Ryan smiled. "Just don't burn it all too soon."

Her smile faded. "You handle the tactics, I'll deal with the arcana."

Her attitude bothered him, but he really didn't have much choice but to give her the benefit of the doubt. "Okay," he said, looking around at the others. "Any further questions?"

They all shook their heads.

"Dhin?"

"Yes?"

"You ready for action?"

There was laughter over Ryan's earpiece. "I'm already into position for the power dive. The storm is really starting to kick things around down there. Better strap yourselves in. This is going to be a hell of a ride."

Ryan shut off the topographical display. "Jane?"

"Ready to coordinate tacticom and vid from here, Quicksilver."

"All right, everybody strap in."

In the next few seconds, the team strapped themselves in to their crash harnesses and made one last check of their weapons and ammunition. When they were all ready, Ryan said, "Dhin. Take us down."

The steady rocket roar, a constant background noise until now, went silent. Ryan's stomach shot into his throat as the Phoenix II began to fall, picking up speed as it dropped from the sky.

18

On the far edge of the Matrix, in a deep pocket of pure ultraviolet information, the world of Wonderland stretched tendrils out into cyberspace. Alice rarely traveled through the Matrix to find what she wanted. Instead, Wonderland pulled that information into itself.

Alice and Wonderland were one and the same. Two facets of the same gem. Two manifestations of the same code. In this case, she was checking out Rox's story about Dunkelzahn's role in the Crash of '29.

The shining city stretched up into a glossy black sky around her as she walked. Moody and smoking more cigarettes than she should. Virtual smokes didn't have the drawbacks of the real thing, but the narcotic effects were programmed in. The city street felt like a canyon of mirrored blue glass, a trench of glistening mist over an empty urban landscape. No people, only buildings. This was her city and she rarely shared it.

Guess I'll have to deal with Rox sooner or later. Wonderland had checked out his story, but had turned up a few inconsistencies. Anomalies. Alice didn't like anomalies.

She opened a window and peered through into the land programmed to run like Lewis Carroll's Wonderland. She faded herself into that reality as the Cheshire cat, noticing that Rox had survived to reach a carefully sculptured garden of white roses, some of which seemed to have been painted red.

On the far side of the garden, a game of croquet was in progress. Man-sized playing cards, each with swords at their flat sides, leaned on each other to form crude bridges.

A huge woman, dressed in an ornate red frock and wearing a crystal tiara in her high-piled hair, was screaming at the top of her lungs. " 'Off with his head!' I said, 'Off with his head!' "

The guards, who had tumbled to the ground when she began screaming, rushed about in a frenzy, trying to find the offending party. Unfortunately, the Queen of Hearts seemed to be pointing in all directions, one right after the other. She even pointed to a rose bush that an over-zealous guard had lopped to the ground.

The Queen looked at the bush and wailed, "Now, off with his head." This time she had finally settled on the guard who had chopped down the roses.

The other two grabbed the third and hauled him away.

Alice looked around for Roxborough, finally spotting him near the garden entrance. Tucked under his arm, a great pink flamingo struggled to get free while Roxborough tried to get the small hedgehog at his feet to stay still long enough for him to use the flamingo to hit the poor creature.

Roxborough looked years older than he had the last time, and he had covered his fat body with a table cloth, wrapped around like a towel and tucked to stay up under his arms. He winced in pain as he moved, bending down slowly.

Alice knew the lupus was extremely painful, and would continue to worsen if her program was allowed to run its course.

Roxborough grimaced and dropped the flamingo, which jumped away from him in an explosion of pink feathers. He screamed suddenly and collapsed to the ground in a heap. The small hedgehog unrolled from its protective ball and scampered after the flamingo.

Roxborough spotted Alice's Cheshire cat icon and glared at her. "Damn it, Alice! I've told you everything I know."

"Oh, I hardly believe that, Rox. In fact, you've been very naughty."

"Naughty? Get bent, Alice."

Alice settled in the tree above him. "You seemed to have left out a pulse or two of data regarding the story of your alleged attempt to purchase Gossamer Threads."

Roxborough looked at her, then shook his head. He was in obvious pain, though he was trying to pretend otherwise. "It's a pity you had to show up just now. I'd finally gotten the hang of this game. I think I could have actually beaten the Queen this round. That damn flamingo was a dud, though. Wouldn't even keep his neck stiff. Every time his head hit the hedgehog, the little bugger rolled less than a meter."

Alice's tone was soft. "Rox, stick to the subject, or you'll be the next one to lose your head here."

"Did I hear someone say lose your head?"

The Queen waddled up to the tree, breathing hard. "Hello, Cat. You want me to take this little bastard's head?"

Alice grinned at Roxborough.

"It would be my pleasure, you understand. We haven't had a good beheading in quite a while."

Roxborough snorted. "You just took the guardsman's head a few moments ago."

The Queen looked baffled. "Isn't that what I said? We haven't had a beheading in quite a while."

Roxborough gave Alice a pleading look. "All right, Cat. As you said, back to the subject. Just what are you accusing me of?"

"Lying for one. You told me you were trying to buy Gossamer Threads. What you left out was how that was being done. And last, if not the most damning, is that you kind of changed the order of how things went down."

Roxborough raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

Rage filled Alice. "You told me that you had your hacker hit the place after you had already decided to buy it out. I just double checked that. Eva Thorinson was working for Acquisition Technologies, doing routine runs against a number of small companies. It wasn't until after Thorinson's equipment got fried that you attempted to acquire Gossamer Threads. And you didn't try to buy it. There was no bargaining table for you to go to. You tried a hostile take-over."

"Whatever protection they had was good enough to keep Eva out, and I wanted it," Rox said with a nervous glance at the Queen of Hearts, who was watching the conversation with detached fascination.

Alice grinned. "However, you forgot that most important rule. Don't deal with a dragon, and better yet, never try to frag one over. Dunkelzahn burned you good on that deal."* Roxborough looked up at her, wincing. "Look, Alice. Let's take this step by step. All right, I wasn't completely honest, but that doesn't matter. Dunkelzahn was the one with the code. Not me."

"I don't believe you. I think it's just as likely that you created the Crash entity and used it to try to get a hold on a number of companies. Maybe it just backfired on you."

"You don't believe me? Why don't you check with your old friend Damien Knight. He was so sure the Big D was behind that whole mess that he's been working on a way to kill the old lizard for years." Roxborough let out a harsh laugh. "And he might just have been the one to succeed."

Alice felt as if she had just been punched in the gut. "Knight?"

"Why not? Look at their entire relationship. Deadly moves on a chessboard that uses human pawns. Damien profited a good deal from the dragon's death. His lackey, Kyle Haeffner, is now in the White House."