Chapter 1, "Day -31", Scene 2

Jik Dain Bedlip

     Players cluttered the arena's stone walkways, members of a league separated into rosters, rosters divided into triads. They shouted taunts across the rectangular hollows of the tlaxtli courts; they leaned together and laughed at inside jokes; and they murmured plans, readying themselves for the serious play ahead. They stretched limber, tanned bodies, seeping sweat under the glare of wide-open double-suns' shine; they worked kuna-gall oil into the carved leather of their protective gear; they sucked noisily at durian fruit for a last-minute systemic surge. This peculiar fusion of scents merged the joyful agony of past tournaments with today's tingling promise; it whispered about their resplendent future.
     Jik Dain Bedlip relished these moments. He touched these people and resonated to their strength. He filled his nose with the stink of their anticipation. He beheld their intensity and beauty. He dreamed of the day when he would send them into real battles.
     Dressed in his Governor's tunic, a spiral of stars glinting from hip to shoulder, Dain ambled along a network of walls that defined interlocking sections of the arena. The tlaxtli league had set its arenas — two-hundred ninety-four altogether, scattered across the Continent Popovich — into solitary hills surrounded by rolling grasslands, for the best access control. And in this season, the play inevitably unfolded beneath clear skies.
     Some players wouldn't compete today; not their turn. On walkways topping walls that defined courts, these clumped together, casually clothed, arms folded, shoulders rubbing, eyes roving in constant scrutiny. Wandering by, Dain found their conversations disjointed, intermittent exchanges thrown over shoulders as they dissected someone else.
     The rest of the ollomani readied for play. These assembled in triads, assigned just for the day as near center, deep center, and roamer: topador, golpe, and chivero. They dressed for the games, debating tactics, comparing techniques. Each, man and woman alike, would soon be wearing a thick-leather palmas covering front and back of the torso and engraved with alligators, herons, and other animal figures. In the meantime, they stretched or conferred or worked on equipment, their minds consumed by preparation.
     Ahead of Dain, yet another triad on the two-meter-wide wall: the only man fussed with a thick belt that cinched his palmas in place; two women outlined plays on an infoplate. For now, they wore only narrow bands containing and protecting groins and breasts. Otherwise, their sun-baked skins were naked except for an impact-shined pad, called a pachcab, on one wrist and another on the opposite knee.
     Dain pre-empted their concentration. He smiled and looked up at the man's face. "What's your roster's name?"
     The man pulled himself to attention. He focused on the distance over Dain's head. "Xicalcoliqui!"
     "Excellent!" Dain reached up to gently slap the player's arm where it jutted out of his palmas. Muscles hard under leathery skin. "As I remember the standings, you're tied for third in the league." He turned his attention to the women. "Good luck!"
     "Thank you, sir," answered the one with the infoplate.
     The other one stared at him, her mouth slightly ajar. Without really seeing her, he nodded in her direction, crinkling his eyes and mouth in acknowledgment and goodwill, then moved on. He edged between a brace of triads two steps away.
     He overheard one of the women behind him say, "Who was that?" Maybe the one carrying the infoplate.
     "Governor of the tournament."
     Dain paused to hear more.
     "I know that! Which one is he?" So: the one who had stared.
     "How should I know?" A shrug came through the words. "What do you care?"
     "There are three strategists for the league," said the man. "They take turns governing tournaments."
     "This is my first competition. Which one is he?" The woman's question was insistent.
     "We do not use his name," the man instructed. "He is one of our leaders. That is enough."
     After a moment, the questioner said, "I know him from somewhere."
     Ollomani shuffled about. Dain stepped out of their way, keeping bodies between him and the woman who had stared, yet twisting to take a circumspect look at her. She was bending over her palmas. He couldn't see her face. Even if he could, would he recognize her? If he didn't, did that mean she was not a threat?
     She had opened a question in both their minds. A chance existed that its answer could connect parts of his legitimate past to his role as Governor of the tlaxtli league — a role he preferred to remain secret. A scandal now could ruin his hard-wrought position within Byukan-Hamil Consortium and his plans to advance it.
