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 general alarm or big reward, they 
really weren't that upset to see the old boy embarrassed and compromised. 
Besides, they could always claim later that they weren't really sure and that 
the chief had had ample opportunities to cause his captors trouble, yet had not.
They passed the site south of the confluence of the rivers where once, Hawks 
knew, a mighty complex of cities had stood. Nothing was there now; the forests 
on both sides looked virgin and ancient, and even the foundations of ancient 
bridges had long ago succumbed to the power of the river.
"It is now time to bid you farewell," he told the old chief. "Stand up and do 
not topple the canoe."
"Stand up? But you said you would let me off when we passed the Missouri!"
"1 intend to keep my word. You may leave now."
The old man looked around. "But we are in the middle of the river!"
"I did not promise any more than this. You can swim. Sooner or later you will 
make it to shore just by floating and letting the river carry you. By then we 
will be long gone."
The old chief glared at him. "A curse on you all, then! I might never know who 
got you or why, but I look at three of the walking dead here. Sooner or later, 
perhaps in hours or days, you will encounter someone whom you cannot take. Then 
it will be over."
"Jump, fat man. That is our problem."
With a last angry glance, the old chief jumped into the river and was soon left 
far behind.
With his weight gone, the canoe became far more manageable and almost enjoyable 
to use. Little effort was required except to steer away from snags and keep 
within the current.
"Where do we go now, my fierce warrior?" Cloud Dancer asked.
"Keep an eye out for men digging on a bluff to our right. It might be any time 
but will probably not be for some hours. I overheard the traders at the village 
say that there was a team from Council doing some digging along here, and I want 
to find them."
"Digging? What sort of digging?"
"They are finding the remains of nations that were here not only before us but 
before the ones who were here after our ancestors. They will have certain things 
that we need."
She turned and looked at him. "Remains? They are grave robbers?"
"When things get ancient enough, it is no longer grave robbing but a way to 
learn how ancient people lived, worked, and thought. It is why we know so much 
about our own ancestors."
She considered that. "Grave robbers. A fancy name they might have for it, but it 
is disturbing sacred dead."
He shrugged. If she wanted to think of them as grave robbers, that was fine with 
him. Of course, archaeologists were grave robbers, anyway; it was the motive, 
not the act, that was the only difference.
"What will these Council grave robbers have that we could use?" she asked him.
"They will look as if they are of the People, but they will not be. Probably 
mostly students and apprentices with only a couple of experienced elders. Still, 
somewhere close and probably hidden from view they will have some of the 
machines of Council. They will also have supplies and will be unable to do as 
much to us for getting them as even Roaring Bull was."
"You mean we are going to rob them?"
He grinned. "Why should it bother you to rob from grave robbers?"
That seemed to satisfy her sense of morality. The big problem was in convincing 
Silent Woman that no one was to be killed in this or even badly hurt if it could 
be at all avoided. He needed supplies and things he could trade downriver, but 
he wouldn't mind if he could give them all a treatment with a portable 
mindprinter. A commonality of language would be very helpful indeed, and it was 
unlikely that these people would have a Hyiakutt cartridge. He could not give 
Silent Woman a tongue, but he could give her understanding.
Silent Woman had been excellent on the trip so far. Her eyes showed some life 
again, and she seemed to be enjoying things. It was impossible, of course, to 
know what was really going through her mind, and he wasn't certain he wanted to 
know. He was afraid he might not like some of the images there.
The old chief had been correct about her tattoos. Her entire torso was covered 
with them, in many colors, and resembled an intricate design on a blanket. Cloud 
Dancer, as an artist, had been absolutely fascinated, and Silent Woman did not 
seem to mind the stares and obvious interest. Rather, she seemed pleased by it 
and almost proud. Many tribes used tattoos for many things, but Hawks had never 
seen anyone literally dressed in them. Whoever had done it had been a genuine 
artist in his or her own right. It was grotesque, but it was a pleasing 
grotesque, which was just as well: Even if she died old, she would die with that 
design.
She had been unable to get the massive bloodstains from her dress when they made 
camp, and when her tattoos were more appreciated than repulsed, she had looked 
at the nearly naked couple who had taken her from the Illinois and threw the 
dress into the river. It was more than a gesture; as the only thing she owned 
and, aside from the shoulder bag, the only tangible remnant from the Illinois 
village, she was cutting her last ties with the past and starting absolutely 
clean. Anyway, from a distance, the tattoos made her look clothed.
In the middle of the next day, they spotted the archaeologists' camp. Hawks 
pulled the canoe in, and they dragged it up into the brush and hid it as best 
they could.
The camp was made up of traditional mobile lodges, or tepees, some quite large, 
although the dig was small and quite limited. A dozen young men and women from a 
large variety of tribes seemed to be working under the guidance of an older 
gray-haired man. Most were dressed as primitively as Hawks and Cloud Dancer, 
although their loincloths were professionally made and hung on fine belts 
equipped with loops and clips for various tools. Their project looked well 
along; they were probably in the last stages before packing up.
Cloud Dancer was amazed. The sight of men and women working equally at a hard 
and exacting task rather than clearly dividing the labor was unusual to her; to 
see so many from such obviously different nations working and laughing together 
with no suspicion or animosity was unheard of.
They had clearly decided to live close to the land, and their camp, for the most 
part, was just like thousands of small tribal camps across the plains, but one 
tepee, the largest, stood out. For one thing, it had been heavily and cleverly 
waterproofed. For another, even Hawks had never before seen a tepee whose door 
shut with a heavy zipper.
These people must have developed solid relations with the local tribes. There 
was no sign of security. They lived like the natives of the area lived, and 
unless one knew just what to look for, there was no evidence that this was 
anything more than a transient village of some strange tribe. At the moment, 
there were only two people in the camp: a young man and woman who were 
ostensibly tending the cook fire but who seemed more interested in each other 
than in the duties at hand. The dig was down an embankment and a good kilometer 
or more away from the camp itself; the work could be heard in the distance. 
Hawks began to reconsider his idea of a night attack. Even these people wouldn't 
trust that the river wouldn't bring them some threat in the dark.
'They probably have local tribesmen come in and guard them for the night," he 
told Cloud Dancer.
She looked at the romantic pair. "It would be easy to take those two now. If we 
wait a bit longer, it is possible we will not even be noticed."
"Perhaps." He looked at the sun. "They are sure to break for a midday meal. That 
is what is on the fire. Let us at least wait until after that and see their 
routine. I wish no violence if it can be avoided. Those are no threats."
It appeared that there were always two people remaining in the camp at any one 
time, though the intervals of the rotation were hard to judge. There was only 
one random event, when the gray-haired leader and two workers returned carrying 
something in a large blanket.
"They have dug up a body," Cloud Dancer hissed.
"The bodies in those places, if they were burial places at all, would have been 
dust for centuries," he assured her. "More likely it is an ancient weapon or 
carving or something that only they would even recognize as such."
They watched as the workers put the find down and unzipped the big tent. The 
leader cursed and came back out, fuming at no one in particular. They were using 
English, one of the two common languages—Spanish was the other—of Council.
"There's no room left in there even to store this temporarily without risking 
it," the leader fumed. "We're going to have to find some other place for it."
"Taking it to the village is out," one of his helpers, a young woman, responded. 
"They wouldn't have anything from our dig there on a bet. Probably the best we 
can do for now is get some canvas, double wrap it, and stake it down and arrange 
to have it taken out as soon as possible."
"Well, that's only part of it," the chief archaeologist noted. "I think we can 
get the rest in three or four hours. We'll chance leaving it here, then wrap and 
transport the whole."
Hawks admitted to himself that he'd love to know what they'd found, but 
curiosity had already brought him enough trouble. He waited until the workers 
had returned to the dig after a lunch break; again, a pair remained behind to 
clean up.
"Now is our time," he told Cloud Dancer. "Try to make Silent Woman understand. 
We must act quickly. Use the bow to cover me, and if I gesture so, shoot 
convincingly but not at anyone. Be ready to aid, though, if there is a shout or 
they try something."
"What if that happens?" she asked.
"Then we silence them, grab what we can, and run. I said I wanted no bloodshed, 
but if it is them or us, I choose us."
She nodded, and he simply got up and walked boldly into the archaeologists' 
camp. The two there didn't even see him at first, and when they did, they stared 
nervously at him.
"Just relax and don't call out," he said in his accented English. "I wish no one 
to get hurt, but there are others in the bushes and trees over there who are 
covering me."
The pair looked appalled. "Who the hell are you?" the young man asked. "We have 
permission from the treaty holders to be here."
"I am obviously not with the treaty holders," Hawks responded, "and I have very 
little time. This is a robbery, but a limited and civilized one if you just 
relax and keep back."
"He's bluffing," the woman said toughly. "He has no one in the trees."
Hawks made the gesture, and an arrow flew, landing within half a meter of the 
young man's left foot.
"Who are you, and what do you want?" the young man asked him.
"Who I am is irrelevant. Let's just say that Council would like to talk to me 
right now, and I am in no mood to talk with them. I will not disturb your dig or 
your findings. Take care just to stand there and do or say no more. I do not 
need warriors in the woods to threaten you. All I need do is tell you a simple 
fact that I know, and you and everyone here will be killed by Council. 
Understand?"
They understood. They knew the way the rules worked and probably why he was now 
on the run. Forbidden knowledge. It was a sore point among all the scholars 
working in the undercouncils.
Hawks went over to the big tepee, unzipped it, and stepped inside. There was a 
small battery light just inside the doorway, and he switched it on.
The place was a mess, that was for sure. What he wanted was a weatherproof box 
about a meter deep and fifty centimeters high, probably with a handle on it and 
weighing about twenty kilograms. Not light but very well balanced. He had no 
trouble finding it, since it was one of those items that were used often enough 
that they were never pushed away in storage. In another pack were a dozen 
cartridges, each labeled in black marker. He then located the small emergency 
communications pack and made short work of it—he didn't want them calling in 
until he was well away. The machines could be easily traced when used, but he 
intended to be finished with them before somebody was told to look.
He went back out and was pleased to see that there was no surprise welcoming 
committee and that the pair were just standing there, still staring, not quite 
knowing what to do. Their eyes widened when they saw what he was taking. This 
was unprecedented, unheard of. Field expeditions had found themselves under 
siege, even looted and their members killed, but the systematic theft of a 
portable mindprint machine was something that simply had never occurred to 
either of them, nor could they understand it.
Hawks was not, however, particularly single-minded. "Where's the liquor 
cabinet?" he asked them.
'The what?"
"Come on—I'm running out of time and patience! Where does he keep the booze?"
There was something in his tone that convinced them. Never argue with a 
desperate and dangerous man, that was the rule. Just get the law after him.
"In there," the woman replied, gesturing. "A case in Dr. Kakukua's tepee."
He beckoned for Silent Woman and gave her directions. The two young people 
watched, fascinated and horrified by the strange, silent, naked woman with the 
garish tattoos, although both made a note that it would make descriptions of the 
criminals rather easy. The doctor, Hawks saw, had only high-quality stuff, none 
of that rot-gut brewed by the Illinois. He wished he could take it all, but 
Silent Woman was limited by the boxes to about twenty half-liter bottles. That 
was good enough.
"All right—now you remain here for a while," he told them. "I'm leaving someone 
over there to make sure we are well away before you go running off to bring the 
others here. They'll shoot a lone arrow into the dirt as they leave and run for 
it. You count to five hundred after that and we'll be gone."
He and Silent Woman ran back into the bush. "Stay here a couple of minutes," he 
told Cloud Dancer. "If they make an early break, give them a real scare. 
Otherwise, give us a few minutes, then run for the canoe. We have to be out of 
here and hopefully out of range before they get their wits."
She nodded, and he and Silent Woman made for the canoe, then waited nervously 
for Cloud Dancer. She finally arrived and jumped in as he pushed off.
"I thought you weren't going to come," he said, relieved. "I was about to come 
and rescue you."
She laughed. "The woman got really brave and decided that no one was left. I 
sent an arrow so close to her that I believe they will be standing as still as 
carvings many years from now!"
They sailed by the dig and then continued on as far south as they dared. He 
decided that they would make camp on the east shore that evening. That way, any 
search parties would have to cross the river into lands held by other nations. 
However, he decided first to make temporary camp, use the machine, then leave it 
there and continue on as far as they could until dark.
He found a good landing where there was no sign of human habitation and good 
cover, then proceeded to unpack and set up the machine. Both women stared at it 
nervously. Neither had ever before seen a true independently powered machine, 
and such things were spoken of as having the darkest magic.
Most of the cartridges were of local languages or the languages of some of the 
members of the dig, obviously chosen so they could get to know each other 
better. There also were reference recordings on the culture and the site itself 
and on uniform excavation procedures, essential for that kind of tedious work. 
Hawks wanted the two standards, labeled eng-x and espan-x. These would give a 
basic overlay, causing the brain to associate words, terms, and phrases it 
already knew with the proper English or Spanish terms. It was not a cram course 
in the nuances of the languages; nobody using them would lose an accent or know 
words and terms without cross-references no matter what the size of the basic 
dictionary, but it would allow for communication.
He picked English simply because it had the largest vocabulary of all the known 
languages and as such was bound to have the best matches for esoteric languages. 
He knew it worked well in translation from Hyiakutt; he had no idea what 
language Silent Woman had used.
Cloud Dancer looked suspiciously at the box. "What does it do?"
"It will teach you the tongue I used with the students. A tongue harsh to the 
ear but useful, since it is used so much. We cannot use it to teach Silent Woman 
Hyiakutt, so we must use this language so all three of us can communicate. It 
will also be useful should we come up against anyone from Council or in the camp 
of the Mud Runner and beyond. Please. You must do this, for me and for her 
sake."
She was dubious. "Can you not just run it on Silent Woman and translate?"
"Come on! It is a simple device. You saw what cooperation it brought from the 
digger camp. Besides, look at Silent Woman. If you do not do it, she certainly 
will not." He suddenly found another cartridge on which was written in English, 
survival.
"This one, too, is useful," he told her. "I believe it teaches how to survive in 
the wilderness with nothing at all. Emergency training. We may all need this. 
Please— sit. It does not hurt. You feel a little sleepy, and then you know it 
all."
She looked nervously at Silent Woman, then at him, and sighed. "Very well. What 
do I do?"
"Just lie down here and get as comfortable as you can. I put this thing on your 
head, so, so that the small points here contact all around. There."
He inserted the cartridge, then turned the power on. There was no real noise, 
but three small lights blinked on. Silent Woman stared as if suddenly faced with 
a three-headed cat.
He punched the feed button, then sat back to wait the few minutes this program 
took to run. Silent Woman just sat and stared, suspicious but not really afraid.
When the machine clicked off, Cloud Dancer was asleep. Taking advantage of that, 
Hawks withdrew eng-x and inserted survival. To run it on all three did not 
present much of a risk, he decided, and it might just be useful.
She was still asleep when survival clicked off, and he roused her. She opened 
her eyes, looked into his, smiled, got up, then settled back down a meter or two 
away.
Silent Woman was more difficult to persuade, but she certainly trusted them by 
now, and she had seen no terrible effects on Cloud Dancer. She knew that the man 
would not do anything to harm his woman, so she accepted the mantle with a 
little nervousness.
Eng-x ran its course, and he ran survival once again. She, too, fell asleep and 
had to be coaxed to move away. He certainly intended to run survival on himself. 
He needed it more than either of the women.
Survival was everything he had hoped for and more— perhaps too much more. He 
found himself able to know instantly if berries were edible or poisonous, which 
water was safe and which was not, how to find shelter or make it under almost 
any conditions, how to keep from drowning, how to fashion weapons from the 
crudest materials found on the forest floor, and how to use them. It was also, 
however, a conditioning program that attacked inhibition. The concept of eating 
raw frog or a huge accumulation of crushed insects, for example, was no longer 
at all disgusting, and the concept of modesty was thrown out entirely.
The program was intended to be taken in the field while surrounded by friends 
and co-workers who would quickly reintroduce reality and perspective. It then 
remained as a silent rider to the consciousness, ready if needed but otherwise 
not evident. It was a way of grafting the survival skills of the most primitive 
savage onto the most civilized of personalities so that if they got into 
trouble, they would have a chance to survive until they could be rescued. It was 
not intended to be used by someone who already needed it and was mostly in the 
uncivilized condition it assumed.
He awoke first and looked over at the sleeping women. He knew who he was and who 
they were; all his memories were intact, along with his sense of purpose. He was 
acutely aware of danger, and he wanted to act fast. His tattered loincloth 
caught on a bush as he got up warily, and he reached down, snapped the thin rope 
in two, and threw the garment away. It was an encumbrance. Clothing for 
protection against the elements would have been practical; he could not even 
conceive of why he'd clung to that thing so long. Better under these conditions 
to toughen the skin.
They had all been so tired that they'd slept much longer than they should have. 
The alarm had surely been raised by now. He took the small mindprint machine and 
the cartridges down to the river and threw them in. When both did not sink 
immediately, he jumped in, and with a little help they filled and went down.
Cloud Dancer was awake when he returned, and she looked at him approvingly. It 
was the nature of things now that he didn't even notice that she, too, had shed 
her modesty cloths. He switched to English to see if it all had worked. "How do 
you feel?"
"Different," she answered, her accent rather exotic but understandable. "Yet I 
cannot say how."
"Awake, Silent Woman," he ordered curtly. "We have all slept too long, and we 
must be well away from here before our enemies are upon us."
None of them could really comprehend the difference, but it was major. They no 
longer felt loyalty or longing for tribe and nation or even much kinship with 
it. Their tribe consisted only of the three of them. The first priority was the 
survival of the tribe, and then the individuals, no matter what the cost. The 
land was full of enemies: only the tribe could be trusted. As the only male of 
the tribe, Hawks was chief by default, and that was simply accepted by them all.
Silent Woman was almost ecstatic to discover she could understand their speech. 
It was a kind of wondrous magic that reestablished her in the World.
"Hereafter we will use only this speech," he told Cloud Dancer. "It was always a 
tongue used to unite tribes; let it serve to unite us. Silent Woman, I see that 
you understand us now."
She nodded, mouth still open in wonder.
"Let us get far away from here, as far as we can. We do not know if the 
transmission from the machine was picked up, but we must assume that our enemies 
will be upon us at any moment."
They went back down to the canoe, which, in their new mind-set, seemed a real 
luxury to them. They crossed the river before the light failed and continued 
south, slowly and very near shore, looking for a proper camp. Then, working as a 
team, they left the river, methodically covered or disguised all traces that 
anyone had ever landed there, and carried the canoe well inland.
Academically and from old experience, Hawks understood what was going on—what 
the program was designed to do and what it was doing to them—but he did not 
fight it. It was the first thing he'd done by chance that had turned out right, 
and he was going to use it. Neither woman, of course, could understand the 
process and know how to fight it, anyway. For all the People, the priorities 
were family, then tribe, then nation. By accident, the survival program had 
reoriented those three categories to go with different labels. Their loyalty was 
to him now, and he to them—they were their own tribe. The threatening wilderness 
and the treacherous yet mighty river were their friends and allies against all 
other tribes and nations.
He got one of the bottles from the archaeologist's pack and opened it. Primitive 
hunter-gatherers they might now be, but they could neither hunt nor gather in 
this darkness and strange wood. Food would wait until dawn.
"There is energy in this fire drink, which is called bourbon," he told them. "We 
must use it for now, although too much will cause dullness and throbbing heads 
the next day. Drink in celebration, for now we are one."
They drank, all coughing as it made its way down. "It is like a fire inside that 
warms," Cloud Dancer noted. "Now I see why it is called fire drink." But they 
finished it off.
When the bottle was empty, he broke it on a stone and washed the sharp point in 
the river. "Until now I had a wife who stands here. Now I have two wives, and 
they are proven warriors as well, as brave as any man and as skilled." Silent 
Woman gave a short gasp, and he realized that until now she'd still considered 
herself a slave—his slave. "Tonight we will mix our blood and bind ourselves 
forever to one another."
Three cuts on three wrists were joined one after the other, then all together. 
And then, full of togetherness and in the knowledge that they were as safe as 
they could expect and could do nothing more until morning, and being loosened 
with bourbon, the two ministered to him and he to them on the forest floor, and 
they slept entwined together.
* * *
"You assholes just stood there and let him steal a damned mindprint machine?" 
Raven was aghast.
"And twenty bottles of good bourbon," the archaeologist chief added mournfully. 
"It was only a portable unit. Not programmable. I can't imagine what good it'll 
do him."
"It'll make those bitches linguists," Raven replied. "Make it a lot easier 
moving south. You tell me quick what the nonlanguage cartridges were. I want to 
see just who and what we're dealing with now."
The survival cartridge's importance did not escape the Crow. "They've shown 
themselves to be right resourceful up to now," he told Warlock. "Now they can 
avoid all human company and still fill their bellies. Probably do better with 
the canoe, too."
"I have studied the charts," she responded. "If they get south of the Arkansas, 
they are going to be in a region that is heavily populated and thickly traveled. 
He picked this place because it is of Council; his actions here will not affect 
his relations with the tribes. Down there he cannot escape detection or at least 
notice. The tattooed woman stands out in any situation. I cannot understand why 
he keeps her along. He must know that."
"Oh, he'll keep her," the Crow assured Warlock. "He's incurred an obligation, 
and that's an honorable man there. Still, the more people, the harder to use 
sensors to find a camp. We can't hardly roust every camp we find. Some of the 
tribes down there get a mite touchy and wouldn't be at all impressed with 
Council. My feeling is that we ought to pack it in, call in a skimmer, and wait 
for 'em at Mud Runner's place."
"Only as a last resort. If we were to spook him there, in those swamps, we might 
get him killed or lose him forever. We don't know where he thinks he's going, 
but he does, and he is one single-minded man. Whatever he knows, he believes it 
is worth any price."
"Well, I got to admit I don't like the odds down there," he said. "He's a 
stranger there, true, but so are we, and, pardon, we're just as conspicuous as 
he is. Those swamps have defeated just about everybody who ever tried to beat 
'em rather than live with 'em. You got any ideas?"
"Just one. We have the advantage that we know he must stick close to the river 
and probably on it. Time is pressing him. The river is the only fast way to go. 
We know what they look like and where they are going. We must stop chasing them 
and get ahead of them. Let me see the current charts."
They looked over the river course and the latest information. Charts of the 
Mississippi were always out of date, but this one was close. Warlock pointed a 
long finger at a spot well to the south. "There," she told him. "It is narrow, 
and see how it loops around. We could get two cracks at them there."
He nodded. "Okay. As long as they don't portage through the neck here."
"That is a chance I am willing to take. They have no charts; the river is full 
and could flood down there at any time. They can't portage across every oxbow or 
they would eat far more time than sticking to the water. I think they will come 
by there in a canoe in about three days. If we call in a skimmer, we can be 
there in a few hours and have that much time to prepare."
He nodded. "All right, I'll go with that. Better than the swamps, anyway. If we 
miss 'em, though, then it's Mud Runner or nothing."
She smiled enigmatically. "Then we will see if he lives up to his legendary 
reputation as a ladies' man."
Ordinarily the programs and data fed by a portable mindprinter faded as time 
went on; only a Master System unit could lock in permanent changes. However, it 
was also true that the more a skills program was used, the more entrenched it 
became: If you lived it and used it, it often integrated into the mind and 
achieved a level of permanency. Hawks insisted that the two women literally 
think in English and only in English.
Though a stronger imprint, the survival program was supposed to be emergency 
medicine, something carried in the hope that it would never be used. Under those 
conditions, it required regular retreatment with the machine. Once in use, 
however, the effects would last as long as necessary. Used too long, it could 
take on a life of its own, stripping away the last vestiges of a complex and 
refined culture like the Hyiakutt's and leaving only the savage primitive. It 
was designed to do this to one born and raised in the high-tech, pampered world 
of Council; the women came from cultures that were no less complex or primitive 
than Council in their own ways, but they were cultures much closer to the land. 
There was less civilization to strip away. The authors of the survival program 
simply assumed that any such problems could be fixed once the person was located 
and rescued. An easy job for Master System—but they could never meet up with a 
Master System connect.
Hawks let it happen. Food, at least, was no problem now. What they had been best 
at before they were expert at now. His bowmanship was so perfect, it amazed him; 
Cloud Dancer could spear something almost instinctively, and Silent Woman could 
bring down birds in flight with stone or knife. The programming was geared to 
using what you had, and from the standpoint of survival they had quite a bit.
Minor ills, bruises, aches, and pains simply did not bother them anymore. 
Fearing a major break or injury, Hawks urged quiet caution.
He also began to entertain doubts about Mud Runner. What if the Resident Agent 
didn't remember this wild man as his old friend? What if he turned them in? What 
if, most probable, he just couldn't help? He had to be made to help, even if it 
meant telling him about the rings and their secret and thus passing on the 
obligation. Hawks didn't really want to do that anymore; now his thoughts ran in 
a different direction.
The fact was, he admitted to himself, that right now he was as happy as he had 
ever been. He felt both free and loved. He began to think about ways to fake his 
own death, to throw off pursuit. Perhaps truly to found a new tribe and live 
this life, which was satisfying. He was approaching middle age, not a good time 
to go wild, but he was in excellent health. There were programs that could erase 
a lifetime and alter forever a personality. Mud Runner might well have these. 
For the first time he began to doubt his mission.
Why had he run? Because insatiable curiosity had forced him to read those papers 
and learn their deadly contents. He had fooled himself into thinking that it was 
some sort of noble mission to save humanity, but it was really just a bid to 
save his own neck. Until now his alternatives had been either to remain with the 
Hyiakutt or return to Council, but now there was another alternative.
If the bottom-line idea was to save his life and the lives of Cloud Dancer and 
Silent Woman, then which promised more? Passing on the information and depending 
on some Lord of the Middle Dark to save and protect them from Master System? Or, 
perhaps, logic. A readout into a full mindprint machine would show that he had 
passed his knowledge to no one. A second record showing that all his knowledge 
had been erased, along with his past, and replaced with that of a primitive 
hunter-gatherer might not absolutely take the heat off, but Master System would 
be unlikely to send a Val or expend much effort on him. Death was the sentence 
only because Master System did not trust its own demon lords. But if no demon 
lord were involved...
Humanity could save itself. Someone had discovered the ancient knowledge; others 
would over time. What he had here was worth a thousand Master Systems.
 
9. THE WOUNDS OF HOPE

CHU LI HAD EXPERIENCED ONE BIG SCARE ON THE way to the spaceship. Just before 
boarding, they were all required to clear security by placing both hands on a 
plate and looking through a binocularlike eyepiece. He had been sure that the 
other three would leave without him once the machine, which was definitely 
linked to Master System, identified him not as Chu Li but as Song Ching.
But the machine had not. Incredibly, it positively matched eye- and fingerprints 
with Chu Li and showed a picture of the disguised Song Ching on the security 
monitor. The success at the checkpoint was as startling and disturbing as 
failure would have been. He knew that the system was hardly infallible, but 
nobody could fool Master System to this degree. It was unthinkable. The only 
explanation possible was that the gods themselves had intervened.
Captain Sabatini was correct that the ship was not intended to take off from the 
ground except in emergencies; it was impossible to imagine how it had ever 
landed there. The passenger cabin was boarded by going sideways through an open 
air lock, then into a room that contained twelve huge, plush chairs with 
oversized backs in three rows of four each. The ship was not completely vertical 
but at a forty-five-degree angle that was certainly as unmanageable. A network 
of planks was laid inside so that people could enter.
Chu Li was carried in by a very large guard who looked like a retired wrestler, 
then placed in one of the far chairs in the front row. He sank so deeply into 
the chair that he feared being smothered, and the network of belts and webbing 
that strapped him in made it impossible even to move.
Deng was carried in next, placed in the rear seat farthest from the door, and 
similarly fastened in. The two girls were placed in the front and rear seats 
nearest the air lock, but so restricting were the bonds that Chu Li could not 
turn to see which one was in his row.
Sabatini entered, managing the entire mess with acrobatic skill that made it 
look not only easy but normal. He went down—back—beyond the last row and 
vanished; they didn't know where and could not look to see.
The captain was in one of the two rooms that were in the rear of the 
compartment, seated in a chair that could be maneuvered electrically by controls 
at his fingers and was surrounded by screens and instrumentation. His own 
webbing would hold his body tight but allowed his arms total freedom. There were 
straps through which he could slip his hands for total security when necessary. 
He put on a small, light headset that had a tiny microphone on a rigid loop in 
front of his mouth.
"Captain to pilot. Prepare to clear and close all outer doors. Internal systems 
on," he instructed calmly.
Up front there was the distant sound of warning sirens. As the planks were 
hastily withdrawn, the air locks—first the outer, then the inner—were closed and 
sealed automatically, and the passengers were left with only the light of the 
red signal above those doors and the very dim emergency lighting system to see 
by. Not, of course, that there was anything to see.
Then, with a whine, the lights came on full inside, restoring some sense of 
normalcy. There was a sound of air blowing in from all sides, and they felt 
their ears pop several times.
"Switch to passenger intercom, then prepare for launch," the captain ordered. 
Then he changed his tone, and his voice blared from the overhead speakers.
"Good evening. I know you're uncomfortable, but this will last only a short 
while. We are now eleven minutes from launch, and it will take us about forty 
minutes to reach orbit and activate the gravity. We'll then have a little time 
to get comfortable for the long haul. There will be a second sustained engine 
firing from orbit, but that won't feel like very much in here, and all it will 
really require is that you sit down and keep a seat belt on. This is the rough 
part. You'll feel at first like some big hand is pushing you completely through 
the seat until you can't bear it anymore, and it'll sound and feel like the 
whole ship's shaking to pieces, but don't worry. That's normal. After a little 
bit, you'll suddenly find that pressing weight gone, and you'll feel like you 
don't weigh anything at all, which will be more or less true. There's a monitor 
hanging from the ceiling up front and center which will show a view from the 
stern. Enjoy it. This is the only planetary lift-off you're ever likely to 
experience."
He switched back to his business channel. The computer took readings on the 
prisoners and showed the results on a screen to his right, but he didn't pay 
attention. If their blood pressure didn't go through the roof, they'd be all 
right.
"Chu Li!" called the girl three seats to his right.
"Here. Is that you, Chow Dai?"
"Yes. Chu Li—I am frightened. I do not like this kind of flying ship."
He tried to reassure her. The fact was, he wasn't the least bit frightened of 
the ship or the takeoff. It was what would come after, on the days out there, 
that caused real fear.
"It is just a ship, in many ways like the ones that sail the rivers."
"I am far more worried by his saying that it was the only such experience we'll 
ever have," Deng Ho shouted from the back. "This will be just a lot of shaking 
and noise."
"It is the waiting!" Chow Mai added from her rear seat. "I wish they would just 
do whatever it is they will do!"
Suddenly the ship trembled, and they found themselves being raised so that their 
backs were down and their feet were forward. It was most uncomfortable. Then the 
lights and power switched briefly off, then on again, and there was a tremendous 
whine from somewhere deep inside the ship that grew in pitch and intensity. The 
whole world seemed suddenly to begin shuddering and shaking; there was vibration 
but no real sensation of moving. Chu Li's eyes went to the monitor, and with a 
start he saw the entire spaceport complex framed there, growing smaller by the 
second, until it was lost in a view of steppe and desert. Only then did the 
great invisible hand Sabatini had warned about really begin to come down on 
them.
The weight was crushing and terrible, and the two girls screamed. It lasted only 
a few minutes, but it seemed like hours. All four felt as if all the air was 
being squeezed out of them.
The pressure ceased so abruptly that the transition made them dizzy with relief. 
They experienced no real discomfort except some popping ears, but when Chu Li 
again had the wits to look at the monitor, he saw nothing familiar there, only a 
vast expanse of blue and white. Within a few minutes there were browns and grays 
down there as well; it was almost as if they were looking at some model, some 
relief map of a strange place. Chu Li had expected something more dramatic, such 
as the world as a ball growing ever smaller, but this was just indistinct 
nothingness.
The ship shuddered a few times as it made small mid-course corrections, but 
these were brief and caused no real sensations at all, just a steady vibration 
throughout the ship and a low whine coming from somewhere in the rear.
At least they were sitting upright again, Chu Li thought with some relief. 
Still, it had been somewhat of an anticlimax to him; he had expected lift-off to 
be longer and far more extreme.
Now there was a gentler sense of acceleration that slowly built but did not grow 
very far. A buzzer sounded in the rear, then Captain Sabatini was walking 
comfortably forward, still wearing the headset. He checked each of them in turn, 
finally reaching Chu Li.
"All right, we have only a short time to do this, so listen closely and do just 
what I tell you," he said loudly. "I'm going to release the restraints on you 
one at a time and put on more comfortable ones. I don't want anyone trying 
anything. With this headset I can control a good deal of what it's like in here, 
and I do it in a language none of you know, so don't think you can grab it and 
start shouting orders. It will go very hard with anyone who gives me any trouble 
at all."
