The White Mountain

"My Lord . . ." The note of pure panic in the Director's voice was almost comical, yet Li Yuan had never felt less like laughing.

"Twelve months. Understand me? For my part, I'll make sure you have another dozen men—the best scientists I can recruit from the Companies. As for funding, you're quite correct, Director. It is inadequate. Which is why I'm tripling it from this moment."

For the first time Spatz's head came up and his eyes searched him out. "My Lord, you are too generous."

Li Yuan laughed sourly. "Generosity has nothing to do with it, Director Spatz. I want a job done and I want it done properly. We underfunded. We didn't see the scale of the thing. Well, now we'll put that right. But I want results this time."

"And the boy?"

Li Yuan stood, handing the main copies of the files to Chang Shih-sen, then looked back at Spatz.

"The matter of the boy will be dealt with. You need worry yourself no further in that regard, Director."

BARYCZ LOCKED the door of the Communications Room, then went to his desk and activated the screen. He tapped in the code and waited, knowing the signal was being scrambled through as many as a dozen subroutes before it got to its destination. The screen flickered wildly, then cleared, DeVore's face staring out at him.

"Is it done?"

Barycz swallowed nervously, then nodded. "I've dispatched copies of the files to your man. He should have them within the hour."

"Good. And the boy? He's out of it, I hope?"

Barycz bowed his head. "I've done everything as you ordered it, Shih Loehr. However, there is one small complication. The Director has ordered Hammond off the Project. With immediate effect."

DeVore looked away a moment, then nodded. "Fine. I'll see to that." He looked back at Barycz, smiling. "You've done well, Barycz. There'll be a bonus for you."

Barycz bowed his head again. "You are too kind." When he looked up again the screen was dark.

He smiled, pleased with himself, then sat back, wondering how generous Loehr planned to be. Maybe he'd have enough to move up a deck—to buy a place in the Hundreds.

Barycz sniffed thoughtfully, then laughed, recalling how Hammond had spat in the Director's face.

"Served the bastard right," he said quietly. Yes. He was not a spiteful man, but he had enjoyed the sight of Spatz getting his deserts. Enjoyed it greatly.

LEHMANN STOOD in the doorway, looking in. "Ebert's here."

DeVore looked up from the wei chi board and smiled. "Okay. I'll be up in a while. Take him through into the private suite and get one of the stewards to look after him. Tell him I won't be long."

DeVore watched his lieutenant go, then stood. He had been practicing new openings. Experimenting. Seeing if he could break down old habits. That was the only trouble with u>ei chi—it was not a game to be played against oneself. One needed a steady supply of opponents, men as good as oneself—better, if one really wished to improve one's game. But he had no one.

He stretched and looked about him, feeling good, noticing his furs where he had left them in the corner of the room. He had been out early, before sunrise; he had gone out alone, hunting snow foxes. The pelts of five were hanging in the kitchens, drying out, the scant meat of the foxes gone into a stew—a special meal to celebrate. Yes, things were going well. Only a few weeks ago the situation had seemed bleak, but now the board was filling nicely with his plays. In the north, the Ping Tiao were effectively destroyed and Mach's Yu was primed to step into the resultant power vacuum. In the east his men were in position, awaiting only his order to attack the Plantations, while to the west he was building up a new shape—seeking new allies among the elite of City North America. Added to these were two much subtler plays—the poisoned statue and his plans for the Wiring Project. All were coming to fruition. Soon the shapes on the board would change and a new phase of the game would begin—the middle game—in which his pieces would be in the ascendant. And what was Ebert's role in all this? He had ambitions, that was clear now. Ambitions above being a puppet ruler. Well, let Ebert have them. When the time came, he would cut him down to size. Until then he would pretend to trust him more.

DeVore laughed. In the meantime, maybe he would offer him the girl, the lookalike. She had been meant for Tolonen—as a "gift" to replace his murdered daughter—but Jelka's survival had meant a change of plans. He studied the board thoughtfully, then nodded. Yes, he would give Ebert the lookalike as an early wedding gift. To do with as he wished.

He smiled, then leaned across and placed a white stone on the board, breachin§ the space between two of the black masses, threatening to cut.

HANS EBERT stood by the open hatchway of the transporter, his left hand strao tiehtiv as the craft rose steeply from the mountainside.

DeVore's gift was crouched behind him against the far wall of the craft, as far from the open hatchway as she could get. He could sense her there behind him and felt the hairs rise along his spine and at the back of his neck.

The bastard. The devious fucking bastard.

He smiled tightly and waved a hand at the slowly diminishing figure on the hillside far below. Then, as the craft began to bank away, he turned, looking at the girl, smiling at her reassuringly, keeping his true feelings from showing.

Games. It was all one big game to DeVore. He understood that now. And this— this gift of the girl—that was part of the play too. To unsettle him, perhaps. Or mock him. Well, he'd not let him.

He moved past her brusquely and went through into the cockpit. Auden turned, looking at him.

"What is it, Hans?"

He took a breath then shook his head. "Nothing. But you'd best have this." He took the sealed letter DeVore had given him and handed it across. "It's to Lever. DeVore wants you to hand it to him when you meet the Americans at the spaceport. It's an invitation."

Auden tucked it away. "What else?"

Ebert smiled. Auden was a good man. He understood things without having to be told. "It's just that I don't trust him. Especially when he 'puts all his stones on the table.' He's up to something."

Auden laughed. "Like what?"

Ebert stared out through the frosted glass, noting the bleakness of their surroundings. "I don't know. It's just a feeling. And then there's his gift . . ."

Auden narrowed his eyes. "So what are you going to do with her?"

Ebert turned back, meeting his eyes briefly, then jerked away, pulling the cockpit door closed behind him.

the girl looked up as Ebert came back into the hold, her eyes wide, filled with fear. He stopped, staring at her, appalled by the likeness, then went across and stood by the open hatchway, looking outward, his neat-cut hair barely moving in the icy wind.

"I'm sorry," he said, against the roar of the wind. "I didn't mean to frighten you." He glanced around, smiling. "Here. . . come across. I want to show you something."

She didn't move; only pressed tighter against the far wall of the cabin.

"Come. . ." he said, as softly as he could against the noise. "You've nothing to be afraid of. I just want to show you, that's all."

He watched her: saw how fear battled in her with a need to obey. Yes, he thought, DeVore would have instilled that in you, wouldn't he? She kept looking down, biting her lip, then glancing up at him again, of two minds.

Yes, and you're like her, he thought. Physically, anyway. But you aren't her. You're just a common peasant girl he's had changed in his labs. And the gods alone know what he's done to you. But the real Jelka wouldn't be cowering there. She would have come across of her own free will. To defy me. Just to prove to me that I didn't frighten her. He smiled and looked down, remembering that moment in the machine when she had glared back at him. It had been then, perhaps, that he had first realized his true feelings for her. Then that he had first articulated it inside his head. I'm in love with you, Jelka Tolonen, he had thought, surprised. In love. So unexpected. So totally unexpected.

And afterward, when she had gone, he had found himself thinking of her. Finding the image of her entangled in his thoughts of other things. How strange that had been. So strange to find himself so vulnerable. And now this ...

He went to her and took her arm, coaxing her gently, almost tenderly, across, then stood there, one arm holding tightly about her slender waist, the other reaching up to hold the strap. The wind whipped her long, golden hair back and chilled her face, but he made her look. "There," he said. "Isn't that magnificent?"

He looked sideways at her; saw how she opened her eyes, fighting against the fear she felt; battling with it; trying to see the beauty there in that desolate place DeVore's thing. His "gift."

For a moment there was nothing. Then the tiniest of smiles came to her lips, th< muscles about her eyes relaxing slightly as she saw.

He shivered, then drew his arm back and up, forcing her head down. He watched the tiny figure fall away from the craft, twisting silently in the air, a tiny star of darkness against the white, growing smaller by the second; then he shuddered again, a strange mixture of pain and incomprehension making him shake his head and moan.

No. There would be no impediments. Not this time. No possessive old women or mad whores with their love children. And certainly no copies.

No. Because he wanted the real Jelka, not some copy. Even if she hated him. Or maybe because she hated him. Yes, perhaps that was it. Because underneath it all she was as strong as he and that strength appealed to him, making her a challenge. A challenge he could not turn his back on. For you will love me, Jelka Tblonen. You will.

He watched the body hit in a spray of snow; then he turned away, the roar of the wind abating as he drew the hatch closed behind him.

emily ASCHER turned from the door, then caught her breath, the pay-lock key falling from her hand, clattering across the bare ice floor.

"You ..."

DeVore looked back at her from where he sat on the edge of her bed and smiled. "Yes, it's me."

He saw her look from him to the key, judging the distance, assessing the possibility of getting out of the room alive, and smiled inwardly.

She looked back at him, her eyes narrowed. "How did you find me?"

He tilted his head, looking her up and down, his keen eyes searching for the telltale bulge of a concealed weapon.

"It wasn't so hard. I've had someone trailing you since that meeting at the meat warehouse. I knew then that you were planning to get out."

"You did?" She laughed, but her face was hard. "That's strange. Because I had no plans to. Not until last night."

He smiled. "Then you got out in good time. They're all dead. Or had you heard?"

He saw the way her breathing changed, how the color drained from her face.

"And Gesell?"

He nodded, watching her. "I made sure of him myself."

Her lips parted slightly, then she looked down. "I guess it was . . . inevitable." But when she looked back at him he saw the hatred in her eyes and knew he had been right. She was still in love with Gesell.

Such a waste, he thought. Had the worm understood how lucky he had been to share his bed with two such strong women?

No. Probably not. Like all his kind he took things without thinking of their worth.

"Mach helped me," he said, watching her closely now, his hand resting loosely on the gun in his pocket. "He arranged it all."

"Why?" she asked. "I don't understand. He wanted it to work more than any of us."

"He still does. But he wants to start again, without the taint of Bremen. New blood, with new ideals, fresh ideas."

She stared back at him a moment, then shook her head. "But still with you, neh?"

"Is that why you got out? Because of my involvement?"

She hesitated, then nodded, meeting the challenge of his eyes. "It changed, after you came. It was different before, sharper, but then . . . well, you saw what happened. It wasn't like that before."

"No . . ." He seemed almost to agree. "Well, that's past, eh?"

"Is it?"

He nodded, sitting back slightly, the gun in his pocket covering her now.

"So what now? What do you want of me?"

His smile broadened. "It's not what I want. It's what Mach wants."

"And?"

"And he wants you dead."

Again that slight tremor of the breasts, that slight change in breathing, quickly controlled. She had guts, that was certain. More, perhaps, than any of them. But he had seen that much at once. Had singled her out because of it.

"I'm unarmed," she said, raising her hands slowly.

"So I see," he said. "So?"

She laughed, almost relaxed. "No ... It wouldn't worry you at all, would it? To kill an unarmed woman."

"No, it wouldn't. But who said I was going to kill you?"

Her eyes narrowed again. "Aren't you, then?"

He shook his head, then reached into his left pocket and pulled out a wallet. It held a pass, a new set of identity documents, two five-hundred yuan credit chips, and a ticket for the intercontinental jet.

"Here," he said, throwing it to her.

She caught it deftly, opened it, then looked up sharply at him. "I don't under-

stand . . ."

"There's a price," he said. "I promised Mach I'd bring something back. To prove I'd dealt with you. A finger."

He saw the small shiver pass through her. "I see."

"It shouldn't hurt. I'll freeze the hand and cauterize the wound. There'll be no pain. Discomfort, yes, but nothing more."

She looked down, a strangely pained expression on her face, then looked up again. "Why? I mean, why are you doing this? What's your motive?"

"Do I have to have one?"

She nodded. "It's how you are."

He shrugged. "So you've told me before. But you're wrong."

"No strings, then?"

"No strings. You give me a finger and I give you your freedom, and a new life in North America."

She laughed, still not trusting him, "It's too easy. Too — " She shook her head.

He stood. "You're wondering why. Why should that cold, calculating bastard DeVore do this for me? What does he want? Well, I'll tell you. It's very simple. I wanted to prove that you were wrong about me."

She studied him a moment, then went across and bent down, recovering the pay-key.

"Well?" he asked. "Have we a deal?"

She looked up at him. "Have I a choice?"

"Yes. You can walk out of here, right now. I'll not stop you. But if you do, Mach will come after you with everything he's got. Because he'll not feel safe until you're dead."

"And you?"

DeVore smiled. "Oh, I'm safe. I'm always safe."

SLOWLY the great globe of Chung Kuo turned in space, moving through sunlight and darkness, the blank faces of its continents glistening like ice caps beneath huge swirls of cloud. Three hours had passed by the measure of men; and in Sichuan Province, in the great palace at Tongjiang, Li Shai Tung sat with his son in the dim-lit silence of his study, reading through the report General Nocenzi had brought. Li Yuan stood at his father's side, scanning each sheet as his father finished with it.

The report concerned a number of items taken the previous evening in a raid on a gaming club frequented by the sons of several important company heads. More than a dozen of the young men had been taken, together with a quantity of seditious material: posters and pamphlets, secret diaries and detailed accounts of illicit meetings. Much of the material confirmed what Tolonen had said only the day before. There was a new wave of unrest; a new tide, running for change.

