightly. "Yes. But where would I be without my madness?"

BEN turned from the open kitchen window. Behind him the moon blazed down from a clear black sky, speckled with stars. His eyes were dark and wide, like pools, reflecting the immensity he had turned from.

"What makes it all real?"

His mother paused, the ladle held above the casserole, the smell of the steaming rabbit stew filling the kitchen. She looked across at her son, then moved ladle to plate, spilling its contents beside the potatoes and string beans. She laughed and handed it to him. "Here."

She was a clever woman. Clever enough to recognize that she had given birth to something quite other than she had expected. A strange, almost alien creature. She studied her son as he took the plate from her, seeing how his eyes took in everything, as if to store it all away. His eyes devoured the world. She smiled and looked down. There was a real intensity in him—such an intellectual hunger as would power a dozen others.

Ben put his plate down, then sat, pulling his chair in closer to the table. "I'm not being rhetorical. It's a question. An honest-to-goodness question."

She laughed. "I don't know. It seems almost impertinent to ask."

"Why?"

She shrugged. It was scarcely the easiest of questions to raise at the dinner table. Who made the Universe? he might as well have asked. Or Why is Life? Who knew what the answer was?

Rabbit stew, maybe. She laughed.

Ben had gone very quiet, very watchful. A living microscope, quivering with expectancy.

"Two things come to mind," she said, letting the ladle rest in the pot. "And they seem to conflict with each other. The first is the sense that it'll all turn out exactly as we expect it. What would you call that?—a sense of continuity, perhaps. But not just that. There's also a sense we have that it will all continue, just as it ever did, and not just stop dead suddenly."

"And the second?" It was Meg. She was standing in the doorway, watching them.

Beth smiled and began ladling stew into a plate for her.

"The second's the complete opposite of the first. It's our ability to be shocked, surprised, or horrified by things we ought to have seen coming. Like death. . ." Her voice tailed off.

"A paradox," said Ben, looking down. He took a spoon from the table and began to ladle up the stock from his plate, as if it were a soup. Then he paused and nodded. "Yes. But how can I use that knowledge?"

There he had her. She in a lifetime had never fathomed that.

She turned to Meg, offering her the plate. "Where's Father?"

"He'll be down. He said there was something he had to do."

She watched Meg take her place, then began to pour stew into another plate. It was unlike Hal to be late to table. But Hal had changed. Something had happened. Something he couldn't bring himself to tell her just yet.

"I'm sorry to keep you, Beth." Hal was standing in the doorway, something small hidden behind his back. He smiled, then came forward, offering something to her.

"What is it?" She wiped her hands on her apron, then took the tiny present from him.

He sat, then leaned back, his arms stretched wide in a gesture of expansiveness. The old fire still burned in his eyes, but she could see that he was unwell.

She shivered and looked down at the tiny parcel, then, with a brief smile at him, began unwrapping it.

It was a case. A tiny jewel case. She opened it, then looked up, surprised.

"Hal. . . It's beautiful!"

She held it up. It was a silver ring. And set into the ring was a tiny drop-shaped pearl. A pearl the color of the night.

Meg leaned forward excitedly. "It is beautiful! But I thought all pearls were white ..."

"Most are. Normally they're selected for the purity of their color and luster—all discolored pearls being discarded. But in this instance the pearl was so discolored that it attained a kind of purity of its own."

Beth studied the pearl a moment, delighted, then looked up again. Only then did she notice Ben, sitting there, his spoon set down, his mouth fallen open.

"Ben?"

She saw him shiver, then reach out to cover the cold, silvered form of his left hand with the fleshed warmth of his right. It was a strangely disturbing gesture. "I had a dream," he said, his eyes never leaving the ring. "The pearl was in it." Meg laughed. "Don't listen to him. He's teasing you."

"No." He had turned the silvered hand and was rubbing at its palm, as if at some irritation there. "It was in the dream. A pearl as dark as nothingness itself. I picked it up and it burned its way through my palm. That's when I woke. That's when I knew I'd damaged the hand."

Hal was looking at his son, concerned. "How odd. I mean, it wasn't until this morning, just as I was leaving, that Tolonen brought it to me. He knew I was looking for something special. Something unusual. So your dream preceded it." He laughed strangely. "Perhaps you willed it here."

Ben hesitated, then shook his head. "No. It's serendipity, that's all. Coincidence. The odds are high, but. . ."

"But real," Meg said. "Coincidence. It's how things are, isn't it? Part of the real."

Beth saw how Ben's eyes lit at that. He had been trying to fit it into things. But now Meg had placed it for him. Had allowed it. But it was strange. Very strange. A hint that there was more to life than what they experienced through their senses.

Another level, hidden from them, revealed only in dreams.

She slipped the ring on, then went across to Hal and knelt beside him to kiss him. "Thank you, my love. It's beautiful."

"Like you," he said, his eyes lighting momentarily.

She laughed and stood. "Well. Let's have some supper, eh? Before it all goes cold."

Hal nodded and drew his chair in to the table. "Fine. Oh, by the way, Ben, I've some news."

Ben looked across and picked up his spoon again. "About the team?" "No. About the other thing. I've arranged it."

"Ah . . ." Ben glanced at Meg, then bent his head slightly, spooning stew into his mouth.

"What other thing?" Meg asked, looking at Ben, a sudden hardness in her face.

Ben stared down at his plate. "You know. Oxford. Father's said I can go." There was a moment's silence; then, abruptly, Meg pushed her plate away and stood. "Then you are going?"

He turned and looked at her, a strange defiance in his eyes. "Yes."

She stood there a moment longer, then turned away, storming out down the steps. They could hear her feet pounding on the stairs. A moment later a door slammed. Then there was silence.

Ben looked across and met his mother's eyes. "She's bound to take it hard." Beth looked at her son, then away to the open window. "Well. . ." She sighed. "I suppose you can't stay here forever." She looked down, beginning to fill her own plate. "When do you plan to go?"

"Three months," Hal answered for him. "Ben's going to work on something with me before then. Something new."

She turned, looking at Hal, surprised. "So you'll be here?"

But before Hal could answer, Ben pushed back his chair and stood. "I'd best go to her. See she's all right."

"There's no need. . ." she began. But Ben had already gone. Down the steps and away through the dining room, leaving her alone with Hal. "You're ill," she said, letting her concern for him show at last. "Yes," he said. "I'm ill."

THE DOOR WAS partly open, the room beyond in shadow. Through the window on the far side of the room the moon shone, cold and white and distant. Meg sat on her bed, her head and shoulder turned from him, the moonlight glistening in her long dark hair.

He shivered, struck by the beauty of her, then stepped inside.

"Meg . . ." he whispered. "Meg, I've got to talk to you."

She didn't move; didn't answer him. He moved past her, looking out across the bay, conscious of how the meadows, the water, the trees of the far bank—all were silvered by the clear, unnatural light. Barren, reflected light; no strength or life in it. Nothing grew in that light. Nothing but the darkness.

He looked down. There, on the bedside table, beside the dull silver of his hand, lay a book. He lifted it and looked. It was Nietzsche's Zarathustra, the Hans Old etching on the cover. From the ancient paper cover Nietzsche stared out at the world, fierce-eyed and bushy browed, uncompromising in the ferocity of his gaze. So he himself would be. So he would stare back at the world, with an honest contempt for the falseness of its values. He opened the book where the leather bookmark was and read the words Meg had underlined. To be sure, 1 am a forest and a night of dark trees. . . . Beside it, in the margin, she had written "Ben." He felt a small shiver pass down his spine, then set the book down, turning to look at her again.

"Are you angry with me?"

She made a small noise of disgust. He hesitated, then reached out and lifted her chin gently with his good hand, turning her face into the light. Her cheeks were wet, her eyes liquid with tears, but her eyes were angry.

"You want it all, don't you?"

"Why not? If it's there to be had?"

"And never mind who you hurt?"

"You can't breathe fresh air without hurting someone. People bind each other with obligation. Tie each other down. Make one another suffocate in old, used-up air. I thought you understood that, Meg. I thought we'd agreed?"

"Oh yes," she said bitterly. "We agreed all right. You told me how it would be and what my choices were. Take it or leave it. I had no say."

"And you wanted a say?"

She hesitated, then drew her face back, looking down, away from him. "I don't know ... I just feel. . . hurt by it all. It feels like you're rejecting me. Pushing me away."

He reached out again, this time with his other hand, not thinking. She pushed it from her, shuddering. And when she looked up, he could see the aversion in her eyes.

"There's a part of you that's like that, Ben. Cold. Brutal. Mechanical. It's not all of you. Not yet. But what you're doing, what you plan . . . I've said it before, but it's true. I fear for you. Fear that that—" she pointed to the hand—"will take you over, cell by cell, like some awful, insidious disease, changing you to its own kind of thing. It won't show on the surface, of course, but I'll know. I'll see it in your eyes, and know it from the coldness of your touch. That's what I fear. That's what hurts. Not you going, but your reasons for going."

He was silent for a moment, then he sat down next to her. "I see."

She was watching him, the bitterness purged now from her eyes. She had said it now, had brought to the surface what was eating at her. She reached out and took his hand—his human hand—and held it loosely.

"What do you want, Ben? What, more than anything, do you want?"

He said it without hesitation; almost, it seemed, without thought. "Perfection. Some pure and perfect form."

She shivered and looked away. Perfection. Like the hand. Or like the moonlight. Something dead. "Do you love me?"

She heard him sigh; sensed the impatience in him. "You know I do." She turned slightly, looking at him, her smile sad, resigned now. Letting his hand fall from hers, she stood and lifted her dress up over her head, then lay down on the bed beside him, naked, pulling him down toward her.

"Then make love to me."

As he slipped from his clothes she watched him, knowing that for all his words, this much was genuine—this need of his for her.

You asked what's real, she thought. This—this alone is real. This thing between us. This unworded darkness in which we meet and merge. This and this only. Until we die. "I love you," he said softly, looking down at her. "You know that."

"Yes," she said, closing her eyes, shuddering as he pressed down into her. "I know . . ."

And yet it wasn't enough. For him it would never be enough.

PART 3 | AUTUMN 2206

An Inch of Ashes

The East wind sighs, the fine rains come:

Beyond the pool of water-lilies, the noise of faint thunder.

A gold toad gnaws the lock. Open it, burn the incense.

A tiger of jade pulls the rope. Draw from the well and escape.

Chia's daughter peeped through the screen when Han the clerk was young,

The goddess of the river left her pillow for the great Prince of Wei.

Never let your heart open with the spring flowers:

One inch of love is an inch of ashes.

—LI SHANG-YIN, Untitled Poem, ninth century A. D.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Pool in the Ruins

sERVANTS CAME running to take their horses, leading them back to the stables. Fei Yen seemed flushed, excited by the ride, her eyes wide with enjoyment. Li Yuan laughed, looking at her, and touched her arm. "It suits you, my love. You should ride more often."

Tsu Ma came up and stood between them, an arm about each of their shoulders. "That was good, my friends. And this"—he gestured with his head, his strong neck turning to encompass the huge estate, the palace, the lake, the orchards, the view of the distant mountains—"it's beautiful. Why, the ancient emperors would envy you."

