FIVE

HARI SAT MOTIONLESS in his uncomfortable chair, the pain in his back forgotten, listening so hard he barely breathed around the knot in his guts.

He knew the voice.

This weirdass-looking fey he didn’t recognize, but he still had an Actor’s ear for voices. This voice stirred old memories, half buried in passing years; he eased back in his chair and closed his eyes, shutting out the unfamiliar face, concentrating on the familiar voice.

“. . . but this is what you don’t know. At least, I hope you don’t know. By all I hold sacred, I pray that even the monsters who control the Studio are not so evil that you would inflict HRVP on us intentionally . . .”

HRVP? On Overworld? His eyes jerked open and he jolted upright, staring at his deskscreen. He couldn’t seem to get his breath.

“Remember that HRVP once came within an inch of destroying civilization, even with vaccines and quarantines and the finest medical technology that Earth could muster.

“Remember that here, on Overworld, the primary method of healing is the laying on of hands.

“Resist the Blind God. The greed of your worst should not be allowed to triumph over the conscience of your best. Fight it.

“You are our only hope.

“We are at your mercy.

“Save us.”

Hari forgot about the voice; a tornado howled inside his head, and its silent roar drowned out every thought, save one nerveless whisper: HRVP.

It had to be a mistake. It had to be an accident. He must have heard wrong—he must have. On a nontechnological world, HRVP was the perfect weapon. It could wipe out every warm-blooded creature on the planet.

Except for us, Hari thought.

HRVP had been eradicated on Earth, brought to extinction by quarantine and vaccination, more than fifty years ago. The final outbreak had come somewhere in Indonesia, when a strain that had been preserved in an immunological laboratory had escaped. Someone had leaked news of the strain’s existence to the local press, and the story sparked riots in which the laboratory had been destroyed, burned to the ground—but not quite thoroughly enough.

Worldwide, more than two million people died, roughly five hundred thousand of HRVP itself; the other million and a half were victims of the victims. The standard ratio, which had held roughly true for this one as it had for each large HRVP outbreak since the beginning of the twenty-first century, was that an HRVP sufferer killed an average of 2.8 people before either succumbing to the disease or being killed himself. The Leisure Congress in Geneva had acted with extraordinary swiftness: less than twelve hours after the outbreak was confirmed, the island had been sterilized by a series of minimum-residue neutron bombs. The deaths of one hundred and twenty-seven thousand islanders were buried in the disaster’s total—and they died for nothing.

Before the worldwide network of slavelanes had gone online, it wasn’t possible to quarantine any large area, even an island; thousands of people had fled in their cars at the first word of the outbreak. Within hours, the disease had reached every continent. This was why there remained a mandate of universal vaccination, even today.

Hari, like many of his generation, had grown up with occasional nightmares of seeing that neutron fireball blossom over his own head—but that was less terrifying than the disease itself. The bald elf with the weirdly familiar voice had said that HRVP came within an inch of destroying civilization; My father, Hari thought mordantly, would argue with that.

Duncan would say the inch was imaginary.

Everything Duncan cherished in the history of human thought, from the democratic franchise to those individual “rights” he so often insisted upon, had been marched up the chute in the slaughterhouse of the Plague Years and had taken the hammer square between the eyes.

The regional and national governments, who were the sole guarantors of those rights, had been completely helpless. A few nations adopted rational, progressive HRVP policies, but they could enforce them only within their own borders—what gains were made could be wiped out by an unlucky shift of the wind. The national militaries became a dangerous, unfunny joke; chain of command is a tricky thing, when one slip of an anti-infection protocol could transform a competent commander into a raving homicidal paranoid. Twenty years after the first outbreak of HRVP, there was no longer even the illusion of a sovereign nation left on Earth—but there was still government.

For centuries—dating back to the Dutch traders and the British East India Company—multinational corporations had pursued their interests globally, as opposed to the provincialism that made national governments so vulnerable. Even before the Plague Years, many of the zaibatsus and the megacorps had maintained private military forces, to protect their employees and interests in places where the local governments were unwilling or unable to do so; these giant corporations often had more claim on the loyalty of their employees than did the nations in which these employees chanced to live. After all, the corporation provided the employee’s education, housing, child care, health care, income, and finally, as nation after nation collapsed during the Plague Years, the corporation also provided police and military defense. They had no choice; corporations that failed in any of these fundamental responsibilities swiftly found themselves unable to attract the high-quality workers they needed to remain competitive in the unregulated, purely Darwinian jungle of international business. When the nations collapsed, the corporations were already in place, holding the gap.

They were able to act with the ruthlessness that the ongoing crisis required, to act in ways that the merely national governments could not. A national government rules, finally, by consent of the governed; a corporation rules by consent of the stockholders.

By the time an effective, mass-producible HRVP vaccine was developed, the three pillars of the current society—the caste system, the tech laws, and the Social Police—were solidly in place.

The caste system, the rigidly enforced social code that forbade cross-caste personal contact, ensured that any outbreaks of HRVP would spread laterally instead of reaching up to the really important people: the business directors, the investment managers, and the majority stockholders—later to become Businessmen, Investors, and Leisurefolk.

HRVP was thought to have been a partially developed bioweapon that escaped from a private laboratory; the tech laws, a loosely bound series of intercorporate treaties, were designed to prevent precisely that kind of dangerous research.

The Social Police enforced the caste laws; violation of a caste law was considered prima facie evidence of HRVP infection. Minimum punishment was isolation quarantine; more usually, violators were summarily executed.

Over the years, caste violation penalties had been relaxed, but the scope of the Social Police’s mandate had expanded to include the defense of the social order in the broadest terms, from monitoring compliance with the tech laws to enforcing intercorporate contracts. Lower-priority crimes such as robbery, assault, and murder were handled by the understaffed, underpaid, and overworked CID.

Hari wasn’t naive enough to long for the vanished pre-HRVP days; due to his semieducation under Duncan’s direction, he was more aware than most that what had seemed to be the convulsive transformation of the Plague Years had, in truth, only codified and rigidified trends that had been evolving for centuries.

It would not be so on Overworld.

The elf had said, Remember that here, on Overworld, the primary method of healing is the laying on of hands.

The trends of centuries would be irrelevant; no one would survive to continue them. If HRVP could infect primals, it could probably kill stonebenders, treetoppers, ogrilloi—given HRVP’s ability to mutate and adapt to new hosts, it could be a mass extinction on the scale of the Cretaceous die-off. Twenty years from now, there might not be a warm-blooded creature alive on Overworld—and the ripple effect on the ecosystem would destroy reptiles, insects, plants—

The prospect crushed air from his lungs as though stones were piled upon his chest. No more lancers on lumbering destriers with armor shining in the sun; no wizards; no cheery innkeepers and gap-toothed stableboys; no primals or stonebenders; no treetoppers, griffins, trolls; no more Korish shamans raising dust devils in the Grippen Desert; no ogrillo tribals marauding the fringes of the Boedecken Waste; no more lonely wails of seniiane calling the faithful to prayer in the dusk of Seven Wells; no Warrengangs . . . And the numberless creatures now extinct on Earth, but surviving in the wilds of Overworld: no more otters playing in sparkling streams, no more wolves pursuing elk on the high plains, no whales singing to each other from oceans on opposite sides of the world, no condors wheeling on mountain thermals, no coughs of stalking cougars.

This can’t be happening.

It made him want to stand up and howl.

Suddenly he comprehended Tan’elKoth utterly: he was being smothered. Choked to death. Earth had forced itself down his throat, and he was strangling on it. Overworld was the only place he’d ever been happy. Overworld was freedom. Overworld was life.

It was home.

This had to be some kind of mistake.

Viceroy Garrette was ruthless, a stone motherfucker, but he wasn’t a monster—

Hari recalled a story Duncan had pulled from a two-hundred-year-old hardbound book of Western history: a story of European colonists who’d deliberately infected natives on the American continent with a lethal disease called smallpox.

The monsters who control the Studio, the elf had said.

I’m one of the monsters he was talking about.

“Bastards,” Hari snarled through his teeth. “Motherfucking bastards—”

“Administrator? I’m sorry?”