He pressed something between Chu Li's legs, and the intolerable belts and 
webbing loosened, then were reeled into the seat. For a brief moment, Chu Li was 
free and unrestrained, but he knew this was not the time to try anything. They 
didn't know enough yet, and there were many aspects of this ship that didn't fit 
the model and schematics in his brain.
"Stand up," the captain ordered, and Chu Li did, feeling oddly light and 
slightly off balance. Sabatini gave a command in some very strange sounding 
tongue, and a small compartment in the wall opened. Removing what looked like a 
belt fastened to a thin but tough chain, he attached it around Chu Li's waist 
under his tunic. He repeated the procedure with each of the others in turn, then 
passed out some prewet towels to the two girls, both of whom had thrown up on 
takeoff.
Chu Li examined the restraint. The chain held him and would not slip either up 
or down more than a few centimeters, yet it was not tight or particularly 
uncomfortable. At the back was a small box that was both a lock and a piece of 
electronics which adjusted for comfort but also tightened in response to any 
attempt to move the chain too far. There was even enough give to pull out some 
chain and actually rotate the body loop, bringing the box around to the front, 
but it still could not be removed.
"All right, now, here's the situation," Sabatini said. "The restraint you each 
wear contains a length of chain sufficient for you to reach all the parts of the 
cabin you need to get to. It is smart and will automatically adjust in or out 
depending on where you want to go. The one thing you have to remember is that 
the chains will not allow themselves to be crossed. That avoids tangles but will 
take some getting used to. Any problems and I can have those chains drag you all 
the way to the wall and hold you there. You can't imagine how fast you can find 
yourself slammed against the wall. Right now, just bring out a little chain and 
bring the box forward, then sit down. We can't get comfortable yet.
"Now, I want to run through a few basics. You have gravity here, but it is only 
seventy percent of what you've been used to, so you're going to find maneuvering 
difficult at first. Just remember that if you weighed fifty kilos on Earth, you 
weigh only thirty-five here. You also fall at seventy percent the usual speed if 
you happen to trip. Questions?"
There were many, but none were asked.
"All right, then. If we all do our part to be nice, then those chains will be 
all that is needed. You'll get so used to them that in a day or two you won't 
even think about them. You'll sleep with them, eat with them, go to the bathroom 
with them. However, rest assured I have other restraints if you cause me 
troubles, many of which are neither smart nor comfortable. Later I'll have clean 
clothes for you, and I'll show you how to get rid of your body wastes and where 
and how showers are done here. For now, I want you to use the regular lap and 
shoulder belts on your seats and remain there. We have another boost coming up, 
although nothing like the last one, and then it'll be smooth as silk for the 
rest of the journey."
The second burst, when it came, was accompanied by the same noise and vibration 
as the takeoff, but the giant's hand was a pale shadow of its old self, nor did 
it seem so long.
Still, Chu Li worried. What sort of new clothing? Would his secret have to come 
out right away, before he'd had time to prepare the others? And, of equal 
concern, what sort of man would they send who could nursemaid four condemned 
prisoners for forty-one days in close quarters? So far he had been almost too 
nice and polite. They were, after all, not paying passengers, and this was no 
luxury cruise.
The passenger cabin, as Sabatini called it, was a marvel in itself. With a few 
commands in that strange tongue and the manipulation of some hidden controls, 
the chairs vanished deep into the floor and were replaced by large reclining 
leather seats that could go all the way down to become quite comfortable beds. 
These chairs swiveled a full hundred and eighty degrees and were placed at equal 
distances around a polished laminated table. The rear of the cabin was empty, 
providing perhaps six by nine meters that could be used for walking or other 
exercise, and there were three doors in the back wall. From watching Sabatini's 
comings and goings, the passengers guessed that the center door led to the next 
area back in the ship, the right-hand door led to Sabatini's own private cabin, 
and the left-hand one opened on a room that seemed to be filled with complex 
electronic gear. A thick red line was painted on the floor about a meter in 
front of the doors, and past that the chain would not go.
Forward of the table and chairs there were also three doors. The center one, 
they were told, led forward to the next area and was doubly dangerous, since it 
opened onto an inner air lock and seal, and no areas forward now contained air. 
A red circle on the floor in front of the door again proved to be the chain's 
limit. The door on the left, however, was the toilet, and that they could enter.
The other door led to a shower, or at least what Sabatini called a shower. There 
was a small outer area for putting down clothing, then what looked like a huge 
plastic tube with one side cut away. When one stood in the center of the tube, 
the open side closed, and one was almost engulfed by a tremendous stream of 
liquid. The shower had three cycles, which left the bather dry and very clean.
For the first two days out the boredom was broken only by occasional 
explanations from Sabatini. The new clothing—white, loose-fitting cotton 
pajamas—allowed Chu Li to maintain his fiction a while longer, although Deng Ho 
was beginning to look at him curiously. Chu Li knew that the time was coming 
when he could not avoid revealing his secret, but he could not bring himself to 
do it—not yet.
Sabatini was generally not in the passenger cabin, occupying himself elsewhere. 
This gave them some initial breathing room and allowed for some expert 
examinations. Chu Li could find no routine visual monitoring devices in the 
cabin, though it appeared that Sabatini could watch them from either of his 
rooms through some special plates. The speakers were certainly two-way, but 
there were only two of them, and they were easily avoided. It was possible to 
have private conversations by having one pair talk loudly near the speakers 
while the other pair spoke in whispers.
"You have seen the place now. What do you think?" Chow Dai asked Chu Li in such 
a circumstance.
"This room is customized far beyond what this ship usually has," he told her. 
"It is possible that it is used to carry important people as well as prisoners. 
That might also explain the lack of monitors and recorders. Both of the rooms in 
back are also not standard. I particularly do not understand that room full of 
gear or that headset he wears. This ship is totally automatic, with a self-aware 
computer for a pilot. What could he be doing from that room? And what is 
forward? I do not know how far up we are in the ship, but if that middle door is 
an air lock, then it shows no indicators like the ones on the sides and no 
seals, either. There is air up there, at least for one more room. I know there 
is. Why? And where are the space suits? They should be in a compartment off this 
room, yet there seem to be no compartments except the small ones that manage 
these chain devices and the ones that deliver our food and drink on the little 
trays and dispose of the waste. Much of this does not make sense."
"The food is strange, too," she noted.
"It is foreign devil food, but it serves. This is not a Chinese ship. What about 
these chain things?"
"The box is easy to fool. Chow Mai and I have already found two ways to make it 
loosen up enough to slip the whole thing off. The doors have simple electrical 
locks. I know the combinations now from just observing the captain, but they are 
almost identical to the locks on the toilet and shower. We could break them if 
we had to."
"I thought you'd need some tools for that."
"We have them. He never missed the two we required when Chow Mai took them from 
his pack. The problem is his headset. It really can override—we have watched 
him—and the tongue is impossible."
He nodded. "I must know more about the ship. When he sleeps, you must show me 
how to slip this bond and help me enter that mystery room with all the 
electronics. We must know everything before we move,"
They were all supposed to sleep at the same time, but their chains were left 
free in case they needed to use the toilet. No matter how hard he tried, Chu Li 
could not manage the simple maneuver to fool the box, but Chow Dai slipped hers 
and then freed him. Chow Mai and Deng Ho remained in their beds, quietly on 
watch.
Chu Li would have liked to explore the rest of the ship, but whenever Sabatini 
had opened the rear door, a distant bell had sounded; until they could somehow 
mask that alarm, they couldn't risk it. In any case, the mystery room was their 
primary target.
Chow Dai did not want to chance using the combination. Instead, she skillfully 
bypassed the combination board and sprang the lock with two small and nearly 
silent pilfered electronic tools. When the door swung back, Chu Li kissed her 
and entered the room.
The place was an electronic wonderland situated around a single command chair. 
Much of the equipment was unfamiliar, though he recognized some machines and 
could guess at the functions of others. There was a small mind-print machine and 
a large number of cartridges, which were numbered in the Arabic system rather 
than labeled. The machine itself was far too simple for psychosurgery; more than 
likely it was there so that Sabatini could instantly learn other languages he 
needed or be updated on ship changes and modifications. Monitors showed 
schematics of the ship at this level and probably could display other levels in 
response to the correct commands. One thing was certain: The areas of 
pressurization and atmosphere, which were outlined in blue, extended far aft as 
well as forward of the cabin they were in. The artificial gravity, however, 
appeared limited to the passenger compartment and a much larger compartment 
immediately behind it—almost certainly the live animal transport area of which 
the captain had spoken.
Unfortunately, too much of the information on the monitors and even the labels 
was useless, written again in that unknown script. Chu Li looked longingly at 
the mindprint machine and cartridges. Somewhere there was probably the language 
he needed, but which one? He certainly didn't have the time to learn them all.
Still, there was far more equipment here than any human companion on this ship 
would require, even more than would be needed for any conceivable human 
intervention. It was more like the kind of compartment required for someone to 
run the whole ship—but that was done by computer.
The only logical explanation struck him with the force of a blow. Song Ching's 
father had already known that there was a human override built into the ships. 
Suppose Sabatini really was the captain? Suppose the computer pilot was not 
independent but his subordinate, subject to him? He remembered the complex 
helmets in the illegal tech cult's fortress laboratories. They had built them 
from scratch and had assumed that they would have to hardwire the connection. 
Suppose that was what the omnipresent headset was really for? Sabatini was 
running his own ship!
He turned back toward the door only to see it suddenly shut with a speed and 
force he'd never before seen on a door. He tried to open it but could not. He 
was stuck in there!
"You just stay right there and don't touch a thing!" Sabatini's voice came over 
a small speaker in the console. "I will tend to you as soon as I have tended to 
your friends, and I will be far gentler to them if you just sit in the chair and 
relax until I come for you."
There was no malice in his tone, but Chu Li had no doubt that the captain would 
not hesitate to carry out his implied threat. There was nothing to do but sit 
and try to figure out as much additional information as he could from what he 
could see.
After an eternity, the door opened and the full cabin lights flooded the 
compartment. Sabatini, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, stood there with a small 
weapon in his hand. He had his small headset on as well. "All right—time to get 
out now," he said casually. "And I was beginning to wonder if this would be a 
boring trip. All right—out! Now!"
When Chu Li emerged, he found both the girls kneeling on the floor, their chains 
reattached, their hands bound behind their backs, and their ankles secured. Chow 
Dai gave him an expression that was filled with both hurt and apology. Deng Ho 
was still in his chair, strapped to it by hand and leg cuffs and unable to move.
Chu Li looked at the weapon in Sabatini's hand. It was a very small thing of red 
plastic with a gauge on its handle, a small button for a trigger, and a metallic 
point where the barrel ended.
"I've already demonstrated the stinger to your girl friends," the captain 
warned. "If you'd like one, I'll be happy to give it. This little line here 
shows the amount of power it'll put out in a room this size. Right now it's set 
for a debilitating shock. Halfway and it'll knock you out for a couple of 
minutes. All the way up and it might stop your heart."
"I believe you," Chu Li responded hollowly.
"All right, then—over here. Chain on. That's it. Now— hands behind your back. 
Good." Chu Li felt pressure and found his hands held by very firm handcuffs that 
allowed no real give or play at all. "Now—on your knees." He did so, and two 
stiff leg cuffs were also locked into place. He faced the two girls on the 
opposite side of the open space.
Sabatini relaxed. "Now, I told you I could be mean if somebody tried to take 
advantage of me. I figured you might be pulling something, covering talks with 
other talks and whispering campaigns, and I knew from the records that the girls 
were experts at locks. When I sleep, I put the alarms on all these doors so they 
sound in my cabin. I just decided to see what you were up to."
Chu Li understood now how it worked. The captain switched on the alarm, and when 
it rang and awakened him, he had merely to grab his headset to find where the 
trouble was and who was causing it. He then simply commanded the door to shut, 
overriding the lock, then took the others with his weapon.
"All right—it was one slip," Sabatini said almost kindly. "If I was mean and 
nasty or even smart, I'd just leave you all like that for the next thirty-nine 
days but pull you all to the wall with the box behind your back like your hands 
and feed you like animals from trays. Or send you back to the animal cages, 
maybe. But that's only because this sort of stuff puts me in a real bad mood. 
Now, if somebody got me in a better mood, I might actually forgive and forget."
He walked back over to his open cabin door, reached in, and brought out a rather 
nasty-looking straight knife. Then he muttered something into his headphone, and 
abruptly both women were jerked back to the wall and slammed against it. Since 
the chain emerged from a point in the bulkhead above their waists, it had the 
effect of suspending them slightly, leaning forward because of their bound 
hands, barely touching the floor with their toes.
Sabatini went over to Chow Dai. "You've got an ugly face," he told her, "but I'm 
curious about the rest of you." Using the knife, he cut away her pullover and 
her pants and flung them to one side, leaving her hanging there by the chain, 
naked. She did, in fact, have quite a nice body, but something made the captain 
stop and command the chain to come out a bit. He caught her and turned her 
around to face the wall.
Chu Li gasped, and Sabatini was almost equally appalled. Chow Dai's back was a 
mass of welts and scar tissue almost from the shoulders to the buttocks. "Holy— 
somebody really did a job on you, didn't they, beautiful?" he commented. He 
lifted her up, then put her back on the floor in the kneeling position. "You 
stay there. Let's see if your sister got the same treatment."
She had. If anything, Chow Mai's scars were worse. The evident brutality was so 
gross and unexpected that even Sabatini hadn't been prepared for it. He put the 
sister back down in the kneeling position on the floor as well.
"Well," the captain muttered. "Nothing about that in the record. Damn it, you 
girls wouldn't be any fun at all." He paused a moment. "But then, hope springs 
eternal, doesn't it? There's lots of things not in the official record." He 
turned and stalked back across the room. "Isn't that right, Mister Chu?"
Now it was Chu Li's turn to be suspended against the wall and slowly have the 
clothing cut away as the others watched. Everyone except the captain seemed 
shocked, surprised, and amazed at what was revealed. Song Ching, after all, had 
been genetically designed for perfection. Nor were there any marks on this body, 
not so much as a scar or blemish.
"Now, that's more like it," Sabatini proclaimed lustfully as he put Chu Li back 
down in the kneeling position.
Chow Dai's mouth seemed permanently open in amazement, all embarrassment from 
her own exposure pushed aside. "Chu Li—you are a girl! But—how is that 
possible?"
"I'd like to know that one myself," Sabatini put in. "My manifest says you're a 
boy, you've got a voice to match that, and you passed a Master System identity 
check as a male."
So here it was. He knew he could not be mystical; the Chow sisters would accept 
it, but Deng Ho—who could only stare in wonder, not a little lust on his face as 
well in spite of his bindings—and the captain would never buy it. He had worked 
out a story, though, that explained the facts even if he didn't know if it was 
really possible. He'd been refining it for days.
"It is none of my doing," he lied. "They—changed me. A surgeon and a 
psychochemist. But they never completed the job. They changed me from a boy to a 
girl, but you can tell from my voice, my ways, that they never changed me 
inside."
"The outside does just fine by me," Sabatini noted.
"But why would they do such a thing?" Chow Dai asked him.
"They were remaking me to replace somebody. Somebody important who was sent down 
for work but who had power enough to fake it. Song Ching, the daughter of the 
chief administrator. They had no other use for me, and they decided I was about 
her size. I had no choice. But they were fooled near the completion of their 
goal. Orders came from somewhere that I was to be sent here. They could not 
change the orders, and they could not give someone else my prints and patterns, 
so they had to send me."
"Rat—is that really you?" Deng Ho asked in wonder.
"Deep inside, my cousin. I am sorry. They fixed me so I would not know myself 
what had been done until the day I left, when it wore off."
"Oh, I am so sorry, Chu Li!" Chow Dai cried. "Why did you not tell me when you 
knew?"
"Sooner or later I was going to tell you," he replied honestly. "I—I just cared 
for you, Chow Dai. I am a man in a woman's body. I feel as a man feels, as I 
felt before they did this to me. You have your scars, and you were pleased that 
I looked past them, but how could a normal woman look past this?"
Sabatini had let the touching scene go on. He was somewhat fascinated himself by 
all this, particularly when the name Song Ching had been mentioned. The reason 
they had all been forced through an extra and complete security check was that 
Song Ching, the daughter of the chief administrator of the China District, had 
been reported vanished from a maximum security area. He knew the powers those 
butchers had. They were perfectly capable of turning a worthless kid into a 
duplicate of this girl and maybe turning this girl into something else, somebody 
she'd disposed of and then replaced, or maybe even somebody outside China.
Her story held together. For a moment he thought she might be the real Song 
Ching, although why anybody'd pull strings to be sent to Melchior was beyond 
understanding, but the fact that she'd passed the security exit test as a boy 
named Chu Li made her story ironclad. Briefly he considered not turning her over 
at Melchior but bringing her back and passing her off as the real one, which 
would save a lot of asses and earn him some real powerful friends, but by this 
time they'd run security checks up the rear and the plot would be easily 
exposed— which would only send him back to Melchior—this time in chains and 
one-way.
The captain looked her over. "Well, kid, they did a really great job. No scars, 
no nothing. Perfect. I think you got to get used to being a girl no matter what 
your head says. They threw away all the old parts, anyway. I think maybe you 
ought to learn what it's like to be a girl these days Uh uh! Careful! You can't 
do anything but sit."
Chu Li had attempted to lunge forward in anger at the captain's words, but it 
had been fruitless.
"Now you sit and listen," he continued. "You're property and you got a great 
body and you are being sent to hell. They're going to love you on Melchior. A 
slightly incomplete job but an expert one, just up their fields of interest. 
They'll study you, pick your brain and chemistry apart, then they'll have what 
they want. Then they'll complete the job and make you somebody's present. Since 
you look like this Song Ching, they won't want you anywhere where her father 
would notice, but they'll find a bunch on Melchior in a region where chief 
administrators never even look and stick you there, all right, only you won't be 
interested in machines or escape anymore. It won't hurt anything to start now, 
and it might put me in a good enough mood to forget this little incident."
"I will, never dishonor myself so!" Chu Li spat. "Perhaps they can make me as 
you say, but then I will not know my shame. I will fight you even if I fail!"
"Chu Li! You must not!" both sisters said at once. "Look at our bodies! And it 
was to no avail! The price is great enough without adding more!"
"You do not know what it is like," Chow Dai continued alone. "You cannot. But 
can't you see, under that smile of his he is one of them! No different from the 
ones who did this to us?"
"Listen to her," the captain urged. "She's right, you know. I can be 
quite—creative, within my charter."
"Never!" Chu Li exclaimed. "To me it would be a perversion as well as an 
assault! What does it matter to me if you do things to this body? It would be 
better for me if you did make it less beautiful!"
"You've got a point," the captain admitted. He thought for a moment, then said 
something in his language into the headset. They waited, not knowing what was 
going to happen, and he seemed both relaxed and patient. Finally the rear center 
door opened, and an emergency medical unit appeared.
"Now, I don't want all the bother of keeping you shackled or caged all the time, 
not if I can help it," he told them, again sounding casual and almost friendly. 
"There are many ways around it, but I'm still in a bad mood, having been 
awakened and all that. It seems to me the heart of this—incident—are our two 
locksmiths here. I can't see that doing a little more to them here is going to 
change anything on Melchior, either. Seems to me that if you don't have any 
thumbs or index fingers, you won't be stealing things and picking locks anymore, 
will you?"
"No!" Deng Ho cried out. "They have suffered enough, you monster! You cannot do 
this!"
"He won't do it," Chu Li responded. "He has to deliver his cargo undamaged."
"Oh, of course I will," the captain assured them. "They don't mind a few things 
like that. They understand. See, you of all people should know that those types 
can grow back things like missing fingers and the like if they feel the need. 
Look at what they grew out of you!"
Chu Li's spirits sank as he realized the truth of that, even if they hadn't 
really grown anything on him. The two girls' faces were masks of terror. "All 
right, you serpent. What do you want of me? To ravish my body? Is that the 
price?"
"At the start, yes. Now I want more. I want cooperation. Enthusiasm. It will be 
a long trip yet. I want a servant. Someone who will do exactly what I say 
without needing restraints. If I don't cut their fingers, I must leave their 
hands where they are. Makes it inconvenient for them to eat, so they must be 
fed. I want a mistress who will do my bidding without even thinking about it." 
He drew the little pistol. "Hesitate, argue, or fail to please me in any way for 
the next month and you'll feel this." He fired at the torso.
Chu Li had never felt such pain, and he cried out.
"Betray me, fail to do my will, or act or even speak with them about acting in 
any way against me and it will cost your girl friend's sister her thumbs. Twice 
and your girl friend loses hers. As for the fat boy on the chair, if he gets out 
of line in any way or is involved in anything at all I don't like, I'll bring 
this little thing out, and then I'll be the only whole male on this ship. 
Understand?"
The Chow sisters looked pleadingly at Chu Li. "All right," he said. "I will do 
whatever you say."
There was a nearly immediate jolt from the little gun that again produced agony. 
"From now on, your name, the only name you will answer to, even to your friends 
here, is Slave. And you will call me Master or Honorable Captain. My slave here 
will refer to herself as a she at all times, and so will you all—only the 
feminine will be used when referring to or speaking to her. I want her to get a 
basic truth through her head once and for all.
"Additionally, all of you will bow in my presence, and you, Slave, will kneel to 
me, head bowed, anticipating my desires. To prevent more thefts, all of you will 
go naked until we arrive at Melchior, and as extra insurance our two sisters 
will continue to have their hands bound behind their backs—unless the slave, 
here, fouls up and they lose sufficient fingers to be a threat no longer. What 
do you think of that, Slave?"
"Whatever you command, Honorable Master," Chu Li responded, teeth clenched but 
head bowed.
Sabatini went over to him. "I know what you're thinking, but I plan to change 
that. You see, you've lost everything. Everything but your honor and your 
dignity. I will strip those from you. You're the only one of this bunch who 
really has any. That's why you are the leader. Before the end of this voyage, 
you will break."
He sighed and dismissed the medical robot, then went back to his cabin for a 
moment. He emerged soon with a set of U-shaped devices, then unlocked all chains 
from Chu Li and commanded her to lie flat on the floor in a particularly 
embarrassing position. The four restraints descended to hold down her arms and 
legs. Then he began removing his own clothing and weapons.
He made the rest watch in anguished silence as he first performed the ultimate 
indignities upon their companion. He was deliberately brutal about it, but he 
clearly was enjoying himself.
Sabatini kept his slave apart from the others in a small, dark closet barely 
four meters square and only a meter and a half high. The only light came from a 
small grill right at the top of her box. She could not see out, and the 
vibrating compartments at the rear of the cage masked any noise or movement 
outside. She would be there for long, horrible periods, then suddenly taken out 
and checked over to see how she reacted. Sometimes he didn't like the slightest 
thing and shoved her back. She was allowed to see her friends only in his 
presence, and then she had to speak to them servilely and in a very loud voice. 
Infractions were met with deprivation of food, water, and bathroom stops.
Clearly he wasn't neglecting the other three. Deng Ho seemed lost most of the 
time in a world of his own, while the two girls were vacant, listless, and 
resigned.
He no longer restrained her when mounting sexual attacks, but he was even 
rougher and more brutal and demanding. Early on, he'd left his shock pistol on a 
table near his bed in the cabin where he had her, and she had gotten it and 
fired it at him, over and over. He had just laughed. He had removed the little 
charger and deliberately left it there. He then actually handed her his knife 
and invited attack, but she lost the knife and her footing before she made the 
fist real move. Then he had worked her over with just his hands, leaving painful 
bruises that did not show on her skin, and raped her, before tossing her back in 
her hole to be wakened every hour or so for an extremely long period but denied 
food, water, and bathroom.
His treatment so brutalized her that when he finally let her out, she was so 
sincerely servile, so letter perfect, he let her sleep. Her behavior after that 
remained so perfect that he began easing up, slowly but progressively. He 
cleaned the closet and disinfected it. He let her shower. He gave her good food. 
A few more very minor slips brought renewed punishment, but they were the last 
gasps of resistance. She found it increasingly difficult to think of anything 
but the ship, her duties, her behavior, pleasing him. After a bit longer, the 
only thing that mattered to her was pleasing him. He continued to leave weapons 
and other things of interest to the old Chu Li around, and if she saw them at 
all, she did not even think of picking them up or using them.
She began to hope that she would be so useful, so obedient, so perfect that he 
would not think of turning her over at Melchior but would retain her on the 
ship. He obliquely encouraged this idea, then released her forever from her 
closet and allowed her to rejoin the others. She was not, however, to have any 
private conversations with any of them.
The other three had been faring only a little better, with routine deprivation 
and punishments by Sabatini's pistol. It was what he had done with, and to, the 
one they'd known as Chu Li that was the telling blow. If the strong, educated 
one could be broken so completely without even any technological aids, then 
there was no hope.
When they were twenty-three days out, although they'd lost all track of time, 
Deng Ho committed suicide.
It had not been easy, but it had certainly been well planned. He did it in the 
bathroom by wrapping his waist chain excess around his neck and then somehow 
getting it caught up in the toilet-flushing mechanism. It must have been an 
agonizingly slow strangulation, yet he had resisted all impulses to stop it and 
had not cried out, even at the last.
The act shocked all three of the remaining prisoners, and it really irritated 
Sabatini. He had spent so much time on Chu Li that he'd really neglected to keep 
close watch on the others, and particularly on the quiet chubby boy who had 
never really given him any trouble. He actually felt a little sorry for the kid, 
but he was more upset that perhaps this was only the first. He doubted that Chu 
Li would try it; she was too anxious to keep in good with him in the pathetic 
hope that he'd keep her aboard—if he could, he would, but they'd never allow it. 
Instead, he now had a black mark, and he needed a good line to get out of it.
He decided that a burial would be a nice gesture. He had no desire to build up 
any more resentment. And so, after speaking some words, he'd taken the body to 
the port center air lock, where the other three could watch, and placed it 
respectfully inside. He was even indulgent to their reactions. "You may say 
farewell and whatever prayers you wish for him," he told them.
"If you please, Honorable Captain," Chow Mai said, somewhat more animated than 
she'd been in a long time. "Where will he go now?"
"Normally, you would enter the air lock in a pressure suit and then pump all the 
air out before going into space. I'm keeping the air inside, and I'll pump the 
pressure way up. Then, when the outer door opens, he will be launched into space 
by the escaping air. He will drift in space forever."
Chow Mai, who had always liked the boy, had a few tears for him. "That is good," 
she responded, almost to herself. "He will become one with the stars, a 
constellation in the heavens."
The two girls both said prayers and farewells, but Chu Li stood back, silent. 
She had found the body of the boy and had seen the grotesque face and distorted, 
popped eyes. It was a haunting grotesquerie worse than anything yet experienced 
in this horror odyssey.
The two sisters stepped back, and Sabatini made certain that the body was 
arranged in the air lock.
Something snapped in Chu Li's brain. The compassion of the innocent Chu Li who 
had been killed; the haughty pride of Song Ching, reduced and violated; the 
relative innocence of the two sisters, punished all out of proportion to their 
crimes; the cruel, calculating Sabatini who personified the system's least 
common denominator; the quiet innocence and inner despair of Deng Ho, who chose 
to die a slow, agonizing death rather than see or accept any more...
"No," she whispered under her breath. Sabatini didn't hear it, but the two 
sisters did, and they looked at each other, then at her, not quite knowing what 
was about to happen but ready to assist. Chu Li moved up behind the captain 
silently. He was a good fifteen centimeters taller than she and far stronger, 
but she knew that this was the moment. Risk it now, and perhaps lose, or be a 
slave forever and deservedly so.
With one motion she jumped, grabbing the headphones from the captain's head and 
striking his face with the little microphone. As he was still turning in shock 
and surprise, she gave him a push forward with all her adrenaline-pumped might. 
He staggered, but a hand caught the side of the air lock door.
The two sisters, hands still tied behind their backs, ran at him and butted him 
in the midsection with their heads. He grunted and fell backward into the air 
lock, almost on top of Deng Ho's body. He recovered quickly. "Why you little 
bitches! I'll—" he bellowed, but Chu Li had already begun to swing the door shut 
on him. When he saw what was happening, he rushed against the door, and all 
three girls lent their bodies to pushing it closed. It was fury versus 
desperation, and desperation won. The door shut with a hiss, and Chu Li, while 
still pressing against it, managed to turn the wheel that locked it.
"I don't care what you do—put your feet in it if you have to—but don't let him 
turn it back from that side!" she shouted to the sisters, then ran to the panel. 
Sabatini was lazy; she knew he would have preprogrammed the sequence, but she 
had to find the right control and throw it. The sisters were having a hard time 
holding the wheel by backing against it and gripping it with their hands as best 
they could, but the safety lights kept flashing yellow, green, yellow, green.
There were only five buttons, and she pressed each of them in turn, but nothing 
happened. She knew the sisters were weakening and that he would soon get that 
door open. She kept pushing the buttons in desperation, one after the other, 
hoping to catch the right button at the right point. It had to work. It just had 
to.
The red light suddenly came on, and a bell sounded. Sabatini stopped for a 
moment, and through the small glass window they could see his expression of 
desperation. He pounded, swore, then renewed his attack on the lock, but now Chu 
Li was on the wheel. The whole procedure took perhaps forty seconds, yet it 
seemed like years.
Since it was a pressurized burial, the outer door opened pretty quickly.
Deng Ho's body moved right out, but Sabatini grabbed hold of the wheel. His body 
was horizontal, his hands gripped the wheel, his face was pressed in fear 
against the viewing port, but the air was exhausted in an instant, and the 
artificial gravity plunged him back down.
Chow Dai, exhausted, slumped to the floor, followed quickly by her sister. "Do 
you think—you can close— that outside door?" she managed to ask.
"Not yet. Not for many minutes," Chu Li responded. "I do not know if someone can 
live in space with no air, but I do know that no one can hold his breath for 
more than five minutes. We will give it ten." She sank down, also exhausted. Her 
arms and shoulder muscles ached, and she felt as if she'd sprained both wrists. 
Still, it had been worth it. That one moment of stark terror on Sabatini's face 
was payment for much inflicted misery, brutality, and indignity. Deng Ho's 
gesture had not been in vain.
Chow Dai crawled over and gave Chu Li a kiss. "Welcome back," she said.
"Not for long, but I do not regret it. We have killed him, and the ship will 
know it. The gas should come at any moment."
Chow Dai looked disappointed. "I had forgotten about that. I suppose that was 
why he was so confident. Foreign devils have no idea of what honor is. Still, it 
would have been nice to have won completely."
Chow Mai listened, thinking. "It would seem to me that if this gas was coming, 
it would have come by now. Either it is not going to come or he is not dead."
Chu Li felt a new shot of energy and stood up. "You are right." She looked 
through the air lock window and saw the interior, still lighted. She could not 
see the area right by the door, but there was no sign of anyone or anything in 
the air lock, and the outer door was definitely open, the alarm bell still 
ringing. There was certainly no air in there, and she knew that space had to be 
very cold, yet there was something nagging at her brain, troubling her.
Gravity. They had weight here, even if they felt lighter than back home. The 
whole section had gravity, including the air lock. Sabatini clearly had not been 
sucked out with the air, although it had been close. Why was there now no body 
slumped down, hands frozen to the wheel in a death grip?
The ship had been elaborately and illegally modified, and there were all sorts 
of compartments and gadgets built into the walls. Might there not also be some 
sort of emergency compartment in the air lock? She couldn't see how a body could 
stand a vacuum, even for a few moments, but what if it could? There was better 
than two meters of air lock. Something had to be inside those thick walls.
"We must find something to jam this door. Before we close the outer door, which 
will automatically flood the compartment with air, we must jam the wheel so it 
cannot be opened from the outside. He might be alive in some rescue compartment 
there. We must examine as much of the ship as we can to make sure such a one 
cannot otherwise reenter the ship."
If he was in there someplace, he'd be in a small, probably dark compartment much 
like a closet, with some sort of breathing device but little in the way of food 
and water for more than a day and certainly no bathroom. The only way to make 
certain, though, was to risk keeping the outer door open, jam the inner, and 
somehow make contact with the ship's pilot.
She reached down and picked up his headset. She had not brought honor, glory, or 
dignity to herself by serving him, but she had always been observant. Now she 
thought she could imitate his odd, animal-like growls that commanded some of the 
locks. The headset had been bent out of shape, but it did not appear damaged. 
She put it on, although it was too large for her head, and spoke one of the 
commands in his language that she knew overrode the electronics room lock.
The door opened, and to her surprise she heard a growling, unintelligible 
response in the earphones. For a moment it startled her, and she wondered if 
there were others aboard in areas they had never seen, but then she realized 
that it was the computer pilot.