     His llevar chimed from his right shoulder, calling him to start the tournament. After a final, futile glance at the woman, Dain lifted his head to gain perspective.
     He stood at one side of the arena. At his feet, five-meter-high walls of rough stone lined a court skirted by smaller rectangles. Their bottoms defined an I-shaped patch of raked dirt ten meters wide and forty meters long, with serifs three meters deep. The arena offered eighteen of these courts to the tournament, two sets of eight on sides that were flush with two courts in the middle, forming a U. The remaining gap was filled with a smaller court, reserved for the final mano-a-mano contest, and the Governor's Platform at the open end. He strode in that direction.

     Elevated above the court walls, Dain raised his hand. He surveyed athletes and spectators below him, league members only, each one standing tall, raised eyes fixed on him. A zephyr licked his extended fingers. He coiled them into a fist. Released, triads plunged onto sunken fields to begin the first round of games.
     Watching these ulama start, Dain clutched the platform's railing. A sliver of alarm whimpered at him from the depths of his mind. He darted his gaze off to the right, hoping to catch sight of the woman who had found him familiar. Instantly, he dragged his attention back with an unspoken curse. He wrenched his spine straight, marched to one of the platform's stairs — he always walked the walls during tournaments — but stopped himself this time.
     Down there, teams of three hustled to score points by batting an olli, a half-kilo ball of hard rubber, back and forth. Everyone else watched intently.
     Up here, Dain's ingrained caution multiplied his concerns. Was there a real threat to his ambitions here? How much action should he take to identify it, to assess it, to eliminate it?
     He hesitated, two fingers resting on the banister, gaze roaming proudly over the ulama. He wanted to stay here, to attend the league like it was a prize dog. He had conceived it to be his tool of conquest. He had raised it to adore and follow him. He had trained it in physical and mental discipline. He had honed it to perpetual readiness. He enjoyed watching it perform, seeing in each victory a herald of his future.
     But he also knew that people existed, faceless people, litter from his personal history, who could threaten all that. He had to find out if this woman was one of them.
     Dain turned away from the courts and paced across rubbed-marble squares up to the edge of the unkempt, natural grounds surrounding the arena. Ignoring his aircraft sitting there dormant, confident no olloman would venture onto the Governor's Platform, he settled into a relaxed stance, clasped his hands in front of him, and closed his eyes.
     In the piebald gray behind his lids, Dain cleared away the structures and concerns of his life. Next, he summoned a trick of memory and mental discipline, a trick smoothed and cemented through long practice. A door appeared, standing high against this exclusive vista, its backdrop overcast and swirling with streaks of black and jagged lines of near-white. Five steps led up to the door. Their promise warmed Dain.
     Calmly, methodically, he climbed those steps to induce a self-hypnotic trance. One, awareness of the physical world dropped away. Two, awareness of his external body disappeared. Three, his internal body, ever nude, came on-line. Four, a grainy and solid tread supported his bare feet; the brass doorknob cooled his hand. Five, he pushed open the door and stepped through into his past — his carefully preserved and organized perception of his own life.

     Overhead, he saw a flotilla of massive, somber clouds and understood them as the intangible Patterns that determined the interplay of life in the land around him. Consuming yet disembodied, intangible yet imbued with force, these short statements of adopted truth dominated every aspect of his life. His life, his parents' lives, the lives of each child and adult who wandered this landmass, nay, all continents, on the Planet Yeibichai, were controlled by interlocking sets of Patterns. These veritable Languages of rules determined how all the important decisions of life were made. And they milled all people into uniform pieces of animation, no more distinguishable or important than the myriad automata that pervaded modern society.
     Beneath this perpetual reminder of oppression, Dain had constructed an idyllic clearing surrounded by the façade of a deep, thick forest. He strolled forward.
