Sensible; in his current state Sedon knew himself to be no. match for the blurred speed the machined men had exhibited. "You were not," Commissionaire Vance said, "treated quickly."

"How long was I inside?"

"You know a year is one turn of this planet around the sun?"

"One pa.s.sage of seasons?"

"Yes."

"I knowyear ."

The Vance-thing nodded. "Your slowtime sphere ran at about a six-and-a-half-billion-to-one compression ratio. How long did you intend to stay in the sphere?"

"Perhaps a second, internal time. A little over two hundred years." Sedon shrugged. "My pursuer would have grown restless, and left. Perhaps I would have needed to wait another second, or three. There was time." Sedon paused, used the tool of his voice carefully indeed; he spoke quietly, smoothly, without any emotion these barbarians would recognize. "How long was I inside?"

The Commissionaire Vance-thing looked straight at Gi'Suei-'Obodi'Sedon and said, "You were in the sphere for thirty-seven thousand years."

Sedon thought he had been braced for it since seeing the picture of the s.p.a.cecraft. Three thousand years, four, five-it would not have been enough. Not to grow a civilization like this, out of the brutal nomads these people had been when he entered the sphere.

Thirty-seven thousand years.

When the moment came he found that he wasnot braced for it.

The roaring black darkness swarmed up around him, dragged him down into emptiness.

He did not know, how long he was unconscious.

He came to again with a sharp, caustic smell in his nostrils. Perhaps only a few minutes had pa.s.sed.

Perhaps it had been hours; his sense of time was still damaged. He was in the same place, the darkened room with the three machined men. A drink of some liquid was offered him, and he took it without asking what it contained; if they wished to drug him, they would.

"M. Sedon, are you well enough to continue?" The faint undertone of urgency in the question gave Sedon a moment of pause. He drank the cool, tart liquid in numbed silence, not thinking, not feeling. His muscles trembled slightly. Finally he looked up and answered the creature's question. "Yes. I am. What are you?" he asked abruptly. "Your skin, the speed with which you move, your eyes. They are not normal for your people."

The shadowed black eyes studied him. "Fair enough. I am a PKF Elite. PKF stands for Peace Keeping Force. The PKF guards Earth-this world-against people who wish to return us to the days when there were many governments on Earth rather than one. There are millions of PKF across the world. The Elite are the best of their number. We have been improved both by machines and by genetic engineering-what are called transform viruses-to enhance our speed, our eyesight, our hearing. We are stronger than normal humans and difficult to damage." He paused, waiting.

Sedon knew the word he wished to use. "I am a Dancer," he said firmly. "I was exiled to this planet"-he calculated quickly-"approximately fifty thousand years ago. With other Dancers and many persons of questionable sanity, stability, and genetic quality. I would guess you are our descendants.

How long have you had writing?"

In the dimness on the other side of the room the Commissionaire Vance-thing turned away for a moment. When it turned back it said, "Since 3100 b.c, I'm told. A little over five thousand years. What do you mean by dancer? You are an entertainer?"

"Not that. I do not know the words."

"Try."

"A Dancer is-priest. Judge. Keeper. Owner. President. General Secretary. Of a superior cla.s.s. We are a better people than you. More-disciplined. Of greater range. You have only recently been governed, all together, by the same body?"

"Yes. A little over fifty years. Before that there were many nations. Today there is only one Earth.

Elsewhere in the System there are still independent-governments is not a good word, but I find, like you, I do not know what to call them. They are called the s.p.a.ceFarers' Collective and the Belt CityStates and several other names, and they each govern themselves in somewhat different fashion."

Vance paused. "You claim to have been exiled to Earth fifty thousand years ago, and to have entered the slowtime bubble thirty-seven thousand years ago. Am I to understand that youlived through the thirteen thousand years separating those events?"

"I do not understand the question."

"You did not grow old. You did not age."

"No. Aging is a disease. A curable one, which I think your people are beginning to learn. When our children began dying of it, after our exile to this world-" Sedon's features became totally empty. "We were distraught. Not since the Zaradin deserted us had we allowed ourselves to die in such fashion; that we could not aid them pained us."

"You lived for thirteen thousand years. On the surface of Earth."

Sedon met its disbelieving black eyes. "I do not know exactly how long it was. There were no clocks, and my counting of the pa.s.sage of seasons is not to be trusted. My memory is excellent, not perfect. But it was, at least, a time more than twice as long as your people have possessed writing."

A long silence followed.Something is wrong, Sedon thought.Something I have said has offended it.

"You do not believe me when I tell you my age."

It smiled at Sedon again. "I find it difficult to envision a human as old as you claim to be."

He had heard enough from Commissionaire Vance, had watched it closely enough to try. Sedon leaned forward and changed his voice, brought its pitch lower, and Spoke. "But am I old, Commissionaire Vance? Oh, for a rabbit, yes. For a tree, yes, for a tree I am aged. But for a mountain I am young, and for a man I am merely of the correct age. Why should I lie to you? How does it benefit me?"