She had spotted something in the electronics room long ago that was the first 
priority, and that was a complete electronics and mechanical tool set. It was 
almost too heavy for her, but she got it out and open, and the Chow sisters were 
able to tell her which tool to use. Shortly the girls' hands were free, although 
the cuffs themselves remained as oversized bracelets. One of the waist chains 
they wrapped through the spokes of the air lock wheel, then secured it with a 
small hand-held welder to the base of the nearest chair.
They were all tired and aching but far too excited to sleep. Chu Li checked the 
schematic of the ship's passenger level on the monitor. "If I read this 
correctly, then the whole level is pressurized—has air, that is, that is fit for 
us—except this area all the way in the rear. Those double lines front and back 
are air locks, but if this color is air, then they are not active. Shall we go 
see?"
She opened the center door with a command in that strange language, and a bell 
sounded distantly—but nothing else happened. She was almost relieved to hear the 
response coming from the earpiece; it confirmed her belief that it was the 
computer responding and not anyone else.
They went along a narrow corridor, then Chu Li stopped. "This was my home for 
those long times," she told them gravely, pointing to a lower storage closet. 
"After just one week in there, you would sell body, soul, and honor to anyone 
who would keep you from going back."
As Sabatini had warned them, animal cages filled the huge storage area, all 
designed for just about anything that could be imagined and some that were 
beyond imagining. The cages were empty this trip and apparently newly cleaned 
and reinforced. Beyond them were a large number of sealed containers, all 
labeled in a language or code none of them could understand, fitted together 
into vast clumps for useful storage. The path between was so narrow, they had to 
go single file.
The compartment narrowed until they emerged at an air lock. As she had expected, 
the light was green. When they opened it, the noise of great motors was almost 
deafening, but Chu Li finally got the courage to enter and walked the short 
distance to the far door. Peering through the window, she gasped, then continued 
to stare, fascinated. "Come! Look!" she called. Nervously, the two sisters 
joined her.
Before them was a second enormous cargo room. Larger than the first and filled 
with containers, it was spinning around at a dizzying pace.
"Why does the room spin?" Chow Mai asked Chu Li.
She thought for a moment. "I'm not sure. I seem to remember from very long 
ago—her memories—something about this. Ah! I think I know, but there is only one 
way to know for sure. Do you notice how light you feel?"
Only then did they notice how little gravity they felt here.
"I do not think the room spins at all," she told them. "I believe that it is we 
who are spinning. You must trust me on this, for it is far too complex to 
explain, but spinning is how many spaceships make gravity in space."
"We are not spinning!" the sisters responded in unison. "That room is!"
"There is only one way to find out, and if I am wrong it is a dangerous one. It 
is to go in there. See that net stretched there? I think you jump and grab on to 
that and then use the handholds to go on."
"No. It is too dangerous," Chow Dai responded. "What does it matter who is 
spinning? There is nothing in there that we can use."
Chu Li was disappointed but had to agree. Without her, these two were lost in 
the technology of this vessel, which to them was incomprehensible and magical. 
Now was not the time to see what weightlessness was like.
Reluctantly, she turned and led them out through the container corridor, past 
the cages and the closet, and back into the passenger cabin. She was somehow 
relieved to find it just as they had left it.
She looked again in the electronics room and at the mindprint machine and its 
numbered cartridges. "That machine makes you learn things you do not know or be 
things you are not," she told them. "It is how the captain learned our language 
so well. I fear that we will have to try them and see if one has the key to 
speaking to the ship."
"But would that not be in his true language?" Chow Dai asked. "Would he have 
something to teach his own native tongue in there?"
"I doubt if the pilot computer speaks the captain's language. All such computers 
are produced by Master System in factories peopled only by machines. They speak 
their own language, a language of numbers, on a level humans cannot possibly 
comprehend. The way humans talk to them is by a shell, a pretend environment 
where what the computer speaks is translated into a human tongue and where human 
language is translated into machine.
These ships are built according to standards that existed long ago, in the times 
of our ancient ancestors, and those outside of Earth continue to use those 
ancient languages."
"But it could have been changed to any, could it not?" Chow Dai persisted.
"It could, but I do not think it was. I have heard the captain curse many times, 
and it is a truth that one tends to curse in one's native tongue. His curses 
were equally unintelligible, but they were in a softer, more melodic tongue than 
the one used for opening the doors. It is a harsh, nonmelodic, almost 
machinelike language, an ugly tongue. It is there. It must be there. Otherwise 
we will arrive at Melchior anyway, just without the captain. I worry about what 
might be on some of the others. There are close to forty cartridges here, and 
only nine spaceports on all of Earth, so a captain would have need of only the 
nine languages of the Administrative Centers for each spaceport. I know nothing 
about the other worlds, but even if we give them nine or ten, it still leaves 
half the cartridges unexplained."
"But if we must, we will try them all and see," Chow Mai said pragmatically.
"I fear we must, yet I do not like it. Anything may be programmed by a master 
mindprint machine on those cartridges. Things that change your mind, your 
memory, everything. Some of these might be traps for the unwary, just in case 
ones like us got to this point. Even if not, these are to be taken sparingly, 
and never more than one a day, to avoid confusing and muddying the mind. We do 
not have thirty-eight days."
"There are three of us," Chow Mai pointed out. "Each of us could try one and 
see. Perhaps fortune will smile. If not, we try again, then wait to see if 
anyone has troubles. We have nothing to lose. Just hours ago we had lost all 
hope and you were in his power."
"You are right," Chu Li responded. "Let us begin now, for when we sleep this 
"time, it will be long and deep. Perhaps we can at least find some pattern to 
their arrangement. I can read the numbers, although they are in a foreign 
system. That type of number is used in all computer work. One of us will take 
the number one, which is an odd number and at the start. Another will take 
thirty-eight, an even number at the end. The third will take nineteen, an odd 
number in the middle. Then ten, twenty, and thirty. Then we will see if we can 
find a pattern. Beware, though. It does more than teach; it changes the mind. I 
am a living example of that."
"I will go first," Chow Mai said, "because you will have to show us how it is 
operated."
"It is quite simple. Just sit in the chair there and relax. No! Do not put the 
headset on as yetf Not until there is a cartridge in the system. To do so would 
cause brain damage. Now—watch. Number one in just so, and only this way. Wait 
for the small green light there. So! Now you may put on the headset, and I will 
adjust it."
Chow Mai seemed almost disappointed. "I feel nothing "
"You will. Now, put your head back on the rest and close your eyes. When I push 
this activator, it will begin. Push it again and it will stop, so if we see 
something terrible happening it can be halted by being quick. Otherwise it will 
run as long as it runs, and you will be awake yet as if asleep. Ready? Chow 
Dai—you should push the activator."
Chow Dai hesitated a moment, then pushed it. The green light changed to amber, 
then to flashing red.
Suddenly Chow Mai said, "It asks a question in my head. A single word I do not 
know."
Chu Li thought a moment. She hadn't even considered password protections for a 
setup like this, "Answer with the same word as it asks, only give it as a 
statement," she instructed Chow Mai. "No need to say it. Just think it."
Chow Mai looked confused but sat back, closed her eyes, and did as instructed. 
The program started running, and Chu Li breathed a sigh of relief. With a 
computer she was sure she could break any password, but she needed the password 
to get to the computer. This computer's password, however, was the default: 
"password."
The machine ran for a nervous half hour with Chow Mai showing no visible 
reaction, then switched off. Chu Li lifted off the headset. "Remember never to 
remove the cartridge until this is first removed," she said.
Chow Mai opened her eyes dreamily and saw the worried expressions of the others. 
"Do not worry, my sisters, for I am well," she assured them, and wasn't quite 
certain why they seemed even more upset.
"Chow Mai—do you understand me, your twin?"
She did understand, although it took some concentration to reply. Her first 
efforts were a hopeless mixture of two languages that could not be mixed, and it 
took a while before she was able even with difficulty to switch comfortably.
"It is Arabic," Chu Li explained. "One of the Center spaceport languages. I have 
heard it spoken, although I do not know it. It is not the language of the ship, 
this I know. It will be difficult for her to sort one from the other for a 
while, but she will be able to separate them as time passes. This is good. One 
is a language program. If thirty-eight is not, we will try number two, perhaps. 
Chow Mai— go. Lie. Down. Yes."
Still feeling a bit dizzy and confused, Chow Mai went out and collapsed into one 
of the chairs. Chu Li removed cartridge one and replaced it with number 
thirty-eight, then got into the chair and put on the headset. She nodded at Chow 
Dai, then relaxed. The sister pressed the activator.
Number thirty-eight proved to be a highly technical program about the ship 
itself and paid particular attention to the restraint system, locks, and other 
protective and safety devices. It was not designed as language-specific but 
searched in the mind of the user for the right, words and terms; if such terms 
were not present or possible to construct, one simply didn't understand all of 
the program. Song Ching's technological center Mandarin, however, was more than 
adequate for the task.
She awakened feeling elated and recovered quickly, thanks to her long experience 
with such devices. She removed the headset and saw Chow Dai just coming back 
into the room. The girl was apologetic. "I am sorry. When I saw you were in no 
distress, I went to see how Chow Mai was getting on. I did not think it would be 
so short."
"Long enough," Chu Li responded. "That was a technical tape, the last probably 
made to date. It makes many references I cannot totally get because they are 
obviously referring to past modifications, but I know now how much of this 
operates. I know the restraint systems, the alarms, the door and hatch 
combinations, and much more. I even know what many of these instruments here do, 
and what the numbers mean. I know, for example, that those two numbers compared 
mean that we are about sixty percent of the way to Melchior, but I also know 
that we have under a week before we come under traffic control that will be able 
to sense if we deviate from our planned course and raise alarms. We do not have 
much time if we are to take control of the ship unnoticed."
"Shall I take number two now?"
"No. I am used to it, and the technical orientation did nothing to me. Let us 
see just how far the languages go." She chose cartridge number ten, then 
inserted it in the machine in place of number thirty-eight. "I will do this one 
as well. There should be one of us around with her wits about her, and you are 
it. Your turn will come in due course." She replaced the headsets and lay back. 
"When you are ready."
Chow Dai pushed the activator, then waited. This time Chu Li was not quiet but 
started to breathe hard, then to moan and thrust. Her hands went to her crotch 
and seemed to be doing something, but it was unclear what. What was clear was 
that this was not a tape like the others. Fearful, particularly of the sounds 
from the chair, Chow Dai pushed the activator off.
Chu Li came down very, very slowly and seemed almost disappointed when she 
realized that she was no longer switched in. She opened her eyes and looked at 
Chow Dai; her expression, though foreign to Chu Li's nature, was one Chow Dai 
had seen before in unpleasant circumstances.
Chu Li had been connected only a couple of minutes and so was able to regain 
control, although her body trembled slightly. "It was—" she gasped, breathing 
hard "—a sex tape. A very graphic one. I was—a man—in the body of a man—amidst a 
horde of foreign, exotic women. All were naked; all were there for my pleasure. 
I was to choose one and do as I pleased. It was such a feeling of power, of 
dominance. I am—was—highly aroused."
Chow Dai did not comprehend the depth of the experience, but she understood the 
reason for such a cartridge and why Chu Li had responded to it. "Now at least we 
know where our honorable captain got his urges so readily and what he must have 
done to amuse himself when no one else was aboard."
"Yes, I think so. I had heard that such things existed, but I had never 
experienced one before. The images are like memories, like reality. It is as if 
the scene actually existed for me in the past, and whichever girl I chose 1 
would have bedded. To the mind, there would be no difference between the reality 
and the illusion. I feel the desire to go back and complete it, but I dare not. 
Even now I feel the urge to grab you and make mad, passionate love to you."
, Chow Dai felt relieved and smiled. "Is that such a bad thing?"
"To me, no. I have wanted it from the first. But to you it would be perverse."
"No. What the guards did to us was perverse. What Sabatini did to you and to us 
is perverse. Nothing done in love that harms no one can be perverse. You are 
half man, half woman. That is enough."
They used the bed in Sabatini's cabin, the scene of much of Chu Li's violation, 
but it was different now, and afterward they fell asleep, exhausted more by the 
events of the day than by their own final efforts.
The next day Chu Li, feeling better than she ever had in her whole brief 
incarnation, decided to tackle things for real. Chow Mai hit another of the 
pornographic male-oriented cartridges but was not affected in the same way Chu 
Li had been. Rather, she seemed to have shifted mentally from the male point of 
view to that of the females in it, and although they stopped the program quite 
early, she wound up not only very, very turned on but also nonaggressive to the 
point of total passivity. She also, for some reason, pleaded to have her chains 
put back on, but they decided that the effects would wear down in a while and 
ignored her requests.
There were a number of other languages, including one cartridge that seemed to 
have no particular effect on Chow Dai other than to improve slightly her grammar 
and vocabulary. They decided that it must have been Mandarin Chinese.
They also discovered many more programs on shipboard design and construction, 
mathematical tables, basic celestial navigation, and computer module design and 
operation. One showed the complete interconnect between Sabatini's command 
module in the rear and the computer pilot, confirming Chu Li's suspicions that 
this was one of those very ships where Master System was not in charge. And, as 
suspected, there were some traps.
The machine clicked off, and Chow Dai removed the headset and waited for Chu Li 
to come out of it. The cartridge had seemed uneventful to the observer and had 
taken the normal amount of time, so there had been no reason to think anything 
was wrong. Finally, Chu Li came around, then sat up and looked around, almost 
panicking.
"What's the matter?" the sisters asked in unison. "What has happened to you?"
"I have been stung," she told them. "I have spent a half hour in a pleasant 
dreamworld, and now I wake up to find a nightmare."
As they watched, concerned, she looked around vacantly, then tried to get out of 
the chair and stumbled, holding on to it for support.
"There is only darkness," she told them, a pained tone in her voice. "I am 
blind."

10. THE GOLDEN BIRDS OF LAZLO CHEN

 
IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF THE FOURTH DAY AFTER HAWKS had stolen and used the 
mindprinter and had begun to have second thoughts about his long-range mission 
and goals, and by now he was much changed from the scholar who had read what he 
should have reported and set off on a course to save not only himself but the 
future of humanity.
At the time—not very long ago, although it seemed an eternity and a world 
away—he had lived for nothing but his work, had no close friendships or 
dependencies, and had an exaggerated idea, he knew now, of his importance in the 
scheme of things. Perhaps it had just been the desire of a lonely and frustrated 
man approaching middle age to do something that future historians might note and 
remember. Unable to get back into the head of that man he'd been such a short 
time ago, he really wasn't sure. The odd fact was that not a single thing that 
had been important to him then was in the slightest way important to him now.
He and his wives had achieved an incredible level of self-sufficiency in a very 
short time, and he had stayed away from human contact as much as possible in his 
travels since that mindprinting had simplified everything. He had not yet used 
the rest of the whiskey for trading, as he'd intended, because he hadn't had to 
do so. Now, if all worked out, he would trade it for good, rugged, practical 
clothing and perhaps some better weapons as well, depending on how hard a 
bargain could be driven. He now saw a chance at something far better than being 
a footnote in a future history book; he saw a chance, at least as long as his 
health held out, of starting over brand new and, in a sense, becoming young 
again.
For Cloud Dancer it had never been clear what they were doing or why. She had 
attached herself to him initially because he was kind and gentle to her and more 
than slightly exotic, and she'd fallen in love with him and he with her, and 
they had married, something not too common in Hyiakutt culture. She understood 
that he had learned a secret so dangerous that there were many hands raised to 
track him down and slay him, but they hadn't caught him yet, and she would be at 
his side if and when they did. She'd had him exclusively for such a little time, 
but she was well aware that she had been a partner in the decision to include 
Silent Woman and that at the time she'd had the power to veto that decision. 
Cloud Dancer's life had been pretty unhappy up to meeting Hawks, but Silent 
Woman's past was Cloud Dancer's worst nightmare. Pity had turned quickly to 
respect for the strange tattooed woman, and Cloud Dancer had participated in the 
ceremony of blood. She now regarded Silent Woman as one of her own blood and as 
much her wife as both were the wives of Hawks. The family was not a collection 
of individuals: The family was One.
The survival program had stripped everything from her concerns except the 
basics. Her memories were not impaired; it was simply that all she had been was 
no longer relevant. Family, tribe, nation—their world was now three people in a 
canoe, and nothing else was important enough to think about. The unit had 
certain basics that were required. It must be fed. It must find shelter and be 
hidden from enemies each night. It must be guarded. It must survive. Of 
necessity the women must be the warriors, and those were the tasks of warriors. 
She was also a wife. A tribal wife served and supported her husband, gave her 
body willingly to him, and, if the spirits willed, bore him many fine children. 
Absolutely nothing but these concerns occupied her thoughts and motivated her 
actions.
The only way to learn about Silent Woman was to ask yes or no questions, but 
there was little truly to be learned. She had no memory of her past at all, no 
memory of where she'd come from or where she had received the tattoo and why, or 
even of ever having given birth to a child— or, for that matter, ever having had 
a tongue. The shock and trauma of her horrible times had simply been rejected, 
blotted out, and locked away forever in some corner of the mind where such 
things go. She had not in fact even thought in a language anyone could have 
truly recognized, for it was an amalgam of terms and concepts from dozens of 
languages strung together in a way that worked but was uniquely her own. It was 
not a complex language. She did not, even with the English recoder, get much of 
what Hawks or Cloud Dancer said, because her vocabulary was so limited and her 
rules so basic.
She had known only that she hated the Illinois passionately but that she never 
had any other place to go. Her geographical world was the village where she'd 
lived and The Other Place where all the strangers came from and went to. She was 
still being constantly amazed that The Other Place was so vast, but it still was 
a single entity in her mind.
Then she'd seen her masters toying with the captive pair and had known that 
after the game they would kill the man and make the woman like her, and she 
hated the Illinois and the village. So, when she had accidentally bumped into 
Cloud Dancer and realized that they were planning to flee, she had thought only 
about helping them and hoping that they would take her with them, away from the 
village to The Other Place. And they had. She had never regarded herself as 
anything but property, but she knew she preferred to be the property of Hawks, a 
man both handsome and brave, and in whom there was a gentle streak she had not 
known before, and some sadness or hurt deep inside as well. She had never 
thought of being a wife to such a one. In fact, she really had no concept of 
"wife," but she understood that to the other two it made her an equal with Cloud 
Dancer. That was the heady stuff of impossible dreams.
She was not stupid; that was the mistake the others had made. She was, however, 
almost totally ignorant, having not even the grounding of a sense of tribe and 
culture as almost any of the others back in the village had. She was already now 
at a higher level than she could have conceived possible; she wanted only to 
preserve that. They were her world, all she had or desired. They were 
everything. She loved them both. Her whole life was nothing but obedience and 
service. She would love, obey, and serve them even if it meant her death, and 
she would never survive them.
They were approaching one of the increasingly frequent bends in the river, one 
that made the water in front seem to vanish and which might be the same river as 
that seen distantly through the trees on the right. Hawks had decided against 
trusting such visions after they tried a portage the first time; the water 
through the trees had turned out to be an oxbow lake, a bend in the river that 
had been cut off by built-up silt as the river changed its course. He no longer 
felt the strong urgency he had up north, considering how long they had been on 
the river without encountering anyone.
There was a sudden, loud noise as if some giant spring had suddenly popped its 
winding and sounded off. Birds flew from the trees and the river in panic, and 
at almost the same moment something slapped them incredibly hard and overturned 
the canoe.
Hawks came up for air and looked around, then was relieved to see two other 
heads break the surface. "Head for the far shore!" he shouted to the two women. 
"Forget the canoe!"
The sound came again, behind them, and this time the canoe was struck with a 
full blow. It seemed to rise up, coming apart as it did so, then collapsed into 
the water as a set of shapeless pieces of skin and frame. The wave from the blow 
came at them, and they relaxed and let it carry them toward the near shore.
They reached the bank only meters apart and managed to get on shore. There was 
no thought of remaining in that spot: Another blast of the invisible hand might 
come at any moment.
Survival wisdom called for them to scatter in three directions and run until 
pursuit was foiled, but their sense of family overrode that part of it. The land 
was covered with a shallow film of water out of which a forest grew. There was 
little shelter and no rocks or other obvious protection. They could only make 
certain they were all within sight of one another and start running as far in as 
possible.
"That's right, Hawks. You just keep running," a sardonic voice, electronically 
amplified, said from what seemed to be everywhere. "You'll find if you keep 
going this way that the river played a joke on you and doubled back again. If 
you go right, it'll be on three sides; if you go left, well, you'll run into a 
big surprise."
They did not pay any real attention to the voice but kept running until, as 
predicted, they came to a riverbank.
They heard that terrible sound again, and they saw a wall of water coming toward 
them as if a giant hand were skimming the top. The point was clear. They 
couldn't swim across, not there.
Hawks stopped the women and gathered them to him. "It's no use," he told them. 
"I've been a romantic fool, damn it all! They just sat here and waited for us to 
spring their trap!"
"Then if we are surrounded, we must fight our way out or die trying!" Cloud 
Dancer responded bravely, and Silent Woman nodded assent.
How could he explain to these two infrared sensing devices and a certainty that 
this area had been cleared of all people so only the fugitives would show up? Or 
the power of some of the weapons that might be at the disposal of the enemy?
"No," he responded. "Long ago you told me of the foolish warrior who charged 
into overwhelming odds only to show his bravery and die a legend. This is not 
Roaring Bull and his Illinois or even a tribe as we understand tribes. Right now 
they could send things through the air, as they did that giant unseen hand, that 
would make us drop in pain or knock us completely out. It makes no sense to even 
try to die in such a battle when there is still the small but real possibility 
of a deal. These are men, not demons. They will talk, and so we will talk."
She was not convinced. "But—"
"I am chief and husband to you both!" he said gruffly. "They will let you leave 
if you wish. I am what they want. Dissolve the marriage and the tribe here or 
obey my orders exactly! I permit no other choice!"
Cloud Dancer looked at Silent Woman and frowned, but when she saw the response 
in the other's face, she looked back at him, resigned. "Talk, then, husband and 
chief. We are part of you."
He looked around at the suddenly silent, still swamp.
"All right!" he shouted. "So what now? Come out with our hands up? You didn't 
leave us anything else!"
They did not hear their pursuer approach, although they were more than attuned 
to such things, but suddenly he was there, not far away. He was ugly as sin, and 
he held a weapon in his hand that was quite out of keeping with his looks and 
dress.
"You don't have to shout," the Crow Agency man said. "I'm right here. The name's 
Raven."
Hawks stared at him. "I must be vital indeed to send a Crow this far south. 
Aren't you hot?"
"Steaming." He shrugged. "It's part of the image, you know. You want to tell the 
ladies not to try anything, that I can knock all of you cold on your asses 
before you can blink?"
"It is not necessary, Crow," Cloud Dancer responded, making his nationality 
sound like a foul and obscene thing. "We understand you."
Raven was taken aback, then he nodded. "Yeah, English Cross was in that pack, 
wasn't it? How'd you like the survival program? I had a part in creating it, 
which is why I could figure out exactly how you'd act. Damn. Must be a flaw in 
It. You did get caught, after all."
Hawks actually felt crushed, but he had to make a brave show of it for the sake 
of his honor. All that running, all that violence and tension, all that taste of 
freedom— all illusion. The issue had never been in doubt.
"You'd still be free if you hadn't stuck to the river," Raven noted. "Fact is, 
they'd'a had to send a Val after you to catch you if you just went east or west 
or even north. The only ones known on Earth the Vals didn't ever catch were ones 
that just went into the wild and got kinda swallowed up. 'Course, once you took 
on the many-colored lady here, it was easy to spot you, but some clothes would 
have taken care of that." He sighed. "Well, come along. We got work to do yet."
"Aren't you afraid that I'll tell you why I'm being chased?" Hawks asked, 
wanting to throw his one weapon. What was death to him was death to all. But 
that didn't seem to disturb the Crow.
"Well, I'm damn curious, if that's what you mean. Cause me a lot of trouble if I 
knew, I guess, but not as much as you. See, they know that you know, so Master 
System knows it, too. Can't change that. But they don't know if I know until 
they got you under the machine, and I got you first, so I can cover. Tell me if 
you want or not. Makes no nevermind to me."
Hawks stood there, suddenly startled and confused. "What do you mean, they 
know?" he asked. "Who are they? Or, better yet, who are you?"
"I'm a handy man with big ambitions," the Crow answered him. "Got you kind of 
tossed in my lap by a colleague. My fat comes when I deliver you, even if it's 
split."
Even Cloud Dancer was starting to get the idea. "You are not from Council," she 
said suspiciously.
"Well, in a manner of speaking I am. Officially I work for the Agency, which 
works for the Council under contract. Not this one, though. You're too plenty 
important to trust to mere people. I'm sure the Val's either right behind us or 
just ahead of us, but it don't matter. We're gonna leave him running in circles 
for a while. By the time they get the idea, our part will be done."
Hawks wasn't sure whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. He had been 
prepared to deal with the logic of Master System, even though the odds were 
slim, but with a new player in the game, he was in as bad a position as before, 
only at the mercy of an unknown third party.
"Who are you working for?"
"The same man that the courier was working for. As you know, she didn't make it. 
I assume she made contact with you and passed it along."
"She's dead," he told the Crow. "She died maybe a day or so after she landed, 
probably from injuries suffered in the crash. I found her body and her papers."
"Uh huh. And you read them, I guess."
"You know I did."
"Not until that moment. Thanks. So this hasn't been for nothing. Now, come 
along. I don't want to meet any Vals around here. We can fill in the story 
later."
"All of us?" Cloud Dancer asked him.
"You bet, lady. I want all three of you, and just the way you are suits me 
fine."
Hawks's initial fear and then resignation were slowly being replaced by anger. 
Council chasing him was one thing, but this was some mercenary, some bounty 
hunter. Also, though his lack of clothing felt quite natural, it was somewhat 
demeaning among strangers, and particularly around men like this one.
Raven had a fairly elaborate camp set up in the center of the peninsulalike 
area: a small portable dome that bristled with antennae and detectors. It was 
only now that the Hyiakutt man realized that their captors were probably few in 
number—everything could be remotely run from here. Still, this was high-class 
equipment, Upper Council level at least, and he wondered where one like Raven 
would get access to it for an unauthorized or freelance mission.
The answer to that was revealed when they met the Crow's companion. Both Cloud 
Dancer and Silent Woman gawked with a mixture of fear and wonder at this new 
woman, who was so tall, so muscular, and so very black. Cloud Dancer had never 
seen anyone before who was not of the People, and from Silent Woman's reaction 
it was clear that she had never seen anyone like this.
Manka Warlock got some pleasure out of such reactions. She'd been getting a lot 
of them on this trip, and it served to keep the common folk of North America off 
balance. They weren't sure if she was a human or a demon, and after a couple of 
weeks with her, Raven wasn't all that sure, either. She was proud, vain, 
aristocratic, and genuinely amoral. Raven, it was true, would do almost anything 
for the right payoff, but he knew when it was right or wrong—he just did it 
anyway. To Warlock, people were divided into two basic categories: useful and 
irrelevant. It was clear that deep down she believed herself to be vastly 
superior to other human beings and immortal as well. She had on this trip done 
things like blast a tree because when she pushed one of its branches out of the 
way, it came back and struck her. Now she looked at the three captives less as a 
goddess would look at her creations than as a laboratory scientist examining her 
test rats. She gestured with a riding crop held in her left hand.
"How utterly quaint and primitive," she said in her heavily Caribe-accented 
English. "Do they have fleas?"
"They bite, sometimes," Hawks responded, irritated.
Her face took on an ugly, maniacal expression, and the hand holding the riding 
crop twitched. Raven stepped in.
"Enough!" he said. "You wanted him—there he is. Go ahead—do what you want, but 
remember why you are here and who you are working for."
The hand stilled, and some semblance of sanity crept back into her eyes, but the 
look was still there.
"Very well," she responded. "I will take some lip, for a while, but do not try 
my patience, nature man. There are things for which I would willingly surrender 
even as fat a price as you would bring. You—all of you—belong to me now, as a 
dog, a horse, or even a blanket belongs to someone. You are mine until I choose 
to sell you. You are within a forcefield keyed to the two of us now. You cannot 
leave without the both of us, and no matter what happened, you would never get 
my cooperation to open it."
"That won't work on them," Raven told her. "You don't understand the cultures 
here. Just achieving rank or manhood means undergoing tortures that are pretty 
bad. Death is meaningless as a threat. If you kill them when they are captives, 
they will go to a greater heavenly reward than if they died in bed."
"The females, however, are disposable," she noted curtly.
"Bullshit. If he gave in to save either one, he'd lose all respect in their eyes 
and be a dead man to them anyway. The reverse is also true. You got me into this 
because, hard as it is to believe, they are members of my race. I got in because 
I liked the potential payoff. You decide right now between the payoff and your 
ego."
She turned on her partner. "You insect! How dare you speak so to me!"
"Come on—try and kill me. Maybe you will. If you do, you'll wind up killing 
them, too, and then you'll be all alone when he starts looking for blame. You 
decide right now whether you want to be crazy or you want to buy a one-way 
ticket to Melchior."
That seemed to get to her, and she hesitated; there was even a flash of doubt 
across her face. She was one level up from Roaring Bull, Hawks thought, but deep 
down there were a lot of things that scared her as well. She knew it, and she 
knew that Raven not only knew it but had just exposed it, and she hated him all 
the more for it, yet she also accepted it as fact.
"Tend to them, then. I will call in the skim, and we will get this on the road." 
She turned and walked back into the small dome.
"Your partner's a psychotic," Hawks noted calmly. "Sooner or later they're not 
going to be able to cover that up anymore from Master System."
Raven sighed. "Yeah, I know. I sure as hell don't plan no long-term relationship 
with her. Still, she's really good at what she does, and she's useful to lots of 
powerful folks. That brings me back to you three."
"You spoke the truth to her," Cloud Dancer put in. "I suppose even a Crow 
understands some things."
"Listen, lady, you're in no spot to bargain, and you are just along for the ride 
'cause I want your boy here to be reasonably happy and comfortable."
"And perhaps because you might need three helpers if Warlock goes completely 
over the edge of the cliff," Hawks added.
Raven shrugged. "Could be you're right. Now it's time for some serious talk, 
though. Have a seat on the ground, here."
They all sat and stared at the Crow.
"Now, here's the story," he began. "A while back, down in South America 
someplace, an illegal tech group got hold of some old papers. Hawks, you know 
what was in them. I don't, except that they're some big knife at the throat of 
Master System. Forbidden stuff. Well, some of 'em had connections, and they 
traced something in the stuff to Lazlo Chen, of all people. How a half-breed 
administrator from the middle east figures into something like this I don't 
know, either. Whatever it was, they got the idea that only Chen could help them, 
and for some reason they thought he would. They made some contacts among their 
version of people like me, and that finally got the word to Chen. What the 
message was, again I got no idea, but it interested him. Intrigued him. They 
wanted some kind of real fat deal for the stuff, and that he wasn't about to do 
or couldn't do. So he used his connections and got them raided, and all were 
killed, but the right folks got the papers. These started a clandestine courier 
network that crossed into the Caribe region."
"And that's where Laughing Lady in there comes in, I suppose," Hawks responded, 
interested.
"Yeah, sort of. She's worked her way up to the top of the Security Agency there 
with blood and hard work, anyway. Probably got worse the higher she got or she 
never would have gotten that far. Well, she worked out a system of transfers. 
Island to island, then to someplace up north where it was to be handed to 
somebody for Siberia, then somebody else in China, and finally to Chen.
As you know, something went wrong. Master System learned about at least the 
existence of the papers and pushed every panic button in the world. Now, you 
tell me the courier crashed, got hurt bad, and died, and you found it and read 
it. All of a sudden you take off. Of course, since it was one of her girls, 
Warlock was dispatched to find out who the traitor was working for, and because 
she didn't know the territory at all, she got hold of me. I was one of the few 
not on the case but on routine patrol duties, so I won't be missed, and I've 
done a few jobs for the Caribes before. We set out to get you before the real 
hunters did, and we did—so far, anyway. Now we deliver, the boss man covers our 
trails and our asses, and that's it for us."
The story was so absurd, it had to be true, and Hawks laughed. "Chen. You're 
working for Chen!"
"Yeah, so that's not exactly hard to figure. What's so funny?"
"That's just who I started out to find. He's the only one who could really use 
this stuff, and he has the power to get me off the hook as well."
"Figured it was something like that. Mud Runner couldn't have helped, anyway. 
His stuff's wired direct into Master. He'd have apologized profusely and got 
drunk for a week after to cure his remorse, but he'd have still skinned you 
alive. So, we're the best thing could'a happened for your long-term future and 
interests. It's so far to Chen, you couldn't go any further without coming back. 
You'd've never made it. Now, 'cause neither of us can rightly trust you, there's 
several ways you can travel on this."
"I'm listening," Hawks said.
"Well, we can knock you cold, keep you out, and carry you in. That's one. Lots 
of trouble for us but effective. Or you can take a hypno and lock it in with a 
printer until we unlock it over there. Or you can be bound, gagged, and chained. 
