] Y A N CLUNG to the outside of the dome like a small, dark insect. Three of the hoops were set. It remained only to place and arm the last charge.
Where he rested, one hand attaching him to the dome's taut skin, the slope was relatively gentle. He could look out over the capped summit of the dome and see the distant, moon-washed peaks. It was a beautiful night. Cfear, like glass. Above him the stars shone like polished jewels against the blackness. So many stars. So vast the blackness.
He looked down. Concentrate, he told himself. YpuVe no time for stargazing. Even so, he took a final glimpse. Then, working quickly, he placed and fastened the hoop, taping it at four points. That done, he rugged gently but firmly at the joint.
Where he pulled at it, the hoop came apart, a thin thread joining tail to mouth. Like a snake's wire-thin tongue, he thought. Fully extended, the thread w;as as long as his little finger. Already it was being coiled back-, into the body of the hoop. Eventually the ends would join up again and the hoop would send out a trigger signal. When all four were primed, they would form a single, destructive harmonic. And then ...
Slowly, carefully, he backed away, edging back down the steepening wall of the dome. Like all else in the City its skin was made of the superplastic, ice. Normal charges would scarcely have dented the steel-tough, fire-resistant skin, but these would eat right through it before they detonated.
He was balanced at the point where the dome wall fell sharply away when he stopped, hearing a noise beneath him. He turned his head slowly, scarcely daring to breathe. Who in the gods' names . . . ?
; The figure was directly underneath, staring up at him. As Jyan turned his face a brilliant beam of light shone directly into his eyes.
"You! What are you doing up there?"
Jyan looked away, momentarily blinded, then looked back in time to see Chen coming up behind the man.
The man turned quickly, sensing something behind him. As Chen struck out with his knife, the man raised the big torch he was carrying and deflected the blow.
Chen's knife went clattering across the roof.
For a moment the two faced each other warily, then Chen moved, circling the newcomer. He feinted, making the other back off, then dropped to his knees, searching for his knife in the shadows at the base of the dome.
The man looked at his torch, considering whether to use it as a weapon and go for Chen. Then he turned and ran off to the right, where a faint patch of light revealed a second maintenance hatch.
"Pien kua!" swore Jyan under his breath. Loosening the claws, he dropped the last five meters and rolled. Crouched there, he looked about him.
He saw Chen at once, to his right, running after the stranger. But the man was already at the hatch and climbing down.
"Shit!" he said desperately, trying to ease the claws from his hands as quickly as he could. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" If the bastard got to an alarm they would both be done for.
He looked up in time to see Chen disappear down the hatch.
"Hurry, Chen!" he murmured anxiously, folding the claws and tucking them away in his pocket. He turned, looking back up the dome's steep slope, then glanced down at the dragon timer in his wrist. Six minutes. That was all that remained.
And if Chen failed?
He swallowed dryly, then began to run toward the second shaft, his heart pounding in his chest. "Shit!" he kept saying. "Shit! Shit!"
He was only twenty ch'i from it when a figure lifted from the hatch and turned to face him.
"Ai-ya!" He pulled up sharply, gasping with fear, but it was Chen. The kwcd looked up, the broad shape of his face and chest lit from beneath, his breath pluming up into the chill air.
"Where is he?" hissed Jyan anxiously, hurrying forward again. "Oh, gods! You didn't let him get away, did you?"
Chen reached down and pulled the man up by the hair. "He's dead," he said tonelessly, letting the corpse fall back. "There was no other way. He was trying to open a Security panel when I came on him. Now we'll have to find somewhere to hide him."
Jyan shuddered, filled with relief. "Thank the gods." He turned and glanced back at the dome. "Let's go, then. Before it blows."
"Yes," said Chen, a faintly ironic smile lighting his big, blunt face. "The rest should be easy. Like the bamboo before the blade."
THE MAID had gone. Pi Ch'ien sat alone in the room, his ch'a long finished, contemplating the fifteen-hundred-year-old painting of Hsiao Wen Ti that hung on the wall above the door. It was Yen Li-pen's famous painting from the Portraits of the Emperors, with the Han emperor attended by his ministers.
Every schoolboy knew the storywrf Wen Ti, first of the great emperors. It was he who, more than twenty-three centuries before, had created the concept of Chung Kuo; who, through his thorough adoption of the Confucian virtues, had made of his vast but ragtag land of warring nations a single state, governed by stern but just principles. Wen Ti it was who had first brought commoners into his government. He\who had changed the harsh laws and customs of his predecessors so that no one in the Middle Kingdom would starve or suffer cruel injustice. Famine relief, pensions, and the abolition of punishment by mutilation—all these were Wen Ti's doing. He had lowered taxes and done away with the vast expense of Imperial display. He had sought the just criticism of his ministers and acted to better the lot of the Han. Under his rule Chung Kuo had thrived and its population grown.
Eighteen hundred years later the Manchu emperor K'ang Hsi had established his great empire on Wen Ti's principles, and, later still, when the Seven had thrown off the yoke of the tyrant Tsao Ch'un, they too had adopted the principles of Wen Ti's reign, making him the First Ancestor of Chung Kuo. Now Wen Ti's painting hung everywhere in the City, in a thousand shapes and forms. This, however, was a particularly fine painting—a perfect reproduction of Yen Li-pen's original.
Pi Ch'ien got up and went over to the painting, remembering the time when his father had stood there with him beneath another copy of the portrait and told him the story of the finding of the hand scroll.
For centuries the Portraits of the Emperors roll had been housed in a museum in the ancient town of Boston, along with much more that had rightly belonged to the Han. When the American Empire had finally collapsed much had been lost. Most of the old Han treasures had been destroyed out of spite, but some had been hidden away. Years had passed. Then, in the years when the Han were building their City over the old land of America, skilled teams had been sent across that continent to search for the old treasures. Little was found of real value until, in an old, crumbling building on the shoreline of what had once been called California, they had found a simple cardboard box containing the scroll. The hand scroll was remarkably preserved considering its ill use, but even so, four of the original thirteen portraits had been lost. Fortunately, the painting of Hsiao Wen Ti was one of those which had emerged unscathed.
He turned away and went back to his seat. For a second or two longer he contemplated the painting, delighted by the profound simplicity of its brushwork, then leaned across and picked up the handbell. He was about to lift the tiny wooden hammer to ring for more ch'a when the door swung open and Yang Lai came hurriedly into the room.
Pi Ch'ien scrambled to his feet and bowed low.
"Well, Pi Ch'ien?" Yang Lai barked impatiently. "What is it?"
His expression showed he was far from pleased by his Third Secretary's intrusion.
Pi Ch'ien remained bowed, the card held out before him. "I have an urgent message for you, Excellency. I was told to bring it here at once."