Tsu Ma's eyes sparkled and his pure white teeth—strong, square, well-formed teeth—flashed a smile.

"You are welcome here any time, Tsu Ma," Li Yuan answered him. "You must treat our stables as your own."

"Thank you, Li Yuan." Tsu Ma gave a slight bow, then turned, looking down at Fei Yen. "You ride well, Lady Fei. Where did you learn?"

She looked away, a slight color in her cheeks. "I've ridden since I was a child. My father had two horses." She turned back, the way she held her head displaying an intense pride. In a world where animals were rare, to own two horses was a matter of some prestige. Only the Seven took such things for granted.

Tsu Ma studied her a moment, then nodded. "Good. But let us go in. Your father will be expecting us."

Li Shai Tung was sitting in the Summer House, a small comset on his lap. Tiny three-dimensional holograms formed and faded in the air above the set, each figure giving its brief report before it vanished. Tsu Ma sat close by the old man, keeping silent, while Li Yuan went to get drinks. Fei Yen stood by the window looking down the steep slope toward the terrace and the ornamental lake. From time to time she would glance back into the room, her eyes coming to rest on the casually seated figure of Tsu Ma.

He was a broad-shouldered, handsome man. Riding, she had noticed how straight he held himself in the saddle, how unruffled he had been when leading his horse across a fast-flowing stream, how easily he brought his mount to jump a wall, as though he were part of the animal he rode. And yet he was immaculate, his hair groomed and beaded with rubies, his tunic an achingly sweet shade of pink that was almost white, edged with black, his trousers of a blue that reminded her of the summer skies of her youth. She had seen how tightly his thighs had gripped the flanks of the roan horse; how commanding he had seemed.

Li Shai Tung finished his business and put the comset down, smiling at Tsu Ma, then at his daughter-in-law, greeting them wordlessly. Li Yuan turned from the cabinet, carrying a tray of drinks. He was host here in this room.

Fei Yen took her drink and seated herself beside her husband, facing the other men. She was conscious of how Tsu Ma looked at her. So open. And yet not impolitely.

"You're looking well," Li Shai Tung said, looking across at Fei Yen. "You should ride more often."

Li Yuan leaned forward. "She was magnificent, Father. A bom horsewoman! You should have seen how she leaped the meadow gate!" His eyes flashed wide as he said it, and when he looked at his wife it was with unfeigned admiration. Tsu Ma saw this and pushed his head back slightly, as if his collar were too tight. He reached into the inner pocket of his tunic and took out a slender silver case.

"May I smoke?" He held out the case and Li Yuan nodded, looking to his father for approval. The old man said nothing, merely smiled.

Tsu Ma removed one of the pencil-thin cheroots and lit it, then inhaled slowly, seeming to relax in his chair as he did so. The silver case lay on the arm of the chair.

He watched the smoke curl up, a thin, fragile thread of heated ash. "I must thank you, Li Yuan. Today has been perfect." His eyes settled on the young man's face, finding nothing but open friendship there, perhaps even a degree of admiration. He was used to it; accepted it as his due. But the look on Fei Yen's face—that was different. That, too, he recognized, but kept the knowledge to himself. He raised his glass, toasting his host and hostess silently, his smile serene, sincere.

Li Shai Tung watched all, nodding to himself. He seemed well pleased with things. For the first time in months he was smiling. Tsu Ma saw this and asked him why.

"I'll tell you. When we are alone."

The T'ang had not looked at Fei Yen, and his comment seemed quite innocuous, but she knew how traditional her father-in-law was. He was not like her own father; he would not discuss business in front of women. She set her drink down untouched and stood up, patting Li Yuan's hand, then turned to bow low to the two T'ang.

"Excuse me, Chieh Hsia, but I must go and change. The ride has made me tired." It was untrue. She had never felt more alive. Her eyes shone with a barely contained excitement. But she lowered her head and went quietly from the room, turning only at the door to look back, finding, as she'd hoped, that Tsu Ma's eyes were on her.

"Well?" said Tsu Ma when she had gone. His manner seemed no different, and yet the word seemed somehow colder, more masculine than before.

"Good news. Both Wu Shih and Wei Feng have agreed to our little scheme."

Tsu Ma looked down. The development was unexpected. "Is that wise?"

"I thought so," Li Shai Tung continued, noting his hesitation. "In the present circumstances I felt it... safer... to have the balance of the Council know of my plans. It would not do to alienate my oldest friends."

Tsu Ma drew on the cheroot again, then looked up, meeting his eyes. "No. But that's not exactly what I meant. This whole business of covert action. Surely it goes against the spirit of the Council? If we can't be open with each other—"

"And can we?" Li Yuan's words were bitter, angry, but at a look from his father he lowered his head, holding his tongue.

"I understand your feelings, Li Yuan," Tsu Ma answered him, smiling at the old T'ang to show he was not offended by his son's interruption. "But Wang Sau-

leyan must surely not be allowed to triumph. This way, it seems we play into his hands."

Li Shai Tung was watching him closely. "Then you will not give your consent?"

Tsu Ma's smile broadened. "That is not what I said. I was merely pointing out the underlying logic of this course. Whatever you decide I will consent to, my father's oldest friend. And not only because of my respect for my father. I know you would not follow this course if there were any other way."

Li Shai Tung smiled then looked down into his lap. "If it helps reassure you, Tsu Ma, I will say to you what I have already said both to Wu Shih and Wei Feng. I do not wish to circumvent the Council in this matter. This is merely a question of research. A fact-finding exercise before I present my case to Council. The brief of the Project will be to study only the feasibility of wiring up Chung Kuo's population. It will fall far short of actual experimentation. After all, it would not do for me, a T'ang, to breach the Edict, would it?"

Tsu Ma laughed. "No, indeed. But tell me ... who did you have in mind to look after the Project? It's a sensitive scheme. The security on it must be watertight."

"I agree. Which is why I'm placing Marshal Tolonen in charge."

"Tolonen?" Tsu Ma considered it a moment, then smiled. "Why, yes, I can see that that would work very well."

He met the old T'ang's eyes, a look of understanding passing between them that escaped the young Prince's notice. For Tolonen would be opposed to the scheme. He, if anyone, would be guaranteed to keep it in check.

"But see, I've talked enough already, and you still know so little about the scheme itself. Let Li Yuan speak for me now. Let him be my voice in this matter."

Tsu Ma looked across at the young man, interested. This was why he had come: to hear Li Yuan's proposal in detail. "Speak," he said, his left hand outstretched, palm open. A broad hand with long fingers clustered with heavy rings. Smoke curled up from beneath the hand.

Li Yuan hesitated; then, composing himself, he began itemizing the discoveries they had made at various SimFic establishments, discoveries that had broken the Edict—things meant to harm the Seven, now harnessed for their use.

Tsu Ma listened, drawing on the cheroot from time to time, his smile growing broader by the moment. Until, finally, he laughed and clapped his hand against his thigh.

"Excellent! My word, it is excellent." He rose and went to the window, looking down the slope. "You have my agreement, Li Shai Tung. 1 like this plan. I like it very much."

Tsu Ma turned, looking back at the young man. Li Yuan was smiling broadly, pleased with himself, proud of his scheme, and delighted that he had Tsu Ma's approval. Tsu Ma smiled back at him and nodded, then turned to the window again.

At the bottom of the slope, on the terrace above the ornamental lake, a woman was walking, looking back toward the house. She wore riding clothes and her long dark hair hung loose where she had just unfastened it. She was small, delicate, like a goddess made of the finest porcelain. Tsu Ma smiled and looked away; he turned to face the two men in the room with him.

"Yes," he said, the smile remaining on his lips. "It's perfect, Yuan. Quite perfect."

"Who is he?"

DeVore turned to Lehmann and smiled. "His name is Hung Mien-lo and he was Chancellor to Wang Ta-hung before his recent death."

Lehmann studied the screen a moment longer, then turned his back on it, staring at DeVore. "So what is he doing there?"

The film had been shot secretly by DeVote's man among the Ping Tiao. It showed a meeting Jan Mach had had that morning. A meeting he had been very anxious to keep a secret from the other Ping Tiao leaders.

"I don't know. But I'm sure of one thing. He wouldn't be there unless Wang Sau-leyan wanted him there. So the real question is—what does Wang Sau-leyan want of the Ping Tiao?"

"So Hung is the new T'ang's man now?"

"It seems so. Fischer, my man in Alexandria, thinks Sau-leyan wasn't responsi-

ble for his brother's death, but there's good reason to believe that Hung Mien-lo has been his man for some time now."

"And Mach? Why didn't he consult the others?"

"That's Mach's way. He didn't like it when I went to Gesell direct. If he'd had his way he would have checked me out beforehand, but I circumvented him. He doesn't like that. It rankles him. He likes to be in control of things." "But you think he'll deal with Hung Mien-lo?"

DeVore nodded. "It makes sense. If I were he I'd do the same. He'll get what he can out of the T'ang. And he'll use that to keep us at a distance. To make the Ping Tiao less dependent on us. And, conversely, he'll use the alliance with us to keep the T'ang at a distance. It'll mean the Ping Tiao won't have to accept what either of us tell them to do. It'll give them the option to say no now and again. Mach will try to keep the deal with us secret from the T'ang, and vice versa. He'll try to make it seem as if the change—the strengthening of their position—comes from within the Ping Tiao."

Lehmann was silent a while, thoughtful. "Then why not kill Hung Mien-lo and prevent Mach from making this deal? There has to be a reason."

DeVore smiled, pleased with his young lieutenant. He always enjoyed talking out his thoughts with him.

"There is. You see, Mach's scheme works only if we're unaware of the T'ang's role in things, if we're fooled by his tales of a great Ping Tiao renaissance. Oh, their fortunes will be on the up after Helmstadt, there's no doubt, but a deal with the T'ang could give them something they lack. Something they didn't get from Helmstadt. Funds."

"And you want that? You want them to be independently funded?" "No. Not if that were all there was to it. But I don't intend to let them bargain with me. At the first sign of it I'll threaten to pull out altogether. That would leave them in a worse position than they began, because all the T'ang can offer them is money. They'd lose our contacts, our specialist knowledge, our expertise in battle. And the rest of the Bremen map . . ."

"I see. And then there's the question of what Wang Sau-leyan wants from this?" "Exactly. He wouldn't risk contacting the Ping Tiao unless he had some scheme in mind. T'ang or not, if the other members of the Council of Seven heard of his involvement he would be dead." Lehmann glanced at the screen. "It's a thought . . ."

"Yes. There's always that option. If things get really bad and we need something to divert the Seven." "Then what do you intend to do?"

DeVore leaned forward and pressed the pad to clear the screen. At once the lights came up again.

"At present nothing. Mach is meeting Hung Mien-Lo again. In Alexandria in two weeks time. My man will be there to record it for me. It might be interesting, don't you think? And—who knows?—Mach might even give the T'ang his father's ears back."

the NIGHT WAS clear and dark, the moon a sharp crescent to the northeast, high above the distant outline of the mountains. It was a warm night. Laughter drifted across the water as the long, high-sided boat made its way out across the lake, the lanterns swinging gently on either side.

