The scream of utter frustration ripping through her
brain shocked her out of stasis. She felt a jolt run through
her body, then it and the scream dwindled to a tingle at her
spine. That sensation proved unsettling enough that, for
a moment or two, she succeeded in fighting off her body’s
desire to slip back into somnolent bliss.

 Where?

 Why?

 Her mind slowly clawed its way to consciousness. In an
instant she knew exactly where she was. Snippets of
memories, all involving shadowy figures bearing her
downward through dark tunnels, strobed through her
brain. Deeper and deeper they had taken her, just has her
mind had retreated deep into itself, to keep her safe. Safe,
and so I could prepare.

 As she recalled the need for preparation and the reason
behind it, she felt the tingling in her spine shift to a cold chill
clutching her with sharp talons. At first she imagined it a
reaction to the memory, but then she heard faint echoes
of sinister laughter. The laughter built slowly and she
knew, instinctively, that had the creature causing it not
been multiple dimensions from her, she would have been
forced to return to stasis to preserve her sanity.

 It is him. He endures, even after this much time. The

 scream, she realized, had come from far closer than the
laughter. That was the reason it had been able to cut
through all the mental shields she had created to protect
herself.He was here, in this dimension, but he was turned
away. He was defeated. How is that possible?

 She forced her eyes open and waited impatiently for
them to focus so she could read the chronometric display
above the life-signs monitor in her stasis capsule. Glowing
green numerals reported time as both objective and
subjective, with the latter number causing her more
concern than the former.Ihave been in stasis for the
equivalent of 3.27144 life-measurement units. My mis-
sion, my preparation, was projected to take 4.978831
LMUs. Iam not yet ready.

 She looked at the first number again. She frowned,
forcing her brain through the rigors of mathematics.
Twenty-six terrestrial LMUs have passed since I was
placed in stasis. Have they progressed so much that they
can hold him at bay? Has the danger passed? Is it safe?

 The laughter drifted in and out of her mind like snatches
of music borne by the wind. At times she heard it with a
deafening clarity, then it faded until she wondered if it had
ever been there at all. The anger in it slowly drained until
she sensed an almost paternal pride or a begrudged
respect in it. Whoever had driven him off had earned his
attention and, with that, she knew, came fearful, crushing
retribution.

 I was put into stasis tofighthim—and them—toprevent
his exacting revenge. I was to forge myself into a tool that
would end his campaign of terror and domination. She
pressed her fingertips against the soft cloth lining the
stasis capsule and sought in it the peace she had known
before the scream. I am not ready.

 From the heart of the laughter came a new emotion. It
shocked and hurt her, but she automatically shunted the

 pain away as the defenses she had prepared dealt with the
assault. Once she broke through the wall of physical
discomfort, she saw and smelled and felt and heard and
tasted and sensed him and his thoughts. She had trouble
following his mental processes, for though he had one
purpose and one goal, it seemed as if billions of minds
spoke in unison with his. Like listening for one lone flute
in a concert of all the worlds’ orchestras, she caught
tantalizing fragments of his musings, then slowly puzzled
them together.

 She consciously overrode the physical lethargy im-
posed by the stasis capsule and let herself smile. Here he
is called Fiddleback, a name in which he revels for its
irony and infamy. He has agents here—many agents. But
there are those who oppose him. Someone turned one of
his agents, his favorite, against him. That pet has joined
forces with the opposition against him, but Fiddleback
has no fear. There is a trap. He will consume his enemies
in this trap, and take away a greater prize in doing so.

 The monstrous confidence in Fiddleback’s thoughts
threatened to swamp her like a tidal wave. Another
.00001 LMUs rack themselves up on her chronometric
display along with an increase in Fiddleback’s certainty
that he would succeed. That sent another jolt through her,
and the metallic taste of fear flooded her mouth.

 Iam not ready!Part of her brain screamed as her right
index finger flexed and moved upward. Lifting it felt like
moving the mountain beneath which she had been buried.
Had she waited until 4.978831 LMUs had passed, the
stasis capsule would have opened by itself and prepared
her for a return to a world where time flowed unabated.
Part of her very much wanted to wait for that eventuality,
but something in Fiddleback’s palpable egotism told her
that to wait was to awaken in a world he had made his own.

 Millimeter by millimeter her finger rose until it finally

 met resistance. For a half-second, she felt she could not
depress the switch enough to free herself. She let the
energy that her claustrophobic panic freed flow into her
finger. It stiffened, and she heard a faint click.

 The hiss of musty air flowing into the capsule buried
that sound. Dim light encircled her as the top half of the
tubular capsule rose four centimeters. She blinked her
eyes twice, not against the light, but because of the swirls
of dust curling in beneath the edge of the capsule. As the
latches on the right side snapped open, the whole lid
rotated up and to the left. In its wake, a drifting blanket of
dust blew free of the lid’s trailing edge and settled over her.

 She sneezed.

 The sound surprised her, especially the way it echoed
within the small stone chamber, then she laughed. That
happy sound likewise rebounded back to her, and she
smiled, remembering that the denizens of this world still
communicated through sounds instead of through telepa-
thy. Although born here, she shared her parents’ prefer-
ence for thought transfer to the imprecision of speech.

 The incessant chittering of Fiddleback’s myriad thoughts
nibbled through the pleasant feelings her memories had
engendered. She frowned and tried to snap shut the link
to him, but found it impossible. Gritting her teeth, she
redoubled her effort. Success came, along with a return of
the pain wall, leaving her exhausted and numb.

 Golden highlights glinted from her fingernails as she
outstretched her arms. Reaching down, she grasped the
edge of the capsule and levered herself into a sitting
position, then swung her legs over the edge. Scooting
forward, she hopped down to the floor and landed in a
three-point crouch. She looked left and right, her eyesight
piercing the darkness without trouble, but heard and saw
nothing else in the small room.

 Settling back down on her haunches, she brushed her

 thumb over her fingertips, savoring the gritty sensation of
the dust from the floor.No one has been here for a long
time. LMUs, perhaps. She straightened up and glanced
over at the wooden bin stacked with metallic debris and
the four padlocked file cabinets next to it.Dr. Chandra
said no one would ever be allowed to see the Corona crash
evidence. Hiding me here was a good choice.

 Padding over to the gray metal door, she remembered
something about when she had been sealed in the room.
Dr. Chandra had given her a key and hung it around her
neck on a chain. For the first time, she became aware of
it hanging down between her small breasts. She pulled it
free and looked for a lock in which to insert it—she
remembered having practiced with a key so she would not
be trapped.

 The door had no lock.

 Reaching up as high as she could, she ran her hands
down each edge of the metallic door jamb. She felt no weld
scars and, at the bottom of the door, she was able to insert
her fingernails beneath it. Straightening up again, she
took a step back to survey the door in its entirety and
noticed the numeric keypad beside it.

 She smiled because the doors on the ship had used
similar sorts of locking mechanisms. She covered it with
her hand and gave the mental command to open.

 Nothing happened.

 A second attempt achieved the same result. She
concentrated, thinking perhaps her skills had atrophied
during stasis. She rejected the thought—the whole pur-
pose of her time in stasis had been tohone her skills, but
part of her preferred that impossibility to the reality of
being trapped.

 Her third command failed as had the other two, but her
concentration brought another result. She realized that of
the nine keys on the pad, several of them resonated

 differently to her senses. She ran her fingertips over them
very lightly and felt a spark as she touched some of them.

 She shook her head. Ofcourse, the humans put this in.
That which we useformanualoverride is what they have
no choice but to use because the vast majority of them
cannot project their thoughts. Four keys feel special, but
what is the sequence? How many numbers?

 With four keys feeling special, she knew the logical
assumption was that the coded sequence involved only
four numbers. Even so, the first key felt so much more
powerful than the others, she suspected it had to be hit
twice during the sequence. That first number centered the
top row of three: She recalled it being called an 8.

 The other special keys were arrayed on the keypad in
a roughly geometric pattern. The 6 lay one below and one
to the right of the 8. The 2 sat in the bottom row, located
squarely in the middle. The 4 sat on the other end of the
row with the 6.

 A five-number sequence with four possible candidates
is not an insurmountable number of combinations to try.
She stared at the keypad again. Entering a wrong number
couldsetoffan alarm, and with thechanges here, Idonot
want to do that. There must be another clue.

 She frowned and tried to sort through anything she
could remember about her hosts that would give her an
indication of what she should do. She smiled as she
remembered Dr. Chandra and the other humans who had
worked with her, studying her, as she had grown up within
the protected environment of a Federal Liaison Center. It
shocked and surprised her that, as much as she had loved
Chandra and his co-workers, her mother’s thoughts about
humans detonated inherbrain: Humans are undisciplined,
vain and sloppy.

 Sloppy. Instead of forcing themselves to remember
things, they take shortcuts. She looked at the keypad and

 smiled.Mnemonics, patterns, tools. Yes, it makes sense.
Reaching out, she hit 8-6-2-4-8, starting with the 8 and
describing a diamond-shape that ended with the 8 again.
A pair of eights and a skip-straight. Not a betting hand.

 She wondered where that thought had come from as
the door slid silently into the ceiling. She glanced out and
saw nothing but pale yellow light. Thinking herself safe,
she stepped out of the room, then discovered, in a small
alcove, a desk with a lamp producing the yellow light.
Behind the desk, staring at her wide-eyed over the edge
of a tabloid newspaper, sat a very surprised soldier.

 “Jesus H. Christ!” The man pulled his feet from the top
of the desk and sat forward, letting the tabloid spray
across the desk in a blizzard of paper. He looked her up
from her toes to the top of her head and back down again.
”Oh my God!”

 His thoughts raced unbridled and bursting with raw
energy. The first thought she picked up from him was one
of happy surprise, because the first thing he noticed was
her nakedness. He then noticed her gold hair, which
heightened his excitement and keyed his active fantasy
life, despite the apparent drawbacks of her being, in his
eyes, petite.

 Then reality darkened his fantasy. He realized that no
matter how much he thought he deserved a carnal
adventure, there was no way anyone, naked or not, should
be at his hell-hole post. His job was technically to keep
people away from getting into whatever the Air Force
stored down here, but all those interlopers should have
been coming down from above, not out from below. With
that realization she caught the first tendrils of horror in his
thoughts.

 The soldier looked at her again and saw beyond her
nudity and golden hair. She saw herself reflected in his
terror. Her jet-black flesh and metallic gold fingernails

 struck him as odd, but not out of the ordinary from things
he had seen at the Palomino in Vegas. Even the golden
stripes running from her fingers along her arms, and up
her legs from her toes were not so radically out of line. He
could have accepted them, but then he saw her eyes.

 Large and slightly almond-shaped, he saw them as
sensual—for a heartbeat. Then he saw the vertical lozenge
pupil and that triggered in him an ancient race-fear of
reptiles. In less time than it took for the last page from his
tabloid to flutter to the ground, she had gone from an
object of carnal desire to a monster from the bowels of hell.

 She felt his panic and knew there was no way she could
calm him.He is all but gone now! She threw her arms
open, looked him in the eyes and projected an image into
his mind. She forced him to visualize her legs blending
together into 20 feet of gold-bellied snake and her tongue
flickering in his direction.

 The soldier’s eyes rolled back up into his head as he
fainted dead away. He flopped back into his chair, then
dropped to the floor and lay there quietly. His arms and
legs twitched a couple of time, then he rolled onto his back
and began breathing normally.

 She crossed to him and pressed her right hand against
his forehead. Projecting her mind into his, she found his
short-term memory and began to warp it. Plucking a page
from the tabloid, she studied the picture of a dark-haired
actress in a gown that looked barely able to restrain all of
her.Iam sorry this Janine Fonda is not a blonde, as you
seem to prefer, but she should do nicely for you.

 Rooting around inside his head, she tracked the begin-
ning of his fantasy about her through the cognitive links
that opened his fantasy world to her. In no time at all she
found one of many fantasies he’d had involving a clandes-
tine encounter at this, the base’s most forgotten and
despised duty post. She quickly raced through it, substi-

 tuting Janine Fonda for Andrea Beatty-Bening, then
retreated from his mind.

 She noted the happy smile on his face, then started to
unbutton his shirt. In no time she managed to appropriate
his outer clothing. She had to roll the pants up and punch
a new hole in his belt, but she found the clothes comfort-
able and welcomed their warmth against the chill in the
air.

 She realized she would need footwear, so she took his
boots. Because they were far too large for her, she started
to wad up pages from the tabloid to stuff into the toes. As
she did so, she picked up the centerspread and froze.It’s
true: He was here.

 A grainy photograph, clearly taken at night, showed a
monstrously huge creature towering over a skyscraper.
Though she had never actually seen Fiddleback, he had
been described to her in enough detail for her to know this
blurred photograph had to be him.

 She stared at the symbols on the page and forced
herself to remember how to decipher them. Translating
quickly, she rendered the headline as “Genetically defec-
tive arachnid assaults a mythical bird that is reborn of its
own ashes.” Knowing that had to be incorrect, and seeing
the bird reference repeated in captions and the body of the
text, she decided the wordPhoenix probably referred to a
place.

 “Pah-he-o-e-nicks,” she sounded out. It sounded de-
cidedly alien to her, but then everything about the world
of her birth was alien to her, as she was to it.Phoenix. This
is where Fiddleback was defeated. This is where his
enemies dwell, dwell in danger. She balled the paper up
and jammed it into the boot.Then this Phoenix is where
I shall go to warn them.

 Coyote straightened his tie in the way he thought
Michael Loring would, and stood behind his desk as Lilith
ushered Sinclair MacNeal into his office. He came around
to greet Sinclair, his long legs eating up the distance
easily. “How good of you to come on such short notice,
Mr. MacNeal.”

 The shorter, dark-haired man eyed him cautiously, but
accepted his proffered hand in a strong grip. “The call I
received indicated that haste was important.” Sinclair’s
blue eyes narrowed. “We have met before, Mr. Loring.”He
glanced at the third man in the room. “At that time you
were in a company of another.”

 Coyote nodded, then looked up at the stunning blond
woman still waiting in the doorway. “That should be all for
now, Lilith. Let me know when the aircraft is preflighted
and ready to go.”

 “Yes, Mr. Loring.”

 As she closed the door to his office, Coyote pointed to
the man seated in one of two wing chairs in front of the
desk. “Sinclair MacNeal, this is Damon Crowley.”

 Sinclair looked at Crowley but did not offer him his
hand. “I met a Damon Crowley before. He ‘entertained’ at
a party a year ago, over in Goddard Tower One. He was
much older than you. Your father?”

 Crowley’s gray-gloved left hand stroked his goatee
reflectively. He ignored the question. “The Deitrich party,
yes. The good doctor always throws such lavish affairs.”

 Sinclair’s gaze turned to Coyote. “The paper back-
ground you constructed for Michael Loring is flawless. I
commend you on it. I also assume, therefore, that youare
Coyote and that this is not some sort of bizarre job
interview.”

 Coyote smiled. “Sit.” Seating himself on the edge of his
desk, he reached back and picked up a thick sheaf of
newsprint. “I am aware of your falling out with your father
and your discharge from Build-more. As you recall, I was
there. And, while Lorica Industries would very much like
to employ a man of your talents, I have a personal job I
need you to perform.”

 He tossed the tabloid to Sinclair. “Have you read the
story about Phoenix in here?”

 Sinclair glanced at the front page and shook his head.
”Midnight Weekly Inquireris not my kind of reading
material, sorry.”

 “I know that, Mr. MacNeal. I know you take theTokyo
Shimbun andJapan Weekly News as well as two Japa-
nese-language newsletters that are printed by the Yama-
guchi-gumi. I know you subscribe to 14 other magazines,
but the only two you seem to read voraciously are
Methods of Industrial SecurityandCounter-Terrorism
Bulletin. In fact, I found your CTB article on the effects of
minor extortion on executives abroad fascinating.”

 Coyote felt that Sinclair covered his look of surprise
quite well. “As you have checked on me, Mr. MacNeal, so
I have checked on you. This is why you are here. Now,
back to my original question: Have you read about what
happened in Phoenix two weeks ago?”

 Sinclair surrendered with a smile. “I have seen news
reports, but, no, I have not read ‘Mutant Spider Attacks

 Phoenix.’ As for the actual incident,” he glanced down at
his hands, “I managed to sleep through it. Then again, I
was never one for sharing the hallucinations caused by
mass hysteria.”

 Crowley leaned forward. “And what if I were to suggest
that there was fire beneath the smoke that is this article?”

 “I would suggest you get in touch with your father,
because his act was much better than yours.”

 “Good, Mr. MacNeal, very good.” Coyote walked back
around and sat behind his desk. “You’ll need your skep-
ticism, because what we are about to tell you will be very
surprising. I assure you it is true, as odd as it may seem.”

 MacNeal tossed the tabloid onto the gold-carpeted
floor, “It gets odder? I can’t wait”

 Coyote let the sarcasm slip past, knowing he shared
Sinclair’s attitude before he had seen and done what
prevented Fiddleback’s success in assaulting Phoenix.
”Mr. MacNeal, the creature in the picture that accompa-
nies that article is, in fact, real. The maglev circuit that
connects all of the corporate towers here in Phoenix had
incorporated into its design a highly advanced circuitry
layout. When supplied with sufficient power, as was
present in the thunderstorm two weeks ago, it opened a
gateway to another reality. In that reality, this creature
exists.”

 Sinclair shook his head. “Another reality? I think you’ve
been watching too muchStar Trek: Captain Crusher’s
Log.”

 “In fact, there are many alternate realities, or dimen-
sions, that exist side by side. The dimension that contains
our Earth is one that is unusual in that it appears to be a
nexus point and, for whatever reasons, Earth creatures
hold a fascination for the creatures from these other
dimensions.” Coyote shrugged. “They labor to make our
lives hell for their own amusement.”

 Sinclair stood. “They may find us amusing, and you
may findme amusing, but I’m not amused right now. I
don’t know what you wanted me to do, but if I have to buy
this nonsense to do it, I’m out. Good day, gentlemen.”

 “Crowley, you were right. Show him.”

 The man in the gray suit eased himself forward to the
edge of his chair. “At the Deitrich party, you and I ended
up washing our hands side by side in the reception
center’s bathroom. You noticed a peculiar scar on the
back of my left hand and commented that you’d only seen
anything similar on dead fish.”

 Crowley tugged at each finger of the glove on his left
hand. As it slid free, Coyote saw a circular mass of scar
tissue on the back of Crowley’s left hand, it looked twisted
and knotted, as if someone had taken a circular sanding
tool to his flesh and had ground on it for a while. Pulling the
glove all the way off, Crowley showed his hand to Sinclair.

 “The lamprey scar. I remember it.” Sinclair looked up
at the man’s face, then back down at his hand. “But the
man with the scar was much older—20, 30 years your
senior. You could have faked that.”

 “Touch it, if you wish. See if it is real.” Crowley extended
his hand to him, but the challenge in the occultist’s voice
made Sinclair hesitate. “You will recall that only you and
I were in that room at the time, so only you saw the scar.
You would further agree, I think, that while I might have
faked the scar through some complex make-up or sur-
gery, planning to inflict the scar on myself far enough in
advance to let it heal like this, then springing it on you here,
is improbable.”

 Sinclair stared at the hand, then looked up at Crowley.
”Believing you planned ahead is easier than trying to
figure out how you became younger.”

 Crowley slipped his hand back into the glove. “There
are dimensions out there where things...change.”

 Coyote sat back in his chair. “The easiest explanation
is not always the correct one. In order to defeat Fiddle-
back—the ‘mutant spider’ in question—Crowley under-
took a dangerous mission to a dimension that formed the
basis for part of mythological Greek hell, Tartarus. In that
pocket dimension, the one in which the titan Tityus
regenerates on a daily basis after having provided a meal
for vultures, he helped a woman regenerate from injuries
caused by Fiddleback’s agents. In the process, he also
regenerated from all that ailed him. In his case, this was
the ravages of old age. The scar, which he had gotten
before the age to which he regressed, remained unaf-
fected.”

 Sinclair sat slowly, his bright eyes flicking back and
forth between Crowley and Coyote. “I’m listening, but I’m
not convinced.”

 Coyote steepled his fingers. “Good. Stories of things
from yetis and lake monsters to flying saucers and
zombies have a basis in truth. Scholars have, by assuming
the simplest answer is the best one, created scenarios for
describing mythic epics as tales reflecting or explaining in
magical terms concepts that ancient peoples could not
understand. Like you, like them, I did not realize, until my
encounter with Fiddleback, that another explanation
existed: Other realities exist and, at various points in our
history and prehistory, denizens of these other places
have come here and been driven back by our ancestors.”

 “So, you’re trying to tell me that Count Dracula was
really a vampire from another dimension?”

 “Perhaps. But more likely Vlad the Impaler was a
human under the influence of a Dark Lord.” Coyote
unbuttoned his blue suitcoat and leaned forward onto his
desk. “I do not expect you to believe that everything weird
is a result of Dark Lord action—plenty of human mounte-
banks make a living by spreading pseudo-scientific non-

 sense. I just want you to be aware that things, like
Fiddleback, do exist and must be opposed. At the risk of
sounding decidedly melodramatic, what I want you to do
is help us prevent Fiddleback from taking over the world.”

 “I’ve got the weekend free, not a problem,” Sinclair
quipped sarcastically.

 Coyote smiled at him. “I’m glad you have a sense of
humor. You’ll need it.”

 “You said you had a job for me to do.”

 “So I did. Until recently, Mr. MacNeal, I was an assassin
being trained and maintained by Fiddleback’s organiza-
tion. I came to Phoenix to kill Nero Loring. I had my eyes
opened to the nature of reality, or therealities, and now I
have chosen to side with humanity over the whim of the
Dark Lords.”

 “Fiddleback being a Dark Lord?”

 Coyote nodded.

 Sinclair’s eyes narrowed. “And there are more than just
him?”

 Coyote nodded again.

 Crowley crossed his legs. “Fiddleback is but one of
many. Pygmalion, DeadTongue, Baron Someday and a
dozen others all operate here on Earth. Fiddleback has
been the most ambitious to date, but all are effective in
their spheres of influence.”

 “Fiddleback, as part of his plan to solidify his hold on
Earth, has created a training school for assassins and
other agents. I know its general location, but I want you to
pinpoint it and scout it out for me.” Coyote interwove his
fingers and watched Sinclair closely. “This is why I am
sending you to Japan.”

 Sinclair’s head came up as if someone had grabbed his
hair and jerked it back. “Japan? I don’t think you want me
going to the Land of the Rising Sun. You may have a
background file on me, but much of what it reports about

 my time in Tokyo is wrong, I’m certain.”

 “I don’t think so. Jytte is thorough and never settles for
one source. I know about your situationvis a vis the
Yakuza and the others in Japan. You are precisely the
person I want in place there.” Coyote punched the button
on his deskphone when it lit up. “Yes, Lilith?”

 “The flight is standing by, Mr. Loring.”

 “We’ll be right up.” He stood. “Sorry to cut this short, but
I have to catch a shuttle out to the regional airport. I have
a flight leaving very shortly.”

 “Wait a minute. You can’t just leave me in the dark
here.”

 Coyote pointed back toward the door. “My executive
assistant, Ms. Acres, will give you a full set of briefing
documents. She has also prepared your reservations in
Tokyo, all the documentation you’ll need, a credit line of
$50,000 and has $5000 in cash for you. You still prefer the
Beretta M92S as a side arm?”

 Sinclair looked a bit shocked. “Yes, but smuggling one
into Japan will be impossible.”

 “Agreed, which is why we will have one waiting for you
in your suite inthe New Palace Hotel. Ms. Acres will
remain in this office for a week, then she will transfer to the
Lorica office in Tokyo. You can reach her here or there as
needed.” Opening his top drawer, Coyote pulled a sealed
file folder from his desk and offered it to Sinclair. “I need
you to do one more thing. I need you to take this to Phoenix
General Tower, Room 10542.”

 Sinclair accepted the file. “I give this to Hal Garrett?”

 Coyote nodded appreciatively. “Very good, Mr.
MacNeal. How did you know?”

 “I have a head for figures.” He tapped his right temple.
”After your visit to my apartment, I checked on Garrett. I
remember the room number.”

 Then you’ll have no trouble finding it. I will contact you

 in Japan when I am able and you will likely see Mr.
Crowley before you see me.”

 “One thing, Coyote.”

 “Yes?”

 “You said you were trained at this facility, which you put
in Japan. Why am I going after it when you, it seems to me,
would be the logical choice to uncover it?”

 Coyote smiled. “The short form is that I no longer know
where it is, so Ineed you to find it for me. More importantly,
though, Crowley believes—and I have come to agree with
him—that I need to complete the training Fiddleback had
intended for me, albeit without his sponsorship. This
means I must go away, but for how long, I do not know.
If I learn what I must quickly enough, and you find
Fiddleback’s beachhead in Japan, we can defeat him.”

 “And if you or I fail?”

 Coyote pointed to Crowley. “Remember what the
lamprey did to his hand?”

 Sinclair nodded solemnly.

 “Imagine life after Fiddleback does that to the Earth.”

 Sinclair MacNeal shielded his eyes from the dust storm
raised by Lorica’s CV-27 Peregrine. As the dual-rotor craft
lifted off, the pilot rotated the nacelles at the end of the
wings forward, transforming the hybrid craft from helicop-
ter to more conventional plane. The silvery craft dipped
toward the ground to pick up airspeed, then swooped up
and headed directly out toward the regional airport in the
distance.

 Raking windblown hair back into place with his left
hand, Sin looked out over the city of Phoenix. From high
atop the Lorica Industries corporate citadel, he had a clear
view of the black, photovoltaic cell ocean that covered the
city 100 feet above the ground. He saw two Arizona Public
Service crews working to repair cells damaged in the
storm two weeks earlier.

 Seven man-made islands floated in the black sea called
Frozen Shade. To the northwest he saw the Build-more
complex and even allowed himself a proud smile. The
largest of the islands, dead west from the Lorica complex,
dwarfed all the others. City Center sat at the hub of the
maglev-elevated train lines that connected all of the
corporate citadels and very much formed the center of life
for the people living in those towers.

 Raised in the Build-more tower, and having lived there

 when not in Japan or Europe, Sin found what he surveyed
normal. On his 18thbirthday, his father had taken him to
the top of the Build-more tower and swept his arm wide
over the city. “Sinclair, someday this will all be yours.”I’d
have believed him, except I knew he’dsaid thesame thing
to my three older brothers when they turned 18.

 “Mr. MacNeal?”

 Sin looked over toward the accessway into the tower.
”Yes, Ms. Acres, what is it?”

 The blond woman nodded once and smiled. “Mr. Loring
asked me to prepare your things for you. If you would
follow me.”

 Sin took one last look at the city. He drew in a lungful
ofthe dry, desert air and lethimself revel in the 110°Fheat.
”May be hot, but it’s a dry heat,” he laughed to himself.
”Unfortunately, Tokyo is a very wet heat at this time of
year.”

 “Mr. MacNeal?”

 “Sorry.” He shook his head and followed Lilith through
the doorway and down the dark stairwell. Above him, the
door shut automatically and, as they descended, the air
cooled appreciably. “Outsiders always note that Phoenix
hasdry heat, as if that makes it bearable. Tryingto explain
to them that an oven hasdry heat also never seems to
make the point. Still, the dry heat here is preferable to
Tokyo during the summer.”

 Lilith nodded politely, but Sin definitely had the impres-
sion she did so merely because it was mannerly, not out
of any interest. The stairwell ended in a stout metal door
with a one-foot square of white Lucite in the wall beside the
jamb. She pressed her hand to it and a neon green bar
passed from top to bottom and back up again, scanning
her palmprint. The light went out, then the door lock
clicked.

 She held the door open as Sin paused and pulled a

 handkerchief from his back pocket. He wiped the plate
down, then stepped into the foyer of boring’s office suite.
Lilith followed him, and an oaken panel slid down to hide
the door. Sin smiled at her as he refolded his handkerchief
and returned it to his pocket.

 Lilith’s green eyes studied him for a moment, then she
restedherhandsonherhips. “Excuse me, butwhy did you
do that?”

 “I’m a security specialist, remember? The green light
and the scan rate makes that the Tojicorp knockoff of the
Allard Technologies Argus Security Scanner. The Allard
system has some proprietary software burned into its
chips that Tojicorp never cracked, so there are a couple
of tricks that can be used to defeat the TC system.” Sin
shrugged. “They’re not that simple, and few thieves carry
that sort of equipment around with them, anyway.”

 “I see.” Lilith pulled backthe cuff of her green silk jacket
and activated the wrist-recording device she wore. “Note:
have all security scanners replaced with Allard Technolo-
gies Argus systems.” Switching the device off, she di-
rected Sin toward her office. “This way, please.”

 “Neat toy, that.”

 “I will have one ordered for you.” Lilith nodded at her
red-haired secretary, then ushered Sin into her office.
She closed the door behind them, which gave him a
moment to survey the blond-ash paneled room. The
warm, golden carpet and open airiness of the room
made it seem far larger than it really was. This impres-
sion was aided by a window that took up the whole
north wall and provided a breathtaking view of Squaw
Peak and Camelback Mountain.

 She nodded and pointed him to a straight-backed chair
in front of her blackened-steel and smoky-glass desk. The
desk itself was utterly bare, and he wondered how she got
any work done at all without a computer or a phone. As

 she walked around behind it and touched the desk at
several seemingly random spots, he realized her secret.

 The whole desk surface is a touch-sensitive LCD com-
puter screen!“That’s the Big Blue-Delicious XR-8500,
isn’t it?” He leaned forward, but the polarized glass over
the desk’s surface only let someone looking at it from her
angle see anything. “I’ve read about it, but I’ve never seen
one.”

 Lilith smiled, and Sin thought it certain she was taking
joy in having turned the tables on him. “This is actually a
prototype XR-9900.” She hit an invisible icon on the right
side. “Daphne, can you bring Mr. MacNeal’s briefcase in
here, please?”

 Behind him the office door opened and Lilith’s trim
secretary brought him a brushed aluminum attachécase.
Sin looked at the twin locks and saw all the dials were set
at 0. He held it in his lap until Daphne left the room, then
set it down on the floor. He waited to see if that surprised
Lilith, but she did not react to his behavior.

 “The locks are keyed to your birthday. In there you will
find your new passport, ID, credit cards, plane tickets and
$5000 in cash. I’ve also put the file for Hal Garrett in there.”
She glanced at her desktop. “He is in room...”

 “10542.”

 “Very good, Mr. MacNeal. I would have not expected
you to remember.”

 Sin smiled easily. “I trained myself to memorize num-
bers. The case here, for example, is keyed to a number
that I can remember. It’s also a number that anyone who
has a file on me can remember. If I want that stuff to be
secure, I change the combination to something utterly
random and memorize the numbers.”

 Sin half expected her to make another note on her wrist-
recorder, but she did not. “Do you want to check the
material before you go?”

 “No, I trust you.”You’re efficient. It’s your boss I wonder
about “You’ll be in touch when you arrive in Japan?”

 “If you need me, I’ll be available.”

 She gave him a quixotic smile that, if he saw it on the
face of the women he met in his social circle, he would
have taken to be a come-on. With Lilith Acres, however,
he read it as some sign of inner amusement—as if he had
spinach stuck in his teeth or had a shirt-tail out. To him,
this meant their relationship would never extend beyond
business and that suited him fine. He anticipated his return
to Japan would be odd enough without trying to carry on
any sort of social life.

 Lilith directed him from the office to the elevator. “Have
a pleasant trip, Mr. MacNeal.”

 “Thankyou, Ms. Acres.” He entered the empty cylinder
and punched the button for the level with access to the
maglev train. The cage dropped away as if the cables had
been cut above him, but it gradually slowed as it neared
the 12thfloor. The descent let Sin look out through the
many levels of the Lorica tower and at the crowds of
people there. Level after level of shops and offices and
apartments strobed past, yet, while he saw them all and
cataloged the weaknesses of Lorica’s security, his mind
wandered to gnaw on a more immediate problem.

 Michael Loring/Coyote and Damon Crowley had clearly
bought the tabloid story about a giant spider attacking
Phoenix. Even though he had slept through the whole
storm, he’d heard enough people talk about it that he
knew it was decidedly odd. He’d even heard rumors about
what the APS crew working at the base of the Lorica tower
had found amid the ashes and broken PV cells. Even so,
he couldn’t buy it.

 He knew he had a good imagination—a necessity to
successfully work a corporate security beat. Thinking
ahead of all the impossible ways to break security was the

 only way to ensure that it would not be broken. During his
time in Japan, he showed his corporate masters tricks
they had never dreamed of. He’d personally played for
hours with one of the Tojicorp units to figure out how to
crack it.

 Despite that, however, he found himself rigidly skepti-
cal about all the odd things reported about the world. He
fully accepted that yetimight exist in Tibet’s mountains,
but he wasn’t going to believe it until he and someone like
Lilith spent an evening lounging on a yeti pelt in front of
a warm fire. That went double and triple for tales of
zombies and downed flying saucers and aging Nazi
menaces from the hollow Earth.

 Sin admitted to himself that he liked Coyote and
admired him for the cool courage with which the man had
broken into his apartment the night before the storm. He
appreciated Coyote’s sense of loyalty to Hal Garrett and
even respected Coyote’s chameleonlike ability to slip into
the Michael Loring identity so quickly.

 The man’s belief in the giant spider story, though,
disturbed him. Coyote immediately wanted to send
him to Japan to chase down a murder academy run by
agents of this giant daddy-longlegs. This supposed the
existence of this mythical spider and the actual exist-
ence of the assassin training center. Neither of those
things was assured to be anything beyond Coyote’s
personal fantasies.

 The mission made no sense, and it made even less
sense for him to accept the job.

 The doors whooshed open and let him out across from
the maglev VIP lounge.

 Well, at the very least, I can drop this file with Garrett
and maybe talk with him. Otherwise, such as it is,
Phoenix is my home and I’m not sure trooping off to
Yakuzaland is such a winner of an idea.

 Phoenix’s maglev train circuit had been designed by
Nero Loring, the man who had built Lorica Industries in
much the same way that Darius MacNeal had created
Build-more. Each of the trains on the circuit had been
custom-constructed in a triangular shape. The upper,
more narrow car was serviced from the VIP lounge and
only admitted those who had the appropriate passes.
Down below, in the broader, less well appointed part of the
cars, lesser executives and unimportant guests waited in
a crowd to be shoved into the packed cars.

 Sin fished his wallet out of his back pocket and took out
his Build-more identification card. He slipped it into the
slot beside the doors to the lounge and took a step forward.
He bumped straight into the closed doors and rebounded,
a bit surprised. Looking down at the slot he saw his card
sticking back out.

 A dark-haired young woman in a freshly starched gray
uniform looked at him from her position in the booth
beside the doors. He pulled his ID back out of the slot and
pressed it against the glass. She waved a laser-pen over
the barcode on it, then looked at her computer monitor.
She blinked once, then turned her face to him.

 “Can I help you, sir?”

 Sin jerked a thumb at the doors. “You can open them.
The mag strip must be gone from the back of my card
again.”

 Her face shifted into a look of snobbishly bored indiffer-
ence with the ease of plastic being injected into a mold.
”Sir, this is the VIP lounge. I believe you wanted the buses
down on the street level.”

 “What?” Sin looked at the ID card, then slapped it
against the glass again. “Try scanning it now, please.”

 The girl shook her head. “Sir, you have no authoriza-
tion. Build-more does not show you as an employee.”

 You son of abitch!Sin ground his teeth as he clenched

 his jaw against the angry words he wanted to shout.You
bastard! He turned away from the lounge doors, then
almost whirled and drove the attachécase through the
Plexiglass. He refrained, but not out of any fear for what
Scorpion Security might do to him—the weight at the end
of his arm gave him an idea.

 Okay, Coyote, here’s your chance to score some cred-
ibility points.He crossed to a cement bench and sat. He
opened the case and pulled out a manila envelope.
Undoing the clasp he popped it open and smiled as he
pulled another ID card from it.Picture’s not the greatest,
but it will do. He tossed his old card into the case along
with the envelope, then snapped it shut and again ap-
proached the lounge doors.

 The attendant had already started to reach for the
button that summoned security, but her hand froze in
place as his new ID card slipped into the slot and the doors
buzzed. Sinclair stepped through them and pulled his card
from the return slot. Slipping it into his pocket, he glanced
up at the video display to see when the next car was
leaving, then took a seat well away from a pair of men who,
though they were wearing business suits, could havegone
a long way toward proving zombies did exist.

 The attendant left her booth and walked over to him.
”Sir, you shouldn’t be here.”

 Sin rolled his eyes to heaven. “I have a valid ID, Miss.
I’m in.”

 She smiled nervously and lowered her voice. “No sir,
that’s not the problem.” She gently took hold of his upper
right arm. This is just the normal lounge. If you’ll come
with me.”

 Curious, Sin took out the ID card he’d used and looked
closely at it. It resembled the one his father’s corporation
had issued except in three things: the corporate hologram
in the corner represented Lorica, his job description was

 executive vice president for Special Liaison Affairs, and it
had a white border around it. He’d never seen the white
border before. This surprised him because, as a security
officer at Build-more, he thought he had seen everything.

 She led him to a door near the point where the front of
the train would end up when boarding began. “Your carte
blanche, please,” she whispered as she gently tugged at
his ID card. He let go and she slipped it into a slot beside
the door. The door itself slid up into the ceiling, admitting
them to a dark alcove. When the door shut behind them,
another opened in front, and they stepped into what
looked to Sin to be a bar.

 The rectangular room had a full bar with two bartenders
behind it across from him. The far end had a sound system
and a dance floor complete with a revolving mirrored ball
and a floor that changed colors by blocks. Tables with
candles glowing softly filled the space between the door
and the dance floor. Doorways leading into smaller
alcoves appeared every 10 feet or so along the walls and
two of them were shut.

 Sin frowned.What in hell?

 Lounging at the bar, sipping drinks from tall glasses,
Sin saw a half-dozen young men and women all look at
him when he came in. The attendant pressed his ID card
back into his hand and smiled. “I will be leaving now, sir.”
Her smile broadened hopefully. “Unless you want me to
stay.”

 Sin shook his head to clear it, which killed her smile.
She started to drift from sight, but Sin turned and thanked
her. “And the door over there, at this end of the bar, that’s
where I board the train?”

 She nodded. “Your ID will open it for you.”

 Sin thanked her again, then drifted to the bar. He
glanced down at the women, then looked up at the
bartender. “I never knew this was here.”

 The man gave him a chummy wink. “I had you pegged
as a first-timer. Yeah, you get a corp to issue you a carte
blanche and anything goes. What do you want?”

 “A beer—Henry Weinhard’s if you have it.” Sin saw a
leggy brunette who reminded him too much of an un-
pleasant memory named Christina approaching from
farther down the bar. He held his hand up. “Just a beer,
thanks.”

 She stopped and returned to her stool with the sort of
walk that made Sin almost regret his decision. The
bartender set a sweating bottle down in front of him, then
headed back to talk to the loungers, leaving Sin alone. Sin
took a long pull on the beer, letting it burn its way down
his throat.Giant spiders invading Phoenix? Coyote must
have known this place existed and I didn’t. Perhaps he
doesknow what he is talking about

 The nurse on the 10thfloor of Phoenix General kindly
directed Sin to Wing 5 and Room 42. Sin felt he probably
could have found the room on his own, but his introduc-
tion to the hyperspeed lane of corporate life in Phoenix had
disoriented him somewhat. While the carte blanche sec-
tion of the maglev did not offer the wide range of services
supplied by the lounge, it did have a small gift shop
section, so he grabbed some candy to bring with him.

 Sin knocked lightly on the door as he pushed it open.
”Mr. Garrett, I’m Sinclair MacNeal. I don’t know if you’ll
remember...” Sin’s voice trailed off as he saw he was not
Garrett’s only visitor.

 Garrett himself lay in an extra-long hospital bed with the
back elevated at a 30-degree angle. Two intravenous
feeds—one clear and the other a pinkish color—delivered
liquid through one needle in his right forearm and the other
on the back of his right hand. Athin, clear tube ran beneath
his nose and fed him oxygen. Despite Garrett’s being

 garbed in a hospital gown, Sin could see where the fabric
pulled taut against the bandages on his stomach and
chest.

 He looked alert, and the tight lines around his eyes
suggested to Sin that Garrett was not taking full advantage
of pharmaceutical science’s advances in painkiller tech-
nology. The big African-American man raised his left
hand weakly, then dropped it in a gesture of resignation,
or invitation to him to enter. “MacNeal...met you at fund-
raiser...your father gave $10,000.”

 Letting the door close behind him, Sin nodded to
Garrett and the other occupant whom he recognized.
Standing in the corner, near the foot of the bed was a man
who, while not as tall as Garrett, certainly massed more.
Dark, tight eyes look out at him from a lantern-jawed head
that might as well have been cast in iron. The man’s
muscular build and even the way he held his fists balled
and ready for action made Sin think of him as the model
for every neosocialist hero statue he’d seen in Tirane.
Looks like he’s wearing the sameHell’s BellesT-shirt he
had on the night he came with Coyote to my apartment.
Doesn’t look as if he’s washed it since then, either.

 Seated on the foot of the bed, a petite woman smiled at
Sin. She had a pretty face and obviously embodied the
concept of America as a melting pot. A strip of sky-blue
cloth tied her dark, kinky hair back at the nape of her neck,
but the bow looked a bit incongruous with the leather
jacket, leopard-spot leotard and flat-bottomed ankle-
boots she wore.

 Sin decided the bow’s cloth had been torn from the hem
of Garrett’s robe and probably tied in place by the last
person in the room. For a half-second, he thought she
might have been related to Lilith, because they both
shared mid-back length, blond hair and a slender, long-
legged form that legions of women labored fruitlessly for

 years to obtain. Her dark eyes and the way she clutched
her arms around herself dispelled any connection be-
tween her and Lilith. In fact, because she wore a jeans skirt
that hid her legs in its thick folds, and a white blouse
buttoned at collar and cuffs, Sin wondered if she wasn’t
actually a nun visiting Garrett without benefit of her habit.

 The large man in the corner took a step out toward Sin.
”You have the wrong room, MacNeal.”

 Garrett again raised his left hand and the girl on the bed
grabbed the large man’s wrist. “Bat, I know his father
commissioned the shooting. It’s okay.”

 Sin saw more pain shoot through Hal Garrett’s eyes, but
he knew it was not physical. The same assassins who had
put Hal in the hospital bed had killed his wife and almost
started gang genocide in the dark world that lurked
beneath Frozen Shade. “I’m sorry, Mr. Garrett. I would
have stopped it.” He looked at Bat and added: “And if you
want a piece of my father, you can hold my coat and have
whatever I leave behind.”

 Hal smiled as Bat retreated to the comer. “This is Natch
Feral and Jytte Ravel. Chwalibog Kabat you’ve met.”

 Sin nodded at Natch on the bed and saw that Jytte
refused to make eye contact with him. Bat folded his arms
across his chest and just stared smoldering holes into his
head, so Sin did his best to ignore him. “Coyote sent me
and asked me to give you a file.”

 The mention of Coyote served to brighten both Hal’s
and Natch’s faces. Jytte finally looked at him as if
appraising him and his abilities. As Sin opened his
briefcase, he noticed that Bat continued to glower at him.
He pulled out the folder and extended it to Natch.

 Natch broke the seal, then reversed the folder and
opened it in Hal’s lap. Hal’s eyes flicked back and forth as
he scanned the document, then he laid back and closed
his eyes for a second. He drew in a deep breath, hesitated

 for a second, forced himself to take in yet a little bit more
air, then slowly exhaled. “Jytte, read it.” His left index
finger pointed forward. “Tell them.”

 Jytte took the folder from him and scanned it very
quickly. “Coyote has left Phoenix for a while. He wants us
to stay low-profile. If something of importance comes up,
we are to contact him through Mr. MacNeal here, in
Tokyo.” Her eyes flashed at him. “Why you, MacNeal?”

 Why me, indeed?

 Before Sin could answer, Hal shifted stiffly in bed.
”Becausewe need to be here to work on preventing a
gang war, Natch.”

 “Besides, I lived in Japan for a while and I know my way
around.”

 “Don’t be so cocky, MacNeal.” Bat cracked his knuck-
les. “There’s another reason you’re going.”

 Sin’s eyes narrowed. “Yes?”

 “You’re not connected with Coyote.”

 “And?”

 Bat grinned like a cannibal in a morgue. “And that
means you’re expendable.”

 Wandering through the Nevada badlands at night, she
felt the presence of the snake well before she saw it or
heard the warning buzz of its rattles. She turned and saw
it in the moonshadow of a large rock. A coiled mass of
muscle, with black circles running down its tan spine, only
its head and the quickly vibrating scales at the end of its
tail stood out.

 The snake’s buzzing increased as she reached her hand
out to it. The creature’s threat-panic emanated out from
it as if riding the sound waves. She recognized the terror
rising from it and knew instantly that this creature would
strike to protect itself. Squatting down on her haunches,
she pulled her hand back and stuffed both of them into the
pockets of the leather flight jacket she had stolen from the
base.

 Drawing in a deep breath of cool night air, she banished
her fatigue and concentrated. Envisioning the snake’s
fear as ripples circling out from a central point, she
fashioned her thoughts as a spear and drove them back
through the reptile’s primitive display.

 Do not fear me, little brother. You would not find your
venom very effective on me. She smiled as the buzz
dropped in tempo. Iamyourally. Iamasmallsun to warm
you and shade to cool you. If you will guide me, I shall

 protect you.

 Though she composed her thoughts in words, she sent
them as emotions of safety and satisfaction. The Mohave
rattlesnake ceased its threat display altogether, then
slowly and languidly uncoiled. Gliding forward effort-
lessly, the four-foot-long snake slid from the rock and
approached her. It stopped two feet away and half coiled
to strike but did not begin rattling again.

 She slowly withdrew her left hand from the jacket and
extended it.I am Rajani. I will not harm you.

 The creature flickered its tongue over her hand, then
withdrew a bit.

 Yes, I taste different. Not your prey at all. We will be
allies.She opened her jacket and unbuttoned the fatigue
shirt at the waist. The snake slid forward and entered the
darkness between her flesh and the rough cotton fabric of
the shirt, it went all the way around her waist better than
two times, its scaled hide feeling slick and warm against
the flesh of her belly.

 Rajani stood slowly, waiting for the slap of rattles
against her flank to warn her if she was in danger of a
strike. She felt confident that the snake’s venom would not
hurt her because of her alien constitution, but she was not
absolutely certain of that fact. Since she knew she could
process food from Earth, and her parents had told her that
humans and her people could produce hybrids, she
realized that the basic protein chains that made up her
body were the same as those found in most of the things
the snake ate.

 Her two-day trek out of the base designated “Area 51”
had not been an easy one. The actual escape from the
base had been much easierthan she expected, but she put
that down to security having been arranged to keep
snoopers out instead of people in. The guards directed all
their attention to things happening outside.

 Emerging from the depths of the mountain, she had
managed to steal the flight jacket to ward off the cold. She
initially took finding it as a grand stroke of luck: It had been
packed away with other warm clothing in a trunk. The
barracks room was obviously used for storage—she
sensed no impressions of anyone having visited the room
within the last three months. She could not understand
why such a valuable coat would remain forgotten when it
was so cold.

 She took it, a smaller pair of boots and a boonie hat into
which she stuffed her hair. Looking in a mirror in the room,
she imagined seeing herself through the eyes of a human
and concluded, because of the way the clothes draped her
so completely, she would easily be mistaken for a juvenile
wearing an adult’s clothing. The benefit of the oversized
clothes was that they deemphasized the fact that her head
was a bit disproportionately large for her body.

 The most difficult part of her escape came as she
attempted to leave the secure portion of the base. Luckily
for her, two black, bat-wing planes swooped low for
tandem landings on the long airstrip. As they touched
down and raced along the dry lake bed, the two air police
manning the gate turned to watch.

 She took that opportunity to telepathically add in the
image of a spaceship, one of the ships on which her
parents had arrived on Earth, to the tableau. While that
addition clearly interested them, they accepted it far more
readily than she had expected. She sensed no surprise
from them, and no anxiety, which is what she had largely
recalled a ship’s presence creating before.

 “Looks like they’ve got the F-42 out for night maneu-
vers.”

 The African-American guard pulled off his cap and
scratched his head. “Wonder if that thing can see the
Stealths?”

 His partner laughed aloud. “C’mon, my kid’s got a radar
gun that can spot those antiques on the wing. The tech
those onion-heads have can read it molecule by mol-
ecule.”

 “I guess.”

 Rajani raced out into the Nevada desert With the term
onion-headhad come an undercurrent of fear and hatred.
That immediately sparked a bitter memory of the fights
Dr. Chandra used to have with his research assistant,
Nicholas Hunt. Whenever the little man with a lopsided
head had looked at her, she had sensed the same fear-
based hatred, and it abated only slightly when his focus of
attention shifted from her to Dr. Chandra.

 He called itprejudice. On an intellectual level she had
understood how fear of the unknown and uncertainty
about the future can fester into a knot of hatred for
anything different and possibly superior. Because of her
empathic abilities, however, Rajani had experienced the
virulence of the hatred in a way that Dr. Chandra never
could, and she wondered if its strength had been what
warped Nicholas’ features and head, instead of the child-
hood accident he claimed.

 The gentle tickle of the snake’s rattles against her side
brought her back to the present. At first she thought the
snake had been picking up on the emotions triggered by
the memories, but then the night breeze brought the
sound of the whimpering dog and a sobbing child to her.
Though faint, she knew the sounds came from very close
by. Pointing her face into the wind, then turning her head
left and right in two scans, she located the source of the
sound and headed toward it.

 She used a dry wash to make her approach. The banks
only rose up about three feet above the sandy bed.
Tumbleweeds and some small prickly-pear cactus grew
up along the edges, which helped shield her, but she still

 had to crouch. Working forward slowly, her night vision
allowing her to avoid stepping on anything that might
make a sound, she reached the outskirts of a small
campsite.

 Huddled in the darkness, she studied the situation using
all her senses. She saw two children clinging to each other,
and a mutt of a dog with them. The larger one spoke softly
to the smaller, but her words did nothing to dull the terror
radiating from the boy like heat from a blast furnace. Both
wore rags, and dust caked them except where it had
smeared across their cheeks from wiping away tears.
Though the larger one did her bestto hide herfeelings, she
became the minor star in a binary system of fear.

 Like the mongrel beside them, the children had both
been chained to a metal stake driven into the ground just
beyond a small fire. Rajani sensed a connection—an
alliance—between them and the dog. Beyond them,
almost eclipsed by the strength of the young boy’s terror,
she picked up the random emotional patterns of two other
individuals. She could not determine age or sex because
of the degree of interference caused by the boy, but the
steady level of their feelings told her they were uncon-
scious.

 Like a shadow, Rajani moved into the camp. The sheer
shock of the surprise exploding from the girl when she saw
her nearly made Rajani cry out. She raised a hand in
caution to the girl, then held it out to the left so the dog
could get a noseful of her.Yes, brother mine, I have come
to strengthen your pack. I will free you and your compan-
ions.

 The hair on the dog’s spine, which had risen abruptly,
slowly settled back down. The dog licked her hand, which
made the girl less anxious. The boy, who Rajani knew was
her brother, peeked out at her with one eye. Rajani smiled
at him and his sister, then took another step forward and

 grasped the metal stake.

 The girl waved her hands. “No, no. Go away. You have
to go away!” Her harsh whisper barely carried the six-foot
length of the chain, but the fear backing it slammed into
Rajani like a pile driver. The little boy’s anxieties spiked
upon hearing his sister’s words. His hopes for rescue had
been raised then shattered. Panic pulsed from him like
blood from an arterial gash.

 His panic was the empathic equivalent of staring at the
sun with a telescope. She tucked her head down and
raised her fists to her temples. Immediately, the shields
she had once relied upon to keep her sane amid a world
of emotions dropped into place, shutting everything out.
Looking up, she could see the fear in the children’s eyes,
but it no longer assaulted her.

 She twisted the stake to the left, then back to the right,
and yanked it out of the ground. The chains rattled a bit,
but no more than they did when the children moved. She
stood and slipped the ends of the chains off the stake. “You
are free.”

 A hand grabbed her right shoulder and spun her
around. A huge man whose belly stretched a dirty plaid
shirt to the point where it gapped open between the
buttons looked down at her. “Whadda we got here?” He
tried to bat her hat off, but the chinstrap held, leaving it to
hang at her back.

 The flood of golden hair clearly surprised the man.
”Boxer, check this out. We got us a night-thrill.” He
reached inside her jacket and grasped the lapels of her
fatigue shirt. Pulling left and right, he popped buttons and
exposed her breasts to the night air. “Oh, yeah, fine. She’s
mine first.”

 Rajani, stunned and surprised by the man’s appear-
ance and the malignancy of his lust, could think of nothing
as his big calloused hands brushed across her breasts and

 around to her back. He started to pull her forward, then he
jerked sharply and screamed. Reeling backward, arms
flailing, he stared wide-eyed at the snake hanging from his
right wrist by its fangs. His heels caught on a rock and sent
him flying back into a stand of cholla cactus.

 Boxer had awakened when his name had been called,
but the scream brought him to his feet. Wearing only
frayed jeans and holed socks, Boxer charged at Rajani like
a bull. He snatched her up in a hug, but she managed to
rake his face with her gold claws. Shrieking madly, he
dropped herto the ground and clutched at his ruined face.

 She landed hard on the ground and fell back as blood
streamed from between the man’s fingers. Before Rajani
could move, the dog shot at the man and sunk its teeth
deeply into his right leg, bringing him down. Moving in
concert with the dog, the little girl scooted forward on her
butt and looped the length of chain around the man’s
throat. Planting her feet on his meaty shoulders, she
yanked back with her hands while straightening her legs.

 The man’s neck popped with a gunshot sound that
made Rajani wince and the boy cry out. Rajani looked
over at the other man, but she sensed nothing in the way
of active emotions from him. His body twitched a bit, but
his breathing came raggedly and his lack of reaction to the
cactus festooning him told her he was suffering from a
total central nervous system collapse. With its rattle
playing an accompaniment to the sound of the man’s
dying breaths, the snake coiled itself on his chest.

 She scanned the area one more time, but felt nothing
beyond the quartet of Earthlings around her. She shut
herself off from the anger and hatred pouring from the girl,
unprepared for such harsh emotions. The little boy con-
tinued to radiate panic, but it began to drop off as the dog
trotted over to him and licked his face.

 Squatting down by the fire, Rajani used the one remain-

 ing button to close her blouse. “Are you unhurt?”

 The fire layered bright highlights into the girl’s honey-
blond hair as she nodded. “Boxer knew I’d do him if I got
the chance.”

 The edge in the girl’s voice shocked Rajani. She looked
more closely at her and, through the thin fabric of the girl’s
soiled T-shirt, she detected the initial budding of the girl’s
breasts.She can be no more them 12 LMUs in age
physically, but her voice and her anger. .. “I am Rajani.”

 The girl let the chain go slack and slip through her
fingers. “I’m Dorothy and that’s Mickey. The big one, the
one your snake got, that’s Uncle Andy. Boxer was his
friend. They brought me up here to sell me. I brought
Mickey with me.”

 “Sell you?” Rajani looked from Dorothy to the little boy,
who remained hidden in the folds of the thin blanket they
had been given. “But your parents, do they know?”

 “Know?” Dorothy pointed at Andy’s body. “Check his
pockets. My father gave him a bill of sale.”

