"Love, you mean? Human understanding? Goodness?" He laughed shortly, then shook his head. "Those things don't exist. Not really. They're illusions. Masks over the reality. And the reality is like these peaks—it's beautiful, but it's also hard, uncompromising, and cold, like the airless spaces between the stars."
She was silent a moment, as if thinking about what he had said. Then she turned back to him. "I must go. But thank you for letting me see this."
DeVore smiled. "Come again. Anytime you want. I'll send my cruiser for you." She studied him a moment, then turned away, the smallest sign of amusement in her face. He watched her climb the steps and go inside. Moments later he heard the big engines of the cruiser start up.
He turned and looked across toward the snow-buried blister of the dome. Lehmann was standing by the entrance, bare-headed, a tall, gaunt figure even in his bulky furs. DeVore made his way across, while behind him the big craft lifted from the hangar and turned slowly, facing the north. "What is it?" he asked.
"Success," Lehmann answered tonelessly. "We've found the combination." He let his hand rest on Lehmann's arm momentarily, turning to watch the cruiser rise slowly into the blue, then turned back, smiling, nodding to himself. "Good. Then let's go and see what we've got."
Minutes later he stood before the open safe, staring down at the contents spread out on the floor at his feet. There had been three compartments to the safe. The top one had held more than two hundred bearer credits—small "chips" of ice worth between fifty and two hundred thousand yuan apiece. A second, smaller compartment in the center had contained several items of jewelry. The last, which made up the bulk of the safe's volume, had held a small collection of art treasures— scrolls and seals and ancient pottery.
DeVore bent down and picked up one of the pieces, studying it a moment. Then he turned and handed it to Lehmann. It was a tiny, exquisitely sculpted figure of a horse. A white horse with a cobalt-blue saddle and trappings and a light-brown mane and tail.
"Why this?" Lehmann asked, looking back at him.
DeVore took the piece back, examining it again, then looked up at Lehmann. "How old would you say this is?"
Lehmann stared back at him. "I know what it is. It's T'ang dynasty—fifteen-hundred years old. But that isn't what I meant. Why was it there, in the safe? What were they doing with it? I thought only the Families had things like this these days."
DeVore smiled. "Security has to deal with all sorts. What's currency in the Above isn't always so below. Certain Triad bosses prefer something more . . . substantial, shall we say, than money."
Lehmann shook his head. "Again, that's not what I meant. The bearer credits —they were payroll, right? Unofficial expenses for the eight garrisons surrounding the Wilds."
DeVore's smile slowly faded. Then he gave a short laugh. "How did you know?" "It makes sense. Security has to undertake any number of things that they'd rather weren't public knowledge. Such things are costly precisely because they're so secretive. What better way of financing them than by allocating funds for nonexistent weaponry, then switching those funds into bearer credits?" DeVore nodded. That was exactly how it worked.
"The jewelry likewise. It was probably taken during the Confiscations. I should imagine it was set aside by the order of someone fairly high up—Nocenzi, say—so it wouldn't appear on the official listings. Officially it never existed; so no one has to account for it. Even so, it's real and can be sold. Again, that would finance a great deal of secret activity. But the horse ..."
DeVore smiled, for once surprised by the young man's sharpness. The bearer credits and jewelry—those were worth, at best, two billion yuan on the black market. That was sufficient to keep things going for a year at present levels. In the long term, however, it was woefully inadequate. He needed four, maybe five times as much simply to complete the network of fortresses. In this respect the horse and the two other figures—the tiny moon-faced Buddha and the white-jade carving of Kuan Yin—were like gifts from the gods. Each one was worth as much— and potentially a great deal more—as the rest of the contents of the safe combined.
But Lehmann was right. What were they doing there? What had made Li Shai Tung give up three such priceless treasures? What deals was he planning to make that required so lavish a payment?
He met the albino's eyes and smiled. "I don't know, Stefan. Not yet."
He set the horse down and picked up the delicate jade-skinned goddess, turning it in his hands. It was perfect. The gentle flow of her robes, the serene expression of her face, the gentle way she held the child to her breast—each tiny element was masterful in itself.
"What will you do with them?"
"I'll sell them. Two of them, anyway."
Yes, he thought, Old Man Lever will find me a buyer. Someone who cares more for this than for the wealth it represents.
"And the other?"
DeVore looked down at the tiny, sculpted goddess. "This one 111 keep. For now, anyway. Until I find a better use for her."
He set it down again, beside the horse, then smiled. Both figures were so realistic, so perfect in every detail, that it seemed momentarily as if it needed only a word of his to bring them both to life. He breathed deeply, then nodded to himself. It was no accident that he had come upon these things; nor was it instinct alone that made him hold on to the goddess now. No, there was a force behind it all, giving shape to events, pushing like a dark wind at the back of everything. He looked up at Lehmann and saw how he was watching him. And what would you make of that, my ultra-rational friend? Or you, Emily Ascher, with your one-dimensional view of me? Would you think I'd grown soft? Would you think it a weakness in me? If so, you would be wrong. For that's my strength: that sense of being driven by the darkness.
At its purest—in those few, rare moments when the veil was lifted and he saw things clearly—he felt all human things fall from him, all feeling, all sense of self erased momentarily by that dark and silent pressure at the back of him. At such moments he was like a stone—a pure white stone—set down upon the board; a mere counter, played by some being greater than himself in a game the scale of which his tiny human mind could scarcely comprehend.
A game of dark and light. Of suns and moons. Of space and time itself. A game so vast, so complicated . . .
He looked down, moved deeply by the thought, by the cold, crystalline-pure abstraction of such a vast and universal game.
"Are you all right?" Lehmann's voice lacked all sympathy; it was the voice of mechanical response.
DeVore smiled, conscious of how far his thoughts had drifted from this room, this one specific place and time. "Forgive me, Stefan. I was thinking . . ."
"Yes?"
He looked up. "I want you to track the woman for me. To find out what you can about her. Find out if it's true what they say about her and Gesell."
"And?"
He looked down at the jade-skinned goddess once again. "And nothing. Just do it for me."
SHE KEPT HER SILENCE until they were back in Gesell's apartment. There, alone with him at last, she turned on him angrily, all of her pent-up frustration spilling out.
"What in the gods' names are we doing working with that bastard?"
He laughed uncomfortably, taken aback by her outburst. "It makes good sense," he began, trying to be reasonable, but she cut him off angrily.
"Sense? It's insane, that's what it is! The surest way possible of cutting our own throats! All that shit he was feeding us about his inflexibility and our potential for growth. That's nonsense! He's using us! Can't you see that?"