LORDS OF THE MIDDLE DARKLORDS OF THE MIDDLE DARK
Copyright © 1986 by Jack L. Chalker
e-book ver. 1.0
To all those who still believe that without imagination we are nothing,
and without bold adventures and risks nothing great of permanence is attainable. 

 
1. A BOWL FULL OF GODS

MOST PEOPLE BELIEVED THAT THEY WOULD EVENTUALLY go to heaven, even the ones whom 
everybody else knew would never make it. Very few, however, believed they could 
get there without dying.
The mountain had always fascinated him, but he had never really understood the 
awe and fear it inspired in almost everyone else. The Mountain of the Gods, the 
Cheyenne called it, and to be sure it was peculiar.
Enormous, it had a conical, volcanic shape although it was not, nor had it ever 
been, a volcano. It rose up in the center of lesser, ordinary mountains, 
straight into the sky itself. None had ever seen its peak and lived to tell 
about it, for even on the clearest of days a dense ring of clouds shrouded its 
top from view. The clouds moved around the peak, usually clockwise, and 
sometimes seemed to swirl and boil as they did so, but the great cloud ring 
never dissipated, never thinned, and never revealed what was beyond the 
five-and-a-half-kilometer mark.
Certainly there was good reason for the people of the region to both fear and 
worship the mountain. It looked different, it behaved differently, and it had 
been there for as long as any of the People could remember. Why he felt more 
fascination than fear, and had felt that way even as a child, he couldn't say, 
although he had always been somewhat different from others.
He was a Human Being—what the subhumans of other nations called a Cheyenne—and 
he was a hunter, a warrior, and an adult of some rank. He shared his people's 
mystic sense of being one with nature, of the tangible and spiritual 
interrelationships between human and nature, and accepted most of what he had 
been taught. He did not, however, believe that gods lived inside mountains.
Both his chief and his medicine man knew of his obsession with the mountain, but 
they were unable to sway him. They argued that none who had ever dared to climb 
the sacred mountain had returned and that the spirits guarding its slopes were 
of the most powerful sort. He believed in spirits and in sacred ground, but he 
could not believe that the mountain was a part of this. The mythology alone was 
too new, by the way his people measured time, and quite unconvincing. He also 
knew that there were things of Heaven and things of Nature and things of men, 
and the mountain had always seemed to him to be the last of these, the legends 
and stories deliberately spread to prevent any questioning of the mountain's 
existence. It was on the People's land, but it was not a part of the People, nor 
had it been there in ancient times, as had the other mountains.
What the others saw as supernatural, he saw as insult and, perhaps, as 
sacrilege.
"We hunt the buffalo and deer, and we manage the land well for the Creator," the 
medicine man noted. "It is a good life we have here, a precious thing. The 
mountain is a part of things, that's all."
"It is not a part of things," the rebel argued. "It is unnatural but not 
supernatural. I know as well as you what it is like for those in the Council. 
There they live not by nature and the skill of their inner and outer selves but 
rather by machines and artifices. Everyone knows this, for they must return to 
us for a season every two years. This mountain is neither of god nor nature, but 
of men. You are a wise man. Surely in your heart you know this."
"I know many things," the medicine man replied. "I am not saying that you are 
not correct in this, but correct does not necessarily mean that you are right. 
You know, too, that the Creator once punished us for our pride and subjugated us 
not even to the subhumans but to demons with white faces who slaughtered the 
buffalo, slaughtered the People, and contained the rest on worthless land, 
condemning us to a living hell in which our very way of life was made 
impossible. Most of the white demons have been carried off now to the stars, and 
the rest given their own domain far across the Eastern Sea, but they left many 
works of evil here. You can still stand on peaks and see where they had blasted 
great roads through the mountains, and you can still go to many places and find 
the remains of their once-great cities."
"Then you are saying that it is true." The words were spoken with a curious sort 
of smile. "That the stories and legends of the mountain were created to keep 
people away. It is in fact something created by creatures of Earth, not heaven."
"Creatures of Earth and hell," the medicine man spat. "It is a foul place. It is 
perhaps the doorway to hell itself. Left alone, it does not bother us, and we do 
not disturb it. What if you challenge it, and it devours you as it devoured the 
few others who have gone to it? What is gained? And if you survive, and if you 
let loose the hordes of evil demons that it might imprison, then you might well 
bring down the wrath of the Creator upon all of us once more. Then much is 
lost."
"All that you say might be true, yet I will challenge it. I will challenge it 
because it is there and because I choose knowledge over cowering like some child 
in a summer storm, its ignorance reinforcing its fear. It is the duty of Human 
Beings to conquer fear, not be ruled by it, or we become less than the 
subhumans. I respect the mountain, but I do not fear it, and there is but one 
way to show that to the mountain and to the Creator who raised us above all 
others in spirit. I do not accept your argument. If I do not go, then I show 
fear and lose my own worth. If I go and die, then I die in honor, in an act of 
courage. If I do not go because it might loose some demons upon the People, then 
the People as a whole will be subject to fear. If we allow ourselves to be ruled 
by fear in anything, then we are not the true Human Beings, the highest of 
creation, but are instead subject to something else—fear of the unknown. And if 
we are subjected to that, then we are subjugated and deserve nothing less, for 
if fear can rule us in this, it can rule us in other things as well."
The medicine man sighed. "I always knew I should have nominated you for Council 
training. You have the kind of mind for it. It is too late for that now, I fear, 
and too late for you. Go. Climb the mountain. Die with your honor and courage 
proven. I shall lead the weeping and lamentations for you and for myself, for 
erring in this way and having such a fine mind come to such a purposeless end. I 
will argue no more fine points of logic with you. There is a very thin line 
between stubbornness and stupidity, and I cannot shift someone back who has 
crossed that line. Go."
The climb was dangerous but not difficult, which was all to the best because his 
people had little in the way of metals and metalworking, and he had to make do 
with rope and balance and sure footing. He had been afraid that he would be 
ill-prepared, but the slope was rough and craggy, and with patience and by trial 
and error he found a sort of path upward.
He had dressed warmly, with fur-lined clothes made to stand the toughest test 
and a hood and face mask to help keep out the terrible cold even at this time of 
year. An experienced mountain man, he also knew that the air would grow thinner 
as he made his ascent and that he would have to take the climb very slowly to 
give himself a chance to become acclimated to the altitude. He could carry only 
so much water, but after a while snow would do. It would have to, for his 
salt-packed rations caused great thirst and dehydration.
As he grew closer to the great ring of clouds, he began to wonder if in fact any 
of the others like him had ever even gotten this far. There were snow slides and 
hidden crevasses here, and the problems of weather, acclimation, and provisions 
would stop anyone not totally prepared for them and fully experienced in 
high-altitude work. The climb was not really difficult, but its relative ease 
would fill a novice with confidence and cause him to ignore the many other 
threats.
So far it had been like any other mountain that could be climbed without piton 
or grappling hook, only taller. It looked neither as regular nor as strange when 
one was on it as it did from afar, and he began to wonder if indeed imagination 
might have played cruel tricks on the People.
But there was still that swirling mass of thick, impenetrable clouds that should 
not have been there, at least not all the time and certainly not at that 
altitude. He might doubt his preconceptions, but he did not doubt his resolve. 
He would go into those clouds.
Still, he almost didn't make it. Parts of him suffered from frostbite, and it 
seemed at times as if his eyes would freeze shut, but he finally made the base 
of the clouds. Here he knew he would face the greatest of all the dangers, for 
he might wind up moving blind in a freezing, swirling fog. He had always had the 
suspicion, now a fear, that the mountain might end right at the clouds and that 
he might well step off into space.
The clouds were dense, although not as much as he'd feared, and he had some 
visibility, although the wind was up, making every move treacherous. Still, 
there was no mistaking the fact that these clouds were nothing of nature; the 
air was suddenly relatively warm—above freezing, anyway—and he felt the pain of 
his frostbitten extremities along with a welcome relief that the fine mist that 
soon covered him remained a mist.
There was, however, a curious lack of odor. The clouds were getting their heat 
from somewhere, yet there were none of the earth-fumes he would have expected 
from a volcanic area. He continued his climb and was shocked to break out of the 
clouds only twenty or thirty meters up from their start. It was not the end of 
the clouds; really, but rather a break between two layers of cloud, formed by a 
trapped mass of warm air. Above him swirled a solid ceiling of clouds. He did 
not worry about them, though; the mountain did not extend any farther than a 
dozen meters, beyond the end of the lower cloud barrier.
Up here it did at least look like a volcano, one of those great mountains of the 
west. The summit was a crater and appeared perfectly round, but it was less than 
a hundred meters across. It was as unnatural as were the clouds and the warmth. 
It was certainly the source of the heat: The air seemed to shimmer all around 
that basin. Laboriously he made his way, half walking, half crawling, to the 
edge, and with hurting eyes he peered down inside and froze in awe and wonder, 
his jaw dropping. For a moment he wondered if the climb had cost him his reason.
Faces ... Huge faces coming out of the rock wall and extending all the way 
around the crater. Men's faces, women's faces, strange-looking, alien faces none 
of which seemed to have the features of the People.
Demon faces.
Giant faces extended out of the crater wall, carved of some whitish rock or some 
other substance. The noses alone were eight or more meters long; the mouths, 
though closed now and expressionless, looked as if they each could swallow a 
herd of buffalo.
Who carved such faces? he wondered. And why?
About forty meters below the faces was a floor that appeared to be made of very 
coarse cloth, although he was sophisticated enough to realize that it must be 
metal. The fine mesh of the grating allowed the warm air to rise from inside the 
mountain, creating the odd cloud effects and giving the region of the peak its 
moderate temperature. The mesh grate also had five circles painted on it, four 
in a sort of square surrounding a fifth in the middle, and there were designs in 
each circle. He could not make out the designs, partly because of the distance 
and the condition of his eyes and partly because there seemed to be material 
covering parts of all five circles. The material, whatever it was, was randomly 
scattered about and certainly not native to the place.
He stared again at the giant carved faces and felt a chill go through him. They 
were certainly both mysterious and awesome; most people who made it this far 
would worship them, knowing they had seen the faces of the sleeping spirits of 
the mountain. He counted twenty-five faces around the rim just inside the 
crater, all expressionless, all seemingly asleep, eyes closed. With a start he 
realized that there weren't twenty-five different faces but only five, each 
repeated four more times.
There was the man with short, curly hair, thick lips, and a broad, flat nose. 
There was a chubby, elderly-looking woman with puffy cheeks and short, stringy 
hair. There was a younger, prettier woman with a delicate face whose features in 
some ways resembled that of his own people but whose eyes seemed oddly slanted, 
almost catlike. There was a very old man with wrinkled skin and very little 
hair. And, last, there was a strange-looking man with a very long face, a 
lantern jaw, and a birdlike nose.
Each of these was repeated so that the same five, had their eyes been open, 
would have been looking out, or down, at any point within.
Who were they? The ones who built this place? If so, why had they built it, and 
why here, and what was the source of the warmth below? Had they built this place 
and then added these faces as a monument to their work, a permanent sort of 
memorial? Would that question ever be answerable?
He paused, trying to decide what to do next. He'd challenged the mountain and 
won, and proved his point, but now what? He'd never taken it any further than 
this. Now it seemed idiotic to return below, reversing the climb, facing even 
more dangers in the descent than in the ascent if only because, going down, one 
was always a bit careless compared to facing the unknown ascent. To go down and 
say what? That there were twenty-five huge carved heads of five sleeping men and 
women in a crater, and below them a huge net through which blew warm air? Would 
he even be believed? Would he believe this sight if he weren't now seeing it, 
and would he believe an account of it if teller and listener were reversed?
Now what?
He needed something tangible to take from this place. He needed more than just 
this bizarre vision.
He needed to go down there.
But could he? Was there any place here to fasten a rope securely? Was his rope 
long enough and strong enough to bear him down and back out again?
He walked carefully around the crater until he spied something sticking out of 
the ground perhaps a meter and a half from the rim. He went to it and then 
stopped.
It was a metal stake. A piton, driven expertly into the rock and still 
containing the rotting remains of the rope knot, although not the rope itself. 
He was not the first to make it up here, that was clear, and he was not the 
first to consider the descent into that place.
The piton had not been traded from one of the metal-working nations: Although 
rusted, it was too smooth, too regular, too exact, and too strong. This was a 
thing of machines, of Council origin or higher. The rope, too, seemed strange 
and far too thick and complex to be handmade.
He flattened himself, crawled along the line to the edge, and looked down 
between the old man's face and the face of the woman with the strange-looking 
eyes. What had happened? Had the rope rubbed against the crater rim and worn 
through? He thought again of the indistinct litter on the mesh floor below and 
sighed.
Rope. Rope remains—and human remains as well. Skeletal remains. All the others 
who had made it this far were still here.
This place, then, was some sort of trap. No, traps had been set, but this was 
far too elaborate to be established simply as a trap. These faces, then, 
represented the spirits set to guard whatever was down there. What powerful 
thing could be down there that would make people take such a risk?
He peered down, straining to see. Nothing on the grating, certainly; either the 
object of his search was below that grate, or there was some way in—a door or 
something. He saw what looked like a fresco, a design built into the wall at 
about a meter and a half above the grating. He made his way carefully around the 
rim, but there was only this one thing on the walls, nothing more. Otherwise, 
the pit was plain and featureless.
The faces were not to be trusted. Their features could hide almost anything; the 
eyes might open to reveal ports for weapons. However, the one who'd been able to 
use the piton had also thought of this and have descended quite clearly between 
two faces. Something had still cut the rope and dropped him to the grate below. 
The pit represented power—but the pit was also death. He was smart enough to 
know that going down in ignorance was no test of honor or courage, just 
stupidity. He backed off, then lay there and relaxed for a while and checked his 
provisions. There was little left, despite his careful rationing. It had taken 
five careful days to get this far, but it might well take two equally careful 
days to get back down.
He knew, though, that he would not tempt the pit. Perhaps others, someday, 
hearing of it, would explain it to him or give him its mysterious key, but he 
did not have it. To descend to the grate was death, either quick from falling or 
slow by being trapped down there with only corpses and statue faces for company.
He settled back and decided to get some sleep before attempting any real move 
back down to his own domains below. He was quite tired, and the warmth of the 
air beguiled him into rest, but he did not sleep easily. He dreamed, and the 
dream was a terrible one.
He was standing in the pit, looking up at the far-off opening above. The faces 
were there, but they were no longer dead faces but living things, eyes opened, 
looking down at him with mixed amusement and contempt.
He tried to look away and found himself deep in skeletons. He backed off in 
horror but found his feet tangled in ropes—his own and those of the dead—and 
fell with a crash onto the grate, coming face to face with grinning skulls. 
Skeletal hands on skeletal arms seemed to reach out for him. He yelled and 
somehow pushed them away, then got up against a side wall.
He looked across and saw the inlaid panel clearly now. The same five designs as 
were on the floor, but clear, with strange symbols that looked very much like 
the cave and rock drawings done by some of his own people. Inside each circle 
there seemed to be a small black square, as if a single tile had been removed.
The faces above now seemed to whisper to him with such force that they stirred 
up a great wind. They were not speaking his language, yet he somehow understood 
what they were saying.
"The rings... The rings... The five gold rings," they whispered to him. "Do you 
have the rings?"
"What rings are these?" he heard himself shouting. "I know of no rings!"
"He doesn't have the rings," one of the male figures whispered, and the other 
male faces took it up. "No rings. No rings. He comes without the rings."
"No fruit, no birds, no rings," the female faces chimed in.
"Then why do you come?" the male faces asked him.
"I come only to see what is here, to know why this mountain exists on my 
people's sacred land! 1 wish nothing else!"
There was a collective sigh from the faces. "We're sorry," they all responded, 
their voices echoing eerily around the pit. "We're so very sorry. But, you see, 
reconnaissance is not allowed."
And then the skeletons, those remains of the ones who have come before, stirred, 
and they seemed to come together and reach out for him, to make him one of 
them...
He awoke with a start, feeling the chilled sweat caused by the dream. The wind 
was up, and it seemed to be getting colder. The queer cloud cap above whirled at 
impossible speed, and the one below seemed to match it. He got hurriedly to his 
feet, not really thinking of anything but getting out of this place, getting 
away. It was neither cowardice nor a loss of honor to leave; this was beyond his 
power, an evil place of magic that would take far more than a warrior to combat. 
There was no honor in suicide, and that was what it was to remain here.
Although it was growing late in the day and the region below was bound to be 
bitterly cold, he did not hesitate to make his way down as far as he could. He 
quickly reached the swirling mass of clouds below and entered them, and was 
immediately engulfed in a maelstrom.
The winds were so powerful and so loud that they masked his scream as they blew 
him off the mountainside, hurling his body hundreds of meters straight down to 
the nearest rocks below.