He leaned toward the pickup beside his screen. “You’re sure he’s not an Actor?”

Actors can now speak English on Overworld, if they choose; they can even speak of being Actors. The crusade that Toa-Sytell had led to rid the Empire of Actors in the wake of For Love of Pallas Ril had turned the Studio conditioning, which once had prevented Actors from betraying themselves or each other, into the very means of that betrayal. Toa-Sytell had discovered that Actors could always be identified by what they were unable to say; the Studio’s response had been to progressively decondition the Actors. Not a single conditioned Actor was now on Overworld.

And the elf thing—very, very few Actors had ever successfully played an elf, but Hari was pretty sure there were five or six currently active, out of other Studios.

“Pretty, uh, pretty sure he’s not an Actor, Administrator,” one of the techs answered him hesitantly. “We’re running a transponder autoscan, but so far all we’re getting from Rossi’s vicinity is Rossi.”

Hari nodded to himself. What the elf was doing was brilliant, in a pathetic sort of way. Somehow this elf understood that Actors are the Overworld eyes and ears of the wealthiest and most influential people on Earth. Faced with a crisis that could not be met by anyone on Overworld, he turned to the soft hearts of Earth’s romantics. A few thousand Leisurefolk—a few hundred—seeing this, could pressure the Studio, even the Leisure Congress itself, to mount a relief operation, to find a way to distribute vaccine, to save at least some of the billions of lives that would otherwise be lost. Brilliant.

What made it pathetic was that he’d picked the wrong Actor. Rossi had no audience. No one who mattered was watching this—no one at all. Well, no, Hari admitted to himself. That’s not quite true.

Rossi had an audience of one.

And just that simply, Hari knew who it was, the bald and sickly looking elf with the queerly familiar voice. How does an elf learn English? There’s only one answer, curious as it was: he doesn’t.

He’s not an elf. But he’s also not an Actor. A motto percolated up from the depths of some story Duncan had made him read as a boy: When one eliminates the impossible, whatever remains—however improbable—must be the truth.

Hari whispered, “. . . oh, my god . . .”

He looked through the image on his deskscreen, out through Rossi’s eyes, into golden eyes he had not seen in nearly thirty years. He remembered—

He remembered the white plastic surgical mask, worn to protect the progress of the elving. He remembered the gift for intuitive solutions—

He remembered the cold courage—

He remembered the debt he owed.

He murmured, “Kris . . .”

Kris Hansen looked into him now through Frank Rossi’s eyes. Kris Hansen asked him, without even knowing it, for his help.

Hari felt something crack inside his chest; something broke and released a nameless flood that surged fiery and humming into his arms, into his head. You want my help, Kris?

“You’ll fucking well get it,” he muttered.

“Administrator? Is something wrong?”

Hari hissed softly through his teeth, gathering scattered thoughts into a semicoherent plan of action. “Don’t do anything,” he said. “I’m on my way down.”

“What about his audience?”

“Fuck his audience, technician.” He leaned on the word to remind the tech of their relative ranks. “Keep feeding to my desk until you hear otherwise.”

“Acknowledged.”

He pitched his voice to the screen’s command tone and said: “Iris: initiate telecommunication. Screen-in-screen. Execute.” A screen-in-screen box popped up that overlaid Rossi’s POV feed. He began to enter the connection code for Businessman Westfield Turner, the Studio President, already rehearsing in his head what he would say. Listen, Wes, this is urgent. We need to get on this right away, I have an idea—

He hesitated, fingers hovering above the keypad, one stroke away from completing the call.

The President wasn’t known for his decisiveness. He might stall; he might kick the decision upstairs to the Board of Governors in Geneva. Days might pass before Hari got the authority to act as he knew he needed to act. Authority might never be granted at all.

Sometimes it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.

He hit the cancel, then keyed in a new code. Another box popped up in a corner of his deskscreen, overlaying a close-up of maggots crawling from a blackened mouth. Within the box grinned the permanently youthful, professionally cheerful, recorded face of Jed Clearlake, managing producer and star of Adventure Update, the “Only Worldwide Twenty-Four-Hour Source for Studio News”—the number one rated news site in the history of the net.

The recording said, “Hi! I’m Jed Clearlake, and this is my personal message site. Begin recording at any time by pressing Return or clicking on the radio button below.”

Hari hit the key and said, “Real time AV. Command code Caine’s here.”

The image in the box wiped to a solid black screen. White letters scrolled across it:

PRESENT SAMPLE FOR MATCHING.

“He who lives by the sword shall die by my knife,” Hari said softly. “That’s prophecy, if you like.”

CONFIRMED.

The image that came up now within the box had the grainy 1024 x 780 resolution of palmpad video, but Clearlake’s smile was brilliant as ever. “Yeah, Hari, what’s up? I’m in a meeting.”

“I’ve got a hot one for you, Jed. A full POV from one of my ISP Actors.”

“What, too hot to blip to my site? I mean, come on, Hari, there’s only so many hours in the day, and I’m with a seven-figure advertiser right now.”

“This isn’t something I can leave lying around in your message dump. I’m going to load it straight to your palmpad. Don’t lose this, Jed. You’ll understand when you see it.”

“Hari, Jesus Christ, what did I just tell you?”

“And who are you talking to? If it wasn’t for me you’d still be working for that Underwood buttrag as the fucking Ankhanan Affairs Correspondent. Whatever happened to ‘God bless you, Administrator Michaelson, I owe you my career,’ you goddamn weasel? You ever want to get another tip out of this Studio as long as you live?”

Clearlake looked like he had suddenly developed a terrific headache. “How long is it?”

“Five minutes, tops. You won’t be sorry.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Hari pulled up the call file from his deskscreen’s memory core, selected CURRENT and INCOMING: CAVEA, and dragged the icon onto Clearlake’s box on the screen. A progress bar popped up, slowly filling as the file began to upload.

It had reached only 7 percent completion when it self-terminated. Hari frowned. “What the fuck?”

“Hari, what is this crap? Some funny-looking bald elf yapping like a monkey, this is your hot story?”

“Give me a second,” he muttered, but when he went to reselect INCOMING: CAVEA, a dialog box popped up on his screen.

THE SELECTED FILE CONTAINS MATERIAL THAT IS RATED CLASSIFICATION RED. UPLOAD OF RED-RATED MATERIAL CONSTITUTES FELONY CORPORATE ESPIONAGE. PENALTIES FOR FELONY CORPORATE ESPIONAGE INCLUDE UP TO TEN YEARS IN PRISON, FINES OF UP TO TEN MILLION MARKS, AND/OR PERMANENT DOWNCASTE TO WORKER STATUS. CLICK OK TO ACKNOWLEDGE.

Hari moved the cursor to the radio button marked OK, and clicked it.

Another progress bar popped up, labeled DELETING RED-RATED FILES; it filled swiftly. Before he could even move the cursor to save the current feed to a new file, the feed wiped to black.

“Jed?” Hari said grimly. “I’m gonna have to get back to you on this.”

He stabbed the cancel, and the box went blank. He sat very, very still for a long silent moment, thinking hard. Some net-monitor program must have been set for this; it wasn’t hard to program a script to capture and respond to specific words or phrases on a netwide basis—that technology was almost two hundred years old. This one must have been set to capture references to HRVP on Overworld. That meant somebody knew this was going to happen.

That also meant he could guess who that somebody had to be.

He was already in the shit. In deep.

He keyed the Security switchboard. “This is Michaelson. Put two guys in riot gear on the door of the Cavea techbooth. No, don’t—specials, make them specials. Two specials in full gear. No one goes in or out until I get there.”

“Acknowledged.”

He punched a new code. The screen swirled into an image of Tan’elKoth’s face. “I am otherwise engaged,” the image told him. “Leave a message.”

Hari entered his override sequence. “Tan’elKoth, acknowledge,” he said. “Acknowledge, dammit. One goddamn question, all right?”

The screen cross-faded into a real-time image: Tan’elKoth scowled at him. “I am teaching,” he said testily. “These are the hours that you, Caine, yourself assigned to my seminar. You should know better than to interrupt.”