 “What?”

 “Well, daddy’s not been right since Mommy died.”
Mickey began to whimper, so Dorothy turned toward him.
”Quiet, quiet. It’s not your fault. Daddy didn’t mean it when
he said it.”

 The boy fell silent, but his anxiety began to radiate out
again. Rajani smiled at his silhouette in an effort to draw
him out, but he hunkered down, trying to make himself
small and unnoticed. “Your brother is certainly shy.”

 “Yes, he is. And I’m giving you the wrong impression of
my father. He is a good man, really he is. Honest. He brung
us up proper, too.” She waved her brother forward.
”Mickey, say ‘thank you’ to this nice woman for helping
us.”

 “Ang ou,” he whispered from the darkness. He slowly
made his way into the firelight and watched the dancing

 flames with bright fascination in his eyes. When he looked
up and made eye contact with Rajani, she saw the flesh on
his cheeks rise up around his eyes in a smile, but he kept
his face half hidden with the blanket.

 “How old are you, Mickey?”

 Half the blanket slipped back over his left shoulder as
his hand came out and displayed all his fingers. Rajani
smiled. “Five?”

 The boy nodded emphatically.

 Dorothy reached out and stroked his brown hair, “It’s
okay, Mickey. She’s a good person. If she weren’t, Rex
woulda bitten her.”

 Rajani smiled reassuringly at Mickey, then glanced
around the camp. “The truck has Arizona plates. You’re
not that far from your home, are you?”

 Dorothy shook her head. “No, we’re from...”

 “Phlaya,” Mickey shouted. As he did so, he pulled his
right hand away from his face. Though she did not need
it, the firelight fully illuminated the tangle of teeth in
Mickey’s misshapen face. They lined up like warped
bowling pins behind one crooked incisor. His upper lip
rose up and parted as if curtains on a stage, unable to hide
his cleft palate or allow him to close his lips to speak.

 With Mickey’s revelation, Rajani immediately caught
Dorothy’s hawklike scrutiny of her reaction. Over and
above that, she sensed Mickey’s courage dropping pre-
cipitously toward panic if she rejected him as had so many
others. She wanted to reach out to him, but she held back
for fear the boy might take any motion toward him as
aggression.

 She looked at his sister. “Your mother died when
Mickey was born?”

 Dorothy nodded. “There was lots of blood. I was seven.
I’ve taken care of him since then. Dad had a girlfriend who
helped for a while, but it’s pretty much just been Mickey

 and me.” She patted him on the head. “If you didn’t catch
it, he said ‘Flagstaff’ in reply to your question.”

 Rajani nodded to Mickey.«Thank you, Mickey,» she
sent to him telepathically.

 The boy looked at her, then tugged at his right ear. His
sister looked at him with a concerned frown on her face.
”Do you have another earache, Mickey? Because of his
teeth and all, he had trouble with them. I think he has
trouble hearing because of them, too.”

 “I think he’s okay, Dorothy.” Rajani held her hands out
to the fire. “No one has gotten medical help for your
brother?”

 “Orfey!” Mickey beamed.

 The girl shook her head. “My father signed on as a
proxxer for Daizaimoku Corp in Flag when my mom got
pregnant with Mickey. Trying to save her ran up some
bills, which Daisymuck said they’d cover, but at the
expense of care for Mickey. They said if my mom had lived
and they had her vote, too, they would have taken care of
things. Mickey keeps getting sick, so that uses up what
little credit my dad has built up with Daisymuck. Andy
talked him into selling me to get the money to fix Mickey,
but I knew that wouldn’t happen, so I brought Mickey with
me.”

 The girl’s eyes narrowed. “So, what’s your story? Black
skin, gold stripes and some really hot eye-mods. You one
of them exotic dancers from Vegas or something? Or are
you a gangbanger from Eclipse way out of your turf?”

 Rajani was pretty certain Dorothy was speaking En-
glish. She understood the first question and would have
gone with it except that she knew nothing about Las Vegas
and Dorothy seemed to feel the second explanation was
more plausible by the feelings she gave off. “The latter.
Got tricked into visiting Vegas, then abandoned.”

 Dorothy smiled broadly. “Figured you were from Phoe-

 nix. You going back?” Insecurity poured from her as she
continued. “We have to go back to Flag now, so we could
travel together. Safety in numbers and all.”

 Fenix?“I go to Pah-he-o-e-nicks.”

 Dorothy shrugged. “Whatever, gangslang ain’t my
Jones. Flag’s on the way to Phoenix, so you can come
with us, ‘kay?” The plea Dorothy managed to keep out of
her voice rang off her emotionally like peals from a bell.

 So, Eclipse and Phoenix are synonymous. “Yes, travel-
ing with you would be fine with me.” Rajani reached out
and gave Dorothy a big hug. Clearly, the world has
changed during the time I spent in stasis. I went in hoping
I could come out to help save the world from Fiddleback
but, ifithas changed so radically that fathers canselltheir
children, perhaps it is too late.

 Looking at the ancient and beautiful monastery cling-
ing to the mountainside, Coyote felt as if he had traveled
a thousand years back through time on his journey to
Tibet. Adjusting his Serengeti Vermillion sunglasses, he
glanced over at Crowley. He wanted to see if the sight
awed his companion, but instead caught the dark-haired
occultist studying him for his reaction to it. They both
laughed, then urged their little ponies onward along the
narrow, winding trail.

 From Phoenix they had flown to LA and caught a flight
direct to Tokyo. From there they transferred to a flight to
New Delhi. That led to another flight to Guwahati, then to
Paro, Bhutan and finally into Gonggar, Tibet. Each leg had
been completed in smaller and smaller planes, including
the last in which they flew in an old People’s Liberation
Army plane that had been repainted after Tibet reasserted
its independence in 1999.

 At Gonggar they took a bus on the 60-mile trip into
Lhasa. Crowley had commented that the capital looked a
lot more festive than the last time he had been there. “In
1985, when the Chinese hosted a celebration of the 20th
anniversary of Tibet’s autonomy, you couldn’t see any
signs that weren’t written in Chinese. Now look at it;
everything is Tibetan.”

 Coyote had probed a bit more aboutCrowley’spres-
ence in Tibet at that time, but his companion seemed
reluctant to expand upon his comments. Coyote knew
there had been riots in the late 1980s to protest the
Chinese domination of the region. Restrictions on foreign
travel through the area had been fierce, and had remained
so until 1997 when the Second Cultural Revolution had
created so many problems for Beijing that they relaxed
their grip on the outlying regions. Nei Mongol, Manchuria
and Tibet revolted, kicking out the Han settlers through
which the central government had tried to colonize their
nations. After two years of bloody fighting in Tibet, the
14thDalai Lama returned on June 6, his birthday, and
proclaimed Tibet free again.

 Throughout the journey from Lhasa to Shigaste and up
to Namling, Coyote had seen plenty of evidence of the
Tibetan war for independence. Maoist statues had been
toppled, then left to be weathered by the sandblasting
winds of Tibet. As Crowley explained when driving through
Shigaste, “The people have left the Chinese monuments
and buildings in the same state of repair that the First
Cultural Revolution left Tibetan temples. They have de-
voted themselves to restoring their history and have left
the Chinese things to rot.”

 They abandoned their rented Range Rover in Namling
and were met by a yellow-hatted monk with six horses.
Crowley introduced the man as Getsul Khedrup, explain-
ing that he was not yet a full monk, but well on his way to
his final ordination. Following Khedrup, they rode their
shaggy ponies up and out of the fertile central Yarlung
Valley. For the next two days they continued up and away
from civilization, seeing only nomads tending large herds
of yaks as they went.

 The weather cooled as they climbed in altitude, but
Coyote remained surprised at how seasonable the cli-

 mate was. He had expected to need cold weather gear, but
they were not assaulting Mount Everest. The thick yak-
hair blankets their guide had brought with them were more
than enough to ward off the chilly night air. During the day,
a thin shirt or jacket proved more than sufficient, espe-
cially since the desert plateau on which they traveled got
so little rain.

 Coyote turned to Crowley as they approached the
monastery. “It is beautiful. By the looks of it, it must have
been one of the first restoration projects of the new
government.”

 Crowley shared a smile with Khedrup, then shook his
head. “No restoration needed. The Chinese never shelled
it like they did Norbulinka, the Jokhang, Sera Monastery
orthePotala.”

 This is a rather remote area. I guess getting here would
have been difficult.”

 “Actually, the Chinese wanted Kanggenpo destroyed
verybadly. The Dalai Lama stopped here on his way out
of Tibet in March of 1959.” Crowley pointed to some scars
on the landscape. “It’s been a good 50 years, but you can
still see evidence of the elite mechanized division they sent
out to get him and his family. Because he had escaped
from Norbulinka disguised as a soldier, Mao Zedong put
a crack unit on him.”

 Coyote’s eyes narrowed. “How could this monastery
avoid damage?” He dropped a hand to the stainless steel
pistol riding on his right hip. “I could hit the walls from here
with my Wildey.”

 “Ah, but you can see it; they could not. Even during the
First Cultural Revolution, Mao wanted this place de-
stroyed, but again his hunters could not find it.”

 Coyote considered his words for a moment. “I take it
this has something to do with my empathic abilities, my
being asensitive ? When you explained it all to me before,

 you likened it to being able to see in the ultraviolet range.
I take it this place is rendered in ultraviolet, for all intents
and purposes?”

 “Close and logical, but no.” Crowley frowned for a
moment, then pointedbacktowardthemonastery. “What
do you see?”

 Coyote looked up, then removed his glasses. Where he
had once seen the tall ochre walls of the monastery, with
tiled roofs and colorful banners flying from them, he saw
nothing. “It’s gone.”

 “To continue your sight analogy, what would you see
in a place where there was no light at all?”

 “Nothing.”

 “Exactly.” Crowley closed his eyes and Kanggenpo
materialized out of thin air and again hung from the sheer
mountainside. “Kanggenpoisoneof a number of spots on
the Earth in which empathic abilities are muted. Right now
I am sending to you the image that I am getting from
Khedrup—he can see it because those shielding the
lamasery are permitting him to see it. If I so desired, I could
change the image in subtle ways, so you would only see
what I passed on.”

 “But if this place deadens my abilities, how will I learn
what you are bringing me here to leam?”

 Crowley smiled easily. “I saidmuted, not deadened.
Imagine weight training on a world with greater gravity
than Earth. You will have to work harderto be able to break
through. They will show you how. Kanggenpo is probably
the only place on the planet where you can learn what you
must know. And the only way you get here is to be led by
someone who knows the way.”

 The taller man settled his sunglasses over his eyes
again. “Kanggenpo. You said it means ‘ice temple.’ If one
has to be led here, how was it founded and how did you
find it?”

 “I think thekhenpo can better explain the history of
Kanggenpo than I.” Crowley gloved left hand strayed to
his goatee and stroked it unconsciously. “I got here
because I helped foil an assassination attempt on the
Dalai Lama in the summer of 1989—the Chinese govern-
ment was trying to corner the market on stupid repression
tactics that year. Word went out and I was brought to
Kanggenpo much as you are being brought now.”

 As their ponies struggled up the last steep section of the
trail, the massive bronze gates in the monastery wall
swung inward. Coming around a curve in the trail, Coyote
caught his first glimpse of the lamasery’s cobbled court-
yard and the twin stone lions stretched down a long
stairway to form the railings. Through the narrow viewing
port the gate made, Coyote saw tantalizing bits and pieces
of vast murals painted on the interior walls.

 Red-robed monks and their brown-robed students
traveled in tiny knots throughout the ancient fortress.
While he saw a few individuals that were not the typical
black-haired ethnic Tibetans, that surprised Coyote less
than another detail he noticed. “No women?”

 Crowley shook his head. “No women, which is a bit odd
since Gelukpa Buddhism is a tradition built out of the
Vajrayana tradition, which is known in the West as Tantric
Buddhism. Tantric practices include esoteric sexual ritu-
als and meditations, which outraged many missionaries
and right-thinking folks in the West when they heard of it.
Once monks in the Geluk tradition have mastered all five
disciplines, tantric studies are open to them. Until that
time, which will take a minimum of 20 years, they are
strictly celibate and abstain from alcohol and narcotics.”

 “What you’ve brought me here to study won’t take 20
years, will it?”

 “That anxious to see your executive assistant again, are
you?”

 Coyote chuckled lightly. “Better her than Fiddleback,
but I don’t think either one would wait 20 years for me to
complete my coursework here.”

 “True. No, here you will be schooled in the third and
fourth groups of Geluk studies.Oumah is the study of the
path between extremes andSunyata concerns itself with
nonexistence or voidness.” Crowley nodded at Khedrup.
”He will be studyingOumah first, thenSunyata, because
his goal is to become one with the universe and attain
enlightenment. You will study them in reverse because
you desire to learn how to flow through the universe.”

 Their two ponies clip-clopped through the entryway
andrapjungs labored to close the massive gates behind
them. Ahead, Khedrup had already dismounted and
another of the novitiates led his riding and pack ponies off.
Their guide bowed to the red-robed monk slowly de-
scending the steps, then ran off into the monastery’s
interior.

 Crowley sprang from his saddle as if he’d had more
than a half-dozen hours of sleep in the past 36 and bowed
to the monk.“Toshi dili, Lama Mong.”

 The wizened monk smiled serenely and returned the
bow.“Pyag dan-po-la, Mi-ma-yin.”

 Coyote slowly swung down from his saddle, and his
legs ached as they accepted his weight again. He nodded
respectfully to the old monk, then followed it with a bow
as aragjungledhis ponies off.“Nga min Coyote yjn, “he
offered in the only Tibetan Crowley had taught him.

 The monk looked from Coyote to Crowley. “’Coyote’?”
The old man scratched at his bald pate.“Ha ko ma song,
Mi-ma-yin.”

 “Kyi rkan-jnyis,”Crowley replied with a shrug. “’Coy-
ote’ is a word he did not understand. I translated for him.

 The monk nodded. “But does your friend know you
called him a cur?”

 “No, he did not.” The monk’s use of flawless English
surprised Coyote. “A coyote is a stepping stone between
wolves and dogs.”

 “Kyi-can, Mi-ma-yin,Ithink, notkyi rkan-jnyis.” He
smiled at Coyote. “Would you not think of it more as a
jackal than a cur?”

 “Given the choice, yes, definitely.”

 Mong nodded solemnly. “Then Kyi-can you shall be.”

 Coyote thought he heard judgment in Mong’s voice, but
no emotions broke the serenity of the monk’s expression.
”Thank you, I think.”

 Crowley let a look of indifference sweep across his face.
”Mong is thekhenpo of Kanggenpo.”

 Again Coyote bowed to the old monk. Mong returned
his bow, then offered him his hand. Coyote took it and
found the small man had a surprisingly strong grip.His
handsare callousedas well. Heseems tobemorethanjust
an ascetic.

 “I hope Kanggenpo will suit your needs.”

 “As do I, Lama Mong.”

 Coyote looked around the interior of the lamasery and
immediately noted one detail that surprised him: Around
the main gate, in 27 little alcoves running up the sides and
across the top, red-robed monks sat in the lotus position,
chanting softly. In the south wall, Coyote noted the same
arrangement, but the gate they surrounded had been
carved of stone and could not be moved. To the north,
hidden among smaller buildings, he saw one or two
monks in place and assumed the rest were there as well.
He also assumed there was a gate to the east, but both the
north and east walls fit flush into the mountain.

 “If I might inquire, why do you have gates that lead
nowhere and people watching them?”

 “They arepa-tsab. They serve as the guardians of
Kanggenpo. They are the reason we remain undiscov-

 ered.” Mong looked toward the stone gate in the south
wall. “Twenty-seven at each gate adds up to the sacred
number 108. We are warded well no matter which direc-
tion enemies might choose to come at us.”

 “I see.”

 “You will see even more, Coyote.” Crowley clapped
him on the shoulder. “I’ll be leaving you here in Mong’s
very capable hands.O-na gha-le sku bzugs snan, Lama
Mong.”

 “O-na gha-lepeb, Mi-ma-yin.”The old monk bowed to
Crowley and smiled at him.

 Crowley walked away from both men, heading south.
He turned left, as if wanting to mount the stairs, but his
image seemed to go two-dimensional. It slipped forward
and vanished as if it had passed beyond some sort of
invisible curtain. Without a sound, his lagging foot van-
ished and no evidence remained to suggest he had ever
been there at all.

 “Mi-ma-yin has changed in body, but not spirit.” Mong
eyed him up and down, his gaze lingering on the massive
silvery pistol on Coyote’s hip. “I understand the reverse
has happened with you, Kyi-can.”

 “I suppose, yes, by way of contrast with Crowley, this
is true. Does this concern you?”

 “Should it?” The monk watched him closely.

 “It should concern others, not you.” Coyote kept his
face neutral. “One thing I wish to know, if I might: Why do
you call Crowley ‘Mi-ma-yin’?”

 “When he first came to us, he had another identity, one
of which Crowley was only a part. Mi-ma-yin means ‘one
who is not human.’ It usually refers to ghosts, but in his
case...” The old monk shrugged, and Coyote understood.

 Coyote folded his arms across his chest. “Then teach
me what you taught him. The creature I hunt is not human,
either.”

 Sinclair MacNeal smiled in spite of himself as the
America West flight attendant handed him his glass of
Diet Pepsi. “Are you certain you don’t want something
stronger, Mr. MacNeal? You look like you’ve had a rough
day, and it’s only 8 a.m.”

 “No and yes.” He accepted the glass from her, and their
fingers brushed against each other. He quickly read the
name embroidered on her apron. Thank you, Erika. I’m
afraid it’s not a new day for me, just extra innings from
yesterday.”

 “I’ll be back soon to see if you need anything else.” She
winked at him and continued her service to the first-class
cabin of the America West 787.

 Sin laid his head back against the thick leather padding
of the wide seat and sipped his soda again.This is insanity
forme. I’ve no reason to go to Japan fora madman.He set
the drink down and started worrying the package of
almonds Erika had placed on his tray table.I’ve also got
no reason to stay in Phoenix.

 His father, Darius MacNeal, had made good on his
threat to fire him and evict him from the Build-more
corporate citadel. After his trip to the hospital for Coyote,
Sin had tried to return to his apartment, but he found
himself locked out of the residential levels of the main

 tower. When he went to complain to security, he was
handed a small box of personal items and was told
everything else had been paid for by Build-more and,
therefore, would remain in the possession of Build-more.

 The guard had even gone so far as to try to strip the
clothes off his back, but Sin decided that would be going
too far. After the paramedics carted the man off, Sin
stormed into his father’s office and right past his secretary.
She never even made an attempt to stop me. She knew
what was coming.

 Inside, he found his father sitting down to drinks with
two other men. The first was a tall, slender man who could
have benefited from having his hawk-beak nose pared
down to normal size and having the scraps used to give
him a chin. Sin recognized him as a Build-more employee
from the Operations division.A bean counter. His name
is Dodd. Watson Dodd.

 Darius and Dodd dwarfed the third man, yet the small
man did not seem to take notice of their size differential.
When Sin entered the room, his hands tightened down into
fists, then opened again slowly. He snapped his heels
together, bowed his blond head and grinned wolfishly.
”Guten abend,HerrMacNeal.”

 “Get bent, you fascist pygmy.” Sin waved Dodd and the
smaller man away contemptuously. “You both just re-
membered an urgent meeting—Dodd, your wife’s deliv-
ering now and you, Heinrich, your Warriors just found
another synagogue to vandalize.”

 “Well, well, has the Prodigal Son returned?” Darius’ left
hand pressed Dodd down into a chair. Heinrich sat back
and sipped his drink. “You should not be ordering my
guests about.”

 “Guests? You do not want them here, Father.” Sin’s
long strides ate up the distance between him and the bar.
”You and I are going to have it out, right here, right now.”

 Darius smoothed his white hair into place at the back
of his head, “It will have to wait. I need to brief Mr. Dodd
on his duties as my new vice president in charge of
security.”

 “What!” Sin stared so hard at Dodd that the man’s chest
should have caved in. “That’s my job.”

 “Thatwas your job, traitor.” Darius’ blue eyes burned
with energy. “You were fired after your disgraceful con-
duct two weeks ago. Were it not for company policy
offering two weeks’ severance to all employees, you’d
have been gone that second. You dared presume to order
me to cease my financial relationship with the Warriors of
the Aryan World Alliance.”

 Heinrich looked shocked at that little revelation. “You
wound me, Sinclair. I thought we were friends.”

 “I’ll wound you worse, you snake. Next time you decide
to assassinate someone, why don’t you pull the trigger
yourself?” He looked at his father. “I just left the hospital
where they’ve got Hal Garrett. He’ll recover, but one of the
bullets impinged on some nerve. Partial paralysis of his
left leg. That’s what the money you gave WAWA got you.”

 Sin glared at Dodd. “When your child’s born, be sure to
tell him Daddy hires men to gimp good citizens for a living.
Make your kid proud.”

 His father shook his head. “Wait, you must forgive my
son. He was too indulged as a child.”

 “Oh, you’re claiming me, now? That’s more than you
did when I grew up or the last time you fired me.” Sin hit
a hidden release on the bar, letting a panel swing out. He
took a cut crystal glass from there and filled it with ice.
”Your guests don’t rate the good crystal, Dad?”

 Darius smoldered. “Your mother warped you.”

 Sin laughed and filled his glass with Jameson’s Irish
Whisky. “Ah, blame it on Mother again because she
named me.” He looked at the other two men. “You’ve met

 my brothers Harpo, Hypo and Dumbo, haven’t you?”

 “Alexander, Xerxes and Tiberius. Don’t you dare dis-
parage them because they are better sons than you could
ever be.”

 “Invertebrate zombies that worship the cornucopia that
walks like a man.” Sin took a slug of the whisky and let it
burn its way down to his belly. “You’ve hated me since the
start because I dared stand up to you. You can’t walk all
over me like you do them.”

 “Because you run away from conflict.”

 “Ah, the victor writes the history, is that it?” Sin set his
glass down on the bar. “I think some minority reports
would disagree with you.”

 “How can you be like this, after all I’ve done for you?”
His father’s voice took on an offended tone. “If not for
me...”

 “I might have actually been happy.”

 “Are we doing to go over Christina again?” Sin’s father
looked pained. “I told you she was only after my money.”

 Sin shook his head, then focused on Watson Dodd. “I
come back from college with my fiancee, Christina. Dad
tells me she’s not good enough for me, only a gold digger.
He then sends me off to London to deal with a problem in
a site there. I’m gone for a month, at the end of which
Chrissy breaks off our engagement. And guess why?” He
pointed at his father. “She wasn’t good enough for me, but
she was for my father.”

 “I just proved she was after my money.”

 “But did you have to keep proving it for three years?”
Sin pounded his right fist against his thigh. “Remember
that, Dodd, when my father tells you that your wife is not
good enough for you.”

 Darius laughed lightly. “Are you through?”

 “Nope, we’rethrough, Father. You’re a bastard, always
have been a bastard and always will be a bastard. Iwas

 going to demand my things, but no more. I want nothing
from you.”

 “And nothing you shall get.” Darius pointed imperi-
ously toward the door. “You no longer have a father.”

 “I haven’t had one since conception, so nothing’s new
there.”

 “Run, run the way you always do.”

 “I’m leaving, but not because that’s what you com-
mand me to do.” Sin tossed down the rest of the whisky.
”I’m going because I’ll be beyond your reach. I know, in
the long run, that will bug you worse than having me be
under your thumb here.”

 Sin hammered his fist down into the armrest. How
could I have been so stupid. He orchestrated that confron-
tation. He knew what I’d do. I shouldn’t havegiven him
the satisfaction.

 Erika slid into the open seat beside him. “Mind if a catch
my breath?”

 Sin shook his head. “I welcome the company. Are you
based in Phoenix or Tokyo?”

 “Phoenix, but I have two weeks in Tokyo after this run.”
She tucked her blond hair behind her left ear. “Business
or pleasure in Japan for you, Mr. MacNeal?”

 “Sinclair. I don’t honestly know. New job, so I hope a bit
of both.”

 She patted him on the knee. “I hope so, too.” She
glanced at her watch, then tapped the flat LCD screen built
into the seat in front of him. “Are you going to watch the
movie? It won a number of awards.”

 “I know he’s supposed to be the best since Olivier or
Gibson, but I can’t see Macaulay Caulkin as Henry V. I
may just get some sleep.”

 A tone sounded from back in the main cabin. “Well,
sleep tight. I’ll wake you before we land. Sweet dreams.”

 Erika awakened Sin as the jet began its descent into
Narita. The pilot brought the plane in smooth and level,
touching down with only the slightest bump when the gear
hit the ground. Sin looked out through the rain-streaked
windows at the gray airport. The vision of a future
nightmare that had prompted environmentalists to pro-
test the opening of the airport back in the 1970s had come
true. The creeping concrete plague had spread out from
the airport and stretched as far as he could see.

 Sin completed the immigration forms Erika passed out.
He noted he was staying at the New Palace Hotel. He
peeled the barcoded stickers off his ticket sleeve and
affixed them to the Customs portion of the form. Erika
collected it along with all the others from first class, then
led those privileged passengers out through the forward
bulkhead. They filed down a short corridor to a pleasant,
if antiseptic, waiting room.

 Erika handed the forms to a balding Japanese man in
a blue and gray uniform, then headed back to the plane.
”It was nice to meet you, Sinclair. Perhaps I’ll see you in
Tokyo.”

 “That would be a most welcome surprise.” He reached
out and took her hand.

 She folded him into a hug and whispered, “I put your
form on top, so you should get through first.”

 He gave her a little extra squeeze to let her know he
appreciated her effort, then reluctantly let her go. He found
himself a seat in the waiting area and almost instantly
regretted his choice. A wide-hipped matron with a fox-fur
muffler sat down next to him and wedged her doggie-
carryall between them. The Shar-pei/Lhasa apso mix in
the cage looked like a mountain of shag carpet with eyes.
The woman crooned at the dog in low tones which could have
been English, except for the -izzie, -uggams and -ookums
suffixes.

 “Mr. Sinclair MacNeal?” the immigration man called
out.

 Sin stood and crossed to the inspection station. He
presented the ID card Coyote had gotten for him and saw
the immigration official take special notice of it.“Konnichi-
wa.”

 The man looked unimpressed with Sin’s Japanese.
”How are you today?” he asked amid stamping various
forms.

 “Anmari”

 “Just okay? Well, it is a long flight, isn’t it?”

 “Hai.”

 “Mr. MacNeal, you need not speak Japanese to me. I
am fully conversant in yourtongue.” The older man’s gaze
flickered toward a screen after he ran Sin’s ID through the
reader. He frowned, punched a button, then ran it through
again.

 uDo-shitan-dayo? “

 “Nothing is wrong, Mr. MacNeal. I thought I had some-
thing here, but it appears not” The man hit Sin’s immigra-
tion form with one final stamp. “Your luggage will be sent
directly to the New Palace Hotel. Please enjoy your stay
in Japan.”

 “Domoarigato.”SintookhisIDbackfromtheimmigra-
tion officer and passed through a little hallway and out a
door to the main international concourse. He glanced at
the overhead signs and started the long trek to the rail
terminal to catch a train into Tokyo.

 Coyote is good. Somehow he managed to get the
security alerton my identity reversed or canceled. He has
influence here in Japan, which scores more points for him.
Sin shook his head. When he’d left Japan three years
before he’d done so under his own steam, but only just
barely. Infact, until the jet had gotten out of Stinger missile
range of the island, he wasn’t willing to bet he was going

 to make it. Since that time, visitors had mentioned how he
was consideredpersona non grata in the land of the Rising
Sun.

 Slipping into the thick line of people heading toward the
train station, Sin concentrated on letting their voices and
the cadence of their words bring him back to the time
before he left. After his father had stolen Christina, Sin had
left the United States to work in Japan. Hired on as a
security consultant, which initially meant he was to escort
visitors from the US and keep them out of trouble, he rose
up through the ranks at Raibyoin Corp fairly swiftly. His
no-nonsense attitude about trouble, as well as his ability
to act tough or use a gun, meant a lot in Japan.

 Out of the corner of his eye, Sin saw an improbably
large Japanese man in a dark blazer move off a stool at
a noodle stand. The man wore a pair of dark sunglasses
and was clearly attempting to project an air of menace.
Sin found him almost laughable, but the man moved into
the stream of traffic in an effort to cut him off.

 I don’t like this at all.Sin feigned moving deeper away
from the behemoth, then cutforthe noodle shop itself. The
large man clawed his way back through the crowd to get
at Sin, but by that time Sin had already passed beyond the
counter and into the kitchen. The help in the back started
shouting at him, but he smiled and repeatedsumimasen
to each of them, then he headed toward the back door.

 This is too easy. They’ve anticipated me.Sin turned the
knob on the rear door and let the latch slip free. Then,
leaning back, he kicked the door open as hard as he could.
Cutting through the doorway low, he arced a right fist into
the belly of the man on his left. The man doubled over, so
Sin straightened him with a knee to the face then back-
handed him down the security hallway that linked the
various airport shops.

 Retreating one step, he put his back to the far wall and

 watched the door lethargically swing shut again. The man
who had been standing behind it clearly had not expected
it to open so swiftly. The doorknob had caught him in the
groin, and he slowly sagged to the floor.

 Sin started to laugh aloud when another man slowly
applauded from farther down the corridor. Sin looked at
him, then nodded.“Konnichi-wa, Takagi Kazuo-san.”

 “Konnichi-wa, Sinklaru-san.It is good to see you
again, my friend.” The stocky young Japanese man
bowed to Sin, then shook his hand. “It has been three
years, has it not?”

 “Hai.”Sin smiled and looked at the man’s hands. “I see
your oyabun still hasn’t got any of your fingers in a jar.”

 Kazuo shrugged. “Uncle Takeshi sees too much of
himself in me, I think. Now I see you’ve not lost any of your
old piss ‘n’ vinegar.”

 Sin shrugged appropriately. “They weren’t bad, but I
was looking for, and therefore reacting to, another threat
level.”

 “Ah, your friend Nagashita. Yes, well, you will love this:
After he missed you when you left Japan, he was elevated
to colonel and put in charge of the Internal Defense
Cadre!” Kazuo clapped his hands. “Now that pit bull is at
the emperor’s beck and call—and largely out of our hair.”

 “To paraphrase John Paul Jones, give me another run
at old Yamashiro Nagashita, and I could make him
emperor.” Sin draped his arm around his Yakuza friend’s
shoulders. “Give me a lift to my hotel, old friend. I
smuggled two bottles of Glenfiddich out of Phoenix. One
can be for your uncle, but the other we’ll use to toast the
good fortune of the IDC.”

 “And then you will tell me why you have returned?”

 That I will, Kazuo, because the only way I will do what
has to be done is with your help.”

 Rajani knew as she stared down at her sleeping body,
that she was dreaming.

 The snake lay coiled beside Rajani, using her body as
a shield between itself and Rex. Mickey had curled himself
up into a ball with Rex curving his body to fit along
Mickey’s spine. Dorothy lay between Rajani and Mickey
with her fingers tangled in her brother’s dark hair. At their
feet, a bed of coals glowed from within a circle of stones.

 Above them, dark clouds hid the wide, starry bowl of
the sky. Earlier in the day, when their last ride left them off
outside Ash Fork, the sky had been blue. The thought of
camping out in what had been the Prescott National
Forest seemed like a pleasant adventure. The arrival of
the midsummer monsoon clouds as the day cooled made
Rajani reassess her judgment, but the kids did not seem
to mind.

 Even as she studied the wooded landscape around her,
it began to shift. A putrid green light bled into the clouds
and all the pine trees picked up the malevolent glow. Red
streamers shot through the clouds and the rusty pine
needles began to pulsate as if they were metal and being
heated. Unconsciously, Rajani raised her hands to pull in
the heat she knew should have been present, but instead
felt herself being drained of warmth and vitality.

 The landscape began to blur into a green-red mael-
strom. The colors thickened, flooding over her and her
companions. The bloody red ground curved up and the
green sky down to capture her in a sphere. Where the two
bowls met, little eddies swirled the colors together, lock-
ing the bowls together with a black line.

 What is this?She reached her hands out, and even
though they did not seem to touch the inside of the sphere,
she felt resistance at the black line. She tried to twirl her
fingers in the direction opposite the swirls that had locked
things down, but she could not get the line to separate
again.I’m trapped.

 Above her, the green dome began to boil. As she
looked up, a crystalline lattice with a curiously weblike
design worked into it drilled down into the sphere. It
glowed rhythmically with power. Needle-nosed and pos-
sessing a slender body, it slid into the sphere and left a
gaping hole behind it. Rajani began to will herself toward
the opening, but the crystal swerved toward her and sliced
across the surface of her right thigh.

 She cried out in pain, but quickly recognized the agony
as being well beyond physical. She broke through the wall
of pain and for a second found herself eavesdropping on
the thoughts of Fiddleback.No match! blasted into her
brain, then the crystal had passed on and took the pain
with it.

 Rajani felt herself drawn along behind the crystal auger
like a swimmer caught in the wake of a ship. Her first
impulse was to resist it, but then it swooped down toward
Dorothy and her brother. She let herself be pulled after it
and reached out with her left hand to touch the aft end of
the pulsing gray crystal.

 Again the pain hit her, but she steeled herself against
it. «No match!» She shot into the matrix as it plunged in at
the children. She felt the searching drone check itself and

 saw a tantalizingly brief glimpse of the search target.Not
Jaeger/Coyote! the drone concluded and began to spin

 furiously.

 Rajani withdrew her hand, but let herself remain in
position to draft off the crystal construct, it whirled
through the sphere and broke out through the other side.
The globe that had been her reality exploded like a balloon
shot through with a bullet and she burst out through into
a realm of darkness and twinkling starlight.

 Looking out, she saw other lights dip and dive through
the dark. They shot in at glowing lights like moths
attacking flames, and she realized these mobile lights
were other searcher drones akin to the one she followed.
They are searching for Jaeger/Coyote. Is it safe toassume
he knows ofFiddleback’s defeat?

 “Safe assumption, but a dangerous game you play
here.”

 Rajani felt a strong, firm hand on her right arm. She
glanced down as the hand jerked her around and noticed
a gold ring of a curious design on the ring finger of an
utterly black hand. «Isityou they seek?» She sent, then she
realized the human silhouette was that of a man. “Who are
you?”

 The man jerked her toward him, yanking her free of the
crystalline probe. “What were you doing? Are you mad?”

 “I don’t understand.”

 “Look at yourself!”

 She did so and realized why his voice carried as much
alarm in it as it did. A golden nimbus surrounded her. The
gold lines running from the backs of her fingers up along
her arms and shoulders radiated out through the fabric of
the flight jacket she wore. Assuming for a moment that
every light in the sky was another person, they were
candles in comparison to her sun.

 Except him. He radiates nothing.

 “The drones are hunting Coyote but, even so, I am not
anxious to make myself a target.”

 Rajani nodded sharply, then concentrated. She brought
her mental defenses into play, neatly snuffing the glow
surrounding her. “Who are you? What are you?”

 Again the man-thing ignored her questions. “You have
to leave here. Your trick to deflect the hunter away from
the child worked because the creatures monitoring these
devices are slow and stupid. Unfortunately, your display
may have alerted others. You must return and protect the
child.”

 «Whoare you?»She sent such vehemence that a
tremor shook the man holding her. A golden bolt of
energy seemed to emerge from her forehead and punch
through his chest. His eyes and nostrils lit with goldfire,
then black again subsumed it. He jerked back, releasing
her, and held his head in his hands. In that confusing
moment she caughtwrath andwraith from him, but
nothing that really answered her question.

 “You are very good, but out of control. Look!” He
pointed off into the sky and she saw a dozen of the probes
orienting themselves on the both of them.

 “I am sorry...”

 “Save it. Protect the child; he is in danger.” The shadow
man pointed down toward the glowing circle of light below
them, and Rajani saw a smaller triangle of red lights
moving in toward it. “You deal with that problem and I will
take care of the probes. Go, now!”

 Rajani pointed her toes and raised her arms. She
slipped down through the darkness as if it were a greased
tunnel and arrived at her destination far more swiftly than
she could have hoped. Above her she saw a silver-blue
light outline the man, then it metamorphosed into a
glowing silver behemoth that smashed two of the probes
together into blazing dust.

 Rajani felt a wrenching sense of chaos as she touched
and reentered her body. She forced it awake, snapping
her eyes open. She rolled over to her right and touched
Dorothy’s leg. “Wake up, Dorothy, wake up.”

 “What?” Dorothy brushed blond hair from her face.
”Geez, what happened to you?”

 Rajani felt a cold stickiness on her right leg. She looked
down and saw a dark splotch on the right thigh where the
crystal had touched her.I’m bleeding. She pressed her
hand to the wound and black blood oozed up between her
fingers. “It’s nothing, Dorothy. Get Mickey up. We have to
move out.”

 “Aaha?” Mickey asked as he rubbed sleep from his
eyes.

 Rex stretched, then sat and scratched himself. Sud-
denly his head came up and with it came the fur on his
spine. A low growl rumbled from his throat, then helooked
over at Rajani and stood. From the dog she got a sense of
duty tinged with growing fear as she tossed some sticks
on the coals. Rex looked back out into the shadows
surrounding the campsite and barked once.

 The yipped howls of a dozen canine throats answered
him. Mickey reached out to Rex, but the dog moved
beyond his grasp to position himself between the boy and
the threat. Likewise, Rajani moved forward while Dorothy
picked up a big stick. Alone, Mickey clutched his blanket
and huddled down to make himself a small target.

 He’s small physically, but his fear is immense!Sheer
terror radiated out of the boy, and Rajani renewed the
defenses she had erected earlier. She structured them to
let low levels of emotion through, but to cut her off in case
of a huge emotional outburst.I cannot afford to be blinded.

 “Hush, Mickey.” Dorothy grasped the knotted pine
branch in both hands. “They’re coming, Rajani.”

 Behind her the kindling caught and the fire flared to life.

 Rajani saw it reflected in a galaxy of eyes barely three feet
off the ground. As she watched, however, one set drifted
up and forward. A lupine head skylined itself and, as the
creature moved in toward the circle of light, Rajani saw
him complete the transformation from a wolf to a ruddy-
furred wolfman.

 “Grrrreeeeetings,” the creature growled seductively,
infusing the word with insincerity. He eyed Rajani up and
down, then Dorothy. Only on Mickey did his gaze linger,
and Rajani felt pleasure rippling from the wolfman so
strongly that it almost brought a smile to her face.

 Forcing his emotions aside, Rajani snarled. “Leave
here. There is nothing here for you.”

 “Perhaps you are not for me, nor she, but he is a tender
and tasty little morsel.” The wolfman squatted down and
barked sharply at Mickey, making the boy jump. “Oh,
yes!”

 Mickey’s wave of fear crested over Rajani, then she felt
an equally sharp jolt of pleasure from the wolfman. With
a bitter, coppery taste in her mouth, she realized the
wolfman hungered for Mickey’s terror, lusted after it as
Andy had lusted after her.

 “If you dare touch him...,” she began. Beyond him,
backing him, a dozen dogs and coyotes slunk forward.
One, a huge Alsatian, came forward more boldly and
bared his fangs at Rex. The Alsatian started to growl and
set itself to lunge, but the wolfman turned and snarled at
the Alsatian, forcing it to back off.

 Mickey’s fear almost overrode the exchange between
wolfman and Alsatian. In it, Rajani sensed the Alsatian’s
resentment at the wolfman’s domination of what had
been his pack. In return, the wolfman radiated invincibility
and contempt for the Alsatian. The pack shifted uneasily,
as if to deny they ever objected to the wolfman’s leader-
ship, and the Alsatian backed away from the emotional

 fury projected by the wolfman.

 The wolfman turned and studied Rajani. He sniffed the
air, but the slight breeze curled the smoke’s fire around her
like a cloak. He sneezed once, then nodded. “You are
most interesting prey, but it is not you that I want.” He
pointed at Mickey with a clawed finger, then gestured with
it to command the boy forward.

 Mickey buried his head in the blanket, and Rajani felt
his terror rip through her like a chain saw. The wolfman’s
eyes glazed over almost orgasmically, and he howled in
delight. Discipline wavered among his pack, then he
snarled and the various curs backed away. The Alsatian
moved the least and turned to face the wolfman directly.

 Hiscontrol over them is not complete. Dropping to one
knee, she reached back with her right hand and let the
rattler slither forward into it. The wolfman’s eyes followed
the snake’s movement, then he looked up and she made
eye contact.«I will not let you have the boy.»

 «Igiveyou no choice, alien.»

 “Dorothy, scream!”

 Though she had put on a brave front, Dorothy let all her
fear out through her scream. The wolfman oriented on
her, then back to Mickey when his sister’s screams spiked
his terror higher than ever. The wolfman grinned sloppily
and opened himself wide to the emotional feast the two
human children provided him.

 Mickey’s fear hammered Rajani, but she fought against
it. Instead of letting her shield slide up to protect her, she
let her own fear and anguish pour out. She felt hormones
course through her body, giving her more physical energy
that she translated into mental power. Reshaping and
guiding Mickey’s fright, she forged into a weapon.

 The wolfman soaked up the emotional storm like a
plant basking in sunlight. Rajani took her share of that
same energy and forced it back into itself. She trapped

 and concentrated it, like light trapped in a laser tube. She
squeezed it tighter and tighter, letting the pressure build.
Her hands balled into fists, and her teeth ground together.
Finally, when she could hold it no more, she directed the
fear at the wolfman and gave him everything.

 Open as he was, the wolfman had no time to muster his
defenses. As had happened with the shadow man, the
golden bolt Rajani projected pierced him. Unlike the
shadow man, however, it did more than show itself in his
eyes and nostrils. It jetted like dragonfire from every
orifice of his body. It seeped out over his skin like sweat
and poured out of his ears and nose like blood. His mouth
opened, but gold energy, not words, vomited forth.

 In a heartbeat, the wolfman went from hunger to
satiation, then beyond. Brimming with fear, he could not
metabolize it all. It covered him, permeated him and
became him. Panic seized and twisted him, stunning his
mind and crushing his psyche. Locked in the throes of a
psychic meltdown, he made a last-ditch effort to save
himself. Relinquishing his grasp on the energy, he vented
as much as he could into the area.

 The pack instantly sensed his terror and attacked.
Leaping, yipping canine forms closed on him. A brindle
pit bull sank its teeth into the wolfman’s calf while a
Doberman pinscher dove at his throat and a terrier
worried his left ankle. The wolfman tried to bat the
Doberman aside, but a rottweiler took a bite out of his left
hamstring, and he went down. Before he could yell, the
snarling canine mass buried him.

 The Alsatian had hung back, but started forward when
the wolfman lost his footing. But before he could join the
melee, Rex hit him from the flank and locked his white
teeth on the Alsatian’s throat They rolled over and over
out into the shadows to be quickly eclipsed by the bloody
and frenzied pack.

 “Move, fast!” Rajani pointed back away from the yellow
eyes and reddened teeth of the roiling dogfight.

 “Eh!” shouted Mickey as he stood.

 “Rex will find us, Mickey. Move!” Dorothy grabbed
Mickey’s hand and started sprinting on through the thin
woods.

 Rajani took one look back at the pack, then followed
the children. Her right leg throbbed with pain, but seemed
to be functional. Tracking the kids more by emotion than
sight or sound, she caught up with them quickly and led
the way down a steep hill. Using her night vision to pick
out deer trails, she got them safely away from their old
campsite.

 Dorothy leaned heavily on a tree. “Wait, gotta catch my
breath.” She gulped down air. That was a luper, wasn’t
it?”

 Rajani shook her head. “A luper?”

 “A werewolf, a loup-garou.” Dorothy bent over and
breathed in through her nose. “My dad’s girlfriend was
Cajun. She told us stories.”

 “Ah oaries.”

 “Yes, Mickey, bad stories.” Dorothy looked up at her.
”That was one, wasn’t it?”

 “I don’t know.” Werewolves? There are no such things,
or were none when I went into stasis. Were my parents
wrong? Was Dr. Chandra mistaken?Have things changed
so much in such little time?

 Rajani turned and peered back along their backtrail.
She saw movement through the brush, then heard some-
thing. Mickey smiled and pointed. “Eheze!”

 “C’mere, Rex!” Dorothy shouted.

 Mickey clapped his hands and Rajani smiled. She
watched the dog descend the hill. “Aside from the limp,
Rex looks okay.”

 She reached out with her mind to welcomeRex, but she

 sensed nothing from him. As the canine approached
them, the dog’s form shifted and bloated, it thickened and
widened, growing taller as it reared up on its hind legs.
Torn and bleeding, dragging its left leg behind it, the
creature they had taken to be Rex transformed itself into
the luper they had left behind.

 “Almost worked...your trick. I killed them.” Heclutched
his right hand to his stomach, and Rajani saw at least two
of his fingers had been gnawed off. “Even your Rex.” He
swallowed hard and looked at her. “Share the boy with
me. Please.”

 “No. Go away.”

 The luper grimaced painfully. “I asked. Now I demand.
Ineed him. Give him to me.”

 “No!” Rajani slowly crouched and pushed Mickey
behind her.«I will not surrender him to you.»

 «You cannot stand against me!» The wolfman’s lower
jaw dropped open in a lupine grin. «We should have
dominion over these creatures. If I must destroy you first
togetit,Iwill.»

 «Your bark does not frighten me.»

 «Then perhaps my bite will!»

 The wolfman looked at her, and again they made eye
contact. Rajani began to push more fear out at him, but
hot, raw, bestial emotions slammed back down the link.
Gore-drenched tableaux raped her mind as she saw the
wolfman lead his pack through massacres in outlying
towns. Transferred to her was the obscene delight he took
in slaking his thirst with bright, arterial blood. The victim’s
horror pulsed out stronger and stronger as his heart
weakened and he knew he was dying, but feared he would
not die fast enough.

 Rajani snapped her head to the left and felt her hair veil
half her face. She brought her defenses up, but they
merely filtered the wolfman’s blood-spattered fantasies.

 Instead of seeing them in any organized fashion, things
became a blended mixture of corpses bobbing in bloody
pools, with terror rising from them like scarlet steam.

 Rajani felt the wolfman probing her mind, looking for
her fears so they could be woven into his sick fantasies,
but she deflected him. She tried to turn his thoughts back
on him, but his physical weakness only seemed to
strengthen him mentally. Sensing her resistance, he
poured the power on and a blood-red world congealed
around her. She felt locked in as the blood dried to a deep
maroon, then became clear so she could watch the
wolfman stalk toward Mickey.

 «You are done.»The wolfman, to her eyes, blazed with
an unholy red light.«Iam Invincible!»

 Then, suddenly, the wolfman jerked up to his full
height. Rajani saw something waver in and out of focus as
she fought to see empathically.Concentrate. Focus. She
locked her jaw and fed despair into anger and hope.What
is happening?

 The scene cleared, and she saw it. Glowing with a bright
silver light, one of the search drones burrowed its way
through the werewolf’s back, it drilled its way in, going
almost all the way out its chest, then it reversed direction
and withdrew. It shot straight up into the sky, and she
heard laughter echo from everywhere at the same time.

 «I love it when they make themselves into such won-
derful targets.» Rajani felt the rictus holding her fade as a
shadow hand touched her on the shoulder. «Make the
child safe.»

 The world shifted abruptly, and Rajani found herself
staring at the crumpled wolfman. Mickey looked at it, then
her, and then waved his hand.

 “Yes, Mickey, it went bye-bye.” Dorothy hugged her
little brother, then stared at Rajani. “What happened? He
stared at you and you stopped moving. Then he clutches

 his stomach and starts bleeding from the mouth and nose.
What happened?”

 “Kishal.” Mickey pointed at the body. “Kishal.”

 “Crystal, Mickey?” Dorothy looked very confused.
”What is he talking about?”

 Rajani shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe he saw
something. I think the beast had some internal injuries
from the fight with his pack. Running after us did him in.
He was dead, but didn’t even notice it.” As she saw
Dorothy’s face hardening, she added quickly, “I’ve seen
that sort of thing happen in Eclipse.”

 Dorothy shook her head slightly, then relented. “Maybe,
but I don’t know.”

 “It doesn’t matter, Dorothy. We’ll be safe for the rest of
tonight. Then, tomorrow or the next day, we can be in
Flagstaff and reunite you with your father.”Then you’ll be
safe, and I can go to Phoenix and find this Coyote.

 Sweat matting the dark hair on his chest, Coyote
finished his hundredth sit-up and smiled as Mong ap-
peared in the doorway of his cell. He uncrossed his hands
from his chest and levered himself to his feet. Drawing his
heels together, he bowed to the red-robed monk. “Good
morning, Lama Mong.”

 Mong studied him for a moment, and Coyote found the
expression on the elderly man’s face unfathomable. The
monk nodded, then smiled. “I am pleased to see you have
recovered from travel lethargy. You have slept much and
deeply since you arrived here.”

 Coyote used a bedsheet to wipe the sweat from his
face. “I must confess, I think it was more than just jet lag.
The last month has been rather stressful for me. I did not
realize it until I lay down to sleep that first night, but there
had been a background level of pressure on me through-
out that time. It felt as though I was on a leash and
constantly struggling against it. Here I feel none of that,
and the exhaustion caught up with me.”

 The monk pointed to the black silk robe that matched
the pants Coyote already had pulled on. “Finish dressing,
and I will lead you on a tour here. There is much for you
to learn.”

 The silk felt cold at first, but it warmed quickly as he

 belted it in place with a sash. “How long will it take you to
teach me what I need to know?”

 Mong shrugged as he led the way into a dimly lit, narrow
corridor. “I do not know. The Dark Lords do not inform us
of their training techniques or curriculum.”

 Coyote nodded bitterly. “And I have no knowledge of
it.”

 “Conscious knowledge, you mean,”Mong mused. “We
shall see what skills you possess and what you must
learn.”

 As the monk guided him through the lamasery, its
antiquity impressed him. Of his life he knew little beyond
what he had discovered in the past month. While Jytte
Ravel had made available to him the files about his early
life, much of the things he learned from them were rumors
and probably exaggerated beyond reality anyway. In
contrast, the building had a strength and history that he
hungered for.

 He let his fingertips brush along the rough-hewn wall,
reveling in the gritty reality of the stones.This place will
be a cocoon forme.Remembering how Fiddleback had
called him a pet and treated him like something subhu-
man stoked his desire to destroy his former master.Here
I will complete my chrysalis. I will become my own
master. I will turn what you gave me into what will
destroy you.

 The lama paused beside a doorway and waved Coyote
on through it. “This is our armory and training center.”

 Coyote slowly descended the blocky stone steps.
Three dozen stone pillars supported the roof, and Coyote
guessed the whole training complex sat directly below the
main temple. The pillars broke the room down into small
10 x10-foot training areas, with longer strips in the outer
perimeter. Thick mats, darkened by the dirt of thousands
of feet, covered most of the floor and the soot from

 hanging butter-fat lamps blackened the ceiling.

 Two dozen brown-robedrapjungs worked through a
series ofkatas. They advanced, punched, blocked and
kicked in unison, mirroring their instructor’s display.
Many of the young men wore broad smiles, as if what they
were doing was play, but a select few looked serene and
peaceful even as they fought against shadows.

 Mong descended the long staircase behind Coyote.
”Awareness of self and the fragility of the physical body
are important in our studies. All too often, the concept of
self one has involves thought or a list of attributes. Only
through a conscious integration of mind and body, to the
point where the union becomes automatic and uncon-
scious, is it possible to begin down the path of enlighten-
ment.”

 The tall man nodded and pointed to a wall upon which
hung a full array of weapons. “And knowledge of these
reinforces knowledge of life’s fragility?”

 That, and it confirms more about mankind.” Mong
gestured broadly, taking in all the weapons at once.
”Consider, if you will, that man’s earliest tools were rocks
and sticks. Every weapon, every tool is, in effect, de-
scended from those very humble beginnings. Things
become vastly more complex as man refines his tools
over and over again. Man is a toolmaker, and acknowl-
edgment of that fact is crucial to understanding man-
kind.”

 Coyote pulled a short weapon from the wall with his left
hand. The blade ran perpendicular to the haft as with an
ax, but was more slender as befitting a dagger with a
single interior edge. From the point where the blade had
been bolted to the shaft, a weighted length of metal chain
hung down. With his right hand he grasped the chain
about a foot from the weight and whirled it around.
”Kusari-gama,Japanese in origin, favored by ninja.

 Yadama Shinryukan dispatched many a samurai with
one of these before Araki Mataemon tricked him into
fighting in a bamboo grove.”

 “And what is the sickle part but a stick, and the weight
but a rock?”

 Coyote acknowledged the monk’s comment with a
nod, then thought for a moment. “Your point is well made,
but are you not stretching it to suggest all tools, all
machines, come from sticks and stones? What of radios
and cars?”

 The monk smiled. “Modern devices do make defend-
ing my thesis more difficult. Bear in mind that mankind
has always struggled against nature and the circum-
stances that would kill him. Sticks and stones allowed him
to translate superior mental power into superior physical
power. By bashing two sticks together, for example, he
could alert other hunters in his band to potential prey. In
doing this he would effectively double or triple his own
strength by augmenting it with others, it may be stretching
things to suggest a radio is merely two sticks that can be
heard over vast distances, but the core of the reality is the
same.”

 “That reality being that man is a toolmaker and through
his tools has learned to survive.” Coyote increased the
speed of the spinning weight, then let the chain play out
through his fingers. The diamond-shaped steel weight
arced out and struck a spark from one of the pillars, then
Coyote pitched the weight’s rotational plane sharply
upward. The weight reached the peak of the arc, then
looped back down and he caught it in his right hand.

 “I’ve used this before.”

 “Apparently.” The monk pointed to other weapons on
the wall. “What of the others, Kyi-can?”

 “All of them?” He hung thekusari-gama back in its
place on the wall. “Spears,assagai, yari, naginata, a

 reproduction of a Roman pilum, an Inuit walrus spear and
even a boar spear. The swords: claymore, rapier,daito ,
katena,wakizashi, shamsheer, scimitar, broadsword
and obsidian-edged Aztec war club.”

 As he looked at each weapon, he knew how it would
feel in his hands. He knew its weight and its limitations. He
knew what sort of damage itwould do, how best to employ
it in attacks and how to defend against it.If I was
Fiddleback’spet, then he was training me to be a fighting
pet. Knowledge of these things is more than I would need
to know to be an assassin.

 “Iknow them all, lama. I know these and very much
more.” Coyote shook his head grimly, “It would appear
that much of your work has already been done.”

 “Perhaps, Kyi-can, perhaps.” The monk headed back
up the stairs. “Fiddleback constructed you well.”

 “You meantrained.”

 “Imeant constructed.”

 “What?” Coyote hurried up the stairs after the smaller
man. “Constructedme?”

 Mong nodded as he headed down a corridor with a
sunlightopeningattheend.Throughoutthe 1970s, ‘80s
and ‘90s, women claimed they had been kidnapped and
forced to conceive children. They said their abductors
were aliens or satanic cultists who were interested in
breeding hybrids or innocent babies for sacrifice. Skep-
tics pointed out that there was no physical evidence of
these crimes and, in many cases, something as simple as
psychoactively induced hypnotic suggestions were em-
ployed by their kidnappers to create this belief on the part
of the victims. In fact, women were often chosen who had
a history of mental problems and genetic defects specifi-
cally because no one would believe aliens had been
stupid enough to select them for breeding programs.”