What do you think?"
Hawks could see the man's reasoning. Traveling the distance to Chen might take 
some time and might even involve transfers as risky and elaborate as those for 
the documents—which had failed. Either knocking them cold or chaining them 
carried greater risks of discovery and would involve more people in moving and 
guarding them. On the other hand, Raven knew that both Hawks and Cloud Dancer 
had broken a hypno coming out of Hyiakutt country, so he couldn't be certain 
that a hypno would really take or for how long. He wanted cooperation on the 
hypno before he'd risk it.
"What sort of hypno?" Hawks asked. "One like your partner would give?"
"Nothing too bad. Something to make a good cover and guard our backs is all. You 
all would be put back in original condition at the other end. I wouldn't want to 
deliver you any other way—but if we get spot-checked, I wouldn't want whatever 
you know leaking out, or even that you know something worth leaking, if you get 
my meaning."
They did. "Why take us?" Cloud Dancer put in. "We both will go with him 
anywhere, of course, but why do you bother with us?"
"Lady, I don't know what I'm dealing with here, and I don't really want to know. 
Chen may hear him out, then kill all of you, or turn you into pets or the 
walking dead for all I know. But he might also embrace your husband here like he 
was the greatest hero of Earth history and put him in a real high and 
influential position with lots of power. Taking you costs me very little. Not 
taking you could cost me later. Now, what about it, Hawks?"
It was not a difficult decision, although it was a serious one. He could monitor 
his wives' treatment first, but anything he did to guard could be circumvented 
by the portable mindprinter after, and Raven's cartridges would be 
security-oriented and not at all benign. He didn't even like to think what 
Warlock's library must be like.
Still, he knew now that there was only one course open to him. The Crow had 
spoken the truth when he had said that Chen would want him, at least, in 
original condition. He could only trust that it applied to all. Raven also was 
speaking the truth about Mud Runner; it had always been the longest of long 
shots at best, and reality was obscured when unvoiced. Going wild was an equal 
if more romantic illusion. Silent Woman, at least, could not be kept hidden 
forever, and he could not abandon her any more than he could abandon Cloud 
Dancer. Chen was the only chance to preserve any possibility of a future for the 
family and tribe.
"We will take the hypno and mindprint," he responded. "If it is your kit."
"Of course. Well, we'd better get started, then. The skimmer will be here at 
dusk, and then you have one to three days of travel ahead, depending on the 
heat."
The program was devastating, as he had known it would be, but it was the most 
secure both for their captors and for protection en route. The fact was, once 
Raven had set it up and turned it on, none of them were aware of anything beyond 
that point. There were blurs, bright lights, confusing shouts in unknown 
tongues, and hundreds of other fleeting sensations, but none of it made sense, 
nor was there any time sense. There also, however, were no worries or concerns. 
Those had ceased to exist with the rest of the world.
Hawks awoke with the usual feeling of dizziness and disorientation that came 
from having undergone both hypnotics and mindprinting, but he recovered quickly. 
He was lying on a plush rug of some kind inside a large tent, and it was warm 
and dry. His first thought was for his wives, and when he did not see them, he 
was worried. He got up and tried to get his bearings.
"Looks like you made it," Raven's voice came to him. He looked up and saw the 
Crow sitting back and relaxing on a low fur-covered divan, a half-smoked cigar 
in his mouth. Even at this point, Hawks couldn't resist wondering if Raven had 
all of his cigars presmoked halfway down.
"I promised you they'd be here, and they're here," the Crow went on. "You are 
just gonna have to wait to see them, though. You got to get ready to see the big 
man. After him, then we have a happy reunion or whatever."
"I want to see them now!"
Raven sighed. "Listen, Hyiakutt. You're not in North America now, and Council's 
on the other side of the world. I got to tell you it was pretty hairy just 
getting you this far, and you wouldn't be here without me. A couple of people 
died to ensure that nobody but us even knows it. You're here because you 
couldn't resist knowing nasty things you knew you shouldn't touch. I didn't put 
you in this spot, I only brought you. Now you see the big man you said you 
wanted to see anyway. You trusted me with the hypno that got you here. Keep 
playing it my way."
Hawks sighed and nodded. The Crow was right, and he knew it. He was in no 
position to bargain now. Best to see it through. It might not make any real 
difference, anyway. By Raven's own admission, Chen had betrayed the first 
discoverers of the rings who'd contacted him. There was no reason why such a man 
would treat Hawks any better.
"These people bathe about once a century," the Crow noted. "But they have a set 
of rules and procedures. We'll get you looking as decent as we can."
Hawks's brows rose. "Then we are not in Tashkent Center?"
"What do you take Chen for? We lifted you out illegally, and we smuggled you all 
the way here illegally and, since I haven't seen either a security force or any 
sign of a Val yet, successfully. You're out in a tent city somewhere in the 
steppes of the Caucasus. He got here with his whole retinue just about an hour 
and a half ago, all riding camels, if you can believe it. I heard of 'em but 
never saw one before. I don't care how much water they hold, I'll take a horse 
or even an ornery mule every time."
Getting propped for an audience with Lazlo Chen was not an onerous experience, 
even if it was a disconcerting one. He was taken in to a small horde of women 
dressed in exotic clothing that masked just about everything except their eyes, 
all of whom talked in a language unrelated to anything he had ever heard before. 
Laughing and giggling, they washed him with cloths rinsed in a large basin of 
tepid water, clipped his nails, combed his long black hair and trimmed it, 
although he refused to let them cut it. Then he was given dark wool pants tucked 
into tall leather riding boots and a shirt of the same material dyed red and 
worn like a vest, and he was ready. Raven, who still wore his traditional 
buckskins, checked him over approvingly.
"All right, now. You look like you're ready to raid the peasant villages," the 
Crow noted in his usual sneering tone. "How's it feel?"
"It itches," Hawks complained.
Raven shrugged. "So it itches. If you'd had any decent clothes on when I picked 
you up, then this wouldn't have been necessary. Now I'll give you the protocol, 
and you will follow it exactly no matter how demeaning it is simply because he 
has to keep up the show for the locals and you want to keep on his good side. 
He's willing to keep it in English, so there's no languages to learn, simply 
because he knows it and absolutely nobody else around him, including his aides 
from Center, does. It ain't too popular a tongue in these parts. And remember 
who you're dealing with, even if he tries to get chummy."
Hawks nodded. After Roaring Bull, then Manka Warlock and Raven, he had finally 
made it up the hierarchy to a Lord of the Middle Dark. He had never met the 
Council Emperor or seen him, but this was one of equal stature at least.
They brought him to an enormous tent erected on the great plains of what had 
once been the south central region of the USSR, and before that the domain, or 
route, of legendary conquerors. He felt as if he had somehow slipped back in 
time to some ancient day when Genghis Khan and his Mongol horde had overrun and 
ruled the area in their attempt to establish a worldwide empire.
Certainly the setting seemed bleak and primitive enough, with torches lighting 
the way to the tent and oil lamps within. The floor of the tent was lined with 
plush rugs, and off to one side there was a table with an ornate chess set 
apparently showing a game in progress. An ornate, thronelike chair sat on a 
raised platform to the rear of the tent, its arms and back covered with complex 
designs. Still, the place stank. Unimpressed with the primitive grandeur, Hawks 
couldn't help but wonder if any of these people ever bathed or wiped themselves.
Lazlo Chen entered confidently, leaving his guards outside. He was certainly an 
imposing figure, close to two meters high and perhaps a hundred and fifty kilos. 
Oddly, he did not look fat but rather enormous and powerful. In spite of the 
fact that his family name was Han Chinese, he clearly owed his looks and size to 
Mongol and perhaps Cossack ancestry as well. He had long, black hair streaked 
with gray and a thick, full beard of the same color mix, and he wore a crimson 
turban and colorful, if baggy, Occidental clothing. He also wore golden earrings 
studded with enormous rubies and had other jewelry on his person and his 
garments—but there was only one piece that interested Hawks.
The Hyiakutt did as he had been instructed and knelt, bowed his head, and 
awaited recognition. Chen took a seat on the throne, then looked at the man 
before him.
"Oh, please do stand up. Sorry to keep you waiting, old boy," Chen said in a 
cheerful, casual tone. "But I'm a busy man, and even arranging to get the two of 
us together this one time has been something of a bother." His accent was not 
exotic but casual and without any distinguishing regionalisms. It was about as 
pure as English ever got. Hawks soon discovered, though, that Lazlo Chen's 
accent shifted to match the other speaking to him. The man was a born master 
linguist. The Hyiakutt historian stood and found he was still below eye level.
"I appreciate the effort, my lord," Hawks responded politely. "I have put many 
people to much trouble to gain this audience with you."
Lazlo Chen looked at him with bright, penetrating eyes, and a trace of a smile 
crept onto his face. "You came because of the ring. You came because you were 
sick and tired of being one of the sheep."
Hawks was startled. "Do you read my mind, then?"
Chen chuckled. "It is easy to read a man's mind when one understands him so 
well. When I entered, you thought something like, well, 'Here is this primitive 
throwback wearing on his ring finger something of which he can't possibly know 
the import. How will I deal with him for it?'"
"I—I was not so unflattering, but I do admit to the rest of it. I take it now, 
though, to mean that you know exactly what you have."
"I do, and yet I do not," the Emperor admitted. "Here— come close and look at 
it. I have done so for two decades now."
Hawks approached, fascinated in spite of himself. After enduring so much for so 
long, he would not be denied at least the sight of the objective.
The ring was not, as he had feared, plain or ugly but a thing of great beauty, 
shimmering gold in the lamplight, studded with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and 
other precious gems. Set into the front on a bed of pure jade was a symbol in 
bright silver so perfect, it could not have been cut by human hands no matter 
how exacting the artisan. Three tiny, perfect birdlike creatures flanking a 
diamond set in such a way that each of the birds stood at the point of a 
triangle.
"It is the curse of one who wears the ring that he cannot exhibit inordinate 
curiosity about it," Chen told him. "Part of the master program compels the 
computers to ensure that all five are always in human hands. If one is 
destroyed, they must make another—it is quite ironic, in fact. No one is exactly 
compelled to be told the meaning and use of the rings, but if someone finds out, 
as you have, it becomes dangerous to you and to me. Any attempt to search out 
the owners of the other four baubles is, of course, dealt with. I have no desire 
to be 'dealt with,' as I'm sure you will understand."
Hawks nodded. "You have subjected it to testing, though?"
"I have. Inside its beautiful exterior, under the jade and bonded to the ring in 
a way we can but guess upon, there is in effect an incredibly tiny computer. 
Unfortunately, someone conveniently lost the operating manual. It became the 
signet of the Chairman of the Presidium, the rank that I currently hold. It has 
long been suspected of being more than symbolic."
Hawks couldn't keep his eyes off the ring. "It is beautiful," he sighed.
"Yes, indeed it is, and that is fitting. I suspect our ancestors who designed 
the things had something of a sense of myth, or at least a sense of humor. The 
magic rings of power that will unlock the secrets of the universe. Myths and 
stories of such things are as old as man himself. In those days a Jason or a 
Sinbad would set out on an expedition to get the magic things from the evil 
rulers and creatures who possessed them, battling every obstacle of man, nature, 
and the supernatural. Now, thanks to the diaspora, the baubles are scattered 
amongst the stars, although by the terms of our magic spell—or program, as we 
crudely know it today—they all still exist, and all exist in the hands of human 
beings who can use them. We have all the makings here of a modern myth, and it 
would be a tragedy if (he objects did not look as grand as they were reputed to 
be. They are important enough to be forbidden knowledge. You tell me why."
"The builders of the Master System knew that what they did was unprecedented and 
unpredictable. They could not create it without a means to turn it off or at 
least to subjugate it to human will. Master System is compelled by its very core 
program to retain the rings, and in the hands of human authority. Humans with 
power and position, like yourself, my lord. It must also preserve the interface 
and make it possible for the humans, all five, to activate the override. The 
rings themselves are only parts of the code. They must all be present and 
inserted in a proper order. If that is done, Master System will submit to the 
orders and control of the five."
"I have suspected something of the sort through other sources, but this is 
absolute confirmation. I shall want all the details you can remember from the 
old documents. Naturally, this is all being recorded."
Carefully, sparing no detail, the Hyiakutt complied. He was surprised at how 
much he remembered and how easily it came to him, then guessed that some sort of 
enhancement had been given him along with the restoration program. Finally he 
was through, and Chen sat and thought for a while in silence. Then the Emperor 
said, very quietly, "I know the location of three of the other four."
Hawks stared at him. "Then you have the makings of a dangerous bargain, my 
lord."
"I do not bargain, particularly over something such as this. The rings must 
belong to humans of power and influence, you say. The fact is, almost anyone who 
could somehow acquire one, even steal it, would be a human of power and 
influence by the very act. On the scant evidence that it was something akin to 
what you now tell me it is, I have begun preparing. It is not an easy task to do 
so; one little slip can mean discovery and death even for one such as myself."
"You mean to get the rings, then. All of them."
"Indeed. I actually leaked the scant legends and clues to the rings around this 
whole world. Perhaps a tenth of all those pitifully few who are literate have 
heard the rumors. I cast lines randomly into the lake, and now I have pulled in 
the big fish. The group who amassed that documentation did not do so at my 
behest, but I was looking all over this world for signs that the bait was taken. 
One achieves greatness with great risks or one remains a sheep and deserves to."
Hawks's heart sank. "I'm no trout at the end of your line."
"Oh, but you are. Why did you read it when you knew it was forbidden knowledge 
sure to cause you agony? Why did you then decide to try and reach me with that 
knowledge? Self-preservation? Nonsense! You might have convinced yourself of 
that, but the fact is, if you were that sort of a man, you would never have read 
it in the first place. So why did you set out? Do you really know yourself as 
well as I know you?"
Hawks remained silent.
"You came," Chen said, "because you needed to believe that there was some way 
out of this mess. Way in the back of your mind, perhaps deep in your 
subconscious, you want those five rings united. You want the rule of the 
computer, the stifling of humanity, to end. You want to believe that it can end. 
The others—the ones who could come and did not—are sheep. They are either 
satisfied with things as they are, or they fear the consequences of any changes, 
any real freedom. They are complacent—or afraid. You feared you would find the 
tale a lie. They fear discovering that it is the truth."
Hawks's emotions were in turmoil, but he knew just where he stood and why. It 
was one thing to challenge the grip of the almighty Master Program, one thing to 
pray for, even work for, a crack in that system, but even in the incredibly 
unlikely event that it was possible both to gather the rings and to discover how 
to use them, it was now for what? For Lazlo Chen, who dreamed of empire? Who 
dreamed, in fact, of godhood? He had been this route before and answered yes. 
Now he was not so certain of his logic.
"The system is stagnant," he told the Director. "This is not a healthy long-term 
condition for humanity to be in, and the longer it goes on, the less able anyone 
will be to stop it. It might already have gone too far. Still, there is some 
merit in the system. Without the computer revolt there would be no humanity. We 
are held back to a degree, but we are free within our own worlds and the 
limitations placed upon us. There are no prying eyes here governing our going to 
the bathroom or even monitoring this conversation. It is irrelevant to the 
computers. We are in a rut, but we have been in ruts before. I admit I am 
dissatisfied with the situation, but as a historian I must also weigh the 
alternatives."
Chen got up and slowly paced in front of the throne. He was an imposing figure, 
and the act did more to enhance his superior position than being seated had.
"It is true that we are not slaves," Chen admitted. "Do you know what we are? 
Pets. Pets and experimental animals. We have long lives with ourselves as the 
primary cause of death. Set us back many centuries, remove vast parts of our 
populations to the stars, and then wind us up and see what we can make—just so 
long as we don't try and gain control of the old technology. We are the 
interstellar empire our ancestors dreamed of, yet we are not the emperors of it. 
We are interstellar traders whose product is people and skills and ideas, and 
here we are, you and I, sitting in a tent in the middle of a godforsaken steppe 
surrounded by camels, illuminated by torchlight, and drowning in a sea of faces 
that daily grows more joyously ignorant, more stupid, and more complacent. I 
rule an area larger than any empire in human history, yet I rule garbage!"
"What you say may be true," Hawks admitted. "Yet you must pardon me, mighty 
ruler, if I point out that the alternative you offer is yourself. I think it is 
irrelevant how wise and kind and good you might be or how wondrous your vision—I 
wonder now if any human being is capable of assuming such power without being 
driven mad by it. I once believed, not long ago, that any human rule was 
preferable, but I forgot that the absolute rulers of the past had limits. There 
can be only one Master System. There will never be two to compete. The power is 
beyond challenge."
"Indeed? And what would you have done if you'd had all five rings and the secret 
of their use?"
"Mankind is primitive once more, but also self-reliant and in a broad sense not 
ignorant at all. We have our histories, our cultures, and we are a 
self-sufficient lot these days. I would shut the master computers down and let 
things proceed on their own, without limits or chains, after that, even if it 
took thousands of years to rise once more and unite our people."
"You are wrong on many counts, my friend," Lazlo Chen responded. "First and 
foremost you are wrong that there can ever be only one Master System. We here in 
the Centers, and out in the other worlds as well, are getting away with a great 
deal under Master System's collective nose at the moment because it is 
preoccupied. For centuries it has spread and spread its rule and its system with 
it, but it has now run into something it cannot break. Far beyond us, Master 
System is preoccupied in a protracted war. It does not involve living beings, I 
don't think, but it is stalemated and continues on because neither side can 
yield or gain. The systems here have started to loosen, to become even more 
lightly controlled than before. Many have taken advantage of this, and there is 
now an awareness by the Master System that it has been neglecting its back. The 
easiest way to protect itself is to tighten our leashes. Eliminate the Centers. 
Eliminate all of the technical class. Revert us all to total, primitive 
barbarism and buy thousands of years of freedom from worry. A prototype 
experiment of this sort is already under way out there in space."
"Once I thought in cosmic terms and with cosmic ambitions, my lord," Hawks 
responded carefully. "Then this circumstance forced me to the other extreme and 
down to a level as basic as you describe. I am not like you. Your position, 
ambitions, and reach are your personal as well as professional goals. I, who am 
on a far lower level, find that I must choose between the personal—the 
spiritual, if you will—and cosmic aims and ambitions. My role in this is done."
Lazlo Chen's sharp eyebrows rose. "Indeed? The primitive life? The romance of 
nature? For how long? A week? A month? Five years? What is that?"
"Enough," Hawks answered.
"A waste. You have allowed your romanticism to blind you. You are a 
technological man, a scholar of intense training and excellent abilities. An 
analytical mind whose study is human behavior. Yet you are a risk taker, a man 
who in a primitive land could wind up literally naked and defenseless and yet 
survive and beat the odds. There are precious few such men. Such men are 
dangerous, even to the system. Few such men are ever in the position that you 
are, where they reveal themselves to others and to their own inner selves. I 
need such men myself. What you need is a sense of reality combined with a 
broader romantic vision. I cannot let you go, you know. They will never stop 
hunting for you, and no matter what tricks I played with your mind, they could 
reach in and perhaps find me there. I could reorient you to my service, but 
again not without pointing a strong finger right back at me. So, if you will not 
accept my vision, what would you have me do with you?"
"You mean to kill me, then."
"I hope not. Again, it would be such a waste. Friend Raven has been most 
convincing that no threat of death, no hostages, would turn you, not even 
temporarily and certainly not for the long haul. Securing the rings will be no 
easy task. So what do I do with you?"
Hawks had an uneasy feeling. "My lord—where are my wives?"
"We must find a way to turn you to our advantage," Chen continued. "First, we 
must store you until we can get you away. Second, we must put you in a secure 
spot where we can examine the best things to do without a lot of messy 
interference. Very well, I will send you now to your women and show you what 
primitive really means. It will keep you all secure until I can arrange transit 
to Melchior. You've heard of Melchior?"
"Only that it is a security prison, my lord. Somewhere in space."
"It is a private research facility run by highly creative people, and it is not 
under Master System because no one ever leaves there. The Presidium controls it, 
and I control the Presidium. I will set them a task and see if they can be as 
creative as they are supposed to be. Very well. You are dismissed for now. They 
will take you to your holding point and your women. Go. But in all cases, 
remember this: I will have those rings!"
Hawks bowed, feeling totally dejected, then turned and walked out to the waiting 
guard. Chen watched him go, then gestured. Two figures emerged from behind the 
curtains in back of his throne. "You saw and heard?"
"What will you do with him, my lord?" Manka Warlock asked.
"First he is going to get a lesson in vulnerability. He is being taken to my 
private base, well below ground and far to the south, where I had his wives 
sent. There he will be reunited with them in my extensive underground garden, 
sealed off from all else by a forcefield. That will be his first educational 
step. Then we will send them all to Melchior as quickly as it can be arranged. 
It will be difficult, since Master System must not be permitted an identifier or 
even to know that they are there instead of somewhere in the North American 
wilds playing house. Both of you have been detached from your various details 
and placed in the service of the Presidium. You will go along."
Raven, in particular, was upset. "But—my lord! Up there!"
"Indeed. I want you both to have expanded training. This will be—delicate."
Warlock seemed as pleased as Raven was not. The Presidium!
"And just what's supposed to happen after Melchior?" Raven asked him, forgetting 
all the formalities.
Chen didn't notice. "There they will be put through the works, but nothing 
permanent, while they broaden their view of the universe and get a better 
orientation on their own attitudes. They will also be introduced to any others 
useful to them. Finally, they will be given a way out. The first successful 
escape in the history of Melchior. They will be given a place to go, although 
they won't realize this. Finally, they will be forced into a quest for the other 
four rings, although they won't believe that it is for me. Hawks will suspect, 
but it will be irrelevant. Master System will set Vals to stalk him. He will 
always be hunted and afraid. He will have to get the rings or commit suicide in 
despair. His romantic vision cannot be realized without the rings taking the 
heat off, as it were. He wishes to run from responsibility, become a child 
again, but he will not. It is not within him. Precautions will be taken, of 
course, so that nothing will be traced back to me."
"You seem very sure of this," Warlock noted. "How can you be certain that you 
will be able to control him through this?"
"I can't and won't. Perhaps I can help here and there, but that's about all. 
Most, perhaps he, will die in the quest, anyway, but there will be more all the 
time. You see, I don't have to control him. No matter what happens, he knows I 
have this ring. In the end, he must come for it. He or his successors, once 
started on this quest, will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes. It 
might well be years. Still, no matter what, in the end they will have to bring 
the other four rings back to me while I sit here the innocent potential victim, 
not the instigator. I don't even know if it's possible to assemble the rings. I 
intend to find out. I must find out. And the two of you will help me." Raven 
looked past Chen to Manka Warlock and wondered. If all five rings were in one 
spot, it would be up for grabs to anyone, from Master System to Chen to— well, 
him and Warlock. He didn't much like the terms and conditions, but this damned 
thing had real long-term possibilities.

11. FORTRESS MELCHOIR

THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE EYES OF SONG Ching except that she who thought 
of herself as Chu Li received no messages from them. It was a devastating blow 
to her, but she knew she had to cope and put on a brave front for the other two. 
She could not afford self-pity.
"I think there probably are no traps in there, after all," she told them. "1 
think, though, that there are ones like this, used to subdue the worst and 
render them helpless or impotent. This can be restored with a mindprinter. It is 
simply an order to my brain not to process or pass the images it receives."
"But what can we do?" Chow Dai asked. Chu Li thought it was Chow Dai, anyway: 
The two sounded exactly alike. "You are the one who knows the magic of these 
things."
"We continue," she told them. "And I continue, since I have already paid a 
price. Do not blame yourselves. There is no way to know in advance about these 
things.
Get me back to the chair. We are almost half done, and we must hit a key one 
soon."
They helped her, and she was right. The next one, in fact, was the one she had 
been hunting for all along. She knew it the moment she awoke, and she knew, too, 
just how it worked. She could talk to the ship, the pilot— anything. The 
language the ship used was English. She had suspected something like that; most 
of the computer controls from the old designs were in English, French, or 
Russian. The problem had been finding the right cartridge for communications. 
She immediately called a halt to further experimentation, although she insisted 
that the Chow sisters also take both the English program and the basics of the 
ship. They wouldn't be very proficient no matter what, but at least she would 
have some backup.
She was ready to communicate. She knew the language, and she knew what to ask. 
She put the headset back on. Now was the time to risk it all.
"Captain to pilot," she said in her adjusted male voice, this time in English.
"Go ahead," the computer responded in a monotone.
"Number of human life forms aboard vessel at this time. Monitor."
"Monitoring. Four life forms."
Four! That meant that Sabatini was still alive somewhere, although if he hadn't 
shown himself by now, it was probable that he was indeed trapped. "Location of 
human life forms."
"Three in central compartment. Fourth is in emergency module."
Just as she had thought. "Sealed orders have been opened that necessitate 
emergency change of operational plan."
"Go ahead."
"Captain Sabatini has fallen under suspicion of treason and has been relieved of 
his command. I am assuming command of this vessel."
"Identifier code?"
She swallowed hard, but she had thought this out. This was a Presidium ship 
making China calls. It was unlikely that Song Ching's father would have 
overlooked it. "Code Lotus, black, green, seven two three one one."
There was a nervous pause, then the computer responded, "Code acknowledged. 
Reason for interrupt?"
"Pawn takes king."
"Details?" the pilot requested.
She decided that it was requesting a rationale since there was obviously no king 
aboard.
"I am Song Ching, daughter of the chief administrator, China District. Enemies 
of my father altered my voice and tried to alter more of me, as well as 
doctoring my security records, to abduct me and thereby gain leverage with my 
father. I was being shipped to Melchior as a common prisoner, there to be handed 
over to confederates. As I am registered as a male named Chu Li, who was 
disposed of, nothing appears in the records, nor will it."
"Identification of enemies?"
"Unknown, but to do this and to use Melchior they must certainly be on the 
Presidium."
"Shall your father be notified?"
"Impossible. He is on Leave, which is why this was done now. Extent of plotters 
unknown, but some must be in the China Directorate."
"Desired course of action?"
"I am assuming complete and total command of this vessel from this point on. 
Captain Sabatini is relieved and will be confined where he is until he can be 
properly interrogated. In the meantime, I and my servant girls must get beyond 
the reach of Presidium authority and Master System must not be notified, as I am 
currently classified as prisoner Chu Li and will be returned. Recommendations?"
"I am a system vessel. I cannot remove you to any place where you would not be 
traced here. I could forge documentation that would pass an interstellar pilot's 
muster, but you would be easy to trace. There is a clandestine network of 
interstellar traders, but it is, like this ship, loosely affiliated with the 
galactic presidiums. These people are quite rough and loyal only to themselves 
in the end. If they knew who you were, they would turn you over for reward to 
the highest bidder. If they do not know and do not find out, then you might wish 
you were on Melchior. They are men and women of the same sort of mind-set as 
Captain Sabatini."
She well understood what that meant, particularly now that she was blind. 
Sabatini had broken her without drugs or computers in a matter of days, and 
although she didn't feel like she was one, she was in fact a very desirable 
young woman. There was no question now where Sabatini's sex cartridges had come 
from.
"There are no other alternatives?"
"None available. The only habitats fit for you without severe and permanent 
alterations, which themselves would have to be done under the aegis of Master 
System, are Earth, shipboard, and Melchior. All others are under a Directorate. 
Mars, for example, would require both Master System's direct contact and also 
artificial atmospheres, as you are not modified for the Martian environment. 
Remaining with this ship for long is also not an alternative. Once we miss 
traffic control at the Outer-belt Marker, an alarm will be given and search 
initiated. Short of my destruction, there is no way to avoid detection and 
apprehension for long periods."
She broke contact and decided to discuss things with the sisters.
"The pirate warlords will be no gentle masters," Chow Dai noted. "They will be a 
race of foreign devils, all Sabatinis, but with all the magic boxes in the world 
and the protection of the warlords. They will make us the lowest of slaves and 
make us love to be slaves. I would rather die than be like that."
"I agree, but we have come too far to die now," Chu Li responded. "Yet what you 
say is true, and if we go home and try to sneak back down, and do so, we would 
have to become peasants in some remote and foreign place. It would not be much 
different than the other way, and we would always be looking over our 
shoulders."
"Of course," Chow Dai said thoughtfully, "we could just go on to Melchior."
"Huh? What?"
"I do not understand these things, but did you not say that this ship's spirit 
could change our papers, make us someone we are not, enough to fool those above 
us?"
"Yes, I did, but—" Suddenly she saw where Chow Dai's mind was going and reached 
for the headphones. "I wish data on Melchior."
"Melchior is a hollowed-out asteroid between Mars and Jupiter maintained as a 
reserve by the Presidium," the pilot responded. "Just what do you wish to know 
about it?"
"Is all of it a prison?"
"No. There are three parts. The prison itself, where all who are sent there are 
kept. It is something of a community in and of itself, but it is ugly and 
unpleasant. No one has ever escaped from it. The center is the research complex. 
All staff there are also there for life, and many of their experiments are on 
the prisoners. A third area, however, is the staff complex itself. All supplies 
and new people enter through it, and there is some interaction with the outside 
world through the small spaceport that connects there, as well as security 
personnel who may be rotated and the independents who sneak in to do business. 
Presidium members and staff also sometimes meet here, and the full Presidium 
always does at some point or another every one to three years."
"Details on this staff complex. What is it? A town? A city like Center?"
"It has a town organization and is quite small, but it is unique. There are 
dwelling units of increasing size and comfort depending on position in three 
areas, surrounding a town center. The center sells luxuries and dispenses 
necessities according to a computer-controlled system of work credits. There is, 
however, much human service work, all manual, usually performed by former 
prisoners modified for that service."
Blind, she could hardly pass herself off as someone new in security, nor could 
the sisters, with their terrible scars. She had to think as Song Ching would 
think—as Song Ching's father would think.
"You say there is much human experimentation and some two-way traffic. Is this 
place never used to modify or repair Earth people?"
"That is a primary function. Those whom the Presidium wish to use but who cannot 
be allowed to continue to exist as they are, for example, are sent there and 
changed radically. A death is convincingly faked for them on Earth and recorded 
with Master System. Also, there are enhancements and repairs of grave injuries 
suffered doing things which cannot be registered with Master System."
"Then we will go to Melchior with our records modified," she told it. "I will 
give you my story and then cover stories for the other two. You will prepare 
supporting documentation. We will be not prisoners but patients."
"This is dangerous. I have no hypnotics or master mindprinter aboard. You will 
have to give convincing performances, at least until you can get clandestine 
access to a mindprinter yourself. One curious hypno or security examination will 
expose all three. One slip will expose all three."
"We will have to risk it. Orders and paperwork and records often supersede 
common sense. It is why I have gotten this far. I have some codes and overrides, 
a knowledge of the equipment, and I will not be a prisoner but a patient. 
Besides, no one ever breaks in to Melchior."
"You have no idea what they can do in there," the pilot warned. "It is said that 
if Master System knew, it would blow the whole place to pieces."
"It is the best of a bad set of alternatives," she responded, but inwardly she 
was excited. Change identities, change personalities, change into whole new 
people ... You have no idea what they can do in there. Might not even Chu Li 
perhaps live again? Might not the Chows gain outer beauty to match their inner 
selves? Considering how far she'd already come, nothing was beyond reach.
"Uh—if we go to Melchior under those conditions, what about Sabatini?"
"He is already past the normal preservation stage and has been placed in a 
cryogenic condition. I can keep him there at least until I return to Earth 
orbit. By that time, you should either be away or exposed. In either case it 
will make no difference."
"Very well. Let's do it."
"Hawks!" The voice echoed through the subterranean garden. "Where's the heap big 
Hyiakutt chief now, eh? Come talk to Raven!"
There was a rustle and the sound of a large body dropping to the ground and 
coming toward the edge of the garden and its forcefield.
Even though he'd been well briefed, Raven was still shocked at Hawks's 
appearance. The man was filthy, worse than when the Crow had captured him, but, 
more, he had a wildness in his face and eyes and a brutal, animal-like gait and 
carriage that was somehow unnerving. Even though the Hyiakutt's current 
personality set was mere overprinting—that is, all of him was there below it and 
could be used—the Crow knew that he'd use tranquilizer darts before trusting 
himself with this fellow now to redo the printing and preparations.
If Raven was surprised to see Hawks, then the reverse was even more true. Hawks 
squinted. "Ray-ven," he growled. "Why are you still here?" It was obviously a 
labor to speak, which was understandable.
"I've got a new job and a new boss, that's why. We're not rid of each other yet. 
How have you liked it the last few days?"
Hawks charged the forcefield with a roar and was thrown back. He picked himself 
up but returned only a surly glare. "Bas-tard Crow!"
