"Primarily. Everything is subject to the cranial biochemistry. We can make you cry and feel miserable when you are happy and laugh hysterically at the funeral of your best friend. Even humor and tragedy are found here. It is like opium.

The experience is so pleasurable that nothing else is possible except sustaining the experience. Opium drops pleasure modules in the receptors. It is, however, a foreign substance and is eventually expelled as such by the body, but the experience lingers so much that you wish only to find more. That is addiction.

Once we discover the right mix of modules and blockers, we can stimulate your own body to produce the needed enzymes. As with genetically mandated enzymes, the combination that forms you as you are now, we will use blockers to prevent undesired genetically mandated material from finding its receptors, while our newly stimulated substances will find theirs. Over a relatively short period of time the body will adjust and shift to this new pattern, overriding the old, and it will be totally permanent and self-perpetuating. It is so complex that only a computer could isolate and define all the receptors and determine the mix, but only after I tell it the desired goals. There."

She felt pressure and a very slight momentary stinging in her right shoulder.

"Just relax. Only a mild test," he assured her soothingly. "Purely transitory.

We won't get into anything really elaborate today."

She waited, scared to death of this man and his machines, and watched the hologram. Not all the chemical pieces remained put for any length of time; things were always changing, pieces disconnecting and others coming in, although the basic pattern remained the same.

Now, suddenly, some new pieces came into the scene, in colors not otherwise represented. Some were jet-black; others were yellow or gray. Many went right by, but some headed immediately for receptor points as if on homing beacons. A few of the black ones stuck to a blood vessel wall, as if waiting, and when some of the blue pieces vacated their natural positions, the black ones dislodged themselves and then swept in to fill the emptiness. More of the blue entered, natural chemicals, but they found their places occupied, and after pausing as if they were intelligent creatures, they moved on and out of view.

She continued to watch, and suddenly she began to tremble. She felt afraid-afraid not of the doctor or his machines but of everything. She began to cry, and the cry turned into uncontrollable sobbing. She felt a sense of terrible despair. Everything was hopeless. She was unloved, reviled, loathsome to others and to herself. She was unworthy, incapable of doing anything right.

She needed someone-anyone-to protect her, to guide her. She needed someone-anyone-to instruct her in all things. She was afraid almost to think, to make any decisions, because she could only make the wrong ones. She felt so humble, so tiny and insignificant, that she wished someone would take her and command her.

The display shifted, although she had not seen it and had not even felt the second injection. Substances of differing colors moved in and eased out the foreign objects; the black ones were ordered out, and some but not all were replaced in her biochemical tapestry. .

She stopped crying, feeling much, much better now; a damp cloth wiped her face, and she smiled at the feel. It felt wonderful. Everything felt wonderful. Her whole body tingled, and even the brush of skin against the chair or her hospital gown seemed an erotic caress. She was drifting now on a wonderful, magical euphoric cloud in which nothing at all mattered. They could do anything, anything at all to her, and it would not matter. She rarely had any sort of sexual dreams or fantasies, but this was real, and she wished someone would come and take her and ravish her body and do whatever they wished with her. She had a vision of herself as a sultry woman of pleasure, dancing, moving, naked and free in front of a group of adoring men, and she really liked the fantasy.

Blockers and enzymes shifted and changed, and the feelings and the fantasies faded quickly. Reality returned, although she had always been conscious of where she was and what was happening. The difference was that she was becoming clearheaded once more, coldly confident, and increasingly angry over what was being done here. She struggled against her bonds, cursing the fact that she was trapped in a weak woman's body. She didn't feel like a woman; deep down, she had a vision that she was a man, a man trapped by science or sorcery in this weak girl's body, a strong and virile man with courage and confidence and raw animal power. She'd rather bed this body than be trapped in it. Anger turned to pure animal fury, and she struggled against the metal rings that bound her.

Adrenaline pumped,' and she actually twisted and bent the rings and managed to get one hand free. He would show them! He would.

