The Middle Kingdom

Chung Kuo, The words mean "Middle Kingdom," and since 221 B.C., when the first emperor, Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, unified the seven Warring States, it is what the "black-haired people," the Han, or Chinese, have called their great country. The Middle Kingdom—for them it was the whole world; a world bounded by great mountain chains to the north and west, by the sea to east and south. Beyond was only desert and barbarism. So it was for two thousand years and through sixteen great dynasties. Chung Kuo was the Middle Kingdom, the very center of the human world, and its emperor the "Son of Heaven," the "One Man." But in the eighteenth century that world was invaded by the young and aggressive Western powers with their superior weaponry and their unshakable belief in progress. It was, to the surprise of the Han, an unequal contest and China's myth of supreme strength and self-sufficiency was shattered. By the early twentieth century, China—Chung Kuo—was the sick old man of the East: "a carefully preserved mummy in a hermetically sealed coffin," as Karl Marx called it. But from the disastrous ravages of that century grew a giant of a nation, capable of competing with the West and with its own Eastern rivals, Japan and Korea, from a position of incomparable strength. The twenty-first century, "the Pacific Century," as it was known even before it began, saw China become once more a world unto itself, but this time its only boundary was space.

Less than a day in paradise,

And a thousand years have passed among men.

While the pieces are still being laid on the board

All things have changed to emptiness.

The woodman takes the road home,

The haft of his axe has rotted in the wind:

Nothing is what it was but the stone bridge

Still spanning a rainbow cinnabar red.

—meng chiao, The Stones

Where the Haft Rotted, ninth century A. D.

PROLOGUE WINTER 2I90

Yin/Yang

Who built the ten-storeyed tower of jade? Who foresaw it all in the beginning, when the first signs appeared?

—T'lEN wen (Heavenly Questions) by Ch'u Yuan, from the ch'u tz'u (Songs of the South), second century B.C.

Yin

IN THE DAYS before the world began, the first Ko Ming Emperor, Mao Tse-tung, stood on the hillside at Wuch'ichen in Shensi Province and looked back at the way he had come. The Long March, that epic journey of twenty-five thousand li over eighteen mountain ranges and through twelve provinces—each larger than a European state— was over, and seeing the immensity of China stretched out before him, Mao raised his arms and addressed those few of his companions who had survived the year-long trek.

"Since P'an Ku divided heaven from earth, and the Three Sovereigns and the Five Emperors reigned, has there ever been in history a long march like ours?" he said. "In ten years all China'will be ours. We have come this far—is there anything we cannot do?"

China. Chung Kuo, the Middle Kingdom. So it had been for more than three thousand years, since the time of the Chou, long before the First Empire.

So it had been. But now Chung Kuo was more. Not just a kingdom, but the earth itself. A world.

In his winter palace, in geostationary orbit 160,000 li above the planet's surface, Li Shai Tung, T'ang, Son of Heaven and Ruler of City Europe, stood on the wide viewing circle, looking down past his feet at the blue-white globe of Chung Kuo, thinking.

In the two hundred and fifty-six years that had passed since Mao had stood on that hill in Shensi Province, the world had changed greatly. Then, it was claimed, the only thing to be seen from space that gave evidence of Man's existence on the planet was the Great Wall of China. Untrue as it was, it said something of the Han ability to plan great projects—and not merely to plan them, but to carry them out. Now, as the twenty-second century entered its final decade, the very look of the world had changed. From space one saw the vast Cities—each almost a continent in itself; great sheets of glacial whiteness masking the old, forgotten shapes of nation states; the world one vast, encircling city: City Earth.

Li Shai Tung stroked his long white beard thoughtfully, then turned from the portal, drawing his embroidered silk pan. about him. It was warm in the viewing room, yet there was always the illusion of cold, looking down through the darkness of space at the planet far below.

The City. It had been playing on his mind much more of late. Before, he had been too close to it—even up here. He had taken it for granted. Made assumptions he should never have made. But now it was time to face things: to see them in the long perspective.

Constructed more than a century before, the City had been meant to last ten thousand years. It was vast and spacious and its materials needed only refurbishing, never replacing. It was a new world built on top of the old; a giant stilt village perched over the dark, still lake of antiquity.

Thirty decks—three hundred levels—high, each of its hexagonal, hivelike stacks two li to a side, there had seemed space enough to hold any number of people. Let mankind multiply, the Planners had said; there is room enough for all. So it had seemed, back then. Yet in the century that followed, the population of Chung Kuo had grown like never before.

Thirty-four billion people at last count, Han and European— Hung Mao—combined. And more each year. So many more that in fifty years the City would be full, the storage houses emptied. Put simply, the City was an ever-widening mouth, an ever-larger stomach. It was a thing that ate and shat and grew.

Li Shai Tung sighed, then made his way up the broad, shallow steps and into his private apartment. Dismissing the two attendants, he went across and pulled the doors closed, then turned and looked back into the room.

It was no good. He would have to bring the matter up in Council. The Seven would have to discuss population controls, like it or no. Or else? Well, at best he saw things stabilized: the City going on into the future; his sons and grandsons bom to rule in peace. And at worst?

Uncharacteristically, Li Shai Tung put his hands to his face. He had been having dreams. Dreams in which he saw the Cities burning. Dreams in which old friends were dead—brutally murdered in their beds, their children's bodies torn and bloodied on the nursery floor.

In his dreams he saw the darkness bubble up into the bright-lit levels. Saw the whole vast edifice slide down into the mire of chaos. Saw it as clearly as he saw his hands, now, before his face.

Yet it was more than dreams. It was what would happen— unless they acted.

Li Shai Tung, T'ang, ruler of City Europe, one of the Seven, shuddered. Then, smoothing the front of his pau, he sat down at his desk to compose his speech for Council. And as he wrote he was thinking.

We didn't simply change the past, as others tried to do, we built over it, as if to erase it for all time. We tried to do what Mao, in his time, attempted with his Cultural Revolution. What the first Han Emperor, Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, tried to do, two thousand four hundred years ago, when he burned the books and built the Great Wall to keep the northern barbarians from the Middle Kingdom. We have not learned from history. We have preferred to ignore its counsel. But now history is catching up with us. The years ahead will show how wise a course we set. Or blame us for our folly.

He liked the shape of his thoughts and set them down. Then, when he was finished, he got up and went back down the steps to the viewing circle. Darkness was slowly encroaching on City Europe, drawing a stark, dividing line—-a terminator—across its hollowed geometric shape, north to south.

No, he thought. We haven't learned. We have been unwise. And now our own Long March is fast approaching. The bright days of ease—of unopposed rule—lie in our past. Ahead lies only darkness.

The old man sighed again, then straightened, feeling the imaginary cold in his bones. Chung Kuo. Would it survive the coming times? Would a son of his look down, as he looked now, and see a world at peace? Or was Change to come again, like a serpent, blighting all?

Li Shai Tung turned, then stopped, listening. It came again. An urgent pounding on the outer doors. He made his way through and stood before them.

"Who is it?"

"Chieh Hsia! Forgive me. It is 1, Chung Hu-Yan."

Coming so hard upon his thoughts, the tone of panic in his Chancellor's voice alarmed him. He threw the doors open.

Chung Hu-Yan stood there, his head bowed low, his mauve sleeping gown pulled tightly about his tall, thin frame. His hair was unbraided and uncombed. It was clear he had come straight from his bed, not stopping to prepare himself.

"What is it, Chung?"

Chung fell to his knees. "It is Lin Yua, Chieh Hsia. It seems she has begun. ..."

"Begun?" Instinct made him control his voice, his face, his breathing, but, inside, his heart hammered and his stomach dropped away. Lin Yua, his first wife, was only six months into her pregnancy. How could she have begun? He took a sharp breath, willing himself to be calm.

"Quick, Chung. Take me to her at once."

The doctors looked up from the bedside as he entered, then bowed low and backed hastily away. But a glance at the fear in their eyes told him at once more than he wanted to know.'

He looked beyond them, to her bed. "Lin Yua!"

He ran across the room to her, then stopped, his fear transformed into an icy certainty.

"Gods . , ." he said softly, his voice breaking. "Kuan Yin preserve us!"

She lay there, her face pale as the harvest moon, her eyes closed, a blue tinge to her lips and cheeks. The sheets were rucked up beneath her naked legs, as if from some titanic strug-

gle, their whiteness stained almost black with her blood. Her arms lay limply at her sides.

He threw himself down beside her, cradling her to him, sobbing uncontrollably, all thought of sovereign dignity gone from him. She was still warm. Horribly, deceptively warm. He turned her face and kissed it, time and again, as if kissing would bring the life back to it, then began to talk to her, his voice pleading with her.

"Lin Yua.. . Lin Yua.... My little peach. My darling little one. Where are you, Lin Yua? The gods help us, where are you?"

He willed her eyes to open. To smile and say that this was all a game—a test to see how much he loved her. But it was no game. Her eyes stayed closed, their lids impenetrably white; her mouth devoid of breath. And then, at last, he knew.

Gently he laid her head against the pillow, then, with his fingers, combed her hair back lovingly from her brow. Shivering, he sat back from her, looking up at his Chancellor, his voice hollow with disbelief.

"She's dead, Hu-Yan. My little peach is dead."

"ChiehHsia.. . ." The Chancellor's voice quivered with emotion. For once he did not know what to do, what to say. She had been such a strong woman. So filled with life. For her to die ... No. It was an impossibility. He stared back at the T'ang, his own eyes filled with tears, and mutely shook his head.

There was movement behind him. Chung turned and looked. It was a nurse.. She held a tiny bundle. Something still and silent. He stared at her, appalled, and shook his head violently.

"No, Excellency," the woman began, bowing her head re-, spectfully. "You misunderstand. . . ."

Chung Hu-Yan glanced fearfully at the Tang. Li Shai Tung had turned away; was staring down at his dead wife once again. Knowing he must do something, Chung turned and grabbed the woman's arm. Only then did he see that the child was alive within the blankets.

"It lives?" His whisper held a trace of disbelief.

"He lives, Excellency. It's a boy."

Chung Hu-Yan gave a short laugh of surprise. "Lin Yua gave birth to a boy?"

"Yes, Excellency. Four catties he weighs. Big for one born so early."

Chung Hu-Yan stared at the tiny child, then turned and looked back at the T'ang. Li Shai Tung had not noted the woman's entrance. Chung licked his lips, considering things, then decided.

"Go," he told the nurse. "And make sure the child is safe. Your life is forfeit if he dies. Understand me, woman?"

The woman swallowed fearfully, then bowed her head low. "I understand, Excellency. I'll take good care of him."

Chung turned back, then wentiand stood beside the T'ang.

"Cbieh Hsia?" he said, kneeling, bowing his head.

Li Shai Tung looked up, his eyes bleak, unfocused, his face almost unrecognizable in its grief.

"Chieh Hsia, I—"

Abruptly the Tang stood and pushed roughly past his Chancellor, ignoring him, confronting instead the group of five doctors who were still waiting on the far side of the room.

"Why was I not summoned earlier?"

The most senior of them stepped forward, bowing. "It was felt, Chieh Hsia—"

"Fefe?" The T'ang's bark of anger took the old man by surprise. Pain and anger had transformed Li Shai Tung. His face glowered. Then he leaned forward and took the man forcibly by the shoulder, throwing him backward.

He stood over him threateningly. "How did she die?"

The old man glanced up fearfully from where he lay, then scrambled to his knees again, lowering his head abjectly. "It was her age, Chieh Hsia," he gasped. "Forty-two is late to have a child. And then there are the conditions here. They make it dangerous even for a normal labor. Back on Chung Kuo—"

"You incompetent butchers! You murderers! You . . ."

Li Shai Tung's voice failed. He turned and looked back helplessly at his dead wife, his hands trembling, his lips parted in surprise. For a moment longer he stood there, lost in his pain; then, with a shudder, he turned back, his face suddenly set, controlled.

"Take them away from here, Chung Hu-Yan," he said coldly,

his eyes filled with loathing. "Take them away and have them killed."

"Chieh Hsia?" The Chancellor stared at him, astonished. Grief had transformed his master.

The T'ang's voice rose in a roar. "You heard me, Master Chung! Take them away!"

The man at his feet began to plead. "Chieh Hsia.' Surely we might be permitted—"

He glared at the old man, silencing him, then looked up again. Across from him the others, graybeards all, had fallen to their knees in supplication. Now, unexpectedly, Chung Hu-Yan joined them.

"Chieh Hsia, I beg you to listen. If you have these men killed, the lives of all their kin will be forfeit too. Let them choose an honorable death. Blame them for Lin Yua's death, yes, but let their families live."

Li Shai Tung gave a visible shudder. His voice was soft now, laced with pain. "But they killed my wife, Chung. They let Lin Yuadie."

Chung touched his head to the floor. "I know, Chieh Hsia. And for that they will be only too glad to die. But spare their families, I beg you, Chieh Hsia. You owe them that much. After all, they saved your son."

"My son?" The T'ang looked up, surprised.

"Yes, Chieh Hsia. You have a son. A second son. A strong, healthy child."

Li Shai Tung stood there, frowning fiercely, trying hard to take in this latest, unexpected piece of news. Then, very slowly, his face changed yet again, the pain pushing through his mask of control until it cracked and fell away and he stood there, sobbing bitterly, his teeth clenched in anguish, tears running down his face.

"Go," he said finally in a small voice, turning away from them in a gesture of dismissal. "Order it as you will, Chung. But go. I must be alone with her now."

Yang

IT WAS DARK where they sat, at the edge of the terrace overlooking the park. Behind them the other tables were empty now. Inside.^at the back of the restaurant, a single lamp shone dimly. Nearby four waiters stood in shadow against the wall, silent, in attendance. It was early morning. From the far side of the green came the sounds of youthful laughter; unforced, spontaneous. Above them the night sky seemed filled with stars; a million sharp-etched points of brilliance against the velvet blackness.

"It's beautiful," said Wyatt, looking down, then turning back to face the others. "You know, sometimes just the sight of it makes me want to cry. Don't you ever feel that?"

Lehmann laughed softly, almost sadly, and reached out to touch his friend's arm. "I know. ..."

Wyatt let his head tilt back again. He was drunk. They were all drunk, or they wouldn't be speaking like this. It was a kind of treason. The sort of thing a man whispered, or kept to himself. Yet it had to be said. Now. Tonight. Before they broke this intimacy and went their own directions once again.

He leaned forward, his right hand resting on the table, the fist clenched tightly. "And sometimes I feel stifled. Boxed in. There's an ache in me. Something unfulfilled. A need. And when I look up at the stars I get angry. I think of the waste, the stupidity of it. Trying to keep it all bottled up. What do they think we are? Machines?" He laughed; a painful laugh, surprised by it all. "Can't they see what they're doing to us? Do you think they're blind to it?"

There was a murmur, of sympathy and agreement.

"They can see," said Berdichev matter-of-factly, stubbing out his cigar, his glasses reflecting the distant image of the stars.

Wyatt looked at him. "Maybe. But sometimes I wonder. You see, it seems to me there's a whole dimension missing. From my life. From yours, Soren, and yours, Pietn» From everyone's life. Perhaps the very thing that makes us fully human." He leaned forward dangerously on his chair. "There's no place for growth anymore—no more white spaces on the map."

Lehmann answered him dryly. "Quite the contrary, Edmund. There's nothing but white."

There was laughter; then, for a short time, silence. The ceiling of the great dome moved imperceptibly, turning about the illusory axis of the north star.

It had been a good night. They had just returned from the Clay, the primitive, unlit region beneath the City's floor. Eight days they had been together in that ancient netherworld of rotting brick andsavage half-men. Days that had marked each of them in his own way. Returning they had felt good, but now their mood had changed. When Wyatt next spoke there was real bitterness in his voice.

"TheyVe killing us all. Slowly. Irreversibly. From the center out. Their stasis is a kind of poison. It hollows the bones."

Lehmann shifted uneasily in his chair. Wyatt turned, then saw and fell silent. The Han waiter came out from the shadows close by them, holding a tray out before him.

"More ch'o, sirs?"

Berdichev turned sharply, his face dark with anger. "Have you been listening?"

"Sir?" The Han's face froze into a rictus of politeness, but Wyatt, watching, saw the fear in his eyes.

Berdichev climbed to his feet and faced him, leaning over him threateningly, almost a head taller than the Han.

"You heard me clearly, old hundred names. You were listening to our conversation, weren't you?"

The waiter lowered his head, stung by the bitterness in Berdichev's voice. "No, honored sir. I heard nothing." His face remained as before, but now his hands trembled, making the bowls rattle on the tray.

Wyatt stood and took his friend's arm gently. "Soren, please, ..."

Berdichev stood there, a moment longer, scowling at the man, his resentment like something palpable, flowing out across the space between them, then h| turned away, glancing briefly at Wyatt.

Wyatt looked across at the waiter and nodded. "Fill the bowls. Then leave us. Put it all on my bill."

The Han bowed, his eyes flashing gratitude at Wyatt, then quickly filled the bowls.

"Fucking chinks!" Berdichev muttered, once the Han was out of earshot. He leaned forward and picked up his bowl. "You have to watch what you say these days, Edmund. Even small Han have big ears."

Wyatt watched him a moment, then shrugged. "I don't know. They're not so bad."

Berdichev laughed scornfully. "Devious little shit-eaters they are." He stared out across the green, pulling his silk pau tighter about his neck. "I'd rather hand all my companies over to my bitterest rival than have a single one of them in a senior management position."

Lehmann sighed and reached out for his bowl. "I find them useful enough. In their own way."

"As servants, yes. . . ." Berdichev laughed sourly, then finished his ch'a and set the bowl down heavily. He looked from one to the other of them as he spoke. "You know what they call us behind our backs? Big noses! The cheek of it! Big noses!"

Wyatt looked to Lehmann and both men laughed. He reached out and touched Berdichev's nose playfully. "Well, it's true in your case, Soren, isn't it?"

Berdichev drew his head back, then smiled, relenting. "Maybe." He sniffed and laughed, then grew serious again. "Maybe so. But I'll be damned if I'll have the little fuckers taking the piss out of me while they're drawing from my pocket!"

"But isn't that true of all men?" Wyatt insisted, feeling suddenly less drunk. "I mean . . . it's not just the Han. Our race—the Hung Moo—aren't most of us like that?"

"Speak for yourself," said Lehmann, leaning back, his whole manner poised, indifferent. "However, the Han rule this world of ours. And that changes things. It makes even the most vulgar little Han think he's a T'ang."

"Fucking true!" said Berdichev, wiping at his mouth. "They're arrogant bastards, one and all!"

Wyatt shrugged, unconvinced, then looked from one of his friends to the other. They were harder, stronger men than he. He recognized that. Yet there was something flawed in each of them—^some lack of sympathy that marred their natures, fine as they were. He had noted it, down there in the Clay: had seen how they took for granted what he had found horrifying.

Imagination, he thought. It has to do with imagination. With putting yourself in someone else's place. Like the waiter, just then. Or like the woman I met, down there, in the awful squalor of the Clay.

He shivered and looked down at his untouched ch'a. He could still see her. Could see the room where they had kept her. Mary, her name had been. Mary.

The thought of it chilled his blood. She was still there. There, in the room where he had left her. And who knew which callous bastard would use her next; would choose to beat her senseless, as she had been beaten so often before.

He saw himself again. Watched as he lifted her face to the light and traced the bruise about her eye with his fingers. Gently, aware of how afraid she was of him. He had slept with her finally, more out of pity than from any sense of lust. Or was that fair? Wasn't curiosity part of what he'd felt? So small she'd been, her arms so thin, her breasts almost nonexistent. And yet pretty, strangely pretty, for all that. Her eyes, particularly, had held some special quality — the memory, perhaps, of something better than this she had fallen into.

He had been wrong to leave her there. And yet, what choice had he had? That was her place, this his. So it was fated in this world. And yet there must be something he could do.

"What are you thinking, Edmund?"

He looked up, meeting Lehmann's eyes. "I was thinking about the woman."

"The woman?" Berdichev glanced across at him, then laughed. "Which one? There were hundreds of the scrawny things!"

"Andboys. ..."

"We won't forget the boys. ..."

He looked away, unable to join their laughter; angry with himself for feeling as he did. Then his anger took a sudden shape and he turned back, leaning aciro4 the table toward them.

"Tell me, Soren. If you could have one thing—just one single thing—what would it be?"