Tsu Ma had insisted on taking the oars. He pulled the light craft through the water effortlessly, his handsome mouth formed into a smile, his back held straight, the muscles of his upper arms rippling beneath his silks like the flanks of a running horse. Li Yuan sat behind Tsu Ma in the stem, looking past him at Fei Yen and her cousin, Yin Wu Tsai.

The two girls had their heads together, giggling behind their fans. It had been Fei Yen's idea to have a midnight picnic, and Tsu Ma had been delighted when the two girls had come to them with blankets and a basket, interrupting their talk. The two men had smiled and laughed and let themselves be led out onto the lake.

Li Yuan grinned broadly, enjoying himself. In the varicolored light from the lanterns Fei Yen looked wonderful, like a fairy princess or some mythical creature conjured from the rich legends of his people's past. The flickering patterns of the light made her face seem insubstantial, like something you might glimpse in a dream but which, when you came closer or held a clear light up to see it better, would fade or change back to its true form. He smiled at the fancifulness of the thought, then caught his breath, seeing how her eyes flashed as she laughed at something her cousin had whispered in her ear. And then she looked across at him, her dark eyes smiling, and his blood seemed to catch fire in his veins.

He shuddered, filled by the sight of her. She was his. His.

Fei Yen turned, looking out behind her, then turned back, leaning toward Tsu Ma. "To the island, Tsu Ma. To the island . . ."

Tsu Ma bowed his head. "Whatever you say, my Lady."

The boat began to turn. Beyond the temple on the small hill the lake curved like a swallow's wing. Near the wing's tip was a tiny island, reached by a wooden bridge of three spans. Servants had prepared it earlier. As they rounded the point, they could see it clearly, the bridge and the tiny two-tiered pagoda lit by colored lanterns.

Li Yuan stared across the water, delighted, then looked back at Fei Yen.

"It's beautiful, you clever thing. When did you plan all this?"

Fei Yen laughed and looked down, clearly pleased by his praise. "This afternoon.

After we'd been riding. I ... I did it for our guest, husband."

Tsu Ma slowed his stroke momentarily and bowed his head to Fei Yen. "I am touched, my Lady. You do me great honor."

Li Yuan watched the exchange, his breast filled with pride for his wife. She was so clever to have thought of it. It was just the right touch. The perfect end to a perfect day. The kind of thing a man would remember for the rest of his days. Yes, he could imagine it now, forty years from now, he and Tsu Ma, standing on the terrace by the lake, looking back . . .

She had even been clever enough to provide an escort for the T'ang, a clever, pretty woman who was certain to delight Tsu Ma. Indeed, had Fei Yen not been in the boat, he would have allowed himself to concede that Wu Tsai was herself quite beautiful.

For a moment he studied the two women, comparing them. Wu Tsai was taller than Fei Yen, her face, like her body, longer and somehow grosser, her nose broader, her lips fuller, her cheekbones less refined, her neck stronger, her breasts more prominent beneath the silk of her jacket. Yet it was only by contrast with Fei Yen that these things were noticeable: as if in Fei Yen lay the very archetype of Han beauty; and all else, however fine in itself, was but a flawed copy of that perfection. The island drew near. Li Yuan leaned forward, instructing Tsu Ma where to land. Then the boat was moored and Tsu Ma was handing the girls up onto the wooden jetty, the soft rustle of their silks as they disembarked seeming, for that brief moment, to merge with the silken darkness of the night and the sweetness of their perfume.

They settled on the terrace, Fei Yen busying herself laying out the table while Wu Tsai sat and made pleasant conversation with Tsu Ma. Li Yuan stood at the rail, looking out across the darkness of the lake, his sense of ease, of inner stillness, lulling him so that for a time he seemed aware only of the dull murmur of the voices behind him and the soft lapping of the water against the wooden posts of the jetty. Then there was the light touch of a hand on his shoulder and he turned to find Fei Yen there, smiling up at him.

"Please, husband. Come sit with us."

He put his arms about her and lowered his face to meet her lips, then came and sat with them. Fei Yen stood by a tiny table to one side, pouring wine into cups from a porcelain jug; offering first to the T'ang, then to her husband, finally to her cousin. Only then did she give a little bow and pouring herself some wine, settle, kneeling at her husband's side.

Tsu Ma studied them both a moment, then raised his cup. "You are a lucky man, Li Yuan, to have such a wife. May your marriage be blessed with many sons!"

Li Yuan bowed his head, inordinately pleased. But it was no more than the truth. He was lucky. He looked down at the woman kneeling by his side and felt his chest tighten with his love for her. His. It was three days now since the wedding and yet he could not look at her without thinking that. His. Of all the men in Chung Kuo, only he was allowed this richness, this lifelong measure of perfection. He shivered and raised his cup, looking back at Tsu Ma.

"To friendship!" he offered, meeting Tsu Ma's eyes. "To we four, here tonight, and to our eternal friendship!"

Tsu Ma leaned forward, his teeth flashing as he smiled. "Yes. To friendship!" He clinked his cup against Li Yuan's, then raised it in offering, first to Wu Tsai and finally to Fei Yen.

Fei Yen had been looking up from beneath her lashes, her pose the very image of demure, obedient womanhood. At Tsu Ma's toast, however, she looked down sharply, as if abashed. But it was not bashfulness that made her avert her eyes; it was a deeper, stronger feeling, one that she tried to hide not only from the watchful T'ang, but from herself. She turned her head, looking up at Li Yuan.

"Would my husband like more wine?"

Li Yuan smiled back at her, handsome in his own way, and loving, too—a good man for all his apparent coldness. Yet her blood didn't thrill at his touch, nor did her heart race in her chest the way it was racing now in the presence of Tsu Ma.

"In a while, my love," he answered her. "But see to our guest first. Tsu Ma's cup is almost empty."

She bowed her head and, setting down her cup, went to fetch the wine jug. Tsu Ma had turned slightly in his seat and now sat there, his booted legs spread, one hand clasping his knee, the other holding out his cup. Turning, seeing him like that, Fei Yen caught her breath. It was so like the way Han Ch'in had used to sit, his strong legs spread arrogantly, his broad hands resting on his knees. She bowed deeply, hiding her sudden confusion, holding out the jug before her.

"Well . . . ?" Li Yuan prompted, making her start and spill some of the wine.

Tsu Ma laughed, a soft, generous laughter that made her look up at him again and meet his eyes. Yes, there was no doubting it; he knew what she was thinking. Knew the effect he had had on her.

She poured the wine then backed away, her head bowed, her throat suddenly dry, her heart pounding. Setting the jug down, she settled at her husband's feet again, but now she was barely conscious of Li Yuan. The whole world had suddenly turned about. She knelt there, her head lowered, trying to still the sudden tremor of her hands, the violent beating of her heart, but the sight of his booted feet beneath the table held her eyes. She stared at them, mesmerized, the sound of his voice like a drug on her senses, numbing her.

Wu Tsai was flirting with Tsu Ma, leaning toward him, her words and gestures unmistakable in their message; but Fei Yen could sense how detached the T'ang was from her games. He leaned toward Wu Tsai, laughing, smiling, playing the ancient game with ease and charm, but his attention was focused in herself. She could sense how his body moved toward her subtly; how, with the utmost casual-

ness, he strove at each moment to include her in all that was said. And Li Yuan? He was unaware of this. It was like the poor child was asleep, enmeshed in his dream of perfect love.

She looked away, pained suddenly by all she was thinking. Li Yuan was her husband, and one day he would be T'ang. He deserved her loyalty, in body and soul. And yet...

She rose quietly and went into the pagoda, returning a moment later with a p'i p'a, the ancient four-stringed lute shaped like a giant teardrop, "What's this?" said Li Yuan, turning to look at her.

She stood there, her head bowed. "I thought it might be pleasant if we had some music."

Li Yuan turned and looked across at Tsu Ma, who smiled and gave a tiny nod of his head. But instead of handing the lute to her cousin, as Li Yuan had expected, Fei Yen sat, the lute held upright in her lap, and began to play.

Li Yuan sat there, entranced by the fluency of her playing, the swift certainty of her fingers across the strings, the passionate tiny movements of her head as she wrought the tune from nothingness. He recognized the song. It was the Kan Hua Hui, the "Flower Fair," a sweet, sprightly tune that took considerable expertise to play. When she finished he gave a short laugh and bowed his head. He was about to speak, to praise her, when she began again—a slower, more thoughtful piece this time.

It was the Yueh Erh Kao, "The Moon on High."

He shivered, looking out across the blackness of the lake, his heart suddenly in his throat. It was beautiful: as if the notes were tiny silver fishes floating in the darkness. As the playing grew faster, more complex, his gaze was drawn to her face again and saw how her eyes had almost closed, her whole being suddenly focused in the song, in the movement of her fingers against the strings. It reminded him of that moment years before when she had drawn and aimed the bow. How her whole body had seemed to become part of the bow, and how, when the arrow had been released, it was as if part of her had flown through the air toward the distant target.

He breathed slowly, his lips parted in wonder. And Han was dead, and she was his. And still the Great Wheel turned . . .

It ended. For a time no one spoke. Then Wu Tsai leaned forward and took her cup from the table, smiling, looking across at Tsu Ma.

"My cousin is very gifted," she said. "It is said in our family that the gods made a mistake the day Fei Yen was born. They meant Yin Tsu to have another son; but things were mixed up and while she received the soul of a man, she was given the body of a woman."

Fei Yen had looked up briefly, only to avert her eyes again, but it was clear from her smile that she had heard the story often and was not displeased by it. Tsu Ma, however, turned to face Wu Tsai, coming to Fei Yen's defense.

"From what I've seen, if the gods were mistaken it was in one small respect alone. That Fei Yen is not quite perfect. . ."

Fei Yen met his eyes momentarily, responding to his teasing tone. "Not quite, Chieh Hsia?"

"No . . ." He held out his empty cup. "For they should have made you twins. One to fill my cup while the other played."

There was laughter all round. But when Fei Yen began to get up and pour for him, Tsu Ma took the jug and went around himself, filling their cups. "There!" he said, sitting back. "Now 1 can listen once again." Taking his hint, Fei Yen straightened the p'i p'a in her lap and after a moment's concentration, began to play. This time it was a song none of them had heard before. A strange, melancholy tune. And as she played she sang in a high contralto.

A pretty pair of white geese

Double, double, far from dusty chaos;

Wings embracing, they play in bright sunlight,

Necks caressing roam the blue clouds.

Trapped by nets or felled by corded arrow

Hen and cock are parted one dawn.

Sad echoes drift down river bends,

Lonesome cries ring out from river banks.

"It is not that I don't long for my former mate,

But because of you I won't reach my flock."

Drop by drop she sheds a tear.

"A thousand leagues I'll wait for you!"

How happy to fall in love,

So sad a lifetime parting.

Let us cling to our hundred-year span,

Let us pursue every moment of time,

Like grass on a lonely hill

Knowing it must wither and die.

Li Yuan, watching her, found himself spellbound by the song, transfixed by the pain in her face as she sang, and astonished that he had never heard her sing before—that he had never guessed she had these talents. When she had finished and the lute had fallen silent, he looked across at Tsu Ma and saw how the T'ang sat there, his head bowed, his hands clasped together tightly as if in grief.

