
CRUXALBERT E. COWDREYDYEVA WATCHED THE EARTH revolve beneath her, vanish into banks of icy cirrus,then emerge as a patchwork of blue sea and immobile, shining cumuli.Bits of continents poked through the gaps as the airpacket swung out on ahyperbolic curve. She had a glimpse of North America, with the AppalachianIslands trailing into the Atlantic and the Inland Sea glimmering under the hotMarch sun. Then the sixty-one passengers were shrouded in the lower cloud layerand reading lights winked briefly on before they emerged again to flit like theshadow of a storm over the broad Pacific.A light meal was served, and during dessert the glint of Fujiyama Island on theright with its attendant green islets announced that they were nearing theWorldcity. They flashed into the dark red sun and the vast forest of Chinaleaped out of the glittering wavelets of the Yellow Sea. Fifty-five hundredclicks was now too fast and one, two, three times the airpacket quivered as theretros slowed it to a sedate thousand.They were speeding over the green savannahs of the Gobi, famous for its herds ofwild animals. Of course they were too high and moving too fast to see the herds,but a mashina in the forward wall of the cabin darkened, glittered briefly withpinpoints of light, and filled with solid-seeming images of wapiti, elephants,haknim, sfosura -- animals native and imported from other worlds -- shamblingover pool-dotted green plains where the immortal Khan once ruled.Dyeva's pale, high-cheekboned face concentrated and her unblinking dark eyesglinted with reflected images. Nine-tenths of the Earth --humanity's first home-- was now a world of beasts. The ultimate achievement of the man calledMinister Destruction. Was it for this that twelve billion people had died?In the sunset glow of Ulanor the Worldcity, Stef sprawled on his balcony wearinga spotty robe and listening to the cries of vendors and the creak of wheels inGolden Horde Street. He loved to loll here smoking kif in the last light duringall seasons except the brief, nasty Siberian winter.A commotion in the street made him swing his bony legs off the battered loungechair. He tucked the mouthpiece of his pipe into a loop of hose from the censerand shuffled in broken-strap sandals to the railing.Down below, vendors' carts had pulled against the walls and a long line ofprisoners (blue pajamas, short hair, wrists and necks imprisoned in blackplastic kangs) shuffled past like a column of ants. Guards in widebrimmedduroplast helmets strode along the line at intervals, swinging short whipsagainst the legs of laggards to hurry them on. The prisoners groaned andsomebody started to sing a prison song in Alspeke, the only language that allhumans knew: Smerta, smerta mi kalla/Ya nut trubna hal syegda...Death, death, call me, I have nothing but trouble always. Picking up the rhythm,even the laggards began moving so quickly that the guards no longer had anexcuse to strike.A good song, thought Stef, lying down again, because it goes in two oppositedirections, endurance and despair. Those are the poles of life, right? Of hislife, anyway. Except for kif, which was close to being his religion, filling himduring these evening hours with a distant cool melancholy, with what the OldBelievers called Holy Indifference --meaning that what happened happened and youdidn't try to fuck with God. And, of course, there was Dzhun. She meant a littlemore than lust, a good deal less than love. He whispered her name, which meantsummertime in Alspeke, with its original English intonation and meaning: June.Then frowned. He was, as usual, out of cash. Kif cost money. Then how was hesupposed to afford Dzhun? He brooded, puffing slowly, letting the aromatic smokeleak from his nose and mouth. He needed a case. He needed a job. He needed moneyto fall on him out of the sky.Even blase passengers who had seen Ulanor many times, perhaps even had grown upthere, joined the newcomers in staring through the ports at the capital of thehuman race.More than a million people! Dyeva thought. Who could believe a city so vast? Ofcourse, compared to the world-cities of the gist century, Ulanor was hardly asuburb. But this could at least give her a glimmering of the wonders that hadbeen lost -- a revelation of the once land future?) world before the Time ofTroubles had changed everything.The shuttle was drifting along now, joining the traffic at the fifth level onthe outermost ring, swinging around so that the city with its spoked avenues andglittering squares seemed to be turning. The copilot (a black box, of course)began speaking in a firm atonal voice, pointing out such wonders as Genghis KhanAlice, Yellow Emperor Place where the various sector controllers had theirpalaces, and Government of the Universe Place, where the President's Palacefaced the Senate of the Worlds."And then the Clouds and Rain District," said a man's voice, and the nativeEarthlings all broke into guffaws.The black box paused politely while the disturbance quieted, then resumed itsspiel. Dyeva had turned a delicate pink. The brothel district (named for apoetic Chinese description of intercourse, the "play of clouds and rain") hadbeen denounced in Old Believer churches ever since she could remember. And whileshe no longer was a believer herself, she retained a lively sense of thedegradation endured by the women and men (and even children) who worked there.She reflected that such exploitation formed the dark reverse of the civilizationshe loved and hoped to restore. Perhaps after all there was something to be saidfor the near-empty Earth of today. Then, impatiently, Dyeva shook the thoughtout of her head. This was no time for doubt. Not now. Not now.Stef was still frowning, with the mouthpiece between his lips, when his mashinachimed inside the apartment. Irritated because somebody was calling during hisrelaxing hour, he padded inside, evading the shadows of junk furniture, steppingover piles of unwashed clothing. He told the mashina, "Say," and it flickeredinto life. Inside the box hovered the glowing head of Colonel Yamashita of theSecurity Forces."Hal, Korul Yama.""I need something private done. Come see me now, Gate 43."No waste words there. The image expired into a glowing dot. Sighing, Stefdropped his robe among the other castoffs on the floor and plowed into a mustycloset, looking for something clean.On the roof of the old building a hovercab with the usual black box for a drivernosed up when Stef pushed a call button. He climbed in and gave orders for theLion House, Gate 43."Gratizor," said the black box. Thank you, sir. Why were black boxes always morepolite than people?As they zipped down Genghis Khan Allee, Stef viewed the floodlit facades ofGovernment of the Universe Place without much interest. He had long ago realizedthat they were a stage set and that all the action was behind the scenes. Bronzestatues honored the Yellow Emperor, Augustus Caesar, Jesus, Buddha, Alexanderthe Great, and of course the ubiquitous Genghis Khan. All of them Great Unifiersof Humankind. Forerunners of the Worldcity and its denizens.Genghis even had a pompous tomb set amid the floodlights--not that his boneswere in it; nobody had ever found them. But yokels from the offworlds visitedUlanor specifically to gaze upon the grave of this greatest (and bloodiest)Unifier of them all.Near the tomb foreshortened vendors were selling roasted nuts, noodles wrappedin paper, tiny bundles of kif, seaweed, bowls of miso and kimshi, and babakuchicken with texasauce. The scene was orderly; people strolled and ate at allhours and never feared crime. Breaking the law led to the Palace of Justice offGovernment of the Universe Place and the warren of tiled cells beneath that werecalled collectively the White Chamber. The formidable Kathmann, head of EarthSecurity, ruled the White Chamber, and his reputation alone was enough to keepUlanor law-abiding.The cab turned off the main drag, zipped down back alleys at a level twentymeters above the street, and drew up at a deep niche in a blank white slab of abuilding. Stef flashed his ID at the black box and a flicker of lightacknowledged payment. He stepped into the foyer and a bored guard in a kiosklooked up."Hai?""Hai. Ya Steffens Aleksandr. Korul Yamashita ha'kalla."His voice activated a monitor. The guard stared at the resulting picture, thensearched Stef's face as if another, unauthorized face might be concealed beneathit. Finally he spoke to the security system, which silently opened abronze-plated steel door.In the public areas of the Lion House multicolored marble and crimson carvedshishi were everywhere, but here where the action was the hallways were blank,slapped together out of semiplast and floored with dusty gray mats. Light panelsglowed in the ceiling; doors were blank, to confuse intruders. Stef, who knewthe corridor well, counted nineteen doors and knocked.He gasped as a stench that would have done honor to a real lion house hit him inthe face. The door had been opened by a Darksider, and its furry mandrill facegazed at him with black cat pupils set in huge round eyes the color of riperaspberries. The creature had two big arms and two little ones; one big arm heldthe door, one rested on its gunbelt, and the two little ones scratched the thickfur on its chest."Korul Yamashita mi zhdat," Stef managed to say without choking. Colonel Yamaawaits me. The Darksider moved aside and he made his way through the dimguardroom followed by an unblinking red/black stare. He knocked again, and atlast entered Yamashita's office."Hal," said Stef, but Yama wasted no time."Stef, I got a problem," he began. Everything in the office was made of black orwhite duroplast, as if to withstand an earthquake or a revolution. Stef slippedinto a black chair that apparently had been consciously shaped to causediscomfort."Why the animal outside? Can't you afford a human guard?" asked Stef, lookingaround for a kif pipe and seeing none."Everybody important has a Darksider now. More reliable, even if they do stink.Now listen. This information is absolutely a beheader, so I hope your necktingles if you ever feel an urge to divulge it. For months I been getting vaguereports from the Lion Sector about terrorists who are interested in time travel.Now something's happened here on Earth. Somebody's pirated a wormholer from theUniversity.""Oh, shit." Since Stef hadn't even known that a real wormholer existed, hissurprise was genuine."The people who were responsible for the machine are now with Kathmann in theWhite Chamber and I assure you that if it was an inside job the Security Forceswill soon know.""I bet they will.""I don't have to spell out for you the danger if some glupetz gets at the past.Ever since the technology came along, assholes have been wanting to go back andchange this, change that. They don't understand the chaotic effect of suchchanges. They don't see how things can spin out of control."Yamashita sat brooding, a man who had devoted his life to control."They think they can manage the time process. They don't see how some littlething, some insignificant thing, can send history spinning off in some directionthey haven't foreseen, nobody's foreseen."Stef nodded. He was thinking about someone monkeying with the past, suddenlycausing himself, or Dzhun, or the genius who had synthesized kif to wink out ofexistence. It was hard to maintain Holy Indifference in the face ofpossibilities like that."What can I do?"But Yama hadn't finished complaining."Why don't these svini do something useful?" he fretted. Svini meantswine. "Whydon't they try to change the future instead of the past, try to make it better?""Possibly because you'd execute them if they did."Suddenly Yama grinned. He and Stef went back a long way; the academy, service on10, on Luna. They had been rivals once but no longer. Yama headed the SecurityService at the Lion House, a fat job; the Lion Sector which it administered wasa huge volume of space with hundreds of inhabited worlds stretching up thespiral arm toward the dense stars of the galactic center.Meanwhile Stef was out on his ass, picking up small assignments to solveproblems Yama didn't want to go public with. Like the present one: Yama had noauthority on Earth, but suspected a connection between a local happening and onein Far Space. As an agent, Stef had two great advantages -- he was reliable anddeniable."It's true," Yama went on, "I like things as they are. Humanity's been through alot of crap to get where it is. We need to conserve what we've got.""Absolutely."Yama looked suspiciously at Stef's bland face. He didn't like Stef to say thingsthat might be either sincere or ironic, or might wag like a dog's tail, back andforth.Stef grinned just a little. "Yama, I really do agree with you. Against all logicI'm happy, and happy people don't want change. Now, how can I find thiswormholer thief?"Yama was instantly all business again. "I'11 tell you everything you need toknow," he said."And not a bit more.""Absolutely," said Yama, who really did have a sense of humor, colonel ofsecurity or not. He began by transferring 100 khans to Stef's meager bankaccount, knowing that Stef would promptly spend it and need more, and his needwould keep him working.AS YAMA TALKED, across the city in his big, heavily mortgaged house ProfessorYang Li-Qutsai was in his study, lecturing to his mashina under staringvaporlamps.His famous course at the University of the Universe, Origa Nash Mir (Origin ofOur World), drew a thousand students every time he gave it. The reason was notprofound scholarship -- Yang plagiarized almost everything he said -- but hisbrilliance as a speaker. At times he seemed to be a failed actor rather than asuccessful academic. His image included a long gray beard, a large polishedskull, a frightening array of fingernails, and a deep, sonorous voice that madeeverything he said seem important, whether it was or not. A memory cube recordedhis lecture for resale to the offworlds where dismal little academies understrange suns would thrill to the echoes of his wisdom.Even as he spoke, lucidly, stabbing the air with a long thin index finger thatended in nine centimeters of nail, Yang was calculating what resale and residualrights on the lecture might bring him. Enough to purchase a villa at thefashionable south end of Lake Bal? Peace at home, among his four wives? At leastan expensive whore?On the whole, he thought, I'd better settle for the whore. Half of his two-trackmind dreamed of girls even while the other half was retelling the mostcalamitous event in the brief, horrid history of civilized man. The firstlecture of his course was always on the Time of Troubles."Considering that the Troubles created our world," he declared, "it is shocking-- yes, shocking -- that we know so little about how the disaster began. In twobrief years (2091-2093) twelve billion people died, with all their memories.Seven hundred vast cities were obliterated, with all their records; threehundred-odd governments vanished, with all their archives of hardcopy, records,discs, tapes and the first crude memory cubes. No wonder we know so little!"Where and why did the fighting start? The Nine Plagues B when did they breakout? Blue Nile hemorrhagic fever and multiple-drug-resistant blackpox wereraging in Africa as early as the 2070s. Annual worldwide outbreaks of lethalinfluenza had become the rule by 2080. It seems that the Time of Troubles waswell under way even before the outbreak of war."Introductions were always troublesome: students, realizing they were in for along hour, began to sink into a trancelike state accompanied by flutteringeyelids and restless movements