Berdichev stared across the darkened green a while, then turned and looked back at him, hi% eyes hidden behind the lenses of his glasses. "No more Han."

Lehmann laughed. "That's quite some wish, Soren."

Wyatt turned to him. "And you, Pietr? The truth this time. No flippancy."

Lehmann leaned back, staring up at the dome's vast curve above them. "That there," he said, lifting his arm slowly and pointing. "That false image of the sky above us. I'd like to make that real. Just that. To have an open sky above our heads. That and the sight of the stars. Not a grand illusion, manufactured for the few, but the reality of it—for everyone."

Berdichev looked up solemnly, nodding. "And you, Edmund? What's the one thing you'd have?"

Wyatt looked across at Berdichev, then at Lehmann. "What would I want?"

He lifted his untouched bowl and held it cupped between his hands. Then, slowly, deliberately, he turned it upside down, letting the contents spill out across the tabletop.

"Hey!" said Berdichev, moving backward sharply. Both he and Lehmann stared at Wyatt, astonished by the sudden hardness in his face, the uncharacteristic violence of the gesture.

"Change," Wyatt said defiantly. "That's what I want. Change. That above everything. Even life."

PART I SPRING 2196

A Spring Day at the Edge of the World

A spring day at the edge of the world. On the edge of the world once more the day slants. The oriole cries, as though it were its own tears Which damp even the topmost blossoms on the tree.

—LI SHANO-YIN, Exile, ninth century A. D.

CHAPTER. ONE

Fire and Ice

FLAMES DANCED in a glass. Beyond, in the glow of the naked fire, a man's face smiled tightly.

"Not long now," he said, coming closer to the fierce, wavering light. He had delicate Oriental features that were almost feminine; a small, well-shaped nose and wide, dark eyes that caught and held the fire's light. His jet-black hair was fastened in a pigtail, then coiled in a tight bun at the back of his head. He wore white, the color of mourning—a simple one-piece that fitted his small frame loosely.

A warm night wind blew across the mountainside, making the fire flare up. The coals at its center glowed intensely. Ash and embers whirled off. Then the wind died and the shadows settled.

"They've taken great pains, Kao Jyan."

The second man walked back from the darkness where he'd been standing and faced the other across the flames, his hands open, empty. He was a much bigger man, round shouldered and heavily muscled. His large, bony head was freshly shaven and his whites fitted him tightly. His name was Chen and he had the blunt, nondescript face of a thousand generations of Han peasants.

Jyan studied his partner momentarily. "They're powerful men," he said. "They've invested much in us. They expect much in return."

"I understand," Chen answered, looking down the moonlit valley toward the City. Then, unexpectedly, he laughed. "What is it?" Jyan nan-owed his eyes. "See!" Chen pointed off to his right. "There! Up there where the mountains almost touch the clouds."

Jyan looked. Thin strands of wispy cloud lay across the moorfs full circle, silvered by its intense light. Beyond, the sky was a rich blue-black. "So?" »

Chen turned back to him, his eyes shining in the firelight. "It's beautiful, don't you think? How the moonlight has painted the mountaintops white."

Jyan shivered, then stared past the big man toward the distant peaks. "It's ice."

"What? Plastic, you mean?"

Jyan shook his head. "No. Not the stuff the City's made of.

Real ice. Frozen water. Like the ch'un tzu put in their drinks."

Chen turned and looked again, his^;broad face wrinkling.

Then he looked away sharply, as if the very thought disturbed him.

As it should, thought Jyan, aware of his own discomfort. The drugs he'd been given made all of this seem familiar—gave him false memories of such things as cold and clouds and moonlight—yet, beneath the surface calm of his mind, his body was still afraid.

There was a faint movement against his cheek, a sudden ruffling of his hair. At his feet the fire flared up again, fanned by the sudden gust. Wind, thought Jyan, finding it strange even to think the word. He bent down and lifted a log from the pile, turning it in his hand and feeling its weight. Then he turned it on its end and stared at the curious whorl of its grain. Strange. Everything so strange out here, outside the City. So unpredictable. All of it so crudely thrown together. So unexpected, for all that it seemed familiar.

Chen came and stood by him. "How long now?" Jyan glanced at the dragon timer inset into the back of his wrist. "Four minutes."

He watched Chen turn and—for what seemed like the hundredth time—look back at the City, his eyes widening, trying to take it in.

The City. It filled the great northern plain of Europe. From where they stood, on the foothills of the Alps, it stretched away northward a thousand five hundred 1i to meet the chill waters of the Baltic, while to the west the great wall of its outer edge towered over the Atlantic for the full three-thousand-li length of its coastline, from Cape St. Vincent in the south to Kristiansund in the rugged north. To the south, beyond the huge mountain ranges of the Swiss Wilds, its march continued, ringing the Mediterranean like a giant bowl of porcelain. Only to the east had its growth been checked unnaturally, in a jagged line that ran from Danzig in the north to Odessa in the south. There the plantations began; a vast sea of greenness that swept into the heart of Asia.

"It's strange, isn't it? Being outside. It doesn't seem real."

Chen did not answer. Looking past him, Jyan saw how the dark, steep slopes of the valley framed a giant, flat-topped arrowhead of whiteness. It was like a vast wall—a dam two ii in height—plugging the end of the valley. Its surface was a faintly opalescent pearl, lit from within. Ch'eng, it was. City and wall. The same word in his mother tongue for both. Not that he knew more than a smattering of his mother tongue.

He turned his head and looked at Chen again. Brave Chen. Unimaginative Chen. His blunt face rounded like a plate, his bull neck solid as the rocks surrounding them. Looking at him, Jyan put aside his earlier misgivings. Chen was kwai, after all—a trained knife—and kwai were utterly reliable. Jyan smiled to himself. Yes, Chen was all right. A good man to have at your back.

"You're ready?" he asked.

Chen looked back at him, his eyes firm, determined. "I know what I have to do."

"Good."

Jyan looked down into his glass. Small tongues of flame curled like snakes in the darkness of the wine; cast evanescent traces on the solid curve of transparency. He threw the glass down into the fire, then stared into the flames themselves, aware for the first time how evasive they were; how, when you tried to hold their image clear in mind, it slipped away, leaving only the vaguest of impressions. Not real at all, for all its apparent clarity.

Perhaps that's how the gods see us, he thought; as mere traces, too brief for the eye to settle on.

There was a sharp crack as the glass split and shattered. Jyan shivered, then looked up, hearing the low drone of the approaching craft.

"They're here," said Chen, his face impassive.

Jyan looked across at the kwai^nd nodded. Then, buttoning their one-pieces at the neck, the two assassins made their way toward the ship.

"Your pass, sir?"

Pi Ch'ien, third secretary to Juni6r Minister Yang, glanced up at the camera, noting as he did the slow, smooth movement of the overhead trackers, the squat, hollowed tongues of their barrels jutting from the mouths of stylized dragons. Bowing low he took the card from his robe and inserted it into the security slot. Placing his face against the molded pad in the wall, he held his left eye open against the camera lens. Then he stepped back, looking about him.

He had never been into one of the Imperial Solariums before. Even as district magistrate, responsible for the lives of the twenty thousand people in his deck, he had lacked the status to enter such a place. Now, however, as third secretary to Yang Lai, he had been permitted to place his name on the list. But the list was a list, like all the others in this world—interminable. It would be many years and several more promotions before he would find himself inside for reasons of leisure.

The outer doors slid back and he made to go through.

An armed guard barred his way, indicating with his gun that Pi Ch'ien should go into the antechamber to his left. With a bow Pi Ch'ien did as he was bidden. Inside, in front of a vast, brightly colored tapestry that filled the whole of the back wall, an official sat at a desk. The man scanned the screen in front of him, then looked up, smiling.

"Good evening, Third Secretary Pi. I am First Steward Huong. Might I ask the purpose of your visit?"

Pi Ch'ien bent his head respectfully.

"Greetings, First Steward Huong. I have but a trivial message to deliver. For His Serene Excellency, Junior Minister Yang Lai. Ten thousand pardons for imposing on you like this, for it is a matter of the least urgency."

He looked up, holding out the almost translucent message card for the Steward's inspection. Both men knew it was immensely important.

"Forgive me, Third" Secretary Pi, but might I have that?"

Again Pi Ch'ien lowered his head. "My deepest apologies, First Steward Huong. Nothing would please me more than to oblige you, but I am afraid that is not possible. I was instructed to place the message, unimportant as it is, only in the hands of the most illustrious Junior Minister himself."

Steward Huong stood, then came around his desk to stand beside Pi Ch'ien. "I understand, Third Secretary Pi. We are but our masters' hands, eh?" He smiled again, all courtesy now. "If you would be so kind as to permit me, I shall inform the Junior Minister."

Pi Ch'ien bowed, feeling a pang of disappointment. He was not to go inside, then?

"Please, follow me, Third Secretary," the Steward said, making the slightest bow, his head barely lowered as befitted their relative positions. "Junior Minister Yang is witr* the Minister himself and may not be disturbed at once. However, I will have a maid come and serve tea for you while you wait."

Pi Ch'ien bowed again, delighted by the courtesy he was being shown. He followed the official out and down a wide, high-ceilinged corridor, on the walls of which hung a series of huge shanshui landscape paintings, depicting rugged peaks and pleasantly wooded valleys.

Where the corridor turned he had a brief glimpse of another, more ornate passageway lined with bronze statues of gods and dragons, and at its end, a huge, brightly lit chamber—the solarium itself. They walked on until they came to a small but plushly decorated room, hung with colorful tapestries.

First Steward Huong turned to him and smiled, indicating that he should enter and take a seat. "Please be assured, I will keep you no longer than I must, Third Secretary. The maid, meanwhile, will see to all your needs." Then, with a bow, he was gone.

Almost at once a maid entered from a door to one side. She was wearing powder-blue er-silks with a pattern of tiny yellow sunflowers. Smiling, she set down the tray she was carrying on a low table at Pi Ch'ien's side, then knelt and bowed low to him. Straightening up, she poured the ch'a and offered it to him, her eyes averted. He took the cup, studying her closely. She was a pretty little thing, her skin almost'white, her dark, fine hair tied with silk ribbons of blue and yellow. He looked down at her feet and saw, with satisfaction, how petite she was.

"You would like something else, sir?"

He leaned forward and gently drew§ back the hair to reveal her neck. It was as he had thought. There was a small circular mark low down on the left hand side of the neck, close to the collarbone. A capital G with a smaller S inside, the letters English, but the style—the brushwork of the design—pure Han. She was GenSyn. Artificial.

He hesitated, not knowing how long the Junior Minister would be, nor what etiquette prevailed here. Then he remembered the First Steward Huong's words. The maid will see to all your needs. Screwing up his courage, he told the girl to close the door.

As she turned to face him again, he beckoned her back. Then, making her bow before him, he opened the front of his cloak and drew her head down into his naked lap.

"Here, girl. See to me."

THE THREE MEN in the craft had been masked and silent. Even so, Kao Jyan had recognized them as Hung Mao— whites—from the sour, milky scent of their sweat. It had surprised him. His own guesses had taken him in another direction. But even as the craft set down on the roof of the City he was adding this new fragment to what he already knew.

When the door hissed open he went through quickly, followed by Chen. The dome of the Imperial Solarium was directly ahead of them, no more than a Ji—five hundred meters— distant; a vast hemispherical blister, lit from within. Half a li farther on was the maintenance shaft. The two assassins ran, side by side, in silence, knowing that if others hadn't done their work properly they were already as good as dead.

But it would be dkay. Jyan sensed it. Every step he took made him more certain of it. He was beginning to see how things connected; could even begin to make guesses as to names and motives.

There were those who would pay well to know such things. Who would grant amnesties, perhaps, to those who were merely the tools of other men.

Coming closer to the dome Jyan slowed, looking about him. The moon was much lower now, over to the right of them. In its light it seemed as,though they were running on the surface of a giant glacier.

"Circle left," he said softly to Chen. But it was unnecessary. Chen was already moving out around the dome toward the shaft. It was his job to secure it while Jyan was at work.

Jyan stopped, looking down at the dragon on his wrist. Timing was crucial now. He had four minutes to climb the outer wall, then three minutes apiece after that to position and set each of the four charges. That left nine minutes to get into the shaft and away. If all went well it would be easy.

If aft went well Jyan took a deep breath, steeling himself.

He knelt, then reached behind him. Four catches fastened the lightweight parcel. Gently his fingers released the catches and eased the cloth-wrapped package from his back. Carefully he laid it in his lap and, with delicate, practiced movements, drew back the thin folds of cloth.

The four plate-sized hoops had been bound together tightly with a hair-fine wire. They were a dull bronze in color, unmarked except in one place, where it seemed the finger-thick cords joined upon themselves, like snakes swallowing their tails. Quickly, carefully, he untied the wire knots and separated the hoops into two piles on his upper thighs. They were warm to the touch, as if alive. With the slightest shudder he pulled two of them up over his left arm, looping them gently over his shoulder, then did the same with the others, securing them about his right shoulder.

Taking a deep breath, he stood again. Chen was out of sight, behind the dome. Quickly Jyan ran the final distance to the dome's base and crouched there, breathing easily. From the pocket over his heart he took out the claws and clicked them open. Separating them, he eased them onto his hands, respecting the razor-sharpness of their tips. That done, he began to climb.

LWO RANG, son of Lwo Chun-Yi and Minister of the Edict, sat back in his tall-backed chair and looked around the circle of men gathered about him. The folds of his salmon-pink pau hung loosely about him and his olive flesh glistened damply in the dome's intense light. He had a strong but somehow ugly fece;. his eyes too big, his nose too broad, his ears too pendulous. Yet when he smiled the faces of the dozen men seated about him returned his smile like mirrors. Just now, however, those men were silent and watchful, conscious that their lord was angry.

"You talk of accommodation, Shu San, but the Edict is quite clear on this. We are not here to interpret but to implement. We do as we are told, yes?"

To Lwo Kang's left Shu San bowed his head abjectly. For a moment all eyes were on him, sharing his moment of shame. Minister Lwo sniffed, then spoke again.

"Only this afternoon two of these businessmen—Lehmann and Berdichev—came to me. We talked of many things in the course of our audience, but finally they presented me with what they termed an 'ultimatum.' " Lwo Kang looked sternly about the circle of his junior ministers. "They said that certain factions were growing impatient. Hsien Sheng Lehmann even had the impudence to claim that we have been subjecting them to unnecessary delays. He says that our officials have been over-zealous in their application of the Edict's terms."

There was an exchange of glances between the seated men. None had missed that the Minister had used the term Hsien Sheng for Lehmann—plain Mister Lehmann, not even the commonplace Shih, or "Master"—when proper etiquette demanded the use of his full title, Under Secretary. It was a deliberate slight.

Lwo Kang laughed sharply, sourly, then shook his head in an angry gesture. "The impertinence of these men! Because they have money they think themselves above the laws of other men!" His face formed a sneer of disgust. "Hsin fa ts'ai!"

This time there was mild laughter from some quarters. Others, not understanding the term, looked about them for guidance, and formed their faces into smiles, as if half-committed to the joke.

Again Lwo Kang sniffed and sat back a little in his chair. "I'm sorry. I forgot. We are not all ch'un tzu here, are we?"

Lwo Kang looked about him. Hsin fa ts'ai. Social upstarts. Ch'un tzu. Gentlemen. These were Kuan hua, or Mandarin terms. But not all who sat about him were bred to the tongue. More than half the men here had come up through the levels; had schooled themselves in the five Confucian classics and climbed the ladder of the examination system. He did not despise them for that; quite the contrary, he prided himself on promoting men not through connection but because of their natural ability. However, it sometimes made for awkwardnesses. He fixed his gaze on Shu San.

"We will say no more of this, Shu San. You know now how I feel. We will have no further talk of accommodation. Nor will I see these men again."

Shu San bowed his head, then met his lord's eyes, grateful for this second chance. He had come expecting less.

Lwo Kang smiled and looked away, his whole manner changing, relaxing. He had the reputation of being a scrupulously fair man, honest beyond reproach and incorruptible. But that was not to say he was liked. His appointment, three years earlier, had surprised some who saw family connection as a more important quality in a man than honesty or competence. Nonetheless, Lwo Kang had proved a good choice as minister responsible for the implementation of the Edict.

While his subordinates talked among themselves, Lwo Kang sat back, contemplating what had happened earlier that day. It did not surprise him that there were those who wanted to subvert the Edict's guidelines. So it had ever been, for the full 114 years of the Edict's existence. What disturbed him more was the growing arrogance of those who felt they knew best—that they had the right to challenge the present order of things.

These Hung Moo had no sense of place. No sense of li. Of propriety.

The problem was one of race. Of culture. Though more than a century had passed since the foundation of Chung Kuo and the triumph of Han culture, for those of European stock—the Hung Mao, or "redheads" as they were commonly known—the ways of the Han were still unnatural; weye at best surface refinements grafted onto a cruder and less stable temperament. Three thousand years of unbroken civilization—that was the heritage of the Han. Against that these large-nosed foreigners could claim what? Six centuries of chaos and ill-discipline. Wars and further wars and, ultimately, collapse. Collapse on a scale that made their previous wars seem like oases of calm. No, they might seem like Han—might dress and talk and act like Han—but beneath it all they remained barbarians. The New Confucianism was rooted only shallowly in the infertile soil of their natures. .At core they were still the same selfish, materialistic, individualistic species they had ever been; motivated more by greed than duty.

Was it so surprising, then, that men like Lehmann and Berdichev failed to understand the necessity of the Edict?

Change, they wanted. Change, at any cost. And because the Edict of Technological Control was the Seven's chief means of preventing the cancer of change, it was the Edict they tried to undermine at every turn.

Lwo Kang leaned back, staring up at the roof of the dome high overhead. The two great arches of the solarium met in a huge circular tablet, halved by a snakelike S into black and white. Yin and yang, he thought. Balance. These Westerners have never understood it; not properly—not in their bones. It still seems some kind of esoteric game to them, not life itself, as it is to us. Change—the empty-headed pursuit of the new—that was the real enemy of civilization.

He sighed, then leaned to his right, listening, becoming at once the focus of their talk.

They are good men, he thought, looking along the line of faces. Han, every one of them. Men I could trust my life with.

Servants passed among them, mutes who carried trays of ch'a and sweetmeats. GenSyn eunuchs, half-men in more senses than one. Yet even they were preferable to the likes of Lehmann and Berdichev.

Yang Lai was talking now, the tenor of his words strangely reflective of Lwo Kang's thoughts.

"It's a disease that's rife among the whole of this new generation. Things have changed, I tell you. They are not like their fathers, solid and dependable. No, they're ill-mannered brutes, every last one of them. And they think they can buy change."

Lwo Kang stretched his bull neck and nodded. "They lack respect," he said.

There was a murmur of agreement. Yang Lai bowed, then answered him. "That's true, my lord. But then, they are not Han. They could never be c/i'un tzu. They have no values. And look at the way they dress!"

Lwo Kang smiled, sitting back again. Though only in his late thirties he was already slightly balding. He had inherited his father's looks—a thickset body already going to fat at waist and upper chest—and, like his father, he had never found the time for exercise. He smiled, knowing how he looked to them. I am not a vain man, he thought; and in truth I'd be a liar to myself if I were. Yet I have their respect.

No, it was not by outward show that a man was to be judged, but by his innermost qualities; qualities that lay behind his every action.

His father, Lwo Chun-Yi, had been born a commoner; even so, he had proved himself worthy and had been appointed minister to Li Shai Tung in the first years of his reign. Because of that, Lwo Kang had been educated to the highest level and had learned the rudiments of service in his earliest years. Now he in his turn was the T'ang's minister. He looked about him again, satisfied. No, there was not one here who did not know him for their master.

"What these Hung Mao need is a lesson," he said, leaning forward to take a shrimp and snow pickle sweetmeat from the tray on the footstool next to him. He gulped it down, savoring the sweet, spicy hoisin sauce on his tongue, and belched appreciatively. "A lesson in manners."

] Y A N CLUNG to the outside of the dome like a small, dark insect. Three of the hoops were set. It remained only to place and arm the last charge.

Where he rested, one hand attaching him to the dome's taut skin, the slope was relatively gentle. He could look out over the capped summit of the dome and see the distant, moon-washed peaks. It was a beautiful night. Cfear, like glass. Above him the stars shone like polished jewels against the blackness. So many stars. So vast the blackness.