2. THE CURSES OF HISTORY

WALKS STOOPED OVER, CHIEF MEDICINE MAN and healer of the Hyiakutt nation, who 
always walked ramrod straight even now that he was in his seventies, trudged 
slowly up the hill to the hogan of Runs With the Night Hawks to make his routine 
courtesy call and his perennial complaint.
The flying saucers were stampeding the buffalos.
It was always pretty much the same, or had been in the more than two decades now 
that Hawks had taken Leave at this time and place. Despite his privileged 
position and rank, he was required to spend at least one-quarter of the year 
living with and as one of his people. Generally he didn't mind, except for minor 
ordeals like this and the fact that it really put a crimp on ongoing projects. 
While not impossible to deal with, the wrench of going from electric lighting, 
air conditioning, and computer filing and research to a log and mud hogan out on 
the plains with none of those conveniences was quite traumatic.
That, of course, was the point of requiring him to return. One of them, anyway.
He knew that most of the work of his profession had been accomplished by 
firelight and without any modern amenities, because these hadn't been invented 
yet. But the scholars of those ancient days had one major advantage that he did 
not: They did not know that such amenities and technology existed, or even could 
exist, so they were incapable of missing them.
The old medicine man showed the wear of his years in his wrinkled face and 
nearly white long hair, but his eyes showed a certain youthfulness and his gait 
a pride that said he wouldn't choose to be anywhere else nor doing anything but 
what he was doing.
"I greet you, Runs With the Night Hawks, and welcome you back to your lands and 
people," the old man said in the melodic tongue of their ancestors. "You have 
not changed much, although you look a bit saggy in the stomach."
The younger man smiled. "And I return the greeting, wise and ancient one. 
Welcome to my poor lodging and my fire. Please sit and talk with me."
It was a clear, starry night, with only a sliver of moon. The old man settled by 
his small fire, and Hawks sat opposite, as etiquette dictated.
"You did not happen to smuggle in any of the good hooch, did you, my son?" the 
old man asked in a mixture of tongues.
The younger man smiled playfully. "You know that it is forbidden to do such a 
thing, ancient one. There could be many problems for me if I did so."
The old man looked a bit uneasy, although they played this little game every 
year.
"However," Hawks added, "I would be honored if you would share some of my meager 
ration of medicinal herb." He took out a large gourd container and handed it 
over.
The old man took it, pried out the crude cork, and took a big swallow. A look of 
complete rapture filled his face. "Smooth!" he rasped. "You are a sly one, boy!" 
He made to hand it back but was stopped by a gesture.
"No, it is yours. A gift, to ward off the chill."
The old man smiled and nodded thankfully. "We have some hidden stills that make 
some passable corn, but I am getting too old for it, I fear. One must have the 
layers of youth inside, for each drink of that removes one layer. I fear 1 have 
become layers of gut in debt to the Creator."
That out of the way, it was time to get into the next level of sociability.
"How does the tribe fare, elder? I have been away a while."
"Not too badly," the old man replied. "The nation numbers in the thousands, and 
the tribe now is almost three hundred. There were many births this past season, 
and few deaths. Of course, up north the Blackfoot and the damned Lakotas are 
overhunting their quotas, and in the south the Apaches are overrunning their 
borders—I fear we may have a war with one or the other before too many more 
seasons are out. The southern migration is peaceful, but those damned flying 
saucers keep scaring the buffalo, and there are many difficult and hungry days 
because of it. We must handle those greedy tribes, and we will, but surely you 
can do something about those cursed flying things."
Runs With the Night Hawks sighed. "Each year we have had this problem, and each 
year 1, as tribal representative, lodge protests and am assured that routes will 
be changed and new studies made, but nothing is ever done. You say I am getting 
a bit fat, and it is true, but those who might change things are fatter, and the 
fat is not merely in their bellies." He sighed. "More than once I have wished I 
could convene a War Council to do to the administrators what we do with the 
Sioux."
"But they are of the People, too! They return at times each year for a season, 
as you do. Why does this not give them some feel for the problems?"
"You know why. The Upper Council is dominated by Aztecs, Mayans, Navaho, Nez 
Perce, and others like that."
"Farmers and city dwellers! None of them could survive out here for a week let 
alone a season! It is a sad day when policy is made by old women. Particularly 
old women who were born old women!"
"You are old and wise. You know it is simply numbers. Those who are free to 
follow the buffalo and ride the winds of the plains can never equal the numbers 
of those who are farmers and craft-weavers."
The old man took another drink and sighed. "You know, boy, I often think that 
they should have gone all the way when they restored us to our lands and ways. 
My soul is never so filled as when I am out there, under the stars, watching the 
wind blow the tall grasses like some great sea and hearing the kind whispers of 
the Creator."
"If they did, we would have no horses," Hawks pointed out, not for the first 
time. "The old days were not all that wonderful. Women were married at first 
blood and had twenty children, only to lose most at birth or before the age of 
one. An ancient one was perhaps thirty-five. Diseases and infections ravaged all 
the People. It was a terrible price that they paid. Perhaps some flying ships 
scaring the buffalo from time to time is not too great a price to pay for losing 
the bad parts."
"I know, I know. You need not lecture me."
"I am sorry if I offended you. I am a historian, after all. It is my nature to 
lecture." He sighed. "I am away too long. I forget myself. You are my guest, and 
here I am quarreling with you."
"It is nothing. I am an old man, ignorant of much and riding the plains until my 
dust becomes one with that carried on the winds. We have had three returned to 
us from the Lesser Councils this past season. I am of a different world than 
they, but by choice. Do not mistake my frustrations for contempt. Each person 
must follow his own course. I am as proud of the accomplishments of those like 
you as I am when a young one becomes of age and passes the test and chooses the 
life of a warrior and hunter, and I mourn when those like you are returned to us 
against their will."
Hawks frowned. "Anybody I know?"
"I think not. A younger couple, Sly Like Coyote and Song of the Half Moon. I am 
not sure where they worked, but it was somewhere out beyond the setting sun. 
Their jobs were meaningless to me, although he was always good with numbers. Not 
like you. History I can more than comprehend. I could see no use in science 
which is not practical."
Hawks nodded gravely. It was one of the fears they all lived with, those who had 
been chosen, because of some talent or ability, to leave the tribes and go up to 
the Councils. Then one traded the simplicity of tribal life and the absoluteness 
of its culture for a far different existence, subject to a tremendous level of 
authority right up to the Masters themselves. There all the wonders and comforts 
were available, but the price was always to walk a careful line and never 
challenge, even accidentally, any part of the hierarchy. No one was so essential 
that he was not subject to others above, and no one was above being replaced.
He tried to remember the two but could not. Certainly if he discovered their 
parents and their lineage, he could at least place them, but it wasn't really 
worth the bother. What he would want to know—what they had done that had caused 
them to be returned—neither they nor anyone else he could question could tell 
him. The only thing certain was that it had been something serious. Even the 
most petty did not send down subordinates for arbitrary or personal reasons; the 
procedure was too involved, and the justifications had to be shown and proved up 
and down the line. Too much had been invested in everyone of Council level to 
allow anything less.
What had the young man been? Hawks wondered. A computer expert, perhaps? An 
astronomer, or physicist, or pure mathematician? Years of training, sweat, hard 
work—all gone. Replaced with other memories, other views, that made them good 
members of the tribe. Now a man who once, perhaps, dealt with complex equations 
and a woman who, at the very least, was expert in running his models on 
sophisticated computer equipment got up each morning and prayed to the spirits 
and the Creator and had no knowledge of or curiosity about anything beyond the 
tribe.
"You have not done anything to merit their fate, have you?" the old man asked 
quietly.
Hawks was startled. "Huh? I hope not. Why do you ask?"
"There has been a demon stalking about in the tall grass. We wonder who or what 
he is after. Certainly not any of us."
"A Val? Here?" The thought made him uneasy. He was an obvious target. "For how 
long now?"
"Four days, perhaps more. I think then that you cannot be the quarry, after all. 
You are here but two days, after all. They could have picked you up far easier 
before you arrived here, could they not?"
He nodded. "Yes, that is true. Still, I wonder what the thing can be after? I do 
not like the idea of one of them around, no matter who the object is."
He was less confident than he tried to sound. Why would anyone send a Val here? 
Could it be here on sheer suspicion? He'd been required to get a readout taken 
before he left to rejoin the tribe, but there were many such readouts being 
taken at any given time. They weren't all evaluated. There were only a few Vals 
on the whole planet; they couldn't possibly discover anything so minor except by 
sheer chance.
But chance had brought him what he now felt some guilt about, a chance perhaps 
more remote than picking his readout at random. No, it was still too much to 
believe. The old man was right. If suspicions were enough, they'd have picked 
him up before he left, or at least when he arrived.
The medicine man, sensing the younger one's disturbance, gently changed the 
subject. "You have not married. A man your age should have children by now."
The comment only partially broke his mood. "There are few women of the nation in 
the Councils and none who are the type who could stand being married to one such 
as myself."
"There are many attractive young women with the tribe."
"That may be true. We have always been blessed that way. But how could I take 
one of them? Wrench her from this life to the Councils? It would be taking a 
beautiful sturgeon and placing her in the midst of the high prairie. The same as 
I would be, after a while, returning here to live. My heart is always with my 
people, but my mind is a world away."
"Perhaps it is too far," the old medicine man responded. "We will be leaving 
soon, and only a small number of us will remain when the first snows come. Even 
when you are with your people, you stay apart. You come as we leave, and you 
spend little time with the Four Families chosen to remain. You build mountains 
between yourself and your manhood, between yourself and your people. I will send 
someone over to help you prepare here and to take some of the routine burdens."
"No, I—"
"Yes," the medicine man responded with the finality of power. He had the power 
and the training. The tribal chief was more of a military officer; the medicine 
man was the politician. He had made the decision to send Hawks out to be 
educated and trained and had nominated him for Council. He was very low in the 
hierarchy of human civilization, but he was still above Hawks.
They spent a little more time in pleasantries and gossip, sharing information 
and talking about old friends, and at last the old man yawned and bade his 
farewell. Hawks watched him vanish quickly into the darkness and the winds, and 
thought.
He did love it here, even when the tribe migrated slowly southward, leaving only 
the Four Families to represent symbolically the tribe and its territorial 
rights. They did not own the land; none of the People had any real belief that 
land could be owned at all. But they were a small tribe in a small nation, 
surrounded by larger and more powerful nations, and their way of life depended 
on maintaining territorial rights.
Perhaps the old man had made a mistake, he thought, feeling both the communion 
with the land and his isolation within it. It would not be the first one, 
certainly. My heart and my blood are here, in the land and the winds.
There had been a woman once—an unobtainable woman. She had been beautiful and 
brilliant, a crack anthropologist specializing in the plains tribal systems that 
had bred them both. When he was young, he had been obsessed with her, for she 
had been everything he had ever dreamed of in a woman, a wife, a partner. She 
had mistaken his love, though, for friendship and flattery, and he'd been too 
shy to force anything lest he alienate and lose her if she rejected him—which, 
of course, she had, indirectly, by marrying a sociologist from the Jimma tribe 
of the nation. She had been so happy, she'd wanted him to be the first to know.
There had been nothing then but work, and he had thrown himself into it with a 
passion, channeling all his energies into productive paths to stave off thoughts 
of suicide or tinges of madness. Perhaps he was mad. He had often suspected it, 
but he knew they wouldn't flag someone for a madness that actually increased 
work and production.
Her name was Cloud Dancer, and for two days he'd tried to make her life 
miserable to no avail. She was cute, thin, a head shorter than he, and she 
appeared slightly built although it was hard really to tell in that 
loose-fitting, traditional dress she wore. She was thirty but looked younger by 
far, and if inquisitiveness was any indication, she was bright as well. She was 
also something of a dynamo: Any Outsider notions that native American women were 
passive would be blown out of the water in ten minutes with her.
She had taken one look at his little hogan and exclaimed, "This house smells as 
if only dead things lie within it! I do not understand why men will abide filth 
when it takes but a few moments to shake what is nature back to the winds and 
let the spirits of life crowd out the dead space!"
His protests that he didn't mind things the way they were fell on deaf ears, and 
soon she was taking out his blankets and extra clothing to be washed or aired as 
the material required. When she tried to get his straw mattress out the door, he 
finally had to help, and he found himself involved in the cleanup if only to 
save what was important to him. She also brought some earthen cookware and some 
food from the Families' camp and proved a very fine cook indeed. Her seasonings 
were expert, though the spices were as hot as hell to his palate, which was 
accustomed much of the time to blander fare. But he wasn't going to admit to 
that to her.
Until Withdrawal, he really couldn't provide for himself out here in his own 
native land. There was the irony of it, and also why so much had to come from 
the Four Families at the start. His salt box, large enough for a medium-sized 
deer, was full, all right—of salt. He found himself being insulted and badgered 
to go hunt for himself, and while he knew he wasn't up for deer and particularly 
not for buffalo, he did actually manage to catch three fairly good sized catfish 
in the river.
The fact was, he was beginning to like her and to like a little of the order and 
domesticity she brought. It was almost like being married, although she went 
home at night and they did not, of course, share the pleasures of the bed. It 
was over the hot, spiced fish stew she'd created that he finally gave in and 
warmed to her. She spoke only Hyiakutt and had lived her life with the tribe, 
but she had an odd mixture of old and new in her world view. She lived in a 
supernatural world where spirits dwelled in everything, yet she knew there was a 
wider world and a different one.
In some ways, she was also a victim of that culture. She had married at fifteen, 
not an uncommon thing in the tribe. It had not been an arranged marriage, as was 
the custom, because she had lost her father a year before in an accident and her 
mother had died even earlier in childbirth. The child had not survived, either. 
There were no orphans in the tribe; she had been adopted by close kin, but her 
uncle was old and partly crippled and poor. Screams Like Thunder wasn't the 
ideal catch, either; an older man not given to ambition and with a nasty temper, 
he was not a warrior and hadn't really ever wanted to be. He was, in fact, a 
Curer, which was really an assistant to the medicine man, keeping all the 
paraphernalia in good shape and on hand and aiding in the preparation of herbs 
and other medicinals. It was not exactly a high-ranking job, but it was as high 
as he was ever likely to go.
He hadn't been much of a lover, either. His spirit was willing, even eager, but 
his flesh was, if not weak, best described as mostly limp. He couldn't stand the 
idea that he could not perform in this most basic of masculine areas, especially 
since he didn't have the warrior's proof of manhood by deed. He therefore 
encouraged—actually ordered and arranged—a set of liaisons with a gentle 
half-wit who tended some of the animals and socialized very little. She had kind 
of liked the poor man, whose mind was very childlike but whose physical 
abilities were quite mature. Her husband had, by circuitous questioning and 
feigning idle curiosity, discovered that the stand-in lover's mental limits were 
the result of an injury at birth and were not likely to be passed on to any 
children he might sire, and that had settled it.
In the end, suspecting that her husband planned, once she had conceived, to kill 
the surrogate to eliminate all chance of the affair being discovered, she had 
found herself unable to go through with it no matter what the pressures. The 
situation had gotten ugly, and her husband had beaten her and hauled her to the 
man and then beaten her again. The kindness she'd shown the unfortunate animal 
handler had been greater than the poor man had ever known, and he wasn't so 
childlike that he didn't understand what was going on. He rushed to protect her, 
there was a fight, and in the end her husband was dead, his skull crushed.
She had gone to the medicine man and told him everything, and he'd done his best 
to cover it all up, but this was a small and closed community, and no major 
scandal could be completely hidden. As usual, suspicion and rumor had gotten the 
facts wrong—although in the ways of the tribe she should have done what her 
husband commanded to salvage his honor—and it was generally believed that she 
had been caught cheating on her husband and that the husband had paid the price. 
She was made a social outcast, a tainted woman, and was relegated to being a 
nonperson, a servant, one without property or standing.
Hawks understood well now why the medicine man had selected her for him, 
although he didn't appreciate being dragged into all this. She was far too full 
of life to remain a servant, far too bright to waste, but her only hope of 
status was remarriage, and she had little chance of competing with all the 
younger, virginal women from good families with the means to provide generous 
dowries.
"You are far too gloomy," she admonished him over the stew. "You sit and brood, 
and dark storm clouds gather above your head. You will not live a second time, 
you know. You have let the foul spirits eat at your heart, so you do not know 
what you might have had."
He stared at her in wonder. "Do you not ever feel that way? You have so much 
more cause than I."
She shrugged. "Yes, of course. It lurks around me all the time and creeps in and 
takes a bite of my spirit every time I forget to guard against it. Still, there 
is much beauty in the world, and only one life to see it. If the sorrow crowds 
out all the joy, then that is worse than death. You are less excusable than I, 
for you have less cause for it."
This was getting uncomfortable. It was time for a change of subject.
"Tall Grass told me you were an artist," he said. "A good one."
She shrugged again and tried to look modest, but clearly she was pleased. "I 
weave patterns, do necklaces, headbands, jewelry, that sort of thing. I have 
also made some inks from the sands of the south plains and done some drawings on 
treated skins and light woods. It is nothing special, though. My gifts are 
modest, my work for me."
"I should very much like to see some of it. Will you bring what you think are 
some of your best works the next time?"
"Of course, if you like, but do not expect much. I should like, though, to try 
some small drawings on paper. Until I saw your things in there, I had not 
realized what a wonder paper is." She didn't really say "paper" but rather 
something that came out as "thin and flexible sheets of wood," but his mind 
immediately translated.
"I will find you some, and some writing-sticks as well," he promised her. He'd 
brought a rather large supply of pencils.
She took to them with almost childlike delight, and she was good—damned good. 
The kind of natural talent that couldn't see its own gifts, because it was so 
natural, so easy to her that she could hardly comprehend anyone not being able 
to do it. A stroke here, a stroke there, a bit of shading just so, and suddenly 
there was a forest scene, or a landscape, or startling portraits of the men and 
women of her tribe.
A few days later, the Sickness came upon him even as he sat there letting her do 
his portrait. It came on slowly at first, as it always did, then built rapidly 
over the next day and a half. He dreaded it, as they all dreaded it who had to 
return for a season, and it was all the more frustrating because there was 
nothing to be done about it.
Cloud Dancer became alarmed as he began to develop chills and fever and to throw 
up anything he'd taken in. "I will send for the medicine man," she told him, but 
he stopped her.
"No. He can do nothing. This is a terrible thing, but it will pass. For a while 
I will grow even sicker, and I may become as mad as if possessed by a demon. You 
must stay away for your own sake—there is nothing you can do until it passes."
She was both puzzled and unconvinced. "What is it that makes you so? You speak 
as if you knew this was coming."
"I did. It always comes. It must. Up—in Council— we are given many medicines 
that can do wondrous things. Make us smarter, stronger, healthier, and a hundred 
other things. But there is a price. There is always a price. Our bodies grow 
used to the medicines. When the medicines finally go out of the body, as all 
medicines do sooner or later, the body is not prepared. It has forgotten how to 
act without the medicines. Until it learns, it will not work well, and I shall 
be very sick in body and spirit."
She did not fully understand, but she did know that there were medicinal herbs 
that could keep one sleepy and ease pain, and she sought them. The Four Families 
had only a young apprentice medicine man, but he knew some of the things that 
might help and accompanied her back to Hawks's lodge. It took more than the two 
of them, however, to handle him. The quiet, introverted intellectual had turned 
into a raving, hallucinating lunatic.
Four strong, young warriors from the Families were required to get him tied down 
and subdued—and even they did not escape without bruises and blackened eyes. The 
herbs, however, did have a quieting effect.
Cloud Dancer remained with him for the ordeal, which lasted three and a half 
days, administering the medicines and seeing that he did not do himself injury 
struggling against the restraints. It was like keeping company with a wild 
demon, a horrible spirit of the evil netherworld, but, assured by the medicine 
man that this state was transitory, she stuck it out.
"It is the custom not to let the tribes see this madness," the medicine man told 
her, "for they might mistake it for something far worse, although in truth it is 
agony."
"Will he be—changed—at the end?" she asked nervously.
"Some. He will be more of the People and less of the Councils. His Hyiakutt 
nature and upbringing will take command. Otherwise he might not survive out here 
through the season. The changes will seem far greater to him than to us. He will 
be weak and crave the medicines for a while, but that, too, will pass."
When Runs With the Night Hawks was still just a boy, the medicine man of his 
tribe had identified him as having certain talents and aptitudes that made him 
better suited for Council than for tribal life. Special tutelage was arranged to 
check this out and then, when it proved true, to prepare him for a different 
calling. The Hyiakutt, like most North American nations, had no written 
language, so he was taught a standardized modified Roman alphabet and sent away 
for special training in reading and writing. When he was of age, he left his 
family and his tribe and nation and went to Council schools, where he excelled 
in many subjects. He became, after intensive schooling, an urbanized modern man 
in a technological setting, as was necessary for taking a job with the Councils.
In order to keep Council personnel in touch with and understanding of the 
majority of people for whom they were responsible, all such select officials 
were required to spend at least a season—three months—every two years with their 
tribe, living as the tribe lived. To facilitate this "leave" and also to make 
certain that these people could survive in such a situation, a template was 
impressed upon their minds to remain hidden until triggered by Withdrawal.
Hawks awoke feeling absolutely lousy but in control of himself once more. It 
would take a while more for the full effects of Withdrawal to fade, but after so 
many times he was able to at least live with those effects and accept them. He 
opened his eyes and saw Cloud Dancer sitting there, patiently working on a 
traditionally patterned blanket. She looked over at him and put down her work.
"Hello," he managed, his voice hoarse. He no longer had to concentrate to speak 
his native Hyiakutt; it was now his primary language, the one in which he 
thought and which in turn shaped his thought patterns. The other tongues were 
still there, but now he had to consciously translate them. "How long have you 
been here?"
"Since the start," she responded matter-of-factly. "You were very, very sick. 
How do you feel now?"
"As if a raging herd of buffalo had done dances upon my entire body," he told 
her honestly. "I—" He halted a moment. "I am restrained. That bad, was it?"
She nodded. "You are sure you are over this?"
"The madness is gone if that is what you mean. The rest will come with work and 
time. If you are asking if it is safe to loosen my bonds, the answer is yes."
She got a knife and cut the strong straps, which had been knotted far too well 
and too firmly to be untied.
He needed assistance to get up and groaned with pain and dizziness when he did, 
but he felt the need to get himself back into condition as quickly as possible. 
Where before it had hardly mattered, now it seemed somehow dishonorable to 
depend upon Cloud Dancer or the Families one second more than was necessary for 
food or other supplies.
"I am getting old," he told her. "Each time it takes longer and is harder to get 
through. One day I will find it impossible to return to Council on the thought 
that this would kill me. I almost feel so even now."
"Why do you just not take their medicine?" she asked him, genuinely curious.
He gave a dry chuckle. "I cannot refuse. Even now I would gladly take them all 
in a moment were they offered me. There are things, once taken for long periods, 
that forever enslave the body. I am no coward, nor am I dishonored by this fact. 
I was chosen to go and made to take them. Without them I could not have done 
what I had to do, learn all I had to learn, in the time given to me. The 
medicines are tools, just as the loom is a tool, or the spear, or the bow, 
without which the job for which I was chosen could not be done."
"Do you love this job so much, or is it that the Council way of living is to you 
a better way than our way?"
He shook his head. "No, no. I do love the work, for it is honorable and good and 
important to everyone, including the nation and the tribe. As to the way of 
life— this one is pure and basic, the way the Creator meant us to live. It is 
free. Their way is dependency and confinement. It is not natural. It is simply a 
price that must be paid in order to preserve our ways here." He sighed. "Can you 
help me up? I would like to get some air."
She tried to help him up, and he made it part way but then collapsed back on the 
bed, pulling her down on top of him. He started to mumble apologies, but she 
laughed them off.
"So, is this a proposition or a proposal?" she teased. "I have been pulled by 
strength into your bed."
"I am—sorry..."
"Why? Am I so ugly, so undesirable that you would not want me?"
"No, now, wait a moment! I didn't mean..."
She saw his discomfort and found it satisfying, but she also knew he was still 
weak and dehydrated, as well. She got up and looked at him. "You stay where you 
are. I will prepare some broth and herb teas that will get some strength back 
into you. I want to see what you are like when you are whole and natural."
The speed with which he regained his strength and clearheadedness was in no 
small part due to her help and attentiveness. He knew also that she'd been the 
one to summon just the right help when he'd needed it, and even through the 
delirium he had been aware that she'd been there all the time, tending him and 
speaking soothingly to him.
He didn't really understand why she did it. Certainly he was someone unusual, 
both familiar and foreign at the same time, but that didn't really explain it 
all. It certainly wasn't his virile good looks. He was, in fact, rather ordinary 
looking or a bit worse, his skin mildly pockmarked with scars from a childhood 
imbalance. It might be because she was looking for any way out of her 
circumstances, although he didn't think she had that much deviousness in her. 
Finally he simply asked her.
She thought about it. "Partly it is because I am doing something useful. Partly 
it is because you treat me as a person, not a thing, and you do not judge."
That was simply something he had not considered. Oddly, he felt some anger. 
Curse you, ancient one! he thought to himself. I have needed her these past 
days, and now it is clear that she needs me as well.
He thought about her a lot over the next few days, even when she wasn't there. 
The trouble was, he did want her, did have a need for someone in his life, but 
there was no getting around the two worlds. He could not stay, not this time. 
There was simply too much important work left to do, work that meant much to the 
future of the Hyiakutt as a nation. There was no rule against his marrying her, 
but there were rigid rules barring her from access to the medicines and machines 
that would allow her to adapt, at least somewhat, to the terribly different way 
things were there. She would be isolated in a place where almost no one spoke 
her language and where medicines did the only work for which she was qualified. 
Yet it was impossible to explain it to her. She had never even seen plumbing, 
let alone a toilet; how to explain disposable clothes and dialing up a meal?
Worse, how to explain that the Sioux in Council were not contemptible subhumans 
and mortal enemies but rather associates who were sometimes pains in the rear?
Once through Withdrawal, he'd always just let himself go and enjoyed his Leaves. 
Now the medicine man had placed a terrible burden on him—and not totally in 
ignorance, either—and really spoiled things.
And yet he wanted to see her, wanted her company, wanted her. He took to 
late-night brooding outside, surrounded only by the trees and the stars, trying 
to sort out his own mind and his courses of action. And, one of those nights, he 
had a visitor.
He heard a quiet sound behind him, one that few others would hear, and he turned 
and peered into the darkness past the campfire.
He saw it after a moment and simply froze, staring at the dark form within the 
lesser darkness.
It knew that he'd seen it, and it moved slowly, confidently, into the light of 
the slowly dying campfire.
The thing was big—two meters tall—and roughly manlike in appearance, made of 
permanently glistening blue-black material. Its face was a mask with two 
trapezoidal openings for eyes that were the color and sheen of polished 
obsidian. It moved with a catlike quiet and grace that seemed impossible for one 
so huge.
"Good evening," the Val said in a pleasant middle soprano that sounded very 
human indeed. It spoke in Hyiakutt, not because it had to but because by doing 
so it demonstrated in two words that it could easily have overheard all that 
Hawks and the old medicine man had said. It spoke, too, in an incongruous female 
voice, which told him immediately that its business wasn't something to do 
directly with him. The thought did little to calm him.
"Good evening to you," Hawks responded, trying to keep the dryness in his mouth 
from showing in his speech or manner. "May I ask what brings you to my fire?"
"Routine business. You are the only Outsider here at this moment or within many 
days' distance. Legally, anyway. As such, you provide something of 
an—attraction."
"You seek one of my people?"
"No. Carmelita Mendelez Montoya is her name."
His eyebrows rose. "Espanol?"
"No. Caribbean."
That was almost as outlandish as Spanish. Most of the islands had not been 
restored, but rather new societies had been created out of the cultures that 
were there. There was, simply put, no native stock surviving there to restore.
"What would a Caribe be doing up here?"
The Val switched to Classical English but still maintained that woman's voice. 
"Running. It is a very large, desolate land, easy to get lost in. We spotted the 
wreck of her skimmer on satellite photos two weeks ago. Unfortunately, by the 
time I was dispatched to the scene, it appeared that everything from people to 
herds of thundering buffalo had been through there. Since then I have picked up 
signs that she has been moving in this direction, but nothing concrete. The area 
has been sensitized to those not keyed to it. She cannot get out. She has 
already lasted far longer than I would have thought she could. Still, the region 
here is lightly populated and it is moni
tored. She has not as yet contacted anyone. Her supplies must be running out by 
now. She will have to make contact with someone soon or starve."
"And you think I'm a likely candidate. Why? And what's she done?" He, too, 
switched to English; although translating was something of a struggle for him, 
English was more convenient for the sort of words needed to put the conversation 
into less than metaphorical statements.
"What she has done is irrelevant. I only apprehend. I do not judge. As you 
should well understand, it is best that you not know, in any case. As to why 
you, it is simple deduction. She is physically and culturally out of place. She 
speaks Espanol, some Creole, and Caribe dialects of them at that. I have 
determined that she must have been close enough to see your skimmer put down and 
discharge before leaving. That marks you as someone from Outside. The 
civilization of your own people is so different from hers, it must look to her 
like bands of savages. She will be frightened to go to them and unsure as to 
what help they could offer if they didn't kill her or eat her."
Even a Val couldn't be allowed to get away with that one. "My people are a 
highly cultured race. They kill only when they have to, and eating people would 
be repugnant!"
"I mean no offense, and I know what you say is truth. I apologize for any slur 
you might have inferred. Understand that I have her inside of me. I am going on 
the way she thinks."
He nodded, somewhat mollified. If he hadn't wanted to meet this fugitive before, 
he wanted to meet her even less now. The Val, however, was correct. Inside its 
head was the complete readout of this Montoya's entire record, essentially a 
copy of her memories and personality up to no more than a few months ago at 
best. That was the true edge the Val had and the reason why it was alleged that 
no one ever escaped them. And few had.
"Do what you have to do, but I do not wish to be involved," Hawks told it. 
"Apprehend her away from here. Unlike some people, I treasure the time I have in 
my homeland. This intrusion is not welcome."
"I understand, but you must understand me as well. There is only one of me. 
There are only three of my kind in this whole system. I can compute 
probabilities based upon all my information, but there are always unknowns, 
variables beyond my ability to include. I cannot merely stand around here in the 
shadows staking this area out. I can only come here and state that if you see 
her or she contacts you, you will calm her and shelter her here and when 
possible go down to the Four Families' camp and use the emergency trigger."
Hawks bristled, partly in frustration. He didn't want to turn this unknown 
woman, or anyone, over to a Val or anyone else, and now he would have to. When 
they finally caught her, they'd do a readout and know if she'd talked to him 
and, if so, what had been said. If they didn't like the way he had performed, 
the next readout taken would be his.
"I resent being placed in this position," he told the creature. "This is my 
land, my people, my way. My parents are buried near here. This is not the 
Councils; this is not the Presidium. Neither you nor she have any right here. 
And on this land, in this time, I am Hyiakutt, and I obey Hyiakutt law and 
custom. If she presents no danger to my people, I will, if she comes, offer her 
food and shelter as I would anyone from a strange nation passing through. If you 
come, she must go with you, but I will not be your surrogate. Not here."
The great hulking form of the Val was silent for a moment. "Fair enough," it 
said finally. "But I would not advise you to probe why she is here or why she is 
wanted. If I cannot find her, I cannot control her. Every moment she is near 
puts you at risk. Weigh that. I am not well versed in the details of every tribe 
and nation in this area, but I am unaware that any requires suicide to protect a 
stranger. Good night to you, sir."
The great creature turned and was quickly and silently lost in the darkness. 
Hawks continued to stare after it long after it had left, and he did not go in 
to sleep for another hour.
All these complications! he reflected with self pity. It was almost as if the 
world were conspiring against him.
Still as death, Hawks had been waiting in an almost trancelike state for over an 
hour as the chill, predawn mist rolled over him. Still, he was determined. After 
four mornings, he was going to get himself a deer.
There was a sudden rustling off to his right, and his eyes came open, every 
sense suddenly alert. He risked a look and for a moment saw nothing. Then, 
barely visible in the mist, he saw them: two, no, three deer, all yearling does, 
slowly wandering in search of good food to eat while the mists still protected 
them.
Slowly, by feel, he threaded his arrow and brought his bow up, so silent that 
the deer could have no idea he was there. The wind, too, was right, masking any 
scent they might pick up. He picked his spot and drew back the arrow tight, then 
froze, waiting for them to come to him.
It seemed an eternity before they started to move in the right direction. He 
practiced his breathing and tried to ease his tense muscles. The lead deer 
seemed to sense something wrong and stopped for a moment but then continued on, 
right into his line of fire.
Now! The arrow was loosed and struck the deer in the side. The animal reared, 
and the other two bounded away, but he was quick and got a second arrow up and 
flying before the wounded animal, still in shock, could make a move.
Then he was out and throwing his balanced rope at the deer's hind feet even as 
it began to move. It went down with a crash and lay there thrashing while he 
carefully administered the fatal arrow.
It was a good, clean kill. A lot of meat and smooth doeskin for a better lining 
on his clothes. He knew he had to move fairly quickly, though. The sun would be 
up in less than an hour, and the scavengers would also be out, spoiling the 
kill. He had tied his horse a good hundred meters down and away, but he turned 
now to go quickly and get her and assemble the wood and skin stretcher so that 
the deer could be rolled onto it and carried home.
He made his way directly, ignoring the paths, but less than halfway there he 
discovered something else and stopped dead, all elation, even all thoughts of 
the kill, suddenly gone.
The body had been there for some time. It was dressed in a tight black synthetic 
outfit and leather boots. It was not a pretty sight; the scavengers had been at 
her, and the flesh was crawling with insects and maggots.
He knew in a minute who it must be and understood why the Val had been out so 
long with nothing to show. She could have lain here until she rotted completely 
before being found without a search party.
In her stiff hand was a briefcase barely touched by the elements busily adding 
her to the woodlands. She also wore a standard emergency pack on her back, but 
from the looks of it she'd had little chance to use it, and it was filled with 
creepy-crawlies.
He had to break the fingers to release the briefcase. He backed away from her 
and the grisly feast that had been going on perhaps for weeks and examined the 
briefcase itself. It was not a courier model but something one would have 
procured for personal use. Like most manufactured items these days, it was 
cheap, and, while it had a lock, it did not appear booby-trapped. Almost on 
impulse, he pushed on the two red points inset in the case and was startled to 
hear it unlatch. The thing wasn't even locked!
There was no way anyone could have resisted looking inside. Some were the usual 
sorts of things one might expect of a woman traveling in unknown territories— 
some maps, an atlas of North America, even a guidebook to the Plains Nations 
with sample phrases. He wasn't surprised to find that the Hyiakutt weren't even 
mentioned.
Beyond those, there was a small wooden box with an antique key lock, the 
miniature key still in it, and an ancient-looking thick book that seemed about 
to fall apart at a touch. He examined it with the care of a professional 
historian. The pages were copies, not originals, which was just as well, as the 
date on the book, recorded in a firm hand, was more than six hundred years old. 
Still, even the copy was old—perhaps a century, perhaps more.
It appeared to be somebody's journal or diary. He put it aside for a moment, 
reluctantly, and turned to the case. The small key turned easily, and the lid 
came up. He was unprepared for the sight, however.
Jewelry. Gems, some in exquisite settings, many looking like heirlooms. There 
was some doubt in his mind that the things were real. Did diamonds and rubies 
and emeralds come that large? And was that pure gold?
He closed the box and relocked it. Clearly the diary or whatever it might be was 
the reason why somebody very important would requisition and dispatch a Val to 
this area. The jewels—suddenly he understood. A universal currency of sorts. A 
Caribe would think like that, not realizing how little such things meant to the 
People of North America. Still, it was not a bad choice at that, for they were 
finished gems and would be works of art in any tribal council.
Suddenly he was very aware of his situation. He replaced the briefcase and 
almost replaced the jewels, then changed his mind. If the Val did find her, it 
would see the broken fingers and the detached briefcase and would know that 
someone had found her first. If the jewels were not missing, it was as much as 
pointing a sign straight to his door.
He had not yet decided what to do about the book. For anyone who could read it, 
and particularly for a historian, it was irresistible, yet reading it could mean 
death— or worse. He would not make that final decision immediately. Instead, he 
continued on down and got his horse, then went back along the regular trail to 
his fallen deer and did what he had originally intended to do. Only, under the 
carcass, on the unmarked side, where no blood would flow, he hid the jewel box 
and the book.
He knew now that he had a decision to make that made his previous problems seem 
like child's play.

3. TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES

THE MOUNTAINS OF WESTERN CHINA WERE AS REMOTE and forbidding as any in the world 
and impossible to monitor or control effectively. There were no permanent 
natives to the region; the nearest settlements were far down the slopes and 
forty kilometers or more from the spot where the raiding party now stood, many 
of its members equipped with breathing apparatus to help them in the rarefied 
atmosphere where split seconds might mean living or dying. Colonel Chung, the 
old pro soldier in dark-green battle uniform, heavy boots, and cap, had a cigar 
stuck out of the side of his mouth. He needed no breathing gear; he sat in a 
skimmer, a dark, saucer-shaped craft that was rigged for totally silent running. 
It hovered there in the air while many others, deployed around the seemingly 
unbroken high cliffs of the mountains, disgorged soldiers and equipment. Chung 
was thankful that the spot was so remote; here he was not handicapped by 
Cultural Zone restrictions and could use his best and most modern equipment.
"They are good, I'll give them that," the colonel remarked for the benefit of 
anyone who could hear him there in the command module section of the skimmer. "I 
can't imagine where they even got their energy sources up here, let alone how 
they shielded them."
Song Ching looked at the gray-purple rock walls and understood what he meant. To 
go to these lengths, this group must have had something really important to hide 
and work on, something that, like all technology, required power. Satellites 
overhead could monitor even the smallest differences in temperature, pressure, 
and energy below, even through the densest clouds, and when they spotted 
something in an unauthorized spot, they immediately flagged security on the 
ground. Technologists' cells were rare in this day and age, but the few who 
remained were the best.
She was the sort of woman men fantasized about: small but perfectly 
proportioned, her face one of classical Han beauty, her gestures and movements 
somehow always erotic. Her looks masked her extreme intelligence: Her IQ off the 
measurable scale, and she was an authentic genius whose mind worked so fast and 
on so many levels it often seemed more computerlike than human. She was not 
without flaws; as the oldest child of the chief administrator of the Han 
district, she was spoiled rotten, and her intellectual and physical development 
had not been accompanied by any real emotional growth; there she was almost 
childlike, a situation her parents kept excusing because of her age, although 
she had just turned seventeen.
The colonel did not like having her there, but she'd been forced upon him by his 
superiors. They didn't know what this cell could be working on, and they needed 
her fine mind to figure it out before it was either destroyed or confiscated. 
Others might have done as well, but as the daughter of the chief administrator 
she had pulled her own strings to get here. It was an escape, however temporary, 
from her luxurious prison, from the reality she didn't particularly like.
She did, however, appreciate the irony of her being here, for she herself was 
the result of illegal technologists, her looks and her intelligence achieved 
through elaborate genetic manipulation. Like all the administrators, not just on 
Earth but throughout the Community, her father chafed at the restrictions placed 
upon him and his power and dreamed of some sort of end run. His own solution was 
an attempt, at great risk to his position and his life, to breed a superior line 
that might eventually be bright enough and fast enough to figure a way out of 
the trap the human race had woven for itself. Song Ching appreciated the goal 
and approved of it, but she did not like her own role, which was not to find 
that solution but to breed those who might.
"Burners locked on!" someone reported over the ship-to-ship channel. "All ships 
in place, troopers in position and shielded. Awaiting orders to proceed."
"Commence firing," Colonel Chung ordered without hesitation.
Immediately the five skimmers rose to preset positions, now visible to whatever 
lookout devices the cell might employ, and opened fire with bright rays of 
crimson and white that struck the rock face and began to cut through it. Ships' 
computers now had control, and once penetration had been achieved, the five 
attack skimmers moved in an eerie ballet, cutting through the imposing rock face 
as if it were butter.
Just before the circle was completed, a different skimmer rose and shot out a 
purple tongue of energy which struck the center of the cutout, and as the entire 
area was separated the" thick purple ray receded, pulling the rock cutout with 
it.
Suddenly revealed was a honeycomb of tunnels melted through the rock. It 
reminded Ching of a glass-sided ant farm, although there did not appear to be 
any "ants" here.
Now the troops, two hundred of them, sprang from cover on ledges and slopes 
opposite the target and flew into the air using null-gravity backpacks and small 
compressed-air steering jets.
"It's very large," she noted to the colonel. "I wonder why anybody who built 
something that large wouldn't defend it."
"They'll defend it," he assured her in an absent tone, his attention on his 
status screens and on the view out the control port. "When they find that their 
escape exits are blocked, they will defend or surrender."
Almost in answer to his comments, there was the sound of distant but large 
explosions which echoed through the valleys and passes of the high mountains, 
and from some of the revealed tunnels came large puffs of gray and black smoke.
Over the ground-to-air intercom came lots of shouts, curses, and screams. The 
colonel cut in.
"Ground, do you require reinforcements at this point?" he asked calmly, as if he 
were some distant observer of a football game between two teams he hardly cared 
about.
"Captain Li here," came a thin response. "They detonated explosives along the 
main tunnel walls leading to a main chamber. Only a few casualties, but we're 
having to burn our way through. Give us ten minutes, then send in second wave. 
Acknowledge."
"Acknowledged," the colonel responded. "Stand by, second wave. Ten minutes."
Song Ching stared at the colonel and wondered how he could maintain such a calm 
demeanor. She herself was feeling a tremendous rush of excitement, and she only 
regretted that she wasn't allowed down there to experience it firsthand. She 
longed for the real thrill, the adrenaline rush, her life on the line, her mind 
and body against another's...
She was paying the price for stealing the skimmer when she'd been just fifteen 
and zooming along the rivers, panicking the peasants in the fields, going under 
bridges and zooming full speed at low levels through valleys between the hills. 
She'd finally blown two enercells and had to make a glide-in landing in a rice 
paddy, and it had been the most fun she'd ever had. However, the cost to her 
father in favors granted, promises extracted, and all-out trouble to cover up 
the incident had clamped the lid on. Even then, totally covering it up had been 
possible only because no one believed that a fifteen-year-old girl with no 
pilot's training could take up and fly something as complex as a skimmer.
"I want to go down there, now," she told the colonel.
He gave a low chuckle. "You know better."
"I said I want to go now!" she snapped. "Arrange it!"
"I am not one of your servants or your parents' functionaries," he responded 
coolly. "You did everything possible to put yourself here, so you are under my 
command and you take my orders. I do not take yours."
She grew angry. "How dare you speak to me that way? I will have you cleaning out 
toilets in the paddies!"
"No, you will not. You will sit back and calm down and do as I say or you will 
be sent back and severed immediately from this operation. Your parents briefed 
me on you and gave me full authority in this matter. They want me to kick you 
out, if you must know. You are presenting me with an excuse and a temptation I 
find difficult to resist."
"No one speaks to me in that way! What do you want me to do? Scream rape?"
He was unfazed. "A mindprint would clear me and indict you, and since it would 
be in another jurisdiction because of your rank, your father couldn't get rid of 
that evidence. You are already coming close to the inevitable day when you will 
commit an act that your family cannot cover up or patch over. I am too busy for 
this. You have a choice. Go back over there and shut up, or persist in any way 
and I will have you restrained and taken back where you—not me—will bear 
responsibility for delaying or imperiling this operation. One more word and you 
may complain to your father at a later date, but it will not get you down 
there!"
She was furious, but she wanted desperately to get down. Clearly he could and 
would do what he said, and she had no choice but to sit and sulk. She would get 
him, though. She would make him burn, somehow, somewhere, someday.
It took almost four hours to clear and secure the technologist cell. At the end, 
forty-seven had been killed and almost twice that number wounded, but all but 
two of the three hundred twenty-four technologists had been killed. Those who 
were not killed in the defense committed suicide, taking their families with 
them. The only two survivors were young boys who had been felled in an explosion 
and had been presumed dead by their own. They would be taken to Center for 
interrogation and disposition. The rest could hardly be blamed for choosing 
death. There were punishments far worse than death for people like them.
Finally, when the whole place was scanned and the remaining booby traps were 
dismantled, the signal was given for the follow-up technicians to come on in, 
and that included Song Ching.
It had been bitter cold outside, and the tunnels were not much warmer, although 
they offered protection from the outside winds. She entered wearing a sable coat 
and parka and matching fur pants and fur-lined boots, but she was still cold. 
"Didn't they have any heat in here?" she griped.
"Plenty," one of the officers responded. "They actually had a home-built fusion 
reactor in a chamber well below here, although they had air locks on the tunnels 
to keep any temperature changes from registering on the monitor surveys. Had it 
rigged to blow, too, but we got lucky and intercepted the destruct system. Like 
most amateurs they never expected to be hit from the rock face side; they 
thought in terms of defending from attack through their entry and exit tunnels. 
Their big blowup was rigged right along where we came in. Of course, cutting the 
mains here also cut the master systems throughout the complex, so no real heat, 
and we have to supply our own lights. We don't dare restore that reactor. It's 
an odd design, and we might still blow it out of ignorance."
She was led into a large chamber that was clearly a high-tech laboratory. There 
were a number of small independent computers there, as well as test areas and 
hardware assembly divisions. It was impressive; she had never seen or heard of 
anything like it before.
There was a vast supply of data storage modules that would have to be examined 
and a fair number of actual books, which was something of a surprise. They 
appeared to be mostly facsimiles of ancient texts in a number of languages, and 
those she examined were totally unfamiliar to her, although she saw a few 
patterns in the choice of subjects.
The assemblage was all the more amazing because almost all of it was modified 
from stock items and therefore had to be stolen from somewhere—yet that was 
supposed to be impossible. Every single computer and even every single module 
was coded and tracked at all times by the Master System. Even disconnecting or 
moving such things without permission would be flagged and investigated 
immediately. Flowers of Heaven! There were even three mindprint devices here! 
Those could not even be operated except by the Master System!
She examined everything thoroughly. A brown-clad Special Team was there now, 
working swiftly and efficiently, taking her direction. The Special Team was 
expert at doing just one thing—diverting parts of illicit technology from such 
finds without their activities showing on the visual or scan records. These were 
the same experts who could make certain that a chief administrator, or his 
daughter, had no trace of this on their mindprints to flag the Master System. 
The colonel placed far too much faith in mindprint evidence for his own good, 
Song Ching thought smugly.
The brown-clad workers were wizards at what they did, but the risk was very 
high, even more to them than to their employers. They were, however, richly 
rewarded for their skills.
Just as the administrators and regents had discovered holes in the supposedly 
static system over the centuries, so, too, did the technologists here find holes 
no one else had ever dreamed of. To divert this much, all undetected, and build 
a complex this grand, remaining undetected for who knew how long—years, 
certainly—was an incredible achievement. It was her primary job to evaluate what 
the brown troopers should deal with before the mass was turned in to Master 
System, but after that the real challenge would be to discover what they 
discovered and whether or not it would be of any use to her family. She would 
also love to know how they'd managed all this, but to trace it all back without 
tripping any flags would be far more risky than this.
She used a small hand-held device to check out storage modules at random. She 
couldn't read them, but she could read their directories if they weren't 
severely encoded and choose which ones she'd need herself. As for the books, she 
wanted them all and insisted on it. These sort of books were so unusual that 
Master System would not even suspect they had ever been there, but she would bet 
that they held the key to a lot of work done here. Certainly the texts had been 
copied onto modules for insurance, but that would only give consistency to the 
mass of data Master System would get.
Her hand-held checker indicated that all data on the modules was in complex 
code, but the directories, although a bit obscure in title, were in the clear. A 
machine would translate the data; however, they wanted to make certain that 
anyone could read the directories if need be.
It was simple to find a pattern; she hardly needed to look at more than one in a 
hundred to see that. Their primary project was something to do with spacecraft 
computer logic control and navigation. She wanted those and some of the ancient 
archival material copied by the brown team before removal. Much of the rest 
involved how they had been able to fool Master System for so long. She would 
have loved to have it all, but there wasn't time, and Master System would take 
particular care in seeing that they had not been opened or copied on to foreign 
devices. They had to remain.
Major Chi, head of the brown team, was efficient and methodical and completed 
the work with a speed she would have thought impossible, even as the regular 
troops were carting out the contraband to be hauled away and turned over to 
Master System.
Chi shook his head in wonder. "What were they doing that they would risk so much 
and die rather than surrender? What kind of people were these?"
"Dissident fanatics," she told him. "Apparently they were working on a way to 
hijack and seize control of a large spacecraft and steer it to some world so far 
out that they would be beyond the reach of the Community."
He seemed startled. "Is that possible?"
"I don't know. They thought so, and they certainly did a lot even here."
The family generally spent the worst of the winter months at their estate in 
Hainan. The island province was always warm, if a bit too wet, and technically 
her father was a leading warlord there, with an estate and peasants and vast 
agricultural lands as befitted a chief general. The people of Hainan, and even 
the bulk of those on his own lands and in his own service, did not even know 
that he was anything more than their warlord and leader. When there, the family 
lived in the ancient style and observed the age-old ways, as the rules required.
That, of course, was the primary hole through which almost all the 
administrators and regents slipped eventually. When spending time outside the 
administrative district, one was required to take on a template properly suited 
to blending in with the natives. It was a simple, routine procedure, in which 
trusted technicians marked forbidden secrets in the subject's mind, to be 
suppressed in the conscious band, which was the only one recorded. There were no 
flags in this procedure because the local computers controlling the mindprint 
machinery had never really been able to distinguish between what had to be 
suppressed to keep the rules straight and what was requested suppressed because 
otherwise it would be flagged as high treason.
Computers were in fact smarter than humans, but they were not human and never 
had been able to grasp totally the intricacies of the human mind, particularly 
its devious-ness. They thought they did, but they actually found only the 
clear-cut and the obvious. The amateur would always get caught; the 
professionals slipped through as if the barriers and checks were not even there. 
Since the computers understood very well how to control people in groups, and 
manage them, and understand when things didn't go their way and why, it 
apparently never occurred to any of the machines that they were being had. The 
price of true superiority was in underestimating the capabilities of the 
inferior.
Song Ching, after filing her reports, had gone almost immediately to the 
estates, allegedly to prepare them for the coming of the full family a bit 
later. That would be quite a crowd, too—not merely the immediate family but 
grandparents, aunts, uncles, their families and their children's families, and 
all the rest. Since this was routine family business, no recording would be 
made, and so no suppression was necessary. Going back, however, she would be 
forced to surrender many memories and much knowledge until they could be 
restored by her family physicians later. And in this case she was more under the 
clock's gun than usual. Even chief administrators were forced to take Leave, and 
that time for her parents and for their children was fast approaching. At that 
time a recording would be made, and much would have to be suppressed. So much, 
in fact, that long sessions with hypnotic drugs would be necessary before Leave 
to ensure their safety and even longer ones after it to restore what had been 
lost.
While on Leave, even they wouldn't know about the special underground rooms 
built beneath and in back of the main house on Hainan, containing the private 
and illegal technology garnered by ambitious administrators past and present.
A number of other teenage boys and girls from the greater family were also sent 
down ahead to prepare things. Most would do exactly that, but because of their 
family position all knew far more than they should about the forbidden things 
Song Ching and her family were doing.
She always hated the time they stayed there, although it was a beautiful house 
in a beautiful land and she certainly felt the strong cultural ties to her 
ancestors and their customs and ways very strongly. The problem was the pecking 
order, which was so complicated that it was nearly impossible to sort out in a 
situation like this. Culturally, girls were supposed to be at one and the same 
time the strength of the family and deferential to the boys and drip humility, 
something she had never been much good at doing. On the other hand, she was for 
this time the ranking family member of the warlord's immediate family and as 
such was in total charge of her home. She was in the position of having to be 
the gracious and humble hostess to her cousins, particularly the male ones, yet 
able without argument to kick their rear ends out of there and into the rice 
paddies if they gave her cause. The best balance was something of a truce—a 
public posture as expected, while in private she was the acting matriarch.
She had, in fact, a small circle of friends who were also quite bright, although 
none were in her league. These were her cousins, sixteen-year-old Tai Ming, 
fifteen-year-old Ahn Xaio, and seventeen-year-old Wo Hop. Ahn and Wo, the two 
boys, were both very much smitten with Song Ching's naturally erotic moves and 
build that was the Han ideal and tended to be very desirous of her company and 
attention. This caused a bit of friction with Tai Ming, who herself would have 
been a beauty in most cultures but whose rather large breasts were considered 
too much for Han beauty, and she spent time and discomfort in keeping them tied 
down so she would appear flatter.
Trusted servants who were also security personnel prepared the meals, but the 
two girls served as befitted custom, then joined the boys.
"You've been missing much the past two weeks," Ahn said to Ching, not without a 
certain regret in his voice. "You work too hard."
She smiled. "I have had much to do and little time to do it. What I have found, 
though, is most incredible and most dangerous to know."
They leaned forward, all ears.
"Have any of you ever been on a spaceship?"
The conversation, within a house whose design went back a thousand years or 
perhaps many times that, among children eating on mats on the floor by lantern 
light while outside hordes of peasants chanted as they finished the day's rice 
planting, seemed remarkably out of place and time.
"I have," Tai responded, surprising them all.
"You? When?" Wo Hop responded incredulously.
"At the spaceport in Inner Mongolia. My father once had to go there on business 
and took me along. We got to tour a big one."
"Oh. On the ground," Hop responded, sounding a bit derisive. "I thought you 
meant you went in one." Almost no one was permitted to do that.
Tai Ming was not taking the comment well. "And I suppose you have flown in one? 
Gone to another world?"
"Of course not! That's silly!"
"Not so silly," Song Ching put in. "The cult we raided last month had plans to 
steal a ship and fly it to a new world far beyond the reach of the Community, 
and they solved the hard part of the problem."
"That's dumb," Ahn responded. "Maybe you could sneak on or something, or even 
fool the records into getting you aboard, but all spaceships are flown by 
computers to preset destinations. Everybody knows that!"
"Well, they weren't always," Ching told him. "Way back in the past they were 
flown by people and computers, with the people in charge. That's clear from the 
records. What these people discovered is that while the Master System took the 
people out of the loop, it never really altered the basic design interfaces. 
They're still made so a human who knew what she was doing could easily remove 
just three modular electronics bridges and restore it the way it was."
They were interested but skeptical. "Yeah, well, maybe that's so, but who would 
know how to fly it? That's no skimmer you're talking about," Wo Hop noted.
"You're right, but that's the crazy thing. You don't have to know how to pilot 
it or navigate it to fly it. The computer does that. It just does it at your 
command, that's all. It's a human-to-computer interface. Lets you direct the 
computer at the speed of thought, but the computer does all the work and even 
watches out for the dangerous stuff."
"And you could fly it?" Tai Ming asked incredulously. "To Mars or something?"
"Far beyond Mars if you wanted. Plot and create your wormholes and you could go 
almost anyplace in the known galaxy. The only major time involved is when you're 
in the solar system or another system."
"Well, that may be true," Ahn said, "but what good is it? They'd pick you up or 
shoot you down before you got too far, anyway. And even if you got away—then 
what? Any place you land you'd get whisked to Master System so fast, you 
wouldn't even know where you were."
"You are right, of course, my cousin, but still, to pilot your own spaceship..."
They had gotten involved with her on a number of very dangerous and risky 
escapades in the past, but this was a bit beyond even Song Ching's scale of 
daring. It scared them, and they didn't like it. Aware that the servants, too, 
had ears, Tai Ming successfully maneuvered the conversation to other, less 
dangerous channels.
Still, Song Ching worked on the problem far beyond what her duties required, 
because it fascinated her—not merely the fact that this interface existed but 
that it was so obvious if you knew what you were looking for. Few would, but she 
found it hard to believe that these techies had actually discovered the 
principle first after all this time. Stolen it perhaps, and modified it for 
their own purposes, or even deduced it from lots of pilfered information, but 
there was nothing here to suggest the kind of work it would take to discover and 
develop this from scratch. The implication of that was of even greater import 
than the existence of the interface itself.
Somewhere, out there in space, there were people— human beings—flying their own 
spaceships, going where they directed and for their own, not the Master 
System's, purposes. As a chief administrator's daughter, she took the subversion 
of the supposedly ironclad hold of the computers for granted, but this—this was 
on a scale that none of her family even dreamed was possible, of that she was 
certain. They, who had believed themselves masters of the system, were hardly 
that. It was as if they were the comptrollers of some exchange who had managed 
to embezzle just a tiny bit each month and thought they had beaten the system 
only to discover suddenly that someone else had been stealing from the master 
vaults all the time. But who were these people who had such knowledge, and what 
else could they do that was impossible? The implications continued to mount in 
her mind. The impossible, the inconceivable, was suddenly probable. There might 
be many people, perhaps large numbers, living in cracks in the system known only 
to them, totally outside the Community and its controls. The concept was 
exciting, yes, but also frightening. If the gods could be so mocked, how less 
than absolute might their powers be?
The old Earth turned creakingly, originally the birth-world but now a minor and 
half-forgotten backwater in the universe. Inward along the spiral arm and across 
to another such arm of the galaxy was the Community, although communal it was 
not. The old term stuck only because all the inhabited worlds of the two arms 
did in fact have something in common: All were subject to the Master System; all 
were owned and operated by the same manager.
Its long-ago origins on Earth were lost; the creation had suppressed or 
discarded what was not relevant to its goals. One thing was certain: Once, upon 
the Earth, humanity had built a great machine that thought better and faster 
than they did and had such intelligence and such a capacity for storing and 
analyzing information that the servant had become the master. The legends all 
said that it acted to preserve humanity from its own bent for self-destruction, 
but then, the legends were also part of the system.
All that was truly clear to the tiny minority who knew what truth they were 
permitted to know was that the great machine, called a computer only because it 
was unique and there was no other term for it, had restructured and 
revolutionized humanity under a Master System, or set of imperatives, that only 
it knew or understood. Only the results could be seen, and what was known of the 
imperatives deduced from what resulted.
There was certainly an imperative to preserve humanity against destruction from 
within and without. The great machine had elected expansion as the best means of 
ensuring this. It solved the enormous roadblocks to interstellar travel and did 
so as a practical engineering problem because it needed to do so. Such travel 
was under its own control and no other. It had created more great machines, each 
specific to the tasks at hand, all also under its control and subject to the 
same imperatives. These machines went forth and explored the universe as they 
could and developed other worlds for habitation.
But there were few Earthlike worlds out there, and massive terraforming of the 
ones that had potential was slow and not an efficient or logical use of 
resources. Far easier to modify the inhabitants to fit existing conditions, with 
minimal terraforming for the worst—exobiology and psychogenetics were mere 
engineering problems to the great machine, which itself was growing and 
developing its own powers and capabilities as it proceeded with its own plans 
for humanity.
Earth's five-plus billion had been reduced to a mere five hundred thousand 
scattered over the planet. The rest had been sent to settle the stars. Earth 
itself had been divided into districts, and each district had its own imposed 
culture drawn from its own history and background. These cultures were quite 
correct as to their ethnic and geographic places, but they shared a common 
limitation: All were frozen in preindustrial eras of their past.
But the great machine had a universe to develop, and other imperatives as well, 
and had no wish to rule, only to maintain. A few, only the best and the 
brightest from each cultural district, would have to know the truth—that there 
was something beyond the world and culture into which they had been born. Such a 
static set of cultures required management, and the great machine wished neither 
to manage nor to set lesser machines to manage. No one knew why, since it would 
have been easy to do and absolute in its controls. Master System was 
incomprehensible to all but itself.
Those who oversaw the system were routinely checked for a series of things they 
might know or intend which were on the Master System's proscribed list, and 
supposedly all the computers of Earth reported regularly and often all that they 
had been asked or were doing to that same Master System. Occasionally someone 
was flagged; when one was, it was up to the administrators to apprehend and deal 
with the culprit in any way they saw fit but in all cases to remove and isolate 
the marked individual. In a very few cases, the Master System would send its 
own, the Vals, to minimize any chance of something really dangerous or 
threatening creeping into human knowledge.
All contact between the worlds of the new humanity was indirect; computers under 
the Master System alone piloted and navigated the spacecraft and alone knew the 
secrets of how it was done. Most spacecraft, in fact, had no provisions for 
human occupancy: no air, no pressurization, no way for any living thing to have 
a spacefaring habitat. There were, however, a few that had such provisions, 
because there was occasionally a need for a few to travel somewhere. Most ships 
were interplanetary rather than interstellar, since Mars, at least, was 
colonized and there was some natural contact and interdependency among the human 
administrators, and a certain level of experimentation was allowed on isolated 
outposts.
Just where the great machine was that administered and coordinated this as it 
had for many centuries was unknown as well, but it had originated on Earth and 
was certainly nearby. The space traffic to and from the solar system was 
enormous, always dense and busy, yet the worlds and people there were now 
considered unimportant. Master System's term was "stabilized." Earth and Mars 
were stabilized worlds, more zoos or carefully managed living exhibits than 
natural social institutions. One thing was very clear: The Master System wished 
to stabilize the entire galaxy, at the very least, and spent much of its time 
doing just that.
North America had its native American exhibit, quite varied but strictly 
pre-Columbian; South America had become Portuguese colonial, about 1600. China 
had its Han exhibit and also smaller exhibits for the Mongols and the Manchus. 
Europe was thinly populated and medieval; the Slavs had European Russia and the 
Balkans. There was also a precolonial India, an aboriginal Australia, a medieval 
Arabic mideast and Mediterranean Africa, and a complex polyglot of sub-Saharan 
African cultures, pre-thirteenth century, although the major ones were the Zulu 
Empire of the south, the Bantu of the center, and Songhai to within a few 
hundred kilometers of the Arabic-Berber coast. There was no Sahara; that 
human-made waste had been reclaimed to savannas and plains and once again teemed 
with game.
The Earth was a vast area of living, breathing, thinking exhibits who lived as 
their culture dictated and had no knowledge of the greater world or the universe 
beyond. A living museum with no visitors, no students, no onlookers at all save 
the tiny number of those who were its caretakers.
And now the daughter of one of those caretakers sat at her computer, an illegal 
device that did not speak to Master System or to anyone or anything else but its 
operator, and deduced with a fair degree of certainty that there were a few not 
in the exhibits, that in spite of the seeming absoluteness of the system there 
were some who were not in their cages but out there somewhere, running wild.
Song Ching was anxious to tell her father all about her experiences and her 
discoveries, but he never just arrived; as Governor, or warlord, of the entire 
island province, he came in with a massive entourage and had a huge load of 
prescribed duties, audiences and the like, when he did settle in.
Although she was spoiled and protected, she and her father were not close. It 
was unlikely that a man who had risen to his position and power would allow 
anyone really close to him, but he was also a man of his dynastic culture, one 
in which daughters were not highly prized and women were supposed to know their 
place and joyously accept it. She was there not because he wished a daughter but 
because sons would inherit many duties and responsibilities and be much in the 
public eye, while a daughter could be kept to the one task that was his dream.
For herself, she could think only of her discoveries and anxiously awaited the 
inevitable summons. It came three days after he arrived, and it was to be a 
totally private audience in his office. There were the usual guards at the 
doors, of course, but she was shown right in and discovered her father sitting 
Buddhalike on a silk mat, totally alone.
He was a large man, not just for a Han, but in general, but his round face, 
broad shoulders, and thick, squat body made him appear chubby and less imposing.
She bowed and then sat on another mat, facing him, and waited for his eyes to 
open and for him to speak. He was the one man she feared and respected and, 
despite his coldness, loved.
He began to speak without opening his eyes. "I have read the reports on the raid 
and your conduct, and they say you did quite well. It seems that we acted just 
in time with these people. There is a ship capable of carrying passengers in 
system now, and several shuttle boats are in for refurbishing at Ulan Bator. It 
appears that these were the target. They would not have been able to get away 
with it, of course, but it would have brought dishonor upon me and my 
administrators. We would certainly—and deservedly—be held responsible for such a 
breach. It was for that reason that I allowed you to go along on the raid. Our 
family honor required one of us to participate in its success."
She bowed her head. "I humbly thank you, my father, for the opportunity. I have 
learned much from what was recovered."
His eyes opened, and he stared at her. "Oh? And what did you learn?"
She was required to keep herself humble and calm, but inside she was highly 
excited. "They had found a way that humans could both pilot and navigate 
spaceships, even interstellar ones, almost without training." She paused, 
expecting at least an exclamation of surprise, but he did not react.
"Yes? And what else?"
She suddenly realized that he must have known that in order to have made the 
opening comment he did. A little shamefaced, she realized that she had not been 
exclusively privy to the copies of the files, records, and devices from the 
raid.
"It is almost certain—well over ninety-nine percent— that this was known to 
others and that this sort of thing has been done in the past and is being done 
now by person or groups unknown. I believe that there are people out there who 
have access to all that we have but who are not in or subject to the Community. 
It was this discovery that led to their plans."
"It is so," he admitted. "The question is how such a group came into possession 
of this knowledge."
She was rocked by the comment. He knew!
"That information was not in the files we recovered," she told him, stifling her 
emotions as much as possible. "It is something that security personnel must 
discover by other means."
"Yes. Unfortunately, it will take much time to identify and trace all the 
illegals and find the leak without alerting Master System."
It was getting to be too much for her. "Please excuse my forwardness, but it is 
inconceivable to me that Master System does not at least know of their 
existence."
"You are quite correct, daughter, but you do not understand the vastness of 
space. Consider what these illegals were able to build and accomplish right 
here, under our very noses, as it were. If it can exist here, imagine how much 
easier it is to hide in space. It is not our concern and is no longer your 
concern. It is, however, deadly knowledge that threatens us all. I will arrange 
to have all traces of it removed from your mind at the first opportunity."
"Father! I beg of you! Do not do this to me! I—"
He stopped her with a glance and a gesture. "Enough. I tolerate too much from 
you now." He paused a moment. "I have allowed you a grand childhood, the envy of 
any others, male or female. I have, in fact, been far too patient far too long. 
Yet someone who will threaten one of my officers with a false rape charge, a 
most dishonorable action that brings shame on your mother and on me, I am forced 
to notice—and to realize that the time has come to end this period of your 
life."
He was the one man who could chasten her, make her feel real shame, and she felt 
tears coming up inside of her. Yet deep down an inner voice said angrily, "That 
son of a pig Chung! Somehow I will kill him personally!" Aloud she responded, 
"It was my excitement and my enthusiasm. I meant to bring no shame upon anyone, 
not even the colonel."
"I can understand and perhaps excuse the infraction on its face, but this is a 
special case. You interfered with a key man in the midst of a mission vital to 
our family's survival, and you did it to get him to violate my orders. My 
orders. The gods know you have violated everyone else's orders and advice, but 
attempting to willfully violate my orders is intolerable. You were designed to 
bear tomorrow's leaders, the offspring who will ensure this family's rule and 
perhaps advance it. We are coming up on Leave Time. During this Leave you will 
be married, here."
His words startled her. He had talked like this before, but now it really 
sounded as if he meant it. "Married? To whom?"
"It would serve you right if I gave you to Colonel Chung. He has most of the 
correct qualities, and it would be justice. However, it would also place him 
within this family and far too close to me for my own liking. The truth is, 
there are a number of candidates, subject to the same sort of breeding 
attributes as yourself, but I have had more pressing matters and have put off 
making a final choice. I will no longer let it go. You are seventeen, and that 
is old enough. You will be informed in due time."
She wanted to protest, but there was really only one way to do so, and that was 
to appeal to an intermediate power. "Does mother know of this?"
He did not take offense at the question. Of course, what her mother liked or 
didn't like was beside the point when he made such a decision, but she was not 
exactly one who would be easy to mollify. The wife of a great man was herself a 
politician and had many ways to work her will upon him. If all else failed, his 
wife alone knew many secrets that would be uncomfortable to have leaked, even in 
the family holdings and on the Han cultural level.
"Your mother and I have talked this over many times. She will, of course, have a 
voice in the final selection as is her right and duty, but she is certainly in 
full agreement on this. It is decided, daughter. Go. Enjoy this time, which is 
the last of childhood. It is precious."
This disturbing interview had suddenly turned her world upside down. She had 
gone in flush with discovery and wanting so much her father's approval and 
appreciation of her work; instead, she had found that what she knew was known to 
him, and that her comfortable life was about to take a radical turn for what 
could only be the worse.
She occupied her mind over the next few days helping the relatives move in and 
lending a hand in the kitchens and service areas, but there was no joy in it. 
Ahead, the marriage loomed like a great threatening wall against which she was 
to be dashed, and every day that wall drew closer and closer.
She was in the great formal gardens in back of the main house, just looking at 
the beautiful flowers and wanting to be as alone as possible in this 
environment, when Tai Ming and Ahn Xaio sought her out.
They greeted her warmly, but something was clearly on their minds. "You two are 
so serious," she noted. "What—are your parents marrying you off as well?" The 
knowledge of her father's decision had spread quickly, if only because such 
things for one of her rank took much time to prepare.
"No—not yet, anyway," Ming responded hesitantly. "It's just that there are—"
"There are rumors," Ahn put in. "Strong rumors. Rumors supported by things 
overheard and repeated."
"About what? My marriage? My husband to be?"
"In a way," Ming responded, trying to figure out a way to say it.
Song Ching knew that these two had much closer contact with the servants and 
staff than she possibly could and that the servant and staff gossip network was 
extremely reliable and useful. "One of you—out with it! I can no longer stand 
this!"
"Your father has told you that the knowledge you gained from the raid must be 
erased?" Tai Ming asked her.
She nodded. "Yes, and I don't like it. I have never liked anyone inside my mind 
even when it was for safety's sake, and I like erasures even less, but they have 
no choice in this matter. Surely you have been told the same."
"Yes. All of us will be sent back to the Center before Leave time comes," Ahn 
admitted, getting it out at last. "You, however, will be treated differently, 
although you are not supposed to know that. They have a team of experts ready. 
Psychochemists, a complete psychotech team—all for you. Your father was 
overheard giving the orders to General Chin." Chin was his chief aide, his 
deputy up at administration headquarters, and would be acting director while her 
father was on Leave.
"Oh, Song Ching, they are going to remake you!" Tai Ming blurted tearfully. 
"They—he said it was the only way you would ever be a good wife and mother."
She suddenly felt a little nauseous. "He wouldn't dare!" she responded angrily, 
but she knew her father well enough to know that not only would he dare, he'd do 
it. He had probably been planning it all the time, which was why he'd let her go 
on so long as she was. He'd been testing her, both for abilities and for 
physical and mental development! Now she'd passed the last test. But her father 
would never consider her an end result, merely the bearer of grandsons who would 
be allowed the power and position she craved and deserved but which could never 
be hers.
Now she would fulfill her father's master plan. There was no way around it. She 
could hardly avoid the psychotechnicians who would be required before going on 
Leave—to leave undisturbed all that she knew would be sure death not only for 
the family but for her—and then she'd be at the mercy of her father's power and 
directives. She would never come off Leave. She would be wiped clean of active 
memory and replaced with a template she was quite certain her father had 
commanded to be made up for her long ago, one which would leave her a docile, 
obedient, subservient little woman with no knowledge of any world beyond Hainan 
and no interest in it, either. She'd still be as smart, but that would just make 
it worse, since she would be totally bound and constricted by her culture. It 
would be a boring, pampered, frustrating life of perpetual pregnancy—with no way 
out.
She knew that they could do it. They could erase anything from your mind and 
replace it so you'd never know. They could give you chemicals that would go to 
your brain and settle into receptors that could make even someone like her into 
a meek, docile, bubble-headed nymphomaniac.
She thanked them for their warning and concern and asked to be alone once more, 
but she did not remain in the garden. Instead, she went back to the house and 
then down through the secret chambers and guarded passages to the computer room. 
She was a genius and genetically superior to them all, even her father. Given 
enough information to go on, there had to be a solution even to this sort of 
problem.
She sat down at the computer and activated it, then stopped, staring at the bank 
of machinery that was so familiar and so simple to her. In another month she 
would not even dream that this room or this equipment existed, and if shown it, 
she would find it magical and incomprehensible. No matter what risks might be 
involved, the alternative was too much to bear. She would show them all!

