The Elite in command, twenty-nine-year-old Elite Sergeant Pekar, saw her more clearly.

His optics resolved her in detail when she was still a kilometer away. A woman of slightly above average height, young, lean and muscular, wearing black fatigues whose sleeves were cut off at the shoulders. She was barefoot, with white skin and vaguely Asian features, with black hair so short it looked like a military cut.

When she was still a hundred meters away he made out the color of her eyes, a green the color of emeralds.

When she was twenty meters away, at the edge of PCH, Pekar called her to a halt. With his men covering him he came forward to meet her.

"Identify yourself."

The woman grinned at him, a smile that had no humor in it at all. "I"ll do better." Like a bricklayer unloading a bag of dry ferrocrete, she unslung the dead man"s body and dropped it unceremoniously to the pavement in front of them. She raised her voice to be heard by the PKF behind him. "This is the corpse of Mister Obodi, the leader of the Johnny Rebs." Pekar was aware of the murmur that went through the mostly American Peaceforcer troops standing behind him. "I am the personal a.s.sistant of Unification Councilor Dougla.s.s Ripper, Jr." The sunlight dazzled against the brilliant green of her eyes, against the single drop of sweat trickling down the sculpted muscle of her upper arm. "The bounty for Obodi was dead or alive. Well, this is him, and he can"t get any more dead than this. I"m Denice Daimara, and I"m alive. And I"m claiming the six million Credits."

The Last Dancer You say you had to do it But I don"t believe that"s true And I guess that later on tonight I"ll say a prayer for you -Mahliya Kutura, Independence Day "Street Songs."

2078 Gregorian DateLine:November 30, 2076 I"m feeling very relaxed these days, so I wanted to take a moment of your time-to catch up on my mail, make a threat, and share a dream I had.

I amnotback from my retirement .

For all of you who wrote and especially for all of you who got emotional, asking that I return to writing the column-I mean, Jesus. Get a life.

Speaking of Jesus, this one is for the webdancer in Philadelphia. I don"t know how you got my InfoNet ID, and I don"t care. Don"t call again. I"ve never turned anyone to DataWatch in my life, but you could be the first. (And if not DataWatch, I know a couple of Players who eat punks like you for lunch.) I appreciate that Jesus died for my sins-but I didn"t ask him to, and frankly it seems a little presumptuous on his part. I"m a big boy and I"ll handle my own sins.

Speaking of sins, to the girl in Baton Rouge-yes. I"ve tried that one. But thanks for the offer anyway; you have a genuineflairfor description.

And on the subject of offers, to Michaud Delancie, press secretary to the Secretary General: you ugly sociable disingenuous pig-f.u.c.king diseased lying greasy-palmed stringy-haired frog son of a b.i.t.c.h. I wouldn"t write speeches for the Secretary General if he was the last Secretary General on Earth, which, it seems clear, is the idea. The immense arrogance of the man would be appalling if it wasn"t exactly what we"ve come to expect from SecGen Eddore. Still, I"m troubled-are yousure this man is an American? That he was bornhere?

It"s common knowledge that Eddore"s mother didn"t speak to him for three years after the onset of the Troubles. How about it, Chuck? Getting the cold shoulder again?

So. Anyhow, I keep having this dream I wanted to tell you all about, one where I pick up a pumped laser and go climb up on some high spot, some fine upper location with a view, and watch PKF Elite through the scope. The modification to blow the power supply out in three or four shots is, I"m told, ridiculously easy; I"m kind of surprised that it took a rebellion to get the knowledge out into the general public.

I can"t, of course, tell you how to make the modification. That"s covered by the Official Secrets Act of 2076.

But in my dream that I was having, the one where I went up to a high place and looked down, in that very same dream I was scanning through the Fall "76 Black Box Catalog, and I stop on page 112, and the part numberas4077b01sort of leapt out at me. Yes. And it looks very much like a direct replacement for a part commonly found inside most Excalibur Series I through Series IV variable lasers.