Tsu Ma looked up, tears filming his eyes, his voice soft. "That was beautiful, Lady Fei. Perhaps the most beautiful thing I have ever heard."

Fei Yen was looking down, the p'i p'a resting loosely against her breasts, her whole frame bent forward, as if she had emptied herself with the song. She made a tiny motion of her head, acknowledging the T'ang's words; then she stood and with bows to Tsu Ma and her husband, turned and went back into the pagoda.

"Well. . ." said Tsu Ma, looking directly at Li Yuan. "What can I say, my friend? You honor me, tonight. I mean that."

"I, too, Tsu Ma. This has been an evening to remember."

Tsu Ma sat back. "That's true." He shivered, then seemed to come to himself again and smiled. "But come, I am neglecting the Lady Wu." He turned to Wu Tsai, his smile widening. "Do you play anything, my Lady?"

Li Yuan smiled, recognizing that Tsu Ma was hinting he should go after his wife. With a bow to his guests he went. But Fei Yen was not inside the pagoda. He stood there in the empty room a moment, frowning, hearing only the laughter from the terrace outside. Then he heard her calling him softly from the far side of the pagoda.

THEY STROLLED back across the bridge, his arm about her neck, her tiny body pressed warm and tight against his side. The night was mild and dark and comforting about them, but the terrace was empty, the pagoda, too. Li Yuan looked about him, puzzled, then stiffened, hearing a splash in the water close by.

He crouched, facing the danger. "Get behind me, Fei Yen!" he said, quietly but urgently, drawing the dagger from his boot.

A peal of laughter rolled out from the darkness in front of them, rich and deep and full of warmth. Li Yuan relaxed. It was Tsu Ma.

"Gods! What are you doing?"

Tsu Ma came closer, into the light of the lanterns. The water was up to his chest and his hair was slicked back wetly from his forehead.

"Swimming," he answered. "It's lovely. The water's much warmer than I thought it would be."

"And the Lady Wu? Has she gone back?"

In answer there was a splashing to their left and a second whoop of laughter.

"You should come in, you two!" she yelled. "It's marvelous!"

Li Yuan looked about him, puzzled. Tsu Ma saw and laughed.

"If you're looking for our clothes, they're in the boat. It was the Lady Wu's idea. She told me there were fish in the lake and I wanted to see for myself."

"And were there?" It was Fei Yen. She had come alongside Li Yuan and was standing there, looking across at Tsu Ma. He stood straighter in the water, his broad chest glistening wetly in the multicolored light.

"Only an eel," Wu Tsai answered, coming nearer, her naked shoulders bobbing above the surface of the water. "A rather stiff little eel. . ."

"Wu Tsai!" Fei Yen protested, but even Li Yuan was laughing now.

"They say the god Kung-Kung who brought the Great Flood was an eel," Tsu Ma said, scooping water up over his chest and arms as if he were washing. "A giant eel. But look, you two, if you're not going to join us, then perhaps you should let us join you. Li Yuan . . . if you would avert your eyes while the Lady Wu gets out and finds her clothes?"

"Of course . . ." Li Yuan turned away, hearing the giggling that went on behind his back as Fei Yen went across to help her cousin.

"All right," Wu Tsai said, after a while. "You can turn around now, Prince Yuan."

He turned back. Wu Tsai was kneeling in the boat, fastening her silks. She looked up at him, grinning. "You really should have joined us."

He hesitated, conscious of Tsu Ma, naked in the water close by, and of Fei Yen, crouched there beside the boat, watching him.

"It wouldn't have been right..."

Wu Tsai shrugged, and climbed up onto the bank. "1 thought we had made a toast." Her eyes flashed mischievously. "You know, eternal friends, and all that. . ."

Tsu Ma had pushed forward through the water until he was standing just below the deep lip of the bank. Now he spoke, placing his hands flat on the flagstones at the lake's edge. "Prince Yuan is right, Lady Wu. Forgive me, I wasn't thinking. It would be most. . . improper."

Wu Tsai brushed past Li Yuan provocatively, then glanced back at Fei Yen, smiling. "I just thought it would have been fun, that's all. Something a little different."

Li Yuan turned angrily, glaring at her; then, biting back the retort that had come to mind, he turned back, looking at Fei Yen.

She was standing now, her head bowed, her whole stance submissive.

He took a step toward her, one hand raised in appeal. "You must see how wrong it would have been?"

Her eyes lifted, met his, obedient. "Of course, my husband."

He let his breathing calm, then turned back, looking across at the T'ang. "And you, Tsu Ma? What do you wish? Should we retire to the pagoda while you dress?"

Tsu Ma laughed, his body dark and powerful in the water. "Gods, no, Yuan. This is much too nice. I think I'll swim back. Float on my back a bit and stare up at the stars."

Yuan bowed his head. "Of course. As you will. But what will you do when you get to the far shore?"

But Tsu Ma had turned already and was wading out into the deeper water. He shouted back his answer as he slipped into the blackness. "Why, I'll get out of the water, Yuan! What else should I do?"

AT ELEVEN the next morning, Tolonen was standing at the West Window in the Room of the Five Directions in the East Palace at Tongjiang, looking out across the gardens toward the lake. He had been summoned to this meeting at short notice. That in itself was not unusual; but for once he had been told nothing of the reason for the meeting. It was this—a sense of unpreparedness—that made him feel restless standing there, made him turn and pace the room impatiently.

He had paused before the great mirror at the far end of the room, straightening the collar of his uniform jacket, when the door behind him opened. He turned, expecting Li Shai Tung, but it was the Prince, Li Yuan, who entered.

"Prince Yuan," he said, bowing.

Li Yuan came forward, extending an arm to offer the Marshal a seat. "Thank you for coming, Knut. My father will join us later."

Tolonen bowed again, then sat, staring pointedly at the folder in Li Yuan's lap. "Well, Yuan, what is it?"

Li Yuan smiled. He enjoyed the old man's bluntness, a trait that had grown more pronounced with every year.

"My father has asked me to talk to you on a certain matter. When I've finished, he'll come and speak with you himself. But what I have to say has his full approval. You can direct any questions—or objections—to me, as if you were speaking to my father."

"Objections?" Tolonen raised his chin. "If Li Shai Tung has approved it, why should I have objections? He has a job for me, neh?"

"A task, let's say. Something that he feels you should oversee."

Tolonen nodded. "I see. And what is this task?"

Li Yuan hesitated. "Would you like refreshments while we talk?"

Tolonen smiled. "Thank you, Yuan, but no. Unless your father wishes to detain me, I must be in Nanking three hours from now to meet Major Karr."

"Of course. Then we'll press on. It would be best, perhaps, if you would let me finish before asking anything. Some of it is quite complex. And please, record this if you wish."

Tolonen bowed his head, then turned his right hand palm upward and quickly tapped out the command on the grid of tiny flesh-colored blisters at his wrist. That done, he settled back, letting the young Prince speak.

Li Yuan watched the Marshal while he talked, barely referring to the folder in his lap, unless it was to take some diagram from it and hand it to Tolonen. He watched attentively, noting every frown, every look of puzzlement, every last betraying blink or twitch in the old man's face, anxious to gauge the depth of his feelings.

Tolonen had not smiled throughout the lengthy exposition. He sat there, grim-faced, his left hand gripping the arm of his chair. But when Yuan finished, he looked down, giving a great heave of a sigh.

"Can I speak now, Yuan?" Tolonen said, his eyes pained, his whole face grave.

"Of course. As I said, you must speak to me as if I were my father. Openly. As you feel."

Prepared as he was, Li Yuan nonetheless felt a sudden tightening in his stomach. He respected Marshal Tolonen greatly, had grown up in the shadow of the old man. But in this, he knew, they were of a different mind.

Tolonen stared at him a moment, nodding, his lips pressed tightly together, his earnest gray eyes looking out from a face carved like granite. Then, with a deep sniff that indicated he had considered things long enough, he began.

"You ask me to speak openly. Yet I feel I cannot do that without offending you, Li Yuan. This is, I take it, your idea?"

Li Yuan could sense the great weight of the Marshal's authority bearing down on him, but steeled himself, forcing himself to confront it.

"It is."

"I see. And yet you command me—speaking with your father's voice—to answer you. Openly. Bluntly." He sighed. "Very well then. I'll tell you what I feel. I find this scheme of yours repugnant."

Li Yuan shivered, but kept his face impassive. "And I, Marshal Tolonen. And I. This is not something I want to do."

"Then why?"

"Because there is no other way. None that would not result in greater violence, greater bloodshed than that which we are already witnessing."

Tolonen looked down. Again he sniffed deeply. Then he looked up again, shaking his head. "No. Even were the worst to come, this is no path for us. To put things in men's heads. To wire them up and treat them like machines. Achh . . ." He leaned forward, his expression suddenly, unexpectedly, passionate. "I know what I am, Li Yuan. I know what I have had to do in the service of my T'ang. And sometimes I have difficulty sleeping. But this . . . this is different in kind. This will rob men of their freedom."

"Or the illusion of freedom?"

Tolonen waved the words aside impatiently. "It's no illusion, Prince Yuan. The freedom to choose—bad or good—that's real. And the Mandate of Heaven— those moral criteria by which a T'ang is adjudged a good or bad ruler—that too is real. Take them away and we have nothing. Nothing worth keeping, anyway."

Li Yuan sat forward. "I don't agree. If a man is bad, surely it is no bad thing to have a wire in his head—to be able to limit the effects of his badness? And if a man is good—"

Tolonen interrupted him. "You, I, your father—we are good men. We act because we must—for the good of all. Yet when we have left this earth, what then? How can we guarantee that those who rule Chung Kuo after us will be good? How can we guarantee their motives? So you see, I'd answer you thus, my Prince. It does not matter if the man with the wire in his head is good or bad. What matters is the moral standing of the man who holds the wires in his hands like ten thousand million strings. Will he make the puppets dance? Or will he leave them be?"

Li Yuan sat back slowly, shaking his head. "You talk of dictatorships, Marshal Tolonen. Yet we are Seven."

Tolonen turned his head aside, a strange bitterness in his eyes. "I talk of things to be—whether they come in ten years or ten thousand." He looked back at Li Yuan, his gray/eyes filled with sadness. "Whatever you or I might wish, history tells us this—nothing is eternal. Things change."

"You once thought differently. I have heard you speaking so myself, Knut. Was it not you yourself who said we should build a great dam against the floodwaters of Change."

Tolonen nodded, suddenly wistful, his lips formed into a sad smile. "Yes . . . but this!"

He sat there afterward, when the Prince had gone, staring down at his hands. He would do it. Of course he would. Hadn't his T'ang asked him to take this on? Even so, he felt heavy of heart. Had the dream died, then? The great vision of a world at peace—a world where a man could find his level and raise his family without need or care. And was this the first sign of the nightmare to come? Of the great, engulfing darkness?

He kept thinking of Jelka, and of the grandchildren he would someday have. What kind of a world would it be for them? Could he bear to see them wired, made vulnerable to the least whim of their lords and masters? He gritted his teeth, pained by the thought. Had it changed so much that even he—the cornerstone— began to doubt their course?

