Lehmann tucked the bag away. "It'll be okay. Besides, I can't focus properly with those false retinas in place."
Mach laughed. "So Turner doesn't think of everything."
Lehmann shook his head. "Not at all. He's very thorough. Whose man do you think is manning the cameras?"
Mach slowed, then nodded thoughtfully. "Uhuh? And how do you think he does that? I mean, he's got a lot of friends, your man Turner. It seems odd, don't you think? I mean, how long is it since he quit Security? Eight years now? Ten?"
"It's called loyalty," Lehmann said coldly. "I thought you understood that. Besides, there are many who feel like you and I. Many who'd like to see things change."
Mach shook his head slowly, as if he still didn't understand, then got to work on the second of the bolts.
"You think that's strange, don't you?" Lehmann said after a moment. "You think that only you lower-level types should want to change how things are. But you're wrong. You don't have to be on the bottom of this shit-heap to see how fuck-awful things are. Take me. From birth I was set to inherit. Riches beyond your imagination. But it was never enough. I never wanted to be rich. I wanted to be free. Free of all the restraints this world sets upon us. Chains, they are. It's a prison, this world of ours, boxing us in, and I hate that. I've always hated it."
Mach stared up at him, surprised and, to a small degree, amused. He had never suspected that the albino had so much feeling in him. He had always thought him cold, like a dead thing. This hatred was unexpected. It hinted at a side to him that even Turner knew nothing of.
The second bolt came free. He set to work on the third.
"I bet you hated your parents, too, didn't you?"
Lehmann knelt, watching Mach's hands as they turned the bolt. "I never knew them. My father never came to see me. My mother . . . well, I killed my mother."
"You—" Mach looked back at him, roaring with laughter, then fell silent. "You mean, you really did? You killed her?"
Lehmann nodded. "She was a rich Han's concubine. An arfidis addict, too. She disgusted me. She was like the rest of them, soft, corrupt. Like this world. I set fire to her, in her rooms. I'd like to do the same to all of them. To burn the whole thing to a shell and pull it down."
Mach took a deep breath through his nose, then set to work again. "I see. And Turner knows this, does he?"
"No. He thinks I'm someone else, something else."
"I see. But why tell me?"
"Because you're not what he thinks you are either." Lehmann reached across him, beginning to unscrew the final bolt. "Turner sees only enemies or pale shadows of himself. That's how he thinks. Black and white. As if this were all one great big game of wei chi."
Mach laughed. "You surprise me. I'd have thought—" Then he laughed again. "I'm sorry. I'm doing what you said he does, aren't I? Assuming you're something that you're not."
The last bolt came loose. Between them they gently lifted the plate from the connecting pins and set it to one side. Beneath the plate was a panel, inset with tiny slip-in instruction cards. At the base of the panel was a keyboard. Lehmann tapped in the cut-out code he'd memorized, then leaned close, studying the panel. His pale, thin fingers searched the board, then plucked five of the translucent cards from different locations. He slipped them into the pouch at his waist, then reached into his jacket and took out the first of the eighteen tiny sealed packets. When a certain signal was routed through this board, these five would be triggered, forming a circuit that overrode the standard instruction codes. To the backup system it would seem as if the panel were functioning normally, but to all intents and purposes it would be dead. And with all eighteen boxes triggered in this way, communications to the deck would be effectively cut off.
He slotted the five wafer-thin cards into place, reset the cut-out code, then, with Mach's help, lowered the plate back onto the connecting pins.
"There," Mach said. "One down, seventeen to go. Pretty easy, huh?" "Easy enough," Lehmann said, taking one of the restraining bolts and beginning to screw it down. "But only if you've the nerve, the vision, and the intelligence to plan it properly."
Mach laughed. "And a few old friends, turning a blind eye." Lehmann turned his head slightly, meeting Mach's eyes. "Maybe. And a reason for doing it, neh?"
KIM HAD HEARD the alarm from three decks down but made nothing of it, yet coming out of the transit he remembered and, his pulse quickening, began to run toward his room.
Even before he turned the corner into his corridor he saw signs of what had happened. A long snake of hose ran from the corner hydrant, flaccid now. On the far side of it, water had pooled. But that was not what had alerted him. It was the scent of burning plastics.
He leapt the hose, took three small, splashing steps, then stopped. The door to his room was open, the fire-hose curving inside. Even from where he stood he could see how charred the lintel was, could see the ashy residue of sludge littering the floor outside.
"What in the gods' names . . . ?"
T'ai Cho jerked his head around the door. "Kim!" he cried, coming out into the corridor, his face lit up. "Thank the gods you're safe. I thought—"
He let himself be embraced, then went inside, facing the worst. It was gone. All of it. His comset was unrecognizable, fused into the worktop as if the whole were some strange, smooth sculpture of twisted black marble. The walls were black, as was the ceiling. The floor was awash with the same dark sludge that had oozed out into the corridor.
"What happened?" he asked, looking about him, the extent of his loss—his books, his clothes, the tiny things he'd called his own—slowly sinking in. "I thought this kind of thing couldn't happen. There are sprinklers, aren't there? And air seals."
T'ai Cho glanced at one of the maintenance men who were standing around, then looked back at Kim. "They failed, it seems. Faulty wiring, it looks like."
Kim laughed sourly, the irony not lost on him. "Faulty wiring? But I thought the boxes used instruction cards."
One of the men spoke up. "That's right. But two of the cards were wrongly encoded. It happens sometimes. It's something we can't check up on. A mistake at the factory . . . You know how it is."
Only too well, Kim thought. But who did this? Who ordered it done? Spatz? Or someone higher than he? Not Prince Yuan, anyway, because he wanted what was destroyed here today.
He sighed, then shook his head. It would take weeks, months perhaps, to put it all back together again. And if he did? Well, maybe it would be for nothing after all. Maybe they would strike again, just as he came to the end of his task, making sure nothing ever got to Li Yuan.
He turned, looking at his old friend. "You shouldn't have worried, T'ai Cho. But I'm glad you did. I was having my three-month medical. They say I'm fine. A slight vitamin C deficiency, but otherwise . . ." He laughed. "It was fortunate, neh? I could have been sleeping."
"Yes," T'ai Cho said, holding the boy to him again. "We should thank the gods, neh?"
Yes, thought Kim. Or whoever decided I was not as disposable, as my work.
NAN HO stood in the cool of the passageway outside the room, mopping his brow, the feeling of nausea passing slowly from him. Though ten minutes had passed, his hands still trembled and his clothes were soaked with his own sweat. In all his forty years he had seen nothing like it. The man's screams had been bad enough, but the look in his eyes, that expression of sheer terror and hopelessness, had been too much to bear.
If he closed his eyes he could still see it. Could see the echoing kitchen all about him, the prisoner tied naked to the table, his hands and feet bound tight with cords that bruised and cut the flesh. He bared his teeth, remembering the way the masked man had turned, the oiled muscles of his upper arms flexing effortlessly as he lifted the tongs from the red-hot brazier and turned them in the half-light. He could see the faint wisp of smoke that rose toward the ceiling, could hear the faint crackle as the coal was lifted into cooler air, even before he saw the glowing coal itself. But most of all he could see the panic in the young man's eyes, and he recalled what he had thought.