More shifting, more changing color patterns. The sense of strong sexual identity faded but was not replaced. She had no concept of maleness or femaleness; gender was an irrelevancy, without meaning to her. The anger, too, faded quickly, and she felt totally calm, unable even to relate to the emotions she had experienced up to that point. She was like a machine: aware, intelligent, but without passion, without any feelings at all about anything. Yet she was as clearheaded, as logical, as she could ever be. Stripped of her animalism, she stared at the patterns in the hologram and almost immediately grasped their logic and meaning based upon what she had seen so far. At this level, where even pleasure and pain, fear and love, were mere terms, she analyzed her situation. She was being reprogrammed, but this level was the most efficient for undertaking an escape.

There was no hatred, no bitterness, no feeling of any sort that was relevant to her. Escape was mandated because this stage was the optimum one for her potentials, and it was illogical to abort it.

"I believe we have done enough for today," Doctor Wang said casually. "Too much can wear you out and cause harm to the body. My! You really did a job on those restraints! Well, I will just recline you now and allow you to rest and the enzymes to be expelled from your system. It will probably cause you to sleep, so just relax and let it happen. I'll be back in a few minutes to check you out, then you can go and eat."

She watched the doctor actually leave and no one else come back in. She did not feel elation or any other emotion, but she realized immediately that they had made their first mistake. There was simply no way that the chief administrator, her father, was going to allow this place to be without standard safeguards.

"Code Lotus, black, green, seven two three one one," she said aloud in a calm, expressionless voice. "Emergency override activation is ordered."

A computer voice responded from somewhere to the left rear of her. "Code acknowledged," it said. "Reason for interrupt?"

"Pawn takes king."

"Accepted. Instructions?"

Her father could never trust anyone, and that meant anyone. All Center computers with human interfaces were programmed with override codes that would allow him, if need be, to countermand almost any order. He changed the codes quite often and then just as often forgot them, so he had them encoded in his personal files. The only time when he couldn't depend on this was when he was away in Hainan or on Leave, as he was about to be now. For that period, he needed a sequence of codes he could always remember, and he often used a variation of the same sequences year after year. At fifteen, she had broken that code and had gone undiscovered, and she had had little trouble in the hidden room back home in establishing the few changes for this year now that she knew what she was looking for. That had been her one hope, but this had been the first opportunity to use it.

"Subject in Chair Two is object threat to king. At a point when this laboratory is not scheduled for use for a period of at least one hour, you will release subject from cell and substitute recording of previous time of subject in cell so that this is undetected, and you will suppress all alarms and guarantee uninterrupted access. You will be prepared to assist and guard. All outbound channels are monitored, so this is under my seal alone."

"Understood. Additional?"

"I would like to perpetuate my current physical and mental orientation until otherwise instructed. Then stand by until I am able to contact you here again."

"Understood. Formulating." There was a pneumatic hiss below her arm, then an injection. "Duration indefinite. Must be altered chemically."

"Understood. Switch off. I will sleep now."

She went immediately to sleep and did not dream at all.

She awakened back in her cell, but one thing was different. This time they had left the rice bowl and cool tea and not remained to watch her eat. Apparently they were confident of her and themselves now. She would require energy, and there was no way of forecasting when more might be available, so she went over and ate it all. She drank sparingly. She was aware that she could not move for long periods about the cell without attracting attention. She had been so-animalistic. She therefore assumed a position of meditation facing the door and willed her body into trancelike stillness. For the first and only time in her life, she had nearly total control over herself; she did not wonder at that but rather took it for granted.

There were alternatives to consider. Song Ching was in the Master System, so Song Ching must be accounted for somehow, at least for a sufficient length of time to make good an escape. She was in control only of the local network here; she had to take care not to flag Master System and not to raise human alarms.

Master System she thought she could block for a sufficient period of time; the humans were the unpredictable ones.

Even if she escaped from here, though, there would be little she could do. Any security flag within Center itself would be immediately checked with Colonel Ching or her father. All direct access by her would have been blocked long ago.

She could, of course, survive almost indefinitely in the maze of tunnels and service corridors. They might eventually activate a Val, but it would be useless because it would have her old imprint and assume that she would act on animal and distinctly Song Ching motives. If nothing else presented itself, though, she would do that until she was either captured or had managed somehow to tie in to the network from below and use it.

She also had infinite patience and waited for the inevitable to happen or not to happen. She could not even feel any sense of danger or excitement. Her plan was something that had to be tried on grounds of pure logic; it was that and nothing else which motivated her. She would not even feel disappointment if she was apprehended, or even if the door failed to open at all.