"Knut?"

He raised his head, then got to his feet hurriedly. He had been so caught up in his thoughts he had not heard the T'ang enter.

"Chieh Hsia!" He bowed his head exaggeratedly.

Li Shai Tung sat where his son had been sitting only moments before, silent, studying his Marshal. Then, with a vague nod of his head as if satisfied with what he had seen, he leaned toward Tolonen.

"I heard all that passed between you and my son."

"Yes, Chieh Hsia."

"And I am grateful for your openness."

Tolonen met his eyes unflinchingly. "It was only my duty, Li Shai Tung."

"Yes. But there was a reason for letting Yuan talk to you first. You see, while my son is, in his way, quite wise, he is also young. Too young, perhaps, to understand the essence of things—the place of Li and Ch'i in this great world of ours, the fine balance that exists between the shaping force and the passive substance."

Tolonen frowned, lowering his head slightly. "I'm afraid I don't follow you, Chieh Hsia."

The T'ang smiled. "Well, Knut, I'll put it simply, and bind you to keep this secret from my son. I have authorized his scheme, but that is not to say it will ever come about. You understand me?"

"Not fully, my Lord. You mean you are only humoring Li Yuan?"

Li Shai Tung hesitated. "In a way, yes, I suppose you could say I am. But this idea is deep-rooted in Yuan. I have seen it grow from the seed, until now it dominates his thinking. He believes he can shape the world to his conception, that this scheme of his will answer all the questions."

"And you think he's wrong?"

"Yes."

"Then why encourage him? Why authorize this madness?"

"Because Yuan will be T'ang one day. If I oppose him now in this, he will only return to it after my death. And that would be disastrous. It would bring him into conflict not only with his fellow T'ang but with the great mass of the Above. Best then to let him purge it from his blood while he is Prince, neh? To discover for himself that he is wrong."

"Maybe . . ." Tolonen took a deep breath. "But if you'll forgive me, Chieh Hsia, it still seems something of a gamble. What if this 'cure' merely serves to encourage him further? Isn't that possible?"

"Yes. Which is why I summoned you, Knut. Why I wanted you to oversee the project. To act as brake to my son's ambitions and keep the thing within bounds. . . and to kill it if you must."

Tolonen was staring at his T'ang, realization coming slowly to his face. Then he laughed. "I see, Chieh Hsia ... I understand!"

Li Shai Tung smiled back at him. "Good. Then when Tsu Ma returns from riding, I'll tell him you have taken the job, yes?"

Tolonen bowed his head, all heaviness suddenly lifted from his heart. "I would be honored, Chieh Hsia. Deeply honored."

FIFTEEN LI north of Tongjiang, at the edge of the T'ang's great estate, were the ruins of an ancient Buddhist monastery that dated from the great Sung Dynasty. They stood in the foothills of the Ta Pa Shan, three levels of cinnabar-red buildings climbing the hillside, the once-elegant sweep of their gray-tiled roofs smashed like broken mouths, their brickwork crumbling, their doorways cluttered with weed and fallen masonry. They had stood so for more than two hundred and forty years, victims of the great Kb Ming purges of the 19605, their ruin becoming, with time, a natural thing—part of the bleak and melancholy landscape that surrounded them. On the hillside below the buildings stood the ruin of an ancient moss-covered stupa, its squat, heavy base chipped and crumbling, the steps cut into the face cracked, broken in places. It was a great, pot-bellied thing, its slender spire like an afterthought tagged on untidily, the smooth curve of its central surface pocked where the plaster had fallen away in places, exposing the brickwork.

In its shadow, in a square of orange brickwork partly hidden by the long grass, stood a circular pool. It had once been a well serving the monastery, but when the Red (guards had come they had filled it with broken statuary, almost to its rim. Now the water—channeled from the hills above by way of an underground stream— rose to the lip of the well. With the spring thaw, or when the rains fell heavily in the Ta Pa Shan, the well would overflow, making a small marsh of the ground to the southwest of it. Just now, however, the land was dry, the pool a perfect mirror, moss on the statuary below giving it a rich green color, like a tarnished bronze.

The sky overhead was a cold, metallic blue, while to the north, above the mountains, storm clouds were gathering, black and dense, throwing the farthest peaks into deep shadow.

To the south the land fell away, slowly at first, then abruptly. A steep path led down into a narrow, deeply eroded valley through which a clear stream ran, swift yet shallow, to the plains below.

At the southern end of the valley where the sky was brighter, a horseman now appeared, his dark mount reined in, its head pulling to one side as it slowed then came to a halt. A moment later, a second rider came up over the lip of rock and drew up beside the first. They leaned close momentarily then began to come forward again, slowly, looking about them, the first of them pointing up at the ruined monastery.

"What is this place?" Fei Yen asked, looking up to where Tsu Ma was pointing. "It looks ancient."

"It is. Li Yuan was telling me about it yesterday. There used to be two hundred monks here." "Monks?"

He laughed, turning in his saddle to look at her. "Yes, monks. But come. Let's go up. I'll explain it when we get there."

She looked down, smiling, then nudged her horse forward, following him, watching as he began to climb the steep path that cut into the overhang above, his horse straining to make the gradient.

It was difficult. If it had been wet it would have been impossible on horseback, but he managed it. Jumping down from his mount, he came back and stood there at the head of the path, looking down at her.

"Dismount and I'll give you a hand. Or you can leave your mount there, if you like. He'll not stray far."

In answer she spurred her horse forward, willing it up the path, making Tsu Ma step back sharply as she came on.

"There!" she said, turning the beast sharply, then reaching forward to smooth its neck. "It wasn't so hard . . ."

She saw how he was looking at her, his admiration clouded by concern, and looked away quickly. There had been this tension between them all morning; a sense of things unspoken, of gestures not yet made between them. It had lain there beneath the stiff formality of their talk, like fire under ice, surfacing from time to time in a look, a moment's hesitation, a tacit smile.

"You should be more careful," he said, coming up to her, his fingers reaching up to smooth the horse's flank only a hand's length from her knee. "You're a good rider, Lady Fei, but that's not a stunt I'd recommend you try a second time."

She looked down at him, her eyes defiant. "Because I'm a woman, you mean?"

He smiled back at her, a strange hardness behind his eyes, then shook his head. "No. Because you're not that good a rider. And because I'm responsible for you. What would your husband say if I brought you back in pieces?"

Fei Yen was silent. What would he say? She smiled. "All right. I'll behave myself in future."

She climbed down, aware suddenly of how close he was to her, closer than he had been all morning; and when she turned, it was to find him looking down at her, a strange expression in his eyes. For a moment she stood there, silent, waiting for him, not knowing what he would do. The moment seemed to stretch out endlessly, his gaze traveling across her face, her neck, her shoulder, returning to her eyes. Then, with a soft laugh, he turned away, letting her breathe again.

"Come!" he said briskly, moving up the slope, away from her. "Let's explore the place!"

She bent down momentarily, brushing the dust from her clothes, then straightened up, her eyes following him.

"You asked me what monks were," he said, turning, waiting for her to catch up with him. "But it's difficult to explain. We've nothing like them now. Not since Tsao Ch'un destroyed them all. There are some similarities to the New Confucian officials, of course—they dressed alike, in saffron robes, and had similar rituals and ceremonies. But in other ways they were completely different."

She caught up with him. "In what way different?"

He smiled and began to climb the slope again; slowly, looking about him all the while, his eyes taking in the ruins, the distant, cloud-wreathed mountains, the two horses grazing just below them. "Well, let's just say that they had some strange beliefs. And that they let those beliefs shape their lives—as if their lives were of no account."

They had reached the pool. Tsu Ma went across and stood there, one foot resting lightly on the tiled lip of the well as he looked back across the valley toward the south. Fei Yen hesitated, then came alongside, looking up at him. "What kind of beliefs?"

"Oh . . ." He looked down, studying her reflection in the pool, conscious of the vague, moss-covered forms beneath the surface image. "That each one of us would return after death, in another form. As a butterfly, perhaps, or as a horse." ("Or as a man?"

l"Yes . . ." He looked up at her, smiling. "Imagine it! Endless cycles of rebirth. Each new-born form reflecting your behavior in past lives. If you lived badly you would return as an insect." "And if well, as a T'ang?"

He laughed. "Perhaps . . . but then again, perhaps not. They held such things as power and government as being of little importance. What they believed in was purity. All that was important to them was that the spirit be purged of all its earthly weaknesses. And because of that—because each new life was a fresh chance to live purely—they believed all life was sacred."

A path led up from where they stood, its flagstones worn and broken, its progress hidden here and there by moss and weed. They moved on, following it up to the first of the ruined buildings. To either side great chunks of masonry lay in the tall grasses, pieces of fallen statuary among them.

In the doorway she paused, looking up at him. "I think they sound rather nice. Why did Tsao Ch'un destroy them?"

He sighed, then pushed through, into the deep shadow within. "That's not an easy question to answer, my Lady. To understand, you would have to know how the world was before Tsao Ch'un. How divided it was. How many different forms of religion there were, and every one of them 'the truth.' "

She stood there, looking in at him. "I know my history. I've read about the century of rebellions."

"Yes . . ." He glanced back at her, then turned away, looking about him at the cluttered floor, the smoke-blackened walls, the broken ceiling of the room he was in. There was a dank, sour smell to everything, a smell of decay and great antiquity. It seemed much colder here than out in the open. He turned back, shaking his head. "On the surface of things the Buddhists seemed the best of all the religious groups. They were peaceful. They fought no great holy wars in the name of their god. Nor did they persecute anyone who disagreed with them. But ultimately they were every bit as bad as the others." "Why? If they threatened no one . . ."

"Ah, but they did. Their very existence was a threat. This place ... it was but one of many thousand such monasteries throughout Chung Kuo. And a small one at that. Some monasteries had ten, twenty thousand monks, many of them living long into their eighties and nineties. Imagine all those men, disdainful of states and princes, taking from the land—eating, drinking, building their temples and their statues, making their books and their prayer flags—and giving nothing back. That was what was so threatening about them. It all seemed so harmless, so peaceful, but it was really quite insidious—a debilitating disease that crippled the social body, choking its life from it like a cancer."

Tsu Ma looked about him, suddenly angry, his eyes taking in the waste of it all. Long centuries of waste. "They could have done so much—for the sick, the poor, the homeless, but such things were beneath their notice. To purge themselves of earthly desires was all they were worried about. Pain and suffering—what did suffering mean to them except as a path to purity?"

"Then you think Tsao Ch'un was right to destroy them?"

"Right?" He came across to her. "Yes, I think he was right. Not in everything he did. But in this . . . yes. It's better to feed and clothe and house the masses than to let them rot. Better to give them a good life here than to let them suffer in the vague hope of some better afterlife."

He placed his right hand against the rounded stone of the upright, leaning over her, staring down fiercely at her as he spoke, more passionate than she had ever seen him. She looked down, her pulse quickening.

"And that's what you believe?" she asked softly. "That we've only this one life. And nothing after."

"Don't we all believe that? At core?"