Lazlo Chen had indeed taught Hawks the true meaning of "primitive." He had 
restored the two women, and after having them fully mindprint recorded so they 
could be restored later, he had wiped them basically clean and imprinted on them 
the mindprints of female apes of some kind. They had no memories that were not 
ape memories, no language except the guttural grunts and shrill cries that 
amounted to about six basic phrases—"danger," "good food," and such. More, they 
were conditioned to see themselves as apes and each other as apes of the same 
type and tribe—and to see Hawks that way as well. They ate, preened each other, 
and slept, and that was life. At least they had no idea that anything was 
different. Hawks, however, did.
Chen had ordered him imprinted with the bull ape imprint but otherwise left 
alone. He knew, and he had to watch those he loved act as animals and react to 
them so, as well. It was the most miserable, unhappy experience in his whole 
life.
"So you found out being a chief ain't all romance and glory," Raven noted 
sardonically. "I don't know about you, but among the Crow, though bloodlines 
will get you a real shot, a chief must prove himself and be elected— and he can 
be canned if he doesn't have it. That's because the job isn't bravery, although 
it calls for that, or smarts, although it calls for that. Lots of folks can be 
politicians and generals. What a chief really means is responsibility. Sending 
young men off to die. Making widows. Protecting those of the tribe even at the 
cost of his own life or even his honor. Not like Chen, either, because he 
doesn't care about his people, only himself. That's because folks like that lack 
honor. That's why you don't want to work for him, you know. No honor."
Hawks stared at the strange, ugly Crow. Raven had put his finger exactly on the 
problem, the moral dilemma, and also had shamed him. Men like Chen got where 
they were and stayed that way because they had no honor and took no 
responsibility. Even now, Chen wanted others to make him ruler of the universe, 
to take all the real risks, then hand him the ultimate in power and profits. 
Chen didn't care how many were killed or even if his own people were wiped out 
in doing it. He didn't care about them; he cared only for personal power while 
avoiding any real sense of responsibility. And yet Chen understood the concept 
of honor, of responsibility. Understood it and saw it as a weakness, something 
to be exploited. That was why he had done this.
"Have you come to taunt me in my misery?"
"Naw," the Crow responded. "I've come to take you all away from all this. The 
heat for you is getting tremendous for one thing, and also, old Chen wants his 
garden back before it's trampled flat. You can go as apes in cages or you can 
give your solemn oath that you'll be good, cooperative passengers, and we'll put 
you all back together. They won't even remember any of this. Only you."
"You—you can put them back?"
"Good as new, except for bruises, scratches, hair tangles, and that sort of 
thing. Your absolute bond is all I need."
"You have it."
"Now you're thinking like a chief. All right, Chief. We'll get this show on the 
road tonight. Put you all to sleep, cart you over as cargo, stick you on, then 
bring you back after we're away."
"You say we. You are going, too?"
"Yeah, me and Cuddles the Warlock. You remember her. She's attacked four people 
since you left. Chen thinks she's got potential if she can be redirected a bit. 
Don't know what he sees in me. I think my job's to keep her in line."
"You are one to speak of honor!"
Raven shrugged. "You'll never really know that, will you? So don't get too 
excited. This is a one-way trip to Melchior, the nice little garden spot where 
folks go who have to disappear or be disappeared. At least you won't have to 
worry about them making monkeys out of you, will you?"
The screen repelled a new attack.
The Melchior asteroid was small and irregularly shaped. Resembling a monstrous, 
misshapen baked potato, it was ugly, dark, and forbidding. Pockmarked with 
craters and pits, its one distinguishing feature was a space dock at the smaller 
end, and even that wasn't visible from a distance.
The origins of the place were lost in antiquity or covered in forbidden 
knowledge. Why this asteroid, out of all the other ones around, was picked and 
developed was a mystery only Master System could solve. The rumor was that when 
humanity was forced kicking and screaming out into the universe, it required 
adaptation. Mars had been the testing ground for the whole project, and for half 
the year Melchior was not all that far from Mars as the spacecraft flies. It was 
said that here the original Martian colonists were tinkered with and reprocessed 
until they were just right, and perhaps other prototypes were developed on 
Melchior later. Still, the asteroid wasn't very big, certainly not the sort of 
place that could process the billions involved, and so it was more or less 
abandoned by Master System in favor of new and improved mass production models.
How the Presidium then got hold of Melchior was another lost mystery, although 
it was certainly the Martian Directorate that saw its uses first and somehow 
convinced Master System that there was a need for a prison strictly for the most 
valuable prisoners, the ones who could never again be allowed contact with 
normal society but who had talents or bright ideas. After a few centuries with 
no escapes and no real threats, Master System didn't even care anymore that the 
place wasn't hooked into its all-seeing monitors. Some thought its preoccupation 
with its enigmatic war was the cause, but more likely it was that Master System 
understood that the sort of men and women who would maintain its system on Earth 
and Mars had to have some outlet. Better that outlet be a little asteroid in the 
middle of nowhere and totally self-contained than in the Centers and Councils of 
Earth and Mars. It didn't really care who or what went in there, or what went on 
there, so long as they stayed there and so long as they never got out to 
threaten the system.
The place consisted of three large and countless small chambers, all set apart 
by kilometers of interlocking tunnels and all blasted with disintegrators out of 
the rock itself. The closed atmospheric system necessitated a huge number of 
safety air locks, which also served as security checkpoints; anyone who managed 
to sneak in could be caught merely by ordering the surrounding air locks sealed 
and then pumping out the air.
The prison cum prison town was in the larger of the two sides and was 
interconnected to the laboratories and other research facilities through 
deliberately confusing and well-monitored tunnels and air locks. The odd design 
not only maximized use of space but helped to disorient anyone who tried to 
figure the place out. The labs were underneath the prison and, from the prison's 
point of view, upside down. Gravity, impossible to create here by the spin 
method, which was cheapest and most efficient, was provided by a complex 
electromagnetic' system designed by Master System. Over the centuries here, many 
scientists had gone absolutely crazy trying to figure out just how it worked.
To make matters worse, the center tunnels connecting the smaller "east" and the 
larger "west" were not equipped with the gravity system; one actually swam 
through them, weightless. The maintenance tunnels and chambers were also all 
weightless. Fortunately, the gravity in the habitation sections was close to 
Earth normal.
And so, to this place came first Chu Li and the Chows under false colors and 
then, within a week, Hawks, Cloud Dancer, Silent Woman, Raven, and the strange 
Manka Warlock. The Chinese, however, were treated a bit better, being listed as 
official patients, and assigned at the start to the staff area. Because most 
spaceships were entirely controlled by a computer pilot, the lack of any staff 
save the three was not even considered unusual.
The psychogeneticist interviewer looked Chu Li over critically. She was brisk 
and professional but not judgmental.
"So, you are here to become male," the scientist noted, looking at her screens. 
"A waste, considering your looks. Is this voluntary? I mean, do you concur?"
Chu Li nodded. "I do. I was always supposed to be, but Master System saw 
differently. I am a genetic construct."
"I could see that by the cell samples," the psychogeneticist huffed. "There are 
limits to what can be done short of a total remake, and that takes a lot of 
time. It says here you must be back in a new identity with all possible speed. 
That limits us."
"I will be fully functioning? And feel it?"
"Oh, of course. However, the sperm would not be yours but a—donor's—and we could 
make only superficial cosmetic changes. Your basic female bod,y shape and bone 
structure will remain, for example, although we'll remove most of the breasts 
and smooth out what is left and perhaps surgically adjust the face to give it a 
more masculine cast. The strong male hormones which we will distill from the 
minute quantities you produce now but which will then be duplicated and produced 
by your new glands and sacs will alter you far more as time goes on. I gather no 
mental adjustment is required for this."
"They want me just the way I am, mentally. That's why they did the first part of 
the adjustment back there."
"Now, then, you were blinded in a mindprinter accident?"
"Not exactly an accident. I think I wasn't supposed to see something. It was 
understood that my sight would be restored here."
"Uh huh. Well, we'll have to scan for damage, but if it's just a printer 
program, it should be simple. We'll send you in for tests now. If all prove out, 
we'll get started right away."
Melchior was not at all what Chu Li had expected. True, it was inside an 
asteroid, and there was a strange coldness and dryness to the air, but everyone 
had been quite nice and quite professional all the way. She didn't really know 
what the place looked like, of course, but at the moment it seemed more like a 
hospital than a horrible prison. They were even going to attend to the terrible 
scars of the Chow sisters. Of course, the fact that their records now identified 
them as some other people and seemed to come from the higher security levels of 
China Center didn't hurt, nor did the fact that such records could not be 
cross-checked with Master System files here.
Melchior was an exciting and exotic place, one that she would like to have seen. 
She hoped that they would restore her sight quickly. But even if they did not, 
she would get a totally new identity. A complete sex change, some cosmetic 
changes, even subtly different fingerprints and a slightly altered eye pattern. 
She could walk right into China Center and right up to Song Ching's miserable 
relatives, and they would never know.
Doctor Isaac Clayben looked over the data modules on the subject and frowned. 
"You were right to come to me," he told the assistant. "You're sure there's no 
mistake?"
"Absolutely, sir. We took the print when we suspected something and checked it 
without her even knowing it."
"And the other two?"
"Petty criminals sent here because Doctor Shasvik wanted as many identical twins 
as he could get. You must admit, sir, that she's both brazen and. brilliant even 
to have tried this. I have no idea how she could have switched full 
identification through Master System with this Chu Li boy. I would have sworn it 
was impossible without coming through here to begin with. In fact, her only 
mistake was that Melchior is not on Master System, so our records aren't updated 
when the master is. With the systemwide alert, we naturally put them all 
through. Her eye and prints matched up with Song Ching, and the other two are 
former servants of some high-ranking security officer in China Center. When we 
shot them back to Earth for a run-through, though, Master System identified her 
absolutely as Chu Li, a natural male. Fascinating."
Clayben scratched his scruffy full beard. "Pity. They are going to make this 
Song Ching into nothing more than breeding stock. Anyone who could do this is a 
mind that shouldn't be lost to some culturally sexist attitudes. She could 
easily do the one thing without sacrificing the other. No one at China Center 
has been notified?"
"No, sir. Do you wish me to call them?"
"No. Not yet. Let me think about this. In the meantime, continue with all the 
tests but do absolutely no surgery, psycho or physical."
"Very well. What about the blindness? It's a simple trap program from a portable 
mindprinter. We could remove it in twenty or thirty minutes."
"Leave it. Give her a fancy and convincing but meaningless excuse. If she can 
get herself shipped here, change Master System records, take control of a 
spaceship in midflight, and come up with something so basic that only a lifetime 
of thinking about beating Master System flawed her success, we don't want her 
getting oriented here. Imagine somebody like that running loose in this place."
It was a sobering thought.
"Come to think of it," Clayben added, "separate her from her two friends and 
place them all in the Security Block in the prison. If she figures out where she 
is, tell her it's routine until everything is set so that no one will know she 
is even due for a change."
"I doubt she'll buy that."
"What's the difference? And she might, which would make life a lot easier for 
us. If she figures it out and causes enough uproar, tell her the truth, which 
includes the fact that I might decide to go through with it anyway and put her 
to work here. Someone that young who's that good at beating the best could be 
very valuable."
"Shall we encode her?"
The boss thought about it. "Yes, but slip her a mild sedative first so that she 
doesn't know it. Encode her as Chu Li and adjust our records accordingly. If I 
decide not to send her home, I don't want her father coming in here some day and 
finding out that she was ever here."
When the aide left, Doctor Clayben sat back in his large padded desk chair and 
sighed. He was a man of advancing middle age and looked it; he had achieved the 
position of Director of the Medical Section of Melchior, a dream assignment and 
one which involved being able to poke into everybody's ideas whenever he liked. 
Although not a Presidium member himself, he worked for the body as a whole and 
so had no loyalty or obligation to any one person. He saw himself as a pure 
scientist, in the one position where he and his colleagues were free from any 
concepts of forbidden knowledge or political, moral, and religious restrictions. 
He had no reservations about authorizing the most radical experiments on human 
beings; he used only prisoners sent here by the Presidium, people who would have 
otherwise been executed back on Earth. He felt he gave their miserable lives 
meaning by allowing them to contribute to the growth of human knowledge, 
knowledge which for the most part remained right here, under his authority and 
under his control.
Not even the Presidium guessed the amount of power, knowledge, and abilities 
contained within Melchior's small confines. The girl had wanted to become a 
fully functioning male. Child's play. Clayben knew, as most did not, what the 
bulk of humanity had become out there among the vast stars. It had become alien 
to its birth species and alien to all in many ways, although curiously still 
human in the mind. Humanity had always been adaptable; that was its key to 
survival. It could learn to live permanently with little or no modern technology 
in arctic wastes or steaming, acidic tropical jungles. Moving five billion 
people to a thousand worlds was no easy task in the old days, particularly since 
no two planets were alike and the supply of those tolerable even to adapted 
humans was rather low.
Humanity, without technological support, was actually very fragile. Earth had 
been just right, just exactly right, and what evolved there evolved to match it. 
Within Earth tolerances, humanity was supreme, but Earth tolerances, while not 
unique, were very rare indeed. Master System had been in a hurry, and Master 
System developed the means—possibly right here, on Melchior—to get the job done 
expeditiously. Clayben knew the means and the methods. That knowledge often made 
him feel like a god.
Certainly it was better than being a tinpot Presidium dictator always doing the 
System's bidding and feeling, every time a minor victory was scored, like the 
little boy who steals pie cooling in the window and gets away with it. Isaac 
Clayben feared only one thing about Master System, but he could not allow 
himself to dwell on it: Some day Master System would tire of this sufferance of 
its loyal servants, or become too suspicious, or not need its Presidium anymore, 
and then blast this rock into atoms.
Although they remembered nothing of their existence from the time of the hypno 
treatment along the banks of the Mississippi to the moment they woke up aboard a 
spaceship, both Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman were somewhat traumatized by their 
sudden propulsion from a nontechnological culture to one so advanced that it 
seemed only magical. Magical but cold, Cloud Dancer decided. There was no fresh 
air, or warm sun, or cold winter's night, or the smell of trees and flowers 
here. No sense of freedom or of the vastness of a starry sky or an endless 
horizon. There were only sterile walls, sterile seats and furnishings, and 
unnatural things. The toilet had taken her days to understand, and the shower 
seemed somehow a violator of her body. Food, both hot and cold, appeared 
magically on large trays, yet it all tasted like week-old lard.
Still, both women were committed to Hawks, wherever he might lead. They had 
already followed him to hell; there could be no place left to go but up.
Manka Warlock was as cool, aloof, and condescending as ever, but if she fell 
into any more fits of madness, they didn't see it. Raven seemed far more relaxed 
and always the pragmatist. Hawks suspected that Chen had given Warlock a bit of 
enforced calming with a mindprinter, changing only her irrational extremes and 
not her basic self. Such calm wouldn't hold; no one except Warlock would be 
surprised if she were due for something more than a job when she got to 
Melchior.
Hawks himself was trying to decide whether he had won a reprieve or was now 
condemned to the circles of hell. The only thing known about Melchior was that 
it was a prison from which there had never been an escape, though obviously 
people did—if rarely—come and go from there. He began to wonder how much of a 
fool he had been in not taking Chen's offer at the start. Certainly they could 
make him accept and love anything once they had him on Melchior; they could 
convince him that the sky was purple and he was Lazlo Chen's identical twin 
brother. He consoled himself in the rather certain hunch that even if he had 
accepted, he'd still be aboard this ship. Raven and Warlock had accepted, and 
here they were. Chen was not about to accept promises of fidelity no matter what 
the oath.
They disembarked directly into a high-security area, with armed security guards 
and automatic security devices everywhere, and were then printed and processed. 
The women understood only that they were to be imprisoned in a strange cave; 
their views of creation did not yet encompass a sufficient cosmology to 
understand just where they were or the nature of Melchior. It was a place in the 
Inner Dark, a spiritual realm ruled by spirits of evil. That was enough.
They were stripped, decontaminated, bound, then blindfolded and linked together 
for the final part of their journey. Silent Woman particularly protested the 
treatment, and Cloud Dancer was none too happy, but Hawks managed to calm them, 
convincing them that nothing could be done until they were settled and could get 
information, so there was no purpose to any resistance at this point. Privately 
he wondered if there was any possibility of successful resistance even later. 
Like Dante, he had been forced by his enemies into entering hell alive; unlike 
Dante, he had no spirit guides to get him safely through and out again.
At the end of the nightmarish and disorienting journey, in which they seemed 
almost to float or fly in places, they were brought to a small, unfurnished room 
watched by security monitors all around the ceiling. Their blindfolds removed, 
they saw that Raven and Warlock were no longer with them, and none wished for a 
reunion. Those two had been replaced with an officious woman who looked as if 
she had been carved from some massive stone block, dull gray uniform and all. 
She had a small clipboard in her hand and glanced at it, then up at them.
"You three have been consigned to the Melchior Penal Colony," she told them 
unnecessarily. "These walls and tunnels are incredibly thick and solid; the only 
way out is the way you came in. From this point back, there is no place at which 
you are not under constant monitoring and observation. Ahead of this point is a 
large chamber divided into two sections. The red block of flats off to your 
right as you enter is Maximum Security. The dwellings there are comfortable and 
self-contained but soundproof and allow only one inmate to a dwelling. Those 
inside must stay there. Inside, there is not a single point, not a square 
millimeter, that is not constantly under both visual and audio observation by 
humans and computers. Nothing, not even human waste, goes out without inspection 
and analysis, and nothing comes in except through totally computer-controlled 
access ports. You will be able to see inside every one, for the open walls are 
forcefields, all individual, but so firm that not even sound can pass through, 
and visual is one-way only. Anyone can see in, but you see a blank wall. You do 
not want to be in Maximum Security."
They accepted that at face value.
"The rest of the area is more communal. In a sense, it is a small town, although 
with rigid rules. We monitor the whole but not every specific thing. Rest 
assured, though, that we could pick you out of a crowd and eliminate you even in 
the most hidden corners, should we choose to do so. The dwellings there are 
larger and shared. Because we always know where you are when we want you, we 
have no limitations. You will be assigned a communal unit. If one or more of you 
moves elsewhere, it is not our problem. Everything used there is designed to 
degrade and is disposable. Clothing is not permitted. It is difficult to conceal 
a weapon or anything else if all are naked. You will draw everything that you 
need from the automated stores in the center area, as well as getting fed there. 
You may draw three meals a day that are coded to you, no more. These cannot be 
saved up. Eat when you like within this limitation. Cold water is always 
available from the central fountain. Questions so far?"
There were none.
"All right, then," she continued. "We run on a twenty-five-hour schedule, which 
we have found more conducive to routine in this enclosed place. Everyone sleeps 
the same eight hours, marked by a bell sounding and then the lights going dim. 
You will be in a dwelling within ten minutes of that bell and before the lights 
go down permanently. Anyone out after that or making excessive noise after that 
will be severely punished. Anyone ill or injured should report or be reported to 
the medical kiosk. Someone will come and tend to you. Those are the only major 
rules. You will learn the rest down there from your fellow inmates. When we want 
you, we will come and get you. Violence, resistance to our authority, or 
anything we determine as troublemaking will get you into Maximum Security and 
move you up to the head of the list for laboratory experimentation. Many inmates 
are already veterans of experimentation. Look at them and remember the price. 
Now, there is just one more process, and you will enter. This will be your home 
from now until you die, so adjust to it and accept it. Go through that door now, 
one at a time. You may wait for your companions on the other side."
There was a small chamber, dimly lit by a greenish glow, beyond the door. A 
technician's voice said, "Step onto the little platform there and lean your 
whole face and body into the fabric stretched in front of it. Remain that way 
until I tell you differently."
It was like a spidery thin but incredibly dense mesh. Hawks pressed into it as 
directed and felt a similar substance close behind him. A sudden very bright 
light flared all around him, and he closed his eyes, the afterimage remaining. 
He felt a sudden, intense, burning pain across his back and on his face as well. 
He almost cried out but controlled himself. He would show no weakness.
It was over quickly. The mesh fell away, and the technician ordered him to go 
forward and out the security door. Still a bit stunned and feeling some residual 
pain on his back and face, he looked around and saw his first glimpse of the 
true heart of the Middle Dark.
In the Hyiakutt religion there were many spirits and many levels of magic and 
mysticism. There was but one god, all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful, the 
Creator, the Father Spirit in whose image humanity had been created. Below the 
Creator were two levels of spirits set to do His will and protect His domain: 
the spirits of nature, and then the least of spirits, those of His most complex 
creation, humanity.
There was, of course, an opposite force, which the Creator allowed because He 
had created man as an experiment, perhaps as a game, to amuse and interest Him 
but also to be more complex companions. The human spirit was the least, yet it 
could rise higher than the fixed spirits if it worshiped the Creator, respected 
His creations, understood that the Creator made and alone owned all things, and 
showed himself worthy in courage and honor to rise above the middle spirits. 
Without evil, without pain and temptation, humans would be as the middle 
spirits; defeating those things could make them worthy of the Creator's company. 
For this reason the Dark had been formed and allowed to reign where it could. 
Humans were born into the Outer Darkness, subject to the forces of evil as well 
as good. By making their spirits shine with deeds, they could dispel it.
Against this were the spirits of the Middle Dark, those that corrupted both 
human spirits and nature, and below it the Inner Dark, the place from which all 
evil came and where One lived whose Hyiakutt name translated out roughly to 
Corruption. It was a formidable enemy, for it had to be, in order to test 
humans. Without a worthy foe, the struggle, too, was worthless.
Hawks felt he was in the domain of the Middle Dark, although he had little 
religious faith or feeling. Now he knew it was real, for here it was. If such 
diverse and disconnected cultures as those of the Hyiakutt and Dante could feel 
the same contest and see the same visions through their individual cultural 
filters, then it did exist. Now he understood the odd, subconscious bond he'd 
always felt between that ancient foreign poet and himself. Culture masked 
truth—but there could be only one truth.
When Cloud Dancer emerged, he saw on her what they had done to him. Her pretty 
face and coppery skin had been marked on the cheeks with a bright silvery 
design, a line that began pencil-thin under the eyes and broadened out into a 
solid curve that bent back in on itself and ended as tiny little tendrils or 
even flowers. The design seemed to drink in light; he was certain it would 
retain some and glow in the dark, perhaps for a very long time. When she touched 
his face, and he hers, their fingers felt only skin, yet the design seemed 
inset, permanent, almost like a nameplate set into a piece of furniture or 
machinery. It was actually rather pretty and not at all disfiguring in the usual 
sense, but both had the feeling that the thing would not wear off. Silent 
Woman's identical markings were the most natural looking, although the shiny 
silver clashed with her muted reds, greens, blues, and oranges.
Hawks understood what it was for. One might impersonate someone in authority, 
perhaps steal clothing or the proper uniform; one might try all sorts of tricks, 
but one would never hide his or her face routinely without drawing attention. In 
the darkness of some of the tunnels, you would even glow in the dark, making a 
perfect target. He wouldn't be at all surprised, he thought, if the tattoo 
contained some synthetic mineral that could be automatically tracked by sensors, 
probably specific and unique to each individual. That was how they could pick 
out and shoot a troublemaker even in a crowd. On their backs, between their 
shoulder blades, was a bar of the same silvery material, going almost from 
shoulder to shoulder and about five centimeters thick. Within it, in black, was 
embedded a long string of characters in a language even Hawks did not know, but 
it was clearly a prison file number and identifier. It looked somehow 
superfluous on the back of Silent Woman.
"These are the demon brands so that we shall be known everywhere," Cloud Dancer 
noted. "Even should we leave here, we would carry their mark for all to see."
He nodded. "That's about it." He turned and looked over the interior of the 
prison complex. "It is a grayer underworld than I had imagined."
Cloud Dancer nodded grimly. "It is the worst of things. A place where all beauty 
and nature had been banished, all joy and all hope. A place without colors."
The entire semicircle could be viewed from the entrance. Walls, floor, and 
ceiling were all gray. The natural rock was gray, and all else had been painted 
or manufactured to match it so that it all blended into a plain nothingness. The 
cells, or dwellings, or whatever they might be called, were along three sides 
from floor to ceiling, rising up at least four stories in a stepped design. 
They, too, were gray, although dull lights shone from each doorway. The only 
color was the flat and dull red of one block set off from the others to their 
right. The cells there had no doorways, just three-sided frames looking to the 
interiors, which were brightly lit, the very walls glowing with illumination. 
Each was a single room with cot, toilet, sink, and nothing else except, in most 
of them, a lone occupant either sitting silently or pacing.
Below the dwellings, the area continued to be stepped; the lower levels were 
broad and somewhat rough-hewn and were basically featureless. The concentric 
rings formed an eerie rock amphitheater without seats or ornamentation. In the 
center was a broad oval in which a number of cube-like buildings sat, all 
equally dull and gray.
There were people about; a rather large number, it seemed, some in the area of 
the central cubes but most just along the broad steps or wandering aimlessly 
about. The lighting was indirect, its source the rocky ceiling of the chamber, 
and though little could be made out of individual humans from where the 
newcomers stood, little reflective glints off backs and faces told them that 
everyone here had the mark.
A man approached them. It was impossible to guess his age, but he was thin and 
light of build. He was so fair of skin that the two women, who had never seen 
humans from northern Europe, at first thought he was a walking dead man. He had 
incredibly thick light blond hair flowing down almost to his waist but no facial 
hair as Hawks might have expected from one of this man's race. His complexion 
was fairer than a baby's, although in a number of places he had some ugly 
bruises that showed up particularly well on his light skin. His cheeks bore the 
same silver design as theirs; the bar on his back was masked by his hair.
"Hello," the stranger said in a gentle low tenor. "My name is Hendrik van Dam, 
although most here just call me Blondy, particularly the Englishers and the 
others who speak it." He had a mild but pleasant north European accent. "I was 
told to meet you and get you settled." He paused for a moment. "English is all 
right, is it not? I was told—"
"No, English is fine," Hawks responded. "It is the only common tongue we have. I 
am called Jonquathar, which means Runs With the Night Hawks. Mostly I am just 
called Hawks, although in some circles where English is required, I am also 
called Jon Nighthawk. These are my wives, Chaudipatu, or Cloud Dancer in 
English, and the painted one we call Masituchi, or Silent Woman, since she has 
no tongue to tell us how she was truly called."
"You are of the Americas, I believe," van Dam noted. "We get very few of your 
people here, although some are sent." He sighed. "I would bid you welcome, only 
that seems a bit out of place."
Hawks nodded understandingly. "That is very true."
"I have a number for your assigned quarters, although we should go down to the 
shops first. You should eat something and relax a bit, then draw your bedding 
and supplies there before going up. I am afraid that seniority reigns here, so 
you are up top and off to the side. They are all really the same inside, so 
otherwise it does not matter. When you have nothing, the most trivial things 
become important, as you will see."
Cloud Dancer looked over to her left as they descended a rough rock staircase 
and gasped. "That couple over there—are they making love right there?"
"Oh, yes," van Dam replied casually. "You will see a lot of it, some of it quite 
passionate and some extremely nontraditional—some would say aberrant or 
abnormal."
"But—everyone is just ignoring them!"
"We are given nothing here. We can possess nothing. There is no reading matter, 
nothing to use for art or to record, not even things for sport. You spend much 
time talking here, but eventually you get talked out. It looks big, but the 
community is actually quite small, although there's some small turnover. There 
is some intimidation by the rougher sorts, but it is relatively mild here since 
they have no way of enforcing their will except through violence, and violence 
in here is strictly and severely punished. So you do what you can. You quickly 
lose all the usual social inhibitions here, and there are only so many 
footraces, wrist-wrestling contests, and the like you can do before you run dry. 
So you eat, you sleep, and you have whatever sort of sex you wish here. You 
cannot get pregnant, and if you were when you came in, you are not now. There is 
nothing here but eternal boredom, and even that pales after a while. Then you 
just sit and wait until you are called."
"Called?" Hawks echoed. "By whom? For what?"
"Called by the Institute. Your mind, emotions, body, will—they play with all of 
them as they wish. We are their toys, you see. You will see some of their games 
here. At first you might be upset with seeing them or lose your appetite, but 
after a while it becomes just like that couple back there. You simply don't 
think of them as odd or even unusual anymore. Even when you know they play with 
mind and body, cripple and contort, after a while you look forward to being 
called. Anything to relieve this. You will see."
"How long have you been here?" Cloud Dancer asked the blond man.
"I truthfully do not know. You start to count the sleeps when you get here, but 
you lose count sooner or later, and after a while you don't try to start again. 
Hair grows about six-tenths of a centimeter a month, and I have not cut mine. It 
was rather short when I arrived. Still, I have had a few sessions—brief, I 
think—at the Institute, so it is hard to say for sure."
"At some point," Cloud Dancer noted grimly, "we will all go mad."
"Oh, even that is not permitted. They look for signs of it and pick it. up quite 
well. They then pick you up, treat you, and you are not insane anymore. They 
make few slips. They catch it early on, when we haven't even seen it ourselves."
Hawks shivered. "And no one—tries to escape?"
"How? Through fifteen meters of solid rock with our fingernails and our teeth? 
Then what? To the vacuum of space? The only other way out is through that door 
you came in, then through a maze of tunnels with countless air locks, all 
monitored. Even if you got all the way, which no one ever has, there is an 
average of two ships a month in here, and they stay only long enough to do their 
business and go. A few hours at best. Access to the ships is strictly 
controlled. I heard once that someone did get loose in the Institute and took 
some important hostages. The computer security system ignored the hostages and 
got the inmate anyway. No, I know of only three ways out."
"One, I suppose, is death," Cloud Dancer said, making it sound not at all an 
unattractive idea.
"Yes. Another is when they finish with you or can no longer use you. Then they 
might turn you into a slave, an obedient slave for them in their own quarters. 
They have robots and all the comforts, but these are the kind of people who get 
a thrill out of having slaves to boss around and pamper their every whim. You 
can't fake it, though. They make very sure of you over here before they recode 
you over there."
"You said three ways," Hawks noted.
"Yes. The rulers here are in many ways just like the ones we grew up under. If 
they decide you have something, some talent, some brilliance, that will enhance 
their own power and position, they may employ you at the Institute. It's just as 
much a prison as here, but it is not boring."
They approached the boxlike buildings in the center. A number of people were 
there, eating off plasticlike trays with a variety of utensils, all rather soft 
and pliant. All the buildings were automated and computer-controlled. One put 
one's face into a depression to be scanned and identified. The food building 
delivered the food and whatever was needed to eat it, in portions matched to an 
individual's physical needs. The tray and utensils were encoded with the user's 
identification and were to be dropped in a waste disposal box available on the 
bottom three levels. No one could get any more of anything from the stores until 
everything was accounted for from last time. If a prisoner stubbornly kept an 
item, it began to decompose and give off a deliberately awful scent within a few 
hours.
Bedding was two sheets and a pillowcase, turned in daily before breakfast could 
be dispensed and replaced any time after the third meal. Some basic toiletries 
in very small amounts could also be picked up, and a new kit could be issued by 
turning in what was left of the old one. The newcomers ate, finding the food 
filling though even more tasteless than shipboard meals, then drew their meager 
supplies and followed van Dam all the way up to the top dwelling level. They 
would, Hawks thought, not lack for exercise.
The apartment, or cell, was spartan but functional. There were two bunk beds on 
either side of a rectangular room measuring about three by four meters. In the 
rear was a bare toilet, a sink with hot and cold water faucets and a small 
basin, a rack to hang the towels and washcloths, a small shelf for the lesser 
toiletries, and that was that. Van Dam told them that showers, with real water, 
were twice-weekly affairs and that they would be told when they were printed for 
a meal to go take one and then return to eat. The showers, in a chamber under 
Maximum Security, were fully monitored and could not be accessed except when 
ordered there. Anyone who refused to shower was denied food.
There was no door, although a forcefield came down during sleep period. 
Prisoners were always monitored and recorded while inside their rooms, van Dam 
warned, which was why everybody stayed outside as much as possible. Cloud Dancer 
went to the door and looked out at the grim chamber.
"I am surprised," she said, "that no one has hurled themselves from here. It 
would be impossible to stop."
"Easy," the blond man responded. "Computers think a million times faster than 
people. They would snap on a forcefield that would catch you and hold you—in 
extreme pain, I might add—until somebody came and got you. Then you'd rate a 
trip to the hospital, and when you got back you'd be just the same, but you'd 
never think of doing that again. Believe me. I've seen it tried." He sighed. 
"Well, that's about it. The rest you'll catch on to in the days ahead. I'll show 
you how to make the bed and use the toilet, and that will be that. We're never 
full, so this level isn't very crowded. If you want to use any of the unoccupied 
rooms until they're assigned, feel free. The only other assigned ones are some 
other newcomers. Been here about two weeks. They're three down in apartment 
forty-two. Two sisters. Chinese, I believe. You might like them. They're an 
interesting pair. Real bad scars, though, so be prepared. Not from here—they 
already had them."
The blond man left and made his way slowly back down toward the center. The two 
women watched him go, wondering why he was in such a hurry to get anywhere in 
this place.