They were good men—exemplary young men, it might be said—from families whose ties to the Seven went back to the foundation of the City. Men who, in other circumstances, might have served his father well. But a disease was rife among them; a foulness that, once infected, could not be shaken from the blood.

And the disease? Li Yuan looked across at the pile of folders balanced on the far side of his father's desk. There were three of them, each bulging with handwritten ice-vellum sheets. He had not had time to compare more than a few paragraphs scattered throughout each text, but he had seen enough to know that their contents were practically identical. He reached across and picked one up, flicking through the first few pages. He had seen the original in Berdichev's papers more than a year earlier, among the material Karr had brought back with him from Mars, but had never thought he would see another.

He read the title page. "The Aristotle File, Being the True History of Western Science. By Soren Berdichev."

The document had become the classic of dissent for these young men, each copy painstakingly written out in longhand.

His father turned in his seat, looking up at him. "Well, Yuan? What do you think?"

He set the file down. "It is as you said, Father. The thing is a cancer. We must cut it out, before it spreads."

The old T'ang smiled, pleased with his son. "If we can."

"You think it might already be too late?"

Li Shai Tung shrugged. "A document like this is a powerful thing, Yuan." He smiled, then stood, touching his son's arm. "But come ... let us feed the fish. It is a while since we had the chance to talk."

Li Yuan followed his father into the semidarkness of the arboretum, his mind filled with misgivings.

Inside, Li Shai Tung turned, facing his son, the carp pool behind him. "I come here whenever I need to think."

Li Yuan looked about him and nodded. He understood. When his father was absent, he would come here himself and stand beside the pool, staring down into the water as if emptying himself into its depths, letting his thoughts become the fish, drifting, gliding slowly, almost listlessly in the water, then rising swiftly to breach the surface, imbued with sudden purpose.

The old T'ang smiled, seeing how his son stared down into the water; so like himself in some respects.

"Sometimes I think it needs a pike."

Li Yuan looked up surprised. "A pike in a carp pool, Father? But it would eat the other fish!"

Li Shai Tung nodded earnestly. "And maybe that is what was wrong with Chung Kuo. Maybe our great carp pool needed a pike. To keep the numbers down and add that missing element of sharpness. Maybe that is what we are seeing now. Maybe our present troubles are merely the consequence of all those years of peace."

"Things decay . . ." Yuan said, conscious of how far their talk had come, of how far his father's words were from what he normally professed to believe.

"Yes . . ." Li Shai Tung nodded and eased himself back onto the great saddle of a turtle shell that was placed beside the pool. "And perhaps a pike is loose in the depths."

Li Yuan moved to the side of the pool, the toes of his boots overlapping the tiled edge.

"Have you made up your mind yet, Yuan?"

The question was unconnected to anything they had been discussing, but once again he understood. In this sense they had never been closer. His father meant the boy, Kim.

"Yes, Father. I have decided."

"And?"

Yuan turned his head, looking across at his father. Li Shai Tung sat with his feet spread, the cane resting against one knee. Yuan could see his dead brother, Han Ch'in, in that posture of his father's. Could see how his father would have resembled Han when he was younger, as if age had been given him and youth to Han. But Han was long dead and youth with him. Only old age remained. Only the crumbling patterns of their forefathers.

"I was wrong," he said after a moment. "The reports are unequivocal. It hasn't worked out. And now this—this matter of the sons and their 'New European' movement. I can't help but think the two are connected—that the boy is responsible for this."

Li Shai Tung's regretful smile mirrored his son's. "It is connected, Yuan. Without the boy there would be no file." He looked clearly at his son. "Then you will act upon my warrant and have the boy terminated?"

Li Yuan met his father's eyes, part of him still hesitant, even now. Then he nodded.

"Good. And do not trouble yourself, Yuan. You did all you could. It seems to me that the boy's end was fated."

Li Yuan had looked down; now he looked up again, surprised by his father's words. Li Shai Tung saw this and laughed. "You find it odd for me to talk of fate, neh?"

"You have always spoken of it with scorn."

"Maybe so. Yet any man must at some point question whether it is chance or fate that brings things to pass, whether he is the author or merely the agent of his actions."

"And you, Father? What do you think?"

Li Shai Tung stood, leaning heavily upon the silver-headed cane he had come to use so often these days; the cane with the dragon's head, which Han Ch'in had bought him on his fiftieth birthday.

"It is said that in the time of Shang they would take a tortoise shell and cover it with ink, then throw it into a fire. When it dried, a diviner would read the cracks and lines in the scorched shell. They believed, you see, that the tortoise was an animal of great purity—in its hard-soft form they saw the meeting of yin and yang, of Heaven and Earth. Later they would inscribe the shells with questions put to their ancestors. As if the dead could answer."

Li Yuan smiled, reassured by the ironic tone of his father's words. For a moment he had thought. . .

"And maybe they were right, Yuan. Maybe it is all written. But then one must ask what it is the gods want of us. They seem to give and take without design. To build things up only to cast them down. To give a man great joy, only to snatch it away, leaving him in great despair. And to what end, Yuan? To what end?"

Yuan answered softly, touched to the core by his father's words. "I don't know, Father. Truly I don't."

Li Shai Tung shook his head bitterly. "Bones and tortoise shells. . ." He laughed and touched the great turtle shell behind him with his cane. "They say this is a copy of the great Luoshu shell, Yuan. It was a present to your mother from my father, on the day of our wedding. The pattern on its back is meant to be a charm, you see, for easing childbirth."

Yuan looked away. It was as if his father felt a need to torture himself, to surround himself with the symbols of lost joy.

"You know the story, Yuan? It was in the reign of Yu, oh, more than four thousand years ago now, when the turtle crawled up out of the Luo River, bearing the markings on its back."

Yuan knew the story well. Every child did. But he let his father talk, finding it strange that only now should they reach this point of intimacy between them; now when things were darkest, his own life blighted by the failure of his dreams, his father's by ill health.

"Three lines of three figures were marked out there on the shell, as plain as could be seen, the yin numbers in the corners, the yang numbers in the center, and each line—horizontal, vertical, and diagonal—adding up to fifteen. Of course, it was hailed at once as a magic square, as a sign that supernatural powers were at work in the world. But we know better, eh, Yuan? We know there are no magic charms to aid us in our troubles, only our reason and our will. And if they fail . . ."

Li Shai Tung heaved a sigh, then sat heavily on the great saddle of the shell. He looked up at his son wearily.

"But what is the answer, Yuan? What might we do that wre have not already done?"

Li Yuan looked across at his father, his eyes narrowed. "Cast oracles?"

The T'ang laughed softly. "Like our forefathers, eh?"

The old man looked away; stared down into the depths of the pool. Beyond him the moon was framed within the darkness of the window. The night was perfect, like the velvet worn about the neck of a young girl.

"I hoped for peace, Yuan. Longed for it. But. . ." He shook his head.

"What then, Father? What should we do?"

"Do?" Li Shai Tung laughed; a soft, unfamiliar sound. "Prepare ourselves, Yuan. That's all. Take care our friends are true. Sleep only when we're safe."

It was an uncharacteristically vague answer.

Yuan looked down, then broached the subject he had been avoiding all evening. "Are you well, Father? I had heard—"

"Heard? Heard what?" Li Shai Tung turned, his tone suddemly sharp, commanding. Li Yuan almost smiled, but checked himself, knowing his (father's eagle eye was on him.

"Only that you were not your best, Father. No more than thiat. Headaches. Mild stomach upsets. But do not be angry with me. A son should Ibe concerned for his father's health."

Li Shai Tung grunted. "Not my best, eh? Well, that's true of us all after thirty. We're never again at our best." He was silent a moment, thenx turned, tapping his cane against the tiled floor. "Maybe that's true of all things—that they're never at their best after a while. Men and the things men build."

"Particulars, father. Particulars."

The old man stared at him a moment, then nodded. "So I've always lectured you, Yuan. You learn well. You always did. You were always suited! for this."

There was a long silence between them. Han Ch'in's death lay there in that silence; cold, heavy, unmentionable, a dark stone of grief in the guts of each that neither had managed to pass.

"And Fei Yen?"

It was the first time his father had mentioned the separation. The matter was not yet public knowledge.

Li Yuan sighed. "It's still the same."

There was real pain in his Li Shai Tung's face. "You should command her, Yuan. Order her to come home."

Li Yuan shook his head, controlling what he felt. "With great respect, Father, I know what's best in this. She hates me. I know that now. To have her in my home would . . . would weaken me."

Li Shai Tung was watching his son closely, his shoulders slightly hunched. "Ah . . ." He lifted his chin. "I did not know that, Yuan. I..." Again he sighed. "I'm sorry, Yuan, but the child. What of the child?"

Li Yuan swallowed, then raised his head again, facing the matter squarely. "The child is not mine. Fei Yen was unfaithful to me. The child belongs to another man."

The old man came closer, came around the pool and stood facing his son."You know this for certain?"

"No, but I know it. Fei Yen herself—"

"No. I don't mean 'know it' in some vague sense, I mean know; it, for good and certain." His voice had grown fierce, commanding once more. "This is important, Yuan. I'm surprised at you. You should have seen to this."

Li Yuan nodded. It was so, but he had not wanted to face it. Had not wanted to know for good and certain. He had been quite happy accepting her word.

"You must go to her and offer her divorce terms, Yuan. At once. But you will make the offer conditional. You understand?"

Again he nodded, understanding. There would need to be tests. Tests to ascertain the father of the child. Genotyping. Then he would know. Know for good and certain. He gritted his teeth, feeling the pain like a needle in his guts.

"Good," said the T'ang, seeing that what he had wanted was accomplished. "There must be no room for doubt in the future. If your son is to rule, he must be uncontested. Your son, not some cuckoo in the nest."

The words stung Li Yuan, but that was their aim. His father knew when to spare and when to goad.

"And then?" Li Yuan suddenly felt drained, empty of thought.

"And then you marry again. Not one wife, but two. Six if need be, Yuan. Have sons. Make the family strong again. Provide."

He nodded, unable to conceive of life with any other woman but Fei Yen, but for now obedient to his father's wishes.

"Love!" There was a strange bitterness to his father's voice. An edge. "It's never enough, Yuan. Remember that. It always fails you in the end. Always."

Li Yuan looked up, meeting his father's eyes, seeing the love and hurt and pain there where for others there was nothing.

"All love?"

The T'ang nodded and reached out to hold his son's shoulder. "All love, Yuan. Even this."

THERE was a pounding at the outer doors. Li Shai Tung woke, drenched in sweat, the dream of his first wife, Lin Yua, and that dreadful night so clear that, for a moment, he thought the banging on the doors a part of it. He sat up, feeling weak, disoriented. The banging came again.

"Gods help us... what is it now?" he muttered, getting up slowly and pulling on his gown.

He went across and stood there, facing the doors. "Who is it?"

"It is I, Chieh Hsia. Your Chancellor, Chung Hu-yan."

He shivered. Chung Hu-yan. As in the dream. As on the night Lin Yua had died giving birth to his son, Yuan. For a moment he could not answer him.

"Chieh Hsia," came the voice again. "Are you all right?"

He turned, looking about him, then turned back. No. He was here. He wasn't dreaming. Eighteen years had passed and he was here, in his palace, and the knocking on the door, the voice—both were real.

"Hold on, Chung. I'm coming . . ."

He heard how weak his voice sounded, how indecisive, and shivered. Sweat trickled down his inner arms, formed on his forehead. Why was everything suddenly so difficult?

He fumbled with the lock, then drew back the catch. Stepping back, he watched the doors open. Chung Hu-yan stood there, flanked by two guards.

"What is it, Chung?" he said, his voice quavering, seeing the fear in his Chancellor's face.

Chung Hu-yan bowed low. "News has come, Chieh Hsia. Bad news."

Bad news ... He felt his stomach tighten. Li Yuan was dead. Or Tsu Ma. Or ...

"What is it, Chung?" he said again, unconscious of the repetition.

In answer Chung moved aside. Tolonen was standing there, his face ashen.

"Chieh Hsia . . ." the Marshal began, then went down on one knee, bowing his head low. "I have failed you, my Lord . . . failed you."

Li Shai Tung half turned, looking to see who was standing behind him, but there was no one. He frowned then turned back. "Failed, Knut? How failed?"

"The Plantations . . ." Tolonen said, then looked up at him again, tears in his eyes. "The Plantations are on fire."

CHAPTER FIVE

The Broken Wheel

A huge WINDOW filled the end of the corridor where the tunnel turned to the right, intersecting with the boarding hatch. She stood there a moment, looking out across the predawn darkness of the spaceport, barely conscious of the passengers pushing by, knowing that this was probably the last view she would ever have of City Europe—the City in which she had spent her whole life. But that life was over now and a new one lay ahead. Emily Ascher was dead, killed in a fictitious accident three days ago. She was Mary Jennings now, a blonde from Atlanta Canton, returning to the eastern seaboard after a two-year secondment to the European arm of her company.

She had sat up until late learning the brief she had been sent, then snatched three hours sleep before the call came. That had been an hour ago. Now she stood, quite literally, on the threshold of a new life, hesitating, wondering even now if she had done the right thing.

