If there was any implied criticism in that, Lehmann chose to ignore it. He walked across.

"You received my gift?"

Karr nodded. "You knew I couldn't keep it.""That was your choice. It was not a bribe. You're not a man to bribe ... or flatter, come to that."

Karr stared back at him, conceding nothing.

"I would have beaten you," Lehmann continued, "in time."

"I know."

"And yet you remained loyal to Li Yuan. Why?"

Karr looked past him at Soucek. "Why does your man stay loyal? Why does any man?"

"Foolishness?"

Karr was silent. Lehmann studied him a moment, then turned away.

"We'll not beat DeVore," he said, so casually that it was almost as if he didn't care.

"Maybe not," Karr answered, looking out to the northeast, his eyes searching the cloudless sky.

"And yet we have to fight, neh?" Lehmann laughed; a cold, strange sound. "We have to fight because if we don't he'll annihilate us. Oh, he'll annihilate us anyway, but a man must have the satisfaction at least to know he was a man and not an insect."

Karr turned back. Both Soucek and Lehmann were watching him. "I shouldn't be here," he said quietly.

"I should be with my family."

"Then why aren't you?"

Lehmann came back to him, stopping very close, looking up into his face. "Just why are you doing this, Gregor Karr? After all you've witnessed. After all your Master's done. The Wiring Project. The torturing of good men and women-people who shared your ideals. Ah, yes, and the deals. The pandering to greedy, selfish men. Your friend, Kao Chen ... he saw the shape of things. That's why he got out, isn't it?

But you . . . you stayed inside. You served. Why was that?"

Karr shrugged. A sense of duty? Of loyalty? . . . Simple habit? Or was it because he'd still too much pride in himself as a fighter to get out-to become a man of peace and till the earth like Chen?

Pride ... or stupidity.

He looked up. There had been movement in the two gun turrets that still worked. They had swiveled, tracing an incoming. He strode to the edge of the platform and stopped, shielding his eyes, unconscious, it seemed, of the two-li drop only a step from where he stood.

"He's here," he said, seconds before the gun commander confirmed it. "I said he'd come."

"As you said, your Master is a man of his word."

Karr turned, frowning, trying to make out what Lehmann meant by that; but the White T'ang's face was blank, unreadable. Inscrutable, he thought, thinking for the first time how much that face, despite its superficial differences, resembled his Master's. Then he turned back, awaiting his Master's arrival.

THEY HAD SHARED a cup of wine; now the two great men embraced, sealing the compact between them. The paper lay on the campaign table to one side, the ink still drying, the T'ang's great seal lying beside Lehmann's on the cushion.It was done. The Cities were reunited. At least, until he came. Until DeVote's great fleet swept them into the cold northern sea.

Karr looked down, a bitter taste in his mouth. He had never thought to see the day.

Chih yao yu heng hsin t'ieh ch'u mo ch'eng chen, he thought, recalling the banners that had hung before Lehmann's gate that time he'd gone to meet with him.

If only there is persistence, even an iron pillar will be ground into a needle.

Well, so it was. Lehmann's persistence had certainly ground them down. Unfortunately for him, that same persistence which had made his enemy, Li Yuan, so weak, had likewise weakened his own forces. Both now were vulnerable.

How DeVore must be laughing now, Karr thought sourly. Laughing as a jackal laughs, watching his prey fall from exhaustion.

He sighed. They had learned the lesson far too late-that even persistence can mean nothing in the face of Fate.

"General Karr . . ."

He glanced up, meeting Lehmann's eyes, then looked to his Master. But Li Yuan merely nodded, his eyes instructing Karr to listen.

Lehmann stood before him, handing him a scrolled paper. "As from this moment you are in command of our joint forces. We shall draw up a plan of action which you shall carry out on our behalf."

Again he looked to Li Yuan.

"It is what we have agreed," Li Yuan said quietly. "We feel there is no better man to lead our forces."

"But, ChiehHsia ..."

"Please, Gregor. Do what we say. Little time remains and we must make the most of it. First we must devise some means of communicating between our garrisons, then-"

The blare of a siren drowned out his words. All turned, staring to the south. A ship was coming in fast.

Karr ran across, climbed the steps of the turret, and leaned inside.

"Who is it?" he yelled over the siren's wail.

In answer the gun commander pointed to the screen. It was blank, the gun controls dead. Karr climbed inside and, pushing the two men aside, tried to reactivate the control panel, but it was no use. He hammered it with his fists, then scrambled out again. He could see the thing clearly now. It was less than half a ti away, screaming in low over the plain to the southwest.

"Down!" he yelled, knowing it would do no good. "The bastard's jammed the guns!"

Li Yuan looked to Lehmann, expecting a trick, but Lehmann seemed just as surprised. He turned back, frowning, then strode across to Karr and stood beside him, facing the incoming ship.

"Let it come!" he shouted.They waited, expecting the flash of a missile, the sudden explosive warmth of detonation. Instead the craft flashed over them, the sharp crack of it breaking the sound barrier making everyone duck-even Lehmann.

"What the ... ?"

The sirens fell silent. Slowly the craft turned in the air, slowing in a great arc that brought it around to the front of the fortress once again.

"Is that him, do you think?" Li Yuan asked, looking to Lehmann, who had come to stand beside him.

Lehmann shrugged, then patted the gun at his belt. "If it is, I'll shoot the bastard where he stands, copy or no copy. I'll have that satisfaction."

Li Yuan smiled. "You're sure he'll send a copy, then?"

"Oh, he'd not come himself. Not DeVore. He's the Puppet Master himself, that one."

They stepped back, under their banners as, slowly, the craft came down, settling between their own.