 “Why would someone go to all the trouble of faking

 such horrible stories?” Coyote frowned. “And what has
this to do with me?”

 “Camouflage, Kyi-can.” Mong stepped out into the
lamasery courtyard to the right of the long stairway.
”Amid so many people claiming truth where there was
clearly falsehood, no one would listen to those whohad
been kidnapped. Therewere women who were taken and
held in thrall to carry a child to term. Thereweremen who
were targeted, who had sperm samples taken from them,
but were unable to tell their tales to anyone who would
believe them.”

 “You know who my parents were?”

 The monk shook his head as he walked around and
mounted the steps. “I do not, though you find it obvious
that your parents were excellent physical specimens, with
superior intellects and imaginations. Athletic, both of
them, to be sure. Perhaps one was a chess champion or
a wizard at computer programming or destined for a
Nobel in physics. The other, I should think, would have
had a creative side—indulging in painting or poetry.”

 Taking the steps two at a time, Coyote caught up with
Mong. The athletics connection is logical. I assume the
creativity is because that is a link into empathy?”

 “Very good.” Mong pressed his hand along the flank of
the stone lion balustrade as he worked his way up the
stairs. “Your training would have maximized your poten-
tial in physical actions, and your creativity would have
been indulged in other ways. No doubt your master would
have wanted you to learn what we will teach you, but you
would have received the training as a gift from him, not
something you earn so that it belongs to you.”

 “So I would define myself in relationship to him.”Pet
and master.

 “Yes.” The monk reached the flat foyer of the temple
and pointed toward the interior beyond two open bronze

 doors. This is theLhakang, the main hall in which
Buddha is housed, it is used for prayer and meditation.
You are being housed in theDukhang along with all the
other monks. Beneath theLhakang is theGonkhang,
which is reserved for our guardian, the Yidam. It is sacred
and private, and I trust you will respect that by not
attempting to enter it.”

 “As you wish, lama.” Coyote stepped forward and
looked into theLhakang. Up front he saw an altar, in front
of which a number of beaten gold bowls had been arrayed
at the feet of the seated figure of Buddha. At least one
looked to be full of rice and another with flowers. Flanking
the main statue he saw smaller deities represented along
with bodhisattvas, saints and monks. Instructional murals
filled the walls between the pillars supporting the ceiling.
A number of monks and their novices sat on the stone
floor, their meditative murmurs filling the cavernous room
with a low hum.

 “In bringing me here, Crowley said you would instruct
me inSunyata andOumah. He noted my instruction
would be in that order, which is the reverse in which you
normally provide instruction.” Coyote folded his arms
across his chest. “Having seen what Crowley can do—for
example, the manner in which he left here—I know this
ability to slip between worlds is powerful. I would gather,
however, given how you train people here normally,
learning this ability is not the focus of your teaching.”

 “It is a way station.” Mong turned to face out into the
lamasery courtyard. “The people who come here wish to
become enlightened. They wish to understand how all
reality is one. They are, if you will, interested in the tree as
a whole. The ability to leap from leaf to leaf is a minor
sideline.”

 “Yet one that you find very useful.”

 Mong stared at him. “Useful?”

 “I should have said ‘vital.’” Coyote gave the monk a
tightly controlled smile. “You have a community here of
over 500 individuals, yet you have no fields under culti-
vation. On the trip up here I saw little evidence of the sort
of caravan you would need to keep this place supplied. I
also noticed, when I woke up yesterday to eat what a
rapjungbrought to me, that the fruit that looked like an
orange was segmented differently than oranges I’ve had
before.”

 Mong shrugged. “You and Mi-ma-yin notice the seg-
mentation problem. Most of our monks just noticed they
do not have ‘Sunkist’ stamped on them.”

 “So, you sendgetsuls andgelongs out to forage
amongst the various realities?”

 “Since all reality is one, accepting nourishment from
another dimension is a blessing.” The monk folded his
arms into the sleeves of his robe. “I think there is one more
thing you should see before we begin your formal lessons.
Follow me, please.”

 Mong headed off on the long circuit around the outside
of theLhakang. Off to his right, Coyote saw the northern
gate in the lamasery wall. Aside from its having carved
stone doors that could not possibly ever move, it looked
exactly like the western gate through which he had
entered Kanggenpo. The 27 monks seated in the prayer
alcoves surrounding it were deep in their meditations.

 Coyote came around to the rear of theLhakang a step
behind Mong. He stopped short as the monk pointed to it.
”You entered through the west and will depart through the
east.”

 The gate appeared similar to the others in all its
elements, but they had been rearranged and changed to
make that gate seem threatening.It is almost malignant
and hateful. A stone causeway connected it to the
Lhakanglevel of the main temple, placing it 40 feet above

 the courtyard level served by the other three gates. As
with the others, 27 monks guarded it, but they were armed
with weapons and wore armor. The two sets of nine in the
vertical alcoves on either flank carried swords, spears and
bows and arrows, with their armor of traditional Tibetan
design. The monks in the horizontal row capping the gate
had old AKM and G3 assault rifles slung over their
shoulders and two had LAW rockets leaning against the
alcove walls.

 The gateway they surrounded led directly into the
mountainside, and their alcoves had been carved into the
mountain’s hide. Seeing no doors, Coyote thought the
gateway was just the entrance to a huge, dark cavern.
Then he caught sight of what had to be the doors, but he
was uncertain because they seemed insubstantial and
ethereal. Intricately worked with arcane designs, they
slowly solidified into a ghostly gray plasm, then began to
fade again before they reached opacity.

 Opposite the gateway, painted tall and menacing on
the rear of theLhakang, a black-skinned giant with four
arms snarled at the gateway. Bright white tusks thrust out
and up from his lower jaw, and his eyes looked filled with
blood. His upper two hands held lightning bolts, the lower
left a sword and the lower right a mace. Around his neck
hung a string of skulls, and Coyote noticed that a number
of them were not of terrestrial origin.

 Coyote looked from the gateway to the picture and
back. “I have the feeling I’m not intended to understand
this.”

 Mong nodded solemnly. “The painting is of our Yidam.
He is calledVajrabhairava, and he protects us from all
harmful creatures. The monks warding our gates chant
his name again and again and again to keep us safe.”

 He nodded toward the east and the heart of the
mountain. “The gate is the only way you will leave here.

 If you have learned enough that you can travel through it
to the outside world, you will have command of the skills
you have come here to learn.”

 “And if I don’t?”

 Mong’s expression darkened. “Pray you do. Being
reborn into this world is not something I would wish on
even the most malignant Dark Lord.”

 Putter resting on his shoulder, Sinclair MacNeal waited
for the Proteus green to reshape itself into a clone of the
17thhole atthe Tournament of Players Club in Scottsdale.
The machinery beneath the AstroTurf carpet pulled the
left edge in until it achieved a perfect kidney shape.
Pistons rose and fell to provide the rolling terrain and the
gentle hump in the middle of the green. At the farthest
possible point of the green, a dark hole opened up and a
man placed a pin and flag in it.

 Takeshi Takagi tugged at the wrist of his golfing glove.
”I selected this last hole in honor of your visit, Sinclair.”

 “I am honored, oyabun.” Sinclair squatted down as his
’caddy’ moved his ball from the fairway simulator and
spotted it on the green at the end of the kidney farthest
from the pin.You old fox, you did this because you know
I blew this hole in the Build-more Pro-Am three months
ago. Had there been no hump through the middle of the
kidney, he would have rolled his putt up and around the
lip and just tried to get it near the cup. He’d par the hole,
but that would leave him one stroke ahead of Takeshi and
Kazuo. Unfortunately, he knew from recent and painful
experience, hitting the ball hard enough to get it over the
hump would also roll it right off the green.

 The other two caddies—also Yakuza soldiers who

 looked uneasy in short-sleeved jumpsuits and carrying
huge golf bags—placed the other balls on the green.
Kazuo had not tried to play the hole safe and was
rewarded with a five-foot putt on a very slight down slope.
Takeshi, the slender, white-haired oyabun of the Ya-
maguchi-gumi, ended up 15 feet away from the hole, on
Sin’s side of the hump, but all he had to do was putt across
it and run parallel to it right to the hole.

 Kazuo grinned like a cat lapping up cream. “You are
away, Sin.”

 Sin closed his eyes for a half-second. Here, in the
basement of the Takagi mansion, he was playing golf on
a series of simulators with the two most powerful men in
the Japanese underworld. The oyabun had selected an
18-hole course made up of some of the most difficult
holes available in the world. They started on the tee
simulator and had a computer analyze their shots. It then
decided where they would be placed on the fairway
simulator and, from that, where they would end up on the
green.

 The simulators themselves, as well as the whole game
room, were a masterpiece of environmental duplication.
AstroTurf fibers grew and shrank to replicate conditions
from roughs to the best of greens. Terrain features filled
themselves in and, while no part of the simulators flooded
to produce water hazards, a spaghettilike overgrowth of
carpet made for excellent sand traps. Projected video of
the area surrounding the individual holes and a subtle
soundtrack made it possible for Sinclair to believe he was
actually playing the holes depicted.

 Though it was a game of a game, the pressure felt as
great to him as itdid during the Build-more tournament.
He recognized, however, that in many ways, it should
have seemed far more heavy.These men could kill me,
and no one would ever know. In Phoenix all I did was

 disgrace myself in front of a television audience of mil-
lions. Same position, same shot I played it safe then and
lost. Time to go for broke.

 Sinstood and extendedhisputtertohis caddy.“Kusabi.”

 The man stared at him blankly, then looked at the
oyabun.

 “Give him his wedge, as he has asked.” Takeshi smiled.
”The board would have your membership for using a sand
wedge on a green.”

 “But you are more forgiving?”

 “It depends upon the results of your gamble.”

 Doesn’t it always?Sin shifted his stance and carefully
gripped the club. Left index finger linked through right
little finger and right hand covered left thumb. His ball
stood just off the toe of his left shoe.Easy...easy...
concentrate. Smooth swing, gentle touch. He brought the
club back to waist height and swung down through the
ball.

 The sand wedge’s flatly pitched head popped the ball
up like an undercut cue ball on a billiards table. It shot from
point to point on the kidney like a spaceplane going
suborbital. It reached its apex above the hump, then fell
to the ground again with a barely audible thump. Rolling
toward the hole, it looked on target, but swung around the
lip of the cup and ended up a foot downhill from its goal.

 “Well played, Sinclair.” The oyabun stepped up to his
own putt and clearly found standing on the side of the
hump a bit awkward. He shifted his stance, and his caddy
exchanged one putter for another. Lining up for a left-
handed putt, the oyabun kept his club steady, watched
the ball and, with a gentle click, sent it at the cup.

 “Left-handed. I’m impressed.”

 The ball rolled up the hump and looked as if it might
stall, but the oyabun knew exactly what he was doing. He
gave the ball enough power to make it over the top, then

 it picked up speed rolling down the other side. It hit a small
bump that popped it back out on to the wider part of the
green, then followed the path Kazuo’s ball would have to
use right on into the cup.

 Sinclair applauded appreciatively. “With your offhand.
You should be on the tour. This puts you one down for this
hole.”

 “And makes us even, if you make your putt.”

 Sinclair nodded silently as Kazuo stepped onto the
green. The Yakuza addressed the ball confidently and hit
it toward the hole. His putt rolled true, but slowed and
stopped right on the edge of the cup. He waited a full 10
seconds for it to drop, then stepped forward and poked it
into the hole. “Par.”

 Sin walked over to where his ball waited and accepted
his putter from his caddy.Sink this, and I win. Miss, and
the oyabun wins. Sin looked up and watched the oyabun
watch him. Sin settled himself over the ball, lined up the
shot and took one practice stroke with his putter.One foot.
Easy.

 He stroked the ball, and it sank into the cup with ease.
”Par.”

 “Well done, Sinclair.” The oyabun handed his putter to
his caddy, then waved his guest toward the spiral stair-
case up and out of the Sim Country Club. Sin relinquished
his putter to his caddy and kicked his golf shoes off onto
the mat at the base of the stairs. He followed the oyabun’s
ascension into the upper room. The transition from the
TPC’s 17thhole in Scottsdale to a traditional wood and
shojiroom felt a bit abrupt, but the oyabun had furnished
the room like a country club’s clubhouse to help ease the
shift.

 Takeshi seated himself on a wide, white leather couch
and directed Sin to a similar chair across a low table with
his dark eyes.”I have not lost in a long time. My associates

 are not as skillful as you.”

 Take away their little fingers, and I’m not surprised.
”Thank you,Takeshi-sama. Unlike your people, my job is
not so demanding that I cannot get sufficient practice on
my game.” Sin sat and immediately felt as if his chair was
a giant marshmallow trying to eat him.

 Kazuo sank into the chair across from his. “And now,
with your new job, you should have even more time, eh?”

 That depends, my friend, on a number of things.”

 Sin accepted a glass of amber liquid from the silver tray
carried by a butler. The two Yakuza likewise took glasses
from the tray, then the oyabun leaned forward on the edge
of the couch. He sipped the drink, then nodded a salute
to Sin. “Thank you for this scotch. It is excellent.”

 “Do itashimashite, Takeshi-sama.”

 The oyabun held the crystal glass cupped in his hands
and rested his elbows on his knees. “My nephew has told
me that you are no longer with your father’s firm. He also
said you believed that success in your current job de-
pended upon receiving our help. I would have met with
you sooner except for some business in Hong Kong, but
you should not take my tardiness in seeing you as a
rejection of your friendship.”

 “I did not, oyabun. I understand very well the difficulties
of the tasks thrust upon you.” Sin drank some of the
scotch and let himself relax into the chair. “Your invitation
to play here, in your home, was a very pleasant surprise.”

 “It was the least I could do to repay your kindness for
hosting Kazuo on his visits to Phoenix, and to applaud
your courage in returning to our island again.” The
oyabun’s dark eyes glittered. “Your new employer must
be very powerful indeed.”

 Sin sensed a mixture of curiosity and confidence in the

 oyabun’s comment. Fishing for information, orconfirma-

 tion of what you already know? “I have only been

 working for him over the past week but, yes, he does seem
very well connected. Even so, there are things he does not
know, and assistance he requires. He personally sent me
hereto Japan, fully knowledgeable of my past difficulties
and my allies.”

 Takeshi Takagi leaned back in the couch. “I still recall
how you accepted blame for us in that stock manipulation
affair three years ago. I know your exile back to the United
States forced a reconciliation with your father on his
terms. I respect you more than you could know for
performing this duty for us. How can I help you?”

 “I need information on an institution that is likely to be
very private or oddly disguised.It will be the sort of thing
that will attract no notice among us, but theburakumin
and minor merchants might find it odd. I need your ears
to listen closely, for the collection of data should be
passive. If what I am searching for does exist, I do not want
to alert its people to the fact that I am looking for them.”

 He drank a bit more, then continued. “Somewhere,
here, there is an institution or training center. Its resources
would be nearly limitless, yet it would seem very stingy to
those outside.It would seem, on the surface, to be more
normal than anything else in terms of daily administra-
tion.It would never seek the limelight, but would not draw
attention to itself by trying to hide, either.”

 Kazuo smiled easily. “You mean, if it were a warehouse,
it would look like one and function like one, but never
become too successful, yet never so security-conscious
that it would become noticed.”

 “Exactly.It would have loading-dock workers who
moved crates in and out, but never had cause to visit the
executive offices.It might be a school that offers basic and
advanced courses, but a part of the student body never
interacts with those from the general public.It might
sponsor a Little League baseball team and even display

 trophies it had won, but never tour the team through the
whole facility.”

 Takeshi nodded as his eyes narrowed. “It would be
hiding in plain sight, as with Poe’s purloined letter.”

 “Hai!”Sin set his drink on the arm of his chair and pulled
himself forward. “Even so, there will be things that they
cannot hide. For example, they might successfully clean
up a shooting range so no brass could be found and shred
all bullet boxes and targets into pulp so fine it could never
be reconstructed. On the other hand, the chances are
excellent that the laundry women would be able to smell
cordite on the clothes used in the shooting exercise. A
delivery person might never see what is in the packages
he drops off, but he would notice if the firm only worked
with certain companies or, more significantly, seemed to
change suppliers on an almost random basis.”

 The oyabun ran a hand over his smooth chin. “You
want information about a firm that is so ordinary that it
seems unremarkable, and you want us to gather this in a
passive manner.” He shook his head. “You want us to find
the firms about which no one is talking, in essence.”

 “You have it precisely, which is why I need help.” Sin
sighed heavily. “There are some things you can look for.
This place will have a number of nonnatives as long-term
clients or residents. One of those residents vanished six
weeks or more ago and did not return as anticipated. Guns
of every variety are available here, and there is a prodi-
gious amount of ammo used. Gun drills will also take
place in odd ways, so rumors of an accidental shooting
are possible. Weapons and equipment will have to be
smuggled in and out without notice, so access to a private
airfield or shipping could be a factor. It will require a lot of
power, so independent- or high-power demands are
likely.Itwill have communications needs that suggest its
own satellite facility.”

 Uncle and nephew exchanged a glance that Sin knew
was significant, but he could not decipher it. “What?”

 Kazuo shrugged uneasily, “There is one place where all
the things you mention could be placed, and it would go
unnoticed. Unfortunately, that is also the one place in all
of Tokyo where our influence is the weakest: Kimpun-
shima.”

 “Thereservation?Ihadn’tthoughtaboutthat.”Golddust
Island.. Makes sense for all the wrong reasons. “This could
make my job very easy or absolutely impossible.”

 Sin knew that, because of the clash of cultures in the
1980s and 1990s, tension had risen between the Japa-
nese and foreigners. A diet full of nationalists forced a
number of laws that severely restricted the accepted
habitation zones for resident aliens in Japan. The laws
served to protect the contamination and dissolution of the
Japanese culture, as well as isolating the foreigners so
they could only really deal with those the Japanese
wished to have represent them.

 The largest of the reservations was Kimpunshima. Built
as a floating island in Tokyo harbor, a typhoon had
devastated it in the mid-‘90s. It had been rebuilt and
improved and enlarged until some people began to think
of it as the fifth island in the Japanese chain. Various parts
of it had been segregated so the streets and neighborhood
distribution amounted to an economic map of the world,
with the whole of Japan right in scale with Kimpunshima.

 Sin had enjoyed living there for his first two years in
Japan, but mainly because he could leave the American
sector and find himself in France or Italy or Mexico by
taking a tram from one tower to another. Soon, however,
he realized that he could not successfully maintain corpo-
rate security in Japan while living apart from the Japa-
nese. With the Yamaguchi-gumi’s covert help, he ob-
tained one of the rare Imperial Invitations to live wherever

 he wanted.

 “If you can check to make certain there are no suitable
sites outside Kimpunshima, I will try to cover it.”

 Takeshi Takagi nodded. “We will do this, Sinclair. We
will make our search methodical and precise.” The
oyabun downed the last of his scotch. “And I think, my
friend, that we will need to consult each other at least
weekly, on our investigations. To aid you, I even volunteer
use of my Simcenter for these meetings.”

 As Sinclair rode the private elevator up to his suite, he
chuckled again at the way the oyabun had trapped him
into golfing each week.He will beat me, there is no doubt
about it. He will select a course so difficult that both of us
will be forced to play our best. It will be interesting.

 The door opened, and he flicked the lights on with the
switch beside the doorway. The huge living room had
been decorated with standard Western furnishings, but
everything had been carved in a way or upholstered with
cloth that was in keeping with Japanese mythology. The
suite seemed to him like a halfway house between the
West and the East. He found the combination annoying
because it suggested a contempt for him by his hosts.

 That was not really surprising to him. The same fierce
nationalism that had created the reservations was the fire
in the belly of Japan’s economy. While Emperor Akihito
still headed up the government, Japan had really reen-
tered the days of the shogunate. In this case, though, the
shogun waged economic power, not military might, and
he sought to dominate the world, not just Japan.

 In the 1800s, Japan had tried to reject the gun and
return to the days of the samurai, complete with total
isolation. That had been a mistake and, in some ways,
was blamed for Japan’s defeat in World War Two. Having
been rebuilt in a Western image, traditionalists fought

 against that warping of Japanese society. They sought to
preserve what they had by sucking the rest of the world
dry of the things Japan needed to sustain itself.

 That created a number a paradoxes for those who
would be shogun. They had to maintain the emperor
because he was the soul of Japan, yet his inherent
influence over the people could make him a very danger-
ous person if he spoke out against their plans. The
corporators also had to tolerate the Yakuza, because they
were the staunchest nationalists of all and were more than
capable of doing the things necessary to keep the lower
classes in line. They had to accept contact and trade with
the West while studiously avoiding its seduction.It was a
walk across a tightrope with both ends burning and
alligators waiting below.

 Dangerous, yes, but the view from up there is un-
equalled.

 Smiling, Sin hit the glowing red button on the hardwood
cabinet to the right of the elevator. From its hidden recess,
the message printer dropped two sheets of paper into a
wire basket. Picking them up, he saw the first was from
Erika inviting him to a party over on Kimpunshima in the
American sector. The second was from Lilith Acres telling
him her departure for Japan would be delayed a week.

 Sin deposited Lilith’s message in the shredder slot and
heard the gears grind it down into micro-fine confetti. He
reread Erika’s note and smiled.Good timing, Erika. I think
I will accept your invitation. If Kimpunshima is tied into
this whole thing, going in as your guest is probably a
better cover than even Coyote could arrange.

 During the entire journey from Nevada to Flagstaff,
Rajani had assumed that finding Dorothy and Mickey’s
father would be the easiest part of the operation. In the
early 1980s, before she had entered stasis, she had come
to know enough of the world to be able to plot out a course
of action that would result in reuniting the children with
their father. While she had been kept apart from the
normal world outside Area 51, or a half-dozen other secret
facilities where she was studied and educated, the outside
world had come to her in rich color and stereo sound.

 At first she had been dead set against returning the two
children to the man who had sold them, but the love for
him that both kids showed puzzled her. Dorothy appeared
very reluctant to discuss her father, and Rajani could tell
being sold had hurt her deeply, but more because of the
separation it caused than of the betrayal of the bond
between them. Dorothy explained it had been a hard time
because it was the anniversary of her mother’s death, and
her father’s girlfriend was brutally murdered by a co-
worker who had pushed her into a pulping mill.

 Realizing she had no choice but to return them, Rajani
thought she would simply direct the children to the police
in Flagstaff. Despite stasis, she remembered seeing
ample evidence—on television—that the police would

 gladly pack the children into one of their black-and-white
vehicles and take them directly home. When she began
to suggest this strategy, Dorothy nixed it instantly. “The
state of Arizona is last in social spending, Rajani. In
Rumanian orphanages, they tell the kids to clean their
plates because there are starving children in Arizona who
would love to have whatever they leave.”

 For a moment or two the sharp resentment Rajani
sensed from Dorothy seemed out of place, but she
recalled plenty of cases she’d studied in which the
disadvantaged were suspicious of authorities. So, despite
what she knew of the police from “Cagney and Lacey”
and “Barney Miller,” she fell back to a second line of
defense. Unfortunately, Magnum, PI and Jessica Fletcher
did not have phone listings in Arizona, and the local paper
had no ad in it for the Equalizer.

 Realizing she was on her own didn’t depress her. She
found her mission oddly revitalizing after the long trek
south and east.If I cannot find their father, how can I
expect to locate this Coyote or help defeat Fiddleback?
Resolved to finding a way into Flagstaff and acknowledg-
ing that even the A-team would find this difficult, she set
about organizing a plan.

 Daizaimoku, she quickly discovered, owned the
whole city and controlled the vast majority of it. To
protect its interests, the multinational corporation had
fortified the city with a series of trenches and walls that
reminded Rajani of pictures she’d seen of Berlin—
except these lacked the gay and happy graffiti that
suggested hope to those on the wrong side of the wall
in Germany. Armed men walked the walls, and patrols
with slavering monster-dogs made a circuit on a
random schedule on the ground outside the tallest
wall.

 “Daisymuck controls the east and south gates. The

 Mormon enclave controls the west gate and the Indians
control the north. No way we’re getting in either of the last
two—we’re not Indians and I don’t want to be caught by
the Mormons.” Dorothy defiantly folded her arms across
her chest. “We came out of the east gate, but that’s
because Andy stopped by his place first. We lived closer
to the south gate.”

 Rajani frowned as she considered and rejected strate-
gies. Squatting around a small fire amid the vast refugee
camp outside Flagstaff, she found concentrating virtually
impossible. Dirty, scrawny children ran pell-mell through
the tent-and-cardboard city, screaming in terror or squeal-
ing in play. Roving gangs of men and women cruised
through the camp like schools of sharks looking for prey
to rob. Brain-blasted derelicts wallowed in their delusions,
mumbling to themselves and jealously guarding collec-
tions of worthless trinkets as if they were the keys to the
universe.

 “I have seen the guards let some people into Flagstaff,
Dorothy. Why would they do that?”

 “Proxxers, like my dad.”

 “I don’t understand.”

 Dorothy sat down beside her and checked both ways
to see no one was watching. She dug deep into her
clothing and pulled out a laminated blue identification
card.It had the Daizaimoku logo in hologram on it and her
name and thumbprint in red. Micro-fine type on the front
and back defined all the rights and privileges she earned
by possessing the card.

 Dorothy’s voice dropped into a hoarse whisper tinged
with fear. This is my Daisymuck ID card. It’s blue
because I can’t vote, but I got it because my dad has
signed his vote proxies over to the Corp. For his vote we
get to eat, have housing and stuff.It ain’t a whole lot but...”
Dorothy’s stomach growled.

 “It’s something.” Rajani likewise kept her voice low.
”Can’t that get you back into the city?”

 She shook her head. “Only in the company of a valid
adult card. The folks that get in have a card from
somewhere else that can be exchanged for one with
Daisymuck. I have Mickey’s card, so we could return if
you had a white card.”

 Rajani smiled slowly. “IfIhad a card, I could go in and
they’d give me a Daizaimoku card, right? Then I could go
in and out at will? I could come out and get you?”

 Dorothy nodded slowly. “Yeah, but finding a card to
exchange is tough.” She slipped her blue card into her
clothes again as a sharp-eyed gang of adults wandered
past. “The rovers are looking for cards that will get them
in, too.”

 “Couldn’t I, ah...,”What is the word I’m looking for?
”...forgeone?”

 Even Mickey giggled at that idea.

 Dorothy looked at her closely for a second, then
shook her head. “For a gangbanger from Eclipse, you
sure can be a Snow White. These cards have special
fibers worked through them to prevent forgery. The
microtype is virtually impossible to duplicate. Not only
that, but if they detected a forgery, they’d take you out
and shoot you.”

 “For forgery?”

 Dorothy nodded solemnly. “Daizaimoku owns the
votes of the proxxers. They use them to make the laws.
They could be using them right nowto pass a lawthat says
squatting outside Flagstaff is a capital crime, and they
could shoot all of us.”

 “But that would be illegal.” Rajani blinked in surprise.
”Thisis still the United States, isn’t it?”

 “Sure, so 10 years from now some court somewhere
says what happened was wrong and someone gets fined.

 Big deal. They own Flag, they write the laws, they
administer justice—their justice.” She reached over and
tousled her brother’s hair.

 “Let me look at your card again.” Rajani forced all
distraction away as Dorothy produced the small, blue
card. Rajani took it from her and studied it closely. She
memorized how it looked and what it said. She cataloged
its weight and texture and temperature. She flipped it over
and back, then looked over the layout on the card again.
Once she had every little detail fixed in her mind, she
slipped the card back to Dorothy.

 “What’s another corp they would likely have seen here,
but wouldn’t find so familiar that they’d be able to spot a
fake right off the bat?”

 Dorothy shrugged. “Maybe one of the Phoenix corps,
like Sumitomo-Dial or Genentech-Carbide.” She looked
around through the litter surrounding their little campsite.
Amid a small pile of metal scraps that Mickey had
gathered up, she found the bent top of a tin of Vienna
sausages. She straightened it out against her thigh, then
handed it to Rajani. “There, Genentech-Carbide All-
Natural Simulated Koktail Weenies. Their logo’s in the
corner.”

 Good, even close to the right size for the card.Rajani
used her right thumbnail to score a line in the piece of
metal, then she tore the aluminum along that line. She
scraped the torn edge along a rock to dull it, then quickly
brandished it. “What do you think?”

 Dorothy shivered and pulled Mickey close. “I think you
stand a better chance of finding a kinky guard and
working a deal with him than getting them to accept that
as an ID card.”

 Rajani glanced up at the night sky. “Another hour or
two, and then I go.” She smiled a devilish grin. “This will
work. Trust me.”

 Rajani waited until the wee hours of the night to make
her approach. Out of range of Mickey’s constant anxiety,
she opened herself up to the thoughts and feelings of the
three men on duty at the southern gate. The two armed
guards who challenged those who approached both
seemed sleepy, though their level of mental activity
started a slow climb as she approached. The third man,
sitting in a glassed-in cage in the center of the 15-foot
thick wall, had a flat-level of brain activity which Rajani
had come to associate with a drug-induced coma or
watching television.

 “Need a card exchange.” Rajani flashed her fake ID at
the man approaching her. He hesitated, and she sensed
confusion in him. She pushed her hat back on her head,
and he looked up into her eyes.Locked!

 She projected into his brain a composite image made
from Dorothy’s ID card and the logo from the weiner tin.
His confusion spiked into panic, but she sent sensations
of embarrassment at having made a mistake and wel-
come relief at having recognized that fact. The man
blushed, then shook his head. Right along with her, he
wondered how he could ever have thought this harmless
woman was a threat.

 He waved her on through the gate to the interior man.
As she approached him, Rajani forced her racing heart to
calm. Dr. Chandra’s experiments had shown her to be
very competent in manipulating and reading living crea-
tures. Unfortunately for her, unlike other alien species,
she showed no aptitude whatsoever for computer crack-
ing or being able to mentally guide and influence ma-
chines.

 A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. In this case,
it’s Immigration Officer Grant, here.Rajani smiled sweetly
at the man in the cage and saw the small image of a
television reflected in his glasses. As he looked up at her

 she sensed resentment at being disturbed, but she let him
know she’d be no trouble at all. A routine card issue, she
would be hardly more time than the vertblok cutting into
the movie on the TV.

 A small tray slid out from the wall. A panel rose up like
an alligator’s upper jaw. “Put the card in here, please.” The
microphone and synthesizer made his voice tinny and
mechanical. Rajani immediately felt the fragile link she
had established with him crumbling.

 He needs to look at me again.She held the card out,
then hesitated. The man’s anger began to build, but the
television distracted him. He waited with his hand on the
withdrawal lever for the basket as tiny pictures flashed
across his glasses. “C’mon, put the card in.” Along with
his demand came the first inkling of suspicion.

 Rajani fought down her panic and read his full name
from his identification tag. “Bob Grant. Do you have a
cousin named John?”

 Grant’s head came up and their gazes met. “John?
Yes.”

 Suspicion continued to climb, but anger slowly backed
off. Rajani caught fragments of memories from the Immi-
gration officer. “I thought so. I can see the family resem-
blance.” More images came through and she quickly
sifted them for any solid sort of detail she could latch onto.
”I knew him up in Taos years ago.”

 A moment’s confusion washed over the man’s face.
”Taos? But John never...”

 “It was a vacation. He was off on a lark. You know how
he was.” She smiled softly and looked down. “Only a
week, but I’ll never forget him.” She pulsed sexual
innuendo out with her statement, and got more puzzle-
ment back in return. That confused her for a moment,
then she sent Grant a revision of her image in which she
sharpened her features a bit and let the hint of stubble dot

 her chin.

 Her quick sex change made Grant blush, and she felt
an urge on his part to get rid of this evidence of his cousin’s
unnatural life-style. “Are you sure you want in here?
Daizaimoku doesn’t put up with any strangeness. They’re
very conservative here.”

 “I know,” she admitted as she looked up and softened
her image again. “That was a time before I found out who
I was and had my surgery.” She smiled as she pushed a
wave of confusion over Grant, then followed it with a quick
one-two punch of exhaustion, and a vain hope that the
damned reader wouldn’t force him into preparing the card
manually.

 Her assault succeeded in blasting Grant’s rudimentary
mental defenses into kindling. To him, she was a trans-
sexual/homosexual who had not settled for just a sex
change. She’d gone so far as to tattoo her body black and
gold and have some alterations done to her eyes. She was
definitely a weird one, which was just exactly what he
didn’t need, especially during the middle of the Sylvester
Stallone Comedy Film Festival.Why my shift?

 Rajani took advantage of his vulnerability and pushed
him. “I remember John talking about the time you went
fishing and those dogs came after you. He said he was
angry that he got bit and you didn’t, but when that
farmhand nursed him back to health and awakened him,
well, he considered it a blessing in disguise.”

 Guilt gushed from Grant like oil from a ruptured
pipeline. Rajani sent a message back through the waves
of emotion pouring from the man.I don’t want this on my
shift, she sent.She’ll be trouble if she gets in, and I don’t
want that on me. Why couldn’t she have come back
during the day?

 The spark of an idea began in his brain and her
assurances that he was brilliant fanned it to life. Grant

 smiled at her from his cage. “Look, because you’re one of
John’s friends, I’m going to give you a temp pass. Once
you’re inside, you can get a card at a center. That way you
can keep your old card just in case you head back to
wherever.” He winked at her to assure her that he was
doing her a favor.

 “You are even more of a squared-away guy than John
said, Bob.” She palmed her fake card as the metal tray
retracted into the wall. Grant hastily scrawled something
on a sheet of paper, then shoved it into the tray and back
out to her. She took it, nearly laughed at the illegible
signature at the bottom, then winked at him.

 “Maybe I’ll look you up when I get settled, okay, Bob?”
”Sure. Drinks are on me,” he smiled in contrast to the
panic he was projecting. Rajani let his panic grow rapidly
and sowed his mind with confusion. So much so, in fact,
that it would be four days before he wondered why, after
he gave her the pass, she wandered back out in the
squatters camp.

 The immigration officer at the east gate accepted the
temporary pass and issued her an official pass with the
click of a half-dozen computer buttons. “Leslie Grant”
legitimately entered Flagstaff with her two step-children
in tow. Dorothy took charge of the expedition once they
passed through the outer wall. Mickey let Rajani hold his
hand as they trooped through the streets after his sister.

 Rajani sensed Dorothy’s disappointment as they
reached the destination she’d directed them toward.
”Dammit, they’ve shifted things again. This was our
contiminimum block, but it’s been changed.”

 “Don’t you mean con-do-min-ium?” Rajani looked at
the building in front of which Dorothy had stopped. The
exterior had been painted a standard khaki tan and
looked as if it had some flat sort of metal siding on it. Each

 apartment was marked by a single window in the street
end of the building. Along the side, Rajani saw ribbed
siding that added some texture to the building, but no
windows or doors on that side. She saw the start of
balconies and railing on the back side and assumed stairs
there provided access to each of the four floors.

 The building itself had no street number, but beneath
each window, in foot-high letters, she saw an eight-digit
number. “What was your address, Dorothy?”

 “We lived in #49337629.” She pointed at the third floor
and along to the third apartment from the far end. “It used
to be there, but now its gone. And, yes, I did mean
contiminimum.You have tohavethese down in Phoenix.”

 Mickey pointed off along the street. “Uane!”

 Dorothy followed her brother’s line of sight and smiled.
”Yes, a crane. C’mon.”

 Holding firmly on to Mickey’s hand, Rajani followed
Dorothy down the street. As they traveled, she saw a
number of other apartment complexes that looked as if
they had been built out of the same sort of materials as the
first one they’d looked at, but these had a different shape.
One was a pyramid and another had two holes in the
center. While each looked to Rajani to be different in
overall shape, each could be broken own into small, boxy
apartment components.

 It’s like dwellings put together from building blocks.
Rajani saw the crane lifting a metal container and slowly
lowering it into place on a new stack of buildings. They
usedtoship things in containers like thisbeforeIwentinto
stasis. Now they cut a window in them and house people.
As the box descended, two workers snapped power and
plumbing connectors in place, linking the upper apart-
ment with the one below it.

 “There, on the bottom row, that’s our apartment.”
Dorothy started crossing a side street and heading toward

 the building.

 Rajani grabbed her arm. “Wait. They’re still building
there. Is it safe?”

 Dorothy frowned at her. “Of course it’s safe. You ride for
a while, then there’s a bump and it’s business as usual.”

 “You mean you stay in the thing when it is moved?”

 Dorothy answered her with a withering stare. “You’ve
never had a contiminimum moved on you?”

 Rajani shook her head. “No, never. Why would they
move it?”

 The girl shrugged. “The Mormon Polys must have
moved some folks in to unbalance this district.” She
pulled her arm free from Rajani’s grasp and continued to
the building. The man operating the crane shouted
something at her, but she just flipped him off and walked
up to apartment #49337629. Mickey tugged on Rajani’s
arm and led her across the street.

 The first thing that hit her about the apartment was the
scent of stale beer and even more stale sweat. Its sharp
odor made her wince and almost caused her to vomit. At
first she thought something must have died in there, then
she realized that impression came from the stench com-
bined with the level of mental activity she sensed from
inside the dark box.

 Mickey twisted his hand free of hers and went flying
through the room. He hugged the shin of the slender, pale
man sitting in a recliner. The light from the huge black-
and-white television painted the man in cadaverous tones
of white and gray. He clutched a beer can in his right hand
and stared without blinking at the pictures moving across
the screen. Though his left hand rested two inches from
Mickey’s head, he seemed not to notice his son, and made
no move to greet him. The remote control remained in
that hand as firmly as if it had been grafted on.

 Rajani looked up as light from a refrigerator splashed

 out into the room from the middle of the apartment.
Dorothy bent over and stuck her head into the white box,
then straightened up and cursed. “On the Coors diet
again, eh, Dad?” Anger and concern mixed in her voice,
and Rajani knew Dorothy feared the worst for both her
father and her brother.

 Rajani choked down the lump in her throat. “This is
your father?” Contempt filled her words and radiated out
from her like sound waves from a tuning fork. Mickey’s
head snapped up. “This is the reason you wanted to come
home?”

 Dorothy closed the refrigerator door, cloaking herself
with darkness. “He is myfather. We are family.” She didn’t
say it, but Rajani knew Dorothy clung desperately to
something that was bad because it was better than having
nothing.

 The man in the chair stirred a bit. “Dot? Getcher pa a
beer?” His right hand opened, and the can it held dropped
out of sight.It clattered heavily into an unseen aluminum
midden and, from the sound it made, Rajani knew it had
not been empty.

 “Sure, Da.” The refrigerator door opened, and a silvery
can appeared in Dorothy’s hand. “Incoming, Da.”

 Mickey looked up to watch his sister arc the can
through the air toward her father. The can rotated nicely,
making for an easy catch, but the man in the chair did
nothing to grab it. It would have slammed into his
stomach, but Rajani crossed the three steps to the chair
and snagged it before it landed.

 The cold can sent a shiver up her spine. Rajani looked
over at Dorothy. “Go clean your brother up. Get him ready
for bed.” She set the unopened can down in the man’s
right hand. “Your father and I are going to talk.”

 “Dot, getcher dad a beer,” he mumbled.

 Dorothy started to protest, but Rajani’s eyes narrowed

 and let her know that nothing could be done to win a
contest of wills at this point. Mickey looked from Dorothy
to Rajani and back, then slowly released his father’s leg
and headed off down the narrow corridor beside the
kitchen. Reluctantly, Dorothy followed him.

 Rajani moved and cut off the man’s view of the
television. His left thumb punched buttons on the remote
control, but nothing changed. He blinked his eyes once,
then twice in rapid succession. The slack muscles of his
face tightened, giving some shape to his stubbly cheeks.
His mouth closed, then his tongue licked dry lips.
”Whaaaa?”

 “What am I?” Rajani drove an axe blade of sheer terror
through the man’s mind. She chopped through his stupor
and saw what memories arose in response to the fright she
projected into him. She raced past his fear of failing his
children, the despair from the death of his girlfriend and
the pain of losing his wife. What she wanted was deeper
and more primal. She sliced down in until she blew by his
adolescence and touched the memories he recorded
when he was little older than Mickey. “That’s right, I’m the
Grimmand,” she growled, co-opting the name of the
bogeyman his mother used to frighten him with. “I’ve
come to see what sort of man would sell his children
before I rip him to pieces.”

 She grabbed the beer can in her right hand and
punched her golden nails through the front of it. Beer
sprayed out over his face and torso, then she tossed the
foaming can down into the pile beside his chair. “Greed,
sloth, gluttony or the greatest sin—stupidity. Which was
it?”

 The man stared at her wide-eyed with terror. “Not sold,
not sold...”

 “Don’t lie to me!” Rajani yanked free the memory of his
handing Dorothy and Mickey over to his brother Andy.

 “Get a good price for her, and whatever you can get for
him!”She made those words echo again and again inside
his head. She used them to shatter his self-image and in
her anger it took her a second or two to realize how easily
it had collapsed. Within the shards of a heroic granite
statue, she discovered a wailing infant and, as she
watched, it regressed in age to the point where it could no
longer survive.

 He’s dying. He has no will to live. He’s been killing
himself by inches since they left. She projected herself
into his mind and scooped him up into her arms.« No, you
cannot die on me. Your daughter needs you. Your son
needs you. You will live for them.»

 The infant looked up at her with an ancient weariness
in its eyes. Its mouth opened, but its tiny lungs couldn’t
power out a scream. Its little fingers grasped at nothing,
silently signing its inability to succeed at anything.«Iam
worthless. Let me go!»

 Rajani shook her head, and a golden lock curled
through the premature baby’s right palm. The fist closed
on it, and the baby clutched at it with all its failing might.
Rajani knew he wanted to pull on her hair and hurt her, but
he could not. Still, she used that desire to slowly bring him
back.«You cannot hurt me. You are less than either of
your children, and they could not hurt me. Not yet,
anyway. I am safe from them, and safe from you.»

 The child in her arms aged rapidly. He plumped quickly
enough that she had to set him down. In the half-second
it took her to do that, the child’s legs had become strong
enough to support his weight. He rapidly progressed from
infant through toddler to his son’s age. The child looked
down at his body, then up at her. “What is the use? The
world was hell when I grew up. It was worse when Dorothy
was born and worse again when Mickey came. I have
failed them. I failed their mother. They are better off

 without me.”

 “No, they are not.”

 “Others will care for them, do better for them.”

 “But your children don’t love others. They love you.”
Rajani aimed a solid stream of thoughts at the child. She
poured into him her memories of the trip, including the
things his children said about him. She forced their father
to see himself through the eyes of his children and to know
how much they loved and depended upon him. His bond
with them was more than as someone who obtained food
for them and maintained their shelter. He was the core of
their reality, and Rajani drilled that point home over and
over again.

 As the memories filled him, the child grew into a man.
He fought against the transformation, staring at adult
limbs as if they were unwanted growths. He scraped at the
whiskers on his face and raked his fingers across his hairy
chest. He slumped down to deny his height and hugged
his arms around himself to make himself seems smaller.
”No, I cannot take responsibility for them. I am not strong
enough. It is too difficult.”

 Rajani reached up and grabbed his upper arms. “You
havethe strength. No, you will not change the world, but
your children can. Theyare strong, and they have done
incredible things to return to you. You owe them. You
know there is only one way to escape what haunts you,
and that is to ensure that you and your wife are immortal
by providing your children the foundation for their suc-
cess.”

 “Can I?”

 “By simply surviving, you will be that foundation.”
Rajani backed away from him. “With a little bit of effort on
your part, they will excel beyond your wildest dreams.”

 She withdrew herself from his mind and straightened
up over his slumped form. He looked up at her, then his

 eyes closed. For a half-second she thought he might have
slipped away again, but then a loud buzzing snore sounded
from him, and Rajani smiled.

 “He always did sound like a chain saw.” Dorothy leaned
against the apartment wall. “You’re not from Phoenix, are
you?”

 Rajani shook her head. “No, but I am heading there.”

 Dorothy looked right through her. “Are you even
human?”

 Rajani stiffened. “Human enough to know what it is to
lose your parents.” She looked down at Dorothy’s father.
”He’ll be okay now, I think. He knows what he means to
you and how important he is to you. He lost that some-
where, when your mother died and the pressure got too
great. He’s found it again.”

 “Are you going to stay? We have room.”

 Rajani smiled confidently in the face of Dorothy’s
fear and hopefulness. “Don’t worry, Dorothy. You are
more than strong enough to see to your brother and
father. You don’t need me here, neither does your
father.” She hugged her arms around herself. “I would
very much like to stay, but what I have to do necessi-
tates my making it to Phoenix. In fact, I should prob-
ably head out tonight.”

 Dorothy crossed the room and hugged her tightly.
”Thank you, Rajani.”

 Rajani returned the hug, then broke it and blinked away
tears. “Give Mickey my love.”

 Dorothy nodded and sniffled. “I hope you find what
you’re looking for.”

 Rajani winked at her and retreated from the apartment.
She let the sound of the crane’s loud engine pound into her
and blank her mind as quickly as possible. She length-
ened her stride to get away from there fast, but something
tugged at her. She turned and took one look back.

 “Ouah-ah, ajni,” Mickey yelled to her from the window.
His broken smile lit his face and conjured a smile on her
face.

 She waved at him.« Good-bye, Mickey. Be safe.»

 «You, too, Rajani. Good-bye!»

 She stared at him, then they shared a silent laugh and
Rajani wandered happily off into the night.

 Coyote drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes. He
let it out slowly and forced himself to ignore the dull ache
in his ribs from where agetsulhad kicked him during the
morning exercises.It hurts, but my counterstrike would
have killed him had I not pulled it. He did not expect his
attack to get through and was preparing a counter to my
parry. He thought too far ahead and paid.

 Coyote heard the whisper of Mong’s bare feet on the
stone floor of his room, but he did not open his eyes.
Instead, he concentrated and drank in all the clues to the
man’s presence. He knew enough about Mong to know
that the noise had been intentional, but Coyote wondered
if the monk could control the ticklish chill of the air
currents swirling around him, or the faint scent of dried
sweat. He didn’t think so, but he discovered he’d not have
been surprised if the monk had that ability.

 “You fought well this morning, Kyi-can. You combine
the grace of aikido with a very lethal form of karate.”

 “Thank you, Lama Mong. Your acolytes are very
skilled.” Coyote forced his fists open and laid them palm-
up in his lap. “Only their reticence to kill prevents them
from defeating me.” Coyote opened his eyes and felt
pleased his head was turned to face Mong exactly.

 “Perhaps, Kyi-can, perhaps.” The wizened monk’s

 almond eyes narrowed. “They view the martial arts and
weapons training as a means toward an end.”

 “As do I.”

 “They pursue self-discovery and awareness instead of
death. The discipline and exercise fuses body and soul
and spirit into a single union that becomes the core of
each student’s being.” Mong’s hands described a globe
that he compressed into a tight, small ball. “This knowl-
edge of self is vital because, in its compressed form, it is
stripped of labels and tags and only comprises that which
one truly is.”

 The monastery’s visitor frowned. “I am not certain I
follow this.”

 Mong smiled benevolently. “The average man—and I
assure you that you are not average—would respond to
being asked, ‘Who are you?’ in a very predictable way. He
would say his name, then note that he had a degree in
history from, say, the University of Vermont, or that he
had won an industry award for something he did, or that
he was on the board of this corporation or that, and so on.
It is much akin to describing the nature of an automobile
by noting the color of its paint and the brand of its tires. It
speaks to the trappings of its nature, but not the truth of
its nature itself.”

 Coyote nodded. The sum and total of his knowledge
about himself came down to facts contained in two very
slim files. The first said he was Tycho Caine, an assassin
trained in a highly secret place in Japan. He liked fast cars,
gambling and was one of the best assassins in the world.
Everything else beyond that was a fraud created by
himself, his former master or the previous Coyote. The
second file, the one that detailed his life as Michael Loring,
he knew to be less than a month old and put together
through cooperation between Nero Loring and Jytte
Ravel.

 Both identities would check fully within the technologi-
cal world. Caine and Loring had superior credit ratings
and a string of transcripts that made him seem a genius
who blew through schools like bullets through crêpe
paper. Because the information concerning those identi-
ties had been encrypted and duplicated, infused into
magnetic tape strips and matched with laser disks and
barcodes, he existed and was real. Because of that data,
and who it said he was supposed to be, people he had
never met would claim to be his classmates and others
would confess to having known him for a long time.

 Still, despite that real-world legitimacy, his core had
been shaped quite differently. As Mong spoke, Coyote
realized he did not have much in the way of the tags and
labels associated with him.Those who trained me stripped
thataway and prevented its accretion so I would not have
to work past it later. I was being groomed for what I will
be taught here.

 What he could tell about himself did make him proud.
As the physical training with the acolytes had shown, he
had a union of self and body that made him a most deadly
opponent. He knew, from the adventure that culminated
in frustrating Fiddleback, that his training had made him
quick of mind and capable of acting ruthlessly when the
situation demanded it. Even so, by his reluctance to
engage in wholesale slaughter, a slaughter of which he
was very capable, he knew that he had some internal
brake on the darker side of his being.

 “Sunyatais the name we give to the discipline of
studying nonbeing or the void. This is necessary because
the little tags and labels serve as hooks and anchors to
keep us in our reality. As we define ourselves in associa-
tion with things in this world, we bind ourselves to this
world. While Mi-ma-yin introduced me as thekhenpo of
Kanggenpo, I think of myself only as Mong. Like a hot-air

 balloon wishing to fly up from the ground, anchor lines
must be cut and ballast must be cast off.”

 Coyote nodded. “As I have little baggage in this regard,
I hope this will be possible. I know better than to hope it
will be simple.”

 “Discovery is simple, but mastery is torture itself.”
Mong folded his arms across his chest. “Mi-ma-yin
learned quickly but, like you, his anchors were few. His
mastery likewise came quickly, but that was because he
had a need that drove him. Have you such a need?”

 The images of Fiddleback and the empty skull of an
innocent girl fused in his brain. “Yes.”

 “Excellent. Then we shall begin simply.” The hint of a
smile tugged at the corners of Mong’s mouth. “Here is an
old Zen koan that should help you: What is the sound of
one hand clapping?”

 As the monk left the room, Coyote’s eyes closed.What
is the sound of one hand clapping? Instantly, his mind
flashed to the sound made when he slapped a hand
against a thigh or when fingers slapped down against his
palm.Those sound like claps, but the first is not a hand
acting alone, and the second is not really aclap. Thoseare
wrong.

 His mind raced as he approached the question in a
logical manner. It is possible fora single hand to clap? The
question suggests it is, and that a sound results. Is a hand
arcing through theairtowardaphantompartnerinaclap
really clapping? He sifted and searched through a dozen
different ways he could clap with one hand, but rejected
them all. Either they involved hitting something else to
create a sound, or he felt they were not truly claps.

 In his meditation, he swerved off onto another course
of thought. What is the nature of this exercise? It is the
annihilation of self and the compression ofselfto free me
of all the things holding me in this reality. Perhaps the

 Western paradigm of logical and scientific thinking is
merely a construct of this world. There were things I saw
in other dimensions thatseemed to defy the very physical
laws we use to define our world, so perhaps that is
holding me back.

 With that realization, he began to think consciously in
illogical and abstract ways. As he came up with answers
to the question like the ‘color of entropy’ or the ‘death of
death,’ he found himself thinking in terms he had not
before. Wading through oceans of nonsequiturs, he knew
he was approaching the goal that would be the answer to
that question, but he discovered other problems. The first
was that his construction of nonsequiturs wasthought—
not natural orfelt He was, in short, being logical in his
illogic.

 He also discovered that logic was a part of his core
being. As he knew that logic would help him discover the
true nature of any of the other dimensions he would visit,
he knew it could not be what hampered him.Even if I
discover that there is no rhyme or reason to a place, it will
bemy logicalmind that will help me make thatdiscouery.
This is not a hindrance, but a survival trait.

 Moreover, it struck him that the answer to that question
would have to be broader than the focus of his inquiry so
far. He had been concentrating on mechanisms for
creating the sound so he could follow what the sound
would be. In reality, he had been asked what that sound
was.

 I know ofnomethod by which a hand can clap by itself
or produce a sound. It is impossible fora hand to clap by
itself. It follows then that there is no sound that can be
made by a single hand clapping. So, the sound of one
hand clapping is nothing!

 The concept of nothing detonated in his brain with the
force of a 10-megaton bomb. The sea of nonsequiturs

 dried up, leaving desiccated phrases in the mental mud
that its head then fused into stone. Pressure built and
pushed his consciousness outside, letting his world frag-
ment and fray until it projected his mental eye out of his
skull and sent it jetting up through the ceiling of the room.

 As his sense of self flew above him, the whole monas-
tery became like glass to him. He could see distorted
shapes and shadows through the thick bricks. Only the
dark heart of the temple itself remained opaque to his
sight, and that disturbed him.That is the Gonkhang
which is where the Yidam is supposed to dwell. I cannot
see there, but what I feel...

 Utterly hostile sensations pulsed out from the black
rectangle representing the underground chapel. They
stung him like fragments from a grenade, and his attempt
to evade them almost shocked him back into his body.
Coyote focused his mind on nothingness and the pain
lessened.

 Coyote willed himself forward and down toward the
blackness, then realized that in doing so he projected his
own sensations out and into that block. He saw a reddish
sphere push out and around himself, then merge with the
darkness. As it did so, the sensations he had been feeling
immediately vanished and the rectangle cleared to show
an empty place cast in ghostly twilight tones.

 The sudden and sharp shifting from dangerous and
alien to harmless confused Coyote. In that instant, he
snapped his eyes open. He found himself, sweat-soaked
and chest-heaving, still kneeling in his chamber. The thin
sliver of daylight that normally slashed through his door-
way had vanished. The sweat on his flesh conducted the
night’s chill straight through him, yet his shiver came from
more than the cold.

 Night. I’ve meditated for the better part of the day. His
stomach rumbled loudly. Or days.

 He rose to his feet and pulled on a black, sleeveless T-
shirt. In bare feet, he padded down the stone hallway. He
let the darkness embrace him and, as he passed before
each darkened doorway of a monk’s cell, he sensed the
sleeping man within. Beyond them, like the omnipresent
crash of waves on the beach, he felt the power radiating
out from the monks at each gate. Yet, despite all hewas
sensing, the heart of the temple seemed a great void to
him and that, he knew, was as unnatural as he once would
have supposed feeling anything at all was.

 Letting his right hand brush against the corridor’s wall,
he stalked through the ancient buildings and toward the
temple. He assumed he could gain access to theGonkhang
through theDukhang. Even though he had told Mong he
would respect theGonkhang’s sanctity, the urgency he
felt to unravel the mystery there overrode his need to keep
his promise. He had survived in battling Fiddleback by
leaving nothing to chance, and a void in center of the
lamasery would not do.

 The whistled hiss of a weapon being swung through the
air echoed up and out of the training area as Coyote swept
past it. He stopped and listened for a moment, but heard
nothing. He concentrated and forced himself to wait
passively for any sensation in the room, but it remained
psychically silent.No feelings, no sound, nothing.

 He smiled to himself. The sound of one hand clapping.

 Silently, he slipped into the shadowed training room
and slowly descended the stairs. He moved so painstak-
ingly slow that tired and tight muscles threatened to
cramp on him, but he persisted. Step by step he went
down. He let the cold of the stones bleed up through his
feet, and he visualized his outline vanishing within the
darkness.

