"Aren't you afraid that I'll tell you why I'm being chased?" Hawks asked, wanting to throw his one weapon. What was death to him was death to all. But that didn't seem to disturb the Crow.

"Well, I'm damn curious, if that's what you mean. Cause me a lot of trouble if I knew, I guess, but not as much as you. See, they know that you know, so Master System knows it, too. Can't change that. But they don't know if I know until they got you under the machine, and I got you first, so I can cover. Tell me if you want or not. Makes no nevermind to me."

Hawks stood there, suddenly startled and confused. "What do you mean, they know?" he asked. "Who are they? Or, better yet, who are you?"

"I'm a handy man with big ambitions," the Crow answered him. "Got you kind of tossed in my lap by a colleague. My fat comes when I deliver you, even if it's split."

Even Cloud Dancer was starting to get the idea. "You are not from Council," she said suspiciously.

"Well, in a manner of speaking I am. Officially I work for the Agency, which works for the Council under contract. Not this one, though. You're too plenty important to trust to mere people. I'm sure the Val's either right behind us or just ahead of us, but it don't matter. We're gonna leave him running in circles for a while. By the time they get the idea, our part will be done."

Hawks wasn't sure whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. He had been prepared to deal with the logic of Master System, even though the odds were slim, but with a new player in the game, he was in as bad a position as before, only at the mercy of an unknown third party.

"Who are you working for?"

"The same man that the courier was working for. As you know, she didn't make it.

I assume she made contact with you and passed it along."

"She's dead," he told the Crow. "She died maybe a day or so after she landed, probably from injuries suffered in the crash. I found her body and her papers."

"Uh huh. And you read them, I guess."

"You know I did."

"Not until that moment. Thanks. So this hasn't been for nothing. Now, come along. I don't want to meet any Vals around here. We can fill in the story later."

"All of us?" Cloud Dancer asked him.

"You bet, lady. I want all three of you, and just the way you are suits me fine."

Hawks's initial fear and then resignation were slowly being replaced by anger.

Council chasing him was one thing, but this was some mercenary, some bounty hunter. Also, though his lack of clothing felt quite natural, it was somewhat demeaning among strangers, and particularly around men like this one.

Raven had a fairly elaborate camp set up in the center of the peninsulalike area: a small portable dome that bristled with antennae and detectors. It was only now that the Hyiakutt man realized that their captors were probably few in number-everything could be remotely run from here. Still, this was high-class equipment, Upper Council level at least, and he wondered where one like Raven would get access to it for an unauthorized or freelance mission.

The answer to that was revealed when they met the Crow's companion. Both Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman gawked with a mixture of fear and wonder at this new woman, who was so tall, so muscular, and so very black. Cloud Dancer had never seen anyone before who was not of the People, and from Silent Woman's reaction it was clear that she had never seen anyone like this.

Manka Warlock got some pleasure out of such reactions. She'd been getting a lot of them on this trip, and it served to keep the common folk of North America off balance. They weren't sure if she was a human or a demon, and after a couple of weeks with her, Raven wasn't all that sure, either. She was proud, vain, aristocratic, and genuinely amoral. Raven, it was true, would do almost anything for the right payoff, but he knew when it was right or wrong-he just did it anyway. To Warlock, people were divided into two basic categories: useful and irrelevant. It was clear that deep down she believed herself to be vastly superior to other human beings and immortal as well. She had on this trip done things like blast a tree because when she pushed one of its branches out of the way, it came back and struck her. Now she looked at the three captives less as a goddess would look at her creations than as a laboratory scientist examining her test rats. She gestured with a riding crop held in her left hand.

"How utterly quaint and primitive," she said in her heavily Caribe-accented English. "Do they have fleas?"

"They bite, sometimes," Hawks responded, irritated.

Her face took on an ugly, maniacal expression, and the hand holding the riding crop twitched. Raven stepped in.

"Enough!" he said. "You wanted him-there he is. Go ahead-do what you want, but remember why you are here and who you are working for."

The hand stilled, and some semblance of sanity crept back into her eyes, but the look was still there.

"Very well," she responded. "I will take some lip, for a while, but do not try my patience, nature man. There are things for which I would willingly surrender even as fat a price as you would bring. You-all of you-belong to me now, as a dog, a horse, or even a blanket belongs to someone. You are mine until I choose to sell you. You are within a forcefield keyed to the two of us now. You cannot leave without the both of us, and no matter what happened, you would never get my cooperation to open it."

"That won't work on them," Raven told her. "You don't understand the cultures here. Just achieving rank or manhood means undergoing tortures that are pretty bad. Death is meaningless as a threat. If you kill them when they are captives, they will go to a greater heavenly reward than if they died in bed."