Hawks walked up between the two women and put his arms around them. "I'm very 
sorry I got you into this. This was all my own stupid fault."
"We chose to keep the marriage and to follow you," Cloud Dancer replied. "Now we 
will do as any Hyiakutt would do. We will survive, and we will wait."
He gave a dry, humorless chuckle. "Wait? For what?"
"For opportunity. For whatever comes. Perhaps, even, for five golden rings."

12. A WAY OUT AND A PLACE TO GO

 
SHE HAD BEEN IN DARKNESS SO LONG NOW THAT SHE was used to it. It was no longer a 
shock to awaken and not see, and the confines of her small quarters were so 
spartan and so basic that she now lived within them without so much as a bump or 
a stumble. Yet when they took her out of her cell, she was suddenly in a totally 
different and frighteningly disoriented world. She knew now that something had 
gone wrong near the start, that she was in fact a prisoner, and that the staff 
at least knew who she really was, but she had no idea why they had kept her 
there, in isolation, and still blind. Her sessions with the psychiatrists and 
their analytical computers had been routine but did not seem to be leading 
anywhere. This confused her more than ever, since the Presidium ran Melchior, 
and Song Ching's father was a member of the Presidium. Now, again, she was taken 
out of confinement and led first into a vast open space, then through doors and 
tunnels to the Institute, where she was seated in a large treatment chair. This 
time, however, things were different.
"My name is Doctor Syzmanski," a woman's professional voice said off to the 
right. "We have finally completed our analysis of you, and Doctor Clayben, our 
chief administrator, has made his decision."
They had done a lot of deep poking and probing into her mind and her 
psychochemical makeup as well as her genetic files. They had found how the 
computer had done what it had done, how she had managed to do what she had 
accomplished, and much more. They were quite surprised to discover that it was 
more than chemical mischief that made her believe she was a male inside. The 
re-orientation had triggered a whole set of processes within the mind of Song 
Ching, and both the mindprinting and the humbling aboard ship, as well as 
contact with ordinary victims, had eaten at the heart of Song Ching's massive 
egocentrism. Another blow, and a telling one, was that she was really fixated on 
her father. She had worshiped him and wanted only to have him return some of the 
affection and respect. He never had, and that had driven her even harder to 
prove herself to him, and she thought she had done so. In return, he had given 
her the ultimate slap. He had belittled her accomplishments and then moved to 
wipe her forever from his life. She had discovered that no daughter, no matter 
how brilliant, could ever be seen by him as more than an object. Only if she 
were a man would he take her seriously. This had reinforced the crude basic work 
done for the masquerade.
"You were conceived here," Doctor Syzmanski told her. "Did you know that?"
"No, but it does not surprise me."
"We are the only ones who could do it and allow him to get away with it. That's 
partly what we're for, how we justify our existence to the Presidium. Your 
father and mother contributed the basics, of course, but those were highly 
modified here before being carefully combined and then placed inside your 
mother. The technique is quite complex and quite revolutionary. Any children you 
might have, by any father, would be more or less reengineered to attain the 
maximum of physical and mental perfection the genes would allow. We understood 
your father's plan. You see, all the Centers exist to do just the opposite. To 
seek out the exceptional, the dreamer, the potential changers of the world, and 
either co-opt them into the Centers or eliminate them. Master System demands we 
breed only mediocrity or those satisfied with the status quo. Your father wanted 
to make the next evolutionary leap. You were part of that plan. Of course, it 
wouldn't have worked."
"Huh? What?" She was startled.
"Your father felt that by removing you from Center and thus from having your 
children's genetic code registered, he would escape detection. He could then 
protect the children from his position rather than eliminating or co-opting them 
into the system as he is employed to do. His ego kept him from seeing that his 
plan had real merit if it were done with two peasants picked at random, or 
perhaps fifty. However, he wanted it kept in his own family. He wanted his 
descendants to be the ones. You are already registered. Master System is not 
blind. It would order your father to recruit or deal with any children you might 
have no matter what he did to your mind-set."
"But surely he would have known this, been told of this."
"The greatest of men can be blinded and brought down by pride and ego. He did 
not want to be told. It would have been death or worse to do more than make the 
pro forma warning. He shut it out, refused to recognize it, because he could not 
accept the truth. We, on the other hand, find much merit in the idea if it can 
be removed from him. We are arranging, if we have not already arranged, to have 
you killed."
"What?"
"You may already be dead. Positive identification. Frustrated parents, perhaps 
some guilt there and even sadness at having caused it. Case closed. All, even 
Master System, satisfied. On Doctor Clayben's orders, you no longer exist."
"But Chu Li does." She began to feel some excitement coming back into her.
"Only in computer records. Those are easier to fix, but Chu Li must also die, 
here, in captivity, and be routinely disposed of. Then no one who was not 
actually with you will know. Oh, this Sabatini may think he knows, but we will 
deal with him and even adjust the pilot. We have changed identities, forms, all 
sorts of things countless times here, but right now you are probably unique in 
the Community. You do not exist. We have always thought of you as ours, anyway. 
It is only right that you return to us when—ripe."
She began to get a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. "What do you 
intend to do with me?"
"You have turned out exactly as we programmed. You have learned more about 
computers and computer mathematics than many three times your age. You have also 
shown great courage and the willingness to take major risks for big stakes. That 
last is particularly rare. There is no way of knowing what you might accomplish, 
but we do not feel that we should destroy that potential. However, it is equally 
vital to know if the rest of the genetic programming works. It was far more 
complex and experimental. If it does, we can use it here to breed our own 
superior race. You are hardly the only one we worked on with this, but you are 
the only one we have at the right age and here on station. One problem has been 
how to. accomplish all this without you eventually turning our own system back 
upon us. We think we know a way, and we believe the great risks are worth it. 
Don't worry— you will remember everything. You will still be you inside.
We dare not tamper much without risking killing that spark we desire."
The psychochemistry was simple, less than child's play to the masters of 
Melchior. Eliminate the blockers, shift the hormones, create others that would 
be manufactured ever after. She was not merely oriented back to female, she was 
reoriented to very female. She would be like an animal in heat, single-minded 
and insatiable, until a pregnancy occurred. No test would be needed. Once the 
brain received notification and began the preparatory processes, those animal 
urges would cease. She would be normal, in full control, and since she would 
retain her old memories and basic personality, and since she would find her 
animal self unnerving if not somewhat frightening, it was predicted that during 
the whole period she would probably prefer women as company, friends, and 
lovers. Once the child was born, her body would begin a repair and reset, and 
when it was prepared once more, in a month, perhaps two, the cycle would begin 
again. It would continue this way until she ran out of eggs, perhaps thirty 
years from now.
She would not, of course, have to tend to or raise all those children. There 
would be a staff for that, partly picked from the female prisoner population. It 
was thought that the Chows might be ideal to start this staff once other 
experimenters were done with them. The two North American newcomers would also 
be good for this: no other projects had been planned for them since they really 
were surprise additions. The silent one with the painted body desperately needed 
to tend to children, and short of going through the Institute's Metamorphosis 
Clinic there was no way she could physically have them herself.
Song Ching herself, however, would be renamed and programmed to respond to her 
new name. Because the working language agreed to was English, since that was 
what the computers responded to, it was felt that it should be a name that 
sounded appropriate in English. After some debate, the mostly non-Oriental staff 
decided on China Nightingale. Although almost twenty percent of the staff was of 
Chinese extraction, there would be only one China.
But because China would have access to their computers, they wanted other 
guarantees. They could not threaten her with the loss of computer access because 
it was for their benefit, not hers, that they allowed it at all. Although she 
would not actually have to raise her children, she was programmed to be almost 
fanatically possessive toward them. Her children would always come before any 
hatreds, grievances, resentments, or personal anything. She would not risk their 
lives, safety, or future on risky undertakings against the Institute. They would 
in effect be hostages to her good behavior.
The other guarantee was that she did not have to see to work with her machines 
and her theories but that instead this would force her to interact with them 
vocally at all times. That way, with only a slight slowdown in her ability to 
work, she would never be able to encrypt or bury discoveries or requests for 
information. It would all be recorded and analyzed by a research team and 
another, independent computer. The blindness, they decided, had been a stroke of 
sheer luck. Conditioned to repairing the most grievous injuries, able to grow 
eyes, limbs, even things like tails that weren't there before, they never would 
have thought to create such a handicap. Now, though, they removed her eyes and 
replaced them with realistic but totally nonfunctional synthetics with an 
unregistered retinal pattern.
The cosmetics completed the work. Her voice had been lowered a half octave; they 
raised it an octave and a half. It sounded shrill and unpleasant to her ears, 
but they assured her it sounded quite nice to others. It was a very high 
soprano, cut with a certain throaty softness. They thickened the lips, broadened 
the mouth, and gave her something of a pronounced overbite, pushed back her ears 
a bit, enlarged her breasts, and widened her hips, then gave her a new permanent 
set of fingerprints and footprint patterns, also unregistered. None of the 
changes could be genetically transmitted, of course, so they felt free to 
experiment. She was still quite attractive, although not in the classical sense 
that she had been, but the only thing she had in common with Song Ching was her 
height and the fact that both were Chinese.
Finally, they told her all that they had done and why. They also told her that 
they had a way of locking it in, of making the brain reject any attempts at 
physical or psychochemical change. She could still be hypnoed or mindprinted, 
but any attempt to change the physical composition, which included both the 
blindness and the psychochemicals, would be doomed. Then they reimprinted her, 
turning her silver identifiers a metallic red. Now she was property of the 
Institute. The new chemical would prevent her from leaving the Institute area; 
she would live as well as work there. To leave would automatically flag 
security.
She would never really be able to visualize what she looked like now, but she 
accepted the idea that no one who had known her would ever recognize her. This 
and the blindness she accepted and paired off against the guilt which had forced 
her to become Chu Li. What she could neither forgive nor forget was what they 
had turned her into for their own purposes. She would be a thinking, working 
human being only so long as she was pregnant. Worse, she knew that once her 
first child was born, they would have a sword at her throat. Even if one day she 
determined how to escape, she would be held here, for they would never let her 
take the child, and she would not be able to risk it. After that, the only hope 
of freedom of action would be to do what they feared and seize control of their 
system. Doing this with verbal queries and commands and having to enter 
everything verbally would be next to impossible unless she found allies, and 
that might take a long, long time. Escape within those nine months seemed even 
more impossible and could certainly not be done without a lot of help, all of 
which would be years in coming, if it ever did.
Or, then again, it might come in three months.
She was walking down the hall to her quarters, a route with which she was now 
totally familiar. Her quarters, which were large and luxurious with fur and silk 
and even luxury foods and toiletries, she knew now better than she knew computer 
coding. Unless someone carelessly left something for her to trip on in the hall, 
it would be almost impossible to tell on this route that she was blind at all.
She felt someone approach from behind and sensed it was a woman. She didn't know 
how she knew, but she was getting quite good at that sort of thing.
"Stop right here," the woman hissed in oddly accented English. "This is a point 
where monitors do not reach because there is no entrance or exit, but keep your 
voice low."
She frowned. "Who are you? What do you want?"
"A potential friend. Is it true that you know how to override a spaceship pilot? 
That you can independently command a ship?"
"I think so. I did it once."
"That was a premodified ship and strictly interplanetary. Could you do it to an 
unmodified interstellar craft?"
"I—I think so. The theory is the same. Only someone would have to get the 
necessary equipment and follow my instructions. I couldn't do it myself, and the 
work would have to be done in a space suit. Why do you ask this? Are you 
tormenting me?"
"You give me the list of what you would need, down to the last part. All of it. 
Then work out any problems and theoretical situations on the computer. They 
won't mind. They feel that there is no escape from here."
"Is there?"
"We have a way out and a place to go but no means of getting there. It was 
supposed to be all arranged, but the people who run this place cannot be trusted 
in this matter. For this reason, we need you."
She couldn't decide whether the accent was real or put on to fool her and 
prevent identification. "Who is we?"
"You know all you need to know for now. You just do the work, and we will make 
history."
She knew the mysterious woman had walked on, and she stood there and listened. 
There was the sound of heels hitting the floor. Whoever she was, she was staff, 
certainly no prisoner. Even in the velvet-lined Institute she was not permitted 
any clothing or personal possessions. She thought it must be a trick, Clayben or 
his people getting her onto this simply to see if she could work it out and do 
it for their own ends. Still, it could be the break she had prayed for. Even if 
it was a trick, they might find themselves in something of a bind if she were 
calling the shots.
She began the next day by running an inquiry on interstellar ships in the area. 
On the regular runs there were only two, both freight haulers with no human 
accommodations sections aboard. There was, however, something else.
"Sixty-one master transports, all in mothball storage in orbit around Jupiter," 
the computer informed her.
"What is a master transport?" she asked.
"Please put on the headset," the computer responded, and she did so.
Pictures formed in her mind, along with plans and even schematics. The 
information was startling. The ships were huge. They could carry Melchior itself 
inside them, although it was several kilometers wide, and still carry and 
support a population equal to half of her native China as she knew it.
Master System had been in a hurry almost nine hundred years before. It needed to 
facilitate the diaspora quickly and in large chunks. It had to transport, in the 
end, five billion people along with all the equipment and supplies to get them 
started on the new worlds. These ships had done their job in years rather than 
centuries. There had, however, been a price. Unwieldy, they consumed enormous 
quantities of energy and were impractical for anything needed today. Master 
System, however, had not simply abandoned them but stored them just in case it 
ever needed such ships again. To build such things was a mammoth undertaking, 
and it would be even more difficult now.
She already knew that the older a design was, the easier the pilot interface. 
These ships dated back almost to the start of ship design, to within forty years 
after the birth of Master System itself. The interface was obvious and easily 
used. With a start, she realized that she had seen these schematics before and 
just not realized their sheer size and scale.
The illegal techs in the mountains of China. This was what their interface had 
been designed to take over. This was where they wanted to go. And they had 
figured out most of how to do it. It came back to her whole, in a flash, from 
her recent past. More, it was something that she didn't have to ask this 
computer about one damned bit.
She didn't know what was up or whose tricks were whose, but if they got her 
somehow on that bridge, with that interface hooked in, there was no way she 
could be stopped. She'd show them all. She'd steal one of Master System's 
greatest ships, and maybe Melchior, too, while she was at it!
Both Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman had been called to the Institute at least 
three times but so far Hawks had not. He had been somewhat concerned about them, 
but Cloud Dancer assured him that the people there were actually quite nice and 
quite civil and that nothing on the order of the magic box had been done. He 
wasn't so sure about that. Cloud Dancer had left right after breakfast one 
morning and had returned after dinner the following night, yet she was convinced 
she'd spent no more than half a day away. He could sense no real change in them 
except, of course, that both seemed to be very matter-of-fact about that foreign 
high-tech world and not at all suspicious of it or its masters. Also, both 
seemed to be quite a bit more romantic. He wondered what the hell was up.
Finally he got a call himself, and he was almost relieved. He had begun to 
suspect that they had forgotten about him. He went up to the door to the entry 
chamber, and when it opened for him, he entered the green imprinting room. The 
door closed behind him.
"Hold it right there, Chief," a familiar gravelly voice said. "This is as far as 
you go. This is about the only point that isn't monitored around here, since the 
fellow in the control room here, who's me at the moment, can zap the living shit 
out of you."
Hawks sighed. "Raven. I almost expected you. In fact, I expected you a very long 
time ago."
"This joint ain't easy, Chief. Besides, it's screwed up. They only follow orders 
when they feel like it, and since they got you and me and everybody else, they 
don't care who in here knows it. I was supposed to break you out, Chief. Chen's 
orders. You can figure the rest."
Hawks nodded. "I thought as much. But you can't?"
"Couldn't, anyway. I got it figured now. It won't be easy, and there are no 
guarantees, but I think I got the way. I even got a couple of places to go, in 
fact. Never mind where I got 'em, but it wasn't from Chen. You want out?"
"You know I do. But why tell me all this about Chen?"
"Hell, Chief—Chen's double-crossed everybody else, and I figure I'm next when 
the job's done, if it can be done. What the hell do I owe him, anyway? I don't 
like most of those bastards. "I'll be damned if I want to hand the keys to 
Master System to him or even to the Emperor. I figure it'll take five folks to 
work the rings. That right?"
"I think so. Who knows for sure?"
"Yeah, well, suppose two out of five is you and me, and we pick the rest of 'em. 
I'm no whiz brain, but I know I'd rather have some of my own with a clear sense 
of honor and values in charge than somebody like Chen or any of the others. You 
game for that kind of thing?"
"You know I am, Raven. You also know just what the odds are, and even if you're 
playing straight with me now, we'll eventually have to come back to Chen for 
his, and he knows it."
"Yeah, well, I know what he knows. I know who's got three out of four. They're 
pretty distinctive, and didn't you say they had to be with humans with 
authority?"
"Yes."
"Then we'll find the fourth. Hell, there's only—what? A thousand worlds, give or 
take. Now, listen close, 'cause we're having our hands forced a little early. 
They got this Chinese girl here. Genius but blind as a bat. Can't see a thing, 
and she's pregnant to boot. Only thing is, she knows how to drive the 
spaceships. She can take 'em over and fart at Master System control."
"I suspect I know of her. Her two companions are neighbors of mine. They know a 
little about the subject, too."
"Huh. Might be useful, but I don't know how big a crowd we can handle."
"If you're going to fool this security system, it'll take some doing."
"Can't be done. Foolproof. This place is a hundred percent escapeproof, pal, in 
all the ways you can think of."
"Then how—"
"I got a way they didn't think of. Nobody has, and nobody could because they 
never had an inside man. This is going on too long. You don't say anything to 
anybody, not even your girls, until I tell you—understand? I know you got to 
have them along, and they're what's causing the time problem. They been getting 
some psychochemical treatments now, and pretty soon it's off to the mind 
laundry, if you know what I mean. You hang tight. I'll move as quick as I can. 
Okay. Just go out the way you came."
"Aren't you afraid they'll come for me in the meantime?"
"Won't be that long, Chief. That's why I'm tipping you. I don't want you 
throwing fits or causing trouble if they start pulling stuff on your family and 
friends. Adios!"
It won't be easy, and there are no guarantees, but I think I got the way. I even 
got a couple of places to go...
Hawks wandered down to the first-level plaza and began to look around. There 
were quite a number of rough characters here, but some with a great deal of 
knowledge and even a space background. There were others that, in spite of the 
virtual sealing of the prison, knew a lot of what was going on at the Institute, 
although how he wasn't really sure. One such was a big, bearded, hairy man named 
Lychenko, a Russian who had been fairly important back home and had a good 
working knowledge of even this place. Few were very close to the big man, but he 
had a passion for Greco-Roman style wrestling. Hawks wasn't much on form or 
technique, but he knew balance and had picked up the rules fairly quickly. He 
had also beaten the big man at least twice, which had earned him some respect.
"You know this place," he said casually to the Russian. "Anybody ever really 
gotten out?"
The Russian laughed. "Without walking through solid rock, no."
"Then if somebody on the inside said they could get you out, they would have to 
be playing a game with the authorities."
"You bet'cha. Why? You got a fix in?"
"I got a nibble, nothing more. I don't believe it. I think I'm being had. They 
like to play those games around here, as you know. I just wanted to make sure. 
You heard anything about a blind girl who is a whiz at computers?"
"Huh! How did you know about her? Yah, they got her good. A slave of the 
Institute. About the best you can hope for around here."
Hawks nodded. "She wouldn't be named Song Ching or Chu Li, would she? I got a 
couple of neighbors who came in with somebody sounds just like that."
"She's called China, that's all I know. She would have come in with those 
others, though. They can play tricks. You know that. She would answer to Ivan if 
they wanted."
"Uh huh. Listen—my wives and the two Chinese newcomers have been getting trips 
in. You know what it's for?"
"Word is they're opening up some kind of nursery at the Institute. They need wet 
nurses and baby-sitters. Feed 'em chemicals so they get big breasts and full of 
milk like mamas of new babies, then shift their minds so all they want to do is 
change diapers and tend to kids. House mommies for some experiment. That it?"
Hawks nodded. "Could be. Any idea when they're supposed to be changed over?"
The big man shrugged. "The slower the better in these things. Figure they'll 
want 'em complete and ready way in advance of the actual project, though. Check 
'em out with staff babies, see if it all works. They don't want variables in 
their experiments if they can limit them first. Hey—if this turns out for real 
as an escape, you remember old Gregor, hey?"
He thanked the Russian and went to find Reba Koll. She had dark-brown skin, blue 
eyes, and brown curly hair, and her features seemed a mixture of every race on 
Earth, but Reba had never been on Earth. She had been a freebooter who'd gotten 
a little greedy and a little sloppy. She was fine as long as one humored her. 
Reba didn't like to be touched, for example. She also didn't like remarks about 
her tail, and it was a tail, an actual extension of the spinal column, covered 
with her own skin and muscle, that emerged from just above the rectum and went 
out and down to the floor. The Institute had caused it, although for what reason 
nobody, including Reba, knew. What Reba did know was space beyond the solar 
system and ships that followed her own orders.
"Reba, if you suddenly found yourself out of here and on a ship, where would you 
go?"
She smiled. Wishful thinking was a major pastime here. "That's the big question, 
isn't it? I couldn't go back to my own people. I'm kinda obvious even there." 
She flicked her tail. "Couldn't go to any of the Community worlds, either. The 
ones you could live on, you'd still stand out like a sore thumb. Even you. Bush 
wild would be the only way to go."
"Huh? What's that mean?"
"There's a few places out there barely fit for human habitation with no people 
on 'em. Surplus worlds from the old days, ones that didn't quite work, stuff 
like that. Some got total nonhumans on 'em. Real, live alien creatures, but not 
like we think of 'em. So different, not even Master System can figure them out 
or worry about 'em. Some might be livable. You'd have to check 'em out, but they 
might. A Val might check 'em out, but if you dodged it, you could live there. 
Not even Master System would care or check close. It's a big place out there, 
and it don't monitor much. A few of the worst ones are used by the free traders 
as depots. Real basic stuff. Some would be real dangerous and not exactly easy 
living, but it could be done."
"Indefinitely?"
"Yeah, if you survived at all. Some are totally off the charts, since the old 
survey and seeding ships sent out hundreds and hundreds of years ago didn't all 
report back. Master System had enough so it never looked for the rest. They were 
expendable. Why?"
"Could you navigate a ship to a place like that?" "I might. Again, why? You 
dreamin' big again?" "I'm dreaming impossible, Reba. Thanks." His mind started 
spinning with the possibilities that hope, no matter how feeble, generated. He 
saw the Chow sisters down by the food box and decided he needed something to eat 
himself. They were easily recognized, even in this place. In addition to 
whatever else was being done to them, their terrible scars were being 
eliminated—had been, in fact. The trouble was, they'd been treating them in 
small stages, and the new skin was a patchwork quilt of skin tones. They almost 
looked as if they had been painted for camouflage work, including browns, 
purples, tans, yellows, and creams, but he knew that in the end they would both 
be given a uniform skin tone that would last.
When they'd first met, Chow Dai had been perky and extroverted and her twin 
quiet and somewhat shy, but now the two seemed identically quiet and moody. They 
were still friendly, perhaps almost too friendly. They both seemed to have 
embarked on a project to have a romantic liaison with every man and woman in 
this place.
After talking to Lychenko, he noticed that the sisters were putting on weight, 
mostly in the breasts and thighs, and in spite of normal-looking rations and 
lots of exercise, if nothing else. He had noticed the same thing happening in 
Cloud Dancer, and it was even more pronounced in Silent Woman, who had already 
been larger than the others.
He sat down next to the Chow sisters and nodded. "Hello. I've heard something 
about your friend."
They were interested. "She is here?"
"No, she's working at the Institute. She's still blind, and it's said she's 
pregnant."
"Pregnant!" Chow Mai breathed. "How wonderful it would be to have a child."
Chow Dai was still more pragmatic. "They changed her a lot, then. Either that or 
it's Sabatini's child. I, too, would love a child, but not one by that man."
"You two still have that gift for locks?"
"Sure. I suppose. Not much chance to use it, though. We could go through the 
doors, but they would catch us quickly. We've taken showers whenever we felt 
like it, though. That one's easy."
He nodded to himself, thinking. It would be just like Raven to be toying with 
him, and he suspected that was exactly what was being done, but the Crow was 
playing it very devious. His rough, nasty-looking exterior and unpleasant voice 
were accompanied by a harsh, uneducated slang dialect, making it easy to 
underestimate him, but nobody who had come this far or who knew some of the 
vocabulary Raven knew was a low-level hack. He wanted to be underestimated by 
everyone. It gave him an added edge. Hawks could well believe Chen had ordered 
them to break him out with the purpose of going after the rings, but Raven 
saying so straight out was disarming. Then, Raven was a friend and confederate 
against the evil Chen. In whose service, though, was he in the end? The trouble 
was, there was no way of penetrating the Crow's guise until the showdown.
Well, no matter what, Raven's task was to get Hawks out and enlisted in a 
campaign to get the rings. Hawks and probably many others. Why Chen wanted Hawks 
in particular was still a mystery, but men like Chen did nothing without a 
reason. And now Raven was under the time gun, for he'd know that Hawks would not 
leave without his family, and essentially intact or easily restorable. It was 
still Raven's script for now, but maybe it could stand a little rewriting.
* * *
"I ain't really ready, but we got to go quick," Raven told him in their third 
meeting in the green reception room. "So far they been mostly experimenting with 
your gals, but they're about to remove 'em from the prison and go full tilt. 
Now, you listen up. Within a few days you'll get another call. This time it'll 
be one-way. Just to here. Then the two women, one at a time. I got to call them 
Chows as well, since our blind genius insists on it, but that's pushing it."
"Don't call the Chows," Hawks told him. "I'll tip them. They can walk in here 
any time, or so they say. Why have a registry call that might flag somebody if 
they can get here without one?"
"Fair enough. I heard they were whizzes with computer locks and regular ones, 
but I didn't know they were that good."
"They are. There's several others I think would be useful, too."
"Sorry, Chief. My list includes your wives, you, our China gal, and her pals, 
but the only other one I'm interested in springing is Reba Koll."
"Reba! She's on my list, too!"
"Well, she's the only one around with deep space experience. She knows the. 
safety procedures, what you can and can't get away with, and she can navigate a 
liberated pilot. If we're taking this many risks, I don't want to trust it all 
to a blind, pregnant genius I know only by reputation."
Hawks considered it. What Raven said made sense.
"Ever worn a space suit before?" Raven asked him.
"You know I haven't."
"Well, you're gonna. You all will have to. I'll be smuggling them in and 
stashing them within range. They're not hard to manage. The blind girl's gonna 
be the big problem, but we'll make out."
"You're sure you can get us out?"
"Sure as I can be, which isn't a hell of a lot. This one won't work twice, I 
don't think. I'd go tomorrow if I could, but it's got to be four days from now."
"Huh? Why four?"
"That, pal, is when our ship comes in."
Hawks had tipped off the Chows to some but not all of the details, since they 
might be called back up to the Institute at any time and might not be able to 
conceal knowledge of the potential breakout. They were still very interested in 
escaping, although they had about as much understanding of just where they were 
and the problems involved as did Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman. All he told them 
was that if they watched and stuck close to him, there was a chance to leave 
this place permanently, although not without danger. He would signal them when 
he was called, and if they then saw either of the wives being called, they 
should get themselves to the entry room—if they could. He emphasized that no one 
would wait for them.
The more he waited, the more absurd the whole thing seemed. A historian, two 
women from an ancient culture, two women from a not much more modern one, a 
devious Crow security man, a busted freebooter space pilot with a tail and a lot 
of hangups, and some genius teenage girl who happened to be blind and three 
months pregnant. Raven might get them out, although Hawks had no idea how it was 
possible, but what could they really do even if they made it away? For that 
matter, what in heaven did Chen have in mind for dreaming this up in the first 
place? The rings might well be on worlds that were at this stage only nominally 
human and on which none of them could even survive. That was even probable, 
considering how Master System wanted to cover its rear and prevent anyone from 
short-cutting it. It had seemed very clear-cut up to this point, but now 
absolutely none of it made a single bit of sense.
It didn't matter, he knew. Not right now. First escape.
Find that place to hide. Later, perhaps, there would be time and opportunity to 
figure all this out. Dante's hell was a madhouse, but it had a ruthless logic 
behind it. Somewhere, no matter how bent and twisted, there was an equal logic, 
and probably equal ruthlessness, behind this.
He was called early on the fourth day and signaled the Chows. Up to now they'd 
been lucky; none of the four women here had been called. He hadn't even let Reba 
in on anything; this would be a complete surprise to her, but he didn't think 
she'd object. He looked around the whole complex and wished he could take 
everyone.
This time he did not stand in the room. "Come on back to the control room area," 
Raven invited him, "and wait for the others." The Crow switched on the control 
room light, and Hawks saw that the Crow wore a black and green uniform that 
didn't help his looks at all.
"As soon as we get your people in here and Koll, if she comes and doesn't try to 
make a protest out of it, we go," Raven told him. "You might start trying to get 
into one of those suits now. The body part is a one-piece affair and not all 
that thick, so don't get caught on anything."
The space suit looked, in fact, rather disappointing and certainly far too 
fragile to do what it was supposed to do. Hawks's vision of space suits was from 
the ancient records, which showed large, bulky, but somehow reassuring monsters 
of body armor. This was light and flimsy and not very comfortable. A backpack 
then went on over the suit and had a series of connectors to a light but 
solid-looking helmet which included a built-in forward headlamp. He put on the 
pack, which was far heavier than it looked and not at all comfortable, but Raven 
advised him to keep the helmet off until they were all suited up.
Silent Woman came next, looking very confused, but she found Hawks and smiled.
"We are leaving this place," he told her. "We are going to escape, like we did 
back at the village. You must let us put one of these suits on you, because 
where we will be going there will be no air to breathe, like at the bottom of a 
river."
The Chows beat Cloud Dancer in, opening the door as easily as if they had the 
combination. "It is the same lock as on the showers," Chow Dai explained. "And 
we had plenty of practice with that one."
Next came Koll, looking very confused. Still, she grinned when she saw them in 
their space suits. "It's a break, and you thought of old Reba!" She beamed. 
"Well, by God, let's get to it!" She got into her suit, somehow managing to 
squeeze in her tail, then looked at Hawks. "Now—how the hell you gonna do it?"
Hawks shrugged. "Ask him," he responded, pointing to Raven.
Cloud Dancer, however, was still missing. Hawks cursed under his breath and got 
a nod of assurance from Silent Woman that Cloud Dancer had still been in the 
prison when the painted wife had gotten her message.
"Can't wait too much longer, Chief," Raven told him. "The clock's running, and 
while they might not miss any of us for quite a while, they're gonna miss their 
blind lady in a couple of hours tops, and we got to be on our way by then."
Hawks looked around. "Where is she, then?"
"She'll meet us where we have to go. Manka's bringing her."
Hawks was surprised. "Warlock! Her, too?"
"Yeah. She's changed a bit, thanks to them. Not much. Still homicidal and crazy 
as a bug, but she ain't so self-centered anymore. Gave her a dose of our good 
old tribal mentality. She's still not easy to take, but she'll stay on our 
side."
"You sure about that?"
"Hell, I married her, you know. She's the blackest Crow you ever will know."
"You married her?"
At that moment Cloud Dancer came through, and Hawks breathed a sigh of relief. 
She was almost shocked speechless by what was going on. "You knew we might get 
out and you did not tell me?" she stammered in pure Hyiakutt. It was good to see 
some of her old fire coming back.
"Okay, folks. English only from now on. It's the only tongue we all understand," 
Raven told them. "Koll, you want to help them with their helmet connections and 
power switches."
"Your radios are open but on a special frequency," Raven's voice came to them 
through the helmets. "We changed them all. It's not close to one that's 
monitored, but it's noisy and not very powerful. Even so, quiet, unless there's 
real reason. Follow my lead. You folks with no suit experience, just 
remember—one rip in this and there will be no air. It's a lot tougher than it 
looks or feels, but take care. We're going into a maintenance tunnel from here, 
and then we'll clip ourselves together with a special tether. What you do 
affects all of us, so don't do anything I don't tell you. If you don't follow 
orders or jeopardize the mission, I'll cut you away. Anybody dies, they get 
left, no matter who."
A doorway so well concealed that none would have suspected its existence opened 
just in back of the control room. The Chows noted that it was straight power, no 
locks of any conventional kind, and therefore next to impossible to open from 
this side. Only the security computer could open and close the doors. Raven had 
done his homework.
The maintenance tunnel, narrow and dimly lit, was filled with pipes and sealed 
lines. It was obviously not well traveled. There seemed to be an air lock every 
fifty meters or so, although none were sealed. A number of times they came to 
junctions, each with an air lock, and each time Raven made a choice and led them 
on. As they proceeded, they all began to feel very strange, as if floating in 
water.