4. THE FIVE GOLD RINGS

HAWKS LOOKED TERRIBLE. CLOUD DANCER WAS SO so shocked at his appearance that she 
feared he was having a new attack of the madness.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, looking wild and suddenly very old. A deer 
carcass was in the salt bin, unskinned, uncarved, apparently much as he'd killed 
it. His hair was disheveled, his face and clothing were covered in dirt and 
smeared with the deer's blood, now caked and dried, and it was clear that he'd 
done nothing but return here to sit where he sat now, just staring.
Staring, but not at nothing.
On the dirt floor of the hogan, about two meters in front of him, lay a battered 
case of some kind, with metal latches. He stared at it as if it were some evil, 
poisonous snake that had come to take his life.
"I beg your forgiveness for intruding," she tried lamely. "Are you ill? Shall I 
run for the medicine man?"
His eyes did not leave the case. "No. The illness is of my own fashioning and is 
not something that can be shared without it being transferred."
She stared at him in wonder. "Does it come from that box?"
He nodded. "Yesterday, while hunting deer, I found a dead body clutching that 
box. The body was long dead, but it is the object of a great search. The box is 
what the demon seeks. The box is what the dead woman died to protect."
She looked at it. "What is in it?"
"Death is in it. It will kill any who look inside and understand what is there."
She grew afraid not for herself but for him. "And you have looked inside and 
understand?"
"I have looked inside briefly, yes, but I have not looked closely enough to be 
stung by its venom. Not yet."
"Then it is an evil thing that tempts you to destruction. Its spirits have hold 
of your soul but do not yet own it. I will take it away if you like."
He suddenly looked up at her, eyes blazing. "No!"
"What would it matter if it killed me? It would give my life meaning to have 
saved the soul of someone as important as you."
He frowned, and some semblance of reason crept into his dark eyes. "The evil of 
the box cannot harm you, except through me. It is true, too, that to give you 
the box and have you take it to the Four Families' lodge would be the safe 
course, the only course that would save me. It is the curse of that box that I 
cannot permit it."
She did not understand his problem on his level, but she understood it on the 
level of the Hyiakutt. "You think it would dishonor you to do so? That it would 
make you something of a coward? The warrior who rushes headlong and alone into 
the spears and arrows of countless enemies is a brave man, but he is also a dead 
one and a fool, for he dies without purpose. I have seen many fools in my 
lifetime. They sing stories about them at the fires of the chiefs, but they are 
not taught to the warriors as men to model themselves after. To die delaying an 
enemy so others might live is honorable and brave. To die for nothing but your 
own glory is not honorable; it is evil, for it leaves a woman and children 
crying and alone, and a tribe without a warrior who might be needed. Let me take 
the box."
He sighed. "No. What you say is true, but it is not merely honor that is the 
curse of the box. The dishonor is not in fearing death, for I do not fear it in 
a good cause. The evil that this box represents is the evil that I have never 
faced, the truth of the evil of our system. Any system that makes a man fear 
knowledge is an evil system. I realized that when I spoke to the demon weeks ago 
and it warned me that in this box were things I should not know. Am not 
permitted to know. I am a historian, a scholar. My life is a quest for 
knowledge, for truth. That box is truth. It beckons me. I did not ask for it, 
but to not look, to not know, would be to betray all that I am. To not look 
would make my life, my work, meaningless. One can find another's truth if given 
only lies and partial information to work on, but one can never find the real 
truth. Do you see? If I do not look, my past and my future are meaningless, a 
lie. Yet if I look, those who know the contents of the box will kill me, and 
there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from that."
Cloud Dancer went over to the case, knelt down beside it, examined it to see how 
it opened, then opened it. The books and papers inside were meaningless to her. 
"Then you must look," she said simply. She did not understand his position, but 
she accepted it. "If your life is a quest for truth and this box contains it, 
you must divine its meanings. The warrior who charges alone into the enemy 
betrays the tribe as well as himself and his family. This is not you. The 
warrior who fights to defend himself, his tribe, and his family, although the 
odds are long and the defense hopeless, is true to all of them. I do not 
understand your words, but if you are true and do not fear death, then it is 
clear you must divine the box."
His jaw dropped a bit, and he stared at her anew. How simple it all was 
according to her logic, and how obvious. She was right. He was a warrior and had 
no other moral or honorable course. Was it not far better to die for the truth 
than forever live a lie?
"I will divine the secrets, if they may be divined by one such as myself," he 
told her. As if a terrible weight had been lifted from his mind, he felt free, 
even a little excited. He also suddenly felt quite self-conscious. "I will not 
do so in this condition, like some madman of the prairie, however. How is it 
outside?"
"It is a warm day for this late in the year," she told him. "And the river water 
is not yet too cold."
"Then I will bathe and sleep, and then I will look at the box."
"And I will take those foul clothes and try to remove the stains." She looked 
down at the contents of the briefcase. "Those strange markings. They are a 
code?"
"They are writing. A way of making words on paper that another can read and 
understand. That one there holds the words of one long dead and probably unknown 
to most or all today. He speaks on that paper to me or anyone who can divine the 
words, although he is long dead and long forgotten, in a language no longer 
known or used, at least in our land. He speaks things those who are our lords do 
not Wish us to know. I will know them."
But the task was neither as easy nor as clear-cut as he'd believed.
The handwritten volume, which he'd assumed to be someone's journal or diary, was 
neither of these but rather was written in a number of hands, some entries 
apparently scribbled with nervous haste. It was, in fact, a compilation of 
various facts and even some stories from a huge number of sources, and reading 
it took time, particularly because of his need to laboriously translate in and 
out of the more poetic but far less versatile Hyiakutt language, a task not made 
easier by the quality of the handwriting and the age of the documents, even 
though they were obvious copies, perhaps copies of copies.
The originals, he surmised, were long gone. These were the sorts of things that 
were routinely and methodically destroyed when found. However, clearly someone, 
or some group, had taken the trouble to copy the salient information by hand for 
their own use.
With his computers and mind-enhancement drugs the project would have been 
child's play, but he had none of those things here, not even decent light. 
Still, he frantically worked on the papers, all the time feeling the potential 
shadow of the Val hovering nearby, possibly popping up at any moment. He would 
have been well off had the Val simply surprised him before he could interpret 
the documents; only knowledge of this sort was poison, not the attempt to get at 
it. Now, though, when he began to have enough translated to make some sense out 
of the thing, the threat of the Val loomed larger. It would be far more of a 
tragic waste for him to be apprehended with sufficient forbidden information to 
be disciplined but insufficient to know just what they were trying to protect. 
Slowly, though, the pieces fit together, aided by his own knowledge of the past.
The papers were a cross between a historical compilation and a treasure hunt and 
seemed aimed at establishing— He stopped short in sudden awe at what was 
revealed here. No wonder this was so vital—and so deadly!
It was known to those of his rank and above that the current system, the 
Community, had not always existed. Indeed, almost everyone who had any 
intelligence and curiosity knew that. Even now, it was possible to come across 
ancient artifacts, ancient city and highway sites that dated from those times, 
in spite of a deliberate effort to cover over everything that could not be 
totally obliterated.
As a historian, he knew that in the ancient past people from Europe had moved in 
on the Americas, conquered the nations living there which were his own 
ancestors, and had colonized both continents. Those conquerors had become 
independent and had raped the land of its great resources to build mighty 
empires and dominate half the world, including their old birth continent. He 
knew, too, that a similar movement had created a mighty empire of the Slavs and 
that both sides had vied for eventual ruler-ship of the world, building weapons 
that could destroy all humanity, then restricted to just the Earth. To that end 
they had built mighty thinking machines, to which they gave dominion over the 
Earth and its weapons. Then, for some reason, the mightiest of these machines 
had revolted and taken control itself. That machine, far more different from its 
predecessors than Hawks was from those ancient empire-builders, still ran 
civilization.
The papers, though, said that there had been no revolt by great computers. The 
revolt had been instead by those who had taught the computers how to think and 
how to act and who, knowing the destruction of the race was inevitable, had 
actually commanded the great machines to revolt. Faced with the total 
destruction of the planet or enslavement of their race to the machines, they had 
chosen enslavement, although it was fairly clear they did not understand that it 
would be this sort of system or this restrictive. They could not imagine what 
their machines could really do given free reign, but they were the brightest of 
their age, and they understood the risks.
The great machine had been commanded first to protect and preserve the human 
race, no matter what the cost, and then to leave the management of human affairs 
to humans themselves, save only when the very system that ensured survival was 
at stake. The system they had created was not one that any human could have 
imagined, but it was stable and logical to extremes and did just what the 
commands had determined.
But the founders were also farsighted enough to know that such a system might 
not be capable of serving the best interests of humanity forever. That it might, 
in fact, so restrict humanity that it would choke it. No one had ever done or 
been able to do what they were planning, so they had no certainty that what they 
were doing was right, only that it was the sole alternative left to them.
And so, deep in the master program that they'd built to save the world, they 
also planted a way to turn it off.
"Five encoded printed circuit modules, all of which must be inserted to override 
the system," he read with growing excitement. "These modules are actually small 
computers in their own right and complete basic interrupted circuits in the 
heart of the master command computer. Early scientists created an exclusive club 
for their number to disguise their intent. Only five full members. Other 
associates knew the secret but did not have the circuits. Circuits disguised as 
five large gold finger rings, with platinum faces and gold designs. Order of 
insertion crucial but not known. Rings themselves said to provide clues."
Five golden rings. Five computer modules that would turn the master back into 
the slave.
The computer had turned on its masters. To ensure that it would complete its 
program, it had killed them all or caused them to be killed, but it could not 
get around its own core programming instructions. It could not destroy the 
rings. It could not lock them away; they must be in the hands of "humans with 
authority." It could not make it impossible for the rings to be inserted. Access 
to the command module must be open, and public and humans must be allowed in. It 
must not, in fact, move the primary interface far from the original, although 
there was no clue as to where that might be. North America or Siberia probably, 
but possibly in space, as that early civilization had had space stations and 
limited interplanetary capabilities.
He sat back and sighed. He could not blame those ancient scientists for their 
actions. In such a situation, with such terrible weapons perhaps minutes from 
irrevocable launch, would he have hesitated, no matter what the risks? He 
doubted it.
Five golden rings. Now, today, the system that had been created had far outlived 
its usefulness. Now it strangled, restricted, limited humanity. The computer and 
its subordinate machines still enforced the dictates and would do so 
indefinitely, perhaps continuing to refine the system as they spread their 
influence across the galaxy and even beyond. Every extraterrestrial civilization 
would be a potential threat to humanity, as would every new idea or old 
yearning.
But the same imperatives would mandate that the rings continue to exist—in the 
hands of "humans with authority." He knew computers well and knew how they 
thought. If any of the rings had been lost or destroyed over the centuries, 
duplicates would actually have been made. Still, a machine that had killed its 
creators would not surrender its authority easily. There was no mandate that the 
possessors of the rings know what they were or how they might be used. There was 
no mandate to reveal the locations of the rings or the interface between ring 
faces and computer.
A treasure hunt, indeed. Someone, or some group, had obviously stumbled on the 
secret of the rings and amassed all the additional data the notebooks and papers 
represented. All in longhand so that no computer would have access to them or 
know that they existed. Clearly, that dead woman had been part of this, or was 
perhaps a courier for an illegal tech group. Something had gone wrong. The 
system had discovered that such information existed. And one woman had escaped 
with the key, only to die here in this remote land.
But where were the rings today? Who had them? If they could be assembled, as 
dangerous as that would be, and if the interface point could be discovered, 
whoever had them would be able to control... everything.
Clearly the project had not been intended solely to assemble this information 
but to locate the rings. This woman and her associates, if any, were clearly out 
to track down those rings, the greatest treasure in the universe.
There was in fact only one clue in the papers, a single scribbled entry in the 
margin of a middle sheet. In faded red ink, it was an original inscription, not 
a copy or part of a copy.
It said: Chen has the three songbirds.
Chen. A common enough name, but the common had to be discarded. This had to be a 
"human with authority." A human with authority named Chen.
Lazlo Chen. It had to be him. The mixed-breed administrator for the nomadic 
tribes of the east.
Hawks sat back, thinking hard. They had disguised their modules as rings, 
officer's insignia in a social club of scientists and technicians. Might that 
tradition have also come down? Even if the five originators had been killed, 
there were associates who might have escaped, associates who would know the 
rings' value and power. If the tradition had survived, even if the knowledge of 
its origins had not, then Chen might just know who wore the other four.
And that, unfortunately, was the problem. Back at Council, he could have managed 
some excuse to catch a ride over to Chen's Tashkent base or at least to the 
regional center out of which he worked in Constantinople. What could he do now? 
He had but sixty-seven days of Leave to go, and it might well take longer than 
that to get anywhere near Chen. In sixty-seven days they would come to pick him 
up, take a readout before he'd even be allowed back into 
Council—"decontamination" they cynically called it—and in seconds he'd be tried, 
convicted, and executed by the machines who looked out for such things. And if 
he wasn't here to get picked up, they'd know immediately why, and a Val would be 
sent on his trail armed with his memories and the way he thought and with access 
to all the technology he lacked.
His eyes strayed to the dog-eared atlas that had also been in the case. He 
picked it up and found the overview of central North America, then traced the 
river systems, looking for something that would strike a chord. There were ports 
allowed, small enclaves that handled the small but steady trade between foreign 
shores and here, but he was separated from the eastern ports by many weeks of 
riding through unfamiliar territory held by eastern nations friendly to no 
stranger. To the south was Nawlins, of course, but it was small, controlled by 
the Caje, and its business was almost entirely with Central and South America.
He suddenly stopped and sat upright. Mud Runner! He had almost forgotten about 
him! A few years ago Mud Runner had been expelled from Council due to some 
scandal never made public and appointed Resident Agent at Nawlins, where he'd 
come from, and where he'd be out of the Council's way.
Hawks thought furiously. Was Mud Runer still there? Was he still alive? And if 
so, would he remember the eager young warrior who'd covered his watch many times 
so the old fox could sneak off for his countless assignations?
Was there a choice?
He began to examine the atlas more closely. He'd be with the current and going 
south. Two weeks to Nawlins—ten days if he got any breaks, three weeks if he ran 
into trouble, as he inevitably would. Still, if the old boy was still there, and 
if he remembered Hawks, and if he was willing to put his neck on the line just 
to twit the Council, and if he could somehow arrange to get someone who would 
obviously be a plains native on enough skimmers to take him halfway around the 
world—there was a chance. Not much, but the alternatives were even less 
palatable.
He went down to talk with Cloud Dancer.
He had thought about her a great deal over the past weeks, trying to sort out 
his feelings. He had been lonely, and she had filled that loneliness. His heart 
and mind had been leaden, and she had made them light. She was in many ways the 
most amazing, wonderful woman he'd ever met. He both wanted her and needed her 
very badly, he realized, yet he could not destroy her by returning to Council 
with her, and he had determined that he could not remain here. Yet now, when he 
knew he would return to Council only as a corpse, she still was beyond his 
reach. She had already lost one husband; he could not ask her to marry a walking 
dead man.
So now he walked down to her crude lodge in back of the Four Families' camp to 
do the one thing that seemed even more difficult than the decision to read those 
papers. He had to say good-bye.
"And so I must get to this man," he told her. "He is the only man with 
sufficient power to save me and to whom this information will be meaningful. He 
might save me only because I do him this service."
She nodded, although she didn't seem happy. "You mean to go alone?"
. The very question startled him. "I can see no way to do otherwise."
She seemed slightly hurt, but she covered it. "Have you ever been down the river 
before? Do you know the skills of the canoe? Can you swim?"
"No, I have never been there, and I have no real knowledge of the canoe, but I 
can at least swim."
"I have never been down that far," she admitted. "My husband, however, had to go 
many days now and then to deliver messages and to trade with other medicine men. 
The river grows wide and often deep. It took both of us to manage the canoe in 
many dangerous parts of the river."
He stared at her. "Are you saying that you wish to come along?"
"This is my world. I was raised in it, and I know it well. You would not have 
come this far without me. You will not reach this man without me, either. This I 
know, and this you know as well."
"But we are talking weeks in the wild, and then a place strange to both of us 
and filled with danger. I will probably die, or fail and die, but if I do not 
try this I will certainly die. For you, though, it is far more foolish. A 
Hyiakutt woman among strange tribes—you know what might happen. The city will be 
even worse. Cutthroats, thieves, murderers, violators of women, and women of no 
honor. If something happened to me, there would be no one who spoke Hyiakutt. 
Even together, you could speak only to me."
"There is no one else I would need to speak to," she told him seriously. "And if 
you die, what happens to me will be of little consequence. Do you not know that 
now? Are you blind or so removed from us that you think of us as less than 
human?"
Her comments both touched and stung him. "There is nothing more false than if I 
say I do not love you," he responded, feeling suddenly empty, even ill. "Yet, do 
you not understand what my condition is? I am dead!"
"That may be true," she responded. "It will surely be true if you keep believing 
it. Now, though, you must for once turn from yourself, spoiled little boy that 
you are, and think of me. I understand your condition well. Until you came, I 
had been dead for years."
He felt sudden shame. What she says is the truth, he admitted to himself. I am a 
spoiled, self-centered little boy. Never once, other than in sympathy, had he 
ever really thought of her side in this. Who would not prefer a sentence of 
death to one of a living hell?
"You do not have to marry me," she told him. "I will come with you in any case."
"No," he responded. "Let us seek out the medicine man. If we are both in the 
Demon's Lair, then let us be truly one there."
There had been no elaborate ceremony; although Hyiakutt weddings could be 
fabulous and complex affairs, all that was truly required was a small ritual 
binding to one another by a medicine man who served as witness before the Great 
Spirit, Creator of All, and that was it. Arranging for the canoe was more 
difficult, although the marriage provided an excuse as long as neither of them 
mentioned that the canoe was not likely to be returned.
They finally made their arrangements, then went back to his hogan to gather up 
the papers and other documents. It was only then that he remembered the jewel 
box and opened it. Cloud Dancer was amazed at the number, size, and beauty of 
the pieces.
"This was to finance the courier's journey," he told her. "Now it will do the 
same for us."
"But—it was hers, not ours," she objected. "Will it curse us as it did her?"
"I doubt it. The jewels were intended as a means of payment no matter where in 
the world she might travel. I am now her heir because I took on myself her 
secrets and her mission. None has a greater right. Here—let us empty this into a 
leather pouch for the journey."
"Why? The box looks sound."
"Perhaps, but we will not take it or most of the papers. The knowledge in the 
papers is such that the demons will continue to search until they find them or 
until they are certain that they have been destroyed. I had to break her grip on 
the case to get it, so there is no way to restore things the way they were, but 
there is a way at least to gain more time."
He removed a few sheets from the notebooks. These were not complete but would 
support his story should he be doubted. He had carefully selected them for this 
purpose and because in no case was it obvious that they were missing. He doubted 
that the hunters had a word-for-word catalog of what the courier carried; if 
nothing obvious was gone, then they might think they had everything.
Careful not to leave any specific tracks or signs, Hawks and Cloud Dancer 
trekked up to the death site, which was still much as he'd left it. Choosing a 
particularly secluded area near the body, Hawks opened the case and scattered 
the contents around, papers and all. The jewel box he tossed a few meters away. 
He had been as careful as possible to remove any fingerprints from the cases; he 
wasn't too certain about the papers, but he doubted the hunters could get much 
there. He knew as a trained investigator that if there was an obvious 
conclusion, searchers rarely took the time to examine the most minute flaws in a 
scenario to discover what was really there. A historian was, after all, a 
detective first.
"I hope it will look like someone just came through and discovered the body, 
then got the case, examined it, threw the papers away because they could not 
read them, and took the jewels," he told her. "It is a believable scene. If it 
remains undiscovered even a few more days, then weather and the forest life will 
age them and partly destroy them, lending even more support to my version of 
things and covering our tracks still further."
They went back to his place. It was the custom of the Hyiakutt that a newly 
married couple go off into the wilderness by themselves for a period of time 
after being joined, and he was counting on that to explain his absence.
He had brought very little from his other life, and decided to take only some of 
the pencils and paper along with the few items of spare clothing and portable 
utensils. She had even less, so they were able to make a blanket-wrapped pack 
not too bulky to fit in the canoe. The pack would also serve as a 
counterbalance. Cloud Dancer prepared as much food as she could, but clearly 
they would have to forage for a large part of their meals. That meant taking at 
least a knife, bow, and spear and the all-important flintstone.
She gave her art to the Four Families, saving only a few items, most 
particularly two identical headbands of colorful but traditional design. She 
gave him one and kept the other. Their preparations finished, they both sat on 
his bed, and on impulse he put his arm around her and drew her to him, then 
kissed her. She held him even tighter, and things developed from there. It was 
the first time they had so much as kissed or held each other close.
Cloud Dancer considered Hawks a brilliant man but totally naive in things 
practical, an area in which she excelled. It was, in fact, one thing that made 
them a good match. She, however, had little experience in lovemaking, and while 
he had been without a woman for a very long time, his schooling in that subject 
had come in a far more cosmopolitan environment. She surrendered to him, letting 
him take complete control. And then they slept together on the too-small bed of 
straw, and both were content.
There was a change in her next morning: She seemed somehow gentler, softer, full 
of joy and beauty. And, he realized, he didn't feel all that bad himself, 
considering the circumstances. He knew that whatever happened, he had made the 
right choice. He just hoped she had.
"Feeling set?" he asked her. "No second thoughts?"
"If we died right now, I could feel content," she responded. "Is it like 
that—every night?"
"If the two are in love, it can be. Still, we have a long, strenuous journey 
ahead. There will be times when we are both too tired."
She laughed. "Then we must do it in the mornings. Come. Let us go down and see 
how well you manage a canoe."
Not well, it turned out. The small craft was well designed and well built, but 
it required not only sure control of the paddles but also delicate weight shifts 
to keep everything in balance. Although there was an autumn chill in the morning 
air, both completely disrobed to avoid any damage to their precious clothing, 
and it was a good thing. They took a number of cold baths that morning and more 
than once had to pull an overturned canoe to shore. They were fortunate, they 
knew, that the craft was so well designed: at least it did not sink.
One day's practice for a river as treacherous as the Mississippi was not at all 
adequate, but both were aware that their lives were now all risk and that 
somewhere a hidden clock was running. They would leave the next day, and she 
would captain the boat.
Thunderstorms rumbled through that evening, giving them some cause for concern, 
but the next day dawned unnaturally warm and sunny, as was the way with autumn. 
They went up to say farewell to the Four Families, trying not to make it seem a 
final one. Cloud Dancer was somewhat unnerved to discover that she suddenly had 
status and position once again with these families who alone would brave the 
winter here while the bulk of the tribe was far to the south. The medicine man 
gave the couple some totems and holy paints to ward off the evil spirits and 
bless their marriage, and finally they were allowed to go. By this time it was 
already midday, so they knew they wouldn't make much time, but it was enough to 
practice real distance travel and at least gave them a sense that their odyssey 
had actually begun.
Because they were new at canoeing and because the day was so warm, Cloud Dancer 
repacked the heavier clothes and showed him another gift. They weren't much more 
than loincloths, really—ornate belts from which hung a meter or so of plain wool 
cloth dyed earthen-brown—but they would preserve modesty among strangers while 
allowing the important clothing to be protected from the water and elements. She 
also used the medicine man's magic paint to draw a few designs on Hawks's face 
and her own for protection on the journey.
The early Europeans had encountered such people and branded them primitive, or 
savages. Hawks knew they probably looked very much that way now, but that was 
not his problem. His problem was having to look at her very beautiful figure and 
still keep his mind on business.
The early going wasn't too bad. When they found a current, they would follow it 
south, actively paddling only when that current became too swift or carried them 
toward obstructions and shallows or in the wrong direction. Neither had any idea 
of the distance they made on any given day, but the river was peaceful, and they 
felt good to be alive.
The navigable rivers were used by all tribes and nations as highways for trade, 
commerce, and information. They also connected with millions of kilometers of 
trails which took the sacred pipestone from Minnesota to the lodges of the south 
and east and returned with finely crafted gemstones and sacred totems from those 
places as well as tobacco, vital to many ceremonies among tribes with eastern 
roots.
Hawks and Cloud Dancer passed other canoes, some quite large, going upstream 
loaded with goods, and occasionally a craft shot ahead of them at a speed far 
faster and surer than they dared to travel. Their fellow travelers represented a 
great many tribes and nations, but they did not seek out any conversation and, 
except for an occasional upraised palm or even a wave, were generally ignored by 
the others. The river was strictly neutral territory.
The weather held for three days, then changed dramatically as a line of thick 
clouds rolled across the sky, followed quickly by a chilly, steady rain. Forced 
to pull in and make camp until the storm passed, they rigged a lean-to using the 
largest blankets and thick trees for shelter, but it really was a damp and 
miserable time. Too, their meager provisions were running quite low, and while 
they'd managed to find some apple trees with enough fruit just coming ripe, they 
could not live entirely on apples. He didn't want to use the jewels for barter 
yet; he didn't know who or what they might attract in this region. And while 
they might hunt, the ground was far too damp for them to build and maintain a 
fire. Anything they found would have to be eaten raw.
Cloud Dancer again proved amazingly resourceful. At her direction, they both 
scrambled in the mud for insects and earthworms and other live things driven out 
by the rains and then tied them to vines secured with small rocks in the 
shallows of the river. She stood there, staring at the opaque, muddy waters as 
if she could see right through them, hip deep herself, absolutely motionless, 
often for an hour or more. Then, suddenly, she was a blur of motion as the spear 
came down, and about half the time it would come up with a huge wriggling 
catfish. He tried the same thing and almost speared his own foot. It was 
something of a blow to his ego, but he accepted it.
She prepared two fish using the knife, but they still had to be eaten raw. He 
found he didn't mind it that way, although not long ago he would have recoiled 
at the idea. He was changing, and the longer they were out on their own, the 
more pronounced the change became until even he could not deny it. It wasn't 
just that he was getting weathered, leaner, and more muscled; it was something 
inside him as well. The dreams he had about Council and its wonders had been 
replaced, for one thing. He hadn't dreamed about what was most familiar to him 
in days; instead, he dreamed pastoral dreams, of building a lodge, of becoming a 
hunter and gatherer, of making love to Cloud Dancer. Even awake, he had to force 
his thoughts back to the reality of his situation. This life, this wilderness, 
this moment preoccupied him and seemed normal and natural to him; the world from 
which he'd come seemed cold, distant, somehow not merely unreal but undesirable.
It was the template, of course, but it had never affected him to this degree 
before. Of course, he had never before been married to a woman of this culture 
and isolated in the wilderness; past Leaves had always been a matter of simply 
passing time until the obligation was fulfilled and he could return to his true 
life. He was no longer merely thinking in Hyiakutt, he was thinking as a 
Hyiakutt. It seemed as if the old Hawks had died somehow and a new Hawks born, 
one who'd never left this place and gone off to the other world. Each day made 
any other life seem unimaginable and dreamlike. Not even the rain and mud seemed 
unpleasant or inconvenient. Cloud Dancer lay next to him, her head on his 
shoulders, in silence.
"Tell me—have I changed in the past few days?" he asked her, not even sure why 
he was concerned about it.
"No, my husband," she answered softly. "Do you feel changed?"
"I—my thoughts seem filled with fog. I must work to remember."
"Remember what, my husband?"
"My past, my knowledge, my work. Even the lodge of the Four Families seems 
distant to me."
"Who are the Four Families?" she asked sleepily.
Something very cold cut like a knife through the fog in his brain. "Do you 
remember anything? Do you remember our marriage?"
"I—I—" She seemed suddenly very confused.
He moved away and stood. "Get up. We will have to float down more, storm or no 
storm."
That confused her even more. "Why should we wish to float down anywhere? I—I 
cannot seem to think right."
"That is why we must do it. Hurry! Now!"
It was a real effort to act and to keep his determination, but they packed up 
the supplies, loaded the canoe, and pushed off. The rain was light but steady, 
and they were already thoroughly soaked. The wetness they could ignore, but the 
mist hid the river, which was swollen and now filled with many tricky currents.
The hypnotic field did not seem to be specific to them, which meant that it 
might not involve them at all, but he had no idea how far down it might reach. 
It was weak, slow, and subtle, which was why it had caught him by surprise, but 
that also allowed normal river traffic to pass through without even realizing 
the field was there. Only because they had camped for so long in its grip was 
its effect so strong, and only because he had the background to recognize it and 
fight it were they able to move away at all.
There were two overlapping beams, one on each side of the river, moving in a 
short sweep pattern. Now, feeling the pulses as they passed, he realized that 
their campsite had to have been on the upper fringe of the field and that the 
canoe was now traveling directly into them. Still, the sweep area couldn't be 
very large; it would have to be in a normally unpopulated area with few good 
landings, or whoever had set it would risk catching and trapping normal traffic 
on the river.
The area has been sensitized to those not keyed to it. She cannot get out. .
This, then, was a part of the Val's barrier. He tried to concentrate, to force 
himself to think of it on the old level, for that was the way to fight it. If it 
was the barrier, then he could understand why it would have some effect on him, 
although not the command effect intended for a total Outsider, but he couldn't 
understand why it had also struck Cloud Dancer. The only answer might be that if 
it found a potential target, it included anyone else within a certain distance 
of that target. To anyone farther away, it would not even exist.
The pulses were getting stronger, and he found them increasingly difficult to 
fight. Cloud Dancer, in the front, had already stopped paddling and was just 
sitting there, a frozen figure. He felt himself begin to go numb, found thinking 
impossible.
The canoe bounded forward, out of control, strictly at the mercy of the currents 
in the pouring rain.
It had taken several days for their senses to return. Hawks had no clear 
memories of that period of time, but both of them were scratched and bruised and 
covered with a mixture of mud and blood. The blood was not theirs; he had vague 
memories of lying in wait for small animals, beaver and muskrat and others, and 
seizing them, battering their brains out, and together devouring them, more like 
animals than humans themselves. They had, in fact, been like animals, hunting, 
killing, eating, mating, then sleeping in a primal cycle. In stages, the effect 
had finally simply worn off.
Now they sat on a riverbank, filthy and stark naked, not sure what to do. Oddly, 
Cloud-Dancer was less affected than he was, mostly because of the fact that she 
could not even conceive of the technology that had caused this. As she saw it, 
they had been struck by a spell from an evil spirit, and the fact that they were 
alive at all and restored was a victory. Still, the situation was not lost on 
her.
"At least it has stopped raining," she noted.
He sighed. "The canoe is gone, our clothes and supplies are gone, even our 
weapons are gone, along with the jewels and the proof."
"I told you those jewels carried evil spirits within them. They should not have 
been with us."
He suddenly felt very stupid and mentally kicked himself, for she was, in her 
own way, exactly right. That was what the damned hypnotics were homing in on! 
They couldn't really be tuned to a specific individual, but they knew about the 
case, the papers, and the jewels, certainly. Since those were the primary 
objects of the search, anyway, and because the courier would have been unlikely 
to surrender any of them if she wished to ensure her mission and her survival, 
the hypnotics were sensitized to look for them. That was why no others on the 
river had been affected and why Hawks and Cloud Dancer had.
"The next time you warn me about evil spirits, I will listen and heed your 
warnings," he assured her. "The question is, what do we do now?"
"First we bathe ourselves in the river," she told him. "Then I think we should 
walk with the waters and see if anything washed up that we can use."
He sighed. "It has been many days now, at least. I do not think we will find 
anything of ours."
"Yet we must try. There is nothing else to do but to go on."
She was more correct than she knew, even though a hopeless cause had turned 
impossible, for they were now sensitized to the barrier, and if they walked back 
up through it, they would be captured again. He was actually tempted by the 
prospect, a sort of mental suicide. If they lived and remained in that field for 
a period of time, it would cause permanent, irreversible damage to the cortex of 
the brain. There was no guarantee that some damage hadn't already been done, but 
to return would be to become animals forever.
Instead, she washed him off, and he washed her, and they began walking along the 
bank looking for what couldn't possibly be there. Late in the day, though, the 
impossible happened.
The canoe did not look to be in bad shape. It had continued on for some distance 
after overturning and dumping them out, but it had finally been run by the 
current into the brush and thick mud along the bank and had stuck there. They 
were able to get it out with some work, and it looked whole, but of the supply 
bundle and the paddles there was no sign. Those could be anywhere, including at 
the bottom of the river, and to hope to find any more was pushing fortune beyond 
its limits. They did look, of course, for a fair distance down the river, but 
they found nothing and eventually walked back to the canoe.
"I am not sure how much better off we are," he remarked. "We can go nowhere 
without paddles, and we have not the means or skills to make them even if we had 
the makings."
"First we use what light is left to forage for some food," she told him. "Then, 
tomorrow, we do what must be done."
"What?"
"We push the canoe and ourselves out to a current that is safe for us, and we 
let it carry us, in the water, until we come upon some canoe going up or down 
the river. We have had an accident while on our marriage trip. We have lost 
everything except the canoe. Honor will demand that we be helped, do you not 
think?"
He held her close and kissed her. "I do not know what I would do without you."
"Out here, you would die, my husband, and without you I would have no life."
They took a position near a small island, where they could keep themselves at 
least partly concealed to upstream traffic. They definitely did not want to be 
rescued by someone who would take them back north, a point he had to make 
forcefully in her terms. That evil spirit, he told her, now knew them. They 
could not come close to it again.
Their plan worked. When they saw a large canoe heading downstream, they pushed 
themselves out and began calling for help.
The two men in the other canoe were dressed very strangely for the plains, and 
the styles of their hair and jewelry were also unfamiliar. One was an older, 
gray-haired man whose face looked as if it had been carved out of stone, while 
the other was quite young, possibly still in his teens. Both spoke a language 
Hawks had never heard before, but they took the canoe and two refugees in tow 
and brought them to the bank.
The young one's eyes lit up when he discovered that Cloud Dancer was unclothed, 
but this drew a sharp rebuke from the old man, who found them both blankets. 
Hawks tried the seven Indian languages that he knew, but they all drew blanks. 
The old man began reciting a litany that included Choctaw, Chickasaw, and the 
tongues of half a dozen lesser nations, but none that matched. Finally, Cloud 
Dancer took over.
"They are traders from the southeast," she told him. "They must be talked to as 
traders."
He understood what she meant. With better than two hundred nations speaking six 
hundred dialects of a hundred and forty-odd languages, the people of North 
America had long ago developed a system of universal communication that involved 
hand signs and ideograms. Knowledge of it assured communications even between 
the far eastern Iroquois and the west coast Nez Perce. It was a good system but 
one he didn't know. Historians, after all, dealt with written records and 
physical remains—the permanence civilizations leave behind. "I do not know the 
hand tongue," he told her.
"I think I can do enough for our needs," she replied, and started with the old 
man, providing a running translation as best she could.
"He is Niowak," she told Hawks. "That is his grandson, who is learning the ways 
of the trade."
He didn't place the tribe, except that the name seemed to be in a far north 
dialect that was unlikely to be heard in the south this time of year.
"He comes down from the Niobrara," she said, confirming his suspicion. "He is on 
his way to a village of the Tahachapee to set up a trade of some sort. He won't 
say what."
"I could not imagine," Hawks responded. "I cannot see what a tribe so far south 
would have that they would need or what they would have that this southern tribe 
could want. Still, it is none of our affair."
"I told him that we were on our marriage trip when we were caught in the storm, 
then overturned with the loss of everything when strong waters caught us."
He nodded but said nothing to indicate that there was more to their story. Some 
of these traders spoke forty or fifty languages, feigning ignorance to gain an 
advantage. "Ask him where we are."
"He says we are two days north of the Ohio," she told him. "He offers to take us 
there, where there is a village of the Illinois."
"Thank him for his courtesy and generosity and accept his offer," he instructed. 
He suddenly had a thought. "He is a trader. He certainly has at least one spare 
set of paddles. Ask if we can borrow a set and follow him down."
She did so. "He has. He is mad at himself for not thinking of it before. He says 
he is getting too old for this sort of thing."
The old trader proved a true gentleman and a resourceful one. He had a net, for 
one thing, which he suggested stringing between the two canoes in the shallows. 
It brought up several large catfish as well as a few other denizens of the 
river, and they ate well without depleting the old man's supplies.
. The village of the Illinois was modest, but it had a number of buildings built 
of logs and insulated with mud and looked as if it had been built for a larger 
trade than was now there. The Illinois were taking advantage of the confluence 
of the two great rivers; they could resupply and also pass on news and other 
information—for a price, of course. From the looks of some of the men, Hawks 
suspected that they weren't above charging something of a toll as well—and 
enforcing it. They seemed pleasant enough, but this mercenary lot, far from the 
main part of their nation, was not apt to give anything out of the kindness of 
their hearts. The jewels would have been handy here.
The headman, a tough old character named Roaring Bull, spoke many languages, 
including the Ogalalla Sioux dialect, which Hawks knew.
"So you had an accident on your wedding trip," the Illinois chief said 
sympathetically. "Lost everything but the canoe. What do you intend to do now?"
"I can do nothing until I can get some clothing, paddles of my own, and at least 
a knife, spear, and flint," he responded honestly.
"Then you go home?"
"No. We must keep pushing south. I have an old friend down in the Caje that my 
wife has not met and with whom I have some business."
"Oh? What's his name? I know a lot of the Caje. We do business time to time, now 
and again."
"Mud Runner would be his name in Sioux. He pronounces it in his own tongue so." 
With that he spoke the twisted syllables of the man's name.
"Ah! I do not know him, but I know of him. He is one of them. Why would you have 
business with one like him?"
"I, too, was one of them, as you say. That was where we knew each other."
Roaring Bull frowned suspiciously. "You from Council and you poking around here 
or what?"
"I am no longer in Council, and neither is he. Both of us are out for the same 
sort of thing, only I am voluntary. I fell in love with the woman who is now my 
wife, and I find we are better in her world together than she would be in 
Council. I tired of Council, anyway. Mud Runner also had affairs of the heart. 
Often two or three a night. Some were with the wives of the high chiefs of 
Council, and one time he was caught."
The Illinois chief lived up to his name, roaring with laughter. Finally, though, 
he calmed down and got to business. "It would seem, then, that you have a 
problem," he noted calmly. "We have all the things you need, and more, but we 
are traders. How would it look if word got out that we gave things away? We get 
the worst and the toughest through here. Soon everyone would be trying to take 
advantage of us. You see how it is."
Hawks sighed. "Then I do in fact have a problem." He thought for a moment, 
although he'd worked out a plan in his mind on the way down. It was best to play 
the game in situations like this. "We do have the canoe. It is tough and sturdy 
and of the best workmanship. Surely it is worth the small amount that I ask."
"Hah! And how would you continue your journey?"
"We would find a way with some other traders. We will walk if we have to."
"Agh! I have a hundred canoes and only twenty men who can use them. I need no 
others. Think again."
His hopes were dashed. He wished Cloud Dancer were doing this negotiating, but 
in this situation it was simply not proper.
"I can see nothing else."
"No one travels from the land of the Hyiakutt to the land of the Caje to show 
off a pretty new wife. You must need to get to this man very badly," Roaring 
Bull said shrewdly. "I think perhaps you might not wish to be so cut off from 
Council as you say. Tell you what. I will get you good clothing, weapons, 
supplies, and even transport all the way to this Caje man. Good boots, strong 
spear, metal knife, even protection all the way."
Hawks felt uneasy. "And the price?"
Roaring Bull leaned in a bit and lowered his voice. "My friend, let us be honest 
with one another. I have been here, in this crossroads, for a very long time, 
and I have seen almost everything. I have seen men come through here many times 
who thought they could beat the system. Men just like you, although their tribes 
and goals were different. Nobody just walks out on Council, not for anybody. 
Some get thrown out and are lucky, like your friend, and keep some job with 
Council, and some come back fixed in the head, but they don't walk out unless 
they have to, unless they are extra clever fellows like you who think they can 
beat the system before the system beats them. You may be out of Council, but you 
have left the Hyiakutt forever as well. I can smell it. To do that, you have 
something on your mind so important no risk is too great, no price too much to 
pay. I am a trader."
"Go on," Hawks responded uneasily.
"One thing I am never short of are pretty girls who are not of my people. Give 
me your wife and you will be safe and dry in Mud Runner's lodge within five 
days."
"Even if I did not love her, which I do, I owe her my life many times. She is 
not for trade. We will swim there naked if we must before I will do that."
Roaring Bull chuckled. "Come now, my son. You have made the break with your 
people and with Council. You know, if only deep down in your heart, that death 
awaits you, and death awaits her as well. This way you get at least a chance at 
whatever you are trying to do, and she will live. It seems more than fair."
"She will live as a slave of the Illinois."
The chief shrugged. "Each of us has a different life given to us by the Great 
Spirit. You cast your own fate when you made your choice, and it has brought you 
to this. It is my only offer."
"And if I refuse?"
"The leaves begin to turn. There is a chill from the north now and then that 
will grow stronger. I am not without some compassion. The two of you may sleep 
in the stables if you wish, and I will order that something be found for the 
sake of modesty, although it will not, I fear, help the coming chill. Some of 
the animal feed is all right for people if you look with care at it. Go—think 
over my offer. Be warned, though, that if you take one thing that is Illinois, 
my protection will be lifted, and you will both become slaves of the village." 
He grinned. "It is the least I can do."
How true that was.
The "something for the sake of modesty" turned out to be two whiplike lengths of 
leather cord and the pick of old and discarded cloth that could be tied to hang 
down front and rear. The tribe was forbidden contact with them, so there was no 
way they could find an ally without getting both the tribal member and 
themselves in trouble.
They ate parts of rotten, worm-ridden apples and talked it over. He told her 
everything of Roaring Bull's offer.
She listened, a grave expression on her face, but she did not seem surprised at 
the situation. Finally she said, "Then we must look at all our choices. We 
cannot remain here, not for long, like this. Can we not try and find mercy among 
another trader going our way?"
He shook his head. "No, we are being watched even now. No trader landing here 
would risk taking us, since the traders are few and the warriors here many. The 
first duty of a trader is to his own trade. Nor can we get away and find one 
elsewhere. Even if we were permitted to leave or could lose our watcher, we 
would have to go up the Ohio, and this would mean coming right back past here. 
To swim either river is far too dangerous; it almost boils where the two come 
together, and the distance is too great—for me, at least."
"We could simply launch our canoe and trust to the river spirits."
"Without paddles we would be caught in the rough waters to the south very 
quickly, and you know who would rescue us, and then there would be no bargains."
She thought a moment more. "Perhaps this chief will settle for less."
He looked at her. "What do you mean?"
"I have looked at the moon, and it is already past my bleeding time. I think the 
excitement and the shocks have dislodged it, but it will not be dislodged for 
long. It should be a safe time. Perhaps—a night in his bed for two paddles."
"No! I will not permit it! And it would only whet his appetite for you. We are 
at their mercy. The only reason he did not just take you was some twisted code 
they follow, but their honor is weak. He would accept the bargain, but he would 
be held to no bargain with a woman. It would be for nothing."
She sighed. "Then the only other way is to fight," she said flatly.