"The females, however, are disposable," she noted curtly.

"Bullshit. If he gave in to save either one, he'd lose all respect in their eyes and be a dead man to them anyway. The reverse is also true. You got me into this because, hard as it is to believe, they are members of my race. I got in because I liked the potential payoff. You decide right now between the payoff and your ego."

She turned on her partner. "You insect! How dare you speak so to me!"

"Come on-try and kill me. Maybe you will. If you do, you'll wind up killing them, too, and then you'll be all alone when he starts looking for blame. You decide right now whether you want to be crazy or you want to buy a one-way ticket to Melchior."

That seemed to get to her, and she hesitated; there was even a flash of doubt across her face. She was one level up from Roaring Bull, Hawks thought, but deep down there were a lot of things that scared her as well. She knew it, and she knew that Raven not only knew it but had just exposed it, and she hated him all the more for it, yet she also accepted it as fact.

"Tend to them, then. I will call in the skim, and we will get this on the road."

She turned and walked back into the small dome.

"Your partner's a psychotic," Hawks noted calmly. "Sooner or later they're not going to be able to cover that up anymore from Master System."

Raven sighed. "Yeah, I know. I sure as hell don't plan no long-term relationship with her. Still, she's really good at what she does, and she's useful to lots of powerful folks. That brings me back to you three."

"You spoke the truth to her," Cloud Dancer put in. "I suppose even a Crow understands some things."

"Listen, lady, you're in no spot to bargain, and you are just along for the ride 'cause I want your boy here to be reasonably happy and comfortable."

"And perhaps because you might need three helpers if Warlock goes completely over the edge of the cliff," Hawks added.

Raven shrugged. "Could be you're right. Now it's time for some serious talk, though. Have a seat on the ground, here."

They all sat and stared at the Crow.

"Now, here's the story," he began. "A while back, down in South America someplace, an illegal tech group got hold of some old papers. Hawks, you know what was in them. I don't, except that they're some big knife at the throat of Master System. Forbidden stuff. Well, some of 'em had connections, and they traced something in the stuff to Lazlo Chen, of all people. How a half-breed administrator from the middle east figures into something like this I don't know, either. Whatever it was, they got the idea that only Chen could help them, and for some reason they thought he would. They made some contacts among their version of people like me, and that finally got the word to Chen. What the message was, again I got no idea, but it interested him. Intrigued him. They wanted some kind of real fat deal for the stuff, and that he wasn't about to do or couldn't do. So he used his connections and got them raided, and all were killed, but the right folks got the papers. These started a clandestine courier network that crossed into the Caribe region."

"And that's where Laughing Lady in there comes in, I suppose," Hawks responded, interested.

"Yeah, sort of. She's worked her way up to the top of the Security Agency there with blood and hard work, anyway. Probably got worse the higher she got or she never would have gotten that far. Well, she worked out a system of transfers.

Island to island, then to someplace up north where it was to be handed to somebody for Siberia, then somebody else in China, and finally to Chen.

As you know, something went wrong. Master System learned about at least the existence of the papers and pushed every panic button in the world. Now, you tell me the courier crashed, got hurt bad, and died, and you found it and read it. All of a sudden you take off. Of course, since it was one of her girls, Warlock was dispatched to find out who the traitor was working for, and because she didn't know the territory at all, she got hold of me. I was one of the few not on the case but on routine patrol duties, so I won't be missed, and I've done a few jobs for the Caribes before. We set out to get you before the real hunters did, and we did-so far, anyway. Now we deliver, the boss man covers our trails and our asses, and that's it for us."

The story was so absurd, it had to be true, and Hawks laughed. "Chen. You're working for Chen!"

"Yeah, so that's not exactly hard to figure. What's so funny?"

"That's just who I started out to find. He's the only one who could really use this stuff, and he has the power to get me off the hook as well."

"Figured it was something like that. Mud Runner couldn't have helped, anyway.

His stuff's wired direct into Master. He'd have apologized profusely and got drunk for a week after to cure his remorse, but he'd have still skinned you alive. So, we're the best thing could'a happened for your long-term future and interests. It's so far to Chen, you couldn't go any further without coming back.

You'd've never made it. Now, 'cause neither of us can rightly trust you, there's several ways you can travel on this."

"I'm listening," Hawks said.

"Well, we can knock you cold, keep you out, and carry you in. That's one. Lots of trouble for us but effective. Or you can take a hypno and lock it in with a printer until we unlock it over there. Or you can be bound, gagged, and chained.

What do you think?"