He looked down. Concentrate, he told himself. YpuVe no time for stargazing. Even so, he took a final glimpse. Then, working quickly, he placed and fastened the hoop, taping it at four points. That done, he rugged gently but firmly at the joint.

Where he pulled at it, the hoop came apart, a thin thread joining tail to mouth. Like a snake's wire-thin tongue, he thought. Fully extended, the thread w_;as as long as his little finger. Already it was being coiled back-, into the body of the hoop. Eventually the ends would join up again and the hoop would send out a trigger signal. When all four were primed, they would form a single, destructive harmonic. And then ...

Slowly, carefully, he backed away, edging back down the steepening wall of the dome. Like all else in the City its skin was made of the superplastic, ice. Normal charges would scarcely have dented the steel-tough, fire-resistant skin, but these would eat right through it before they detonated.

He was balanced at the point where the dome wall fell sharply away when he stopped, hearing a noise beneath him. He turned his head slowly, scarcely daring to breathe. Who in the gods' names . . . ?

_; The figure was directly underneath, staring up at him. As Jyan turned his face a brilliant beam of light shone directly into his eyes.

"You! What are you doing up there?"

Jyan looked away, momentarily blinded, then looked back in time to see Chen coming up behind the man.

The man turned quickly, sensing something behind him. As Chen struck out with his knife, the man raised the big torch he was carrying and deflected the blow.

Chen's knife went clattering across the roof.

For a moment the two faced each other warily, then Chen moved, circling the newcomer. He feinted, making the other back off, then dropped to his knees, searching for his knife in the shadows at the base of the dome.

The man looked at his torch, considering whether to use it as a weapon and go for Chen. Then he turned and ran off to the right, where a faint patch of light revealed a second maintenance hatch.

"Pien kua!" swore Jyan under his breath. Loosening the claws, he dropped the last five meters and rolled. Crouched there, he looked about him.

He saw Chen at once, to his right, running after the stranger. But the man was already at the hatch and climbing down.

"Shit!" he said desperately, trying to ease the claws from his hands as quickly as he could. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" If the bastard got to an alarm they would both be done for.

He looked up in time to see Chen disappear down the hatch.

"Hurry, Chen!" he murmured anxiously, folding the claws and tucking them away in his pocket. He turned, looking back up the dome's steep slope, then glanced down at the dragon timer in his wrist. Six minutes. That was all that remained.

And if Chen failed?

He swallowed dryly, then began to run toward the second shaft, his heart pounding in his chest. "Shit!" he kept saying. "Shit! Shit!"

He was only twenty ch'i from it when a figure lifted from the hatch and turned to face him.

"Ai-ya!" He pulled up sharply, gasping with fear, but it was Chen. The kwcd looked up, the broad shape of his face and chest lit from beneath, his breath pluming up into the chill air.

"Where is he?" hissed Jyan anxiously, hurrying forward again. "Oh, gods! You didn't let him get away, did you?"

Chen reached down and pulled the man up by the hair. "He's dead," he said tonelessly, letting the corpse fall back. "There was no other way. He was trying to open a Security panel when I came on him. Now we'll have to find somewhere to hide him."

Jyan shuddered, filled with relief. "Thank the gods." He turned and glanced back at the dome. "Let's go, then. Before it blows."

"Yes," said Chen, a faintly ironic smile lighting his big, blunt face. "The rest should be easy. Like the bamboo before the blade."

THE MAID had gone. Pi Ch'ien sat alone in the room, his ch'a long finished, contemplating the fifteen-hundred-year-old painting of Hsiao Wen Ti that hung on the wall above the door. It was Yen Li-pen's famous painting from the Portraits of the Emperors, with the Han emperor attended by his ministers.

Every schoolboy knew the storywrf Wen Ti, first of the great emperors. It was he who, more than twenty-three centuries before, had created the concept of Chung Kuo; who, through his thorough adoption of the Confucian virtues, had made of his vast but ragtag land of warring nations a single state, governed by stern but just principles. Wen Ti it was who had first brought commoners into his government. He\who had changed the harsh laws and customs of his predecessors so that no one in the Middle Kingdom would starve or suffer cruel injustice. Famine relief, pensions, and the abolition of punishment by mutilation—all these were Wen Ti's doing. He had lowered taxes and done away with the vast expense of Imperial display. He had sought the just criticism of his ministers and acted to better the lot of the Han. Under his rule Chung Kuo had thrived and its population grown.

Eighteen hundred years later the Manchu emperor K'ang Hsi had established his great empire on Wen Ti's principles, and, later still, when the Seven had thrown off the yoke of the tyrant Tsao Ch'un, they too had adopted the principles of Wen Ti's reign, making him the First Ancestor of Chung Kuo. Now Wen Ti's painting hung everywhere in the City, in a thousand shapes and forms. This, however, was a particularly fine painting—a perfect reproduction of Yen Li-pen's original.

Pi Ch'ien got up and went over to the painting, remembering the time when his father had stood there with him beneath another copy of the portrait and told him the story of the finding of the hand scroll.

For centuries the Portraits of the Emperors roll had been housed in a museum in the ancient town of Boston, along with much more that had rightly belonged to the Han. When the American Empire had finally collapsed much had been lost. Most of the old Han treasures had been destroyed out of spite, but some had been hidden away. Years had passed. Then, in the years when the Han were building their City over the old land of America, skilled teams had been sent across that continent to search for the old treasures. Little was found of real value until, in an old, crumbling building on the shoreline of what had once been called California, they had found a simple cardboard box containing the scroll. The hand scroll was remarkably preserved considering its ill use, but even so, four of the original thirteen portraits had been lost. Fortunately, the painting of Hsiao Wen Ti was one of those which had emerged unscathed.

He turned away and went back to his seat. For a second or two longer he contemplated the painting, delighted by the profound simplicity of its brushwork, then leaned across and picked up the handbell. He was about to lift the tiny wooden hammer to ring for more ch'a when the door swung open and Yang Lai came hurriedly into the room.

Pi Ch'ien scrambled to his feet and bowed low.

"Well, Pi Ch'ien?" Yang Lai barked impatiently. "What is it?"

His expression showed he was far from pleased by his Third Secretary's intrusion.

Pi Ch'ien remained bowed, the card held out before him. "I have an urgent message for you, Excellency. I was told to bring it here at once."

"Give it here!" Yang Lai said irritably.

Pi Ch'ien edged forward and handed the card across. Yang Lai stared at it a moment, then turned away. With upturned eyes Pi Ch'ien watched him tap his personal code into the instruct box and place his thumb against the release.

There was a moment's silence from Yang Lai, then he gasped. When he turned to face Pi Ch'ien again, his face was ashen. For a moment his mouth worked silently; then, without another word, he turned and left the room, his silk cloak flapping as he ran.

Pi Ch'ien lifted his head, astonished. For a moment he stood there, rooted to the spot. Then he rushed across the room and poked his head out into the corridor.

The corridor was empty. There was no sign of Yang Lai.

He looked back into the room. There, on the floor, was the message card. He went across and picked it up, then turned it in his hand, studying it. Without Yang Lai's thumb on the release pad the surface of the card was blank; even so, it might prove interesting to keep.

Pi Ch'ien hesitated, not certain what to do. Yang Lai had not formally dismissed him; but thert, he had fulfilled his duty—had delivered the message. Surely, then, it was all right for him to go. He went to the door and looked out again. The corridor was still empty. Careful now, consciousjsf the watching cameras, he stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind him. Then, composing himself, trying to ignore the strong feeling of wrong-ness that was growing in him by the moment, he began to walk toward the entrance hall.

THERE WAS movement up ahead. Chen crouched in the narrow circle of the horizontal shaft, perfectly still, listening. Beside him, tensed, his breathing like the soft hiss of a machine, Jyan waited.

Chen turned, smiling reassuringly. In the dim overhead light Jyan's face seemed more gaunt than normal, his cheekbones more hollow. The roseate light made him seem almost demonic, his cold black eyes reflecting back two tiny points of redness. Chen wanted to laugh, looking at him. Such delicate features he had; such neat, small ears. He could imagine how Jyan's mother would have loved those ears—back when Jyan had yet had a mother.

He looked away, sobered by the thought. It's why we're here, he realized, waiting, knowing the noise, the movement, would go away. If we had loved ones we would never have got involved in this. We're here because we have no one. Nothing to connect us to the world.

Chen kept his thoughts to himself; like a good kwai he cultivated the appearance of stupidity. Like all else it was a weapon. He had been taught to let his enemies underestimate him; always to keep something back—something in reserve. And lastly, to take no friends.

Ahead it went silent again. He waited, making sure, then began to move up the access tunnel once more, his right hand feeling the way along the tunnel wall. And as he moved he could sense Jyan immediately behind him; silent, trusting.

MINISTER LWO pulled himself up out of his chair and stretched his legs. It was almost time to call it an evening, but first he'd dip his body in the pool and cool off. His junior ministers had risen to their feet when he had stood. Now he signaled them to be seated again. "Please, gentlemen, don't break your talk for me."

He moved between them, acknowledging their bows, then down three steps and past a lacquered screen, into the other half of the dome. Here was a miniature pool, its chest-deep waters cool and refreshing after the heat of the solarium. Small shrubs and potted trees surrounded it on three sides, while from the ceiling above hung a long, elegant cage, housing a dozen songbirds.

As he paused at the pool's edge two attendants hurried across to help him undress, then stood there, heads bowed respectfully, holding his clothes, as he eased himself into the water.

He had been there only moments when he heard the pad of feet behind him. It was Lao Jen.

"May I join you, Excellency?"

Lwo Kang smiled. "Of course. Come in, Jen."

Lao Jen had been with him longest and was his most trusted advisor. He was also a man with connections, hearing much that would otherwise have passed the Minister by. His sister had married into one of the more important of the Minor Families and fed him juicy tidbits of Above gossip. These he passed on to Lwo Kang privately.

Lao Jen threw off his pou and came down the steps into the water. For a moment the two of them floated there, facing each other. Then Lwo Kang smiled.

"What news, Jen? You surely have some."

"Well," he began, speaking softly so that only the Minister could hear. "It seems that today's business with Lehmann is only a small part of things. Our friends the Dispersionists are hatching bigger, broader schemes. It seems they have formed a faction—a pressure group—in the House. It's said they have more than two hundred representatives in their pocket."

Lwo Kang nodded. He had heard something similar. "Go on."

"More than that, Excellency. It seems they're going to push to reopen the starflight program."

Lwo Kang laughed. Then he lowered his voice. "You're serious? The starflight program?" He shook his head, surprised. "Why, that's been dead a century and more! What's the thinking behind that?"

Lao Jen ducked his head, theri*s"urfaced again, drawing his hand back through his hair. "It's the logical outcome of their policies. They are, after all, Dispersionists. They want breathing space. Want to be free of the City and its controls. Their policies make no sense unless there is somewhere to disperse to."

"I've always seen them otherwise, Jen. I've always thought their talk of breathing space was a political mask. A bargaining counter. And all this nonsense about opening up the colony planets too. No one in their right mind would want to live out there. Why, it would take ten thousand years to colonize the stars!" He grunted, then shook his head. "No, Jen, it's all a blind. Something to distract us from the real purpose of their movement."

"Which is what, Excellency?"

Lwo Kang smiled faintly, knowing Lao Jen was sounding him. "They are Hung Mao and they want to rule. They feel we Han have usurped their natural right to control the destiny of Chung Kuo, and they want to see us under. That's all there is to it. All this business of stars and planetary conquest is pure nonsense—the sort of puerile idiocy their minds ran to before we purged them of it."

Lao Jen laughed. "Your Excellency sees it clearly. Nevertheless, I—"

He stopped. Both men turned, standing up in the water. It came again. A loud hammering at the inner door of the solarium. Then there were raised voices.

Lwo Kang climbed up out of the water and without stopping to dry himself, took his pau from the attendant and pulled it on, tying the sash at the waist. He had taken only two steps forward when a security guard came down the steps toward him.

"Minister!" he said breathlessly, bowing low. "The alarm has been sounded. We must evacuate the dome!"

two Kang turned, dumbstruck, and looked back at Lao Jen.

Lao Jen was standing on the second step, the water up to his shins. He was looking up. Above him the songbirds were screeching madly and fluttering about their cage.

Lwo Kang took a step back toward Lao Jen, then stopped. There was a small plop and a fizzing sound. Then another. He frowned, then looked up past the cageat the ceiling of the dome. There, directly above the pool, the smooth white skin of the dome was impossibly charred. There, only an arm's length from where the wire that held the cage was attached, was a small, expanding halo of darkness. Even as he watched, small gobbets of melted ice dropped from that dark circle and fell hissing into the water.

"Gods!" he said softly, astonished. "What in heaven's name...?"

Then he understood. Understood, at the same moment, that it was already too late. "Yang Lai," he said almost inaudibly, straightening up, seeing in his mind the back of his junior minister as he hurried from the dome. "Yes. It must have been Yang Lai!..."

But the words were barely uttered when the air turned to flame.

THE PATROL CRAFT was fifteen U out when its tail camera, set on automatic search-and-scan, trained itself on the first brief flicker from the dome. On a panel above the navigator's head a light began to flash. At once the pilot banked the craft steeply, turning toward the trace.

They were almost facing the dome when the whole of the horizon seemed to shimmer and catch fire.

The pilot swore. "What in Chang-e's name is that?" "The mountains. . . ." said the navigator softly, staring in amazement at the overhead screen. "Something's come down in the mountains!"

"No. . . ." The pilot was staring forward through the windshield. "It was much closer than that. Run the tape back."

He had barely said it when the sound of the explosion hit them, rocking the tiny craft.

"It's the dome!" said the pilot in the stillness that followed. "It's the fucking solarium!"

"It can't be."

The pilot laughed, shocked. "But it's not there! It's not fucking there!"

The navigator stared at him a moment, then looked back up at the screen. The image was frgzen at the point where the camera had locked onto the irregular heat pattern.

He leaned forward and touched the display pad. Slowly, a frame at a time, the image changed.

"Gods! Look at that!"

Near the top of the softly glowing whiteness of the dome two eyes burned redly. Slowly they grew larger, darker, the crown of the dome softening, collapsing, until the crumpled face of the solarium seemed to leer at the camera, a vivid gash of redness linking two of the four holes that were now visible. For a single frame it formed a death mask, the translucent flesh of the dome brilliantly underlit. Then, in the space of three frames, the whole thing blew apart.

In the first it was veined with tiny cracks—each fissure a searing, eye-scorching filament of fire, etched vividly against the swollen, golden flesh of the dome. As the tape moved on a frame, that golden light intensified, filling the bloated hemisphere to its limit. Light spilled like molten metal from the bloodied mouths that webbed the dome, eating into the surrounding darkness like an incandescent acid. Then, like a flowering wound, the whole thing opened up, the ragged flaps of ice thrown outward violently, flaming like the petals of a honey-gold and red chrysanthemum, its bright intensity flecked with darkness.

He reached forward and pressed to hold the image. The screen burned, almost unbearably bright. He turned and stared at his colleague, seeing at once how the other's mouth was open, the inner flesh glistening brightly in the intense, reflected light, while in the polished darkness of his eyes two gold-red flowers blossomed.

"Gods____That's awful. . . terrible. . . ."

The flat Han face of the navigator turned and looked up at the screen. Yes, he thought. Awful. Terrible. And yet quite beautiful. Like a chrysanthemum, quite beautiful.

CHAPTER TWO

The Silkworm and the Mulberry Leaf

AT THE MOUTH of the narrow, low-ceilinged corridor they had been following, Chen stopped and placed his hand against Jyaris chest, looking out into the wide but crowded thoroughfare beyond. Pan Chao Street teemed with life. Along both sides of the long, broad avenue ran balconies, four of them, stacked like seed trays one atop another, their low rails packed with people, the space between them crisscrossed with a vast unruly web of lines from which enormous quantities of washing hung, like giant, tattered veils, dripping endlessly onto the crowds below.

A hundred smaller corridors led into Pan Chao Street, the regular pattern of their dark, square mouths peppering the walls behind the balconies, like the openings to a giant hive.

Chen reached out and touched the smooth surface of the hexagonal, graffiti-proof plaque on the wall close by. LEVEL eleven, it read; south 3 stack, canton of munich. Relieved, he looked back, ignoring the curious stares of passersby. That much, at least, was right. But were they in the right place? Had they come out at the right end?

He glanced at Jyan, then nodded. "Come on. Let's find that elevator."

It was a noisy, boisterous place. And it stank. The sharp, sour-sweet smell of spiced soymeats and overcooked vegetables was mixed inextricably with the sharper scent of human sweat and the damp, warm smell of the washing. Jyan looked at Chen, grimacing.

"It's worse than beneath the Net!"

Chen nodded. It was true. The air was a rich, unwholesome soup. After the freshness of the higher tunnels it made him feel like retching. Each breath seemed to coat the lungs.

Chen pushed out into the middle of the press, aware of Jyan at his back. Young children, naked, many of them streaked with dirt, ran here and there through the crowd, yelling. Some tugged at their clothes as they passed.

"Ch'ian.'" one tiny, shaven-headed boy yelled, pulling at Chen's tunic, then putting his hand out aggressively. Money! He could have been no more than three at most. Chen glared at him and raised his hand threateningly, but the child only laughed and ran away, making a sign with his hand that was unmistakable. And you, thought Chen. And you.

People jostled this way and that, using their elbows and .shoulders to force a way through the press. In the midst of it all a few of them simply stood and talked, making deals or just passing the time, oblivious of the noise, the crush, the rickshaws jostling to get by. Some turned and eyed the two men as they made their way through, but most ignored them, intent on their own business.

At the edge of things, small groups of women stood in doorways watching them, their arms folded over their breasts, their lips moving incessantly, chattering away in the pidgin dialect of these levels. Nearby, traders pushed their barrows through the crowd, crying out in dae same strange singsong tongue as the watching women. Small MedFac screens were everywhere, on brackets fixed to walls and in shopfronts, on. the sides of rickshaws or pushed along in handcarts, their constant murmur barely distinguishable above the general hubbub, while from every side countless PopVoc Squawks blared out, some large as suitcases, others worn as earrings or elaborate bracelets. All added to the dull cacophony of sound.

Chen moved through it all slowly, purposefully, trying not to let it overwhelm him after the empty silence of the maintenance tunnels. His eyes searched for Security patrols, conscious all the while of Jyan at his side, matching him pace for pace. He allowed himself a brief, grim smile. It would be all right. He was sure it would be all right.

They were mostly Han here, but those Hung Mao about were almost indistinguishable in dress or speech. These were Chung Kuo's poor. Here, near the very bottom of the City, you could see the problem the City faced—could touch and smell and hear it. Here it hit you immediately, in the constant push and shove of the crowds that milled about these corridors. Chung Kuo was overcrowded. Wherever,you turned there were people; people talking and laughing, pushing and arguing, bargaining and gambling, making love behind thin curtains or moving about quietly in cramped and crowded rooms, watching endless historical dramas while they tended to a clutch of bawling children.

Chen pushed on dourly, swallowing the sudden bitterness he felt. To those who lived a quieter, more ordered life in the levels high above, this would probably have seemed like hell. But Chen knew otherwise. The people of this level counted themselves lucky to be here, above the Net and not below. There was law here and a kind of order, despite the overcrowding. There was the guarantee of food and medical care. And though there was the constant problem of idleness—of too many hands and too few jobs—there was at least the chapce of getting out, by luck or hard work; of climbing the levels to a better place than this. Below the Net there was nothing. Only chaos.

Below this level the City had been sealed. That seal was called the Net. Unlike a real net, however, there were no holes in it. It was a perfect, supposedly unbreachable barrier. The architects of City Earth had meant it as a quarantine measure: as a means of preventing the spread of infestation and disease. From the beginning, however, the Seven had found another use for it.

They had been wise, that first Council of the Seven. They had known what some men were; had seen the darkness in their hearts and had realized that, unless they acted, the lowest levels of the City would soon become ungovernable. Their solution had been simple and effective. They had decided to use the Net as a dumping ground for that small antisocial element on whom the standard punishment of downgrading—of demoting a citizen to a lower level—had proved consistently unsuccessful. By that means they hoped to check the rot and keep the levels pure.

To a degree it had worked. As a dumping ground the Net had served the Seven well. Below the Net there was no citizenship. Down there a man had no rights but those he fought for or earned in the service of other, more powerful men. There was no social welfare there, no health care, no magistrates to judge the rights or wrongs of a man's behavior. Nor was there any legitimate means of returning from the Net. Exile was permanent, on pain of death. It was little wonder, then, that its threat kept the citizens of Pan Chao Street in check.