Was it really too late to go back—to make her peace with Mach? She sighed and let her fingers move slowly down the dark, smooth surface of the glass. Yes. DeVore might have been lying when he said he had no motive in helping her, but he was right about Mach wanting her dead. She had given Mach no option. No one left the Ping Tioo. Not voluntarily, anyway. And certainly not alive.

Even so, wasn't there some other choice? Some other option than putting herself in debt to DeVore?

She looked down at her bandaged left hand then smiled cynically at her reflection in the darkened glass. If there had been she would not be here. Besides, there were things she had to do. Important things. And maybe she could do them just as well in America. If DeVore let her.

It was a big if, but she was prepared to take the chance. The only other choice was death, and while she didn't fear death, it was hardly worth preempting things.

No. She would reserve that option. Would keep it as her final bargaining counter. Just in case DeVore proved difficult. And maybe she'd even take him with her. If she could.

Her smile broadened, lost its hard edge. She turned, joining the line of boarding passengers, holding out her pass to the tiny Han stewardess, then moved down the aisle toward her seat.

She was about to sit when the steward touched her arm.

"Forgive me, Fu Jen, but have you a reserved ticket for that seat?"

She turned, straightening up, then held out her ticket for inspection, looking the man up and down as she did so. He was a squat, broad-shouldered Han with one of those hard, anonymous faces some of them had. She knew what he was at once—one of those minor officials who gloried in pettiness.

He made a great pretense of studying her ticket, turning it over, then turning it back. His eyes flicked up to her face, then took in her clothes, her lack of jewelry, before returning to her face again, the disdain in them barely masked. He shook his head.

"If you would follow me, Fu Jen . . ."

He turned, making his way back down the aisle toward the cramped third- and fourth-class seats at the tail of the rocket, but she stood where she was, her stomach tightening, anticipating the tussle to come.

Realizing that she wasn't following him, he came back, his whole manner suddenly quite brutally antagonistic.

"You must come, Fu Jen. These seats are reserved for others."

She shook her head. "1 have a ticket."

He tucked the ticket down into the top pocket of his official tunic. "Forgive me, Fu Jen, but there has been a mistake. As I said, these seats are reserved. Paid for in advance."

The emphasis on the last few words gave his game away. For a moment she had thought that this might be DeVore's final little game with her, but now she knew. The steward was out to extract some squeeze from her. To get her to pay for what was already rightfully hers. She glared at him, despising him, then turned and sat. If he just so much as tried to make her budge . . .

He leaned over her, angry now. "Fu Jen! You must move! Now! At once! Or I will call the captain!"

She was about to answer him when a hand appeared on the steward's shoulder and drew him back sharply.

It was a big man. A Hung Moo. He pushed the Han steward back unceremoniously, a scathing look of contempt on his face. "Have you left your senses, man? The lady has paid for her seat. Now give her her ticket back and leave her alone, or I'll report you to the port authorities—understand me, Hsiao jen?"

The steward opened his mouth, then closed it again, seeing the Security warrant card the man was holding out. Lowering his eyes, he took the ticket from his pocket and handed it across.

"Good!" The man handed it to her with a smile, then turned back, shaking his head. "Now get lost, you little fucker. If I so much as see you in this section during the flight. . ."

The Han swallowed and backed away hurriedly.

The man turned back, looking at her. "I'm sorry about that. They always try it on a single woman traveling alone. Your kind is usually good for fifty yuan at least."

She looked at her ticket, a small shudder of indignation passing through her, then looked back at him, smiling. "Thank you. I appreciate your help, but I would have been all right."

He nodded. "Maybe. But a mutual friend asked me to look after you."

"Ah . . ." She narrowed her eyes, then tilted her head slightly, indicating the warrant card he still held in one hand. "And that's real?"

He laughed. "Of course. Look, can I sit for a moment? There are one or two things we need to sort out."

She hesitated, then gave a small nod. No strings, eh? But it was just as she'd expected. She had known all along that DeVore would have some reason for helping her out.

"What is it?" she asked, turning in her seat to study him as he sat down beside her.

"These ..." He handed her a wallet and a set of cards. The cards were in the name of Rachel DeValerian; the wallet contained a set of references for Mary Jennings, including the documentation for a degree in economics and a letter of introduction to Michael Lever, the director of a company called MemSys. A letter dated two days from then.

She looked up at him. "I don't understand."

He smiled. "You'll need a job over there. Well, the Levers will have a vacancy for an economist on their personal staff. As of tomorrow."

How do you know? she was going to ask, but his smile was answer enough. If DeVore said there was going to be a vacancy, there would be a vacancy. But why the Levers? And what about the other identity?

"What's this?" she asked, holding out the De Valerian cards.

He shrugged. "I'm only the messenger. Our friend said you would know what to do with them."

"I see." She studied them a moment, then put them away. Then DeVore meant her to set up her own movement. To recruit. She smiled and looked up again. "What else?"

He returned her smile, briefly covering her left hand with his right. "Nothing. But I'll be back in a second if you need me. Enjoy the flight." He stood. "Okay. See you in Boston."

"Boston? I thought we were going to New York."

He shook his head, then leaned forward. "Hadn't you heard? New York is closed. Wu Shih is holding an emergency meeting of the Seven and there's a two-hundred U exclusion zone about Manhattan."

She frowned. "I didn't know. What's up?"

He laughed, then leaned forward and touched his finger to the panel on the back of the seat in front of her. At once the screen lit up, showing a scene of devastation.

"There!" he said. "That's what's up."

THE TWO MEN sat on the high wall of the dyke as the dawn came, looking out across the flat expanse of blackened fields, watching the figures move almost somnolently in the darkness below. The tart smell of burned crops seemed to taint every breath they took, despite the filters both wore. They were dressed in the uniform of reserve-corps volunteers; and though only one of the two wore it legitimately, it would have been hard to tell which.

Great palls of smoke lifted above the distant horizon, turning the dawn's light ochre, while, two li out, a convoy of transporters sped westward, heading back toward the safety of the City.

DeVore smiled and sat back. He took a pack of mint drops from his top pocket and offered one to his companion. Mach looked at the packet a moment, then took one. For a while both men were quiet, contemplating the scene, then Mach spoke.

"What now?"

DeVore met Mach's eyes. "Now we melt away. Like ghosts."

Mach smiled. "And then?" .

"Then nothing. Not for a long time. You go underground. Recruit. Build your movement up again. I'll provide whatever financing you need. But you must do nothing. Not until we're ready."

"And the Seven?"

DeVore looked down. "The Seven will look to strengthen their defenses. But they will have to spread themselves thin. Too thin, perhaps. Besides, they've got their own problems. There's a split in Council."

Mach stared at the other man a moment, wide-eyed, wondering, as he had so often lately, how DeVore came to know so much. And why it was that such a man should want to fight against the Seven.

"Why do you hate them so much?" he asked.

DeVore looked back at him. "Why do you?"

"Because the world they've made is a prison. For everyone. But especially for those lower down."

"And you care about that?"

Mach nodded. "Out here . . . this is real, don't you think? But that inside . . ."

He shuddered and looked away, his eyes going off to the horizon. "Well, it's never made sense to me, why human beings should have to live like that. Penned in like meat-animals. Hemmed in by rules. Sorted by money into their levels. I always hated it. Even when I was a child of five or six. And I used to feel so impotent about it."

"But not now?"

"No. Not now. Now I've got a direction for my anger."

They were silent again, then Mach turned his head, looking at DeVore. "What of Ascher?"

DeVore shook his head. "She's vanished. I thought we had her, but she slipped through our fingers. She's good, you know."

Mach smiled. "Yes. She was always the best of us. Even Gesell realized that. But she was inflexible. She was always letting her idealism get in the way of practicalities. It was inevitable that she'd break with us."

"So what will you do?"

"Do? Nothing. Oh, I'll cover my back, don't worry. But if I know our Emily, she'll have found some way of getting out of City Europe. She was always talking of setting up somewhere else—of spreading our influence. She's a good organizer. I'd wager good money we'll hear from her again."

DeVore smiled, thinking of her—at that very moment—on the jet to America, and of her left index finger, frozen in its medical case, heading out for Mars. "Yes," he said. "We shall. I'm sure we shall."

THEY STOOD on the high stone balcony, the seven great Lords of Chung Kuo, the sky a perfect blue overhead, the early morning sunlight glistening from the imperial yellow of their silks. Below them the great garden stretched away, flanked by the two great rivers, the whole enclosed within a single, unbroken wall, its lakes and pagodas, its tiny woods and flower beds, its bridges and shaded walkways a pleasure to behold. A curl of red-stone steps, shaped like a dragon's tail, led down. Slowly, their talk a low murmur barely discernible above the call of the caged birds in the trees, they made their way down, Wu Shih, their host, leading the way.

At the foot of the steps he turned, looking back. Beyond the gathered T'ang his palace sat atop its artificial mound, firmly embedded, as if it had always been there, its pure white walls topped with steep roofs of red tile, the whole great structure capped by a slender six-story pagoda that stood out, silhouetted against the sky. He nodded, satisfied, then put out his arm, inviting his cousins into his garden.

There was the soft tinkling of pagoda bells in the wind, the scent of jasmine and forsythia, of gardenia and chrysanthemum, wafting to them through the great moon-door in the wall. They stepped through, into another world—a world of ancient delights, of strict order made to seem like casual occurrence, of a thousand shades of green contrasted against the gray of stone, the white of walls, the red of tile. It was, though Wu Shih himself made no such claim, the greatest garden in Chung Kuo—the Garden of Supreme Excellence—formed of a dozen separate gardens, each modeled on a famous original.

Their business was done, agreement reached as to the way ahead. Now it was time to relax, to unburden themselves, and where better than here where symmetry and disorder, artistry and chance, met in such perfect balance?

Wu Shih looked about him, immensely pleased. The garden had been built by his great-great-grandfather, but like his father and his father's father, he had made his own small changes to the original scheme, extending the garden to the north so that it now filled the whole of the ancient island of Manhattan.

"It is a beautiful garden, Cousin," Wang Sau-leyan said, turning to him and smiling pleasantly. "There are few pleasures as sweet in life as that derived from a harmoniously created garden."

Wu Shih smiled, surprised for the second time that morning by Wang Sau-leyan. It was as if he were a changed man, all rudeness, all abrasiveness, gone from his manner. Earlier, in Council, he had gone out of his way to assure Li Shai Tung of his support, even preempting Wei Feng's offer of help by giving Li Shai Tung a substantial amount of grain from his own reserves. The generosity of the offer had surprised them all and had prompted a whole spate of spontaneous offers. The session had ended with the seven of them grinning broadly, their earlier mood of despondency cast aside, their sense of unity rebuilt. They were Seven again. Seven.

Wu Shih reached out and touched the young T'ang's arm. "If there is heaven on earth it is here, in the garden."

Wang Sau-leyan gave the slightest bow of his head, as if in deference to Wu Shih's greater age and experience. Again Wu Shih found himself pleased by the gesture. Perhaps they had been mistaken about Wang Sau-leyan. Perhaps it was only youth and the shock of his father's murder, his brother's suicide, that had made him so. That and the uncertainty of things.

Wang Sau-leyan turned, indicating the ancient, rusted sign bolted high up on the trunk of a nearby juniper.

"Tell me, Wu Shih. What is the meaning of that sign? All else here is Han. But that. . ."

"That?" Wu Shih laughed softly, drawing the attention of the other T'ang. "That is a joke of my great-great-grandfather's, Cousin Wang. You see, before he built this garden, part of the greatest city of the Americans sat upon this site. It was from here that they effectively ran their great Republic of sixty-nine states. And here, where we are walking right now, was the very heart of their financial empire. The story goes that my great-great-grandfather came to see with his own eyes the destruction of their great city and that seeing the sign, he smiled, appreciating the play on words. After all, what is more Han than a wall? Hence he ordered the sign kept. And so this path is know, even now, by its original name. Wall Street."

The watching T'ang smiled, appreciating the story.

"We would do well to learn from them," Wei Feng said, reaching up to pick a leaf from the branch. He put it to his mouth and tasted it, then looked back at Wang Sau-leyan, his ancient face creased into a smile. "They tried too hard. Their ambition always exceeded their grasp. Like their ridiculous scheme to colonize the stars."

Again Wang Sau-leyan gave the slightest bow. "I agree, Cousin. And yet we still use the craft they designed and built. Like much else they made."

"True," Wei Feng answered him. "I did not say that all they did was bad. Yet they had no sense of Tightness. Of balance. What they did, they did carelessly, without thought. In that respect we would do well not to be like them. It was thoughtlessness that brought their Empire low."

"And arrogance," added Wu Shih, looking about him. "But come. Let us move on. I have arranged for ch'a to be served in the pavilion beside the lake. There will be entertainments too."

There were smiles at that. It had been some time since they had had the chance for such indulgences. Wu Shih turned, leading them along the long, the covered walkway, then up a twist of wooden steps and out onto a broad gallery above a concealed lake.

A low wooden balustrade was raised on pillars above a tangle of sculpted rock, forming a square about the circle of the lake, the wood painted bright red, the pictogram for immortality cut into it in a repeated pattern. The broad, richly green leaves of lotus choked the water, while in a thatched ting on the far side of the lake, a group of musicians began to play, the ancient sound drifting across to where the Seven sat.

