Handing her inside, Chen turned back. "Is that everyone?" he yelled, making himself heard against the wind, and the thunder that now rumbled incessantly.

"I've checked the houses," Jyan answered him. "You want me to check the barns?"

Chen shook his head. "We'll do a head count down below. If there's anyone missing . . ."

Jyan nodded and then laughed. "What's happening, Father? It's like the Great Flood out here! I've never seen so much rain!"

"No . . ." Chen looked at the sky thoughtfully. "Still, let's get inside, neh? You know how your mother worries."

"I know," Jyan said, laughing, letting his father hand him down the steps.

He watched his son vanish inside, then turned back, shielding his eyes against the beating rain as he looked up at the sky once more. The clouds were dark and menacing, and even as he watched, lightning flickered between them with a crack of thunder.

Where are you now, Gregor Karr? he wondered, concerned for his old friend's safety, but glad that Marie and the girls at least were safe here in his charge. I'll look after them, he vowed, as the rain redoubled its efforts, stinging his exposed flesh and throwing up spray off the muddy steps.

He stepped back, into the shelter of the bunker, then reached up and pulled down the storm shutter.It would be a long time until daylight.

DEVORE STARED AGHAST at the screen, watching one after another of his craft fall slowly to the ground. It was like they were being switched off, one after another. He watched another wobble in the air, then begin to topple to the dry seabed, and shook his head.

It made no sense. There were no beams, no rays, nothing whatsoever to explain it, yet ship after ship was losing power. Soon there would be nothing in the sky. And the storm . . . the storm was fast approaching.

Too long, he thought. I've spent too long here on this single play. Yes, and now he would pay the price for his hesitation.

It was time for more drastic measures.

"Destroy the Cities," he said, leaning over the communicator. "Let the missiles fall."

The image on the screen changed. It was now n view from space. A dozen huge launchers lazed like alligators in a pool, awaiting their moment. As he watched tiny twinkles of light appeared along the sides of each, like matches being struck. A closer view showed a single rocket haring from its launch hatch, silently falling toward the dark mass beneath it.

There was no satisfaction in this, yet if he could not take the board he would at least destroy it.

More missiles launched, and then a final salvo. Seventy-two in all. Enough to leave the continent a bed of smoldering cinders.

He watch them fall, streaking into the upper atmosphere. In two minutes it would be over. He turned, calling one of his men to him, and as he did the screen was lit with brilliant light.

Shielding his eyes, he looked back, trying to see what had happened, but the light was too fierce. Slowly it intensified. Then, with a strange little fizzle, the image on the screen dissolved into a fuzz of static.

DeVore lowered his hand and looked about him. Every single screen in the cabin was the same.

"No . . ." he said, unable to take in what had happened. "No . . ."

THOSE WHO HAD SURVIVED the fall of their ships had clambered out into that nightmare landscape, dazed and uncertain of their bearings. The rain was falling steadily now, lightning flashes briefly illuminating the darkness, casting rocks and hollows into deep shadow. Then, with a startling suddenness, the whole sky lit up. For ten, maybe fifteen seconds the light was painfully intense and those that glanced up found themselves staggering about blindly, their flesh tingling, their retinas burned away.

Among them Ebert walked, truly blind now, his remotes destroyed in that same moment when he had reached out and-feeling his way behind the fine lines of the missile's wiring-had tweaked the signal and detonated the leading rocket.

As the darkness fell once more, the rain intensified. Rain like a solid wall falling endlessly from the night-black heavens. Rain so hard, it beat the blinded stragglers down, sucking at their feet, filling their mouths, its noise like the sound of a million drummers drumming.

For a moment the universe was rain. And then, with a rumble that shook the rocks beneath them, the tide came in again.THE MACHINE WATCHED ALL. It saw the great sea burned away; it watched the ships lose power and fall, the missiles detonate high above the troubled earth. And as the great wave swept across the dry seabed, it spoke to the eight who were in the air, directing them, urging them on, until the one it had chosen was safe.

It watched, knowing how close it had come to doing nothing, not certain even now that it had done the right thing in interfering in the affairs of men. Millions had died. Hundreds of millions. And many more would die in the months to come-of starvation and plague and simple misery.

It watched, seeing how the eight flew high above the Flood, Ebert held safe between the central pair. Let DeVore make what he would of that. Let him slowly figure out just what had happened here today.