Chen knew. It was where they came from, he and Jyan. Where they had been bom. Down there, below the Net.

And now they were returning.

At the mouth of one of the small alleyways that opened onto Pan Chao Street, a group of young men had gathered in a circle, hunched forward, watching excitedly as a die rolled. There was a sudden upward movement of their heads; an abrupt, exaggerated movement of arms and hands and shoulders accompanied by a shrill yell from a dozen mouths, a shout of triumph and dismay, followed a moment later by the hurried exchange of money and the making of new bets. Then the young men hunched forward again, concentrating on the next roll.

As they passed the entrance, Jyan turned and stared at the group. He hesitated, then, catching their excitement, began to make'his way across to them.

"Kao Jyan!" Chen hissed, reaching out to restrain him. "There's no time! We must get on!"

Jyan turned back, a momentary confusion in his face. His movements seemed strangely feverish and uncontrolled. His eyes had difficulty focusing. Chen knew at once what was wrong. The drug he had taken to tolerate the conditions outside the City was wearing off.

Too soon, Chen thought, his mind working furiously. You must have taken it too early. Before you were told to. And now the reaction's setting in. Too soon. Too bloody soon!

"Come on, Jyan," he said, leaning closer and talking ihto his face. "We've got to get to the elevator!"

Jyan shivered and seemed to focus on him at last. Then he nodded and did as Chen said, moving on quickly through the crowd.

Where Pan Chao Street spilled out into the broad concourse of Main, Chen stopped and looked about him, keeping a grip on Jyan. The bell tower was close by and to his left, the distribution elevator far to his right, barely visible, almost two U in the distance.

Shit! he thought. I was right. WeVe come out the wrong end! He glanced at Jyan, angry now. He knew they had been in there too long. He had told him they had come too far along the shaft, but Jyan would not have it. "The next junction," Jyan had said when Chen had stopped beside the hatch: "Not this one. The next." Chen had known at the time that Jyan was wrong, but Jyan had been in charge and so he had done as he'd said. But now he wished he had overruled him. They had lost valuable time. Now they would have to backtrack—out in the open where they could be seen. Where Security could see them. And with Jyan going funny on him.

He leaned close to Jyan and shouted into his ear. "Just stay beside me. Hold on to my arm if necessary, but don't leave my side."

Jyan turned his head and looked back at him, his expression vacant for a moment. Then, as before, he seemed to come to and nodded. "Okay," he mouthed. "Let's go."

Main, the huge central concourse of Eleven, was a Babel of light and sound, a broad, bloated torrent of humanity that made Pan Chao Street seem a sluggish backwater. Along its length people crowded about the stalls, thick as blackfly on a stem, haggling for bargains, while high above them massive view-screens hung in clusters from the ceiling, filling the overhead. On the huge, five-level walls to either side of the concourse a thousand flickering images formed and reformed in a nightmare collage. Worst of all, however, was the noise. As they stepped out into the crush the noise hit them like a wave, a huge swell of sound, painful in its intensity, almost unbearable.

Chen gritted his teeth, forcing his way through the thick press of people, holding on tightly to Jyan's arm and almost thrusting him through the crowd in front of him. He looked about him, for the first time really anxious, and saw how the long'time natives of Eleven seemed to ignore the clamor; seemed not to see the giant, dreamlike faces that flickered into sudden existence and followed their every movement down the Main. They knew it was all a clever trick; knew from childhood how the screens responded to their presence. But to a stranger it was different. Nowhere in the City was quite like Eleven. Here, in the first level above the Net, life seemed in perpetual ferment; as if the knowledge of what lay sealed off just below their feet made them live their lives at a different level of intensity.

Jyan was turning his head from side to side as he moved through the crush, grimacing against the brute intensity of the noise, the awful flickering neon brightness of the screens. Then, abruptly, he turned and faced Chen, leaning into him, shouting into his face.

"I can't stand it, Chen! I can't hear myself think!"

Jyan's face was dreadful to see. His mouth had formed a jagged shape; his round and frightened eyes held a neon glimpse of madness. It was clear he was close to cracking up. Chen held his arms firmly, trying to reassure him through his touch, then leaned close, shouting back his answer. "Two minutes, Jyan, that's all! We're almost there!"

Jyan shuddered and looked up, away from Chen, his eyes wide. From one of the larger screens a huge face turned and focused on him. It was a classically beautiful Oriental face, the eyes like almonds, the skin like satin, the hair fine and straight and dark. Meeting Jyan's eyes she smiled and, somewhere else, a computer matched the face she looked down into against its computer memory of all the faces in that sector of the City.

"You're a stranger here," she said, after barely a pause, the wire-thin stem of a speaker appendage snaking down to a point just above their heads. "Are you just visiting us, or have you business here?"

Jyan had frozen. Chen, too, had turned and was looking up at the screen. "Come on," he said tensely. "It's dangerous here."

As the seconds passed, and Jyan did not move, the computers spread their search, looking to match the face and find a name. It was good sales technique. This time, however, it came up with nothing. Fourteen near likenesses, but nothing to match the retinal print of the man standing beneath its screen. In a Security post five levels up a warning message flashed up on a screen.

"Come on, Jyan!" Chen said urgently, tugging Jyan away; ignoring the curious looks of passersby, pulling him along roughly now.

At the end of Main, only a quarter Ji away, the doors to one of the huge delivery elevators were opening. Chen increased his pace, glancing from side to side. As the doors slid slowly back, a number of Ministry of Distribution workers—chi ch'i—stepped out, their dark, uniformed figures dwarfed by the huge doors.

Nearer the elevator the crowd thinned and the going grew easier. Chen slowed, then stopped and drew Jyan around to face him. The doors were almost fully open now. Already a number of the low-slung electric carts were spilling out into the Main, unloading the code-marked crates.

"You know what to do?" Chen asked, his hands gripping the collar of Jyan's jacket tightly. "You remember what we rehearsed?"

Jyan nodded, his eyes suddenly much clearer. "I'm all right," he shouted. "It was only—"

Chen put his hand to Jyan's mouth. "No time!" he yelled back. "Let's just do it!"

There were about thirty chi ch'i working the elevator. All of them were wearing wraparounds—the bulky headpieces blink-ering them from all distractions. Their close-shaven heads and the heavy, black full-face masks gave them a somber, distinctly mechanical appearance; an impression which their routine, repetitive movements enhanced. Chen walked toward them casually, aware of Jyan moving away from him, circling toward the elevator from the other side.

There were two pan chang, or supervisors. One of them stood only a few paces from where Chen had stopped, his back to the overhead screens, his headphones making him deaf to the surrounding noise. From time to time he would bark an order into his lip mike and one of the chi ch'i would pause momentarily, listening, then respond with a brief nod.

Chen nodded to himself, satisfied. To all intents and purposes the chi ch'i could be discounted. Their awareness was limited to the color-coded crates they were shifting from the elevator: crates that stood out in simple, schematic shapes of red and green and blue against the intense blackness in their heads.

He looked across. Jyan was in position now, directly behind the second pan chang. At a signal from Chen they would act.

Chen had made Jyan practice this endlessly; ripping the mike away quickly with his left hand, then chopping down against the victim's windpipe with his right. Now he would discover if Jyan had learned his lesson.

Chen brought his hand down sharply, then moved forward, grabbing his man. Savagely he ripped the mike from the pan chang¹ s lips and brought the heel of his right hand down hard against the man's throat. He felt the man go limp and let him fall, then looked across.

Jyan was still struggling with his man. He had ripped away the lip mike, but had failed to finish things. Now he was holding the pan chang awkwardly, his right arm locked around the middle of his head, his left hand formed into a fist as he flailed frantically at the man's chest. But the pan chang was far from finished. With a shout he twisted out and pushed Jyan away, then turned to face him, one hand reaching up to pull his headphones off.

Chen started forward, then saw something flash in Jyan's hand. A moment later the pan chang staggered backward, clutching his chest. At the same time some of the chi ch'i straightened up and looked about blindly, as if suddenly aware that something was going on.

Chen ran for the elevator. At the doorway he turned and looked back.

Jyan was kneeling over the pan chang, one foot pressing down into the dead man's shoulder as he tried to pull the long-handled knife from his chest.

"Jyan!" Chen screamed, his voice almost lost in the background noise. "Leave it!"

Jyan looked up sharply. Then, as if coming to himself again, he stood up and began to run toward the elevator, skirting the unseeing chi ch'i and their carts. He had made only eight or nine paces when the first shot rang out.

Instinctively Chen ducked. When he looked up again he couldn't see Jyan. He took a step forward, then stopped, backing up. There, a half Ji down the Main, were three Security guards. They were approaching in a widely spaced line across the corridor, moving people out of their way brusquely, almost brutally, as they walked toward the elevator. Chen cursed beneath his breath and slammed his hand hard against the elevator's control panel.

Slowly—very slowly—the doors began to slide shut. "Jyan!" he screamed. "Jyan, where are you?" A second shot rang out, ricocheting from the back of the elevator. Out in the corridor there was chaos as people threw themselves down. Only the three Security men and the masked c/ii ch'i were standing now. As Ghen watched, one of the electric carts trundled toward the narrowing gap. Angry with Jyan, Chen pulled out his gun and aimed it at the cart, then lowered it again.

It was Jyan. He was crouched over the cart, making as small a target of himself as possible.

There were two more shots, closely spaced. The second ricocheted, clipping a crate on its exit from the elevator, and flew up into a nest of screens. There was a sharp popping and spluttering and a strong burning smell. Glass and wiring cascaded down among the unseeing chi ch'i.

With a painful slowness the cart edged between the doors. Seeing what was about to happen, Chen slammed his hand against the controls once, then again. The huge doors shuddered, made to open again, then slammed shut. But the delay had been enough. The cart was inside.

Jyan climbed down quickly and went to the panel. "Hurry!" Chen's voice was low and urgent in the sudden silence. "They'll bring up burners for the locks!"

Jyan gave the slightest nod, then got to work. Pulling the panel open, he put his fingernails underneath the edges of the thin control plate and popped it out. Behind it was an array of smaller plates, like tiny squares of dark mirror. Only two of them were important. Gingerly, he eased them out, careful not to damage the delicate circuitry behind. At once a voice boomed out from an overhead speaker, warning him not to tamper. Ignoring it, Jyan felt in his pocket for the two replacement panels and carefully fitted them. Then he slipped the top plate back and closed the panel. "Going down!"

Jyan hammered the manual override and felt the huge elevator shudder. For a moment there was a terrible groaning noise, as if the machine were going to grind itself to bits. Then came the sound of something very big and very solid breaking underneath them. With that the floor beneath the elevator floor gave way and the elevator plunged a body's length before jerking to a halt. For a moment there was silence. Then, with a click and a more normal-sounding hum, it continued its descent.

Across from Jyan, Chen picked himself up. "We're through!" he said elatedly. "We've broken through the Net!"

Jyan turned. "That should keep them busy, eh, Chen?"

Alarms were sounding overhead, back where they'd come from. Jyan could almost see what it was like up there. Right now they'd be panicking, afraid of the sudden darkness, the blaring sirens; packing the lightless corridors that led to the transit elevators; screaming and fighting one another blindly; trying to get up and out, away from the breach, before the quarantine gates—the Seals—came down.

Jyan counted. At fifteen the elevator shuddered again. The sound was like a huge, multiple explosion; muffled and distant, yet powerful enough to shake the foundations of the City. "There!" he said, grinning at Chen. "The Seals! They've brought down the Seals!"

Chen stared back at Jyan blankly, the elation draining from him. He was sobered suddenly by the thought of what they'd done. "That's it, then," he said softly. "We're safe." But he was remembering the feel of a small, dirty hand tugging at the sleeve of his one-piece as he walked down Pan Chao Street; the sight of a woman nursing her baby in a doorway; the faces of ordinary men and women going about their lives.

"We dfd it!" said Jyan, laughing now. "We fucking well did it!" But Chen just looked away, giving no answer.

EIGHT HOURS LATER and two hundred and fifty ii to the northwest, two Security officers waited outside the huge doors of a First Level mansion. Here, at the very top of the City, there was space and silence. Here the only scent was that of pine from the crescent of miniature trees in the huge, shallow bowl at one end of the long, empty corridor; the only sound the soft, shimmering fall of water from the ornamental fountain in their midst. Major DeVore faced his ensign, his eyebrows raised. He had seen the look of surprise on the young officer's face when they had stepped from the elevator.

"You'd like to live here, Haavikko?"

The ensign turned and looked back at the broad, empty corridor. The floor was richly carpeted, the high walls covered with huge, room-sized tapestries, the coloring subdued yet elegant. Bronze statues of dragons and ancient emperors rested on plinths spaced out the full length of the hallway. At the far end the doors of the elevator were lacquered a midnight-black. A solitary guard stood there, at attention, a deng "lantern gun" strapped to his shoulder. "They live well, sir."

DeVore smiled. He was a neat, compact-looking man, his jet-black hair almost Han in its fineness, his shoulders broad, almost stocky. On the chest of his azurite-blue, full-dress uniform he wore the embroidered patch of a third-ranking military officer, the stylized leopard snatching a bird from the air. He was a full head shorter than his ensign and his build gave him the look of a fighter, yet his manners, like his face, seemed to speak of generations of breeding—of culture.

"Yes. They do." The smile remained on his face. "These are extremely rich men, Haavikko. They would swallow up minnows like us without a thought were the T'ang not behind us. It's a different life up here, with different rules. Rules of connection and influence. You understand?"

Haavikko frowned. "Sir?"

"What I mean is ... I know these people, Haavikko. I know how they think and how they act. And I've known Under Secretary Lehmann's family now for almost twenty years. There are ways of dealing with them."

Haavikko puzzled at the words momentarily. "I still don't understand, sir. Do you mean you want to speak to him alone?"

"It would be best."

"But. . ." Haavikko hesitated a moment, then, seeing how his major was watching him, bowed his head. "Sir."

"Good. I knew you'd understand." DeVore smiled again. "I've harsh words to say to our friend the Under Secretary. It would be best if I said them to him alone. It is a question of face."

Haavikko nodded. That much he understood, orders or no. "Then I'll wait here, sir."

DeVore shook his head. "No, boy. I want you to be a witness, at the very least. You can wait out of earshot. That way you'll not be breaking orders, eh?"

Haavikko smiled, more at ease now that a compromise had been made.

Behind them the huge double doors to the first-level apartment swung open. They turned, waiting to enter.

Inside, the unexpected. A tiny wood. A bridge across a running stream. A path leading upward through the trees. Beside the bridge two servants waited for them, Han, their shaven heads bowed fully to the waist. One led the way before them, the other followed, heads lowered, eyes averted out of courtesy. They crossed the bridge, the smell of damp earth and blossom rising to greet them. The path turned, twisted, then came out into a clearing.

On the far side of the clearing was the house. A big two-story mansion in the Han northern style, white walled, its red tile roof steeply pitched.

DeVore looked at his ensign. The boy was quiet, thoughtful. He had never seen the like of this. Not surprising. There were few men in the whole of Chung Kuo who could afford to live like this. Four, maybe five thousand at most outside the circle of the Families. This was what it was to be rich. Rich enough to buy a whole ten-level deck at the very top of the City and landscape it.

Pietr Lehmann was Under Secretary in the House of Representatives at Weimar. A big man. Fourth in the pecking order in that seat of World Government. A man to whom a thousand lesser men—giants in their own households—bowed their heads. A power broker, even if that power was said by some to be chimerical and the House itself a sop—a mask to brutal tyranny.-DeVore smiled at the thought. Who, after all, would think the , Seven brutal or tyrannous? They had no need to be. They had the House between them and the masses of Chung Kuo.

They went inside.

The entrance hall was bright, spacious. To the left was a flight of broad, wood-slatted steps; to the right a sunken pool surrounded by a low wood handrail. The small, dark shapes of fishes flitted in its depths.

Their guides bowed, retreated. For a moment they were left alone.

"I thought. . ." Haavikko began, then shook his head. I know, DeVore mused; you thought he was Hung Mao. Yet all of this is Han. He smiled. Haavikko had seen too little of the world; had mixed only with soldiers. All this was new to him. The luxury of it. The imitation.

There was a bustle of sound to their right. A moment later a group of servants came into the entrance hall. They stopped a respectful distance from the two visitors and one of them stepped forward, a tall Han who wore on the chest of his pale green one-piece a large black pictogram and the number i. He was house steward, Lehmann's chief servant.

DeVore made no move to acknowledge the man. He neither bowed nor smiled. "Where is the Under Secretary?" he demanded. "I wish to see him."

The steward bowed, his eyes downcast. Behind him were lined up almost half of Lehmann's senior household staff, fifteen in all. They waited, unbowed, letting the steward act for them all.

"Excuse me, Major, but the master is out in the pagoda. He left explicit orders that he was not to be disturbed."

DeVore half turned and looked at his ensign, then turned back. "I've no time to wait, I'm afraid. I come on the T'ang's business. I'll tell your master that you did his bidding."

The steward nodded, but did not look up, keeping his head down as the Major and his ensign walked past him, out across the terrace and onto the broad back steps that led down to the gardens.

Lotus lay scattered on the lake, intensely green against the pale, clear water. Huge cream slabs of rock edged the waterline, forming a perfect oval. To the left a pathway traced the curve of the lake, its flower-strewn canopy ending in a gently arching bridge. Beyond the bridge, amid a formal garden of rock and shrub and flower, stood a three-tiered pagoda in the classic Palace style, its red-tiled roofs unornamented. Farther around, to the right of the lake, was an orchard, the small, broad-crowned trees spreading to the water's edge. Plum and cherry were in blossom and the still air was heavy with their fragrance.

It was early morning. From the meadows beyond the pagoda came the harsh, clear cry of a peacock. Overhead the light of a dozen tiny, artificial suns shone down from a sky of ice painted the pastel blue of summer days.

Standing on the topmost step, DeVore took it all in at a glance. He smiled, adjusting the tunic of his dress uniform, then turned to his ensign. "It's okay, Haavikko. I'll make my own way from here."

The young officer clicked his heels and bowed. DeVore knew the boy had been ordered by the General to stay close and observe all that passed; but these were his people; he would do it his way. Behind Haavikko the senior servants of the household looked on, not certain what to do. The Major had come upon them unannounced. They had had little chance to warn their master.

DeVore looked back past Haavikko, addressing them. "You! About your business now! Your master will summon you when he needs you!" Then he turned his back on them, dismissing them.

He looked out across the artificial lake. On the sheltered gallery of the pagoda, its wooden boards raised on stilts above the lake, stood three men dressed in silk pau. The soft murmur of their voices reached him across the water. Seeing him, one of them raised a hand in greeting, then turned back to his fellows, as if making his excuses.

Lehmann met him halfway, on the path beside the lake.

"It's good to see you, Howard. To what do I owe this pleasure?"

DeVore bowed his head respectfully, then met the other's eyes. "I've come to investigate you, Pietr. The General wants answers."

Lehmann smiled and turned, taking the Major's arm and walking beside him. "Of course." Light, filtering through the overhanging vines, made of his face a patchwork of shadows. "Soren Berdichev is here. And Edmund Wyatt. But they'll understand, I'm sure."

Again DeVore gave the slightest nod. "You know why IVe come?"

Lehmann glanced his way, then looked forward again, toward the pagoda. "It's Lwo Kang's death, isn't it? I knew someone would come. As soon as I heard the news, I knew. Rumor flies fast up here. Idle tongues and hungry ears make trouble for us all." He sighed, then glanced at DeVore. "I understand there are those who are misconstruing words spoken in my audience with the Minister as a threat. Well, I assure you, Howard, nothing was farther from my mind. In a strange way I liked Lwo Kang. Admired his stubbornness. Even so, I find myself . .. unsurprised. It was as I thought. As I warned. There are those for whom impatience has become a killing anger."

DeVore paused, turning toward the Under Secretary. "I understand. But there are things I must ask. Things you might find awkward."

Lehmann shrugged good-naturedly. "It's unavoidable. The Minister's death was a nasty business. Ask what you must. I won't be offended."

DeVore smiled and walked on, letting Lehmann take his arm again. They had come to the bridge. For a moment they paused, looking out across the lake. The peacock cried again.

"It is being said that you had most to gain from Lwo Kang's death. His refusal to accommodate you in the matter of new licenses. His recent investigations into the validity of certain patents. Most of all his rigid implementation of the Edict. That last, particularly, has harmed you and your faction more than most."