On the other side of the barrier the creature had grown still, drinking in the sound of Sedon's Speaking.

The effect was not what it would have been in shiata, but this French was a broad language, rich in words, and it made a tool with which Sedon was now certain he could work.

"You-" Its voice trailed off, and then the huge form rose abruptly, turned and left without a backward glance. Light spilled through an opening door, and then it was gone.

One of the creatures behind Sedon said quietly, "Please follow us. We will return you to your hospital room now."

Sedon sat in shock, eyes fixed on the spot where Commissionaire Vance had been.It knew what I was trying to do. It did not know how I was doing it but it knew I was attempting it nonetheless.

"Please follow usnow."

Sedon went without argument, without delay.

At the downlot Vance snapped, "Give him a night's rest. Tomorrow morning, the language program interrogates him until he stops answering questions. He is not to speak to any of our officers, including you. If he speaks to you, you are not to answer."

The semiballistic came down out of the dark night sky, running lights doused, and dropped to a gentle landing at the center of the downlot, so close that the heat of its exhaust warmed the surface of Mohammed Vance's immobile face. Vance started across the downlot to where the SB awaited them, Peaceforcer Elite Samuel De Nostri a step behind him. De Nostri said only, "Yes, Commissionaire. It will be as you say."

Vance did not glance back at De Nostri. "Feed him when he requests food. Let him sleep the hours he's been sleeping. When he refuses to answer questions, kill him." Vance mounted the steps into the SB and then turned suddenly at the top of the ramp and looked down at De Nostri. "Kill him by midnight Sunday no matter what he does. Poison in his food."

"Yes, Commissionaire."

"I'll be in Capitol City. You may call me if anything arises."

"Yes, Commissionaire." De Nostri stood rigidly at attention, staring up at Vance's stiff features.

It was as though Vance had audited his thoughts. "Only a fool is never afraid, boy." Vance turned and vanished into the interior of the SB.

De Nostri saluted quickly and trotted back to the edge of the downlot. It was well he moved quickly; the SB lifted again before he was out of range, and the wind of its pa.s.sage would have knocked down any human less heavy than a Peaceforcer Elite.

De Nostri stood in the storm of heated air and watched the SB depart, stood motionless while the cold night air crept in around him. He mulled over Vance's parting comment. In the days following, it never even occurred to him to attempt to repeat it to one of his fellow officers, not even his close friend Harold Pailletin.

Vance was, bar none, the most respected, most admired Commissionaire in the Elite. Even his failure to catch Trent the Uncatchable had not damaged Vance's reputation; unlike any other Peaceforcer in the System, he had at least come close.

De Nostri knew that, were he to repeat the comment, he simply would not be believed.

Breathe.

It was the first thing a Dancer was taught, the first step on the long road to awareness of self.

They left him alone at night, apparently in the belief that he slept then.

The phrase leapt out at him, a fragment of shia, of the discipline that he had, before his hundredth birthday, rejected: You are born broken; life is healing.

Breathe deep. With oxygen, burn the poisons from the system.

Heal yourself.

Lie atop the cool, crisp cloths that cover the bed. Eyes closed, floating in darkness.

Flex the muscle on the outside of the left big toe. Move over, to the inside muscle. One by one, tense and release every muscle of every toe.

Work upward. The ball of the foot, and now the sole, and now the muscles that support the ankle.

Whisper the commands, never by nerve through the long spreading tree of gray fibers. Encourage the flow of the blood, of the scavenger cells that remove dead matter and kill invaders.

The muscles in Sedons calves began to quiver as though he had just finished a marathon, twitching and relaxing until the skin that covered the muscles literally vibrated from the effort.

Breathe.

And work upward.

They gave him all night, three nights in a row.

- 6 -.

Morning came on the fifteenth day of Sedon's imprisonment, and the nonliving voice came with it.

Without a window in his underground room Sedon knew that it was daytime only because the rooms lights had brightened.

Sedon sat upright with his pillow stuffed behind the small of his back. He relaxed, fingers clasped loosely over his stomach. He let entire sections of his body sleep and recover while he and the-"computer,"

perhaps, or "program," these were two of the words he had learned for the thing he spoke to-while he and the program learned about one another.

The things the program was allowed to tell Sedon would have frightened him had he allowed it. Intimate details regarding the rulers of this strange world, of the power structure of the government. Given that he was surely in the grasp of those rulers-the PKF certainly, and perhaps the Secretary General and Ministry of Population Control as well-Sedon was led to one inescapable conclusion: they did not intend for him to live.

He had frightened the Commissionaire Vance creature with his blundering, poorly timed attempt at a Speaking. Speaking was no more than a technology of language; the use of words, in the proper timbre, inflection, volume, sequence, and content, as a persuasive tool; words crafted, as the Dancers of Sedon's childhood had taught him, to touch the soul. But Sedon had not known the Commissionaire Vance creature well enough, and had not sufficiently mastered the tool of French.

