She would not, of course, have to tend to or raise all those children. There would be a staff for that, partly picked from the female prisoner population. It was thought that the Chows might be ideal to start this staff once other experimenters were done with them. The two North American newcomers would also be good for this: no other projects had been planned for them since they really were surprise additions. The silent one with the painted body desperately needed to tend to children, and short of going through the Institute's Metamorphosis Clinic there was no way she could physically have them herself.

Song Ching herself, however, would be renamed and programmed to respond to her new name. Because the working language agreed to was English, since that was what the computers responded to, it was felt that it should be a name that sounded appropriate in English. After some debate, the mostly non-Oriental staff decided on China Nightingale. Although almost twenty percent of the staff was of Chinese extraction, there would be only one China.

But because China would have access to their computers, they wanted other guarantees. They could not threaten her with the loss of computer access because it was for their benefit, not hers, that they allowed it at all. Although she would not actually have to raise her children, she was programmed to be almost fanatically possessive toward them. Her children would always come before any hatreds, grievances, resentments, or personal anything. She would not risk their lives, safety, or future on risky undertakings against the Institute. They would in effect be hostages to her good behavior.

The other guarantee was that she did not have to see to work with her machines and her theories but that instead this would force her to interact with them vocally at all times. That way, with only a slight slowdown in her ability to work, she would never be able to encrypt or bury discoveries or requests for information. It would all be recorded and analyzed by a research team and another, independent computer. The blindness, they decided, had been a stroke of sheer luck. Conditioned to repairing the most grievous injuries, able to grow eyes, limbs, even things like tails that weren't there before, they never would have thought to create such a handicap. Now, though, they removed her eyes and replaced them with realistic but totally nonfunctional synthetics with an unregistered retinal pattern.

The cosmetics completed the work. Her voice had been lowered a half octave; they raised it an octave and a half. It sounded shrill and unpleasant to her ears, but they assured her it sounded quite nice to others. It was a very high soprano, cut with a certain throaty softness. They thickened the lips, broadened the mouth, and gave her something of a pronounced overbite, pushed back her ears a bit, enlarged her breasts, and widened her hips, then gave her a new permanent set of fingerprints and footprint patterns, also unregistered. None of the changes could be genetically transmitted, of course, so they felt free to experiment. She was still quite attractive, although not in the classical sense that she had been, but the only thing she had in common with Song Ching was her height and the fact that both were Chinese.

Finally, they told her all that they had done and why. They also told her that they had a way of locking it in, of making the brain reject any attempts at physical or psychochemical change. She could still be hypnoed or mindprinted, but any attempt to change the physical composition, which included both the blindness and the psychochemicals, would be doomed. Then they reimprinted her, turning her silver identifiers a metallic red. Now she was property of the Institute. The new chemical would prevent her from leaving the Institute area; she would live as well as work there. To leave would automatically flag security.

She would never really be able to visualize what she looked like now, but she accepted the idea that no one who had known her would ever recognize her. This and the blindness she accepted and paired off against the guilt which had forced her to become Chu Li. What she could neither forgive nor forget was what they had turned her into for their own purposes. She would be a thinking, working human being only so long as she was pregnant. Worse, she knew that once her first child was born, they would have a sword at her throat. Even if one day she determined how to escape, she would be held here, for they would never let her take the child, and she would not be able to risk it. After that, the only hope of freedom of action would be to do what they feared and seize control of their system. Doing this with verbal queries and commands and having to enter everything verbally would be next to impossible unless she found allies, and that might take a long, long time. Escape within those nine months seemed even more impossible and could certainly not be done without a lot of help, all of which would be years in coming, if it ever did.

Or, then again, it might come in three months.

She was walking down the hall to her quarters, a route with which she was now totally familiar. Her quarters, which were large and luxurious with fur and silk and even luxury foods and toiletries, she knew now better than she knew computer coding. Unless someone carelessly left something for her to trip on in the hall, it would be almost impossible to tell on this route that she was blind at all.

She felt someone approach from behind and sensed it was a woman. She didn't know how she knew, but she was getting quite good at that sort of thing.

"Stop right here," the woman hissed in oddly accented English. "This is a point where monitors do not reach because there is no entrance or exit, but keep your voice low."

She frowned. "Who are you? What do you want?"

"A potential friend. Is it true that you know how to override a spaceship pilot?

That you can independently command a ship?"

"I think so. I did it once."

"That was a premodified ship and strictly interplanetary. Could you do it to an unmodified interstellar craft?"