Hawks could see the man's reasoning. Traveling the distance to Chen might take some time and might even involve transfers as risky and elaborate as those for the documents-which had failed. Either knocking them cold or chaining them carried greater risks of discovery and would involve more people in moving and guarding them. On the other hand, Raven knew that both Hawks and Cloud Dancer had broken a hypno coming out of Hyiakutt country, so he couldn't be certain that a hypno would really take or for how long. He wanted cooperation on the hypno before he'd risk it.

"What sort of hypno?" Hawks asked. "One like your partner would give?"

"Nothing too bad. Something to make a good cover and guard our backs is all.

You all would be put back in original condition at the other end. I wouldn't want to deliver you any other way-but if we get spot-checked, I wouldn't want whatever you know leaking out, or even that you know something worth leaking, if you get my meaning."

They did. "Why take us?" Cloud Dancer put in. "We both will go with him anywhere, of course, but why do you bother with us?"

"Lady, I don't know what I'm dealing with here, and I don't really want to know.

Chen may hear him out, then kill all of you, or turn you into pets or the walking dead for all I know. But he might also embrace your husband here like he was the greatest hero of Earth history and put him in a real high and influential position with lots of power. Taking you costs me very little. Not taking you could cost me later. Now, what about it, Hawks?"

It was not a difficult decision, although it was a serious one. He could monitor his wives' treatment first, but anything he did to guard could be circumvented by the portable mindprinter after, and Raven's cartridges would be security-oriented and not at all benign. He didn't even like to think what Warlock's library must be like.

Still, he knew now that there was only one course open to him. The Crow had spoken the truth when he had said that Chen would want him, at least, in original condition. He could only trust that it applied to all. Raven also was speaking the truth about Mud Runner; it had always been the longest of long shots at best, and reality was obscured when unvoiced. Going wild was an equal if more romantic illusion. Silent Woman, at least, could not be kept hidden forever, and he could not abandon her any more than he could abandon Cloud Dancer. Chen was the only chance to preserve any possibility of a future for the family and tribe.

"We will take the hypno and mindprint," he responded. "If it is your kit."

"Of course. Well, we'd better get started, then. The skimmer will be here at dusk, and then you have one to three days of travel ahead, depending on the heat."

The program was devastating, as he had known it would be, but it was the most secure both for their captors and for protection en route. The fact was, once Raven had set it up and turned it on, none of them were aware of anything beyond that point. There were blurs, bright lights, confusing shouts in unknown tongues, and hundreds of other fleeting sensations, but none of it made sense, nor was there any time sense. There also, however, were no worries or concerns.

Those had ceased to exist with the rest of the world.

Hawks awoke with the usual feeling of dizziness and disorientation that came from having undergone both hypnotics and mindprinting, but he recovered quickly.

He was lying on a plush rug of some kind inside a large tent, and it was warm and dry. His first thought was for his wives, and when he did not see them, he was worried. He got up and tried to get his bearings.

"Looks like you made it," Raven's voice came to him. He looked up and saw the Crow sitting back and relaxing on a low fur-covered divan, a half-smoked cigar in his mouth. Even at this point, Hawks couldn't resist wondering if Raven had all of his cigars presmoked halfway down.

"I promised you they'd be here, and they're here," the Crow went on. "You are just gonna have to wait to see them, though. You got to get ready to see the big man. After him, then we have a happy reunion or whatever."

"I want to see them now!"

Raven sighed. "Listen, Hyiakutt. You're not in North America now, and Council's on the other side of the world. I got to tell you it was pretty hairy just getting you this far, and you wouldn't be here without me. A couple of people died to ensure that nobody but us even knows it. You're here because you couldn't resist knowing nasty things you knew you shouldn't touch. I didn't put you in this spot, I only brought you. Now you see the big man you said you wanted to see anyway. You trusted me with the hypno that got you here. Keep playing it my way."

Hawks sighed and nodded. The Crow was right, and he knew it. He was in no position to bargain now. Best to see it through. It might not make any real difference, anyway. By Raven's own admission, Chen had betrayed the first discoverers of the rings who'd contacted him. There was no reason why such a man would treat Hawks any better.

"These people bathe about once a century," the Crow noted. "But they have a set of rules and procedures. We'll get you looking as decent as we can."

Hawks's brows rose. "Then we are not in Tashkent Center?"

"What do you take Chen for? We lifted you out illegally, and we smuggled you all the way here illegally and, since I haven't seen either a security force or any sign of a Val yet, successfully. You're out in a tent city somewhere in the steppes of the Caucasus. He got here with his whole retinue just about an hour and a half ago, all riding camels, if you can believe it. I heard of 'em but never saw one before. I don't care how much water they hold, I'll take a horse or even an ornery mule every time."