“Yeah, whatever. What do you know about HRVP?”

His scowl deepened, and he lowered his voice. “I am no physician,” he murmured, “but I have read widely in the history of your civilization. Why?”

“No time for a long story. Got an Actor here who might’ve been exposed. What are the chances he could be infectious?”

“Exposed? How could this Actor have been exposed? And when? And to which strain?”

“If I wanted a bunch of useless fucking questions that I don’t know the answers to,” Hari said, “I would’ve called a real doctor.”

“Mm, just so. Well. I would say—based upon my understanding that several strains of HRVP are capable of remaining potent in the environment for weeks—that yes, this Actor could possibly be infectious. He should certainly be isolated and undergo an antiviral regime before being allowed to make a transfer.”

“Yeah,” Hari said heavily. “It’s a little bit late for that.”

“What do you mean?” Tan’elKoth’s eyes widened. “Caine? What do you mean, it’s too late?”

“No time. Listen: I’m on my way over right now. Start pulling; I’m gonna need a little of your on-the-net magick.”

“Caine, I am teach—”

“Dismiss the class. This is more important. Believe me. Get your shit together, Tan’elKoth. I’ll explain everything when we get there.”

“We? Caine—”

He hit cancel and rapidly entered one last code: his personal contact code for Shanna.

The look of annoyance fixed on her face when she answered would have stung him at any other time; right now he had bigger problems. “Shanna,” he said. “Where are you right now?”

“I’m in the car,” she said, in a if you weren’t such an idiot you’d already know it tone. “I’m taking Faith to Fancon in Los Angeles this morning, remember? You coded the travel permit yourself.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Shit,” he said tiredly. Faith loved conventions, loved meeting her parents’ devoted fans—loved getting the day off school at the Admacademy. Too bad, he thought. “She’s with you now?”

Faith leaned into the video pickup’s field wearing a sunny smile. “Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, honey. Listen, I’m really sorry, but we have to change your plans.”

Her face fell; watching disappointment gather in her sky-blue eyes cut Hari like a slow knife. “But we’re going to Fancon—”

“Change plans?” Shanna said. “What are you talking about?”

“Turn the car around. I need you here right away. Right now.”

“Hari, is this really important? I have a panel at 1400—”

“Yes, goddammit, this is important. People’s lives are at stake. How fast can you get here?”

Her brows drew together. “It’s that bad?”

“You can’t even imagine,” he said feelingly.

She glanced away from the screen, checking the car’s position on the GPS map. “Fifteen minutes.”

“But,” Faith protested, her lower lip threatening tears, “but Fancon . . .”

“Yeah, and uh, listen—” Hari scrubbed his face with the palms of his hands, trying to wipe away the sick dread that gathered in his throat. “Don’t bring Faith. Drop her at home, and get your Pallas gear, all right?”

He refused to let himself be hurt by the spark of anticipation that danced in Shanna’s eyes. “It’s that kind of problem?” she asked slowly, like she was trying not to sound eager.

Faith, too, suddenly brightened. “Mommy’s going back to the river?”

“Yeah,” Hari said.

“Wow,” Faith said happily. “I thought we had to wait almost another month before we got to be together again. A month is a long time!”

“Then you’re all right about not going to the con?” Hari made himself ask.

“Uh-huh.” She nodded brightly. “I get to have the river in my head instead. And you and Mommy won’t be fighting all the time.”

Shanna made a little grimace of apology through the screen; Hari waved it off. “Meet me at the Curioseum,” he said. “At Tan’elKoth’s place.” He gave her a frown that asked her not to press for an explanation.

She nodded, that spark of anticipation now colored by a breath of wariness. “I’m on my way. Give me an extra fifteen to drop off Faith and get my gear. Take care of the permit.”

“Yeah. See you.”

He canceled the call and accessed the San Francisco travel site. It took him only seconds to register her new destination; as Chairman, he had the authority to code and alter travel permits for any Studio contractee.

It took him one more thoughtful moment to accidentally reinitialize his deskscreen’s memory core. “Oops,” he muttered flatly, as a keystroke erased all traces of his communications.

“Damn,” he said. “I hate it when that happens.”

He rose, and stretched to force blood into muscles stiff with long inactivity. Hey, how about that? he thought.

My fucking back doesn’t hurt.

2

ON HIS WAY out, Hari stopped at the desk of his assistant. “Gayle,” he said, “there’s something wrong with my deskscreen. I think I lost some data. Can you look at it for me?”

Gayle Keller peered up at him and blinked; he had a round face, close-set eyes, and a long nose that made him look like a nearsighted rat. Keller had been Arturo Kollberg’s assistant; Hari had despised him for years, and six years of closer association had only intensified the feeling. He was pretty sure Keller supplemented his Studio paycheck by keeping the Social Police up to date on Hari’s activities, and it wasn’t even a secret that Keller filed regular confidential reports with the Studio’s Board of Governors. Shortly after becoming Chairman, Hari had begun proceedings to have Keller replaced—until he’d received a call from Westfield Turner himself, who’d reminded him heavy-handedly just how difficult it is to find a quality assistant, after all. Keller was, in Hari’s clinically unbiased opinion, an unctuous lying little fuck.

“Administrator?” he said, looking politely puzzled. “Perhaps I should call a tech?”

“Aw, come on, Gayle.” Hari forced a grin, looking as good-natured as he could manage. “You’ve been working with this system for twenty years. Where are you gonna find a tech who knows it better than you do? Just have a look, huh? If you can’t fix it, go ahead and call MIS.”

Keller pushed himself back from his desk with an irritated little sigh, got up, and went into Hari’s office. As soon as he was out of sight within, Hari started fiddling with the keypad to Keller’s deskscreen. “See, all I did was something like this—”

“Don’t touch that!” Keller suddenly appeared in the doorway. “I mean, please, Administrator—”

“Oops,” Hari said. “Guess I know what not to do, huh?”

“Here, let me—”

“No, no problem,” Hari said. “Here, all you have to do is—” and another couple of keystrokes reloaded the previous day’s backup. Modern lasergel-core memory has none of the flaws of the antique magnetic media that it had replaced. Core data is 100 percent stable, but it’s also nonpersistent: reinitialization physically scrambles the gel medium. Once the core was overwritten by the intersecting UV lasers, no data-recovery software on Earth could recreate whatever Keller had recorded of Hari’s communications.

Keller glared at him, his piggy little eyes gleaming with suspicion. “You did that on purpose,” he said tightly.

Hari shrugged. “I can’t seem to get the hang of this new software.”

“I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that for one second. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I have a duty to the Board—”

“Hey, my fault. I’m sorry,” Hari said easily, stepping close to look down into the little man’s eyes. “I screwed up. When you make your report, I guess you should remind the Board that the only thing I was ever really good at is killing people with my bare hands.”

He looked long and deeply into Keller’s eyes, until he saw the threat settle there and begin to work its magic on his attitude.

Hari left while Keller was still trying to come up with some kind of reply.

3

ROVER WAITED WITH gleaming patience at the open door of Hari’s private lift. It was a five-minute walk from the lift to the Cavea’s techbooth. Rover whirred precisely two paces behind his left heel.

He stopped outside the door. The two Security specials stood motionless to either side like a pair of caryatid columns, power rifles held diagonally across their chests at parade rest. Hari stood for a moment, taking a deep breath.

“I am Chairman Administrator Hari Khapur Michaelson,” he said.

The specials replied in flat unison, “You are recognized.”

The back of his neck always tingled when he came close to a special; he remembered too well the time one of these cyborged bastards shot him in the head. He could still feel the hammer of gelslugs against his skull every time he looked at one. The cyborg yokes around their necks overrode their higher cognitive functions, making them incorruptible, robotically faithful in the performance of their duties, and incapable of disobeying an order.

“Allow no one except myself to enter or leave this room without my express authorization.”

“Acknowledged.”

Walking between them still gave him a twinge.

Inside the booth, the two techs stared at him like nervous puppies, wondering if they were in trouble; they rose as he entered, respectfully silent.