"I-I think so. The theory is the same. Only someone would have to get the necessary equipment and follow my instructions. I couldn't do it myself, and the work would have to be done in a space suit. Why do you ask this? Are you tormenting me?"

"You give me the list of what you would need, down to the last part. All of it.

Then work out any problems and theoretical situations on the computer. They won't mind. They feel that there is no escape from here."

"Is there?"

"We have a way out and a place to go but no means of getting there. It was supposed to be all arranged, but the people who run this place cannot be trusted in this matter. For this reason, we need you."

She couldn't decide whether the accent was real or put on to fool her and prevent identification. "Who is we?"

"You know all you need to know for now. You just do the work, and we will make history."

She knew the mysterious woman had walked on, and she stood there and listened.

There was the sound of heels hitting the floor. Whoever she was, she was staff, certainly no prisoner. Even in the velvet-lined Institute she was not permitted any clothing or personal possessions. She thought it must be a trick, Clayben or his people getting her onto this simply to see if she could work it out and do it for their own ends. Still, it could be the break she had prayed for. Even if it was a trick, they might find themselves in something of a bind if she were calling the shots.

She began the next day by running an inquiry on interstellar ships in the area.

On the regular runs there were only two, both freight haulers with no human accommodations sections aboard. There was, however, something else.

"Sixty-one master transports, all in mothball storage in orbit around Jupiter,"

the computer informed her.

"What is a master transport?" she asked.

"Please put on the headset," the computer responded, and she did so.

Pictures formed in her mind, along with plans and even schematics. The information was startling. The ships were huge. They could carry Melchior itself inside them, although it was several kilometers wide, and still carry and support a population equal to half of her native China as she knew it.

Master System had been in a hurry almost nine hundred years before. It needed to facilitate the diaspora quickly and in large chunks. It had to transport, in the end, five billion people along with all the equipment and supplies to get them started on the new worlds. These ships had done their job in years rather than centuries. There had, however, been a price. Unwieldy, they consumed enormous quantities of energy and were impractical for anything needed today. Master System, however, had not simply abandoned them but stored them just in case it ever needed such ships again. To build such things was a mammoth undertaking, and it would be even more difficult now.

She already knew that the older a design was, the easier the pilot interface.

These ships dated back almost to the start of ship design, to within forty years after the birth of Master System itself. The interface was obvious and easily used. With a start, she realized that she had seen these schematics before and just not realized their sheer size and scale.

The illegal techs in the mountains of China. This was what their interface had been designed to take over. This was where they wanted to go. And they had figured out most of how to do it. It came back to her whole, in a flash, from her recent past. More, it was something that she didn't have to ask this computer about one damned bit.

She didn't know what was up or whose tricks were whose, but if they got her somehow on that bridge, with that interface hooked in, there was no way she could be stopped. She'd show them all. She'd steal one of Master System's greatest ships, and maybe Melchior, too, while she was at it!

Both Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman had been called to the Institute at least three times but so far Hawks had not. He had been somewhat concerned about them, but Cloud Dancer assured him that the people there were actually quite nice and quite civil and that nothing on the order of the magic box had been done. He wasn't so sure about that. Cloud Dancer had left right after breakfast one morning and had returned after dinner the following night, yet she was convinced she'd spent no more than half a day away. He could sense no real change in them except, of course, that both seemed to be very matter-of-fact about that foreign high-tech world and not at all suspicious of it or its masters. Also, both seemed to be quite a bit more romantic. He wondered what the hell was up.

Finally he got a call himself, and he was almost relieved. He had begun to suspect that they had forgotten about him. He went up to the door to the entry chamber, and when it opened for him, he entered the green imprinting room. The door closed behind him.

"Hold it right there, Chief," a familiar gravelly voice said. "This is as far as you go. This is about the only point that isn't monitored around here, since the fellow in the control room here, who's me at the moment, can zap the living shit out of you."

Hawks sighed. "Raven. I almost expected you. In fact, I expected you a very long time ago."

"This joint ain't easy, Chief. Besides, it's screwed up. They only follow orders when they feel like it, and since they got you and me and everybody else, they don't care who in here knows it. I was supposed to break you out, Chief. Chen's orders. You can figure the rest."

Hawks nodded. "I thought as much. But you can't?"

"Couldn't, anyway. I got it figured now. It won't be easy, and there are no guarantees, but I think I got the way. I even got a couple of places to go, in fact. Never mind where I got 'em, but it wasn't from Chen. You want out?"