of the pelvis. A warning light on the box glowedgreen and Yang headed at once into the horror stories that gave the course muchof its appeal."But the war of 2091 produced the most spectacular effects: the destruction ofthe cities, the Two Year Winter, and the Great Famine. Let us take as an examplethe great city of Moscow, where robot excavators have recently given us anin-depth picture -- if I may be pardoned a little joke -- of the horrors thatattended its destruction. A city of thirty million in 2090..."Detail after horrendous detail followed: the skeleton-choked subway with itsstill beautiful mosaics recording the reign of Tsar Stalin the Good; the drytrench of the Moskva River whose waters had been vaporized in one glowinginstant and blocked by rubble so that the present river flowed fifteen clicksaway; the great Kremlin Shield of fused silicon stretching over the onetime citycenter, with its radioactive core that would glow faintly for at least 50,000years.Observing with satisfaction that his indicator light was turning from unluckygreen to lucky red, Professor Yang moved on to the horrors of London, Paris,Tokyo, Beijing, and New York. Then he spoke briefly about the closed zones thatstill surrounded the lost cities, of irradiated wildlife undergoing rapidevolutionary change in bizarre and clamorous Edens where the capitals of greatempires had stood, only three hundred years ago...The interest indicator glowed like a Darksider's eye. Professor Yang strode upand down, his voice deepening, his gray beard swishing in the wind, his longfingers clawing at the air."Precisely how did it happen -- this great calamity?" he demanded. "How much weknow, and how little! Will it remain for the scholars of your generation tosolve these riddles finally? I confess that mine has shed only a little lightaround the edges of the forbidding darkness that we call -- the Time ofTroubles!"As usual, his lecture lasted exactly the time allotted, a one-hundred-minutehour. As usual, it ended with a key phrase, reminding the drowsy student of whathe had been hearing at the rim of his clouded consciousness.The power light in the mashina winked off, and Professor Yang shouted: "Tea!"A door flew open and a scurrying domestic wheeled in the tea caddy, the cup, themolko, the tins of oolong and Earl Grey."Sometimes," muttered Yang, "I think I'll die of boredom if I ever have to talkabout the Troubles again.""One lump or two?" asked the domestic, and Yang, who drank tea after the ancientEnglish fashion, turned anxious attention to the small, ridiculously expensivelumps of natural brown sugar."Two, I think," he said.If residuals from the lecture didn't buy him a girl, at least they would, hehoped, keep him supplied with sugar for some time to come.The clocks of the Worldcity were nearing 9.1 when Yamashita, dining comfortablyat home with his wife Hariko, heard his security-coded mashina chime andhastened into his den to receive a secret report from Earth Security. Somebodyhad cracked under interrogation. Yama listened to the report with growingdismay."Shit, piss, and corruption," he growled. "Secretary!""Sir?" murmured the box in a soft atonal voice."Contact Steffens Aleksandr. If he's not at home -- and of course he won't be --start calling the houses in the Clouds and Rain District. Make it absolutelyclear that this is a security matter and that we expect cooperation in findinghim.""Yes, sir. His home is not answering.""Try Brother and Sister House. Try Delights of Spring House. Try Radiant LoveHouse. Then try all the others.""And when I find Steffens Aleksandr?""Tell him to wipe his cock and get to my office soonest.""Is that message to be conveyed literally?""Yes!"Back at the table, he had barely had time to fold his legs under him when Harikotold him to stop using bad language in the house where the children might hearhim."Yes, little wife," said the man of power meekly."I suppose you have to go to the office again.""Yes, little wife. An emergency --""Always your emergencies," said Hariko. "Why do I waste hours making you goodfood to eat if you're never here to eat it? And why do you employ that awfulSteffens person? He's a disgrace, a man his age who lives like a tomcat. Noteveryone can be as happy as we are, but everybody can have a decent,conventional life."Yama ate quietly, occasionally agreeing with her until she ran out of words.Then he went upstairs, removed his comfortable kimono, and put on again the souruniform he'd worn all day.On the way down, pinching his thick neck as he tried to close the collar, hestopped in the children's bedrooms to make sure they were all asleep. The boysin their bunk beds slept the extravagant sleep of childhood. Looking at them,gently patting their cheeks, Yama reflected that adults and animals always sleptas if they half expected to be awakened -- children never.Then to the girls' room, where his daughter Kazi slumbered in the embrace of astuffed haknim. Yama smiled at her but lingered longest at the bedside of hissmallest daughter. Rika was like a doll dreaming, with a tiny bubble forming onher half-parted pink lips. He was thinking: if someone changes the past, she mayvanish, never have a chance to live at all. To prevent that, he resolved todestroy without mercy every member of the time-travel conspiracy.At the front door Hariko tied a scarf around his neck and gave him a hug; shewas too modest to kiss her husband in the open doorway, even though they weretwenty meters above the street. He patted her and stepped into the officialhovercar that had nosed up to his porch."Lion House, Gate 43," he told the black box, and sank back against thecushions.AT RADIANT LOVE HOUSE, Professor Yang relaxed from his scholarly labors on oneside of a double divan in the midprice parlor and viewed 3-D images of youngwomen to the ancient strains of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker."Do you see anything that pleases you?" asked the box that was projecting theimages."Truly, it is a Waltz of the Flowers," replied Yang sentimentally. The smell ofkif wafted through the room, presumably from a hidden censer."The dark beauty of Miss Luvblum contrasts so markedly with the rare --indeed,unique -- blondness of Miss Sekzkitti," murmured the box, going through itsrecorded spiel. "The almond eyes of Miss Ming remind us of the splendor of thedynasty from which she takes her nom d'amour. Every young lady is mediscanned ona daily basis to insure her absolute purity and freedom from disease. MissGandhi is skilled in all the acts of the famous Kama Sutra. For a smalladditional fee, an electronic room may be rented in which the most modernappliances are available to heighten the timeless joys of love."Professor Yang had already halfway made his selection -- the most expensive ofthe "stable." Miss Selassie was a tall, slender woman of Ethiopian descent whohad been genetically altered into an albino. The box referred to her as "theWhite Tiger of the Nile," and bald, bearded, long-nailed Yang, at ninety-ninereaching the extreme limits of middle age, found his thoughts turning more andmore to her astounding beauty. Her body is like a living Aphrodite of ancientGreece, he thought, while her face is like a living spirit mask of ancientAfrica."Miss Selassie, how much is she?""One hundred khans an hour.""Oh, dear. And how much for an electronic room?"Professor Yang rightly believed that all the appliances known to modern sciencewould be needed if he was to spend his expensive hour doing anything more thanenjoying Miss Selassie's company."Fifty khans an hour. However," said the box seductively, "for such a man asyourself, Honored Professor, the house gladly makes a special price: MissSelassie and an electronic room for an hour for the sum total of --"A brief pause, during which Yang felt himself growing anxious."One hundred and thirty-five khans, a ten-percent reduction.""Agreed," breathed Yang, giving himself no time to think. There was a briefflutter in the box as his bank checked his voiceprint and transferred anotherK135 from his already deflated account to one of the bulging accounts of RadiantLove House."You should've asked for twenty percent off," said a voice, making Yang jump.A long, stringy, bony man holding a kif pipe rose from the other side of thedouble divan and stretched and yawned."I hope you haven't been eavesdropping," snapped Yang."No more than I had to," said Stef in a bored voice. "I've made my selection,but the selectee is popular and she's busy. I'm just telling you, if you've gotthe balls to bargain you can get them down twenty percent, sometimes more ifit's a slow night. The ten percent reduction they offer you is justmerchandizing."Resentment at the stranger's intrusion struggled with economic interest inProfessor Yang's breast. The latter won."Really?" he said."Sure. I do it all the time. You could've gotten the whole works for 190.""Indeed. And the electronic room -- is it really worth it?""It is if you have to have it."Yang was just beginning to get angry when the door opened and a very tall nakedwoman entered. Her hair was in a thousand white braids and her eyes were ovalrubies. The aureoles of her taut, almost conical breasts were much the samecolor as her eyes. A faint scent of faux ambergris wafted into the waiting roomand mingled with the fumes of kif. Yang sat hypnotized."You the customer?" she asked Stef with some interest."No, I'm waiting for Dzhun. This guy's your customer.""Figures," she sighed, and taking Professor Yang's thin and trembling hand inher own, the White Tiger led him away.A few minutes later the box made two announcements: Dzhun was ready, and Stefwas to wipe his cock and get to Yama's office soonest. Stef promptly did what healmost never did -- lost it completely."FUCK THE FUCKING UNIVERSE!" he roared in English. The divan weighed a hundredkilos but he tossed it end over end. At the crash the door flew open and a guardentered, pulling an impact pistol half as long as her arm. Stef calmed downinstantly."Ya bi sori. My deepest and humblest apologies," he said, clapping his handstogether and bowing. "I don't know what came over me."Stef had seen a number of bodies killed by impact weapons. A body shot usuallyleft very little except the head, arms and legs, plus assorted fragments."Straighten out the goddamn sofa," said the guard, watching him narrowly. Shewas Mongol and looked tough. Stef did as he was told."Incidentally," he said as he was leaving, "I'll need a raincheck on Dzhun. Ialready paid my khans.""Talk to the front desk," growled the guard.Outside, Stef took a deep breath and ordered a hovercab. He felt that he now hada personal score to settle with the svini who had not only stolen a wormholerbut forestalled his session with Dzhun. Since the svini were the only reason hecurrently had money enough to buy her time, that was unreasonable. But Stefwanted to be unreasonable. That was how he felt."So the theft was an inside job," he muttered, trying without success to getcomfortable in one of Yama's black chairs."Yes. A trusted scientist turns out to belong to a terrorist group that callsitself Crux. He's been checked a hundred times. Living quietly, no extra money,no nothing. During lie-detection tests, brain chemicals always indicated he wastelling the truth. Trouble was, the wrong questions got asked. Are you loyal? Towhat? He answers yes, meaning loyal to humanity as he understands it. Are you amember of any subversive group? Subversive in what sense? To the existing order,or to humanity? He gets by with a false answer again.""What exactly do these Crux fuckers believe in?""Life. The absolute value of human life. The wormholer opens the way to reversethe worst calamity in human history, the Time of Troubles. Trillions of livesare hanging on the issue -- not only the lives that were lost in the famines andplagues and wars but all their descendants to the tenth generation."Stef growled, scratched himself, longing for kif, for Dzhun. "Bunch of fuckingidealists.""Exactly. People with a vision, willing to destroy the real world for the sakeof an idea. We've gotta kill them all."Yama jumped up -- a springy man, muscular, bandy-legged. He was fifty andnearing middle age, but a lifetime of the martial arts enabled him to bouncearound like a ball of elastoplast."Kill them!" he roared, chopping at the air.Watching him tired Stef."And this was what you called me back for?""No. Or not only." Yama fell back into the desk chair. "The group that has thisgrand vision is, of course, organized in cells that have to be cracked one byone. But the guy who talked in the White Chamber knew one name outside his cell,the name of a woman, an offworlder. She's called Dyeva. She's one of thefounders of the movement, and she was supposed to contact him."Stef sighed. "Anything from IC on her?""No," admitted Yama. "No report yet from Infocenter.""Call me when one comes in," said Stef, rising. "I'm extremely grateful for theway you took me away from my pleasures to give me information that, as yet, hasno practical significance. Please don't do it again."Yama saw him to the door, nodding to the Darksider who approached smelling likethe shit of lions, owls and cormorants mixed together. Stef pinched his nostrilsand spoke like a duck."I love coming to your office, Yama. The place has a certain air about it."Half an hour later, Stef was again sprawled in the middling expensive parlor atRadiant Love House, waiting. Another customer had taken Dzhun while he was away.Stef spent the time smoking kif and thinking about shooting Dyeva, whoever shewas, with an impact pistol."Phut," he said, imitating the uninspiring sound of the weapon. He made his longhands into a ball and drew them rapidly apart, imitating the explosion insidethe target. Stef had studied wound ballistics and he knew that impact ammovaporized in the body and formed a rapidly expanding sphere of superheated gasand destructive particles. Dyeva v'dtomi sa dizolva, he thought. The svin fliesapart, turns to molecules, atoms, protons and quarks."How happy I am," murmured the box, "to inform you, Sir, that the person of yourchoice is ready to receive you."Instantly Stef was up and moving, his bloody thoughts forgotten. At heart he wasa lover, not a killer.In the blue peace of the electronic room, Professor Yang lay huddled under asheet of faux silk.Beside him, her hand still languidly resting on a gadget called anerector-injector, lay a statue of living ivory. At least he now knew the WhiteTiger's given name. Even if it was only a prost's working name, a nom d'amour,for Yang it was what the old French phrase meant -- a name of love."Selina," he murmured, and she turned her head and smiled at him."I'm afraid your time is up," she whispered. "But perhaps you'll come again, mydear. You were special.""Selina," he said again. Around him monitors winked and a low electromagnetichum soothed with a white sound. Yang was all too conscious of the birth of a newobsession, one even less affordable than four wives and natural sugar."I must see you again," he said.Detecting the urgent note in his voice, Selina smiled. Ah, that enigmaticwhore's smile! thought Yang with pain in his heart. What did it mean? Pleasurein you, pleasure in your money, no pleasure at all but mere professionalism? Whocould tell?Wasn't this how he had happened to marry the most obnoxious of his four wives?Dyeva sat quietly in the front room of a small but elegant suburban villa.The windows were open and the morning sun entered through a gentle screen ofglossy leaves thrown out by a lemon tree. The room held all the necessities ofrustic living, bare beams across the