Li Shai Tung sat back in his chair, looking about him at his fellow T'ang. For the first time in months the cloud had lifted from his spirits, the tightness in his stomach vanished. And he was not alone, he could see that now. They all seemed brighter, refreshed and strengthened by the morning's events. So it was. So it had to be. He had not realized how important it was before now; had not understood how much their strength depended on their being of a single mind. And now that Wang Sau-leyan had come to his senses they would be strong again. It was only a matter of will.

He looked across at the young T'ang of Africa, and smiled. "I am grateful for your support, Cousin Wang. If there is something I might do for you in return?"

Wang Sau-leyan smiled and looked about him, his broad face momentarily the image of his father's when he was younger; then he looked down. It was a gesture of considerable modesty. "In the present circumstances it is enough that we help each other, neh?" He looked up, meeting Li Shai Tung's eyes. "I am a proud man, Li Shai Tung, but not too proud to admit it when I have been wrong—and I was wrong about the threat from the Ping Tiao. If my offer helps make amends I am satisfied."

Li Shai Tung looked about him, a smile of intense satisfaction lighting his face. He turned back to the young T'ang, nodding. "Your kind words refresh me, Cousin Wang. There is great wisdom in knowing when one is wrong. Indeed, I have heard it called the first step on the path to true benevolence."

Wang Sau'leyan lowered his head but said nothing. For a while they were quiet, listening to the ancient music. Servants moved among them, serving ch'a and sweetmeats, their pale-green silks blending with the colors of the garden.

"Beautiful," said Tsu Ma, when it had finished. There was a strange wistfulness to his expression. "It is some time since I heard that last piece played so well."

"Indeed—" began Wu Shih, then stopped, turning as his Chancellor appeared at the far end of the gallery. "Come, Fen," he said, signaling him to come closer. "What is it?"

Fen Cho-hsien stopped some paces from his T'ang, bowing to each of the other T'ang in turn before facing his master again and bowing low. "I would not have bothered you, Chieh Hsia, but an urgent message has just arrived. It seems that Lord Li's General has been taken ill."

Li Shai Tung leaned forward anxiously. "Nocenzi, ill? What in the gods' names is wrong with him?"

Fen turned, facing Li Shai Tung, lowering his eyes. "Forgive me, Chieh Hsia, but no one seems to know. It seems, however, that he is extremely ill. And not just him, but his wife and children too. Indeed, if the report is accurate, his wife is already dead, and two of his children."

Li Shai Tung looked down, groaning softly. Gods, was there no end to this? He looked up again, tears in his eyes, the tightness returned to his stomach.

"You will forgive me, cousins, if I return at once?"

There was a murmur of sympathy. All eyes were on the old T'ang, noting his sudden frailty, the way his shoulders hunched forward at this latest calamity. But it was Wang Sau-leyan who rose and helped him from his chair, who walked with him, his arm about his shoulder, to the steps.

Li Shai Tung turned, looking up into the young T'ang's face, holding his arm briefly, gratefully. "Thank you, Sau-leyan. You are your father's son." Then he turned back, going down the twist of steps, letting Wu Shih's Chancellor lead him, head bowed, back down Wall Street to the dragon steps and his waiting craft.

KIM woke and lay there in the darkness, strangely alert, listening. For a moment he didn't understand. There was nothing. Nothing at all. Then he shivered. Of course. . . that was it. The silence was too perfect. There was always some noise or other from the corridors outside, but just now there was nothing.

He sat up, then threw back the sheet. For a moment he paused, stretching, working the last traces of the drug from his limbs, then crouched, listening again.

Nothing.

He crossed the room and stood by the door, his mind running through possibilities. Maybe they had moved him. Or maybe they had closed down the Project and abandoned him. Left him to his fate. But he was not satisfied with either explanation. He reached out, trying the lock.

The door hissed back. Outside, the corridor was dark, empty. Only at the far end was there a light. On the wall outside the guard room.

He shivered, the hairs on his neck and back rising. The overhead cameras were dead, the red wink of their operational lights switched off. And at the far end of the corridor, beyond the wall-mounted lamp, the door to the Project was open, the barrier up.

Something was wrong.

He stood there a moment, not certain what to do, then let instinct take over. Turning to his left, he ran, making for T'ai Cho's room and the labs beyond, hoping it wasn't too late.

T'ai Cho's room was empty. Kim turned, tensing, hearing the soft murmur of voices further along the corridor, then relaxed. They were voices he knew. He hurried toward them, then slowed. The door to the labs was wide open, as if it had been jammed. That, too, was wrong. It was supposed to be closed when not in use, on a time-lock.

He twirled about, looking back down the dimly lit corridor. The few wall lights that were working were backups. Emergency lighting only. The main power system must have gone down. But was that an accident? Or had it been done deliberately? He stepped inside, cautious now, glancing across to his right where Spatz's office was. He could see the Director through the open doorway, cursing, pounding the keyboard on his desk computer, trying to get some response from it. As he watched, Spatz tried the emergency phone, then threw the handset down angrily.

Then maybe it had just happened. Maybe the shutdown had been what had wakened him.

He ducked low and scuttled across the open space between the door and the first row of desks, hoping Spatz wouldn't catch a glimpse of him, then ran along the corridor between the desks until he came to the end. The main labs were to the left, the voices louder now. He could hear T'ai Cho's among them.

He hesitated, turning his head, staring back the way he'd come, but the corridor was empty. He went on, coming out into the labs.

They were seated on the far side, some in chairs, some leaning on the desk. All of them were there except Hammond. They looked around as he entered, their talk faltering.

"Kim!" T'ai Cho said, getting up.

Kim put up his hand, as if to fend off his friend. "You've got to get out! Now! Something's wrong!"

Ellis, the Director's Assistant, smiled and shook his head. "It's all right, Kim. It's only a power failure. Spatz has gone to sort things out."

Kim looked about him. A few of them were vaguely uneasy, but nothing more. It was clear they agreed with Ellis.

"No!" he said, trying to keep the panic from his voice. "It's more than that. The guards have gone and all the doors are jammed open. Can't you see what that means? We've got to get out! Something's going to happen!"

Ellis stood up. "Are you sure? The guards really aren't there?"

Kim nodded urgently. He could feel the tension like a coil in him; could feel responses waking in him that he hadn't felt since—well, since they'd tried to reconstruct him. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest, his blood coursing like a dark, hot tide in his veins. And above all he could feel all his senses heightened by the danger they were in. It was as if he could hear and see, smell and taste better than before.

He lunged forward, grabbing at T'ai Cho's arm, dragging him back. T'ai Cho began resisting, but Kim held on tenaciously. "Come on!" he begged. "Before they come!"

"What in the gods' names are you talking of, Kim?"

"Come on!" he pleaded. "You've got to come! All of you!"

He could see how his words had changed them. They were looking to each other now anxiously.

"Come on!" Ellis said. "Kim could be right!"

They made for the outer offices, but it was too late. As Kim tugged T'ai Cho around the corner he could see them coming down the corridor, not forty ch'i away. There were four of them, dressed in black, suited up and masked, huge lantern guns cradled against their chests. Seeing the tall figure of T'ai Cho, the first of them raised his gun and fired.

Kim pulled T'ai Cho down, then scrambled back, feeling the convected warmth of the gun's discharge in the air, accompanied by a sharp, sweet scent that might almost have been pleasant had it not signaled something so deadly.

"Get back!" he yelled to the others behind him, but even as he said it he understood. They were trapped here. Like the GenSyn apes they had been experimenting on. Unarmed and with no means of escape.

"Dead . . ." he said softly to himself. Dead. As if they'd never been.

the assassin backed away, shuddering, glad that his mask filtered out the stench of burned flesh that filled the room. He felt a small shiver ripple down his back. He hadn't expected them to act as they had. Hadn't believed that they would just get down on their knees and die, heads bowed.

But maybe that was what made them different from him. Made them watchers, not doers; passive, not active. Even so, the way they had just accepted their deaths made him feel odd. It wasn't that he felt pity for them; far from it—their passivity revolted him. Himself, he would have died fighting for his life, clawing and scratching his way out of existence. But it was the way they made him feel. As if they'd robbed him of something.

He turned away. The others had gone already, to fetch the boy and plant the explosives. Time then to get out. He took a couple of paces, then stopped, twisting around.

Nerves, he thought. It's only nerves. It's only one of the apes, scuttling about in its cage. Even so, he went back, making sure, remembering what DeVore had said about talking pains.

He stopped, his right boot almost touching the leg of one of the dead men, and looked about him, frowning. The four apes lay on the floor of their cages, drugged. "Funny. . ." he began. Then, without warning, his legs were grabbed from behind, throwing him forward onto the pile of bodies He turned, gasping, his gun gone from him. The creature was on him in an instant, something hard smashing down into his face, breaking his nose. He groaned, the hot pain of the blow flooding his senses, stunning him. He put his hands up to his face, astonished. "What the hell?" This time the blow came to the side of his head, just beside his left eye. "Kuan Yin!" He screeched, pulling his head back sharply, coughing as the blood began to fill his mouth. He reached out wildly, trying to grasp the creature, but it had moved away. He sat forward, squinting through a blood haze at what looked no more than a child. But not just a child. This was like something out of nightmare. It stood there, hunched and spindly, the weight held threateningly in one tiny hand, its big, dark, staring eyes fixed murderously on him, its mouth set in a snarl of deadly intent.

"Gods . . ." He whispered, feeling himself go cold. Was this what they were making here? These . . . things?

But even as the thought came to him, the creature gave an unearthly yell and leaped on him—leaped high, like something demented—and brought the weight down hard, robbing him of breath.

li shai tung turned, angered by what he had seen, and confronted the Chief Surgeon.

"What in the gods' names did this to him, Chang Li?"

Chang Li fell to his knees, his head bent low. "Forgive me, Chieh Hsia, but the cause of the General's affliction is not yet known. We are carrying out an autopsy on his wife and children, but as yet—"

"The children?" Li Shai Tung took a long breath, calming himself. His eyes were red, his cheeks wet with tears. His right hand gripped at his left shoulder almost convulsively, then let it go, flinging itself outward in a gesture of despair.

"Will he live?"

Again the Chief Surgeon lowered his head. "It is too early to say, Chieh Hsia. Whatever it was, it was strong enough to kill his wife and two of his children within the hour. Nocenzi and his other daughter—well—they're both very ill."

"And you've definitely ruled out some kind of poison in the food?"

Chang Li nodded. "That is so, Chieh Hsia. It seems the Nocenzis were eating with friends when they were stricken—sharing from the same serving bowls, the same rice pot. And yet the three who ate with them are totally unharmed."

Li Shai Tung shuddered, then beckoned the man to get up. "Thank you, Chang Li. But let me know, eh? As soon as anything is known. And do not tell the General yet of the loss of his wife or children. Let him grow stronger before you break the news. I would not have him survive this only to die of a broken heart."

Chang Li bowed his head. "It shall be as you say, Chieh Hsia."

"Good." He turned away, making his way across to the great hallway of the hospital, his guards and retainers at a respectful distance. Nocenzi had been conscious when he'd seen him. Even so, he had looked like a ghost of his former self, all his ch'i, his vital energy, drained from him. His voice had been as faint as the whisper of a breeze against silk.

"Forgive me, Chieh Hsia," he had said, "but you will need a new General now."

He had taken Nocenzi's hand, denying him, but Nocenzi had insisted, squeezing his hand weakly, not releasing it until the T'ang accepted his resignation.

He stopped, remembering the moment, then leaned forward slightly, a mild wash of pain in his arms and lower abdomen making him feel giddy. It passed and he straightened up, but a moment later it returned, stronger, burning like a coal in his guts. He groaned and stumbled forward, almost falling against the tiled floor, but one of his courtiers caught him just in time.

"Chieh Hsia!"

There was a strong babble of concerned voices, a thicket of hands reaching out to steady him, but Li Shai Tung was conscious only of the way his skin stung as if it were stretched too tightly over his bones, how his eyes smarted as if hot water had been thrown into them. He took a shuddering breath, then felt the pain spear through him again.

Gods! What was this?

Doctors were hurrying to him now, lifting him with careful, expert hands, speaking soothingly as they helped support him and half-carry him back toward the wards.

The pain was ebbing now, the strength returning to his limbs.

"Wait. . ." he said softly. Then, when they seemed not to hear him, he repeated it, stronger this time, commanding them. "Hold there!"

At once they moved back, releasing him, but stayed close enough to catch him if he fell. Chang Li was there now. He had hurried back when he had heard, "Chieh Hsia . . . what is it?"

Li Shai Tung straightened, taking a breath. The pain had left him feeling a little lightheaded, but otherwise he seemed all right.

"I'm fine now," he said. "It was but a momentary cramp, that's all. My stomach. Hasty eating and my anxiety for the General's welfare, I'm sure."

He saw how Chang Li looked at him, uncertain how to act, and he almost laughed.

"If it worries you so much, Surgeon Chang, you might send two of your best men to accompany me on the journey home. But I must get back. There is much to be done. I must see my son and speak to him. And I have a new General to appoint."

He smiled, looking about him, seeing his smile mirrored uncertainly in thirty faces. "I, above all others, cannot afford to be ill. Where would Chung Kuo be if we who ruled were always being sick?"