"You know I do. But why tell me all this about Chen?"

"Hell, Chief-Chen's double-crossed everybody else, and I figure I'm next when the job's done, if it can be done. What the hell do I owe him, anyway? I don't like most of those bastards. "I'll be damned if I want to hand the keys to Master System to him or even to the Emperor. I figure it'll take five folks to work the rings. That right?"

"I think so. Who knows for sure?"

"Yeah, well, suppose two out of five is you and me, and we pick the rest of 'em.

I'm no whiz brain, but I know I'd rather have some of my own with a clear sense of honor and values in charge than somebody like Chen or any of the others. You game for that kind of thing?"

"You know I am, Raven. You also know just what the odds are, and even if you're playing straight with me now, we'll eventually have to come back to Chen for his, and he knows it."

"Yeah, well, I know what he knows. I know who's got three out of four. They're pretty distinctive, and didn't you say they had to be with humans with authority?"

"Yes."

"Then we'll find the fourth. Hell, there's only-what? A thousand worlds, give or take. Now, listen close, 'cause we're having our hands forced a little early.

They got this Chinese girl here. Genius but blind as a bat. Can't see a thing, and she's pregnant to boot. Only thing is, she knows how to drive the spaceships. She can take 'em over and fart at Master System control."

"I suspect I know of her. Her two companions are neighbors of mine. They know a little about the subject, too."

"Huh. Might be useful, but I don't know how big a crowd we can handle."

"If you're going to fool this security system, it'll take some doing."

"Can't be done. Foolproof. This place is a hundred percent escapeproof, pal, in all the ways you can think of."

"Then how-"

"I got a way they didn't think of. Nobody has, and nobody could because they never had an inside man. This is going on too long. You don't say anything to anybody, not even your girls, until I tell you-understand? I know you got to have them along, and they're what's causing the time problem. They been getting some psychochemical treatments now, and pretty soon it's off to the mind laundry, if you know what I mean. You hang tight. I'll move as quick as I can.

Okay. Just go out the way you came."

"Aren't you afraid they'll come for me in the meantime?"

"Won't be that long, Chief. That's why I'm tipping you. I don't want you throwing fits or causing trouble if they start pulling stuff on your family and friends. Adios!"

It won't be easy, and there are no guarantees, but I think I got the way. I even got a couple of places to go...

Hawks wandered down to the first-level plaza and began to look around. There were quite a number of rough characters here, but some with a great deal of knowledge and even a space background. There were others that, in spite of the virtual sealing of the prison, knew a lot of what was going on at the Institute, although how he wasn't really sure. One such was a big, bearded, hairy man named Lychenko, a Russian who had been fairly important back home and had a good working knowledge of even this place. Few were very close to the big man, but he had a passion for Greco-Roman style wrestling. Hawks wasn't much on form or technique, but he knew balance and had picked up the rules fairly quickly. He had also beaten the big man at least twice, which had earned him some respect.

"You know this place," he said casually to the Russian. "Anybody ever really gotten out?"

The Russian laughed. "Without walking through solid rock, no."

"Then if somebody on the inside said they could get you out, they would have to be playing a game with the authorities."

"You bet'cha. Why? You got a fix in?"

"I got a nibble, nothing more. I don't believe it. I think I'm being had. They like to play those games around here, as you know. I just wanted to make sure.

You heard anything about a blind girl who is a whiz at computers?"

"Huh! How did you know about her? Yah, they got her good. A slave of the Institute. About the best you can hope for around here."

Hawks nodded. "She wouldn't be named Song Ching or Chu Li, would she? I got a couple of neighbors who came in with somebody sounds just like that."

"She's called China, that's all I know. She would have come in with those others, though. They can play tricks. You know that. She would answer to Ivan if they wanted."

"Uh huh. Listen-my wives and the two Chinese newcomers have been getting trips in. You know what it's for?"

"Word is they're opening up some kind of nursery at the Institute. They need wet nurses and baby-sitters. Feed 'em chemicals so they get big breasts and full of milk like mamas of new babies, then shift their minds so all they want to do is change diapers and tend to kids. House mommies for some experiment. That it?"

Hawks nodded. "Could be. Any idea when they're supposed to be changed over?"

The big man shrugged. "The slower the better in these things. Figure they'll want 'em complete and ready way in advance of the actual project, though. Check 'em out with staff babies, see if it all works. They don't want variables in their experiments if they can limit them first. Hey-if this turns out for real as an escape, you remember old Gregor, hey?"