ceiling, lounges covered with faux linen, aglass table bearing apples and oranges and kuvisu fruit, and a mashina half thelength of the wall to entertain the owner, a Professor of Rhetoric whose hobbywas playing at revolution.Relaxing on the lounges were the other members of the cell: two students and adark and tensely attractive woman of middle age who bore a painted mark on herforehead. The students were still talking about Professor Yang's lecture of lastevening, tailor-made as it seemed for the members of Crux."Lord Buddha, but he makes you see it," said the boy, fingering a string ofbeads restlessly. He was an Old Believer. Dyeva had noticed years ago that suchpeople were represented in Crux far beyond their numbers in the generalpopulation.The girl was lovely: bronzed, yellow-haired, sloe-eyed, the perfect Eurasian.She called herself Dian and spoke in a throaty whisper that someone had told herwas mysterious."Actually, he's a horrible old man. But it's as Kuli says, he has the gift ofmaking the past live.""We expect to do more along that line," said the owner of the villa in a deep,resonant voice, and the two young people laughed happily. All three of themloved the taste of conspiracy; the older man, whose codename was Zet, earnestlyhoped to seduce Dian. Supposedly nobody in the group knew anybody else's realname. They had a vast and fundamentally childish panoply of measures to preservesecrecy--passwords, hand signals, ways of passing information in complicated anddifficult ways. Because cyberspace was a favorite hunting ground for thesupermashini of the Security Forces, they avoided electronic contact wheneverpossible. Instead, they had oaths, secret meetings, symbols. Their key symbolwas the looped cross of ancient Egypt, the crux ansata -- the sign of life.Kuli wore a crux on a cord around his neck; at meetings he took it out for allto see. The girl, Dyeva noted with amazement, had the symbol tattooed on thepalm of one slender hand. Why didn't the senior members of the cell force her tohave it removed?People had often told Dyeva that she had icewater in her veins. That wasn'ttrue: her emotions were intense, only deeply buried. Right now anger and alarmwere stirring deep beneath her masklike face. Did her life, to say nothing ofthe lives of trillions of human beings, depend on these amateurs, children?The dark woman, who called herself Lata, brushed a hand across her brow andsaid, "The essential thing is to speed our visitor safely on her way. And I musttell all of you something I learned last night. The theft of the wormholer hasbeen discovered and there have been arrests.""Arrests?" demanded Dian, in a scandalized tone. "Of someone I know?"She seemed to think that the polizi had no right to arrest members of a secretorganization merely because it was bent on annihilating the existing world."No," sighed Lata. "Fortunately for you. That beast Kathmann and the polizidrugged and tortured both the guards and the people who were responsible fortechnical maintenance of the wormholer. Thus they learned that one of thescientists had been involved in the theft. Thank God, the device had alreadybeen turned over to another cell, and the poor man who talked didn't know theirnames or where it is at present."The two young people seemed paralyzed. Zet was turning his head from side toside, looking at the furniture, the fresh fruit. Dyeva had no trouble readinghis mind: the glupetz had suddenly realized that he could lose all this byplaying at conspiracy. Some day, she thought, if he thinks about it long enough,he will realize that he may lose much more."I will go with you," said Dyeva, rising and pointing at Lata, apparently theonly one of the gathering with any sense. "You will conduct me. I must not stayhere longer and endanger these heroes of humanity."Zet looked relieved at the news she'd soon be gone; Kuli and Dian were stillabsorbing the news of the arrests. He was stunned, she indignant."Oh, but the people who were tortured -- they're martyrs!" she exclaimedsuddenly and burst into tears."Yes," said Dyeva, "and by this time they are also corpses. Death is the rewardthe technicians of the Chamber hold out to their victims. I will be packed andgone in five minutes if you will lead me," she said to Lata."Of course," said the dark woman, and Dyeva hastened to the room where she hadslept to gather her kit.Later, in Lata's hovercar, Dyeva asked her how she had come to join themovement."I despise this world," Lata said quietly. "It's a gutter of injustice and pain.Nothing will be lost if this world suddenly vanishes at the word of LordKrishna. Of course, if we manage to undo the Troubles, success will cost us ourown lives. That is the splendor of Crux. If our movement did not demand theultimate sacrifice I would not have joined it."Another Old Believer, though Dyeva, only this time of the Hindu type. And I wasbrought up a Christ-worshipper, and the boy Kuli is a Buddhist. Are we allremnants and leftovers of a dead world? Is that why we wish to restore it?"What are you thinking?" asked Lata."Wondering why the movement contains so many Old Believers.""Oh, I think I know. It's because we want to undo the death of our faiths. Somany people simply stopped believing after the Troubles. They said tothemselves, There is no God. Or, if there is and he allows this to happen, I donot care about him."Dyeva glanced at her curiously. They were entering the air-space above Ulanorand Lata paid frowning attention to the traffic until a beam picked up her car'sblack box. For an instant Dyeva had a powerful urge to continue thisconversation, to talk about things that had real meaning. Then she rememberedthat the less Lata knew about her, and she about Lata, the better for both ofthem."We all come to it for different reasons," she said guardedly, and silencefollowed. The little car revolved above the Worldcity, bearing two women whohoped to change it into a phantasm that never had existed at all.Stef and Dzhun were having breakfast in a teashop deep in the Clouds and RainDistrict. Half the customers seemed to recognize Dzhun, and she waved and blewkisses to them. She had scrubbed off her white working makeup and with it hadgone her nighttime pretense of lotus delicacy and passivity. She looked and wasa tough young woman to whom life had not been kind."Wild turnover last night," she said to a red-haired eunuch who had stopped bythe table to shriek and fondle her. "I did ten guys.""Oh my dear," said the sisi, "I do ten on my way to work.""Seems you've got some catching up to do," Stef told Dzhun when the sisi hadmoved on."Oh, he's such a bragger. And old, too. When I'm his age I'll have my own houseand instead of bragging about doing ten guys I'll be doing one -- the one Ichoose.""And that one will be me.""Only if you get rich," said Dzhun candidly, buttering a bun. "I'm tired ofbeing a robotchi, a working stiff. I've got a senator on the string now, Stef,did I tell you? Soon you won't be able to afford me at all."She dimpled as she always did when saying unpalatable things."Is that why I'm buying you breakfast?""Oh Stef, I'm just needling you. I love my poor friends, too. Look, why don'tyou take me to Lake Bai for a week or two? Get a cabin. I won't demand a villa.Not yet.""Unfortunately, I'm on a big case right now. One that might even save yourlife."Dzhun stopped eating and stared at him. "You're telling the truth?""Believe it. When the payoff comes, it'll be as big as the case. Then we'll goto Bai. Get a villa, not a cabin."Stef spoke with the calm assurance he employed when he was in a state of totaluncertainty. The investigation was dead in the water. The arrests had not led tothe wormholer. IC still hadn't come up with a make on Dyeva. Mashini werecombing passenger lists of recent arrivals from the offworlds -- voiceprints,retinographs, DNA samples -- turning up nobody with a record, nobody who fit theprofiles. Stef's local contacts had nothing to offer."What's it all about, Stef?" asked Dzhun."Never mind. The case is a beheader. It's nothing you want to know about, sodon't ask. It's a security matter and it'd be a hell of a shame if theDarksiders came and carted off a butt like yours to the White Chamber."Their voices had fallen to whispers. Dzhun's face was so close that Stef'sbreath moved her long eyelashes. A delicate scent clung to her kimono, somenameless offworld flower, and the drooping faux silk disclosed the roundness ofher little breasts like pomegranates. Stef could have eaten her with a spoon."I won't say anything," she promised. "If anybody asks what you're doing, I'llsay that you never tell me anything."Stef leaned back and sipped the bitter green tea he used to clear his head inthe morning. Effortlessly, Dzhun put her whore's persona on again, screaming andwaving at a friend who had just entered the teashop. Towering over the crowd,the White Tiger of the Nile headed for their table.She and Dzhun kissed and Selina sat down, nodding at Stef."Hell of a night," she said to them and the world in general. "I did a dozenguys.""Oh, Selina," said Dzhun. "Honey, I do a dozen on my way to work."YAMASHITA CLAPPED his hands and bowed to announce himself to the fromazhi -- thebig cheeses. It was the morning meeting of the Secret Emergency Committee thathad been formed to deal with the wormholer theft.Yama's boss, Oleary, Deputy Controller of the Lion Sector, grunted a welcome,adding, "You know these people, I'm sure."Considering that he was talking about the Solar System Controller, her deputythe Earth Controller, her Chief of Security, and Admiral Hrka of the Far SpaceService, that was inadequate to say the least.The SSC was Xian Xi-Qing, a small woman with a parchment face, tiny hands anddull gold and jade rings stacked two and three to a finger. She was famous formany things, her three husbands, her stable of male concubines, the ruthlessnessand cleverness that had kept her alive and in power for decades.She glared at Yama and demanded abruptly, "We've heard from Kathmann. At leasthe's caught somebody. What are you doing about this wormholer business? I'veheard rumors the conspiracy originated in your sector."Yama took his time seating himself on a backless chair known as the shozit, orhot seat. The grandees faced him behind a Martian gilt table surrounded by aninvisible atmosphere of power. Admiral Hrka, Yama noted, wasn't even wearing hisnine stars. That was the ultimate sign of status. Nobody needed to see hisrating.Among the bureaucrats, the admiral looked and probably felt out of place. Hrkausually dealt with the arcane business of moving in Far Space -- using inertialcompensators and particle beam trans-lightspeed accelerators, navigating by magspace forcelines and staging chronometric reentries where an error of amicrosecond could put him deep inside the glowing core of a planet. He wasaccustomed to using atomlasers that could melt steel at half a million clicks,launching supertorps at near-light velocities and converting the enemies of hisspecies into plasma thinner than the solar wind.Now he found himself face to face with a threat that might enable one fragilehuman to undo his world and render all his knowledge and bravery pointless. Helooked as if he longed to be in Far Space now, where even if he was a thousandlight years from anyplace he knew where he was.Seated to one side was Kathmann, Yama's opposite number in Earth Security. Heresembled a files technician, with his pointed head and fat neck. He worereplacement eyes and the plastic corneas glittered blankly.Quietly Yama laid out the steps taken so far to locate members of Crux. Thenotion that the conspiracy had grown up in the Lion Sector remained unproven,yet diligent inquiries were underway on all the Sector's two hundred andthirty-six inhabited worlds. All available mag space transponder circuits hadbeen cleared for this one task. Enough energy to light Ulanor for six weeks hadalready been poured into the message traffic. The whole business was necessarilyslow; even at maximum power, a message routed through mag space from thefarthest planets of the Sector took more than seventy standard hours to reachEarth.And so on. Actually he had nothing to report and his aim was to make nothingsound like something. When he was done the fromazhi, who knew bureaucraticboilerplate when they heard it, just sat there looking bored. Only Kathmannspoke up."All your inquiries are on offworlds?""Certainly. That's where our authority begins and ends.""You're not invading my territory, using unofficial agents here on Earth?"Yama was shocked."Onor kolleg, eto ne'legalni!" he exclaimed. "Honored colleague, that'sillegal!"Kathmann raised one fat fist and stared at Yama with eyes like worn silverhalf-khan pieces."Remember, Colonel, this hand holds the keys to the White Chamber!"Yams raised his own much solider fist."And this one, Colonel Kathmann, has killed a thousand enemies of the State!"The spat had Admiral Hrka grinning."Simmer down, boys," he said, while the Earth Controller, a man named Ugaitish,muttered into his beard, "Spokai, spokai. Take it easy.""What I want to know," said Oleary in a fretful tone, "is why anybody built thisgoddamn gadget in the first place. If it didn't exist it couldn't be stolen.""It was some idiots at the University," said Ugaitish. "They just had to see ifthe theory worked. They applied for a permit, all very legal, and some minorofficial gave them an oke for the materials, which are pretty exotic. There's nouse putting them in the White Chamber," he added, waving a hand to shut Kathmannup.Xian agreed. "Typical academics. All they know is what they know. Not an atom ofcommon sense.""Besides," Ugaitish added, "the academics were the ones who reported the theft.Except for that, nobody would know anything about it.""They should be beheaded anyway," Kathmann growled, "to get rid of the dangerousknowledge in their brains. A laser can do it in five seconds, and there youare."Yama's sharp eyes intercepted the glance that passed among the fromazhi.Kathmann made them uneasy -- a man who knew too much and executed too readily.Yama filed away this insight for future reference."At this point, beheading is not the issue," declared Hrka. "Let me sum up. Awoman, name unknown, took a commercial ship, probably somewhere in the LionSector -- now there's a big volume of space to cover -- and traveled to Earth,where she has, perhaps, contacted a group of terrorists who intend to obliterateour world by changing the past. The group has a functional wormholer, callsitself Crux, and in the most overpoliced human society since the fall of theImperial Chinese People's Republic nobody knows who they are or where they are.Have I stated the situation clearly?"Xian glared first at him, then at the two cops in turn."You better find them," she said, "or I'll put you both in the White Chamber."She let that sink in, then said more formally: "Honored security chiefs, wepermit you to go."When they were gone, Xian told the others, "We need information now. Ugaitish isputting out a public call for help. We don't have to tell everything, just thata gang of terrorists called Crux is on the loose, planning to kill many innocentpeople.""Is that wise?" worried Oleary. "Informing the masses seems like an extreme stepto me.""If we don't, the politicians will. I have to brief the President and the Senatetoday, and what do you think will happen then?""Much smoke, much heat, no light," said Hrka fatalistically. "Well, we'd bettercatch these bastards. The whole world order as we know it exists only because ofthe Time of Troubles. Without that, everything would be different."The fromazhi