She shivered, then looked up, meeting his eyes. "One life?"

He hesitated, his eyes narrowing, then reached out and brushed his fingers against her cheek and neck.

"Tsu Ma . . ."

He drew his hand back sharply. "Forgive me, I..." He stared at her a moment, his eyes confused, pained. "I thought. . ." He looked down, shaking his head, then pushed past her.

Outside the sky was overcast. A wind had blown up, tearing at the grass, rippling the surface of the pool. Tsu Ma knelt at its edge, his chest heaving, his thoughts in turmoil. One life . . . What had she meant if not that? What did she want of him?

He turned, hearing her approach.

"I'm sorry . . ." she began, but he shook his head.

"It was a mistake, that's all. We are who we are, neh?"

She stared at him, pained by the sudden roughness of his words. She had not meant to hurt him.

"If I were free. . ."

He shook his head, his face suddenly ugly, his eyes bitter. "But you're not. And the Prince is my friend, neh?"

She turned her face from him, then moved away. The storm was almost upon them now. A dense, rolling mist lay upon the hills behind the ruins and the wind held the faintest suggestion of the downpour to come. The sky was darkening by the moment.

"We'd best get back," she said, turning to him. But he seemed unaware of the darkness at the back of everything. His eyes held nothing but herself. She shuddered. Was he in love with her? Was that it? And she had thought. . .

Slowly he stood, his strong, powerful body stretching, as if from sleep. Then, turning his head from her, he strode down the slope toward the horses.

ON THE FLIGHT down to Nanking, Tolonen played back the recording, the words sounding clearly in his head. Listening to his own voice again, he could hear the unease, the bitterness there and wondered what Li Yuan had made of it. Prince Yuan was a clever one, there was no doubting it; so perhaps he understood why the T'ang had appointed him to oversee the Project rather than someone more sympathetic. Maybe that was why he had left things unresolved, their talk at an impasse. But had he guessed the rest of it? Did he know just how deeply his father was opposed to things?

He sighed, then smiled, thinking of the reunion to come. He had not seen Karr in more than three years. Not since he'd seen him off from Nanking back in November '03. And now Karr was returning, triumphant, his success in tracking down and killing Berdichev a full vindication of their faith in him.

Tolonen leaned forward, looking down out of the porthole. The spaceport was off in the distance ahead of them, a giant depression in the midst of the great glacial plateau of ice—the City's edge forming a great wall about the outer perimeter. Even from this distance he could see the vast, pitted sprawl of landing pads, twenty li in diameter, its southernmost edge opening out onto Hsuan Wu Lake, the curve of the ancient Yangtze forming a natural barrier to the northeast, like a giant moat two li in width. At the very center of that great sunken circle, like a vast yet slender needle perched on its tip, was the control tower. Seeing it, Tolonen had mixed feelings. The last time he had come to greet someone from Mars it had been DeVore. Before he had known. Before the T'ang's son, Han Ch'in, had died and everything had changed.

But this time it was Karr. And Karr would be the hawk he'd fly against his prey. So maybe it was fitting that it should begin here, at Nanking, where DeVore had first slipped the net.

Ten minutes later he was down and seated across from a young duty captain as they traveled the fast-link that connected the City to the spaceport. Things were tight here, tighter than he remembered them. They had banned all transit flights across the port. Only incoming or outgoing spacecraft were allowed in its air space. Anything else was destroyed immediately, without warning. So this was the only way in—underneath the pott.

Karr's ship was docking even as Tolonen rode the sealed car out to the landing bay. The noise was deafening. He could feel the vibrations in his bones, juddering the cradle he was strapped into, making him think for a moment that the tiny vehicle was going to shake itself to pieces. Then it eased and the sound dropped down the register. With a hiss, a door irised open up ahead of him and the car slipped through, coming out into a great sunken pit, in the center of which stood the squatly rounded shape of the interplanetary craft.

He could see the Tientsin clearly through the transparent walls of the car, its underbelly glowing, great wreaths of mist swirling up into the cold air overhead. The track curved sharply, taking his car halfway around the ship before it slowed and stopped. Guards met him, helped him out, standing back, their heads bowed, as he stretched his legs and looked about him.

He smiled, looking back at the craft. It had come all the way from Mars. Like a great black stone slapped down upon the great wei chi board of Chung Kuo. Karr. He could see the big man in his mind's eye even now, lifting Berdichev and breaking him. Ending it quickly, cleanly. Tolonen sniffed. Yes, in that he and Kan-were alike. They understood how things worked at this level. It was no good dealing with one's enemies as one dealt with one's friends. Useless to play by rules that the other side constantly broke. In war one had to be utterly ruthless. To concede nothing—unless concession were a path to victory.

As he watched, an R-shaped gantry-elevator moved on its rails across to the craft and attached itself to a portal on its uppermost surface. He walked toward it, habit making him look about him, as if, even here, he could expect attack.

Karr was in the first elevator, packed in with twenty or thirty others. As the cage descended, Tolonen raised a hand in greeting, but stayed where he was, just back from the others waiting there—maintenance crew, customs men, and guards. Kan-was carrying a small briefcase, the handle chained to his arm. At the barrier he was first in the line, his Triple-A pass held out for inspection. Even so, it was some three or four minutes before he passed through.

The two men greeted one another warmly, Tolonen hugging the big man to him. "It's good to see you, Gregor. You did well out there. I'm proud of you!" "Thank you, sir. But you're looking well yourself."

Tolonen nodded, then pointed at the briefcase. "But what's this? Don't we pay you enough that you have to go into the courier business?"

Karr leaned closer, lowering his voice. "It's my gift for the T'ang. I didn't want to say anything about it until I got back. You know how it is."

Tolonen sighed. "I know only too well. But tell me, what is it?"

Karr smiled. "Berdichev's files. His personal records. Coded, of course, but I'm sure we can crack them. If they're what I think they are, we can polish off the Dispersionists for good."

"Unless someone's done it already?"

Karr narrowed his eyes. "The Executive Killings, you mean?"

"Yes. It's one of the theories we're working on. Which is why I wanted you to take over the investigation from young Ebert. You've the nose for it."

"Hmmm . . ." Karr looked down. "I've read the files."

"And?"

"They make no sense. There's no real pattern to it. Good men and bad. It seems almost random. Except for the timing of it all."

"Yes. But there has to be a connection."

"Maybe . . ." Karr's face was clouded a moment, then he brightened. "But how's that darling daughter of yours? She was a little tiger!"

Tolonen's face lit up. "Gods, you should see her now, Gregor. Like Mu-Lan, she is. A regular little warrior princess. Yes. . . you must come and train with us some time!"

Karr bowed low. "I would be greatly honored."

"Good, then let's . . ."

Tolonen stopped. A man was standing just to Karr's right. Karr turned, reacting to the movement in Tolonen's eyes, then relaxed, smiling.

"First Advocate Kung!" Karr gave a small bow and put out his left hand to shake the outstretched hand of the Advocate. "I hope all goes well for you."

"Thank you, Major. And your own ventures ... I hope they prove successful."

The Advocate hesitated, looking to Tolonen. Karr saw what his hesitation implied and quickly made the introduction.

"Forgive me. First Advocate Kung, this is Marshal Tolonen, Head of the Council of Generals."

Tolonen accepted the Advocate's bow with a tight smile. He knew this game too well to be caught in the web of obligation.

"I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Marshal Tolonen," Kung said, bowing again. Then he turned and clicked his fingers. At once his valet approached, handing him a small case. "However, it was you, Major Karr, whom I wanted to see. I was most grateful for your hospitality on board ship, and wanted to offer you a small token of my appreciation."

Tolonen smiled inwardly. He would have to brief Karr afterward on how to escape from this situation, otherwise First Advocate Kung would be calling upon him for favors from here until doomsday, playing upon the Major's need not to lose face.

"Thank you, Advocate, but. . ."

Karr saw the case falling away, Kung raising the handgun, both hands clasping the handle; and he reacted at once, straight-arming Tolonen so that the old man went down. It was not a moment too soon. The explosion from the big old-fashioned gun was deafening. But Karr was already swinging the case at the Advocate's head. He felt it connect and followed through with a kick to the stomach. Kung fell and lay still.

There was shouting all about them. The valet had gone down on his knees, his head pressed to the floor, his whole body visibly shaking. It was clear he had had nothing to do with the assassination attempt. Karr turned, looking for further assassins, then, satisfied there were none, looked down at Tolonen. The Marshal was sitting up, gasping, one hand pressed to his ribs.

Karr went down on one knee. "Forgive me, Marshal, I—"

Tolonen waved aside his apology, the words coming from him wheezingly. "You . . . saved my ... life."

"I wouldn't have believed it. He was Senior Advocate on Mars. A highly respected man."

"Major!" The call came from behind Karr. He turned. It was one of the spaceport's Security captains.

"What is it?" he answered, standing, looking across to where the Captain was kneeling over the fallen man.

"There's no pulse."

Karr went across and knelt beside Kung, examining the body for himself. It was true. Advocate Kung was dead. Yet the wounds to the head and stomach were minimal. If he had meant to kill the man . . .

"Shit!" he said, turning to look at Tolonen, then frowned. "What is it, sir?"

Tolonen's eyes were wide, staring at the corpse. As Karr watched him, the old man shuddered. "Gods . . ." he said softly. "It's one of them."

Karr stared back at him a moment, then his eyes widened, understanding. "A copy. . ." He turned and looked across at the valet. The man had been forced to his feet and was being held between two Security men, his head bowed in shame, his hands trembling with fear.

"You.¹" Karr barked at him, getting up and going across to him. "Tell me, and tell me fast, did you notice anything different about your master? Anything unusual?"

The man shook his head abjectly. "Nothing, honored sir. Believe me. 1 knew nothing of his intentions."

Karr studied the man a moment longer, then waved the guards away. "Take him away and interrogate him. Whatever it takes. I want the truth from him." He turned back. Tolonen was getting to his feet, one of the guards giving him a hand.

Tolonen turned, smiling his thanks, then put out his hand. "Give me your knife, sergeant."

The guard did as he was told, then stood back, watching as Tolonen limped slowly across to the corpse.

He met Karr's eyes. "If it's like the others . . ." Karr nodded. They both remembered that day when Han Ch'in had been assassinated. Recalled the team of copy humans who had come in from Mars to kill him. And now here they were again. A second wave, perhaps. Tolonen knelt by the body, putting the knife down at his side.

"Here," Karr said, coming the other side of Kung. "I'll do it." If it was like the others it would have a metal plate set into its chest. The real Kung would have been killed months ago.

Tolonen handed Karr the knife, then sat back on his knees, rubbing at his ribs again, a momentary flicker of pain in his face. "Okay. Let's see what it is."

Karr slit the Advocate's tunic open, exposing the flesh; then, leaning right over the body, he dug deeply into the flesh, drawing the blade across the corpse's chest.

Blood welled, flowed freely down the corpse's sides. They had not expected that. But there was something. Not a plate, as they'd both expected, but something much smaller, softer. Karr prised the knife beneath it and lifted it out. It was a wallet. A tiny black wallet no bigger than a child's hand. He frowned, then handed it across.