Hari nodded to them. He glanced through the glass reflexively, into the Cavea; the thousand or so empty first-hander berths out there tied a brief knot in the pit of his stomach; shit, Caine had sold out the Cavea every Adventure for ten years—now he had ten Actors at once working out of SF’s main hall and they could only pull four thousand between them. And god only knew how many of the private boxes that climbed the walls were empty.

He shook it off. None of that counted right now.

He scanned the curving bank of POV screens until he found Rossi’s. The show was still going on: now each time Rossi’s gaze settled upon a body, shadowy ghost-images of that person’s living days played around it. Translucent mothers cradled half-seen infants; cloudy children skipped and laughed and threw apple cores at each other; youths spun of smoke and cobwebs played plaintive love songs, wrote poetry, and stole away together among the blasted, dying trees.

And through each shape, as through half-melted glass, could be seen the bloated, raven-picked corpse, blackened with decay, that was the end of each bright smile and mother’s kiss.

“You’ve guessed by now that what you are seeing is a Fantasy—what humans call illusion. There will be those who will try to tell you that Fantasy is the opposite of reality, that it is the same as lies, that what you have seen is impossible—that it is a lie because it is a Fantasy. I tell you this is not so.

“It is the greatest gift of my people, that we can bring our dreams to life for other eyes. Fantasy is a tool; like any tool, it may be used poorly or well. At its best, Fantasy reveals truths that cannot be shown any other way.”

“This is a Fantasy of what I’m asking you to fight. This is a Fantasy of the Blind God.”

Hari frowned at the screen and made a faint, thoughtful hissing noise between this teeth. This was the second time Hansen had mentioned this blind god—or was it the Blind God? He’d heard about this before, somewhere, or maybe read it . . . One of his father’s books? Maybe. He’d ask Duncan about it when he got the chance; he might know the reference.

Hari nodded toward the screen. “Get ready to pull him. On my mark.”

“Pull him—?” The techs exchanged worried frowns. “What for? He doesn’t even have an audience.”

“Just do it, Technician. That’s an order.”

“Administrator, we can’t do that—not with the native there. It’s an exposed transfer—the Kollberg Rule—”

“Fuck the Kollberg Rule,” Hari said distinctly. He thought of one of Duncan’s dicta: All authority, political or otherwise, is ultimately a cloak for naked force—and sometimes you have to remind people of that. “I’ll give you a choice. You can pull him because it’s a direct order, or—”

“But the rule—”

“Or,” Hari overrode him, “you can pull him because one of those specials outside has a power rifle jammed against the back of your head. Any questions?”

The tech squinted like a kid flinching away from his father’s fist. “No, sir,” he said, and turned back to his board.

Hari looked at the other. “And you?”

“Me? I, I, I didn’t say nothing. Sir.”

“All right, then.”

He stared expressionlessly into the tech’s eyes until this one, too, turned to his board.

Now on the POV screen, the elf was back in view.

“And I, at least, am no Fantasy.”

The elf reached toward Rossi’s face, his hand vanishing below the Actor’s peripheral vision.

“I am real. Feel my touch. I am here. In the name of all that both our peoples hold sacred, I ask for your help.”

Hari listened with only half his attention; with the elf’s voice to cover any small noises he might make, he thumbed the reject on one of the dual gravers that recorded Rossi’s Adventure. When the cube popped up, he palmed it and swiftly replaced it with a blank from the rack below.

His teeth showed through a particular variety of grin he hadn’t used in nearly seven years. “Y’know what?” he said. “I think you’re right about that exposed transfer.”

The techs flicked brief glances at each other, afraid to be caught looking away from their screens.

“Sir?” one of them said.

“Yeah. It’s not worth the risk. Pull him at your first opportunity, and then get his ass back into his storyline ASAP. Call Scripting and have them work out the transition; have a faxpack ready for him. Then we can just forget any of this ever happened, huh?”

4

THE SCREEN SHOWED the animated image of the friendly stenographer that indicated an open channel to the automated recording function of the Report Center. With what he imagined to be cool, professional competence, Gayle Keller made his report.

“At 1017 this morning, visual transmission resumed from J’Than aka Francis Allen Rossi,” he said, reading from his notes. He pitched his voice toward his best imitation of the smooth tones of a professional broadcaster; he liked to imagine that occasionally the Board of Governors themselves played his recordings, and in his fond imaginings he saw a dozen Leisurefolk, faceless with absolute power, listening intently around a long oval table—they would nod to each other, favorably impressed with the skill of his delivery and his rich, round vocal tones—

“In what was later determined to be an illusion, J’Than aka Rossi appeared to be in an elven village, which had been destroyed by what was claimed to be an outbreak of HRVP on Overworld. This was reported directly to Chairman Michaelson from the techbooth; immediately on learning of the supposed HRVP outbreak, Chairman Michaelson undertook several real-time communications. Following this, he forcibly erased all record of his transactions from his own desk’s memory core, and from that of this reporter. He also threatened this reporter with bodily injury or death.”

There, Keller thought smugly. The Board would make certain Michaelson couldn’t escape the consequences of such behavior.

“Chairman Michaelson then proceeded to the Cavea’s techbooth, where—once again under the threat of bodily injury or death—he ordered the duty tech to perform a transfer that may have been exposed, in violation of the Kollberg Rule—”

He was interrupted by an attention chime from the speaker on his deskscreen.

“Artisan Gayle Keller. You are instructed to remain at your current screen. Hold for voice communication from the Adventures Unlimited Board of Governors.”

Keller gagged, then coughed convulsively, spraying spit across his deskscreen. In sudden panic, seeing in his head an irrational vision of the Board staring out at him, knowing they had just been spit upon, he wiped frantically at the screen with the sleeve of his jumpsuit and nearly put his elbow right through it. He had imagined this event so many times that even now, he wasn’t sure it was actually happening—but he guessed this must be real.

In his daydreams, he was never this frightened.

He placed his hands on the desk in front of him and tried not to notice how they trembled. He breathed deeply, in and out, in and out, until he became quite light-headed—but still, when the Report Center’s friendly stenographer dissolved into the armored knight on the back of the winged horse, rampant, that was the official logo of the Studio, he knew that all the deep breathing in the world wouldn’t melt the ball of ice that grew in the bottom of his throat.

“Artisan Keller. Expand upon this transfer that Michaelson ordered by threat of force.”

That simply, that coldly, with that precise lack of ceremony or preamble, Gayle Keller found himself in the telepresence of the Board of Governors.

Chairman Michaelson had spoken, now and again, of the digitized, electronically neutral voice that represented the Board of Governors, so that one never knows precisely who’s talking or whom one is talking to. One never even knows who is on the Board at any given time, only that there are between seven and fifteen of them, drawn always from the Hundred Families, the elite of the elite of the Leisure caste. Their identities are carefully protected, so that the Studio System as a whole maintains its status as an unbreachable public trust—no private pressure can be brought to influence the Board members’ decisions if no one knows who they are. It was rumored that even the Board members were unaware of each other’s identities, that the entire Board met only in virtual space, each member participating from his own private screen.

To Keller, this had always seemed a sensible, full explanation of the blank anonymity of the Board. Only now, faced with the static logo on the screen and the passionless neutrality of the voice, did he gather a glimmering of some larger truth. The absolute impersonality of the Board had a power of its own.

“The, hrm, the, the transfer?” Keller stammered. “Mmm, yes—” He made the tale as concise as he could manage; rather than becoming more easy as he spoke, he found his fright inching toward blank terror. Without any of the visual cues—no nods of the head, no smiles, no frowns, no hint of posture or demeanor, none of the encouraging Mmm-hmm or Yes, go on of ordinary conversation, he couldn’t tell if his report was being received with warm paternal indulgence, lethal fury, or somewhere inbetween.

“Do you have any analysis?”

“Uh, analysis? I, uh—”

“Do you know, or are you able to guess, why Chairman Michaelson was determined to make this transfer, to the point of threatening physical force, and then arbitrarily changed his mind?”

He rubbed his palms together below his desk, trying to wipe away their thick slimy coating of sweat. “I, uh, no, I guess . . . I mean, I can’t guess, I haven’t really thought—”

“These real-time communications. With whom did he speak?”

