T'ai Cho smiled. "You deserve the best, Kim. I hope it all goes well tonight."

Kim sighed. "It scares me, T'ai Cho. Seeing her again ... I ... I don't know what I'll say."

"Say what comes to mind. 'Thank you' might be a good start, for the tapes she sent you."

"Yes." Kim laughed. "Yes, you're right." He stared at his old friend a moment, then stepped forward and embraced him. "I'm glad you came, T'ai Cho."

"I'm glad you asked me," T'ai Cho said, hugging him tightly, moved by the gesture of affection. "I missed you."

Years ago, when Kim had first come up from the Clay, it had been T'ai Cho who had found him, trained him, fought for him when things went wrong and Andersen-the Director of the Recruitment Project- had wanted to have him terminated. T'ai Cho had been his tutor, his protector, the closest he had known to a father, his own having been killed-executed by the T'ang, unknown to him. Yet, for the last seven years, T'ai Cho had been almost a stranger to him. He had kept in touch, yet his work as a commodity slave for SimFic had filled his time. That, and the waiting . . .

Kim put a hand to the pulsing band about his neck. But now the waiting was at an end. Today Jelka came of age. Today he ceased to be a slave and became an owner. And tonight ... tonight he would ask her to be his wife.

He felt a strange thrill-a mixture of fear and feverish expectancy- pass through him, then turned, looking at the great clock on the wall. "Aiya! I'll be late. . . ."T'ai Cho shook his head. "Don't worry. I've arranged everything. Director Reiss is coming here."

Kim turned back. "Here? But I thought-"

"You're important to them, Kim. Whatever you want . . ." T'ai Cho stopped, then laughed suddenly. "I'm so pleased for you. So ... thrilled. I keep remembering how we had to fight, even to keep you alive. But now . . . well"-he turned, indicating the opulence of the Mansion and its grounds-"the world is your oyster. You want a Mansion? They give you one. Your own company? It's yours. The hand of the Marshal's daughter? . . . Well, how could he refuse? You are a Great Man, Kim Ward. Today you have arrived. Today you take your place in the world."

Kim looked away, embarrassed, then smiled. "I'd best get ready. When's Reiss due?"

T'ai Cho glanced at the clock. "Any moment. I told him noon."

"Noon? Aiyal" Kim turned, beginning to climb the stairs.

"Kim?"

He stopped, looking down at T'ai Cho from ten steps up.

"Take your time. He'll wait. They'll all wait from now on. You are a Great Man now, remember that?"

He smiled enigmatically. "You are the golden key that opens doors, remember?"

Kim's eyes widened. "Matyas . . . You remembered. . . ."

T'ai Cho nodded. "I remembered. But those days are done with now. No one will bully you ever again, Kim. No one. Now go and change. It's time they took that collar from your neck."

Kim touched the glowing band, then nodded and, turning, mounted the steps again, jumping them three at a time. And as he went T'ai Cho spoke softly to his back.

"No one, you understand that, Kim Ward? No one. Not even the great T'ang himself. ..." * *

"Jelka?"

Tolonen popped his head around the door, looking into his daughter's room.

"Daddy?" She looked up from her desk, then got up and came across to hug him. "How's it going?"

"It's madness. Absolute madness! I've hardly dared come out of my rooms. But Harrison seems to know what he's doing."

Harrison had been brought in by Tolonen two weeks ago to oversee the final stages of the party. He was the veteran of a thousand social campaigns; a hard taskmaster and accomplished socialite rolled into one.

"Don't worry, Daddy," she said, seeing the troubled look on his face. "Any problems, he'll sort them out."

"Yes . . . Yes, I suppose he will." He looked past her distractedly, then gestured toward the brightly lit screen of the scanner on her desk. "Anything interesting?"

She shook her head. "Nothing really ... I thought I'd catch up with my journal."

"Journal?" He looked back at her, intrigued. "You keep a journal?""Yes . . . and before you ask, no, you can't see it. It's private."

He raised a hand, as if fending her off. "Okay . . . but make sure you're ready for the first guests."

"Fourth bell. Right?"

"Right." He smiled, then looked past her again. "It's a lovely dress. Your mother"-he shivered, then said it-"your mother would have loved to have seen it."