Getting propped for an audience with Lazlo Chen was not an onerous experience, even if it was a disconcerting one. He was taken in to a small horde of women dressed in exotic clothing that masked just about everything except their eyes, all of whom talked in a language unrelated to anything he had ever heard before.

Laughing and giggling, they washed him with cloths rinsed in a large basin of tepid water, clipped his nails, combed his long black hair and trimmed it, although he refused to let them cut it. Then he was given dark wool pants tucked into tall leather riding boots and a shirt of the same material dyed red and worn like a vest, and he was ready. Raven, who still wore his traditional buckskins, checked him over approvingly.

"All right, now. You look like you're ready to raid the peasant villages," the Crow noted in his usual sneering tone. "How's it feel?"

"It itches," Hawks complained.

Raven shrugged. "So it itches. If you'd had any decent clothes on when I picked you up, then this wouldn't have been necessary. Now I'll give you the protocol, and you will follow it exactly no matter how demeaning it is simply because he has to keep up the show for the locals and you want to keep on his good side.

He's willing to keep it in English, so there's no languages to learn, simply because he knows it and absolutely nobody else around him, including his aides from Center, does. It ain't too popular a tongue in these parts. And remember who you're dealing with, even if he tries to get chummy."

Hawks nodded. After Roaring Bull, then Manka Warlock and Raven, he had finally made it up the hierarchy to a Lord of the Middle Dark. He had never met the Council Emperor or seen him, but this was one of equal stature at least.

They brought him to an enormous tent erected on the great plains of what had once been the south central region of the USSR, and before that the domain, or route, of legendary conquerors. He felt as if he had somehow slipped back in time to some ancient day when Genghis Khan and his Mongol horde had overrun and ruled the area in their attempt to establish a worldwide empire.

Certainly the setting seemed bleak and primitive enough, with torches lighting the way to the tent and oil lamps within. The floor of the tent was lined with plush rugs, and off to one side there was a table with an ornate chess set apparently showing a game in progress. An ornate, thronelike chair sat on a raised platform to the rear of the tent, its arms and back covered with complex designs. Still, the place stank. Unimpressed with the primitive grandeur, Hawks couldn't help but wonder if any of these people ever bathed or wiped themselves.

Lazlo Chen entered confidently, leaving his guards outside. He was certainly an imposing figure, close to two meters high and perhaps a hundred and fifty kilos.

Oddly, he did not look fat but rather enormous and powerful. In spite of the fact that his family name was Han Chinese, he clearly owed his looks and size to Mongol and perhaps Cossack ancestry as well. He had long, black hair streaked with gray and a thick, full beard of the same color mix, and he wore a crimson turban and colorful, if baggy, Occidental clothing. He also wore golden earrings studded with enormous rubies and had other jewelry on his person and his garments-but there was only one piece that interested Hawks.

The Hyiakutt did as he had been instructed and knelt, bowed his head, and awaited recognition. Chen took a seat on the throne, then looked at the man before him.

"Oh, please do stand up. Sorry to keep you waiting, old boy," Chen said in a cheerful, casual tone. "But I'm a busy man, and even arranging to get the two of us together this one time has been something of a bother." His accent was not exotic but casual and without any distinguishing regionalisms. It was about as pure as English ever got. Hawks soon discovered, though, that Lazlo Chen's accent shifted to match the other speaking to him. The man was a born master linguist. The Hyiakutt historian stood and found he was still below eye level.

"I appreciate the effort, my lord," Hawks responded politely. "I have put many people to much trouble to gain this audience with you."

Lazlo Chen looked at him with bright, penetrating eyes, and a trace of a smile crept onto his face. "You came because of the ring. You came because you were sick and tired of being one of the sheep."

Hawks was startled. "Do you read my mind, then?"

Chen chuckled. "It is easy to read a man's mind when one understands him so well. When I entered, you thought something like, well, 'Here is this primitive throwback wearing on his ring finger something of which he can't possibly know the import. How will I deal with him for it?'"

"I-I was not so unflattering, but I do admit to the rest of it. I take it now, though, to mean that you know exactly what you have."

"I do, and yet I do not," the Emperor admitted. "Here- come close and look at it. I have done so for two decades now."

Hawks approached, fascinated in spite of himself. After enduring so much for so long, he would not be denied at least the sight of the objective.

The ring was not, as he had feared, plain or ugly but a thing of great beauty, shimmering gold in the lamplight, studded with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other precious gems. Set into the front on a bed of pure jade was a symbol in bright silver so perfect, it could not have been cut by human hands no matter how exacting the artisan. Three tiny, perfect birdlike creatures flanking a diamond set in such a way that each of the birds stood at the point of a triangle.