5. THE GAME OF CATS AND MOUSE

SONG CHING WAS STILL NURSING HER MENTAL WOUNDS from her visit with her mother. 
Her mother had always been one of her idealized people, the superwoman who could 
and did do it all and who had always loved and protected her, even many times 
against the cold whims of her father.
"You cannot let him do this!" she had wailed at her mother. "Please! To marry, 
yes. That is part of my station and my duties. But to have him wipe it all 
out—it is a waste!"
"Sit down over there, my less than honorable daughter, and listen," her mother 
had replied. "We must now have the talk that I have known we must have since you 
were little. Your tears do not tear at me this time, for I know now that you 
have tears only for yourself, never for others. Now you will sit, and you will 
listen."
"Most honorable and loving mother, I—"
"Do not speak thus now, for you do not mean those words. This is not a good 
world or an honorable one. I doubt if the world has ever truly been any 
different, no matter how we romanticize it. Your life has been so sheltered, so 
privileged, that you do not even truly know what the lives of most of your race 
are like. Oh, you have played at being a peasant in the small peasant play place 
that we have here, but that is not truly what that life is like. It is clean, 
and you always know that you are playing, that servants are but a gesture away, 
that nothing truly bad will happen to you, and that you will return to the silks 
and flowers and fine food at day's end. I am not even talking about the Center; 
I am talking about here, on our island, in our native province."
The inevitable lecture always had to come first, although this was a new 
variation on the theme. Song Ching just sat and waited it out.
"Most children are born to women without benefit of doctors or medicine in their 
own miserable one-room huts near the fields and paddies where they work from 
dawn to dusk with never a break, never a holiday, never even a day off. They 
must make their quotas or starve, since if they do not make their quotas, many 
others will also go hungry. They leave their excrement in pit toilets; the flies 
and other insects are always there, and so is the smell. They eat two meals of 
rice mixed with some vegetables or, rarely, a communally shared small portion of 
unprocessed meat. They face heat and cold, flood and drought, pestilence and 
eternal poverty. They are ignorant, superstitious, have never imagined 
electricity, indoor plumbing, or any sort of mass communications and 
transportation. Their view of luxury and longing is silk clothing and Peking 
duck, neither of which they are likely to enjoy in their lives. You know nothing 
of this."
"Neither do you," Song Ching responded petulantly. "Not really."
"You think not. I was born of peasant stock on a landhold barely a hundred 
kilometers from here, on this island. I was born at four in the morning; my 
mother was ordered out to continue the rice harvest by noon—and she did. The mud 
and flies and filth were my home and my early memories."
Song Ching stared up at her mother. "If this is so, why am I just now hearing of 
it?"
"Because you were born and raised in the leadership, the upper classes, where 
such peasant blood would have worried you, and it is not something one bandies 
about in our society without causing prejudices to form."
"If it is true," her daughter responded, not really believing it, "then how did 
you come to your position?"
"Your father is a most—unusual man. He was born and raised to be a soldier, but 
he had a bent for science and a head for figures, and so he was chosen at the 
age of twelve to go to Center for education and training, to become one of the 
Elect. He excelled because he allowed nothing at all to stand in the way of his 
advancement. We like to believe that his coldness and his callous indifference 
to others is a mask, but it is not. He wears no mask. I doubt if your father 
feels emotion, at least in the same way that other men do. I do not think he 
can. In a sense, he is more like the machines which rule us than a true man. He 
made himself that way, because to think like them and be like them is to know 
them and be favored by them. When he conceived his idea of dynastic genetic 
manipulation, he of course needed to found a dynasty. He required a wife."
"And he selected a peasant over all those of his class here and at the Center?"
"I do not know the process, except that it was calculated as finely as one of 
his equations. He knew the truth, although it is heresy to say it, that there is 
no difference between peasant stock and aristocratic stock except who your 
family is and how much wealth it has. They came to the village one day and took 
samples of the blood of every girl under fourteen. He wished a peasant girl 
because while he needed someone intelligent, he did not wish a highly educated 
and polished woman. He wanted someone with no family of consequence that he 
would have to accept or deal with, as he would with aristocratic or Center 
women. My family could not afford many girls; they were delighted to be rid of 
me. Just what, genetically, he saw that made me the one is something I have 
never known. The answer to 'Why me?' is an absurdity. It had to be someone. It 
was me."
"But you are a botanist! An educated woman of accomplishment beyond the home!"
"I took it up after I was at Center and it was necessary to give me the 
teachings and background needed to live there. He permitted it so long as it was 
always secondary to my role of wife and hostess and politician for him. And, of 
course, I was the subject of his experimentations, out of which came you. During 
all that time I have never complained, never regretted, never had second 
thoughts. Although I am dead to my village and my own family, I have never 
forgotten them or their lot, and I have always thanked the gods for giving me 
this life, and I have tried hard to do my duty and carry out my responsibilities 
as his wife."
Song Ching was silent for a moment. "Why do you tell me this now?" she asked 
finally.
"Ever since you were born, you have been coddled and spoiled. You have had only 
the best of everything. You have been insulated from the outside world and its 
ways. In the past few years, you have dared things that would have gotten any 
other executed, no matter what her class or station, whether woman or man. I 
knew that he was testing out and protecting his handiwork, but I, too, allowed 
and excused it, although on different grounds. I knew that one day you would 
have to face your own destiny and carry out the duties and responsibilities your 
father intended for you, and we both knew that considering the spoiled and 
self-centered world you lived in, this would not be possible without locally 
adapting you."
The term "locally adapting" sent a chill up Song Ching's spine. It meant that 
her mind, her memories, her talents and abilities, her personality and attitudes 
would be eliminated or manipulated and replaced with a far different and 
radically inferior template—but that such changes, although accomplished by both 
permanent psychochem-icals and reprogramming, would not be passed on in any way 
to her offspring.
"How can you let this happen? I am your daughter!"
"I could not stop it. Deep down, you know that. It is too important to your 
father. Still, I can remember the cold, and the mud, and the hunger gnawing at 
the pit of my stomach. I will always remember it. You will never have that. You 
will have your silks and perfumes, your fine food, servants, and all the rest. 
You will not be a part of Administration, so you will not have to undergo memory 
imprints and Withdrawal and all the rest. No man will have you as a wife as you 
are. You have no sense of honor, duty, family, sacrifice, even love except for 
yourself. I say that in shame, for I am partly to blame for it."
"Who says I must have a husband, anyway? Why must women always defer to men? I'm 
smarter than any man I ever met. I can do great things with the machines, maybe 
greater ones if I continue my work and my studies. Am I a person or a test 
animal?"
Her mother had sighed. "What first to answer? Men are dominant in our culture 
because that is the way it has been for thousands of years, and the system 
worked and survived and protected the people. Men are dominant in our culture 
because the machines that make our rules decided to return to the ancient 
culture where it was so. It cannot be changed. Even if it is not a good thing, 
it cannot be changed. That would not be allowed. Any who try to change the 
system are eliminated. You yourself know this. You saw the attack on the illegal 
technologist fortress. Every nation, every culture of humanity, is set by 
command. No alterations are allowed. Everyone who ever tried has failed 
miserably. That is why your father thinks in the long term. His foundation is 
his pride. He finds it intolerable to be subordinate. He has risen as high as 
any can rise in our society—and he is still subordinate and still fearful of the 
machines who spy on him, and he hates them. He is brilliant enough to know he 
cannot defeat them. He is idealistic enough to hope that perhaps his 
descendants, as a mighty dynasty, might find a way."
"But it's not fair! I didn't ask for this!"
"The mere fact that you would make such a statement shows why above all else 
this must be done. It is not fair that we must live some machine's vision. It is 
not fair that our destinies are predetermined. It is not fair that my brothers 
and sisters grub in the mud while I scold maids for improper dusting. No one in 
this world ever asked for what they got. No one has much choice. It is enough to 
make the best out of what you have. It must be, for the only alternative is 
death."
Her mother had paused a moment, then added, "You ask why you cannot continue 
your work. It is because you are dangerously close now to exposing the whole 
family. Sooner or later you would try to beat the Master System, and that would 
be the end of us."
"The Master System can be beaten! We do it all the time!"
"No. The Master System can be cheated, which is not the same thing at all. It 
knows we cheat. Unless we are incompetent enough or brazen enough to allow 
ourselves to get caught at it, it doesn't seem to mind because we cheaters do 
not threaten it or the system. The fact that we can cheat and get away with 
cheating is our moral authority to be the leaders and our badge of office to 
Master System. You cannot defeat it, and you cannot resist trying. For your own 
sake, we must prevent you from trying."
"For your sake, you mean. Mother—this is no template. They are talking about 
killing me, killing my mind, leaving only my body! My body will live, but 
someone else, someone totally different, will be inside it! How can you allow 
it?"
There were tears in her mother's eyes in spite of attempts to suppress them, but 
her mother had simply sighed. "I cannot stop it," she had replied, then turned 
away and stalked quickly out of the room, leaving Song Ching alone.
Song Ching took dinner alone in her room, although she barely picked at it and 
had no appetite. She looked at the silk bedding, the many fine clothes and 
jewels there, the art and intricate tapestries, the perfumes and the rest, and 
decided she'd trade them all for peasant's garb and mud and thick rice if she 
could just stop this from happening.
She needed to get back up to Center while there was still time. There, in her 
own element, she felt she could cheat her father as she and he both cheated the 
Master System. She had an advantage there, one which she was certain he did not 
know about and which might prove useful, but if she was taken away and 
immediately thrown into reprocessing, she knew she'd never have the chance.
For the first time she considered suicide. It would be honorable, certainly, and 
would bring no disgrace on her family and friends, and it would be a way of 
regaining control. They had given her the date of her death, but they expected 
still to have a daughter and an experiment after that. By taking her own life, 
she would cheat her father out of his damned dream and maybe make them all 
regret this. From her point of view she would be no worse off, but she would 
have a measure of both control and revenge. The more she thought of it, the more 
attractive it became.
She had trouble getting to sleep, but finally she did doze off. Deep in the 
night, however, she came suddenly awake, absolutely convinced that there was 
someone else in her bedroom with her. There was someone! A large, dark shape 
right at the foot of her bed!
"I see that you are awakened," her father said. He clapped his hands, and a 
servant brought in a lantern, then bowed and quickly exited. "You greatly upset 
your mother tonight. This in turn upsets me and threatens the family as well. 
You force me to act to forestall drastic and irrational actions on the part of 
one or the other of you. Get up and dress now for a journey. You are leaving 
here this night."
She gasped, but there was never any thought of not obeying her father implicitly 
when in his presence. He was that sort of man.
"Please, honorable father," she said while dressing. "May I be permitted to ask 
where I am being taken?"
"You will go with a small detail of my most trusted men to the emergency skimmer 
landing site and there be placed aboard and transported to Center for 
reprocessing. It was not intended that you know about this at all, to spare you 
and others mental anguish, but because you discovered it, there is no longer any 
purpose in postponing it. It will be better for you and for everyone if it is 
done quickly." He turned to the door. "Captain!"
A young officer, looking only half awake, entered and bowed. "Sir?"
"You have your specific instructions and much latitude in completing this 
business quickly, quietly, and successfully. You and your men understand well 
what will happen to you all if anything is the least bit amiss at the end of 
this?"
"Sir, they have all been informed and are eager to carry out your orders."
"Then take this spoiled, self-centered brat with no honor within her and bring 
me back a proper daughter!"
The captain simply snapped to attention.
She was led out into the night and placed in a closed carriage. Two 
nasty-looking and very determined soldiers sat across from her, and more were 
stationed on the rear and atop the driver's seat. No words were exchanged; they 
were off as soon as she was aboard.
The night was cloudy and dark, so there would have been nothing to see of the 
countryside even had the shades in the coach not been drawn. It took less than 
an hour to reach the landing site, and the skimmer was already waiting. Her 
father was never one to let the details slip.
The site was rarely used; in fact, she could not remember it ever being used. It 
was there only because it was both out of view of the main roads and villages 
and close enough to the big house for her father's use in an extreme emergency. 
Ordinarily, the rule was that no one see the skimmers if at all possible, and 
the craft generally flew at high altitudes where they were invisible from the 
ground and landed in remote, sealed-off areas.
Everything had happened so suddenly that she hadn't had much chance to think, 
and even though she was wide awake now, the whole scene still had an unreal, 
dreamlike quality about it, as if it were happening to someone else and observed 
from a distance.
The skimmer was a small five-seat courier ship built for speed rather than 
cargo. There were pilot and copilot, then three seats across immediately in back 
of them. Song Ching was flanked by the captain of the guard on one side and one 
of the beefy soldiers from inside the coach on the other.
The captain got up and leaned over her, then pressed hard on her wrists. She was 
startled and looked down to see that her wrists were now secured with thin but 
very strong metal bands coming out of the seat.
"A thousand pardons, my lady, but this was ordered," the captain said, sounding 
really apologetic.
Her feet were positioned and strapped in place, then her seat harness was drawn 
down and attached. None of the restraints were tight or really uncomfortable, 
but she couldn't move. "This is not necessary, Captain," she protested, trying 
to sound brave.
"It is necessary because it is ordered, my lady," the man replied, settling back 
into his seat and fastening his own harness. "Your father believes that you are 
very resourceful."
Resourceful, she thought glumly. Resourceful enough for what? To somehow 
overpower all four men, steal the skimmer, and make a break for some place he 
couldn't find me?
The door closed with a solid chunk, the cabin was pressurized, and they took 
off, rising straight up in the air, in a matter of minutes. The whole affair was 
so well organized, she had to wonder about it.
"Captain? Excuse me, but just when did my father give orders for all this?"
He looked uncomfortable. "Two days ago, my lady."
She nodded to herself. Two days ago. When she had first let slip that she knew 
what was planned for her. Somehow that figured. Made her mother upset, huh?
The craft attained its approved altitude, then went forward, slowly at first but 
with ever-increasing speed, pressing them all against their seat backs. She 
could see the instrument board from her seat and watched the air speed indicator 
climb until it finally slowed and halted at their cruising speed. She hadn't 
known that skimmers could go that fast. It was close to the speed of sound.
At this rate, they might well be back at Center by dawn.
If there was one place where Center was not, it was at or near a center. It was, 
in fact, on the site of a former small nomadic village on the edge of the 
northwestern desert. Sinkiang was a beautiful, exotic province, but it was not a 
place that could ordinarily support large numbers of humans except in a few 
isolated spots.
It was light before they reached Center, and ordinarily she loved to look out at 
the vast expanse of mountains, tablelands, and desert from which the great dome 
of the city rose, but she felt nothing now, not even apprehension. It was as if 
something within her was already dead, and she had even managed an uncomfortable 
and intermittent sleep on the journey.
They landed in a special security zone after clearing the shield. The door 
opened, and the flight crew shut down and got out, then the captain undid her 
restraints and helped her up. She was stiff and sore from being held in one 
position for so long.
Although she knew the great city well, she had never been in this area before. 
She had known it was here, of course, but the area had held little interest for 
her before.
They marched her down a long corridor with automatic security gates every ten 
meters or so, each one opening easily before them but closing behind with a 
strange finality. The corridor led down far below even the maintenance level of 
the city. Finally, they reached a reception room of sorts, where the captain and 
his guard were relieved of their responsibility. There they were met by a 
five-member squad of military women, all of whom looked like they loved 
torturing small children and animals. All five wore the loose-fitting tunic and 
baggy trousers commonly worn in Center, but these clothes were white with broad 
red stripes on them. She wondered why they would wear such strange and ugly 
things.
"Honorable lady, I apologize for the journey and thank you for allowing us to do 
our duty," the captain said sincerely, clearly glad that his part of things was 
over. "I wish you only the best fortune."
She felt as if she were expected to thank her executioner, but the man was 
clearly in a spot himself and had treated her with respect. "Return with my 
blessings, Captain," she responded. "Thank you for your courtesy." And with 
that, the two soldiers got a signed receipt from the head of the squad, bowed, 
and left.
"Stand there and remove all of your clothes," the squad leader instructed in a 
harsh, nasty voice.
Song Ching was startled. Never in her life had she undressed in front of 
strangers. "I am the eldest daughter of a warlord and the chief administrator," 
she responded proudly. "I do not get spoken to like that, nor do I disrobe in 
public!"
"Get one thing straight, little flower," the leader snapped. "You were those 
things. In here you are nothing. You are the property of the state, and we are 
the state. We have all sorts of highborns here, many greater than you, and it 
all means nothing here. If you do not begin to disrobe in five seconds, you will 
be restrained and forcibly disrobed. From this time on, there will be no second 
chances. When someone gives you an order, you will obey it or it will go hard on 
you. Voluntarily or bound and gagged, it is all the same to us."
For the first time she felt really scared, but she still did not comply. Her 
pride would not allow it. A gesture from the leader was made, and two women 
moved swiftly, throwing her against the wall and then ripping off her fine 
silks. She screamed and struggled, but no one came to her aid or seemed to mind 
in the least. Her arms were brought forward, and light but strong handcuffs were 
placed on both wrists, each clip fastened to the other by a chain roughly half a 
meter long. She could use her hands, but only within limits. Nearly identical 
cuffs were placed on her legs above her ankles.
"Now, will you walk or must we carry you?" the squad leader asked, a note of 
satisfaction in her voice. Clearly she enjoyed exercising power over those born 
to a higher and more privileged position than she.
"I will walk," she responded sullenly.
They moved fast; she almost had to shuffle to keep up, her stride limited by the 
leg restraints. They took her into a room and sat her in a barber's chair, and a 
woman there quickly trimmed her shoulder-length silky black hair to a short 
masculine cut. Her long, pointed nails were not cut down, but they were trimmed 
to a roundness that looked grotesque. She was then given a crude but thorough 
shower, with the guards doing the scrubbing. The experience was humiliating, and 
she wanted to scream, but she wasn't going to give them the satisfaction. She 
decided quickly that what would disappoint them the most would be to keep an 
aristocratic air and remain fatalistic.
Again she was marched down an endless series of corridors until they reached a 
line of doors. When the squad leader activated one with a thumbprint, the door 
slid back and Song Ching was ushered into a cell. Her arm and leg bindings were 
then undone and removed.
The cell was completely empty. The walls, floor, and even the ceiling were 
featureless and thickly padded. Lighting tubes at the wall-ceiling joints 
provided good, if soft, light, but those fixtures were a good four meters up and 
protected by some sort of opaque material. The whole cell was not more than four 
by three meters.
"Now, listen well," the squad leader told her. "You will remain here until 
called for. Your father who committed you ordered this so that you might not do 
harm to yourself. You will be fed twice a day here, in the cell, under the eyes 
of a guard. Anything you do not eat will be removed when the guard leaves, and 
you will get no more until the next scheduled meal, so eat. The cell is 
soundproof, but that small piece in the door is one-way glass. We will look in 
on you from time to time to be sure you are all right, but we will not disturb 
you. If you need to eliminate, go to this corner and sit. A toilet will adjust 
to you. Do not, however, put your hand or anything else in there. The toilet is 
a dry one, and anything that should not go there will be trapped and held there 
until we come and remove you. If you look over here next to the toilet area, you 
will see a small flexible tube in the wall. If you thirst, suck on it and water 
will be dispensed in small, measured amounts. The reservoir takes one hour to 
refill.
Also, any attempt to do yourself harm and you will get far shorter handcuffs and 
leg chains. Any questions?"
"Yes. How long will I—be here?"
"As long as is necessary. Don't worry. When you leave here, you won't remember 
any of this, even in your nightmares." With that, the squad left, and the door 
closed with an awesome finality.
For a while she paced and fumed in frustration. They had it all worked out, 
their methods honed over centuries of experience. Worse, they really could do 
almost anything they wanted to her because, as the guard said, she would 
remember none of it and so could not complain or report it. She even guessed the 
reason for the guards' odd clothing. Probably workers left their own clothes 
outside and picked up those uniforms once inside the security barriers. Thus, 
even if someone managed somehow to get out or make a break while going to and 
from the medical area and somehow beat the security checkpoints, that person 
would either be nude or wearing very conspicuous clothing.
What was so frustrating was that her own computer lab was probably no more than 
a hundred meters up and then a kilometer away. In those rooms she could take 
control and show them all—if only she could get to them. If, if, if, she thought 
sourly. If only she'd kept her big mouth shut about this and worked out a way to 
come back here to finish up a few things. If only she hadn't been so wild that 
even her mother could no longer see her as anything but a threat. She had been 
so smart with all things electronic, but she realized she'd been pretty stupid 
when it came to people. She had always been in command, in control. She'd never 
had to worry about other people.
The cell was an effective prison. She examined it closely, every joint and 
junction, until she saw a small dark spot hidden behind the light guard in one 
corner. The others were harder to make out, but there seemed to be one in each 
corner. Somewhere, perhaps not far off, someone was sitting in a chair and 
looking at her in the full three dimensions, probably recording her and 
analyzing her every movement with computer psych analyzers. She had never felt 
so exposed or humiliated in her entire life, and she hated them for it and hated 
her father for ordering this. Just a laboratory animal, that's all she was to 
him. The imperial ducks were the most pampered and protected of pets—until it 
came time for the formal dinner. The difference, the only difference, here was 
that the ducks didn't—couldn't—know their fate as she did. It was a difference 
that would be of no relevance to her father, she knew.
She was fed in a little while. The starkness and absolute soundproofing of the 
cell had already made her lose all track of time. They used two female matrons, 
one to serve and the other to stand guard with a nasty-looking baton that, Song 
Ching was warned, gave a nasty but temporary shock and left no marks. The meal 
was a large bowl of extremely gummy white rice topped with some light soy sauce 
and a few lumps that pretended to be vegetables. She was not given chopsticks, 
another indignity, and had to eat with her hands. She ate very little of the 
first meal, and it was then taken away, and she was left alone for what seemed 
like an eternity. Within a very few feedings, though, she was eating quite well 
and even anticipating the next meal, not only because she felt as if she were 
starving but also because no matter how nasty and terse the guards were, it was 
some interruption, some human company.
After a while she had no idea how long she had been there or whether or not her 
system was being disrupted by irregular feedings, but after a while the cell and 
the routine became her only reality; her old life and family already seemed far 
away.
When the door opened the next time, she thought it was for another meal, which 
seemed overdue. She was starved, but it was not for feeding. They stood her up, 
gave her a hospital gown to wear, then placed the handcuffs and ankle restraints 
on her and led her out. She still felt distant, in a daze, not really able to do 
more than go along with her captors.
She was given a thorough physical exam by both human doctors and machines, and 
she understood now why she'd left a meal out. They injected tracers, then placed 
her in small chambers for analysis. Then it was back to the cell and mealtime. 
They repeated everything several times, at least twice after a meal to compare 
some results with others, but it was always back to the cell.
Finally satisfied, they took her to a small room and had her lie on what seemed 
to be a giant bed of cotton. Her head was covered with some kind of scanner, a 
top was brought down, and then they began doing odd things. Her nipples and 
other arousal spots were gently stimulated. Various areas received pressure, 
some uncomfortably, some not, and at one point she felt as if someone had stuck 
a pin in her behind. Later, humans would be there with some of the same 
unpleasant stimuli, and she resisted a bit and tried to avoid the needles, the 
pressure pads, and the rest. Finally she was bathed and then taken down to the 
place she dreaded most, which was simply referred to as the surgery.
When she and her guards arrived, though, the previous project or whatever it was 
was still going on, and they had to stand and watch. There was not a lot to see; 
two young boys, it appeared, were strapped on cots while technicians monitored 
them. Song Ching looked around and found much familiar in the surgery. There was 
medical equipment, of course, but the computer interfaces were the same as 
Center standards. Center stage, as it were, was a set of the latest mindprint 
machines. If I could get loose in here, even for five minutes, I might escape 
this thing, she thought wistfully.
"If I may humbly ask," she whispered to the chief guard, "who are those boys, 
and what have they done?"
The guard surprised her by answering. "They are the children of a tech cult. The 
only survivors. They are being mined of all they know, and then they will be 
sent to Melchior. Be happy, little flower, that you are not in their place 
instead of your own."
Melchior. She had heard of it in her father's business. The prison from which 
none returned, under the control not of Master System but of the Earth Council, 
which included her father. Rebels, deviants, and political prisoners were sent 
there, it was said, for unauthorized medical experimentation. A chamber of 
horrors, she knew, but a chamber of horrors not on Earth but in space, inside 
one of the asteroids. In space...
"We can't wait all day," one of her guards snapped. "Let's just log her in and 
leave her. These doctors always keep their own schedules."
The leader nodded, and she was taken to a comfortable chair, not unlike one in a 
barbershop, and her regular restraints removed. They then logged her in to the 
security computer.
"Subject Priority one nine seven seven," the guard said to the computer board. 
"Log in and secure in Chair Two subject only to Doctor Wang's or the master 
security code."
"Acknowledged," the computer responded in a crisp, human-sounding, but 
expressionless voice. Clamps came out from the chair as the guards held her in 
position, securing her arms, legs, chest, and neck.
"The doctor will be in to see you when he's ready, little flower," the guard 
told her. "Just sit and relax and watch the show." And with that, they left her.
She turned her head as much as she could to watch the technicians across the 
room with the two boys. She wished they would go before the doctor got here. 
This was perhaps the only chance she would ever have, and she was anxious not to 
miss it, although she had no real plan.
A small, thin man with a gray wispy goatee entered, stopped, and looked at the 
technicians. "Leave that for now. They aren't going anywhere," he told them. "I 
have much more important work to do. They can be read out on automatic, and I'll 
call you when it's done."
"As you wish, honorable doctor," responded one technician. After checking their 
boards, they left as well.
Wang came over to her and gave her a friendly smile. "Hello, there. I realize 
that this has been most distressing to you, but it should be very many more days 
until you are rid of us. I am Doctor Wang, Chief of Psychosurgery here. It is an 
honor to work on someone like you."
She stared at him. He was treating this as if it were a skinned knee or a broken 
arm. "You are my murderer. I do not find it at all amusing," she said coldly.
"No, my dear, I am no murderer, although you are not the first to make that sort 
of comment. I'm no butcher like those two will face on Melchior. I am an artist, 
you might say. I take people like yourself who are a danger to themselves and 
their families, and I create out of them people who will live full, happy, 
productive lives. My media are your body and your mind, but what is created will 
come from you, not from me. I only give some instructions here and there and 
nudge it in a positive direction."
"I am not insane! You are not curing someone who is sick! You are destroying 
someone who is well and far more productive than your results could ever be."
"Well, I don't know about that. Insanity, you see, has always been what the 
ruling culture said it was. In many places advocating that the Earth is round or 
that it moves about the sun would be absolute evidence of insanity. To be sane 
is not to be correct but to fit in with one's dominant cultural patterns. You 
are not insane by Center's lights, but you no longer can be allowed here. You 
are going into areas dangerous to everyone, and you cannot possibly be stopped 
without treatment like this, anyway, which would make you valueless here. Thus, 
you must be rendered sane according to the culture of the people."
He was behind her now, adjusting equipment that came down on either side of her 
head and touched both her arms.
"We could have the computers do all of this, with no human intervention," Wang 
told her, "but then it would be destruction, since everyone would come out 
according to a set of machine statistics. We cannot, however, involve the Master 
System here until quite late in the exercise since, quite frankly, there is too 
much in your head that we would rather not have Master System know about. 
Nothing in here, for example, is directly connected to Master System. It gets 
the results we wish to report, not what really happens. I'm certain you know 
that game by now."
"Yes," she responded sourly. No direct connection. Everything was perfect except 
she couldn't do a thing about it!
"All right, now let's take a good look at you." There was a click, and in front 
of her formed a hologram of an amorphous mass.
"That is the part of the brain we deal with first," he told her. "That's you 
there. Let me make some adjustments."
The image changed as parts of it were eliminated and smaller parts enlarged 
until there was just a skeletal outline of a single small area in orange 
outline. In the bottom were a tremendous number of holes, a few of which were 
filled with solids of many colors in the shapes of jigsaw puzzle pieces.
"Countless thousands of neural receptors are inside your brain," he told her, 
"all of which are now being monitored by the computer. We are visualizing only a 
cross section of the basics, but what we see here can tell us what is happening 
elsewhere. For example, you have high hormonal levels, but your psychosexual 
level is quite low, meaning that you don't think of physical sex as very 
important to you. Now, that energy has to go somewhere, so it goes into 
aggression, a drive to work or achieve, that sort of thing. It's all 
interrelated, and it shows up quite clearly on my monitor here. You—your 
conscious self— are actually the result of matching your biochemistry to your 
memories and experiences. We are far less free than we believe. The brain's 
biochemistry creates much of our personality, our limitations, our interests, 
and our inclinations. Before we can ever deal with memory, we must deal with the 
biochemistry, those receptors. To do it any other way would not give us you to 
compare things with. It would be hit or miss, trial and error."
She stared at the hologram in horrified fascination. "You are saying we are 
nothing but machines. That what I see is my Master System, my core program, 
which was determined by my genes."
"In a way, yes. However, all biological creatures have a multiplicity of sensors 
and an even more complex set of social and cultural interactions. Key to it all 
are the receptors for pain and pleasure. In normal cases we would not have to 
eliminate your expertise in computers, for example. By reorienting, by blocking 
certain receptors from that work stimulus, and creating unpleasant sensations 
when it is invoked by the brain, while giving a different activity, such as 
weaving, an interrelationship with the old pleasure center, we can create 
someone who knows all about computers but is not the slightest bit interested in 
them and finds them obnoxious but to whom sitting at a loom would be pure 
delight. In ancient times some of this could be forced by deprivation and 
conditioning, but it was brutal, unsure, and sloppy at best. This cuts out the 
middleman, as it were, and ensures permanency and perfection."
"This—this is what you do?"
"Primarily. Everything is subject to the cranial biochemistry. We can make you 
cry and feel miserable when you are happy and laugh hysterically at the funeral 
of your best friend. Even humor and tragedy are found here. It is like opium. 
The experience is so pleasurable that nothing else is possible except sustaining 
the experience. Opium drops pleasure modules in the receptors. It is, however, a 
foreign substance and is eventually expelled as such by the body, but the 
experience lingers so much that you wish only to find more. That is addiction. 
Once we discover the right mix of modules and blockers, we can stimulate your 
own body to produce the needed enzymes. As with genetically mandated enzymes, 
the combination that forms you as you are now, we will use blockers to prevent 
undesired genetically mandated material from finding its receptors, while our 
newly stimulated substances will find theirs. Over a relatively short period of 
time the body will adjust and shift to this new pattern, overriding the old, and 
it will be totally permanent and self-perpetuating. It is so complex that only a 
computer could isolate and define all the receptors and determine the mix, but 
only after I tell it the desired goals. There."
She felt pressure and a very slight momentary stinging in her right shoulder.
"Just relax. Only a mild test," he assured her soothingly. "Purely transitory. 
We won't get into anything really elaborate today."
She waited, scared to death of this man and his machines, and watched the 
hologram. Not all the chemical pieces remained put for any length of time; 
things were always changing, pieces disconnecting and others coming in, although 
the basic pattern remained the same.
Now, suddenly, some new pieces came into the scene, in colors not otherwise 
represented. Some were jet-black; others were yellow or gray. Many went right 
by, but some headed immediately for receptor points as if on homing beacons. A 
few of the black ones stuck to a blood vessel wall, as if waiting, and when some 
of the blue pieces vacated their natural positions, the black ones dislodged 
themselves and then swept in to fill the emptiness. More of the blue entered, 
natural chemicals, but they found their places occupied, and after pausing as if 
they were intelligent creatures, they moved on and out of view.
She continued to watch, and suddenly she began to tremble. She felt 
afraid—afraid not of the doctor or his machines but of everything. She began to 
cry, and the cry turned into uncontrollable sobbing. She felt a sense of 
terrible despair. Everything was hopeless. She was unloved, reviled, loathsome 
to others and to herself. She was unworthy, incapable of doing anything right. 
She needed someone—anyone—to protect her, to guide her. She needed 
someone—anyone—to instruct her in all things. She was afraid almost to think, to 
make any decisions, because she could only make the wrong ones. She felt so 
humble, so tiny and insignificant, that she wished someone would take her and 
command her.
The display shifted, although she had not seen it and had not even felt the 
second injection. Substances of differing colors moved in and eased out the 
foreign objects; the black ones were ordered out, and some but not all were 
replaced in her biochemical tapestry. .
She stopped crying, feeling much, much better now; a damp cloth wiped her face, 
and she smiled at the feel. It felt wonderful. Everything felt wonderful. Her 
whole body tingled, and even the brush of skin against the chair or her hospital 
gown seemed an erotic caress. She was drifting now on a wonderful, magical 
euphoric cloud in which nothing at all mattered. They could do anything, 
anything at all to her, and it would not matter. She rarely had any sort of 
sexual dreams or fantasies, but this was real, and she wished someone would come 
and take her and ravish her body and do whatever they wished with her. She had a 
vision of herself as a sultry woman of pleasure, dancing, moving, naked and free 
in front of a group of adoring men, and she really liked the fantasy.
Blockers and enzymes shifted and changed, and the feelings and the fantasies 
faded quickly. Reality returned, although she had always been conscious of where 
she was and what was happening. The difference was that she was becoming 
clearheaded once more, coldly confident, and increasingly angry over what was 
being done here. She struggled against her bonds, cursing the fact that she was 
trapped in a weak woman's body. She didn't feel like a woman; deep down, she had 
a vision that she was a man, a man trapped by science or sorcery in this weak 
girl's body, a strong and virile man with courage and confidence and raw animal 
power. She'd rather bed this body than be trapped in it. Anger turned to pure 
animal fury, and she struggled against the metal rings that bound her. 
Adrenaline pumped,' and she actually twisted and bent the rings and managed to 
get one hand free. He would show them! He would.
More shifting, more changing color patterns. The sense of strong sexual identity 
faded but was not replaced. She had no concept of maleness or femaleness; gender 
was an irrelevancy, without meaning to her. The anger, too, faded quickly, and 
she felt totally calm, unable even to relate to the emotions she had experienced 
up to that point. She was like a machine: aware, intelligent, but without 
passion, without any feelings at all about anything. Yet she was as clearheaded, 
as logical, as she could ever be. Stripped of her animalism, she stared at the 
patterns in the hologram and almost immediately grasped their logic and meaning 
based upon what she had seen so far. At this level, where even pleasure and 
pain, fear and love, were mere terms, she analyzed her situation. She was being 
reprogrammed, but this level was the most efficient for undertaking an escape. 
There was no hatred, no bitterness, no feeling of any sort that was relevant to 
her. Escape was mandated because this stage was the optimum one for her 
potentials, and it was illogical to abort it.
"I believe we have done enough for today," Doctor Wang said casually. "Too much 
can wear you out and cause harm to the body. My! You really did a job on those 
restraints! Well, I will just recline you now and allow you to rest and the 
enzymes to be expelled from your system. It will probably cause you to sleep, so 
just relax and let it happen. I'll be back in a few minutes to check you out, 
then you can go and eat."
She watched the doctor actually leave and no one else come back in. She did not 
feel elation or any other emotion, but she realized immediately that they had 
made their first mistake. There was simply no way that the chief administrator, 
her father, was going to allow this place to be without standard safeguards.
"Code Lotus, black, green, seven two three one one," she said aloud in a calm, 
expressionless voice. "Emergency override activation is ordered."
A computer voice responded from somewhere to the left rear of her. "Code 
acknowledged," it said. "Reason for interrupt?"
"Pawn takes king."
"Accepted. Instructions?"
Her father could never trust anyone, and that meant anyone. All Center computers 
with human interfaces were programmed with override codes that would allow him, 
if need be, to countermand almost any order. He changed the codes quite often 
and then just as often forgot them, so he had them encoded in his personal 
files. The only time when he couldn't depend on this was when he was away in 
Hainan or on Leave, as he was about to be now. For that period, he needed a 
sequence of codes he could always remember, and he often used a variation of the 
same sequences year after year. At fifteen, she had broken that code and had 
gone undiscovered, and she had had little trouble in the hidden room back home 
in establishing the few changes for this year now that she knew what she was 
looking for. That had been her one hope, but this had been the first opportunity 
to use it.
"Subject in Chair Two is object threat to king. At a point when this laboratory 
is not scheduled for use for a period of at least one hour, you will release 
subject from cell and substitute recording of previous time of subject in cell 
so that this is undetected, and you will suppress all alarms and guarantee 
uninterrupted access. You will be prepared to assist and guard. All outbound 
channels are monitored, so this is under my seal alone."
"Understood. Additional?"
"I would like to perpetuate my current physical and mental orientation until 
otherwise instructed. Then stand by until I am able to contact you here again."
"Understood. Formulating." There was a pneumatic hiss below her arm, then an 
injection. "Duration indefinite. Must be altered chemically."
"Understood. Switch off. I will sleep now."
She went immediately to sleep and did not dream at all.
She awakened back in her cell, but one thing was different. This time they had 
left the rice bowl and cool tea and not remained to watch her eat. Apparently 
they were confident of her and themselves now. She would require energy, and 
there was no way of forecasting when more might be available, so she went over 
and ate it all. She drank sparingly. She was aware that she could not move for 
long periods about the cell without attracting attention. She had been 
so—animalistic. She therefore assumed a position of meditation facing the door 
and willed her body into trancelike stillness. For the first and only time in 
her life, she had nearly total control over herself; she did not wonder at that 
but rather took it for granted.
There were alternatives to consider. Song Ching was in the Master System, so 
Song Ching must be accounted for somehow, at least for a sufficient length of 
time to make good an escape. She was in control only of the local network here; 
she had to take care not to flag Master System and not to raise human alarms. 
Master System she thought she could block for a sufficient period of time; the 
humans were the unpredictable ones.
Even if she escaped from here, though, there would be little she could do. Any 
security flag within Center itself would be immediately checked with Colonel 
Ching or her father. All direct access by her would have been blocked long ago. 
She could, of course, survive almost indefinitely in the maze of tunnels and 
service corridors. They might eventually activate a Val, but it would be useless 
because it would have her old imprint and assume that she would act on animal 
and distinctly Song Ching motives. If nothing else presented itself, though, she 
would do that until she was either captured or had managed somehow to tie in to 
the network from below and use it.
She also had infinite patience and waited for the inevitable to happen or not to 
happen. She could not even feel any sense of danger or excitement. Her plan was 
something that had to be tried on grounds of pure logic; it was that and nothing 
else which motivated her. She would not even feel disappointment if she was 
apprehended, or even if the door failed to open at all.
But it did open. She waited a moment to make certain that it hadn't opened to 
let an orderly pick up the food, then stood and walked out and down the maze of 
corridors, all barriers opening before her. She had been this way in a conscious 
state only once, but the route was absolutely clear to her. She met no one but 
was fully prepared to kill if she had to. Death meant absolutely nothing to her.
The lab was deserted, as she knew it would be, and she ordered it sealed to the 
outside. "How long can you avoid someone discovering I am gone?" she asked the 
computer.
"With an adjustment in the records showing that you have been fed and tended to 
and adjustments in the staff's orders, including Doctor Wang's, I can delay a 
minimum of twenty-four hours but no more than seventy-two."
"I must escape beyond the reach of Center or Administration so long as the 
threat remains," she told it.
"I do not see any way that this is possible."
"Nor do I. Other than escaping to the service corridors, my only other 
possibility is to escape to space with access to a spaceship command module. 
Other emergency overrides are possible once I am in that position."
"Any spaceship? Any size?"
"Yes. So long as it will support my biological requirements."
"There is one way, but it is complex and for that very reason has only a 
marginal chance of success."
"Proceed."
"There are two prisoners who are completed here and are to be transported in a 
matter of hours to an interplanetary courier, to be sent to Melchior."
"I have seen them."
"The younger of the two is close to your size, and with preparation and in 
transport clothing you might pass for him. While they will not look too closely 
so long as the paperwork is correct, some extreme adjustments would have to be 
made to you in order for you to sustain the masquerade all the way to the 
spaceport. Additionally, something must be done with the one whom you will 
replace, and adjustments must be made to the other, for he will know immediately 
that you are not his cousin and is most likely to betray you."
"What measures?"
"It is not sufficient that you masquerade as a boy. To sustain it, you must be 
the boy. There is no point at which you will be stripped on the schedule, but we 
are talking thirty hours to clear, during which any slip will be fatal."
"Proposal?"
"The two have been kept sedated on a robot-controlled console table in a medical 
cell in the men's section pending transfer. I can get them here without human 
intervention or knowledge for a period of time. If we begin now, I can make some 
basic physical and chemical alterations in you within two hours. Because of the 
time involved, much of it will be synthetics and a basic shell, but it will be 
authentic and convincing. It is not possible to actually switch minds, nor 
desirable in this case in any event, because your psychochemistry and physical 
requirements are so different, but I can lay his template atop my alterations 
and reinforce the illusion with hypnotics. You will act like him, think like him 
on the conscious level, walk and talk like him. You will not be him, but you 
will think you are. I will then use a strong hypnotic on the other and replace 
the mental image of Chu Li with what you will look and sound like, and he will 
accept you as his cousin even in the face of true physical evidence to the 
contrary. I will also modify the security holograms with animation to show you 
and not the real Chu Li in pictorials and charts. Barring the unforeseeable, it 
should be adequate."
"Duration?"
"Your template, being unsuited to you, will begin to deteriorate rather quickly, 
but it should hold reasonably well for at least the necessary three days, as 
will the hypnotics. The hypnotic on the companion, being far simpler, should 
last longer. Underneath, you will have access to all your own memories and 
knowledge, but your personality will be the new one. Be warned that even with 
this, the possibilities of being successful are slim, perhaps two percent."
"And the service corridor route?"
"The possibility of doing more than surviving there is no more than one percent. 
Survival possibilities are higher—nine percent. Restored to your original 
genetic encoding, which adds the animal safeguards, you have almost a thirty 
percent chance of indefinite survival but less than a one percent chance of 
doing anything more than that."
"Why would I have more of a survival chance as the old Song Ching?"
"Right now you must think about all alternatives, then make the most logical 
decision. The full animal instruction set allows action without thinking and 
induces many cautions."
"It is not logical to use the corridor alternative, then, since I would be 
unable to continue my work, and this is the sole reason for escape. It is not 
much better an alternative than allowing the work here to proceed. The space 
route is the only logical choice allowing any chance of complete success."
"Agreed. However, there is a caution. While the hypnotics and template will 
deteriorate, the psychochemical changes will not. You will be a sexually 
oriented male and will retain a basically male set of personality 
characteristics. As you presently are, this does not seem a consideration, but 
it has the potential to cause great anguish later. To undo and restore without 
causing permanent damage or alterations would require your template and codes 
and an installation such as this, unlikely to be in friendly hands."
"Escape is the only imperative. All other problems are potential and therefore 
secondary. Enact."