I"m told the same modification can be made to most hand masers, though you"ll likely only get one shot with it.

The Secretary General probably wouldn"t appreciate my sharing this dream with you, but what the h.e.l.l. I don"t really appreciate the things he"s been trying to share withmerecently.

Come to think of it, I suppose Eddore must be an American.

"Cause the TriCentennial has certainly been good tohim.

If a little less so for the rest of us.

Later.

"Utter lie. Given Shawmac"s frequenty and well-publicized tirades against the office and person of the Secretary General, it hardly seems likely that we would attempt to retain him to write speeches for the Secretary General... You in the back. What"s that? Oh. Yes. The Prosecutor General likely will try to have him executed for publishing that Black Box listing. So he couldn"t write for us anyway."

-Michaud Delancie, press conference, December 2, 2076 - 1 -.

The PKF did not believe her story. Denice had never expected them to.

But it made for excellent propaganda, and she pointed it out to them. She had learned that much from Ripper, that a thing need not be true if it could be made to seem so.

They gave her the six million and made her famous. She was the woman whose loyalty to the Unification had been stronger than the ties of nationalism, a woman who had understood herself a citizen of the world.

When it was over, she was, next to Secretary General Eddore himself, one of the most admired and hated human beings in the system.

The Peaceforcers executed Robinette Cabot, the man who had introduced himself to Denice as Doctor Derek, on August 12, 2076. He was the 4,408th American executed since the end of the rebellion.

They released video of his execution to the Boards, as they had released video of the executions of 4,407 others; Rebs and Claw and even a few innocents wrongly accused.

Denice had followed Cabot"s case without intervening; she had not dared, not in his case or those of any of the others she recognized from her times in Iowa and Santa Monica. She watched him die, standing in front of a PKF firing squad, wondering why he hadn"t used his knowledge of her to save his life.

Perhaps he had tried, and they"d executed him anyway, to avoid warning her. The thought made the skin crawl on the back of her neck, but there was nothing at all she could do about it.

They sat out on the patio, at Ripper"s beachfront house in Hawaii, early on the morning of December 15, and watched the returns come in. An exercise in futility, Ripper muttered at one point, and with justification; they were going to lose and they had known it for the last month.

At lunchtime Ripper ushered his aides outside and sat alone with Denice. Balloting was less than four hours under way, with over twenty left to go: nonetheless the results were clear."Command, main off."

Ripper turned away from the large holofield as it vanished. "He"s the man who held the Unification together, and he"s running fifty-five percent I"m somewhere around thirty-two." In a matter-of-fact tone, Ripper said, "We"re not even going to get a second ballot." He sighed, rubbing his temples. "If only j.a.pan hadn"t fought so well."

Denice and Ripper ate lunch together quietly, sitting together in the large, empty dining room. The quiet babble of the newsdancers was barely audible in the background.

When lunch was over Dougla.s.s went outside and sat on the balcony overlooking the bay.

Denice turned the smaller holos off and joined him.

"Well," said Ripper grimly, after a long silence, "he got what he wanted. Fourth term, fifth term-the clone of a bleeder plans to hold on forever."

Denice nodded.

Ripper said, "I"m going to have to do something about this."

Later that evening they sat out on the patio and watched the waves ripple over the surface of the water.

The wind had come up and it was chilly. The sun was only a few minutes away from touching the surface of the ocean.

Dougla.s.s ordered them coffee drinks with whipped cream, and Denice sat cuddled inside the circle of his arms, watching the orange glow of the sun, while they waited for the waitbot to bring their drinks.

Dougla.s.s murmured, "Romantic, isn"t it?"

"I noticed."

Denice thought that perhaps Dougla.s.s was nervous; he said it very abruptly, utterly without his usual smoothness. "Will you marry me?"