     An open fire crackled in a circle of stones. Its flames leapt joyfully, tongues of orange amid blue auras, wisps of white smoke breaking free to scent the air. Two short logs, facing each other, covered with smooth, white bark, snuggled up to the fire. Sitting on one, a small boy hunched toward the radiant warmth, eyes mesmerized by the friendly fury.
     "Jikki," Dain said quietly.
     The boy whirled, running even before looking, grinning, arms wide in greeting. Dain crouched, reached, and took him in. He rejoiced in the hug for three, five, seven heartbeats, then released the boy.
     "I've come on a search," Dain said.
     Jikki pouted. "Then I can't perform." He, too, was nude, his small, perfect body flushed from the fire's heat, his fine brown hair combed carefully to accentuate its cowlicks.
     Dain relented. "Maybe just a little."
     Jikki grinned, whirled away in a simple dance of celebration, then with a peek to show his respect for Dain's mission, settled onto his log. Dain promptly took his place on the other, so he could stare into the boy's eyes, eyes with agate irises and lilac sclera, eyes that expanded and swirled and enveloped Dain until he became Jikki — again.

     Jikki peered with delight around the sitting room before him.
     The walls were hyper-compressed dirt — from his recess in the joint mind, Dain silently discounted Jikki's reaction because he knew now that this house was built like nearly all the others in the world, in accordance with the Global Pattern Language. But Jikki, dominant in the mind for now, drew sustenance from their earthy tones, breathed in their fragrant coziness, slipped into their gentle trustiness. They harbored him, gave him a place to be, a place to return to. Within them, he found learning easy.
     Jikki swiveled his chair till he faced a rosebud-trimmed alcove. Within it, his family's private entrance to the Mirnaya Direvnya welcomed him. Its foilscreen, window-shaped, glowing with its own portrayal of cyberspace, dominated the recess. But he commanded it, touching its surface, typing within its keyspace, even replacing its sight and touch with the pseudo-senses of virtual reality. All these fondly remembered artifacts extended his senses. With them, he journeyed at will into this Global Village, its world-wide network of infraware and automata invisible behind the images it presented to him. Whether the medium was plain text, video, graphics, or virtual encounters, the purveyed knowledge fascinated him, as long as he could peek out past it at his home.
     The focus shivered and changed. Jikki walked now, outdoor air cooling his skin, forest-tang tickling his nostrils. Venturing with him, in a comprehensible multiplicity of images, mixing, overlaying, eclipsing, he perceived just himself, or himself and his parents, or himself and his siblings, or himself and his friends.
     Ahead of them shimmered destinations thick in his memories. Even a small direvnya like theirs offered interesting places — mosaic of subcultures, sacred sites, markets of many shops, self-governing workshops and offices. Each excursion was limited, though, a capsule of physical rather than virtual experience, that always ended with his returning home, their porch light a green beacon.
     Home. Dain interrupted gently, "Jikki."
     They were back in the clearing, sharing the fire.
     "Thank you, Jikki."
     "Next time? I'll have more time?"
     Dain nodded. "We'll spend all the time you want." He stood. "But now—"
     Jikki huddled at his place on the log. He focused on the fire as if using its light to purge his mind of the implication placed there by Dain.
     Dain reluctantly turned his back on the boy and took a few steps toward a particularly ugly part of the forest backdrop. Here the trees tangled with each other, twisting their limbs into an intricate congestion, a nasty parody of a network.
     For Jikki had left Dain's life when he was old enough for the Network of Learning. Taking his place was — Dain had never found a suitable name for the creature he'd become in that period, a creature who now inhabited this tortured scene.
     In front of the mock network, Dain had erected a sign with the text of the Network-of-Learning Pattern: "Instead of the lock-step of compulsory schooling in a fixed place, work in piecemeal ways to decentralize the process of learning and enrich it through contact with many places and people all over the direvnya: workshops, teachers at home or walking through the direvnya, professionals willing to take on the young as helpers, older children teaching younger children, museums, youth groups traveling, scholarly seminars, industrial workshops, old people, and so on. Conceive of all these situations as forming the backbone of the learning process; survey all these situations, describe them, and publish them as the direvnya's 'curriculum'; then let students, children, their families and neighborhoods weave together for themselves the situations that comprise their 'school' paid for by the Collective. Build new educational facilities in a way which extends and enriches this network."