 After 30 minutes, he had reached the halfway point in
his descent. A dozen steps remained in his trek, and with

 each step his feeling of closing on his prey increased. He
sensed himself the hunter, yet did all he could to banish
that feeling. He knew for certain, because of its ability to
mask itself, that the thing he sought had skills beyond
those he himself possessed.In an instant, this thing could
turn on me and, doubtlessly, destroy me.

 His eyes took a long time to adjust, due to the near
absence of light. Coyote looked out into the long, deep
room, searching for any hint of his adversary. As happens
when one stares out into the darkness for a long time, he
saw shapes flit past. He could not be immediately certain
they were not just floaters in his eyes, but when they
resolved themselves into consistent, if odd, patterns, he
decided they were not.

 Again he heard a sound. The light snap seemed, to him,
to be the sound of a silken sleeve slapping itself around the
haft of a pole weapon, or otherwise being stressed into
making a whip-crack sound. He immediately turned his
head to lock onto the sound, and he saw the black shape
dart off through the pillars. Then another snap sounded
from the far left, and a third from deep to the right.

 Without conscious thought, Coyote knew that three
such sounds after so much silence was not a mistake. It
was a trap and, in that, he was meant to orient on the final
sound.If I am supposed to look there, then...

 He launched himself from the steps and out into the
darkness to his left. He snapped his left foot up through
where he sensed a momentary spark of surprise. His foot
met resistance, then the thick wooden shaft of anaginata
snapped. His leap carried him beyond the broken weapon
and through the echoes of the thunder crack.

 He landed in a low crouch, then pulled his head back
and let his body roll into a backward somersault. Ending
on all fours, he did a right shoulder roll back toward the
stairs. He brought his left arm up, forearm perpendicular

 to his upper arm, but parallel to the floor, and swept it up
in an arc to protect his head.It deflected a kick wide and
Coyote rolled out from under it.

 His arm stung.That would easily have fractured my
skull had it landed. Clutching his left arm to his chest, he
started a left shoulder roll back the way he had come.
Slapping his left hand flat against the stone, he stopped
the roll in the middle and pivoted his body so both his legs
scythed through the space parallel to the course of his roll.

 His opponent somehow saw enough of what was
coming that he leaped up above the attack, but did not
clear it entirely. Coyote caught an ankle, and he felt the
creature’s center of balance shift. He heard his foe land on
the floor, but not heavily enough to cause injury, then it
rolled away in the whisper of silken robes.

 Coyote pushed himself off the floor and leaped to his
feet, but his fatigue left him feeling disoriented in the
darkness. He half-turned to the left, seeking any clue that
could help place him in the room, then stars exploded
before his eyes as a kick caught him above the left eye.
His head snapped around to the right and his stunned
body tumbled off in that direction.

 He hit the ground and bounced once. Regaining mo-
mentary control of himself, he let his body spin, and then
twisted around so he could let the momentum bring him
to his feet again. As he did so, however, he ran into the side
of the stairs and smacked his head against the stone.

 Huge shimmering balls of light burst like fireworks in his
vision. He shook his head and closed his eyes, but nothing
would banish them. His left hand snaked back and felt
blood coming from the wound in the back of his head.I
need help.

 Something in the darkness grabbed him by the armpits
and lifted him like a child onto the steps. Coyote opened
his eyes and stared at the thing, but the lightballs made

 seeing anything clearly impossible. “What are you?”
The thing’s eyes burned with a scarlet light.
Coyote succumbed to the sudden and overwhelming

 desire to sleep.

 Coyote’s eyes opened as Mong prodded him. Lying at
the base of the stairs, Coyote saw three of the monks
standing around him, and he felt the pressure of a
bandage around his head. “Did you see?”

 Mong held his hand out. “Quiet. You took a nasty fall.
You should have gotten something to eat after your
meditation. You were weak and took a misstep.”

 “I did?”

 Mong nodded slowly. “Agetsul heard you cry out as
you fell. We came immediately and stitched you up. I
don’t know what you dreamt about while you lay here, but
it is time to return to your room.”

 Coyote closed his eyes. Nice try, Mong, but the dream
remark went too far. There was something here. Some-
thing more substantial than the sound of one hand
clapping.

 Despite the throbbing pain in the back of his head,
Coyote forced himself to conjure up the last image he had
seen. He melded all the views of it he had seen into one,
then deleted the distortion caused by the balls. Piece after
piece slid into place, and he suddenly realized where he
had seen the black face with white tusks and red eyes
before.

 I fought the Yidam down here. He opened his eyes and
saw his thought confirmed by Mong’s unguarded glance
at him. Fine, Mong. You play your game, and I’ll play
mine. Do what you will, but I guarantee this: In the end,
I’ll know why a Buddhist demon exists in the heart of this
monastery and why you keep this such a deep, dark
secret.

 Sin lay back in bed as Erika sat up and reached for a
cigarette and her lighter. He stroked her back with his right
hand. She smiled at him, the lit her cigarette, drew deeply
on it and sent a plume of smoke up toward the ceiling.

 She offered him the cigarette, but he shook his head.
”Never developed the habit, I’m afraid.”

 She smiled, the cherry on the end of the cigarette
putting a rosy glow on her face. “I quit a long time ago, but
a cigarette still tastes great after sex.” She raked the
fingernails of her left hand through the damp hair on his
chest. “With you around, though, I could become a regular
chain-smoker.”

 Sin picked her left hand up and kissed her palm. “Ah,
but smoking is bad for you. You’ll have to get plenty of
exercise to counteract those evil effects.”

 Erika smiled at him and laughed lightly. “That could
become a deliriously wonderful cycle, you know.” She
yawned.

 “My thoughts exactly.” Sin suppressed his own yawn.
”I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted.”

 Erika nodded and stubbed her cigarette out in the
ashtray on the nightstand. “Tired but very, very happy.”
She slid down beside him and pulled the sheet up to her
waist. Doubling the pillow over, she lay on her left side and

 smiled at him. “An hour or two of shut-eye, then see what
we can do to raise the price of Phillip Morris stock, shall
we?”

 Sin reached down and pulled the sheet up to her
shoulder. He kissed her on the tip of her pert nose, then
slowly slipped out of bed. “I’m going to hit the shower for
a second here, to cool off. Be back before you know it.”

 As he stood up she said, “Wait.”

 “What?”

 She held her right hand out, thumb erect, as if she were
an artist trying to judge relative sizes of objects in a
painting. “Just wanted to memorize you so I get you right
in this dream I’m planning.”

 “Oh?”

 “It will be wonderful.” She yawned and stretched.
”Wake me when you get back, and I’ll show you all about
it.” She closed her eyes and feigned sleep, then winked at
him and snuggled beneath the sheet.

 Weaving slightly unsteadily for his first step, Sin stumbled
to the bathroom and shut the door before he flicked the
light on. Its brightness stung his eyes, but he shielded them
with his left hand, then leaned heavily against the sink.
Lowering his hand, he looked up at his reflection and
shook his head.

 I’m sure Coyote is going to love your spending this
much time cloistered with Erika. He smiled as he remem-
bered what she looked like in the electric blue dress
currently decorating his living room floor. If he saw her in
that dress, he ‘d understand. He might not like it, but he’d
understand.

 He opened the shower stall’s smoky-glass door and
stepped in. He set the water on medium and pointed the
nozzle toward the wall. As the door snapped shut behind
him, he yanked up on the water control handle and started
a stinging spray from the shower head. He let it warm up

 and swung the nozzle in line with his head.

 Washing down over him, the water felt as wonderful as
his time at the Kimpunshima party did. With Erika on his
arm, no one paid too much attention to him. This gave him
the freedom to listen a lot, and he realized that Kimpunshima
had not changed too much since he had lived in Japan.
It was still the bastion of ethnocentric fools who gloried in
the high salaries their companies paid them to live in
Japan, without realizing that, contrary to their self-im-
ages, they were not at the top of the food chain.

 What had surprised him was the number, and relative
importance, of the Japanese at the party. Most had been
identified to him as middle- to upper-level employees with
different Japanese corporations. It struck him that the
majority of them were American- or European-born or
raised and had been selected for ease of interface with the
Kimpunshima residents. Still, Sin had been told one
person, a handsome young man, was Ryuhito, the
emperor’s grandson, which would have been a great
departure from the sort of interaction he had seen in the
past.

 The other odd thing he noticed was a recurring topic of
conversation. He had been used to fads of all types
traveling like diseases through the Kimpunshima popula-
tion when he had lived in Japan. At one point, for a month
he preferred to forget entirely, it seemed like every
European had a Hula Hoop grafted to his middle. Paleo-
retro parties built on the 1950s theme predominated the
social schedule at the time. He remembered one costume
party in which people were required to come as their
favorite old television character—and they had to dress in
shades of black and white with gray make-up to keep the
look genuine. He recalled a nasty fight when Ethel Mertz
found Fred with Rowdy Yates and Dale Evans, but in
general, it had been harmless.

 The difference he found at the party was that people
almost seemed to be proselytizing about Arrigo and
Michelle El-Leichter and the Galbro training center they
had. At first he thought they ran some sort of business-skill
improvement center, but the sense he got from folks was
that it was something more.They kept hinting at hidden
knowledge, which means they’re being conned. One of
the things old Horatio might not have dreamt of is that
there are folks who are out to separate anyone and
everyone from their money.

 Sin heard the bathroom door open and close. “Decide
to join me?”

 The shower stall door swung open. Sin found himself
staring down the bore of his own Beretta 9mm pistol. The
small, dark-haired Japanese man holding the gun eased
the hammer back, then leaned against the wash stand. “It
is illegal to possess one of these inJapan, Mr. MacNeal.”

 “Then I’d hide it while you have the chance, Nagashita.”
Sin shut the water off. “I won’t tell.”

 The Internal Defense Cadre colonel shook his head. “I
could shoot you now, you know. I could tell my superiors
that you jumped me and that I had to defend myself.”

 “They’d never believe you. They know you’d kill me
with your bare hands just for the pleasure of it.” Sin
glanced at the towel on the rack near the shower. “May I?”

 Nagashita nodded and dropped the gun’s aiming point
to his legs. “I do want you alive, but walking is optional.”

 Easy, Sin. This is no time to fool around.He reached for
the towel slowly as he looked at the IDC officer. The man
wore clothing associated by countless movies with ninja
warriors. While his uniform looked traditional, Sin could
tell from the tightness of the fabric across Nagashita’s
chest that he wore body armor beneath it. His bracers and
greaves appeared to be formed from Kevlar, and Sin did
not doubt that theshuriken on the weapon harness were

 ceramic instead of metal. A mini-Uzi filled the holster on
Nagashita’s right thigh, while the more traditionalkatana
had been slung on his back with its hilt protruding just
above his left shoulder.

 “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” Sin finished
drying himself off, then wrapped the towel around his
waist. “You can’t still be angry about missing me three
years ago, can you? I thought you a much better loser than
that.”

 Nagashita’s dark eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.
He gently let the hammer on the Beretta fall, then dangled
the gun from his index finger and extended it to Sin. “That
has not been forgotten, but I am merely an instrument of
my master’s will. My own satisfaction means nothing in
the face of his wishes.”

 Sin took the gun and popped the clip out. Pulling the
slide back, he popped the single-chambered round out
and caught it before it hit the floor. He replaced it in the clip,
but did not return the clip to the gun. “What do you want,
Nagashita?”

 The IDC man opened the bathroom door. “Your living
room, now.”

 Sin walked out of the bathroom and in the light of the
bedside lamp saw that wet, rumpled sheets and cigarette
ash were the only evidence that Erika had ever been there.
He tossed the gun and clip on the bed, then reached for the
pants he had draped over a chair.

 Nagashita shoved him from behind. “He just asked me
to deliver you,nendo. He said nothing about having you
dress.”

 Snarling soundlessly, Sin walked to the bedroom door-
way and saw six IDC ninja stationed around the room. Two
stood at the doorway through which he passed and
another two stood beside the main door. The last two
bracketed the chair that had been pulled into the middle

 of the living room floor.

 The only light came from the bedroom and filtered out
and around Sin’s shadow. Moving forward and to the side
let a tantalizingly brief flash of light wash over the old man
sitting in the chair, then Nagashita’s black outline covered
him.No, it’s not possible.

 The voice coming from the chair sounded to Sin to be
far too strong for the frail body he had seen. “Forgive me,
Mr. MacNeal, but the logistics of having you visit me are
more fraught with danger than the reverse. Also, please
excuse the fact that you will never see Ms. Conklin again
in Japan. Her visitation and work permits have been
revoked.It is for her safety.”

 Sin shook his head, scattering droplets of water around
the room. “I don’t understand.”

 The little man’s silhouette held up its right hand and
rubbed thumb against forefingers until a droplet of water
evaporated. This evening you attended a party that
included among its number my grandson. Your presence
was brought to Colonel Nagashita’s attention, and he
immediately requested the honor of killing you. You
caused him much embarrassment three years ago and, at
that time, he requested leave of me to kill himself.”

 Sin glanced back over his shoulder at Nagashita. “He
always was a traditionalist.”

 “As am I, Mr. MacNeal, yet I am a pragmatist as well.
Colonel Nagashita was too valuable to me then to let him
die, and you are too valuable tome now to let him kill you.”
His hand returned to his lap. “I need your services.”

 “I am flattered, but I already have an employer.”

 “I know. I believe he would find my mission and
whatever he has charged you with coincide in most
important areas. After all, Michael Loring appeared to
head up Lorica Industries after the former CEO, Nerys
Loring, died amid a strange atmospheric disturbance. I

 know you are here in connection with that, and I know that
storm has been linked with the appearance of a mon-
strous creature in Phoenix itself.”

 The American laughed. “I am afraid I find it easier to
believe Godzilla will rampage through Tokyo tonight than
I do to believe a monster threatened Phoenix.”

 “But if you thought Godzilla or something like itdid
threaten Phoenix or Tokyo or your family, you would do
what you could to prevent it, would you not?”

 Sin slowly nodded. “I would.”

 “And thus I am doing.” The old man’s head came up.
”You have heard of Arrigo and Michelle El-Leichter?”

 Sin nodded again. “Yes. They live in Kimpunshima and
appear to have some sort of training institute set up there.”

 “I believe they exercise an undue influence on my
grandson.”

 “Exile them, just like you did Erika.” Sin’s response
came a bit hot, and Nagashita hissed behind him. “For-
give my rudeness, but it seems like a viable solution.”

 The old man remained silent for a moment, then spoke
again in a lower voice. “I cannot. They have powerful
friends who protect them. Exiling my grandson will do no
good. He must be shown that they are frauds and stupid
so that he can make up his own mind to abandon them.
To do that I need someone inside their organization who
can reach him and sow doubt in his mind. You are an
American, and Colonel Nagashita’s disgust with you is
well known. I could not manufacture a better agent to be
inserted into their school.”

 “I understand your reasoning, but why do you need
your grandson turned away from them? Can’t you just
explain things to him?”

 “There are two facts of life in Japan for the Imperial
family, Mr. Mac Neal. The first is that an industrial shogunate
has imposed itself and has, realistically, stripped away the

 last of the power the emperor ever had. This is especially
frustrating for a virile young man who wants to shape the
future of his nation. Because of his blood, he cannot enter
industry and exercise power, yet because of his blood, he
is the best choice to lead his nation.”

 The little man’s voice picked up new power as he
continued. The second fact, and it is afact, is one of
history. My father renounced his divinity as part of the
settlement of the Great Pacific War. He paid that price to
preserve his nation and its identity. Christians note their
Jesus gave his life for his people. In the same way, my
father made a supreme sacrifice. However, his renuncia-
tion of divinity does not change the fact that blood of gods
runs in our veins.

 “You might think that curious, Mr. MacNeal, a relic of a
past time, a myth. It is not. It is fact and, at once, both
wonderful and terrible. The power that blood confers on
the Imperial family is incalculable and, were it misused,
could be disastrous.”

 An uneasy shiver ran down Sin’s spine.Blood of the
gods? This is as crazy as giant spiders invading Phoenix,
yet I find myself believing him. “You think Arrigo El-
Leichter is trying to use your grandson and his divine
blood in some way that will hurt Japan?”

 “Not just Japan, but the world.” The man’s hands came
together into a black knot. “The El-Leichters are based in
your Phoenix and operated out of Hawaii until indicted in
an illegal phone credit-card scheme. They have many
followers who are influential throughout the world. They
claim connection with a brotherhood of space travelers,
and we have no way of knowing how much of what they
say is true.”

 Something told Sin that no matter how bizarre this
sounded, the El-Leichters were just as dangerous as the
people Coyote had sent him to Japan to find. He dis-

 trusted any conclusion based on next to no information,
but he’d also learned to trust his hunches. “All right, you
want me to infiltrate the El-Leichter institution and dis-
suade your grandson from following them. I’ll do it, but on
two conditions.”

 “You will not find me ungrateful if you succeed, Mr.
MacNeal.”

 “I believe you. First, I want Nagashita kept away from
me and my friends. I need running room, and I don’t need
a shadow right now. If I need him, I’ll call him.”

 The man in shadows nodded. “Done.”

 “Second, when this is over, I’ll need help finishing off the
job my boss gave me to do. I would like your help in that.”

 “This you will have,if you save my grandson.”

 “I’ll do my best.” Sin nodded solemnly. “What if that
isn’t good enough?”

 The little man remained immobile for a second, then his
head nodded forward. “Colonel Nagashita informed me
you have a gun. I assume you know how to use it.”

 “You want me to kill your grandson?”

 “I do not desire his death, but it would be better to mourn
at his funeral then to preside over the destruction of the
world.”

 Lost in his own little world, Mickey pushed a stamped
tin car along the sidewalk in front of the box in which his
family lived. The rear wheel supports scraped along the
ground and left wavy white lines on the concrete. The
wheels has long ago vanished, but Mickey didn’t mind. In
that vehicle, he saw himself and his sister and father and
Rajani all driving off to a place where they could be happy.

 He did not hear the man walk up, but that came less
because of his hearing loss from repeated ear infections
than it did from the man’s stealthy nature. Instead, Mickey
felthis presence and looked up. The man’s bald head
eclipsed the sun, giving him a nimbus halo. Despite
having to look up at the man and his having such a
startling silhouette, Mickey saw he was small. Having met
Rajani, though, he did not mistake a tiny physique for
powerlessness.

 “Yii.”

 “Yes, hello to you, too.” The man’s voice came softly,
barely a whisper, yet Mickey heard it clearly above the
roar of the crane piling more apartments onto the building.
«How are you today, Mickey?»

 «You can brain-talk!»Mickey smiled openly, for a half-
second forgetting how such things had spawned revulsion
and ridicule by others.

 «Icanindeed.» The man squatted down, and the sun
briefly blinded Mickey. Reaching out, the man took
Mickey’s lower jaw in his hand. Mickey pulled away, but
the man caught him again. «I will not harm, you, Mickey.
I have come to help you.»

 The little boy blinked with surprise. “Hela?”

 “Help, yes.” The man’s dark eyes seemed to glow with
a light blue outline for a moment, and Mickey felt the flesh
of his face and lips tingle. That ticklish sensation traced
along the crack in his upper palate and on back through
his sinuses.It contracted and shot off out both ears. “How
could they have let you go for this long? This should have
been repaired before you were out of diapers.”

 Mickey stared at him with innocent eyes. “Hela?”

 The little man nodded solemnly and stood. “Yes, I will
help you. I will make you whole.” He extended his hand to
Mickey. “Come with me.”

 Mickey shot a glance back over his shoulder at the door
of his house. “Orfey.”

 “Give your sister not another thought, my child. You
know she would do anything she could to see you made
well.” The man’s voice surrounded him like one of his
sister’s hugs. «This is your chance to become what she
wants you to be, and you’re giving her back her life.»

 «But, I should say good-bye.»

 “When you return you can say hello,” the man said in
a voice so compassionate that Mickey missed the lie in his
words. “Come with me.”

 Mickey stood and took the man’s hand. The fact that his
flesh felt cool but dry did not strike Mickey as unusual.
Smiling his broken smile, he walked off with the small man
and after 10 paces they had left Flagstaff worlds behind.

 Rajani almost refused the ride from the ramshackle
pickup truck that slowed and pulled off the road in a dust
cloud. Most of the vehicles she’d seen in a similar condi-
tion had been burned-out hulks left beside I-17, and some
of those had more parts than the truck stopping for her.
Big and boxy, it was missing the right front wheel-well
panel, and the rusty front bumper hung lopsided like a
madman’s grin. The grill might once have been a chromed
grid, but enough pieces of it had vanished over the years
to make it look like a crossword puzzle template.

 The light of the single working headlight pinned her in
place, and she contemplated darting back into the brush
at the edge of the road. She reached out with her mind and
sensed no hostility from the two occupants of the vehicle
and, in fact, caught a reverent joy from the one on the
passenger side.

 The passenger door opened slowly. The old man
climbed out, apparently stiff and sore. He turned back and
looked at the younger man behind the wheel and said
something to him in a tongue Rajani could not decipher.
Holding on to the open door so he would not slip in the
gravel beside the road, he came around and smiled at her.

 “Welcome. If you wish a ride, we will give you one.”

 The opposite door opened, and Rajani instantly got a

 twin blast of concern and fear from the younger man
getting out. She noticed that both of them wore their
straight hair long, with the youth’s jet black and the old
man’s steely gray. “Grandfather, stay away from her. She
might be one of them.” The young man reached into the
truck to pull a shotgun from the rifle rack over the rear
window.

 The old man frowned. “The young ones, they know
nothing. Come with us, little sister.” The old man looked
back at his grandson. “Will, this is a great day. Do nothing
to spoil it. Leave the gun there.”

 Will shook his head but did not free the gun from the
rack. “Picking up a hitchhiking gangbanger on a lonely
road. I can’t imagine what you would have done if I’d let
you make this trip alone, Grandfather.”

 Despite the younger man’s reticence, the warmth and
happiness being radiated by the older man drew Rajani
forward. She did not flinch at the gentle touch of the older
man’s hand on her back as he guided her around the door
and into the middle of the bench seat. She smiled as
sweetly as she could at Will, and his frown lightened a bit,
but he remained sullen as he pulled his door shut. His
grandfather climbed into the cab, and Rajani found herself
slightly uncomfortable on the crowded seat.

 Carefully avoiding her left knee, Will jammed the truck
into gear and started them off. “We’re heading to the
reservation east of Phoenix. Okay if we drop you there?”

 Before she could reply, the old man patted her right
hand. “We will take you wherever you need to go, little
sister. I am He Whose Antics Are The Light in The Eye of
the Raven.”

 “Raven’seyes are both glowing tonight,”Will grumbled.

 “You may call me George, and this is my grandson,
Will.”

 The pure joy in the older Native American radiated out

 and stilled the apprehension given off by his grandson. “I
am Rajani.”

 “So, Rajani, what’s your story?” Will jammed the truck
into a higher gear. “Have to run from a drug bust in Flag?”

 She tried to think of a plausible story to offer them, but
she knew that what had fooled children would not pass
muster with these two. She glanced over at the older man,
and once she looked in his eyes she knew she could safely
tell him the truth. “My parents were born on another world,
but I was born here. I was named Rajani after a Hindu
goddess in honor of Dr. Chandra, my parents’ best friend.
I have been in a stasis shell for the past two decades in a
secret research facility maintained by the government,
and I am traveling to Phoenix to stop someone from falling
into a trap being set by a monster from outside this
dimension.”

 The truck swerved a bit as Will hit the break and started
to steer onto the shoulder. “You expect me to believe
that?”

 “Keep driving, Will. We will not leave here,” George
smiled sagely. “We will do everything we can to help you,
little sister.”

 “Grandfather, she’s nuts!”

 The older man’s voice took on an edge. “Will, only
weeks ago you were told that what I have to teach you has
value. You yourself saw the storm and the creature
forming above Phoenix. You know that happened, and
after that you started your studies.”

 “I know what I saw, Grandfather, but that’s worlds away
from a blond bimbo from Betelgeuse.” Will’s face flushed.
”I’m sorry, miss, but I can’t buy your story.”

 Rajani sensed in Will a conflict that pitted himself and
his self-image against his heritage and all the things his
grandfather had tried to teach him over the years. Will
wanted to be a man of the 21stcentury. He wanted to

 leave superstition and nonsense behind, but he kept
experiencing things that suggested to him that his
grandfather’s ancient ways were still valid. A huge part of
him wanted to be worthy of his grandfather’s legacy, but
the modern man laughed at his desire to master rituals
and traditions that had been stripped of meaning by the
real world.

 “Will, reach out with your heart.” The older man
reached around Rajani’s shoulders and touched his left
hand to Will’s forehead. “See her with my eyes. Look
beyond her surface, and see inside her.”

 George gave Rajani’s hand a squeeze and whispered
conspiratorially to her. “Open yourself to him. Let him in.”

 Rajani nodded and purposely pulled her defenses
down. She sensed his probing.It came feebly, yet with
enough substance that she knew he would be strong if he
learned how to control his abilities. She sent confidence
and praise back through the link they had established,
which made Will smile for a second before he blanched
and stared intently out the window.

 “He will learn, little sister. He will learn.” George let a
wheezy laugh spring melodically from his throat. “This
person you are to warn, who is he?”

 Rajani shrugged. “I am uncertain, but....” She recalled
the search drones and their check-pattern for people. “I
think I want to find Coyote.”

 Will stiffened and even George seemed to be momen-
tarily sobered by her suggestion. Will’s foot pressed down
on the gas a bit further. “Coyote, did you say?”

 Rajani nodded. “Do you know him? He’s in grave
danger.”

 George shook his head. “We know of him. He is a
legend. Some say he is dead, and others say he has come
back after he killed himself. He was instrumental in
defeating the monster in Phoenix.”

 “Fiddleback.”

 “The Recluse.” George smiled, and his eyes focused
distantly. “An appropriate name for one who manipulates
from afar.”

 “So you can get me to Coyote?”

 The old man shook his head. “We do not know where
he is.”

 Rajani slumped down into the shell of her leather jacket.
”Oh.”

 George winked at her. “We do, however, know of
someone who, rumor has it, knows him.”

 Will looked over. “We do?”

 “Drive, Will. We are making a slight detour.” The old
man interlaced his fingers and bridged them outward,
cracking his knuckles. “We may not be much in compari-
son to Fiddleback, but if I can be a pebble in his shoe, I will
be very happy.”

 Rajani could not shake her feeling of unease as she and
George walked down the dimly lit corridor on the 10th
floor of Phoenix General. Will had parked at the base of the
tower and let them out, but his grandfather refused to let
him accompany them. “What Ihave to do is best done with
only two.”

 She’d not known what the old man meant, but as they
approached the tower she sensed his aura changing.It
dulled, then expanded and enfolded her when he took her
hand. George smiled and marched boldly on toward the
hospital. He hesitated until two EMTs caused the auto-
matic doors to open, then he pushed on through into the
crowded emergency-room lobby.

 Rajani watched in stunned silence as the Native Ameri-
can walked through the lines of bleeding and moaning
patients without notice. He slipped around behind the
admitting desk and quietly typed a name into the com-

 puter. Information came up over the screen, and he
smiled. As the admitting clerk turned back toward her
terminal, he picked up a pencil and dropped it, distracting
her while he blanked the screen and retreated.

 Without saying a word, he led her over to a bank of
elevators. As with the doors, he waited until the elevator
opened to let passengers out, then he and Rajani entered
the box. He hit the button marked 10, then let her hand go.
The doors closed, and they began their ascent.

 “How did you do that? Did you make us invisible?”

 George shook his head and wheezed. “No, I made us
improbable.”

 Rajani frowned. “Improbable?”

 “All of them, guards, nurses, clerks and patients saw us.
What I allowed them to see was an old Indian man walking
hand-in-hand through the hospital well aftervisiting hours
with an extraterrestrial fugitive being hunted by the gov-
ernment.” He smiled as she blinked in shock. “Of course,
such a thing is utterly improbable, and I increased their
confidence in that conclusion. Because they knew they
could not have, in fact, seen such a thing, and because at
2 a.m., the mind begins to play tricks on them. They
refused to believe it.”

 The elevator’s bell dinged, and the doors slid open.
George started down the hallway, then took a turn around
the nurses’ station and headed off toward the northern
wing. With her following closely and quietly, they walked
down to Room 42 and, ignoring the ‘No Admittance’ sign,
George opened the door. Glancing at the cardboard
nameplate in the door bracket, Rajani trailed after him.

 An undercurrent of physical pain ran beneath the
troubled sensation Rajani got from the large African-
American lying in the bed. Twin IV bottles dripped liquids
into him, and another tube appeared to be sucking fluid
from his left lung. In the darkness, his black skin became

 an ebon sheet pulled tight across his face. An oxygen tube
ran below his nose, but the ragged sound of his breathing
sent a shiver down Rajani’s spine.

 George’s face focused down into a frown. He held his
hands out as he approached the left side of the bed. They
moved fluidly over the man’s body, hovering an inch or so
above him except where they dipped toward his chest.
The Native American grunted, then shook his head. “He
should be mending, but his will to live is ebbing.”

 The man’s eyes fluttered open. “Who?” he croaked
hoarsely.

 Rajani sent out waves of reassurance as she ap-
proached the right side of his bed. “We have come a long
way. I am told you know Coyote.”

 The big man nodded weakly. “Coyote.” He snorted out
a breath, and Rajani caught a flash of mental anguish.
Images of a beautiful woman crystallized in her brain, then
dissolved in blood.

 Rajani stared at him, confused. “Coyote had your wife
killed?”

 “No, no.” The man swallowed hard. “He couldn’t
prevent it. They only told me two days ago. Didn’t know.”

 “I need Coyote’s help, Mr. Garret!.” Rajani gently
grasped the fingers of his massive right hand. “Coyote is
in grave danger from Fiddleback.”

 Something sparked in Garrett’s dark eyes. “Fiddleback?
Coyote is not here.”

 “I need to find him. Can you tell me where?”

 Garrett shook his head. “There are people you need to
meet, but I can’t take you.”

 Rajani frowned. “Why not?”

 “Little sister, his wounds are too grave.” George lifted
up the edge of the sheet and Rajani saw darkness tinging
the outline of the tube in the man’s chest, “It will be months
before he goes anywhere.”

 “We don’t have months,” Rajani shot back.

 “You don’t have minutes,” snarled a young, blond punk
pushing the door open. He and a confederate slid through
the narrow opening and allowed the door to close behind
them. Each wore dark boots and gray jodhpurs with
suspenders. The leader carried a submachinegun of a
particularly compact and ugly look, while the woman
behind him held up a blocky automatic pistol with a thick
cylinder grafted on to the muzzle.

 She purred like a cat. “Looks like a three-for-one, Karl.”

 “Warriors,” Hal whispered and slumped down in his
bed. Rajani sensed his desire to fight, but hopelessness
overwhelmed him.

 “That’s right, Garrett. We’re here to finish the job.
Waited a bit for the heat to come off.”

 Rajani smiled at Karl as she caught the image of a
hulking man swim through his mind. “And for Mr. Garrett
to be left helpless and alone.”

 “Save it, bitch. Defiance won’t even make it into your
epitaph.” The gunman stepped back from the foot of the
bed and waved his female companion forward. “Heidi, the
honor is yours.”

 The blond woman made a great show of mechanically
pulling the slide on the pistol back, then letting it pop
forward. The sound made Rajani shudder and she sensed
a bit of pleasure from the woman at her reaction. Rajani
glanced over at George to see if he had picked up the
same sensation, but his eyes had glazed over, and Rajani
felt nothing at all from him.

 “Hal Garrett, you have been sentenced to death by the
Warriors of the Aryan World Alliance.” She extended her
right arm and slowly let her forearm drop down so the gun
pointed at Hal’s head. “You are guilty of crimes against the
Aryan nation, and you will pay for your treason. Your co-
conspirators will die with you.”

 As Rajani saw the image of a bullet congealing in the
woman’s mind, she lunged toward the foot of the bed. The
fingertips of her right hand slapped the silencer upward as
the girl tugged on the trigger. Feathers flew as the bullet
popped through the pillow.

 Heidi snarled and tried to bring the gun to bear on
Rajani, but she’d moved inside the larger woman’s strik-
ing range. Rajani drew her right hand back, then shot it
forward and hammered the woman’s sternum. Coughing
out a gasp, Heidi reeled back as Karl tried to bring his gun
up.

 Suddenly, a huge hole exploded in the door. Metal and
splinters formed a cloud that blasted into the two white
supremists. A yellowish tongue of flame stabbed through
the hole, and the strobe light froze Karl in place as the
shotgun pellets opened his chest. Heidi, who had caught
most of the first load, smashed into the far wall and slid to
the floor as if her bones had become as fluid as the blood
leaking from her. Karl fell over her, and his gun clattered
to the floor.

 The shotgun held to cover the two racists, Will kicked
the door open. “Saw them enter and pay off a guard. I
followed.” He looked at his grandfather. “I saw them with
your eyes, Grandfather. Thank God the rest of you were
clear.”

 Garrett grabbed Rajani’s sleeve with renewed strength.
”Go to The Pit. Speak with Bat. He’ll help you. Go!”

 “Let’s go. They had backup downstairs.” Will kicked
the pistol out of Heidi’s hand. “At least two more.”

 Rajani shook her head. “We can’t leave you here. They
will come and find you and kill you.”

 “I don’t have much choice.” Garrett’s body started to
tremble from the exertion. “Take the guns and get out of
here.”

 “No!”

 Rajani’s shout startled all three men. She plucked the
IV needles from Garrett’s arm and hand, then pointed at
the tube in his chest. “Pull it.”

 Will shook his head. “Youare nuts!”

 She looked up at George. “You trust me. Pull it.”

 The old man nodded solemnly. “She knows what she
is doing.”

 Rajani turned and pulled both her sleeves up. She took
Garrett’s head in her hands and pressed both thumbs
gently into the hollow of bone where his brows met. Her
fingers splayed out along the sides of his head, and her
palms pressed against his cheeks. Garrett stared up at her
from the space between her thumbs and forefingers.
”Trust me, Hal Garrett. Work with me.”

 The man nodded, then winced as George eased the
tube out of his chest.

 “Clear.”

 Rajani stared into Hal’s eyes and projected herself
down through them. She moved into his mind and
sought what she had found in Mickey’s father’s mind.
She worked in toward where his self-conception ex-
isted and found a scarecrow-thin doll with three gaping
holes in it. Its limbs—save the paralyzed left leg—hung
limply and flapped in an unfelt breeze. The fingers of
his right hand swung back and forth barely above a
shiny black coffin.

 «You know betterthan that, Hal Garrett. You did not kill
your wife. There was nothing you could do.»

 The scarecrow’s burlap face remained slack. «I could
have done something.. I could havegoneaway and made
hersafe.»

 In the background Rajani saw the images of two small
children. »You will not fail them, Hal Garrett. You are
strong, and you fight for their future. Surrender now, and
those who hunt you will be free to hunt your children.

 Capitulate now, and that which hunts Coyote will hunt
us all.»

 The scarecrow’s arms slowed. «Not enough time to
heal.»

 «Work with me. Trust me. I will heal you.»

 The scarecrow nodded, and Rajani shifted the focus of
her vision. The mental images of his mind faded, and she
replaced them with visions that Dr. Chandra had long ago
worked her through. She saw Hal Garrett for what he truly
was: a community of multicellular structures. Each de-
pended upon the other, and all had come from common
stock. They fought together to maintain life, but Rajani
began to work on them so they would actively pursue life.

 She reached down into the neurons that made up Hal
Garrett’s brain and sent a trickle of electrical energy into
certain cells. They dutifully passed the stimulation on
down the line, spurring glands to produce hormones.
Those hormones flooded through the body, triggering
other cells to react. Dormant genes snapped on for a
second or two, and cells began manufacturing proteins.
These coded messages then drifted elsewhere in the body
to prompt other actions.

 In an instant, the community of cells that was Hal
Garrett went to battle stations. Cells at the sites of his
wounds went into near-cancerous rates of division, mul-
tiplying wildly to seal the two holes in his lungs and the one
in his stomach. Bone marrow pumped out new cells to
help oxygenate the blood, while leukocytes and mac-
rophages began hunting in packs for lingering bits of
infection. His body began to metabolize what little fat he
had left and fed the mitochondria everything they needed
to fill him with energy.

 Rajani pulled herself back into her own skull and
released Garrett’s head. It did not fall back on the pillow
the way she would have expected. Instead, his eyes

 tightened and the muscles in his neck bulged to hold it up
in defiance of gravity.

 “Thank you.” Hal threw the sheet back from the bed.
Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed toward George,
he clutched at the railing to steady himself. He massaged
his left leg for a moment, then pointed toward the chest of
drawers beside the door. “My clothes should be in there.”

 Will shivered. “You can’t leave the hospital.”

 Hal sucked at the droplet of blood on the back of his
hand. “Son, lots of people come into hospitals to die. I’ve
just decided I’m not one of them. Now, unless you’re really
looking forward to a firefight with the other Warriors,” Hal
said slipping an arm over George’s shoulder, “get me
some clothes so my butt isn’t hanging out, and we can
blow this pop stand.”

 Rajani smiled up at the big man. “And find Coyote to
warn him.”

 Hal winked at her. “And find Coyote to warn him.”

 Coyote caught Mong’s puzzled look out of the corner of
his eye. Ignoring it, he cinched the Kevlar vest tight to his
chest and pulled a dark T-shirt over it. He slipped his left
arm through the loop on the Bianchi shoulder holster, then
inserted his right arm through the other side and settled
the Wildey Wolf in place on his left flank. He readjusted his
web belt and the holstered Colt Kraits at each hip, then
flexed his legs and decided the boots were laced tight
enough.

 Mong shook his head. “For this first excursion into
dimension walking, I want you to be comfortable.”

 Coyote half-grinned. “Withoutthis hardware, Iwouldbe
most uncomfortable. I know there is danger out there, and
I want to be prepared. More importantly, though, I’m likely
to dimension walk wearing this much or more gear, so I
might as well learn how to do it with this stuff on as not.”

 “This is a good point, Kyi-can, and one I will concede
to you.” The monk pointed to a wooden bench at the foot
of Coyote’s bed. “Please, be seated. Begin your breathing
exercises. Begin to clear your mind.”

 Coyote did as he was bidden. Sitting, he ignored the
clack of spare clips in the thigh pockets of his fatigues and
concentrated on maintaining a good posture. He forced
his mind to forget the itching sensation at the back of his

 head where Mong had stitched his scalp. Breathing
regularly and slowly to an internal metronome, he closed
his eyes and began to calm and control his body.

 “Your first venture out, Kyi-can, will capitalize on what
you have seen and experienced in your meditations on the
void. Your previous masters crafted you in a manner that
has made you most adept at learning these skills. Mi-ma-
yin had rejected his identities, but you never really had
one. You were without labels and tags so you could
assume them as you needed them. Even your lack of
knowledge about your predecessor as Kyi-can is in
keeping with this.”

 Coyote nodded slowly as Mong’s voice grew distant.I
am . With that thought, he crystallized his core and cast off
all but the last of his links with the reality that he had been
born into. “Proceed.”

 “The first place you will go is a proto-dimension. It is not
far from here, so we are able to protect it the way we
protect Kanggenpo.” Coyote heard a swish of robes that
suggested to him that Mong had seated himself on the
floor. This is a dimension that we use to enter and exit the
monastery. If it is necessary, the proto-dimension can be
isolated and even contracted until nothing can exist in it.”

 The dimensional equivalent of an airlock?” Coyote
smiled, then went back to breathing regularly.

 “Quite so. Now clear your mind and fill it with an image
of a place that is neither light nor dark, warm nor cold, it
is not sharp, nor is it entirely soft. It is safe and welcoming.
When you find it, define it and move toward it.”

 Sounds like the description of a womb.Coyote realized
this characterization was not entirely inappropriate, so he
latched onto it and wove it into the place he was imagin-
ing. As the concept completed itself in his mind, he felt a
substance to it that he had not experienced before. He
forced himself to stand and drift toward that substance,

 imbuing it with a gravity that pulled him in as he moved
toward it.

 Something in his mind told him that his next step would
carry him into the stone wall but, as his hand reached out
to brace him, it encountered nothing. He opened his eyes
and found himself standing in a smoky-gray world with
dry air that smelled of long dead flowers. He moved his
right hand up and around in a figure eight that set the mist
swirling, but the spirals he created vanished by the time
they got six feet away from him.

 “You have done very well, Kyi-can.” Mong materialized
out of the mist, his red robes the brightest color in the
small, spherical dimension. “You reached this place
quickly and without difficulty.”

 The tall man accepted the praise with a nod, then
frowned. “I know one must crawl before he can walk, but
this place has less definition and substance than the
proto-dimension I first encountered outside Sedona in
Arizona. There we had color and distance. This feels like
being swaddled in gray cotton.”

 “You must understand, Kyi-can, how proto-dimen-
sions work. Imagine, if you will, that all the various
dimensions are books shelved in an infinite library. A
proto-dimension is a worm’s burrowing through several
volumes. This proto-dimension, for example, gives us
access to several of the dimensions from which we
harvest the staples that sustain Kanggenpo.”

 As Mong spoke, Coyote saw several red-robed monks
move through the swirling mist and vanish. “Then to stay
with your library analogy, I could travel to a dimension
directly if I knew where it was indexed in the library?”

 “Precisely.” The monk gave him a pleased smile. “The
index consists of a number of factors, many of them tactile
and sensual more than quantifiable. Still, there are some
creatures that have been able to define dimensions with

 a coordinate system that makes them accessible to their
machinery.”

 “I know. Crowley possesses a device that was able to
send us to a dimension he called Plutonia. It was popu-
lated with creatures that reminded me of Fiddleback.”

 The monk held his left hand up and circled it quickly.
”Please, be careful. Here we are not as well warded as we
are in Kanggenpo itself. It is possible for your thoughts to
slip out and alert enemies.”

 “I don’t understand.”

 “In the same way that thinking about a place enables
you to find it and move to it, it is possible that something
could track back along that link.”

 “The mountain coming to Mohammed.”

 “Precisely.”

 Coyote nodded. “It would be possible, though, to travel
to any dimension provided I could define it.”

 “The journey could be difficult, but, yes, it is possible.”
Mong’s head came up and he looked a bit distracted. “Did
you have a particular destination in mind?”

 Coyote dropped his hand to the Colt Krait on his right
hip. “Last time we fought on my home turf. I think taking
the war to Fiddleback would be a good thing.”

 There isnothing good about going there!” Mong spun
and caught a bleeding monk as the man reeled into the
proto-dimension. Mong’s eyes blazed scarlet, sending a
red pulse of power straight down into the center of the
ground. The mist immediately started to spiral down into
its wake like water draining from a tub. “Go, quickly, run!”

 Coyote saw Mong toss the monk down into the widen-
ing hole and knew he should follow. At the same time the
elder monk dashed to his left and disappeared through a
dark gash in the dimensional wall. Without a second
thought, Coyote leaped over the growing hole in the floor
and dove through the shrinking black slit.

 He completed a shoulder roll and came up with a Krait
in his right hand. His thumb snapped the selector lever off
safe as a spark of red from Mong’s eyes blossomed into
a fireflower on the roaring creature to Coyote’s right. The
fire’s light turned the creature’s dun fur coppery and filled
the night withbitter, cloying smoke. Thecreature screamed
and broke off its charging attack, but as it turned away,
Coyote saw the fire burn all the way through to its spine,
and the monster collapsed in a heap of limbs.

 “What was that?” Coyote crouched down in the brush
and watched the thing burn. At least 12 feet in length, from
bandy lower legs to the top of its head, the monster’s
general size and pelt reminded him of the mythical
Bigfoot. At the same time, this creature had eight limbs
and only one eye. An auxiliary set of legs posted down
from the upper part of the double pelvis. A powerful set of
arms hung down from broad shoulders, then another pair
of weaker arms sprouted from a narrower set of shoulders.
While clearly not as strong as the lower arms, they were
set closertothe face and more suited to tasks that required
finesse instead of strength.

 “It is probably the source of yeti legends.” Mong
dropped to one knee next to the broken body of a monk.
He pressed his fingers to the man’s neck, then shook his
head. “He is dead.”

 “What about the other one? There were three of them.”

 Mong shook his head again. “The gorfash are meat-
eaters, and there are more of them out there.” Mong
looked up at the starry sky and apparently made order out
of stellar chaos. “Normally, their bands do not wander in
this area until well after the harvesting season.”

 Coyote looked down and saw that the brush came in
neat rows. Huge gourds hung from lush vines and,
breathing in, he recognized the faint scent of whatever had
been a key component of his meals over the last week.

 “Can’t say I like the idea of dying to defend squash. Shall
we go after your other monk?”

 Mong hesitated a moment, then shook his head. “No,
your guns would be useless against them.”

 The tall man holstered the Krait and stood. He drew the
brushed steel pistol from his shoulder holster and took it
off safe. “The Kraits are only 10mm, but this is a .457
Wildey Magnum. The bullets go fast and make big holes.
Which way?”

 “No, Kyi-can, we need to get Trinle here back to
Kanggenpo.” Mong pulled at the dead man’s arm, then
recoiled when it came off in his hands.

 Before Coyote could ask the monk why he was trying
to hold him back, a scream pierced the night. He turned
to face the sound and sprinted off toward it. Dry saw-blade
grasses rustled as they tore at his clothes. Coyote raised
his left hand to protect his eyes, then dropped down as he
scrambled up a tall, steep hillside. The grasses sliced the
skin on his arms and shoulders, but he crested the hill
without noticing the pain.

 Below him, in a valley drenched by the light of a blood-
red moon, he saw a dozen of the gorfash whooping and
dancing around in a circle. The hapless monk trapped in
their midst darted back and forth, trying to escape. Casual
cuffs spun him to the ground, then monsters leaned in and
bellowed at him. They flashed enormous fangs and raked
his clothes away with their claws. Naked and bleeding, he
huddled in a fetal position on the grassy ground.

 Coyote’s eyes narrowed. Twenty-five meters, a dozen
targets. Two arejuvenile and, judging from the breasts
and swollen bellies, four are female. Six are males massing
400 pounds at the least. One bullet, maybe two. He
reached down into his left thigh pocket and pulled out two
spare clips for the Wildey. How fast can one of these cross
this distance?

 He pointed the gun at the gyrating circle of creatures
and squeezed the trigger. Fighting the recoil, he followed
the one creature staggering out of line and pumped a
second round into it. The first, he saw, had hit it wide of the
midline, while the second produced athrough and through
hit on the abdomen. The gorfash went down, and Coyote
smiled at his estimate of two bullets per creature.

 Then the wounded gorfash got up and charged at him.

 It raised its four arms and rushed him, making itself a
perfect target. The third bullet caught it right at the bridge
of the nose, snapping its head back. The monster stumbled
forward, dead before it hit the ground, with its brains
sprayed back behind it. Coyote kept the gun on it for a
second in case it rose again, then brought it around as the
rest of the troop roared in at him.

 This is not good. I started with 21 bullets. If each one
takes me three, I’ll be dessert.He triggered off two more
shots and succeeded in knocking one back into the
gorfash behind it. The trailing gorfash’s chest smashed
into the lead one’s back, then he sailed up and over his
wounded fellow. He brought his smaller arms into cover
his bullet head, then his larger arms flailed through the air
before they hit the ground and broke his fall.

 Two shots kept him down, then Coyote dropped the
clip and slammed a new one home. He let the slide snap
shut, then he rapid-fired the Wolf. Starting low, he let the
recoil track his aimpoint up. He knew what he was doing
would have been foolish under normal circumstances, but
with the thick knot of gorfash bodies racing at him, there
was no way he could miss.

 Another new clip went into the gun, and he screwed one
eye shut. The loss of depth perception made the gorfash
seem even closer as they ran up the slight incline to where
he stood.It’soverunlessIthinkofsomething.He dropped
into a crouch and popped the bullets off as fast as he could.

 I’m in too deep.

 Suddenly it hit him.They’re cyclopses!

 As the rushing gorfash wall descended on him, he
tucked himself into a ball and rolled back off the hill. He
dropped through the air, then hit on his shoulders and
continued to roll down the hill. He immediately splayed his
arms out and grabbed on to whatever he could find to stop
his tumble. Razor-edge grass filled his left hand and
somehow held strongly enough to slew him around to the
left and a resting place

 Above him, the gorfash’s momentum carried them out
into the air. Their battle roars shifted tenor to screams of
terror as they spun out of control through the air. Two of
them collided in mid-air, then whirled apart. Crashes,
crunches and whimpered shrieks filled the night as the
creatures hit the ground.

 Only one of the gorfash seemed unpanicked by the
surprise, and he flew through the darkness like a creature
born to it. He held his arms and legs wide, both to cut his
speed and prepare for landing. He let his body begin to
rotate forward, and Coyote saw him orient himself to
absorb the shock of the landing on his strong arms and
smaller set of muscular legs.

 The gorfash hit solidly off to Coyote’s right and a little
below his position on the hill. He heard scrambling
through the brush, then saw the four-armed silhouette rise
up at the edge of the grassy circle where he’d landed. The
gorfash bellowed out a challenge and Coyote chuckled as
he raised the Wildey.

 The gorfash charged at the same instant Coyote saw
the Wildey’s slide was locked back in the open position.
Empty!He pulled his feet up and rolled away from the line
of the creature’s attack, but he knew it was too late.
Turning back around to face the monster, his left hand
clawing for the Kraft holstered on that hip, Coyote steeled

 himself for death.

 Something intervened. Two hands grasped him around
the ribs from behind and tossed him to the right. Flying
through the darkness, Coyote heard the dry whisper of
something moving very fast through the air, then a thick,
wet, hollowthunk. The gorfash’s bellowing died in a
gurgle, then Coyote heard a heavy crunch as the monster
hit the ground.

 Coyote tucked himself into a ball to roll off the energy
of his fall. He set himself into a crouch and returned the
Wildey to its holster. Pulling one Krait, he trained it on the
dark outline of the gorfash that had almost killed him, then
slowly closed with it. The musky scent mixed with the
sweet odor of blood turned his stomach, but he kept
moving in closer.

 He stepped over the lower end of its body and saw it was
lying face down. Halfway up on its right side, beneath the
lower armpit, a ragged wound ran from spine to flank.
Dropping to one knee beside the dead creature, Coyote
shifted the Krait to his left hand and probed the wound with
his right.That’s clean through. Cut the spine and splin-
tered some ribs. Got lung and probably heart —this thing
had to have a huge heart, maybe more than one.

 He ran his fingers through the thick pelt. With this fur to
absorb some of the impact and the size of the creature, it
would take something like a poleax to do this much
damage. Coyote’s eyes narrowed. A poleaxoranaginata.
Who—or what—was out here?

 Coyote’s pistol came up as Mong broke through the
brush. “Kyi-can, are you hurt?”

 “Marei.I escaped injury. You?”

 “I am fine. Come, we must go.” Mong waved him
forward urgently. “There are things that may track us from
this place. Much power was used here tonight.”

 Coyote dimly recalled Crowley having made a similar

 statement after another dimensional encounter. “Too
much power or too much violence?”

 “Both. And there are things that are attracted by both.
Come.” Mong reached out and grabbed his left wrist. A
searing yellow line split the landscape like a tear in a movie
screen. Mong yanked him through it, and Coyote caught
a brief glimpse of the gray proto-dimension a second
before both of them dropped to their feet on the floor of his
monastery chamber.

 Mong released him. “For what you did today, I thank
you. Two monks will live.”

 Coyote nodded his head. “There was no real option for
me.”

 “Yes there was.” Mong’s face tightened. “You could
have, should have, obeyed me. You are good at traveling
through dimensions and could be, in fact, good enough to
mount an assault on Fiddleback’s home, but not yet. Here
you knowthe rules, so your impulses are often correct and
even meritorious. Away from here, though, they can get
you killed.”

 Coyote waited five minutes after Mong left, then headed
straight for the training room. He found it empty, but this
did not surprise him at all. Employing the pocket flashlight
that he had brought with him to Tibet, he descended the
stairs, then swept it along the weapons’ walls. As he got
to the pole weapons section he smiled when he saw a
naginatawith a new haft.

 Above it hung an older weapon of a similar design. He
pulled it down and inspected the long, sharp blade.
Despite its obvious antiquity, it had no nicks in it. It looked
clean, and he wished he had access to the equipment in
the secret room of his home in Phoenix. “A little chemical
spray and a blacklight and we’d see if you’ve been
blooded.”

 He played the light over the blade again, then paid
special attention to the guard on it. There, deep in where
the blade had been joined to the haft, he saw a piece of a
thick fiber. Again he wished for equipment he didn’t have
with him, but this time he wanted it just to confirm what he
already knew.

 That’s fromthegorfash’shide. He returned the naginata
to its place on the wall and turned out his light. The Yidam
I fought in here tried to kill me and it used a naginata.
Something, using a naginata, saved me tonight in
gorfashland. Why thesudden reversal?Coyote shrugged
at his own question. And what will it do next time?

 Straightening his tie, Sinclair MacNeal approached the
secretary. He tugged atthe left sleeve of his jacketto make
sure it hid the wrist recorder Lilith had finally gotten to him.
Smiling, he stopped in front of the desk. “Sinclair MacNeal
to see Ken Martin.”

 The brown-haired secretary looked up and pursed his
lips. “Do you have an appointment?”

 “No. Just tell Mr. Martin I’m here. This will only take a
minute.”

 The slender man shook his head. “No appointment, no
visit. Sorry. That’s policy.”

 Sin sighed. “Mr. Martin will vary his policy for me. Trust
me.”

 “I have scars from the last time I trusted someone, Mr.
MacNeal.” The secretary glanced down at his appoint-
ment book. “Besides, the policy is Dutch Allied Chemi-
cals’ policy, not Mr. Martin’s. I can get you in a week from
Tuesday.”

 Great Ihaveamissionfortheemperorandwillsavethe
world and some secretary is going to keep me from step
one. Sin reinforced the smile on his face. “Look, tell Mr.
Martin...”

 “Is this going to be some sort of pseudo-spy code word
thing?” The secretary covered his feigned yawn with a

 long-fingered hand. “I’m afraid we don’t do James Bond
here.”

 Sin’s nostrils flared. “You know, the last time Kip and I
went deep-sea fishing, we used a guy just like you for bait.
He was shorter, so we only got mako sharks. With you, I
figure a great white.”

 The secretary blanched quickly. With a pencil, he
scratched a line through a name in the book. “Looks like
the 8:15 just canceled.” He hit an intercom button. “A Mr.
Sinclair MacNeal to see you, sir.”

 “Sinclair MacNeal?” blasted back a tinny voice. “Well,
I’ll be. Send him in.”

 Sin opened the doortothe office beyond the secretary’s
station and smiled as Kip Martin stood behind his walnut
desk. The stocky man rolled the sleeves down on his white
shirt, then came around the edge of the desk and offered
Sin his hand. “Good to see you, Sin.” The man smiled and
shook his head. “Never figured it would be this side of the
Hawaiian lake, but you’re looking good.”

 Sin pumped the man’s hand. “So are you, Kip. Nice
office.”

 Kip smiled proudly and opened his arms to take it all in.
”Long way from where I started with you.”

 Walnut paneling covered three of the walls and, in turn,
was covered by several lithographs of sailing ships and a
huge mounted sailfish directly across from the desk.
Beneath the fish Sin saw a number of framed photographs
that showed Kip with celebrities and fish they’d harvested
from the ocean. Sin couldn’t recognize a couple of the
types offish, but he knew Kip would tell him all about them
if he got the chance.