"My faction? You mean the Dispersionists?" Lehmann was quiet a moment, considering. "And by removing him I'd stand to gain?" He shook his head. "I know I've many enemies, Howard, but surely even they credit me with more subtlety than that."

They walked on in silence. As they reached the pagoda, the two men on the terrace came across and stood at the top of the slatted steps.

"Soren! Edmund!" DeVore called out to them, mounting the narrow stairway in front of Lehmann. "How are you both?" They exchanged greetings, then went inside, into a large, hexagonal room. Black lacquered walls were inset with porcelain in intricate and richly colored designs. The ceiling was a single huge mosaic; a double helix of tiny, brightly colored pythons surrounded by a border of vivid blue-white stars. Four simple backless stools with scrolled, python-headed feet stood on the polished block-tile floor, surrounding a low hexagonal table. On the table was a small green lacquered box.

Despite the heaviness, the formality of design, the room seemed bright and airy. Long, wide-slatted windows looked out onto the lake, the orchard, and the surrounding meadows. The smell of blossom lingered in the air.

It was almost more Han than the Han, DeVore observed uneasily, taking a seat next to Lehmann. A rootless, unconscious mimicry. Or was it more than that? Was it Han culture that was the real virus in the bloodstream of these Hung Mao; undermining them, slowly assimilating them, "as a silkworm devours a mulberry leaf." He smiled wryly to himself as the words of the ancient historian Ssu Ma Ch'ien came to mind. Ah, yes, we know their history, their sayings. These things have usurped our own identity. Well, by such patience shall I, in turn, devour them. I'll be the silkworm delving in their midst.

"So how's the Security business?"

DeVore turned on his stool, meeting Edmund Wyatt's query with a smile.

"Busy. As ever in-this wicked world."

Despite long years of acquaintanceship Wyatt and he had never grown close. There had always been a sense of unspoken hostility beneath their surface politeness. It was no different now.

Wyatt was a slightly built man with an oddly heavy head. Someone had once commented that it was as if he had been grafted together from two very different men, and that impression, once noted, was hard to shake. At a glance his face revealed a strong, unequivocal character: aristocratic, his dark green eyes unflinching in their challenge, his chin firm, defiant. But looking down at the frame of the man it was noticeable at once how frail he seemed, how feminine. His hands were soft and thin and pale, the nails perfectly manicured. Slender tiao tuo, bracelets of gold and jade, hung bunched at both wrists.

Such things made him seem a weak man, but he was far from that. His father's ruin might have destroyed a lesser man, but Wyatt had shown great courage and determination. He had gambled on his own talents and won: rebuilding his father's empire and regaining his place on First Level.

DeVore studied him a moment longer, knowing better than to underestimate the intelligence of the man, then gave the slightest bow. V "And you, Edmund—you're doing well, I see. There's talk your company will soon be quoted on the Index."

Wyatt's eyes showed a mild surprise. He was unaware how closely DeVore kept himself briefed on such things. "You follow the markets, then?"

"It makes sense to. Insurrection and business are close allies in these times. The Hang Seng is an indicator of much more than simple value—it's an index of power and ruthlessness, a club for like-minded men of similar ambitions."

He saw how Wyatt scrutinized him momentarily, trying to make out the meaning behind his words. The Hang Seng Index of Hong Kong's stock market was the biggest of the world's seven markets and the most important. But, like the House, it was often a front for other less open activities.

DeVore turned slightly in his seat to face Berdichev, a warm smile lighting his features. "And how are you, Soren? I see far too little of you these days."

Soren Berdichev returned the smile bleakly, the heavy lenses of his small, rounded glasses glinting briefly as he bowed. He was a tall, thin-faced man with pinched lips and long, spatulate fingers; a severe, humorless creature whose steel-gray eyes never settled for long. He was a hard man with few social graces, and because of that he made enemies easily, often without knowing what he did; yet he was also extremely powerful—not a man to be crossed.

"Things are well, Howard. Progressing, as they say."

DeVore smiled at Berdichev's understatement. SimFic, his company, was one of the success stories of the decade. It had been a small operation when he had bought it in eighty-eight, but by ninety-one it had been quoted on the Hang Seng 1000 Index, along with Chung Kuo's other leading companies. Since that time he had made great advances, leading the market in the production of HeadStims and Wraps. In five short years SimFic had achieved what had seemed impossible and revolutionized personal entertainment. Now they were one of the world's biggest companies and were quoted in the Top 100 on the Index.

For a while they exchanged pleasantries. Then, as if at a signal, Berdichev's features formed into a cold half-smile. "But forgive me, Howard. I'm sure you haven't come here to talk market." He turned away brusquely and looked pointedly at Wyatt. "Come, Edmund, let's leave these two. I believe they have business to discuss."

Wyatt looked from Lehmann to DeVore, his whole manner suddenly alert, suspicious. "Business?"

There was a moment's awkwardness, then DeVore smiled and nodded. "I'm afraid so."

Wyatt set down his glass and got up slowly. Giving a small bow to Lehmann he made to follow Berdichev, then stopped and turned, looking back at Lehmann. "Are you sure?" he asked, his eyes revealing a deep concern for his friend.

Lehmann gave the slightest of nods, meeting Wyatt's eyes openly as if to say, Trust me. Only then did Wyatt turn and go.

DeVore waited a moment, listening to Wyatt's tread on the steps. Then, when it was silent again, he got up and went to the table, crouching down to open the small green box. Reaching up to his lapel, he removed the tiny device that had been monitoring their conversation and placed it carefully inside the box. Lehmann came and stood beside him, watching as he switched on the tape they had recorded three weeks before. There was the cry of a peacock, distant, as if from the meadows beyond the room, and then their voices began again, continuing from where they had left off. DeVore smiled and gently closed the lid, then he straightened up, letting out a breath.

"The simplest ways are always best," he said, and gave a short laugh. Then, more soberly, "That was unfortunate. What does Wyatt know?"

Lehmann met DeVore's eyes, smiling, then put an arm about his shoulders. "Nothing. He knows nothing at all."

Slowly, DeVore peeled off his gloves and laid them on the table.

"Good. Then let's speak openly."

THE STONE DRAGON was a big, low'Ceilinged inn at the bottom of the City; a sprawl of interconnected rooms, ill lit and ill decorated; a place frequented only by the lowest of those who lived in the ten levels below the Net. A stale, sweet-sour stench permeated everything in its cramped and busy rooms, tainting all it touched. Machines lined the walls, most of them dark. Others, sparking, on the verge of malfunction, added their own sweet, burning scent to the heavy fug that filled the place. Voices called out constantly, clamoring for service, while shabbily dressed waitresses, their makeup garishly exaggerated, made their way between the tables, taking orders.

The two men sat in the big room at the back of the inn, at a table set apart from the others against the far wall. They had come here directly, two hours back, unable to sleep, the enormity of what they'd done playing on both their minds. To celebrate, Kao Jyan had ordered a large bottle of the Dragon's finest Shen, brought down from Above at an exorbitant price, but neither man had drunk much of the strong rice wine.

Jyan had been quiet for some while now, hunched over an untouched tumbler, brooding. Chen watched him for a time, then looked about him.

The men at nearby tables were mainly Han, but there were some Hung Mao. Most of them, Han and Hung Moo alike, were wide eyed and sallow faced, their scabbed arms and faces giving them away as addicts. Arfidis was cheap down here and widely available and for some it was the only way out of things. But it was also death, given time, and Chen had kept his own veins clear of it. At one of the tables farther off three Han sat stiffly, talking in dialect, their voices low and urgent. One of them had lost an eye, another was badly scarred about the neck and shoulder. They represented the other half of the Stone Dragon's clientele, noticeable by the way they held themselves— somehow lither, more alert, than those about them. These were the gang men and petty criminals who used this place for business. Chen stretched his neck and leaned back against the wall. Nearby a thick coil of smoke moved slowly in the faint orange light of an overhead panel, like the fine, dark strands of a young girl's hair.

"It's like death," he said, looking across at Jyan.

"What?" Jyan said lazily, looking up at Chen. "What did you say?"

Chen leaned forward and plucked a bug from beneath the table's edge, crushing it between his thumb and forefinger. It was one of the ugly, white-shelled things that sometimes came up from the Clay. Blind things that worked by smell alone. He let its broken casing fall and wiped his hand on his one-piece, not caring if it stained. "This place. It's like death. This whole level of things. It stinks."

Jyan laughed. "Well, you'll be out of it soon enough, if that's what you want."

Chen looked at his partner strangely. "And you don't?" He shook his head, suddenly disgusted with himself. "You know, Jyan, I've spent my whole life under the Net. I've known nothing but this filth. It's time I got out. Time I found something cleaner, better than this."

"I know how you feel," Jyan answered, "but have you thought it through? Up there you're vulnerable. Above the Net there are pass laws and judges, taxes and Security patrols." He leaned across and spat neatly into the bowl by his feet. "I hate the thought of all that shit. It would stifle the likes of you and me. And anyway, we hurt a lot of people last night when the quarantine gates came down. Forget the assassination—someone finds out you were involved in that and you're dead."

Chen nodded. It had meant nothing at the time, but now that the drug had worn off he could think of little else. He kept seeing faces; the faces of people he had passed up there in Pan Chao Street. People who, only minutes later, would have been panicking, eyes streaming, half choking as Security pumped the deck full of sterilizing gases. Children too. Yes, a lot of them would have been just children.

He hadn't thought it through; hadn't seen it until it was done. All he'd thought about was the five thousand yuan he was being paid for the job: that and the chance of getting out. And if that meant breaking through the Net, then that's what he would do. But he hadn't thought it through. In that, at least, Jyan was right. The Net. It had been built to safeguard the City; as a quarantine measure to safeguard the Above from plague and other epidemics, and from infiltration by insects and vermin. And from us, thought Chen, a sour taste in his mouth. From vermin like us.

He looked across, seeing movement in the doorway, then looked sharply at Jyan. "Trouble. ..." he said quietly. Jyan didn't turn. "Who is it?" he mouthed back. Chen groomed an imaginary moustache. "Shit!" said Jyan softly, then sat back, lifting his tumbler. "What does he want.⁷" Chen whispered, leaning forward so that the movements of his mouth were screened by Jyan from the three men in the doorway. "I owe him money." "How much?" "A thousand yuan."

"A thousand!" Chen grimaced, then leaned back again, easing his knife from his boot and pinning it with his knee against the underside of the table. Then he looked across again. The biggest of the three was looking directly at them now, grinning with recognition at the sight of Jyan's back. The big man tilted his head slightly, muttering something to the other two, then began to come across.

Whiskers Lu was a monster of a man. Almost six ch'i in height, he wore his hair wild and uncombed and sported a ragged fur about his shoulders like some latter-day chieftain from a historical romance. He derived his name from the huge tangled bush of a moustache which covered much of his facial disfigurement. Standing above Jyan, his left eye stared out glass-ily from a mask of melted flesh, its rawness glossed and mottled like a crab's shell. The right eye was a narrow slit, like a sewn line in a doll's face. Beneath the chin and on the lower right-hand side of his face the mask seemed to end in a sunken line, the normal olive of his skin resuming.

Ten years back, so the story went, Whiskers Lu had tried to come to an arrangement with Chang Fen, one of the petty bosses of these levels. Chang Fen had met him, smiling, holding one hand out to welcome Lu, his other hand holding what looked like a glass of wine. Then, still smiling, he had thrown the contents of the glass into Lu's face. It was acid. But the man had not reckoned with Whiskers Lu's ferocity. Lu had'held on tightly to the man's hand, roaring against the pain, and, drawing his big hunting knife, had plunged it into Chang Fen's throat before his lieutenants could come to his aid. Half blinded he had fought his way out of there, then had gone back later with his brothers to finish the job.

Now Whiskers Lu was a boss in his own right; a big man, here beneath the Net. He stood there, towering over Kao Jyan, his lipless mouth grinning with cruel pleasure as he placed his hand on Jyan's shoulder, his single eye watching Chen warily.

"Kao Jyan. . . . How are you, my friend?"

"I'm well," Jyan answered nervously, shrinking in his seat. "And you, Lu Ming-Shao?"

Whiskers Lu laughed gruffly, humorlessly. "I'm fine, Kao Jyan. I killed a man yesterday. He owed me money."

Jyan swallowed and met Chen's eyes. "And he couldn't pay you?"

Lu's grip tightened on Jyan's shoulder. "That's so, Kao Jyan. But that's not why I killed him. I killed him because he tried to hide from me."

"Then he was a foolish man, I'd say."

The big man's laughter was tinged this time with a faint amusement. His eye, however, was cold, calculating. It stared challengingly at Chen from within its glasslike mask.

Chen stared back at it, meeting its challenge, not letting himself be cowed. If it came to a fight, so be it. Whiskers Lu would be a hard man to kill, and the odds were that Lu and his two henchmen would get the better of Jyan and himself. But he would not make it easy for them. They would know they had fought a kwcd.

Whiskers Lu broke eye contact, looking down at Jyan, his thin lips smiling again.

"You owe me money, Kao Jyan."

Jyan was staring down at his tumbler. "I have a week yet, Lu Ming-Shao. Don't you remember?"

"Oh, I remember. But I want my money now. With interest.

Twelve hundred yuan I want from you, Kao Jyan. And I want it now."

Almost unobtrusively Whiskers Lu had slipped the knife from his belt and raised it to Jyan's neck. The huge wide blade winked in the faint overhead light. The razor-sharp tip pricked the flesh beneath Jyan's chin, making him wince.

Chen let his hand slide slowly down his leg, his fingers closing about the handle of his knife. The next few moments would be crucial.

"Twelve hundred?" Jyan said tensely. "Surely, our agreement said—"

Jyan stopped, catching his breath. Whiskers Lu had increased the pressure of the knife against his flesh, drawing blood. A single bead trickled slowly down Jyan's neck and settled in the hollow above his chest. Jyan swallowed painfully.

"You want it now?"

"That's right, Kao Jyan. I've heard you've been borrowing elsewhere. Playing the field widely. Why's that, Kao Jyan? Were you planning to leave us?"

Jyan looked up, meeting Chen's eyes. Then, slowly, carefully, he reached up and moved the knife aside, turning to look up into Whiskers Lu's face.

"You mistake me, Lu Ming-Shao. I'm happy here. My friends are here. Good friends. Why should I want to leave?" Jyan smiled, then swept his hand over the table, indicating the empty chairs. "Look, you're a reasonable man, Lu Ming-Shao. Why don't we talk this through? Why don't you sit with us and share a glass of S/ien?"

Whiskers Lu roared, then grabbedjyan's hair, pulling his head back viciously, his knife held threateningly across Jyan's throat.

"None of your games, Kao Jyan! I'm an impatient man just now. So tell me and have done with it. Do you have the money or not?"

Jyan's eyes bulged. Lu's reaction had startled him. His hand went to his pocket and scrabbled there, then threw three thick chips out onto the table. Each was for five hundred yuan.

Chen forced himself to relax, loosening his tight grip on the knife's handle. But he had seen how closely Lu's henchmen had been watching him and knew that they'd had orders to deal with him if it came to trouble. He smiled reassuringly at them, then watched as Whiskers Lu let go his grip on Jyan. The big man sheathed his knife, then leaned forward, scooping up the three ivorycolored chips.

"Fifteen hundred, eh?" He grunted and half turned, grinning at his men. "Well, that'll do, wouldn't you say, Kao Jyan?"

"Twelve hundred," Jyan said, rubbing at his neck. "You said twelve hundred."

"Did I, now?" Lu laughed, almost softly now, then nodded. "Maybe so, Kao Jyan. But you made me work for my money. So let's call it quits, eh, and I'll forget that you made me angry."

Chen narrowed his eyes, watching Jyan, willing him to let it drop. But Jyan was not through. He turned and looked up at Lu \ again, meeting his eyes.

"I'm disappointed in you, Lu Ming-Shao. I thought you were a man of your word. To ask for your money a week early, that I understand. A man must protect what is his. And the extra two hundred, that, too, I understand. Money is not a dead thing. It lives and grows and must be fed. But this extra . . ." He shook his head. "Word will go out that Lu Ming-Shao is greedy. That he gives his word, then takes what is not his."

Whiskers Lu glowered at Jyan, his hand resting on his knife. "You'd dare to say that, Kao Jyan?"

Jyan shook his head. "Not I. But there are others in this room whoVe seen what passed between us. You can't silence them all, Lu Ming-Shao. And you know how it is. Rumor flies like a bird. Soon the whole Net would know. And then what, eh? Who would come and borrow money from you then?"

Lu's chest rose and fell, his single eye boring angrily into Jyan's face. Then he turned sharply and barked at one of his henchmen. "Give him three hundred! Now!"

The man rummaged in the pouch at his belt then threw three slender chips down in front of Jyan.

Jyan smiled. "It was good to do business with you, Lu Ming-Shao. May you have many sons!"

But Whiskers Lu had turned away and was already halfway across the room, cursing beneath his breath.

When he was gone, Chen leaned forward angrily. "What the fuck are you playing at, Jyan? You almost had us killed!"

Jyan laughed. "He was angry, wasn't he?"

"Angry!" Chen shook his head, astonished. "And what's all this about you borrowing elsewhere? What have you been up to?"

Jyan didn't answer. He sat there, silent, watching Chen closely, a faint smile on his lips.

"What is it?"

Jyan's smile broadened. "IVe been thinking."

"Thinking, eh?" Chen lifted his tumbler and sipped. The calculating gleam in Jyan's eyes filled him with apprehension.

Jyan leaned forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. "Yes, thinking. Making plans. Something that will make us both rich."

Chen drained his tumbler and set it down, then leaned back in his chair slowly, eyeing his partner. "IVe enough now, Jyan. Why should I want more? I can get out now if I want."

Jyan sat back, his eyes filled with scorn. "Is that all you want? To get out of here? Is that as high as your ambitions climb?" Again he leaned forward, but this time his voice hissed out at Chen. "Well, I want more than that! I want to be a king down here, in the Net. A big boss. Understand me, Chen? I don't want safety and order and all that shit, I want power. Here, where I can exercise it. And that takes money."

Heads turned at nearby tables, curious but lethargic. Chen looked back at one of them with a cold look of loathing, meeting the cold, dispassionate stare that was the tell-tale symptom of arfidis trance. Then he laughed softly and looked back at Jyan.

"You're mad, Jyan. It takes more than money. You can't buy yourself a gang down here, you have to make one, earn one, like Whiskers Lu. You're not in that league, Jyan. His kind would have you for breakfast. Besides, you're talking of the kind of sums you and I couldn't dream of getting hold of."

Jyan shook his head. "You're wrong."

Chen looked down, irritated by Jyan's persistence. "Forget it, eh? Best take what you've got and get out. That is, if you've still got enough after paying Whiskers Lu back."

Jyan laughed scornfully. "That was nothing. Small change. But listen to me, Chen. Do you really think you can get out?"

Chen said nothing, but Jyan was watching him closely again.

"What if all youVe saved isn't enough? What if the permits cost more than you can pay? What if you run into some greedy bastard official who wants a bit more squeeze than youVe got? What then? What would you do?"

Chen smiled tightly. "I'd kill him." But he was thinking of Pan Chao Street and the quarantine gates. Thinking of the huge, continent-spanning City of three hundred levels that was there above the Net. He had hoped to get a foothold on that great social ladder—a place on the very lowest rung. But he would have to go higher than he'd planned. Up to Twenty-one, at least. And that would cost more. Much, much more. Maybe Jyan was right.

"You'd kill him!" Jyan laughed again and sat back, clearly disgusted with his partner. "And be back here again! A kwai. Just a kwai again! A hireling, not the man in charge. Is that really what you want?"

Chen sniffed, then shook his head.

Jyan leaned across the table again. "Don't you understand? We can be kings here! We can!" His voice dropped to a whisper. "You see, I know who hired us."

Chen met the other's eyes calmly. "So?"

Jyan laughed, incredulous. "You really don't see it, do you?"

Chen let his eyes fall. Of course he saw it. Saw at once what Jyan was getting at. Blackmail. Games of extreme risk. But he was interested, and he wanted Jyan to spell it out for him. Only when Jyan had finished did he look up, his face expressionless.

"You're greedy, Jyan. You know that?"

Jyan sat back, laughing, then waved a hand dismissively. "You weren't listening properly, Chen. The tape. It'll be my safeguard. If they try anything—anything at all—Security will get the tape."