He thanked the Russian and went to find Reba Koll. She had dark-brown skin, blue eyes, and brown curly hair, and her features seemed a mixture of every race on Earth, but Reba had never been on Earth. She had been a freebooter who'd gotten a little greedy and a little sloppy. She was fine as long as one humored her.

Reba didn't like to be touched, for example. She also didn't like remarks about her tail, and it was a tail, an actual extension of the spinal column, covered with her own skin and muscle, that emerged from just above the rectum and went out and down to the floor. The Institute had caused it, although for what reason nobody, including Reba, knew. What Reba did know was space beyond the solar system and ships that followed her own orders.

"Reba, if you suddenly found yourself out of here and on a ship, where would you go?"

She smiled. Wishful thinking was a major pastime here. "That's the big question, isn't it? I couldn't go back to my own people. I'm kinda obvious even there."

She flicked her tail. "Couldn't go to any of the Community worlds, either. The ones you could live on, you'd still stand out like a sore thumb. Even you. Bush wild would be the only way to go."

"Huh? What's that mean?"

"There's a few places out there barely fit for human habitation with no people on 'em. Surplus worlds from the old days, ones that didn't quite work, stuff like that. Some got total nonhumans on 'em. Real, live alien creatures, but not like we think of 'em. So different, not even Master System can figure them out or worry about 'em. Some might be livable. You'd have to check 'em out, but they might. A Val might check 'em out, but if you dodged it, you could live there.

Not even Master System would care or check close. It's a big place out there, and it don't monitor much. A few of the worst ones are used by the free traders as depots. Real basic stuff. Some would be real dangerous and not exactly easy living, but it could be done."

"Indefinitely?"

"Yeah, if you survived at all. Some are totally off the charts, since the old survey and seeding ships sent out hundreds and hundreds of years ago didn't all report back. Master System had enough so it never looked for the rest. They were expendable. Why?"

"Could you navigate a ship to a place like that?" "I might. Again, why? You dreamin' big again?" "I'm dreaming impossible, Reba. Thanks." His mind started spinning with the possibilities that hope, no matter how feeble, generated. He saw the Chow sisters down by the food box and decided he needed something to eat himself. They were easily recognized, even in this place. In addition to whatever else was being done to them, their terrible scars were being eliminated-had been, in fact. The trouble was, they'd been treating them in small stages, and the new skin was a patchwork quilt of skin tones. They almost looked as if they had been painted for camouflage work, including browns, purples, tans, yellows, and creams, but he knew that in the end they would both be given a uniform skin tone that would last.

When they'd first met, Chow Dai had been perky and extroverted and her twin quiet and somewhat shy, but now the two seemed identically quiet and moody.

They were still friendly, perhaps almost too friendly. They both seemed to have embarked on a project to have a romantic liaison with every man and woman in this place.

After talking to Lychenko, he noticed that the sisters were putting on weight, mostly in the breasts and thighs, and in spite of normal-looking rations and lots of exercise, if nothing else. He had noticed the same thing happening in Cloud Dancer, and it was even more pronounced in Silent Woman, who had already been larger than the others.

He sat down next to the Chow sisters and nodded. "Hello. I've heard something about your friend."

They were interested. "She is here?"

"No, she's working at the Institute. She's still blind, and it's said she's pregnant."

"Pregnant!" Chow Mai breathed. "How wonderful it would be to have a child."

Chow Dai was still more pragmatic. "They changed her a lot, then. Either that or it's Sabatini's child. I, too, would love a child, but not one by that man."

"You two still have that gift for locks?"

"Sure. I suppose. Not much chance to use it, though. We could go through the doors, but they would catch us quickly. We've taken showers whenever we felt like it, though. That one's easy."

He nodded to himself, thinking. It would be just like Raven to be toying with him, and he suspected that was exactly what was being done, but the Crow was playing it very devious. His rough, nasty-looking exterior and unpleasant voice were accompanied by a harsh, uneducated slang dialect, making it easy to underestimate him, but nobody who had come this far or who knew some of the vocabulary Raven knew was a low-level hack. He wanted to be underestimated by everyone. It gave him an added edge. Hawks could well believe Chen had ordered them to break him out with the purpose of going after the rings, but Raven saying so straight out was disarming. Then, Raven was a friend and confederate against the evil Chen. In whose service, though, was he in the end? The trouble was, there was no way of penetrating the Crow's guise until the showdown.