 The fourth wall, which stood behind the desk, had a
panoramic view of Tokyo from Kimpunshima. The city
looked largely like a land of gray stalagmites and smoky
haze, but there was some variation there. From between

 several buildings, Sin saw hints of the green preserve
surrounding the emperor’s palace. Likewise, some blue
ocean peeked up from the bay and the cloudy haze
occasionally parted to let other glimpses of blue through.

 “Hey, buddy, you studied hard to get ahead. When we
brought you on as a security accountant, I knew you were
destined for better things.” Sin broke their grip and
dropped himself into the chair in front of Kip’s desk. “They
working you hard?”

 Kip shrugged somewhat wearily. “Usual 7 to 7 drag.”

 “They have you working Japanese hours?”

 “Sort of. I get an hour for lunch, and I don’t have to come
in on Saturday.” Kip smiled. “Other guys head out to the
links, I take a fishing charter out.”

 Sin frowned. “I’d a thought you’d own your own boat
now.”

 “You know what they say: A boat is a hole in the water
into which you throw money.” Kip’s mood downshifted
from jovial to neutral. “Had one for a while, actually, it was
a steal, but I lost it.”

 “What happened?”

 The man’s eyes focused on where his hands rested in
his lap. “I don’t know. I was out and hooked something. It
was big, really big.” He looked up but didn’t focus his eyes
on Sin. “I guess it was also pissed. I woke up about a week
later when they wheeled me out of an intensive-care unit.
Don’t fish outside the harbor much now.”

 “That’s bad news. How’s Susan?”

 Kip’s face fell a bit further. “She ran off with the intern
who treated me.”

 “That’s bad.” Resting his elbows on his knees, Sin
leaned forward. “You should have let me know, bud.”

 “What could you have done about it, Sin? Besides, it
wasn’t her fault. When she married me, I was a 10 to 2
American accountant making decent bucks. The move

 here allowed her to see a lot of the world, but not much of
me. We grew apart”

 Inever guessed his life was such a mess.“I don’t think
I’m going to ask anything more because I’ve got one last
strike before I’m out.”

 Kip’s smile returned and his mood lightened. “Hey, no
blood, no foul, my friend. I met my present wife, Miko,
through an executive matching service here. She’s na-
tive-born and grew up in a traditional family. She loves my
ass and doesn’t mind the long hours I put in. Every night
it’s a good meal, hot tub, massage and lights out.” He
patted his belly. “The living don’t get much better than
this.”

 “Great, man, really great.” Sin leaned back with a
genuine smile on his face. “Nobody deserves better than
you.”

 “Thanks.” Kip leaned forward conspiratorially. “So,
what are you doing in Japan? I heard a rumor that you
were seen at a party in Kimpunshima a week ago. I tried
to check up on you to see if it was true, but the lead on the
flight attendant they said you were with fell through. It’s
like she dropped off the edge of the Earth. Same with you.”

 “I’m here, Kip, in the flesh. I’m working for Lorica
Industries. They hired me on as a consultant in all sorts of
things. Right now, the new CEO—everyone calls him
Mikie ‘cept to his face—is thinking of buying a chunk of
Kimpunshima. He’s sent me over to figure out the lay of
the land. He wants to know how much it’s changed since
I was here. He wants me to get current with everything our
people will run into here.”

 “Tall order.”

 “True enough, but I’ve got an expense account that will
let me reach to the very top.” Sin winked at his friend. “I’ve
got to cover everything from the hottest and most chic
restaurants to, I don’t know, this Galbro stuff that was

 being talked about at the party. I figured I could use
another opinion, and I value yours.”

 Kip leaned back and brought his hands together in a
gesture Sin recognized from the past.Something is
bothering him. “Spill it, Kip.”

 “I’ll be happy to snarf down as much food as you want
to point in my direction, my friend, and Lorica will find that
I know some truly exotic places to while away your time
and their money.”

 “But?”

 Kip frowned. “I’d leave the Galbro Institute alone.
They’re weird people, and they’re into very strange stuff.”

 “What are you talking about?”

 Kip pointed off toward the closed door and the secretary
beyond it. “Before Mr. Congeniality out there, I had a real
secretary. Janny Pigot was her name. Really efficient and
had a smashing personality. Wasn’t quite the looker she
wanted to be—still had scars from childhood acne—but
she was great. I would have dated her after Susan left, but
DAC doesn’t allow that and, quite frankly, I valued her
more as my secretary.

 “Anyway, she accepts an invitation to one of the Galbro
weekend retreats in their center here. She was all excited
about it and on Monday she returned a bit exhausted, but
just brimming full of stuff. She and I normally chatted over
coffee in the morning, and that day I couldn’t get her to
shut up. It was all sorts of crazy stuff, and I knew it was
trouble right away.”

 Sin frowned. “What kind of crazy stuff?”

 “Real crazy stuff, Sin.” Kip opened his hands in a sign
of disbelief. “I can’t remember all of it, but in the middle she
dropped a bombshell: My boat had been destroyed
because I’d hooked a gray starship on a covert mission to
the center at the bottom of the ocean. She told me that
good aliens had rescued me and placed me on the shore

 amid the wreckage of my boat.”

 Sin laughed. “And you don’t believe her?”

 Kip swung his right leg up onto his desk and pulled up
the pant leg. “I dunno. If you ever see an alien that can do
this, let me know.” Yanking down his black sock, Kip
exposed a puckered circular wound on his leg.

 “Sucker mark. Looks like a squid tried to hitch a ride.”

 “Big squid. My boat was a 30-footer and my hip was
dislocated.” He pulled his sock back up, lowered his pant
leg and pulled his foot off the desk. “Those facts didn’t
dissuade Janny. She went back for more, and back and
back. Then weird things started happening, like files going
missing for a day or two and copier counts not matching
the numbers of copies ordered. Little stuff, pilfering, you
know.”

 Sin nodded. “You think she was turning information
over to these people?”

 “No, but I think she was working on collecting evidence
to convince me they were right. She started wandering
around in her own dream world. She began to act
paranoid, like refusing to answer the phone if it rang at
seven minutes after the hour.” He shrugged. “I had to let
her go. Galbro hired her. I understand she’s Arrigo El-
Leichter’s personal secretary now.”

 Sin shook his head. “That’s bizarre.”

 “You’d do well to take a pass on it.”

 “I agree, but I don’t know that I can.” Sin smiled weakly.
”A man I knew once, Joe Ybarra, said, ‘Always do the
hardest part of the job first.’ If I check out one of these
seminar things I can give it a big black star, then move on
to the easy stuff. You understand, right?”

 Kip nodded. “Right. I can pitch you in the direction of a
recruiter for them. You can be in this weekend, if you
want.”

 “Thanks. What are you doing for dinner? Can I take you

 and Miko out?”

 “Not tonight, Sin.” Kip fingered a pile of envelopes on
his desk. “She’s in Osaka visiting her mother. I, on the
other hand, have tickets for the Daizaimoku Ospreys
versus the Honchin Dragons. Want to go?”

 “Corporate Basketball?” Sin chuckled lightly. “I haven’t
seen a game since I was here last.”

 “Ospreys arethehometeam, and they’re being coached
by Kevin Johnson. You might remember him; he was a
Phoenix Sun.”

 “Yeah, I think I saw him play when I was 10. Sounds
good. When?”

 Kip glanced at his watch and then his schedule book.
”Meet me here at 6. I’m skipping lunch today so I can go
to the game.”

 Sin stood and headed toward the door. “Six, got it. I’ll
be exploring Kimpunshima until then.”

 “Hey, Sin,” Kip called to him.

 “Yes?”

 “If you see any aliens during your wanderings,” he
laughed, “ask them who their insurance agents are so I
can make a claim for my boat.”

 Rajani decided that Hal Garrett had impressed her.
Despite still needing time to heal up even after what she
had done, he had pushed himself to ensure no one
followed them from the hospital. On the drive away, he
had Will pull up to a “drive-by” pay phone. His call had
been short and curt, with codewords being exchanged for
less than a half minute. When he hung up, he gave Will
some directions, then lay back down in the bed of the
truck.

 Rajani lost complete track of where they were within the
dark world of Eclipse. The ceiling of photovoltaic cells 100
feet above her head transformed the whole undercity into
a dirty, forbidding world of perpetual night. Looking up,
she could see man-sized nests clinging to the undersides
of panels and jury-rigged walkways between buildings.
Bonfires dotted the landscape despite the choking heat
and, while she welcomed the warmth, she could see it
made Hal very uncomfortable.

 Neon signs provided more light than the few unbroken
streetlights scattered around the city. A secondary set of
roads almost halfway up to the ceiling looked largely
untraveled and, when she did see a car up there, it looked
sleeker and newer than anything in the thick traffic stream
surrounding the pickup truck. Traveling amid the squalor

 and noise of Eclipse, she wondered if, in fact, Fiddleback
had not already won the battle for Phoenix.

 Will let them out of the truck at a dark intersection. He
offered Garrett the shotgun, but Hal shook his head and
leaned heavily against a lamp post. “Not necessary.
Thank you for your help. Now, get out of here.”

 Rajani gave George a big hug. “Thank you for believing
me and helping.”

 The old man winked at her and climbed back into the
truck. “Believe in yourself, little sister. Fiddleback doesn’t
know it, but his days are numbered and closing fast on
single digits.”

 As the truck lurched away, a number of individuals
seeped out of the shadows and slowly started ambling
toward the two of them. Rajani’s night vision let her see
that these young men were African-Americans like Hal,
but they had been altered in subtle ways. She noticed it
first in how their hands swung freely and heavily at their
sides.They have added weight to their hands to aid in
hitting. And their faces, cheeks and browridges are en-
larged to protect their eyes.

 One of the young men moved away from the pack and
toward Hal. He raised a clenched fist, and Rajani almost
moved to shield Hal before the young man could blud-
geon him, but the waves of amusement coming from
Garrett stopped her. “What it is, homey,” the younger man
said.

 “What it will be, bro,” Hal replied. He raised his own right
fist, and their hands met in a gentle, even friendly collision.
”I need a crib to stash her. Look, don’t touch, Jalal.”

 “Hey, I’ll be cool, and so will the rest of the posse.” The
younger African-American winked at Rajani. “Skin that
color, she’s a sister.”

 Rajani found she was missing more of the conversation
than she was catching, so she relied more on what her

 feelings were telling her than anything else. She sensed an
incredible amount of pride among the young men and a
fierce loyalty among them to their leader and Hal. Weak-
ened though he was, Garrett seemed to have the stature
of a divinity to them. What Hal requested, Jalal saw as
duty, and what Jalal saw as duty the Blood Crips treated
as a law of nature.

 Jalal led them off through the streets and into an
abandoned building. Rajani saw power cables going up to
leech power from the cells above, though the hallways
had no lights and most of the original paint had been
covered in several layers of graffiti. Most of the apartments
had no doors on them and had been torn to pieces on the
inside.

 Jalal rapped twice, waited, then rapped three times on
the metal door at the end of the corridor. A small slit
opened up, words were exchanged, then the door opened
only wide enough for everyone to slip inside. Jalal directed
Hal and her into a side room with two chairs, a table and
two cots. Before he closed the door, she did see a vast
collection of weapons in the outer room, and it struck her
that the Blood Crips were better armed than the soldiers
at the base from which she had escaped.

 Hal sat heavily in one of the chairs. Pain passed over his
face, but he forced it away with a brave smile. “Okay, I
don’t know what you did to me in the hospital, but I’m
mending very fast. Who are you, and why do you need to
get Coyote a warning?”

 Rajani slipped her leather jacked off and rolled up the
sleeve on her fatigue shirt. She turned her left forearm so
Hal could see the gold lines running from her gold
fingernails up her arm. “You won’t believe me, but what I
will tell you is the truth. I was born on your planet in the year
1969. In 1984,Iwas placed in stasis to combat a specific
evil.Itis the thing you call Fiddleback.”

 The mention of the name caused Hal’s smile to disap-
pear. “I was in the hospital when they dealt with Fiddleback,
but they’ve told me about it.” His dark eyes glittered. “So,
I guess I do believe you, in part anyway. Now, give me
details so I can check you out. If you’re not some sort of
trap, then we’ll get you in touch with Coyote.”

 Whatever Hal did to run her story down took two days.
During that time, she remained with the Blood Crips.
While they did not let her out of the apartment, various
members of the gang took turns entertaining her with
everything from the vast selection of shows on their
pirated cable feed to timing her in stripping down and
reassembling automatic weapons.

 Despite having trouble understanding all their slang,
Rajani enjoyed spending time with the gangbangers. She
sensed from them the same depth of curiosity about her
that Chandra and the other researchers had, yet none of
them hated her the way Chandra’s aide Nicholas had.
While teaching her how to break down and put back
together weapons had reminded her of the various experi-
ments Dr. Chandra had performed, neither he nor his
assistants had reacted with the gangbangers’ unbridled
enthusiasm when she succeeded. Had Jalal not vetoed
the idea, a couple of the Blood Crips had intended to let
her “make her meat” with an AKM in a drive-by on the
Warriors of the Aryan World Alliance.

 Afterthe two-day wait, Hal Garrett returned and brought
three other people with him. Jalal escorted all of them into
the little room, then shut the door and stood with his back
against it. “We’ve been taking good care of her, Hal.”

 “Thanks.” Hal, looking much better, introduced his
associates. “Rajani, these are Natch, Bat and Jytte. If you
pass muster here, we will help you get to Coyote.”

 Natch stood almost as tall as Rajani and held herself in

 tightly. Hidden inside a leather jacket, the woman had
tucked most of her hair up into a red beret. Rajani felt like
a prisoner before a judge as Natch looked her up and
down, then the small woman grinned just a bit and Rajani
felt her opening up some. “Not from around here, are you,
Rajani?”

 “No, I’m not.” Rajani returned her grin, then looked up
at the tall, hard man standing behind Natch. If Natch had
been a judge, then Bat was the executioner. She sensed
him evaluating her on an animal-threat level. The surface
thoughts she picked up read like tactical battle reports on
how best to crack a tank. She realized, as she sifted
through his ideas, that the plans were accepted or rejected
not on the basis of efficiency or efficacy, but on how much
fun he would have in employing each technique.

 Shivering, she shifted her focus to Jytte. Physically she
found the tall, slender, blond woman appealing and non-
threatening. She noticed something stiff about Jytte, but
she brushed passed it as she sought to probe the woman’s
mind.

 Jytte shook her head. “Please, do not do that.”

 Rajani blinked. “What?”

 “Please refrain from trying to get inside me.” Jytte
hugged her arms around herself. “I am a very private
person. Please.”

 Rajani nodded. “Forgive me, allof you. Reading thoughts
and emotions is, to me, akin to hearing. It is a sixth sense
that I have learned to live by. I did not mean to intrude.”
She brought her internal defenses up to shield the others
from her probes, but still caught a sense of relief from
Natch and Jytte both.

 Bat’s hostility almost punched through her mental
wards. “You don’t look like an extraterrestrial. They’re
small and gray and have light-bulb heads. You’re differ-
ent. Are you lying to us?”

 Rajani sat on the edge of the cot. “No, no I am not. I can
explain that, if you wish.”

 Natch reached back and took Bat’s hand. “Please do.”

 “The race you have described are known to me and my
people as theCythera, and the phenotype is the one they
assume in all but one phase of their life-cycle. They are
very intelligent and developed space travel ages ago.
Then they discovered other inhabited planets in their solar
system and, on one of them, they met and allied with my
people, theJes’da. It was theCythera who devised the
plan and built the ships that came here to explore your
solar system”

 Rajani frowned, trying to remember exactly how her
mother had explained all this to her while still trying to
work in the explanation Dr. Chandra had devised for some
of the things that she could do. “We, theJes ‘da, travel with
theCythera and coexist with them. Often, the crews are
mixed equally despite theCythera vastly out-numbering
us. There are manyJes’da who have grown up only in the
company of theCythera, and they have begun to re-
semble them because of that association.”

 Jytte’s face remained impassive as she shook her
head. “Contact Lamarckism? The idea that environmen-
tal influences create changes that are passed on to
offspring has been rejected for decades as fallacious.” She
looked at Natch. “Bat’s children, for example, won’t
inherit his scars.”

 “No, no, that’s not it at all.” Rajani closed her eyes and
concentrated. “Dr. Chandra said we werepsychomimetic
and, with training,psychomorphic. In infancy and on up
through the age of five or six of your years, roughly one of
our life-measurement units, we imprint on our surround-
ings and adapt so as to best survive. Protective coloration,
if you will, that makes us take the form of those around us.

 “You see, I was bom on this world, though my parents

 were from aJes’da colony world. I was raised in a lab
setting where I interacted with humans and my parents. I
retain their skin color, but physiologically I became more
like a human than my parents—and they both looked very
much like theCythera with whom they had grown up.”

 Muscles twitched at the corners of Bat’s jaw. “Nice
stripes. Have a tiger for a pet?”

 Rajani blushed. “These ‘stripes’ are not natural.” She
tossed off her jacket, then unbuttoned her shirt and
slipped out of it. She held her arms out so they could see
the stripes running the length of her arms, then turned so
they could see where they fused into the solid gold line
running from the waistband of her trousers on up to
beneath her golden hair. She reached down and undid the
button at the waist of her pants. “The stripes run up from
my toes, as well.”

 Hal held his hand up. “We’ll believe you on that; you
don’t need to show us. Put your shirt back on and finish
your explanation.”

 She sat again and pulled the shirt on, but did not button
it. “The stripes are from the tattooing done during a ritual
that you would take to be a baptism, I think. My parents
were both practitioners, or adepts, in a philosophical
tradition of my people. It is called...well, with my vocal
apparatus closer to yours than that of my parents, I can’t
even say the word, but it’s almost pronouncedc’dithrta.
It teaches us to be always flexible and adaptable, to
change the way the universe is changing.”

 She found herself trembling, and she struggled to stop.
Natch sat beside her and hugged her gently. That helped
a bit, but the waves of adamant disbelief rolling off Bat
began to burrow through her.Hatred and prejudice I can
deal with, but at least those things confirm I exist. He
refuses to believe anything I say. He denies whatIam. He
will grind me into nothing.

 Deep down inside, defiance sparked in her. Her head
came up, and she met Bat’s dark stare bravely. “Our
psychomimetic nature ends at one LMU, but those of us
who practicec’dithrta are able, through exercises and
meditation, to make changes in ourselves. It is not easy,
but given time and the solitude necessary, it is possible.
One of Dr. Chandra’s aides, a man named Nicholas, was
fascinated with this psychomorphic ability and studied it
andc’dithrta. He may have even written about it.”

 Bat’s expression did not change, but the negativity
stopped flowing so freely. “Why stasis?”

 “Stasis tubes mute outside influences. I went into stasis
to meditate on the nature of Fiddleback with the specific
goal of my becoming attuned to him. My father wanted me
to become able to spy on him without being detected. I
worked on the shielding first and, so far, I’ve not been
detected, or I’ve been able to deflect Fiddleback’s probes.
My stay in the stasis tube was interrupted by Fiddleback’s
proximity, and I left without being able to fully understand
him.

 “The reason for stasis, though, was to protect me. While
we are in our meditations, we are very susceptible to
outside influences.” She smiled at Bat. “Were I to meditate
in your proximity, for example, and had I proper nutrition,
I would become that creature you want most to smash
down and destroy.”

 Bat’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly as a hostile
wave pulsed out from him. Rajani recoiled from it, then
was almost sucked in by the undertow of respect pouring
off him. She felt very confused, but Bat drifted away until
he rested his back against the wall and folded his hands
across his chest.

 Hal looked at him, then back at her. “This meditation
you were doing? You said it was interrupted when
Fiddleback showed up in Phoenix?”

 Rajani nodded. “I had a hard time making sense of
Fiddleback’s thoughts because they came through on an
emotional level that was akin to dealing with a volcano.
His frustration and anger nearly overwhelmed me, and
they would have if I’d not been in the stasis tube. Afterthat,
I sensed his confidence because his tormentor was walk-
ing into a trap. Later I found things he had sent out,
searcher drones, that were looking for Coyote. Will and
George made the connection with you and so I’m here.”

 The big African-American looked over at Jytte. “Com-
ments?”

 “The Native Americans check out. They were the ones
who helped Nero Loring when his daughter was after him.
They do not work for Fiddleback.” Jytte stood rock still as
she spoke, reminding Rajani of a machine spitting out
reams of facts. “Area 51 is still a highly classified base in
Nevada. Dr. Parit Chandra worked for the Department of
Defense as a consultant until he was diagnosed as having
brain cancer in 1986. His body, and that of an unidentified
female, were found in the ashes of a cabin near Big Bear
Lake, California. She had been shot six times—it was
ruled a murder/suicide. Nicholas Hunt was cited as a co-
author of a research paper Chandra had published in
1981, but all traces of him are lost in 1984.”

 Jalal smiled. “Chandra probably splashed Huntto keep
Raj here a secret.”

 “No! Dr. Chandra would never do that.” Rajani hesi-
tated. “He would never have done that. You’re sure Dr.
Chandra is dead?”

 The plea to the contrary in her voice brought Jytte back
from wherever she had been. The blond woman blinked
at her, then glanced down at the floor. “I am afraid there
is little doubt of that. I am...sorry.”

 Take it easy, Rajani.” Natch gave her shoulders a
squeeze. “He knew you were safe, so he had to have died

 happy.”

 Rajani brushed away a tear, then laughed lightly.
”Tears. We don’t have these. I guess the pod didn’t filter
everything out.”

 “Anything else, Jytte?” Hal sat back in the chair he’d
taken.

 “Incidentals check, both what she told you before and
other things she has said here. I think she is legitimate.”

 “I agree.” Hal looked at Bat and Natch and got nods
from both. “Good. Reaching Coyote won’t be that easy
because our only contact with him is in Tokyo. Looks like
we’ll have to head there, so pack up for a trip.”

 Natch frowned. “Can you get us in?”

 Hal smiled confidently. “I have some old Suns team-
mates working the corporate leagues overthere. My ‘staff’
and I have standing invitations to put on a clinic, and I feel
in the mood to do some teaching.”

 Rajani felt the rising confidence in the room and found
her spirits being buoyed right along with them. Still,
something tugged at the back of her mind. She concen-
trated, then looked up at Bat. “You didn’t believe me, but
not because I said I was an extraterrestrial. You didn’t
believe me because I wasn’t the right kind of ET. How did
you know about theCythera? “

 “One of them once bet that his champion could tear a
man limb from limb in under a minute.” Lethal cruelty slid
through Bat’s smile. “He lost the bet.”

 Twisting away from the spear thrust, Coyote let his
momentum spin him around. His right hand came up in
a fist that arced through where thegetsul’s head had been
a second before, then he pulled his own head down as the
spear shaft swung over it. Still tucked into a crouch,
Coyote rolled backward and ignored the monk’s anticipa-
tory cry of victory.

 Reaching out with his mind, Coyote yanked himself
through to another dimension. Uncurling himself, he
stood and waited as the tip of the spear probed the slit in
reality that had swallowed him. Grabbing it right behind
the head, he tugged it forward, then shifted it back to the
right and shoved. He felt the butt end of it hit solidly, then
he pulled hard on it, and the spear came free and into the
new dimension.

 Turning to the right, he opened another hole and
stepped through it. He turned his steps back on them-
selves and opened another hole through which he threw
the spear, then he backed away and crouched down.That
should be enough to delay him, if he comes after me. If not,
that’s three down and two more to go.

 Only three weeks into his training, Coyote had met and
exceeded the demands made on him by Mong. The monk
labored long and hard to test the limits of Coyote’s

 abilities. He challenged him with a number of different
tasks, binding them all together to place Coyote under
incredible stress. Coyote wondered if Mong was truly
training him or just trying to crush his spirit.

 For the current set of exercises, Mong led Coyote to
what he described as a “clutch” dimension. “Kyi-can, it is
a proto-dimension akin to multiple bubbles all joined
together within a larger bubble. An adept can use his skills
to move through the dimensional walls without venturing
very far, and this particular clutch is largely benign and
easily included within our wards.”

 “Largely benign?”

 Coyote remembered the old monk smiling when he
replied to that question. “What little natural life there is
there tends to be harmless and timid. There will, however,
be fivegetsuls doing their best to kill you. You are to elude
or eliminate them, preferably without fatality to them.”

 “Or me.”

 “Indeed.” Mong smiled quixotically. “I do not fear for
your life in this exercise, but I do fear for it if you do not
masterthis exercise.”

 So far, so good.Coyote closed his eyes and reached out
with his mind. He expanded his consciousness until he
reached the logical limits of the dim, dusty-red dimension
in which he had taken refuge. He waited like a trap-door
spider and sought any sign that anyone was moving
through the dimensions nestled next to his in the clutch.

 Nothing.He had identified the various clutch dimen-
sions with terms that made focusing on them easier. The
dimension in which he currently stood he had designated
as Rust. Moderately warm and fairly dry, he scraped his
tongue across his teeth to rid it of the metallic taste in the
air. The desolate Marscape struck him as the most normal
of the proto-dimensions in the clutch. In eluding the
getsul,he’d made a brief side-trip into Muck and tossed

 the spear into Night.

 Angle is likely where they want to engage me. Muck,
Nightand Crush are my three choices outofhere, and the
spear should luresomeone into Night. Iwasjust in Muck,
so it looks like Crush is it. Having made that decision, he
took two steps to the left, focused his mind on splitting the
wall between dimensions and moved.

 Crush’s atmosphere closed in on him like a hot and
humid summer day inside an iron box. The dimension’s
gravity ran about 30% greater than that of Earth, as nearly
as Coyote could tell, except for the occasional “upspout”
in which gravity geysered up or out or counter to normal.
The landscape gently rolled through a series of gray hills,
with a deep, dark blue sky that appeared to be in perpetual
twilight. The only sign of life he saw were broad, squat
plants and ribbonlike kelp that thrived in the upspouts.

 Coyote crouched, not wholly by his own choice, and let
his mind stream out to probe the other nearby dimen-
sions. Rust remained clear, but he detected something in
Slide.Slide has an advantage for the defender. As I’m
supposed to be the one being hunted, and he’s searching
the logical place formetobe hiding, perhaps Ican surprise
him.

 Coyote concentrated and cleared his mind as much as
he possibly could. He stopped probing Slide and, instead,
left himself open and passive. He let all the impressions he
could from Slide pour into him, then inside his head he
filtered out everything but thegetsul’s probes. Like a
Stealth aircraft, he deadened his own image, giving the
getsulnothing upon which to track. In return, however, he
picked up on the man’s probes and used them to pinpoint
him.

 Soft shift.Instead of popping a hard-and-fast shift
image into his brain, which is what allowed him to do rip-
shifts to elude pursuit, Coyote assembled an image of

 Slide from bits and pieces. He imagined the lighter gravity
and cooler, drier atmosphere. The air tasted cool and
slick. He filled the flat, glassy landscape with the rivers of
neon colors that flowed through it. Whirling Frisbee clouds
filled the sky like blue polka-dots on a pink background.

 Building Slide up image by image, he willed himself
forward. Without taking a step, he dissolved himself
through the wall between Crush and Slide. As he opened
his eyes he saw the tableau before him matched that
which he had imagined in all but one aspect. Agetsul
crouched a dozen feet in front of him, utterly unaware that
his foes had just materialized behind him.

 “You lose, sport.”

 At the sound of his voice, thegetsul spun around and
made a serious mistake. Slide, as Coyote had discovered
in his first run through the clutch’s dimensions, could
easily have been designated Teflon or Grease. Everything
had the frictional equivalence of ice on wet glass. As the
getsulcompleted his turn, his pivot foot slipped back, and
his other foot skipped forward. He went down in an abrupt
and painful split, then fell forward and bashed his face into
the ground.

 Coyote winced as the man hit. Dropping to one knee,
he bent forward, then pulled his head up, imparting just
enough forward momentum to his body to start him
sliding toward the unconscious man. He bumped up
against thegetsul and that bled off his momentum. He
pressed fingers to the man’s throat and found a strong,
steady pulse.

 Only one left, I think. Kneeling there, Coyote checked
Crush and Muck but found no one. I don’t want to stay
here. MaybeMuck toAngletoStorm, and Ican hide there.

 Concentrating again, Coyote made a rip-cut in the wall
of Slide and pulled himself through to Muck. He sank
about six inches into the red-gray ooze covering the

 ground. He recognized the gelatinous substance as some-
thing Fiddleback had transplanted to a tower in Phoenix.
Because the slime, which Coyote thought must have been
some form of life, concentrated gravity in itself, it created
a bond between whatever it touched.If not for the fact that
it probably, eventually, eats the stuff it touches, it could
make wonderful Super Glue.

 He stood, and the slime dripped off his legs. Taking
great sucking steps forward, he came to a sheer hillside
covered with the slime. Climbing up, he twisted around
and planted his back flat against the rock face. Hanging
up above normal human eye level, he focused his mind
and probed both Rust and Angle.

 Initially, he caught only a faint impression of agetsul in
Angle, but that trace evaporated beneath the harsh glare
of a far stronger sensation. Someone or something en-
tered the clutch and its trace filled the whole series of
pocket dimensions. At first, Coyote thought someone had
made a bad mistake in not shielding himself, but then he
caught the edges on the impression and he realized it had
been curbed so it would not extend beyond the clutch.

 This is deliberate, then. A lure and a trap.As Coyote
sorted through the sensations being broadcast by this new
hunter, he decided it was not Mong, nor was it any of the
other monks with whom he had trained. He also discov-
ered the hunter was male, but he couldn’t bring himself to
see the hunter as a man. The second he drew that
conclusion, he knew who was out there.

 The Yidam.

 Twisting his way around to face the cliff, Coyote clawed
his way up toward the top. The impressions of the Yidam
pounded into him like hoofbeats. The Yidam stalked
openly through the clutch, confidently and contemptu-
ously advertising its presence. The hammering sensa-
tions came faster and harder as the Yidam approached,

 but they so overwhelmed Coyote that he could not
pinpoint a direction, and he looked about in vain for any
sign of the creature as he reached the top of the cliff.

 Suddenly, there above him, the Yidam appeared through
a slash in the sky. Cloaked in black, the Yidam stepped
through to the cliff edge and stared down at him. His
scarlet eyes flashed with gold, and his gaze seemed to
bore right through Coyote. White tusks stood out in sharp
contrast with his jet-black skin, and the cloak opened
enough to let Coyote see the necklace of skulls hanging
from around his neck.

 Gold glinting from his talons, the Yidam’s right foot
swept free of the mucusoid carpet creature and caught
Coyote over his left ear. Stars exploded before Coyote’s
eyes, and he sensed himself starting to fall. At the same
time, something stabbed deep into his mind, using his
disorientation to make him vulnerable. He snapped his
head around to try to break that contact, but only suc-
ceeded in starting his body rolling through the air.

 «Get out of my mind!»Coyote focused long enough to
snap his mind shut, then immediately assessed his situ-
ation. He knew he had little control over his body as it still
fought off the shock of the blow.One chance.

 Coyote ripped through to Angle and braced himself for
impact. He landed with his left shoulder on one of the huge
hexagonal plates that made up the world of Angle. The
plate gave a bit, preventing his shoulder from being
crushed, then pushed back and returned almost all of his
energy to him. Bouncing up at the complementary angle
from that at which he’d hit, Coyote spun up and off to the
right.

 Are you as cocky as you advertise?Coyote craned his
neck back to watch the gash from Muck and tried to will
himself back toward it. As he spun around, he lost sight of
it, then, as it came back into view, he sawthe Yidam’s feet

 break through.Bingo!

 Spinning uncontrollably, Coyote passed close to the
opening into Muck. His feet flailed through the air and
caught the Yidam in mid-chest, crushing two of the skulls.
The blow immediately killed Coyote’s spin, but sent the
Yidam whirling backward and down toward the ground.

 The Yidam hit hard with his head, but the soft ground
prevented him from breaking his neck. His body contin-
ued to spin down, slamming his buttocks into the ground
as well, then he bounced up and started forward somer-
saults through the air. He made some motions to control
his flight, but he headed away from Coyote and could do
nothing until he hit the ground again.

 Angle’s gentle gravity pulled Coyote down to a hexago-
nal plain. His legs managed to support his weight by the
time he landed, but he let himself drop into a crouch,
anyway. Reaching down, he jabbed his hands into the
Earth and tore a new opening into another proto-dimen-
sion. Taking one last look at the flying Yidam, Coyote
broke through to Storm.

 A driving barrage of hailstones blasted Coyote to the
snowy ground. Pushing off the ground, he tried to stand,
but a thunder strike’s concussive explosion knocked him
down again. Lightning strobed silver into the dark world,
then the hissing sting of wind-sped sand blinded him.

 Not necessarily my best choice.He blinked away the
sand and set himself as he sensed the Yidam’s approach.
He turned slowly, resigning himself to always be facing
into the wind, and raised his left hand to shield his eyes.
A forked lightning bolt split the sky, silhouetting the Yidam
off to his right, then an arctic wind separated them with a
sheet of snow.

 Cutting to his right, Coyote snapped a kick through
where he had last seen the Yidam. To his surprise, he
connected solidly and heard a grunt. Expecting a riposte

 of some sort, Coyote threw himself on his face, then rolled
twice to the right and rose into a low crouch. A curtain of
rain cleansed the air between them, drenching the Yidam
and wrapping him up in his heavily sodden cloak.

 With a half-step forward, Coyote drove his right heel
into the monster’s spine. Raising his left arm, he blocked
the elbow flying back at him, then hammered his right fist
into the same spot he had kicked. He felt thick muscles
protect the spine from the full force of the blow, but he hit
again, then leaped back as the Yidam fell forward and
scythed his legs back through where Coyote had stood.

 As he landed, something in the back of his mind painted
a schematic over the outline of the Yidam. His mind tried
to fit the monster into a foe identification template and
rejected it when the height and robustness of the figure
failed to drop into standard variations from the norm.
Before the template faded, Coyote saw it contained
detailed information on the weakness of the creature it
had described, including the locations of nerve ganglia
and points where a single strike could maim or kill.

 Where did that come from?

 The Yidam looked back over his shoulder.«From your
master, Dark Minion!» The Yidam pushed off the ground
and set himself in a long-legged fighting stance. Still
hidden beneath the cloak, his elbows broadened his
outline, and his gold-clawed hands appeared through the
slit at its center.«Iknow why you have been sent, and it
ends now.»

 Coyote pulled back to the right as the Yidam closed and
posted a kick that would have pulverized his left shoulder
had it landed. Back-peddling as fast as he could, Coyote
ducked and dodged away from the kicks and punches the
Yidam threw at him. The creature’s sheer ferocity and
power made it terrifying, but Coyote’s discipline and
control made him invincible.

 The Yidam came up and around with his left leg in a
roundhouse kick that Coyote avoided easily.Too easily.
As he made that realization, he saw the Yidam lean
forward and use his flying leg to counter-balance his
upper body. Reaching out with his right hand, the Yidam
caught Coyote’s right ankle and tossed him back up into
the air.

 Coyote landed hard on a rock ridge. The fall stunned
him. He looked up as the Yidam loomed over him and
raised a foot meant to crush his skull in one final stomp.
Coyote tried in vain to bring his arms up to protect his
head, but his limbs would not respond.Sorry, Crowley,
Fiddleback is all yours now.

 The foot never fell. Egg-sized hailstones caught the
Yidam in the back like a shotgun blast, cartwheeling him
over Coyote and down into a little hollow. A white, wet
blanket of snow unfurled itself over them, then an icy gust
of wind crystalized it into a sheet of ice. Water soaked him,
then another sand storm gnawed on what little of his flesh
it could expose beneath the ice.

 Pumping his legs, Coyote kicked free of the ice. Rolling
over onto his side, he slid down the hillside to where the
Yidam lay buried on his stomach. He smashed the ice over
the creature’s head and saw by the vapor cloud he still
breathed. When the Yidam’s eyelids fluttered for a mo-
ment, Coyote raised his right fist for a knock-out blow, but
dropped it when the creatures eyes did not open.

 Been here too long.Reaching out, Coyote cored a hole
between Storm and Might, then knelt in the warm, dry
darkness of absolute night. When he had first run across
Night, the idea of being utterly blind had frightened him,
but he realized the total lack of visual stimulation made
concentration easier. The tenebrous atmosphere felt heavy,
as if filled with humidity, and flowed around him like a
stream.

 Calming his racing heart, he gently probed Rust to see
if the lastgetsul had taken up a position there. He found
nothing, so he pushed his probing beyond Rust to Muck
and Crush. Those dimensions remained clear. Beyond
them he added Slide and Angle to his sweep of the clutch.
Nothing.He quickly checked Storm but he got nothing
from it either.Ishe in Night?

 Coyote focused his mind on the dark dimension, but
sensed nothing.Maybe he was moving fast, remaining
one step in front of my probes. Maybe he homed in on me
as I did the getsulin Slide. Coyote instantly moved to the
left, remained low, and raised his hands toward off unseen
strikes.

 If he is here, at least we’re even—we’re both blind.

 «Wrong, Kyi-can,»Coyote heard the Yidam’s voice in
his mind,« Isee in the ultraviolet range.»

 Fingers tangled themselves in his hair, jerking his
head back, and an invisible fist pounded him into
unconsciousness.

 Uncomfortably wet and stiff, Coyote awakened staring
up at the night sky over Tibet. Back between his feet he
sawthe heavily guarded East Gate, but none of the monks
at the far end of the causeway paid him any attention.
They stared out beyond him, chanting as always.

 Pain centered itself in his nose, and he immediately
knew it had been broken. Licking his lips, he tasted blood.
He pulled himself up into a sitting position, resting his back
against theDukhang wall, and waited until the wave of
dizziness passed. Resting his elbows on his knees, he
cradled his head in his hands.

 It makes no sense.He assumed the creature he had
fought in the training room was the same one who used
thenaginatatodestroy the gorfash. The first time he met
it, the Yidam tried to kill him, but the second time it saved

 his life. The third time it sought him and tried to kill him,
but then didn’t do the job when it had the chance in Night.
No sense at all.

 Coyote slowly stood and turned to lean on the wall.
Looking up, he saw the Yidam’s image staring down at
him.

 Coyote shook his head. “You mock me because you’re
in control, but you should not take refuge in that idea.
Things change, and I change. Fiddleback thought he
controlled me, and you, like him, will learn how dangerous
I can be when the tables are turned.”

 Given Kip’s apprehension about the Galactic Brother-
hood Institute, Sin had not been sure what to expect when
he accepted a recruiter’s invitation to attend a Friday night
seminar offered by Arrigo El-Leichter. Over the phone,
the woman had made it sound as innocent as a lecture
about a trip to some exotic locale, but the talk’s title, “The
Secret Masters of Your Life,” came across as far more
sinister.

 Things were slated to start at 7:30 p.m., so Sin arrived
15 minutes early on the off chance he would get a chance
to take a look around the institute. According to the map
he had of Kimpunshima, the Galbro Complex occupied as
much space as a small multinational corporation could be
expected to use, though its percentage of residential to
operational facilities approached those of a service orga-
nization. Galbro did have access to the docks on the
underside of the artificial island and maintained a hangar
at the Level Two airport on the island’s south end.

 Early arrivals for lectures were expected and greeted by
two smiling, uniformed women. Both struck Sin as a bit
vacuous and even incongruous because, while he was
used to being greeted at the door in Japan, the greeters
were seldom Aryan types like these two. They directed
him across a large, inlaid marble foyer to a built-in booth

 where another Nordic type was checking a list and
handing out name tags.

 “Welcome to GBI. How may I help you?” Standing in a
booth filled with books, videos, CDs, cassettes and post-
ers, the blond man look as wholesome and clean cut as
an ad for virtue.

 Sin gave him an innocent smile. “I registered for this
evening’s lecture. I am Sinclair MacNeal.”

 The blue-eyed young man studied the printout on his
clipboard, then smiled and checked a name off the list. He
looked over at several rows of name tags, then plucked
one from the center of a line. “Sinclair K. MacNeal, here
you are.” He pointed off to his left and toward a set of
double-doors. “Go in and take a seat. Try to get near the
front so you can see Mr. El-Leichter better.”

 “Thank you.” Sin took the tag and pinned it to his
jacket’s breast pocket. Following the man’s directions, he
walked into a huge auditorium and headed directly for the
tiny phalanx of folding chairs arranged at the far end near
a podium. The room itself had the look of a gymnasium,
but Sin saw no court lines painted on the parquet floor, nor
any basketball backboards hanging on the walls. Instead,
numerous tapestries, quilts and huge paintings decorated
the room, with all of them sharing a “Visitors from the
Stars” motif.

 Sin thought most of them laughably amateur in
execution. This surprised him, because he already
knew GBI was highly sophisticated, as evidenced by
his name tag. He had arranged with Lilith to have his file
modified to change his middle initial every three hours.
Their providing him with name tag that used a “K” as
his middle initial meant they had accessed his file 33
to 36 hours after their recruiter made contact. Given
the level of security consciousness Lorica Industries
had shown, it meant GBI had excellent computer

 crackers or a plant inside Lorica Japan.

 The only reason to have these things up here is to put
us at ease and to use as contrast later. Looking at these
things, I would hardly think aliens the sort of folks who
would destroy Kip’s boat or be running secret missions.
This should be interesting, if nothing else.

 Sin found himself a seat in the third row, over on the
right edge. Up behind the podium he saw a huge banner
of a white, polar-coordinate grid on a light blue back-
ground — about the same shade of blue as the United
Nations flag, it seemed to him. Superimposed on the white
web he saw stars arrayed in the familiar Big Dipper
constellation, with the North Star hanging there above the
whole circle. Beneath the whole design, in all capital
letters, he read “THE GALACTIC BROTHERHOOD WEL-
COMES YOU.”

 Below the painting stood two sets of doors, one on
either side of the podium. The one nearest him, to the right
of center, looked like utterly unremarkable fire doors,
complete with a glowing red exit sign overthem. The other
door, on the left, had a touch-sensitive scanning plate next
to it. It looked to Sin very much like the one in the top of
the Lorica Tower in Phoenix. He devoted a certain amount
of his attention to that door and resolved, at some point,
to get past it and into whatever GBI had gone to such pains
to protect.

 The room quickly filled, and Sin found himself doomed
to spend the lecture next to a rather dapper man who had
saturated himself with cologne. That man, in turn, let
everyone else around him know that he was attending this
lecture for the fifth time and that “you will learn things here
that you never even dreamt could be possible.” He smiled
at Sin and added, “We all have our little secrets here, don’t
we?”

 “Sure,” Sin laughed. “I’m an agent in the employ of

 Japanese government who’s come to infiltrate this whole
operation.”

 The perfume man did not take the joke well, but the
others around him laughed, and that silenced him. Over-
head air conditioning units hummed to life, and the breeze
they created succeeded in blowing the cologne stench
away for the most part.Things are looking up. The lights
slowly dimmed.It’s showtime.

 Wall-mounted loudspeakers crackled. “Ladies and
gentlebeings, it is the Galactic Brotherhood Institute’s
distinct pleasure to present to you tonight’s featured
speaker: Arrigo El-Leichter.”

 Everything faded to blackness for a second, then a
platinum spotlight encircled the security door behind the
podium dais. The door itself clicked, then opened slowly
with a white vapor leaking out around its edges. As the
smoke drained away, it revealed a figure of a man.

 Tall and slender, his face had a sharp, angular bone
structure and a straight, slender nose. His thick blond hair
had been combed back to emphasize his broad forehead
and widow’s peak, yet was piled high to show off its natural
wave and thickness. Despite not having a massive,
muscular body, when he moved forward, Sin had no
doubt the charismatic man was physically powerful and
mentally sharp. His piercing blue gaze swept across the
audience, reflecting the light of the spot back on them.

 He wore a custom tailored suit of white that bridged the
gap between a military uniform and something that might
be a fashion rage in the near future. The jacket, which was
cut to his waist, featured a double-breast with lapels flared
on either side looking almost like wings. The slight flare to
the legs of his slacks allowed him to wear white boots
without having to tuck the pants into them.

 Arrigo El-Leichter strode to the dais and mounted it in
one easy step. As he took his place behind the podium,

 the spotlight dimmed and the house lights came up a bit.
Track lights on the ceiling illuminated the Galactic Broth-
erhood banner, and a vent somewhere shunted enough
air at it to make it wave slightly.

 Arrigo raised his right fist to thump his left breast, then
extended it upward and out in a salute mimicked by some
members of the audience. “I bring you greetings and best
wishes from the Galactic Brotherhood Institute. Those of
you who are with us for the first time might not know it, but
we were formed three decades ago to help all mankind
realize the unity of their creation and to help them attain
their rightful place in the galaxy.”

 Sin felt the room’s tension build as uninitiated folks like
him began to wonder what they were doing there, but
Arrigo drained it off with a smile. “You have probably
heard many things about us and our work here—many
wild and wondrous and evencrazy stories about what we
do and who we are.” He laughed lightly, and the audience
joined in. “Well, I will leave it to you to judge, after this
evening, if any of those things are true. All I ask of you,
right here and now, is to open your minds, and try to put
aside your preconceptions. Don’t ask yourself if what I will
share with you is true or false, but ask yourself if itcould
be true, then judge from there what action you should
take.”

 Sin smiled. The man’s request sounded reasonable on
the surface of it, but Sin saw the logical trap. He knew that
if he were to accept aspossible what the man said, then
act on that possibility, he could be talked into anything.
Arrigo was asking him to disable his decision-making
faculties, then suggesting he could make a decision based
on whatever he had left.

 “The story I am going to tell you is going to sound
strange and perhaps even disjointed. It is, in fact, far more
complex than I am able to present here, and researching

 every facet of it is the main work of our organization. Rest
assured that I would not offer any of these facts to you had
not extensive and exhaustive studies been done of them.”

 The Galbro leader leaned heavily on the edges of the
oak podium. “Over 60 years ago, on July 2, 1947, a
spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin crashed during a
thunderstorm on a farm outside Corona, New Mexico, in
the United States. This has popularly been referred to as
the ‘Roswell Incident,’ though ittook place nearly 80 miles
from that city. From the crash were recovered four
EBEs—extraterrestrial biological entities—three of which
died in the crash. The fourth remained alive and even
recovered from his injuries. His name was Krlll.

 “Krlll served as a liaison between the United States
government and his people, a spacefaring race we know
as the ‘Grays.’ The Grays were, at the time of the crash,
involved in a program of human kidnapping and animal
mutilation. They managed to hide evidence of this from
the United States government and, in return for aid in
developing high-technology devices like antigravity space-
ships, entered into an alliance with the United States and
her allies. They later concluded a similar agreement with
the Soviets and, by the time President Kennedy chal-
lenged America to put a man on the moon, the Grays, in
conjunction with the CIA and KGB, already had an
operational moonbase called Luna in place.”

 Sin frowned. Man’s race to the moon had taken place
well before his birth, but he’d studied it avidly as he grew
up. He’d also read enough about UFOs to recognize the
reference to the Corona crash, but all of that had been
explained away as a downed weather balloon.This is nuts.

 Arrigo went on, keeping his voice low and sincere. “The
Grays, to this day, continue their predation on mankind.
They steal our people and use them for genetics experi-
ments. Under terms of their agreement with the govern-

 ments of the world, they built a number of underground
bases, and the Grays use them to clone themselves and
make hybrid Gray humans. You have heard of them from
the few that have escaped. In some places in the United
States, these forlorn individuals have become bogeymen,
known variously as Gray devils or Gray-man or Grim-
mands.

 “Through the alliance and agreements made in it, the
Grays have succeeded in implanting one in 40 humans
with tiny devices that, at an appointed time, will react to
a signal and turn the afflicted into an army of zombies that
will destroy the world as we know it. Those of you who
have awakened with blood on your pillow from what you
thought was a nocturnal nosebleed could well have been
plucked from the safety of your bed and unwittingly turned
into an implantee against your will!”

 Various members of the audience apparently recog-
nized themselves in Arrigo’s description. Several rubbed
at their noses, and one man in the back honked loudly as
he blew his nose into a white handkerchief. Sin found
himself wrinkling his nose unconsciously, then he frowned
and exerted conscious control to banish the itching.

 “I would be irresponsible, my dear friends, if I were to
drop this bombshell on you without having some sort of
solution to the problem the Grays pose. As you can
imagine, they are not the only ET race in the universe. In
fact, within a year of the Roswell Incident, a representative
of another intergalactic race, the Noorn, arrived on our
world and offered a warning about the Grays. He was
ignored and ridiculed, mainly because he claimed to have
come from Venus, when he really came from much
farther. His name was Valiant Thor, and for years he
worked to try to keep us safe from the Grays.”

 Arrigo looked down and seemed almost profoundly
embarrassed for a moment. “Valiant Thor, while working

 with Dr. Frank E. Stranges, met and married my mother.
I am his son, and his mission, after his murder at the hands
of the Grays, has fallen to me. We have here, at the
Galactic Brotherhood Institute, the equipment necessary
to rid you of the Gray influence. We have training that will
make you able to resist them and thwart their plans.” He
paused and smiled gently. “And it has been reported to
me that one side effect of our training is an apparent
increase in the material well-being of our students.”

 Arrigo stood up straight and clasped his hands before
him humbly. “I know this is an incredible amount of
information for you to digest.If you will turn to your left,
one of my associates will start a video presentation we
have that will show you much of the proof we have brought
to light from beneath the shroud of a government cover-
up. After that, I will gladly answer questions, then we can
adjourn to a more informal setting where we will offer you
refreshments.”

 The lights again went down, and a projection screen
descended from the ceiling. Sin turned his chair toward it,
and sat back to watch the presentation. It consisted of
grainy photograph after grainy photograph of UFOs with
complete listings of when and where they were sighted.
Pictures offaces on Mars and clips from classic films like
ETandClose Encounters of the Third Kind were included,
the narrator noting their presentation as “fiction” was part
of the Gray disinformation campaign designed to make
people think of EBEs as harmless.

 The barrage of pictures and short “eye witness” seg-
ments appeared to Sin to be long on circumstantial
evidence and twisted logic. He saw some of the thor-
oughly discredited Billy Meier photographs being touted
as genuine, and heard once again the accusation that
UFO debunker Philip J. Klass was a CIA agent. Claims of
duplicity were made about people long dead, and the

 narrator asked questions designed to implant doubt in the
minds of the views, using formulations like “Isn’t itcurious
that...?” or “Could it possibly becoincidencethat...?”

 Sin found everything woven together in a nice package
that connected utterly disparate elements into a web
designed to gather everyone in. The shotgun approach to
describing phenomena meant that almost everyone in the
room would find one “fact” that rang true to them.
Because that part of it checked in their mind, they
seriously considered the other “facts” and weighed them
accordingly.

 The result was a conspiracy matrix that explained
everything from natural disasters like the hole in the ozone
layer to the assassination of President John Kennedy—
allegedly at the hands of one of his own bodyguards.
Taken as a whole, the conspiracy could be lifted out, and
events would have still functioned the way they did, but
the conspiracy made larger, sinister sense out of isolated
incidents, it fed into the nascent sense of paranoia trig-
gered in everyone when asked, “What if this is true, but the
government doesn’t want you to know it?”

 Unconvinced, but impressed at Arrigo El-Leichter’s
ability to manipulate an audience, Sin watched the man
return to the podium as the lights came back up, and the
screen retracted into the ceiling.He’s very good. He offers
hopeandapromiseofpower, because he’s manufactured
the threat precisely so he can prescribe and provide the
cure. No wonder Ryuhito would find this seductive, and
why his grandfather is worried.

 Arrigo smiled at the crowd. “Thank you for letting us
show you that very important information. Now, if you
wish, I will entertain questions.”

 Sin concentrated on the man’s face as a whole series of
people asked him questions. Whether they were banal or
probing, Arrigo never lost his smile and never seemed

 exasperated. He fielded every inquiry with the skill of third
baseman playing pepper and managed to personalize
each reply, yet added a bit of a message that included the
whole audience.

 Ican’t stand this.Sin raised his hand. Arrigo nodded to
him, so Sin stood. “Sinclair MacNeal, Mr. El-Leichter. I’ve
heard you say that the Grays control the world’s govern-
ments in fact and through things like the Trilateral Com-
mission—I believe, actually, that you said the Trilateral
Commission took their name from the Gray coat of arms.
What I would like to know is that if these people are so
powerful and have labored so hard to keep their secret,
how are you allowed to continue to exist?”

 The edge in Sin’s voice and the logic of his question
immediately prompted nods from other members of the
audience. Arrigo took this in stride and broadened his
smile a bit. “Mr. MacNeal, that is an excellent question.
What has protected me is the fact that I have gone public.
If they were to hit me now, all of you would know that what
I have said is the truth. So, instead of doing that, they allow
me to speak and they labor to neutralize the people I have
trained and those who would help us in our researches.”

 “Neutralize, sir?” Sin shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t
follow that.”

 “For various reasons, we don’t include this information
in our video presentation, but the United States govern-
ment maintains prison camps in Arizona to sequester
those who know too much.”

 Sin made a great show of being surprised. “Mr. El-
Leichter, I come from Arizona. There are no prison camps
there.”

 The smile on Arrigo’s face shifted from one of amuse-
ment to a mask of beneficence. “Don’t exist, Mr. MacNeal,
or you have never seen them? You would agree there is a
difference?”

 The jaws of the trap snapped shut on Sin. He bowed his
head. “You’re right, there is a difference. And, no, I have
never seen them.”

 “The Grays are very crafty, Mr. MacNeal. They do not
take chances.” Arrigo scratched at his right ear. “In fact,
during your last stay in Japan, it is entirely possible that
your father’s corporation actually worked to construct
one of the underground breeding camps south of Casa
Grande.”

 Sin sat slowly and immediately knew his father was
more than capable of making a pact with the devil if it
meant shareholder dividends in the next quarter.There
are plenty of jobs that I don’t know about. Build-more
could have easily...wait a minute.

 Sin smiled and nodded his head. El-Leichter had
succeeded in finding the “fact” Sin would latch onto. Very
smooth. Probably has an earpiece linked to someone at a
computer console. That’s good, because my placement
has got to make me a ripe candidate for recruitment.

 “Well, then, if that is an end to the questions, please join
us for refreshments in the lobby.” Again Arrigo gave the
audience a self-effacing smile. “My staff constantly re-
minds me that we do have certain costs, so some of my
books and tapes are available outside, if you wish to learn
more. We also have some GBI staffers there to help you
with inquiries about our classes. Thank you for coming
this evening.”

 Mild applause broke out, then the audience began to
drift out toward the lobby. Sin purposefully hung back, yet
provided the perfume man no opening to engage him in
conversation. Sin assumed that he, as well as a number
of other people in the crowd, were shills pimping for
Galbro.

 Arrigo El-Leichter strode over to where Sin sat. “I want
to thank you for your question, Mr. MacNeal.”

 Sin laughed lightly. “Thank me? I hardly towed the
party line here, Mr. El-Leichter. I would imagine you find
doubting Thomases an annoyance.”

 “Ari, please, and may I call you Sinclair? Thank you.”
El-Leichter composed his face in a serious expression. “A
question like yours shows you have actually been think-
ing about what you’ve heard. I could have hundreds of
thousands of these people believing me in a second,
many because they want to believe inanything. Now
those people have as much right to our help as anyone,
but they are not the sort of people who can help us.”

 “I’m not sure I follow you, Ari.”

 “Simply put, Sinclair, the Galactic Brotherhood can use
everyone and welcomes everyone, but weneed people
who can think and who can lead.” He glanced down at his
hands, then back up into Sin’s eyes. “I know this is a
difficult time for you, and I applaud the sense you had in
coming to Japan to get away from your divorce with
Christina. It means you are capable of change and
recognizing and making the difficult choices in life. I’d like
to offer you a chance to maximize your potential.”

