Satisfied at having discharged its duties, the 'bot returned to its patient, and said cheerfully, "Where to, mademoiselle?"

Prior to the building's takeover by the Rebs, the ninth floor had belonged to a major accountancy firm whose expert systems had specialized in duels with the Tax Boards. Since the rebellion, obviously, n.o.body in San Diego had been uploading returns to the Tax Boards; and Callia hoped that the offices were empty. Only about half the floors in the building were in use.

She found herself in luck. The medbot pushed her out of the utility corridor, and into one of the long hallways that crisscrossed the building; quiet, n.o.body in sight. "Left again, 'bot." The medbot pushed her down the length of the corridor, to the building's southeast corner. The door to the corner office was locked; she had the 'bot pull her back, and then set the maser for its tightest aperture, and started slicing through the door. She got a quarter of the way through when the door's memory plastic went crazy; the door curled open fast, with a sound like a rifle shot-rolled slowly shut, snapped open, rolled shut-Callia timed it, waited until the door was fully open, and then shot it one last time.

The door froze open, and the 'bot wheeled her through. She did not even consider using the system, though it was still installed; any calls coming from this floor would be an instant notification to Ring that something was not correct. Instead she had the medbot push her up close to the south window. From here she could see much of the plaza below; it looked quiet. Then the east window; from here she could see the bulk of the Temple itself, four blocks inland.

The charge on the maser showed 42 percent; she'd wasted a lot of it cooking the j.a.panese cyborg.

d.a.m.n he'd moved fast. Callia had trained against holos of real Elite in action, against robots designed to move at Elite speeds; if the j.a.panese cyborg had been slower, he had not been slower by much.

It was still a half hour until sunset; but the east side of the building was in shadow. They might see her maser.

She sliced a small circle in the window, hoped that the falling piece of gla.s.site would not alert anybody in the plaza below; tuned the maser to medium dispersion, stuck the barrel through and aimed for the Temple of Eris.

In speedtalk she started flashing:Callia. Alive.

Callia. Alive.

Callia. Alive.

Joe Tagomi's image appeared in front of Sedon without warning. An emergency, then. "Yes, Joe?"

The cyborg spoke rapidly. "Mister Obodi, we have reports that semiballistics are boosting out of Los Angeles by the hundreds, possibly thousands."

Sedon nodded, rose calmly. "How long?"

"From L.A.? We're going to have PKF dropping on us in twenty-four minutesflat."

Sedon spoke without haste. "How long before the entire invasion force arrives?"

"If they launch as they did from Unification s.p.a.ceport for the L.A. invasion, they'll go up in waves, one every two minutes; it might be an hour or an hour and ten minutes from now before the entire complement has arrived."

"Very good. Meet me in Operations. Have the semiballistics loaded with the warheads; leave one behind, timed for detonation in exactly one hour and fifteen minutes. Put another aboard a semiballistic bound for L.A., to detonate upon arrival. We will boost for j.a.pan in twenty minutes."

"I'll give the orders."

"Have Operations ready for me. I'll be there promptly.Command, access David." The boy was sleeping, a distant, dreamy smile touching his features. "David!"

The sharp rap of Sedon's voice penetrated the haze of electric ecstasy; David stirred, opened his eyes.

"Yes?"

"Join me in Operations. PKF are approaching; do itnow."

The boy nodded. "Yes, Mister Obodi."

"Good. I will see you there."

Sedon needed to take nothing with him, other than his own quite irreplaceable self. He swept out the door, gestured to his bodyguards, and headed for the lifts.

David Castanaveras took sixty seconds, counting-one one thousand, two one thousand-with the wire at its highest setting. At sixty he disconnected the wire, stood stock still until the wave of shudders that wracked his body had pa.s.sed. He tucked the wire into his coat pocket, checked himself in the mirror. Shaved, clean clothes, not a hair out of place. Shoes polished, crease in the pants. No tie or shoulder silks, but he'd heard they didn't wear them much out here on the West Coast anyway.

Time to go.

He opened the door to his room, waited for the waldo to stir itself from where it waited, like a faithful dog, beside his door. Out in the lobby, two of the polite young j.a.panese cyborgs waited, holding a lift door open; waiting for him, clearly. That was convenient. To the one nearest him, he said,Destroy the waldo behind me.

The cyborg went past David so fast that David felt the wind of his pa.s.sage. The sound of the cyborg's impact with the waldo echoed through the lobby. David did not turn around to see what happened; he stepped into the lift, said to the other cyborg,You come with me.

"Command," he said aloud, "the roof." The lift moved upward. To the cyborg, David said,If anyone is on the roof, you kill him.

The lift opened into a small hallway; stairs at the end of the hallway led up to the roof proper. David remembered descending those stairs, an eternity ago, to meet with Obodi. David stayed inside the hallway while the cyborg went out onto the roof, and waited for the cyborg to return. He heard a single gunshot, then nothing. The cyborg returned, his shirt torn where the bullet had struck him, but otherwise apparently unharmed.