“I don’t, I can’t, ah—” He stopped himself and forced a deep breath. “Ordinarily I, ah, copy the Chairman’s communications files from his deskscreen while he’s out of the office, but . . . well, the data cores, you know—”

“Do you have any evidence, documentary or otherwise, that the data erasure was an intentional act of sabotage?”

Did they think he was lying? Or did they want something they could hold over the Chairman’s head? How much trouble was he in?

“I, uh, I, well—no, not directly. B-but, why would he have threatened me, if he wasn’t trying to hide something?”

His voice trailed off, his face green in the light cast from that still logo. The motionless knight on the winged horse stared back at him for an unreasonably long moment.

Then, finally, blessedly, he heard, “Artisan Keller. You are dismissed. Return to your duties.”

Keller stared at the blank grey rectangle of his deskscreen for a long time, then jerked as though he’d started from a doze and jumped to his feet.

He really, really needed to use the toilet.

5

THE LIFT OPENED onto a service hallway of blank white walls, steel-colored doors, and nondescript carpet. There was age here, mold tracks on the walls and dust in the semicirculated air, a sharp contrast to the immaculate public areas of the Studio. Hari marched some distance along its wide curve, Rover whirring at his heels. A palmlocked security door let him onto the skywalk.

The skywalk between the Studio and the Curioseum was little more than a transparent tube a half-klick long with all-weather polyester carpeting laid along its narrow floor. A low grey overcast spat drizzle that rippled the view through the armorglass, and the whisper of atmosphere control was barely audible above the patter of raindrops. Hari walked fast over the honeycombed car hive twenty-odd meters below, over the ten-meter-high security fence that ringed it.

He reached the Curioseum’s security door and pitched his voice to his chair’s command tone. “Rover: Stay.” The chair settled in place and locked its brakes; Hari sat down, shifting his weight from side to side, grimacing—it was bad enough, using this thing when he needed it; he couldn’t get comfortable, couldn’t make himself settle into this chair, with a pair of working legs.

He reached up and flattened his hand against the palmlock’s screen. The security program’s voder replied, “Access denied. Persons dependent upon bioelectronic implants may not enter this facility pursuant to the Liability Reduction Act of—”

“Michaelson one override.”

“Please present sample for matching.”

“ ‘Then it’s Tommy this and Tommy that and “Tommy, ’ow’s yer soul?” ’ ” Hari said with flat dispassion. “ ‘But it’s “Thin red line of ’eroes” when the drums begin to roll.’ ”

The door hissed aside, revealing a small airlock-type compartment, just large enough for three or four people to stand in comfortably. On the far side was a steel door secured with a large drop-latch instead of a palmlock. “Welcome to the Curioseum, Administrator Michaelson.”

Hari made a face; he hated this part. The boundary effect was murder.

He took a deep breath and rolled across the threshold. As soon as the skywalk door hissed shut behind him, his legs began to jerk and twist like the galvanic response in a dissected frog muscle. He snarled under his breath as he maneuvered the chair around so he could swing up the bar on the inside door; his legs knotted into cramps that felt like somebody had sunk dry ice meat hooks into his thighs.

Crossing the boundary between Earth physics and the Overworld-normal field of the Curioseum was always a race between his hands and his asshole: he had to get that inner door open before he lost control of his bowels. In the boundary, the ON field sort of mingles with Earth physics, and the goddamn bypass just goes berserk. Once he was all the way into the ON field, the bypass just surrendered.

After what felt like an hour, he managed to lift the drop-latch and push open the door. Instantly all the feeling drained out of his legs. He thumped his thighs a couple of times with his fists to make sure they weren’t still cramping. They seemed to be relaxed; the muscle jiggled slackly under his hands.

Just meat, now.

Like having a couple dead dogs strapped to my ass, he thought. Except I can’t eat them.

He rolled on along the hallway, heading for the balcony that ringed the Hall of Fame. When he rolled out onto the balcony, the immense exhibition hall suddenly blazed with light. Hanging in the center of the hall, suspended from thin, almost invisible guy wires, was a dragon.

Thirty-five meters of sinuous power, her titanic wings spread a translucent pavilion over the entire hall, and her scales shone iridescent diamond. Her long saurian neck arched high, her titanic mouth gaped with hooked teeth as long as Hari’s forearm, and from that mouth gouted flame like a solar flare, scarlet and orange and yellow bursting from eye-searing white at its core. At the center of that unimaginable fire, on a small circular dais twenty meters below, a figure in shining armor knelt in an attitude of prayer, hands folded upon the hilt of a broadsword. A Shield of shimmering blue warded the flames that melted the very stone on which he kneeled.

Hari gave the scene just the barest glance. The armor there was real; it had belonged to Jhubbar Tekanal—the Actor Raymond Story. The dragon was real, too, most of her; he’d sent the expedition himself to the site of the battle and salvaged her scales. He wondered briefly if Kris Hansen had ever watched the recording of Story’s legendary three-day battle against Sha-Rikkintaer. He had a vague recollection that Story had been Hansen’s favorite Actor.

He rolled on, faster, scowling.

He hated this fucking place. He’d fought the whole idea of a Hall of Fame, but he’d been overruled by President Turner with the support of the Board of Governors. Turner had said it would be a valuable tourist attraction, and the Bog had agreed, and Hari had to admit they were right: the Hall of Fame was less than a fifth of the Curioseum, but it was the primary draw for 90 percent of the visitors.

He turned the chair and pumped its wheels, rolling along the balcony toward a long spiral ramp that led down to the ground floor. He had to keep his ass moving: this place would open at noon, and he had a lot to get done before it filled up with tourists. He pushed the wheels harder, gaining speed even before he swung onto the ramp. He coasted all the way down, half braking with his palms against the wheel rims. He rolled off the ramp and bled velocity in a long, slow curve that brought him to a stop in the middle of the gallery that led to the Caine Hall.

Small in the distance, waiting for him at the far end of the gallery, was Berne.

Inside a large case of armorglass in the middle of an archway, he was posed in a fighting crouch. He wore clothes of close-fitting serge, once red but now faded to strawberry—the same clothes he’d had on when Caine killed him. He had a snarl on his face and both hands on the hilt of Kosall, the wide-bladed bastard sword angled before him as though he guarded the arch against a fierce enemy.

Hari forced himself to roll the chair forward. I always think I can cruise right past here, not even think about it, just roll on by—

And I am always dead fucking wrong.

The armorglass case was overpressured with some kind of preservative gas—a faint chemical stench always lingered in the air around it. Taxidermy was a very efficient art these days: the Curioseum staff had simply cleaned him up, patched the slices in the clothes, covered the hole in his skull with a wig, posed his corpse, and shot him full of something to rigidify the muscles.

And there he was: the real Berne. The real Kosall.

The most popular single exhibit in the whole Curioseum.

Hari stopped beside the case and forced himself not to read the plaque. He knew it by heart, anyway. He stared up into Berne’s glittering eyes.

Sometimes I have trouble remembering that you lost, and I won.

He set his teeth in a silent snarl and pushed on.

6

THE BROAD MISSION door that fronted Tan’elKoth’s apartment stood open, and Hari rolled through the arched doorway without knocking, without even slowing.

The apartment was huge and open, converted from one of the Curioseum’s exhibition halls. Smaller than the titanic halls devoted to Jhubbar and Caine, it nonetheless towered a full three stories to the thick skylight of armorglass. On the ground floor was an immense entertainment area scattered with furniture custom-designed for Tan’elKoth’s enormous body, arranged to create the feeling of separate rooms: a living room, a kitchen, a den. A simple sweep of staircase would take one up through the open light well to the second floor, which held Tan’elKoth’s bed and personal spaces; a second sweep would take one to the third floor, where Tan’elKoth maintained his studio. On that third floor, in the full sun that streamed through the skylight, he sculpted the statuary that dotted the apartment—and that also graced the homes of fashionable Leisurefolk around the world; a Tan’elKoth original had become a hallmark of good taste.

At least that’s what Tan’elKoth said was up there. With no ramps in the apartment, Hari had never been above the ground floor. He’d never had a reason to go up urgent enough to make it worth the humiliation of asking Tan’elKoth to carry him.