 Sin folded his arms across his chest. “You seem to know
a great deal about me.”Including the divorce factoid that
went into my file only two days ago. “Your researchers
are very good.”

 “Coming from a man with your background, I take that
as a supreme compliment. Also, with your background,
you’d know me to be an utter fool if I did not screen people
to learn if they are Gray agents or not.”

 “Touché, Ari.” Sin gave him a genuine smile. “What is
this offer?”

 Arrigo snapped his fingers, and one of his maroon-
jacketed staff members slowly drifted over. “Mr. Handy
here will drive you back to your hotel. We have a week-
long workshop starting at midnight. I think you will find it

 very enlightening and rewarding. If you are indeed the sort
of man your file makes you out to be, you will avail
yourself of this opportunity.”

 Sin stood. “How much?”

 “Good, very good.” Arrigo smiled as he took a step
back and gave Sin some room. “Always thinking. This
workshop is free. Your accommodations and meals will
be provided. All you need to do is pick up a shaving kit and
a change of clothes. We will provide uniforms for most of
the time you are here—we do that to promote solidarity in
our cohorts, as I am certain you understand.”

 “All right, I’ll do it.” Sin started to offer the man his hand,
but Arrigo had already moved beyond that range.

 “Excellent.” El-Leichter glanced at the security door
through which he had entered the auditorium. “I will go
make arrangements. You will find this very rewarding.” He
placed his hand over the scanner plate. The neon-green
light outlined the bones in gangrenous hues, then the door
clicked open and El-Leichter waved.

 Sin returned the wave, then looked at his guide. “Shall
we go, Mr. Handy?”

 “Yes, sir.” The man smiled and pointed toward the door.
”You won’t regret this, sir. You’ll find this the most
interesting week of your life.”

 Sin slapped him on the back. “Somehow I’m confident
you are very, very right.”

 I

 Rajani kept her finger on the elevator’s “Door Open”
button as Natch had instructed her. She quickly glanced
out at the empty lobby one level below the New Palace
Hotel’s penthouse suites. “All clear, is that right?”

 Natch popped some chewing gum. “Word up. We’ll
have you being a proper spotter in no time.” Natch raked
the lockpick in her right hand down while pressing up with
the pick in her left. The locknexttothe “Penthouse” button
shifted slightly to the right, and Natch cursed. “Damn
Corbin lock!”

 “What does ‘Corbin’ mean?” After flying to Japan
seated next to Natch and spending her first day there with
her, she’d gotten a lot of the woman’s street argot down,
but Corbin was a new term.

 Natch smiled gently. “Corbin is a brand name, kid.”
Natch used the pick in her left hand to probe the lock, “It
has mushroom tumblers in 3 and 5.”

 “Does this mean you cannot ‘pop’ it?”

 “Child, there is no lock I can’t pop, Corbin or otherwise.”
Natch frowned and went back to work on the lock. “Jes
have to be really delicate with this one. Need the touch.”

 The tip of Natch’s tongue appeared at the corner of her
mouth as she concentrated. Rajani marveled at how
Natch was able to focus on her task. Her hands moving

 with the skill of a surgeon, Natch played the pick down
through the middle of the cylinder, then used the tension
bar in her left hand to press up. She jiggled the tension bar,
then raked the pick through the lock. Rajani heard a click,
saw the cylinder twist to the left, and Natch laughed
triumphantly.

 “Let the door go.” Natch hit the “Penthouse” button.
”We’re on our way.”

 Rajani did as she had been told, but frowned. “If this Mr.
MacNeal is your contact in Tokyo, why are we breaking
into his hotel suite?”

 “Hal called him as soon as we got in on Friday night and
left numerous messages for him on Saturday. Either
MacNeal is ducking us, or something happened to him.”

 The elevator door to Sinclair’s suite opened, and the
two women stepped out into the foyer. Rajani smiled as
she looked out into the opulence of Sin’s accommoda-
tions. “This is not at all like the Hyatt, is it?”

 Natch shook her head in response to the question, and
Rajani immediately picked up a spike in the low-grade
hostility she’s been getting from Natch throughout their
morning’s adventure. Rajani set her Yakult Swallows’
baseball cap back on her head. “Why don’t you like him?”

 Natch shrugged silently and punched the glowing red
message button on the side of the cabinet in the foyer.
”Jes don’t, that’s all.” The printer dutifully spit sheets of
paper into the tray on a shelf. She sorted through them and
then tossed them back into the basket. “Four from Hal,
one from Lilith, one from a guy named Kip Martin and one
from an Erika. ‘Cept for Hal’s, all of them came in on
Saturday, and Martin wants to know why MacNeal stood
him up.”

 Rajani opened herself up to the impressions in the room
and smiled unconsciously. She had found her room at the
Hyatt hopelessly sterile. Even the beds had nothing by

 way of unique Impressions. Everything there struck her as
washed-out and gray.

 The suite, by contrast, felt like a riot of bright colors.
Unfortunately, the strongest of them was a glossy black
radiating out from Natch like a damp fog that threatened
to swallow everything else. “Please, Natch, don’t resent
him so.”

 Sharp red lances jabbed out of the black fog. “Why not?
It’s his fault Hal was shot and Hal’s wife Candy is dead. He
hired the Warriors for Build-more, and his father gave the
orders.”

 Rajani shook her head. “No, that’s not possible.” She
opened her hands and raked them through the air. “The
man who was here could never have condoned a murder
like that. No, I can’t believe it.”

 Natch’s dark, almond-shaped eyes narrowed. “What
do you know of him? You’ve never met him.”

 “People leave impressions, Natch. They leave them on
things.” Rajani looked around the room. “Living here for
the past two weeks has meant Sinclair has left his mark
on this place.” Oddly, she found she could not imperson-
alize him by calling him MacNeal the way Natch had. “So
have others.”

 Natch slowly smiled. “And I thought Hal had you along
with me just so I could baby-sit you.” She laughed and
jammed her hands in her pockets. “Tell me about the
others.”

 Rajani freed her mind of conscious thoughts and
immediately found herself attracted to a big chair in the
living room. She drifted toward it and ran her hands over
the embroidered fabric. “There was someone here of
incredible power and presence. The impression here is
stronger than any other in the whole place, but it is focused
right here.”Outside of my brush with Fiddleback, I have
never felt anything this strong.

 “What do you make of this?” Natch tossed her a dark
ball that unfurled itself into the silk stocking she’d pulled
from behind a couch cushion. “Either MacNeal dresses
funny, or he did the do with some b-squeeze.”

 Rajani caught the stocking and relished the softness as
it curled overthe back of her hand, “It belongs to a woman,
but it is new, so that’s all I can tell.” She frowned. “What
does ‘did the do’ mean?”

 “You know, got down, got physical, did the lambeda.”
Natch planted her fists on her hips. “You know.”

 She followed Natch’s gaze toward the suite’s bedroom,
then saw the other woman blush. “Oh, they engaged in
procreative activities. Like you and Bat.”

 Natch’s nostril’s flared. “You some kind of psy-spy?”

 “No, no, believe me.” Rajani swallowed quickly. “As
Jytte requested, I have remained very careful not to
intrude. The only things I do pick up are those feelings that
are so strong that you cannot contain them. They are the
same ones thatyou humans tend to translate into physical
action, like a caress or a kiss. I mean, literally, that is a sign
that you cannot contain the emotion, and I pick it up like
hearing a snake’s rattle seconds before feeling the bite.”

 She saw Natch was not convinced. “Is not my assump-
tion about you and Bat a logical one? You share the same
room at the Hyatt. You spend a great deal of time together.
You clearly care for him. Are these not the signs of a
bonded relationship among humans?”

 “My relationship with Bat is special, Rajani.” Natch’s
eyes focused distantly. “He helped me out in a very
dangerous situation. He wasn’t doing itforme—he wanted
to take me away from the broker to whom I’d been sold
to hurt that man. It was one of the first times he and
Coyote—the original Coyote—worked together.”

 Natch’s head came up and her gaze met Rajani’s
openly. “I was in bad shape—they’d tethered me to a hype

 so I wouldn’t run. I needed someone, and Bat got elected
because of proximity. He didn’t want the job, but I think no
one ever neededhim before. It surprised him, as did I when
I didn’t break when he touched me.”

 “You’re an anchor for him.”

 “No. I’d love to be an anchor for him.” Natch shook her
head and pulled her blue Dragons baseball cap down to
shield her eyes. “At best, I’m a brake on him, slowing him
a bit, but he’s bound for where he’s bound, and there’s no
stopping him.”

 Rajani sensed Natch’s reluctance to continue, so she
quickly shifted the subject. “I do not think, based on this
stocking and the things I feel about Sinclair, that there was
any bonding here. If not for this, I do not think I would have
known she was here.”

 Natch shrugged. “Anything that will tell us where he is?”

 Rajani moved past Natch and headed into the bed-
room. She felt stronger impressions coming from the bed,
as well as a hint of the woman’s presence, so she stayed
away from it. Instead, she stepped into the bathroom and
discovered a surprise. “Natch, come here.”

 “What?”

 Rajani pointed to the clear counter space on either side
of the bathroom sink. “When I was allowed to watch
television, I used to watch detective programs. They
always get things like hair samples from brushes or can
tell how much money someone makes by their choice of
cologne.”

 “Word up. This room is chilled to stuff like that, though.”

 “Exactly, I think.” Rajani turned to her and smiled. “In
Hal’s room, during the meeting we had this morning, I
used the bathroom. Hal’s shaving kit was all laid out nice
and neat on the counter. He even had a little case there
with places for everything, and it had the logo of the hop
team he used to play for on it.”

 “That’s ‘hoop,’ Rajani.”

 “Hoop, okay. The point is that Sinclair’s shaving kit isn’t
here. If he’d been taken by someone, I don’t think they
would take his stuff with them, do you?”

 Natch darted back out of the bathroom, and Rajani
heard the sound of the closet door sliding open. “Most of
the hangers are full, and the valet service’s plastic wrap is
still on his tuxedo. Looks like maybe one business suit is
gone. Maybe the stocking woman has our boy out playing
when he should be working.”

 “Maybe.” Rajani walked from the bathroom to the
dresser and fondled one of a pair of cufflinks sitting on top
of it. “Could Jytte check to see if he’s rented a car or
bought train tickets or charged a gift or something?”

 Natch nodded and pointed at the phone on the bedside
table. “Call her and ask her to start.”

 “No, I can’t.”

 “What?”

 “Jytte acts very skittish around me.” Rajani cupped the
cufflink in her hands and shook it around. “She doesn’t
trust me. She keeps pushing me away.”

 Natch laughed. “She does that to everyone, including
herself. Ever notice how she always sits in the darkest part
of a room and keeps out of line with a mirror?”

 Rajani shook her head.

 “Then you’ve not been around her much. She got
worked over by a guy called Pygmalion. I don’t know
much about him, except that he’s supposed to do with
flesh what Michelangelo did with marble. I heard Jytte
used to be a frumpy little mouse of a woman.”

 “Is that possible? She’s so beautiful now.”

 The petite woman shrugged. “Don’t know, but that’s
what Jytte says. She also says she doesn’t remember
anything about the Pyg-man, but I think that’s because
she isn’t trying hard enough to remember. I think part of

 her secretly loves the way she looks now, which fuels her
hatred for Pygmalion and herself—him as the man who
raped her body and her for letting herself be a victim. She
doesn’t want to face any of it, so she never lets anyone in
and keeps to her machines.

 “You, you’re a threat because you can muck around in
her mind.” Natch winked at her. “I know, and so does she,
that you’re not doing that. I also think she had it bad for the
real Coyote, and when he went the way of all flesh, she
threw herself into making sure the new Coyote would
become everything his predecessor wanted him to be.
With him being off and out of touch, and you arriving with
a warning, well...”

 “It’s messing with her wet-ware?”

 “You’re hooked tight.” Natch looked at the closet again,
then back at Rajani. “You don’t think MacNeal is out
scrappin’ with the stocking lady?”

 Rajani’s hands flattened around the cufflink. “No. Ithink
he went to a party in his tuxedo and was wearing these
cufflinks at the time. He was confident and happy and in
his element. He was doing all he could to make an
impression, and I think he succeeded.”

 “One silk legskin: Exhibit A.”

 “True. I can’t see him starting out so formally then
backsliding. He would make the next outing even more
spectacular.” She glanced over her shoulder at the chair
in the living room. “No, I think he subsequently had a
visitor who asked him to do something for him.”

 “Is he in danger, do you think?”

 “I don’t know.” She added the other cufflink to its mate.
”These tell me nothing.”

 Natch frowned, then slapped her forehead with her
open right palm. “If my head weren’t bolted on.”

 “What?”

 Natch marched back out into the main room with

 Rajani following behind. “MacNeal is supposed to be a big
security expert, isn’t he?”

 “I guess.”

 The American woman knelt down and ran her hand
beneath the dust curtain around the base of the couch.
”He was bound to have a gun somewhere. Needed easy
access, but had to be located in a place where it was not
likely to be discovered by the staff, since guns are illegal
in Japan.”

 Rajani marveled as Natch moved through the room and
searched it thoroughly. “You’ve done this before?”

 “Girlfriend, I’ve made a tidy living off finding things folks
don’t want found.”

 “What can I do?”

 Natch shrugged again, then pointed at the metal
briefcase beside the message unit in the foyer. “It’s
possible he kept it there. Check. If it’s locked, sing out.”

 TheJes’dafemale picked upthebriefcase and crouched
slightly to balance it on her thighs. Gold-nailed thumbs
pulled back on the buttons, and the latches snapped open.
Rajani lifted the lid expectantly, then shut the case again.
”Empty except for a stack of computer paper. What
next?”

 Natch straightened up. “Computer paper?” She shook
her head. “And you call yourself a securityexpert,
MacNeal?”

 Crossing the room, Natch opened the door above the
message center, exposing the printer. It sat on a Plexiglass
stand that had nestled in it a stack of computer paper.
Twisting the stand and printer around, Natch pulled on the
bottom half of the paper stack, and it came out in one
solid, doughnut-shaped piece.

 “I don’t understand.”

 “It’s easy, Raj. Folks got to thinking that thieves are
really stupid. We would take a printer or a computer, but

 leave the paper behind because it was heavy and had no
value to a fence. They were right. As a result, though, they
pulled a switch on the old hollow book hiding-place trick
and took to making little hideaways in a two- or three-inch
stack of paper.”

 “So, as long as the printer didn’t run out of paper...”

 “Or some clumsy thief didn’t accidently knock a pile of
paper onto the floor...”

 “The valuables would remain hidden.” Rajani looked at
the paper in Natch’s hands. “No gun.”

 “Right, no gun.” She set the paper back in the cabinet
and closed it up. “That means, as you figured, MacNeal
went of his own accord and had time to take his gun with
him.”

 Rajani’s left fist closed on the cufflinks. “And that
means he knows he’s walking into trouble.”

 Using a hammered-silver mirror, Coyote placed a new
strip of white adhesive tape over his nose. After he had
stumbled to his chamber upon his return from the clutch
dimensions, he had slept for the better part of a day.
Sometime during that day, he discovered when he woke
up, he had been bathed and bandaged. Already the
swelling in his face had gone down, and the outer edges
of the bruising beneath his eyes had begun to turn a
jaundiced yellow.

 “You heal quickly, Kyi-can.”

 Coyote turned slowly. “So it appears, Lama Mong.
When do I resume my training?”

 “Whenever you feel physically able, Kyi-can.” The
monk watched him serenely. “The way you mend, it
should only be a couple of days.”

 “I’m physically able now, Mong. You know as well as I
do that I could go out into your main courtyard and take
on everything you care to throw at me.”

 “Really?” Mong’s face hardened. “Your bruises would
seem to suggest something to the contrary.”

 The tall man leaned back against the stone wall and let
the cold, rough stone leech heat from his body. “Physi-
cally, I’m ready, but I need answers to some questions
before I decide to continue. First and foremost, why the

 charade?”

 “Charade?” Mong folded his hands into the sleeves of
his red robe. “What charade is this?”

 “This shell game about training me to walk through
dimensions.” Coyote held his right hand up and started
ticking things off on his fingers. “I have learned in weeks—
I havemastered in weeks—skills it takes your monks a
minimum of five years to learn—longer in most cases.
Those monks adhere to strict rules of conduct to cleanse
themselves spiritually. They can be expelled from the
monastery for lying, stealing, fornicating and murdering,
yet I have done all of these things, and the reason I killed
was for money. In four hours of contemplation, I manage
to attain a knowledge and understanding of the universe
many would envy after a lifetime of meditations.”

 “I have often praised your prowess, Kyi-can, and I have
told you that, as an outsider, there are things about you
that are unimportant.”

 “That’s bullshit, pure and simple, Mong, and you know
it.” Coyote’s right hand closed into a fist. “The fact is that
you’ve not taught me anything here, really. All you’ve
done is reacquaintme with skills I already possessed. And
you’ve done this while keeping me under a microscope.
You’ve been watching me and testing me. Why?”

 The old man’s voice took on an angry edge Coyote had
never heard before. “You are the one spinning this fantasy.
Why do you think I would agree to open Kanggenpo to
you, then participate in this testing?”

 The tall man pushed off the wall and paced through his
small cell. “You trained Crowley and, through him, learned
of me. From him, you learned I had been one of Fiddle-
back’s pets. He told you what I had done to defeat
Fiddleback and, from the last journey he and I took
together, he realized that my training had gone even
further than the original Coyote had dared guess.”

 He looked over at the monk. “You were afraid I was still
one of Fiddleback’s minions. If I was, you would stop me,
is that it?”

 “You are every bit as quick as Mi-ma-yin told me.”

 “Why?”

 Mong seemed to shrink as he sighed. “In 1989,I was
sent as an envoy from Tibet to Beijing to plead with the
government to stop the dilution of our population. I had
hoped, with the reforms sweeping the world, that the spirit
of freedom had truly come to my homeland. In Beijing, I
saw many things, wondrous things, from which I had been
isolated in Kanggenpo. I became swept up in the fervor
and intoxicated by the prospects of liberty.

 “I was in Tiananmen Square on the 3rdand 4thof June.
Yes, I had seen death before, but never like this. I watched
as freedom-drunk students stepped bravely before tanks,
knowing in their hearts that their countrymen could never
run them over. I watched others march singing into the
face of machinegun fire. And I was dragooned to help burn
the bodies and hide the evidence of what happened, then
I returned home to a new wave of repression.”

 Mong wore the pain of years on his face as he looked
at Coyote. There, in Tiananmen Square, I felt the first
touch of the Dark Lords. I do not know if that was
Fiddleback or another of his misbegotten brethren, but it
showed me that malign forces did inhabit the universe.
When Mi-ma-yin said you had been forged by one of
them, I felt no choice but to bring you here so I could see
for myself what you were.If, as Mi-ma-yin felt certain, you
had been broken away from the Dark Lord’s control, you
could serve as a hideously powerful weapon to use
against any and all of them.”

 Coyote clasped his hands behind his back. “What do
you think? Do I still belong to Fiddleback?”

 “If I thought that, you would not have recovered from

 your injuries.” The monk smiled grimly. “I am not,
however, the court of final arbitration.”

 “The Yidam.” Coyote rubbed his chin with his left hand.
”This begins to make sense. The night we fought in the
training area, he sought evidence of any special ability
Fiddleback might have given. He thought, because of the
advantage he had over me, I would use it. Then he had to
save me from the gorfash because he had not made his
decision about me yet. But why was he...” Coyote’s head
came up. “The red pulse that you shot back into Kang-
genpo, that alerted the Yidam to thegetsul’s distress.
That’s why you tried to stall me and keep me back.”

 “He has fought gorfash before.”

 “I see. Then, two days ago, in the clutch, he came to
provoke me and get me to betray myself. He threatened
to kill me, but did not.” Coyote gingerly brushed the
fingertips of his right hand overthe tape on his nose. “Why
not?”

 The monk shook his head. That is a question I cannot
answer. Only he can answer it.”

 Coyote pressed his lips together into a flat line. “And I
know where he is, so the only question I have now is how
do I get there?”

 Mong smiled. “You knew much before you came here,
but the exercises I forced upon you honed your skills. You
know what you are; that is your strength. As the Yidam has
said, if you are worthy of the answer to your question, you
will find the way to obtain it.”

 The setting sun cast theDokhang’s long shadow over
Coyote like a shroud. He stood there with his back to the
east gate, concentrating on the Yidam’s portrait. Clad in
boots, fatigue pants and a sleeveless black T-shirt, he
tugged on black leather gloves and flexed his hands. A
breeze tousled his dark hair, then died abruptly.

 Youknow what you are; that is your strength.In
Mong’s words, Coyote found the key that unlocked a huge
portion of the mystery he still was to himself. He had
known, both through what the original Coyote had told
him and through evidence of his skills, that Fiddleback
had been behind his training as an assassin. His predeces-
sor as Coyote noted that he was one of the top 10
assassins in the world and especially effective against
targets that had to be hunted down.Iam not merely an
assassin. Fiddleback made me into a hunter who could
move through the dimensions with a singleness of pur-
pose: killing his enemies.

 That realization brought other things into perspective.
When he shifted into Slide, he had appeared behind the
getsulnotby chance, but by unconscious design. He had
used the man’s probes to track back on him, and he
appeared in Slide at a point where he could have killed the
man with ease. Coyote also realized that the stronger and
more able the foe, the easier the time he would have
tracking him.

 Other things confirmed for him the narrow purpose to
which he had been directed. He had seen Crowley move
things by the force of his mind, orcause things to burst into
flame with a thought. He also knew Crowley could use
psychometry to gain impressions about people from
things they had worn or owned or touched. Crowley could
also lift thoughts from the brains of others, yet another skill
denied him. Coyote knew he could do none of these
things, and he suspected that Fiddleback, when the time
came, would have provided him with the empathic equiva-
lent of bloodhounds to let him begin the chase on a target.

 Coyote closed his eyes and summoned into his mind
the image of the Yidam standing over him. Locking that
firmly in place, he opened his eyes and began to modify
the mental picture until it merged with the one on the wall

 of theDukhong. He layered in the solid feeling he’d had
in hitting the creature in Storm. He added the sound of its
mental contact with him and the ferocity of its attacks.
Lastly, he overlaid the tactical diagram he’d imagined in
the clutch and changed it to fit and enfold the Yidam.

 The daylight and wind world slowly dissolved around
Coyote. Darkness seeped in at the edges and, even
though he remained motionless, he sensed himself mov-
ing forward and down into the black void he had seen in
the temple.This istheGonkhang—the lair of the Yidam.

 Though he had not given any thought to where a
creature like that might live, the place in which he found
himself surprised him. The basic architecture proved this
place to have been part of the temple since its construc-
tion. Thick stone pillars supported the ceiling, and hang-
ing oil lamps provided dim balls of illumination within the
cavernous room. The dry, dusty air made theGonkhang
feel more like a crypt than place of worship, yet Coyote
still felt the place once deserved reverence and respect.

 Throughout the room, Coyote saw hundreds upon
hundreds of tiny tableaux arranged on shelves and tables.
Some of the tables were little more than rectangular boxes
filled with sand and rocks that had been molded into
rolling landscapes. On these Coyote saw vast armies of
tiny figures arrayed in battle lines, as if frozen in some
tangible holograph on the eve of battle.

 Moving through the room in silence, Coyote recognized
some of the armies that had been painstakingly rendered
in miniature. Blue and gray forces vied for supremacy in
a battle he guessed had taken place during the American
Civil War. Brightly colored troops from a Napoleonic
conflict dominated another shrunken battlefield. What
could have been the bold Spartans bedeviling the Persians
at Thermopolae appeared at his left and scale model of
Stalingrad’s tractor factory appeared on his right.

 Walking deeper and deeper into theGonkhang, he saw
many more battles and discovered he recognized few of
them. Troops had been painted with strange colors, and
their shapes had been modified so they no longer re-
sembled any creature he could recognize. While part of
him wanted to dismiss these new displays as fantasy
encounters, the adherence to detail in the creation of the
armies and the care with which they had been laid out told
him that they were every bit as real as the conflicts he
recognized.

 As he moved past huge conflagrations featuring giant
robots and skirmishes between hordes of dinosaurian
combatants, a shiver ran down his spine.These fights
must have taken place in other dimensions. The scale of
destruction is unimaginable.

 A yellow corona surrounded the Yidam’s cloaked
figure. Coyote found himself approaching the creature
from behind, but somehow he knew the Yidam was aware
of his presence. Still, the monster kept his head down and
continued to work on something sitting on the table before
him. Getting closer, Coyote saw several lines of shiny
metal figures waiting to be painted and realized what the
Yidam was doing.

 Coyote stopped. “What are you?”

 The Yidam half-turned in his chair and raised the wire-
rimmed glasses up onto his forehead. “You really mean to
ask whatwas I, for this work is not that which a Yidam
could accomplish. Iwas a military officer, a tactician and
a historian.”

 Coyote nodded slowly. “I can see that. I recognize some
of these battles, but not others. I know you can travel
through the dimensions. These others took place there?”

 “Other places, other times.” The Yidam removed the
glasses and set them on the table. “I found in myself a
fascination with conflict, and I became well known among

 my peers as a brilliant theoretician. I studied everything I
could about war and, eventually, I came to develop a
comprehensive theory of war that turned previous admi-
ration into scorn.”

 Coyote took a step backward as the Yidam stood. “You
saw a common element in wars, or those things that
triggered them? You saw something that you could not
explain.”

 The oil lamps’ light stained the Yidam’s tusks a dull
yellow. “Two things really, but they were related. The first
was a spark of insanity that started conflicts. It takes one
of two forms: an unreasoning confidence in the assurance
of total victory or the unwavering conviction that unseen
enemies will destroy you if you do not strike out first. The
second thing proved more disturbing to me, and that was
the transformation of perfectly normal and sane individu-
als into savages bent on creating as much pain and horror
and suffering as possible.”

 “And, like Mong, in this you saw a Dark Lord?” Coyote
realized he’d unconsciously balled his fists, so he forced
them open. “Yet when you tried to explain what you had
seen, you had no evidence, and no one would believe your
unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.”

 The Yidam nodded. “When I learned of a mission to
another star—your star—my wife and I volunteered. I had
to learn if there were other races in other star systems, and
if they were suffering the depredations of Dark Lords as
well, or if they were free of such evil influences.

 “It turns out I was correct in suspecting that a Dark Lord
was working here.” His red eyes narrowed to bloody
crescents. “I was mistaken in bringing my family into
danger.”

 Coyote tugged at the hem of his left glove. “You said I
meant to ask what you had been. Now I ask my original
question again: What are you?”

 The Yidam smiled most grimly and his voice lowered.
”I am now Kanggenpo’s Yidam.” His taloned feet spread
out as he sank into a fighting stance. “And if you are still
a creature of Fiddleback, I will be your death.”

 Sinclair MacNeal raised his hand and smiled semi-
benignly at the instructor standing in his little study group.
”Ms. Markgraf, I’m not doubting what you’re telling us
about how the United States government shot down and
recovered a Gray UFO off Long Island in 1989, but I
question the logic of believing in it having happened. If
you’ll follow me, you’ve told us that James Forrestal,
secretary of Defense for the US, was one of the first
abductees and that he was later killed by the CIA before
he could go public with the information about the Grays.
That means, especially with the increasing number of
abductions going on in the 1980s, that the government
knew they were powerless to stop the Grays, right?”

 The matronly Aryan woman rested her hands on her
hips. “So, what is your point, Mr. MacNeal?”

 “Well, ma’am, if I knew someone could kidnap me or
my family or my friends and really mess them up, and that
I would be powerless to prevent the kidnapping and
unable to help them out later, and I am going to piss that
someone off?” Sin glanced across the circle at the
thoughtful Japanese youth sitting there. “I mean, I under-
stand a ruler’s desire to keep his people safe, but there is
no logic in shooting an alien craft when retribution is likely
to come quickly and be nasty.”

 Ms. Markgraf smiled confidently. “Perhaps the presi-
dent at the time had already been kidnapped and im-
planted. Perhaps he was acting under the orders of the
Grays.”

 “Excuse me, Ms. Markgraf,” Ryuhito began as he
leaned forward, “but there is no logic to the Grays ordering
humans to shoot down a Gray ship. Even if a Gray leader
wanted the commander of that craft dead, the wisdom in
showing humanity it possessed the technology necessary
to shoot down one of their craft must be questioned.”

 “But, Highness, you and Mr. MacNeal continue to make
the error of viewing the Grays while using human logic.
They think in an utterly alien pattern, one that makes little
sense to us.”

 Ryuhito nodded sharply. “This is apparent, Ms. Markgraf,
because your explanation of their motives is utterly
without logic. At the same time you claim we shot down
a people possessing crafts capable of spanning the gulf
between stars, humans were beginning the successful use
of genetic therapy to combat congenital defects. You
claim the Grays came here to steal our genetic material
to replenish their own deteriorating DNA, but the chances
of such an exchange working are miniscule. Moreover,
the level of technology needed for them to travel here and
determine that our DNA was harvestable and useful to
them is well beyond that level needed to solve the
problems for which they were going to steal from us.”

 Sin nodded and leaped into the fray. “Another thing,
Ms. Markgraf, you’ve said we had high-tech weapons
being developed to take out that alien craft. Ithink you said
one was a sound-based weapon developed under the
codename JOSHUA. You said it was used to shoot down
the Long Island UFO, yet there is no record of that same
weapon being used in the Gulf War with Iraq, or in any
conflict, for that matter.”

 Looking flustered, the large woman fingered the whistle
hanging around her neck on a yellow cord, “It only works
on Grays.”

 “Bah, nonsense.” Ryuhito imperiously waved away her
explanation. “JOSHUA was a weapon that concentrated
sound waves. That technology has been used for the past
25 years for ultrasound scans and to pulverize kidney
stones. High and sharp sounds have been employed in
various forms for crowd control. Repetitious playing of
simple rock ‘n’ roll records were enough to drive Manuel
Noriega from the Papal Nuncio during the American
invasion of Panama. What works on kidney stones would
work on bunkers, and Saddam Hussein was not that
different from Noriega. If the United States had possessed
such power in 1989, they would have used it in 1991.”

 “Well, well...” Ms. Markgraf wiped her forehead on the
short sleeve of her gray T-shirt. “I think these are good
questions, and you should pose them to Mr. El-Leichter.
It is time for you to break anyway and dress for dinner, so
let us leave things that way until later.”

 Sin followed her gaze as she looked up at the figure
standing in the picture window overlooking the large
training arena. Arrigo El-Leichter waved benevolently at
her and the study circle sitting in the middle of the
AstroTurf field. He nodded at her, then gestured as if to
urge her to continue.

 Ms. Markgraf swallowed audibly, then licked sweat
from her upper lip. “As I said, you will be dismissed.” She
raised the whistle toward her lips and gave them a short
blast that lacked the sadistic intensity of earlier in the day.
”Give me four laps, then go to your rooms. I will see you
this evening, and you will have answers then.”

 Sin glanced up again at El-Leichter and, despite the
distance, saw a self-satisfied smile on the man’s face.
Either Markgraf did something very wrong, and earned

 our group as the punishment, or we are being set up to
feel superior. Perhaps both. He increased his speed a
bit to catch up slowly with Ryuhito. At least they’re not
impressing the emperor’s grandson, yet. And a bit part
of me hopes I’m not there to see what they will do to
impress him.

 Arrigo El-Leichter turned from the window and walked
over to his XR-8500 desk. His left index finger stabbed
the curtain icon on the LCD screen, and the curtains
slid closed. He brought his hand down to another icon
and hit it.

 “Yes, sir?” asked the disembodied voice of his secre-
tary.

 “Janny, dear, I will leave from here directly for the
dinner tonight. You can finish up now, then go off home.
Please set the phones up so I won’t be disturbed.”

 “Yes, sir.” An electronic hum filled the air as the woman
hesitated. “Does that include your wife’s private line?”

 Arrigo’s nostrils flared for a moment, then he regained
control. “Yes, Janny, it does. Call Raoul and tell him I don’t
think it is necessary for my wife to attend me tonight. And,
Janny, prepare yourself because you will join me for
dinner tonight.”

 “Yes, sir! Thank you, Mr. El-Leichter.

 “Ari from now on, Janny.”

 “Yes, Ari.”

 The tall man punched the lockout button on his desk-
top. Locks on the doors and windows snapped shut, then
the surface of the desk changed. A darkness swallowed
the normal icons on it and replaced them with strange
sigils and images that appeared to be the stuff of night-
mares. His hand drifted above all of them, then he touched
a spot on the screen that had no visible icon on it at all.

 The glass-panel doors on the centermost, floor-to-

 ceiling bookcase opposite his desk closed and locked
tight. The top of it tipped toward the floor and, like a
Murphy bed, the whole case rotated toward the ground.
Numerous dark cables snaked from a hidden area behind
it and might have appeared, had Arrigo ever allowed a
casual observer into the room, to be electrical lines. He
knew this was because, in their current dormant state,
they looked black, exactly like most power cords.

 As the bookcase touched down and locked into posi-
tion on the floor, the substance clinging to the back of it
quivered. Arrigo recalled thinking of it as black Jell-O
when he first saw it, but that opinion had been modified by
years of contact with it. At its heart he saw a green glow
that began to pulse sluggishly. Ghostly green lights shot
off through it, backlighting fibrous structures in the slowly
swelling matrix. The cables thickened and, as they did,
began to glow with jade energy.

 As the green light began to pump faster, the glossy goo
shifted shape. Sharply pointed things began to poke up
like skeletal fingers. They never managed to pierce the
gangrenous gelatin. Instead, it spread out between them
like fleshy webbing, and that webbing, as it thinned to
translucency, revealed the connective tissues binding the
tall spires together into a bizarre, slime-laden skeletal
hand.

 Arrigo licked his dry lips and tried to tell himself he had
nothing to fear, this time. Removing his clothes, he
assured himself he had done well. He had done his
master’s bidding and even exceeded it. His master would
be proud. He knew it, and he knew he would be rewarded.

 He stepped forward and lowered his right foot into the
ameboid mass. He fought the shiver that the first cold
touch always brought with it, but he failed. Deep down
inside he knew he was reacting to more than the tempera-
ture. Despite the way the goop pulled heat away from him,

 he began to perspire.

 Turning around slowly to face his desk, he lowered his
body onto the giant palm and pressed his spine against
the elongated middle finger. He let his head drift back until
he felttheooze’s cold kiss through his hair. He shifted once
to more comfortably accommodate his shrinking scro-
tum, then he raised his hands and crossed his arms across
his chest. Capping each shoulder with the opposite hand,
he closed his eyesand forced himself to breath normally.

 The throbbing began at the base of the chair, but
quickly started up through the middle finger. Inch by inch
it vibrated its way up his spine, and he found himself
shivering as it reached the middle of his shoulders. His
scalp began to itch as the vibration rattled his teeth. At that
point he clamped his jaw shut tight and concentrated on
breathing in and out of his nose. Like a horse snorting after
a gallop, Arrigo El-Leichter braced himself.

 Greenish sludge dripped languidly down over him from
above. A thick, choking mask poured over his face and
the fetid scent of decay filled his nose. He wanted to
scream, but he managed to keep his mouth shut. Tasting
that stuff, he knew, was the only thing worse than smelling
it. It filled his ears, then drenched his shoulders and clung
like honey to his chest. It coursed down his body to his
loins, then cascaded down over his legs.

 Once it had coated him completely, it became even
more turgid. His wife, having once discovered him in
communion with his master, had told her doctors he
looked trapped within a diseased placenta. The image
had not much pleased him, nor had the complication of
having to deal with her because of her discovery, but he
did acknowledge the accuracy of it.Through this I have
been born again into power.

 The membrane surrounding him palpated his body.
Two tubular tendrils shot up his nose and snaked their way

 down his windpipe to his lungs. He swallowed reflexively
against the sensation, but he much preferred it to the
burning in his lungs that they alleviated. The membrane
tightened slightly around his chest, and his lungs no
longer pumped.

 «What have you for me, my pet?»The telepathically
communicated question came not in words as much as
colors and scents and feelings blasted straight into his
brain.«Have you the godling you promized?»

 Arrigo tried to nod, but he did not possess the strength
needed to make the elastic membrane move.«Ihave him,
master, as I told you I would. IhavehiminanAlphagroup,
and he believes himself superior. He is impatient, and his
frustration will make him leap at what you offer.»

 «Exzellent, my pet»It felt as if something wonderful had
exploded in his brain. Intellectually, Arrigo knew his
master had just caused his pleasure centers to fire, but the
rest of him craved more and more.«What elze have you,
pet? I senze zomething elze.»

 Arrigo felt barely able to contain himself.« That Alpha
group has another who is as strong as Ryuhito. He comes
from America and has many corporate ties. He is a
security expert.»

 «Thiz one checkz complete? He iz not the one we lozt?»

 The human frowned.« No, this one is not Jaeger. He is
too short, if nothing else. I knew Jaeger well; this is not
him.»

 «You did not know Jaeger well enough. Who iz thiz
new toy?»

 «He is Sinclair MacNeal. His father owns Build-more in
Phoenix. He is here working for your Lorica Industries. He
left after a bad divorce and is vulnerable.»

 The distant laughter started gently and communicated
itself to Arrigo as a gentle vibration running through the
membrane. As it shifted in intensity and tenor, it grew to

 an uncomfortable tingle, as if he had grabbed an electrical
cord. Then the membrane began to twitch and writhe,
jabbing him with sharp edges and drumming directly
against his skull.

 «Have mercy, master!«

 «My merzy you have, cretin. Lorica waz mine until the
Witch lost it Jaeger is using it! Clearly, this MacNeal is
Jaeger’z agent. Jaeger haz hidden himzelffrom me and,
thereby, thinkz himzelf immune to my influenze. He will
learn the folly of that azzumption, and the man he has
plazed into my cuztody will zerve azthe bait that will lure
him out of hiding.»

 «Master, I will devise a program of torture to wrack the
most out of him, and that will attract Jaeger.» Arrigo
smiled at his own cleverness. «Ms. Markgrafwill be most
appreciative of a chance to avenge herself upon him.»

 The membrane at the top of his head rose up, then
twacked sharply down on his skull« Have you learned
nothing? If Jaeger choze him, he will be dangerouz. Kill
him and dizpoze of the body. Jaeger will know where he
waz, and he will come to zettle the zcore.»

 Arrigo shuddered as he remembered Jaeger and the
man’s skill and area of expertise.« Master, Jaeger was very
good at killing. Idonotrelish beingthefocusofhisanger.»

 «You dizappoint me, pet I reward loyalty. Yez, Jaeger
will come for you, but I will protect you. I will let you put
on a dizplay of power that will bring Jaeger back to me or
deztroy him. That demonstration will win me thegodling
az well, and with him belonging to me, there iz nothing
than can everztop me.»

 Sin and Ryuhito shared polite laughter over a very
poor joke made by another member of their study
circle. While all wearing the maroon and gray uniforms
provided by Galbro, everyone had seemed to Sin to be

 on a rough par. Gathered for dinner, on the other hand,
and wearing their own clothes, quality and sense made
itself readily apparent.

 Sin, dressing more to his role as a corporator than he
might otherwise, had chosen a pair of slacks with sus-
penders and a conservative shirt. At the last minute, he
added the wrist recorder that Lilith had given him because
he noticed Ryuhito also wore one of the devices. While the
imperial prince had been cordial during the study group
sessions, Sin had not really had a chance to speak
informally with him. He hoped that showing an interest in
the latest technological toys would make the prince open
up and see him as an ally.

 The two of them stood on the white crushed gravel that
paved the walkways and central area of the Khmer
Courtyard. Standing behind them, its stony smile un-
changing, a copy of theLokeshvara from Ankor Wat
formed the centerpiece of the whole courtyard. Sin saw a
circular line worked around the flat base on which he
stood, as if the head were placed on an elevator for raising
and lowering.

 “I wonder if they move it for volleyball games.”

 Ryuhito looked over at him and smiled. “Possibly,
though I think it more likely they shipped it in and loaded
it here from below.” He indicated the thick trees in the
courtyard. “Bringing it in, even by helicopter, would have
been difficult.”

 “Good point.” Sin ran his hand over the smooth stone.
”Nice copy.”

 “It would be, Sinclair, but it is an original. Good evening.”
Arrigo El-Leichter, wearing a more formal version of his
paramilitary uniform from Friday night, executed a slight
bow. He turned to the stunningly beautiful brunette beside
him and smiled. “May I present my executive secretary,
Janet Pigot.”

 Sin had to restrain himself from doing a double-take.
The tall, obviously self-assured woman with El-Leichter
bore no resemblance to the mental image he’d con-
structed from Kip’s description of her. Her smooth cheeks
bore no trace of childhood acne scars.As wonderful as
Miko might be for old Kip, there’s no way he would have
seen this woman more valuable as a secretary than asa
bedmate.

 Sin took her proffered hand and shook it. “I’m very
pleased to meet you. I know Kip Martin, and he asked to
be remembered to you if I saw you.”

 Janet’s smile broadened ever so slightly. “You are most
kind in relaying that, Mr. MacNeal. I will have to call Mr.
Martin and see how he is doing.”

 El-Leichter continued introductions around the circle,
and Sin noticed Ryuhito watching the Galbro leader. Sin
couldn’t read the prince’s face, but he suspected Ryuhito
was trying to assess how much truth there was behind
everything they had been taught in the two days of
seminars.If what his grandfather fears is true, Ryuhito
cares less about the source of any true power El-Leichter
possesses than Arrigo’s ability to share it with the prince.

 Before he could move around toward where Ryuhito
and El-Leichter were beginning to talk, Mr. Handy tapped
him on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Mr. MacNeal, but there
is an urgent call for you from a Ms. Acres. It came through
on one of our trunk lines, so I had it transferred to one of
the classrooms. If you will follow me.”

 Sin nodded.What could Lilith want? Has something
happened to Coyote? He looked up as Handy turned right
when he should have gone left. “I thought all the class-
rooms were over in the east wing.”

 “The basic ones are, sir.” Handy paused next to a
security door with a keypad beside it. “These are the
advanced classrooms and are closer. It will be faster, sir.”

 Sin nodded and tugged at his shirt sleeve, surrepti-
tiously activating the recorder on his wrist.Decode the
tones, and can figure out the combination. He smiled and
waved Handy on. The man punched the combination in
on the keypad, and the little redLCD on Sin’s recorder
flickered with each note it caught.

 “This way, sir.” Handy walked down a narrow corridor
and into the first doorway on the right. Sin followed him a
half-step behind and entered the room looking expect-
antly for a phone. What he found instead was Handy
pulling what looked a lot like his Beretta M92S from a desk
and jamming it into his ribs.

 “We found this when doing a security sweep just now,
Mr. MacNeal. Hiding it in the air conditioning vent was
good, but not good enough.” Handy motioned with the
gun for him to get his hands up. “Mr. El-Leichter says
you’re a Gray agent and that you have to die.”

 Sin took the extra half-second the Beretta’s double-
action required on the first trigger-pull to act. He made a
grab for the pistol as Handy’s finger tightened on the
trigger. His right hand clamped down on top of the gun and
jammed the slide back toward the hammer. The shell in
the chamber ejected up and into Handy’s face, startling
the Galbro man.

 Pushing the gun down and out of line with his body, Sin
kicked up with his left leg and caught Handy solidly in the
groin. The man groaned and sagged as Sin ripped the
pistol out of his hand. He used it to club the man down to
the ground, then held the gun on him and waited for him
to get back up.

 Handy lay still, and blood leaked from his scalp where
Sin had pistol-whipped him.Looks red. I guess he’s
human. Sin knelt beside him and flipped him over. A
quick search proved fruitless—Handy had no keys, no
money and no identification.

 “Okay, let me think for a moment.” Sin picked up the
live bullet on the floor, slipped the clip and replaced it. He
knew his cover had been blown, but he didn’t think having
entertained the emperor would be a shooting offense.I’ve
been straight up about everything else —the only decep-
tions have come concerning a wife and my middle initial.
No one could know I’m working for Coyote, and that
wouldn’t concern Galbro anyway.

 Suddenly, as he crossed to the doorway, it hit him.
”Holy shit! Galbroisthe place Coyote sent me to find. That
means this is a finishing school for assassins, among other
things, and that means...”That means I wish I had more
than 14 bullets.

 Sin looked out into the hallway and saw it was all clear.
He stepped out into it and casually walked toward the far
end. He slapped the clip home, then, holding his arms
across his chest, he half-hid the Beretta. Moving down the
corridor, he tried to remember the general layout of the
Galbro Institute.This direction should get me close to the
front. With any luck.

 At the far end of the secured corridor, he entered a
secretarial office full of desks with covered typewriters and
retro-styled blocky, black phones. Except for a man in
overalls spreading tools all over the desk, the room was
empty. The man looked up as Sin came through the
security door, but Sin just nodded at him and continued
on his way.

 “Wait a minute, buddy, what are you doing here?”

 “I’m on an errand for Mr. El-Leichter,” Sin gave him a
smile. “Bitch, isn’t it? Me doing errands and you wrestling
with that Migoyan typer while he’s out dining with the
customers.”

 “You got that right. These things never quite work right
when they’re switched from Cyrillic—least they could
have done was buy Estonian, you know?” The man

 wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “Don’t mind El-Leichter
chatting up the folks that pay our wages, but spending a
bit to get some Smith-Coronas or Sonys in here would
make my life easier.”

 Getting out of here alive would do the same to my life.
Sin just shrugged and kept on straight down the center
aisle toward the glass double doors at the room’s far end.
”That’s true, but then they’d just find something else for
you to do, eh?”

 “You got that right, dammit.” The man smiled. “Have
a good day. Don’t let the Grays get you.”

 Too late!Two uniformed security officers laughed as
they pushed their way through the doors. One had a
rubberized black body bag slung over his shoulder and
held his AKM by the pistol-grip. The other had his
automatic rifle dangling from his shoulder by the sling.
Both stopped dead in theirtracks as they realized the man
they’d come to carry off was more ambulatory than he
had any right to be.

 Sin brought the Beretta around and clicked the safety
down with his thumb. He jerked the trigger through the first
double-action around, not caring for finesse because he
knew, at the short range, he couldn’t miss. The first round
hit the man with the body bag in the shoulder and the
second punched through his chest right below the ribs.

 Before the shell casing had hit the floor, Sin shifted his
gun to cover the second man. The Galbro guard dove
behind a secretary’s desk, and Sin heard the sound of the
AKM’s charging lever being pulled back. Having neither
the time or inclination for a shoot-out with an automatic
weapon at point-blank range, he dropped to one knee and
triggered a three-shot volley that punched through the
desk’s lower edge. The second bullet started a scream
that the third one ended, and Sin sprinted from the office.

 The second he hit the hallway he wanted to kick himself

 for not grabbing at least one of the AKMs. He hesitated for
a moment and debated going back, but hearing shouts
from both ends of the corridor prompted a different course
of action. Turning to his left, he planted a kick above the
lock of an office door.

 The door jamb splintered as his kick drove the deadbolt
back through it, and he found himself in a small room with
a conference table and four chairs. He instantly knew the
Formica-topped table wouldn’t offer him any cover, but
that mattered not at all. Above the four-foot high, exterior
cinderblock wall, tall windows offered him an easy out.
One of the chairs went sailing through glass, then he
leaped up on the table and out through the hole.

 Nuts, this was a mistake!Sinlanded in a crouch on the
crushed stone paving a garden patio. Forty feet across at
the widest point, it had a 12-foot-tall cinderblock wall
between him and freedom. Little jungle oases and gur-
gling streams combined with patio furniture to make the
place seem relaxing, but it did nothing for Sin. Aside from
a big brick barbeque to his right, the place offered little by
way of cover.

 A commanding shout from the conference room he’d
just left sent him into a long, diving roll to the barbeque.
AKM bullets nibbled away at the whitewashed and soot-
stained construction, singing metallically as they rico-
cheted off the cast-iron grill. He heard other bullets whiz
past and saw them chip bits and pieces off the Galbro wall
backstopping him.

 Putting his back against the bricks, he pulled his knees
up and licked the sweat off his upper lip. You’ve done it
now. You’ve got 20 feet to a wall that, if you’re lucky, you
can grab the top of with a running start. Arrayed against
you, you haveahandfulofmen with automatic weapons.
They probably have radios and are even now calling in
fire support

 Twisting around to lie flat on his belly, Sin worked his
way around to the far edge of the barbeque. The guards
continued to concentrate their fire four feet to his left,
directing it at the corner around which he had disap-
peared. A quick glance confirmed the shooters were
taking turns keeping their heads down, and they were
getting sloppy while doing it.

 Popping up tohis knees, he snapped off two shots at the
man framed in the window. The first bullet hit the window
sill and sprayed lead fragments into the room. The other
hit the standing guard in the neck. It ripped a hole through
his carotid artery, allowing blood to geyser out as the man
pitched backward and out of sight.

 Sin tossed himself forward onto his stomach and
started working backward. As he did so, he glanced back
behind himself, then forward again. He brought his gaze
up to sweep the edge of the wall just as another of the
Galbro guards gained the top of it, crouched and pointed
her AKM at him.

 Their fingers tightened on triggers at the same moment.
Sin’s first shot hit the wall about a foot below her, but the
second blew through her right thigh. The third hit the
magazine on her AKM and skipped down to punch
through her stomach. She toppled back off the wall, her
gun’s flaming muzzle making an arc through the evening
sky.

 Her aim had likewise started low, but the automatic
rifle’s recoil walked the line of fire right across his legs.
Only one bullet hit, and Sin screamed as it shattered his
shinbone.Minor wound, you can survive it! he told
himself in between the waves of pain rippling up his spine
and into his brain. In their trough, he found his whole lower
body had gone numb.

 Shit. Oh, shit.He grit his teeth against the pain and
watched the dark stain spreading across his pant leg.Five

 bullets left, an infinite number of guards, a hole in my leg
anda wallthatmightas well be a mile high. He swallowed
hard and tasted fear in his suddenly dry mouth. It can’tget
worse.

 From the Galbro building he heard Mr. Handy shouting
orders. “Get that bunkerbuster over here and use a high-
explosive round. He’s hunkered down behind that
barbeque. That’s where he’s chosen to die, so roast him.”

 The echoes of distant malevolent laughter shook Rajani
awake. Instantly, one of Hal’s half-jest warnings about
earthquakes sprang to mind, and she rolled off her bed
and stumbled to a doorway. Bracing herself halfway in
and out of the bathroom’s door frame, she felt a sharp pain
in the palm of her left hand. Slumping to the right, she
opened her hand saw blue-black blood welling up around
a pair of gold cufflinks.

 She slid down the door jamb to the floor and shifted the
pieces of jewelry to her right hand. She sucked at the blood
from the wound, then looked at it again.Little cut. She
concentrated, and the hole sealed itself over. She smiled
and stood again, tugging the fabric of her one-piece
bathing-suit back down to cover the sides of her buttocks.

 Hal had asked her to stay behind in the hotel, ostensibly
to answer the phone if Sinclair MacNeal decided to return
any of the calls for him. Hal himself went out to help the
Daizaimoku Ospreys in a workout—firming up their
cover—while Bat took Natch with him to prowl the Tokyo
underworld. Jytte had locked herself away in her room
with all sorts of electronic equipment, and Rajani had been
given strict orders not to disturb her.

 Tired of staring at the phone for hours, she arranged for
her calls to be transferred down to the hotel’s pool. As it

 was early on Sunday evening, she had the pool all to
herself and swam laps to burn off the frustration she felt.
She had left her stasis tube to warn Coyote of the danger
from Fiddleback, but she found herself unable to get that
message to him. While she knew she was unsuited to any
of the jobs the other members of Coyote’s cadre had
undertaken, the fact that she was left behind angered her.

 Feeling exhausted, she returned to her room and fell
asleep with Sinclair’s cufflinks in her hand. Sitting down
again on the edge of the bed, she closed her hands on
them and opened her mind.«Please, Sinclair, call me.»

 She looked at the phone expectantly, but she knew that
without a solid clue as to where he was, the chances of her
message getting anywhere close to him was nil. She
concentrated and listened for the echoes of her message,
then let her mind drift out and, in imitation of the crystalline
seeker drones, she tried to match the sensations in the
cufflinks with those of a person in Tokyo’s concrete heart.

 She did not find Sinclair, but another message blasted
through her brain for agonizing seconds before she swung
her defenses into place. She recognized the thought
patterns instantly and knew it had been his laughter that
so rudely woke her up.Fiddleback is here! Worse yet, the
frggment of message she got from him was tinged with
Sinclair’s aura: “Kill him, and dispose of the body.”

 She closed her eyes and instantly willed herself to look
at things from an empathic point of view. The walls
surrounding her exploded outward, and her viewpoint
rose like a rocket through the roof of the hotel. Tokyo
became reduced into a neon vector-graphic maze with
millions and millions of glowing lights to mark every living
creature in it.

 From above and behind her she saw bolt after bolt of
green energy lancing down into a glowing malachite
sphere in the heart of the island in Tokyo Bay. She looked

 back up to the energy’s source and saw a shiny black
pearl with a fiery green corona surrounding it. A hot green
spot whirled through the middle of it, flashing out the
beams that shot down into the city.

 Looking at it, she saw a companion sphere halfway
across the sky from it, then another above it and another
below it. Barely visible against the black sky, she caught
the faint outline of an oval, and she suddenly realized the
spheres were eyes and the oval a head.

 A weak green signal from below rose up to the image
of Fiddleback, then the monster’s icon vanished. Looking
back toward the island, she saw the green sphere begin to
dull. As its color faded, she saw a light that matched the
cufflinks.Sinclair isthere, and they are going to kill him.

 Fighting the wrenching sensation of nausea, she forced
herself back into her body. She tugged a pair of jeans on,
stepped into some sneakers and darted out of her room
without giving thought to calling the others or even taking
the new leather jacket Natch had talked her into buying.
She hit the button summoning the elevator, but after
waiting impatiently for 15 seconds, she took the stairs and
raced down five floors to the street level.

 Dashing through the lobby, she turned sideways and
squeezed through the slowly opening automatic glass
doors. A liveried doorman stared at her with surprise on
his face, then composed himself. He turned and pointed
to a taxi, then summoned it when Rajani nodded.

 The taxi pulled up beside her, and the doors slid open
on a cushion of air. The little green light on the dashboard
turned red as she climbed in. From the back seat she
pointed out toward the bay. That way, the island, go!”

 The old driver look at her, then off where she was
pointing.“Kimpunshima, hai? “

 “Go, go!” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a
handful of crumpled yen-notes and dolmarks and threw

 them down into his lap. “Go!”

 She barely noticed the wave of happiness pouring off
the man as the taxi lurched forward. She didn’t hear the
squeal of rubber as he took off, nor did she feel the beaded
seatcovers as the G-forces pressed her back into the seat.
The garish neon lights strobing past made no impression
on her because she had retreated deep inside and had
deadened her external senses to concentrate on the
cufflinks and their connection to Sinclair MacNeal.

 Holding them in her hands, and pressing her hands tight
between her knees, she focused her consciousness down
and pushed it through the cufflinks and out again. As she
did so, she visualized an ethereal thread winding aimlessly
through the city. Shooting energy into it, she brightened
it and forced it to become more substantial. Like an empty
hose with water being pumped through it, the thread
plumped and straightened out.

 Filling it full, she made contact.

