For an AI who reputedly spurned emulation of any human emotion, Ralf had the clear impression that the sixty-four-bit string of nulls that Ring directed at him was a distinctly insulting snort of contempt. The Zone Lord was a real Player, and a poor one; it was not impossible that he would have written some trashy thing named Darkrider. Clearly Ring found it believable.

Ralf said curiously, You are rather large for an AI, aren"t you?

DARKRIDER, said Ring patiently, WE MUST SHARE THESE PROCESSORS AND DATA s.p.a.cE UNTIL THE WEB ANGELS HAVE Pa.s.sED.

BUT WE NEED NOT TALK TO ONE ANOTHER, AND IF YOU DO NOT QUIET YOURSELF,.

I WILL UNRAVEL YOUR CODE WHEN WE HAVE LEFT HERE.

OH. SORRY.

SHUT UP. AND TELL THE ZONE LORD, WHEN NEXT YOU SEE HIM, THAT THE ELDEST.

SAYS HE"S AN IDIOT.

YOU"RE THEELD-.

SHUT UP.

The cell door curled aside.

Denice, sitting in lotus in the center of her bed, hands on her knees, said mildly, "h.e.l.lo, Callia."

A chair extruded itself from the floor; Callia sat. "h.e.l.lo, Denice."

Denice smiled. "It"s good to see you. I saw Lan earlier today, in the gym; I thought it was him again, just now. Except for the doctor who worked on me, you"re the first person who"s come to see me here in my cell."

Callia studied her. "You seem in good spirits."

Denice shrugged. "I will not worry about things I cannot affect. Right now I"m waiting for things to change. One way or another, they will. And soon, I think."

"I spoke to your teacher Robert-"

Denice said quickly, "How is he?"

"Fine. In the cell down the hall from yours. I asked him to join us, told him that if he didn"t, he"d be executed. Which is the truth, incidentally, I wasn"t threatening him."

"And he said"-Denice paused-"that he couldn"t work with people he didn"t respect. And that Mister Obodi is an amateur he doesn"t respect."

"Very good."

Denice nodded. "He"s a good teacher. He"s taught me to think like him. All that Robert sees is that Obodi got himself into a fight that he can"t win. Robert wouldnever have done that."

"Denice-Los Angeles is gone. PKF are taking back San Francisco as we speak. All that"s left is Navajo s.p.a.ceport, j.a.pan, and San Diego." She took a deep breath and said, "We"re losing the war."

"I know. Lan told me. I"m not surprised; I always thought you would. You"re outnumbered, outgunned, and outplanned."

"I don"t understand it. Our simulations-"

"Lied to you. Ring lied to you."

"Butwhy ?"

Denice shook her head. "Obodi hasn"t told you something. I don"t know what it is. But he"s told Ring, the AI who worked with you. And then Ring lied to you because it was the only way that the Claw would rise with the Rebs."

"Can you guess?"

"What Obodi is planning? No. Something likely to work, or the Eldest would not have aided him. That"s the best I can give you."

"Okay," said Callia slowly. She glanced around at the tiny cell. "Just out of curiosity, what are you doing in here?"

"I won"t do something he wants me to."

"That"s as clear as you"re going to be?"

"It"s a very long story, Callia. Just out of curiosity, why did Obodi let you come see me?"

"I don"t know. I didn"t ask him, I just said that I was going to; and he didn"t say no. He can"t alienate the Claw too much, even now; he needs the Temples to organize recruitment in San Diego, and only the Claw has the credibility with the public to do that."

"Did he ask you to talk to me about anything in particular?"

"No. He did ask me to come see him afterward, and report."

Denice had thought about not saying it, and then decided to. "Tell him I still won"t dance for him."

Callia stared at her. "He has-This is because you won"tdance for him?"

"That"s the short answer."

"That"s psychotic."

Denice smiled at her. "It"s the truth."

"I thought-I thought he didn"t-"

"Like women? Apparently there are exceptions."

Callia rose slowly; the chair sank away into the floor. "I"ll-try and see what I can do about this. I can"t promise you much."

"Okay. Do me a favor?"

"What?"

"Take Robert some gum? Wrigley"s Spearmint, if you can find it."

Callia stared at her again. She shook her head and left without saying anything further.

A half hour later, the cell door curled aside. Denice said gently, "h.e.l.lo, Lan."

"Obodi said I could visit you, if I wished to."

"I see." She paused. "My hair is extremely short."

"Good hair isn"t everything."

On Tuesday, July 14, Mohammed Vance flew eastward over Los Angeles in an Armored AeroSmith.

It was safe, finally; it had taken two weeks, but the orbital laser cannon were either destroyed or in s.p.a.ce Force hands. Twelve Elite dead in the process. Twenty-seven of forty-two laser cannon had been destroyed; only fifteen were left, and nine of those were only partially functional.

Another gorgeous day in Paradise. Bright blue skies, with the very faintest of wispy white clouds hovering high above. The Pacific Ocean glittered, far off to the right, a deeper blue.

Beneath him the city was a wreck. Fires still smoldered along the length of the Wilshire Corridor, from the ocean to Old Downtown. He pa.s.sed over the ruined remnants of Century City; it had suffered the worst of the fighting. The two tacnukes he"d been allowed to use had been expended in Century City; with them he"d wiped out the fiercest of the rebel resistance. Not a single high rise in all of Century City was left standing. Old Downtown, where the Temples of Eris were popular, had been more a matter of street fighting; at street level, the scars of battle were everywhere, but from two hundred meters up, today it simply looked abandoned.