stared at each other. "Great Tao," said Ugaitish, "if thesescoundrels succeed -- even if we continue to exist at all, we might be anything.Coolies, prisoners, offworld scum!""Ask for help," Oleary told Xian. "If necessary, beg."After his night in the District, Stef needed sleep. Yet he spent a couple ofhours at his mashina, checking his regular contacts for hints of terroristgroups. He heard gossip about lunatics who wanted to blow up Genghis' tomb, butnothing of interest to him. So he went to bed.The daytime noises rising from Golden Horde Street had no power to keep himawake. He had slept away too many days, sunk in the half light admitted from theroofed balcony, embracing rumpled bedcovers in the brown shadows of afternoon.In a few minutes he drifted off, but not for long.He woke suddenly thinking he must have shit on himself. He reached for hispistol just as a crushing furry weight fell on him.The ceiling light went on and the Darksider rolled Stef over and sat on hisback. For an agonized few moments he couldn't breathe at all, while thecreature, aided by a human Stef never saw clearly, thrust his hands into a kangand locked the wrists. Then the Darksider rose, bent down over its gaspingvictim and lifted him so that the kang could be clamped on his neck as well. Afour-fingered, two-thumbed hand gripped his hair and pulled him to a sittingposition.Spots drifted before his eyes in a red torrent that slowly cleared. Stef wassitting naked on the bed with a black plastic kang clamped on his wrists andneck. His faint hope that this might be a nightmare died. The Darksider wasstanding bowlegged by the bed and scratching its chest. The human seemed to bewearing a polizi uniform; he kept to the shadows just beyond the limits ofStef's vision. Head immobilized, Stef tried to twist his body to get a view ofhis captor, but without success."Who the fuck are you?""Your guide, Mr. Steffens. I'm here to show you something you never saw before.""What?""The inside of the White Chamber."At a gesture, the Darksider tossed a sack over Stef's head and pulled a cordtight around his neck. A hypodermic gun spat at his shoulder and he had ahorrifying sense that his whole body was melting into a cold and lifeless fluidbefore darkness descended.He would have preferred not to wake up, but wake he did. Still in the kang,still with the sack over his head. Of course you're not comfortable, he toldhimself. You're not supposed to be comfortable. He had no idea how long he'dbeen here, except that he was thirsty and hungry. No idea where "here" was,except somewhere in the warrens of the White Chamber.He had urinated at some point and was sitting in the wet. The cell was so smallthat his knees were folded up against his chest. His icy toes pressed againstmetal that was probably the door. The cell was narrower than the kang, and Stefhad to sit with his body twisted. There was no way to move, no way to rest. Asthe hours passed, agonizing pains began to shoot through his back and side.Breathing became difficult. He began suffering waves of panic at the thoughtthat the polizi would leave him here until he slowly suffocated. The panic madethings worse; he started to hyperventilate, and every breath stabbed him like aknife. He tried to calm himself, counting slow shallow breaths that didn't hurtso much.Then voices approached along a corridor outside the cell. Faint hope wasfollowed by stomach-knotting fear. They might let me go; it was all a mistake;Yama will get me out. No, Yama doesn't know anything and anyway he doesn'tcontrol the polizi. They're coming to torture me.The voices came close. Two techs were discussing a "client," as they calledtheir victims. Voices neutral, atonal like the voices of two black boxes."Maybe twenty cc of gnosine would do it.""I dunno. This client is a tough case.""Maybe needles in the spinal marrow..."They were gone. A faint noise in the distance remained unidentifiable until adoor in the corridor slid open. Then Stef heard a whimpering, sobbing sound thatmade all the hairs rise on the back of his neck. Extreme agony, he thought --beyond screaming.The door slid shut again and the sound became a low meaningless murmur. Humanfootsteps approached again. Two voices."Just wonderful, Doctor. I never thought she'd break.""Sometimes a combination of therapies is essential."They too were gone. Doctors. Technicians. Therapies. Clients. The language ofthe Chamber. We are not sadists, we are scientists performing a distasteful butnecessary function in the cause of justice. Try the gnosine, try the needles,try everything in combination. Promise the clients life; after you've worked onthem for a while, promise them death.When the polizi came at last, they came in silence. Without the slightestwarning the door clanged open. Somebody yelled, "Get the scum! Get the piece ofshit!"A Darksider grabbed Stef's legs and dragged him into the hall and the wrench onhis cramped limbs made him scream. Then the animal was dragging him down thehall by the heels while boots kicked at Stef's ribs and head.The kang knocked against the walls and floor. A human hand grabbed his testiclesand twisted and he screamed again, louder than before. Then somebody, a crowd ofthem, human and inhuman, seized the ends of the kang and dragged him to hisfeet."Walk! Walk, you piece of shit! Walk!"He couldn't and fell and somebody kicked him hard in the groin and this time hedid no screaming. He was unconscious.He woke with intense light in his eyes. He was sitting in a hard duroplast chairand the sack was off his head. His eyes burned; agony rose in waves from hisgroin. Somebody in hard boots stamped on the bare toes of his left foot.Stef wasn't thinking any longer, he was living in nothing but the convictionthat every second some new pain would strike. What next, what next? Hands seizedthe kang and pulled it back. Other hands, some human, some inhuman, grabbed hisankles and stretched out his legs. In the blazing light he was half blind,absolutely helpless. Somebody touched his breastbone and he moaned and hisstomach knotted, expecting the blow.Nothing happened. The light dimmed. Gradually his eyes cleared. A man with apointed head was standing before him. The man had plastic eyes that went blankwhen he moved his head. There was no crowd of tormentors, only two thuggi fromEarth Central and one Darksider. One of the thuggi gave the other a piece ofcandy and they stood there, chewing. The Darksider scratched its furry backsideagainst a wall."Mr. Steffens.""Yes," whispered Stef."I'm sending you home now. For the future, will you remember one thing?""Yes.""From now on, Yamashita will continue to pay you, but in spite of that you'll beworking for me as well as for him, and I'll expect to know everything you do andeverything you discover about Crux."Kathmann leaned forward and once again tapped Stef's breastbone."If you hide anything from me, I'll know it, and I'll bring you back here. Doyou understand?""Yes.""Next time you'll get standard treatment," added Kathman, straightening up. "Notthe grandmotherly kindness you received this time."To the thuggi he said, "Give him one more."He left the room and a door closed. Behind the light the room flickered and asecond Darksider Stef hadn't seen before approached him, holding a spiked clubin its paws. But that'll kill me, he thought, and his eyes clamped shut on afinal vision of the new Darksider raising the club for a smashing blow to hisgut.He sat there blind, waiting. Then he heard them laughing at him. He opened hiseyes as one of the thuggi unlocked the kang. The other was grinning. TheDarksider with the club flickered, evaporated. A three-dimensional laser image,created, Stef now saw, by projectors mounted high up on the walls."The boss likes to have his little joke," the thug explained with a wink. Thereal Darksider was still scratching its butt. Insofar as an animal could, itlooked absolutely bored.Outside was deep night or earliest morning. Wrapped in a blanket and shiveringuncontrollably, Stef rode home in a polizi hovercar. Before dawn he was in hisown bed, wracked by pain from toes to scalp. Yet he slept, and by noon was ableto creep to the balcony, dragging one foot behind him. He walked bowlegged,because his scrotum was the size of a grapefruit.Slowly, very slowly, he prepared kif and lay down. He was starving but wouldn'thave dreamed of getting up to look for food.He smoked and the drug dulled everything, pain and hunger alike, and let himsleep. In all the world only kif was merciful. No wonder it was his religion.By nightfall Stef was minimally better. He slept long, despite nightmares thatleft him drenched with sweat. By morning he was functional enough to bathe (hesmelled worse than a Darksider by then) and dress. Then he called Yama on hismashina, hoping the polizi would monitor his call -- he wanted to remind themthat he had powerful friends."Stef. What's up?""I just wanted you to know that your pal Kathmann had me in the White Chamber.I'm working for him now, too.""That son of a bitch. He hurt you much?""It wasn't a picnic. But I've been through worse.""Yeah, I know you're a survivor. Well, I guess we got to share anything we findout with Earth Central. But I'm going to see Kathmann and tell him if he grabsyou again, I'll send Oleary to see Xian herself. You got anything broken, likebones?""No.""Well, at least the miserable bastard went light on you."Stef next called a neighborhood babaku shop and ordered food. Then he found hispistol, made sure it was loaded, and returned to his kif pipe.On the balcony he smoked and thought about ways to kill Kathmann. He had twopeople on his list now: Dyeva, because she wanted to destroy his world, Kathmannbecause he had -- well, not tortured Stef; what had happened was too trivial tobe called torture. No, Kathmann had simply been getting his attention in theinimitable polizi way.This wasn't the first time in his life that Stef had been completely abased andhumiliated. But he decided now that it was to be the last. He pointed his pistolat the wall and said, "Phut."After Dyeva, Kathmann was next.THAT EVENING Professor Yang again stood before his mashina, which was set toTransmit and Record. A memory cube nestled in the queue. Lights arranged by hisservant illuminated Yang against a background of ancient books that had beenimprinted on the wall by a digital image-transfer process. (Real books were tooexpensive for a scholar to afford.)Watching the interest indicator with a sharp eye, Yang launched into the secondlecture of his course, Origin of Our World. His subject today was the responseto the Troubles: the slow repopulation of the Earth by humans and thereintroduction of hundreds of extinct animal species whose DNA had fortunatelybeen preserved for low-gravity study on Luna.He spoke of the first halting steps toward Far Space and of the gradualemergence of humanity from the cocoon of the Solar System during three hundredyears of experiment and daring colonization. He spoke of the new morality thatemerged from the Time of Troubles, the ecolaws that limited the size of familiesand prescribed a human density of no more than one person per thousand hectaresof land surface on any inhabited planet. (Great populations tend to producepolitical instability, to say nothing of epidemics.)He spoke of the Great Diaspora, the scattering of humankind among the stars toinsure that what had almost happened in the past could never happen again. Hespoke of a species obsessed with security and order, and pointed out what a goodthing it was that people had, for once, learned from the past, so that theywould never have to repeat it. He spoke about the liquidation of democracy andexplained the strange term as a Greek word meaning "mob rule." He ended with akindly word or two about the friendly aliens like the Darksiders who had nowbecome part of humanity's march toward ever greater heights of stability andglory.All across the city, students were recording the lecture. So were people whowere not students but had a hunger for learning. In his apartment, Stef listenedbecause he was still recovering from his night in the Chamber and had nothingelse to do. His chief reaction to Yang's version of history was sardonicamusement."Pompous old glupetz," he muttered.In another shabby apartment, this one opening on a rundown warren of buildingsnear the university called Jesus and Buddha Court, Kuli --whose real name wasAnanda -- and the beautiful Dian -- whose real name was Iris -- also listened toYang. Their reactions tended less to laughter and more to scorn."I liked the bit about the Darksiders," said Ananda, fingering his rosary. "Abunch of smelly barbarians our lords and masters use as mercenaries to suppresshuman freedom." "You're so right," said Iris, shutting off the box. "How I hatethat man.""Oh well, he's just a professor," said Ananda tolerantly. "What can you expect.Look, is there a Crux meeting this week?""I don't know. Lata will have to message us, won't she? Nobody we know has beenarrested. Maybe the excitement's over," she added optimistically."I thought Zet was getting spooked.""Well, he's old. Old people get scared so easily."She smiled and sat down on the arm of his chair. Ananda used his free hand torub her smooth back. Not for the first time in history, conspiracy had led toromance. The relationship had begun with talk and more talk; change the past,restore life to the victims of the Troubles and at the same time erase thisworld of cruelty and injustice. Neither Ananda nor Iris could imagine that theymight cease to exist if the past were changed; they thought that somehow theywould continue just about as they were. Maybe better.Growing intimate, they had told each other their real names; that had been acrucial step, filled with daring trust and a quiver of fear --somewhat liketheir first time getting naked together. The fact that Ananda in the past hadtold other girls his name and had tried to recruit them for Crux was somethingthat Iris didn't know.Indeed, Ananda had forgotten the others too, for he was floating in his new lovelike a fly in honey. In the middle of the disheveled apartment, surrounded bydiscarded hardcopy, rumpled bedding, a few stray cats for whom Ananda felt abrotherly concern, Iris of haunting beauty bent and touched her lips to those ofthe ugly young man with the rosary at his belt."I'd better go," she murmured. "I've got a lab." Her tone said to him, Make mestay."In a minute," said Ananda, tightening his grip. "You can go in just a minute."A few streets away, in a less shabby student apartment occupied by four youngwomen, the mashina was still playing after Yang's lecture, only now switched toa commercial program.One of the women was insisting that she needed to make a call, but the otherthree were watching a story of sex among the stars called The Far Side of theSky and voted her down."You can wait, Taka," they said firmly. Taka, who was twenty, had begun to arguewhen a news bulletin suddenly interrupted the transmission."Suppose I make my call now--" she started to say, when something about thebulletin caught her attention."Hush up," she told the others, who were bitterly complaining about theinterruption of the story just as the hero had embraced the heroine deep in magspace."I want to hear this," said Taka.After the bulletin the story quickly resumed. Taka thoughtfully retired to herbedroom and sat down on the floor, folded her slim legs gracefully under her,and reached for her compwrite. The compwrite transmitted through the mashina inthe other room but gave her privacy to work."A letter," she said, "to --"Who? She wondered. Daddy had always