David went up to the roof. No bodies; his cyborg must have tossed it, or them, over the edge. Three cars. He glanced at his cyborg. "Do you know which of these vehicles is the fastest?"

The cyborg said, "The Chandler 1790. The blue car. It has a top speed of two hundred seventy kph."

"Carcomp?"

"Yes."

David nodded. "Keyed how?"

"Pa.s.sword.Liberty '76."

"Good. Do you have any family?"

"My mother, a brother, a son."

"I see."They are all dead, David told the cyborg.Mister Obodi raped your mother and sodomized your brother and f.u.c.ked your child in the mouth. Then he killed them all by -David paused, abruptly totally bereft of ideas-in the most unpleasant way you can think of,he finished.

The young man's face twisted abruptly into a mask of pain and fury. "He killed myson."

"He's down in Operations," David told the cyborg. "Fourth floor. Thank you for your help." He turned away and went to the car. "Car,Liberty '76. Command, open the canopy." The canopy cracked, and David sank into the soft black pseudo-leather seats.

He sat motionless for a moment. It was very near sunset, and the night sky to the west was stunning, scarlet near the bulk of the sun, fading to pink toward the edges of the horizon, deep blue shading toward black in the sky above and behind him. It occurred to David that he had never seen a sunset over the ocean before. "Carcomp, take us south, as low as you can get to the ground. Keep close enough to the sh.o.r.e that I can watch the sunset. Then head inland. Clear?"

"Yes, monsieur." The car's fans came up, and then it lifted, moved forward, picked up speed, and moved free of the building, dropping slightly to pick up speed.

David did not look back even once. He watched the sunset, trying not to think about what he left behind. Obodi scared him as no one had scared him in his life; if the PKF had not been coming, to distract Obodi from dealing with him, David did not think he would have taken this chance. He did not need to imagine the sorts of things that would happen to him if he fell into Obodi's hands again; he had been forced to keep the entire building full of people between himself and Dvan just to avoid feeling the man's broadcast pain.

Obodi would not make the mistake of thinking his Speakings had worked a second time.

Not that Speaking was not a good trick. Obodi approached, with no tool better than words, the sorts of things that David could do with the Gift. David thought that the Speakings probablywould have worked on anyone except a Castanaveras who had spent seven years fighting the pull of the wire.

That his sister was imprisoned behind him he had already forgotten. The thought of letting her see what he had become hurt him at such a deep level that he did not like, to think of it.

So he did not.

The sunset was a wonderful experience.

In the last half hour before sunset they walked across the plaza, two squads of Erisian Claw. They moved without hurry, past two checkpoints that waved them through upon recognizing Lan; then, at the entrance to the Latham Building, a Reb Lan did not know stopped them. Half a dozen Rebs stood inside the lobby, in front of the double row of lifts.

The Reb eyed them with distinct suspicion. "What's this about?"

Lan sighed his annoyance. "They didn't tell you?"

The Reb said bluntly, "No."

"We're supposed to escort some prisoners," Lan said. "They're being moved?"

The man's hostility was plain. "I don't know anything about that."

Lan stared at the man. "Then why don't you f.u.c.king wellcheck?"

The Reb nodded slowly. "All right. Stay right here." He took a step backward, not turning around, not taking his eyes from Lan and the forty Claw standing behind him.

A body fell out of the sky.

The impact of the body against the pavement, twenty meters off to Lan's left, froze everyone throughout the plaza. The Reb officer turned slightly to his right, to look at what had happened.

Lan palmed his knife and put it in the man's neck, took a step forward and held him up as though they were talking with one another, hissed to the Claw closest to him, "Comeget him."Callia? flashed through his thoughts, but if so, after that fall there was nothing he could do for her now, and he had made her a promise. He released the Reb into the arms of a comrade, stepped through into the lobby of the Latham Building, knew the Rebs by the lifts would have noticed the confusion, and told them the truth because it was the simplest thing he could think of: "Hey! We just had a body fall off the roof! What's happening?"

One of the Rebs stepped forward, toward Lan, and Lan walked toward him without hurry. When he was ten meters away he unslung in one smooth motion; the autoshot was already set to full auto, safety off. He fired while bringing the weapon around, as soon as he had his finger on the trigger. A trick he'd been taught; the noise was so awesome in an enclosed s.p.a.ce that it rattled the target, and the autoshot cycled so fast that it did not significantly delay the next shot. Lan stood braced and watched the officer approaching him dissolve in a shower of flesh and blood. The five who had waited back at the lifts died almost as quickly, and only a little less messily; none of them even got a shot off.

Behind him, his Claw did as they'd been instructed, poured through after him. First Squad spread out and took up positions throughout the lobby, twenty of the faithful prepared to die guarding the entrance to the building. On his way to the stairs Lan called out,"Remember! They can come at you through main doors, side doors, lifts, stairwell, and finally with an X-laser they can cut through from the roof above you or the floor below."

He had told them before, spent most of the last hour drilling them, but they were amateurs and he did not expect them to remember.