     Dain lifted his gaze from the sign and stared into a dark cleft between two gnarled trees. In there, he had locked away that part of his life battered by the Network of Learning, a past segregated so he would never revisit it accidentally, a time recalled only when necessary.
      He waited.
     A wraith appeared in the cleft, a pale rendition of Jikki just after he started living in the network, an image that aged appropriately during each sojourn through his bank of memories.
     "You know why I'm here," Dain said.
     The figure jerked a nod. Its face showed no specific features, only blurs.
     "Let's go then." Dain raised a hand in command, then dissolved into the other's gestalt.

     Each day — the days collected in his mind like a series of punctures — he stepped from his doorway alone and sought out courses. The direvnya's paths teemed with other students of all ages, bigger, different, more talented. They jostled him with their skills, attitudes, eager pursuits. He toiled at enrollment until the Em-Deh — Mirnaya Direvnya — the planet's virtual Global Village — told his parents he had found enough classes.
     That Pattern controlled the rest of his childhood. When he was not enrolling, he was attending classes — in small rooms above shops, on benches at the edges of plazas, led by masters in workshops, given by teachers who contracted out their specialties. Each course contained students who competed, for grades, for position, for attention. Inevitably, one or more of the others excelled, and all he could do was follow along.
     Images of the pattern-in-reality replicated in his mind. A room with dense walls of dirt, but somehow dusty, cold, and gray. A teacher of occluded features, smirched by time and repetition. A crowd of others, his age, older, even younger; their faces and bodies distilled to the same set of eyes — wide, knowing — the same nose — broad with thick nostrils that flared easily — the same mouth — always open, always spouting, always laughing with confidence. And he, watching, copying, channeling his own learning through his replica of their talent. Each instance of a class drained something from inside him, plucked at his core and left nothing behind, fattening the black-hot void that kept him from going home again.
     Bodiless, Dain reacted, observer, yet one with the observed. Loss, love, exile, and homecoming: all these emotions tumbled around him like restless, demanding animals. The actual memories belonged to the wraith, of course, so each portrayal came across fresh, yet their import seemed familiar, poignant, putrid.
     Though immersed in the viscous mood, Dain realized that he had seen nothing to help his search for the woman and the size of her threat to him and his future. He struggled to assert himself. "Show me," he demanded.
     The classroom composite stalled. "No fair!" the wraith wailed. "I must have time — I must guide you — I must —"
     "Show me." Dain churned, called by his duties, trapped by his past.
     A classroom, one in particular, came to life. In one corner stood a girl, her face turned away. He couldn't tell who she was.
      "Show me," Dain insisted.
     His guide flashed a snarl over the scene, a brief glimpse of his now-adolescent smudge of a face twisted by fury, a reminder of the days long past when he experienced anger directly.
     A scent of mustiness trickled into Dain's nose. A chill rippled Dain's imaginary skin. The class had gathered in the teacher's basement. Under its artificial lights, the girl twirled toward them. She grinned impishly and her blue eyes flashed in complement.
     Dain studied the face until he felt he could carry the memory, updated for age, into reality. He just hoped that the wraith had not invented her. Then he climbed back to consciousness.

     Reality overlaid Dain's trance. Out here, the evergreen forest enjoyed the onslaught of summer. Behind him, the games continued. He checked the time; the trance had lasted sixteen seconds. With a final sigh to clear his lungs and a shake to clear his mind, he strode across the platform and down those longer, more tangible steps. He went looking for the mysterious olloman.
     Dain worked his way amidst walls of watchers. Most of them paced. A few squatted. But all studied the tactics, the skills, the foibles of each athlete below them. Someday soon, they would range that same scruffy dirt seeking victory against these same ollomani. And they hoped to compete in the last ulama of each tournament, mano-a-mano, to near-death.