 At once she felt elated and frustrated. The link worked
to let her know where he was and what he was feeling, but
she could not communicate directly with him. She re-
membered one time when Dr. Chandra had showed her
how to build a telephone with two paper cups, two buttons
and string. While the makeshift device did transmit sound,
it was not sturdy enough for serious communication.

 At least he’s safe right now!She took heart in that and
anchored her end of the link in the back of her mind.
Opening her eyes, she looked out and, between shoreline
warehouses, saw the brooding island that dominated the
harbor. “There!”

 “Hai, Kimpunshima, hai.” The driver steered his hack
to the right, cutting off a lane of traffic and popped down
a side street. Turning to the left, he raced through rows of
warehouses. He deftly dodged weathered crates and
trashpiles. All the while he laughed aloud and kept up a

 running commentary of which Rajani caught little and
understood even less.

 A feeling of doubt, of hesitant confusion, shot down the
link. Too little information came through for her to deci-
pher it, but she did pick out the image of a telephone.Yes,
call. Then it struck her that even if he did call, there would
be no one there to answer it.

 She pounded her fist on the top of the front seat. “Faster,
faster.”

 The cab took a right on two wheels and merged via the
shoulder lane onto the Kimpunshima bridge. Tall sodium
lamps sank the whole bridge into a pinkish-gray. The
cabbie shouted curses at other drivers and swerved wildly
in and out of traffic. Finally, he broke clear of the pack and
punched the accelerator. Reaching the far end of the
bridge, he hit his brakes enough to bring his speed back
into the low hundreds of kilometers per hour and steered
into the heart of Kimpunshima.

 To Rajani, the only difference between the island and
the city of Tokyo itself was the intensity of feelings she had
coming through the link.Danger!She slapped the passen-
ger-side window. “This way! We’re close now. Hurry!”

 The driver dutifully took the next right and came to a
screeching halt as the dozen members of abosozoku
biker gang ran their big American motorcycles around in
a circle in the middle of the street. Clad in black leather and
chromed chains, they called derisively to pedestrians and
brandished chains to threaten the cars they had stopped.

 The sensation of fear sizzling down the link nearly
overwhelmed Rajani. She tore at the door handle and
opened the cab’s rear door just in time to flatten one of the
bikers. Stepping on the stunned man’s chest, she vaulted
from the cab and ran down the street. She heard people
yelling at her and the sound of motorcycle engines being
gunned, but they meant nothing as fear and surprise

 invaded her through the link.

 Running as fast as she could, Rajani cut through alleys
and vaulted fences. She chose her path unconsciously,
letting the growing strength of the link reel her in. Through
it she gained a sense of water, so she cut toward the
shoreline. As she came out of an alley and into the grassy
wedge of a park, she saw a jeeplike security vehicle pull
up beside a cinderblock wall.

 A woman got out of the vehicle with a rifle in hand and
climbed up onto the hood. From there she stepped onto
the roof, then jumped over to the top of the wall. Rajani
heard gunshots, then saw the woman crouch and bring
what the Blood Crips had shown her to be an AKM up to
her shoulder.

 “Sinclair!” she screamed as foot-long flames shot from
the automatic rifle’s muzzle. Rajani saw a secondary
spark, then the woman flew back off the wall. She landed
hard on the car’s roof, then bounced off and lay dead in the
street.He got her!

 The moment of triumph Rajani felt in that died as shock
and pain crashed in on her through the link.It pounded at
her. It would have driven her to her knees, but she caught
herself on the security vehicle open doorway. Despair and
resignation flowed through the link like blood through a
sliced artery in the pain’s wake.«No, I won’t let you die!»

 Rajani scooped up the AKM and cleared the damaged
clip. She picked another one up from the ground where
they had spilled from the woman’s ammo pouch and
jammed it home. Cranking the charging lever back and
letting it snap forward, she leaped up onto the hood,
clambered onto the roof, then made the short leap to the
cinderblock wall.

 Gunsmoke filled the courtyard below her. Off to her left,
she saw a blocky mass of bricks and Sinclair MacNeal.
Opposing him, nestled in an office building, she saw four

 men. One, radiating confidence like heat pouring from a
bonfire, sighted down the thick tube he had resting on the
windowsill.

 “Clear!” he yelled. “I’m going to smoke the bastard!”

 Clutching the gun at waist level the way the Blood Crips
had done when talking about their combats, Rajani
yanked back on the trigger. Still selected for fully auto-
matic fire, the AKM kicked out all 30 of the bullets loaded
in the clip. Impressive muzzle flashes lit the patio as the
hail of bullets raked their way through the unbroken panes
in the conference room window.

 All the field stripping and dry firing she’d done with the
Blood Crips hadn’t prepared her for recoil. The AKM’s
muzzle tracked up through the sky and twisted her around
the right, flinging her off the wall. Crashing onto her back
on the vehicle’s roof, she somersaulted over her head and
landed hard on the ground. Her head smacked the
sidewalk and the smoking AKM bounced off toward the
rear of the vehicle.

 Stars burst in front of her eyes, then a secondary
explosion ripped through her, complete with thunder and
smoke. A red fireball shot into the air and transformed
itself into a greasy black cloud, then chunks of debris
started pelting her and the jeep. The windscreen cracked
as half a cinderblock punched through it. Smaller pieces
of concrete pinged and clinked off the vehicle, then a
hissing sand-rain condensed out of the smoke and splashed
gritty sheets over her.

 Rajani shook her head and rolled over onto her stom-
ach. Pushing off the ground, she stood and leaned heavily
against the jeep. Two more gunshots prompted her to
duck, then she saw the figure of a man limping and firing
back through the hole. She started to run toward him, then
stopped instantly as he shifted the gun to cover her.

 “Who the hell are you?”

 “I am Rajani.” She dug in her pocket and held her left
hand out to him. “I have your cufflinks.”

 “Hell of a valet service the hotel has.” He snarled as he
hopped toward the jeep and leaned on the hood. “Can you
drive? No, wait, I saw you shoot.” He hopped around to the
driver side and slid into the driver’s seat, then bashed out
the rest of the windscreen. “Well? C’mon.”

 Rajani ran to the passenger side and tossed the
cinderblock clear of her seat. She barely settled into it
when Sinclair, letting his left leg hang out of the driver-side
opening, shifted into drive and stomped down on the
accelerator. “Don’t know who you are, but thank you. You
saved my life back there.”

 “I am here with Hal Garrett.” Rajani braced herself as
Sin swerved around a couple of bicycles. “We were
worried about you when you were not at your hotel.”

 Sin winced and pressed his head back onto the head-
rest. “So, you black-bagged my room and kept my
cufflinks for a prize?” His breath hissed out through
clenched teeth, and Rajani felt white-hot pain stab through
the link. “How’d you find me? I left no clues to where I was
going to be.”

 Rajani could sense, through Sin’s pain, that he was in
no shape to understand any explanation she would give
him. She also knew that he might black out at any second
and, given the speed they were traveling, that would be
dangerous. “This alley. Turn right and stop the car.”

 “Are you nuts?”

 “I found you, and I stopped them from killing you. Trust
me. Stop the car.”

 Reluctance pulsing through the link, he did as she
asked. “Now, stay there,” she commanded. Swinging out
of the jeep, she ran around through the twin headlight
cones and squatted down near his bloody shin. This may
hurt.”

 “You mean it might hurt worse?”

 With the gold nail on her right index finger she sliced
down through the fabric of his trousers, then peeled the
cloth back. The dark, meaty wound brimmed with half-
coagulated blood. She saw flecks of white in it, and she
thought most of them were little chips of stones.

 She started to reach around behind his leg, but Sin
shook his head. “There’s an exit wound, it’s through and
through, it feels like a lightning storm knotted up down
there.”

 Rajani looked up and made eye contact with him. She
caught his shock as he finally saw her slitted gold pupils.
Her eyes—they’re not natural!

 «As natural as yours are, Sinclair.»Rajani reinforced the
old link with him and pushed on through the stronger link.
As she had with Hal Garrett, she sent a message to
portions of his brain, spurring them into action to help him
heal. She also triggered the production of endorphic
painkillers to dull the throbbing from his leg. A wave of
contentment passed over him, causing her to smile as she
withdrew from his mind.

 Sin stared at her and blinked his eyes. “Lady, have you
any idea what you did?” He blushed and shook his head.
”Christ, you’re better than morphine.”

 “Is that good?”

 “In this case, that’s great.” Sin slid himself forward and
out of the jeep. “C’mon, they’ll be trackingthis thing. We’d
better abandon it.”

 Rajani frowned. “How do you know that?”

 “I don’t.” Sin winked at her. “But that’s what I’d be doing
if I were running their operation. And the two of us are
going to be damned conspicuous on the street.” He
limped overto a storm-drain grating. “You’ve got a suit on.
Do you swim?”

 “They have an Olympic-sized pool at the hotel.” She

 hooked a thumb through her suit’s shoulder strap. “I used
it today.”

 “Well, let’s go down into the hole then.” He pulled the
grate up and waved her toward the dark opening. “You
won’t get any gold for swimming down here, but chances
are you won’t get any lead, either.”

 Coyote stared at the Yidam as the creature reached up
and unfastened the gold cloak clasp at its throat. The
heavy, dark garment fell to the floor, for the first time
affording Coyote an unobstructed view of his opponent.
”My God, what are you?”

 The reason for the Yidam’s extraordinary height was
the second shoulder girdle and pair of arms located a foot
beneath the first pair. Set slightly back, the long, slender
arms ended in long-fingered hands capped with gold
talons, but they were not identical to the upper pair. They
did not have its bulging musculature, nor did they possess
the slender gold lines tracing from the talons up along the
arms and over the shoulders. Coyote also noticed similar
piping running from the gold claws on the creature’s feet
up its legs to the yak-hide loincloth and around to its back.

 Moving more swiftly than he could imagine anything
that size moving, the Yidam closed. Its upper hands
grabbed his wrists and pulled his arms out straight from
his sides. Lower jaw agape, its lower arms came up and
took hold of either side of his head. “You did not slay me
when you had the chance in Storm. Now I will see if you
are what you believe yourself to be.”

 Their eyes met, and Coyote recoiled as the Yidam’s
icepick consciousness pierced his brain. Coyote felt like

 a lock with a crude pick jammed into it. He tried to fight
him, but found himself unable to grapple with the alien
mind. Though powerless, Coyote tried to pull away from
the contact, but succeeded only in encysting part of his
conscious mind.

 The Yidam used no finesse to sort through his mind—
he just pounded on in. He sorted through memories like
a detective pulling all the clothes from a dresser drawer
and tossing them over his shoulder. Coyote watched as
the two months he could remember of his life were
examined and then discarded casually. It seemed to
Coyote that all he had done as Tycho Caine to thwart
Fiddleback in Phoenix only heightened the Yidam’s dis-
trust.

 As the claustrophobic memory of waking up in a body
bag enfolded Coyote, he felt the first slowing of the
Yidam’s probe. The creature hesitated as it came up
against a wall. Coyote knew this was the drug-induced
amnesia his predecessor had subjected him to.You even
anticipated something like this, he thought to himself in a
mental salute to the man who had made him into Coyote.

 «You expect a biochemical barrier to stopme?» The
Yidam’s contemptuous laughter echoed through Coyote’s
skull, making his brain feel like the clapper in a giant bell.
«Behold, your body betrays you.»

 Coyote suddenly saw his own mind as a complex,
three-dimensional network of interconnected neurons
and synapses. The blocked areas comprised an egg-
shaped area outlined in red. Each nexus point into that
area had a small, hard, red dot glowing on it. They pulsed
angrily like hot coals beneath the kiss of a bellows.

 Other areas of that neural net began to glow under the
Yidam’s direct influence. In turn, Coyote felt other parts of
his body respond and flood his bloodstream with hor-
mones and chemicals. As they coursed up into his brain,

 he watched the embers dull, then the first of them winked
out.

 Coyote screamed as the Yidam burst through that first
roadblock. Suddenly, instead of being trapped in the
small world comprised of two memory months, Coyote
emerged like a snake from an egg. He found himself in a
dark world that slowly expanded as the chemicals the
Yidam had started his body manufacturing dissolved the
barriers. The Yidam, preceding him and drawing him
along in his wake, gleefully threw memories at him.

 Like a spectator watching someone else, Coyote saw
who he had been in random snippets of his life. He saw
himself as a child studying detailed anatomical texts and
working with cadavers. He caught glimpses of martial arts
exercises in which human bones were substituted for the
wooden boards others would have been instructed to
break. He relived hours and hours spent in dim chemistry
labs preparing poisons and explosives.

 As each nexus opened up, Coyote rebuilt his cognitive
network. Cohesive bits of information linked up to form
new connections both within the previously sealed area
and out again to his more conscious memory. He did not
feel reincorporated with what and who he had been in the
past, and he took efforts to maintain that distance as more
bizarre and curious events sizzled through his mind.

 He watched himself study a victim through the tele-
scopic sight of a custom-built, .50-caliber sniper rifle. At
the same moment he realized he had built the weapon
himself and had hand-crafted the slug, he felt his right
index finger twitch. The woman’s head exploded like a
balloon filled with red oatmeal. In the emotions that
flickered past, he sought remorse or regret and he found
it, but only that he’d clearly wasted three grains of powder
in the shell that killed her.

 Coyote went cold as he realized he had to be a

 sociopathic personality. Yet the second he made that
judgment he rejected it because of the things he had done
since he became Coyote.A sociopath has no conscience
and thinks only of himself. An amnesiac, while possess-
ing no memory of his past, still operates within the bound
of his normal personality. It follows that I have something
of a conscience, a loyalty to something, that guides me
and that I was able to transfer over to Coyote and his
mission.

 The Yidam continued his ruthless sorting through
Coyote’s lifetime.«There is, Coyote, there is. I will find it,
and then you will see what you really are.» The Yidam
increased his pace, probing memories for bare millisec-
onds before discarding them.

 As the world of Coyote’s past swelled, he began to
visualize details in the darkness. Little stars began to glow
in the night sky, but a dim haze made it difficult to see all
of them. Below him, the world began to take shape. Off in
the distance he saw the great curve of China’s coast
outlined in gold. Beyond it, Korea’s daggerlike peninsula
stabbed down into the black ocean and toward the islands
of Japan.

 Coyote began to feel vibrations from the haze. He
realized it must have been the monks’ chanting about the
same time he saw he had centered himself above the
lamasery. He also knew, as he looked east again, that he
had spent most of his life in Japan. He quickly chided
himself because he had known that fact from the file his
predecessor had prepared on him, but now heknew it
and, somehow, that felt far more significant.

 Then, as the Yidam cried out triumphantly, Coyote saw
a green-ringed pulsar rising where the sun should have
been. As its burning pupil swept around, a bolt of light
impaled Japan. The pupil passed twice more, its pace
increasing, then it spun up to the point where it became

 a green band encircling the sphere’s oasis.

 Suddenly, a glowing green plane of light shot out and
sliced cleanly through the haze. Coyote felt rather than
heard faint screams, then the light hit him and collapsed
into a single, sustained needle.It pinned him in space like
an insect in a collection, leaving him powerless.«My pet,
my pet, you have been returned to me.» A chittering hum
filled his mind, and he felt the muscles of his face contract
into a smile.«And you brought me a prezent!»

 The Yidam struggled against the energy being pro-
jected into Coyote like a game fish fighting a fishing line.
He had searched for a connection to Fiddleback and
found it, then realized too late that the Dark Lord had
anticipated this type of foray into Coyote’s mind. As the
Yidam fought, his frustration bled into the link, and Coyote
felt Fiddleback’s delight in the Yidam’s helplessness.

 Coyote realized that Fiddleback had intended the trap
to catch another Dark Lord and that it should have
swallowed the Yidam whole.«Izthatyou, Vikram?DidInot
deztroyyou when I had your wife? After all thiz time, can
it be you?»

 «Living proof you do not always win.»

 «I am entropy, Vikram. I always win. Mozt of your
comradez welcomed me when I pozzezzed them. Your
wife mozt azzuredly among them. Come to me.»

 The Yidam continued his fight.« Iam not foryou, beast.
Were you as strong as you imagine yourself, you would
have destroyed me by now.»

 Coyote sensed the Yidam’s bluff and desperation in the
link, and he bled it off into a red star that arced across the
sky. The rest of the message passed unadulterated
through the link like a gold spark and struck the black orb
in its heart. A bar of black cycled through the band, then
another gold spark raced back down the link.

 «Father?»

 «Rajani?»

 The Yidam’s return message blasted back too strong
for Coyote to control or affect in any way. It passed back
through the link as a ragged gold circlet. It struck the
sphere and filled the corona with gold highlights, then that
color drained away leaving a blue after-image in its wake.
Another black line and another appeared in the pulsar’s
band as the cycling slowed.

 The power in the link wavered for a second, giving
Coyote a chance to do more than act as an unwitting
conduit. He fused his revulsion with the past the Yidam
had shown him into an alloy with his conscious hatred of
Fiddleback. He infused it with his fury at having his mind
raped by the Yidam and his body being possessed by
Fiddleback and forged it all into a scarlet axe blade. He
chopped down into the link and felt a searing jolt of pain
blow the top off his head.

 He found himself stumbling back within the Yidam’s
chamber. He landed on his butt, then caught the Yidam
before he could hit the floor. Shaking his head to clear it,
Coyote flipped the Yidam over to his back, then folded the
cloak up into a pillow and placed it beneath the monster’s
head.

 The Yidam’s red eyes opened. “Thank you,” he whis-
pered hoarsely.

 “That was Fiddleback. I know that much. What hap-
pened? Who is Vikram?”

 The Yidam brushed aside his question and tried to get
up, but Coyote pinned him to the ground with a hand in the
middle of his chest. “No, damn you. You rip through my
mind without so much as a ‘by your leave’ and then ignore
me. Do you think I am Fiddleback’s minion?”

 The Yidam sank back and shook his head. “No. Were
you, the link never could have been severed. You are
powerful, which is doubtlessly why he chose you.”

 “Good. Then you know that I can be a powerful weapon
used against him. Answer my questions.”

 “There is no time.”

 “Give me the short form.” Coyote looked up as Mong
appeared in theGukhong. “Are we hidden again?”

 “Four men died, and 10 are being cared for in our
infirmary. They will not die in pain.” Mong knelt by the
Yidam. “We are reestablishing the wards and should be
difficult to find.”

 “Answers, I want them now.” His fists balled, Coyote
stood over both men.

 The Yidam reached up and grasped Mong’s shoulder
affectionately. “My wife studied religions the way I studied
war. Through the Dalai Lama, she was introduced to
Mong and he, in turn, instructed her in his faith. Though
she was barred from visiting this monastery because of
her sex, I was extended an invitation to take a retreat here.
I happened to be here when Fiddleback managed to
subvert the crew of the ship that had brought me here.”

 Coyote nodded. “Including your wife?”

 The Yidam closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded.
”Including her. Their subversion suddenly gave him a
beachhead on Earth, and that precipitated another Dark
Lord making a strike at him. During the time he was
preoccupied, I returned to the United States and made
arrangements with Dr. Chandra for the care of my daugh-
ter.”

 “You avoided possession by being here, I assume. How
did your daughter—Rajani is her name, isn’t it—escape
Fiddleback?”

 “I do not know for certain, but I assume Fiddleback was
looking for a specific mental pattern. TheCythera he got
instantly. My wife took more time, and my daughter, she
thinks enough like a human to be difficult to spot or
control.” The Yidam smiled weakly. “Did you know you

 humans have a very disorderly mind structure?”

 “Vast fortunes are made by people who try to help us
deal with that problem.” Coyote returned the smile.

 “Wehavetofindmydaughter.ShecanreadFiddleback.”

 “Read him?”

 “My meditations here helped me defend myself against
Fiddleback. She is better shielded against him than I am,
and if she is free of the stasis tube, she will be able to
eavesdrop on his thoughts. That’s why she was able to
piggyback a message to me through the link.” The
Yidam’s lower arms pushed him up into a sitting position.
”In stasis, she was able to meditate without outside
influences.

 “When I first came here, I was not that much different
than you or Mong.” His spare arms hugged his knees to
his chest. “Because I meditated here, the wishes, dreams
and beliefs of the monks over the past 25 years changed
me into the Yidam that was meant to guard them from evil
influences.”

 Coyote shivered and stood. “That’s some change.”

 “It is, but as the price to elude Fiddleback and his
influence, it is cheap.” Accepting Mong’s and Coyote’s
help, the Yidam pulled himself upright. “We must hurry
and find Rajani.”

 “Do you know where she is?”

 The Yidam nodded to Coyote. “In Japan and in dan-
ger.”

 Coyote winced. “Japan will take two days, maybe less
if I can get a helicopter in here.”

 “No, there is another way.” The Yidam looked at Mong
and the monk nodded. “Go, Coyote, and prepare yourself.
You have the skills you need to leave this place, and now
I will show you the way home.”

 Sin tugged the storm grate back into place in the street
above, then gingerly lowered himself down the steel-rung
ladder in the manhole wall. With his pistol tucked into the
waistband of his pants at the small of his back, he grabbed
the wet, greasy rungs with both hands. Standing only on
his right leg, he hopped down one rung, then shifted his
grip. Each jolting hop sent pain up through his left leg, but
he found the pain much less intense and decreasing
noticeably.

 He landed with a splash in the cylindrical tunnel.
”Rajani, right?”

 The woman nodded, her gold hair reduced to a dim
gray in the darkness. “Yes, Sinclair?”

 “Call me Sin.” He squinted and looked both up and
back along the tunnel. “I figure they’ll expect us to head
toward where these tunnels dump into the ocean. We
need to find a crosscut tunnel that will take us deeper into
Kimpunshima.”

 She pointed off in the direction she was facing. “You
mean like that one down there?”

 Sin saw nothing but blackness. “You can see in the
dark, too?”

 Rajani held a hand out to him, then looped his right arm
over her shoulder. Sin immediately felt the physical

 warmth she radiated. “The plants in here are biolumines-
cent in the ultraviolet range. Come on, I’ll help you.”

 “Okay.” Is there anything she can’t do? Not only does
shestaremein the eyes and start my leg feeling better, but
she popped a button in my brain that left me feeling better
than Erika ever did. And now she can see in the dark. Sin
glanced over at her. And didn’t I think I heard her voice in
my mind?

 He heard a chittering and immediately filled his left
hand with the Beretta. “Did you hear that?”

 She nodded. “Rats. Let me concentrate, and Ican make
certain they will leave us alone.” Sin would have made a
comment, but his right foot slipped in the slime at the
bottom of the cylinder. Rajani caught him and held him
upright. “Are you okay? I can clear the pain again.”

 “No, no, don’t do that.” Sin coughed lightly. “It does
deaden the pain, but, ah, you shouldn’t be doing that to
folks.”

 “What do you mean? I know it pleased you.”

 “Yeah, well, I need a clear head here, you know.” Sin
frowned because he got the distinct impression shedidn’t
know. “You’re rather unique, you know that?”

 She nodded solemnly. “I believe I am the onlyJes’da
ever born on your world.”

 Born on yourworld?Sin swallowed hard. He knew she
looked weird, and he wondered what kind of insanity it
took to do the body mods and tattoos she’d had done.
Especially the eyes.Now he knew: schizophrenia. “So,
you’re not from Earth?”

 “I just said I was.” She stopped. “We’re at the tunnel.
Away from the ocean, yes?”

 “Yes, away from the ocean.” Sin tested his left leg, and
the pain had subsided to a dull, tired ache. He started to
pull his arm from her shoulder, but she shivered. “Are you
cold?”

 “Yes, but this is something else.” She faltered a half-
step, then leaned heavily on him. “He’s still there.”

 He homed the pistol and held her up. “Who?”

 “Fiddleback.” Her head came up. “He’s here.”

 He heard the bubbling rush of water and felt a shiver run
through Rajani. He turned toward the sound and faced the
black tunnel behind him, but then the echoes shifted. He
tried to place his body between the sound and Rajani, but
couldn’t be sure what was out there and where it was.
”Help me, Rajani.”

 She mumbled something, but he missed it as the water
boiled around his legs. He heard it churning to a filthy froth
and felt the warm fluid flick up on his face and neck. Then
something tugged at his left pant leg. He felt a hunk of the
bloody cloth tear free, and something hard rasped against
his bare flesh. New pain started from where Rajani had
dulled the old pain, and Sin knew something had re-
opened the bullet wound.

 “Rajani! What is it?”

 She shook her head weakly, her hair brushing against
his neck. “Move. Go.”

 “I hope it doesn’ttrackby scent, because I’mbleeding.”
Great. Bleeding in a river of sewage that’s home to
something slithery! I should’ve let the rocket kill me.

 «No, Sinclair. That would have been bad.»

 “Rajani? Did you just say something?”

 «It comes again.»She leaned heavily against him, vainly
attempting to get him to turn around. His left hand
grabbed the waistband of her jeans to hold her up, and he
moved in the direction she wanted, but he could still see
nothing. In the back of his mind, like the clicking of a
Geiger counter approaching an atomic pile, a staticky
sound built.

 Something in the miasmic river made the gentle
thruppingsound of a fish striking at the surface. Sin

 recognized it as almost being normal, but it seemed louder
than it should have. The sound also ripped through the
tunnel like a serrated knife sawing through bone.

 Sin let Rajani steady herself against the tunnel wall,
freeing his left hand. “C’mon, thing. You and me.” He
grinned toward where he knew Rajani stood, “It lives in a
cesspit. How tough can it be?”

 “Very,” she whispered, “It is not from here.”

 “What?”

 «Fiddleback wants us dead.»

 Suddenly, a segmented serpentine form reared up
through the sludgy water. Mandibles clicked once, then
Sin cried out as something slashed across his chest.It
sliced through his shirt, suspenders and flesh, then with-
drew. With it went the mental static.

 Sin hissed and pressed his left hand over the cut.
”Proper tools to do a proper job.” Sin swallowed hard.
”Where is it, Rajani? If I can find it, I can kill it.”

 She said nothing, but he felt her hand on his shoulder
as he reached around and pulled the Beretta with his right
hand. His vision swam for a second, then he saw himself
drawing his gun.I’m seeing through her eyes! In an instant
the static pounded back into his brain and he felt fetid
water splash up and over him.

 What he saw disturbed him more than how he saw it.
The creature had risen up and pulled back like a cobra
preparing to strike. One of the two larger mandibles
dripped blood. Other smaller ones ringed the creature’s
mouth and clenched reflexively as if to rip great hunks of
flesh out of him. The composite eyes sat nestled deep in
a spiny, chitinous skull and glowed a dull green.

 Sin saw the viewpoint in his eyes crash toward his head
as Rajani integrated their views. He blinked, and Sin saw
through her eyes what his eyes were seeing as the
creature’s head drove forward. As it did so, the creature’s

 mouth flared open, its jaws bending it out into a hexagonal
shape.

 He stabbed his right hand straight at it, and the creature
engulfed his whole hand, gun and all. Sin felt the sting as
auxiliary mandibles chomped down on his wrist, but he
didn’t pull back or fight it. The creature’s eyes pulsed with
green fire, and the spiny antennae twiddled back and forth
as something inside the head bit down with achank!

 Sin’s finger tightened on the trigger. The bullet blew out
the back of its head and covered the wall behind it with
glistening bits of chitin. The hot gasses from the muzzle
plumped the jaws and pulled the pincers from Sin’s wrist
a second before the head shot back. It smacked the wall,
spattering it with more dark fluids, then the whole creature
slid beneath the sluggish river of effluent.

 “Bit off more than you could chew, eh?” Rajani’s sight
faded from his eyes, so Sin didn’t get a good look at the
deep scars on either side of the pistol’s slide. He turned
back toward her, saying, “Hey, the joke wasn’t that bad,”
when he saw her sag against the sewer wall. Hecaughther
and held her up out of the slime. “Hang in, kid. Rajani!”

 «Father?»he heard resound in his head.

 She went limp, and the world went black again.

 Sin looped his left arm around her slender waist, then
tucked his gun away. Scooping her up in his arms, he was
surprised at how little she weighed given her ability to hold
him up when he needed help. Even with her added weight,
his left leg felt pretty good, and his right wrist barely pained
him.

 The sheer insanity of his situation clamped down on
him like the creatures jaws had on his hand. He saw
himself as another might. There he stood, a beautiful and
exotic woman in his arms. Knee-deep in sewage, not a
bullet to his name, and the blood of some creature that
could have only come from a tabloid news story running

 down the wall of a tunnel, he saw himself like the hero of
American Ninja IX: Recomb Revenge.

 What was worse, to him, was that his particular mental
image of the moment almost made sense, because it only
took into consideration the cosmetic conditions. What
made it more bizarre was how Rajani had healed his leg
and spoken through his mind and let him use her eyes.
Part of him hoped the whole adventure was a nightmare
from which he could awaken, yet another part feared it
was some hallucination Galbro was forcing into his brain.

 Unfortunately, he decided, those two minority opinions
safely bracketed the truth. Coyote had invoked the name
Fiddleback to explain curious things that had happened
in Phoenix. Now, here, in the darkness beneath an artificial
island, another person had used the same name. And this
time Sin had ample proof that somethingvery strange
was truly happening.

 As suddenly as the creature had attacked him, Sin’s
worldview shifted. Instead of seeing everything he knew
as full and real, it all became like building facades on a
movie set. Where he had assumed incompetence or petty
jealousies as explanations for things going wrong, now he
entertained the possibility that a Fiddleback might have
been orchestrating disaster.

 In an instant he saw that further down that path lay
paranoia. He resisted, slowing his progress toward it, but
he did not wholly withdraw from it.Just because you’re
paranoid doesn’t mean there aren’tfolks out to get you.
He smiled to himself.And I knowthere are folks out to get
us, so I’d best get us out of here.

 Think, Sin, think.From a corporate security review
he’d done three years before, he knew Kimpunshima had
one manhole every 50 meters. He also remembered that
at its center there was an open, festival-like area that was
generally found packed with tourists at night. Splashing

 on into the darkness, he headed away from the ocean.
Forty manholes in, and I should be in that area. May have
to go a bit north, as well.

 Rajani’s eyes came open and glowed gold. She stared
at him for a second, then she blinked and the glow faded.
”Sin?”

 “Easy, kid, I’ve got you. You’re okay.” He smiled at her
even though he couldn’t see her. “I don’t know what that
was, but it’s gone now.”

 Her voice came in a weary whisper lacking even
enough strength to echo from the walls. “It was from
Fiddleback...one of his pets. He sent it to finish what they
tried to do with you earlier.”

 “Will he send another?”

 Her hair brushed against his left hand as she shook her
head. “He has been distracted.” She grabbed his left
shoulder. “Here...we have to go up here.”

 “What? There shouldn’t be anything here. It’s not far
enough.”

 “Up here.” She pointed up, and Sin saw a faint check-
erboard pattern above them. “I have friends up there.”

 “Can you stand?”

 “I think so.”

 He gently lowered her legs, but kept his left arm across
her back. She looped her arms around his neck and hung
on until she had her legs firmly beneath her. Sin smiled
and gave her a hug. “Good. Now for the hard part.”

 “Yes?”

 “I can’t see a bloody thing. Put my hands on the ladder.”

 She directed his hands to the metal ladder on the tunnel
wall. Unlike the other one, it was not constructed of metal
rebar rungs sunk into the concrete. This one felt to Sin like
the lower end of a fire escape that had been removed from
its original location and placed in the sewer. It shook a bit
as he mounted it, and, as he neared the grating above, he

 saw it was made of wood. That confirmed to him that the
opening was not an official one.

 He pushed open the grate and slipped up into the dark
basement. He felt so good about being out of the sewers
that he never paused to consider what sort of place would
want an open access point to the sewers in it.She says she
has friends here. He pulled Rajani up out of the hole, then
lowered the grate back into place.

 Letting her cling to his arm, he guided her up the narrow
wooden staircase. As he got near the top, he heard
raucous American music blaring through the door and
found the thick smoke of cigarettes killed the sewer stink
clinging to both of them.Good, a public place. “Almost
home, kid.”

 He pushed open the door and found himself in a dimly
lit, cracked-tile corridor.It led past two bathrooms to the
back of a smoke-choked bar. Sin swung his arm around
Rajani’s shoulder and threw her a wink. “Let’s look casual,
find your friends and go, okay?”

 She nodded and slipped her left arm around his waist.
”Okay.”

 From the amount of noise he heard in the corridor, Sin
had assumed the place would be packed wall to wall with
people. Stepping into the main room, he saw he’d equated
the bone-cracking volume of the sound system with a
need to compete with a crowd that didn’t exist. He knew
the folks who had been there were there recently because
their cigarettes still burned in ashtrays and the heads on
various beers were still going down.

 “Welcome to CaféMarie Celeste,“ he murmured.

 Aside from a couple of barely visible people speaking
in dark alcoves along the far wall, the last ofthebar’s patrons
were streaming out between two lines of jeeringbosozoku
gang members. He immediately steered Rajani toward
the door, willing to endure taunts and jibes to get out, but

 the gap closed down as they approached.

 “These are your friends?”

 Rajani shook her head.

 A smallish man with a gash on his shaved head
dropped his Lennon glasses down to the end of his nose
as he blocked their path.“Baka-da!”

 “What are you talking about?” Sin’s eyes narrowed.
”I’ve never seen you before, so how could I have done
something stupid?”

 The rat-faced man snarled at him. “Not you,yanki!The
mesudid.” His dark-eyed gaze shifted back and forth
between them. “Give her to me, and you won’t have
trouble.”

 “Namenna-yo!”Sin balled his fists. “This isn’t worth the
pain you’ll feel.” The little man, with his gang fanning out
behind him, looked more confident than Sin wanted to
see.

 Rajani moved away from him, then looked back toward
the bathroom. “Sin, look out!”

 Sin whirled and only caught part of the meaty punch
coming in at his head. It clipped him hard, striking sparks
into his vision. He felt his knees turn to water, and blood
began to drip from his nose. He braced himself to kiss the
floor, but he never hit it, and he couldn’t figure out why.

 Then he felt the pressure on his back and saw the arm
connected to the hand that had a massive amount of his
shirt in its grasp. He followed the leather-swathed arm as
it swelled on up into a body that looked big enough to be
two sumo wrestlers grafted together. The head on it had
flat, gray eyes and looked like it had grown up in a bucket
mold, with the short neck it sat on being wider than the any
part of the head.

 “Bukkoroshiteyaru!“The man holding him smiled with
a mouth full of brown, picket-fence teeth. He raised his left
fist. “I punch you until you die!”

 The fist started down but never connected. Halfway to
its target another arm reached over the biker’s shoulder,
and a hand closed around the fist. Muscles bunched on
this new arm, and bones cracked in the fist. The interlop-
ing hand then shoved down and mashed the broken hand
into a table top.

 With a twist of the arm, Bat spun the fat biker around
and smashed him in the mouth with an elbow, forcing him
to let Sin drop to the floor. Releasing the shattered fist, Bat
grabbed the big man around the back of his bull neck and
brought his head down to meet Bat’s rising knee. The
biker collapsed to the floor, moaning. Bat stomped down
on his outstretched right arm, snapping its bones cleanly,
then planted a hard kick in the man’s ribs.

 Smiling demonically Bat beckoned the other bikers
forward. “Themantoldyounottomess withhim. Nowyou
know why. C’mon, girls, I’m almost done with your friend,
and I ain’t even broke a sweat yet.”

 Natch stepped from one of the alcoves with a Beretta
automatic pointing toward the bikers. “Don’t worry, you
won’t suffer...much.”

 Bat took a step forward, and thebosozoku gang broke
running.

 Sin sat up and dabbed at the blood from his nose with
his left sleeve as they crowded out the door. “Never
thought I’d be happy to see you, Mr. Kabat.”

 “If I’d known you worked so well as bait, MacNeal, I’d
have worn the boots with steel toes.” Bat grabbed the
unconscious biker and bashed his head into tables and
chairs on the way to the door, then he tossed him out into
the street. He looked out for a second, then smiled. “They
got courage on the other side of the street.”

 Rajani frowned as she helped Sin to his feet. “Do you
think they will try to jump us?”

 “Hope so,” Bat nodded grimly.

 Jesus Christ!Sin used a napkin from the bar to wipe the
blood off his face. “At the risk of spoiling your fun, I’d just
as soon get out of here.” He looked at the little bartender
trembling in the corner.“Denwa, arimas’ka?”

 The man brought him the phone, and Sin punched a
number in. The man at the other end answered it after one
ring. “Yes, Kazuo, this is Sinclair. I am with friends, and I
need a ride. I don’t know where, but someone here does.
Thanks.” Sin held the receiver out to the bartender.

 The little man took it and started speaking very fast as
Sin turned to the others. “Kazuo will get us out of here, and
then we have to meet with Hal and some others as quickly
as possible.”

 Natch tucked her pistol away. “Why the rush?”

 “Because, Natch, the place I just left is the place Coyote
send me to locate.” Sin tasted blood on his lips. “Between
Rajani and me, I’ve learned enough to know that it’s a
breeding ground for this Fiddleback and a legion of
loonies.”

 “Fine, but why the urgency?”

 “Because one of those budding loonies is the emperor’s
grandson.” He rubbed the puncture marks on his right
wrist.”From what I’ve been told, letting Fiddleback get his
hands on him is roughly equivalent to looping a new
ammo belt into a minigun. As none of us—hell, none of the
world—is on that team, I’d like to do everything I can to
frustrate Fiddleback one more time.”

 Acquire, imprint, kill!Mickey stood in darkness with his
feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent and weight forward
on the balls of his feet.Acquire, imprint, kill! His arms
hung down at his sides with his fingers stiffened into a
spearhead.Acquire, imprint, kill!

 The lights slowly came up in the room, and Mickey
found himself facing a host of misshapen, hunched
figures. They bulged with muscles and carried clubs
and swords in the massive hands that lurked at the end
of improbably long arms. Oversized jaws and out-
thrusted muzzles contrasted with mismatched eyes
and haphazardly set ears to make the pointy heads
bottom-heavy.

 «Magilla Gorilla, but bad.»

 «That’s it exactly, Mickey. They have been bad.»The
little man’s voice soothed away the concerns sparked by
the cartoon connection Mickey had made.«They were
bad, and you must punish them.»

 “They have no hats.” Mickey smiled as he spoke, his
new face and jaw making it possible for him to pronounce
words that had previously proved impossible for him.

 «Hats?»

 Mickey nodded carefully. “Magilla Gorilla has a hat.
Why don’t they have hats?”

 »Hats. They lost them, Mickey. This is why they were
bad.»

 “Bad. Punish.”

 «Precisely, Mickey.»A tone sounded and the dozen
screaming Koman charged at him in a frenzied knot.
«Mickey, ignore.»

 The bestial Koman surrounded him and smashed the
clubs down on his head and shoulders. Mickey felt the
impacts and heard them, but remained detached. He
knew the knife thrust to his abdomen had split skin and
had to hurt, but he channeled the pain away, as he had
been instructed. The loud crack of a club against his right
kneecap numbed his whole right leg, but he pushed the
panic away.

 «Now, Mickey, you may defend yourself. Sequence
normally. Start with Claw! Go!»

 Acquire.Mickey turned his head and scanned the
group. He assessed them in terms of threat potential
based on their weapons, size, skill, disposition, apparent
intelligence, range and state of health. As one part of his
brain sorted through the candidates and assigned them
threat-assessment levels, another part searched through
known-enemy templates and searched for the one that fit
the Koman. Having fought them before, he came up with
the original template he had memorized and visualized it
as modified by supplementary data.

 The Koman with a bloodied knife to his right won the
designation as primary target. Mickey merged his image
with the template. Red dots covered the Koman at
forehead, throat and the center of its chest, showing areas
of vulnerability.Imprint. Mickey’s right hand contracted,
fingers hooking halfway in, palm pulling perpendicular to
the forearm.

 Kill.

 Mickey’s hand struck with blinding speed. His fingers

 penetrated the Koman’s flesh before the creature had a
chance to realize Mickey had even begun to move.
Leaning in toward the Koman, Mickey pushed his hand
through the beast’s sternum, snapping off the ends of a
half-dozen ribs. As the bone fragments shredded the
Koman’s lungs and started them hissing, Mickey mashed
its heart against its spine. His hand contracted as he
encountered bone, and his arm retracted, taking four
vertebrae with it.

 The first Koman collapsed with the upper half of his
torso folding backward and blood spraying out of the hole
in his chest. Mickey turned back away from him, stiffening
his left hand into a spearhead.Acquire. Moving to the left,
he spotted a Koman with a rapier. His mental template
fused with the Koman.Imprint.

 Kill!

 With the skill of a championship fencer, Mickey arched
his back to avoid a thrust, then stabbed his left hand at the
Koman’s eyes. His fingers pushed past them, shattering
the bones behind the orbits.If the bone shards being
driven through the Koman’s brain had not been enough to
kill him, Mickey’s spearhand thrust going all the way to
touch the back of the skull would have accomplished the
job easily.

 Mickey pulled his hand free with a suckingthwok, then
spun. He acquired a target as he pivoted on his left leg and
knotted his right hand into a hammerfist. He imprinted his
target as it missed an overhead stroke with a baseball bat.
He brought his right hand through and killed the Koman
by blasting its left ear beyond the midline of its skull and
driving its body into another Koman.

 Acquire, imprint, kill.Mickey worked his way through
the axe and awl shapes, then moved to the more complex
double-strike forms that required both hands, like ham-
mer and anvil, nut and bolt and turnabout. Two elbow

 strikes, a kick and a ram’s-head strike finished the rest of
the Koman, then Mickey resumed his original stance.

 The blood dripping from his hands ran down his legs to
the growing puddle at his feet.

 The small man came out of the darkness surrounding
the combat arena and wore a pleased smile on his face.
He snapped his fingers, and a large green orb on a leathery
green stalk dropped down and hovered five feet above the
ground. The scaled flesh surrounding it peeled back, and
a translucent membrane slid diagonally away. It revealed
a star-pupiled eyeball with a red circle iris. The eye
tracked right, then down and left, then down and right,
repeating the process until it had scanned him from head
to toe.

 The little man nodded appreciatively. “You did an
excellent job, Mickey. Your forms were all correct. You
have studied well.” He squatted down and watched the
bruising on Mickey’s knee disappear. “Your recovery rate
is fantastic. You are perfect.”

 Mickey smiled broadly. “Now I go home? Now I see
Dorothy?”

 The little man rested his right elbow in this left hand and
tapped his teeth with a finger. “Soon, Mickey, very soon.
There are only a couple more things you have to do, then
I shall return you home.” He smiled, and Mickey’s disap-
pointment vanished. “And, believe me, everyone will
remember your homecoming for a long, long time.”

 The maelstrom of emotions swirling through the room
made Rajani feel dizzy. “Please, stop it, all of you.”

 Sin and Colonel Nagashita both looked up from the
map over which they had been arguing. Behind them,
Kazuo and Bat both looked surprised at her outburst. Only
Hal, standing near the street map with a Silva rolling map
scaler, appeared to understand what had made her angry.
Natch looked up from cleaning her pistol, and Jytte
remained at the computer terminal in the corner of the
room.

 Sin frowned and wiped his sweaty brow with his
shirtsleeve. “What’s the matter, Rajani?”

 She got a feeling of genuine concern and care from him,
which made it easier for her to speak. “You are all working
at cross purposes.” She pointed at Nagashita. “You resent
Sin’s planning because you believe this is a problem your
command should have been given to handle from the
start. You also don’t like Mr. Takagi and his people being
brought in on this. You are purposefully ignoring the
gravity of the situation.”

 Sin nodded, then froze as she glared at him. “And you,
Sin, you are just as guilty. You are angry because of
having been shot. You also resent Colonel Nagashita
because you think he’s trying to take over this operation.

 You are ignoring the fact that he and his people have had
vast amounts of training in this sort of thing, especially
after the incident in the Olympics two years ago. You are
pushing the use of the Yakuza as a diversionary force for
the most part because it will work, but a little because their
presence needles Colonel Nagashita.”

 Rajani let her own anxiety filter into her words. “You, Mr.
Takagi, want to help because of your sense of duty to the
imperial family. You are also thinking that this could give
your people an entréinto Kimpunshima and perhaps
even a chance to destroy thebosozoku group that has
been annoying your uncle.”

 She just looked at Bat and shivered.

 Sin looked down at his shoes in embarrassment.
”You’re right, Rajani.” His head came up again as he
looked at the IDC leader. “Colonel, let’s table our prob-
lems until we have Ryuhito out and safe.”

 “Hai.”The small, sharp-eyed man nodded curtly and
unfolded his arms. Kazuo Takagi nodded in agreement,
and Hal smiled. Only Bat remained untouched by her
appeal.

 Then, if this meets with your approval, this is what I
propose.” Sin pointed on the map of the Galactic Broth-
erhood Institute at the patio from which he had left the
grounds. “We have a wall breach here, which they’re
going to have to devote a lot of attention to. Kazuo, your
people need to arrive here and put on a big show of force.
Be aware they’re armed with some heavy weapons,
including rocket-propelled grenades, LAW rockets and
even some SAWs. I don’t know where they got them, but
I’ve not got a hard time imagining a network of true
believers within all sorts of corporations around the world.
Be careful, and, if/when the shooting starts, you head in
here.”

 Kazuo nodded.“Wakarimas. Colonel, is that accept-

 able to you?”

 Nagashita nodded. “Having you attract their attention
is good. Your people, when they come in, will wear blue
armbands so my people will not shoot them, yes?”

 “Hai.”

 “Good.” Sin shifted to the front of the GBI building. “This
is the weakest spot in the GBI defenses. The public lobby
has lots of glass, and the auditorium is clear, so even if an
alarm is sounded and help arrives, the defenders won’t
have any place to hide. Aside from the book kiosks, there
is no cover. We will get in quietly.

 “Now this door here,” he said as he tapped the map,
”leads straight into their secure area. This is their spine,
and it gives us instant access to the rest of the complex.
I can get us through the door, then we have teams locate
Ryuhito, secure him and get him out.”

 Colonel Nagashita’s eyes nearly closed as he frowned.
”I do not like the fact that our strike into the complex is
predicated on your being able to breach this secure door.
You said it has a Tojicorp Hogosha security door and
palmprint reader. I think it we will have to blow it.”

 Sin shook his head. “Rajani, toss me that room service
menu, please.”

 She took the laminated menu from the table and
brought it over to him. Sin flipped it open to the room
service section and smiled. “Kobe’s finest. We’re in, trust
me.”

 Jytte hit a key on her console. “By retrotracing through
the Lorica system, I have penetrated the GBI computer
system at the most basic levels. They are in the midst of
notifying the people who were scheduled to show up for
a meeting tonight that it has been postponed.”

 “Good.” Sin looked over at Colonel Nagashita. “This
plan will work, trust me.”

 “I am afraid any trust I might have had for you vanished

 three years ago, Mr. MacNeal.” Nagashita pulled himself
up to his full height and gave Sin a stare harsh enough for
Rajani to feel it. “However, I serve one who trusts you. Your
plan has merit, and we will employ it.”

 “We’re cooking with microwaves now. Jytte, can you
access any higher computer functions from here?”

 She shook her head in response, giving off waves of
frustration. This level allows for some administrative
functions, presumably so field representatives can make
appointments and add people to schedules from remote
locations. I have tried to gain upper-level access, but they
may have a cut-out system in place to prevent tamper-
ing.”

 Rajani frowned. “Cut-out?”

 Jytte gave Rajani a quick, mechanical smile. “Data
transfers from this basic system to the higher-level system
may require an operator to physically move a storage
medium, like a WORM disk from one network to another.
For orders going down from higher to lower, the higher
system can always call the lower on the same sort of
access line as we are using.”

 The blond woman closed her eyes and concentrated
hard enough that Rajani caught no impressions or emo-
tions from her at all. Jytte’s fingers drifted to the keypad,
then began hitting keys in short, sharp bursts. Her whole
body stiffened for five seconds, and no one in the room so
much as breathed. Then she typed another, longer se-
quence into the machine and sat back.

 The key to WORM disks is that they hold far more
information than even the most busy system could ever
handle. WORM means ‘write once, read many’ and this
disk in the drive currently has been in use for the past
month. To make their system ultrasecure, they should
destroy the disk after each transfer, but financial analysts
do not see that as economical. I will read all the data and

 see if there is a mention of upper-level access.”

 “Good hunting.” Sin looked over at Hal. “You and Jytte
will be our logistics coordinators. You’ll come in with the
second waves of Colonel Nagashita’s men and take up a
position in the GBI executive offices. You’ll have the job of
keeping us all pointed in the right direction. You’ll also be
the one to get Ryuhito out when we find him.”

 Hal nodded, and Rajani sensed in him welcome relief at
not being asked to actively engage in the assault. This did
not surprise her, given his recent brush with death and the
loss of his wife, but Rajani knew his abhorrence of violence
ran deeper than that. Hal clearly believed violence was
one of the root causes of the world’s problems and, while
he might have acknowledged that some people fervently
needed killing, the collateral damage done by violence
was far too high a price to be paid easily.

 Sin glanced at Bat, got a stony stare in return, then
looked at Nagashita again. “You can have your people in
place and pick us up here in an hour and a half?”

 “Hai.”

 “Is that workable for you, Kazuo?”

 “Hai.”

 Rajani turned away and slid the door open onto the
hotel balcony as Sin escorted the two Japanese men to his
elevator. She stepped out into the night and shivered, but
shut the door behind her instead of returning for a coat.
The new pair of jeans and thin, white cotton blouse with
short sleeves did nothing to stop the humid air from
chilling her, but she didn’t care. It felt right to her to feel
cold.

 She tried to sort through everything she had experi-
enced and learned over the last four hours. The shock of
having sensed her father nearly overpowered everything.
She had always hoped he had survived the years, but
when she was put into stasis she had been told that the

 chances of that were slim at best. Her father had im-
pressed upon her the absolute necessity of what she was
doing and told her how proud he was of her for accepting
that burden.

 Leaning against the balcony railing, feeling the cold
steel against her belly, she stared out at the imperial
palace and the forested oasis surrounding it. Her father, in
that brief contact, reminded her much of that building. He
seemed as remote as ever, but also changed. He was not
the same as a medieval palace in a modern world, but he
struck her as more guarded and primal. He had changed
as much as she had.

 She also realized she was continuing to change, but not
in the focused manner in which she had during stasis or
before. Dr. Chandra and his aides, even the loathsome
Nicholas, had been strong personalities, but they faded to
insignificance in comparison to Natch and Bat and Sin.
Moreover, her entire life had been one of learning and
experimenting instead of actually living. She realized that,
as nice as Dr. Chandra and his people had been to her, as
much as they accommodated her, she was really just a
large lab rat to them.

 As much as it had embarrassed her to have the AKM’s
recoil knock her off the wall, she had reveled in it. Dr.
Chandra and his people had taught her about the concept
of equal and opposite reactions, but that was a practical
demonstration of the principle. That was a lesson she
would never forget, but it was delivered in a manner that
no one would have ever allowed in the old days.

 More importantly to her, though, she had actually done
something. Deep down she knew that making the trip
from Area 51 to Flagstaff with Dorothy and Mickey was an
accomplishment in and of itself, but there she had help
because the kids knew where their home was. In going out
to rescue Sin, she had operated on her own. She knew that

 her action had been impulsive and even foolish, but she
had no choice, and her inaction would have meant that Sin
died.

 She found that was the last thing she wanted.

 As much as she liked the surprise Bat had shown when
Sin explained about how her shooting had caused the
man with the antitank missile to shift his aimpoint to the
wall, the gratitude coming from Sin made her feel even
better. She liked his laughter and even didn’t mind when
he joked that he would have had her drive the getaway
jeep, but he feared her marksmanship with a car would
have been even worse than that with a gun.

 The people she had known in the lab were much like
Bat in that they had a single focus that dominated their
lives. Sinclair MacNeal struck her as a personality with
multiple facets. His mind always raced on, looking for a
use for something or an angle on it or a relationship of it
to something else he knew about. He also cared about
people, not just as resources, but as people. When he
tipped the concierge for bringing her a new set of clothing
from the hotel store, he did it with genuine thanks in mind
instead of a desire to impress the other people in the room.

 “Hey, kid, you going to be up to this tonight?”

 She spun around and brushed strands of gold hair back
from her face. “Sin! I didn’t hear you.”

 He nodded. “You seemed pretty far away.” He held out
a blue windbreaker. “I thought you might need this.
Thinking about your father?”

 Rajani nodded, then turned back toward the palace.
”Him, and a lot of things. And, to answer your question,
yes, I’m up to going into GBI. Why do you ask?”

 “You’re going to be our early-warning system.” Sin
joined her at the railing and leaned on it with his elbows.
”If Fiddleback was able to summon up that devil-worm
just to nail us, imagine what he’ll do to hang on to Ryuhito.

 We’ll need to know what and where to react to it.”

 He turned toward her, and she read the concern from
his face even before she felt it. “I know you can find the
fighting tough to take—proving once again you’re an
intelligent person.”

 Rajani shook her head. “Not the violence, but the
emotions it engenders. There are some emotions no one
should ever have.”

 “Yeah, I imagine being around Bat in thebosozoku fight
was like being forced to read that old piece of trash,
American Psycho.I’m having a hard time here because I’ll
be keeping an eye out for El-Leichter, Nagashita and Bat
to see which one shoots me first.”

 “Sin, you don’t have to worry about Bat.”

 Sin raised an eyebrow. “Oh? He hates me as much as
most of Tokyo hates this heat wave.”

 “That may be so, but he also respects you.” Rajani half-
smiled, “It started when you told him about how you got
away from Mr. Handy, then it stayed alive when you talked
about the devil-worm. What guaranteed it was how you
formulated a plan and were able to work around the
objections advanced by Hal, Kazuo and Nagashita. I think
Bat finds you borderline dangerous now, which is quite an
accomplishment.”

 “Forgive me if that doesn’t make me sleep any easier
tonight—if I sleep at all.” He smiled at her. “So, can your
psychic powers let you see into the future?”

 “No, but they could let me see into you.” She shrugged.
”I don’t think I need to, though, because I watched you in
there. You know your plan is good, and you’ve done
everything you can to make sure it works. Fiddleback is
your only random element, and you even have him
partially covered.It will be dangerous, but it is also
necessary.”

 “The only way we can guarantee failure tonight is to not

 do anything.” Sin turned around and leaned his back into
the railing. “Everything else is a toss of the cosmic dice.”

 She nodded and hugged the windbreaker tight around
her body. “If only we knew the odds.”

 He winked at her. “Naw, if we knew the odds, we’d be
smart enough not to go.” He looped his left arm around her
shoulders and steered her back toward the suite. “Come
on back inside, Rajani. I have to call room service and I can
add some hot tea to take care of that shiver, it’s warm
inside.”

 “No, Sin, I think I’ll stay out here for a bit.”

 “Rajani, stay out here and you’ll catch your death.” He
gave her a brief hug. “And that is not something I want to
happen.”

 An unseasonably cold wind cut at Coyote as he met
Mong and the Yidam at the heart of a crowd of monks. He
was glad he’d chosen to wear a black turtleneck sweater
over his Kevlar vest instead of the T-shirt he’d used during
training. His Wildey Wolf rode in the Bianchi shoulder
holster, and the two Colt Kraits occupied positions on his
hips.

 in addition to the small arms, he carried a short carbine
that, at first glance, looked almost identical to the carbine
version of the M16 automatic rifle. What differentiated the
Armalite AR-12 Stormcloud from the generation of weap-
ons that spawned it was the boxier magazine and larger
bore. The combat shotgun fed shells in from a 12-round
box, and Coyote had specifically loaded his with sets of
three buckshot shells and one Dragonfire incendiary
round. He had three clips and, while he had picked the
weapon up out of professional curiosity after a conversa-
tion with Crowley, the lark struck him as being a fortunate
bit of luck.