There was laughter, but it lacked the heartiness, the sincerity of the laughter he was accustomed to from those surrounding him. He could hear the fear in their voices and understood its origin. And, in some small way, was reassured by it. It was when the laughter ceased altogether that one had to worry. When fear gave way to relief and a different kind of laughter.

He looked about him, his head lifted, his heart suddenly warmed by their concern for him, then turned and began making his way back to the imperial craft.

yin TSU welcomed the Prince and brought him ch'a.

"You know why I've come?" Li Yuan asked, trying to conceal the pain he felt.

Yin Tsu bowed his head, his ancient face deeply lined. "I know, Li Yuan. And I am sorry that this day has come. My house is greatly saddened."

Li Yuan nodded uncomfortably. The last thing he had wished for was to hurt the old man, but it could not be helped. Even so, this was a bitter business. Twice Yin Tsu had thought to link his line with kings, and twice he had been denied that honor.

"You will not lose by this, Yin Tsu," he said softly, his heart going out to the old man. "Your sons ..."

But it was only half true. After all, what could he give Yin's sons to balance the scale? Nothing. Or as good as.

Yin Tsu bowed lower.

"Can I see her, Father?"

It was the last time he would call him that and he could see the pain it brought to the old man's face. This was not my doing, he thought, watching Yin Tsu straighten up then go to bring her.

He was back almost at once, leading his daughter.

Fei Yen sat across from him, her head bowed, waiting. She was more than eight months pregnant now, so this had to be dealt with at once. The child might come any day. Even so, he was determined to be gentle with her.

"How are you?" he asked tenderly, concerned for her in spite of all that had happened between them.

"I am well, my Lord," she answered, subdued, unable to look at him. She knew how things stood. Knew why he had come.

"Fei Yen, this is—painful for me. But you knew when we wed that I was not as other men—that my life, my choices, were not those of normal men." He sighed deeply, finding it hard to say what he must. He raised his chin, looking at Yin Tsu, who nodded, his face held rigid in a grimace of pain. "My Family—I must ensure my line. Make certain."

These were evasions. He had yet to say it direct. He took another breath and spoke.

"You say it is not my child. But I must be sure of that. There must be tests. And then, if it is so, we must be divorced. For no claim can be permitted if the child is not mine. You must be clear on that, Fei Yen."

Again Yin Tsu nodded. Beside him his daughter was still, silent.

He looked away, momentarily overcome by the strength of what he still felt for her, then forced himself to be insistent.

"Will you do as I say, Fei Yen?"

She looked up at him. Her eyes were wet with tears. Dark, almond eyes that pierced him with their beauty. "I will do whatever you wish, my Lord."

He stared at her, wanting to cross the space between them and kiss away her tears, to forgive her everything and start again. Even now. Even after all she had done to him. But she had left him no alternative. This thing could not be changed. In this he could not trust to what he felt, for feeling had failed him. His father was right. What good was feeling when the world was dark and hostile? Besides, his son must be his son.

"Then it shall be done," he said bluntly, almost angrily. "Tomorrow."

He stood, then walked across the room, touching the old man's arm briefly, sympathetically. "And we shall speak again tomorrow, Yin Tsu. When things are better known."

the old han squatted at the entrance to the corridor, waiting patiently, knowing the dream had been a true dream, one of those he could not afford to ignore. Beside him, against the wall, he had placed those things he had seen himself use in the dream—a blanket and his old porcelain water bottle.

This level was almost deserted. The great clothing factory that took up most of it had shut down its operations more than four hours ago and only a handful of Security guards and maintenance engineers were to be found down here now. The old man smiled, recalling how he had slipped past the guards like a shadow.

His name was Tuan Ti Fo, and though he squatted like a young man, his muscles uncomplaining under him, he was as old as the great City itself. This knowledge he kept to himself, for to others he was simply Old Tuan, his age, like his origins, undefined. He lived simply, some would say frugally, in his rooms eight levels up from where he now waited. And though many knew him, few could claim to be close to the peaceful, white-haired old man. He kept himself very much to himself, studying the ancient books he kept in the box beside his bed, doing his exercises, or playing himself at wei chi—long games that could take a day, sometimes even a week to complete.

The corridor he was facing was less than twenty ch'i long, a narrow, dimly lit affair that was little more than a feeder tunnel to the maintenance hatch in the ceiling at its far end. Tuan Ti Fo watched, knowing what would happen, his ancient eyes half-lidded, his breathing unaltered as the hatch juddered once, twice, then dropped, swinging violently on the hinge. A moment later a foot appeared— a child's foot—followed by a leg, a steadying hand. He watched the boy emerge, legs first; then drop.

Tuan Ti Fo lifted himself slightly, staring into the dimness. For a time the boy lay where he had fallen; then he rolled over onto his side, a small whimper—of pain, perhaps, or fear—carrying to where the old Han crouched.

In the dream this was the moment when he had acted. And so now. Nodding gently to himself, he reached beside him for the blanket.

Tuan Ti Fo moved silently, effortlessly through the darkness. For a moment he knelt beside the boy, looking down at him; again, as in the dream, the reality of it no clearer than the vision he had had. He smiled, and unfolding the blanket, began to wrap the sleeping boy in it.

The boy murmured softly as he lifted him, then began to struggle. Tuan Ti Fo waited, his arms cradling the boy firmly yet reassuringly against his chest until he calmed. Only then did he carry him back to the entrance.

Tuan Ti Fo crouched down, the boy balanced in his lap, the small, dark, tousled head resting against his chest, and reached out for the water bottle. He drew the hinged stopper back and put the mouth of the bottle to the child's lips, wetting them. Waiting a moment, he placed it to the boy's mouth again. This time the lips parted, taking in a little of the water.

It was enough. The mild drug in the liquid would help calm him, make him sleep until the shock of his ordeal had passed.

Tuan Ti Fo stoppered the bottle and fixed it to the small hook on his belt, then straightened up. He had not really noticed before but the boy weighed almost nothing in his arms. He looked down at the child, surprised, as if the boy would vanish at any moment, leaving him holding nothing.

"You're a strange one," he said softly, moving outside the dream a moment. "It's many years since the gods sent me one to tend."

So it was. Many, many years. And why this one? Maybe it had something to do with the other dreams—the dreams of dead, dark lands and of huge brilliant webs, stretched out like stringed beads, burning in the darkness of the sky. Dreams of wells and spires and falling Cities. Dreams filled with suffering and strangeness.

And what was the boys role in all of that? Why had the gods chosen him to do their work?

Tuan Ti Fo smiled, knowing it was not for him to ask, nor for them to answer. Then, letting his actions be shaped once more by the dream, he set off, carrying the boy back down the broad main corridor toward the guard post and the lift beyond.

THE DOCTORS were gone, his ministers and advisors dismissed. Now, at last, the great T'ang was alone.

Li Shai Tung stood there a moment, his arm outstretched, one hand resting against the door frame as he got his breath. The upright against which he rested stretched up like a great squared pillar into the ceiling high overhead, white-painted, the simplicity of its design emphasized by the seven pictograms carved into the wood and picked out in gold leaf—the characters forming couplets with those on the matching upright. Servants had opened the two huge white-lacquered doors earlier; now he stood looking into the Hall of Eternal Peace and Tranquility. To one side, just in view, stood a magnificent funerary couch, the gray stone of its side engraved with images of gardens and pavilions in which ancient scholars sat enthroned while the women of the household wove and prepared food, sang or played the ancient p'i p'a. Facing it was a broad, red-lacquered screen, the Ywe Lung—the circle of dragons, symbolizing the power and authority of the Seven— set like a huge golden mandala in its center.

He sighed heavily, then went inside, leaving the great doors ajar, too tired to turn and pull them closed behind him. It was true what they had said: he ought to get to bed and rest; ought to take a break from his duties for a day or so and let Li Yuan take up his burden as Regent. But it was not easy to break the habits of a lifetime. Besides, there was something he had to do before he rested. Something he had put off far too long.

He crossed the room and slowly lowered himself to his knees before the great tablet, conscious of how the gold leaf of the Ywe Lung seemed to flow in the wavering light of the candles, how the red lacquer of the background seemed to hum. He had never noticed that before. Nor had he noticed how the smoke from the perfumed candles seemed to form words—Han pictograms—in the still, dry air. Chance, meaningless words, like the throw of yarrow stalks or the pattern on a fire-charred tortoise shell.

He shivered. It was cold, silent in the room, the scent of the candles reminding him of the tomb beneath the earth at Tongjiang. Or was it just the silence, the wavering light?

He swallowed dryly. The ache in his bones was worse than before. He felt drawn, close to exhaustion, his skin stretched tight, like parchment, over his brittle bones. It would be good to rest. Good to lie there, thoughtless, in the darkness. Yes . . . but he would do this one last thing before he slept.

Reaching out, he took two of the scented sticks from the porcelain jar in front of him and held them in the thread of laser light until they ignited. Then, bowing respectfully, he set them in the jar in front of the tiny image of his great-greatgrandfather. At once the image seemed to swell, losing a degree of substance as it gained in size.

The life-size image of the old man seemed to look down at Li Shai Tung, its dark eyes magnificent, its whole form filled with power.

His great-great-grandfather, Li Hang Ch'i, had been a tall, immensely dignified man. For posterity he had dressed himself in the imperial style of one hundred and ten years earlier, a simpler, more brutal style, without embellishment. One heavily bejeweled hand stroked his long white, unbraided beard, while the other held a silver riding crop that was meant to symbolize his love of horses.

"What is it, Shai Tung? Why do you summon me from the dead lands?"

Li Shai Tung felt a faint ripple of unease pass through him.

"I... I wished to ask you something, Honorable Grandfather."

Li Hang Ch'i made a small motion of his chin, lifting it slightly as if considering his grandson's words; a gesture that Li Shai Tung recognized immediately as his own.

Even in that we are not free, he thought. We but ape the actions of our ancestors, unconsciously, slavishly. Those things we consider most distinctly ours—that strange interplay of mind and nerve and sinew that we term gesture—are formed a hundred generations before their use in us.

Again he shivered, lowering his head, conscious of his own weariness, of how far below his great-great-grandfather's exacting standards he had fallen. At that moment he felt but a poor copy of Li Hang Ch'i.

"Ask," the figure answered, "whatever you wish."

Li Shai Tung hesitated, then looked up. "Forgive me, most respected Grandfather, but the question I would ask you is a difficult one. One that has plagued me for some while. It is this. Are we good or evil men?"

The hologram's face flickered momentarily, the program uncertain what facial expression was called for by the question. Then it formed itself into the semblance of a frown, the whole countenance becoming stem, implacable.

"What a question, Shai Tung! You ask whether we are good or evil men. But is that something one can ask? After all, how can one judge? By our acts? So some might argue. Yet are our acts good or evil in themselves? Surely only the gods can say that much." He shook his head, staring down at his descendant as if disappointed in him. "I cannot speak for the gods, but for myself I say this. We did as we had to. How else could we have acted?"

Li Shai Tung took a long, shuddering breath. It was as if, for that brief moment, his great-great-grandfather had been there, really there, before him in the room. He had sensed his powerful presence behind the smokescreen of the hologrammic image. Had felt the overpowering certainty of the man behind the words, and again, recognized the echo in himself. So he had once argued. So he had answered his own son, that time when Yuan had come to him with his dream—that awful nightmare he had had of the great mountain of bones rilling the plain where the City had been.

Back then, he had sounded so certain—so sure of things—but even then he had questioned it, at some deeper level. He had gone to his room afterward and lain there until the dawn, unable to sleep, Yuan's words burning brightly in his skull. Are we good or evil men?

But it had begun before then, earlier that year, when he had visited Hal Shepherd in the Domain. It was then that the seed of doubt had entered him; then—in that long conversation with Hal's son, Ben—that he had begun to question it all.

He sat back, studying the hologram a moment, conscious of how it waited for him, displaying that unquestioning patience that distinguished the mechanical from the human. It was almost solid. Almost. For through the seemingly substantial chest of his great-great-grandfather he could glimpse the hazed, refracted image of the Ywe Lung, the great wheel of dragons broken by the planes of his ancestor's body.

He groaned softly and stretched, trying to ease the various pains he felt. His knees ached and there was a growing warmth in his back. I ought to be in bed, he thought, not worrying myself about such things. But he could not help himself. Something urged him on. He stared up into that ancient, implacable face and spoke again.

"Was there no other choice then, Grandfather? No other path we might have taken? Were things as inevitable as they seem? Was it all written?"

Li Hang Ch'i shook his head, his face like the ancient, burnished ivory of a statue, and raised the silver riding crop threateningly.

"There was no other choice."

Li Shai Tung shivered, his voice suddenly small. "Then we were right to deny the Hung Mao their heritage?"

"It was that or see the world destroyed."

Li Shai Tung bowed his head. "Then. . ." He paused, seeing how the eyes of the hologram were on him. Again it was as if something stared through them from the other side. Something powerful and menacing. Something that, by all reason, should not be there. "Then what we did was right?"

The figure shifted slightly, relaxing, lowering the riding crop. "Make no mistake, Shai Tung. We did as we had to. We cannot allow ourselves the empty luxury of doubt."