     Ducking by a triad waiting its turn, Dain stepped into a break in the human wall, then glanced across the court on his right — straight into eyes lying in wait. That woman again, motionless against the roil of her teammates celebrating victory. Dain halted, returning her study. The round eyes, their honey-gold glowing; the angular face, soiled with dirt and sweat; the muscular body, obscured by the bulky palmas; nothing like the girl shown to him. The wraith had taken Dain through that painful revival to benefit no one but himself. A pity, for an acquaintance from that period would have been no real threat. A goad, for now he must find her somewhere else in his life.
     Over there, the man at her side jostled her attention from Dain. She moved away with her triad to their next ulama in double-elimination. She gave Dain one last glance, a more lively, over-the-shoulder glimpse — and he envisioned her younger, much younger. In that form, the face seemed familiar. Nothing specific, just familiar somehow, a residual connection to history left by the trance.
     The chill of that connection, the chance of a dark splinter from his past thwarting his present hard-won potential, shivered him into action. He elbowed his way to the nearest Scorekeeper and scanned the names of the triad that had just won in that court: 3'Q'eyex, 8'Issaw, and 7'Na, all ollomani names, with no detectable relationship with her background or his.
     Dain thanked the Scorekeeper and withdrew to the Governor's Platform. He avoided the railing and sight of the ulama. Cocking his head to the right, he told his llevar to rouse. Woven into the thin shoulder padding he affected, the electronic device projected a holoscreen forward. He peered into its swarm of glyphs.
     "Agents," he ordered. A menu of automated services swelled. "Limited Questions." The data-fetching service mutely displayed its request for parameters. "Extend the following names, known to the Tlaxtli-League database." He listed the names from the scorecard. "Cross with membership of the Continental Collective. Cross with residential history of Jik Dain Bedlip. Go."
     The agent panel shifted from reddish input mode to green processing mode and shrank away to a winking symbol.
     Dain looked away, then wandered back across the platform, where he settled into distracted oversight.
     A chant broke through his brooding: "Hail! Hail! Hail!"
     Dain peered down from the jutting balcony. On the near wall of each field, triads of players raised their arms in victory. He nodded gravely at each threesome and listened as each olloman shouted his or her name. Then he lifted his hand to start the next round. A cheer greeted his signal. Losing squads joined the ranks of spectators scattered along the walls. The winners turned to their next ulama.
     Habit drew him toward stairs again. Indecision slowed his steps. A few commands to his llevar could bring him the tourney schedule. He could follow that woman's triad into the next round, go watch their play, but to what point? Better to see if the automated agent had done its job.
     A brief report waited in the holoscreen. Outside the league, 8'Issaw went by the name Dood Rose Margo-Rufus. They had lived in the same direvnya early in his career. He retreated across the platform, then took that data into another trance.

     Jikki wasn't waiting in the clearing; he knew Dain had no time. Instead, Bedlip stood there, his near-adult face averted from the fire's light, but angled to still catch its heat. His hair was shorter, thinner, stiffened into a sensible frame for his intense face and marbled eyes. His nude body was trim, its muscles undefined.
     Dain regarded this younger version of himself with some pride, though he never wanted to relive that phase again. He saw his life as a fated course, a miserable trail of stepping stones leading to, a baleful stream of projectiles targeting, a sequence of jobs preparing him ... to be who he was, a rebel seed planted at the core of the ubiquitous Byukan-Hamil Consortium that spread the continent with its own nested webs of power and action. And Bedlip had taken him there, rescuing him from the fretful self-doubting of the wraith.
      "Bedlip," Dain said, a word of recognition that permitted the other persona to speak.
     The young man turned smartly and sidestepped the fire. Moving outside the logs, he drew Dain into cooler air. "I stayed in that direvnya twice." He glanced around. "When you live according to the 'Delegate the Work of Society' Pattern, you get to see a lot of the continent."
     Dain had expected that Pattern to come up. Defining the planet-wide rule, the Founders of Yeibichai had stated, "Avoid governments. Identify your jobs, both public and private. Hire someone to do them. Keep an eye on them. Force them to compete for those jobs regularly."