Tan’elKoth’s kettledrum rumble echoed hollowly through the cavernous space, though he was at the farthest corner of the apartment. “No, Nicholas, green. Not chartreuse. Green. The green of young oak leaves in April.”

He knelt in seiza on the carpet in the den area, at the head of a small oval of two men and three women in similar posture. He wore precisely faded dungarees and a polo shirt that stretched like latex over his enormous chest and shoulders, looking every inch the casually stylish Professional. The other five in the oval wore the short-sleeved white shirts, neckties, and chinos of junior Professionals; none of the five looked very much at ease, and a couple were openly sweating.

This was Tan’elKoth’s graduate seminar in Applied Magick. Every year, the top five Battle Magick students from the Conservatory were awarded the opportunity to come here and do advanced study under Tan’elKoth. The Studio was not in the business of giving out free rides, even to political prisoners. In the mornings, he taught; in the afternoons, he did two matinee lecture/demonstrations per day for the crowds in the Curioseum.

He conducted his seminar in his home, because the Overworld-normal field that sustained his phase-match with Earth also allowed the use of Flow. Only the most minuscule amount was available here—generated by the plants in the arboretum and the animals in the bestiary, as well as the tiny energy traces left behind by the Curioseum’s innumerable tourists—but it was enough for tiny, basic effects.

“I, I, uh, haven’t, I mean, I’ve seen pictures of an oak—” the pale student began.

“Less yellow, then. Can you not see the color your classmates project?”

“But sir, this is the color that I’ve always—”

“And that is why you are last in this class, Nicholas. Any fool can enchant a bit of herb; to master the molding of life itself, one must use green! This green. If you cannot summon the hue for yourself, at least try to open your blurred and misty consciousness long enough to perceive mine.”

“Why can’t I just memorize the spell?”

“Spells are for fools, Nicholas. They are a crutch for adepts who lack the discipline of a true thaumaturge. The true master of magick forms his intention and charges it with Flow by the pure action of his will: make it real within, and the Flow will mirror your reality without. That is true—”

“Hey,” Hari said flatly. “Didn’t I tell you to dismiss your fucking class?”

Tan’elKoth’s leonine head turned with ponderous, inhuman deliberation: a temple guardian of stone coming slowly to life. He gathered a cavernous breath and unfolded smoothly to his feet. “Students. Rise for the Chairman.”

The students scrambled upright, four of them blinking at being so suddenly roused from their meditation. All five stood at attention, their faces reflecting various degrees of awe and dread. “Class dismissed,” Hari said. “Beat it. All of you.”

The only movement any of them made was to cast dubious glances toward Tan’elKoth. Tan’elKoth stood with arms folded across his ogre-sized chest. “This is my home,” he said. “These are my students. I fulfill the task that you have given me. Chairman or no, do not presume to give orders here.”

“Here’s a fucking order,” Hari said sharply, leaning forward in his chair. “Sit down and shut up. This is too important for us to waste time on your shit.”

Tan’elKoth didn’t move. “You cannot comprehend how offensive this is.”

“Yeah, maybe not. You’ve known me how long? And you still expect me to have manners?”

“Manners? Hardly. Thoughtfulness, perhaps; consideration of the few shreds of dignity that you have allowed me to—”

“Drop it,” Hari said flatly.

“I can only hope that you bring me glad news: perhaps this HRVP of yours has broken out among the elves, and you have come to help me celebrate.”

Fuck it, Hari thought. He wants it standing up, he’ll goddamn well take it standing up. “That’s right,” he said. “There’s been an HRVP outbreak among the elves. And you know what? That Actor I was asking about, the one who might be exposed? He’s in Ankhana.”

Tan’elKoth’s eyes went wide and blank, and his breath escaped in a fading hiss. He groped for the back of a chair into which he could lower himself, missed it, and stumbled like a drunk.

“I told you,” Hari said. “You should have sat down.”

He looked at the students. “Last chance. Beat it.”

Again they glanced at Tan’elKoth; he covered his eyes with one hand and waved them away. They scattered without a word, gathering up their belongings and hustling out the door.

“Caine . . .” Tan’elKoth said weakly. “Please say this is but a cruel jest.”

“Yeah, sure,” Hari said. “I’m famous for my sparkling sense of humor. Pull yourself together. We have work to do.”

7

THE KEYS TO Tan’elKoth’s deskpad felt alien under Hari’s fingertips: a strange mechanical resistance, as though the pad itself fought back against his touch. Instead of an electronic pad, Tan’elKoth’s was a mechanical rod-and-lever linkage, like an antique typewriter. The rods sank through the well cut in the center of Tan’elKoth’s immense rolltop desk, down into the shielded receptacle in the floor where the actual electronics lay, protected from the effect of the Curioseum’s ON field.

Hari stared at the angled mirror propped on the desktop by an ornate stand of wrought brass. The mirror reflected a rectified image of a screen that actually sat beneath his feet in the subfloor receptacle.

Tan’elKoth lay flat on the floor beside Hari’s sandals, one massive arm stretched downward into the receptacle, his forefinger lightly brushing the cube in the screen’s socket. The cube held the recording of Hansen’s performance with J’Than.

The unfamiliar feel screwed up Hari’s typing; it took him a couple tries to key in Clearlake’s priority access code. And the speaking tube down to the audio pickup altered his voice enough that he had to repeat the Caine quote three times before the security program recognized him. The mirror finally assembled an image of Clearlake’s face.

“Hey, Jed,” Hari said with a tight smile. “Ready for this?”

“For that story you were talking about? I did a little analysis on what you sent me already—from some of the bodies, I’m seeing signs—”

“Don’t say it,” Hari interrupted. “We can’t talk about it on an open line. Just tell me if you’re ready for an upload.”

“Hari, I’m as ready as it gets,” Clearlake answered with a smile of his own. “I’m just wondering what’s taking so long.”

“All right. Now listen: this is important. What I’m about to send you? You need to review it off-line. There’s a security capture keyed to a couple words in here—I’ve got a counter-measure, but it’s ablative. Save it for the broadcast.”

“Security captures and countermeasures—just how big is this?”

“As big as it gets, Jed.”

“You sure I’ll want to broadcast?”

Hari nodded. “I’m thinking special edition; I’m thinking prime-time preempt. I’m thinking license fees for clips from this report should run into eight figures, easy.”

“Bring it on then, Hari. You’ve always been good luck.”

Hari leaned over to glance down at Tan’elKoth. “Ready?” he said softly.

Tan’elKoth’s reply had the hollow distance of mindview. “I am.”

It’s going to work, Hari thought. His fingers trembled, just a little bit. Not nerves, though, no: fuck nerves. This was fun.

Maybe not a whole lot of fun, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any at all.

Hari stroked the final key.

As the file uploaded, Tan’elKoth channeled the tenuous Flow obtained within the Curioseum’s Overworld-normal field into the net. A living nervous system is the natural interface between Flow and the material world; Tan’elKoth could gather Flow here and funnel the energy across the boundary by touch. He couldn’t do much—the power he could exert in terrestrial physics was just one hair this side of nonexistent—but a surge of a few microvolts in the right place is all it takes to burn out a molecular circuit or randomize a couple lines of code. He didn’t even need to know exactly what he was affecting—hardware, software, it didn’t matter. Tan’elKoth had put it this way: “A thing is what it does. My power becomes a needle that will prick any hand which attempts to seize the dream within this cube.”

Five seconds of burst-feed later, it was done.

“Got it,” Clearlake said. “Confirmed.”

“All right. Signing off, Jed—miles to go before I sleep, that kind of thing.”

“You want your finder’s percentage? If you’re right about that eight figures, it could run into a substantial chunk.”

“Put it in escrow,” Hari said. “If this gets my ass fired, I’ll need it.”

“Will do. Later.”

“Yeah.”

Hari hit the cancel and folded down the screen. Tan’elKoth rose and stretched until his shoulder joints popped with a pair of meaty squelches. “Success.”

“You’re sure?”

“I am Tan’elKoth.” This he said without even a ghost of a smile.

Hari took a deep breath. So far, so good.