"Ah . . ." Li Shai Tung stared back at the hologram a moment longer, then, sighing, he plucked the scented sticks from the offering bowl and threw them aside. At once the image shrank, diminishing to its former size. He leaned back, a sharp sense of anger overwhelming him. Anger at himself for the doubts that ate at him and at his ancestor for giving him nothing more than a string of empty platitudes. We did as we had to ... He shook his head, bitterly disappointed. Was there to be no certainty for him, then? No clear answer to what he had asked?

No. And maybe that was what had kept him from visiting this place these last five years: the knowledge that he could no longer share their unquestioning certainty. That and the awful, erosive consciousness of his own inner emptiness. He shuddered. Sometimes it felt as if he had less substance than the images in this room. As if, in the blink of an eye, his being would turn to breath as the gods drew the scent sticks from the offering bowl.

He rubbed at his eyes, then yawned, his tiredness returned to him like ashes in the blood. It was late. Much too late. Not only that, but it was suddenly quite hot in here. He felt flushed and there was a prickling sensation in his legs and hands. He hauled his tired bones upright, then stood there, swaying slightly, feeling breathless, a sudden cold washing through his limbs, making him tremble.

It's nothing, he thought. Only my age. Yet for a moment he found his mind clouding. Had he imagined it, or had Chung Hu-yan come to him only an hour ago with news of another attack?

He put his hand up to his face, as if to clear the cobwebs from his thoughts, then shrugged. No. An hour past he had been with his Ministers. Even so, the image of Chung Hu-yan waking him with awful news persisted, until he realized what it was. "Lin Yua . . ." he said softly, his voice broken by the sudden pain he felt. "Lin Yua, my little peach . . . Why did you have to die? Why did you have to leave me all alone down here?"

He shivered, suddenly cold again, his teeth chattering. Yes, he would send for Surgeon Hua. But later—in the morning—when he could put up with the old boy's fussing.

Sleep, he heard a voice say, close by his ear. Skep now, Li Shai Tung. The day is done.

He turned, his eyes resting momentarily upon the dim gray shape of the funerary couch. Then, turning back, he made a final bow to the row of tiny images. Like breath, he thought. Or flames, dancing in a glass.

IT WAS DARK in the room. Li Yuan lay on his back in the huge bed, staring up into the shadows; the woman beside him was sleeping, her leg against his own warm and strangely comforting.

It was a moment of thoughtlessness, of utter repose. He lay there, aware of the weight of his body pressing down into the softness of the bed, of the rise and fall of his chest with each breath, the flow of his blood. He felt at rest, the dark weight of tension lifted from him by the woman.

In the darkness he reached out to touch the woman's flank, then lay back, closing his eyes.

For a time he slept. Then, in the depths of sleep he heard the summons and pulled himself up, hand over hand, back to the surface of consciousness.

Nan Ho stood in the doorway, his eyes averted. Li Yuan rose, knowing it was important, letting Master Nan wrap the cloak about his nakedness.

He took the call in his study, beneath the portrait of his grandfather, Li Ch'ing, knowing at once what it was. The face of his father's surgeon, Hua, filled the screen, the old man's features more expressive than a thousand words.

"He's dead," Li Yuan said simply.

"Yes, Chieh Hsia," the old man answered, bowing his head.

Chieh Hsia ... He shivered.

"How did it happen?"

"In his sleep. There was no pain."

Li Yuan nodded, but something nagged at him. "Touch nothing, Surgeon Hua. I want the room sealed until I get there. And Hua, tell no one else. I must make calls first. Arrange things."

"Chieh Hsia."

Li Yuan sat there, looking up at the image of his father's father, wondering why he felt so little. He closed his eyes, thinking of his father as he'd last seen him. Of his strength, masked by the surface frailness.

For a moment longer he sat there, trying to feel the sorrow he knew he owed his father, but it was kept from him. It was not yet real. Touch—touch alone—would make it real. Momentarily his mind strayed and he thought of Fei Yen and the child in her belly. Of Tsu Ma and of his dead brother, Han Ch'in. All of it confused, sleep-muddled in his brain. Then it cleared and the old man's face came into focus.

"And so it comes to me," he said quietly, as if to the painting. But the burden of it, the reality of what he had become while he slept, had not yet touched him. He thought of the calls he must make to tell the other T'ang, but for the moment he felt no impulse toward action. Time seemed suspended. He looked down at his hands, at the Prince's ring of power, and frowned. Then, as a concession, he made the call to summon the transporter.

He went back to his room, then out onto the verandah beyond. The woman woke and came to him, naked, her soft warmth pressed against his back in the cool, predawn air.

He turned to her, smiling sadly. "No. Go back inside."

Alone again, he turned and stared out across the shadowed lands of his estate toward the distant mountains. The moon was a low, pale crescent above one of the smaller peaks, far to his right. He stared at it a while, feeling hollow, emptied of all feeling, then looked away sharply, bitter with himself.

Somehow the moment had no meaning. It should have meant so much, but it was empty. The moon, the mountains, the man—himself—standing there in the darkness: none of it made sense to him. They were fragments, broken pieces of some nonsense puzzle, adding up to nothing. He turned away, his feeling of anguish at the nothingness of it all overwhelming him. It wasn't death, it was life that frightened him. The senselessness of life.

He stood there a long time, letting the feeling ebb. Then, when it was gone, he returned to his study, preparing himself to make his calls.

TOLONEN STOOD in the center of the chaos, looking about him. The floor was cluttered underfoot, the walls black with soot. A pile of dark plastic sacks was piled up against the wall to one side. They were all that remained of the men who had worked here on the Project.

"There were no survivors, Captain?"

The young officer stepped forward and bowed. "Only the tutor, sir. We found him thirty levels down, bound and drugged."

Tolonen frowned. "And the others?"

"Apart from T'ai Cho there were eighteen men on the Project, excluding guards. We've identified seventeen separate corpses. Add to that the other one— Hammond—and it accounts for everyone."

"I see. And the records?"

"All gone, sir. The main files were destroyed in the explosion, but they also managed to get to the backups and destroy them."

Tolonen stared at him, astonished. "All of them? Even those held by Prince Yuan?"

"It appears so. Of course, the Prince himself has not yet been spoken to, but his secretary, Chang Shih-sen, advises me that the copies he was given on his last visit are gone."

"Gone?" Tblonen swallowed dryly. He was still too shocked to take it in. How could it have happened? They had taken the strictest measures to ensure that the Project remained not merely "invisible" in terms of its security profile, but that in the unlikely event of sabotage, there would be copies of everything. But somehow all their endeavors had come to nothing. The assassins had walked in here as if they owned the place and destroyed everything, erasing every last trace of the Project.

DeVore. It had to be DeVore. But why? How in the gods' names could he possibly benefit from this?

"Let me see the reports."

The officer turned away, returning a moment later with a clipboard to which were attached the preliminary, hand-written reports. Tolonen took them from him and flicked through quickly.

"Very good," he said finally, looking up. "You've been very thorough, Captain. I ..."

He paused, looking past the Captain. His daughter, Jelka, was standing in the doorway at the end of the corridor.

"What is it?"

Jelka smiled uncertainly at him, then came closer. "I wanted to see. I..."

Tolonen looked back at her a moment, then shrugged. "All right. But it's not very pleasant."

He watched her come into the room and look about her. Saw how she approached the sacks and lifted one of the labels, then let it fall from her hand with a slight shudder. Even so, he could see something of himself in her, that same hardness in the face of adversity. But there was more than that—it was almost as if she were looking for something.

"What is it?" he said after a moment.

She turned, looking at him, focusing on the clipboard he still held. "Can I see that?"

"It's nothing," he said. "Technical stuff mainly. Assessments of explosive materials used. Post-mortem examinations of remains. That kind of thing."

"I know," she said, coming closer. "Can I see it? Please, Daddy."

Out of the corner of an eye he saw the Captain smile faintly. He had been about to say no to her, but that decided him. After all, she was a Marshal's daughter. He had taught her much over the years. Perhaps she, in turn, could teach the young officer something.

He handed her the file, watching her flick through it quickly again, as if she were looking for something specific. Then, astonishingly, she looked up at him, a great beam of a smile on her face.

"I knew it!" she said. "I sensed it as soon as I came in. He's alive! This proves it!"

Tolonen gave a short laugh, then glanced briefly at the Captain before taking the clipboard back from his daughter and holding it open at the place she indicated. "What in the gods' names are you talking about, Jelka? Who? Who's alive?"

"The boy. Ward. He isn't there! Don't you see? Look at the Chief Pathologist's report. All the corpses he examined were those of adults—of fully grown men. But Kim wasn't more than a child. Not physically. Which means that whoever the seventeenth victim was, he wasn't on the Project."

"And Kim's alive."

"Yes . . ."

He stared back at her, realizing what it might mean. The boy had a perfect memory. So good that it was almost impossible for him to forget anything. Which meant...

He laughed, then grew still. Unless they'd taken him captive. Unless whoever had done this had meant to destroy everything but him. But then why had they taken the tutor T'ai Cho and afterward released him? Or had that been a mistake.⁷

"Gods . . ." he said softly. If DeVore had the boy, he also had the only complete record of the Project's work—the basis of a system that could directly control vast numbers of people. It was a frightening thought. His worst nightmare come true. If DeVore had him.

He turned, watching his daughter. She was looking about her, her eyes taking in everything, just as he'd taught her. He followed her through, the young Captain trailing them.

"What is it?" he said quietly, afraid to disturb her concentration. "What are you looking for?"

She turned, looking back at him, the smile still there. "He got out. I know he did."

He shivered, not wanting to know. But she had been right about the other thing, so maybe she was right about this. They went through the ruins of the outer office and into the dark, fire-blackened space beyond where they had found most of the bodies.

"There!" she said, triumphantly, pointing halfway up the back wall. "There! That's where he went."

Tolonen looked. Halfway up the wall there was a slightly darker square set into the blackness. He moved closer, then realized what it was. A ventilation shaft.

"I don't see how . . ." he began, but even as he said it he changed his mind and nodded. Of course. The boy had been small enough, wiry enough. And after all, he had come from the Clay. There was his past record of violence to consider. If anyone could have survived this, it was Kim. So maybe Jelka was right. Maybe he had got out this way.

Tolonen turned, looking at the young officer. "Get one of your experts in here now, Captain. I want him to investigate that vent for any sign that someone might have used it to escape.

"Sir!"

He stood there, Jelka cradled against him, his arm about her shoulders, while they tested the narrow tunnel for clues. It was difficult, because the vent was too small for a grown man to get into; but with the use of extension arms and mechanicals they worked their way slowly down the shaft.

After twenty minutes the squad leader turned and came across to Tolonen. He bowed, then gave a small, apologetic shrug.

"Forgive me, Marshal, but it seems unlikely he got out this way. The vent is badly charred. It sustained a lot of fire damage when the labs went up. Besides that, it leads down through the main generator rooms below. He would have been sliced to pieces by the fans down there."

Tolonen was inclined to agree. It was unlikely that the boy had got out, even if DeVore hadn't taken him. But when he looked down and met his daughter's eyes, the certainty there disturbed him.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm certain. Trust me, Father. I know he got out. I just know."

Tolonen sniffed, then looked back at the squad leader. "Go in another five ch'i. If there's nothing there we'll call it off."

They waited, Tolonen's hopes fading by the moment. But then there was a shout from one of the men controlling the remote. He looked up from his screen and laughed. "She's right. Damn me if she isn't right!"

They went across and looked. There, enhanced on the screen, was a set of clear prints, hidden behind a fold in the tunnel wall and thus untouched by the blast.

"Well?" said Tolonen, "Are they the boy's?"

There was a moment's hesitation, then the boy's prints were flashed up on the screen, the computer superimposing them over the others.

There was no doubt. They were a perfect match.

"Then he's alive!" said Tolonen. He stared at his daughter, then shook his head, not understanding. "Okay," he said, turning to the Captain, "this is what we'll do. I want you to contact Major Gregor Karr at Bremen Headquarters and get him here at once. And then—"

He stopped, staring open-mouthed at the doorway. "Hans . . . what are you doing here?"

Hans Ebert bowed, then came forward. His face was pale, his whole manner unnaturally subdued.

"IVe got news," he said, swallowing. "Bad news, I'm afraid, Uncle Knut. It's the T'ang. I'm afraid he's dead."

HANS EBERT paused on the terrace, looking out across the gardens at the center of the Mansion where the Marshal's daughter stood, her back to him.

Jelka was dressed in the southern Han fashion, a tight silk samfu of a delicate eggshell-blue wrapped about her strong yet slender body. Her hair had been plaited and coiled at the back of her head, but there was no mistaking her for Han. She was too tall, too blond to be anything but Hung Moo. And not simply Hung Moo, but Nordic. New European.

He smiled, then made his way down the steps quietly, careful not to disturb her reverie. She was standing just beyond the bridge, looking down into the tiny stream, one hand raised to her neck, the other holding her folded fan against her side.

His wife. Or soon to be.

He was still some distance from her when she turned, suddenly alert, her whole body tensed as if prepared against attack.

"It's all right," he said, raising his empty hands in reassurance. "It's only me."