     Bedlip said, "I have isolated one incident during each stay that could include this woman Margo-Rufus." He pinned Dain's gaze with a stare. "You could have gotten more specific data out of that agent. Couldn't you?"
     Dain bobbed his head, granting validity to Bedlip's accusation. "Do what you can."
     Bedlip swept an arm between them, sucking Dain into his memories.

     The Applied-Politics Seminar assembled in a south-facing garden. Rising above them, a building housed the financial nexus of a large direvnya's Web of Shopping. Its simple face of hyper-compressed earth reminded the students of the constant flux of money churning inside — and how the right application of the right skills could tap that flow.
     Bedlip strolled into the garden just as the Master called attention. Truthfully, Bedlip was more interested in one girl — how she filled out her shirt and trousers — than in the lesson. The Master snapped his fingers three times, and they all settled into quiet. Bedlip leaned on the base of a statue.
     The Master gestured toward a nearby bara-bara tree and beckoned two men forward out of its shade. Bedlip recognized them and his breath caught in his throat. These men represented a financial-services combine, the very combine that had hired Fin Boerge Ousland straight out of this class. Fin Boerge who had assumed the role in this class as the One Who Excelled, who had become Bedlip's model for emulation here, who had left Bedlip behind and went to do real business. Bedlip's pulse raced along his temples at the chance of it happening to him.
     "We have some bad news," began the taller man. "Fin Boerge was killed a few days ago." His eyes scoured the students on garden benches. "A hunting accident. His bow shattered as he faced a charging gwira." The questing eyes lifted finally to discover Bedlip. "A rare manufacturing flaw, but such things happen." The man relaxed and spoke over the other students' heads. "Fortunately for some, life goes on; business goes on. We hired Fin Boerge from this class, mainly because of the work he did here. We return here to hire his replacement as tactician for our latest sales campaign. Jik Dain, will you take the job?"
     Reaction spread over Bedlip, hammering his lungs and heart with excitement, turning his stomach with challenge and change. He accepted on the spot, then scanned the class for their reactions. Several open, smiling faces rose to his. But he also saw more blasé expressions, some mixed with impatience. Then he noticed a young girl with honey-gold eyes, sitting on grass. He really hadn't acknowledged her before, chubbier than he liked, too serious, too cautious. But, as the seminar's alternate lead, he would have been familiar to her.
     Skeptical, Dain broke into Bedlip's tale. "Must we come here every time?"
     Bedlip brought them back to the clearing. "My life began with this moment. I emerged from the Network of Learning into the Work of Society. And I discovered the career-enhancing aspects of death at the same time."
     Dain disdained the youth's coy directness; it was so primitive. "Was she really in this class with you?" he asked curtly.
     Bedlip wavered, insecurity hobbling his pose. "Yes. I wouldn't do that to you." He held up a finger. "But I can't guarantee that she's Margo-Rufus." He extended the other fingers and tossed the handful into the air. "I don't have direct access to the Em-Deh. You'll have to check the seminar's roster yourself."
     "Adequate. What's next?"

     Bedlip leaned forward. Strategist at last — for a different combine, newly capitalized, poised to break into the marketplace — he sat with his tacticians inside a commercial entrance to the Mirnaya Direvnya. Images surrounded them. Strips of virtual panels cascaded over every surface of the automated chamber that linked them with the global network. They sat amidst samples of every product similar to the one they planned. Every product, that is, already defined, explained, and sold through the planet's cybernetic infrastructure. The competition was daunting.
     "Now's the time to quit, people," Bedlip told them. "Disband this combine and go back to working for somebody else." He observed the collective shudder and joined it.
     "I'll take that as a resounding 'No.'" Bedlip stretched his legs in the confines. He wanted to pace, take a power stance in front of his new subordinates, but room didn't allow. Instead, he occupied as much volume as he could sitting down. "Then we face a gravity well as steep as any orbital vehicle, even though it is virtual. Any ideas?"