Tolonen wiped it against his sleeve, then turned it over, studying it. It seemed like an ordinary pouch, the kind one kept tobacco in. For a moment he hesitated. What if it was a bomb? He ought to hand it over to the experts. But he was impatient to know, for the man—and he was a man, there was no doubting that now—had almost killed him. He had been that close.

Gently he pressed the two ends of the wallet's rim toward each other. The mouth of the pouch gaped open. He reached in with two fingers, hooking out the thing within.

He stared at it a moment, then handed it across to Karr. He had known. The moment before he had opened it he had known what would be inside. A stone. A single white wei chi stone. Like a calling card. To let the T'ang know who had killed him.

Tolonen met Karr's eyes and smiled bitterly.

"DeVore. This was DeVore's work."

Karr looked down. "Yes, and when he hears about it he'll be disappointed. Very disappointed."

Tolonen was quiet a moment, brooding, then he looked back at Karr. "Something's wrong, Gregor. My instincts tell me he's up to something while we're here, distracted by this business. I must get back. At once. Jelka . . ."

Karr touched his arm. "We'll go at once."

devore turned in his chair and looked across at his lieutenant. "What is it, Wiegand?"

"I thought you should know, sir. The Han has failed. Marshal Tolonen is still alive."

"Ah. . ." He turned, staring out of the long window again, effectively dismissing the man. For a while he sat there, perfectly still, studying the slow movement of cloud above the distant peaks, the thin wisps of cirrus like delicate feathers of snow against the rich blue of the sky. Then he turned back.

He smiled- Like Wiegand, they would all be thinking he had tried to kill Tolonen, but that wasn't what he'd wanted. Killing him would only make him a martyr. Would strengthen the Seven. No, what he wanted was to destroy Tolonen. Day by day. Little by little.

Yes. Tolonen would have found the stone. And he would know it was his doing.

There was a secret elevator in his room, behind one of the full-length wall charts. He used it now, descending to the heart of the warren. At the bottom a oneway mirror gave him a view of the corridor outside. He checked that it was clear, then stepped out. The room was to the left, fifty ch'i along the corridor, at the end of a cul-de-sac hewn out of the surrounding rock.

At the door he paused and took a small lamp from his pocket, then examined both the locks. They seemed untouched. Satisfied, he tapped in the combinations and placed his eye against the indented pad. The door hissed back.

The girl was asleep. She lay there, facedown on her cot, her long, ash-blond hair spilling out across her naked shoulders.

He had found her in one of the outlying villages. The physical resemblance had struck him at once. Not that she would have fooled anyone as she was, but eighteen months of good food and expert surgery had transformed her, making the thousand yuan he'd paid for her seem the merest trifle. As she was now she was worth a million, maybe ten.

He closed the door and crossed the room, pulling the sheet back slowly, careful not to wake her, exposing the fullness of her rump, the elegance of her back. He studied her a moment, then reached down, shaking her until she woke and turned, looking up at him.

She was so like her. So much so that even her "father" would have had difficulty telling her from the real thing.

DeVore smiled and reached out to brush her face tenderly with the back of his hand, watching as she pushed up against it gratefully. Yes. She was nearly ready now.

"Who are you?" he asked her gently. "Tell me what your name is."

She hesitated then raised her eyes to his again. "Jelka," she said. "My name is Jelka Tolonen."

jelka WASKICKING for Siang's throat when the far wall blew in, sending smoke and debris billowing across the practice arena.

The shock wave threw her backward, but she rolled and was up at once, facing the direction of the explosion, seeing at a glance that Siang was dead, huge splinters jutting from his back.

They came fast through the smoke—three men in black clingsuits, breathing masks hiding their features, their heads jerking from side to side, their guns searching.

Ping Tiao assassins. She knew it immediately. And acted . . .

A backflip, then a singlehanded grab for the exercise rope, her other hand seeking the wall bars.

The middle assassin fired even as she dropped. Wood splintered next to her. She had only to survive a minute and help would be here.

A minute. It was too long. She would have to attack.

She went low, slid on her belly; then she was up, jumping high, higher than she had ever leaped before, her body curled into a tight ball. All three were firing now, but the thick smoke was confusing them; they couldn't see properly through their masks.

She went low again, behind Siang, taking a short breath before turning and kicking upward.

One of the men went down, his leg broken. She heard his scream and felt her blood freeze. The other two turned, firing again. Siang's body jerked and seemed to dance where it lay. But Jelka had moved on, circling them, never stopping, changing direction constantly, dipping low to breathe.

In a moment they would realize what she was doing and keep their fire at floor level. Then she would be dead.

Unless she killed them first.

The fact that there were two hindered them. They couldn't fire continuously for fear of killing each other. As she turned, they had to try to follow her, but the rapidity of her movements, the unpredictability of her changes of direction, kept wrong-footing them. She saw one of them stumble and took her chance, moving in as he staggered up, catching him beneath the chin with stiffened fingers. She felt the bones give and moved away quickly, coughing now, the smoke getting to her at last.

Fifteen seconds. Just fifteen seconds.

Suddenly—from the far end of the arena where the wall had been—there was gunfire. As she collapsed she saw the last of the assassins crumple, his body lifted once, then once again, as the shells ripped into him.

And as she passed into unconsciousness she saw her father standing there, the portable cannon at his hip, its fat muzzle smoking.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Shadows

tOLONEN SAT at his daughter's bedside, his eyes brimming with tears. "It was all a terrible mistake, my love. They were after me." Jelka shook her head, but a huge lump sat in her throat at the thought • of what had happened.

She had spent the last ten days in bed, suffering from shock, the after-reaction fierce, frightening. It had felt like she was going mad. Her father had sat with her through the nights, holding her hands, comforting her, robbing himself of sleep to be with her and help her through the worst of it.

Now she felt better, but still it seemed that everything had changed. Suddenly, hideously, the world had become a mask—a paper-thin veil behind which lay another nightmare world. The walls were no longer quite so solid as they had seemed, and each white-suited attendant seemed to conceal an assassin dressed in black.

The world had flipped over in her mind. Was now a thing of menace, a jagged landscape of threat.

It made it no better for her that they had been after her father. No, that simply made things worse. Far worse. For she had had vivid dreams—dreams in which he was dead and she had gone to see him in the T'ang's Great Hall, laid out in state, clothed from head to foot in the white cloth of death.

She stared at him a moment, her eyes narrowed slightly, as if she saw through the flesh to the bone itself; and while he met her staring eyes unflinchingly, something in the depths of him squirmed and tried to break away.

They had been Ping Tiao. A specially trained cell. But not Security-trained, thank the gods.

He looked down at where his hands held those of his daughter. The audacity of the Ping Tiao in coming for him had shaken them. They knew now that the danger was far greater than they had estimated. The War had unleashed new currents of dissent; darker, more deadly currents that would be hard to channel.

His own investigations had drawn a blank. He did not know how they would have known his household routines. Siang? It was possible, but now that Siang was dead he would never know. And if not Siang, then who?

It made him feel uneasy—an unease he had communicated to Li Shai Tung when they were alone together. "You must watch yourself, Chieh Hsia," he had said. "You must watch those closest to you. For there is a new threat. What it is, I don't exactly know. Not yet. But it exists. It's real."

Bombs and guns. He was reaping the harvest he had sown. They all were. But what other choice had they had?

To Jay down and die. The only other choice.

Tolonen looked at his daughter, sleeping now, and felt all the fierce warmth of his love for her rise up again. A vast tide of feeling. And with it came an equally fierce pride in her. How magnificent she had been! He had seen the replay from the Security cameras and witnessed the fast, flashing deadliness of her.

He relinquished her hand and stood, stretching the tiredness from his muscles.

They would come again. He knew it for a certainty. They would not rest now until they had snatched his breath from him. His instinct told him so. And though it was not his way to wait passively for things to come to him, in this he found himself helpless, unable to act. They were like shadows. One strove to fight them and they vanished. Or left a corpse, which was no better.

No, there was no center to them. Nothing substantial for him to act against. Only an idea. A nihilistic concept. Thinking this, he felt his anger rise again, fueled by a mounting sense of impotence.

He would have crushed them if he could. One by one. Like bugs beneath his heel. But how did one crush shadows?

fei yen jumped down from her mount, letting the groom lead it away, then turned to face the messenger.

"Well? Is he at home?"

The servant bowed low, offering the sealed note. Fei Yen snatched it from him impatiently, moving past him as if he were not there, making her way toward the East Palace. As she walked, she tore at the seal, unfolding the single sheet. As she'd expected, it was from Li Yuan. She slowed, reading what he had written, then stopped, her teeth bared in a smile. He would be back by midday, after four days away on his father's business. She looked about her at the freshness of the morning, then laughed, and pulling her hair out of the tight bun she had secured it in to ride, shook her head. She would prepare herself for him. Would bathe and put on fresh clothes. Perhaps the new silks he had sent her last week.

She hurried on, exhilarated, the delights of her early morning ride and the joy of his return coursing like twin currents in her blood.

She was about to go into her rooms when she heard noises farther down the corridor, in the direction of Li Yuan's private offices. She frowned. That part of the East Palace was supposed to be off-bounds while Li Yuan was away. She took two steps down the corridor, then stopped, relieved. It was only Nan Ho. He was probably preparing the offices for his master's return. She was about to turn away, not wishing to disturb the Master of the Inner Chamber, when she realized what it was she had found strange. There had been voices . . .

She walked toward him, was halfway down the corridor when he turned.

"Lady Fei. . ."

She could see at once that he had not expected her. But it was more than that. His surprise in finding her there had not turned to relief as, in normal circumstances, it ought. No. It was almost as if he had something to hide.

"You know Prince Yuan will be here in two hours, Master Nan?"

He bowed his head deeply. "He sent word, my Lady. I was preparing things for him."

"My husband is fortunate to have such an excellent servant as you, Master Nan.

Might I see your preparations?"

He did not lift his head, but she could sense the hesitation in him and knew she had been right.

"You wish to see, my Lady?"

"If you would, Master Nan. I promise not to disturb anything. I realize my husband has his set ways, and I'd not wish to cause you further work." "They are but rooms, my Lady . . ."

"But rooms are like clothes. They express the man. Please, Master Nan, indulge my curiosity. I would like to see how Prince Yuan likes his room to be. It would help me as a wife to know such a thing."

Nan Ho lifted his head and met her eyes. "My Lady, I ..." She smiled. "Is there some secret, Master Nan? Something I should know?" He bowed his head, then backed away, clearly upset by her insistence. "Please, my Lady. Follow me. But remember, I am but the Prince's hands."

She hesitated, her curiosity momentarily tinged with apprehension. What could have flustered the normally imperturbable Nan Ho? Was it some awful thing? Some aspect of Li Yuan he wanted to keep from her? Or was it, instead, a surprise present for her? Something that she would spoil by insisting on seeing it?

For a moment she wondered whether she should draw back. It was not too late. Li Yuan would hate it if she spoiled his surprise. But curiosity had the better of her. She followed Master Nan, waiting as he unlocked the great double doors again and pushed them open.

She walked through, then stopped dead, her mouth fallen open in surprise.

"You!"