As the engines whined down toward silence, Karr stepped out, facing the hatch, and drew his gun. Now that the moment had come, he understood why he was here. This was not for Li Yuan. No, nor for that callous bastard Lehmann. This was for Marie and his girls. For them.

I killed you once, he thought, and 1 shall kill you again. However many times it takes. However many copies you send against me.

The hatch bolts fired, the door hissed slowly open. ......

Karr raised his gun.

"Gregor Karr ... is that you?"

The man who stepped out into the light was not DeVore. He wore black, as DeVore might have worn, and his hair was shaven close to his skull in a distinctly military style that DeVore might easily have affected, but it was not DeVore. Karr frowned, staring at the man.

Where his eyes should have been the sockets were hollow and empty. Burned out, Karr realized with a shiver of revulsion. Over the blind man's head three tiny buglike remotes hovered, slowly orbiting.

Karr stared a moment longer then gave a surprised laugh. No . . . it couldn't be!

"Ebert?" Li Yuan stepped past Karr and stood there, looking up the ramp. "Hans Ebert?"

Slowly the blind man came down. Then, unexpectedly, he dropped to his knees, touching his head to the floor before Li Yuan.

"Chieh Hsia," he said, drawing the dagger from his belt and offering it to Li Yuan. The T'ang stared at it, recognizing it. It was the dagger he had given Ebert the day he had appointed him his General. With a shudder he dropped it and stepped back.

"Aiya! Now he sends ghosts against me!"

"No, Chieh Hsia," Ebert said, making no move to retrieve the dagger. "I come to serve you. That is, if you'll forgive me.""Serve me?" Li Yuan laughed bitterly. "As you served me before, no doubt, by betraying me to my enemies!"

"If you think that, Chieh Hsia, kill me now. Pick up the dagger of my shamed office and carry out the sentence you and your fellow T'ang passed in my absence. But I am not the man I was."

Li Yuan stared at the knife, then looked back at the kneeling man. "No. No, I ... Get up, Hans Ebert.

Get up now."

As Ebert got to his feet Karr stepped forward. "Shall I kill him, Chieh Hsia?"

Ebert turned toward him. "Is that you, Gregor Karr? Ah, yes, I see it now. I did you wrong, not once but many times. I see you're General now. Well, no better man deserved it."

Karr made to answer but Lehmann laid a hand on his arm, then stepped past him, confronting Ebert.

"How did you do that? How did you jam the guns?"

Ebert smiled. "Stefan Lehmann ... I didn't expect to find you in this company. But as for your query, look. . . ." He pointed unerringly at the bank of screens beside Li Yuan's craft. As he did the face of DeVore vanished from all twenty screens, to be replaced by the tiny walking matchstick figure.

"What does this mean?" Li Yuan asked, looking about him as if expecting some sign of trickery to be revealed.

"It means I am here to help my Lord again. Not as servant, but as guide."

"Guide?" Li Yuan was totally bemused.

Ebert bowed his head again. "Am I forgiven?"

"Forgiven?" Li Yuan turned, looking to where Kuei Jen stood with Pei K'ung and Nan Ho. Urged by his stepmother, Kuei Jen stepped forward and gave a nod. Li Yuan stared at him a moment, then turned back. "I ... I forgive you, Hans Ebert, and lift the sentence of death that hangs over you."

"Chieh Hsia," Ebert answered, bowing his head smartly. Then, turning toward the darkness of the open hatch, he extended an arm. "Look!"

Karr glanced at the hatch, then looked at his Master, seeing the sudden astonishment there in Li Yuan's face. Surprised, he looked back. Eight men now stood in the open hatchway: big men dressed in strangely old-fashioned spacesuits. Black men.

"The heroes . . ." Li Yuan whispered, real awe in his voice. "You brought the eight black-faced heroes!"

Ebert beckoned for the men to come down the ramp, then faced Li Yuan again. "You remember, then?"

"The gift of stones."

"Yes." As they formed up behind him, he straightened, for the first time seeming something like the old Hans Ebert-a prince in disguise, returning to his kingdom. "If we win, you must promise to tear it all down."

"Tear it down?"

"The City. The evil of the levels. You must tear it down and start again. This way . . . it's wrong."Li Yuan turned once more, looking first to Nan Ho, then to Pei K'ung and finally to Kuei Jen. Each nodded. He turned back.

"All right. But how? He has forty million. . . ."

"And we have eight." Ebert's smile was unexpected. "As I said to you, old friend, I am not the man I was."

He turned and, going to the edge of the platform, raised an arm. At once the sky was lit suddenly with the searchlights of a hundred cruisers, the machines forming a great circle about the gutted fortress.

"Aiya!" Karr said, noting how not one of the cockpits held a pilot. "What dark wizardry is this?"

But Ebert merely laughed and pointed to the screens. "No wizardry at all, friend Gregor. Look!"

They all turned, looking to the bank of screens. And as they looked the twenty screens, which, for long hours past, had shown a single duplicated image, now broke into a cacophony of images and sound as the commanders of all their garrisons appeared suddenly, clamoring for orders.

"The eyes," Ebert said, coming back to them and standing in their midst, reached out, touching first one and then another of them in turn, smiling at them blindly. "The eyes are open now. Let us use them to see our way out of the darkness."

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

A Spring Day at the Edge of the World.

FAR OFF ACROSS the bay the sea was boiling. The great space-mounted lasers fired down-broad, dazzlingly bright beams that ripped like pillars of fire through the clouds. And where they touched, the surface turned to steam. Great thunderheads were rolling across the sky. The air was heavy.

Again and again the lasers struck, burning the elements, stripping away layer after layer, down to the rock.