Maybe that's why, Tuan Ti Fo said, speaking from the space at the center of it-from that point of emptiness it could not see into. Maybe you simply couldn't let him win.

Maybe . . . But such a thing was incalculable. It was not even something it could rationalize. On Mars it had acted to preserve itself. But here . . . Here it has acted out of instinct.

Instinct? Tuan Ti Fo asked and laughed; a gently ironic laugh. Since when did a Machine possess instinct?

Since . . .

But it did not know. Just as it did not know how it had come to be self-aware, so this, too, was a mystery to it.

Another step, Tuan Ti Fo said. Another tiny step.

And then laughter; a gentle, ironic laughter, slowly fading.

LI YUAN sat in the great tent, alone at his desk, the rain drumming on the canvas overhead. Nan Ho had left him for a moment, gone to greet the latest arrivals on the far side of the encampment, but there was much to do, and while he waited for him to return Li Yuan busied himself with matters of State, trying not to think of what was happen- ing in the greater world, keeping his thoughts within the tiny circle of lamplight in which he sat.

How many millions had died already? And how many more would end their lives before this day was done?

That was the worst of it, the reason he could not dwell on it too long: it was the impotence he felt; the inability to change a single thing that had happened or was to come. Slowly, degree by degree, they had lost control. Seven had become One-himself. And now that One no longer held the reins. The world ran foaming mad toward the brink and he could do nothing.

He sighed and looked up, rubbing his eyes, then tensed. There had been a movement in the shadows across from him; the faintest noise.

"Who's there?"

He waited, his heart pounding, squinting into the dark. Had he been mistaken? Yes. It was only the wind, moving the canvas on the far side of the tent. He sat back, frowning, angry with himself for letting his imagination run away with him. There were guards outside, after all. It was just not possible. . . .He felt a shiver at the back of his neck and looked up. Lehmann was standing there, not three paces from him, watching him, those cold pink eyes staring.

"No speeches," Lehmann said, drawing his knife. "You know why."

Li Yuan threw the desk up between them, then tugged the knife from his belt. But he had no intention of fighting Lehmann. Scrambling back, he slashed at the tent's soft wall, then threw himself out through the gap his knife had made, Lehmann close behind.

"Help!" He yelled, his feet slipping on the wet grass. "Hel-!"

A hand caught him, picked him up, and threw him aside unceremoniously. He rolled awkwardly, then slammed into the palisade, the breath knocked from him. Groaning he turned his head, looking back.

Lehmann was standing beside the rip in the tent's wall, crouched like a fighter in the flickering torchlight, his knife in his left hand. Facing him, holding the gusting torch, was a huge figure of a man, head and shoulders taller than the albino. As he slipped from consciousness the man's name flickered like a guttering lamp. Karr . . .

LEHMANN LOOKED PAST Karr at the crowd that was gathering and straightened, making himself less threatening.

"I have no fight with you, Gregor Karr. You served your Master well.

But enough's enough. One must respect one's Master, surely? One must be in awe of him, neh?" He gestured toward the fallen bundle by the palisade. "But how can you be in awe of that?"

Karr looked to Li Yuan, then back at Lehmann. It was in his power to choose. For this one brief moment, as the rain fell and the storm gathered strength, he had been granted the freedom to determine how he lived.

And the choice? The choice was simple. It was whether he chose to carry on, confused, struggling to make sense of things, to bring some form of good from the chaos of his life, or to submit to the certainties-the rigid order-of this other way.

Li Yuan groaned again and opened his eyes.

"Is the promise good?" he asked, looking to him.

Li Yuan coughed, then struggled to his knees. "Promise?"

"What you said to Ebert."

"Ah . . ." Li Yuan looked to Lehmann, then back at Karr. "I swore."

"You'll tear it down?"

The rain beat down. The torch gusted in the wind. Across from him Lehmann waited, crouched now, the knife slowly turning in his hand.

"I swear I'll tear it down."

Lehmann sprang. His knife arced toward Karr's throat, his foot toward his guts.

Karr shifted back a fraction, the torch spinning from his grip. His left forearm turned the knife thrust, hisknee met Lehmann's foot. His right hand punched.

Lehmann was dead before he fell.

