"You mean, they implanted something in his head? Something to control him?"
"Not to control him, exactly. But something that would make him see precisely what they wanted him to see. Something that superimposed a different set of images. Even a different set of smells, it seems. Something that made him see Han Ch'in differently. ..."
"And we know who carried out this . . . operation?"
Tolonen looked back at the boy. "Yes. But they're dead. TheyVe been dead for several years, in fact. Whoever arranged this was very thorough. Very thorough indeed."
"But SimFic are to blame? Berdichev's to blame?"
He saw the ferocity on Li Yuan's face and nodded. "I believe so. But maybe not enough to make a conclusive case in law. It all depends on what we find at Hammerfest."
SHE CAME AT HIM like a madwoman, screeching, a big sharp-edged hunting knife in her left hand, a notched bayonet in her right.
Ebert ducked under the vicious swinging blow and thrust his blade between her breasts, using both hands, the force of the thrust carrying her backward, almost lifting her off her feet.
"Gods. . . ." he said, looking down at the dying woman, shaken by the ferocity of her attack. "How many more of them?"
It was five minutes to six and he was lost. Eight of his squad were dead now, two left behind in the corridors, badly wounded. They had killed more than twenty of the defending force. All of them women. Madwomen, like the one he had just killed. And still they came at them.
Why women? he kept asking himself. But deeper down he knew why. It gave his enemy a psychological edge. He didn't feel good about killing women. Nor had his men felt good. He'd heard them muttering among themselves. And now they were dead. Or good as.
"Do we go on?" Auden, his sergeant, asked.
Ebert turned and looked back at the remnants of his squad. There were four of them left now, including himself. And not one of them had ever experienced anything like this before. He could see it in their eyes. They were tired and bewildered. The past hour had seemed an eternity, with no knowing where the next attack would come from.
The ground plans they had been working from had proved completely false. Whoever was in charge of this had secretly rebuilt the complex and turned it into a maze: a web of deadly cul-de-sacs and traps. Worse yet, they had flooded the corridors with ghost signals, making it impossible for them to keep in contact with the other attacking groups.
Ebert smiled grimly. "We go on. It can't be far now."
At the next junction they came under fire again and lost another man. But this time the expected counterattack did not materialize. Perhaps we're almost there, thought Ebert as he pressed against the wall, getting his breath. Maybe this is their last line of defense. He looked across the corridor and met Auden's eyes. Yes, he thought, if we get out of this I'll commend you. You've saved me more than once this last hour.
"Get ready," he mouthed. "I'll go first. You cover."
Auden nodded and lifted his gun to his chest, tensed, ready to go.
The crossway was just ahead of them. Beyond it, about ten paces down the corridor and to the right, was a doorway.
Ebert flung himself across the open space, firing to his left, his finger jammed down on the trigger of the automatic. Behind him Auden and Spitz opened up noisily. Landing awkwardly, he began to scrabble forward, making for the doorway.
He heard her before he saw her. Turning his head he caught a glimpse of her on the beam overhead, her body crouched, already falling. He brought his gun up sharply, but it was already too late. Even as he loosed off the first wild shot, her booted feet crashed into his back heavily, smashing him down into the concrete floor.
THE FILM had ended. Tolonen turned in his seat and looked at the boy.
"There are two more, then we are done here."
Li Yuan nodded but did not look back at him. He was sitting there rigidly, staring at the screen as if he would burn a hole in it. Tblonen studied him a moment longer, then looked away. This was hard for the boy, but it was what his father wanted. After all, Li Yuan would be T'ang one day and a T'ang needed to be hard.
Tolonen sat back in his chair again, then pressed the handset, activating the screen again.
On the evening of the wedding the walls of the Yu Hua Yuan had been lined with discreet security cameras. The logistics of tracking fifteen hundred individuals in such a small, dimly lit space had meant that they had had to use flat-image photography. Even so, because each individual had been in more than one camera's range at any given moment, a kind of three-dimensional effect had been achieved. A computer programed for full-head recognition of each of the individuals present had analyzed each of the one hundred and eighty separate films and produced fifteen hundred new, "rounded" films of seventeen minutes duration—timed to bracket the death of Han Ch'in by eight minutes either side. The new films eliminated all those moments when the heads of others intruded, enhancing the image whenever the mouth was seen to move, the lips to form words. What resulted was a series of individual "response portraits" so vivid, one would have thought the lens had been a mere arm's length in front of each face.
They had already watched five of the seventeen-minute films. Had seen the unfeigned surprise—the shock—on the faces of men whom they thought might have been involved.
"Does that mean they're innocent?" Li Yuan had asked.
"Not necessarily," Tolonen had answered. "The details might have been kept from them deliberately. But they're the money men. I'm sure of it."
This, the sixth of the films, showed one of Tolonen's own men, a captain in the elite force; the officer responsible for the shoo tin posted in the garden that evening.
Li Yuan turned and looked up at Tolonen, surprised. "But that's Captain Erikson."
The General nodded. "Watch. Tell me what you think."
Li Yuan turned back and for a time was silent, concentrating on the screen.
"Well?" prompted Tolonen.
"His reactions seem odd. His eyes . . . it's almost as if he's steeled himself not to react."
"Or as if he was drugged, perhaps? Don't you think his face shows symptoms similar to arfidis trance? He's not been known to indulge before now, but who knows? Maybe he's an addict, eh?"
Li Yuan turned and looked up at the General again. Between the words and the tone in which they had been said lay a question mark.
"You don't believe that, do you?" he said after a moment. "You don't think he would have risked public exposure of his habit."
Tolonen was silent, watching the boy closely. Li Yuan looked away again, then started, understanding suddenly what the General had really been saying.
"He knew! That's what you mean, isn't it? Erikson knew, but—but he didn't dare show it. Is that right? You think he risked taking arfidis in public?"
"I think so," said Tolonen quietly. He was pleased with Li Yuan. If one good thing had come out of this rotten business it was this: Li Yuan would be T'ang one day. A great T'ang. If he lived long enough.
"Then that explains why no shoo Un were close enough to act."
"Yes."
"And Erikson?"
"He's dead. He killed himself an hour after the assassination. At first I thought it was because he felt he had failed me. Now I know otherwise."
Tblonen stared up at Erikson's face, conscious of the misery behind the dull surface glaze of his eyes. He had suffered for his betrayal.
Li Yuan's voice was strangely gentle. "What made him do it?"