Chen watched him a moment longer, then looked down, shrugging, knowing that nothing he said would stop Jyan from doing this.

"Partners, then?"

Jyan had extended his left hand. It lay on the table's surface beside the half-empty bottle; a small, almost effete hand, but clever. An artisan's hand. Chen looked at it, wondering not for the first time who Jyan's father might have been, then placed his own on top of it. "Partners," he said, meeting Jyan's eyes. But already he was making plans of his own. Safeguards.

"I'll arrange a meeting, then."

Chen smiled tightly. "Yes," he said. "You do that."

EDMUND WYATT stopped beneath the stand of white mulberry trees at the far end of the meadow and looked back at the pagoda. "I don't trust him, Soren. I've never trusted him." Berdichev looked sideways at him and shrugged. "I don't know why. He seems a good enough fellow."

"Seems!" Wyatt laughed ironically. "DeVore's a seeming fellow, all right. Part of his Security training, I guess. All clean and smart on the outside—but at core a pretty dirty sort, don't you think?"

Berdichev was quiet a moment. He walked on past Wyatt, then turned and leaned against one of the slender trunks, studying his friend. "I don't follow you, Edmund. He is what he is. Like all of us."

Wyatt bent down and picked up one of the broad, heart-shaped leaves, rubbing it between thumb and finger. "I mean ... He works for them. For the Seven. However friendly he seems, you've always got to remember that. They pay him. He does their work. And as the Han say—Chung ch'en pu shih erh chu—You can't serve two masters."

"I don't know. Do you really think it's that simple?" Wyatt nodded fiercely, staring away at the distant pagoda. "They own him. Own him absolutely."

He turned and saw that Berdichev was smiling. "What is it?" "Just that you let it worry you too much, Edmund." Wyatt smiled back at him. "Maybe. But I don't trust him- I'm sure he's up to something."

"Up to what?" Berdichev moved away from the tree and stood beside Wyatt, looking back across the meadow. "Look, I'll tell you why he's here. Lwo Kang was murdered. Last night. Just after eleventh bell."

Wyatt turned abruptly, shocked by the news. "Lwo Kang? Gods! Then it's a wonder we're not all in the cells!"

Berdichev looked away. "Maybe . . . and maybe not. After all, we're not unimportant men. It would not do to persecute us without clear proof of our guilt. It might. . . well, it might make us martyrs, eh?"

Wyatt narrowed his eyes. "Martyrs? I don't understand."

"Don't think the T'ang underestimates us. Nor the power of the Above. If he had all of us Dispersionists arrested, what then? What would the Above make of that? They'd say he was acting like a tyrant. He and all the Seven. It would make things very awkward, don't you see?"

"But Lwo Kang was a minister! One of Li Shai Tung's own appointees!"

"It makes no difference. The T'ang will act properly, or not at all. It is the way of the Seven. Their weakness, if you like."

"Weakness?" Wyatt frowned, then turned back, looking across at the pagoda again. "No wonder DeVore is here. I'd say he's come to find a scapegoat. Wouldn't you?"

Berdichev smiled then reached out, putting his hand on his friend's shoulder. "You really think so, Edmund?" He shrugged, then squeezed Wyatt's shoulder gently. "Whatever else you might think about him, DeVore's Hung Moo, like us. He may work for the Han, but that doesn't mean he thinks like them. In any case, why should he be interested in anything but the truth?"

Wyatt stared at the pagoda intently for a time, as if pondering some mighty problem, then he shivered and touched his tongue to his teeth in a curiously innocent, childlike gesture. He turned, looking back at Berdichev. "Maybe you're right, Soren. Maybe he is what you say. But my feelings tell me otherwise. I don't trust him. And if he's here, I'd wager he's up to something." He paused, then turned, looking back at the pagoda. "In fact, I'd stake my life on it."

"Yang Lai is dead, then?"

DeVore turned from the window and looked back into the room. "Yes. The Junior Minister is dead."

Lehmann was silent a moment, then nodded. "I see. And the lieutenant in charge of the Security post?"

DeVore hesitated, then, in a quieter voice. "Dead, too, I'm afraid. It was . . . unavoidable."

Lehmann met his eyes, understanding at once. "How?"

"By his own hand. The dishonor, you see. His family. It would have ruined them. Better to kill oneself and absolve them from the blame." He turned back to the window and looked out again, following the slow progress of the two men down below as they made their way back across the meadow to the pagoda.

"So we're clear."

DeVore gave a short laugh. "Not clear. Not yet." • "Then you think there's still a chance they'll find something?"

The Major's eyes met Lehmann's briefly, then looked away. "Remember how long this took us to plan, Pietr. WeVe been careful, and such care pays off. And anyway, we have the advantage of knowing all they do. There's not a move General Tolonen can make without me hearing of it."

He was quiet a moment, staring off across the meadow. It was true what he had said. He had spent years recruiting them; young men like himself who had come, not from First Level, from the privileged top deck of the City—the supernal, as they liked to term themselves—nor from the army families—the descendants of those North European mercenaries who had fought for the Seven against the tyrant Tsao Ch'un a century before—but ordinary young men without connection. Young men of ability, held back by a system modeled on the Manchu "banners"—an archaic and elitist organizational structure where connection counted for more than ability. Misfits and malcontents. Like himself.

Yes, he had become adept at spotting them; at recognizing that look, there at the back of the eyes. He would check out their backgrounds and discover all he could about them. Would find, invariably, that they were loners, ill at ease socially and seething inside that others had it so easy when army life for them was unmitigatedly hard. Then, when he knew for certain that it was so, he would approach them. And every time it was the same; that instant opening; that moment of recognition, like to like, so liberating that it bound them to him with ties of gratitude and common feeling.

"Like you, I am a self-made man," he would say to them. "What I am I owe to no one but myself. No relative has bought my post; no uncle put in a word with my commanding officer."

And as he said it, he'd think of all the insults, all the shit he'd had to put up with from his so-called superiors—men who weren't fit to polish his boots. He had suffered almost thirty years of that kind of crap to get where he was now, in a position of real power. He would tell his young men this and see in their eyes the reflection of his own dark indignation. And then he would ask them, "Join me. Be part of my secret brotherhood." And they would nod, or whisper yes. And they would be his: alone no longer.

So now he had his own organization; men loyal to him before all others; who would hesitate neither to betray their T'ang nor to lay down their lives if he asked it of them. Like the young officer who had been on duty the night of Lwo Kang's assassination. Like a hundred others, scattered about the City in key positions.

He looked back at Lehmann. "Are the trees real?" He pointed outward, indicating the stand of mulberries at the far end of the meadow.

Lehmann laughed. "Heavens, no. None of it's real."

DeVore nodded thoughtfully, then turned his face to look at Lehmann. "You're not afraid to use Wyatt?" His eyes, only a hand's length from Lehmann's, were stern, questioning. There was the faintest hint of peppermint on his breath.

"If we must. After all, some things are more important than friendship."

DeVore held his eyes a moment longer then looked back at the figure of Wyatt down below. "I don't like him. You know that. But even if I did—if it threatened what we're doing ... if for a moment. . . ."

Lehmann touched his arm. "I know."

DeVore turned fully, facing him. He smiled, then reached up and held his shoulders firmly. "Good. We understand each other, Pietr. WeVe always understood each other."

Releasing him, DeVore checked his wrist-timer then went to the middle of the room and stood there by the table, looking down at the box. "It's almost time to call the others back. But first, there's one last thing we need to talk about. Heng Yu."

Lehmann frowned. "What of him?"

"I have reason to believe he'll be Lwo Kang's replacement."

Lehmann laughed, astonished. "Then you know much more than any of us, Howard. How did you come by this news?"

"Oh, it isn't news. Not yet, anyway. But I think you'll find it reliable enough. Heng Chi-Po wants his nephew as the new minister, and what Heng Chi-Po wants he's almost certain to get."

Lehmann was quiet, considering. He had heard how high the Heng family currently rode. Even so, it would use all of Minister Heng's quite considerable influence to persuade Li Shai Tung to appoint his nephew, Heng Yu. And, as these things went, it would be a costly maneuver, with the paying off of rivals, the bribery of advisors and the cost of the post itself. They would surely have to borrow. In the short term it would weaken the Hengs quite severely. They would find themselves beholden to a dozen other families. Yet in the longer term . . .

Lehmann laughed, surprised. "I'd always thought Heng Chi-Po crude and unimaginative. Not the kind to plan ahead. But this. . ."

DeVore shook his head. "Don't be mistaken, Pietr. This has nothing to do with planning. Heng Chi-Po is a corrupt man, as we know to our profit. But he's also a proud one. At some point Lwo Kang snubbed him. Did something to him that he couldn't forgive. This maneuvering is his answer. His revenge, if you like."

"How do you know all this?"

DeVore looked across at him and smiled. "Who do you think bought Yang Lai? Who do you think told us where Lwo Kang would be?"

"But I thought it was because of Edmund. ..." Then Lehmann laughed. "But of course. Why didn't you tell me?"

DeVore shrugged. "It didn't matter until now. But now you need to know who we are dealing with. What kind of men they are."

"Then it's certain."

"Almost. But there is nothing—no one—we cannot either buy or destroy. If it is Heng Yu, then all well and good, it will prove easy. But whoever it is, he'll remember what happened to Lwo Kang and be wary of us." He laughed softly. "No, they'll not deal lightly with us in future."

"And Li Shai Tung?"

DeVore spread his open hands, then turned away. There, then, lay the sticking point. Beyond this they were guessing. Li Shai Tung, and the others of the Seven who ran the Earth, were subject to no laws, no controls, but their own. Ultimately it would be up to them whether change would come; whether Man would try once more for the stars. DeVote's words, true as they were for other men, did not apply to the Seven. They could not be bought—for they owned half of everything there was—nor, it seemed, could they be destroyed. For more than a century they had ruled unchallenged.

"The T'ang is a man, whatever some might think."

Lehmann looked at DeVore curiously but held his tongue.

"He can be influenced." DeVore added after a moment, "And when he sees how the tide of events flows . . ."

"He'll cut our throats."

DeVore shook his head. "No. Not if we have the full weight of the Above behind us. Markets and House and all. Not if his ministers are ours. He is but a single man, after all."

"He is Seven," said Lehmann, and for once he understood the full import of the term. Seven. It made for strength of government. Each a king, a T'ang, ruling a seventh of Chung Kuo, yet each an equal in Council, responsible to his fellow T'ang; in some important things unable to act without their firm and full agreement. "And the Seven is against change. It is a principle with them. The very cornerstone of their continued existence,"

"And yet change they must. Or go under."

Lehmann opened his mouth, surprised to find where their talk had led them. Then he shook his head. "You don't mean..."

"You'll see," said DeVore, more softly than before. "This here is just a beginning. A display of our potential. For the Above to see." He laughed, looking away into some inner distance. "You'll see, Pietr. They'll come to us. Every last one of them. They'll see how things are—we'll open their eyes to it—and then they'll come to us."

"And then?"'

"Then we'll see who's more powerful. The Seven, or the Above."

HENG CHI-PO leaned back in his chair and roared with laughter. He passed his jewel-ringed fingers across his shiny pate, then sniffed loudly, shifting his massive weight. "Excellent, Kou! Quite excellent! A good toast! Let's raise our glasses then." He paused, the smile on his face widening. "To Lwo Kang's successor!"

Six voices echoed the toast enthusiastically.

"Lwo Kang's successor!"

There were eight men in the spacious, top-level office. Four were brothers to the Minister, three his nephews. Heng Yu, the subject of the toast, a slender man in his mid-twenties with a pencil moustache and a long but pleasant face, smiled broadly and bowed to his uncle. Kou, fourth son of Heng Chi-Po's father Tao, clapped an arm about Yu's shoulders, then spoke again.

"This is a good day, first brother."

Heng Chi-Po nodded his huge rounded face, then laughed again. "Oh how sweet it was to learn of that weasel's death. How sweet! And to think the family will profit from it!"

There was laughter from all sides. Only the young man, Yu, seemed the least bit troubled. "He seemed a good man, uncle," he ventured. "Surely I would do well to be as he was."

The laughter died away. Chi-Po's brothers looked among themselves, but Heng Chi-Po was in too good a mood to let Yu's comments worry him. He looked at his nephew good-naturedly and shook his head in mock despair. Yet his voice, when he spoke, had an acid undertone. "Then you heard wrong, Yu. Lwo Kang was a worm. A liar and a hypocrite. He was a foolish, stubborn man with the manners of the Clayborn and the intelligence of a GenSyn whore. The world is a better place without him, I assure you. And you, dear nephew, will make twic6 the minister he was."

Heng Yu bowed deeply, but there was a faint color to his cheeks when he straightened, and his eyes did not meet his uncle's. Heng Chi-Po watched him closely, thinking, not for the first time, that it was unfortunate he could not promote one of his nearer relatives to the post. Yu, son of his long-dead younger brother, Fan, had been educated away from the family. He had picked up strange notions of life. Old-fashioned, Confucian ideals of goodness. Things that made a man weak when faced with the true nature of the world. Still, he was young. He could be reeducated. Shaped to serve the family better.

Kou, ever watchful, saw how things were, and began an anecdote about a high-level whore and a stranger from the Clay. Giving him a brief smile of thanks, Chi-Po pulled himself up out of his chair and turned away from the gathering, thoughtful, pulling at his beard. Under the big wall-length map of City Europe he stopped, barely aware of the fine honeycomb grid that overlaid the old, familiar shapes of countries, thinking instead of the past. Of that moment in the T'ang's antechamber when Lwo Kang had humiliated him.

Shih wei su ts'an.

He could hear it even now. Could hear how Lwo Kang had said it; see his face, only inches from his own, those coldly intelligent eyes staring at him scornfully, that soft, almost feminine mouth forming the hard shapes of the words. It was an old phrase. An ancient insult. Impersonating the dead and eating the bread of idleness. You are lazy and corrupt, it said. You reap the rewards of others' hard work. Chi-Po shuddered, remembering how the others there—ministers like himself—had turned from him and left him there, as if agreeing with Lwo Kang. Not one had come to speak with him afterward.

He looked down, speaking softly, for himself alone. "But now the ugly little pig's ass is dead!"

He had closed those cold eyes. Stopped up that soft mouth. And now his blood would inherit. And yet. . .

Heng Chi-Po closed his eyes, shivering, feeling a strange mixture of bitterness and triumph. Dead. But still the words sounded, loud, in his head. Shih wei su ts'an.

BIG WHITE brought them a tray of ch'a, then backed out, closing the door behind him.

Cho Hsiang leaned forward and poured from the porcelain bottle, filling Jyan's bowl first, then his own. When he was done he set the bottle down and looked up sharply at the hireling.

"Well? What is it, Kao Jyan?"

He watched Jyan take his bowl and sip, then nod his approval of the ch'a. There was a strange light in his eyes. Trouble. As he'd thought. But not of the kind he'd expected. What was Jyan up to?

"This is pleasant," said Jyan, sitting back. "Very pleasant. There's no better place in the Net than Big White's, wouldn't you say?"

Curbing his impatience, Cho Hsiang placed his hands on the table, palms down, and tilted his head slightly, studying Jyan. He was wary of him, not because he was in any physical danger—Big White frisked all his customers before he let them in—but because he knew Jyan for what he was. A weasel. A devious little shit-eater with ambitions far above his level.

"No better place in the Net," he answered, saying nothing of the excellent Mu Chua's, where he and others from the Above usually spent their time here, nor of his loathing of the place and of the types, like Jyan, with whom he had to deal. "You'd best say what you want, Kao Jyan. I've business to attend to."

Jyan looked up at him, a sly, knowing expression in his eyes. "I'll not keep you long, mister contact man. What I have to say is simple and direct enough."

Cho Hsiang stiffened slightly, bristling at the insult Kao Jyan had offered him in using the anglicized form of hsien sheng, but his mind was already working on the question of what it was Jyan wanted. As yet he saw no danger in it for himself, even when Jyan leaned forward and said in a whisper, "I know who you work for, Cho Hsiang. I found it out."

Jyan leaned back, watching him hawkishly, the fingers of his right hand pulling at the fingers of the left. "That should be worth something, don't you think?"

Cho Hsiang sat back, his mind working quickly. Did he mean Hong Cao? If so, how had Jyan found out? Who, of Hsiang's contacts, had traced the connection back? Or was Jyan just guessing? Trying to squeeze him for a little extra? He looked at the hireling again, noting just how closely the other was watching him, then shrugged.

"I don't know what you mean. I am my own man. I'm not a filthy hireling."

He made the insult pointed, but Jyan just waved it aside. "You forget what you hired me for this time, mister contact man. It was way beyond your level. I knew at once you were working for someone else. And not just anyone. This one had power. Real power. Power to make deals with Security, to trade with other, powerful men. With money to oil the cogs and sweep away the traces. That's not your level, Cho Hsiang. Such people would not deign to sit at table with such as you and I."

Cho Hsiang was quiet a moment, thoughtful; then, "Give me a name."

Jyan laughed shortly, then leaned forward, his face now hard and humorless. "First I want a guarantee. Understand? I want to make certain that I'm safe. That they'll not be able to come for me and make sure of my silence."

He made to speak, but Jyan shook his head tersely. "No, Cho Hsiang. Listen. I've made a tape of all I know. It makes interesting listening. But tapes can go missing. So I've made a copy and secured it in a computer time-lock. Never mind where. But that time-lock needs to be reset by me every two days. If it isn't, then the copy goes directly to Security."

Cho Hsiang took a deep breath. "I see. And what do you want in return for your silence?"

In answer Jyan took the tape from the pocket of his one-piece and pushed it across the table to him. "I think they'll find a price that suits us both."

Smiling, Jyan refilled his cup from the bottle, then, sitting back again, raised it in salute. "You said you wanted a name."

Cho Hsiang hesitated, his stomach tightening, then shook his head. He hadn't seen it at first, but now he saw it clearly. Jyan's talk of safeguards had brought it home to him. It was best he knew nothing. Or, if not nothing, then as little as possible. Such knowledge as Jyan had was dangerous.

"Suit yourself," said Jyan, laughing, seeing the apprehension in Cho Hsiang's face. When he spoke again his voice was harsh; no longer the voice of a hireling, but that of a superior. "Arrange a meeting. Tomorrow. Here, at Big White's."

Cho Hsiang leaned forward, angered by Jyan's sudden change of tone, then sat back, realizing that things had changed. He picked up the tape and pocketed it, then got up from his chair and went to the door. "I'll see what I can do."

Jyan smiled again. "Oh, and Cho Hsiang . . . pay Big White for me on your way out."

LEHMANN turned sharply, the low, urgent buzzing of the desk alarm sending his heart into his mouth. Four symbols had appeared on the screen of his personal comset, Han pictograms that spelled Yen C/ung—Eye—the code word for his Midlevel contact, Hong Cao.

That it had appeared on his personal screen indicated its urgency. No computer line, however well protected, could be guaranteed discreet. For that reason Hong Cao had been instructed to use the personal code only as a last resort.

Placing his right forefinger to the screen, Lehmann drew an oval, then dotted the center of it. At once the message began to spill out onto the screen.

It was brief and to the point. Lehmann read it through once, then a secqnd time. Satisfied he had it memorized, he pressed CLEAR and held the tab down for a minute—time enough to remove all memory of the transmission. Only then did he sit back, stunned by the import of the message.

"Shit!" he said softly, then leaned forward to tap in DeVore's personal contact code.

Someone knew. Someone had figured out how it all connected. .

DeVore was out on patrol. Part of his face appeared on the screen, overlarge, the signal hazed, distorted. Lehmann realized at once that DeVore was staring down into a wrist set.

"Pietr! What is it?"

Lehmann swallowed. "Howard. Look, it's nothing really. Just that you—you left your gloves. Okay? I thought you might want to pick them up. And maybe have a drink."

DeVore's face moved back, coming into clearer focus. There was a moment's hesitation, then he nodded. "I'll be off duty in an hour. I'll come collect them then. Okay?"

"Fine." Lehmann cut contact at once.

The package from Hong Cao containing the tape and a sealed message card arrived a half bell later by special courier. Lehmann stared at it a moment, then put it unopened in the top drawer of his desk and locked it.

His first instinct had been right. They should have erased all traces that led back to them. Killed the killers. Killed the agents and the contact men. Killed everyone who knew. DeVore had argued against this, saying that to do so would only draw attention, but he, Lehmann, had been right. And now they would have to do it anyway. If they still could.