told her to obey the law but have nothing todo with the polizi, who were, he said, scum, gryaz, filth. How then to get herinformation to them without using the boxcode that had appeared on the screenduring the newsflash?"To Professor Yang, History Faculty," she began, rattling off the universityaddress code from memory. "Send this with no retur address, oke?""I am waiting, O woman of transcendent beauty," said the compwrite. Taka herselfhad taught it to say that and was now trying to make it learn how to giggle."Honored Professor, I am sending this to you as a person I honor and trust andadmire," she began, laying it on thick."I have always been a law-abiding person and there was a news bulletin just nowwhere the polizi were asking for information about a terrorist group called theCrooks. Well, a student named Ananda, when he was trying to climb aboard --scratch that, make love to me a couple of months ago, stated that he belonged tothis group and tried to make it seem incredibly important, though I had neverheard of it myself up to that time. In any case my native dialect is English andI happen to know what Crooks means and I was angry that somebody would try toinvolve me in something criminal."Hoping that you will convey this info to the proper authorities, I remain oneof your students choosing to remain anonymous."She viewed this missive on the screen and then added, "PS, this Ananda is anugly guy with a rosary of some kind he wears on his belt. I think he's an O.B.He is skinny and wears a funny kind of cross under his jacket. He says it is asymbol of something I forget what."She added, "Send," and headed back into the front room, where the currentchapter of The Far Side of the Sky had expired in a shudder of Far Spaceorgasms."Well, I suppose I can make my call now," she said, and did so, setting up anappointment for tomorrow with the mashina of a depilator who had promised toleave her arms and legs as smooth as babyflesh, which she thought would lookvery nice.Professor Yang's infatuation with Selina was leading him deeper and deeper intodebt. He tried to stay away from Radiant Love House, but instead found himselfdreaming of the White Tiger all day and heading for the District by hovercab atleast three times a week.He told himself all the usual things -- that this was ridiculous in a man hisage, that he would lose face if his frequent visits became known, that hecouldn't afford this new extravagance. No argument could sway him; he wanted hiswoman of ivory in the blue peace of the electronic room where for an hour atleast he feasted on the illusion of youth regained.He was again in the middling expensive parlor waiting for the White Tiger whenStef lounged in and collapsed on the double divan.Ordinarily, Yang would have ignored the fellow, but when Stef said, "How areyou, Honored Professor?" he felt he had to say something in return."Quite well." Brief, cool."I watched your last lecture," said Stef, who was inclined to chat, knowing thatas usual he had time to kill before Dzhun could receive him."Really," said Yang, thawing slightly. He was paid. 10 khan for every box thattuned in to his lectures. It wasn't much, but he needed every tenth he couldget."Yeah. I'm not a student, but I am ill-educated and I occasionally try toimprove my mind, such as it is."Stef pulled over a wheeled censer, dumped a little kif into it from a pouch hecarried, and turned on the heating element."Inhale?" he asked, unwinding two hoses and handing one to Yang."The waiting is tiresome," Yang allowed, and took an experimental puff. Findingthe quality acceptable (local kif, not Martian, but pretty good) he tookanother."May I ask your profession?""Investigative agent. I'm also a licensed member of the Middlemen and Fixers'Guild.""Ah." Yang looked at Stef sharply. "Are you good at what you do?""Well, I live by it and have for years. Why? Need something looked into?""Actually," said Yang slowly, "I received an anonymous letter a few days ago andI've been wondering how to handle it. It claims to place in my hands certaininformation that I, ah, feel somebody in authority ought to know. Yet I have noway of checking it or naming the sender, who claims to be a student of mine. Itmay be worthless; on the other hand, if it's useful, well--""You'd like to be paid for it," said Stef promptly. "I can handle that. Insulateyou from the polizi. There are ways to handle it confidentially and at the sametime claim a reasonable reward if the information's good. What's it all about?"Yang thought for a moment and then said, "It concerns something called Crux."All of Stef's long training was just barely sufficient to enable him to keep amarmolitz -- a marble face."Ah," he said, clearing his throat, "the thing that was on the box a few nightsago?""Yes."Briefly he told Stef about the letter, witholding, however, the name Ananda andhis description."What do you think it might be worth?""How happy I am," interrupted the box in the corner, "to inform you, honoredguest, that Dzhun is now ready to receive you.""Tell her to wait," said Stef.To Yang he said, "Let me try to find out if the matter's really important. Ifso, I wouldn't hesitate to ask ten thousand khans in return for suchinformation.""Ten thousand?"The kif pipe fell out of his mouth."It must be something major," Stef pointed out, "or it wouldn't have been put onthe air. At the same time, I would recommend caution. This is clearly a securitymatter, and you certainly wouldn't want to expose yourself to the suspicion ofknowing more than you actually do. That's a short path to the White Chamber.Luckily, I have a friend on the inside who's not polizi and can make inquiries.""And your, ah, fee?" asked Yang."A flat ten percent of the award. I'm an ethical investigator." "Good heavens,"said Yang, who was perfectly indifferent to Stef's professional ethics but whosemind was engaged in dividing K9,000 by 120 to reached the astounding figure ofseventy-five hour-long sessions with the White Tiger in the electronic room."What do you need?" he asked."Your chop on my standard contract, one sheet of hardcopy with the message, andabout two days.""You shall, my friend," said Professor Yang rather grandly, "have all three."YAMA AND STEF sat at the duroplast desk in the Lion House staring at thehardcopy."One name. And what a crappy description. Maybe I should turn Yang over toKathmann just to see if he knows anything more.""An honored professor? Come on, Yama. Stop thinking like a security gorilla foronce. Yang doesn't know a damn thing except that he needs money to rent hisalbino. What we need is to find this Ananda.""How? Call in the polizi?""Hell, no. Get the credit yourself. First of all, access the university records.Tell your mashina to search for Ananda as both a family name and a given name.Let's say for the last two years. Do you have access to the polizi and cityrecords?""That's Earth Central stuff," said Yama with a cunning look. "It's off limits tous. Of course I've got access.""When you get some names from the university, have the box start calling theirnumbers and checking the faces of these Anandas. That'll eliminate some -- theycan't all be skinny, ugly guys -- and meanwhile you can be having the nameschecked against the polizi records for arrests and against the city records foreverything else -- property ownership, energy payments, tax payments,everything, Then there's the Old Believer angle --"Yama was already talking to his box. "I want confidential access to universityrecords. Now."He turned back to Stef. "By the way, how much is this costing me, assuming itleads to anything?""If it leads to Crux, I promised Yang fifteen thousand.""Petty cash," said Yama. "If it leads to Crux."The box chimed. "Sir, I have accessed the university central administrativefiles.""Search admission, registration and expulsion records for the name Ananda," saidYama promptly, "especially expulsion." He added to Stef, "Terrorists are oftenstudents, but very few of them are good students."Dreaming of the money, Stef paced the room impatiently. The university recordswere voluminous and ill-kept. There was no Ananda as a family name. Searchinggiven names was just getting underway -- "This baby does it in nanoseconds,"promised Yama -- when the whole university system went down. And stayed down.After more than an hour of waiting and pacing and dreaming of kif, Stef loungedout, holding his nose until he was past the Darksider, and took a hovercab home.There he called Earth Central and reported to one of Kathmann's aides that heand Yama were following down an anonymous tip that a student was a member ofCrux.Then he called Yang and told him that the money was practically in hand. Yangwas ecstatic."You don't know what this means to me, honored investigative agent," he bubbled."I've had so many calls on my purse lately.""I know what you mean.""What do you think this Crux organization might be?""I don't have the slightest idea," Stef lied. "In English the word means, uh,the essential thing. Like the crux of an argument.""Of course there's also the Latin meaning.""What's Latin?""It's a dead language. The original source of the word. In Latin it means cross.Hence the crossroads, the critical point.""Ananda wears a funny kind of cross," said Stef slowly."Yes. My informant thought he was an Old Believer.""I wonder --"Stef's box chimed. He quickly made arrangements to bring Yang his payoff and cutthe circuit."Say," he told the box."Stef, I got the names," said Yama, abrupt as usual. "Got your recorder on? Herethey are. Last year, Govind Ananda, withdrawn. This year, Patal Ananda, NishAnanda, Sivastheni Ananda. That's all.""Boxcodes?""Got 'em all except Govind. Like so many of those damn students, he may have apirated mashina. I'm having the box call the ones we've got, and at the sametime start running through the city records. Got any more bright ideas?""No," said Stef, "except I want a vacation when this is over. And my pay.""Stop kidding me, I know you'll take your pay out of old Yang's reward money.Don't try to...wait a minute. Box reports Patal and Sivas-whatever don'tresemble the description. Nish is away from home. Wait a minute again. GovindAnanda paid the energy bill on No. 71, Jesus and Buddha Court. Didn't the lettersay something about a rosary? And about him being an O.B.?""Keep trying Nish, Yama, but send three or four of your thuggi to meet me at Jand B Court. I'm going to try Govind. I like the smell of that address. It'snear the University and the names would echo for an Old Believer.""You got 'em. Plus a Darksider in case things get rough.""And a gas mask."Stef rang off, plunged into a battered Korean-style chest on his balcony andbrought out his one-centimeter impact pistol. He touched the clip control andchambered one of the fat, black-headed rounds.Action elated him, freed him from his memories of being beaten, his sense ofuselessness. Suddenly he felt wonderful, better than when he was on kif, betterthan when he was drunk, almost better than when he was about to make love. Aflutter of fear in his belly was part of the frisson. So was the taste of ironfilings beginning to fill his mouth.He rummaged through his closet, dragged out his most ample jacket, tore theright-hand pocket to give him access to the space between cloth and lining. Handin pocket, he pressed the gun against his ribs to hide any bulge and slippedthrough the door, listening to it click behind him, wondering if he would everunlatch it again. He whispered a goodbye to Dzhun. On the roof he signaled for ahovercab."Jesus and Buddha Court," he said, when one drew up.The cab's black box said, "Gratizor."On Lake Bai in the evening the tinkle of samisen music mixed with the thrummingof a Spanish guitar, the notes falling like lemon and oleander flowers into thedark, cold water.Half a click down in the huge lake--really a freshwater inland sea --glacial icestill lingered, surviving into the heat of an earth warmer than it had beensince the noontime of the dinosaurs. Shrieking happily, goosepimpled swimmerswere leaping into the water from the floating docks of lakeside villas. Furtheron, strings of Japanese lanterns illuminated teahouses and casinos andsliderrinks where the children of grandees cavorted on expensive cushions ofair.Back in the hills, spotlights illuminated palaces. Bijou villas lined theshores, and on the veranda of one of the smaller ones Stef and Dzhun idled,wearing light evening robes and not much else. Dzhun kept returning to Stef'saccount of the raid, trying to get the story straight."So these terrorists -- did you shoot them?""Didn't have to. I've seldom felt like such a fool in my life."Stef gestured lazily, and Dzhun disturbed herself long enough to pour champagne.The grapes of Siberia were justly famous, the flavor supposedly improved by thelow background radiation. "The terrorists weren't dangerous?""Pair of dumb kids. The boy wearing his funny cross and the girl with the samesymbol tattooed on her hand, if you can believe that. The Darksider smashed thedoor in and let out a roar and they both fainted dead away. Then I jumped inyelling and the thuggi followed, and suddenly the four of us were standingaround waving weapons at two unconscious children. Ridiculous scene."I almost puked when I had to hand them over to the polizi. Not that there wasanything else I could do, with the thuggi and the Darksider there. I was sureKathmann would tear them limb from limb, but Yama says they woke up spillingtheir guts. The polizi have got 'em locked up, of course, but Security goteverything they wanted in the first three minutes.""Dyeva.""Absolutely. Iris and Ananda said she'd come in by the Luna shuttle on such andsuch a day. That was enough. Kathmann called Yama. Yama has shuttle data at hisfingertips, there were only four females of the right age on that one, and theyall checked out except Akhmatova Maria from a planet called Ganesh, which is,just like it was supposed to be, in the Lion Sector. She stepped off the shuttleand vanished."So now they got her hologram, plus retinographs, voiceprints, DNA, all thatstuff they take when you get a passport. The kids have positively identifiedher. Dyeva's been made, for whatever good it may do us."It was an eventful day. The kids had met Dyeva at a villa outside town, so thepolizi descended on that and bagged the owner. He went straight to the Chamberand promptly gave them the name of another member of the cell, a woman who hasso far evaded capture. A demand for information went out to Ganesh at maximumpower and with the most awful threats that Yama could think of on the spur ofthe moment."He'd just laid all this information on Oleary's desk when another call comes infrom Earth Central. Kathmann's got the wormholer. Gadget takes a hell of a lotof juice, so his mashini were watching the Ulanor power grid for unusual currentsurges. Well, a surge of the right size occurred, and Kathmann arrived at themeter with half a dozen Darksiders to find the wormholer standing all by itselfin a deserted warehouse in the northwest quadrant."Dzhun was frowning. "Then that means --""You and I may vanish at any moment," Stef grinned. "Dyeva's presumably in the21st century trying to prevent the Time of Troubles. I wish her luck. How's shegoing to do it?" "And we're here.""And we're here, relaxing, courtesy of the payoff to Yang. My success incracking Crux convinced Yama that I'm the guy to stop Dyeva. He offered me ahundred thousand to go after her. I laughed in his face.""Then who'll do the job?""Some thuggi from Earth Central who're under military discipline and can't sayno.""And what'll happen to her?""In the 21st