 His black combat fatigue pants and combat boots,
along with the turtleneck, almost looked like street clothes.
He assumed he might have to pass for normal when he
reached Japan, which is why he also had a nylon satchel
folded into a tight little package and stuffed in his back

 pocket. The guns and spare clips could go into it when
they arrived.

 The Yidam, Coyote realized, would present a problem
even in the weirder districts of Japan. Four Vietnam-
vintage flak jackets had been cut apart and sewn together
to provide the four-armed alien with body protection. He
wore yak-skin boots that had been specially crafted to fit
his clawed feet, and the talons poked through the ends of
them like decorations. His arms, legs and head remained
bare, but their dark color would help conceal him.

 Concealing the long rifle the Yidam carried on his upper
right arm—as if he were a country squire ready for a day
of quail hunting—would be something else entirely.I
could break that down with a hacksaw, and I’d still not
be able to conceal it. Taller than Coyote by a clean foot, it
had a bore he could have plugged with his thumb. From
the shells distributed in the bandolier slung across the
Yidam’s torso, Coyote knew the weapon wasn’t a shot-
gun, despite the large barrel diameter.

 “Loaded for bear, aren’t we?”

 The Yidam smiled, and Mong patted the gun the alien
carried affectionately. “This is an old surplus weapon we
thought to use against tanks if they ever worked through
our shielding.”

 Coyote took another look at the weapon, then nodded.
” 14.5mm Protivotankovoe Ruzh’yo obr 1941 g PTRS. The
Soviets manufactured those to stop German tanks. Shoots
a 14.5mm tungsten-cored, armor-piercing incendiary
round that it gets from a five-round clip. Semiautomatic
fire, hellish recoil.” He pointed to a polished wooden grip
halfway up the barrel. “You’re supposed to have a bipod
there, but I guess you don’t need it.”

 The Yidam shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

 Coyote chuckled lightly, then frowned. “The 14.5mm
round was good in its day, but any armor we’re likely to

 run into has benefited from 60 years of technological
development.”

 “I am not concerned about armor, just whatever sort of
creature your former master can dredge up.”

 “Besides,” added Mong, “these shells are new. They
have even been modified to work better.” When Coyote
gave him a quizzical look, he offered one word. “Teflon.”

 That moment of levity faded as Coyote looked along
the torchlit causeway leading to the east gate. He could
see people in all of the alcoves as usual, but fluid stains
rendered in black by the torchlight caught his attention.
Mong said he’d lost people and would lose more.Staring
at the silent evidence of the evil Fiddleback could do with
a stray thought, Coyote set himself.

 “Mong, thank you for what you have given me in the
way of wisdom and training.”

 “Kyi-can, we who know of the Dark Ones have a
responsibility to fulfill. You repay me by fighting for the
future.”

 Coyote reached out and squeezed the monk’s shoul-
der. “My predecessor asked those he helped to ‘pay
forward,’ not back. We will pay forward, with interest.”

 The Yidam brandished his tank-killing rifle, “It is time to
return to the Dark Ones that which they have sown.”

 Mong nodded. “Our prayers are with you.”

 The Yidam led Coyote off along the causeway. “When
I probed your mind, I sawthat Crowley had shown you one
of the transportational devices available for travel be-
tween the dimensions. We will walk to a place where one
of these is located and move from there, because the
3500-mile hiketo Japan would still take a while, even with
shortcuts through other dimensions. This particular site is
little used because it is located in a pastoral dimension
with little or no value to the Dark Lords.”

 “I trust your judgment.”

 The two of them came to the massive stone gate and
stopped before it. Coyote closed his eyes for a moment
and exhaled a deep breath to the count of five. He forced
his heart to slow and he cleared his mind. Around him, he
heard the pitch and tenor of the chanting shift, then felt an
unseen pressure on his back.

 He stepped forward and reached out with his mind. He
sensed the Yidam’s passage and slipped in behind him to
speed his transit to their target destination. Things went
smoothly for a dozen steps, then the ground seemed to
lurch upward, driving his knees toward his chest. Coyote
found himself racing forward with the exaggerated steps
of someone running on a trampoline, then the terrain
stiffened beneath his feet and he fell to the ground.

 He felt grasses and opened his eyes to a bizarre
nightscape. He felt hands on his shoulders lifting him up
and thought it was the Yidam, but he came into view off
toCoyote’s right. Coyote turned his head and sawCrowley’s
silhouette, then nodded to his friend and was released.
”What are you doing here?” he whispered.

 Crowley crouched between him and the Yidam. “I
assumed, after the display an hour ago, that you would be
coming out.”

 “Display?” Coyote likewise crouched and let the long
summer grasses in the meadow hide him.

 “The net Fiddleback used to locate you shocked me out
of one of the more pleasant social situations I’ve been in
recently. There I was, reading Janine Fonda’s palm and
suddenly I’m hit with a piece of Fiddleback’s brainblast. I
started babbling uncontrollably for the time it took for him
to shred Kanggenpo’s defenses, then I stopped when he
focused on you.” Crowley laughed wryly, the sound
seeming odd coming from a shadow. “Turned out for the
best, though, because Ms. Fonda recognized the drivel I
started spouting about Grays and how they’ve taken over

 the planet. Speaking of which, who is Gunga Din and what
is that peashooter he’s carrying?”

 “Meet Kanggenpo’s Yidam. He’s on ourside.”

 The Yidam offered Crowley his lower right hand, and
the man took it. “I am the Yidam. I also used to crew with
the so-called Grays.”

 “Lovely.” Crowley shook his head. “Janine asked if I
was a disciple of Arrigo El-Leichter, too, and mentioned
she’d gone to some seminars he gave at the Galactic
Brotherhood Institute in Kimpunshima. I did a quick
check and realized that Arrigo must be another of Fiddle-
back’s pets, and he runs a training facility. It also seems
he has a working dimensional transport device in his
facility there. Assuming you’d come out here, I arrived
ahead of you, and that’s when I foundthat.”

 Coyote looked off toward the south. Cutting across the
meadow, he saw an S-shaped track of golden light that
reminded him of a timed-exposure picture of car taillights
at night.It stood almost twice the Yidam’s considerable
height, and he thought he could see humanoid silhouettes
moving within it. Most moved through in the ground,
heading from west to east, but a few moved in the opposite
direction in the upper area. He had no way of telling how
wide it was, but it extended from the middle of one hillside
to halfway up the next and apparently ended in the same
place it began: nowhere.

 “What is it?”

 Crowley shrugged. “I don’t really know. Could be a
tunnel through dimensions, I suppose. I’ve never seen its
like before.”

 The Yidam stared at it, then folded his lower arms. “I’ve
not seen such a thing either, but I have heard tales. I think
this may be a conduit between dimensions. I suspect
having it track through here is to let it avoid detection.
Chances are excellent, Coyote, that the turbulence we felt

 as we walked here was our cutting across its path.”

 Coyote frowned. “Is it Fiddleback’s?”

 “No. Too elegant.” Crowley shook his head. “Another
Dark Lord’s work, I’d guess. Maybe the Empress of
Diamonds or Midas Longclaws.”

 “We don’t have time for this. Where is the dimensional
transporter?”

 Crowley flattened some grass back behind himself, and
Coyote saw a low ring of stone. “You’re in the middle of it.
That stream over there powers it. Rearrange the stones in
the pool in the right way, and it works.” The occultist
stepped over the stone ring and in the direction of the
stream Coyote heard gurgling in the darkness. “I’ve got it
targeted for a clear area about 20 meters south of El-
Leichter’s device.”

 “Are you coming with us?”

 Crowley nodded toward the lightwall. “I think I’d best
check that out. I’ll report back as fast as I can. Good luck.”

 Coyote threw Crowley a wave, then charged the
Stormcloud and took it off safe. The Yidam likewise
worked a shell into the PTRS’s breech, then held it ready.
”We check. Go, Damon.”

 Coyote heard the swish of water, then the world lurched
sideways. The night sky and lightwall vanished into a cool,
black ocean. But before he or the Yidam could get used
to that, thunder cracked the darkness, and they reap-
peared in a world of fire.

 Sin reached over and opened the Japan Gray Line tour
bus’ front and back doors. “This is the Galactic Brother-
hood Institute. Everybody out!”

 Hal and Jytte led a coterie of Japanese men and
women wearing oversized, garish Hawaiian shirts and
dresses from the bus. They milled around, chattering
away pleasantly, each carrying a tour bag and with
cameras looped around their necks like talismans to ward
off evil. Nagashita alighted last and tugged his gray blazer
into place. Shouting at the tourists to line up, he marched
to the front door, and they followed in lockstep.

 The two GBI employees on duty looked at each other,
then both came to the doorway. Sin recognized neither
the man or woman from his first visit or from the classes
he had subsequently taken. They paused at the door and
shouted muffled questions at Nagashita. The colonel, in
turn, just bowed politely, smiled and pointed at the lock
before bowing again.

 The man opened the glass door. “I am afraid we are not
expecting you.”

 “So sorry,” said Nagashita. He reached inside his coat
and came out with a silenced Beretta automatic. His hand
bucked twice, and both GBI employees died with a bullet
through the brain. Nagashita yanked the door wide open

 and waved his people through.

 The callousness with which Nagashita had killed the
two GBI peons irked Sin. He had agreed that the Internal
Defense Cadre would secure the lobby, but he’d somehow
imagined Nagashita would take any employees prisoner.
Then again,he reminded himself,he’s treating this like a
hostage rescue in which he’s freeing the emperor’s grand-
son. There’s bound to be retribution in the mix.

 Sin keyed the radio he wore. “Team 1 is in. C’mon.
Natch, have your folks hold.”

 A black van roared up and came to a quick stop behind
the bus. The side panel slid open, and four black-clad
ninjas poured out. Each carried a silenced and sup-
pressed HK MP-7 submachinegun and wore a traditional
katanaacross his back. Two carried between them
another satchel that they hustled into the lobby, then
dropped in the midst of their compatriots. The first team’s
ninjas had peeled off their colorful clothing beneath which
they wore the dark togs of their profession.

 Sin grabbed his own tour bag and tore his gray Gray
Line shirt open. He walked straight past the two ninjas
stationed at the door and met Nagashita. Sin pulled his
own Beretta from his bag and screwed a silencer on it as
Nagashita pried one of the doors to the auditorium open.
”Clear.”

 “Let’s do it.” Sin slipped through the door and crouched
low to the right. He swept his gun across the dark room,
ready to shoot anything he saw. Nagashita entered the
room right behind him and likewise found it clear. Sin
looked over at him and caught his nod, then the two of
them ran across the room to the security door while the
rest of the IDC ninjas entered the auditorium and fanned
out.

 “This is the door you can defeat?” Nagashita pressed
his back against the wall beside the light panel.

 Sin nodded and tucked his pistol in his waistband. “This
Tojicorp door lacks a bit. When someone presses his palm
against it, he leaves a handprint. The Allard Technologies
version of the device maps the print both for comparison
for identification and to screen out in the future. The
number of maps it keeps varies, but Tojicorp dumps the
map information fast, saving on storage and making its
unit cheaper.”

 He reached into his bag and brought out a huge Kobe
steak encased in clear plastic-wrap. Using his right hand,
he pressed it to the panel, and the green scanning light
activated. It passed down, then up again.

 Nagashita grabbed his shoulder. “Why is it not open?”

 “Give me a minute. The meat provides the correct
backdrop to make the old palmprint stand out. It’s
probably just sorting through all the marks left on the
glass.” Sin held his breath as the light repeated the cycle,
then let it out in a low “yes” as the door clicked open.

 Nagashita gave him a look that could have pierced his
Kevlar vest. Tossing the steak aside, he pulled the door
open, and four ninjas poured in to secure the hallway.
They reported it clear, and Sin followed them. As they
moved up the hallway, Sin looked into the offices they
cleared, then waved Jytte and Hal into the second one on
the right.

 He pointed at a computer console and the bank of
mainframes behind it. “Jytte, can you take security down
from here?”

 The computer empath concentrated for a moment,
then nodded. “I think so. I found some codes for the Taos
center they just opened. I should be able to use them and
get in.”

 “Good. Go to it” Sin helped Hal unfold the blueprint of
the place and pointed out their current location. “We’ll
keep reporting where we are. Coordinate us with the

 Yakuza, if we have to bring the Dogs in.” Hal gave him a
sidelong glance, and Sin amended his statement. “Bat’s
with them, sowhen they come in, direct them to areas
where we won’t come up against each other.”

 “I’m supposed to be here, right?”

 Sin turned as Rajani entered the room and killed a
laugh. Swathed in Kevlar, she looked like the child of an
overprotective mother who has been amply insulated for
the first snow of winter. Her bright eyes still glittered, but
she looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Yes, here. Warn us
if Fiddleback brings us any surprises. You okay?”

 She nodded. “First time I’ve felt warm in a while.”

 Sin laughed and winked at her, then dashed out the
door and down the hallway. The ninjas of Falcon Team—
his team—had reached the far end of the security corridor.
”Jytte, we’re at the end of the hallway.”

 Sin got no reply over the radio, but the door latch
buzzed. He twisted the knob, killing the sound in seconds
and stepped out into the corridor. To the right it looked
clear, but a guard emerged from the men’s room at the far
end of the corridor. Left hand pressed against his sagging
stomach to hold it back, he tugged at his fly with his right.
He looked up with that surprised, fearful expression worn
by anyone who had been caught with his fly undone in
public, then started to take a half-step backward when he
saw Sin’s gun.

 Sin snapped off his first shot hurriedly, creasing the
man’s stomach. The gun made almost no sound because
of the silencer, but the metallicthwang of the bullet
ricocheting off the bathroom door jamb sounded incred-
ibly loud to his ears. The guard gave a yelp, then
scrambled into the lavatory on all fours.

 Sin and two IDC ninjas chased after him. They paused
at the door, and one ninja tossed a concussion grenade
into the room. By way of return, they got two shots fired

 back at them.The bullets blewthrough the tile wall and out
through the plasterboard wall in the hallway, but aside
from stinging plaster shrapnel, the blind shots did no
harm.

 The concussion grenade went off with a loud bang.
Smoke poured from the narrow, tiled corridor leading into
the washroom. The lead ninja swept the room with criss-
crossing patterns of fire, tracing an X on the wall of the
stalls. The toilet bowls shattered, and a body splashed
down back in the corner. Water mixed with blood ran out
and into the central drain.

 “Falcon is compromised. Let the Dogs go.” Sin heard
acknowledgments through his radio, then met the rest of
his team back out in the corridor. They pressed on,
heading toward the area in which the students had been
housed. “Hal, does Jytte have a room number for Ryuhito
yet?”

 “Negative, Falcon. She’s working on it.”

 He heard Nagashita’s voice on the radio link. “Eagle is
moving into the islands.”

 “Roger that, Eagle.” Hal’s voice paused for a second.
”Falcon, Eagle, we have a change in the schedules.
Ryuhito should be in the Sun Court right now. Go!”

 The Sun Court, Sin recalled from the orientation tour,
was the largest of the island courtyards that ran through
the center of the complex. Located north of the Khmer and
Yellowstone courtyards, it had a huge circular fountain full
of solar imagery done in a Mesoamerican style reminis-
cent of the Aztecs. Their guide had described it as a place
used for initiation ceremonies and celebrations like mar-
riages. She had said the fountain could double as baptis-
mal font, if needed, and was lit at night.

 Sin sprinted down the corridor and took his first left
down another corridor. The second corridor linked the two
halves of the complex, so he fired twice at the big plate-

 glass window, then stepped through the hole as soon as
the glass stopped falling. That brought him out into the
junglelike Khmer courtyard. He ran to the nearest palm
tree and slapped his back against it.

 “Falcon is in K-land. We’re inbound for Helios.”

 “Eagle has Y-land. Converging on Helios.”

 “Falcon, be advised Rajani has bolted.”

 “What? Why?”

 “Don’t know. She ran out of here fast.”

 Shit!Sin nodded at two of his ninjas and sent them
running forward to the next position. The white, serpentine
paths of crushed stone all converged on the open area in
the center where he had been enjoying drinks with Ryuhito
before things had fallen apart. In their advance, Falcon
team avoided the pathways and headed on an oblique
angle toward the middle.

 Peering out from behind the bole of another palm tree,
Sin saw the giant stonehead had vanished. He thought he
saw something else there, but couldn’t be certain, so he
waved two people to the edge of cover to check it out. As
they moved up, he saw the head’s replacement move,
and he dove for cover screaming “Down!” into his radio.

 The RamTech Roboguard IV had been painted over in
the orange and black striping of a tiger, but its resem-
blance to any living thing ended there. It squatted in the
middle of the courtyard like a streamlined mechanical
toad, only rising up to its full three meters of height when
it flicked on its running lights. The clawed feet dug into the
gravel with a crunch as the stubby, L-shaped right arm
mounted on the side of its clamlike body raked back and
forth across the courtyard. The 9mm bullets from the
built-in submachinegun sliced through the undergrowth
at a meter above the ground.

 The projectiles shredded vegetation and cut one of
Sin’s two scouts in half. His companion had started to dive

 for cover and caught a line of slugs in a bar sinister across
her chest. She went down hard, and Sin could hear air
bubbling up out of her lungs in the darkness.

 Below the Roboguard’s body, the heavy barrel of a
25mm cannon waggled obscenely at Falcon team. Hav-
ing seen the specs on the RamTech monstrosity, Sin knew
that cannon could tear apart armored vehicles. Likewise,
the heavier M2 machinegun located right below the SMG
in the right arm could punch through anything his team
had, but in keeping with the RamTech programming, the
Roboguard had only used as much firepower as it needed
to get the job done.

 Which is a lot more than we can bring to bear to take
that armored beast apart.

 Suddenly, Sin heard gravel being crushed under run-
ning feet. He glanced to the right and saw Rajani sprint
past alongthe path, heading right forthe Roboguard. “No,
Rajani, no!”She’s not even got a gun!

 The Roboguard’s left arm rotated outward and tracked
her. Sin heard an explosive hiss of compressed air, then
saw Rajani stumble and fall.It only darted her. She could
still be alive. The hope that thought inspired died quickly
as the Roboguard sidled over like a big bird approaching
an egg and crouched above her recumbent body.

 “Hal, we’ve got a RamTech Roboguard IV here holding
K-land and Rajani.” Sin licked his lips. “If Jytte’s been
saving a security-cracking miracle, now is the time to use
it.” He ducked his head as another 9mm burst swept
through the undergrowth. “If not, the only way we’re
getting to Ryuhito is in another incarnation.”

 Rajani felt her heart skip a beat as Sin ran out of the
command center. She started to send him a message
telepathically, but stopped when she realized he had more
than enough to think about without her distracting him.
And you have more than enough to think about without
letting him distract you,

 She appropriated a high-backed chair and sat in it,
sinking deep into the cushions. She focused herself and
purposely tuned out the algorithms and equations bleed-
ing off Jytte like radio static. She found it more difficult to
push past Hal’s underlying hatred of violence, but she
worked around it and let her mind float. She sensed both
the Eagle and Falcon teams as they moved purposefully
to their jobs, then went out beyond the buildings.

 In her mind she visualized them as being akin to the
blueprints Hal had spread out on the desk, but she
reversed the colors so the walls and doors became a neon
blue in a navy blue background. Sailing up over the walls,
she started spotting and fixing in her mind where people
were. For a second, a yellow lifelight burned down the
hallway near Falcon team, then it winked out. Then, way
out, she sawanumber of lights blazing away, including the
double-sized one she knew to be Bat.

 In the vast courtyards she saw no one. “Hal, Khmer and

 Yellowstone lookclear. Dogs are closing on the guards out
at that end.”

 “Are you sure about the courtyards?”

 Rajani nodded and checked them again. “Clear. No life
signs.”

 “What about the Sun Court?”

 “Clear. Wait.” She frowned and shifted uncomfortably
in the chair. To her mind, that large central circle looked
clear, but she had a hard time concentrating on it.
”Something is not right.”

 “Hal, Ryuhito should be in the Sun Court, according to
this schedule I’ve found.”

 “Checking.” Rajani let her anger power her, and she
again focused on the Sun Court. As if her anger were a
hammer, the black shroud shielding that area crumpled.
Golden lights filled it, but at the center she saw a brilliant
white light burning like magnesium and a tainted green-
gray light beside it. “Ryuhito is there in the Sun Court. I’m
sure of it.”

 She heard Hal’s voice squawk over the radio, but the
earpiece pulled free of her ear as she jerked her head to
the right. The blackness tried to shut her out again, but she
fought it and forced it to remain down. She saw Falcon and
Eagle teams moving toward the Sun Court, and confi-
dence strengthened her.

 Suddenly, a malignant green beam shot down through
the sky and impaled the gray-green glow. For a moment,
she saw the black silhouette of a centauroid spider
creature devour the green-gray speck, then that speck
returned with black marbling running through it, shifting
from moment to moment.

 The green light shot out through the holes in the
marbling and slammed into all the gold sparks surround-
ing it. She saw the green energy surround the bright light
and mask its brilliance. Then a jade circle expanded and

 eclipsed the original ball, but Rajani realized too late that
it meant one of the green beams was coming for her.

 She felt it slam into her forehead, and she jerked back
in the chair.«Iam here foryou,»it communicated to her.
«Come to me, come to me all.»

 At once she knew this sending had come from
Fiddleback through his agent in the Sun Court. As she
listened, the human edge of emotion on the message
began to fail. Through it she began to hear more of
Fiddleback’s sibilant tones, and she fed that back along
the link line to create a disruptive echo.

 Proximity will help!Rajani vaulted herself out of the
chair and started running down the hallway. Distantly
behind her, she heard Hal calling out to her, but she
continued running. She sensed Fiddleback’s growing
satisfaction as, one by one, the gold lights shifted to green.
«Come tome;Iam hereforyou!»crooned the green energy.

 As she ran on, Rajani suddenly understood something
about Fiddleback, and it spurred her on to greater speed.
He collected things—people and creatures—and fused
them together. If he were forced to break them down first,
he could still use them, but they were not nearly as strong
or capable as they would be if they came to him freely.
Given that all the golden lights in the Sun Court could not,
even were they all combined, even begin to match
Ryuhito’s energy, she knew she had to prevent his
seduction.

 Gravel crunched beneath her feet. She heard gunfire in
the distance, but she pushed on as her goal stood less than
40 meters north.Wait. Was that Sin? Do I smell blood?

 She heard Sin call out to her as she rushed past cover
and into the central circle of stones. She started to turn
back toward him when the Roboguard’s dart, having
missed her carotid artery, hit her right below her larynx.
The dart stung, and she brought her hands to her throat,

 throwing herself utterly off balance. She fell heavily and
rolled onto her back.

 Lying there sprawled out, she felt a rain of spent
cartridges pour over her body. Looking up, she saw the
Roboguard station itself above her. She wanted to scream,
but could not because the drug in the dart paralyzed her
vocal chords—a human would have been out, but with her
xenobiological chemistry, a localized effect was the best
it could produce.

 Iam dead!

 «No, daughter, you are not!»

 Off to the right, a huge figure stood and raised a rifle of
immense proportions. The Roboguard started to pivot
right. The machine’s right arm began tracking, then the
underslung ball turret moved, then the arm again. By the
time its decision tree determined the target did not fit any
known attack profile, and it tried to bring all its weapons
to bear, the giant’s finger pulled the trigger.

 The PTRS’s projectile weighed over two and a quarter
total ounces. By the time the four-foot-long muzzle flame
chased it from the gun’s barrel, it had accelerated to 3320
feet per second. At that speed, the bullet traveled the 20
meters from the muzzle to the Roboguard roughly three
times faster than the sound of it being fired.

 The teflon-coated tungsten projectile hit the Roboguard
right beneath the spot where a GBI employee had lovingly
painted one of the tiger’s eyes. At the moment of impact,
the Roboguard’s armor began to bend and heat with the
transfer of kinetic energy from the shell. The interior of the
armor plating spalled off, spraying metal fragments through
the CPU and severing fiber-optic connections to one of the
two gyroscopes that kept it upright. That alone would
have been enough to take the machine out of action.

 The teflon coating reduced friction between the
bullet and the armor so its speed had only bled down

 to Mach 2.5 when the tungsten rod fully penetrated the
Roboguard’s armor. At that point, the shell’s outer
sheath began to telescope down, injecting the incendi-
ary charge into the interior of the Roboguard’s body.
Those chemicals, which had ignited on impact, blos-
somed into a fireball as they got enough oxygen to
combust. In the blink of an eye, the sophisticated
sensors, custom ROMs and electrical relays that gave
the Roboguard the illusion of life and sentience van-
ished into greasy smoke and molten sludge.

 The tungsten rod continued its flight and pierced the
other side of the Roboguard’s armor. Jets of fire shot out
both the entry and exit wound like flames snorted by a
dragon. They illuminated the whole Khmer courtyard,
then vanished into dark after-images. The Roboguard
froze in its last position and, unbalanced, toppled over on
its right side.

 Rajani rolled to the left and away from the shower of
stones the claws tossed into the air when the machine
went down. She clutched at her throat, but could not find
the dart. More importantly to her, though, she didn’t find
a gaping wound where her throat should have been, and
she checked twice because she could not believe how
little blood she had on her hands.

 Sin skidded to a halt beside her and pulled her into the
shadow of the Roboguard. “Are you all right?”

 She nodded, then looked up beyond him as two other
figures came running over. One she did not recognize at
all, but the other...«Father?»

 «Yes, Rajani. It is me.»

 Her head craned back as she slowly stood. The creature
answering her question towered above her. She recog-
nized his color and his tattooing, yet he had changed
incredibly since she had last seen him: the tusks and the
extra pair of arms. Even his mind felt different as he spoke

 to her. Even so, there at the core she found someone
familiar.

 Smiling, she threw her arms around him.«Father!» She
lay her head against his chest and nestled herself in the
security of his four-armed hug.

 Another mental voice pushed through the area and
intruded on her happiness. From the surprised look on
Sin’s face, Rajani knew he heard it, too.«Ollie, Ollie in free!
Come to the Zun Court, my friendz! Come one, come all!»
Underlying the message, Rajani heard the human voice
she had heard before, but the bulk came straight from
Fiddleback. That made her fight to resist it, but she could
find no hostility in the call. It might have been arrogant and
patronizing, but not overtly threatening.

 Her father looked at his companion, and both of them
nodded. “This is our only play,” her father’s friend said. “If
you get a shot at Fiddleback, take it.”

 “I will.”

 As she left her father’s strong embrace, she sensed
from both him and his companion reluctance and resig-
nation. They knew the Sun Court would be a trap, but it
would also be their best chance to rescue Ryuhito. They
knew that fighting a Dark Lord straight up was foolish, but
her father’s companion also believed Fiddleback’s ego
and confidence would give them an opening to defeat
him.

 Sin walked a little ahead of her on the way to the Sun
Court, but looked back and smiled confidently. “We’ll win
this one. Trust me.”

 Rajani returned his smile. “You, I trust. Fiddleback, I
don’t.”

 All four followed the Falcon team ninjas into the Sun
Court and pushed on through to the front of the ninja
ranks. Off to her left, she saw Eagle team with Colonel
Nagashita at its head. Hal and Jytte appeared between her

 and Eagle team, and the Yakuza appeared with Natch,
Bat and Kazuo on the right. Between her and the fountain,
Rajani saw all sorts of folks dressed for the party Sin had
quit earlier in the evening, and arrayed out beyond the
circle of the fountain she spotted two dozen GBI security
guards.

 What attracted her attention most was Arrigo El-
Leichter. His fists balled, his cruciform body floated 10feet
above the illuminated base of the fountain. Below him,
suspended between heaven and Earth, Ryuhito stood on
a hovering green disk. Verdant energy crackled from a
halo around Arrigo’s head, and she saw it reflected in the
eyes of noncombatants ringing the fountain.

 Arrigo’s head came up, and his face locked into a
demonic grin. “Ah, my pet haz returned to hiz zpawning
plaze. Zplendid that the prodigal zon be prezent for thiz.”
He shifted his gaze and looked at everyone. “You are here
to birth in a new order on thiz world.”

 Rajani felt his stare as if it were a lecherous caress, and
she immediately wanted to bathe. She retreated a step to
the right, and Sin slipped his left arm over her shoulder.
She shuddered, and he hugged her.

 “Ryuhito haz azked for a practical demonztration of the
power I have to offer him. You know of thiz, your Internal
Defenze Cadre?”

 Hands clasped at the small of his back, Ryuhito nodded
curtly. “I also see thatMr.MacNealhas returned, when you
said he had been dealt with.”

 “Thatwaz notme, butthe vezzel Inow occupy.” Arrigo’s
body brought its arms together so his fists touched above
his head. “You wizh to zee power? You wizh to zee that
which I will give to you?” His arms shook, and his hands
disappeared in long gouts of green fire. The flames swept
over the crowd without burning anyone, then evaporated.
”Thiz iz power.”

 “It’s nothing,” Sin laughed. “It’s gone.”
Rajani shuddered again. “It’s not gone, Sin. Look at
their eyes. Look at his disciples’ eyes.”

 Coyote did not need Rajani’s warning to tell him
something was very wrong. Right in front of him he saw
a rather plain woman’s head and body jerk down as if she
were in great pain. Her head curled on through her
stomach, and her upper body followed, emerging on the
other side of her spine. As the ripple effect continued to
turn the woman inside out, swallowing her arms and legs
as it went, she rebirthed herself as a 20-foot-long snake
with a woman’s head and a serpent’s fangs glistening with
venom. She coiled herself sensuously and flicked a forked
tongue at him.

 All around her, throughout the crowd that had willingly
accepted Fiddleback’s invitation to join him in power,
other people started to change. One obese man’s flesh
disappeared back into himself as if his bones were
sponges soaking it all up. He looked down at his skeletal
body, then threw his head back in an attitude that should
have been accompanied by wild laughter, but without
lungs and vocal chords, the only sound he made came
from the raspy click of his mandibles grinding in their
sockets.

 As Coyote saw others transform into bizarre creatures,
none exactly like another, he figured out the one thing
linking them all. The plain woman became a serpentine

 seductress. The fat man became thin. A slight, balding
man bulked out and had a thick, black pelt covering him—
with Coyote certain the man would have become a
gorfash if he had known to model himself on one.Each of
these people is becoming a caricature of what they most
desire to be. Fiddleback’s gift is like a wish granted by an
evil djinn. A child never again wishing to be hungry
would find himself alone on an island with an unending
supply of moldy bread and rancid butter.

 «Thiz iz becauze they arepawnz, Jaeger/Coyote. They
are what they have made themzelvez to be. You are what
I have wrought. You are a leader, and they are deztined to
be your minionz.»

 Fiddleback invaded Coyote’s mind through the open-
ing the Yidam had created in his probing. Unbidden and
undesired, Coyote saw Fiddleback’s warped vision of the
future blossom fully. Coyote watched himself become
engulfed in the green fire that Fiddleback had used to
baptize the crowd.

 Something deep down inside of him combusted. He felt
incredible joy as unparalleled power pulsed through him.
It raised him to heights he had never even dreamed
existed. Legions upon legions of possibilities assaulted
him, and he knew, with the power he had been given, he
could doanything. He could make anyone’s wish into
reality, altering and adapting it as he saw fit.

 Suddenly, he heard the voices of all those surrounding
him. The snake woman shouted out her exhilaration and
unbridled pleasure at the transformation Fiddleback had
wrought. The skeleton man luxuriated in his new-found
slenderness, and yet others reveled in their transmog-
rifications. From them, Coyote felt a sense of right and
justice.

 He saw his arms go out to embrace them all, then join
with them physically. He absorbed them and their power.

 He grew larger and stronger, his raw energy grossly
outstripping that which his gigantic form alone should
have given him. As he grew, with people flowing into him
like droplets of oil combining on a still-water pond, he saw
Bat and the Yidam shrink. They were nothing to him
because they did not possess the sort of power that
sustained him. Unworthy as morsels, he saw them as
threats in that they had the ability to destroy the creatures
upon which his vast hunger fed.

 «I will give you thizpower, my pet!You will know your
full potential. You will deztroy our enemiez, and wezhall
become invincible!»

 The exultant tone in Fiddleback’s voice sent a ripple of
contempt through Coyote’s mind. In the one second of
clarity he had in its wake, he picked up a counterpoint to
the joy and happiness still coming from those creatures he
had allowed to become one with him. It resonated in low
tones, but pulsed with dark energy. He dove down,
clawing through all the positive affirmations and undying
statements of gratitude. There, where his soul narrowed
down into its blackest corner, he found the source of the
undercurrent, and it greedily pulled him inward.

 Like black pearls that had been pitted and scarred by
acid, he saw the fears and terrors of those Fiddleback had
changed. Clinging to themselves, naked, cold and mal-
nourished, the core identities of the people decayed. Flesh
sloughed off in dry ashes. The trembling horror and anger
shot out from them like dark rays that twisted and warped
into the green energy empowering their new selves. They
had been changed, but only through the torture of who
and what they had been.

 «Now you know the zource. Now it iz all revealed to
you. Come to me, my pet. Take up your rightful place at
my right hand. What you azk will be yourz, if you will be
mine!»

 “No!” Coyote leveled the Stormcloud at the snake
woman as she reared back to strike. His first burst hit her
two feet below her head, stopping her lunge more effec-
tively than a stone wall. The second cloud of pellets
obliterated her face. Her body went limp for a second as
her head arced down to the ground, then uncoiled with a
spasmodic jerk, causing the skeleton man to jump back.

 A huge winged shape that looked like the improbable
marriage of pterodactyl wings to a shark’s body soared
into the air. It looped once to build up airspeed, then came
in on an attack vector with its razor-studded jaws agape.
It hit one of ninjas and lifted her up into the air, then
dropped her screaming body as it gobbled down her left
arm.

 Sin turned and snapped two silent rounds off at the
flying shark. Holes appeared in the taut, fleshy membrane
of one wing. The shark dipped that wing and arced down
into a turn that set it up for a run at Sin.

 Coyote tracked it with the Stormcloud and hit the
trigger twice. The buckshot chewed a crescent bite out of
the shark’s dorsal fin, but did not even slow it down. The
Dragonfire round, by contrast, did. The 25-foot-long
flame jet hit the shark over its left-side gill slits. The fire
stream continued virtually unabated out the other side,
then the creature vomited flames. Its eyes went dead, and
it crashed into the ground, rolling over and over, like a
child’s broken glider.

 Men and monsters alike scattered as a mottled red and
blue triceratops stampeded through the courtyard. Tracer
rounds from submachineguns glanced off its bony shield
and sailed like fireworks into the night sky. Blood glistened
black from its horns, and a blue satin Yakuza jacket
flapped like a pennant from the left-most one.

 Coyote turned to bring the Stormcloud to bear on the
charging beast, but the Yidam’s secondary arms pushed

 him aside. The alien giant calmly raised his PTRS to his
shoulder and sighted down it like a white bwana hunting
rhinoceri. The dinosaur, its eyes glowing with human
knowledge of its invulnerability, raced straight at the
Yidam.

 The gun roared once, and the recoil slewed the Yidam
all the way around so that he faced away from his target.
The bullet hit the charging triceratops cleanly between the
eyes, punching through the skull as if it were made of sun-
baked clay. The tungsten core blew back through the hole
in the skull that allowed for the entry of the spine and spun
its way through the creature’s body. The incendiary
charge exploded in the tiny brain case, blowing the eyes
back out on fiery pillars, then splitting the skull like a
dropped melon.

 The triceratops’ nose dipped, digging into the ground
like an anchor. Its body piled up behind the broad shield,
stopping the creature barely seven meters from the
Yidam. Its body settled back, leaving its legs splayed
forward, then lolled over on its left side.

 The skeleton man vaulted the triceratops’ corpse like
an X-ray of Bruce Lee. The bony fingers of his left hand
slashed the face of one Yakuza to ribbons. The skeleton
man hooked his right hand up underneath the rib cage of
a second Yakuza and carelessly tossed him back over his
shoulder. The Yakuza flailed his arms and legs as he flew,
but could do nothing to prevent himself from being
impaled on the triceratops’ horns when he landed.

 A look of pure, unadulterated joy lit Bat’s face as he
yanked two Yakuza back by the scruff of their necks to get
at the skeleton man. The monster slashed at him with
bloody claws, but Bat stepped back and contemptuously
slapped the blows aside. The skeleton man’s head came
up in surprise, and Coyote knew he had realized that as
frightening and dangerous as he might be, a trained fighter

 he was not.

 Bat’s right fist hammered that point home as it ex-
ploded on the skeleton man’s jaw. Bone shattered, litter-
ing the ground with teeth and bits of mandible. Bat’s left
fist came up in a murderous hook that snapped ribs. His
right foot came down, crushing foot bones into ivory
splinters, then another right first fractured the skeleton
man’s left collarbone.

 The skeleton man turned to run away, but even before
he could bump into the dinosaur’s corpse, Bat grabbed his
spine in his left hand. Pleasure melting Bat’s face into a
nightmare mask, he reached down and took a firm hold
of the skeleton man’s right femur. Twisting it left and then
right again, Bat ripped it free. As the bones below the knee
dropped away in an inanimate pile, Bat spun the femur
around and crashed it down through the skeleton man’s
skull.

 Colonel Nagashita quickly crossed the open area
between him and the hirsute behemoth created out of the
small, balding man. The creature took one swipe at him
with a fist the size of Nagashita’s head. The IDC ninja
leader ducked beneath the blow, then darted forward.
Coyote saw a flash of light as Nagashita drew hiskatana
and heard the creature utter a softoof as the blade passed
through its chest. Its upper half started to pivot toward the
ninja, but when its lower half failed to start the same
maneuver, the creature fell over backward, dead before it
hit the ground.

 «Rezizt, my pet! You know how I love to dizplay my
power! You help me make my point to Ryuhito! Now,
more playthingz for you to deal with, I think.»

 From beyond the fountain, GBI’s transformed guards
entered the battle. Walking tall like men, they had become
sable-coated wolves with glowing green eyes. A snap-
ping, howling pack, they fell on the Yakuza and ninjas as

 they streamed in toward Coyote and his people. Coyote
turned and nailed one with a close-range blast that tore
one of its arms clean off, but the wolfman kept coming.

 Tohis right, Sin dropped one with a single shot thatwent
in right above its snarling muzzle and exploded out the
back of itshead. Beyond him, another died as Bat used the
skeleton man’s femur to cave its skull in. Natch popped
a three-shot burst from her MP-7 through one’s spine,
taking it out of the fight, and Nagashita killed another by
decapitating it.

 “Brain or spine!” Coyote shouted as he opened one up
with a shotgun blast. Despite his best effort, it took another
shot to kill it, and, despite his warning, the wolfmen
pressed forward. Fiddleback’s foul power, channeled out
through El-Leichter’s eyes, rebuilt new wolfmen from the
scattered parts of the old ones.

 Coyote tapped Sin on the shoulder and signaled him
back a step while he used the Stormcloud to knock
anotherwolfman down. “Wherecan we go?We’re losing!”

 Sin snapped off two shots that blew fist-sized chunks
from a wolfman’s head. “The main building. Room-to-
room fighting, but they’ll know it better than us.”

 Dammit! I have to do something!The press of wolfmen
had already split the IDC ninjas off from his group, though
they seemed to be holding their own against the former
guards.We are losing!

 «Join me, Coyote. I will then let you win!»

 The hopefulness in Fiddleback’s telepathic message
reminded Coyote of the earlier sendings. He wants me to
come willingly. That way he gets more power. If I am
broken, I am of no use to him. Together, we can be
invincible, which means he is vulnerable now!

 «You are magnificent, my pet! But as I am vulnerable,
so are your friends!»

 The Yakuza started to break and run as Bat went down

 with a howling wolfman on him. The howl shifted to a yelp
of pain as Bat regained his feet and held the creature aloft
by its head. With his left hand clamping its muzzle shut and
his right hand capping its skull, Bat wrenched his hands
hard to the right. The creature’s body twisted along with
its head, preventing him from breaking its neck, but the
spasmodic jerking of its body showed he’d clearly hurt it.
Not content with that, Bat shifted his right hand down to
the front of its throat and grabbed a handful of stomach
muscles with his left. He slammed the wolfman down on
the edge of the triceratops’ shield, snapping its spine like
a candy cane.

 Though Bat’s victory heartened Coyote, he knew they
could not stand. A dozen of the wolfmen broke off to chase
the fleeing Yakuza, but the rest poured around the open
right flank and threatened to sweep around to cut off their
retreat. Coyote could barely see the encysted ninjas off on
the left for all the wolfmen attacking them. As the
Stormcloud’s breech snapped open and he unconsciously
reached for a nonexistent spare clip, he knew the end had
come.

 «Thiz iz your lazt chance, Coyote! Come to me. Now!»

 The sheer desperation in Fiddleback’s sending made
defying him easy, but still he hesitated. Cut and bleeding,
his friends pulled back, fighting against forces that would
engulf and devour them. Coyote knew, deep down, that
if he accepted Fiddleback’s power, he could keep his
friends safe. Then he also realized that when he accepted
Fiddleback’s power, he would have no desire to keep
them safe.

 With a butt stroke from the Stormcloud he shattered a
wolfman’s skull and forced himself to ignore the stinging
furrows left in his chest from its claw. “Never, Fiddleback,
never.”

 «No!» Fiddleback’s frustrated screech sliced through

 his brain like a razor, but Coyote realized it was not
directed at him. He sensed another power entering the
Sun Court. He saw nothing at first, but noticed instantly
that both El-Leichter and the wolfmen turned their atten-
tion back to their own rear area. He heard choked-offyips
of pain, then saw a limp canine body flip end over end
through the air.

 Through gaps in the humanoid pack, he saw a slender,
dark-haired, clean-limbed youth rendered in shades of
reflected green and black. His hands and feet moved with
blurring speed, and black blood covered his arms from the
elbow down. Over his body, worked lovingly in bold swirls
that helped define his musculature, black lines both thick
and thin decorated him.

 Where he struck, a body fell and, if it moved after that,
only gravity or an involuntary muscular twitch was the
cause.

 “How dare you!” Arrigo spun in the air and scattered his
soldiers with the wave of a hand.

 The youth stopped in the oasis strewn with the torn
bodies of his enemies, and blood streamed off his body.
Beyond him, back where it could have been a gate in a
wall, a golden circle glowed, and the tiny silhouette of a
man slowly grew within it. Coyote thought, because of the
image’s size, that the man was far away, but when the
silhouette assumed its full three dimensions, he saw the
figure was indeed small.

 “I dare. I dare many things, Fiddleback.”

 “You? You were nothing, and I gave you all you are. I
now revoke my giftz to you.” Arrigo El-Leichter’s body
pulsed out power. “Die!”

 The little man, still hidden in the shadow of his warrior,
waved the threat away. “Kill him.”

 Before the youthful assassin could move, Colonel
Nagashita ran forward, vaulted off a mound of wolfman

 corpses and leaped into the air. He drove hiskatana
through El-Leichter’s abdomen. The look of betrayed
surprise on El-Leichter’s face metamorphed into a trium-
phant leer as he caught Nagashita up in both hands and
started to compress his chest.

 “Kill them both, then,” the little man ordered his
assassin.

 He had no chance. As El-Leichter dug his fingers into
Nagashita’s ribs, the ninja leader twisted his own hands
and rotated thekatana blade 180 degrees in the wound.
Ribs popped, and Nagashita jerked, but he retained his
grip on the sword. He tugged up, then sawed the blade
back and forth. Blood and entrails streamed from El-
Leichter’s wound, dripping down into the fountain’s shal-
low basin, and the blood pouring from Nagashita’s mouth
soon mixed with them.

 With one final effort, Nagashita twisted the blade
around and brought it across, severing El-Leichter’s
spine. The green nimbus surrounding him died and,
locked with Nagashita in death, he fell to the pool. The
water flashed red, then green, then erupted in an explo-
sion of green steam.

 When it cleared, Coyote saw no one in the fountain.So
that is the dimensional gate here! He looked up to see if
the Japanese man who had been hovering with him had
fallen outside the fountain, or had been taken along with
the twocorpses. He did not see him at first, but then looked
up and saw the man floating in a golden throne.

 The little man stepped forward into the backlight of the
throne. “So, Ryuhito, do you want the power Fiddleback
offers you, or would you like whatIcan offer you?” A smug
expression of superiority accompanied the smile on the
little man’s face. “He provides you the power to transform
yourself. I can give you the power to transform others. I
offer my herald as a simple example of my art.”

 Jytte dropped to her knees. “Pygmalion!”

 Rajani stared at him. “Nicholas!”

 The little man smiled at Jytte, raising his right hand as
if to caress her face. “You were one of my finest creations,
Jytte. And you, Rajani, were always an annoyance.
Mickey, kill her.”

 “Mickey?” Rajani cried out as the assassin started
toward her.

 He hesitated for a half-second, which gave Bat all the
time he needed. Streaking across the battle line, he
tackled Mickey and brought him down. Both of Bat’s arms
slipped up through Mickey’s armpits and around the back
of his neck. Locking his legs around Mickey’s waist, Bat
rolled up into a sitting position. The muscles in his arms
and back bunched as he began to pull back on Mickey’s
arms and press his head forward.

 “No, Bat, no!” Rajani screamed at him. “He’s only a
child!”

 Pygmalion looked over at his charge and seemed about
to issue an order when the golden gate behind him
collapsed into nothingness. This appeared to disturb him
for a second, then he turned back and frowned. “Ryuhito,
if you enthrall yourself to Fiddleback, you will be his slave.
I know, for I was until I made Lucifer’s choice. As you can
see, I do with one what Fiddleback could not oppose with
many. Come with me, and I will give you this world to do
with as you wish.”

 Ryuhito nodded. The golden throne flared in intensity
and became a sphere. It contracted down to the size of a
walnut, then floated over and landed in Pygmalion’s open
right palm.

 Pygmalion smiled like a man who had just found an
object for which he had searched his entire life. “Though
I regret it, it seems I must leave you all alive here.” He
studied his surroundings for a moment, then let his gaze

 linger upon the gold sphere in his hand. “I bid you adieu.”

 “I go!” Mickey’s voice squealed anxiously.

 Pygmalion regarded him coldly. “I hardly think so.”

 “I go? See Dorothy? You promised?”

 “You failed me, Mickey.” The little man held the gold
sphere up like a jewel and smiled at its glow.“I do not need
those who fail, Mickey.”

 “You promised!” Mickey’s voice grew hoarse with the
shout, and he struggled against Bat. “You promised!”

 “And that promise is broken, just as is the promise I
thought I saw in you. You failed Mickey.” Pygmalion spit
on the ground. “You are nothing.”

 Coyote saw the boy try to twist free from Bat’s hold,
then he went limp and began to sob. Bat, still holding the
boy tightly, seemed at a loss to deal with him. Mickey
hung like a scarecrow in Bat’s arms, tears streaming down
his face and washing the blood from his convulsing chest.

 Pygmalion smiled, then looked up at the others. “Con-
sider him a present—and a warning. I have an army of
warriors modeled after him. They will ensure that my work
with Ryuhito will be uninterrupted. This you will soon see,
and you had best prepare yourselves for that day.”

 Sin slammed a new clip home in his Beretta. “I’m ready
now.”

 “How glib, how droll.” Pygmalion palmed the sphere,
and its light died. “When we return, you will venerate him
as your emperor, and you will worship me as your god.”
His laughter filled the courtyard, but by the time it echoed
back to the center, he had vanished in a burst of gold light.

 I looked up as Crowley stepped around a knot of docile
wolfmen being led away by two of the IDC ninjas. “You
missed the party.”

 Crowley toed the dead flying shark. “If you’d told me it
was open season on lawyers, I would have been here.” He
winced, and I noticed for the first time that he was favoring
his right leg. “As it was, I had a bit of a job to do myself with
that gold tunnel.”

 “Are you okay?” I knew he always kept a tight rein on
himself, but I couldn’t sense even a hint of distress coming
from him.

 Crowley shrugged. “I’ll live. Turns out the tunnel be-
longed to a Dark Lord named Pygmalion. He’s fairly new
and works a lot with folks from Earth.”

 “I know.” I pointed to where Rajani, Jytte, Natch and Bat
were standing with the warrior Pygmalion had called
Mickey. “He was here and abandoned Mickey. Rajani, the
Yidam’s daughter, says Mickey was a timid five year old
boy when last she saw him.”

 Crowley raised an eyebrow. “When was that?”

 I shrugged and felt some aches from my clawed ribs.
”Two or three weeks ago. She says he has a sister and
father in Flagstaff.”

 “That will make forafascinatinghomecoming.”Crowley

 shook his head. “What do you know about Pygmalion?”

 “Not much, and all of it picked up by inference.” I slung
the Stormcloud over my shoulder. “I gather Pygmalion
was a human scientist named Nicholas Hunt. Fiddleback
offered him power in return for loyalty. Pygmalion rebelled
and has been annoying Fiddleback since that time.”

 Looking over at Mickey and Jytte, both creations from
the hand of Pygmalion, part of me wanted to admire his
handiwork. I could also sympathize with his rebellion
against Fiddleback, and I knew well the pleasure of
defying him. I also knew the seduction of the power
Fiddleback offered, and I felt strong in resisting it—this
time.Will I always make that choice?

 Crowley’s voice refocused my attention outside. “He’s
been annoying lots more than just Fiddleback. All the
Dark Lords vie against each other for dominance. Pyg-
malion may well be new, but he is upsetting many of the
old power structures. In many ways, he is responsible for
having renewed the Dark Lords’ hunger for new worlds.”

 I could see it. Power is a drug that satisfies none.It only
creates a hunger for more. Even though one might have
enough powerto survive, the mere fact that anotherwants
your power makes you more ravenous. Dark Lords that
had lain dormant for eons were now waking with empty
bellies, and Earth seems to be in season.

 Crowley looked around as another group of the trans-
formed creatures walked away under guard. “What are
you going to do with them?”

 “For now, we’re putting them in the secure areas of the
GBI complex. Without Fiddleback to guide them, most
are very shocked and stunned by what they have be-
come.” I shook my head. “They were looking for an edge,
a secret that would give them an advantage over their
peers. They thought they’d found it with GBI. Now they’re
just fodder for tabloid stories.”

 “At least they can find work in the circus.” Crowley
walked over and leaned against the triceratops’ shield.
”Pygmalion had some builder-beings in the lead con-
structing that tunnel through the dimensions. I moved the
markers he had left behind for them into an area with a
dimensional gateway. I managed to program it to ran-
domly select a new destination every three seconds, so
I’ve been scattering his no-deposit, no-return warriors all
over the place. A lot of them looked like that guy over
there, and some of them were good.”

 I nodded. “When Rajani spoke with Mickey, he became
docile. She thinks she has broken the links in his mind that
make him a killer on order, and the fact that he’s not slain
her is fair proof of that. He was fast, Crowley,very fast. The
black swirls and lines look like decoration, but they’re
really carbon-fiber armor. I’d like to see an MRI of him
because I think the bones in his arms and legs have been
replaced with titanium replicas.”

 “Interesting. Where’s the big guy you were with?”
Crowley looked around, then glanced down at the
dinosaur’s shattered skull. “Out looking for a taxidermist?

 A single loud gunshot punctuated the night. “There was
a loose Roboguard IV in the Garden of Contemplation.”

 We shared a smile, then both looked over toward the
main building as Hal Garrett and Sinclair MacNeal led a
group of five men toward us. Four of the men wore
business suits and, despite the darkness, sunglasses.
They seemed unimpressed by the odd menagerie of
creatures in the Sun Court. The fifth man was smaller and
moved with the care of old age, yet I sensed a vitality in him
that even Pygmalion had not exhibited.

 Sin stopped and pointed me out with a wave of his hand.
”This is Coyote. Coyote, this is-“

 “I know.” I bowed deeply and held the bow out of
respect. Straightening up slowly, I noticed, from the

 corner of my eye that Crowley had also bowed to the
elderly man. I smiled politely and made an introduction.
”May I present Damon Crowley.”

 “We have met.”

 Crowley smiled. “How kind of you to remember.It was
a long time ago.”

 I looked over at Crowley and raised an eyebrow in a
silent question.

 Crowley shrugged. “His coronation, a Red Army cell. It
was a long time ago.”

 The small man surveyed the courtyard. “You are
responsible for this?”

 I nodded reluctantly. “Some of it. The man who cata-
lyzed it, Arrigo EI-Leichter, is dead. Your Colonel Nagashita
killed him.”

 “My grandson, is he one of these...things?”

 “No, sir, he is not.” I frowned. “El-Leichter was a pawn
of a Dark Lord we call Fiddleback. Ryuhito resisted him.
Another Dark Lord, Pygmalion, offered Ryuhito some-
thing more. Your grandson left with him.”

 The small man sighed heavily, then remained silent for
a while. Sin looked down and swallowed hard, but the
small man shook his head. “You were to get to him and
convince him of his error. Clearly things were worse than
I imagined, and I did not charge you with the right duty.”

 He looked up at me. “Mr. MacNeal and Mr. Garrett have
told me you are the person who is most capable of dealing
with these Dark Lords. Is this accurate?”

 “They are generous with praise and optimistic. How-
ever, with my friends I am willing to defy Dark Lords.”

 “Can you bring my grandson back?”

 I hesitated as the full import of the question landed on
me heavily. Could we find a Dark Lord’s home dimension
and extract Ryuhito? The logistics and timing for such an
operation would be staggering. Part of me knew it would

 be impossible, but another part said that not even trying
would be criminal. “It would be difficult and dangerous,
but I am willing to try.”

 “Good. Whatever it takes, you shall have. From this
point forward, this facility is yours to use as a staging area.
My people will secure it. Draw up a list of things you need,
and I will supply them. Whatever expenses you incur are
mine.”

 “You love your grandson very much.”

 “This is true, but that is not the reason for my generosity
here. As Itold Mr. MacNeal,” he said hoarsely, “I do not act
out of love for Ryuhito, but out of my love for the world.”
He bowed and withdrew inside his group of guards.

 Sinclair stared after him, then turned back with a
surprised expression on his face. “Can it be done? Can we
find Ryuhito and pull him out?”

 “It can be done, but the odds of Elvis becoming the pope
are a bit better than our chances of success.” I jerked a
thumb at the carnage behind us. “Had Pygmalion not
intervened, Fiddleback would have won here. Going one
on one with a Dark Lord is not a survival trait.”

 Crowley smiled slyly. “I don’t think we’ll have to go it
alone, Coyote.”

 “Oh?” The amused tone in his voice sent chills down
my spine.

 “As I noted before, Pygmalion is not a favorite of the
other Dark Lords. In fact, in coming here I met one who
pledged his help to destroy Pygmalion.”

 “Really?”

 “Yes,” Crowley nodded solemnly. “In fact, he said
without him you will fail. I think he’s right.”

 “Who?” A sinking feeling tugged my stomach toward
my toes as I realized who Crowley had spoken with.
”Fiddleback? An alliance with Fiddleback? I might as well
commit suicide.”

 “Without him, you likely will.” Crowley’s eyes hard-
ened. “While I don’t begrudge you that option, I hope you
reconsider. Alone, you’ll kill yourself. And the rest of world
will die with you.”

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