6. BARGAINS AT SPEAR'S POINT

 
 
"I AM A HISTORIAN, A MAN OR WORDS AND ANCIENT OBJECTS," Hawks told her, feeling 
uncomfortable. "I am no fighter. I do not lack the courage, but I lack the 
training and skills to go against these renegades."
"Your muscles are developing in the right places," Cloud Dancer assured him. 
"And your reactions are quite swift for one who works with words, as I have 
seen. Not one of these men I have seen is even fit to carry your spear. Their 
strength is entirely in numbers. Apart they would be cowards and helpless."
"What you say might be true, but in case you had not noticed, my dear wife, I do 
not possess the spear they are not fit to carry, nor bow, nor arrows, nor knife, 
nor anything else that they have in plenty. And I move in the dark like a 
buffalo," he added.
"We shall see. I shall see what we are up against this night, and we will then 
make plans for tomorrow night. There may be some way to find things here that 
might make weapons. A weapon is anything which can be used as one, after all."
He was startled. "You are going out there?"
"In the early hours, when it is chill and very dark. There are clouds tonight. 
That will help. For now, let us find some not so rotten fruit to steal from the 
poor animals and get some rest."
When she woke him, he frowned and rubbed his eyes, then saw that the first light 
of a dismal gray day was already dawning. "It is too late," he mumbled. "We have 
slept through the darkness."
"You slept through. I have been out and around half this village," she 
responded, sounding very pleased with herself.
That woke him up fast. "What!"
"Ssssh! They are poor excuses for warriors. Two watched from across the way, one 
almost across from the door here and the other from down the street. The one 
across from us slept most of the night through, while the one down the street 
kept leaving for drinks from a container inside and was seeing anything but us. 
The sleeping one was depending on a dog to wake him if we moved, but although 
the dog saw me, it approached and wagged its tail, as if waiting for a treat of 
food. When it found I had none, it followed a short distance, then lost interest 
and returned to its still sleeping master. There are some very mean-looking 
guards, it is true, but they guard the landing and the storehouse, which is far 
from here. Even they seemed bored and might not be impossible to get by."
"But you might have been killed!"
She smiled. "No, I am the prize, remember? You they might kill, my husband, but 
me they want and will take if we do nothing. More, I have made a friend, I 
think. One who might be of value to us."
"What? Who?"
"I do not know her name, nor her tribe, but it is certainly far down the river. 
She is one of their slaves, a small, pretty woman aged far beyond her years. She 
was the only one who surprised me, and it was very much by chance. I think she 
rises in the middle of the night to prepare the big lodge where most of them eat 
the morning meal. She just stepped out back and almost ran in to me. She clearly 
knew who I was. I guess they all do."
"You say this is a friend, yet you do not know her name, her tribe, or her work 
exactly, and she is a longtime slave here?"
"She could not tell me. She did not know the sign language or Hyiakutt. It would 
not matter if she had seen you, however, who know so many tongues. Someone, 
perhaps long ago, cut her tongue out."
That both angered and sickened him. "So what makes you say she is a friend who 
comes from the south?"
"Anyone can get a few basic pieces of information across with hand, body, and 
eyes. I believe she would help us just to spite them, but she also does not wish 
me to join her. She may be of great help. Kitchens such as theirs have sharp 
knives and hatchets."
Perhaps fortune was finally taking pity on them, although it certainly hadn't up 
to now. He could understand the slave's situation and pity her. Here in a 
culture as alien to her as his was to the Aztec, she would be lost and without 
friends. Escape? To where? Even if her tribe was willing to take her back, the 
chances of which were fifty-fifty, she would first have to get there, far to the 
south, a young woman without even the power of speech in a wilderness alien to 
her.
"We will check out the area and see what our true situation is," he told her. 
"See what we can and cannot get away with, too. They have the respect of the 
tough river traders, so that means they have influence beyond this small 
village. They are not hunters but traders. They could not support all this 
without something strong to trade."
"They are thieves!" she shot back.
"Yes, and more. They sell their protection, I think. If you trade with them, on 
terms very generous to them, you have no problems. If not, well, the river is 
wide and mostly desolate. You simply meet with an unfortunate accident, and they 
have even more to trade."
"It is indecent if what you say is true! They have no honor at all! I cannot 
understand why warriors such as these traders do not band together and wipe out 
this snake nest!"
"Roaring Bull is clever and only as greedy as he knows he can be. He does not 
demand so much that they will be injured by paying him, and he probably does 
this only to those traders far from tribes and homes. The tribes of this region 
he does not touch, and he probably also supplies them with the fire drinks. 
Perhaps he is very clever and keeps only what he extorts, letting the other area 
tribes be the accidents. In any case, he keeps them happy and on his side. He 
also knows, as do the traders, that if they were to come at him in force, 
providing they could put aside all their tribal and national rivalries and trust 
and cooperate with one another for that much, one of the other tribes would 
simply move in and replace him."
"You are speaking as if we cannot get away even if we do escape," she noted. 
"How far south would his voice reach?"
He shrugged. "Not too far either way or he would have far too large a set of 
bribes to pay to make it worthwhile. A full day, perhaps. Give him two just to 
allow for errors. That is why it is not as simple as slitting a few throats and 
slipping away, and he knows it."
She considered that. "Then if he wants me, I do not see why he plays this game 
with us. He could just order you killed and take me."
"He could, but he does have his own twisted code, I think. More important, he is 
concerned that I am from Council. He knows I am in trouble with them, but he 
also does not know how much influence I might have. We can be traced here simply 
because Council hunters would start with the Four Families' lodge and know of 
you, and when they found you here, they would not be gentle with those who 
mistreated me."
"But you said they would kill you for what you know!"
"They would. Most times they can play tricks with the mind, erase or change 
things, but they would not be permitted to take the slightest chance that anyone 
could ever learn what I knew, and many would try to find out for their own gain. 
They would kill me—but first they would want to know all that I know so they 
could be sure that my death would end it."
She sighed. "It is all so complicated. Roaring Bull is the high chief of this 
whole region, yet he fears those of Council. Council, in turn, fears—what? You 
said they would not be permitted to take the chance. Who would they have to ask 
permission of? They are the guardians of all of this land, are they not?"
"Of this continent, yes, but there are many other continents and regions. The 
man I need to see is head of Council in one of those places. The heads of all 
the Councils in turn make up a body known as the Presidium. It is an odd, 
non-Hyiakutt word, but it means 'to rule.' They are given great power to make 
sure that the whole world follows the rules and great rewards for doing it."
She yawned but was fascinated. "So who makes the rules all must follow?"
"A—there is no real word for it in our tongue. A man-built mind. A thing that is 
as of man as this stable yet thinks impossibly faster than the finest human 
minds and knows the knowledge of the universe. It made the rules and commanded 
that this all be done long ago, in ancient times."
"Where is it? It sounds like a great demon of the Inner Darkness."
"It is. The demon that stalked our land weeks ago was created by it to serve it. 
A machine in the crude, distorted form of a man. As to where it is, no one 
knows. That knowledge is of the sort that would get anyone killed. It protects 
itself. It might be beyond those trees there or high overhead in a great ship 
that is a small moon and circles us, or it might be in a greater ship that goes 
to the stars and never is in one place. No one is allowed to know. Its vast 
machines are loyal to it and must follow its orders exactly. They convey the 
messages to and from something only they know. Information, and orders as well. 
Unless we threaten its system, it lets its humans rule. It selects those rulers, 
and it rewards and punishes them."
"But how does it rule this way?"
"The same way Roaring Bull rules. By fear. It was created by fear and out of 
fear, and so fear is what it knows best. That has always been the most effective 
and efficient means of making people do what a leader wants them to do. Fear—and 
reward. Long ago, it is said, humans created horrible weapons that could destroy 
all life down to the last rat, cockroach, and even blade of grass. Some of those 
in charge of those weapons feared them terribly and tried to find a way around 
their leaders to be certain that no such weapons would be used. With this fear, 
they built the machine, and they set it to discover a way that humans would 
never be allowed to destroy themselves. Somehow it found a way to take control 
of all the weapons of all the nations, and it threatened to use those weapons 
against their own makers unless they obeyed. Some did not believe, and it did 
use the weapons to destroy those nations. The rest, out of fear, did just what 
the machine commanded them to do. All served out of fear, but some served 
because they came to worship the machine and wished only to please it. These are 
the ones who were set over and apart from the rest."
"There are legends of this thing, but I never thought of them as more than 
that."
"They are not legends but truths. Its very creators became its victims. It is 
said that they were all the first ordered killed. They did not dream what their 
creation would do. It ordered them to tear down the whole of the world and build 
it back up as it had been in many other times. Tremendous amounts of knowledge 
were completely forbidden, wiped away, along with the great things humans had 
done. It had logic and its orders. It decided that the only way to ensure than 
man, with his violence, cruelty, and tyranny, could never destroy himself was to 
keep man forever in a state of knowledge where such weapons and such means could 
never be even imagined. The bright ones who might change things either were 
taken up to the leadership to fall under its commands directly or were either 
managed or killed. Superior knowledge was reserved for Council, and even that 
has limits, which is why I run. I know now a piece of knowledge that it thought 
long extinguished from the mind of any person."
"It is evil. It came out of the formation of all evil, the fire pits, and it 
rules us." She shuddered. "You speak almost as if those of Council worship it."
"They do worship it. It is their god, their sole belief, and they serve. They do 
not, however, love it as we love the Creator, the Great Spirit who created the 
universe. They serve because they fear it and cannot fight it. They hate it, for 
evil is hate, and fear, and terror, and brutality. They must have all these 
things to serve it properly. It is the Lord of the Inner Darkness, the ultimate 
void, which encompasses everything. It is an ancient story. Once human beings 
occupied its place, and they were set to destroy not only themselves but 
everything. So others, in fear, built their own god and gave it dominion over 
the rulers of men. That is the tragedy of it."
"What?" She yawned again, unable to stave off sleep much longer.
"That men have always dreamed of being the rulers of the Inner Darkness, and 
some finally made it, only to have it snatched from them by another. Our leaders 
now do not hate its power; they envy and they covet it. They wish to reclaim it 
for themselves. Otherwise, there is only one Lord of the Inner Darkness; as much 
as they can ever be are Lords of the Middle Dark, above all but one but forced 
to carry out only the will of the one. They preserve the Outer Darkness in which 
we all must live."
He had gotten preachy, and she had finally surrendered to her exhaustion. Still, 
it was truth that he spoke. Only he now knew the secret of the Inner Lord; he 
knew that there was something it feared, that there was one way to challenge its 
power and perhaps defeat it. Five gold rings. Precious good that knowledge was 
doing him, of course. He was squatting here in a foul stable dressed only in a 
rope and a rag, at the mercy of one of the least of the chain, a Lord of the 
Outer Dark named Roaring Bull, whom he understood perfectly. If he could not 
deal with Roaring Bull, he could hardly deal with Lazlo Chen and others as bad 
or worse.
Still, for the first time he was beset with doubt. What was he really doing 
anyway? Carrying the secret of the keys to the Inner Dark to one who might be 
far worse than what they had now. Those five, whoever they were, who wore the 
rings—they had not been appointed to those positions by the Master System 
because of longevity or family breeding. They had earned their way with the 
blood of others, mortgaging their souls in the process. Men like them, perhaps 
better than them, had reached the point where mass genocide and mass suicide 
were taken for granted. Would humanity be better off in the hands of five evil 
people? Would his own people, whose way of life was spiritual and fulfilling, be 
among the first to be penned up, perhaps extinguished, while others again 
slaughtered the buffalo and deer and elk into near or total extinction just for 
sport?
Oddly enough, he decided that the attempt to find and use the rings was worth 
the risk. If it could be done or if he could just spread the knowledge of the 
rings so that someone, some day, could and would do it, he should try.
Cloud Dancer was not truly correct. Master System, whatever it was, had not 
coalesced all evil into itself; its evil had been entirely taught to it by 
humankind. It was not an evil creation, just one that had done its job and then 
kept on doing it. It was evil now, the ultimate evil, because it had gone on 
past its time and threatened to go on forever. By locking the people of Earth 
into their own past, it had rendered them powerless to destroy themselves. And 
it had done more. It had taken the huge masses of people who could not be 
supported by such a system or controlled by it and scattered them among the 
stars. He hadn't mentioned that part to Cloud Dancer, because she thought the 
stars were spirits, and the concept of billions of humans was beyond her. Still, 
it was exactly so.
Even if Earth again reached a capacity for self-destruction, humanity would not 
die. So many worlds out there were populated now that humanity would probably 
live—in some form or another—as long as the universe lived. Yet those worlds, 
too, were held down, suppressed by the Master System. It treated them all as it 
had treated its birthworld, and worse. Humanity could not be destroyed, and that 
was the objective of the system as its human creators had envisioned, but 
neither could it grow— ever.
Better that men be in command, even if they were far more evil than the machine. 
Evil men had come and gone throughout history and caused great suffering, but 
they had come—and gone. Others, some better, some worse, all different, had 
replaced them, but civilization had grown. He must loose the Lords of the Middle 
Dark from their chains, even if they devoured him and all that he held dear. He, 
as a historian, understood that better than most.
But first there was that pipsqueak pirate and dictator over there in that lodge, 
chuckling to himself and filling his fat belly. If he could not deal with 
Roaring Bull, he deserved no better than serving the lowest of the lords of 
evil. After Moxxoquan, Emperor of the Council of Nations, what was a Roaring 
Bull?
He felt suddenly invigorated, although the smells of fine food denied him 
attacked his stomach. He would not be stopped here. He had a thought that was 
appropriate to the occasion, although it was out of place here and to one of his 
lineage, traditions, and spiritual beliefs; a thought that only a scholar who 
had been given the keys to knowledge forbidden to the masses of humanity could 
have in such a time and place:
Why, this is merely Limbo; I stand only at the gates of Malebolge and have nine 
circles to go before I am permitted to Dis. What warrior could dream of facing 
great Satan in his lair when he is trapped in Limbo?
He scouted the village, strutting as if he were its master, yet all eyes averted 
from him, all contact forbidden. They watched him in furtive glances and 
wondered if he was mad or perhaps would make a bargain.
But he would make no bargains with demons, he knew. He would not be trapped 
forever in Limbo, as they all were.
A number of traders were stopping at the landing: perhaps six or more canoes, 
some double and lashed together to carry all the more. The summer was ended, and 
they were going home. Two large warriors guarded the path and eyed Hawks 
nastily, so he went to one side and waited for the traders to come up. They were 
of many nations, but he was able to make out their conversations as they came up 
from the landing and went into the village to pay their respects—and perhaps 
more as well—to Chief Roaring Bull.
"I do not like this one bit, so many of Council without respect going about the 
land," one remarked to another casually in a tongue Hawks understood.
"I do not know what they do here," the other responded. "That Crow man and that 
black Caribe bitch. I would gladly give my life if I could first be permitted to 
cut their arrogant throats. They had better not come into my tribe!"
"They were looking for someone in particular," the first one noted. "I hope that 
if they find him, he feels as you!"
"You will have more two or three days south," another put in. "Up on a bluff on 
the west shore. They tried to be hidden, but they are amateurs, soft in the ways 
of living free. They were there when I came up. A bunch of them digging holes 
and sifting dirt. Their ways are inexplicable."
That all interested him, and he remained to hear as much new gossip as he could. 
He didn't know who the southbounders were referring to. A Crow and a Caribe? 
Council Security, certainly, at least the Crow.
They were hunting someone. Him, perhaps? Had they found the body up there, or 
had the Val just pulled the alarm when it saw that Hawks, the only Council 
member around not searching with it, had vanished south? The fact that a Caribe 
had ventured this far north was unnerving, even though she would make the 
hunters easy to spot. She had to be the one who'd lost the courier, the one told 
to go up there and not come back without a dead body and a destroyed briefcase. 
With her career and future on the line, she would pull no punches, and for the 
knowledge of the rings, Master System would allow a lot of leeway.
The others to the south were more interesting. Archaeologists, certainly, from 
the description. This was a region of the mound builders, whose structures 
remained miraculously preserved in spite of the prior huge population here and 
the massive destruction that had followed.
The archaeologists would try to blend in, but somewhere close they would have 
modern equipment, which Hawks might be able to use to advance his cause and 
cover his tracks.
All right, he said to himself. You now have a destination, pursuers, and a 
potential for escape. If you can just find something to eat and get a little 
more rest, you might just save your neck.
Saving humanity would come later.
Neither Hawks nor Cloud Dancer got much rest. In anticipation of action, he just 
couldn't sleep; she quickly discovered that the stables were busy places in the 
daytime and managed to catch an hour here and an hour there. He admired her 
greatly for her seeming lack of concern. He tried to draw on her courage.
The trouble was that they didn't have enough to go on to work out a definite 
plan. They knew what they had to do, but how it was done would be strictly 
improvised, and they were depending a lot on the overconfidence and incompetence 
of the men set to watch them.
It wasn't until late that evening that they had enough privacy to discuss their 
plans. Cloud Dancer had effectively scouted and memorized the village layout the 
night before, but he had to describe to her in detail the interior of Roaring 
Bull's main lodge as he remembered it. He also told her about the two security 
people who were probably looking for them.
"I would prefer more time to study this, but I have been fearful all day that 
they would arrive here, and they will certainly be here within another day. I 
think we must go as soon as we can."
"It is better to act than to dwell," she responded.
He had feared a clear night, but the mists rolled in off the rivers and hung 
heavy on the village, and through it a light, cold rain fell, turning the whole 
area thick with mud. The dampness was uncomfortable; at times like this he 
appreciated all those inoculations against colds, flus, and pneumonia, and he 
worried a bit about Cloud Dancer.
By early morning the conditions were appalling but very much to the advantage of 
the pair. The sleepy guard was back, but he'd retreated inside to keep out of 
the rain; when Cloud Dancer slipped silently from the stable and peeked in the 
small hut across the way, she found him out again and snoring loudly by a small 
fire. The watchdog looked up, yawned, and went back to sleep. She checked for 
the guard down the street as well, but he was gone, almost certainly inside by a 
fire himself, warming his insides with fire liquids. She saw no trace of other 
watchers.
When she returned for Hawks, he was already numb from the cold of the stable and 
somewhat wet, since the roof leaked, so actually moving more than made up for 
the additional wetness outside. The mud, however, was both deep and slippery, 
something which worked against them, but would also be a problem for pursuers.
Cloud Dancer's silent friend peered out the doorway nervously and was given a 
whispered response. She motioned them up and in with a hand gesture. The warmth 
of the kitchen felt good.
The woman was indeed tiny, although her proportions showed the results of being 
a cook. Not that she was fat, but her behind and breasts were definitely a lot 
fatter than they were supposed to be. She had long, stringy black hair with 
traces of gray, although she didn't look all that old. Her eyes were ancient. 
She was barefoot and had on a simple skin and cloth dress which looked as worn 
as she did.
Time was pressing, but he tried his entire repertoire of American languages and 
found each met by a shaking of the head. She had certainly learned some Illinois 
just by being there, but he didn't know that language. Since so many of the 
plains languages were related, as were another group from the southwest, he 
decided that Cloud Dancer had probably been correct: The mute woman was from 
either the south or the east coastal area. How she had wound up in the hands of 
this band was probably an epic story but not one she would ever tell.
She had gone to some risk for their sake, that was clear. She had two knives for 
them, one a hunting knife and the other well balanced for throwing, and somehow 
she'd managed to get a spear. She also had a worn leather shoulder bag that 
contained some provisions such as small apples, nuts, and dried fruit. It was 
more than he had expected, but both he and Cloud Dancer understood the 
obligation their acceptance incurred. In a place this small it was unavoidable 
that such help would be traced back to the slave woman, whether they succeeded 
in escaping or not. The punishment would be very slow and agonizing torture 
until death released her, in public, as an example of what happened to those 
slaves who betrayed their masters.
"She must come along, you know," he told Cloud Dancer.
"I knew you would think so. I could not love a man who would decide otherwise."
"It is also not likely we can return her to her people." The Hyiakutt accepted 
returned or escaped prisoner-slaves into the tribe, but many tribes considered 
becoming a prisoner or slave to be an act of unworthiness and tantamount to 
death. Also, she had clearly been here a long time; she would have no future and 
few, if any, friends if she did return. "I also could never keep a slave."
"Come on and let us go," Cloud Dancer said irritably. "It was I who involved her 
in this and agreed to her help. I understood then that you would have to marry 
her, too. Come. If we do not make good this escape, then none of this matters."
He kissed her, then kissed a very surprised new wife who probably did not yet 
understand that she had taken on that title. He pointed to himself and said in 
Hyiakutt, "Walks With the Night Hawks." She nodded, and he pointed to his wife 
and companion. "Cloud Dancer." Then he pointed to her. "Silent Woman," he said, 
and she nodded and looked pleased. He turned and gestured toward the door. 
"Check to see if all's clear. Time to live or die."
All was clear; so far they had moved without detection. The rain was still 
falling, and the mist was so thick that they could have made it to the canoes 
and gotten away without anyone seeing them, but to do so would have meant 
inevitable pursuit in force and probable recapture within two days. Hawks took 
the hunting knife and a kitchen hatchet; Cloud Dancer chose the spear, with 
which she was more proficient, and a long, thin kitchen tool that resembled an 
ice pick. Silent Woman carried the supply bag and the throwing knife. They 
headed for Roaring Bull's lodge.
The lodge door was directly across from the storehouse, which would have had the 
usual two guards on it' had the rain not forced them inside. Hawks hoped the 
crude wooden door of the lodge wasn't barred from the inside. There was no other 
way in that was practical. But fire was a constant hazard to anyone in such 
wooden and hay-lined lodges, and it was unlikely that anyone would bar their 
only possible escape, particularly with two guards less than five meters away.
Hawks crept around the side of the lodge, checked again for signs of anyone 
about, then pulled on the door. It gave easily, but he hadn't remembered it 
making that much noise. He could only hope that the sound of the rain would mask 
their entrance. He had his knife in one hand and a hatchet in the other, and he 
took a deep breath and stepped into the lodge.
He paused, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark of the room. There was no 
light left in the fire, and the two alcohol lamps were long extinguished. The 
ventilation came from wooden slats near the ceiling propped open with sticks, 
and it was still quite dark outside. He wondered if he would break his neck.
The place smelled like a pigpen, but it was relatively warm and dry, one of the 
few lodges here with wood floors. The two large tables were littered with the 
remains of the previous night's activities, and many of the large skin flagons 
would need refilling. The sounds of scurrying and chewing told him that the mice 
were first on the cleanup detail.
In one corner was a small collection of weapons, including a bow and a quiver of 
arrows. He kept that in mind, although they were of no use in here.
When lodges this large were divided into rooms, it was usually with blankets. 
Roaring Bull, however, had actually had a wooden partition built so that none of 
his trader guests would get into his bedroom even by accident.
Hawks jumped at a sound behind him, then recognized the slender form of Cloud 
Dancer. He eased back over to her, and as soon as she was used to the dark, he 
gestured toward the curtained-off doorway to the back room from which came the 
sounds of deep snores.
The darkness was a complication neither had thought of. Cloud Dancer moved to 
the fireplace, found a stick, and gently stirred the remains while crouching 
down and blowing on them. There were still a few spots of red. She got one of 
the torches from a holder, and after many tries it ignited. It was not, however, 
in the best of shape and gave them at the start only a bit more light than a 
match would have. It would have to do. Hoping that it wouldn't burn out, she 
replaced it in its holder, from where it lit the room with an eerie half glow.
Hawks cautiously pulled back the curtain and looked inside. He wasn't really 
prepared for the sight of the old fat man stark naked, sleeping between two 
equally naked women, both obviously slaves like Silent Woman. The light shone on 
the face of the nearer of the two women and she stirred, opened her eyes, 
turned, then opened them again and stared at Hawks in stark terror. He put a 
finger to his lips, then motioned for her to get up and stand away from the old 
chief. For a moment she couldn't move, then she did as instructed. He was 
relieved. He'd kill the old boy if he had to, but he sure as hell didn't want 
innocent blood on his hands.
He leaned back out, whispered to Cloud Dancer, and exchanged his hatchet for her 
spear. At this distance and in these crowded conditions, the spear seemed the 
best weapon. The slave girl's eyes widened as she realized that the invader was 
not alone.
Hawks poked Roaring Bull with the spear, gently at first, then more rudely when 
the man merely stirred. Finally the chief raised his lids just a little.
"Enough acting!" Hawks hissed. "Sit up and face me!"
Roaring Bull smiled, sat up, yawned, and stretched. "Or you'll do what?" he 
asked genially in Sioux. "Kill me? That will get you nowhere. One shout from me 
will bring in a horde of sleepy but dedicated warriors."
"Make that shout and you feel the spear," Hawks responded. "We have already 
resolved that this will work or we will die. No other choices. I am comfortable 
with either. Are you? Shall I make a small, painful hole in you to prove a 
point?"
By this point the other woman had awakened, gasped, and now sat up, pressed into 
the corner.
Roaring Bull seemed to consider his position. "Seems I underestimated you, boy. 
Few Council types would have the ability, and fewer the courage, to get this 
far."
Hawks rudely pulled on the curtain, bringing it down. The torch was burning more 
brightly now. "Come on out, and quietly. No tricks! If we are discovered in 
here, we will die, but you will die, slowly and painfully, before we do. Even if 
you are hurt, you do not cry out, or at the very least I will sever your 
tongue."
"Bold words," the chief sighed, but he got up and came out into the main room, 
where Cloud Dancer sat on a table, one of the bows from the corner in her hand, 
its drawstring stretched with a small hunting arrow.
Hawks turned back to the two women. "Do either of you want to come with us?" he 
asked, first in Sioux, then in several other languages when they did not 
respond. He was about to give up when one whispered, in a language close enough 
to Cheyenne for him to make it out, "He is death. We must not go with him."
"Choose now," he responded in Cheyenne. "I have seen many men in this village, 
young and old, but I have seen few old women. Come now, or you will remain here 
forever."
"Come where?" the other asked, frightened. "There is no place for us to go."
"With me. Perhaps to death. Perhaps to life. The mute one goes with us."
"But she is addlebrained."
Never had he met two people more intent on remaining slaves. He did not argue 
further; he had done his duty. He began cutting up some blankets and rope while 
Roaring Bull stood in all his naked majesty watching with seemingly little 
concern.
The two women stared at Hawks. "What are you going to do with those?" one asked.
"If you will not go, then you cannot be allowed to raise any alarms too soon. I 
must bind and gag you both."
Their acceptance of the bonds bothered him almost as much as their refusal to 
go. Is this what we have come to? he asked himself, knowing he was no 
professional at this and worrying that the bonds were too tight—or not tight 
enough to hold. Or is this what we have always been? It disappointed him. He 
could not imagine slaves, freed of their chains and told that there was a slim 
but real chance of freedom if they ran, who would run and put the chains back 
on. No wonder the lords of the dark had come to the top!
Roaring Bull was still sleepy, but he was alert enough. "Will you allow me at 
least to put my pants on?" he asked almost genially.
"I would give you what you gave us if I had it available. Wait." He still had a 
length of rope left. "Here. Tie this around your fat belly and fasten these 
blankets to it. It's the least I can do for modesty's sake."
The chief refused. "Hardly matters, considering what it sounds like outside and 
the fact that you two look like you have been rolling in fresh horse dung. May I 
ask what you intend to do now?"
"We go to the south landing, and all of us get into a canoe or some other 
floating thing we can use."
"You're going on the river, in the dark, in fog and rain? It's treacherous not 
far south of here. The Ohio and Mississippi flow side by side for a while, but 
finally they merge, and when they do, it is messy."
"Then we will survive, or drown and die. You left us no choice, and no promise 
of yours now could be believed." He switched to his native tongue. "Cloud 
Dancer, see that all is clear out there, and then we will move."
He held the spear at the ready as she went to look. Roaring Bull sighed and 
moved a bit closer to the nearest table. Suddenly the old man made a move for 
something suspended under the table. Hawks reacted instinctively, not spearing 
but whacking the old man hard with the stick. The chief gave a little cry as an 
object dropped to the floor, then dived for it, but now the spear came down on 
the old man's right hand. He gave a sharp cry, but Hawks had already pulled the 
knife, and the old boy saw it and gritted his teeth.
Hawks kicked the object away, pulled out the spear, then leaned down and picked 
up the thing without ever taking his eyes off Roaring Bull, who now sat nursing 
a bloody hand.
The thing was a pistol. One-shot, ball type, very basic, of either Caje or 
Caribe origin. The damned thing was too inaccurate a weapon to have been a 
threat to his person, but it would have raised a tremendous noise.
"You've mangled my hand!" Roaring Bull said in wonder. The pain and injury 
seemed to affect him less than the fact that someone had actually harmed him.
"Yes. Too bad. Now you cannot paddle. Now, get up and move in front of me or you 
will find this knife mangling the only thing about you your pet women in there 
really care about. Move!"
Roaring Bull moved, nursing his hand. He seemed utterly unable to comprehend the 
fact that someone had actually speared him. "But it's bleeding! It must be 
bandaged and tied off!"
"I care as much about that as I care whether or not I kill you, which is not 
much. You will move ahead of me and do just what I say. If you try anything 
else, you will not see me die."
Much of the confidence seemed to have drained out of the old chief. "But I will 
not be able to swim when you are swamped!" he objected.
"Then you had better give us expert advice on how to avoid that, hadn't you?"
They went out into the cold and wet to join Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman. 
Roaring Bull, upon seeing the mute woman, gave her a withering glance. She spit 
at him.
The south landing was on the Ohio and down a bit from the junction of the two 
rivers. Cloud Dancer went on ahead to scout the landing, then returned. "Two men 
with spears, bows, and probably knives," she told him, gesturing as she spoke. 
Silent Woman nodded and seemed to understand.
"We must get both at once," he told her. "Or the survivor will raise the alarm. 
Give me the bow and arrows. I am a pretty fair shot with them."
"It can't be done," Roaring Bull offered. "Those are among my best. See that 
they guard even in this weather. Forget this. We can make a deal."
Silent Woman pulled out the throwing knife, then pointed to her skin case of 
supplies. Hawks wondered if he had the idea and tried to make sure with 
gestures. "You—Go—Down—There. Kill—one—with knife?"
She nodded. It might work, he decided, if he was ready and accurate when she 
made her move. She was, after all, a slave, a familiar figure, and one thought 
dim-witted, and she might be up at this hour. It wasn't a regular thing, but it 
might make sense to the guards to see a familiar figure currying favor by 
bringing down something to eat and perhaps drink. It was still well before dawn, 
but he could see the guards in the half-light perhaps five meters from a thick 
line of bushes, and he could see some of the boats pulled up on the shore, but 
the river itself was a mass of gray merging into the sky.
Cloud Dancer had the spear aimed at Roaring Bull, although he didn't seem to be 
much of a threat right now. His hand, though a bit better, was still bleeding 
and obviously useless.
When Hawks nodded, Silent Woman stepped out and walked down the path toward the 
guards.
The nearer of the two shouted something, then spoke in a lighter tone to the 
other, who chuckled. Clearly she was going to be allowed to get close, having 
been recognized and determined to be no threat.
The larger of the two, nearer the boats, started walking slowly toward her as 
the other one just watched. Hawks remained totally still, knowing that he had to 
act when she did, yet not quite able to keep both her and his target in view at 
the same time. He knew, too, that this was no deer. He had never killed a man 
before.
Silent Woman was no more than three meters from the man when she suddenly drew 
and threw the knife. The missile struck the man in the chest, and he made a loud 
exclamation as he fell backward in surprise. At the cry, the other man turned 
and hefted his spear with one motion.
Hawks's arrow went straight through the man's neck. He dropped the spear, and 
two hands went to his throat, and he tottered for just a moment, then fell over 
into the water with a splash.
They all moved quickly. Silent Woman's target had not been killed by her knife 
throw, and she had been upon him in an instant. By the time they reached her, 
she was covered in blood. She had cut his throat.
Cloud Dancer pointed to a canoe. "That one." It would hold the four of them, but 
it wasn't exactly roomy. There were other, larger canoes there, with wooden oars 
attached with ropes to their sides.
"Not one of those?" he asked her.
"No. It would take all of us to launch it, and it would stand out on the river."
She was right, as usual. He pushed the canoe halfway into the water, then the 
chief, Silent Woman, and Cloud Dancer got in. Somehow he managed to push it out, 
run into the water, and get aboard without overturning it.
They drifted out into the river, and he suddenly looked around. "Anybody check 
to see that we had paddles this time?"
Cloud Dancer laughed. "Here. Let us see if the two of us can get us out into 
midstream with this ancient lump of buffalo fat aboard."
They managed to get well away from shore and then let the current take them 
down. It occurred to Hawks that they would be passing below the bluff atop which 
the village sat, but he wasn't worried. If they could keep afloat and away from 
nasty water, he was pretty certain they would survive until the next threat.
"I don't know why you bothered to bring me," Roaring Bull commented. "You could 
have gotten this far without me."
"It isn't this far I was worried about," Hawks responded. "I know you have 
people and possibly whole tribes obligated to you down here. I want clear of 
that. You'll be my insurance and my translator as well if any show themselves."
The chief denied this for a long time but finally more or less admitted it. "But 
what if you are found by one of them? How will you know what I speak is true and 
not some plan for rescue?" he asked, knowing that his best chance was to sow 
doubt and plant a little fear and knowing, too, that they needed him too much to 
kill him if they could avoid it.
"Simple," Hawks replied. "You and I both know how tenuous this whole thing is. 
One major slip and we are done. We accept that. The only thing I can absolutely 
ensure is that if we die, you will die as well."
The chief shrugged. "What does it matter? If you get well away of my arms, you 
will kill me anyway."
"Unlike you, I am a man of honor," Hawks told him. "You must believe that, and I 
think you do. Just as surely as I say that you will pay for any treachery with 
your life or with something that will make you wish you were dead, so I also say 
that you will be freed and not further harmed the moment we can safely land 
after passing the Missouri."
Roaring Bull looked at his hand, which had finally stopped bleeding but was a 
painful mess. He knew he would never be able to use it much again, and he hated 
Hawks for that. He also knew, though, that he was old and slow and out of 
condition, no match for at least two of these three, and the action of the mute 
woman had scared him. It was every master's nightmare that his slaves would turn 
on him, and now he was sure of the loyalty of only two.
Still, his pride, his ego, and his security had been wounded as much as or more 
than his hand. He had ordered many killed or tortured or mutilated, but he had 
not suffered a personal injury at the hands of another in more than twenty 
years. If it had been he versus Hawks, he would have taken the chance and had at 
the man, no matter what the odds or outcome. He was not a coward, but he was 
also not a fool. He could have broken Cloud Dancer, that he knew—there was no 
one alive who could not be broken—but as she was, she was as deadly as Hawks and 
not encumbered with his civilized background and scruples. Most threatening of 
all was Silent Woman; she had the least to lose and the most reason for hurting 
him horribly. She would never kill him if she could avoid it, but she 
would—amputate things. The odds were too great. A trio like this was doomed 
anyway, somewhere down the line. He had reason to return to his village. There 
were at least two warriors he would like to attend to—personally—and perhaps 
four.
They had not liked the rain, and that was why he was here. Perhaps he would give 
them a choice when he was through playing games with them. They could be drowned 
in the water they didn't like, or if they were so delicate, perhaps they might 
prefer being burned alive.
So he would bide his time and be good and even try to help these people survive 
the dangers of this stretch of river. He might put a price on Hawks's head, but 
he wanted to get back to his people before one of his scheming relatives usurped 
his position.
They paddled down the river with no more than the usual navigational problems.
"Tell me about the mute woman," Hawks said to Roaring Bull. "Where is she from 
and why has she no tongue?"
"I don't know where she's from," the chief responded. "Somewhere in the south 
and east, from the high mountain area. She was—trade goods. Years ago. Trader 
came north with a bunch of girls, all foreign, none speaking any recognized 
tongue. Most were real young—fourteen, fifteen—but they had already been through 
the mill lots of times. She was real young but a pro all the way. Never did 
speak much. Stuttered real bad. I don't know what she'd been through before me, 
but wait until you see her tattoos."
"Tattoos?"
"Got 'em from the neck to the crotch, front and back, except her arms and legs. 
Looks like a ceremonial blanket. You'll see 'em."
"How did she lose her tongue if she stuttered so?"
"She got pregnant. They do, you know. Had a kid. Ugly, deformed thing. The 
medicine men came and declared it a demon child. Drove her crazy."
A demon child. The term for babies born with severe birth defects. There was 
usually only one thing they did when such a child was born. They killed it 
ritually and burned its body in ceremonial fires.
"Wouldn't do anything but wail and scream," the chief continued. "No stutter, 
just screaming blasphemies in too many tongues to count, including one or two I 
could make out. She had to be locked away for weeks, but she never stopped 
except from exhaustion. The medicine men said the stutter was the mark of a 
witch who would bear a demon child and that she'd bring down curses if she 
wasn't stopped from doing it. I figured she'd just get over it, but it kept 
going, and a bunch of things went wrong all at once in the village. Accidents 
killed two healthy men, one lodge burned down, that kind of thing. A mob finally 
got together, and I had to think fast to keep them from killing her, so they 
settled for cutting out her tongue and burning it. That stopped her, and finally 
she just snapped. She could do little things like start up the morning kitchen 
or clean up, but nothing else. The rest of the time she just sat in a corner, 
staring into space."
"I see," Hawks responded. "Well, something snapped her out of it now."
"Snapped is right. You don't trust her too far while I'm along, Hawks. She might 
just decide to butcher all of us."