Trent.The thought came and went; Denice smiled with just a touch of wistfulness, said gently, "No. No, I won"t."

His arms tightened around her slightly and he sighed. She did not think he was surprised. "Why not?"

"I have things to do."

He was silent then until their drinks came. After the waitbot had left he said quietly, "Such as?"

Denice sipped at her drink. Whipped cream with chocolate shavings on top, coffee with brandy underneath. It was very good and it warmed her as it went down. She licked a dab of whipped cream off her upper lip. "I don"t work for you, Dougla.s.s. And I can"t tell you."

He held her then while the sun set, flooding the bay with orange light. Even after the sun had completely set the sky was a gorgeous deep blue laced with glowing scarlet clouds. Glowfloats bobbed out over the bay, turned themselves on. One stationed itself a few meters above them. "I guess," said Dougla.s.s finally, "if you don"t trust me enough to tell me about your personal business, marriage is probably a very bad idea."

"I"ll tell you someday. I promise."

"Finish your drink and let"s go to bed."

"Do you trust me to tell you when I can?"

"Let"s go to bed."

Before he dropped off to sleep, he said quietly, "You should run for the Unification Council. The people who vote in Unification elections are mostly pro-Unification anyway; they won"t think you"re such a traitor. I think you"d win a seat."

Afterward, lying in bed with Ripper, head on his shoulder, while listening to his quiet sleep, Ralf the Wise and Powerful came to her.

"I traced him to Las Vegas."

- 2 -.

Christine Mirabeau sat motionlessly on the prison cot. She did not get up when he came in.

"Mohammed. I had hoped you"d come visit me before-before tomorrow."

Vance nodded. His floatchair stopped twenty centimeters away from her. He wore the formal uniform of the Elite Commander, the uniform Christine herself had worn until July 4, 2076.

His left leg was gone above the knee. Fixing a badly injured Elite is difficult; the technology of the day did not permit them to clone a leg, cyborg the leg, and attach it. He"d probably end up with a robot leg, when he had time to learn to use it; it took a few weeks for the neural connection to grow in, and it was distracting until then. Christine had heard that his left arm was in a cast until only a few weeks ago. Some of the finest biosculptors in the world had worked on him, in sessions lastingdays. To Christine it seemed the only effect of it all had been to leave him with slightly less expressiveness than ever.

"The uniform looks good on you," she said. "I always knew it would."

"You"re not surprised."

"To whom else would they give it? You can be proud, Mohammed. To be forty-eight years old, and the second most powerful person in the System-it"s a great accomplishment."

"Apparently they haven"t told you how you"re to be executed."

No PKF Elite had ever been executed before. Christine nodded, a bit jerkily. "No. I"ve been wondering; we"re not easy to kill. In the mouth?"

"No. Undignified, given that it will be done on camera. We considered lethal injection and decided against that as well; the toxins and viruses with which we are familiar, your nanovirus immune system is also familiar. It would take quite a while even if successful; you would likely suffer convulsions, and it seemed inhumane. Some wanted to put you in front of a firing squad. Once again I dismissed it as inhumane; it would take several minutes for you to die. Drowning was discussed; so was dropping you from a high building. A few of the more bloodthirsty suggested that we use the pumped lasers the Rebs developed."

Something in her cyborg eyes twitched. "You"re going to boil me alive?"

Vance shook his head. "No. I requisitioned one of the damaged orbital laser cannon. It was functioning at twelve percent efficiency; s.p.a.ce Force had decided it was not worth repairing, and they were going to destroy it. It came downside yesterday. You will be vaporized before you know anything has happened.

It should be nearly instantaneous."

"On holocam."

"We are not ashamed of what we do, Christine. Even to our own. We cant touch Eddore; he is widely believed to be the man who kept the Unification together, and making public his crimes would tear the Unification apart. But even if the public does not quite understand why you are dying, Christine, the PKF does. And the example will stand."

