THE MACHINE WATCHED ALL. It saw the great sea burned away; it watched the ships lose power and fall, the missiles detonate high above the troubled earth. And as the great wave swept across the dry seabed, it spoke to the eight who were in the air, directing them, urging them on, until the one it had chosen was safe.
It watched, knowing how close it had come to doing nothing, not certain even now that it had done the right thing in interfering in the affairs of men. Millions had died. Hundreds of millions. And many more would die in the months to come—of starvation and plague and simple misery.
It watched, seeing how the eight flew high above the Flood, Ebert held safe between the central pair. Let DeVore make what he would of that. Let him slowly figure out just what had happened here today.
Maybe that's why, Tuan Ti Fo said, speaking from the space at the center of it—from that point of emptiness it could not see into. Maybe you simply couldn't let him win.
Maybe . . . But such a thing was incalculable. It was not even something it could rationalize. On Mars it had acted to preserve itself. But here . . . Here it has acted out of instinct.
Instinct? Tuan Ti Fo asked and laughed; a gently ironic laugh. Since when did a Machine possess instinct?
Since . . .
But it did not know. Just as it did not know how it had come to be self-aware, so this, too, was a mystery to it.
Another step, Tuan Ti Fo said. Another tiny step.
And then laughter; a gentle, ironic laughter, slowly fading.
LI YUAN sat in the great tent, alone at his desk, the rain drumming on the canvas overhead. Nan Ho had left him for a moment, gone to greet the latest arrivals on the far side of the encampment, but there was much to do, and while he waited for him to return Li Yuan busied himself with matters of State, trying not to think of what was happen-
ing in the greater world, keeping his thoughts within the tiny circle of lamplight in which he sat.
How many millions had died already? And how many more would end their lives before this day was done?
That was the worst of it, the reason he could not dwell on it too long: it was the impotence he felt; the inability to change a single thing that had happened or was to come. Slowly, degree by degree, they had lost control. Seven had become One—himself. And now that One no longer held the reins. The world ran foaming mad toward the brink and he could do nothing.
He sighed and looked up, rubbing his eyes, then tensed. There had been a movement in the shadows across from him; the faintest noise.
"Who's there?"
He waited, his heart pounding, squinting into the dark. Had he been mistaken? Yes. It was only the wind, moving the canvas on the far side of the tent. He sat back, frowning, angry with himself for letting his imagination run away with him. There were guards outside, after all. It was just not possible. . . .
He felt a shiver at the back of his neck and looked up. Lehmann was standing there, not three paces from him, watching him, those cold pink eyes staring.
"No speeches," Lehmann said, drawing his knife. "You know why."
Li Yuan threw the desk up between them, then tugged the knife from his belt. But he had no intention of fighting Lehmann. Scrambling back, he slashed at the tent's soft wall, then threw himself out through the gap his knife had made, Lehmann close behind.
"Help!" He yelled, his feet slipping on the wet grass. "Hel—!"
A hand caught him, picked him up, and threw him aside unceremoniously. He rolled awkwardly, then slammed into the palisade, the breath knocked from him. Groaning he turned his head, looking back.
Lehmann was standing beside the rip in the tent's wall, crouched like a fighter in the flickering torchlight, his knife in his left hand. Facing him, holding the gusting torch, was a huge figure of a man, head and shoulders taller than the albino. As he slipped from consciousness the man's name flickered like a guttering lamp. Karr . . .
LEHMANN LOOKED PAST Karr at the crowd that was gathering and straightened, making himself less threatening.
"I have no fight with you, Gregor Karr. You served your Master well.
But enough's enough. One must respect one's Master, surely? One must be in awe of him, neh?" He gestured toward the fallen bundle by the palisade. "But how can you be in awe of that?"
Karr looked to Li Yuan, then back at Lehmann. It was in his power to choose. For this one brief moment, as the rain fell and the storm gathered strength, he had been granted the freedom to determine how he lived.
And the choice? The choice was simple. It was whether he chose to carry on, confused, struggling to make sense of things, to bring some form of good from the chaos of his life, or to submit to the certainties—the rigid order—of this other way.
Li Yuan groaned again and opened his eyes.
"Is the promise good?" he asked, looking to him.
Li Yuan coughed, then struggled to his knees. "Promise?"
"What you said to Ebert."
"Ah . . ." Li Yuan looked to Lehmann, then back at Karr. "I swore."
"You'll tear it down?"
The rain beat down. The torch gusted in the wind. Across from him Lehmann waited, crouched now, the knife slowly turning in his hand.
"I swear I'll tear it down."
Lehmann sprang. His knife arced toward Karr's throat, his foot toward his guts.
Karr shifted back a fraction, the torch spinning from his grip. His left forearm turned the knife thrust, his knee met Lehmann's foot. His right hand punched.
Lehmann was dead before he fell.
Fate. In a second he had decided what would be. As the thunder growled, he stepped back, letting a shuddering breath escape him. It was done with. Finished.
Someone picked up the torch and held it up. In its light he saw the dead man shudder, then lie still. Turning, he saw that Li Yuan was watching him, his dark eyes staring, trying to understand just what had happened.
"Chieh Hsia," he said, kneeling. Yet somehow the balance had changed. In a single moment he had made sense of his life. One single action—one single, physical action—had changed the shape of things. Had he died—had Lehmann triumphed over him—the future would have been different, the balance altered.
He shivered, then stood and stepped away. The rain was falling hard now. They would need to find better shelter than a tent afforded them.
He looked to Li Yuan again. The T'ang's silks were sticking to him, his dark hair plastered to his head. Karr frowned, understanding it at last. There were no levels, only those Man invented for himself. And Li Yuan ... Li Yuan was just another man.
"Come," he said, holding out his hand, offering it to the man. "We'd best get out of this."
Li Yuan took the offered hand, letting himself be helped up, then smiled.
"Round everyone up," Karr said, looking about him. "We'll go to the island. To Kalevala. It's no good here. This weather . . ."
Thunder cracked and rumbled over the plain. The rain intensified, drumming madly on the canvas close by. The torch hissed and suddenly went out. As it did, lightning played on the rim of the ruined fortress to the east.
Li Yuan looked up at Karr and nodded. "We'd better wake them. Warn them we're coming."
"Wake them?" Karr laughed. Yes, wake them, he thought. A new age beckoned. A new way. He felt a thrill flash through him, then, laughing, wiped the rain from his face.
So it began. So the Wheel turned and the world changed. He looked down at the corpse of the albino and nodded to himself.
So it began.
DEVORE SAT IN THE pilot's seat of the tiny one-man craft, hovering above the boiling sea, the rain hammering at the craft's wings as he looked out through the rain-streaked window.
The sea was awash with corpses, his own face, dead, forty million times dead, staring up at him blindly, endlessly.