But it did open. She waited a moment to make certain that it hadn't opened to let an orderly pick up the food, then stood and walked out and down the maze of corridors, all barriers opening before her. She had been this way in a conscious state only once, but the route was absolutely clear to her. She met no one but was fully prepared to kill if she had to. Death meant absolutely nothing to her.

The lab was deserted, as she knew it would be, and she ordered it sealed to the outside. "How long can you avoid someone discovering I am gone?" she asked the computer.

"With an adjustment in the records showing that you have been fed and tended to and adjustments in the staff's orders, including Doctor Wang's, I can delay a minimum of twenty-four hours but no more than seventy-two."

"I must escape beyond the reach of Center or Administration so long as the threat remains," she told it.

"I do not see any way that this is possible."

"Nor do I. Other than escaping to the service corridors, my only other possibility is to escape to space with access to a spaceship command module.

Other emergency overrides are possible once I am in that position."

"Any spaceship? Any size?"

"Yes. So long as it will support my biological requirements."

"There is one way, but it is complex and for that very reason has only a marginal chance of success."

"Proceed."

"There are two prisoners who are completed here and are to be transported in a matter of hours to an interplanetary courier, to be sent to Melchior."

"I have seen them."

"The younger of the two is close to your size, and with preparation and in transport clothing you might pass for him. While they will not look too closely so long as the paperwork is correct, some extreme adjustments would have to be made to you in order for you to sustain the masquerade all the way to the spaceport. Additionally, something must be done with the one whom you will replace, and adjustments must be made to the other, for he will know immediately that you are not his cousin and is most likely to betray you."

"What measures?"

"It is not sufficient that you masquerade as a boy. To sustain it, you must be the boy. There is no point at which you will be stripped on the schedule, but we are talking thirty hours to clear, during which any slip will be fatal."

"Proposal?"

"The two have been kept sedated on a robot-controlled console table in a medical cell in the men's section pending transfer. I can get them here without human intervention or knowledge for a period of time. If we begin now, I can make some basic physical and chemical alterations in you within two hours. Because of the time involved, much of it will be synthetics and a basic shell, but it will be authentic and convincing. It is not possible to actually switch minds, nor desirable in this case in any event, because your psychochemistry and physical requirements are so different, but I can lay his template atop my alterations and reinforce the illusion with hypnotics. You will act like him, think like him on the conscious level, walk and talk like him. You will not be him, but you will think you are. I will then use a strong hypnotic on the other and replace the mental image of Chu Li with what you will look and sound like, and he will accept you as his cousin even in the face of true physical evidence to the contrary. I will also modify the security holograms with animation to show you and not the real Chu Li in pictorials and charts. Barring the unforeseeable, it should be adequate."

"Duration?"

"Your template, being unsuited to you, will begin to deteriorate rather quickly, but it should hold reasonably well for at least the necessary three days, as will the hypnotics. The hypnotic on the companion, being far simpler, should last longer. Underneath, you will have access to all your own memories and knowledge, but your personality will be the new one. Be warned that even with this, the possibilities of being successful are slim, perhaps two percent."

"And the service corridor route?"

"The possibility of doing more than surviving there is no more than one percent.

Survival possibilities are higher-nine percent. Restored to your original genetic encoding, which adds the animal safeguards, you have almost a thirty percent chance of indefinite survival but less than a one percent chance of doing anything more than that."

"Why would I have more of a survival chance as the old Song Ching?"

"Right now you must think about all alternatives, then make the most logical decision. The full animal instruction set allows action without thinking and induces many cautions."

"It is not logical to use the corridor alternative, then, since I would be unable to continue my work, and this is the sole reason for escape. It is not much better an alternative than allowing the work here to proceed. The space route is the only logical choice allowing any chance of complete success."

"Agreed. However, there is a caution. While the hypnotics and template will deteriorate, the psychochemical changes will not. You will be a sexually oriented male and will retain a basically male set of personality characteristics. As you presently are, this does not seem a consideration, but it has the potential to cause great anguish later. To undo and restore without causing permanent damage or alterations would require your template and codes and an installation such as this, unlikely to be in friendly hands."