When DeVore arrived they took the package straight through to Lehmann's secure-room and listened to the tape through headphones. Afterward they sat there looking at each other.

DeVore was the first to speak. "He may have got it wrong, but he was close enough to do us damage. If Security investigates Berdichev at any depth they'll uncover the links with you. And then the whole structure comes crashing down."

"So what do you suggest?"

"We kill him."

"What about the copy tape?"

"Leave that to me." DeVore reached across and took the message card. He looked at it, then handed it to Lehmann.

Lehmann activated the card, read it, then handed it back across to DeVore.

"Good. This Kao Jyan wants a meeting. I'll see to that myself. Meanwhile I've something you can do." - Lehmann frowned. "What's that?"

"Yang Lai's alive. He tried to make contact with Wyatt. My men have found out where he is, but he'll only speak to you or Wyatt. It seems you're the only ones he trusts."

Lehmann felt his stomach flip over for the second time that morning. Yang Lai had been one of the ministers of the Edict, Lwo Kang's chief officials. They had thought him with Lwo Kang when the Minister and all his principal men were killed.

"Then he wasn't in the dome when it went up?"

DeVore shook his head. "I only heard two hours back. All of the internal Security films were destroyed in the explosion, but the door tally survived. The body count for the solarium came out two short. It seems Junior Minister Yang is one."

"Then who's the other?"

DeVore shrugged. "We don't know yet. But Yang Lai might. Go see him. Do what you must."

Lehmann nodded. This time he would act on his instincts. "Okay. I'll deal with him."

DeVore stood up. "And don't worry, Pietr. We can handle this. You know we can." He glanced down at the tape and card, then back at Lehmann, "Destroy those. I'll see to the rest. Oh, and Pietr..."

"What?"

"My gloves. . . ."

J Y A N had spent two hours at Big White's after Cho Hsiang had gone. A meal of real pork and vegetables, a bottle of good wine, and a long session with two of the house's filthiest girls— all on Cho Hsiang's bill—had put him in a good mood. It was all going his way at last. Things were happening for him. About time, he thought, turning the corner and entering the corridor that led to his apartment.

In the noise and crush of the corridor he almost missed it. Almost went straight in. But something—some sense he had developed over the years—stopped him. He drew his hand back from the palm-lock and bent down, examining it. There was no doubt about it. The lock had been tampered with.

He put his ear to the door. Nothing. At least, nothing unusual. He could hear a soft machine purr coming from within, but that was normal. Or almost normal. . . .

He turned and looked back down the busy corridor, ignoring the passersby, trying to think. Had he left any of his machines on? Had he? He scratched at his neck nervously, unable to remember, then looked back at the marks on the lock, frowning. They looked new, but they might have been there some while. It might just have been kids.

It might have. But he'd best take no chances. Not in the circumstances.

He placed his palm flat against the lock, then, as the lock hissed open, drew back against the wall, away from the opening.

As the door slid back slowly, he looked into the room for some sign of an intruder. Then, drawing his knife with one swift movement, he stepped into the room.

The knife was knocked from his hand. He saw it flip through the air. Then a hand was clamped roughly about his mouth.

Jyan struggled to turn and face his assailant, one arm going up instinctively to ward off a blow, but the man was strong and had a tight grip on him.

Then, suddenly, he was falling backward.

He looked up, gasping. Kuan Yin, goddess of mercy! It was Chen!

Chen glared down at him angrily. "Where have you been?"

Two or three faces appeared in the doorway behind Chen. Jyan waved them away, then got up and moved past Chen to close the door. Getting his breath again, he turned to face the kwai, a faint smile returning to his lips. "IVe been arranging things. Making deals."

He went to move past him again, but Chen caught his arm and sniffed at him. "You've been whoring, more like. I can smell the stink of them on you."

Jyan laughed. "A little pleasure after business, that's all." He moved into the room, then sat down heavily on the bed, facing Chen. "Anyway, what are you doing here?"

Chen sheathed his big hunting knife and crossed the room. There, in a comer recess, was an old-fashioned games machine. Turning his back on Jyan, he stared at the screen. "I thought I'd come and find out what was happening. You were gone a long time."

Jyan laughed, then pulled off his left slipper. "As I said, I was making deals. Working for both of us."

Chen toyed with the keys of the games machine a moment longer, then turned back. "And?"

Jyan smiled and kicked off the other slipper, then began to peel off his one-piece. "We've another meet. Tomorrow, at Big White's. We fix the price then." *

Oblivious of the other man, Jyan stripped naked, then went over to the comer shower and fed five ten-/en tokens into the meter beside it. Drawing back the curtain, he stepped inside and, as the lukewarm water began to run, started to soap himself down.

Chen watched Jyan's outline through the plastic a moment, then tuined back to the machine.

It was an ancient thing that had three standard games programed into it; t'.iao chi, hsiang chi, and wei chi. He had set it up for a low-level game of wei chi, and the nineteen-by-nineteen grid filled the screen. He was playing black and had made only twenty or so moves, but white was already in a strong position.

Chen looked about him once again. He had never been in Jyan's room before today—had, in truth, never been interested in Jyan's homelife—but now the situation was getting deep. It had seemed best to know how things stood.

Cheap tapestries hung on the walls. Standard works by Tung Yuan and Li Ch'eng; scenes of mountains and valleys, tall pine trees and gentle-flowing rivers. The sort of crap one saw everywhere in the Net. On the bedside table was a small shrine to Wen Ti, the evidence of burnt candles in the tray revealing a side of Jyan he would never have guessed. A small rug covered part of the bare ice floor at the end of the single bed, but otherwise the only furnishings were a pair of cheap fold-up chairs.

Some of the things there had surprised him. In a box under the bed he had found a recent generation SimFic HeadStim: a direct-input job that linked up to wires implanted in the brain. That alone must have cost Jyan at least five hundred yuan at current black market prices—maybe even the full thousand he had borrowed from Whiskers Lu—but unlike the two wraparounds he had, it was a useless item—a status symbol only— because Jyan, like most in the Net, hadn't had the operation.

A huge blue and gold er-silk eiderdown covered the bed. Underneath it two bright red cotton blankets were spread out over the normal ice-cloth sheets of the bed—as if for a wedding night. For some reason it had reminded Chen of that moment on the mountainside when Jyan had pulled the wine bottle and the glasses from his sack. There was something dangerously impractical about that side of Jyan. Something hideously self-indulgent. It was a flaw in him. The kind of thing that could kill a man.

Chen cleared the board and switched off the machine, his sense of disenchantment coming to a head. All this—it was so ostentatious. So false. Jyan ached to be better than he was. Richer. More powerful. More cultured. Yet his attempts at mimicry were painful to observe. He was a cockroach imitating a turtle. And this latest scheme . . . Chen shuddered. It was doomed to failure. He knew that in his bones. You could not make deals with these people; could not be partner to them, only their hireling.

He looked about him one last time, watching the thinly fleshed shape of Jyan bend and stretch behind the plastic curtaining. Then, his mind made up, he left quietly. It wasn't toys he wanted. He wanted something real. A new life. Better than this. More real than this. A child, maybe. A son.

He was tired of being wang pen—rootless, his origins forgotten. It was time he was connected. If not to the past, then to the future. He sighed, knowing he could do nothing about the past. But the future—that was unwritten. . . .

As he walked back to his own apartment the thought went through his mind like a chant, filling his head, obsessing him— a child. A son. A child. A son. The words coursing through him like the sound of his feet as they pounded the bare ice flooring of the corridors. A child. A son.

Very well. He must be ready, then. There was no other way.

YANG LAI knelt at Lehmann's feet, his head bowed low, his hands gripping the hem of Lehmann's paw tightly.

"You're a good man, Pietr Lehmann. A good, good man. IVe been so scared. So frightened that they would find me before you or Edmund came."

Lehmann looked about him. The room was filthy. It looked as if no one had tidied it in years. Had Yang Lai fallen this low, then? Had he no friends of higher rank to help him in his need? He drew the man to his feet and freed his hand, then reached across to lift his chin, making Yang Lai look at him.

"I'm glad you called, Yang Lai. Things are difficult. If Security had found you..."

Yang Lai averted his eyes. "I understand."

"How did you get out?"

The Han hesitated. "Does it matter?"

Lehmann noted the undertone of suspicion in Yang Lai's voice. The man had had time enough to work it out. Yet he wasn't certain. His trust in Wyatt had acted like a barrier against the truth. It had prevented him from piecing things together. Well, that was good. It meant things would be easier.

"I'm interested, that's all. But anyway . . ." He feigned indifference, changing tack at once; moving past Yang Lai as he spoke. "The Minister's assassination. It wasn't us, you see. Someone preempted us." He turned and looked back at the Han. "Do you understand me, Yang Lai? Do you see what I'm saying? Whoever it was, they almost killed you."

"No! No. . . ."Yang Lai shook his head, confused. "That's not how it was. They—they warned me. Told me to get out of there."

Yang Lai shuddered violently and looked away. He was red eyed and haggard from lack of sleep, and his clothes smelled. Even so, there was something in his manner that spoke of his former authority. He was a man accustomed to command.

For a moment Yang Lai seemed lost in thought. Then, like someone suddenly waking, he looked up at Lehmann again, a smile lighting his face. "Then Edmund had nothing to do with it?"

"Nothing." This time it was the truth.

For a moment Lehmann pondered the connection between Wyatt and the Han. Why did Yang Lai trust Edmund so explicitly? Was it only friendship? Or was it deeper than that? Were they lovers?

"Who warned you?" he asked, moving closer. "You have to tell me, Yang Lai. It's very important."

Yang Lai glanced up at him, meeting his eyes briefly. Then he looked down sharply, his shame like something physical. "A messenger came," he said softly. "My Third Secretary, Pi Ch'ien."

Pi Ch'ien. Lehmann caught his breath. Pi Ch'ien hadn't been on the list of names DeVore had given him. Which meant he was probably still alive. Lehmann turned away, pressing his left hand to his brow, trying to think. Then he turned back. "This Pi Ch'ien . . . where is he?"

Yang Lai shrugged. "I don't know. I assume he was killed." He looked away, his voice going very quiet. "I think I was the last to get out before the solarium went up."

Lehmann was still a moment; then, abruptly, he turned and made to go.

Yang Lai rushed after him and caught him at the door, holding tightly to his arm, his face pressed close to Lehmann's.

"What's happening? Please, Pietr, tell me what's happening!"

Lehmann turned back, taking Yang Lai's hands in his own. "It's all okay, Yang Lai. It will all be all right. Trust me. Trust Edmund. But there are things we have to do. For all our sakes."

Yang Lai studied his face intently for a moment. Then he looked down, giving no sign of what he'd seen. "All right. Do what you must."

Outside, Lehmann paused and glanced across at the two men standing against the far side of the corridor. Behind him he heard the door slide shut and the door lock click into place.

It would not help him. Hitmen had the combination to the lock.

It's necessary, Lehmann told himself. All of this. All the killing and the lying and the double-dealing. All necessary.

He met the eyes of the taller man and nodded, then turned away, making his way quickly to the waiting transit elevator.

Necessary. For all our sakes.

CHOH SIANG put the envelope on the table in front of Jyan, then leaned back, watching him carefully.

"What's this?" Jyan looked up guardedly.

"Open it and see. I'm only the messenger."

Cho Hsiang saw how suspicious Jyan was of the envelope. He had not seen anything like it before. It was all tape or mouth-work down here. No subtleties.

"You tear it open," he explained. "The message will be written on the sheet inside."

Jyan hesitated, then picked up the envelope and examined it. On one side of the whiteness was written his name. The other seemed to have been slit open diagonally, then sealed with something hot that had left the imprint of a double helix. Seeing that, he laughed.

"I guessed right, then?"

Cho Hsiang said nothing, merely inclined his head toward the envelope.

Jyan tugged gently at the seal, trying to prise it open. Then, more brutally, he tore at the silken paper. The seal gave suddenly and the message spilled out onto the table, coming to rest beside Cho Hsiang's hand. It was a single folded sheet. Gingerly, using only his fingertips, Cho Hsiang pushed it across to him.

On the paper was a figure. Jyan studied it a moment, then whistled softly.

"Will it do?"

There was the faintest trace of sarcasm in Cho Hsiang's voice.

Jyan had folded the paper. He unfolded it and stared at the figure again. Then he looked up over the paper at Cho Hsiang.

"Do you know what it says?"

Cho Hsiang shook his head slowly. "As I said, I'm only the messenger. But I know this. There'll be no haggling. Understand? You either take what's offered or you get nothing."

"Nothing. . . ." Jyan laughed tensely. "That would be rather stupid of them, don't you think?"

Cho Hsiang leaned forward. "You heard me. Take it or leave it."

"And if I leave it? If I take what I know elsewhere?"

Cho Hsiang allowed himself a cold smile. "You're an imaginative man, Kao Jyan. Work it out for yourself."

Jyan looked down, unfolding the paper yet again. Cho Hsiang watched him, amused. They knew how to deal with such types up Above. Theirs was the way of ultimatum. Take it or leave it—it was all the same to them. Either way they would come out on top. He reached out and took his glass, draining it, then reached across and pressed the button on the wall that would summon Big White.

"I have to go now, Kao Jyan. What shall I say to my friends?"

Jyan looked up. From his face Cho Hsiang could see he was still undecided. He pressed him. "Well?"

There were sounds, outside. The door lock popped softly and the door began to slide back.'Jyan looked past Cho Hsiang, then back at him.

"Okay. We'll take it. And tell your man ..."

He stopped, seeing Big White there.

"Yes?" Cho Hsiang stood up, letting Big White help him into his big mock-beaver coat.

"Tell him he'll have no more trouble. Okay?"

Cho Hsiang smiled tightly. "Good." He turned, as if to leave, then turned back. "I'll be seeing you then, Kao Jyan."

Jyan nodded, all the cockiness gone from him.

"Oh, and Jyan ... see to the bill for me, eh?"

"What have we got?"

The technician tapped at the keys, running the recording back for analysis. Then 'he leaned back, letting DeVore read from the screen for himself.

Fifty-one words total. Fourteen repetitions. Total vocabulary thirty-seven words.

"It's not enough."

The technician shook his head. "Maybe not for direct speech transposition. But we could generate new words from the sounds we have. There's a considerable range of tones here. The computer can create a gestalt—a whole speech analogue—from very little. We've more than enough here to do that. You write the script, the machine will get him to say it. And not even his mother would know it wasn't him saying it."

DeVore laughed. "Good. Then we'll move quickly on this." He took a hard file from his jacket pocket and handed it to the technician. "Here's what I want our friend Jyan to say."

The technician hesitated fractionally, then nodded. "Okay. I'll get to work on it right away. Will tomorrow be too late? Midday?"

DeVore smiled and slapped the technician's back. "Tomorrow's fine. I'll collect it myself."

He went out, heading back down toward the Net. It was still early. In under four hours he was due to meet the General to make his report. There was time enough, meanwhile, to set things up.

In the Security elevator, descending, he made contact with the two men he had left outside Big White's.

"How's our man?"

The answer came back into his earpiece. "He's still inside, sir."

"Good. If he comes out, follow at a distance. But don't make a move. Not yet. I want them both, remember."

He had barely closed contact when an urgent message came through on his wrist console. It was Lehmann again, his face taut with worry.

"What is it, Pietr?"

Lehmann hesitated, conscious that he was speaking on an open channel, then took the risk. "The missing body. I know who it is. It's Yang Lai's man, Pi Ch'ien."

"I see. So where is he?"

Lehmann laughed anxiously. "That's just it. I've been checking up. There's no trace of him. He hasn't been seen since the assassination."

"So he's in hiding?"

"It seems so."

"Right. Leave it to me." He paused. "All's well apart from that?"

Lehmann hesitated, then gave the coded answer. "It's a cloudless sky, Howard. I ... well, I'll see you sometime, yes?"

DeVore closed contact. So Yang Lai was dead. Good. That was one thing less to worry about.

The elevator slowed, then came to a halt. For a moment DeVore stood there, his hand almost touching the Door Open pad, his skin, beneath the simple one-piece he was wearing, tingling from the decontamination procedure. Then, clear in mind what he had to do, he hit the pad and went outside, into the Net.

CHAPTER THREE

A Game of Static Patterns

FIFTH BELL WAS SOUNDING when Major DeVore reported to General Tolonen in his office at the top of the vast fortresslike barracks that housed Security Central. The General stood as he came into the room and came around his desk to greet DeVore, a broad smile on his chiseled face.

"Good day, Howard. How are things?"

DeVore bowed at waist and neck, then straightened up, meeting the old man's eyes. "Not good, sir. Our investigation of the Minister's death is proving more difficult than I thought."

The General looked at him a moment longer, then nodded. Briefly he rested a hand on the Major's arm, as if to reassure him, then turned and went back behind his desk. Ensconced in his chair again he leaned forward, motioning to DeVore to take a seat. "Still nothing, eh?"

DeVore gave the smallest hint of a bow then sat. "Not quite, sir."

Tolonen tilted his chin back, interested. "I see. What have you got?"

"Nothing certain. Only rumor. But it may prove a lead."

"Anything I should know about?"

DeVore took the tiny tape from his tunic pocket, wiped it on the cloth, then handed it across the desk. Tolonen sat back and pushed the wafer-thin cassette into the input socket behind his left ear. For a minute or two he sat there, silent, his eyes making small, erratic movements in their sockets. Then, as if coming to again, he looked directly at his Major.

"Interesting, Howard. Very interesting." Tolonen squeezed the narrow slit of skin behind his ear and removed the tape. "But how reliable is this?"

DeVore tilted his head slightly, considering. "Normally I'd say it was highly reliable. But the circumstances of this case— particularly its political importance—make it more complex than usual. It would be unwise to take things at face value. For now I'm having the sources checked out. Playing ear. However"— he hesitated, then spoke again, studying the General more closely than before—"there is something else, sir. Something perhaps more important in the long run."

"Go on, Howard."

"Well, sir. I'm almost certain this involves Security. Maybe at StarTlevel."

Tolonen looked at him directly for some moments, then nodded soberly, his expression unchanged. "I agree—though with great reluctance, I must say. The very thought of it makes me shudder."

DeVore bowed his head sympathetically, "Then—"

Tolonen stopped him with a look. "Let me outline the situation as I see it, Howard. Then we'll see how this new information fits with what we have."

DeVore sat straighter in his chair; his eyes watching the older man intently as he outlined the situation.

"First—what kind of weapon was used, and where and by whom was it manufactured?" Tolonen pulled broad, long fingers through neatly cut gray hair, his deeply blue eyes fixing DeVore. "We're working on the assumption that it was some kind of ice derivative. An ice eater. Research into ice derivatives has been banned by the Edict, but we're not dealing with legitimate activity here. It's therefore possible that someone has come up with such a thing.

"Second—who knew Lwo Kang would be there at that time? Most of those we might have suspected—Lwo's own junior ministers—died with him. Only Yang Lai is unaccounted for."

DeVore nodded. "No trace yet, sir. But we're still looking."

"Good. Now, third—who took the Security squad off duty?

Are we safe in assuming it was the duty captain, or was someone higher up the chain of command behind the decision?" Tolonen paused and shook his head. "It seems almost inexplicable to me that the officer concerned acted independently. His record was without blemish and his suicide would seem to confirm it. But he was a frightened man, Howard. I believe he was acting under threat."

"I agree, sir. I knew the man as a cadet and I'd vouch that he would not have acted as he did without good reason. Our assumption is that his immediate family was threatened. We haven't yet located them—but whether that's because he placed them in hiding or whether they were taken we don't know. Even so, we mustn't rule out another motive. Gambling debts, perhaps. Or some kind of addiction. Women, maybe. Even the best men have their weaknesses. In any case, I have a squad investigating it."

"Good. Then, fourth—who were the actual assassins? As you know, our first idea was that it was done from the air—from a craft overflying the dome. But now we've ruled that out."

"Sir?" DeVore tensed slightly, suddenly more alert.

"A search of the area surrounding the dome has brought a number of new items to light, chief among which is a corpse."

"A corpse?"

"Yes. We found the body crammed into a narrow feed tunnel, not far from a ventilation shaft that comes out close by the dome. A Hung Mao. Male. Aged thirty-five. He'd been stabbed twice with a large-bladed knife. Very expertly, so I'm told."

"Then we've got one of the assassins?"

