"This is most unusual," Madam Peng began. "To guarantee success in a matter like this—"
Tolonen raised a hand. "I understand. If my daughter falls for young Emil here, all well and good. He looks a fine young chap and his past conduct is exemplary, but you do not understand. I ..." He frowned, searching for the right words, then shrugged. "Let's put it this way. If you succeed in distracting her tonight ... in entertaining her, let's say, and taking her mind from other matters, well, there will be a huge bonus in it for both of you."
Bartels looked to Madam Peng, surprised. "But I thought—"
"Oh, don't get me wrong," Tolonen said hastily. "If my daughter wishes to see young Bartels again, and if that association leads to marriage, I shall place no obstacle before it. But the main aim of this exercise is to ensure that tonight goes . . . well, without a hitch, let's say."
Madam Peng's fan snapped shut. Her face was now openly suspicious. "Forgive me, Marshal. You might tell me it isn't my business, but does your daughter already have a suitor?"
Tolonen looked down, sniffing deeply, then nodded.
"Aiya!" Madam Peng said softly. "Why in the gods' names didn't you tell me this?"
"You were paid well, Madam Peng," Tolonen said, an edge of steel in his voice. "And if your young man is successful the world shall know of it. As for this rival, this so-called 'suitor,' 1 shall deal with him. Your job is simple. You have only to do what you have always done—to facilitate the coming together of healthy young men and women of the right social level. If there's a problem with that . . . ?"
Madam Peng stared at him a moment, dumbstruck, then shook her head.
"Good. Then you can begin at once. I have arranged a room for you in an apartment nearby. Whatever you need, ask for it. Shih Harrison is in charge. He'll see to all your needs."
Tolonen stood, then came around the desk, offering his hand to the young man. "And good luck, Emil. Do your best for me, neh?"
The young man took the hand and shook it, then stepped back and bowed his head, like a soldier before his commanding officer, while beside him, Madam Peng looked on, her face concerned, the fan fluttering uneasily in her hand.
THE news WAS FULL OF IT. A bizarre new cult was killing people—many of them suspected terrorists—by nailing them to huge wheellike crosses, slitting their wrists, and leaving them to die. There had been a few instances before today, but this morning more than fifty had been discovered in the Mids, sign of a dramatic increase in the cult's activities. Rumor was that it was the work of what had once beeri called the Black Hand—or of a new break-off sect called the Sealed.
Whatever the truth, it was a disturbing escalation, and most of the Media channels had turned their full attention to the new "trend."
Kim sat beneath the screen in his study, watching with the sound turned down as the images changed. He was troubled by this new upturn in violence. Down where he'd come from, in the Clay, such savagery would have seemed quite normal. Dog ate dog down there. But he had climbed the levels to escape from that nightmare reality, thinking it would be different up here.
He had been wrong. The darkness wasn't down there, it was inside. However high men climbed, the darkness climbed within them. It was there, beneath the skin, there behind the pupils of the eyes. Darkness: it was rooted in the head and in the heart. Darkness, everywhere darkness.
"Enough!" he said. At once the screen went black. He turned. T'ai Cho was watching from across the room.
"What is it?" he said softly, sensing Kim's mood.
Kim shrugged. "It gets worse . . . every day there's more of it. And every day it's more extreme. The Clay . . . it's becoming like the Clay."
T'ai Cho nodded and looked away. He, too, had been disturbed by what he'd seen.
"It worries me," Kim said after a moment. "What kind of world is this to bring one's children into?"
"Things will get better. . . ."
Kim gave a short, despairing laugh. "I'd like to think so, T'ai Cho, but experience teaches otherwise. We live now on the edge of chaos, of perpetual uncertainty. Look at us. I mean . . . guards and guns. Whoever would have thought it?"
"It has always been so. From the time of the Three Emperors, men have built walls to keep other men from killing them. So it was, so it is."
"And must ever be?" Kim sighed, then shook his head. "No, T'ai Cho. There just has to be something better than this!"
"And if there isn't? If this is all there is?"
Kim stared at him, then shook his head. "Darkness ... it can't all be darkness. There has to be light. Darkness and light . . . balanced. That's what the great Tao says, isn't it?"
T'ai Cho nodded. "Yes, but remember what the great sage Lao Tzu said? The bright Way appears to be dark.' "
"And if it is dark?"
"Then be a light in that darkness, Kim. Shine out and make things change. Dedicate yourself to it. You have a gift, Kim. Use it. Maybe that's why you were saved. Maybe that's why the darkness coughed you up!"
Kim laughed. "You make it sound so easy."
"Easy? No, I never said it would be easy. Remember how we began. Remember what a knife-edge we walked back then, you and I. Why, one mistake and I'd have had to gas you in your cell. You were such a tiny, bony creature—more wraith than child. Yet I knew you were different. I could see it, right from the start. And to think how far you've come . . ."
Kim stood up, then went to the window. It was true. He had come far. Yet how much farther the light now seemed above him. How much farther it seemed he had to climb. Even so ... His hand went up to touch his neck where the collar had been removed. It was his choice now. His choice entirely what he was to be.
"Okay. I'll try. I promise you I'll try."
T'ai Cho came over, touched his arm. "Good. But right now you'd best get ready. You don't want to keep Jelka waiting, do you?"
Kim smiled. "No. I think we've waited long enough."
THE MADMAN WALKED through the market quickly, his head back, his shouts, his manic whoops of laughter, carrying above the normal hubbub of the place. Emily, sitting alone at one of the tables in the Blue Pagoda, turned to watch him pass, then frowned and sipped from her half-empty chung. A madman was a common sight these days. Then again, it was a wonder they weren't all mad, things being as they were.
She sighed, then looked back at the documents she'd been reading. So many things she'd seen these past ten years—so many awful, dreadful things—but this was by far the worst. And the most awful aspect of it was that it proved the old men—the Seven and their servants— right, for such a thing would never have been thought of before the Edict had been relaxed. Now it was almost commonplace. Almost . . . for thank the gods there were still some people with a shred of decency—of humanity—left in them.
Emily closed the file with a shudder. Tonight they would hit the place. Oberon's it was called, a club up on the Twenty-fifth level of the fashionable Augsburg stack, the haunt of the super-elite of the First Level, the "Above-the-Above," as they called themselves, the "Supernal."
It would not be easy, for the place had its own guards—ex-Security, for the most part—and a state-of-the-art laser defense system, but it could be done. And they would do it, whatever the cost.
She finished her ch'a, then set the chung down, recalling the difficulty she'd had getting Pasek to agree. He had been against it, wanting to carry on with his petty wars against his rivals, but she had put her foot down, insisting on this as a price of her continued loyalty, and he had given in. But if she fucked up ...