"I'm glad you asked me," T'ai Cho said, hugging him tightly, moved by the gesture of affection. "I missed you."
Years ago, when Kim had first come up from the Clay, it had been T'ai Cho who had found him, trained him, fought for him when things went wrong and Andersen—the Director of the Recruitment Project— had wanted to have him terminated. T'ai Cho had been his tutor, his protector, the closest he had known to a father, his own having been killed—executed by the T'ang, unknown to him. Yet, for the last seven years, T'ai Cho had been almost a stranger to him. He had kept in touch, yet his work as a commodity slave for SimFic had filled his time. That, and the waiting . . .
Kim put a hand to the pulsing band about his neck. But now the waiting was at an end. Today Jelka came of age. Today he ceased to be a slave and became an owner. And tonight ... tonight he would ask her to be his wife.
He felt a strange thrill—a mixture of fear and feverish expectancy— pass through him, then turned, looking at the great clock on the wall. "Aiya! I'll be late. . . ."
T'ai Cho shook his head. "Don't worry. I've arranged everything. Director Reiss is coming here."
Kim turned back. "Here? But I thought—"
"You're important to them, Kim. Whatever you want . . ." T'ai Cho stopped, then laughed suddenly. "I'm so pleased for you. So ... thrilled. I keep remembering how we had to fight, even to keep you alive. But now . . . well"—he turned, indicating the opulence of the Mansion and its grounds—"the world is your oyster. You want a Mansion? They give you one. Your own company? It's yours. The hand of the Marshal's daughter? . . . Well, how could he refuse? You are a Great Man, Kim Ward. Today you have arrived. Today you take your place in the world."
Kim looked away, embarrassed, then smiled. "I'd best get ready. When's Reiss due?"
T'ai Cho glanced at the clock. "Any moment. I told him noon."
"Noon? Aiyal" Kim turned, beginning to climb the stairs.
"Kim?"
He stopped, looking down at T'ai Cho from ten steps up.
"Take your time. He'll wait. They'll all wait from now on. You are a Great Man now, remember that?" He smiled enigmatically. "You are the golden key that opens doors, remember?"
Kim's eyes widened. "Matyas . . . You remembered. . . ."
T'ai Cho nodded. "I remembered. But those days are done with now. No one will bully you ever again, Kim. No one. Now go and change. It's time they took that collar from your neck."
Kim touched the glowing band, then nodded and, turning, mounted the steps again, jumping them three at a time. And as he went T'ai Cho spoke softly to his back.
"No one, you understand that, Kim Ward? No one. Not even the great T'ang himself. ..." * * *
"Jelka?"
Tolonen popped his head around the door, looking into his daughter's room.
"Daddy?" She looked up from her desk, then got up and came across to hug him. "How's it going?"
"It's madness. Absolute madness! I've hardly dared come out of my rooms. But Harrison seems to know what he's doing."
Harrison had been brought in by Tolonen two weeks ago to oversee the final stages of the party. He was the veteran of a thousand social campaigns; a hard taskmaster and accomplished socialite rolled into one.
"Don't worry, Daddy," she said, seeing the troubled look on his face. "Any problems, he'll sort them out."
"Yes . . . Yes, I suppose he will." He looked past her distractedly, then gestured toward the brightly lit screen of the scanner on her desk. "Anything interesting?"
She shook her head. "Nothing really ... I thought I'd catch up with my journal."
"Journal?" He looked back at her, intrigued. "You keep a journal?"
"Yes . . . and before you ask, no, you can't see it. It's private."
He raised a hand, as if fending her off. "Okay . . . but make sure you're ready for the first guests."
"Fourth bell. Right?"
"Right." He smiled, then looked past her again. "It's a lovely dress. Your mother"—he shivered, then said it—"your mother would have loved to have seen it."
She turned, looking at the dress where it hung beside her outer-system suit, then nodded. It was her mother's dress—the same dress she had worn to her own Coming-of-Age party twenty-six years before. She turned back, then, kissing him gently on the brow, pushed him from the room, closed the door, then returned to her desk.
For a moment she sat there, staring into space, thinking of her mother; a mother she had seen only in holograms; had only dreamed of; never met, never touched.
Could you love someone you had never met? Could you love them because of what they ought to have been in your Ufe? Love them despite their absence?
She shuddered. Never had she framed it so explicitly, but there it was, the thing that made her different from all her friends; the very thing that made her idiosyncratically herself—the lack of a mother's love.
She typed it in, then sat back.
The closer it gets, the less real it seems.
And what if she found she didn't actually like him? What if the years had changed what she felt? What if the thing she had been carrying inside her all these years was only an illusion—the chimera of love?
It frightened her. She, who prided herself on fearing nothing—who had survived three separate assassination attempts—was afraid of this; of meeting the man she loved. Afraid in case his feelings for her had changed. Afraid simply because she had never done this kind of thing before, never loved. Not in this way. Not in the way she proposed to love him.
Even the thought of it made her feel odd. She had tried not to think of it; had tried to divert her thoughts whenever they fell into that track, but her dreams had tripped her up. In her dreams she had been with him, woman to man, naked with him in that cave on the island where she had seen the fox that time, his dark eyes shining in the dark. Dark, animal eyes that made her shiver simply to think of them staring back at her.
Be brave, she told herself. Furthermore, be true.
Seven years. So much could change in seven years. Yet she had waited. She had kept her word.
Tonight. She shivered, then leaned forward, switching off the screen. Tonight he would be hers.
MADAM PENG WAS W AITING for him in his study.
"Madam Peng," he said, smiling tightly as he moved toward his desk.
She got up quickly, taken by surprise by his entrance. "Marshal Tolonen. Forgive me. . . ." She bowed, the young man at her side standing to do the same.
Tolonen sat, moving the papers he had been working on aside, then looked up, taking in the young man at a glance.
"And this is?"
Madam Peng turned to her left. "This is Emil Bartels. I sent you his file. . . ."
"Ah, yes." Tolonen nodded to the young man. "You understand why you are here, Shih Bartels?"
"Yes, Marshal Tolonen."
Tolonen's expression softened a fraction. "You're a good-looking young man, Emil. And your family . . . very sound, if I recall."
The young man nodded, then glanced at Madam Peng uncomfortably.
"Please, sit down, both of you."
Madam Peng sat, smiling, fluttering the fan before her face. The young man beside her leaned forward, his hands on his left knee, the fingers interlaced, his face deadly earnest.
"Forgive me, Madam Peng," Tolonen began, sitting back a little. "As you know, it was my intention to have Shih Bartels visit my daughter before tonight. To ... prepare her for this. But there simply hasn't been time. Besides, my daughter is ... difficult, let's say. She suspects my motives. I wish only the best for her, of course, but she mistakes my interest for meddling. In the circumstances we must be careful. Her encounter with Shih Bartels must seem an accident."