Fate. In a second he had decided what would be. As the thunder growled, he stepped back, letting a shuddering breath escape him. It was done with. Finished.

Someone picked up the torch and held it up. In its light he saw the dead man shudder, then lie still.

Turning, he saw that Li Yuan was watching him, his dark eyes staring, trying to understand just what had happened.

"Chieh Hsia," he said, kneeling. Yet somehow the balance had changed. In a single moment he had made sense of his life. One single action-one single, physical action-had changed the shape of things.

Had he died-had Lehmann triumphed over him-the future would have been different, the balance altered.

He shivered, then stood and stepped away. The rain was falling hard now. They would need to find better shelter than a tent afforded them.

He looked to Li Yuan again. The T'ang's silks were sticking to him, his dark hair plastered to his head.

Karr frowned, understanding it at last. There were no levels, only those Man invented for himself. And Li Yuan ... Li Yuan was just another man.

"Come," he said, holding out his hand, offering it to the man. "We'd best get out of this."

Li Yuan took the offered hand, letting himself be helped up, then smiled.

"Round everyone up," Karr said, looking about him. "We'll go to the island. To Kalevala. It's no good here. This weather . . ."

Thunder cracked and rumbled over the plain. The rain intensified, drumming madly on the canvas close by. The torch hissed and suddenly went out. As it did, lightning played on the rim of the ruined fortress to the east.

Li Yuan looked up at Karr and nodded. "We'd better wake them. Warn them we're coming."

"Wake them?" Karr laughed. Yes, wake them, he thought. A new age beckoned. A new way. He felt a thrill flash through him, then, laughing, wiped the rain from his face.

So it began. So the Wheel turned and the world changed. He looked down at the corpse of the albino and nodded to himself.

So it began.

DEVORE SAT IN THE pilot's seat of the tiny one-man craft, hovering above the boiling sea, the rain hammering at the craft's wings as he looked out through the rain-streaked window.

The sea was awash with corpses, his own face, dead, forty million times dead, staring up at him blindly, endlessly.

As he watched the last of his ships slip beneath the darkness he nodded to himself. The game was lost. It was time to cut and run, back to the no-space. Back to the cold dark space from which he'd come.

EPILOGUE SPRING 2222Starlight and Nonbeing Starlight asked Nonbeing: "Master, are you? Or are you not?"

Since he received no answer whatever, Starlight set himself to watch for Nonbeing. He waited to see if Nonbeing would put in an appearance.

He kept his gaze fixed on the deep Void, hoping to catch a glimpse of Nonbeing.

All day long he looked, and he saw nothing. He listened, but heard nothing. He reached out to grasp, and grasped nothing.

Then Starlight exclaimed at last: "This is IT!"

"This is the farthest yet! Who can reach it? I can comprehend the absence of Being But who can comprehend the absence of Nothing? If now, on top of all this, Nonbeing IS, Who can comprehend it?"

-chuang tzu, Writings, xxii, VIII, sixth century B.C.

EPILOGUE.

Starlight and Nonbeing SHE HAD WALKED for four days, through abandoned levels and empty rooms, past broken barricades and scenes of desolation, returning to him. Through the nightmare vistas of a ruined City, through scenes of misery and torment and the utmost degradation, she passed like a shadow, unseen, untroubled by the gangs of thugs and madmen who roamed like pack dogs in those half-lit regions.

Eventually she stood there in the room she had shared with him, looking about her at the wreckage, and felt the last faint glimmer of hope die in her. She had been so sure-so certain he'd be here.

She sat, weary now, letting her head fall. If she died it would not matter. Let the sky fall and the earth crack open, it would make no difference now.

For a long time she slept, beaten, finally defeated by the world. Then, pulling herself to her feet, she turned and went from the room, not knowing where she'd go.

Main seemed echoing and empty. Glass littered the floor from broken screens, but one still functioned at the far end by the clock tower. Beneath it a small crowd had gathered, standing idly or sitting on their bundles, as if waiting to see this last transmission before they, too, moved on.

She walked across and stood there at the back, looking up at the screen, her eyes registering nothing.

Dead. This world was dead now, and she with it. She looked down, meaning to walk on, then saw him, there at the front, leaning against the barrier.

"Lin?" She went toward him, not sure at first that it was him. Then, as the certainty of it gripped her, shecalled to him, louder this time.

"Lin! Lin Shang!"