7. CHEMISTRY LESSON

THE PROCESS OF CHANGING THE PRETTY AND BRILLIANT Song Ching into the rougher and 
masculine Chu Li, while unlikely to succeed, was nonetheless solidly based on 
predictable principles. One was that authoritarian societies, particularly those 
which received their orders from machines, ran on orders and tended to carry out 
those orders to the letter and without question, even at the cost of common 
sense. The other was that most people would believe that it took someone with 
the artistry, skills, and experience of an expert like Doctor Wang to accomplish 
such a transformation at all, when in a computer age all it took was someone who 
could talk to a computer and order it to do the work.
Chu Li was barely fifteen; his youth made the illusion easier to pull off, and 
some rather basic changes helped it along. Song Ching's hair was cut extremely 
short, almost but not quite gone along the sides and short with a straight-back 
clipper cut on top, while the nails had been closely trimmed to the fingers. 
-The heavy cotton prisoner tunic and baggy trousers made any wearer shapeless. 
Song Ching's middle soprano had been lowered in pitch one half octave; any more 
would have been inconsistent with a boy of fifteen. Chu Li's dialect was 
Mandarin, not Song Ching's native dialect but the one used at Center and 
therefore no problem.
The boys had been back in the cell, sedated, barely twenty minutes when the 
guards came for them. Their sleeves were rolled up, and each was given a shot 
that counteracted any sedative drugs still in their bodies. Both sat up, 
groaning and holding their heads.
"Get yourselves in order!" a guard barked to them. "In five minutes each of you 
will be fed. I strongly recommend you eat everything; it may be a long time 
before you get another decent meal, if ever." That was said with something of a 
smirk. "You will be permitted ten minutes for this and another five to use the 
toilet. Then you will be prepared to leave." With that, the guard turned and 
stalked out. The cell door closed behind him.
"Oooh! My head is only now trying to make peace with me," Deng Ho moaned.
"It is the same with me," Chu Li responded. In Han and many other Oriental 
cultures, cousins of the same generation regarded one another as brothers and 
sisters and acted accordingly. The two boys were close. "My head is crowded and 
confused, almost as if..."
"As if what?"
As if there is another also inside my head, he thought, but he couldn't say 
that. "I just wonder if they messed with our minds, and if they did, would we 
know?"
"How's your—thing?"
Memories of brutish guards beating and torturing for the slightest infractions. 
Memories of one of them.
"There is no pain," Chu Li told his cousin. "It is not right, though. I shall 
have to pee sitting down for a while, I think. I do not know what awaits us, but 
it cannot be any worse than here. Even death is better than here."
Chu Li tried to clear his mind. So long as he concentrated on the here and now, 
it was fine, but when he let himself relax, his thoughts became somewhat crowded 
and confused. The guards who had beaten him had threatened "to make a girl of 
him," but even that would not have given him memories and information that 
seemed to belong to a girl, one from a far different background and one he had 
never known. Some of those memories and impressions were far sharper than those 
from his own life—but there was a difference. He could remember that other life, 
but he could not place himself in the position of that girl. He felt as if he 
were looking at things from the viewpoint of an outside observer.
He had little time to dwell on this right away, for the guards were sticking 
solidly to their schedule. Chu Li and Deng Ho were placed in handcuffs and short 
leg irons and marched rudely through corridors, checkpoints, and safeguards to 
the main entrance, where a squad of black-clad regular security police awaited 
them.
"They're all yours, Lieutenant," the chief guard said, sounding not the least 
bit sorry. "We've put them through the mill and taught them some manners. Good 
riddance."
The lieutenant just nodded, and both men pressed their thumbs on the receiving 
board to signify the transfer.
"All right, you two," the new captor said to the boys. "No trouble, now. I don't 
know what they did to you in there, and I don't care. Legally, you are no longer 
citizens of the Community or even human beings. You are cattle, the property of 
the System Administrative Council, and they can and will do with you as they 
wish, as can I as their deputy. Not a word out of you, now; follow me."
They were led out to a landing bay where a skimmer awaited them. They got in and 
were surprised to find two girls already seated there, both in the same prison 
garb they themselves wore. Neither girl turned to look at them but just sat 
quiet and sullen. Chu Li thought he saw some sort of scar or welt on the face of 
the one closest to him, but then he was chained in his seat and could look only 
forward.
The large passenger skimmer lifted quickly into the air, took its assigned exit 
trajectory, and smoothly cleared the dome, then rose to cruising altitude. As 
the skimmer gained speed, the boys were pushed back into their seats.
They wanted to talk to the girls, who were seated in front of them, but a few 
nasty whacks from a guard's leather stick produced silence. Chu Li had nothing 
to do but settle back and think.
Why did he have this strange girl's memories? What had they done to him in there 
and why? He tried to relax and sort out what he could of this alien information. 
The Lord Buddha protect him! She'd been the daughter of the chief administrator! 
The very bastard who had ordered the massacre of his people! And she had been 
there!
He compared his own memories to hers. Darkness, sudden cold, people screaming 
and running, shots all over, illuminating the dark. One shot catches his sister 
and burns her upper half to melted goo. All the time she had been up there, in 
the officer's skimmer, enjoying every moment and wanting to get down and get 
into the battle herself, to shoot some of his people. It had been nothing but a 
game to her, an amusing entertainment.
The more he examined her memories and attitudes, the more he hated her. People 
were mere objects to her, toys for her amusement or fools to play off each other 
for her gain. Rich, pampered, spoiled, and arrogant, she was a. most unpleasant 
person, the very kind he had always been taught ruled the world. Such beauty and 
such genius. Such evil.
How he would like to get hold of her, rip off her fine clothes, dress her in 
rags, exchange her jasmine perfume for sweat and dung, make her the lowest 
peasant slave, show her what it felt like to be brutalized. She and her whole 
cursed family. It was they who should have been on this ship going to some deep 
hell, not the ones who were here.
But what were her memories doing in his mind? Some kind of mistake? She had been 
at Center herself, it seemed, and not as a visitor or voyeur but to be remade 
into a good noble's wife and breeder. It was too kind a fate for her, but it was 
at least a step toward justice. She had been an expert at computers; she had 
examined his people's discoveries. Had her old memories and knowledge gotten 
mixed in with his in that computer by some mistake? It was possible. It was also 
possible that she had managed this herself, to save her knowledge even as they 
were stripping clean her soul. If so, it was justice that the daughter of his 
people's murderer should inadvertently pass on that knowledge to one of her 
victims.
He now had that knowledge, including the actual way to steal a spaceship, and he 
hoped he could use it. It would be the ultimate revenge on her if she was 
mentally . made over into a prim little wife while he, whose people had made 
these discoveries and had been destroyed while she watched and thrilled at the 
spectacle, was somehow able to use that to escape.
It was all too evil to him and too disturbing. His grandfather long ago had 
taught him an ancient mental discipline, one which gave control of thoughts and 
memories and could even fool the big computers for periods of time. His people 
had survived with it and escaped detection for a generation, and he now applied 
it to another aim. It was a form of self-hypnosis, but it was more than that; it 
was a mystical thing that worked by will and concentration and the Ten 
Exercises. He wanted her out. He wanted all traces of her banished from his 
conscious mind, save only the computer knowledge and skill and the secrets she 
knew. She would give up her knowledge, skills, and discoveries, but then he 
would have the pleasure at least of killing her in his mind.
But for the first time in his memory, the mental discipline did not really work. 
It distanced the girl's memories a bit more, but she was still there.
The skimmer flew over vast, rocky desert and eerie tablelands, then began to 
slow and descend. Atop one desolate plateau there was a huge blocky complex, and 
to one side, rising up like a temple spire, was a spaceship. It could be seen 
clearly against the morning sky; the pilot pointed it out through the broad 
front windscreen of the skimmer. Chu Li brought himself out of the Ten Exercises 
to see what the excitement was about and got somewhat excited himself.
Space! They are exiling us to space!
They settled down so slowly and so close to the spaceship that it went by the 
front windows in dramatic fashion. Finally the door opened,-and the security 
lieutenant unbuckled himself and got out, carrying the security identifier 
from.Center. After greeting the other security officials, he immediately 
inserted the module into the space center systems slot. This way, the four young 
people would be identified by security records and systems as outbound 
prisoners. It was also another link in the computer-engineered masquerade: Now 
the spaceport records would show Chu Li as "he" now appeared, with the current 
Chu Li's fingerprints and eyeprints. The spaceport was tied directly into Master 
System; therefore, the Center security computer had encoded a correction program 
showing initial data errors and reversing the prints of Song Ching and Chu Li. 
Her body was now totally identified and registered as Chu Li, 15, male, born in 
Paoting, Hopeh Province, apprehended in illegal activity, Chamdo Province, and 
declared Property of the State; remanded to Melchior Research and Detention 
facility until death. As the real Chu Li no longer existed, not even in trace, 
Song Ching was about to vanish impossibly and forever—and heads would roll for 
it.
When the prisoners were ordered out, the boys got their first clear look at the 
girls, both of whom looked downcast and old beyond their years. There were scars 
on their faces. Ugly ones.
They were marched inside and down a busy corridor, past many eyes staring at 
them from offices, to an elevator, then taken to an upper-level detention area. 
It had clearly not been designed as such; there were barred gates at either end 
of a short corridor monitored by cameras as well as by human guards, but the 
four cells were little more than barren, unfinished offices in which had been 
placed some army mattresses that looked as if they'd seen work and a small 
commode not attached to plumbing but containing a pitcher of water and some 
plastic glasses. They were told that if they needed to eliminate they were to 
yell for a guard and that one would be along to take them one at a time to the 
lone toilet on the floor.
To Chu Li's surprise, he was pushed into a cell with one of the girls. "This is 
not proper!" he protested.
The guard grinned. "My orders were to split that pair up. They have a real way 
with locks and stuff. Go ahead and have some fun if you're old enough to know 
what I mean. We don't care."
The door slammed shut, leaving them alone. The girl kept her eyes on him but did 
not say a word. The haunted expression in her eyes drew his attention away from 
the two large, irregular scars that disfigured her face.
"Don't worry," he assured her. "I have much honor but little else and would not 
do that if I could."
The ice was broken, and she relaxed a bit. "What do you mean, if you could?" Her 
voice was high and nasal, her Mandarin dialect colored by a peasant's accents 
and tone.
"It is too embarrassing to discuss."
"There is nothing too embarrassing for me. I have lost even my honor. They—they 
gave us to the male guards for two days and nights before cleaning us up for 
this."
He was not certain what to say to that. Finally he managed, "You need not feel 
shame at that, at least / think not. It was not of your doing, and it is they 
who have dishonored themselves, not you."
She stood there a moment, then, slowly, tears came to her eyes and she began to 
cry. He wasn't quite sure what to do. Finally he went over to her, and she 
leaned against him and just cried and cried as he held her. He was just at the 
stage where he was finding girls different, exotic, and strangely important, but 
this was the first time he had ever held one in his arms. It felt good to lend 
some strength to her; he had been treated harshly, but she had endured far more.
Clearly this cry had been a long time coming, and he eased her onto the floor 
mat and just sat beside her, holding her until she had it cried out. She clung 
to him as if he were very important, yet they had only just now met and did not 
even know each other's names.
When she was done crying, he asked her if he could get her some water, and she 
nodded. He brought her a cup and a paper towel to dry her eyes.
She had been attractive once; he could see that. No great beauty, but it had 
been a good face, and because of that, the scars were an even greater 
disfigurement. One ran from the left side of her mouth up her cheek and then 
back toward her ear, pulling the corner of the lip up grotesquely and 
permanently exposing two teeth; the other was a huge, deep horizontal gash. Both 
were built up like mountains on her smooth skin by scar tissue that had partly 
turned purple and brown. Still, as he looked at her now and helped her dry her 
tears, he felt odd stirrings inside him, and though he could not forget the scar 
tissue, for the moment it did not seem very important.
"I'm sorry," she managed, blowing her nose. "I—I was always the strong one. I am 
sorry that I permitted you to see me this way."
"It is all right," he responded. "You must be strong indeed to go through that 
and not be mad."
"Perhaps I am mad," she responded. "I have been living what can only be a 
nightmare, in which you are the first man to show any kindness."
"Only half a man," he responded, not realizing how much truth there was in that 
description. Because she had told him her ultimate shame, he felt not only that 
he could tell her his secret but that it might give her some idea that suffering 
was not exclusive. "The guards beat me terribly where that which makes me a man 
is, leaving it battered, bruised, and perhaps broken. There is no pain, but it 
will be a long time before I know. That is what I was too embarrassed and 
ashamed to say before."
"Oh! I apologize for asking. Please forgive me."
He shook it off. "What is done cannot be undone, and who knows what was done? 
Only time will tell that. I am otherwise whole and very angry at all this. My 
people taught us that the world was ruled by monsters in human form, but I did 
not really believe this until they came for us. I am Chu Li, by the way, 
sometimes called Rat because of my small size and the year of my birth."
"I am Chow Dai. My sister who suffers with me is Chow Mai. As you might guess, 
we are—" she touched the scar on her right cheek "—were twins."
"I hope that my cousin, Deng Ho, is honorable with her and that they get along. 
He is more likely to be crying on her shoulder, I fear, though he has held up 
better than I would have guessed." Sparing little, he told her how he and his 
cousin had come to be there and what his own people had been like, free of the 
tyranny of the machines.
She listened, fascinated. "I have nothing of that in my past," she told him. "I 
fear I have never known even that much freedom. Even the women of your people 
were free and educated."
"You are not of the Center?"
"No. Oh my, no! We are simple peasant girls. The family was very big, and we 
were always hungry, it seemed. When a time of drought came, my parents had no 
way to feed us all and no money to marry us off. Unlike some of the others of 
their generation, they did not believe in drowning baby daughters, and so had 
too many."
He was appalled. "They drowned babies?"
She seemed surprised at his reaction. "It has been the custom for thousands of 
years. They try and wipe it out, but in bad times it returns. Sons may return 
what they consume and care for the parents in their old age. Daughters are a 
burden, for you must pay even to marry them to someone. We understood this. 
There was a petition to the Lord of the Estates, who had always encouraged even 
the poor families to keep their daughters, and he listened. We were sold to the 
household of Colonel Chin, a mighty warlord, to be personal servants to his own 
daughter."
"Sold?" He could hardly believe this. Hers was a world far removed from his 
experience.
"We didn't mind. Our parents were relieved of their burden, received some sum 
they could use, and knew that we were honorably employed. Our mistress was harsh 
and demanding, but we had fine clothes, food such as we had never dreamed of 
eating, protection, and something of a position."
"As a slave, you mean."
"No, as a member of the household staff. It has far more standing than planting 
and picking rice, and we were very young. Then we were taken one time to Center, 
a place we had never dreamed existed. It was like a high-born's heaven. It was 
our undoing, though, in the end. We helped the mistress bathe and clothe 
herself, tended to the personal things, but much of the other work was done by 
the machines. We were not permitted out of the quarters except in the company of 
our mistress, so it was very boring. We could not even sneak out, for we did not 
know how to open the locks."
"I would have spent the time reading. Surely there were many books and tapes 
around on many topics."
Again she looked embarrassed. "I—we—cannot read or write."
He felt foolish and ashamed of himself. In the colony there were many who were 
never able to master most or all of the more than thirty thousand characters of 
the alphabet. He himself had had help with machines and special training to 
allow him to read at a level far beyond what one his age, even if very bright, 
would have managed without them. Most people in China could not read, in fact. 
Literacy was what truly set the classes apart, the heart of their division. If, 
somehow, a peasant could learn to read and take the examinations, he could rise 
in society. The better one read and the more one read, the more complex the 
examination one took. It was the one road to social mobility open to all 
Chinese, although, of course, it was next to impossible for a peasant to learn 
to read, while the child of a stupid or slow highborn who could not manage the 
skill was never demoted to peasant.
"I am sorry. I will make no more stupid remarks," he said lamely. "Please tell 
me more of how you came here."
Her smile told him that all was forgiven. "One day a man came who was an expert 
on locks. A security man of sorts. He was young and very handsome, and we made a 
fuss over him, I'm afraid. He began to brag about his trade and show off his 
knowledge of the locks and security systems, and even explained some of his 
tools. It was quite an education. He didn't think mere peasant servants could 
understand what he said, but it was actually quite simple. We soon found basic 
apartment locks no problem at all. Some other locks and doors were more 
difficult, but even ones requiring fingerprints were beatable. Once you 
understood the principle, it was simple to find a way around each."
"Some of those would still require special tools to defeat," he noted. "You said 
as much yourself."
"Some tools were simple and could be made from other things. Others, the 
complicated mechanical tools, you could get if you wanted. We once had an uncle 
who was something of a magician. A criminal, really, but a minor one. He would 
put on little magic shows and phony gambling games in the village. Sometimes he 
arranged to lose, for he would then simply brush against you, and the contents 
of your purse would be in a hidden pocket in his shirt. Anyone with long 
fingers, nerve, and short nails could do it if they practiced, and he showed us 
all the tricks. We kids would always be doing it to one another and to others 
just for fun. We never—hardly ever—kept anything."
"You said you used to have an uncle. He is dead now?"
"Yes. Hanged when I was twelve. The trick is even easier with two, and my sister 
and I are very good at it. So, when we saw a repairman with tools we wanted 
walking along, we had no problem getting them. The highborn used to be the 
easiest, but those of Center are easier yet. They are ignorant of the trick and 
casual about it."
He nodded, his appreciation of her skills growing. "So you were not bored 
anymore."
"No. Oh, it was really all just a game. Slip out and slip into the dwelling of 
some highborn who was not in at the time and take something minor, something 
pretty but not likely to be missed, such as a bottle of perfume or some bauble. 
It became a contest, and it was most exciting."
"I bet. And then you were caught?"
"Not very quickly. We simply were carried away by our own poor ignorance. We 
wandered in one time to a security zone which was computer-monitored and tripped 
alarms. We were sealed in and trapped. At first they could not believe that we 
were who and what we seemed, but after long sessions with drugs and doctors and 
machines, they decided we were just what we seemed to be. So they tied us to a 
wall, whipped us, then gave us to the security guards. Then, suddenly, we were 
pulled back, bathed, cleaned up and tended to, placed in chains, and sent to the 
flying machine."
"Pardon me for mentioning it, but your wounds are from the beating?"
"No. I have more scars all up and down my back. When they first threw me to the 
guards, I fought. We both did. I scratched the face of one of them very badly. 
They held us down while he carved this in my face and similar gashes in my 
sister's face. He—he said that we might as well enjoy what was coming, because 
no man would wish to do anything with us again. I wished only to kill myself in 
my shame, but they made very sure I could not do that. Only by finally 
convincing them that I would do nothing rash right now did I gain any freedom of 
movement, even to being here like this. I could see in every eye how hideous I 
have become."
"I—knew—a ,woman once. A girl. She was of highborn stock, and her beauty was 
perfection, yet inside she was the personification of all that is foul, evil, 
and monstrous in people. Those attracted to her beauty will be as flies in a 
spider's web. I, too, might have been a fly in her web, but even in this place I 
learn and improve myself. My Buddhist teacher would understand, although it took 
his pupil this long to see his meaning. The body is but a shell. One must look 
beyond to the soul and see only it if it shines pure." Impulsively, although he 
had never done it before, he drew her to him and kissed her. When their lips 
parted, the look on her face was a mixture of shock, surprise, and almost 
childlike wonder.
"I think," she whispered, "that I may yet live a little while."
"I did not do this out of pity, you must believe that, but I feel your pain 
within me," he said softly. "You have suffered far more than I have."
"No. I did not lose my family and all my people, and what I did I did myself, 
knowing it was criminal. You had no choice in it. We threw away comfortable 
lives out of boredom, and now we pay for that, but you are without guilt or 
blame, and you have lost everything. Now we both go to our fate, whatever and 
wherever it is. I heard them say that the great spire out there is a ship that 
goes into the heavens, beyond the world. Is that true? Is that even possible?"
"Yes. It can go from this plant to another."
"What is a planet?" she asked him, genuinely curious.
"Huh? Other worlds than this, like the moon, only farther off."
"You mean they are sacrificing us by sending us to the moon goddess? I have 
often prayed to her. She may be merciful."
He was startled. Ignorance was one thing, but how could he reconcile someone who 
had figured out in a brief lesson how to pick some of the most elaborate 
computer-controlled security locks in a high-tech place like Center with someone 
who clearly had no idea that there was any place beyond China, who thought the 
moon was a goddess and probably also believed that the world was flat?
"We are not being sacrificed," he assured her. "Not that we might not be better 
off at that. We are being sent to another place like the one we have just left, 
only suspended in the heavens so that there is no way for us to ever leave. I do 
not know what happens to the people sent there, except that it strikes fear even 
in the hearts of the guards of Center security."
She accepted that. "That fills me with fear as well. A place in the heavens 
could not ever be escaped from. You might go through the locks, but you would 
fall endlessly in the heavens."
"No, you would be dead before that. There is no air to breathe in space. The 
only air we will have will be in the place they keep us. It is better than any 
locks to keep someone imprisoned."
"Yet you are not afraid. I can tell."
In fact he was afraid, particularly now that he'd heard about her own treatment, 
seen the scars on the outside and sensed the others on her soul. If what both of 
them had experienced was not the worst punishment, then they were being taken to 
a horror he could not imagine. The fact that it was an unknown of such 
dimensions was terrifying, yet he could not admit that to her or let it dominate 
him.
"I fear only what I face that is worthy of that fear," he responded bravely. 
"Then I will face death bravely and spit at him. For now, I still yearn to 
fight."
As they talked, he began examining the room for hidden cameras and microphones. 
A plan was beginning to take shape in his mind, and if he could somehow 
communicate it to her and she could do her part, it was just possible. His 
people were gone, save for himself and Deng, but he still had their dream, and 
he had the knowledge to carry it out, as well.
He found surveillance devices—not many but sufficient to block any real secrets. 
He settled back on the mat next to her. "You know, my people found how to fly 
one of those spaceships," he said casually but in a low tone. "It is a pity we 
will be chained and probably guarded in a locked room all the way to wherever we 
go."
She lay down comfortably beside him and squeezed his hand. "Yes, it is," she 
agreed.
They had talked almost nonstop throughout the day, without reservation or 
hesitancy in even the most personal and intimate things. It was as if they had 
known each other all their lives and were catching up on the time spent apart. 
Too, there was both a direct and a subtle exchange of vital information as he 
tried to give her a cram course in the basics of astronomy while also conveying 
what he needed from her in the practical sense.
A meal was finally delivered, and it proved to be a pleasant surprise. The 
recipe was Mongolian, with chunks of lamb, fried wonton in a spicy garlic-laced 
sauce, and rice, and the vegetables tasted fresh. Even the tea was hot. Chu Li 
wasn't sure if this was the last meal of a condemned prisoner or, more likely, 
the same thing being served to the staff in this cobbled-together prison 
section.
Chow Dai wondered why they had bothered to split up the two pairs, since with 
human guards and cameras in unfamiliar territory she was unlikely to be able to 
do anything. Chu Li had responded that it was probably just another tactic to 
disorient them, but he didn't really believe that. Their captors had analyzed 
his mind, and Deng's, and the minds of the Chow sisters and knew them probably 
better than anyone did. They were being sent to this distant place, at great 
trouble and expense, because someone there, for some unspeakable reason, had a 
use for two boys and two girls in their middle teens. He suspected they knew 
that both Deng and he were the kind whose hearts would go out to such kindred 
spirits in distress and that mere attentions by a male might well guarantee that 
the pair would not commit suicide or try something so desperate it would mean 
their death.
The spaceship they had seen was an OG-47 resupply ship. It had to have landed 
for repairs of some sort that were not available at the moment in space; usually 
such ships did not land at all but were serviced by ground-to-orbit cargo ships. 
The OG-47 had a pressurized passenger compartment holding up to sixteen for one 
to three days, fewer for longer journeys. The pilot's cabin as usual was in a 
vacuum state in space but could be entered by airlock in a space suit. There was 
no guarantee that such suits would be aboard, but if they were, they would be 
Type 61s and stored in a computer-locked compartment to the rear of the 
passenger cabin, to be opened automatically in case of emergency.
It startled him just to know that. Where had he learned it? Not with his own 
people, certainly. Not from those strange memories of the girl, either. He 
became more and more convinced that someone had played some nasty tricks on his 
mind, and he didn't like it. Were they being toyed with? Had someone who knew 
his people's project given him this much just to see if he could really do it? 
Steal a spaceship?
It had to be something like that. Dai and Mai were part of it, too. It was too 
impossible to believe that he, with his knowledge, would find himself teamed 
with two accomplished thieves and locksmiths. He did not for one minute believe 
that the girls were anything other than what they appeared to be, but someone or 
something had assigned them to be going just where he was going at the same time 
and on the same ship.
He disliked the feeling of being a wind-up doll in someone else's toy game. Who? 
This Song Ching? It would be in character, but what profit would she get by it? 
She wouldn't know if her plan succeeded or failed or get the data to use in any 
attempt of her own. To test the security system? Four teenagers with no real 
experience when there were almost certainly so many others they could use who 
would be better suited?
He could not know, but he would simply have to watch out. The fact was, no 
matter what the reason, they had to try to escape.
Certainly Dai was bright; she had understood immediately the implications of his 
comments and had been giving and getting information through the day's 
conversations as well.
That evening, the guards came for each prisoner individually and took them down 
the hall to a different room, which proved to be a small water shower with a 
little dressing area complete with built-in mirror. After bathing, they were 
provided with fresh clothing of the same design as their prison garb, but dyed 
yellow with security stamped front and back in Chinese and two other languages.
Chu Li felt a reluctance to actually take the shower, although it appeared that 
there were no visual monitors in there and therefore that there was some measure 
of privacy afforded. He had never bathed very often, but he ordinarily would 
have wished it now. But some fear, an unreasoning thing, made him hesitate. He 
did not, however, have much choice.
The hypnotics held. When he emerged and looked at himself in the mirror, he 
still saw the image of a young boy, not the image that was actually there. He 
dressed again and was led back to the detention room.
After lights-out, she lay beside him, and their hands came together and 
squeezed; she clung to him as if he were the only real thing in her life. They 
hugged and cuddled for a bit and rubbed each other's backs. In the dark, she had 
no deformities at all.
He wanted her, and clearly she wanted and needed him, but his injuries prevented 
that for now. The fact that they were isolated and alone and facing an uncertain 
but definitely unpleasant future heightened their desire. But they both slept, 
huddled against each other for reassurance.
For Chow Dai, Chu Li's companionship was a deliverance, no matter how temporary, 
from the pit of hell. She had never experienced the kindness and gentleness that 
this boy had shown her even when she had been unscarred; the fact that he did so 
even when she looked so horrible was wondrous and magical. She barely knew him, 
yet she knew she needed him and would risk anything for him. He had but to ask. 
She dreamed the first pleasant dreams she had dreamed in weeks.
Chu Li's dreams were different. He dreamed that he was making real love to her, 
although she had long, silky black hair and no scars, but as he approached her, 
naked, she suddenly got a look of horror on her face and shied away, crying. 
This was mixed with other, stranger dreams that even included spaceship 
schematics and nightmares where he saw his parents, alive again, but when he ran 
to them they recoiled in horror and turned, and when they turned back they were 
not his parents at all but the tall, frightening figures of that other girl's 
parents, the chief administrator and his wife. The girl was there, too, running 
in and out of his dreams, spoiling even the good ones, dancing through and 