century? Probably get killed by the surface traffic. Or catch afatal disease. Or get lost in the crowds. I wouldn't trust Kathmann's idiots tofind their peckers when they need to piss. Dyeva's safe enough from them."Later, he and Dzhun wandered up the shingled beach to a waterside inn thatserved caviar and Peking duck and other edibles. People of the upper andunderworld were crowded together at small tables, eating and drinking. Blueclouds of kif drifted from open censers over the crowd, relaxing everybody.Dzhun, who had an indelicate appetite, was just piling into her dessert when thehaunting notes of a synthesizer drifted like pollen across vast, cool Lake Bai.A band floated up in an open hovercar, and a sisi with a piercingly sweet voiceperformed a popular air, "This Dewdrop World," whose simple theme was eat,drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die. The crowd loved it; silver half-khansand even a few gold khans showered the car. Whenever a coin fell in the water, amusician would jump in after it like a frog and have to be fished out by hisfriends.It was a fine end to the evening. When Stef and Dzhun left the restaurant theair had the lingering chill of spring and the scent of lemon groves that wereblossoming in the hills. Dzhun pulled Stef's arm like a scarf around her neckand started to sing the song again. He leaned over her, hugged her close. It wasat moments like this that he almost envied people who were foolish enough tofall in love."I love that song," she said. "It's so nice to be sad. Sadness goes with joylike plums with duck."Didn't statements like that mean that she was, after all, a bit more than just awhore? Stef hugged her tighter, breathing in her offworld perfume with thechilly scent of the lemon groves.They had an amorous night and spent next morning lolling on the deck with theirusual strong green tea. They were supposed to start back to the city today andDzhun was looking abstracted."Can't wait to get back and go to work?" Stef smiled."Stef...there's something I have to tell you.""What?""My senator wants to set me up in a little house in Karakorum. He's jealous, andit'll be the end for you and me."That produced silence. Stef cleared his throat, drank tea."Ah. So this trip was a kissoff.""It doesn't have to be.""Meaning?"Dzhun said, eyes cast down, "I'd rather live with you. We don't have to marry.""No," said Stef.Dzhun sat down, still not looking at him."I thought you'd say that. I've never bothered you with my life story because Ithought you'd get bored and angry. But let me tell you just a little. My familyneeded money, so they sold me into the District when I was nine. The ownerrented me to one of his customers. The night he raped me, I almost bled todeath."By the time I was twelve I was a registered whore, a member of the guild. Ittook me three more years to pay off my debts because in the District the housescharge you for everything, heat, water, towels, mediscanning, almost for the airyou breathe. But I was beautiful and earning good money and I was out of debt bythe time I was sixteen. Now I'm almost eighteen and I'm sick of it all. I don'twant to be a robotchi anymore."I hear people talk about going to the stars and I've never been out of Ulanor.I can barely read and write and if Selina hadn't taught me some arithmetic sothey couldn't cheat me, I wouldn't be able to add two and two. I don't knowanything, all I do is live from night to night -- up at sixteen, to bed ateight. I've had dozens of diseases -- sida six times -- and the last time ittook me a whole month to recover. The house doctor says my immune system'scollapsing, whatever that means."I've got to get out of the life, Stef. I want to live with you, but if youdon't want me I'm going with my senator. He has some funny tastes and threewives and he's old, but he's also kind-hearted and rich, and that's enough."She stopped, still looking down at the floor. Stef was staring at Dzhun andclenching his fists. He felt as if a favorite dog had just bitten him. Twice, infact -- once by threatening to leave him, and once by demanding a commitmentfrom him."I don't want anything fancy," Dzhun went on. "I want to live in a house with agarden. I want to get up in the morning and go to bed at night. I want to go toschool before I'm too old and learn something about the world. I can see you'reangry with me. Well, so be it. If you're too angry to pay my way back to thecity, well screw you. I'll get the shuttle by myself."She stood up and walked somewhat unsteadily into the house, taking by habit thelittle mincing steps they taught the girls -- and the boys as well -- in RadiantLove House.Half an hour later she came back out, dressed for the road. Stef was leaning onthe railing, looking down into deep and black Lake Bai.Stef said, "I'm poor. I'm a loner. I'm a kif head.""So you can't afford me, don't want me, and don't need me because kif's better.Right? So, goodbye.""Can you fend off your senator for a while?""Not forever. He can buy what he wants, and I don't want to lose him.""I guess I could set up housekeeping with a hundred thousand," Stef muttered."But maybe I can bargain for more."Dzhun collapsed rather than sat down and drew the longest breath of her life.She put her hands over her face as if she was weeping, though in fact she hadstopped crying many years before and her face was hot and dry. Her mind wasrunning on many things, but chiefly on her friend Selina's brainstorm, thewonderful invention of the senator, who, of course, did not really exist."So you'll do it," said Yama."For a million khans. Paid in advance. I want something to leave to my heirs inthe event I don't come back.""That's a bunch of fucking money.""There's one more thing I want. Get those two kids I captured turned loose.Otherwise Kathmann will sooner or later cut their heads off on generalprinciples."Yama frowned. "He'll never turn them loose. They're young and the girl'sbeautiful, so he'll want to mutilate them. In my opinion, he's saving them forsomething special. That's the way Kathmann is -- he's a fucking sadist, as youof all people ought to know.""Try anyway.""It's hopeless. But if I can save them I will."When Stef had gone, Yama set out to sell his prize agent to the fromazhi. Heexpected trouble with Kathmann but none developed; the chief of Earth Securitywas assembling an assassination team to kill Dyeva and viewed Stef's mission asa chance to test the wormholer. Ugaitish, Admiral Hrka, and Xian were ready totry anything and put their chops on the proposal without a murmur. It was Yama'sown boss, Oleary, who objected because of the cost."Why don't you go yourself?" he demanded. "It'd be cheaper.""Sir, I'll go if you say to. But I got a wife and four kids.""That's two more than the ecolaws allow.""I got an exemption."Oleary stared at Stef's file, frowning."What's wrong with this guy? I don't trust him. Why did he have to leave theservice in the first place?""Sir, he's a great agent. Brave, quick, adaptable. But he's got a soft spot inhis head. He's sentimental. You can't be a cop and be sentimental. A long timeago he helped a woman thief who was headed for the White Chamber to escape.Well, I found out about it, so I did my duty and turned Steffens in."Oleary kept on frowning."If he's sentimental about women, what about when he has to kill, what's hername, Dyeva?""Sir, she's different. She's threatening his whole world, including this littletart he seems to be in love with.""Oh, well," said Oleary, shrugging. "Send him, I guess. Can't hurt. But take themoney back if he doesn't succeed. How could I justify a budget item like thatfor a failure?""You go tomorrow," said Yama. "Here's some stuff to study tonight." Stef tookthe packet of copy, caught an official hovercar, and flew straight to RadiantLove House. The long farewell that followed left Stef weeping, and Dzhun -- oncethe door had closed behind him -- smiling at prospects that seemed equallybright whether he survived his mission or not.Back home, he settled down on the balcony to study the three items that Yama hadprovided him: a hologram of Dyeva, a summary of her life on Ganesh, and a map ofancient Moscow. The map got little more than a glance; he needed to be in situto use it. Dyeva's hologram was another matter. Stef studied it as closely as ifshe and not Dzhun was his lover, imprinting on his mind Dyeva's round Tartarface, high cheekbones and unreadable eyes.Then he read her biography. To his surprise, the hardcopy with its STATESECRET/BEHEADER stamp had been written by Professor Yang. Liking the taste ofpolizi money, he'd gone to work for Yama as a volunteer agent, and his firsttask had been writing up and annotating Dyeva's life story.Settlers of the Shiva system had been led by a devout Hindu who had hoped toestablish a refuge for members of all the old faiths --Muslims, Christians,Jews, and Buddhists as well as his own people --where, far from corruption andunbelief, peace and justice and the worship of God could reign for all time."The actual results of this noble experiment," wrote Yang, "were not withoutirony." In the process of settling the system, three intelligent species hadbeen destroyed, and among the humans religious wars and bitter sectariandisputes had constituted much of the system's subsequent history.Akhmatova Maria was born to a devout family on the third planet, Ganesh. Theymaintained Christian belief according to the Russian Orthodox rite and hatedboth their neighbors of other faiths and the depraved and godless civilizationof other planets. In time she lost her own faith in God but adopted in its placethe religion of humanity. Her private life remained austere; she had neithermale nor female lovers, and the name she took in the movement which she helpedto found, Dyeva, meant virgin in Russian, her native dialect.She was attending the local academy when news of the technical advances whichallowed invention of the wormholer gave her the great project of her life. Shewas one of a group of people loosely connected with the academy who formed ascheme to undo the Time of Troubles by returning to the past. Some members ofher group transferred to the University of the Universe in Ulanor, where theymade converts to their views and laid plans to build -- later on, learning thatone had already been built, to steal -- a wormholer.Then came a part of the account that Yama had marked in red. Dyeva's theory thatthe Troubles could be prevented rested upon a verbal tradition among the RussianChristians of Ganesh: that a man named Razruzhenye, the defense minister ofancient Russia when the troubles began, ordered the first thermo/bio strike uponChina and that this attack launched the Time of Troubles. Killing this oneindividual might well prevent the war and undo the whole course of disastersthat followed."So," muttered Stef. It seemed a little strange to him that Dyeva, who believedin the absolute value of life, was returning to the past to kill someone. ButYang in a footnote pointed out that such things had happened many times in thepast: people who believed in freedom imprisoned freedom's enemies; those whobelieved in life murdered anybody who seemed to threaten it.His study finished, Stef ate a little, then fell into bed. He woke when hismashina chimed and managed to stumble through a bath. Then he confronted a largebox of ridiculous clothing that had been prepared according to Professor Yang'sdesigns, based on what men wore in the mosaics of the Moscow subway.At seven-seventy-five a government hovercar picked Stef off the roof and flewhim to a neighborhood that he knew only too well, a cluster of huge anonymousbuildings with vaguely menacing forms. They descended past the ziggurat Palaceof Justice and the Central Lockup in whose subterranean rooms he had tasted thejoys of interrogation.This time, however, the huge pentagonal block of Earth Central was the goal. Thehovercar descended through a well in the central courtyard that wits called theNavel of the Earth. Yama met Stef as he emerged in a sunless court of blackhexagonal stone blocks and led him down one narrow blank corridor after another,past huge stinking Darksiders armed with impact weapons, into a vaultedunderground room with a gleaming contraption standing in the center of the flooramong a jungle of thick gray cables."So that's it," said Stef, interested by his own lack of interest. At the centerof the wormholer was a two-meter cube with a round opening in one side, whosepurpose he could easily guess.Blue-coated techs helped him into a heavy coat with wide lapels and big pockets,slipped an impact pistol into the right-hand coat pocket, and slid a blackpowerpack with a small control box into the left. Somebody stuck a chilly metalbutton into his left ear."Pay attention to the control," said Yama. "Take it in your hand. Now. Redbutton: job's done, bring me home. Oke? White button: I need help, send backupnow. Black button: hold onto your ass, Dyeva's succeeded and your world isfinished. The powerpack feeds a little tiny built-in mag space transponder thatemits a kind of cosmic squeak for one microsecond. The signal crosses timeexactly the way it crosses space, don't ask me why. That's what we'll belistening for. Then we have to pull you back, send help, or --""Grab your butts. I see. But that also means you could just cut me off, leave methere, save yourselves a million.""Yeah, we could, but we won't. Hell with that, I really mean I won't. Not," hesmiled, "for a measly million that isn't even my money."They stared at each other until Stef managed a weak grin."That's good enough. Any problems?""Yes," said Stef, "lots. I don't speak Russian. I've got no goddamn idea how tofind Dyeva even if I land in Moscow at the right time. I --"Yama took Stef's arm and began to walk him toward the wormholer."Don't worry about the language. That thing in your ear will translate for you.And don't worry about the time. A register inside the machine recorded the dayDyeva chose, the 331st day of 2091. So we're sending you to that same date inhopes she's close to the point of exit. If she's not, you'll have to find her.""How?""Come on, Stef. I sold the others on you because of your adaptability. Thiswhole world you're going into vanished in a cloud of dust. How much can anybodyknow about it? There's just no way to be systematic."They stopped beside the huge glittering gadget."I really envy you," said Yama in a choked voice. "This is the most crucialmoment in human history. You're the plumed knight of our world, like Yoshitsune,like Saladin, like Richard the Lion-Hearted."Yama embaced him. "Take care, my old friend, and kill that fucking virgin.'An instant later the techs had helped Stef into the wormholer and closed theheavy door, which looked like a nine-petal steel chrysanthemum. Yama steppedback, wiping his eyes. Kathmann had now arrived to observe the action and Yamajoined him."Well, that's one less friend I got," said Yama. "This job of mine is hell. Howare the preparations going for your assassination team?""As fast as possible. Of course they're the ones who'll really do the job.""There's a chance that Steffens might pull it off alone.""Yeah," said Kathmann, "and there's a chance I might be the next Solar SystemController. Svidanye," he added, "see you later. Some more members of Crux havebeen arrested and I got work to do in the Chamber."IN THE WORMHOLER, seated as he had been instructed, knees drawn up, chin down,arms around his shins, sweltering in the heavy coat, feeling the pistol grateagainst his ribs, Stef tried to imagine Dzhun's face, but found that it, likeeverything else, was inadequate to explain to