Wisps of clouds poured past; the sun chased reflections across the cockpit and the plane came about and kept on with the sun on its right wing.

"We're going to pick up our escort in a few minutes," a thin voice came over the speaker in the helmet. The pilot or copilot was talking on their channel. "They'll meet us at Delga."

Duun acknowledged that. The voice came again. "We've just got word.

We've got ghota craft headed our way. Our escort's going to intercept.

Planes are in the air at Homaan. Council's going into session now."

Thorn leaned his head against the cushioned seat and stared ahead of him at the milky glare of light, the black, surreal figures of the pilots. There was no world but this, no past or future. He hung motionless above the earth while the sky rushed faster and faster at them and small voices from the ground spoke to the pilots (who themselves could do nothing) and told them that the world was in chaos. Duun spoke of missiles. Of intercepts.

Of aircraft which would be lifting from one city and another around the world, across seas and continents. People down there were looking up in fear at planes they could not see, expecting missiles to fall on them.

Children standing on that brown rock at Sheon, next the bent tree, would look up and wave at white trails in the sky. ("See us, here we are!

Hello!")— while dreadful missiles roared off in fire and smoke.

(This can't be happening.)

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(There is no can't,minnow.)

"Someone's on intercept with us." The pilot's voice again. "Bearing 45

low."

"From the sea," Duun said. "That's Betan. I figured. Hang on, minnow,"

The plane turned in flight. Pressure dragged at them, pulled at jaws and eyes and bowels and Thorn's nose ran; there was a pounding in his ears.

The plane rocked. They went into a steep bank. (We're going to crash. We were hit.) Thorn rolled his head against the seat as his heart went wild and the sun spun up again and over the right wing.

"That's a miss on their side, a hit on ours. It's down."

(What are they talking about? The other plane? Betan?) The milky light surrounded them again, implacable. On a screen a tiny point of light went out and Betan no longer existed, a plane scattered itself in shards and fragments, lives went out— ("That's a miss on their side, a hit on ours.") Their own plane had fired. That had been that shaking. And Betan was dead in a moment, with all her courage and her skill. ("It's down.")

"Betan," Duun said. "headed out over the sea and came back again. Points to her. She might have won it right then."

"She's dead."

There was a silence for a moment. The sky was incredibly smooth. Surreal again.

"There's a man named Shbit," Duun said. "A councillor. You know Dallen Oil? You remember your companies?"

"Yes."

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"Well, they're not only oil, they're a lot of things. Energy, trade, manufacture. They've got a lot of power in council. They saw it slipping.

They got Shbit elected: one of their own. Shbit wanted you transferred out of Ellud's wing and into one where things are more accessible— where you'd be more— public. Where politics could benefit by controversy.

Where I could be weakened. They can't overthrow a hatani judgment. But they can undermine it. They can come at you from so many sides you can't track them all. Shbit tried that. He had a few ghotanin in his employ.

Personal guards. They're ordinary as rain in private service. He had a few free-hatani he knew where to reach back home. A few kosanin, gods help them. And the fool got Betan past a fool of a personnel supervisor, the security chief, the division chief. Ellud— gods, five years ago: while we were still at Sheon. Brightest young security officer Ellud had. She ought to have been."

"Elanhen and Sphitti and Cloen—"

"Security as well. Sphitti's a free-citizen, son of a woman I know. Elanhen and Cloen from the station: kosanin. Damn good kids. Betan: free-citizen, career security. So they said. They left out pertinent details in her case."

The smoothness continued. The milky light never varied. To one side and the other cold terms like interceptflew on radios; ("It's down….") Lives ended. Beyond illusion-forests in city windows missile silos opened like flowers to the sun.

"…Betan knew we were succeeding. That was what tipped the balance.

She had help, gods know; all of Shbit's resources, forged records. She made a foul-up of it even so— a free-ghota might be that careless. But she wasn't working for Shbit. She meant to foul things up. Kill you if she could. Doublecross Shbit. I know it was a possibility. I took my time settling that affair and it was damn near too much time, while I was working on those tapes."

"You—"

"While you were out. Daily. Constantly. Never mind that. I'd spread myself too far; I'd hastened things, and my time was occupied; and I was 187

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held to law. I traced Betan as far as Shbit. When I learned she'd surfaced again in Shbit's keeping and stayed alive— thenI knew either Shbit himself was ghota or Shbit was being worked by one. I saw the pattern."

Thorn turned his face from the sun a second time and looked at Duun, at a face rendered faceless by the mask, sun reflecting on plastic eyeshields.

"Betan," Duun said, distant through the speaker, "may have been aimed all her life for what she did. Guild-service. A special kind of ghota. Gods know what the ghotanin had been feeding Shbit for information out of the department. Shbit was up against the ghota guild and totally outmatched…

playing their moves against me and thinking they were his. Even Dallen Company. I can't say I didn't expect guild trouble. But there was law, again— I was trying to keep from destroying the council's autonomy.

Dammit, they gave me too much. I let Shbit live because I knew he was a trigger I could pull, one the ghota would respond to. There's a spy in Ellud's office I've let stay. Sagot's mine."

(Something's still faithful in this world. O Sagot, one bit of truth.)

"…And you did what we'd been waiting for."

"What did I do? That tape?That damned stupid tape?The numbers and the pictures?"

"You survived it. You survived it, minnow, and you read it. And the meds would know what you knew in one more day— and the instant they knew, that unstopped leak would send the news straight to our enemies; while Ellud wouldn't want to let you leave the building— I could overrule him, but he could have fought me on it and fouled things up beyond recovery.

He's a good man; and honest: and he always wants more time than the opposition gives him. Some things I couldn't even tell Tangan himself.

Like guild war. Like the fact I'd pulled the trigger."

"This Shbit sent Betan when he knew we'd left the city."

"You're catching onto it. He gave a ghota a courier plane and never suspected she'd been hired by her own guild to be hired by him. He had to give her a ghota crew: no kosan would fly her to us."

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"Why come herefor the gods' sake?"

"She couldn't overtake us. For Shbit— she was supposed to go in and wail and howl and put on a good act. Disgrace you. Keep you out of the guild.

Create scandal. For the ghota— she was to walk in there just the way she did and deliver a message from her guild. You read Tangan. He wouldn't bend. That's clear to you and me— but ghotanin have a guiding belief that everything can be bought if you set the terms up right; she walked in there and saw she hadn't the right coin… by her way of looking at it. It was clear when she said keep you out the way she did she wasn't talking for Shbit. Tangan knew it then. Read what she was and knew what I'd done to him and knew why. And forgave us both." Duun was silent for a long while.