     "Is there any place else to sell from?" asked Ol' Ment Caljeanne, tactician for distribution and sales channels.
     "Like a shop at each Local Transport Area? Where people can walk in and look at stuff?" retorted Shi Gechiyo Izumi, engineering lead. "Costs too much for too little exposure."
     Bedlip wriggled a hand and captured all their attention. "Consider this: a solipsistic view of cyberspace. Virtual reality exists only in people's minds. All this —" he waved at the projections around them "— just provides a stimulus. A consistent, powerful, self-adjusting stimulus, true, but the real reality occurs, takes place, acts out —" he paused for emphasis "— only in the cerebral reality inside the viewer's head. Can we do anything with that?"
     "Select a stimulus that produces maximum substance in cerebral reality." That came from their manufacturing tactician, Mar Louise Febronmeill.
     "How do we do that?" Bedlip whispered.
     "By maximizing on what is already there. By relating to the patterns already existing in the prospect's mind. By connecting to the unsatisfied goals there," said Ment.
     Bedlip tugged on the reins slightly. "Don't reach so far."
     "What we put in front of them there." Gechiyo thrust a hand into one of the holographs hanging beside him. "Has to fit exactly with." He shook his head. "No, into the concepts in here." He tapped his forehead.
     "Almost so they know what we're saying even before we say it," said Ment. "How do we do that?"
     Bedlip leaned forward, drew his legs under him, planted knuckles on one thigh, laid a forearm on the other, and waited to confide the answer to them. When they drew closer, he said, "By understanding the person who is already our customer before he or she even buys anything."
     Dain intruded on the retelling, snapping, "And Margo-Rufus? She's here?" He knew this project because its success had elicited Byukan-Hamil's attention. The conglomerate had summoned him for an interview after his combine had snatched market share from the continental masters.
     "In a minute."
     "Now."
     A flicker of spite, then Bedlip returned to his remembering. He/they walked out of the commercial entrance, emerging from its capsule of virtual reality. The combine's headquarters spread around him, and there, behind a massive design workstation, a slender, golden-eyed woman glanced up. She smiled and went back to work.
     "So we worked together?" Dain said. He found himself amidst trance-borne trees once more as Bedlip's recollection vanished.
     Bedlip, obstructing the fire, shrugged. "That's the way I remember it. She designed prototypes for the manufacturing team. I didn't see her very much. I didn't really know her name. I was busy." His eyes glittered.
     "I know." Dain knew the thoughts exciting Bedlip, thoughts of the lofty Byukan-Hamil Consortium, coruscating in legend, almost illusory except for its power. And riding the cornerstone of this construct was a single woman, Har Norma Byukan.
     "What's it been like, working with her?" Though awestruck, Bedlip had refused to come running at Byukan-Hamil's call. Then, Har Norma invited him personally. He went to the meeting rough, arrogant, cagey, and charmed a job offer out of the continent's most powerful person. His acceptance ended his life.
     And started Dain's.

     An explosion of approval drew Dain to the platform's railing. He looked down on a court, its walls packed with his followers, their mouths open, arms raised, faces alight with approval. In the court itself, its analco, or center line — normally an invisible screen of infrared light — cut the field in two with a sullen-red plane. That meant a yachuach had ended the match. He skimmed his gaze along the analco to a circle of stone jutting out of the court wall a meter short of its lip. Someone had blasted the olli through the center of that ring, the yachuach. That single shot transcended the point tally, abruptly and without recourse.
     Dain checked one side of the court. Three athletes climbed morosely up the wall, aided by reaching hands. In the other direction, two ollomani stood aside, their arms extended to present a third to the audience. He stood there, his head raised to drink in the crowd's noisy praise. Dain recognized the stiff, unusable hand that extended beyond the olloman's wrist pachcab. 13'Sao-La was the man's name, and yachuach at any time was his signature play.