him why he was where he was. Theexcitement he'd felt earlier was gone, replaced by mere dread. He could onlysuppose that his entire life had been leading up to one moment of supreme folly,and this was it.Then a great violet-white light flashed through him, he felt an instant ofsupernatural cold, and he was sitting on a gritty sidewalk against a dampstuccoed wall.He raised his face. The day was overcast, and a restless throng of thick-bodiedpeople wrapped up against the autumn chill hurried past, not one of them payinghim the slightest heed.He looked higher. Behind the solid walls of elderly, three-story buildings withflaking plaster and paint he saw high polished towers of what looked like mirrorduroplast. Immense crimson letters hovered just below the lowest layer of murk.Since Alspeke was written mostly in cyrillic letters, he had no trouble readingMoskovskaya Fondovaya Birzha, and when he murmured it aloud a soft atonal voicein his ear translated: Moscow Stock Exchange. Below the Stock Exchange sign wasa huge blue banner saying "1991-2091 ."Slowly he got to his feet, staggered, caught himself against the wall. A prettyyoung woman paused, stared at him, then drew a pale furry hood around her faceand hurried on.A couple of teenagers stopped also, looked at him and grinned. They squawked toeach other in seabirds' voices."What's this asshole dressed up for?""Must think he's Stalin or something. Hey, asshole -- where'd you get thatcoat?"A stout woman stopped suddenly and shook her fist at the kids."You leave that man alone! Can't you see he's crazy? He's got troubles enoughwithout you hooligans pestering him."A little man in a checkered coat stopped and joined her."Show some respect!" he shouted at the kids."What, for a guy dressed up like Stalin, for Christ's sake? Hey you," said ateenager to Stef. "You going to a party?"Unfortunately, the translator didn't answer questions, and Stef just stared athim."My God, he's deaf and dumb, and you're harassing him," said the woman inscandalized tones.By now a little crowd had gathered. Everybody had an opinion. It was the adultsagainst the teenagers."You little bastards got no respect for anybody!""Not for you, Grandaddy.""Call me Grandaddy? Yes, I've got grandchildren, but thank God they're nothinglike you, you little pimp."In the confusion, Stef managed to slip away, leaving them arguing behind him. Inan alleyway he unbuttoned the coat and stared down at the tunic and coarsetrousers jammed into boots. The clothes were nothing like what people werewearing on the street. Already the stiff, kneehigh boots of faux leather werebeginning to chafe his toes, and he hadn't walked more than a hundred meters.Cursing Yang, he tried to decide what to do. While he pondered, he worked hisway from alleyway to alleyway until he suddenly spotted, among the hundreds ofsmall shops lining the street -- Boris Yeltsin Street -- a shop with a sign thatsaid Kostyumi. He didn't need the translator for that.Thirty minutes later, Stef emerged from the costume shop wearing acceptableclothes, short soft boots, baggy trousers, a faux astrakhan hat, a long warmpadded jacket. In his pockets were thirty ten-ruble notes, the differencebetween the value of the handsome and practically new theatrical garb he'd soldthe shop's owner and that of the second-hand, ill-fitting stuff he'd bought fromhim.He slipped into the crowd, which was denser than the center of Ulanor on GreatGenghis Day. The street traffic was noisy and thick, everybody driving headlongas if their odd, smelly cars were assaulting a position. Above, the air trafficwas thin, almost absent -- a few primitive rotary-wing machines with shapes sobizarre that Stef thought at first that they were some sort of giant insectlife. Jet trails streaked far above, making him wonder if airpackets alreadyflew from Luna.Between street and sky, strung on cables, hundreds of blue banners fluttered,all saying 1991-2091, and sometimes "100 Years of the Democratic Republic,"whatever that meant. He could see no mention of Tsar Stalin the Good.His next stop was in front of a huge window filled with flickerings mashini.Stef was surprised to see that the images made by the boxes werethree-dimensional -- he had expected something less advanced --though thetechnology was crude, merely a rough illusion created on a flat screen. His eyesroved past a ballet and half a dozen sports programs. Russian futbol teams haddominated world play in the season just past, but what would the hockey seasonbring forth? Young people dashed around on grass or ice while the announcertalked.Nobody at all seemed to be thinking about the danger of universal destruction.Stef shook his head, amazed at the ordinariness of this world, so close to itsend. He moved along, jostling against these people who would soon be dust andashes, astonished at their solidity and their obvious confidence that they wouldexist for a long time to come.A single screen was tuned to a news program called Vremya and he stopped towatch it. A young woman wearing a fantastic pile of yellow hair spoke of theRussian-led international team now hard at work establishing the Martian colonyand the problems it was facing. People on Mars, needing to communicate despite ababel of tongues, were developing a jargon all their own; the American membersof the colony called it All-Speak. It was mostly Russian and English, with aflavoring of words from twenty other languages.Meanwhile a new condominium development on Luna marked the transformation ofthat spartan base, barely seventy years old, into a genuine city, the first onanother world. Space had never looked better; Russia's own program, after a longeclipse, again led the world. Here on Earth things were not so encouraging.There were new outbreaks of Blue Nile hemorrhagic fever. The Nine-Years' Warcontinued in the Rocky Mountains; the weak U.S. central government seemed unableto conquer the rebels, and United Nations peacekeepers had again been massacredin Montana.But the big worry was that border tensions continued to mount in Mongolia, whereChinese forces had occupied Ulan Bator. The name caused Stef to press his noseagainst the glass. He had heard enough of Yang's lecture to know that Ulan Batorwas the origin of the name Ulanor, even though the city the announcer wastalking about was now -- now? --nothing more than a mound on the green forestedbanks of the River Tuul.According to Yang, a few survivors of the Troubles had trekked northward,bringing the name with them and applying it to a cluster of yurts in an endlesssnowstorm. Later, because it had low background radiation, the place had becomethe site of the Worldcity -- a strange fate for a Mongol encampment that hadsurvived the Two Year Winter for no better reason than the sheer unkillabletoughness of its people and an endless supply of frozen yak meat, which they hadsoftened by sleeping on it and eaten raw for lack of firewood.Another name caught Stef's attention. "Defense Minister Razumovsky has declaredthat Russia, together with its European and American allies, will stand firmagainst further aggression by the Imperial People's Republic of China."Defense Minister Razumovsky? That wasn't the word he had learned, the name ofthe man Dyeva was supposed to kill. It was another Raz word, Raz, raz --Razruzhenye.He must have said the word aloud without meaning to, for his translatormurmured, "Destruction."Stef nodded. Sure. In the folk memory, Minister Razumovsky became MinisterRazruzhenye, Minister Destruction. The name was wrong, but the tradition mightstill be correct.Razumovsky suddenly appeared in a clip. He had a wide, flat face like a frogsomeone had stepped on. He seemed to talk with his right fist as much as hismouth, pounding on a podium while he spoke of Russia's sacred borders and ofChina's presumption, now that it had conquered Korea and Japan, that all EastAsia belonged to the Dragon Republic."They'll find out different if they mess with us!" Razumovsky bawled, and loudcheering broke out among a crowd seated in something called the Duma. "Theythink they can threaten us with their rockets, but our Automated Space DefenseSystem is the most advanced in the world. I spit upon their threats!" Morecheering.Then a weighty, white-maned man came on, identified as President Rostoff. Hismessage was of conciliation and peace. "As the leader of the Western Alliance,Russia bears a grave responsibility to act with all due caution. Our guard isup, but we extend as well the hand of friendship to our Chinese brothers andsisters."Stef smiled; across the centuries, he recognized without difficulty the ancientgame of good cop-bad cop. He moved on, meditating on a final line from theannouncer: that the debate on the Mongolian situation would continue in the Dumatonight, and that the President and the cabinet would again be present. Was thatwhy Dyeva had picked this particular day to return to the past?He walked down a gentle declivity where the street widened into an avenue calledGreat Polyanka and rose to the marble pylons of a new gleaming bridge. Beyond asmall river he saw red walls, gold onion domes, palaces of white stone -- theKremlin.Pleasure boats with glass roofs slid lazily along the river, which was dividedhere by a long island. In the boats Stef could see brightly dressed peopledancing. Then the crowd swept him onto the other bank, past the AleksandrovskyGardens and up a gentle rise. Here the throng divided; most people passed on,but some joined a long queue that had formed at a brick gatehouse.Stef continued with the majority along the autumnal garden and the crenellatedwall into Red Square. He stared like any tourist at a cathedral like akif-head's dream and then, feeling tired and hungry, crossed the square anddrifted into the archways of a huge building that filled the far side, a marketof some sort crowded with shops and loudly bargaining people. At a stall thatsold writing paper, Stef bought a small notebook, an envelope, and an object hehad never seen before-- a pen that emitted ink.The building held eating places, too. Hungrily, Stef found himself a place at asmall table in one of them and ordered shchi without knowing what cabbage was.Soon a bowl of hot greenish soup lay steaming before him, along with a slicedonion and a chunk of dense and delicious brown bread and sweet butter. It wasthe first time he'd ever tasted butter from a cow, since all the Earth's cattlehad died in the Troubles. It had a subtle, complex flavor and an unctuoustexture quite different from the manufactured stuff he knew.He devoured it all, licked his fingers as the other diners were doing, and paidwith a few of his rubles. Then, still sitting at the table, he laboriously wrotea few lines, tore out the page, and sealed it in an envelope which he addressedto Xian in care of Yams. He left the eating place smiling grimly; in casesomething went wrong, this note was another legacy he hoped to leave behind him.He returned to Red Square to find that in his absence it had become almostunbearably beautiful. A light autumn snow had begun to fall, streetlights werecoming on, and the bizarre cathedral of St. Basil floated in its ownillumination, more than ever a dream.Shadows, light and snow turned everything to magic. Strolling past were youngpeople with faces as white and pink as dawn clouds, and among them stout men inastrakahns and elegant women in faux ermine. Old women were selling apples thatcould have been plucked from their own cheeks.A little band began to play somewhere as Stef slowly retraced his steps, out ofthe square and up to a floodlit gate in the Kremlin wall. People were streamingin, all talking excitedly, and Stef followed.Inside, he moved with difficulty through the throng gathering at a big,anonymous new building with the words DUMA OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE in gold lettersabove the doors. Guards in hats of faux fur were trying to keep a roadway openhere, pushing people back but, to Stef's surprise, using no whips. Consideringwhat he had always heard about the Tsars, the mildness of this government wasastonishing. He circled the crowd, his mind now centered on Dyeva's hologram,searching faces of which there seemed no end, countless faces, all different,none hers.Away from the Duma the Kremlin grounds were more open. In the last light, hugerooks wearing gray patches on their wings like shawls flew from one bare tree toanother, cawing their complaints about the human invasion. Stef wandered into asmall church like a glittering lacquered box. Gold-haloed saints ascended everywall and hung suspended in the red depths of the ceiling; ghostly notes of songshowered down, although he could see nobody singing.People knelt, prayed or simply stood and looked on. An old woman rose, crossedherself, and jostled Stef on her way out. Another and younger woman wearing afur hat and a long coat rose and turned to go. Either Dyeva or her twin sisterpassed so close to Stef that he could have touched her.AFTER A STUNNED instant of surprise he followed, out into the dry fresh-fallingsnow, the lights and shadows of dusk. The rooks had settled into their nests.She didn't walk, she strode, eyes straight ahead. He followed her along awinding path, keeping one or two people between them. He was looking for a placeto kill her, a dark corner, a moment of privacy.Then he realized that he didn't need privacy. Left hand on the red button of thetransponder, he gripped his weapon with his right, raising the barrel a littlein his coat pocket. He would kill her in the open and escape where nobody couldfollow. He only had to make absolutely sure that this was his quarry. He steppedoff the path, the dry snow crunched under his boots, he hastened, he wasdirectly behind her.She had stopped to watch a wedding party ending a day's celebration here in theKremlin at dusk. Holding wine glasses were a pretty girl in voluminous white,her new husband in an uncomfortable-looking suit of black, and half a dozenfriends. One of the friends stepped forward with a bottle of bubbling wine andfilled their glasses. Everyone was laughing. They had picked up a streetmusician someplace, an old man with a primitive instrument of some sort that hecrushed and stretched between his hands. He played wheezy music and the youngpeople toasted the couple while onlookers clapped, laughed and wept."Dyeva," said Stef and she turned her head and looked at him.Unquestionably it was the Tartar face he knew so well, with the high cheekbonesand the angled eyes. Her face didn't change, yet she knew instantly why he hadcome. Instead of pleading for her life, she said in Alspeke, in a low, urgentvoice:"Look at them! Look at them! Look at this world. Can you really let it destroyitself to save what we have -- tyrants, fools, Darksiders, the White Chamber?These people are alive, they're free, they deserve to have a future. Whoever youare, take just one second before you kill me. Think about it!"And for a lengthening instant Stef did. In fact, he had been thinking about itsecretly for hours. To be here, now, seeing these people, this world -- itwasn't theory anymore. Uncounted millions lived and breathed and wanted to keepon doing so. His own world seemed remote and for the moment unbelievable -- thebroken drains and babaku smells of Golden Horde Street, his dirty apartment andthe kif pipe, Yama and his stinking guardian, his long day in the White Chamber,Lake Bai and the singsongers on the boat, the synthesizer and the sisi warblingthe melody "This Dewdrop World."For that instant he could have joined Crux himself. Then he thought of Dzhun andhe was paralyzed by indecision. As