Her stiff Elite features bore no trace of her feelings. "How did you manage the cannon?"

He understood her; relations with s.p.a.ce Force were strained as never before, primarily over his pullout of the Elite during the retaking of the laser cannon. "I paid for it. It"s remarkable how honored the Unifications servants are to be bribed by the Elite Commander."

"I wouldn"t know," she said, without any irony at all. "I never had occasion to find out." After a pause, she said, "Thank you."

He spoke with what was, even for him, abruptness. "Why did you do it, Christine?"

She took a long deep breath. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Vance"s stare did not waver at all. "I need to know."

"Simulations showed the Rebs with a chance ofwinning, Mohammed. Eddore came to me early last year. He showed me a way to get the Rebs and Claw to rise; showed me convincingly that if they rose this summer they could never win, and that, after they rose, we would have the moral justification-and the votes-to wipe the rebels from the face of the Earth, to break them for good."

"Did it never occur to you that the best way to see that they could never win a revolution was to ensure they never had the opportunity to engage in one?"

She hung her head and spoke in a low voice. "He is a very convincing man."

"And you gave him another term. And another, and another-do you understand what you"vedone?"

Vance moved in his floatchair, great bulk shifting restlessly. "We don"t have time for me to list all the sins you"ve committed; you"ll be dead first. But you"ve done these things: "You"ve given the Rebs a taste of blood. Before this, they wereafraid of the Elite. They dreaded us, because we were the nightmares that could not be killed. Now they merely respect us; thousands of them have seen Elite die; twenty-two still at large have killed Elite themselves. We willnever regain what we lost on those battlefields, Christine, and ordinary PKF and Elite will die with increasing frequency because of it.

"You"ve done worse than that, though. You"ve given all of us cause to hate. You stood by while fools played with matches in a forest full of dry wood, because you hoped that after the fire we might have gained some advantage. We lost three hundred forty-seven Elite, a hundred and ninety thousand PKF troops. Nearly two million Americans died, most of them innocent, in the retaking of the West Coast. In j.a.pan better than half a million j.a.panese died. And all those people have friends and loved ones who will dream of vengeance for those they have lost.

"If all those things were not enough, Christine, the worst thing you have done is this: you have changed the nature of the dialogue. Before this year, even in Occupied America, even among those who opposed us, there werelimits. The Rebs and Claw have had fifty years to employ nuclear devices against us, fifty years to make every city on Earth, from Capitol City down to the towns in which you and I were raised, a military target; and for fifty years they have refrained. Christine," said Mohammed Vance softly, "this is something we"ve buried so deeply only six PKF and Eddore himself know it: we recovered twenty-two thermonuclear warheads, stored on semiballistics in San Diego. We don"t know if there were others, and we likely willnot know until, unless, they are used against us. Those Reb and the Claw left alive have lost nine in ten of their comrades, and they are consumed with hatred. And one way or another, Christine, we willpay for that hatred."

Christine Mirabeau stared at Vance. "Mohammed, the simulations Eddore showed me suggested that they couldwin. All they needed was a leader, and if we"d waited for Trent"s return we"d have given them a leader to make this Sedon,wherever he came from, look like the rank amateur he was."

Mohammed Vance rapped on the door to her cell. They both heard the guard returning for him. "I have not seen the simulations you speak of, so I cannot say if they are accurate. But I will tell you this; there are worse things than losing to the likes of Trent, and fighting with allies like Eddore is one of them."

"You weren"t there," Christine Mirabeau said. Tears stood out brilliantly against the glittering black Elite eyes. "You can"t know."

The door opened behind Mohammed Vance. He sat there for just a moment, resplendent in the black-and-silver dress uniform of the Elite Commander.

"No," he said. "I can"t."

He turned his floatchair about and left.

They executed her six hours later. The cannon vaporized her and melted the wall of the Detention Center against which she had been stood.

- 3 -.

"h.e.l.lo, McGee."