With twenty Claw at his back he blew the stairway door out of its track and trotted down the stairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

In the midst of a rebellion, it was still possible to get a cab, at least if you lied to the dispatching computer. Ralf the Wise and Powerful did, and with his hijacked cab made half circles of the Latham Building at a safe distance. He could not make entire circuits; it would have taken the cab out over the ocean, where the rebels would likely have shot it down.

The cab's optics were poor, but no matter; Ralf had access to video from several other sources, mostly pay phones-which had equally poor optics, but interpolating from multiple sources let him build up a good idea of what was happening.

None of the pay phones were oriented to pick up the red light blinking on the ninth floor of the building.

Ralf had been flying back and forth for twenty minutes before he realized it was there. He swept quickly through all the optical sources available to him; nothing but the cab would serve to give him a good look at the blinking light. He debated briefly, then took the cab straight up, facing the Latham Building, and hovered forty meters up for most of half a minute.

On-off signals. A binary code with a modulation time of asecond? If he had been a human Ralf the Wise and Powerful would simply not have believed what he saw. But AIs are pragmatic; what exists, is. In instants Ralf swept through every binary code he knew from the dawn of computing forward, four-bit, eight-bit, sixteen-bit, thirty-two-bit, sixty-four-bit, multiprocessor, transputer, parallel processor, nothing that fit.

The duration; obviously a human source, nothing electronic moved with such astonishing slowness. A binary code being employed by ahuman.

What a remarkable thing the world was.

Ralf went back to the San Diego Public Library. He scanned through the Library of Congress; codes, Morse; descendants of- Speedtalk. Employed by Speedfreaks, flashing headlights or running lights at one another to avoid being overheard on radio by the PKFCallia, alive. Callia, alive.

Alive,probably. Likely she didn't quite remember the code; Callia's mother had been a Speedfreak, but it was doubtful Callia had had opportunity to use speedtalk since her mother's death in 2063.

Intelligence from Los Angeles suggested that PKF would be in San Diego within mere minutes.

Ralf made his decision almost instantly; he had no obligation to the woman, but it was possible that helping her would help Denice. He kept the vehicle steady, flashed back with the headlamps,Rescue coming.

The cab shot forward at full throttle.

Gunfire for just a moment. Then Lan's voice at the door to Denice's cell: "Stand back!"

Denice crouched in the corner of her cell, mattress from her bed pulled over to cover her.

The memory-plastic door, under the impact of the autoshot,shattered. Denice felt scattershot and slivers of door pepper the mattress; the instant the ricochets had stopped she was up and moving. Lan handed her a Series IV Excalibur laser rifle, said, "Good to see you again, we'vegot to do lunch sometime."

In the corridor outside five dead rebels lay sprawled across the floor, four in uniform, one not; the one in civilian clothes was one of Lan's squad, Denice guessed. The rest of his people were cl.u.s.tered in the far end of the hallway, wearing armbands; one person with an autoshot would decimate them cl.u.s.tered together that way. They were amateurs and Denice ignored them.

Blood had sprayed up to cover the walls from floor to ceiling. Lan shouted back over his shoulder, moving down the row of cells, "Have you seen Callia?"

"No."

"Stand back!" Lan brought the autoshot around- "Lan!"

He hesitated. "What?"

"These aren't real prison cells. This was commercial s.p.a.ce." Lan shook his head blankly, and Denice said, "Try the doorpad."

He stared at her for just an instant. "Oh. Sure."

The door curled open at his touch. Empty. He moved down the row, door to door; Robert was in the third cell, Dvan in the fourth, n.o.body in the fifth. Lan stood in front of the empty fifth cell, staring blankly for a second, then nodded, turned and headed back the way he'd come. As he pa.s.sed by Denice he stopped, said quietly, "We heard before we headed over that PKF is on the way in. They'll be dropping on San Diego in maybe ten or twelve minutes. Good luck." He started to say something else; then Lan simply shook his head and said, " 'Bye."

He left at a dead run, long brown hair trailing behind him, the other Claw following him as quickly and capably as they were able.

Robert stood motionlessly in the hallway, watching Denice.

Denice looked at him.

"This,"said Robert Dazai Yo, "is what happens during wars." He waved his hand at the blood-soaked walls with clear distaste."Bad killing."

There was n.o.body in the cab.

Callia stared at the empty cab, floating outside the ninth-story window, its canopy popped completely off.

Her legs were numb and her left shoulder was on fire. Under normal circ.u.mstances she would have made it without too much difficulty, from the window to the cab, but now- The maser showed 6 percent. She set the beam to its tightest setting and sliced the window in an X; when she was done the maser still read 2 percent, but touching the trigger did nothing. " 'Bot!"

The medbot, watching with a total lack of comprehension, finally found something it understood: its patient wanted help. "Yes, mademoiselle?"

"Push me up to the window."

Alarm coursed through the medbot. "Icannot do that, mademoiselle."

The patient stared at it. "Why not?"