he hesitated, Dyeva turned to face himsquarely and he heard the soft sound Phut! as she shot him through her coat.He felt -- not pain, but an incredible, crushing pressure in his midsection. Hisupper body flew backward, almost separated from the rest of him and the back ofhis head struck the cold hard snowy ground. A last mechanical contraction of hisright hand fired his pistol, sent the bullet up, up into the darkening overcastlike a tiny missile. His left squeezed the red button, meaning: my job isfinished, I have succeeded. Bring me home.Dyeva turned and hastened away, boots squeaking in the fresh snow. People weregawking at the wedding party and almost a minute passed before she heard, by nowfar behind her, a single scream. She would never know that the reason was notonly the sight of a dead man lying horribly mutilated in the snow, but the factthat, even as someone spotted him, he disappeared, evaporated into the gatheringdarkness. Yama had kept his word.She plunged into the crowd before the Duma building, her mind running now on thescheduled arrival of the President and his cabinet for a debate on the Mongoliansituation. Running also on the fact that such schedules were almost never kept.Running on the fact that she still had fifteen bullets, and that any one wouldbe enough. Running on the importance of stopping this Minister Destruction thatshe had been hearing people on Ganesh curse since her childhood -- the man whohad given the order that ended their world.No, she didn't believe in God any longer. But she had had to try once more torecapture her faith in the Cathedral of the Annunciation. Who could haveimagined that she'd ever have a chance to pray there, in a building long sincevaporized and its atoms embedded deep in the Kremlin Shield?Well, the experiment had failed; she could not recapture her own faith, but shewould insure that other people kept theirs. She would sacrifice herself asChrist had for the sins of the world. There was no heaven at the end of it, butthis was how she wanted to die.She squeezed herself through the crowd, murmuring apologies in her strangelyaccented Russian, a kind of Russian that wouldn't be invented, ever, if shecould manage it. She wondered if her parents would still be born and meet andhave a child and call it Maria. No, too unlikely; if they lived at all, theywould meet other people and marry them. Everything would be different. She felta strange, dark satisfaction in thinking that she would not merely die here inthe Kremlin; in some sense, she would never have existed at all.She had reached the front of the crowd, and stood pressed behind a bulkypoliceman. Fortunately, when the first gleaming limousine turned in through theGate of the Savior and slid to a stop before the Duma, the policeman moved alittle to get a good view of the notables. On the far side of the car, PresidentRostoff emerged and turned to wave at the crowd. On this side, a young andapparently nervous security man emerged and glanced briefly at Dyeva's face.Other security men appeared too, jumping from cars, stepping briskly through thesnow.Rostoff, instead of going inside, crossed behind his own car and came to thecrowd, reaching out to shake hands. People were cheering, arms reaching out andwaving like limbs at the edge of a forest in a windstorm. From a secondlimousine, Razumovsky approached, also smiling, but keeping a few steps back toavoid upstaging the President. Dyeva shifted the pistol in the deep pocket ofher coat and prepared to fire.Then a gaggle of odd-looking people ran up, carrying primitive cameras of somesort. A sudden spotlight flashed on the crowd and Dyeva was blinded by thelight. The long barrel of the impact pistol slipped through the hole in her coatmade by her last shot. Shielding her eyes, she aimed as well as she could atRazumovsky. The little sound Phut! vanished in the roar of the crowd.But the young security man had spotted the gleam of metal, and without theslightest hesitation he shoved the President the wrong way, into the path of theexploding bullet. Suddenly half of Rostoff's large body was gone, shredded.Unaware of the disaster, the security man raised his own right hand, which washolding the newest M91K police automatic, 7.8 mm and loaded with superteflonhollowpoints. The first of six bullets hit Dyeva. They were not impact ammo, butthey were sufficient.She toppled backward, firing a last round that skated upward and blew ameter-wide hole in the marble facing of the new Duma building. The chips werestill flying as she hit the snow, feeling nothing but a strange lightness as ifshe had become a woman of air that would shortly disperse. She looked up intothe faces of the security man and Minister Razumovsky as the two bent over her.But you're supposed to be dead, she thought. And died.Razumovsky glared down at her Tartar face."The goddamn Chinese did this!" he roared, and turned away.Half a dozen people in the crowd were down, bleeding and crying for help,because the young security man and the others who had rushed to help him hadmanaged to hit not only Dyeva but everyone near her as well. Razumovsky ignoredall that, the screams, the confusion. Roughly he shook off the hands trying todrag him this way or that way to safety. Alone of them all, he knew exactly whathe wanted to do.He plunged into the President's armored limousine and shouted to the driver,"Get me out of here!"While the driver, weeping and blinded by tears and lights, tried to find thegate, tried to force a way through the crowd without killing anybody else,Razumovsky took a key from around his neck and drove it into a lock in the backof the front seat. A small steel door fell open and he pulled out a redtelephone."Razumovsky here!" he roared. "Chinese agents have wounded the President! Irelay to you his exact words: 'We are at war! You will launch now!' Codeword:Ivan the Terrible."He sank back on the upholstery and passed a shaking hand over his squashed-frogface. At least in dying the glupetz Rostoff had inadvertently chosen the rightpolicy -- for a change. Had he lived, who could tell what might have happened?"Goddamn," said Oleary. "I still can't believe he managed it, all alone likethat."The Secret Committee had assembled to hear Yama's final report on Stef's missionto the past. Xian, Ugaitish, Hrka, Oleary -- they were all there but Kathmann.Except for Xian -- who already knew the story -- the fromazhi were leaningbreathlessly over the gilt Martian table, listening to the story of how theirworld had been saved."Well, here's the evidence," said Yama. "First, we recover Stef's body, dead,obviously shot by a modern weapon, oke? His own gun has been fired once. Theworld we live in does not vanish, but on the contrary looks as solid as ever, atleast to me. Just to eliminate any doubts about what happened, we use thewormholer one more time. We pull back from Moscow, 360th day of 2091, an airsample which is full of intensely radioactive dust and ice particles."Now I ask you, Honored Grandees. What can we conclude, except that Stef andDyeva killed each other, that with his last gasp, so to speak, he signaled us torecover him because his job was done, and that the Time of Troubles proceeded tohappen on schedule?"Xian turned to Yang, standing in the shadows, deference in every line of hisbig, weak body. "What do you think, Honored Professor?""I agree. The evidence is absolutely irrefutable, and I have spent my whole lifeevaluating evidence.""Well, I guess we have to accept it," fretted Oleary. He still hoped to takeback Stef's million, but he could see that it would be difficult now."I am obliged to add," Yama continued, "that a sealed envelope was found onSteffen's body containing a note to Solar System Controller Xian."He glanced at her and she nodded."It reads as follows," said Yama, spreading a copy on the arm of the shozit.Facing death, Dyeva states that Kathmann cooperated in the theft of thewormholer. He expected to win promotion by crushing the conspiracy afterward,but Crux was too clever for him. Ever since, he has been desperately trying towipe out those few who know of his treason.Steffens AleksandrThe fromazhi drew a deep collective breath."Is it possible?" demanded Ugaitish. "The head of Earth Security? What could hehope to gain from assisting a conspiracy, then destroying it?""He told me once," said Yama, who had been waiting for this moment for manyyears, "that he dreamed of being Solar System Controller.""Honored grandees," said Xian, "you must know that at first I, too, found thisaccusation hard to believe. But the evidence is great. The paper, ink andhandwriting prove that Steffens wrote this note. In his own defense, Kathmannmade the claim that Steffens was seeking revenge because he had been tortured.But Kathmann's own record of Steffens's interrogation certifies that thequestioning was 'exceptionally gentle.' This was a troubling contradiction."We all know that Kathmann, in spite of his many virtues, was too zealous, tooambitious. I ordered him to bring me the scientist who stole the wormholer forquestioning. The man had been beheaded. That seemed an extremely suspiciouscircumstance to me. Was Kathmann trying to ensure his silence? All the buildersof the wormholer were also dead. I questioned the only two Crux prisoners whowere still alive, but they were mere children and knew nothing -- which wasprobably why they had kept their heads."In the end, to resolve the matter I ordered Kathmann into the White Chamber.With the needles in his spine, he made a full confession. Every statement madeby Steffens in this note is true. Kathmann knew too many state secrets to bepermitted to live, and so I had him beheaded."She looked around at the others, as if waiting for a challenge. Yams smiled alittle. Admiral Hrka remarked that he had never liked the fellow. Aside fromthat, Kathmann's harsh fate produced no comment whatever."Is there any other business, then?" asked Xian, preparing to end the meeting.Yang had been waiting for this moment to step forward from the shadows. "Nowthat Crux is finished, Honored Grandees," he said smoothly, "I would suggestgoing public with the story and making Steffens a hero."The heroes we honor all lived a long time ago; they are almost mythic figures-- indeed, some of them, like the Yellow Emperor, are entirely myths. But herewe have a hero of today, one that people can identify with, one who brings theglory and splendor of the present world order home to the common man. It's true,of course," he added, "that certain aspects of Steffens's life will have to beedited for public consumption. But the same could be said of any other hero ofhistory.""Superb," cried Xian at once, ending any argument before it began. Raising atiny, thin hand that looked with its many rings like a jeweled spider, shedeclared: "Steffens will be buried with full honors. Someone with talent willwrite his biography and Yang will sign it. Scenes from his life will be enactedon every mashina. A great tomb will be built --""Honored Solar System Controller," muttered Yams, "we've already cremated thebody and disposed of the ashes.""What difference does that make? Do you suppose Genghis Khan sleeps in what wecall his grave? Now, bistra, bistra! -- quick, quick! Get a move on. Rememberthat heroes are made, not born."Professor Yang, smiling over the adoption of his idea, left the cabinet roomwith Yama."In some ways," he remarked, "the most intriguing supposition is that the worldwe live in has always been the consequence of the Crux conspiracy and itsoutcome. Wouldn't it be interesting, Honored Colonel, if time is, so to speak,absolutely relative -- if this episode has been embedded in the past ever since2091, and all our world is the long-term result of what, from our point of view,has only just happened?"Yama, hurrying to carry out Xian's order, paused long enough to stare at Yang."What complete nonsense," he growled.Pending appointment of a replacement for Kathmann, Yama was combining EarthCentral duties with his own. Most of his day was taken up with Stef in one wayor another. Yama launched the process of glorification, then carried out a morepersonal duty: as he'd once promised Stef, he ordered the release of Iris andAnanda from the White Chamber. He did not see the young people, and so neverknew that their brief stay beneath the Palace of Justice had turned their hairthe same color as the tiled walls of their cells.Weary and ready to go home, Yama was thinking of Hariko and his children when apiece of copy containing two lines of script was hand-delivered to his desk.Thus he learned that the woman Lata, last survivor of Crux on earth, had beentracked down at a village near Karakorum. She had committed suicide before thepolizi and the Darksiders arrived and had left this note."It is all over," she wrote, "and I know it. This world endures as if protectedby a god. But what sort of god would protect this world?"Yama slid the paper into a port on his mashina."Copy, file, destroy," he said.On the next Great Genghis Day, Government of the Universe Place was crowded withpeople. From every flagpole hung nine white faux yaktails in honor of the famousUnifier of Humankind. But the event of the day was not honoring Genghis --though President Mobutu burned incense on his grave -- but the dedication ofStef's memorial.As the veil over the statue fell, Dzhun and Selina stood together looking at anidealized Stef striding ever forward, holding an impact pistol in one hand and aglobe symbolizing the world order in the other.Since Dzhun was only semiliterate, Selina read the epitaph that Yang hadcomposed: "Like the Great Khan in Courage and Like Jesus in Self-Sacrifice.""Yang's been made a grandee, you know," Dzhun said. "They needed somebody topurge subversives from the University, and he just dropped into the slot. We'relucky to have him for a customer."She had used the million Stef had left her, not to buy a cottage or get aneducation, but to open her own brothel. She called it House of Timeless Love.With clever Selina to manage it -- and to serve a few select customers, such asthe now famous, rich and powerful Yang -- it had rapidly become the most popularof the newer houses, with capacity crowds every night.Selina smiled down at her friend and employer."Anyway, the statue's nice. Of course he never walked stiff-legged like that.Stef just lounged around.""I think I preferred him as he was," mused Dzhun. "Alive.""You loved him, didn't you?""I guess so. I really don't know much about love. I know that I love you."She and Selina had been sleeping together for years. Sometimes they made love,but sex wasn't really the point. After the night's work was done and all thecustomers were gone, they lay together for comfort, holding each other close."Can I ask you something, Dzhun?""Anything. Almost anything.""How'd you get Stef to leave you all that money? Was it just telling him thatyou had a senator on the string?""That was part of it. But also I made up a sad story about myself and fed it tohim. You know, in spite of everything he was sentimental. That's why he wasthrown out of the Security Forces. I was working for the polizi then, keepingthem informed about my customers. When I reported that Stef was working on animportant secret project, I got a bonus. Kathmann himself told me about Stef'sweakness," said Dzhun proudly. "Even way back then I had powerful friends,Selina.""Tu nespravimy, Dzhun," said her friend, smiling and shaking her head. "You'reincorrigible.""What's that word mean?"Selina told her. Dzhun smiled; she liked the sound of it."Well, honey, if you ask me, we live in an incorrigible world."