He saw how she relaxed—or tried to, for there was still a part of her that held out against him—and smiled inwardly. There was real spirit in the girl, an almost masculine hardness that he admired. His father had been right for once: she would make him the perfect match.

"What is it?" she asked, looking back at him as if forcing herself to meet his eyes. Again he smiled.

"I'm sorry, Jelka, but I have to go. Things are in flux and the new T'ang has asked for me. But please . . . our home is yours. Make yourself comfortable. My mui tsai, Sweet Flute, will be here in a while to look after you."

She stared back at him a moment, her lips slightly parted, then gave a small bow of her head. "And my father?"

"He feels it best that you stay here for the moment. As I said, things are in flux and there are rumors of rioting in the lower levels. If it spreads ..."

She nodded, then turned away, looking across at the ancient pomegranate trees, flicking her fan open as she did so. It was a strange, almost nervous gesture and for a moment he wondered what it meant. Then, bowing low, he turned to go. But he had gone only a few paces when she called to him.

"Hans?"

He turned, pleased that she had used his name. "Yes?"

"Will you be General now?"

He took a long breath and shrugged. "If the new T'ang wishes it. Why?"

She made a small motion of her head, then looked down. "I... I just wondered, that's all."

"Ah . . ." He stood there a moment longer, watching her, then turned and made his way back along the path toward the house. And if he were? Well, maybe it would be a reason for bringing his marriage forward. After all, a General ought to have a wife, a family, oughtn't he? He grinned and spurred himself on, mounting the steps two at a time. Yes. He would speak to Tolonen about it later.

SHE STOOD there after he was gone, her eyes following the slow swirl of a mulberry leaf as it drifted on the artificial current.

So the boy Kim was alive. But how had she known?

She shivered and turned, hearing footsteps on the pathway. It was a young woman, a girl little older than herself. The mui tsai.

The girl came closer, then stopped, bowing low, her hands folded before her. "Excuse me, Hsiao Chi, but my Master asked me to see to your every wish."

Jelka turned, smiling at the girl's use of Hsiao Chi—Lady—to one clearly no older than herself. But it was obvious that the girl was only trying to be respectful.

"Thank you, Sweet Flute, but I wish only to wait here until my father comes."

The mui tsai glanced up at her, then averted her eyes again. "With respect, Hsiao Chi, I understand that that might be some while. Would you not welcome some refreshments while you wait? Or perhaps I could summon the musicians. There is a pavilion ..."

Jelka smiled again, warmed by the girl's manner. Even so, she wanted to be left alone. The matter with the boy disturbed her. The preliminary search of the levels below the Project had found no trace of him.

She sighed, then gave a tiny laugh. "All right, Sweet Flute. Bring me a drink. A cordial. But no musicians. The birds sing sweetly enough for me. And I do wish to be left alone. Until my father comes."

The mui tsai bowed. "As you wish, Hsiao Chi."

Jelka looked about her, letting herself relax for the first time since she had heard of the attack on the Project, drinking in the harmony of the garden. Then she stiffened again.

From the far side of the gardens came a strange, high-pitched keening, like the sound of an animal in pain. For almost a minute it continued, and then it stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

What in the gods' names?

She hurried across the bridge and down the path, then climbed the wooden steps up onto the terrace. It had come from here, she was sure of it.

She paused, hearing the low murmur of male voices from the doorway just ahead of her. Slowly, step by step, she crept along the terrace until she stood there, looking in.

There were four of them, dressed in the pale-green uniforms of the Ebert household. In the midst of them, a gag tied tightly about her mouth, was a woman. A Han woman in her early twenties.

Jelka watched, astonished, as the woman kicked out wildly and threw herself about, trying to escape her captives, her face dark, contorted. But there was no escaping. As Jelka watched, the men subdued her, forcing her into a padded jacket, the overlong arms of which they fastened at the back.

Shuddering with indignation, she stepped inside. "Stop it! Stop it at once!"

The men turned, disconcerted by her sudden appearance, the woman in their midst suddenly forgotten. She fell and lay there on the floor, her legs kicking impotently.

Jelka took another step, her whole body trembling with the anger she felt. "What in the gods' names do you think you're doing?"

They backed away as she came on, bowing abjectly.

"Forgive us, Mistress Tolonen," one of them said, recognizing her, "but we are only acting on our Master's orders."

She looked at the man witheringly, then shook her head. "Unbind her. Unbind her at once."

"But, Mistress, you don't understand-—"

"Quiet, man!" she barked, the strength in her voice surprising him. He fell to his knees, head bowed, and stayed there, silent. She shivered, then looked to the others. "Well? Must I ask you again?"

There was a quick exchange of glances, then the men did as she said, unbinding the woman and stepping back, as if afraid of the consequences. But the woman merely rolled over and sat up, easing the jacket from her, calm now, the fit—if that was what it had been—gone from her.

"Good," Jelka said, not looking at them, her attention fixed upon the strange woman. "Now go. I wish to be alone with the woman."

"But, Mistress—"

"Go!"

There was no hesitation this time. Bowing furiously, the four men departed. She could hear the dull murmur of their voices outside, then nothing. She was alone with the woman.

Jelka went to her and knelt, letting her hand rest on the woman's arm. "What is it?"

The woman looked up at her. She was pretty. Very pretty. In some ways more like a child than Jelka herself. "What's your name?" Jelka asked, touched by the expression of innocence in the woman's eyes.

"My baby . . ." the woman said, looking past Jelka distractedly. "Where's my baby?"

Jelka turned, looking about the room, then saw it. A cot, there, on the far side of the room. And as she saw, she heard it—a strange, persistent snuffling.

"There," she said gently. "Your baby's there."

She stood to one side as the woman got up, and casting the straitjacket aside, went across to the cot, bending down over it to lift and cradle the child. "There, there . . ." she heard her say, a mother's softness in her voice. "There, they'll not harm you. I'll see to that, my little darling. Mumma's here now. Mumma's here."

Jelka felt a ripple of relief pass through her. But she was still angry. Angry with Hans, if it really was he who had given the order to subdue the woman. He had no right to torment the woman. She went across, touching the woman's back.

"Let me see ..."

The woman turned, smiling, offering the child. A small, helpless little bundle, that snuffled and snuffled ...

Jelka felt herself go cold, then stepped back, shaking her head, her mouth suddenly dry, appalled by what she saw. "No . . ."

It stared up at her, red-eyed, its pink face too thin to be human, the hair that sprouted indiscriminately from its flesh too coarse, despite the silks in which it was wrapped. As she stared at it, one tiny three-toed hand pushed out at her, as if to grasp her hand. She jerked away, feeling the bile rise in her throat.

"Golden Heart!" The voice came from the doorway behind her. "Put that dreadful thing away, right now! What in the gods' names do you think you're doing?"

It was the mui tsai, Sweet Flute. She came into the room, putting the drink down on the table, then went across to the woman, taking the bundle from her and setting it back in the cot.

"It's all right," she said, turning back to face Jelka. "I can explain . . ."

But Jelka was no longer there. She was outside, leaning over the balcony, gulping in air, the image of the tiny goat-creature like a mocking demon burning indelibly in the redness behind her closed lids.

T u A N TI F O looked up from where he was making ch'a to where the boy lay sleeping on the bedroll in the far corner of the room. He had been asleep for some time, physically exhausted after his ordeal, but now he tossed and turned, held fast in the grip of some awful nightmare.

The old man put down the ch'a bowl and the cloth and went across to the boy, balancing on his haunches beside him.

The boy seemed in pain, his lips drawn back from his teeth in what was almost a snarl, his whole body hunched into itself, as if something ate at him from within. He thrashed this way and that, as if fighting himself; then, with a shudder that frightened the old man, went still.

"Gweder . . ." the boy said quietly. "Gweder . . ."

It was said softly, almost gently, yet the word itself was hard, the two sounds of which it was made stranger than anything Tuan Ti Fo had ever heard.

For a moment there was silence, then the boy spoke again, the whole of him gathered up into the movement of his lips.

"PandY'a bos ef, Lagasek?"

This time the voice was harsh, almost guttural. Tuan Ti Fo felt a small ripple of fear pass through him; yet he calmed himself inwardly, a still, small voice chanting the chen yen to dispense with fear.

"Travyth, Gweder. Travyth . . ."

He narrowed his eyes, understanding. Two voices. The first much softer, gentler than the second. Gweder and Lagasek . . . But what did it mean? And what was this language? He had never heard its like before.

He watched, seeing how the face changed, ugly one moment, peaceful, almost innocent the next. Now it was ugly, the mouth distorted. Gweder was speaking again, his voice harsh, spitting out the words in challenge.

"Praga obery why crenna? Bos why yeyn, Lagasek?"

The boy shivered violently and the face changed, all spite, all anger draining from it. Softly now it answered, the brittle edges of the words rounded off. Yet there was pain behind the words. Pain and a dreadful sense of loss.

"Yma gweras yn aw ganow, Gweder . . . gweras ... ha an pyth bos tewl."

The abruptness of the change made him shudder. And the laughter . . .

The laughter was demonic. The face now shone with a dark and greedy malice. With evil.

"Nyns-us pyth, Lagasek."

There was such an awful mockery in that face that it made Tuan Ti Fo want to strike it with his fist.

Slowly, very slowly, the malice sank down into the tissue of the face. Again the boy's features settled into a kinder, more human form.

"A'dhywar-lur . . ." it breathed. "A-dhywar-lur." Then, in a cry of anguish, "My bos yn annown . . . Yn annown!"

A ragged breath escaped Tuan Ti Fo. He stood abruptly, then crossed the room to the tiny bookshelf. He brought the book back, then squatted there again, closing his eyes and opening the pages at random, reading the first thing his eyes opened upon.

He smiled. It was a passage from midway through Book One. One of his favorites. He read, letting his voice be an instrument to soothe the boy.

"Thirty spokes share one hub. Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the cart. Knead clay in order to make a vessel. Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the vessel. Cut out doors and windows in order to make a room. Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the room. Thus what we gain is Something, yet it is by virtue of Nothing that this can be put to use."

He looked down, seeing how still the boy had become, as if listening to his words; yet he was still asleep.

"Who are you, boy?" he asked softly, putting the book down. He reached across and pulled up the blanket until it covered the boy's chest. Yes, he thought, and what brought you here tome? For the fates as surely directed you to me as they directed my feet this morning to a path 1 never took before.

He leaned back, then took up the book and began to read again, letting Lao Tzu's words—words more than two-and-a-half thousand years old—wash over the sleeping boy and bring him ease.

"Well?"

Karr stared back morosely at his friend, then put his ch'a bowl down.

"Nothing. The trail's gone cold. I tracked the boy as far as the factory, but there it ended. It's as if he vanished. There's no way he could have got past that guard post."

Chen sat down, facing Karr across the table. "Then he's still there. In the factory."

Karr shook his head. "We've taken it apart. Literally. I had a hundred men in there, dismantling the place back to the bare walls. But nothing."

"We've missed something, that's all. I'll come back with you. We can go through it again."

Karr looked down. "Maybe. But I've been through it a dozen, twenty times already. It's as if he was spirited away."

Chen studied his friend a moment. He had never seen Karr looking so down in the mouth.

"Cheer up," he said. "It can't be that bad."

"No?" Karr sat back, drawing himself up to his full height. "It seems Ebert's to be appointed General. The old T'ang accepted Nocenzi's resignation before he died. Tolonen was to step back into the job, but it seems the new T'ang wants a new man in the post."

Chen grimaced, then sat back. "Then our lives aren't worth a beggar's shit." Karr stared at him a moment, then laughed. "You think?"

"And you don't?"

Karr stood up. "Let a thousand devils take Hans Ebert. We'll concentrate on finding the boy. After all, that's our job, isn't it—finding people?"

li yuan was the first to arrive. Walking from the hangar, he felt detached, as if outside himself, watching. The meaning of this death had come to him slowly; not as grief but as nakedness, for this death exposed him. There was no one now but him; a single link from a broken chain.

Outside his father's rooms he stopped, in the grip of a strong reluctance, but the eyes of others were upon him. Steeling himself, he ordered the doors unlocked, then went inside.

The doors closed, leaving him alone with his dead father.

Li Shai Tung lay in his bed, as if he slept, yet his face was pale like carved ivory, his chest still.

Li Yuan stood there, looking down at him. The old man's eyes were closed, the thin lids veined, mauve leaf patterns on the milky white. He knelt, studying the patterns in the white, but like the rest it meant nothing. It was merely a pattern, a repetition.

He shook his head, not understanding, knowing only that he had never seen his father sleeping. Never seen those fierce, proud eyes closed before this moment.

He put his hand out, touching his father's cheek. The flesh was cold. Shockingly cold. He drew his hand back sharply, then shuddered. Where did it go? Where did all that warmth escape to?

Into the air, he said silently to himself. Into the air.

He stood, then drew the covers back. Beneath the silken sheets his father lay there naked, the frailty of his body revealed. Li Yuan looked, feeling an instinctive pity for his father. Not love, but pity. Pity for what time had done to him.

Death had betrayed him. Had found him weak and vulnerable.

His eyes moved down the body, knowing that others had looked before he had. Surgeons with their dispassionate eyes; looking, as he looked now.