Tolonen shrugged. "Well, I wouldn't rule that out, but it's more likely that the man simply stumbled onto things. His ID shows him to have been a maintenance engineer, cleared for First Level Security."

DeVore considered a moment. "It sounds the ideal profession for gaining access to the dome."

"My own first thought, Howard, but it doesn't check out with anything else. We can account for his movements up to the time he got into that ventilation tunnel. We've checked. He's on camera, climbing into the access hatch only twelve minutes before the dome went up. He made one check—timed and logged—halfway up the tunnel. That accounts for the first five minutes. That'd leave him only seven minutes to climb the rest of the way, meet his partner, set the charges, and get back down."

"Time enough. And anyway, what if his partner set the charges?"

"That's possible. But then, why would he be needed? And why killed? It doesn't fit. And anyway, we have something else."

DeVore blinked. "YouVe been busy, sir."

Tblonen laughed. "Yes, well, I did try to get you, Howard. Anyway, it's possible we have our men. Two low-level sorts. They were involved in an incident with Security guards in one of the nearby stacks at Level Eleven. A CompCam unit noticed that one of the men had no ID match and had Security investigate. There was an exchange of shots and the two men got away."

DeVore was quiet a moment. "But you have them now?"

"No. Not yet. but listen to this, Howard. You'll never believe it. Do you know how they got out?"

DeVore shook his head.

"Well, our men thought they had them cornered in a distribution elevator. They'd called up a burner, ready to melt the door locks, but the two suspects did something to the elevator. They overrode its circuits, then rammed the whole thing through the floor and into the Net!"

DeVore whistled. "What happened?"

"The whole deck had to be sealed and cleaned out. A messy business. Thousands hurt. More than a hundred and fifty dead. WeVe had to put out a story about systems failure. But think about it, Howard. Our two friends must have had inside information. There aren't that many people who know those elevators go down another ten levels. Just as important, however, is the fact that they had a device that overrode the circuitry." He paused. "It makes sense of other things too. My guess is that they were dropped in. Picked up at one of the under-Net gates— perhaps near one of the agricultural processing stations—and landed on top of the City. They did the job, made their escape down the ventilation shaft—killing our maintenance man on the way—then emerged at Eleven."

DeVore nodded slowly. "It. . . makes a kind of sense."

"Good. I'm glad you think so. In which case there are a few other questions that need answers. Who were their contacts? Who gave them the information? Who trained them? Who physically landed them on the roof? This kind of operation would have needed a lot of planning. A substantial number of people would have been involved."

Again DeVore nodded, but this time there was an air of distraction about him.

The General leaned forward excitedly. "Just think, Howard. If we could get to just one of those involved—just one!—we could blast the whole thing open!" He laughed, then slammed his hands down firmly on the desk top. "And in order that we can do just that, I've been to see the T'ang."

"Sir?" DeVore seemed surprised by this new development.

"Yes, Howard. The T'ang has given me authority. The authority to cut through bureaucratic tape, to make deals, grant pardons, whatever's necessary, providing we get information on the people who were behind this." He smiled broadly. "So you see, Howard. What you brought me was of great interest. If Wyatt was involved, either as principal or as agent. . . well, I want him. Understand? I want to know what his motive was, who his connections were."

"So you think it might be him?"

The General was silent for a time, then he shrugged. "I don't know. I thought. . . well, you know what I thought. I listened to the tape of your conversation with Lehmann. He's an unpleasant specimen, but I agree with you. He's too bluff, too careless in what he says, to have been behind this. As for Wyatt, I've met him more than once, and I liked him." Again he shrugged. "Still, do what you must. The T'ang wants answers, and he wants them fast."

WHEN DEVORE had gone, Tolonen summoned the ensign, Haavikko.

Axel Haavikko was a tall, broad-shouldered young man of nineteen years, his blond hair cut severely short. On his jacket he wore the insignia of the elite military school from which he had graduated only eight months previously, on his chest the embroidered sea-horse patch of a ninth-grade military officer. He marched briskly across the room and came to attention before the desk.

"Sir?"

The General smiled. "At ease, boy. Have you got the tape?"

"Yes, sir. But I thought—"

Tblonen raised an eyebrow. "I know. But I decided against it. Major DeVore doesn't need to know everything. He's tired. I could see it myself. He's taking on too much, trying to keep abreast of everything."

He leaned back in his chair, studying the young man; observing that he, too, was showing signs of strain. "We could all do with some rest, eh, Haavikko? A break from things. But the evil of this world goes on, whether we're there to deal with it or not." He smiled kindly. "Okay, let's see what we have."

The cadet bowed, then turned and went over to the viewer, placing the flimsy transparent card he was carrying onto the viewing surface. Immediately the wall screen above his head lit up, showing two men pushing their way through a broad but crowded corridor. The tape sheet had been put together from segments of hundreds of individual tape sheets, then edited to make it seem as though a single camera had followed the suspects the whole length of the Main.

"These are the two men, sir. The one on the left was addressed as Jyan. The other is unnamed. There's no entry on either in Security Central records."

The General sniffed. "Hold that a moment."

The image froze. A sign behind the first of the men read LEVEL ELEVEN, SOUTH 3 STACK, CANTON OF MUNICH, the English in blocked black figures above the blood red Mandarin pictograms. Crowds packed the Main. The second man—better built than the first; the telltale bulge of a knife at his waist—had turned to left profile, revealing a short, livid scar on his neck just below the ear.

"Interesting types, eh, Axel? From the Net. There's no doubt about it. If Security Central has nothing, then I'm certain these are our men. Can we tell where they appeared from?"

Axel tapped the controls. At once the picture changed— showed a smaller corridor; dimly lit, almost empty.

"Where's this?"

"Up five levels, sir. At Sixteen. It's a maintenance corridor. Not used by the Public. Watch."

As they watched, a hatch dropped down from the ceiling and two men lowered themselves into the corridor, one after the other. The two Han from the other shots.

"Where does that lead?"

"There's a long vertical shaft, about twenty ch'i back from that hatch. It comes out at Forty-one. There we lose them."

"Any reason why?"

"Camera malfunction. Vandalism. It seems genuine. TheyVe been having trouble with that section for weeks, apparently."

"Okay. So let's get back to Eleven. See what kind of men we're dealing with."

For the next ten minutes they watched in silence as the situation unfolded. They saw the fight. Saw Jyan draw and use his knife, then drive the loader into the elevator. Then, less than a minute later, the screen went blank.

"That's all that survived, sir. When the quarantine seals came down most of the cameras blew. We've pieced this together from Central Records' copies."

Tolonen nodded, satisfied. "YouVedoneagoodjob, Haavikko. It shouldn't be difficult to trace these two. We have arrangements with certain of the Triad bosses beneath the Net. They'll find them for us. It's only a question of time."

"Then we do nothing, sir?"

"Nothing until we hear from our contacts. But I want us to be ready, so IVe arranged something. It'll mean that we'll have a squad down there, under the Net in Munich Canton, when news comes. It'll allow us to get to them at once. I've put Fest in charge. He has strict orders to take the men alive if possible. You and Hans Ebert will make up the squad."

Haavikko hesitated, then asked, "What are we to do down there?"

Tolonen laughed. "Until you're called on, nothing. You can treat it as a paid holiday. Ebert knows the place quite well, apparently. I'm sure he'll find something for you to do. But when the call comes, be there, and fast. All right?"

Haavikko bowed his head. "Anything else, sir?"

"Yes. One last thing. I want you to make a list."

"Sir?"

"I want you to compile a list of all those who might have planned this; anyone who might conceivably have been involved. Not just those with a clear motive, but anyone who might have had the right contacts."

"Anyone?"

The General nodded sternly. "Leave no one out, however absurd it might seem."

The cadet bowed deeply, then clicked his heels together. "Sir."

Alone again, Tolonen stood, then went to the window. Far below, the wide moat of the Security Fortress seemed filled with an inky blackness. In the early-morning light the two watch-towers at the far end of the bridge threw long, thin shadows across the apron of the spaceport beyond.

He would not act. Not yet. For a while he would trust to instinct and let Wyatt be. See if Wyatt's name appeared on Haavikko's list. Wait for DeVore to gather something more substantial than the tattle of Above. Because deep down he didn't believe that Wyatt was involved.

He turned back to his desk, putting his fingers lightly to the intercom pad.

His secretary answered at once. "General?"

"Play me that tape again. Major DeVore and Under Secretary Lehmann. The part where Lehmann talks about suffocating and bad blood. A few lines, that's all."

"Yes, General."

He turned back to the window, looking down. As he watched, a tiny figure emerged from the shadow and marched quickly but unhurriedly across the bridge. It was DeVore.

Major DeVore was a clever officer. A good man to have on your team. There was no fooling him; he saw things clearly. Saw through the appearance of things. And if he believed that Lehmann wasn't involved ...

"The tape's ready, General."

"Good," he said, not looking round; continuing to watch the figure far below. "Let me hear it."

Lehmann's voice filled the room, urgent and passionate.

"Were suffocating, Howard! Can't they see that? Biting at the leash! Even so, violence . . . Well, that's a different matter. It hurts everyone and solves nothing. It only causes bad blood, and how can that help our cause? This—this act... all it does is set us back a few more years. It makes things more difficult, more—"

The voice cut out. After a moment the General sniffed, then nodded to himself. He had heard the words a dozen, maybe two dozen times now, and each time they had had the power to convince him of Lehmann's innocence. Lehmann's anger, his callousness, while they spoke against him as a man, were eloquent in his defense in this specific matter. It was not how a guilty man behaved. In any case, he was right. How would this serve him? Li Shai Tung would merely appoint another minister. Another like Lwo Kang.

Down below, DeVore had reached the far end of the bridge. Two tiny figures broke from the shadow of the left-hand tower to challenge him, then fell back, seeing who it was. They melted back into the blackness and DeVore marched on alone, out onto the apron of the spaceport.

The General turned away. Perhaps DeVore was right. Perhaps Wyatt was their man. Even so, a nagging sense of wrongness persisted, unfocused, unresolved.

"I'm tired," he said softly to himself, sitting himself behind his desk again. "Yes, tiredness, that's all it is."

"Wait outside, at the junction. You know what he looks like?"

The Han nodded. "Like my brother."

"Good. Then get going."

The Han did as he was told, closing the door behind him, leaving DeVore alone in the room. DeVore looked around, for the first time allowing himself to relax. Not long now. Not long and it would all be done. This was the last of it. He looked at the sealed bag on the floor by the bed and smiled, then sat on the end of the bed next to the corpse's feet.

The kwai, Chen, had been hard to kill. Stubborn. He had fought so hard for life that they had had to club him to death, as if strangling the man hadn't been enough. His head was a bloodied pulp, his features almost unrecognizable. The Han had enjoyed that. DeVore had had to drag him off.

Like animals, he thought, disgusted, promising himself he'd make the Han's death a particularly painful one.

For a while he sat there, head down, hands on knees, thinking things through. Then he looked up, looked about himself again. It was such a mean, shabby little place, and like all of this beneath the Net, it bred a type that matched its circumstances. This Kao Jyan, for instance; he had big dreams, but he was a little man. He didn't have the skill or imagination to carry off his scheme. All he had was a brash impudence; an inflated sense of self-importance. But then, what else could be expected? Living here, a man had no perspective. No way of judging what the truth of things really was.

He got up and crossed the room. Inset into the wall was an old-fashioned games machine. A ResTem Mark IV. He switched it on and set it up for wei chi; an eighth-level game, the machine to start with black.

For a time he immersed himself in the game, enjoying the challenge. Then, when it was clear he had the advantage, he turned away.

The General was sharper than he'd thought he'd be. Much sharper. That business with the dead maintenance engineer. His discovery of Kao Jyan and the kwai. For a moment DeVore had thought their scheme undone. But the game was far from played out. He'd let the General find his missing pieces. One by one he'd give them to him. But not until he'd done with them.

He glanced at the machine again. It was a complex game, and he prided himself on a certain mastery of it. Strange, though, how much it spoke of the difference between East and West. At least, of the old West, hidden beneath the levels of the Han City, the layers of Han culture and Han history. The games of the West had been played on similar boards to those of the East, but the West played between the lines, not on the intersecting points. And the games of the West had been flexible, each individual piece given breath, allowed to move, as though each had an independent life. That was not so in wei chi. In wei chi once a piece was placed it remained, unless it was surrounded and its "breath" taken from it. It was a game of static patterns; patterns built patiently over hours or days—sometimes even months. A game where the point was not to eliminate but to enclose.

East and West—they were the inverse of each other. Forever alien. Yet one must ultimately triumph. For now it was the Han. But now was not forever.

He turned from the screen, smiling. "White wins, as ever."

It had always interested him; ever since he had learned how much the Han had banned or hidden. A whole separate culture. A long and complex history. Buried, as if it had never been. The story of the old West. Dead. Shrouded in white, the Han color of death.

DeVore stretched and yawned. It was two days since he had last slept. He crossed the room and looked at his reflection in the mirror beside the shower unit. Not bad, he thought, but the drugs he had taken to keep himself alert had only a limited effect. Pure tiredness would catch up with him eventually. Still, they'd keep him on his feet long enough to see this through.

He looked down. His wrist console was flashing.

DeVore smiled at his reflection. "At last," he said. Then, straightening his tunic, hfe turned to face the door.

JYAN came laughing into his room. "Chen. . ." he began, then stopped, his eyes widening, the color draining from his cheeks. "What the ... ?"

He turned and made to run, but the second man, following him in, blocked the doorway, knife in hand.

He turned back slowly, facing the stranger.

"Close the door," DeVore said, looking past Jyan at the other. Then he turned to face Jyan again. "Come in, Kao Jyan. Make yourself at home."

Jyan swallowed and backed away to the left, his eyes going to the figure sprawled facedown on the bed, the cover over its head. It was Chen. He could tell it from a dozen different signs—by the shape of the body, the clothes, by the black, studded straps about his wrists.

For a moment he said nothing, mesmerized by the sight of those two strong hands resting there, lifeless and pale, palm upward on the dark red sheet. Then he looked up again. The stranger was watching him; that same cruel half-smile on his lips.

"What do you want?" Jyan asked, his voice barely audible.

DeVore laughed, then turned to face the games machine, tapping in his next move. Jyan looked at the screen. The machine was set up for wei chi, the nineteen-by-nineteen grid densely cluttered with the small black and white stones. From the state of the game it looked as though the stranger had been waiting for some time.

DeVore turned back, giving Jyan a strangely intense look. Then he dropped his eyes and moved closer. "It's a fascinating game, don't you think, Kao Jyan? Black starts, and so the odds are in his favor—seven out of ten, they say—yet I, like you, prefer to play against the odds."

He stepped closer. Jyan backed against the wall, looking away.

"You have the envelope, Kao Jyan?"

Jyan turned his head, meeting the other's eyes. Only a hand's width separated them now. He could feel the other's breath upon his cheek. "The . . . envelope?"

"The offer we made you."

"Ah . . ." Jyan fumbled in the inside pocket of his one-piece, then drew out the crumpled envelope and handed it to him. The stranger didn't look at it, merely pocketed it, then handed back another.

"Go on. Open it. It's our new offer."

Jyan could see the body on the bed, the man waiting at the door, knife in hand, and wondered what it meant for him. Was he dead? He looked down at the sealed letter in his hand. It was identical to the one Cho Hsiang had given him.

His hands shaking, he opened the envelope and took out the folded sheet. This time there was nothing on it. The pure white sheet was empty.

DeVore smiled. "You understand, Kao Jyan?"

Jyan looked from one man to the other, trying to see a way out of this. "The tape . . ." he began, his voice trembling now. "What about the tape?"

The stranger turned away, ignoring his comment, as if it had no significance. "I'm sorry about your friend. It was unfortunate, but he was no part of this. The deal was with you, Kao Jyan."

Jyan found he was staring at the body again. The stranger saw where he was looking and smiled. "Go on. Look at him, if you want. He'll not mind you looking now." He went across to the bed and pulled the cover back. "Here. . . ."

The stranger's voice held a tone of command that made Jyan start forward, then hesitate, a wave of nausea passing through him.

DeVore looked up from the body. "He was a hard man to kill, your friend. It took both of us to deal with him. Chu Heng here had to hold him down while I dressed him."

Jyan shuddered. A cord had been looped about Chen's bull neck four or five times, then tightened until it had bitten into the flesh, drawing blood. But it was hard to judge whether that had been the cause of death or the heavy blows he'd suffered to the back of the head; blows that had broken his skull like a fragile piece of porcelain.

He swallowed dryly then looked up, meeting the stranger's eyes. "Am I dead?"

DeVore laughed; not cruelly, but as if the naivete of the remark had genuinely amused him. "What do you think?"

"The tape . . ." he said again.

"You don't understand, do you, Kao Jyan?"

The Han in the doorway laughed, but shut up abruptly when DeVore looked at him.

Jyan's voice was almost a breath now. "Understand what?"

"The game. Its rules. Its different levels. You see, you were out of your depth. You had ambitions above your level. That's a dangerous thing for a little man like you. You were greedy."

Jyan shivered. It was what Chen had said.

"You've . . . how should I say it... inconvenienced us."

"Forget the whole thing. Please. I—"

DeVore shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said quietly, looking at Jyan with what seemed almost regret. "It's not possible."

"I'll say nothing. I swear I'll say nothing."

"You give your word, eh?" DeVore turned and picked up the bag on the floor by the bed. "Here. This is what your word means."

DeVore threw the bag at him. Jyan caught it and looked inside, then threw the bag down, horrified. It was Cho Hsiang's head.

"You understand, then? Its necessity. We have to sacrifice some pieces. For the sake of the game."

"The game . . . ?"

But there were no more explanations. The Han's knife flashed and dug deep into his back. Kao Jyan was dead before he hit the floor.

IN MU chua's House of the Ninth Ecstasy it was the hour ofleisure and the girls were sprawled out on the couches in the Room of the Green Lamps, talking and laughing among themselves. Mu Chua's House was a good house, a clean house, even though it was below the Net, and catered only to those who came here from Above on business. Feng Chung, biggest of the local Triad bosses and Mu Chua's onetime lover, gave them his protection. His men guarded Mu Chua's doors and gave assistance when a customer grew troublesome. It was a good arrangement and Mu Chua had grown fat on it.

Mu—it meant mother in the old tongue, though she was no one's mother and had been sterilized at twelve—was in her fifties now; a strong, small woman with a fiery temper who had a genuine love for her trade and for the girls in her charge. Here men forget their cares was her motto and she had it written over the door in English and Mandarin, the pictograms sewn into every cushion, every curtain, every bedspread in the place. Even so, there were strict rules in her house. None of her girls could be hurt in any way. "If they want that," she had said to Feng Chung once, her eyes blazing with anger, "they can go down to the Clay. This is a good house. A loving house. How can my girls be loving if they are scared? How can they take the cares of men away unless they have no cares themselves?"

Mu Chua was still a most attractive woman and many who had come to sample younger flesh had found themselves ending the night in mother's arms. Thereafter there would be no other for them. They would return to her alone, remembering not only the warmth and enthusiasm of her embraces, but also those little tricks—special things she kept a secret, even from her girls— that only she could do.

Just now she stood in the arched doorway, looking in at her girls, pleased by what she saw. She had chosen well. There were real beauties here—like Crimson Lotus and Jade Melody—and girls of character, like Spring Willow and the tiny, delicate-looking Sweet Honey, known to all as "little Mimi," after the Mandarin for her adopted name. But there was more than that to her girls; she had trained them to be artisans, skilled at their craft of lovemaking. If such a thing were possible here in the Net, they had breeding. They were not common men hu—"the one standing in the door"—but shen nu—"god girls." To Mu Chua it was an important distinction. Her girls might well be prostitutes, but they were not mere smoke-flowers. Her house was a land of warmth and softness, a model for all other houses, and she felt a great pride in having made it so.

Crimson Lotus and Sweet Honey had settled themselves at the far end of the room and were talking with another of the girls, Golden Heart. Mu Chua went across to them and settled herself on the floor between them, listening to their talk.

"I had a dream, Mother Chua," said Golden Heart, turning to her. She was Mu Chua's youngest girl, a sweet-faced thing of thirteen. "I was telling Crimson and little Mimi. In my dream it was New Year and I was eating cakes. Nian-kao—year cakes. Above me the clouds formed huge mountains in the sky, lit with the most extraordinary colors. I looked up, expecting something, and then, suddenly, a tiger appeared from out of the West and came and mated with me."