She turned, looking at the dress where it hung beside her outer-system suit, then nodded. It was her mother's dress-the same dress she had worn to her own Coming-of-Age party twenty-six years before.

She turned back, then, kissing him gently on the brow, pushed him from the room, closed the door, then returned to her desk.

For a moment she sat there, staring into space, thinking of her mother; a mother she had seen only in holograms; had only dreamed of; never met, never touched.

Could you love someone you had never met? Could you love them because of what they ought to have been in your Ufe? Love them despite their absence?

She shuddered. Never had she framed it so explicitly, but there it was, the thing that made her different from all her friends; the very thing that made her idiosyncratically herself-the lack of a mother's love.

She typed it in, then sat back.

The closer it gets, the less real it seems.

And what if she found she didn't actually like him? What if the years had changed what she felt? What if the thing she had been carrying inside her all these years was only an illusion-the chimera of love?

It frightened her. She, who prided herself on fearing nothing-who had survived three separate assassination attempts-was afraid of this; of meeting the man she loved. Afraid in case his feelings for her had changed. Afraid simply because she had never done this kind of thing before, never loved. Not in this way. Not in the way she proposed to love him.

Even the thought of it made her feel odd. She had tried not to think of it; had tried to divert her thoughts whenever they fell into that track, but her dreams had tripped her up. In her dreams she had been with him, woman to man, naked with him in that cave on the island where she had seen the fox that time, his dark eyes shining in the dark. Dark, animal eyes that made her shiver simply to think of them staring back at her.

Be brave, she told herself. Furthermore, be true.

Seven years. So much could change in seven years. Yet she had waited. She had kept her word.

Tonight. She shivered, then leaned forward, switching off the screen. Tonight he would be hers.

MADAM PENG WAS W AITING for him in his study.

"Madam Peng," he said, smiling tightly as he moved toward his desk.

She got up quickly, taken by surprise by his entrance. "Marshal Tolonen. Forgive me. . . ." She bowed, the young man at her side standing to do the same.

Tolonen sat, moving the papers he had been working on aside, then looked up, taking in the young manat a glance.

"And this is?"

Madam Peng turned to her left. "This is Emil Bartels. I sent you his file. . . ."

"Ah, yes." Tolonen nodded to the young man. "You understand why you are here, Shih Bartels?"

"Yes, Marshal Tolonen."

Tolonen's expression softened a fraction. "You're a good-looking young man, Emil. And your family . . .

very sound, if I recall."

The young man nodded, then glanced at Madam Peng uncomfortably.

"Please, sit down, both of you."

Madam Peng sat, smiling, fluttering the fan before her face. The young man beside her leaned forward, his hands on his left knee, the fingers interlaced, his face deadly earnest.

"Forgive me, Madam Peng," Tolonen began, sitting back a little. "As you know, it was my intention to have Shih Bartels visit my daughter before tonight. To ... prepare her for this. But there simply hasn't been time. Besides, my daughter is ... difficult, let's say. She suspects my motives. I wish only the best for her, of course, but she mistakes my interest for meddling. In the circumstances we must be careful.

Her encounter with Shih Bartels must seem an accident."

"This is most unusual," Madam Peng began. "To guarantee success in a matter like this-"

Tolonen raised a hand. "I understand. If my daughter falls for young Emil here, all well and good. He looks a fine young chap and his past conduct is exemplary, but you do not understand. I ..." He frowned, searching for the right words, then shrugged. "Let's put it this way. If you succeed in distracting her tonight ... in entertaining her, let's say, and taking her mind from other matters, well, there will be a huge bonus in it for both of you."

Bartels looked to Madam Peng, surprised. "But I thought-"

"Oh, don't get me wrong," Tolonen said hastily. "If my daughter wishes to see young Bartels again, and if that association leads to marriage, I shall place no obstacle before it. But the main aim of this exercise is to ensure that tonight goes . . . well, without a hitch, let's say."

Madam Peng's fan snapped shut. Her face was now openly suspicious. "Forgive me, Marshal. You might tell me it isn't my business, but does your daughter already have a suitor?"

Tolonen looked down, sniffing deeply, then nodded.

"Aiya!" Madam Peng said softly. "Why in the gods' names didn't you tell me this?"