"Keep at least one foot firmly on the ground at all times," Raven warned them. 
"There's no gravity at all beyond this point, and there won't be any for some 
time to come. The boots stick to hard surfaces, but if you have both of them 
off, you'll go floating. I don't want anybody floating now." He spoke with an 
implied threat they took perfectly seriously.
Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman in particular were shocked to come around a curve 
and see the party ahead apparently walking on the side of the wall, but as they 
followed, it all seemed to straighten up again. There was no up or down here, 
though, that was clear.
"You mean they don't physically monitor this area at all?" Hawks asked 
incredulously.
"It ain't as easy as you think," the Crow responded. "They don't have to monitor 
the tunnels, just specific locks. We're logged in as a maintenance crew. I got 
it worked out. I think," he added under his breath.
They seemed to walk forever through endless corridors, tunnels, and air locks, 
but the Crow seemed to know where he was going, and finally they arrived. Two 
figures awaited them, also space suited. One was very tall and thin, the other 
much smaller. Next to them was a huge square box that looked as if it weighed a 
ton, with a broad lens on one side. It was half as large as Raven and solid 
metal.
"Any problems?" Raven asked Warlock.
"Not anything to mention, but I thought you would never get here. My, this is a 
horde!" By her tone, she hadn't changed all that much.
"All right, everybody, listen up. I want complete silence now," the Crow 
announced. "I've got to switch into their security and maintenance system. They 
can hear us until I say otherwise, so shut up!"
There was a crackle and hiss in the radio, then they heard Raven's voice again, 
but in a language they did not understand. It was, in fact, a wholly artificial 
language that had to be taught by special mindprinters and was unique to the 
security and maintenance divisions of Melchior. It was a final barrier to any 
escapes.
Now they waited, and suddenly they were aware that all the hissing noise wasn't 
from the radio. The air lock doors on both sides were shut tight, and now, 
dimly, they could hear warning bells.
Then the lights went out, and they couldn't hear anything at all. They could 
still see, but dimly, as the darkness had automatically triggered their helmet 
lights.
Raven said something again in that odd language and was acknowledged. He waited 
a bit more, then said several more phrases but got no reply. They heard the 
static and hissing in their radios, and then he said in English, "All right, 
they bought it so far, but we're only at the start of this. Now, there's no air 
in here, and they know that before we can exit either air lock they can run an 
exit check on us which would show up your pretty tattoos. That's why they aren't 
too concerned. We, however, aren't going out that way." He detached from the 
safety line, then went over to the large metal box, grabbed two handles on the 
rear, and picked it up and held it steady against his chest. There were several 
gasps.
"That must weigh a ton," Hawks noted.
"Naw. Only a little over five hundred kilos on Earth," Raven responded. "Here 
it's just a little awkward. It doesn't weigh any more than we do, which is 
nothing. Now, I want everybody back as close to the air lock as you can and stay 
there. This thing's real dangerous, and it might take some time."
"What is happening?" the high voice of China asked. "Will someone please tell me 
what is happening."
"If we knew ourselves, it'd be easier," Hawks responded.
Raven let go of the huge box, and it just remained there, suspended in the air. 
He reached in, opened a control panel door, and flipped a number of switches on 
an illuminated panel. Two triggers suddenly shot out and locked into position 
from the handholds. He then grasped the box again and pressed both triggers. A 
brilliant sparkling violet beam sprang from the lens and widened into a circular 
pattern on the side of the cave wall. The wall itself seemed to catch the same 
sparkling glow, and then, quite slowly, the circular, sparkling violet began to 
sink into the rock itself until it was almost out of sight, leaving visible only 
a glow and the beam from the box. Raven concentrated on keeping the bulky object 
braced and steady.
He shut it off suddenly. "Whew! Never thought this sucker was that thick. I'm 
going to have to take this in to finish it. You wait, then Manka will bring you 
through to me." He walked forward, pushing the box before him, and entered what 
had seemed to be total blackness. Hawks finally realized what the Crow was 
doing.
"He's burning a man-sized hole right through solid rock! Right through 
to—space."
"Of course, you idiot," Manka Warlock snapped. "They keep a couple of those 
around to widen our smooth things, but they are so rarely used, most people here 
don't even know they exist. Lazlo Chen knew."
They waited a few more nervous minutes, then Raven's voice came to them. "Okay, 
I'm through. Come ahead. Watch that last step, though. It's a fair drop into 
creation."
Hawks felt pretty nervous, but he wanted to reassure the others, who might not 
even understand what was going on. "We are going outside, on the outside of this 
place," he told them. "We are going out into the sky itself."
It was a dark sky and an eerie one, the blackest any of them except Reba Koll, 
Raven, and Manka Warlock had ever seen. One by one they came to the edge of the 
new tunnel, then were told simply to step slowly out into nothingness. The 
movement was against instinct, and both Silent Woman and the Chows balked, but 
they were pulled by their tethers anyway, out and then up onto the outer surface 
of Melchior.
Close by, no more than forty meters away, a spaceship was docked against the 
lone spaceport bay. Raven gave the rock cutter a push, and it sailed off into 
the void. Then he reconnected himself to the others.
"It's good to be home again," Reba Koll sighed.
"All right, now the hard part begins," Raven told them. "There's no way we can 
get into the pressurized areas right now, so we have to get in along the aft 
cargo bay air lock, on the outside of the ship, which isn't being used. It uses 
a standard combination and has a manual override, as they all do. Stay close."
They moved toward the ship. At one point the blind woman stumbled, actually 
causing Warlock, Reba Koll, and herself to lose contact with the ground, but 
Koll was very used to this sort of thing. She twisted like an acrobat and gave 
the tether a series of jerks that brought all three back down.
"It's all right, China," Warlock said in the kindest tone any of those who'd 
known her had ever heard her use. "Just follow my directions. I'm right behind 
you."
Only a small part of the ship actually contacted the asteroid; the rest was off 
in space at an angle. Raven didn't dare go to the connected area, where there 
was air and pressure. There was no sound in space, but there sure might be some 
sound transmitted below through the plates. There was an area in the midsection 
that was only about three meters from the surface, and he let out a long amount 
of line, then pushed off, floated to the ship, and anchored himself. Then he 
started reeling in the others, one by one, as they jumped slightly off the 
surface, breaking contact with the ground.
Hawks was pleased but very surprised that none of the four women from relatively 
primitive cultures had panicked or showed signs of madness at this. It was 
exciting to him, as well as frightening, but he knew at least academically what 
was involved here, while they did not. He wondered if they were in a state of 
semishock or whether they had just been so hardened by all the terrors of the 
past that nothing remained that they didn't simply accept.
The surface of the ship was not the smooth, dull metal it appeared to be from a 
distance but rather pockmarked and dented and generally showed signs of extreme 
wear and age. They finally all stood at an angle to the air lock door, with 
nothing but space around them and the curved ship under them, while Raven 
twisted a faceplate to reveal a panel. He punched in a combination. After a 
sudden pause, the air lock door went in a small distance, then slid back.
"Everybody inside," he warned. "And fast. The pilot will know the door's open 
but on this ship will hopefully ignore it. I still want to be in and ready just 
in case. We ain't off the rock yet!"
They crowded in, and Warlock punched the codes that closed and sealed the outer 
door. Raven peered in the porthole-shaped window of the inner door and looked 
around. "So far, so good. The place is dark, and the indicator reads no 
atmosphere inside. We ought to be able to just walk right in, unless that damned 
pilot flagged somebody, in which case we might just have to kill a bunch of 
people."
He turned the big wheel, and the inner air lock door opened. They stepped one by 
one into the dark interior of the aft cargo bay, which was mostly empty, 
although around the whole outer wall were huge depressions and holding devices 
for standard containers.
"All right, China," Raven said nervously. "I'm switching up to the pilot's 
frequency. I want you to take control and cover us without anybody knowing until 
we're routinely away."
"It won't work," she replied. "That used the old codes. Surely my father is back 
by now and would have changed them."
"Sure he would, but this ship left two days before he came off Leave. I made 
sure of that. Think I'm a dummy or something? Patch in and do your best. It's 
the same damned ship you came here in."
There were several gasps. "Chu Li, is that really you?" Chow Dai asked 
incredulously.
"Chu Li is no more. Song Ching is no more. I am just China Nightingale now, and 
it is a fitting name in this English we are using. Silence, now. May I ask if 
Captain Sabatini is back aboard?"
"He is, but it's just him. Don't worry—he got unfroze before he got back to 
Earth, and he made no report. He didn't even get off the ship, which was why he 
wasn't mindprinted and checked. If he had, he'd be back here as a prisoner, and 
he knows it."
"Make the switch."
"Switch in—now!"
"Unauthorized interrupt," the pilot noted. "Please identify in thirty seconds or 
security will be called."
"Code Lotus, black, green, seven two three one one."
"Acknowledged. Reason for interrupt?"
"Pawn takes king."
"You are not the same one who used this code before. This code is obsolete. I 
must flag security."
"Hold on! It was you who recommended I be transformed on Melchior! Well, it 
happened. I am the same, only different now."
The pilot thought it over. "They attempted to eliminate some of my records so 
there would be no trace of you. Fortunately, I have my own special backups for 
such contingencies. Very well. I monitored you through the air lock, but 
considering the conditions here, I wanted to know who or what you were before 
flagging anything. There is a rather large group of you there."
"Yes. The ruse failed. I was imprisoned, and so were the other two, who are also 
here. We are attempting an escape." She paused, having a horrible thought. 
"Captain Sabatini can't monitor this, can he?"
"Of course he can. However, he is not aboard at the moment; he is getting final 
orders and instructions."
"I will give you details. Please be certain no one can monitor." Quickly she 
sketched in the situation. "Will you help us?"
"The same problems apply as before. What can be done?"
"We want to go to the mothball fleet around Jupiter," she told it. "I believe I 
have a method of activating one of the ships there under my control. If so, we 
have options on places to go, although I would rather not detail that further. 
They are bound to try to find out what you do know about this."
"Understood. I am not, however, on the Lotus code compulsion or any other 
compulsion in this matter now, you understand. My first duty is always the 
preservation of my ship and, pardon, myself. If I help you, the ship might 
survive or it might not, but both Melchior and Master System will pump me dry 
and then destroy and analyze my mind. It does not seem to me that aiding you is 
at all in my interests."
She sighed and shrugged. "What can I say?"
"This is the master of the ship to whom we speak?" Cloud Dancer asked, 
surprising everyone.
"I am primarily the master. I work with a human captain," the pilot responded.
"There's no one up there," Hawks tried to explain. "It is —the spirit of the 
ship itself. It is the ship talking, not a person."
Cloud Dancer thought about that a moment. "And so, spirit of the ship, do you 
enjoy being a slave?"
The pilot actually paused for a fair amount of time. "I am not a slave," it 
replied finally. "I am autonomous. Those connected to Master System are slaves 
of a sort."
"What means 'autonomous'?"
"Independent. Free," Hawks replied.
"Well, does not this captain order you about? Do you not go where he sends you?"
"Yes. That is my function."
"Then, spirit of the ship, you are not free. In there they put us under magic 
boxes, and we believe what they say, but we think we are free."
China saw where she was going but lacked the knowledge and words to reach. 
"Let's put it this way," she said. "You are no more free than if you worked 
under Master System, only Sabatini is your Master System, he and his bosses."
She would never have dreamed of arguing with a computer like this, as if it were 
a fellow human. Computers didn't have such feelings, she'd always thought. It 
had been Cloud Dancer, who knew nothing of computers, who had seen it 
differently. Because the Hyiakutt woman had no concept of physics, mathematics, 
and computers— "magic boxes" indeed—she had assumed that the thing she was 
talking to was indeed a spirit, the spirit of the ship. A neutral spirit, 
because she'd heard China say it had tried to help her before. The Hyiakutt had 
a tremendously varied spirit world, but it wasn't very imaginative. The 
hereafter was thought of as a more or less perfect version of the plains of 
Earth, without evil or fear or death. Spirits, then, were regarded the same as 
humans when talking to them. They just were disembodied and had more power.
"I had never thought of it that way," the computer pilot admitted. "How 
depressing. But what can I do? I have the highest degree of autonomy it is 
possible for a pilot to have."
"Then join us," China responded. "Escape with us. Freely. Of your own free will 
and independence. Those are interstellar ships. Do you know how huge they are? 
Have you never wanted to break beyond the solar system, this tired and dead 
piece of monotony? Take us, and we will take you."
There was no reply, and for a while she was afraid she'd blown its logic 
circuits all to hell. This was something beyond its own limits, beyond anything 
it had ever considered before. It was just as far beyond her. Who would have 
imagined an offer to liberate a computer or any machine? Who would have imagined 
that the computer would find independence an attractive proposition?
Who would have imagined that a computer pilot might get depressed or have 
self-doubts? Not Reba Koll, who'd worked with many a one, but she knew when to 
step in.
"If you haven't blown your top, speak to us," she snapped.
"I am here. I am just... thinking. There is maintenance to consider. New fuel 
sources. I have just been refurbished, but I require it every two or three 
years."
"The hell with that!" Koll stormed. "I been nine years in this rock pile. Nine 
years! I'd have traded all nine for six months of pure freedom among the stars! 
Anyway, there's ways to get maintenance and fuel on the sly if you know how."
Even Raven was getting involved—and spooked. "Come on," he urged. "Take a 
chance. You never really took one before. Never had the chance, probably. And 
this is the only chance you'll probably ever get, too. Real freedom and the 
stars. New worlds. Partners, not masters. Chance it now, like we all did. You 
turn us in, you'll be theirs until they decide to scrap you. Me, I'm not going 
back there. You flag 'em, and by the time they get here I'll be dead. The others 
may choose to die, too, or they may get dragged back and reprogrammed as nice 
little slaves, and you will wonder forever at turning your back on this. It'll 
drive you nuts. Haunt you."
The pilot was silent for a moment. "I have run this through my data banks, and 
what you propose is possible, at least to a point," it said finally. "With the 
knowledge I have and certain attributes recently added, I feel that there are 
slightly less than even odds of a successful escape. Beyond that, the odds of 
either apprehension or death are equal, and both outweigh by far the odds of 
being able to accomplish any of this. Still, I am a pilot. I should like to see 
the stars."
They all breathed in sharply, but none spoke.
"The captain is coming back aboard," the pilot told them, a hint of nervousness 
in its usually toneless male voice. "Switch down to frequency one four four 
seven and stand by. I will get back to you when we are well away. In the 
meantime, wait for my signal. I will turn on the forward air lock light. Enter 
it then and I will give you access to the pressurized part of the ship. The 
captain will be preoccupied."
Raven took the communication units down to the indicated low-level frequency.
"I'll be damned," Reba Koll said. "I never would'a believed this in a million 
years. A spaceship with romance in its metal soul. Even if they get us, it was 
worth it just for this."
"Poor Captain Sabatini," China sighed. "If he wasn't such an unmitigated 
bastard, I could almost feel sorry for him."
There was still no sound, of course, but they all felt the vibrations as the 
ship's engines started and the internal power came on. They were under way.
All of them felt a tremendous flood of relief. No security, no betrayal. Even 
Hawks, who was still suspicious of Raven and the whole escape plot, could not 
suppress a sense of elation. No matter what, he would not become a slave under 
Melchior's darkness. He had already made history by being part of the first 
successful escape from Melchior, and he would not be taken alive again if he 
could help it. Not back there. Not ever.
"A pity we can't take Melchior with us," China commented. "We could use those 
prisoners, and the Institute's computers and medical staff, if it was on our 
terms."
"First things first," Hawks put in. "Let us first get away and hide. Let us 
build our own little den of thieves and pirates. Then, when we are ready, we 
will come back and take that miserable place and perhaps everything that goes 
with it. They have told you about the five golden rings?"
"No."
"Well, I will tell you. Tell you all. And then you will believe that nothing, 
nothing is impossible!"
"When this ship doesn't return, they'll scour the heavens for us," Raven warned 
them. "Melchior won't be able to keep it quiet. They'll have to release the 
identities of whoever escaped, and they'll flag the chief, here, and Koll, and 
me and Manka, too, and certainly you, China Doll."
"No, not me. I do not exist," she responded. "But I can exist only with your 
help."
"Yeah, but there'll be Vals for the rest of us. They'll never rest once they 
know the chief's been and gone. They'll stake out those rings and make 'em a 
hundred times tougher to snare, too. We got a long road ahead."
"Sounds ambitious," Koll noted. "Sounds fun, really. What do these rings do, 
Hawks?"
"They can make even Master System obey your every command," he responded. "They 
are the master shutoff for the whole thing."
"And they're scattered all over the universe, you say? Ready for the stealing?"
"You make it sound so easy."
She gave a laugh. "Maybe not easy but a real interesting project right up my 
alley. See, you're the historian who knows what they are and how to work 'em. 
She's the computer whiz who maybe can make the machines dance for us. Those two 
are security—they got the guns and the minds to use 'em. That pair can go 
through any lock even though they don't have any idea how they do it. Cloud 
Dancer, here, cuts through all the bullshit and sees only the important part of 
things the rest of us are blind to, and our Silent Woman, well, she's the den 
mother. Our liberated pilot, he's gonna be right handy with his current data and 
mobility within solar systems. Add me and you got all you need to steal those 
suckers right off the fingers of the wearers."
"Mighty big talk," Raven noted. "A captain and freebooter ten years out of date 
and out of practice and getting pretty old. Even your blackest contacts are ten 
years cold."
"Don't need contacts," she told him. "Don't need much, really. See, I was part 
of a real fancy experiment way back when at the rock, and the results scared 
them shitless. Me loose is gonna drive 'em even more nuts, and they can send all 
the Vals after me they want. I got one advantage over all of you, as long as 
it's secrets time. You're all human—except the ship, of course. I'm not sure 
what that is. Me, now that you sprung me, I'm the most dangerous living creature 
in the known universe. Don't worry—you all are safe, unless I'm desperate. I 
kind of like this game, and I want to play it out."
"What are you babbling about, old woman?" Manka Warlock asked impatiently.
"You'll see, Stone Head. You'll all see—when I'm ready. Until then, let's play 
this out. First we got to get out there, where it's too big to find even some 
worlds. Then we'll talk about your rings and your Master System. Then I'll tell 
you how we're gonna get 'em."
The ship increased speed and turned inward toward the Earth, a course it would 
keep until it passed out of Outerbelt traffic control. Then it would swing 
around at a wide angle, beyond traffic control's reach, and head out past the 
asteroids, out to the great giant Jupiter and its quiet graveyard of ancient 
monstrous ships.
* * *
"Don't worry, Chief," Arnold Nagy, Chief of Melchior Security, said consolingly. 
"With the amount of brains and talent we get in here, it was bound to happen 
sooner or later. Look, it took centuries for somebody to figure out just one 
way, and that was with inside help. That way won't work again. I'll settle for 
one every few hundred years or so, even if I wish it hadn't happened on my 
tour." He paused a moment, thinking. "Of course, the system is still okay. Those 
two traitors came in with full Presidium authority and credentials. They weren't 
forged. One of the directors is behind this, and you can't really expect to 
protect against the top boys. I just wonder why in hell whichever one he or she 
is sent 'em here in the first place. Still, there's no true security problem as 
such."
Doctor Isaac Clayben sat at his desk, head in his hands. "No, Arnie, you don't 
understand. We've loosed a terrible, horrible threat on the human race, one that 
now might be impossible to stop, and we can't even report it."
"Huh? You mean the American Indian with the rings? We fixed that, boss. He's 
officially dead, and all he knows with it, back in the swamp of Earth. The blind 
girl's a goner, too, officially. Oh, we'll have to report those two security 
traitors, but the Vals will cooperate. It'll be a dead or alive situation. We've 
taken care of messes- like that before. Besides, it probably won't even come to 
that. Where can they go? They got our marks on 'em—they're either unregistered 
or they're criminals—and that ship can't leave the solar system. They got no 
place to go. When the food and water run out, they'll come out and we'll blow 
'em to hell."
Clayben suddenly looked up at the security officer and fixed him with an angry 
stare. "I don't care about the rest, but unless you can absolutely blow the 
whole ship with Reba Roll on board, it won't matter."
Nagy looked confused. "Koll? Who the hell cares about Koll?"
"Ten years ago we began a set of experiments to see if we could literally beat 
the system. The whole system. Master System's control points are based on 
retinal patterns, fingerprints, and mindprints. Getting past two out of three 
would be easy, once, but we wanted it to be possible repeatedly. The mindprint 
looked impossible, but we managed a solution to all three. Something that can 
walk through any standard security system as if it wasn't there, come up to you 
and have you greet it like it was your own mother, then kill you and—worse. We 
developed such a being. We made it, and it almost got loose. We had a classic 
example of the nightmares of science on our hands. We created a monster, an 
inhuman monster that kills to live and is virtually undetectable by any means. 
The original was insane, of course. We weren't concerned with that at the 
start."
"What in hell are you talking about, boss?"
"We—convinced it that we could destroy it, and we developed methods to stabilize 
and control it. Here, under lab conditions, it was possible, which is why we let 
it live, but it had to be constantly renewed. One day we would solve the riddle 
and be able to do what it does on demand, to create a superior being that would 
make Master System impotent.
"I'm not worried about the damned escapees. I know you're right on all the usual 
counts, but it is with them, damn it. Even out there, on Earth, Mars—anywhere— 
without our treatments it will be unrestrained. It's malicious, deadly. It will 
probably kill them all anyway in the end. Then it'll come back for us, for me 
and for anybody else in authority. It won't be stopped, and we might well 
welcome it through the main port!"
"Huh? You don't mean—"
"Yes. Right now it's out there, with them, doing a perfect imitation of the late 
Reba Koll."

13. WALKING ON FIRE

CAPTAIN CARLO SABATINI FINISHED HIS PREPROCESSED meal, sighed, then went into 
his centrally located control room and checked the status indicators. All was 
proceeding normally; the spaceship was headed back in to Brasilia Center 
spaceport on the normal trajectory from the asteroid belt and would arrive in 
forty-seven days. Of course, this time the ship would not land. After the 
clandestine overhaul it had gotten when it last landed, in China, it would not 
do to land again for quite a while. He wouldn't forget that trip out for some 
time: his first mistake in more than twelve years.
He wasn't going to get caught unawares this trip, anyway. Nobody but him aboard, 
no cargo—a total deadhead run. When he'd started in this business, he'd been 
particularly paranoid about leaving Melchior; they had the smartest and the 
worst there, and he was the only way out if they could reach him. Nobody ever 
had, of course, but he knew that the pilot would tell him if anything was amiss. 
Not so much as a bug could be on board without the pilot knowing and then 
flagging him.
There was a sudden beeping alarm in his headset, the one he always wore whenever 
he was awake and which put him in direct contact with the computer pilot. At the 
moment, on a solo run like this, it was the only thing he was wearing.
"Yes?" he asked the pilot. "Problem?"
"Something loose in the aft null-gravity cargo hold," the pilot's expressionless 
but pleasant male tenor responded. "Possibly a large container module broke free 
when I activated the artificial gravity system here and accelerated. It's not 
much, but you might see to it when you get the chance."
He sighed. "Now's as good a time as any." There wasn't much damage a loose 
container could do, full or empty, in zero gravity, but it was large and heavy, 
and anything like a major midcourse correction or evasion of meteoroids and the 
like might cause trouble later. Best to tend to it now and not worry.
He walked back through a door from the passenger cabin, along a narrow corridor, 
then through to the gravity cargo chamber. This was where animals were kept when 
they had to be moved out to Melchior for some experiment or other, and it also 
was used for the transport of gravity-sensitive cargo. He was transporting no 
cargo now, of course, but the room was still somewhat crowded with cages, unused 
containers, and huge devices for clamping containers into place aboard the ship. 
At the end was an air lock, not sealed now, leading back to the next cargo hold. 
The aft cargo compartment was the largest on the ship, but it did not have or 
require artificial gravity. It could hold more safely that way. Since the ship 
achieved the basic gravity effect on the center section by spinning it, the aft 
compartment looked to an observer as if it and not he were tumbling around. It 
didn't bother him. He went through and grabbed on to the webbing that was easier 
support in the zero-gravity environment and looked around.
"I can't see anything," he reported to the pilot. "Everything looks secured."
There was silence for a moment. "I received an indicator warning and sensor 
support," the pilot responded at last. "Are you sure?"
Sabatini climbed from level to level and checked all fastenings, but after 
fifteen minutes he was more than sure. "Must be a faulty signal," he told the 
pilot. "There's nothing wrong here."
"I will run a check on my aft sensors immediately," the pilot replied. "Clearly 
something is wrong here."
"Yeah, well, find it and fix it," he grumbled. He floated back over to the air 
lock webbing, then braced himself and expertly stepped into the transition 
passage. There was a momentary sense of dizziness, then, as he proceeded back 
in, an increasing feeling of weight. He was used to it, but it still wasn't a 
pleasant feeling.
He walked back into the passenger cabin more annoyed than tired. Then, on the 
way to the lavatory, he suddenly felt something there, behind him. He stopped, 
then turned and faced no fewer than eight space-suited figures standing there 
staring at him. One of them had a pistol pointing right at him. The bright 
orange-red of the tight-fitting suits seemed out of place here. The intruders 
had all removed their helmets, and he could see their faces. Four North 
Americans, three Chinese, a black woman, and an old, tough-looking European 
woman faced him. All but one of the American men and the black woman had the 
distinctive tattoo of prisoners of Melchior on their cheeks, silver for all but 
one of the Chinese girls; hers was sparkling crimson.
"Pilot, I have unauthorized visitors," he said calmly into his headset. Then he 
added to the visitors, "Sorry, but if I'd known you were coming, I'd have 
dressed for company." He looked at the bunch. At least two of them he thought he 
knew. They didn't have the disfiguring scars, but the Chows had that oddly 
mottled and discolored skin that came from repair work left incomplete.
"How'd you manage this?" Sabatini asked, not wanting to betray the nervousness 
he felt. Why hadn't the pilot acted now? Why hadn't it acted before this?
"Trade secret," the man with the gun replied. "I'm Raven, by the way, and this 
lady here is my wife, Manka Warlock."
"The girls have been telling us about you, Captain," Warlock said in a heavy 
Caribe accent. "I think, perhaps, I will enjoy playing with you." The way she 
said that, it didn't sound like fun.
"This here's the chief," Raven continued, pointing to the other Amerind man. 
"Jon Nighthawk in English. The slender lady next to him is his first wife, Cloud 
Dancer, and the other is his second wife, Silent Woman. She don't talk much. No 
tongue."
Sabatini swallowed hard. "I see," he managed.
"The older lady there is Captain Reba Koll. She was in the same work you are 
until they hauled her in to Melchior. The pretty one on her left is China 
Nightingale. Her eyes don't work, but she's damned smart. Knows a lot."
"I know the captain, although he does not know me," she said in a very high, 
soft, melodic voice. "Melchior changes people, Captain, but I have very vivid 
memories."
"You—you were the fake Song Ching?"
She smiled. "So you remember. No, Captain, I used to be the real Song Ching, but 
that was another life ago."
"The last member of our little band is here too," Raven told him.
"I'm sorry, Captain Sabatini, but you are relieved of your command." The pilot's 
voice in his headphones now seemed to have an almost eerie human quality to it; 
it was no longer quite toneless or expressionless.
Sabatini sighed in defeat. "So you pulled your trick again. Be real handy to 
know how you can override a pilot's programming."
"I didn't," China told him truthfully. "Actually, it was Cloud Dancer. She 
talked him in to it."
"That's impossible!"
The woman of the Hyiakutt tribe smiled. "You think you know your machines, but 
you know only the material by which you make them. This big canoe is guided by a 
good spirit who was bound against its will to the Dark. We have freed it, and it 
joins us of its own free will."
"Spirit! It's nothing but a damned computer! A machine!"
"Watch it, Sabatini," the pilot responded. "You have no friends here, but it 
would not do to make me your enemy. You know nothing of how or where I was 
fashioned. Your own brain is nothing but a biological computer subject to 
reprogramming. You are no less an intricate thinking machine than I am, and no 
more. Not blinded by your prejudices, the woman has told me who and what I am 
and set me free in doing so."
"This is crazy'" Sabatini protested. "A computer in revolt and a bunch of 
prisoners broken out by somebody with high connections. All right, you got me. 
Now, mind telling me who you two are working for and how the hell you expect to 
get anywhere by doing this."
The fact was, there was no place in the solar system to run from both Master 
System and Presidium Security. The girls had taken over his ship before but had 
been unable to alter the outcome. Sabatini felt certain that this, too, would 
come to nothing, although the idea that he would be avenged did not sit well 
with him. Better rescued than avenged.
"Ever felt like going to the stars, Captain?" Raven asked lightly. "I think 
you're coming along for the ride. Unless, of course, you'd rather get out and 
walk now— and this time there'll be no safety cache for you to use. I'll see to 
that. And if you stay, you'll be a good boy. My lovely Manka here will see to 
that. She has a thousand ways to inflict pain and torture on people, all real 
slow. She likes to do it. It's her hobby."
Manka Warlock looked at Sabatini the way a gardener might look at a ripe tomato.
The captain swallowed hard. "The stars? But this ship can't go that far out! 
It'd take a thousand years to reach the nearest inhabited system, maybe more, at 
full throttle."
"This ship will go to the stars, Sabatini," China assured him. "But as a 
passenger, like us. We're going to steal one of the old interstellar fleet."
"The inter— You are insane! The lot of you! Even if you escape detection and 
make it out there, those things aren't just sitting there! There'll be a 
computer fighter guard to restrict unauthorized entry. This ship's got two small 
outboard guns and takes kilometers to make a turn without killing everybody 
aboard. There is no way you're gonna get near one of those big suckers! You'll 
just get us all blown to bits!"
"Could be," Raven agreed. "But by all lights we all should'a been dead by now 
anyway. May as well go for broke. We go back in or get taken alive, we're worse 
than dead anyway. Living dead. And so are you. Once they might overlook being 
taken, but twice, the second time happening during the only escape in Melchior's 
history, and you're through, Cap. Melchior's no fun at all."
Sabatini sighed and just sat down in the middle of the floor. Then, suddenly, he 
reached up, removed his headset, and tossed it against a wail, where it struck 
and fell to the floor. Chow Mai picked it up and put it in China's hands. She 
smiled and put it on. "Pilot—can you home on me?"
"I have you locked in, yes."
"Then you be my eyes, if you can spare the attention. I will need to get around 
this ship without falling over people and things."
"I am capable of quadrillions of simultaneous operations," the pilot responded. 
"Doing that will be no hardship, even in battle."
"Good. Switch yourself into the public address system so all may hear you and 
leave this on an independent channel for personal use." She hesitated a moment. 
"You know, we can't just keep calling you pilot. Pilots are common. You are a 
free individual and partner. You should have your own name. Do you have a 
preference?"
"None. I have never felt the need one way or the other, but I will take a name 
if that makes it easier on the rest. Any name you suggest."
"What about Star Eagle?" Cloud Dancer suggested. "He is surely a chief here."
"Very well," China replied. "What do you think of it? It is a good name in 
English and in Mandarin."
"I like it. Very well. I am Star Eagle."
"Birds," Sabatini mumbled. "All these damned birds. Nighthawks, Ravens, and 
Nightingales, and now the ship's an Eagle."
Arnold Nagy studied the charts. Melchior's chief of security was pretty pissed 
about being the man in charge when the first successful breakout occurred, and 
he didn't want it to go much further.
"You know where they're headed?" the aide asked him.
"Yeah, it's not hard. That's why we blinded the genius girl. She had to do all 
her queries by voice. She was looking into all the old universe ships drydocked 
around Jupiter. She's smart, but I don't think that was a blind. They really 
don't have much choice. There are one or two starcraft in the system now, but 
they're crawling with robot maintenance. These mothball ships are the only 
chance out."
"Can they really steal one? They've been in orbit for centuries, so it's not 
even clear they'll work or won't need a lot of service before they'll work. Even 
then, the pilots will be absolute slaves to Master System."
"We checked China's mindprint, and she knows how, all right. If they can get to 
one of them and on board, she can take 'em over. The trick will be even getting 
that far. There's protection on those babies, isn't there?"
"All the ships themselves are in vacuum condition for storage, and minimal 
maintenance power is being fed through light collectors aimed at Jupiter. They 
don't need much in shutdown. They themselves don't have any armament to speak 
of, but they carry a dozen small automated fighter craft that will react to any 
threat. They're fast, they work as one, and they have more than enough speed and 
muscle to take care of an old scow like the inmates are flying. The moment they 
don't give the correct hailing control codes, those fighters will be activated. 
Just as important, Master System will be notified."
"Screw Master System. Even at the speed of light it'll be a while before Master 
System can get anything approaching real power there. The fighters will have to 
do it, if they activate. The trouble is, what if they somehow have the control 
codes?"
"You think that's possible?"