"Escape is the only imperative. All other problems are potential and therefore secondary. Enact."

6. BARGAINS AT SPEAR'S POINT.

"I AM A HISTORIAN, A MAN OR WORDS AND ANCIENT OBJECTS," Hawks told her, feeling uncomfortable. "I am no fighter. I do not lack the courage, but I lack the training and skills to go against these renegades."

"Your muscles are developing in the right places," Cloud Dancer assured him.

"And your reactions are quite swift for one who works with words, as I have seen. Not one of these men I have seen is even fit to carry your spear. Their strength is entirely in numbers. Apart they would be cowards and helpless."

"What you say might be true, but in case you had not noticed, my dear wife, I do not possess the spear they are not fit to carry, nor bow, nor arrows, nor knife, nor anything else that they have in plenty. And I move in the dark like a buffalo," he added.

"We shall see. I shall see what we are up against this night, and we will then make plans for tomorrow night. There may be some way to find things here that might make weapons. A weapon is anything which can be used as one, after all."

He was startled. "You are going out there?"

"In the early hours, when it is chill and very dark. There are clouds tonight.

That will help. For now, let us find some not so rotten fruit to steal from the poor animals and get some rest."

When she woke him, he frowned and rubbed his eyes, then saw that the first light of a dismal gray day was already dawning. "It is too late," he mumbled. "We have slept through the darkness."

"You slept through. I have been out and around half this village," she responded, sounding very pleased with herself.

That woke him up fast. "What!"

"Ssssh! They are poor excuses for warriors. Two watched from across the way,

one.

almost across from the door here and the other from down the street. The one across from us slept most of the night through, while the one down the street kept leaving for drinks from a container inside and was seeing anything but us.

The sleeping one was depending on a dog to wake him if we moved, but although the dog saw me, it approached and wagged its tail, as if waiting for a treat of food. When it found I had none, it followed a short distance, then lost interest and returned to its still sleeping master. There are some very mean-looking guards, it is true, but they guard the landing and the storehouse, which is far from here. Even they seemed bored and might not be impossible to get by."

"But you might have been killed!"

She smiled. "No, I am the prize, remember? You they might kill, my husband, but me they want and will take if we do nothing. More, I have made a friend, I think. One who might be of value to us."

"What? Who?"

"I do not know her name, nor her tribe, but it is certainly far down the river.

She is one of their slaves, a small, pretty woman aged far beyond her years. She was the only one who surprised me, and it was very much by chance. I think she rises in the middle of the night to prepare the big lodge where most of them eat the morning meal. She just stepped out back and almost ran in to me. She clearly knew who I was. I guess they all do."

"You say this is a friend, yet you do not know her name, her tribe, or her work exactly, and she is a longtime slave here?"

"She could not tell me. She did not know the sign language or Hyiakutt. It would not matter if she had seen you, however, who know so many tongues. Someone, perhaps long ago, cut her tongue out."

That both angered and sickened him. "So what makes you say she is a friend who comes from the south?"

"Anyone can get a few basic pieces of information across with hand, body, and eyes. I believe she would help us just to spite them, but she also does not wish me to join her. She may be of great help. Kitchens such as theirs have sharp knives and hatchets."

Perhaps fortune was finally taking pity on them, although it certainly hadn't up to now. He could understand the slave's situation and pity her. Here in a culture as alien to her as his was to the Aztec, she would be lost and without friends. Escape? To where? Even if her tribe was willing to take her back, the chances of which were fifty-fifty, she would first have to get there, far to the south, a young woman without even the power of speech in a wilderness alien to her.

"We will check out the area and see what our true situation is," he told her.

"See what we can and cannot get away with, too. They have the respect of the tough river traders, so that means they have influence beyond this small village. They are not hunters but traders. They could not support all this without something strong to trade."

"They are thieves!" she shot back.

"Yes, and more. They sell their protection, I think. If you trade with them, on terms very generous to them, you have no problems. If not, well, the river is wide and mostly desolate. You simply meet with an unfortunate accident, and they have even more to trade."

"It is indecent if what you say is true! They have no honor at all! I cannot understand why warriors such as these traders do not band together and wipe out this snake nest!"