"You were paid well, Madam Peng," Tolonen said, an edge of steel in his voice. "And if your young man is successful the world shall know of it. As for this rival, this so-called 'suitor,' 1 shall deal with him. Your job is simple. You have only to do what you have always done-to facilitate the coming together of healthy young men and women of the right social level. If there's a problem with that . . . ?"

Madam Peng stared at him a moment, dumbstruck, then shook her head.

"Good. Then you can begin at once. I have arranged a room for you in an apartment nearby. Whateveryou need, ask for it. Shih Harrison is in charge. He'll see to all your needs."

Tolonen stood, then came around the desk, offering his hand to the young man. "And good luck, Emil.

Do your best for me, neh?"

The young man took the hand and shook it, then stepped back and bowed his head, like a soldier before his commanding officer, while beside him, Madam Peng looked on, her face concerned, the fan fluttering uneasily in her hand.

THE news WAS FULL OF IT. A bizarre new cult was killing people-many of them suspected terrorists-by nailing them to huge wheellike crosses, slitting their wrists, and leaving them to die. There had been a few instances before today, but this morning more than fifty had been discovered in the Mids, sign of a dramatic increase in the cult's activities. Rumor was that it was the work of what had once beeri called the Black Hand-or of a new break-off sect called the Sealed.

Whatever the truth, it was a disturbing escalation, and most of the Media channels had turned their full attention to the new "trend."

Kim sat beneath the screen in his study, watching with the sound turned down as the images changed. He was troubled by this new upturn in violence. Down where he'd come from, in the Clay, such savagery would have seemed quite normal. Dog ate dog down there. But he had climbed the levels to escape from that nightmare reality, thinking it would be different up here.

He had been wrong. The darkness wasn't down there, it was inside. However high men climbed, the darkness climbed within them. It was there, beneath the skin, there behind the pupils of the eyes.

Darkness: it was rooted in the head and in the heart. Darkness, everywhere darkness.

"Enough!" he said. At once the screen went black. He turned. T'ai Cho was watching from across the room.

"What is it?" he said softly, sensing Kim's mood.

Kim shrugged. "It gets worse . . . every day there's more of it. And every day it's more extreme. The Clay . . . it's becoming like the Clay."

T'ai Cho nodded and looked away. He, too, had been disturbed by what he'd seen.

"It worries me," Kim said after a moment. "What kind of world is this to bring one's children into?"

"Things will get better. . . ."

Kim gave a short, despairing laugh. "I'd like to think so, T'ai Cho, but experience teaches otherwise. We live now on the edge of chaos, of perpetual uncertainty. Look at us. I mean . . . guards and guns.

Whoever would have thought it?"

"It has always been so. From the time of the Three Emperors, men have built walls to keep other men from killing them. So it was, so it is."

"And must ever be?" Kim sighed, then shook his head. "No, T'ai Cho. There just has to be something better than this!"

"And if there isn't? If this is all there is?"

Kim stared at him, then shook his head. "Darkness ... it can't all be darkness. There has to be light.Darkness and light . . . balanced. That's what the great Tao says, isn't it?"

T'ai Cho nodded. "Yes, but remember what the great sage Lao Tzu said? The bright Way appears to be dark.' "

"And if it is dark?"

"Then be a light in that darkness, Kim. Shine out and make things change. Dedicate yourself to it. You have a gift, Kim. Use it. Maybe that's why you were saved. Maybe that's why the darkness coughed you up!"

Kim laughed. "You make it sound so easy."

"Easy? No, I never said it would be easy. Remember how we began. Remember what a knife-edge we walked back then, you and I. Why, one mistake and I'd have had to gas you in your cell. You were such a tiny, bony creature-more wraith than child. Yet I knew you were different. I could see it, right from the start. And to think how far you've come . . ."

Kim stood up, then went to the window. It was true. He had come far. Yet how much farther the light now seemed above him. How much farther it seemed he had to climb. Even so ... His hand went up to touch his neck where the collar had been removed. It was his choice now. His choice entirely what he was to be.

"Okay. I'll try. I promise you I'll try."

T'ai Cho came over, touched his arm. "Good. But right now you'd best get ready. You don't want to keep Jelka waiting, do you?"