Wang-mu and Master Han waited together on the riverbank some hundred meters from their house, a pleasant walk through the garden. Jane had told them that someone would be coming to see them, someone from Lusitania. They both knew this meant that faster-than-light travel had been achieved, but beyond that they could only assume that their visitor must have come to an orbit around Path, shuttled down, and was now making his way stealthily toward them.

Instead, a ridiculously small metal structure appeared on the riverbank in front of them. The door opened. A man emerged. A young man– largeboned, Caucasian, but pleasant-looking anyway. He held a single glass tube in his hand.

He smiled.

Wang-mu had never seen such a smile. He looked right through her as if he owned her soul. As if he knew her, knew her better than she knew herself.

“Wang-mu,” he said, gently. “Royal Mother of the West. And Fei-tzu, the great teacher of the Path.”

He bowed. They bowed to him in return.

“My business here is brief,” he said. He held the vial out to Master Han. “Here is the virus. As soon as I've gone– because I have no desire for genetic alteration myself, thank you– drink this down. I imagine it tastes like pus or something equally disgusting, but drink it anyway. Then make contact with as many people as possible, in your house and the town nearby. You'll have about six hours before you start feeling sick. With any luck, at the end of the second day you'll have not a single symptom left. Of anything.” He grinned. “No more little air-dances for you, Master Han, eh?”

“No more servility for any of us,” said Han Fei-tzu. “We're ready to release our messages at once.”

“Don't spring this on anybody until you've already spread the infection for a few hours.”

“Of course,” said Master Han. “Your wisdom teaches me to be careful, though my heart tells me to hurry and proclaim the glorious revolution that this merciful plague will bring to us.”

“Yes, very nice,” said the man. Then he turned to Wang-mu. “But you don't need the virus, do you?”

“No, sir,” said Wang-mu.

“Jane says you're as bright a human being as she's ever seen.”

“Jane is too generous,” said Wang-mu.

“No, she showed me the data.” He looked her up and down. She didn't like the way his eyes took possession of her whole body in that single long glance. “You don't need to be here for the plague. In fact, you'd be better off leaving before it happens.”

“Leaving?”

“What is there for you here?” asked the man. “I don't care how revolutionary it gets here, you'll still be a servant and the child of low-class parents. In a place like this, you could spend your whole life overcoming it and you'd still be nothing but a servant with a surprisingly good mind. Come with me and you'll be part of changing history. Making history.”

“Come with you and do what?”

“Overthrow Congress, of course. Cut them off at the knees and send them all crawling back home. Make all the colony worlds equal members of the polity, clean out the corruption, expose all the vile secrets, and call home the Lusitania Fleet before it can commit an atrocity. Establish the rights of all ramen races. Peace and freedom.”

“And you intend to do all this?”

“Not alone,” he said.

She was relieved.

“I'll have you.”

“To do what?”

“To write. To speak. To do whatever I need you to do.”

“But I'm uneducated, sir. Master Han was only beginning to teach me.”

“Who are you?” demanded Master Han. “How can you expect a modest girl like this to pick up and go with a stranger?”

“A modest girl? Who gives her body to the foreman in order to get a chance to be close to a godspoken girl who might just hire her to be a secret maid? No, Master Han, she may be putting on the attitudes of a modest girl, but that's because she's a chameleon. Changing hides whenever she thinks it'll get her something.”

“I'm not a liar, sir,” she said.

“No, I'm sure you sincerely become whatever it is you're pretending to be. So now I'm saying, Pretend to be a revolutionary with me. You hate the bastards who did all this to your world. To Qing-jao.”

“How do you know so much about me?”

He tapped his ear. For the first time she noticed the jewel there. “Jane keeps me informed about the people I need to know.”

“Jane will die soon,” said Wang-mu.

“Oh, she may get semi-stupid for a while,” said the man, “but die she will not. You helped save her. And in the meantime, I'll have you.”

“I can't,” she said. “I'm afraid.”

“All right then,” he said. “I offered.”

He turned back to the door of his tiny craft.

“Wait,” she said.

He faced her again.

“Can't you at least tell me who you are?”

“Peter Wiggin is my name,” he said. “Though I imagine I'll use a false one for a while.”

“Peter Wiggin,” she whispered. “That's the name of the–”

“My name. I'll explain it to you later, if I feel like it. Let's just say that Andrew Wiggin sent me. Sent me off rather forcefully. I'm a man with a mission, and he figured I could only accomplish it on one of the worlds where Congress's power structures are most heavily concentrated. I was Hegemon once, Wang-mu, and I intend to have the job back, whatever the title might turn out to be when I get it. I'm going to break a lot of eggs and cause an amazing amount of trouble and turn this whole Hundred Worlds thing arse over teakettle, and I'm inviting you to help me. But I really don't give a damn whether you do or not, because even though it'd be nice to have your brains and your company, I'll do the job one way or another. So are you coming or what?”

She turned to Master Han in an agony of indecision.

“I had been hoping to teach you,” said Master Han. “But if this man is going to work toward what he says he will, then with him you'll have a better chance to change the course of human history than you'd ever have here, where the virus will do our main work for us.”

Wang-mu whispered to him. “Leaving you will be like losing a father.”

“And if you go, I will have lost my second and last daughter.”

“Don't break my heart, you two,” said Peter. “I've got a faster-than-light starship here. Leaving Path with me isn't a lifetime thing, you know? If things don't work out I can always bring her back in a day or two. Fair enough?”

“You want to go, I know it,” said Master Han.

“Don't you also know that I want to stay as well?”

“I know that, too,” said Master Han. “But you will go.”

“Yes,” she said. “I will.”

“May the gods watch over you, daughter Wang-mu,” said Master Han.

“And may every direction be the east of sunrise to you, Father Han.”

Then she stepped forward. The young man named Peter took her hand and led her into the starship. The door closed behind them. A moment later, the starship disappeared.

Master Han waited there ten minutes, meditating until he could compose his feelings. Then he opened the vial, drank its contents, and walked briskly back to the house. Old Mu-pao greeted him just inside the door. “Master Han,” she said. “I didn't know where you had gone. And Wang-mu is missing, too.”

“She'll be gone for a while,” he said. Then he walked very close to the old servant, so that his breath would be in her face. “You have been more faithful to my house than we have ever deserved.”

A look of fear came upon her face. “Master Han, you're not dismissing me, are you?”

“No,” he said. “I thought that I was thanking you.”

He left Mu-pao and ranged through the house. Qing-jao was not in her room. That was no surprise. She spent most of her time entertaining visitors. That would suit his purpose well. And indeed, that was where he found her, in the morning room, with three very distinguished old godspoken men from a town two hundred kilometers away.