This was an improved version of what Hansen had been trying to do by capturing Rossi in the first place—he’d been trying to get through to a group of first-handers, in hopes of finding some Leisurefolk with big enough bleeding hearts to get involved. But that was because he didn’t understand first-handers. Hari did. He’d built his life understanding first-handers.

Rossi’s first-handers could have experienced everything on that cube and thought it was nothing more than part of the story. For them, it’d be nothing they need to do anything about, except sit back and watch how J’Than and the rest of the ISP cast handle it. Hari’s way, it would go onto the net, out of context.

Instead of being part of a story, it was the story.

Instead of watching the hero in place do something about it, each Leisureman and Leisurewoman becomes the hero for their own little story: they see the problem, they see they have the power to do something about it, and they make the choice to do it or not, all on their own. Not too fucking bad, he thought. We’re off to a running start.

Tan’elKoth cracked his enormous knuckles. “Now: I have done as you asked, and it is time to move on. There is only one course of action, and we both know it: You must return me to Ankhana without delay.”

Hari shook his head. “Not gonna happen.”

Tan’elKoth looked as though he might spit on the floor. “You waste all this effort, all this thought, in persuasion. It is ultimately futile. Childish. You depend upon your Leisure caste as surrogate parents, to act for you; thus shall you inevitably fail.”

Hari’s smile tightened. “We use what tools we have.”

“Bah. Useless tools produce nothing of use. Call upon me, Caine. I will help your cause.”

“You have already.”

“Of course. And I will continue to do what you ask of me, everything you ask of me—until and including the moment when you realize that all these plans are useless. Your sole remaining choice is to send me home.”

Hari sighed. “It’s not gonna happen,” he repeated.

“Caine, it must. Direct action is my world’s only hope. Exposing this crime is a worthy stroke, but it will not win the war. My people—my very world—is bent beneath the axe. You must let me save it.”

“Yeah, sure,” Hari said with a bitter smile. “Save the world, my ass.”

“Why do you resist the inevitable?”

That’s the main question of my life, Hari thought, but he said, “Because I can’t fucking trust you.”

The ex-Emperor stiffened. “You doubt that I would save my Children?”

“Oh, yeah, sure, your Children,” Hari said. “But what about the elves? Shit, Tan’elKoth, how stupid do you think I am? You think I forgot why the Monasteries were supporting your government? Your policy on the other humanoid races wasn’t exactly a secret. Once your Aktir-tokar consolidated your power over the nobles, you were gonna fire up your own personal genocide. I have a feeling this primal friend of mine wouldn’t be too happy to see you back.”

“Yet I am his only hope.”

“If you were still Emperor, you’d be the number one suspect.”

Tan’elKoth came to Hari’s side, towering over him, forbidding, unassailable. “The power of a god is required, to avert this disaster. I am that god.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I am. The gods of my world cannot intervene, bound as they are by the Covenant of Pirichanthe. And even if they could—no god of my world has the faintest understanding of virology, let alone the specifics of HRVP: the minds of those gods are merely the sums of the minds of their worshipers. My world’s only hope lies in the action of a god who has both comprehension of HRVP and the power to do something about it.”

“Okay, sure,” Hari allowed, “But you’re not the god.”

Tan’elKoth’s rumble dripped sarcasm. “And which god, then, did you have in mind?”

“You know her,” Hari said. “She’ll be here in about five minutes.”

With his comprehension, Tan’elKoth’s expression twisted into one of distaste. “She is unworthy of this task.”

“Don’t start with me,” Hari said through his teeth. “You know better.”

“She is unworthy of you, Caine.”

“Drop it.”

“She is weak. Prissy. She holds herself removed from the realities of deity; I have never understood why you tolerate her manifest frailties.”

“Not so weak,” he said, heating up. “Not so weak she couldn’t kick your ass—”

“Perhaps not; but so weak that she didn’t. Not even to save your life, Caine.”

Hari lowered his eyes and turned his face away, struggling with his temper. Finally he said, “You’re not going back. You’re never going back. Knowing what you know about the Studio, Actors, what you know about Earth, with the kinds of power you can throw around over there? No chance.”

“You would take the side of the Studio against me? Against my world? Caine, who do you think has done this? Whom do you think you are fighting?”

“There’s fighting and then there’s fighting,” Hari said. “Send you back on my own authority? They’d shoot me down like a dog. The Bog would blow up this whole Studio to keep you off Overworld; shit, they’d nuke the city.”

“And even if your Board of Governors—the Bog, as you say—should be so rash, one city is a small price to pay for an entire world.”

“Yeah?” Hari said flatly. “What if it’s your city?”

Muscle bulged around the corners of Tan’elKoth’s jaw. “I am willing to take that risk.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not. Once this story hits the nets, people are going to be all over the Studio to do something about it; the Bog, all virtuous, will have to point at me and say, ‘Through the swift and decisive action of Chairman Hari Michaelson, and the power of the great Pallas Ril, the situation is already under control.’They’re gonna have to thank me, don’t you get it? When Shanna gets back, Wes Turner will probably be giving her a medal.”

Tan’elKoth took a step back; with a slow breath, he drew himself up to his full height. He seemed to change, somehow, inhaling some new reality along with his breath, transforming his polo shirt and dungarees into a costume, and his tired, aging face into a mask.

“You are a brilliant tactician,” he said slowly, remotely, with that quality of performance as though he spoke once more for that audience inside his head, “perhaps the most brilliant I have ever known. But tactics win only battles; one can win every battle and still lose the war. Remember, in your hour of darkness, that you were offered this chance, and you refused it.”

Hari squinted at him. “Y’know, I wouldn’t swear to it, but that kind of sounded like a threat.”

Tan’elKoth looked away, over Hari’s head; his eyes drifted closed as though tired with a familiar pain. “Your—” He seemed to search for the proper word. “—wife . . . has arrived.”

8

IN THE EMPTY silence left behind by the departure of Caine and his pet goddess, minutes passed like days for the man who had once been a god. They had watched their cube-trapped dream, made their plans, and left to save the world; now he sat alone in the tenebrous gloom.

Silence enfolded him, enwrapped his heart, soaked through his pores: silence so deep it screamed with imaginary echoes. Silence was the fertile earth from which sprouts of possibility budded within his far-ranging mind; these sprouts grew to mighty fractal trees of world-paths, blossomed, and died, only to sprout again in new variations for the future. Like a gardener, he sought ways to guide this growth with gentle efficiency; like a gardener, he would use the course of nature to his advantage.

Thus, the thought, finding a branch upon which the weight of his finger could curve the entire tree toward his desire; and thus, another spot where his breath upon its bark would color the blooms of this new curve; and finally, thus.

And the tree of the future had the shape of his dreams.

He had watched her—the mock-deity, the make-believe avatar of Chambaraya—watched her review the captured dream, had watched the lust of her river sparkling within her eyes. He had read there the joy of leaving behind this sterile hell of concrete and steel; he had read that she had been only waiting for an excuse.

I can get you there right away, Caine had told her, slowly, as though it hurt him to say the words. We’ll do it freemod, just like your regular shift—no audience, so we don’t need approval from the Scheduling Board. How long will it take?

Four days, she had said. Maybe five. Creating a new life-form is a complicated thing, even for a god; it’ll take at least that long to make sure my cure doesn’t turn out to be worse than the disease. Four or five days on Overworld, and I should have a safe countervirus.

And thus did she pronounce her doom. Three days would be the measure of her life.

He must act now; to wait until she had won his battle would cost him his war. Her power would suffice against HRVP; but the true threat to his people came not from the disease itself, but from the forces gathered behind it. Against those, she had no hope; thinking her war won, she would return to Earth, and be destroyed.

If his people were to be saved, Ma’elKoth must live again.

The men within him clamored for his attention; he opened the gates of his mind to release them. He stood before them as a giant, and he regarded them coldly. First among them, as he had ever been, was the fading palimpsestic remnant of the contemptible weakling he’d once been: Hannto the Scythe.

Hannto of Ptreia—Hannto the Scythe, the bent-backed asthmatic necromancer—had been nearsighted, slight, and nervous, the lonely child of a journeyman scribe. Hannto now begged for caution, cringing against the imagined humiliation of failure. To Hannto, he said: I am more than you were. I am Tan’elKoth. Failure is impossible.