East of Old Downtown, in the modern core of the city, it was almost possible to believe things were normal; there was even some traffic on the streets, the odd pedestrian here and there. Throughout most of the city, the surface streets were clogged with the downed wrecks of vehicles, both rebel and PKF; in modern downtown, the streets were largely clean. By the time PKF forces had moved this far east, most of the resistance had stopped.

Casualty estimates were nine hundred thousand civilian deaths; a quarter million deaths among those could properly be called rebels. Even with vastly superior firepower Vance had lost seventy thousand troops taking back the city; forty-four PKF Elite.

And while they mopped up in L.A., down in San Diego the rebels dug in. They"d had fifteen days, now, to prepare in j.a.pan, without having to worry about the Peaceforcers; and were antic.i.p.ating another two to three weeks for the Unification to take back San Diego.

Vance said to his pilot, "Let"s return."

The pilot nodded; the AeroSmith banked, began a slow arc over the blasted city, in whose streets one and a quarter million corpses lay rotting.

"All the waste," Vance murmured.

Bright daylight. Two teenagers actually played on the beach, threw a Frisbee back and forth in front of the row of tanks.

Denice sat in lotus before Sedon.

He knelt facing her, hands folded in his lap, the very image of serenity. "I have been thinking about our last conversation."

"Yes?"

"Is there anything I could say to you-anything I could do for you-that would convince you to join me?"

Denice thought about it before answering. "Give me back my Gift. Let me see my brother. Let me see my teacher. Then-perhaps. I won"t make you a promise when I don"t know myself."

"You spoke with Callia Sierran the other day."

"You allowed it."

"I was curious," Sedon admitted. "The perception you revealed, even unaided by your Gift, impressed me."

"You never thought this rebellion would succeed."

"Not as it was presented to those who would fight it for me, no. There was never any possibility that the Unification would be overthrown."

"Why did you do this?"

"I am constrained by the language I must use with you. It lacks grace." Sedon paused, said slowly, "And vocabulary. But I have no time to teach you to speak shiata; so we must struggle along."

"What do you want to talk to me about?"

"My failure to persuade you to join me. It occurred to me... recently... that once I was a master of persuasion, a man whose words were so feared that I was exiled to a distant world rather than given the opportunity to Speak before Demolition." Denice simply looked at him, and Sedon inclined his head slightly. "Forgive me," he said after a moment. "I have decided to be honest with you, but it has been some time since I have had the need, and I am somewhat-out of practice. In the last days I have resurrected a set of memories and beliefs I have had virtually no occasion to call upon since my exile to this world. For a time so long you cannot understand it, I havehad no concern but survival. You must understand how sudden all of this has been; in the four years since I was released from my imprisonment, I have had to adjust to a world as foreign to me as you would find that of the sleem. Suddenly, for the first time in many, many millennia, I encountered humans with skills and concerns other than those of mere survival; humans withpa.s.sion. I make no apologies for my actions, Denice. I"ve killed many people in this time, and abused many others. And it came to me," Sedon said, in a quick rush, "when you and I last talked, that once I wouldnot have taken such actions so lightly; that I might have taken the lives of those who opposed me, but that I would have done so with care, with some measure of concern for the how and why of it. And last night I dreamed of the person I had once been, of the man who led a rebellion on the World, and I knew that if I were to face that person, I would be shamed. And it came to me, while I dreamed, that I must, for the sake of my own survival, become again that creature for whom survival was not everything."

"You"re telling me that-since the last time I talked to you-you turned into a different person."

Sedon spoke to her in the gentlest voice she had ever heard him use. The impact of his pale blue eyes, touched with pain and longing, was devastating. "Denice Castanaveras, I am telling you exactly that."

They sat together in silence for a long, long while.

Denice tried to order her thoughts, and failed. She knew there was a plaintive note in her voice. "What do youwant from me?"

"We will meet, very shortly," said Sedon, "with representatives from the Unification. We will request that they give us California, from San Francisco to San Diego, and j.a.pan. In return we will cease fighting."

"They"ll say no."

"I would have you at my side during the negotiations. To aid me."

Denice paused. "And in return?"

"I will free your brother. Your teacher. I will return to you your Gift. If there is anything else, you have only to ask. There is the embryo of a Dancer in you andI want you with me."

"SecGen Eddore won"t come. Neither will Vance. And whoever we send back, no matterwhat I or David tell them to say, won"t have the authority to make the deal you want. Anything short of an unconditional surrender will be rejected out of hand by people you neversee."

"I have twenty-two hydrogen fusion warheads. And I am capable of delivering them, via semiballistic, anywhere in the world."

Dizziness touched her. She thought she might be sick; she had to look down at the floor. "No."

The voice was elegant, a thing of beauty. "I do not understand. "

"No.No. I don"t know how you think you"ve changed yourself-but this is evil. What you are talking about doing is anevil thing. And I won"t help you. I won"t ever,ever help you."

The reaction was not what Sedon had expected. He felt a flicker of genuine uncertainty; could he possibly have miscalculated so badly? He shook his head, said quietly, "How have I disturbed you?"

The more complex the argument gets, Trent had said to her once,the easier it is to refute .

Trent"s presence was so strong in the room that Denice could have sworn he stood there by her side.

Denice Castanaveras looked at the monster and said, "Killing is wrong."

- 24 -.

They stood together in a conference room aboard the parked s.p.a.ce Force s.p.a.ceship that was being used as headquarters; two French Peaceforcers who served the Unification.

Vance"s senior a.n.a.lyst, PKF Captain Adrian Hile, said, "He"s here."

Vance studied the holo, a realtime feed from a spysat. "You"re certain?"