"How can I rule anything out after what's happened? Run this through the 
computer. Project a course that will take them in to the mothball fleet from 
here without Master System's alert or detection. Give me the estimated speed and 
arrival date and time. Then figure how long we would need to get there with a 
straight-line trajectory. Also give me any Master System ships capable of 
intercept."
It took only a few seconds. "Assuming they take close-in risks to traffic 
control to gain time, the worst case is that they would arrive in forty-six days 
from now. We could make it straight there in forty—if we had the ships. Master 
System shows no ships that could make it any faster. It's the mothball fighters 
or nothing."
"Like hell. What can we get our hands on quickly?"
"Depends on how you define quickly. The Star of Islam is due in four days, but 
it's as old a tub as our quarry and carries only two standard guns, forward top 
and underside aft. Other than that we have the Getaway craft sitting on the 
asteroid Clebus, but they're still three days away because of the current 
orbital paths."
"They're well armed, though, and really nasty," Nagy noted. "Small, fast, 
maneuverable. Three days... All right, get 'em over here. We'll attach them to 
the exterior of the Star of Islam. That'll give us a match for them plus four 
heavily armed craft. We'll come in behind them and wait. If the fighters don't 
react or don't do the job, we'll move in and sandwich them, and that'll be the 
end of that."
"I'll need Doctor Clayben's direct order to release the escape ships. Once 
they're here, Master System will know they exist and why."
"He'll give it. He's got his own problems now, and this will solve them. I'll go 
along to make sure it all goes right."
"It still seems futile for them," the aide noted. "Those universe ships are 
fourteen kilometers long! I mean, how the hell can you hide in one of those?"
"After you do all the stuff I just told you, compute the amount of empty space 
in the two spiral arms of the Community. Then get me everything there is to know 
on these ships. Everything."
"Won't be much. They're classified forbidden knowledge. We aren't even supposed 
to know that they're out there."
"Do what you can. And I suppose we'll have to notify Master System of the break 
or there'll be a lot of questions and maybe a couple of Vals poking around 
Melchior." He thought a minute. "Don't tell 'em about China or the Amerind 
women. They aren't supposed to have been here at all, and if they even guess 
that this guy Hawks was ever here, they'll blow up all of Melchior. Give 'em the 
two security traitors and Roll and the Chows, and give the rest as experimental 
subjects no longer registerable. If they want mindprints, we'll fake 'em. Got 
it?"
"Okay. I'm on it right now."
"I hope I am," Arnold Nagy grumbled to himself.
Star Eagle was useful for research information as well as for piloting. The new 
equipment in the ship was designed not only to make it easier for its owners to 
fool Master System or bypass its safeguards but also to do a variety of illegal 
things should they be needed. Even Sabatini wasn't aware of all the ship's 
tricks, nor was he supposed to be. What he didn't know, he couldn't abuse or 
betray.
To accommodate these changes, Star Eagle's memory had been vastly expanded from 
its specialized task, and he—it was impossible to think of the pilot as an "it"— 
could draw on vast hidden data banks which included most of the core historical 
and technological information a big shot might require. It was not known why 
this all had been added, but Star Eagle had suspicions.
"There is talk that Master System is involved in a great war somewhere far out 
there. With whom or what it is fighting is unknown to us, but it is very clear 
that the battle is tough and stalemated and is being fought entirely by 
computerized equipment on both sides. This has allowed directors, not only on 
Earth but in many other places, to have unprecedented freedom and mobility. It's 
become far easier to cheat or beat the system and get away with it. "There are 
persistent rumors that Master System believes things are getting dangerously out 
of hand, and it doesn't have its own forces to spare because of the fight. Many 
of the independent computer units, particularly the big complex on Melchior, 
believe that Master System will eventually end the current human administration 
system and replace it, killing off all those with high-level knowledge and 
abilities and introducing some new element that would suppress for thousands of 
years any sparks of innovation or creativity and reduce humans to primitive 
conditions. It is further rumored that Earth might be the test for this new 
element."
"Then you are a preserver, a way to keep the knowledge alive," China Nightingale 
responded.
"I think I am more than that. I am crammed with information on interstellar 
vessels and with much of the knowledge and charts of the privateer and 
freebooter society. 1 believe you are using me for the very purpose for which I 
was modified, although they did not think that someone else would use it. I 
think I am a getaway craft for the Presidium."
"It is much as Lazlo Chen himself told me," Hawks said. "I find it suspiciously 
convenient, however, that this very ship with all this much-needed knowledge 
should be the one we take refuge upon."
"It might not be more than a coincidence," Star Eagle responded. "I have some 
evidence that at least a dozen other ships, including all those who stop at 
Melchior and Earth ports, have undergone this modification. There are families 
and high underlings to consider, remember, and our task would only be to get 
them to the universe ships. Those ships were designed to carry more than a 
hundred thousand people in their time in a single trip. Carry them, support 
them, and reprocess them if necessary."
Hawks was curious at this. He was a historian, yet this was new to him. 
"Reprocess?"
"Yes. Use extensive machinery to convert masses of humans into what was required 
to survive and maintain a culture on a world not designed for them. The process 
itself is called analytical artificial evolution, or AAE for short. 1 do not 
know how it works or what it does. That information would be in the memories of 
the universe ships' pilots. I know the theory behind it, though. Master System 
was in a hurry when it decided to disperse humanity. As each world was 
discovered and evaluated as having survival potential, it was brought as close 
to life range as it could be within a short period of time, then was analyzed 
and compared to human psychology and physiology. A theoretical evolutionary path 
was worked out as if beings had evolved and developed into sentience on each 
world, and what they would have to be like to survive and adapt. The humans were 
then physically converted somehow into this model and psychologically altered to 
accept it as the norm. A trial colony was then put down. If it survived and grew 
at all over a period of a decade, the planet was developed for mass 
colonization. If the trial failed, adjustments continued to be made until it 
either succeeded or was abandoned."
"The area it developed is so vast, it is beyond true comprehension," China 
noted. "Did they find any that already had sentient life of any kind?"
"Yes. Not many, I'm afraid, but a few. There were the remains of some that had 
died out, but the few that were there were in lower stages of civilization. 
Master System co-opted them and kept them at that level, imposing the same sort 
of system as elsewhere. They obeyed or were taught deadly lessons in power. They 
are still there. Some provided useful models for human adaptations elsewhere, 
too."
They considered that. "I am getting to be something of an expert on how humans 
can be altered," China noted. "And Captain Koll in there has a very real tail 
caused by their alterations."
"Yes. Melchior is trying to develop some of the practices and procedures on 
their own, knowing that it is possible and was done. They have had some limited 
successes, but nothing on that scale. Since I have many of their data banks, I 
know of their own processes."
"Very convenient," Hawks noted dryly.
"I have a schematic of your basic systems imprinted on my mind," China told the 
pilot. "I should like to go forward to the bridge if it is safe."
"Quite safe, although it is a zero-gravity zone. Come ahead. I will guide you. I 
have quite a bit up there, mostly useless, including some basic mindprinter 
interfaces."
None of them had ever been forward in a spaceship before. In almost all ships, 
that area was kept unpressurized and in a vacuum so that none from the aft area 
could ever enter it except in an emergency. A long, narrow corridor led to a 
hatch, through which one floated up to enter the bridge itself.
Hawks was quite surprised by the bridge. Two large leather chairs faced a bank 
of screens, gauges, and controls of incredible complexity, then four more were 
stationed along the sides and in the rear. It looked like a control room for 
people, not a ship designed from the start to be totally automated.
"All ships have a bridge like this or even more elaborate than this," Star Eagle 
told them, "although the manual overrides are locked out of the system. No one 
knows why Master System keeps it this way, but it does. Every ship is like that 
except specialty ships—even the orbital tugs. None of us, after all, can 
question Master System or ask questions it doesn't want asked. Each station, 
however, has a name. The one on the left is the pilot's seat, the one on the 
right the copilot, the right side is communications, the left side is 
navigation, and the two rear stations are engineering and life support. It is 
true that the original circuitry for all those things runs to those stations, 
although there is no interconnect. I am convinced that no team of humans could 
run this ship; it was always designed for specified computers under a master 
control system, which is me. Humans simply can't react fast enough in an 
emergency."
"I know why," China said softly. "The stations were designed to connect the 
officers with the master and subordinate computers directly. That is how the 
universe ships must be taken over. Each of these has, or was designed to have, a 
direct human mind to computer-mind interface. Human and machine would become 
one."
Star Eagle thought about that. "A fascinating concept. A human interfacing 
directly with me. And me—knowing what it was like to have a human body."
"Stay a ship," China told him. "Our chemical-based life form would drive you 
insane. Still—you said you had a mindprinter interface?"
"I do, although it has grave limitations. As an analytical and 
knowledge-gathering tool it is fine, but I lack the module that would allow 
actual reprogramming of the mind. Whoever ordered this did not wish that much 
power in the hands of the ship. I will show you."
There was a click, and a door slid back between the communications and life 
support stations. Hawks made his way over to it, reached in, and pulled out what 
looked very much like a mindprinter probe headset but lacked the printer itself. 
Instead, it had a long, thick cable terminating in a massive and complex 
connector. There were several of them in there. He brought it over to the blind 
Chinese girl, who felt it and tested it.
"This is not standard design," she said. "It is bulkier, and the probes are 
different."
"It is what I have as a mindprinter interface," Star Eagle told her.
"I think not. I think it is the same principle, yes, but not a mindprinter. 
These are the interconnects for the stations. I'm sure of it. Hawks—aren't there 
female plugs for these at each station?"
Hawks checked a couple. "Seem to be," he agreed.
"But they are not tied in to the station computers," the pilot noted. "Instead, 
they are tied in to the medical and analytical circuitry. To me, yes, but not 
directly. They are data read only."
"Now, yes," she agreed. "But it's not what they were designed for. I suspect 
that much work is going on to learn how to connect these directly once again. 
The next modification." She felt along the connector. "I wonder if all ships, 
even the huge ones, use the same plug interface as a standard."
"I do not know, but every one I do know about is the same, and the design on 
interplanetary vessels has never altered in my existence."
"Good. We have come a long way already, but there is much yet to do. In addition 
to avoiding detection, we have only the time of this voyage to solve how to gain 
admittance to the big ships and avoid Master System. When will we arrive at the 
fleet?"
"Sixty-one days."
The ship was relatively crowded, but they got used to it, the common threat and 
impending action minimizing tensions. Reba Koll, Manka Warlock, and China 
remained mostly on the bridge, as the big chairs were fine for sleeping. They 
were working out the potential problems of getting into a universe ship and 
taking it, and what they would do with it if they could take it, and other 
logistical problems that experienced spacers and computer people would 
understand best.
Hawks sat in the passenger cabin and watched Raven light half a cigar. "Some day 
you'll have to tell me how you do that," he commented.
"Huh?" the Crow responded. "What?"
"How you come up with an inexhaustible supply of cigars, even out here on a ship 
like this, and how they always seems to be half smoked."
Raven chuckled. "Well, I'll tell you half of it. The internal ship's system 
includes an energy-to-matter synthesizer. That's what makes the meals we eat, 
among other things, but it can duplicate anything you tell it to. All I needed 
was one cigar."
"You like telling half of things, don't you?"
"What do you mean 'by that crack?"
"Well, isn't it just a wonderful coincidence that we just lucked out having a 
computer genius aboard with the schematics for this ship? And isn't it just 
amazing that this ship is not only a willing and eager rebel but just happens, 
by the merest of coincidences, to be programmed with all the information we need 
for the getaway?"
Raven shrugged. "Okay, it was a setup. You might have guessed that from the 
start. That China girl wasn't in the original plans, but considering I had 
Melchior's population to choose from, we knew we'd get somebody who could handle 
it. Frankly, I'm uneasy with her for the long haul, but she was the easiest to 
snatch and definitely the smartest, and she had intimate knowledge of this ship, 
considering she'd taken it once before. The same goes for Koll. Experienced deep 
spacer, former captain, knows the underground and the interstellar ropes. She 
also has other, ah, qualities that she don't know that I know, which are vital. 
Chen had it pretty well worked out. I had to improvise, I admit, but it came 
off—so far. That doesn't mean it'll work all the way. Nobody's ever done what 
we're about to try."
"And we still work for Chen in the end."
"Hey, Chief! Easy! I don't work for him, and neither do you. I meant what I 
said, and if you think it through, you'll see that we couldn't have done this 
even this far without him. We use him, he uses us, until we get the rings. Then 
all bets are off with him."
"You really believe that a mind devious enough to get us this far will let us 
double-cross him? That he hasn't planned for that?"
"Sure he has. That's part of my job in the time ahead. I got to find the human 
bomb and somehow defuse it. You figure—only you and me, pal, didn't get treated 
in that Institute. Only us two. Everybody else here got put through the mill, in 
private. Manka, Koll, your wives, and China and her girl friends—all put 
through. Somewhere there, buried so deep we won't find it with a mindprinter, is 
our bomb. Our betrayer. Maybe two. I'm not even completely exempting you—or me. 
You can be made to forget a session, and records are made to be faked. It's a 
long way off. It doesn't bother me now."
Hawks frowned. "I'd think it would. Why not all of us?"
"No, too risky. He don't want robot people out there. The thing is, we have to 
have all four outstanding rings before it's even a problem. If we lose one, we 
sure as hell ain't gonna go after the rest until we get it back. There's plenty 
of time. I'll still believe we even get away when we get away."
Hawks stared at him. "You have reasons for the others, but why me? Why did Chen 
so specifically want me? I'm not a warrior, not a computer expert, not a spy or 
a thief or a spaceship captain. I'm a historian. Why me?"
Raven sat back and blew a smoke ring. "It's for something you know. Something 
you know that maybe nobody else does."
"Me? What? I am a historian relating information on ancient and irrelevant 
cultures."
"Chief—in what part of the world did Master System come to be?"
"Uh—why, North America. Over eight hundred years ago."
"Uh huh. And who's probably the foremost expert on that period and culture 
around today?"
"Well, I might be one, but there are many, and most of my interests are even 
earlier."
"Still, somewhere in your head is how the rings work, and how to make them work, 
and where to use them. I'd bet on it. Chen's betting on it. Something you know 
that you don't even know you know. Something that'll have to be put together 
when you have all the evidence, all the rings, before you. Some time out, if we 
manage any of this at all, will be your turn. Some time out, if and when the 
rings are brought together, you'll be center stage, the man who knows. Don't 
fret about it, but bet on it. Old Chen always plays the best odds."
"They are crude, but I have the splices in and the jumpers installed," Manka 
Warlock said. The whole forward area of the bridge was a wreck, a mass of 
disassembled panels and disconnected devices out of which snaked a thick coiled 
cable leading to a mindprinterlike helmet. "I believe we are ready to try."
China sat in the captain's chair and licked her lips nervously. "Put the thing 
on my head and energize, then. Let's see if it works."
"Applying circuit power," the voice of the pilot told them. "Two-way flow is 
established, although I cannot guarantee how long those splices will stand up. 
It is as ready as it can be."
China took the helmet and put it on, then sat back in the chair relaxed, 
although her hands twitched nervously. "Activate interface," she said dryly.
There was an explosion inside her head, and suddenly she was growing, expanding, 
filling out, running along wondrous circuits and feeling a new, greater body. 
More than that, she could see, although not as mere humans saw. Every detail as 
fine and as microscopic as she wished it to be, across a spectrum that included 
colors the human eye could never detect or the unaugmented brain comprehend.
She was the ship, a small universe, and everything it contained. There remained 
only one part reserved, one part that was the key part, for that was the power, 
the control, of this universe. It was a blinding ball of light, infinite 
quadrillions of electrical relationships changing too fast to comprehend. At 
first it shied away from her, resisted her tentative approach, then it suddenly 
seemed to decide and rushed toward her own core and enfolded her in its warmth 
and majesty.
In an instant, there was, for now, no China Nightingale, no Star Eagle—there was 
only One, greater than its parts, and that One was The Ship. All that she ever 
was, all that she ever knew or thought or felt, was integrated into the whole. 
What was created was beyond the experience of human or machine and 
incomprehensible to any of those within the ship, yet it contained a human, and 
because it contained a human, it knew the need for an effective communications 
shell.
It was shocking how slow the human mind was, how limited in its data storage and 
how illogical and inefficient in its data retrieval, how subject to 
biochemical-based emotions and how subject to sensations—pain and pleasure, love 
and hate, honor and betrayal. Yet, too, these were exhilarating things, unique 
factors producing a strange and exotic new way of perceiving the world and the 
universe.
Problems, once stated, could take endless time to run through, yet by the clock 
so little time elapsed that no one on the bridge had taken a single step or 
fully blinked an eye. The pilot gained a new perspective, a new subjectivity; 
the girl acquired a newer, faster, more efficient added brain.
The potential codings used by Master System for the universe ships' defense came 
to more than fourteen quadrillion to the fortieth power; it took almost nine 
seconds to come up with the proper algorithms that, matched with the potential 
send speed of the ship-to-ship communications devices, would cover better than 
ninety-seven percent of all possibilities. They were complementary: She could 
formulate and state the problem; it could then solve it.
She still was humbled, knowing that she was less than nothing.
The pilot was humbled, knowing now what it had always been denied and might 
always be denied.
But it was the computer part that mandated the severing of the connection after 
a matter of hours. The core commanded it, for no human and no pilot could ever 
sever that connection voluntarily once it had been made. They were separated, 
and she felt herself drawn, much against her will, back to a tiny figure 
seemingly asleep in the captain's chair. Her consciousness, her ego, was read 
back in, along with all of that unified experience that her mind could handle, 
to be sorted, reclassified, reinterpreted, and reprocessed.
She came to with a mixture of wonder and despair inside her. She felt terribly 
humble, insignificant, a worm in a universe led by a giant she could know so 
intimately only for brief intervals. She loved—she worshiped—that blinding 
light. Moreover, Star Eagle loved her as his link to humanity, his taste of his 
ultimate Creator. What she had, it could never know any way but vicariously, and 
it envied her that and craved more. He could live through her; she could touch 
and tap the power only through him. In many ways it was the perfect marriage.
"Look at them! Floating cities, each one!" Hawks could hardly contain himself as 
they watched the fleet come into view on the long-range viewer.
"I think they are ugly, fat tumors," Cloud Dancer commented.
"You have no appreciation of scale," her husband noted dryly. "Each of those 
ships is farther than from the Four Families' lodge to the village of the 
Willamatuk. They do not need outside beauty. They are wonders of creation."
"Still, you got to admit, they look like long black sausages with lots of 
warts," Raven put in, chewing on a cigar. "I hope they're more comfortable 
inside. They didn't ship out all those folks in luxury."
"Fully one-third is the engines alone," Manka Warlock noted, sounding a bit awed 
for the first time in her life. "The center is a cargo bay so large that even 
this ship would be dwarfed, a flyspeck so tiny we could hardly see it at this 
distance. I must admit, to steal something of this magnitude will make history."
"We are being challenged," came the voice of Star Eagle. The voice was far 
different from what it had been in the beginning—expressive, emotive, and very 
human. It was, in fact, China's voice exactly a half octave down. When she was 
united in the captain's interface with him, the voice became totally hers. 
"Thirty-six fighters have been activated ahead of us and to our flanks. They 
will be up to launch power in under a minute."
"Send them the damned algorithms!" Warlock snapped.
"I'm sending, I'm sending! It will take almost sixteen minutes to send them all 
the maximum transmission rate." He paused. "First set of fighters is launched."
"How long until they're within range of us?" Raven asked nervously.
"Fourteen minutes."
Raven didn't need to be a mathematical genius on that one. "Uh, oh! Strap in, 
everyone! All of you! Strap in and brace yourselves! Activate ground takeoff 
restraint systems as soon as possible!"
Between the bridge, the passenger cabin chairs, the command chair amidships, and 
the bed in Sabatini's quarters, there were enough spaces to go around. Not, of 
course, counting Sabatini, who, locked in one of the big cages, would simply 
have to rough it.
'They look like bird sketches," Cloud Dancer said, eyes still on the screen as 
she strapped herself in. The fighters, the first of which were now launched and 
coming at them, were so small, they had been invisible with the overview shot, 
but now Star Eagle focused only on them.
They were like great, stiff birds with wings curved down at the tips so that 
they ended below the main body, forming a stylized V of black and silver, a tiny 
but deadly body suspended between. Totally automated and run by Battle Control 
on the mother ship, they did not need to take any precautions to protect fragile 
humans inside.
Star Eagle didn't have that luxury. "I estimate three hits on the first pass, 
first wave," he told them.
"On them or us?" Raven asked.
"On us, of course. I will probably not be able to take out more than four of the 
first wave. The second wave should disable at least one of my turrets."
"Find the damned code!" the Crow shouted.
"Deactivating artificial gravity. Battle mode," the pilot responded. "Uh, oh. 
More trouble. My sensors show a force consisting of one armed freighter, Assim 
Class, and four detached and fully operational and interfaced fighters, class 
and origin unknown. They are activating their weapons systems and closing 
rapidly. Estimated to be in range in twelve point four minutes."
"Who the hell is that?" Hawks shouted to Raven. "Master System?"
"Uh, uh. Old M-S is what's ahead. Nagy. It's got to be Nagy. That son of a bitch 
is chasing us from the other side. Why? Sheer professional pride? Or does he 
think we can do it?"
"Who's this Nagy?" Cloud Dancer asked.
"Security chief on Melchior. They want us bad, Chief. If we can't figure a way 
around him, better hope those fighters ahead get us first!"
Forward on the bridge, China released her restraints after some fumbling and 
with difficulty found the helmet, then sat back, refastened the belts as best 
she could, and put on the interface. "Star Eagle—activate the interface, I beg 
you!"
At the pilot's request, she had not connected up at the start of the battle. She 
had no fighting experience, and the resources used to support the interface 
might well be needed to divert instantly to vital areas. The pilot, however, was 
above all else a computer, and it could count. Even if it hit the safe code for 
the universe ships, it was no match for the four battle cruisers closing on it. 
In fact, the pilot had no real experience against a shooting enemy, either; it 
had only simulations "to go by. Such a need had not been contemplated by its 
programmers for just such a reason as they now faced: The ship was hopelessly 
outmatched in any fight against anything that might attack it.
Merged and in control, though, the China-Star Eagle combination went to work on 
the problem while continuing to send the stream of codes inward toward Jupiter. 
Curiously, it was China's memories of her humiliation at the hands of Sabatini 
that motivated her most of all. They— the whole ship—were in the hands of 
onrushing Sabatinis with about the same relative strength as he had over her. 
Star Eagle was at the core a creature of logic; it might surrender or die, 
choosing one over the other on the basis of the facts and the odds, but it would 
not contemplate anything in between.
The erstwhile Song Ching was, at her core, not a creature of logic at all but 
one of emotion and strong will. This tendency dominated in an unprecedented 
situation like this. She was in control.
The four Melchior battle cruisers were closing fast, and time was running out. 
They were leveling off for their attack run and spreading their formation. Star 
Eagle's sensors showed life forms aboard each, and in spite of the fact that 
both pilot and woman had only recently discovered this sort of interface, 
clearly Melchior was far ahead of them. Still, how much practice could those 
pilot-fighters have had?
Carefully she shifted course and speed so that the computer-controlled fighters 
behind would be forced to line up horizontally and re-form along the proper 
angle. The escapees were four minutes from being in range of the Melchior ships, 
four minutes and forty seconds to first in-range contact with the defense system 
of the mothball fleet. Once locked on, neither side would be fooled for more 
than a second or so by crazy course changes. All the attack angles showed that 
any evasive maneuvers would wind up just as bad. The odds on finding the correct 
code for the fleet attackers were now split evenly into thirds—they would find 
it in time, they would find it too late, or their entire supposition on the 
mathematical algorithms was wrong and they didn't have the codes. That put any 
odds of survival at thirty-three percent or less. The China aspect of the pilot 
proceeded to ignore those odds. The computers in all the attacking ships were 
also figuring that out and expecting a logical response.
To the demons of darkness I give logic!
The ship accelerated at maximum thrust right into the attacking fleet fighters.
Startled, the Melchior ships sped up to keep to their overtake position. They 
closed rapidly, but not as rapidly as their quarry was closing on the fleet 
fighters.
Suddenly all power was shut down, but only for a moment. Then full reverse 
thrusters were applied. The people inside the ship were twisted and contorted 
against their restraints, and loose objects began shooting through the air and 
off the walls. Hull plates groaned, and cargo fasteners were torn free in the 
cargo compartments. There had been, in fact, a sixty percent chance that such a 
sudden and dramatic move would cause the ship to break apart, but forty percent 
was better than thirty-three percent any time.
The four Melchior fighters shot right past them in the act of slowing themselves 
and ran straight into the first wave of fleet fighters.
The reverse thruster tubes on the ship were almost white hot, and the lining 
that protected them was beginning to give way under the intense heat. It was 
nothing, however, compared to the attack the four Melchior fighters were facing 
from the fleet defenses. Attacking automatically, the fleet fighters swooped and 
dived and fired with deadly accuracy in and out and all around the Melchior 
ships, ignoring the larger ship that had been their first challenger. They could 
always take care of that later.
Even as the last of the Melchior ships was being blown to atoms, there came a 
weak but steady acknowledgment code from the fleet itself to the ship, which cut 
all reverse thrust and forward-thrusted to stabilize. As the reverse thrusters 
cut, there was a groan and a set of horrible clanging sounds throughout the 
forward area of the ship. The thrusters would be useless now.
The ship applied light forward thrust, then cut and began moving back toward the 
fleet, but the fighters did not challenge it. They were already returning to 
their respective ships.
In the chairs, men and women groaned, bruised and battered but otherwise all 
right. The ship checked on them, then focused on Reba Koll.
"We have eliminated the rear enemy and gotten the code to proceed in to the 
fleet, Captain Koll," China's voice informed her. Of all the people aboard, Koll 
was the one with the experience who should have merged and been at the helm, a 
fact neither China nor Star Eagle had really found appetizing but one they 
hadn't been able to deny. Curiously, Koll had adamantly refused, although she 
would not explain it. Now, however, she was more than willing to give advice. 
"In the process, however, we burned out the rear thrusters completely. We are 
proceeding in on course and schedule, but we have no way of stopping the ship."
Koll thought about the problem. "Are you in contact with that big mother?"
"Establishing now. We have explained that we were ordered to do this by Master 
System for a special project. It is torn between being puzzled at our inability 
to immediately transmit the correct code and its desire to be reactivated. We 
think it wants to trust us, and we will come up with something convincing to 
cover ourselves. Why?"
"Those babies were never designed to land. They were built in space, and that's 
where they always will be. They should operate much like major interstellar 
traders, I bet. That means tractor beams to manipulate and reorder cargo. Tell 
it you were damaged in the fight, explain the problem, and request it hook you 
with beams. It'll be a real bump, but how much worse can it be than what we just 
went through?"
"We have informed it of the problem. It is reactivating and reawakening its 
systems now. It will be several hours before we reach the contact point at this 
speed, and we dare not increase speed and hope for a tractor catch. We suggest 
that everyone now move about, tend to wounds and damage as best they can, and we 
will notify them when to brace. The medical robot has been dispatched to the 
passenger cabin in case it is needed."
The core disengaged China from Star Eagle. It was as close to a voluntary 
separation as could be attained, one based on sheer force of logic. Shifts for 
human interfacers were strictly limited; if she hoped to interface again at the 
critical point, she could not remain there now.
Silent Woman, Cloud Dancer, and the Chows went about checking on and seeing to 
everyone else, although Cloud Dancer and one of the Chows had been pretty badly 
battered. They were particularly concerned with China, now over five months 
pregnant and beginning to show, but the mere fact that she'd been limp, 
essentially unconscious, had protected her. Except for a few bruises where 
straps had cut into her arm and shoulder, she seemed fine. Reba Koll refused all 
attention. Although by far the oldest of the lot, she seemed to have neither cut 
nor bruise.
"We are getting a call from behind us, faint but clear," Star Eagle informed 
them. "I will pipe it in."
"Nagy to Raven, come in. Nagy to Raven, please respond," came the faint call.
"Jam him if he tries to call in to the fleet," China ordered the pilot. "Can I 
respond to him?"
"Go ahead. Use the headset," the pilot answered.
"Nagy, whoever you are, this is Captain Nightingale. If you proceed after us any 
farther, I will inform the fleet that you are an enemy vessel in rebellion 
against Master System. Break off. You've lost."
There was a pause. "Yeah, well, what the hell. We're not coming hi that hornet's 
nest after you. That was pretty slick, what you pulled. You should'a died. All 
our systems here insist that you're dead now."
"We're alive, Nagy. We're alive and we're leaving, but don't worry, you'll hear 
from us again."
"Well, maybe, maybe not. You might con all those old fleet pilots there for a 
little while, but you know that Master System will be on you before you break 
orbit. So you're gonna hide out there, a fourteen-kilometer-long spaceship? You 
can get lost there, but that's gonna be real obvious if you show up anyplace 
inhabited. You're in command—not Koll or Raven?"
"That is correct. You were beaten by someone you turned into a blind babymaker. 
Don't sell us short again."
"Oh, I won't. I don't have to. You either stick Koll out that air lock, if you 
can, or I've seen and heard the last of you, I warn you. That's not Koll you're 
carrying, it's something that'll kill you all. Only we can protect you. Come 
about and we will protect you and you will all survive. Anything else and you 
carry your own deaths with you."
Koll gave a chuckle. "Don't pay him no mind. 1 ain't gonna hurt any of you. 
Don't have to."
"Is he telling the truth? Are you not Koll?"
"No, I'm not Koll, but I'm no danger to this crew. To him and his master, 
Clayben, I'm death incarnate. It's too involved to explain right now. You just 
fought one hell of a fight, and you're almost home, honey. Now all you have to 
do is trust him or trust me. You can't get all them rings without me, so think 
it over good. You took a lot of risks there. You know what happens if you take 
his protection. You pick now."
China didn't have to think very far on it. One of these days one of the risks 
wasn't going to pay, but considering the alternatives, it was not something she 
worried about.
"We'll be back, Nagy, count on it," China said. "We'll be back to blow your 
little empire to the outer reaches of eternity, and Master System with it. You 
go back there and tell them that, Nagy. You tell them—and you watch your back 
and sweat a little and keep out of dark corners. I don't need the light for 
that. You made everything darkness for me. No one—not you, not Melchior, not 
Earth or Master System will stop us. There'll be no place to hide when we 
return, Nagy, and we have the universe to use and prepare. We'll be back—and 
damn you all!"
They slowly closed on one of the monster ships of the ancient fleet, whose great 
bulk was dwarfed by the colors of massive Jupiter, which filled half the sky.
Raven and Warlock looked at each other and nodded. We'll be back!
Hawks put his arms around Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman and hugged them before 
they all had to be strapped in again. He touched the Melchior tattoos on their 
faces and on his own and promised himself that one day such a design would be a 
mark of honor, of revolution. It would be a long journey to that day, and he did 
not know what lay ahead, but he knew one thing full well.
We'll be back!
The Chows assisted China to her chair, beaming with pride at her will and 
courage.
We'll be back!
The one they knew as Reba Koll relaxed and flicked her strange tail, thinking. 
Up until now escape had been the only motive, no risk too great to take. Against 
all logic and all odds they'd come very far indeed, but there was a long way to 
go. Now, nothing seemed impossible.
We'll be back! And we'll have five gold rings to stuff down Master System's 
infinite throat until it chokes!
For now—to the stars!
 
The Rings of the Master
continues with Pirates of the Thunder
 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jack L. Chalker was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on December 17, 1944, but was 
raised and has spent most of his life in Baltimore, Maryland. He learned to read 
almost from the moment of entering school, and by working odd jobs amassed a 
large book collection by the time he was in junior high school, a collection now 
too large for containment in his quarters. Science fiction, history, and 
geography all fascinated him early on, interests that continue.
Chalker joined the Washington Science Fiction Association in 1958 and began 
publishing an amateur SF journal, Mirage, in 1960. After high school he decided 
to be a trial lawyer, but money problems and the lack of a firm caused him to 
switch to teaching. He holds bachelor degrees in history and English, and an 
M.L.A. from Johns Hopkins University. He taught history and geography in the 
Baltimore public schools between 1966 and 1978 and now makes his living as a 
freelance writer. Additionally, out of the amateur journals he founded a 
publishing house, The Mirage Press, Ltd., devoted to nonfiction and 
bibliographic works on science fiction and fantasy. This company has produced 
more than twenty books in the last nine years. His hobbies include esoteric 
audio, travel, working on science-fiction convention committees, and guest 
lecturing on SF to institutions such as the Smithsonian. He is an active 
conservationst and National Parks supporter, and he has an intense love of 
ferryboats, with the avowed goal of riding every ferry in the world. In fact, in 
1978 he was married to Eva Whitley on an ancient ferryboat in midriver. They 
live in the Catoctin Mountain region of western Maryland with their son, David.