And, to be sure, Commissionaire Vance was not a human as Sedon had ever known humans. More than a barbarian, less than one of the Flame People.Different.

He had been freed from the stasis bubble at a pivotal moment in their history. Even without the Zaradin teachings to guide them, Sedon suspected that these ex-barbarians were on the verge of discovering-of rediscovering-the Dance. There were dozens of facts that led him to this belief, and only a few that allowed him to think that the discovery might be somewhat delayed.

Two of the things which led him to believe that they might soon discover the Dance came from the language called English, from the proto-Splinter society of the webdancers. That they called themselves after dancers did not surprise him; dance was a metaphor for the method by which webdancers linked themselves to the artificial intelligences they had built.

So he thought himself prepared; the signs were there.

And then, early on the fifteenth day of his imprisonment, the computer with which he spoke used the wordPlayer.

It struck him like an actual blow. He compared the root English word, "play," with the synonyms and connotations with which the word "player" was a.s.sociated. Performer, partic.i.p.ant, athlete-compet.i.tor.

One definition in particular leapt out at him:one who acts upon a stage.

A Player, as the word was commonly used in this Culture, was a computer user, a webdancer of transcendent skill.

Only men fight, and only men dance;it was a truism among the Flame People, a saying Sedon had heard the first time while still a child in body.

In many of the cultures of this time, Sedon was deeply disturbed to learn, women did both.

Not for his very life could Sedon envision a woman dancing, not even a dance for amus.e.m.e.nt. When the computer attempted to show him images of women engaged in what it called "dance," Sedon was forced to look away.

They had only recently, within the last eighty years, mastered their own genetic map. The results were predictable; their genegineers were changing them in ways they had never antic.i.p.ated, and which many of them did not like. Sedon's own people had suffered it, briefly: the Splintering which followed the Zaradin Desertion. These PKF Elite were not, Sedon thought, a true Splinter race; he did not think that they bred true.

The program verified it. "PKF Elite are not, by definition, genies. A genie is a person who was designed, gene by gene, to some specific blueprint. The commonest genetic modifications are those to remove blatant flaws in the human genotype, such as the inherited tendencies toward cancer, obesity, degenerative eyesight, and so forth. Even that is, under Unification law, illegal, but it is rarely prosecuted even when uncovered. More extreme examples of genegineering are also illegal, and have usually been prosecuted since the onset of the Troubles."

The density of the information caused Sedon difficulties; every sentence implied a vast background of history with which Sedon was not acquainted-what, for example, were the Troubles? He pa.s.sed over it for now, and directed the program's attention back to the subject of the Elite. "If an Elite is not a genie, what then is it?"

"My turn," said the program. "What was the nature of the crime for which you were exiled to Earth?"

"I cannot tell you, program."

"Cannot, or will not?"

"Rather than serve, I made a servant of the Flame that lived within me, program, the Flame that gave me my life, that taught me to Move. Does this enlighten you?"

"No. What is the flame?"

Sedon took a long,breath, considering. A distant surprise touched him when he realized that even now, in this far distant, alien world, he found himself reluctant to breach the vows of silence he had taken as a young Dancer, uncountable eons past. When fifteen seconds had pa.s.sed without reply from him-Sedon was used to it by now-the program repeated, "What is the flame?"

"In the beginning was the Flame, and the Flame was life. We who came after saw the Flame, and rejoiced, and Danced in its beauty." He said the words in shiata, adding in French, "It was called the Dance of the Flame." The program was, apparently, willing to accept that as an answer, for it returned to his question regarding the Elite: "A PKF Elite is a cyborg; a normal human, modified with machinery and transform viruses. They are created at Peace Keeping Force s.p.a.cebase One at L-5, in free fall. Surgeons implant new eyes, remove the skin, and implant a pair of small lasers within the index fingers. After the skin has been removed, the last surgical operation places a fine web of superconductors immediately beneath the skin, to distribute heat evenly across the Elite's surface in the event the Elite is fired upon with an energy weapon; the skin is then regrown, though the regrown skin is far stronger than the original envelope. Transform viruses-diseases designed to cause benign changes within the body-speed the Elite's neural reactions by sixty to seventy percent. An enhanced-strength transform virus makes the muscles in an Elite's body four to five times more efficient-makes the Elite four to five times stronger. A second nerve network grows around the network the Elite is born with, and is connected to a battle computer implanted at the base of the Elite's skull. Carbon-ceramic filaments reinforce all points where muscle, ligament or cartilage attaches itself to a bone. The bones themselves are regrown with a new carbon-ceramic base. Early Elite," the program said, "were quite heavy. Recent advances in design and implementation of the Elite upgrade have reduced the weight penalty significantly, so that an Elite is generally only thirty to forty percent heavier after the upgrade than before. My turn. You worshiped the flame?"

"Program, I do not think I can tell you. The Flame is a thing of living creatures, and though I speak to you of it in words, you will know nothing of what I mean."

"You do not wish to answer the question?"