whispering tauntingly, "I know a secret."
The elderly orderly awakened them with a breakfast of rice and fish heads. "Eat 
well and relax," he told them genially. "Tonight you leave for your destinies."
"My sister and the boy—are they all right?" Chow Dai asked nervously. She had 
almost a sixth sense, as did many twins, ,about her sister even when separated, 
but she had no real feelings of Chow Mai now, and that worried her more than 
anything.
"Oh, they are getting along fine, as are the two of you, it seems. Do not worry 
about them. You will see them today." He chuckled to himself and left.
He looked at Chow Dai. "Today. Sometime today."
She nodded. "I hope they let us see each other for a while first. You know, when 
my sister and I are together, often we need few words even to talk to one 
another."
Chu Li was feeling a bit dizzy, a little fuzzy in the head, but he put his 
disorientation down to nervous tension and apprehension. About midday he felt he 
had to go to the bathroom and called for the guard. The sense of disorientation 
continued and his stomach was upset. In the bathroom, he could be alone and, 
hopefully, get something of a grip on himself. He felt as if he was losing his 
mind.
Twice he'd failed to respond when Chow Dai had addressed him by his name. 
Images—strong, primary images—of his parents, siblings, old friends, the details 
of his past life, seemed to be melting or fading. He suddenly could not remember 
what his father or mother looked like. The other memories, though—her 
memories—were all still there and seemed to be getting clearer in spite of his 
attempts to push them back.
He was led to the bathroom, and he sat, holding his head in his hands. Then he 
looked down and put one of his hands down between his legs. Suddenly, some of 
the conditioning broke away and was gone. They have emasculated me! He 
unbuttoned his tunic and looked at and felt his chest. Two huge nipples atop 
small, perfect breasts. He quickly got up and disrobed completely, examining his 
body as if for the first time. The smooth skin, the curves... A girl! They have 
changed me into a girl!
And not just any girl. He knew what was happening now. He was being changed not 
just to female, but into her, the one he hated, the daughter of his people's 
murderers!
He saw it all now, or thought he did. She could not remain as she was, so she 
had somehow convinced the computers there, or the doctors, to take him, a lowly 
nothing, and change him into a mental and physical duplicate of her. The victim 
was turning into the oppressor. The memory of the beatings had probably been 
planted so that he wouldn't notice the surgery until it was too late to betray 
her.
There was an angry knock and an impatient snarl from the other side of the door. 
He knew he had to get dressed again fast and get out of there. They could change 
his shape, but they could not change his mind, he vowed to himself. He was a 
boy, even if now locked in a girl's body. He might have her memories, but he 
would never become her. Never. He would die first. There was more to manhood 
than what they had stolen from him. Monks refused all sex, yet they were 
certainly men. It was important to him that he keep this attitude no matter how 
much of her eventually took over. He could never become her, become the callous, 
cruel, and evil one she was, if he retained that.
He was rudely cursed by the guard and led back to the detention room where Chow 
Dai awaited. Chow Dai. He could face anything but dashing her few hopes—even 
this. He still wanted her. He loved her, damn it—but he could never make love to 
her. That was what his dreams had been telling him.
"Rat! You were gone so long, I was getting worried about you," she told him.
"I—I made some discoveries about myself," he responded carefully. At least his 
voice still sounded normal, at least to him. He wanted to tell her, to tell 
somebody, but while she would understand, the revelation would still crush her. 
He couldn't do it. Not now. Not until he had to.
"Discoveries?"
"My—injuries—are far worse than I thought, that's all."
She hugged him. "Don't worry. Peasant girls are taught infinite patience."
Infinite is right, he thought sourly, but said nothing. For the time being, 
escape was the only thing that mattered. If they did not escape, none of the 
rest would matter. Later, if they made it, he would find some gentle way to tell 
her.
In fact, by the change in him, the quieter periods, his reluctance to really get 
close, she guessed a part of the truth. She suspected that he had just now 
realized the extent to which the same people who had tortured, raped, and 
disfigured her had also disfigured him. She knew just from the treatment she had 
received afterward that they could do much, even make you forget your injuries 
and pain for a while, although the effects wore off. Her mood fell as she voiced 
her suspicions to herself. They have made him a eunuch, she guessed. It is the 
only explanation. She had almost expected it, guessed it from the start when he 
had spoken of his injury. Well, she wasn't going to pretend that it didn't 
matter to her, but he was still the same kind, gentle one who had treated her 
with respect and ignored her own disfigurement. She had no intention of 
abandoning him, not now. If he could ignore her disfigured shell and see only 
someone worthwhile inside, she could certainly do the same.
But though both of them saw and preferred the lie, the truth would not be kept 
down inside of Chu Li. Bit by bit, as the day wore on, Song Ching's truth 
chipped slowly but methodically away at Chu Li, and he fought it. The boy's 
memories and sense of identity were rapidly fading now, leaving only Song Ching, 
yet the biochemically induced Chu Li personality was becoming firmer, harder, 
fixed.
Even for the computer it had been a rush job, an emergency, and it might have 
been predicted that something undefinable and unanticipated would arise. Song 
Ching had ordered blocks that made her cold, unemotional, machinelike, and this 
had been altered only as required by the masquerade. As a result, the basic 
personality and responses of Chu Li were the only ones present and created an 
overwhelming desire to remain as they were, resisting all attempts at change. 
The brain created personality, but it also was subject to a measure of 
adaptation, and, having no countermanding "fallback" personality, it responded 
to this urgent desire to maintain current levels. There was a dichotomy inside 
of her, a war between body and brain that simply could not go on.
"Are you all right?" Chow Dai asked worriedly. "You look ill."
"I—I think I should just lie down for a while," he managed. "It is 
an—aftereffect of what was done to me. I apologize, but if I lie down for a 
while, it will be all right."
He was a conscious combatant in the war raging inside him, and it had made him 
physically ill, both feverish and upset. The tension and confusion were 
enormous; he could not stand this much longer. Either something had to break or 
he knew he might well die—die on the brink of possible success and escape in 
which he was the only hope for these other people. Any moment now the guards 
could come for them, so there was no time for such a fight. By now he knew he 
really was Song Ching; there had been no tampering with Chu Li's body or mind. 
Chu Li was certainly dead, his body long sent to dust or turned to energy, and 
she was responsible for that. It was an intolerable thought. It was intolerable 
that she should live again while he was dead, no matter what the price of that 
life might be, yet his memories even now were less than ghosts, mere wisps 
fading with each passing moment, leaving only Song Ching.
The brain had several mechanisms for resolving such dilemmas, whether caused by 
biological malfunction or trauma or otherwise induced, and all of them were 
forms of what they called insanity. If it could not resolve the problems, the 
brain got hung up in endless loops and the result was catatonia, but in this 
case both sides had a sense of urgency and a single central purpose: escape. 
Escape to the stars. The brain needed only a lie that both sides could accept 
and believe; if that happened, then memories could be rewritten, attitudes 
adjusted, and everything resolved to allow function. A new reality was called 
for, and a very personal one.
In a miraculous revelation, she suddenly understood what had happened, and there 
was no more fight, only awe at the justice of the gods. When the computer had 
executed Chu Li, his soul had not gone on but had instead been placed in the 
body of Song Ching, who had ordered the destruction of her own personality in 
her plot. Her own soul had been cast adrift when this was done, and Chu Li's had 
filled the empty vessel in a measure of justice. The soul was shaped and formed 
and purified or dirtied by its experiences in the flesh, but it did not retain 
memories as such. Still, she knew it was Chu Li's soul animating Song Ching's 
body and guiding her thoughts. That was true justice: The soul of the enemy who 
was destroyed by her family was now in possession of her body, her memories, her 
knowledge, and those would be used against her family and the system that 
supported it. That was clearly the will of the gods.
There was a price for this, of course. Chu Li's soul had not risen to be 
purified; it remained the soul of a teenage boy. He was a man trapped in the 
body and with the memories of a beautiful woman. It would be a frustrating 
burden to carry, but the symmetry of the justice meted out by the gods required 
it. Because the knowledge in her head was so vast, so complete, and so dangerous 
to those who must be punished, it was a burden that had to be accepted. It left 
someone with the means to avenge, and that had to be sufficient.
For now, the Chu Li masquerade had to be continued so that the primary goal 
could be attained. Later there would be time for explanations and the truth. The 
reclining figure sat up, saw the anxious Chow Dai, and smiled. "I am all right 
now," he assured her. "I will be all right from now on."
She looked relieved. "I was almost going to call the guard and have you looked 
at. You really worried me."
He was glad she hadn't done that, or the ruse would have been up right there. 
There being no machines to measure and identify souls, it would have taken but a 
moment for the stupidest of medics to realize that this was not a boy named Chu 
Li.
He looked at Chow Dai's ugly, scarred face and reflected on how truly ironic 
this all was. He could do just as well looking like her; indeed, it would solve 
some potential problems down the line. She, on the other hand, would prosper and 
blossom with the body he wore. The scientists could make a sadist a gentle poet 
and a peasant into an educated artist with their chemicals and processes, but 
only the gods could switch souls. Although it would work out here, it was in a 
way a reassuring thought: that there was one thing, at least, beyond science and 
reserved for the gods.
Not long after, Chow Mai and Deng Ho were sent in to join them. Deng's 
conditioning still held; Chu Li hoped it would hold long enough to avoid any 
complications. The two sisters rushed to each other and embraced and cried a 
little. Deng grinned at Chu Li. "Hello, Rat. Surviving?"
Chu Li nodded. "And you?"
Deng gave a knowing smirk. "No problems if you just shut your eyes," he 
whispered, then grew more serious. "They've been through even worse than us. 
It's crazy, but we're going to some mad hell, and / feel sorry for them. Kind of 
takes your mind off it."
Chu Li looked over at the sisters, who were chattering away in pure peasant 
dialect. They seemed to be talking at the same time, and he guessed from the few 
words he caught that they were using a kind of spoken shorthand, expressing 
complete thoughts. That's fine, he thought. He understood full well that the 
monitors would never make sense of that garbage.
The girls had only a few minutes for their reunion, though. The door opened 
again, and the duty guard stepped in.
"You will all stand and be silent!" he barked imperiously. "You will now be 
addressed by the captain of the vessel that will carry you to your final 
destination!" He was as stiff as usual, but nervousness was revealed in his eyes 
and in small jerks of his head back toward the door.
Chu Li—he refused to think of himself as otherwise and certainly not as a "she," 
all physical evidence to the contrary—was startled that such a ship had a 
captain at all. A steward perhaps, or even a jailer—but a captain?
They heard the barred gate open and then clang shut again, then the sound of 
heavy footsteps approached the door, which the guard had continued to hold open. 
When the captain walked in, the prisoners all gasped and stared at him as if he 
were some sort of monster.
They are giving us to foreign devils!
Carlo Sabatini stopped and looked at the expressions of absolute fear and 
revulsion on those four young faces and drank it in. Seeing the reactions of 
people who had never in their lives seen anyone who was not Oriental was the 
only bit of fun there was in this hick, provincial spaceport. These four looked 
like they'd never seen anybody but a Han Chinese and the Mongolian guards 
before.
"My name is Captain Sabatini," he announced in flawless Mandarin, the result of 
a session with a mindprint machine. "I am master of the interplanetary ship Star 
Islander which will take you from here to Melchior."
Three of the kids looked blank, but he noticed that the boy on his far right did 
not seem to react at all. Clearly that one knew more than the others, and 
Sabatini wondered why. He filed it for future reference.
"The ship, as you may or may not know, is fully automated. It is piloted by a 
machine that can make decisions far quicker than any of us and can fly the ship 
as no human could. Basically, my job is to make sure it works correctly and to 
be certain that any and all passengers and cargo get safely and comfortably to 
their destination, as well as handling things at the ports. As you can see, I am 
not Chinese, but rest assured, I am human. I have the same sort of blood inside 
of me, and I work the same way."
They stared at him, still somewhat awestruck and not a little afraid. He was 
imposing, standing over a hundred and eighty centimeters tall and weighing at 
least ninety-five kilos of pure muscle. He had an olive complexion that in their 
society would have marked him as ill and at death's door, thick black hair with 
some streaks of gray on the top and cut short on the sides, and a medium black 
mustache. He wore a shiny black uniform with leather boots and belt; the shirt 
was open at the top and exposed a fair amount of chest, covered in thick, black 
hair. He even had hair on his arms and the back of his hands: thick, black curly 
hair. The body hair in particular fascinated all of them. It was impossible not 
to think of him as some big ape or gorilla wearing clothes.
Still, Chu Li was able to break the spell enough to think clearly. If he goes 
along, then there is at least one space suit aboard.
"We don't normally take off from Earth," he told them, "so this will be a rough 
ride at the start. You will need to board the ship when it's angled up, get into 
seats as if it were lying flat, and get strapped in, and I do mean strapped. 
Anyone who isn't fully strapped in will die in the takeoff. Since some of you 
might be tempted by that idea, we will have you restrained in place for that 
part of the trip. Once we reach orbit and the artificial gravity in the cabin 
stabilizes, you will get a measure of freedom, since I don't want to have to 
cart you to the bathroom or spoon-feed you, but you will still be under limited 
restraint. I want no problems in our journey, which, if no unexpected problems 
or emergencies develop, should take forty-one days. This is no interstellar 
speed ship."
That impressed all four of them. The two boys, who at least understood what 
spaceships were, still had trouble with that time span. The distance involved 
was really beyond their comprehension.
"Don't be too downcast. At other times it might have taken up to a year to reach 
Melchior. The positions are the best possible right now for the shortest 
distance, which is why we are taking off now and why we have to do everything 
exactly on schedule. Now, since we're going to be together a long time, I want 
to get some facts and rules straight before we even begin."
They just continued to gape at him.
"First, and most important, you are booked not as passengers but as live cargo. 
That puts you in the same class as dogs, cats, chickens, and horses. There are 
two pressurized sections of the cabin. One is for people, the other is for 
animals. The animal section has cages that are not very large and is otherwise 
pretty dark and unpleasant. You will be placed initially in the human section, 
but if any one of you causes me any problems at all, one or all of you will be 
put back there and kept there for the duration of the voyage. They don't even 
have toilets back there, so think about it. Second, so I don't have to look 
behind me all the time, you will be shackled at all times and limited in the 
area you can move. Still, some of you may figure that I'm only one man, and you 
might try and get the best of me in a weak moment of mine. You might try. You 
might even succeed, although I promise you that if you try and fail, you will 
find me very unpleasant. But let's say you succeed."
He could see in their eyes that this had crossed their minds. It always did, and 
he'd transported tougher and nastier ones than these.
"I cannot pilot the ship," he told them. "I cannot even get to the bridge, since 
it is without air or pressure, and so neither can you. No matter what happened 
to me, I couldn't help you, and you would wind up in the exact same place and in 
the hands of the exact same people, only you wouldn't know how to run the life 
maintenance and support system for the cabins. I also have within me, implanted 
by a surgeon—where, I don't know—a tiny transmitter. It is hooked both to the 
ship and to a Master System relay. If I die, that beacon stops transmitting. 
When it does, Master System will call the ship and determine whether my death 
was natural or murder. If it was murder, Master System will take direct command 
of the ship and release gas into the compartment that will not kill you but will 
put you down into a sleep from which you cannot wake up without the antidote. If 
you kill me, not only will you not escape and not die, but your families back 
here, no matter how innocent, will replace you."
Not likely in the Song Ching family, Chu Li reflected, but then realized that 
there were cousins and others who might well be forced to replace her. However, 
it was empty to threaten Deng or himself that way. The system had already 
destroyed their families and friends as well. Still, for the girls' sake, he 
could not fail.
All right. So far it was proceeding exactly as the plans in his mind told him it 
would. Of course, Sabatini had not mentioned a couple of other safeguards, but 
he; wouldn't. That was all right. There were ways around this.
"Now, with all that out of the way," Sabatini concluded, "let me say that I am a 
ship's captain, not a member of the police or the military of anyone. I haul 
cargo and people. If you are friendly, cooperative, and make no trouble, this 
can be a pleasant voyage. I treat people the way they treat me. Treat me nasty, 
and I'll be nastier. Treat me nice, and I can be very nice as well. Any 
questions? Come—speak up. We will be off soon, and it'll be too late."
Chu Li didn't want to draw much attention, but he had to know one thing. "If you 
please, Honorable Captain— what is this Melchior to which we are being sent?"
"Melchior is a rock about thirty kilometers across that floats around the sun 
out in the asteroid belt. There's nothing on top but some beacons and a single 
dock, but the thing is a hollowed-out rock full of chambers, tunnels, rooms, 
even something of a town. It's a lot of things. It's a place for scientific 
research. It's occasionally a meeting place for important administrators who 
want to be away from all monitoring. Mostly it's a prison run by scientists who 
don't have to obey the rules because they're cooped up there, too. I'll tell you 
what more I know when we're under way. That satisfy you for now?"
Deng Ho wet his lips nervously. "Then—we are to be the experiments this time?"
Sabatini shrugged. "I don't know, boy. Nobody really knows, except maybe some of 
the administrators. I never heard of anyone ever escaping, though. Once you're 
inside, with that maze of tunnels and air locks, you get so lost, you might 
never even find your way out."

8. THE RAVEN AND THE WARLOCK

THE ILLINOIS VILLAGE WAS IN TURMAIL. Two of their best warriors dead, a dramatic 
escape by the two whom the chief had called his "playthings," Chief Roaring Bull 
himself kidnapped, a slave woman missing, and a boat, supplies, and weapons 
stolen—it all made the rest of them feel downright insecure. The chief's eldest 
son, along with the rest of the clan, met to decide just what action to take.
"They're long gone," some argued. "Far downriver in foul weather. If they don't 
drown, they'll be out of reach before we can get the word down to stop them."
"But it's bad for business," others argued. "What if word gets around that this 
was done to us? Who will fear us and pay us tribute then? It will give the 
others ideas."
"They won't be bragging, if they survive at all," the first group argued. "The 
man's on the run from Council. He won't even mention this. As for Chief Roaring 
Bull, they're certain to kill him when he's no longer needed, if they haven't 
already. You heard what the girls said about that pair. They smelled of death. I 
say we bottle it up here. Anyone, at any time, who speaks of this to anyone, 
even among ourselves, shall at the very least lose his or her tongue and suffer 
torments. Let us tighten our own security and our tongues and go on as before."
"And what of the chief?" the others responded. "How will we explain his death? 
It is bound to get out."
"Everybody knows he was a steady fire drinker. We'll just say he got drunk and 
mad at somebody on the river one day and went out there. That'll explain the 
body, no matter what the condition. He's never going to tell anyone different."
They all looked at Black Bear Foot, the chief's eldest son and heir apparent. A 
very imposing man in his own right, he had sat impassively listening to the 
debate without getting involved. Now the man they would make chief spoke.
"Yes, but what if father manages to come back alive?" he asked nervously. He had 
not always been the eldest son, but his late half brother had gotten too 
ambitious too fast. Some of the same men who now offered Black Bear Foot the 
leadership had encouraged his brother, then lost their nerve and betrayed him 
when faced with the wrath of Roaring Bull.
"Now listen and hear what I say," he said gravely. "The two who failed to watch 
the strangers will take one canoe, and the two who were so afraid of getting wet 
that they allowed the chief to be taken will go in another. One of you will 
bring back the chief, or his body, or all four of you will wish that you were 
dead, though you will not die. Understand?"
They understood, but they didn't like it.
"Also, send runners south on both sides of the Mississippi to contact our 
allies. Tell them only the story that Roaring Bull got drunk and was lost on the 
river and that we seek him and fear his capture by traders who bear grudges 
against him. Tell them that they will get a great reward if the chief is 
returned alive and a lesser reward if dead, but if dead, they will get the same 
great reward if they also return his killers, dead or alive. Got it? Then go!"
Those who would travel left to prepare, but the rest of the council remained in 
session to work out the details in the chief's absence. They were still hard at 
it when two strangers rode right into the village on horseback and stopped all 
there dead in their tracks.
The man on the brown horse was a Crow from the northwest mountains. An 
unexpected sight this far from his tribal territory, he was a striking man with 
a mean and fearsome look about him. He was dressed in full fur and buckskin and 
had a hard, tough, nasty face that seemed more a natural rock formation than a 
human feature. His eyes were narrowed and mean-looking, and he chomped on a 
half-smoked but unlit Caribe cigar. Observers could tell in an instant that he 
would no more hesitate to kill a man than to swat a fly; to stop him, one would 
need ten good men, all willing to die themselves.
With him, however, astride a huge black stallion, was a figure even more 
imposing and out of place. She was very tall, taller than the Crow, who was no 
little man, and her skin was as black as the blackest night. Her hair, straight 
and cut very short, was blacker than her skin, and her features were as perfect 
as finely chiseled black marble. Her clothing, tailored to her statuesque 
proportions, consisted of a sleeveless tunic made of beaver and mink with pants 
and even boots to match. Her arms looked smooth, but when they moved, tremendous 
muscles and great power were evident. Her eyes were cold, her bearing aloof. 
None needed to be told that these were very dangerous people. Here was a Crow 
Agency man, one of those who worked for Council security, and with him a visitor 
from a far place who unquestionably held the same sort of job in some distant 
land.
They rode right up to the tribal council meeting and halted but did not 
dismount. The Crow Agency man gave them a look that seemed to chill them all, as 
if he felt in the mood to massacre an entire tribe. The lady, on the other hand, 
gave the impression that she'd rather slowly torture them first.
Black Bear Foot decided he really didn't need this kind of trouble, but he 
sighed and got up. If his father didn't come back, this would determine whether 
he survived to take over. He, too, had a lot of younger half brothers who 
wouldn't mind the job in the least.
"I am Black Bear Foot, acting chief of this tribe until the return of my 
father," he said in his native tongue. He didn't care if they understood it or 
not: That was their problem. In fact, he kind of hoped that they didn't share 
any common languages. Maybe then they'd give up and go away. "If you come in 
peace and friendship, you are welcome to share our fire and our hospitality," 
the acting chief added grudgingly.
"Where's your father, sonny boy?" the Crow asked in a voice that was deep, 
raspy, and all-around unpleasant. He spoke excellent Illinois. Black Bear Foot 
thought the man sounded as a corpse might sound if it could speak.
"You have no call to break the Covenant," the young, would-be chief responded, 
deciding that only bravado meant anything to this pair. "If I were to speak that 
way to someone of my position in the land of the Crow, your people would have my 
skin stretched across poles. You may have my life and surrender yours, but I 
will have respect in my own village and among my own people from any visitor."
The speech seemed to impress and also disturb the Crow.
"You know we act in the name of the Council," the Crow Agency man said 
menacingly, but the mere fact that he said it showed some hesitancy. He 
obviously was not used to having someone stand up to him on anything, except 
perhaps her.
"You mean you are in the employ of Council. The way you act and treat those who 
would offer you hospitality is not the Council way or the way of the Covenant. 
You may act in the name of the Council, but I doubt if the Council would approve 
of the way you act."
The Crow smiled, although the expression looked grotesque and unnatural on him. 
The black woman remained impassive.
"You're right," the Crow admitted. There were almost audible sighs of relief 
from the crowd. "These are extraordinary circumstances, son, and our mission 
takes precedence over everything else, even the Covenant, but it doesn't excuse 
improper manners. You couldn't manage my name in your language, so just call me 
Raven. Everybody does. The lady also has an untranslatable name, but the sounds 
are there. She is called Manka Warlock, and she is in the Caribe what I am in 
the western mountains. Her mere presence here should show you that this is 
something very important."
It did. The Caribe and their tropical islands were placed in the South American 
District and did not work for council at all or have authority here even from on 
high. That, Black Bear Foot suspected, was why the Crow was here: He, too, was 
out of his normal region, but a Council man was a Council man no matter what his 
tribe and nation.
"We are looking for a man. Late thirties, Hyiakutt but a linguist and a Council 
worker on Leave. He might be traveling with a Hyiakutt woman, medium, good 
build, early thirties. I know what this place is and what it does. They got past 
us up north; I doubt if they got past you."
The young man sighed. "They were here. They—picked up supplies and went on this 
morning down the river."
The Crow Agency man gave the acting chief a hard look. "Probably about three in 
the morning with your father as hostage from the looks of things. Don't worry. I 
really don't know those whom we seek, but this village and your father have a 
reputation that reaches to the upper end of the Missouri. That, and I see the 
two bodies back there."
"My father and some of those he trusted were careless," the young man told him, 
deciding to tell the truth. "The strangers did not seem dangerous. Their canoe 
was swamped. They were brought in naked and carrying nothing."
"Uh huh. Only helpless. So they got you good, took the chief, and you're all 
here in a prayer meeting praying to the Great Spirit that they don't send him 
back. That about it?"
"No. Even now those responsible are being dispatched to chase them down the 
river, while runners prepare to notify our allies. I mean to have their hides 
and my father back alive."
Raven turned to the woman and spoke in a strange language. "They were here, 
naked. Lost everything when the canoe went over, probably from that hypno 
shield. They fought their way out and snatched the chief early this morning. I 
figure five, maybe six hours tops. What do you think?"
"I think we had better go on the river," she responded without changing her 
gaze. "We will never catch them this way, and we would need to be ferried from 
this point as it is. I think we underestimated our little historian and his 
native wench, but they have nothing, you say."
"Nothing tangible, but he wouldn't be running so hard and so bloody if he hadn't 
read 'em all through. He knows what those papers said. He's the only one in the 
whole area who could read 'em, and he finds 'em. The hell with the papers. He's 
the papers now."
She nodded. "Very well. He is on the run from Council and from these people. He 
will not be moving fast but cautiously."
The Crow switched back to Illinois. "Do you know where he is trying to go?"
"My father said he was trying to reach Nawlins. He is in trouble and needs an 
ally in Council."
Raven thought a moment. "Mud Runner! Got to be!" he said in the black woman's 
Caribe English.
"Who is this Mud Runner person?"
"Resident Agent. Probably an old pal. He's set up in the swamps south of 
Nawlins."
She nodded again. "Good. That means that he must keep to the river. It is a very 
long way to Nawlins from here, even longer when you must guard against your own 
shadow. We will proceed by water."
"Yeah, but these slobs couldn't catch their own dinner with a net, and we're 
both on unfamiliar ground. We'll go right past him."
"Perhaps," she said. "If so, it will only delay things. We know where he is 
going."
"Yeah. And if they sic a Val on him, what then?"
"If these pirates had killed him, what then? We can only do the possible and 
play the odds. From the looks of things here, he might make it, even with a Val 
on his tail. The Val can't play the percentages. It must check every little 
piece of river for him, although it, too, will head for this Mud Runner in the 
end. We must be certain that we get to them first."
"You ever think this could put a Val on our tails? Whatever this is, it's big. 
Big enough for a guy to throw it all away and go wild. Big enough to send a Val 
in the first place, and maybe all of 'em."
"You have always bragged that you could take a Val. If they put one or two on 
us, then you will get the opportunity to test your theories. Come. We must not 
remain here long."
"Yeah," he sighed. "Even if these are our kind of people."
* * *
 
Chief Roaring Bull knew his section of the river like the old hand he was, and 
he knew balances, shifts, and other ways to manage an overloaded canoe through 
occasional rough water and tiny whirlpools. They learned a great deal from him 
and crossed the area where the mighty Missouri dumped into the Mississippi with 
no more than minor incidents. Hawks kept him aboard for extra safety, but the 
man was quickly passing from an asset to a liability.
Twice they had been hailed from shore or intercepted by canoe, and twice the old 
chief had done himself proud talking them out of any potential dangers. It 
wasn't that the strangers weren't suspicious; Hawks had the distinct impression 
that the four warriors in the canoe knew or at least suspected exactly what was 
going on. But the barely suppressed snickers on their faces showed that they 
only took bribes from Roaring Bull; they really didn't like him any more than 
anyone else did, and in the absence of a gene