The two girls had risen from the couch at her entrance. Now they stood there, their heads bowed, their hands folded before them.

She turned, her face dark with anger. "What is the meaning of this, Master Nan? What are these creatures doing here?"

Nan Ho had kept his head lowered, bracing himself against her reaction. Even so, the savagery of her words surprised him. He swallowed and keeping his head low, looked past her at the girls.

"My master said to bring them here this morning. I was to . . ."

Her shriek cut him off. "Do you expect me to believe that, Nan Ho? That on the morning of his return my husband would have two such—lout sorts brought to him?" She shuddered and shook her head, her teeth bared. "No ... I don't know what your plan is, Master Nan, but I know one thing, I can no longer trust you in your present position."

He jerked his head up, astonished, but before he could utter a word in his defense, Fei Yen had whirled about and stormed across to where the two girls stood.

"And you!" she began. "I know your sort! Turtles eating barley, that's what you are! Good-for-nothings! You hope to rise on your backs, neh?"

The last word was spat out venomously. But Fei Yen was far from finished.

"You! Pearl Heart. . . that's your name, isn't it?"

Overwhelmed by the viciousness of the attack, Pearl Heart could only manage a slight bob of her head. Her throat was dry and her hands trembled.

"I know why you're here. Don't think I'm blind to it. But the little game's over, my girl. For you and your pimp here." Fei Yen shuddered, pain and an intense anger emphasizing every word. "I know you've been sleeping with my husband."

Pearl Heart looked up, dismayed, then bowed her head quickly, frightened by the look in Fei Yen's eyes.

"Well? Admit it!"

"It is true, my Lady . . ." she began, meaning to explain, but Fei Yen's slap sent her sprawling back onto the couch. She sat, looking up at Fei Yen, her eyes wide with shock. Sweet Rose was sobbing now, her whole frame shaking.

Fei Yen's voice hissed at her menacingly. "Get out... All of you . . . Get out!"

Pearl Heart struggled up, then stumbled forward, taking her sister's arm as she went, almost dragging her from the room, her own tears flowing freely now, her sense of shame unbearable. Li Yuan . . . How her heart ached to see him now, to have him hold her and comfort her. But it was gone. Gone forever. And nothing but darkness lay ahead of them.

BACK IN HER ROOMS, Fei Yen stood looking about her sightlessly, the blackness lodged in her head like a storm trapped between high mountains. For a while she raged, inarticulate in her grief, rushing about the room uncontrollably, smashing and breaking, the pent-up anger pouring out of her in grunting, shrieking torrents. Then she calmed and sat on the edge of the huge bed, her respiration normalizing, her pulse slowing. Again she looked about her, this time with eyes that moved, surprised, between the broken shapes that lay littered about the room.

She wanted to hurt him. Hurt him badly, just as he had hurt her. But a part of her knew that that was not the way. She must be magnanimous. She must swallow her hurt and pay him back with loving kindness. Her revenge would be to enslave him. To make him need her more than he needed anything in the whole of Chung Kuo. More than life itself.

She shuddered, then gritted her teeth, forcing down the pain she felt. She would be strong. As she'd been when Han had died. She would deny her feelings and will herself to happiness. For the sake of her sons.

She went to the mirror, studying herself. Her face was blotchy, her eyes puffed from crying. She turned and looked about her, suddenly angered by the mess she had made, by her momentary lapse of control. But it was nothing she could not set right. Quickly she went into the next room, returning a moment later with a small linen basket. Then, on her hands and knees, she worked her way methodically across the floor, picking up every last piece of broken pottery or glass she could find. It took her longer than she had thought, but it served another purpose. By the time she had finished she had it clearly in her mind what she must do.

She took the basket back into the dressing room and threw a cloth over it; then she began to undress, bundling her discarded clothes into the bottom of one of the huge built-in cupboards that lined the walls. Then, naked, she went through to the bathroom and began to fill the huge, sunken bath.

She had decided against the new silks. Had decided to keep it as simple as she could. A single vermilion robe. The robe she had worn that first morning, after they had wed.

While the water streamed from the taps, she busted herself at the long table beneath the bathroom mirror, lifting lids from the various jars and sniffing at them until she found the one she was searching for. Yes . . . She would wear nothing but this. His favorite. Mei hua, plum blossom.

She looked at her reflection in the wall-length mirror, lifting her chin. Her eyes were less red than they'd been, her skin less blotchy. She smiled, hesitantly at first, then more confidently. It had been foolishness to be so jealous. She was the match of a thousand serving girls.

She nodded to her image, determined, her hands smoothing her flanks, moving slowly upward until they cupped and held her breasts, her nipples rising until they stood out rigidly. She would bewitch him, until he had eyes for nothing but her. She remembered how he had looked at her—awed, his eyes round in his face; she laughed, imagining it. He would be hers. Totally, utterly hers.

Even so, she would have her vengeance on the girls. And on that pimp, Nan Ho. For the hurt they had caused her.

Her smile softened. And after she had made love to him, she would cook for him. A recipe her grandmother had left to her. Yes, while he slept she would prepare it for him. As a wife would.

LI YUAN YAWNED and stretched as the craft descended, then looked at his personal secretary, Chang Shih-sen, who was gathering his papers together, softly humming to himself.

"We've got through a lot of work in the last four days, Chang," he said, smiling. "I don't think I've ever worked so hard."

Chang smiled back at him, inclining his head slightly. "It is good to work hard, my Lord."

"Yes . . ." Li Yuan laughed, feeling the craft touch down beneath him. "But today we rest, neh? I won't expect to see you until tomorrow morning."

Chang bowed low, pleased by his master's generosity. "As the Prince wishes." He turned back, looking out the portal at the activity in the hangar. A welcoming committee of four servants, led by Nan Ho, was waiting to one side, while the hangar crew busied themselves about the craft. Chang was right. He felt good despite his tiredness. He had spent more than eighty hours scanning files and interviewing, and now all but two of the places on the Project were filled. If his father agreed, they could go ahead with it within the week.

For one day, however, he would take a break from things, set all cares aside and devote himself to Fei Yen.

He looked down, grinning at the thought of her. Life was good. To have important business in one's life and such a woman to return to; that, surely, was all a man could ask for.

And sons . . . But that would come. As surely as the seasons. He heard the hatch hiss open and looked back at Chang Shih-sen. "Go now, Chang. Put the papers in my study. We'll deal with them tomorrow."

Chang bowed his head, then turned away. Li Yuan sat there a moment longer, thinking over the satisfactions of the last few days, recollecting the great feeling of ch'i, of pure energy, he had experienced in dealing with these matters. Unlike anything he had ever felt before. It made him understand things better, made him realize why men drove themselves instead of staying at home in the loving arms of their wives. And yet it was good to come home, too. Good to have that to look forward to.

"A balance . . ." he said softly, then laughed and climbed up out of his seat, making his way down the short gangway, the three servants standing off to one side of him as he passed, their heads bowed low.

Nan Ho came forward as he reached the bottom of the steps, then knelt and touched his head to the ground.

"Welcome home, my Lord."

"Thank you, Master Nan. But tell me, where is Fei Yen?"

Nan Ho lifted his head fractionally. "She is in her chambers, Prince Yuan. She has given orders for no one to disturb her. Not even her amah."

Li Yuan grinned. "Ah . . ."

"My Lord—"

But Li Yuan was already moving past him. "Not now, Master Nan. 1 must go and see her."

Nan Ho turned, his extreme agitation unnoticed by the Prince. "But my Lord—"

"Later, Nan Ho . . ." Li Yuan called back, not turning, breaking into a trot as he crossed the flagged pathway between the hangar and the northern palace.

He ran through the palace, past bowing servants, then threw open the doors to her apartments.

She was waiting for him, sitting on the huge bed, her legs folded under her, the vermilion robe she had worn on their wedding morning pulled about her. Her head was lowered in obedience, but there was a faint smile on her cherry lips. He stood there in the doorway, getting his breath, drinking in the sight of her.

"My Lord?" she said, looking up at him, her eyes dark like the night, her voice warm, welcoming.

"My love . . ," he said, the words barely a whisper, the scent of plum blossom in the room intoxicating. Then, closing the doors firmly behind him, turning the great key, he went across to her and sat beside her on the bed, drawing her close.

He drew back, looking at her again, seeing at once the reflection of his love, there in her eyes. "I've missed you . . ."

In answer she shrugged the thin silk robe from her shoulders, then drew his head down into the cushion of her breasts, curling her legs about him.

"Make love to me, my Lord, I beg you."

Afterward he lay there, next to her, staring at her in wonder.

"My love. My darling little swallow ..."

She laughed, then drew his face close, kissing him gently, tenderly. "Now you know how much I missed you."

"And I you . . ."

She pushed him back and sat up. "But you're tired, husband. Why don't you sleep a while. And when you wake I'll have a meal ready for you."

"But my love, you needn't..."

She put a finger to his lips. "I want to. Besides, I am your wife."

He started to protest again, but she shook her head. With a brief laugh he lay back on the bed, closing his eyes. Within a minute he was asleep.

She studied him a moment, laying her hand softly on his chest, feeling the soft rise and fall of his breath, then gently covered the soft fold of his spent manhood. She shivered. He was still such a boy.

She went into the tiny pantry and busied herself, preparing the ingredients she had had brought from the kitchen only an hour before. It would be two hours before it was ready. Time enough to bathe and change again.

She lay there a long time in the bath, soaking, looking through the open door at his sleeping figure on the bed. He was no bother really. Such a sweet boy. And yet. . .

As she floated there, she found herself remembering the sight of Tsu Ma in the water, his chest bared, his hair slicked back, the presence of his boots planted so solidly on the earth beneath the table, the deep, warm vibration of his voice.

Tsu Ma . . .

She opened her eyes again. The boy was still sleeping. Her husband, the boy.

She shivered, then stirred herself in the water. It was time she dressed and saw to his meal.

when he WOKE it was to find her sitting beside him on the bed, watching him. He turned his head, glancing at his timer, then yawned. He had slept more than two hours.

He sat up, breathing in deeply. "What's that? It smells delicious."

She smiled and turned away, returning moments later with a bowl and chopsticks. He took it from her, sniffed at it, then began eating, holding the bowl close to his mouth, smacking his lips in appreciation.

"This is excellent. What is it?"

She was kneeling by the bed, watching him. "It's a recipe of my grandmother's. Wolfberry stewed with beef. A tonic for yang energy . . ." She laughed at his frown. "An aphrodisiac, my husband. It enhances strength and endurance."

He nodded enthusiastically. "It's good. Your grandmother was a clever woman, and you, my love, are an excellent cook."

She looked down, smiling. "My husband is too kind."

He was still a moment, watching her, astonished for the hundredth time by the fragile beauty of her; then he began to eat again, realizing with a laugh just how hungry he had been.

"Is there anything else, husband? Anything I could get for you?"

He lowered the bowl, smiling at her. "No. But that reminds me. There is something I must do. One small thing, then the rest of the day is free. We could go riding if you like."

She looked back at him, her eyes bright. "I'd like that." "Good. Then I'll call Nan Ho—"

Uncharacteristically, she interrupted him. "Forgive me husband, but that is not possible."