He shuddered. The body was thin, painfully emaciated, but unmarked. His father had been ill. Badly ill. That surprised him, and he paused a moment before putting back the sheet. It was unlike his father not to comment on his health. Something was amiss. Some element beyond simple senility had been the cause of this.

He had no proof and yet his sense of wrongness was strong. It made him turn and look about him, noting the presence of each object in the room, questioning their fiinction. All seemed well, and yet the sense of wrongness persisted.

He went outside, into the hallway. Surgeon Hua was waiting there with his assistants.

"How has my father been, Hua? Was he eating well?"

The old man shook his head. "Not for some time, Chieh Hsia. Not since Han's death. But. . ." he pursed his lips, considering, "well enough for an old man. And your father was old, Li Yuan."

Li Yuan nodded, but he was still troubled. "Was he ... clear? In his mind, I mean?"

"Yes, Chieh Hsia. Even last night." Hua paused, frowning, as if he, too, were troubled by something. "There was nothing evidently wrong with him. We've . . . examined him and . . ."

"Evidently!"

Hua nodded, but his eyes were watchful.

"But you think that appearances might be deceptive, is that it, Hua?"

The old surgeon hesitated. "It isn't something I can put my finger on, Chieh Hsia. Just a ... a feehng I have. Confucius says—"

"Just tell me, Hua," Li Yuan said, interrupting him, reaching out to hold his arm, his fondness for the old man showing in his face. "No proverbs, please. Just tell me what made you feel something was wrong."

"This will sound unprofessional, Chieh Hsia, but as you've asked." Hua paused, clearing his throat. "Well, he was not himself. He was sharp, alert, and in a sense no different from his old self, but he was not—somehow—Li Shai Tung. He seemed like an actor, mimicking your father. Playing him exceptionally well, but not. . ."

He faltered, shaking his head, grief overwhelming him.

"Not like the real thing," Li Yuan finished for him.

Hua nodded. "He was . . . uncertain. And your father never was uncertain."

Li Yuan considered a moment, then gave his instructions. "I want you to perform an autopsy, Hua. I want you to find out why he died. I want to know what killed him."

TSU MA was dressed in white, his hair tied back in a single elegant bow. The effect was striking in its simplicity, its sobriety; while his face had a gentleness Li Yuan had never seen in it before. He came forward and embraced Li Yuan, holding him to his breast, one hand smoothing the back of his neck. It was this, more than the death, more than the coldness of his father's cheek, that broke the ice that had formed about his feelings. At last he let go, feeling the sorrow rise and spill from him.

"Good, good," Tsu Ma whispered softly, stroking his neck. "A man should cry for his father." And when he moved back, there were tears in his eyes, real grief in his expression.

"And Wei Feng?" Li Yuan asked, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

"He's waiting below." Tsu Ma smiled, a friend's strong smile. "We'll go when you're ready."

"I'm ready," Li Yuan answered, straightening, unashamed now of his tears, feeling much better for them. "Let us see our cousin."

Wei Feng was waiting in the viewing room, wearing a simple robe of white gathered at the waist. As Li Yuan came down the stairs Wei Feng came across and embraced him, whispering his condolences. But he seemed older than Li Yuan remembered him. Much older.

"Are you all right, Wei Feng?" he asked, concerned for the old man's health.

Wei Feng laughed. A short, melodic sound. "As well as could be expected, Yuan." His expression changed subtly. "But your father . . ." He sighed. Wei Feng was the oldest now. By almost twenty years the oldest. "So much has changed, Yuan. So much. And now this. This seems . . ." He shrugged, as if it were beyond words to say.

"I know." Li Yuan frowned, releasing him. "They killed him, Wei Feng."

Wei Feng simply looked puzzled, but Tsu Ma came close, taking his arm. "How do you know? Is there proof?"

"Proof? No. But I know. I'm sure of it, Tsu Ma. I've asked Surgeon Hua to ... to do an autopsy. Maybe that will show something, but even so, I know."

"So what now?" Wei Feng had crossed his arms. His face was suddenly hard, his tiny figure filled with power.

"So now we play their game. Remove the gloves."

Beside him Tsu Ma nodded.

"We know our enemies," Li Yuan said, with an air of finality. "We have only to find them."

"DeVore, you mean?" Tsu Ma looked across at Wei Feng. The old man's face was troubled, but his jaw was set. Determination weighed the heavier in his conflicting emotions. Tsu Ma narrowed his eyes, considering. "And then?"

Li Yuan turned. His eyes seemed intensely black, like space itself; cold, vacant, all trace of life and warmth gone from them. His face was closed, expressionless, like a mask. "Arrange a meeting of the Council, Tsu Ma. Let Chi Hsing host it. We must talk."

Li Yuan was barely eighteen, yet the tone, the small movement of the left hand that accompanied the final words, were uncannily familiar, as if the father spoke and acted through the son.

CHAPTER SIX

Chen Yen

The ch'a bowl lay to one side, broken, its contents spilled across the floor. Beside it Tuan Ti Fo crouched, his back to the door, facing the boy.

"Yn-mes a forth, cothwasl" the boy snarled, the sound coming from the back of his throat. "Yn-mes a forthl"

Tuan Ti Fo felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. The boy was down on all fours, his face hideously ugly, the features distorted with rage, the chin thrust forward aggressively, his round, dark eyes filled with animal menace. He made small movements with his body, feinting this way and that, gauging Tuan Ti Fo's response to each, a low growling coming from his throat.

It was the third time the boy had tried to get past him, and, as before, he seemed surprised by the old man's quickness; shocked that, whichever way he moved, Tuan Ti Fo was there, blocking his way.

The old man swayed gently on his haunches, then, as the boy threw himself to the left, moved effortlessly across, fending off the child with his palms, using the least force possible to achieve his end. The boy withdrew, yelping with frustration, then turned and threw himself again, like a dog, going for Tuan's throat.

This time he had to fight the boy. Had to strike him hard and step back, aiming a kick to the stomach to disable him. Yet even as the boy fell back, gasping for breath, that strange transformation overcame him again. As Tuan Ti Fo watched, the harshness faded from the boys features, becoming something softer, more human.

"Welcome back, Lagasek," he said, taking a long, shuddering breath. But for how long? He looked about him, noting the broken bowl, the spilled ch'a, and shook his head. He would have to bind the boy while he slept, for in time he would have to sleep. He could not guard against this "Gweder" thing forever.

He moved closer, crouching over the boy. He was peaceful now, his face almost angelic in its innocence. But beneath? Tuan Ti Fo narrowed his eyes, considering, then began to speak, softly, slowly, as if to himself.

"Look at you, child. So sweet you look just now. So innocent. But are you good or evil? Is it Gweder or Lagasek who rules you? And which of them brought you here to my rooms?" He smiled, then got up, moving across the room to fetch a small towel to mop up the ch'a, a brush to gather up the tiny pieces of broken porcelain. And as he did so he continued to speak, letting his voice rise and fall like a flowing stream, lulling the sleeping child.

"Kao Tzu believed that each man, at birth, was like a willow tree, and that righteousness was like a bowl. To become righteous, a man had therefore to be cut and shaped, like the willow, into the bowl. The most base instincts—the desire for food or sex—were, he argued, all that one could ever find in the unshaped man, and human nature was as indifferent to good or evil as free-flowing water is to the shape it eventually fills."

He turned, looking at the child, seeing how the boy's chest now rose and fell gently, as if soothed by his voice, then turned back, smiling, beginning to mop up the spill.

"Meng Tzu, of course, disagreed. He felt that if what Kao Tzu said were true, then the act of becoming righteous would be a violation of human nature—would, in fact, be a calamity. But I have my own reason for disagreeing with Kao Tzu. If it were so—if human nature were as Kao Tzu claimed—then why should any goodness come from evil circumstances? And why should evil come from good?" He gave a soft laugh. "Some men are water drops and willow sprouts, it's true; but not all. For there are those who determine their own shape, their own direction, and the mere existence of them demonstrates Kao Tzu's claim to be a misrepresentation."

He finished mopping, then carried the towel to the basin in the corner and dropped it in. Returning, he set the two large pieces of the broken bowl to one side then began to sweep the tiny slivers of porcelain into a pile.

"Of course, there is another explanation. It is said that shortly after the Earth was separated from Heaven, Nu Kua created human beings. It appears that she created the first men by patting yellow earth together. She labored at this a long time, taking great care in the shaping and molding of the tiny, human forms; but then she grew tired. The work was leaving her little time for herself and so she decided to simplify the task. Taking a long piece of string, she dragged it to and fro through the mud, heaping it up and turning that into men. But these were crude, ill-formed creatures compared to those she had first made. Henceforth, it is said, the rich and the noble are those descended from the creatures who were formed before Nu Kua tired of her task—the men of yellow earth—whereas the poor and the lowly are descendants of the cord-made men—the men of mud."

He laughed quietly and looked up, noting how restful the boy now was.

"But then, as the Tien Wen says, 'Nu Kua had a body. Who formed and fashioned it?"

He turned, taking the thin paper box in which the ch'a brick had come and put it down, sweeping the fragments up into it; then he dropped in the two largest pieces.

"Ah, yes, but we live in a world gone mad. The bowl of righteousness was shattered long ago, when Tsao Ch'un built his City. It is left to individual men to find the way—to create small islands of sanity in an ocean of storms." He looked about him. "This place is such an island."

Or had been. Before the child had come. Before the bowl had been broken, his peace disturbed.

For a moment Tuan Ti Fo closed his eyes, seeking that inner stillness deep within himself, his lips forming the chen yen—the "true words"—of the mantra. With a tiny shudder he passed the hard knot of tension from him then looked up again, a faint smile at the corners of his mouth.

"Food," he said softly. "That's what you need. Something special."

He stood, went across to the tiny oven set into the wall on the far side of the room, and lit it. Taking a cooking bowl from a shelf, he partly filled it from the water jar and set it down on the ring.

Tuan Ti Fo turned, looking about him at the simple order of his room. "Chaos. The world is headed into chaos, child, and there is little you or I can do to stop it." He smiled sadly, then took up the basin, carrying it across to the door. He would empty it later, after the child had been fed.

The boy had turned onto his side, the fingers of one hand lightly touching his neck. Tuan Ti Fo smiled, and taking a blanket, took it across and laid it over the child.

He crouched there a moment, watching him. "You know, the Chou believed that Heaven and Earth were once inextricably mixed together in a state of undifferenti-ated chaos, like a chicken's egg. Hun tun they called that state. Hun tun . . ."

He nodded, then went back to the oven, taking a jar from the shelf on the wall and emptying out half its contents onto the board beside the oven. The tiny, saclike dumplings looked like pale, wet, unformed creatures in their uncooked state. Descendants of the mud men. He smiled and shook his head. Hun tun, they were called. He had made them himself with the things the girl Marie had brought last time she'd come. It was soy, of course, not meat, that formed the filling inside the thin shells of dough, but that was as he wished it. He did not believe in eating flesh. It was not The Way.

As the water began to boil he tipped the dumplings into the bowl and stirred them gently before leaving them to cook. There were other things he added— herbs sent to him from friends on the plantations, and other, special things. He leaned forward, sniffing the concoction delicately, then nodded. It was just what the child needed. It would settle him and give him back his strength.

That precious strength that "Gweder" spent so thoughtlessly.

He turned, expecting to see the child sitting up, his face transformed again into a snarl, but the boy slept on.

He turned back, for a while busying himself preparing the food. When it was cooked, he poured half of the broth into a small ceramic bowl and took it to the boy.

It was a shame to wake him, but it was twelve hours now since he had eaten. And afterward he would sleep. The herbs in the soup would ensure that he slept.

He set the bowl down, then lifted the boy gently, cradling him in a half-sitting position. As he did so the boy stirred and struggled briefly, then relaxed. Lifting the spoon from the bowl, Tuan Ti Fo placed it to the boy's lips, tilting it gently.

"Here, child. I serve you Heaven itself."

The boy took a little of the warm broth, then turned his head slightly. Tuan Ti Fo persevered, following his mouth with the spoon, coaxing a little of the liquid into him each time, until the child's mouth was opening wide for each new spoonful.

At last the bowl was empty. Tuan Ti Fo smiled, holding the boy to him a while, conscious again of how insubstantial he seemed. As if he were made of something finer than flesh and bone, finer than yellow earth. And again he wondered about his presence in the dream. What did that mean? For it had to mean something.

He drew a pillow close, then set the boy's head down, covering him with the blanket.

"Maybe you'll tell me, eh? When you wake. That's if that strange tongue is not the only one you speak."

He went back to the oven and poured the remains of the hun tun into the bowl, spooning it down quickly, then took bowls and basin outside, locking the door behind him, going to the washrooms at the far end of the corridor. It didn't take long, but he hurried about his tasks, concerned not to leave the child too long. And when he returned he took care in opening the door, lest "Gweder" should slip out past him. But the boy still slept.

Tuan Ti Fo squatted, his legs folded under him, watching the boy. Then, knowing it would be hours before he woke, he got up and fetched his set, smoothing the cloth "board" out on the floor before him, placing the bowls on either side, the white stones to his left, the black to his right. For a time he lost himself in the game, his whole self gathered up into the shapes the stones made on the board, until it seemed the board was the great Tao and he the stones.