At Hannto’s side stood a more recent tenant of Tan’elKoth’s mind: Lamorak—Karl Shanks—whose life had been etched permanently into Tan’elKoth’s brain by magick nearly seven years ago. Lamorak—who’d been terrorized by his older, tougher brothers, who’d been beaten and nearly raped by Berne in the Imperial Donjon, who’d lain helpless under Master Arkadeil’s knives in the Theater of Truth—haunted the darkest chambers of Tan’elKoth’s mind, whispering surrender.

Lamorak feared and hated Caine. His most potent memory was of that brilliant noon on the arena sand, when Caine had drawn his neck against Kosall’s irresistible edge and tossed his head like a child’s ball into Ma’elKoth’s lap. Lamorak regarded Pallas Ril with mingled lust and fury; his deepest desire was to fuck her to death, yet his spirit was bound with chains of helplessness and despair. Lamorak forever whispered that all is random, mere chance, that life is an accident at the mercy of the universe’s whim: since all is meaningless, it is better to survive in safety, here as he was, than to engage in the pain and risk of futile struggle. To Lamorak, he said, Life is mere chance only when one allows it to be. I am more than you were.

Behind Lamorak crowded ghosts of the many others consumed over his years as Ma’elKoth: faceless, nearly shapeless shades, lives too small to remain distinct even in this mock afterlife. Their voices blended together into an oceanic murmur, begging that he remember them, that he love them, that he care for their children. To the crowd, he said, Fear not, for I am with you.

He marshaled his strength and pushed them all back within the gates, and locked the gates against them. One figure alone remained to face him.

Ma’elKoth.

Towering in his strength, majestic in his armor of polished obsidian, his beard long and bristling, his hair a pelagic cascade past his shoulders, his eyes black diamonds. To Ma’elKoth, he said, I am coming. You shall live again.

And the silent god within his mind lifted an omnipotent hand in benediction.

Tan’elKoth breached once more the surface of his consciousness, to regard the wider world. He typed a code into his deskpad. Each keystroke fell with a measured, echoic cadence: the drumroll of an execution.

The mirror of his screen lit with an animated image of a cheerful stenographic clerk, sitting at a desk, and a pleasant voice told him that he could now record a message for the Adventures Unlimited Board of Governors.

“I am the Emperor-in-exile Tan’elKoth,” he said with slow precision. “Tell your Board of Governors this: in exchange for certain considerations, I shall undertake to solve their Michaelson problem.”

He stroked the disconnect, and sighed.

Soon now, he said to the god within. Soon.

9

HARI STOOD ON the techdeck. On the laser scale, beyond a transparent wall of armorglass, lay the dull grey ceramic lozenge of Shanna’s freemod coffin. He tried not to imagine how happy she must be, lying there right now.

The freemod techdeck was a busy place, these days. Formerly, it had only been used twice a year, to transfer the most recent graduates of the Studio Conservatory to Overworld for their two-year freemod tour; this was the oldest Studio in the system, and was the only Earthside freemod site. On Overworld, there were twenty-five scattered freemod sites—not counting the Railhead in Thorncleft—all in remote locations, all disguised as temples to a particularly forbidding spider god.

The Overworld sites did not require extensive equipment; all they needed was a small transfer pump to drive an Earth-normal field—for data storage and communications—and some exceptionally sophisticated mechanical scales. The freemod process is essentially a swap, an even trade of mass-energy between the universes, and thus requires extreme precision in the weighing of materials to be exchanged. The closer the mass-energy ratio to 1:1, the less energy was required. Even the air inside the coffin was controlled to a nicety.

This was the primary factor that had kept the San Francisco Studio afloat these past few years. Once the studio had formed the Overworld Company and gone into full-scale exploitation of Overworld resources, San Francisco had been the only Studio with freemod technology already in place.

On the far side of the techdeck, beyond another, larger window of armorglass, lay the docks: an immense cavern of a room crowded with sealed crates, each labeled in Westerling with their destinations. Off to another side were titanic slag canisters the size of freight cars; when there were no supplies of equipment to be sent, incoming shipments of ore were balanced by returning to Overworld the waste products left after valuable metals had been refined out. The docks were always loud with the rumble of heavy turbines; an endless stream of freightliners landed and lifted off again outside.

But Hari had no eyes for that now; he could only stare at Shanna’s coffin, and listen to the tech at his side mutter low-voiced corrections to another tech a universe away.

Yeah, better not fuck with Caine, he thought, helplessly bitter. If he gets really pissed, he’ll tell his wife on you.

He shook his head sharply. Fucking cut it out, he snarled at himself. I don’t have to do everything myself. Don’t be such a suckass. Yet—how was he supposed to stand here and watch her go, and not ache with envy?

She’d promised to look in on Kris. Hari knew Hansen was in for a bad time; a word of hope from the goddess should do him wonders. She wouldn’t have any trouble finding him; once joined with Chambaraya, she became aware of every living creature that partook of its waters. She’d said the recording had given her a good enough sense of him that she would know his touch, even among the hundreds of thousands of people in Ankhana, and she should make contact with him, anyway: if he was carrying HRVP, he’d be her most convenient source for a sample of the virus.

He could still taste her lips. Just a little kiss, a little see ya later peck; he couldn’t have taken more.

For a few minutes there, it had been almost like old times—he’d almost felt like he could do things. For the brief span they’d spent walking from the Curioseum, planning together, anticipating a little action, he’d almost felt like they were a team again. Like they’d briefly been, back all those years ago.

Before they were married.

Be careful, he’d told her, trying—really trying—to keep it light. You get in trouble over there this time, I can’t come and bail you out.

It hadn’t raised even the faintest of smiles. Keep your eye on Tan’elKoth, she’d said. Don’t ever let yourself forget who he is.

He’d answered, He better not forget who I am.

It had been a pretty good line, but it was only a line.

Her coffin began to shimmer around the edges as it interposed with the nearly identical one coming through from Overworld. It took on a faint translucency; the other resolved into a more solid existence; within a second or so, Shanna’s coffin was only a ghost shape, and the new one—roughly half-full of water—became solid, fully here. Shanna was gone.

Now, somewhere in another universe, there appeared a goddess named Pallas Ril.

Hari thanked the technician and walked out of the techdeck. Outside, near the elevator that would return him to the public areas of the Studio, Rover waited with electronic patience. Hari scowled at it—but after a moment he sighed, shrugged, and sat down. As he rolled into the elevator, he dug out his palmpad and keyed the code for the Abbey. When Bradlee answered, Hari asked him to put Faith on.

Her smile nearly filled the tiny screen. “Hi, Daddy. Mommy’s with the river now,” she reported.

“Yeah, I know, honey,” Hari told her. “I was just with her. Listen—”

“She’s pretty worried,” she said, her smile fading and her golden brows wrinkling. The familiar glazed, eldritch dissociation gathered in her eyes. When Pallas Ril walked the lands of Overworld, half of Faith walked with her.

Hari nodded. “It’s a pretty serious thing she’s doing over there.”

Faith said solemnly, “She’s worried about you.”

“Listen,” he said, “since you’re off school today anyway, I was thinking I might take the rest of the day off and go down to Fancon. Maybe even a couple of days off. You want to come along?”

“Really? Really for real?”

“Sure, really for real. How about it? Still in your con clothes?”

“Sure. Uh, Mommy’s happy I get to go to the con.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet. Me, too. One other thing, honey: before Mommy left, we were real busy and in a big hurry, and I forgot something I need to tell her, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Just tell her I said I love her.”

“Uh-huh. She loves you, too,” Faith said with simple, serene matter-of-factness. “But I don’t really tell her things. It’s not like that. She just knows.”

“I just wanted to make sure,” Hari said. “I just wanted to make sure she knows.”

THE CROOKED KNIGHT laid himself down to rest. There was no battle left for him to fight. He had fulfilled his mission, succeeded in his quest. His war was won.

But he remained, nonetheless, the crooked knight.

In winning, he had lost.