Thay Hahn leaned forward. "Then why are you sitting?"

"I don't know why, yet. But I trust my sensei. I guess I'm sitting to find out why I'm sitting."

Thay Hahn nodded. "That will do. To start."

"OKAY, Little Friend," said Lieutenant Durant. "The guy with the red shirt coming out of the courthouse. Got him?"

Kimble nodded, though he kept his eyes on the subject. They were standing by the Exodus monument and Kimble half-expected to see his own younger self atop it, challenging all comers.

"When the bell rings four, report to me at Cafe del Mundo and tell me where he went and who he talked to. Remember. Covert. From the Old French by way of Old English. Past participle of covrir, meaning to cover. Not 'overt.' Discreet."

"Discreet. Yes, ma'am," Kimble said, and wandered diagonally across the plaza, pacing the man with the red shirt. He would much rather be watching the lieutenant. He'd had a crush on her from the moment Captain Bentham introduced them.

He glanced back for one more glimpse of her and saw his own tail, a corporal he'd last seen behind a desk in Lieutenant Durant's outer office. The man was now in mufti, a large straw hat shading his face.

Ha! Kimble spent five minutes losing the corporal and then watched both of them, for the corporal was keeping track of the man in the red shirt, probably in hopes of reacquiring Kimble.

"Any difficulty?" Lieutenant Durant asked later when he met her at the Cafe del Mundo.

Kimble shrugged.

Lieutenant Durant frowned. "Did you lose your subject?"

"Ha." Her corporal must've reported in. "No, ma'am." Kimble listed the places the man in red had gone and the people he'd talked to.

The lieutenant looked at a piece of paper as he spoke, ticking through a list. Her eyebrows rose as Kimble went along. When Kimble stopped talking she said, "Anything else to report?"

"Your corporal ate chicken souvlaki at Petra's Greek Food. The bill was eight-fifty with a beer. Was he on duty? Should he be drinking? I always liked their dolmades. Looked like he fell asleep for a few minutes on the bench near the livestock end of the market. That could've been the beer. I really think that's a bad idea, the beer, though I must admit I was having a hard time not falling asleep myself, but that was because I was up at four."

"Stop," she said, laughing. "I'm never going to let him live this down. How'd you do it? Disguise?"

"If I tell you, he'll be harder to lose next time. Buy me a pastry?"

He really loved the way she laughed. "I promise not to tell him, but I have to evaluate your methods. Now, by results, you're doing pretty darn good. How'd you do it?"

"Let's just say your corporal should look up occasionally."

She blinked. "Oh. Rooftops?"

"Yes, though I did stick my head in the back door of the restaurant while he was eating and talked to his waiter."

"Nice." She nodded thoughtfully. "What will you do when you can't use the rooftops?"

"Try me."

She laughed again. "Oh, we will. We will."

CAPTAIN Bentham took him on horseback out to the Territorial Academy. "I've seen you in action in your dojo and that's very impressive, but I'd like to see how you operate against non-aikidoists."

"What, you think it's just forms? That we're cooperating with each other when we practice?"

"Well, to a small extent, you do. Otherwise you'd kill each other, yes?"

Kimble conceded the point with a shrug.

"We've got some practical exams today for our Unarmed Combat and Prisoner Control Tactics class. I'm going to slip you in as a perp on some of the arrest scenarios."

"Aren't you afraid they'll hurt me?"

"Not worried about you. Just don't kick anybody in the head, okay?"

Nine out of the ten arresting cadets ended up facedown on the mat. The tenth, more aggressive than the others, sprained his shoulder when Kimble used the energy of the man's initial rush to project him along his way. They would have to fix the plaster on a wall, too.

On the ride back, Bentham kept chuckling.

"Not really fair, was it?" Kimble said. "I mean, slipping in a ringer."

"Maybe not. But it taught them a valuable lesson about appearances, didn't it?"

SITTING was getting easier. The first days had been struggles against sleep alternating with the cries of joints, random itches, and stiffness. Now Kimble struggled with vivid images and thoughts and occassional hallucinations.

The worst was Pritts standing beside Thayet's cushion, looking down and licking his lips. He'd yelled and fallen out of half-lotus.

Thay Hahn said, "Of course it is impossible to empty your mind. Things drift across your consciousness inevitably. What's important is that you don't attach to any of these thoughts. Let them go their way."

Kimble tried. It was hard to avoid thinking about Parsons and the deputies, or Johnny Hennessey, or even Sandy Williams. But mostly he thought about sex.

He tried not to, but he was nearly fourteen and the images and thoughts that went through his head were like forces of nature. He thought about Lieutenant Durant and that idiot girl Luanne, whose breasts he'd glimpsed the day he kicked Johnny in the head, but mostly he thought about Athena and the afternoon swimming naked in the beaver pond.

Without details, he confessed these thoughts to Thay Hahn while Thayet was out in the garden. The priest had nodded seriously. "Yes, of course you do."

"I try not to."

"You can't 'try' something without attaching to it. Don't try anything. Let them come and let them go. Just sit." He looked out the window at his daughter. "When I was your age there was the daughter of a fruit seller in Nha Trang who fired my loins. I sat and I sat, 'trying' to get her out of my mind, and while I could dismiss certain things-her clothing mostly-she stayed. Usually, when I think back on those sessions, I deeply regret the waste."

He winked at Kimble. "And sometimes I rejoice."

AN out-of-uniform Lieutenant Durant took her "Little Friend" for a walk into the northeast part of town. Behind the temple of the Church of Latter-day Saints she indicated, with a shift of her eyes, a two-story house across the lane. "Know it?"

Kimble, taking his cue from her averted gaze, didn't even nod. "Madame Rosario's. When I left, it was the best in town-or at least the most expensive." It was easy for him not to look toward the bordello. The lieutenant was wearing a formfitting sundress and light sweater. And I thought she looked good in uniform.

Still walking ahead, casually, she said, "Hearsay? Or experience?"

"Of course hearsay. I was only eleven, after all. But young men brag. They pay for someone in an alley and they don't say much, but they scrape together enough for Madame Rosario's and they strut around like kings."

"Well, it's still the top house. You've got to have the money or, in the case of our local marshal or our public health director, you need to be in a position to shut them down. No window shopping for them."

"Are they your targets?"

"No. Despite their patronage, or perhaps even because of it, Rosario's has got a much better record on the STD front. No underage sex workers, either."

Kimble froze, mid-step, and she said, "Relax! Keep walking. You're breaking character!"

He dropped his shoulders and stuck his hands in his pockets, and concentrated on his breathing.

Lieutenant Durant pointed at some of the stonework on the temple. "What was that about?" she said quietly.

"I did some work for the captain, in Parsons. There was a rape. A fifteen-year-old girl-I found her." He bent down and took off one of his sandals, pretending to dislodge a pebble.

Even the lieutenant had trouble appearing casual after he said that. "That meth ring. Heard about it." She took a deep breath. "As I said, underage sex workers are not the problem here, though I certainly couldn't vouch for all the houses in town."

They resumed their walk, swinging west on Avenida del Flores.

"Why the concern? Isn't this the marshal's jurisdiction?"

"Corruption in territorial government is our lookout." At his glance, she said, "Not the marshal, not the public health director. One of the governor's junior aides was seen here, a Mr. Franks. He's not a wealthy man. Happily married. Three kids. He wants to cat about town, that's his business, but where's he getting the money? Either he's peddling influence, which doesn't fit what we know about him, or someone else is paying for his time in the saddle."

"If he won't take money directly to influence the governor, it doesn't seem likely that he'd do it for the nookie."

"Hard to say. Everybody's different. But I'm more worried about what Mr. Franks would do to keep his wife from finding out. There could be photographs."

Digital and metal-cased cameras were impractical in the territory, attracting bugs as they did, but there were territory-safe cameras with plastic cases and light-sensitive emulsions.

"Ah. I see. So I'm following him?"

"Yeah. At least tonight. I've got a man in his office. Mr. Franks sent a message home saying he had a late meeting tonight. But there's nothing on his office calendar."

"So this is real. Not another of your tests?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die." She did not suit her actions to the words. "Let's go give you a look at Mr. Franks."

MR. FRANkS, a lanky redhead in a tropical-weight suit, left the Territorial Complex on the plaza side about a half hour after the rest of his staff. He ate tacos alone at one of the market stalls before taking the Avenida del Sol toward Northgate.

Kimble found himself falling into a meditative state, standing, sitting, and even walking, aware of Franks but not attaching.

Even from half a block away, Kimble could tell that Mr. Franks was nervous. He paused a lot. Once he ducked into a store when he spotted two women coming up the street and didn't come out again until they were well past. Yet his glance skipped right past Kimble.

He's avoiding people he knows.

At least twice, Franks paused on street corners and gazed westward. Lieutenant Durant had told Kimble, "He has a cottage near Westgate right across from his kids' school."

Kimble staggered suddenly. The street was shaking and the sound of a bell was swelling, blocking out all noise, yet people were strolling calmly by, as if nothing had happened. Kimble steadied himself against a garden wall.

Franks is conflicted. It had come out of the Zen state, unasked for, unlooked for, but it had pushed up out of his unconscious with volcanic force.

When Franks took the right that led toward Madame Rosario's, Kimble took the closest turn, sprinting down the middle of the street and then through an alley. He was catching his breath at the alley mouth when Franks came up the walk. The man was slowing with every step and glancing back to the west and Kimble knew his analysis was correct.

"Mr. Franks," Kimble said, "please come with me."

Franks took a step back, startled. "What? Did Sam send you? Who are you?"

Kimble said, "I'm a friend."

"I don't know you!"

"No, you don't know me. Life is full of friends we've never met." He gesture at the city in general. "I really do have your best interests at heart. For instance, I'd like to see you keep your job and not go to jail."

Franks' eyes widened. His voice raised in pitch, strident. "I don't know what you're talking about!"

Kimble wanted to slap him. "Fine. It's your marriage. Do you really want to go back to Madame Rosario's?"

He'd said it quietly but Franks' hand went out, toward Kimble's mouth, as if to cover it, to silence him, even though he was two yards away. Franks hissed, "How do you know about that?"

"That's not the question you should be asking. What I'd worry about is 'who else knows' and 'what are they going to ask you to do to keep them from talking to your wife?'"

PER orders, Kimble reported to Lieutenant Durant back at Cafe del Mundo. She was wearing reading glasses and had a thick volume open before her.

"Cervantes?" said Kimble. "In Spanish?"

"Yeah, the original seventeenth-century Spanish. It's more like modern Spanish than Elizabethan English is like modern English. What are you doing here?"

"Reporting."

"You found the contact? Already?"

"Samuel Peralta. He's an attorney who works for Richardson and Sons, Importers. They're seeking a change in the governor's import regulations, specifically the interdiction against some of the nastier insecticides."

Durant made a face. "We know Richardson and Sons."

"The first and only time Franks ended up at Rosario's, he was drinking with Peralta, who got him in there after four quick whiskeys. Franks thought they were going to another bar but he was up to his armpits in tits and ass before he knew it."

Durant said, "Now how the hell did you learn that?" The book shut with a thump. "You talked to him, didn't you?"

"Well, yeah. The question is, why didn't you guys?"

Durant glared at him. "You were told to follow him. Not blow your cover."