     As governor, Dain held up a hand. As governed, the crowd reacted immediately, with waves of heads turned in attention and hands reaching to pass it on. In a moment, silence, nibbled only by the rustling of lungs and palmas, claimed the players around the court, and down in it, 13'Sao-La and his teammates bowed their heads over their fist-in-palm greetings.
     "Well done!" Dain shouted, then closed his hand and lowered it. The players redoubled their cheers.
     Dain turned aside and called a pair of agents to life in his llevar's holoscreen. He sent them in parallel to check the data supplied by Bedlip. The crowd's tumult overshadowed his virtual quest. The roar filled his ears, so robust that it could hardly be endangered by such a pale threat from his past. Could it?
     Torn by the contrast, Dain looked around and lingered. Below his feet, the crowd — so full of comments about 13'Sao-La, praise, analysis, fear — drained away as they complied with the tournament schedule. The flow surged and stalled and thinned; a dirty, bloodied olloman in palmas broke out of the jam and strode toward him. Two others scrambled after her. Dain looked casually down on this triad.
     The first one snapped her face up at Dain. Honey-gold eyes glared at him — 8'Issaw. She stomped to a halt and shouted, "Who are you?"
     Dain gripped the railing with one hand as he swept the other up across his tunic. He kept his voice normal in tone and volume. "You know very well who I am."
     The other female olloman caught up, snatched at 8'Issaw's arm, and hissed her name. Their teammate hung back.
     8'Issaw jerked free, but didn't draw away from her colleague. She kept her gaze on Dain. "Not now — then! Why can't I remember?"
     With a surge in his gut, Dain guessed why neither Jikki nor Bedlip could recall this woman: another persona had created and still controlled the memories of her. The suspicion explained his mounting fear of exposure. He settled both hands on the railing and stared down grimly.
     The other olloman took a better grip, pulled harder. 8'Issaw yielded even as she shouted again, "What did you do to me then?"
     Dain said, "I will inform your Rollkeeper of your insolence."
     Finally, 8'Issaw was moving, towed by the others. Her angry gaze broke down into fear. "Why can't I remember?" she wailed.
     Dain turned away. He could still hear her question against the surging background of the tourney — then all sounds ceased. Sight vanished, the arena, its surroundings gone. Sensation stopped, the railing warm in his hands gone. Smells, sweat and forest, gone. The tongue in his mouth, gone.
     Reduced to a point with no size, Dain existed nowhere — and anywhere.
     A voice, its grating eerily familiar. Words, staggering with the effort to break through Dain's control of their consciousness. =Come to my pince, barát Dain. You know why.=
     And the world flooded back, its textures sweet against the bitter after-sense of that voice.

     The steps led down this time, five as before, pulling his mind into hypnosis. Eagerness dappled his reluctance to enter this different trance-place. The steps felt stone-cold under his bare feet. A sharp-edged joy slashed open his mind. The door wore riveted straps over its hardwood planks. He pushed it open — was sucked inside, was tossed roughly onto a narrow stool, a mere perch amid dozens of sensations. He settled himself, oriented the inputs, and discovered, after a moment, that he could see out through his own eyes, could listen through his own ears, could feel —
     =There are things even Mirnaya Direvnya doesn't store,= the voice — JDB's voice — resounded.
     Dain thought of his virtual agents, sure now that they would return no match between Bedlip's memories and 8'Issaw's legal name.
     =Things best kept in the physical and digital dark,= JDB continued, =things we have done, Dain — you and I — out of needs that they wouldn't understand.=
     "They" were the vast majority of the Continental Collective, the voting adults on Popovich. Dain and JDB existed apart from them.
     8'Issaw? Dain asked. Dood Rose Margo-Rufus? Was she —
     JDB snarled.
     Dain sucked back words and waited, surrounded by JDB's ferocity, fixed by JDB's tension, frightened by JDB's restraint.
     =She escaped me.= JDB's terse words came slowly. =I was young, still a part of Bedlip, before you came along.=
     Show me, Dain said.
     =Nem, nem, megyek el.=
     Co-consciousness is the deal, JDB. When I'm here, I share your memories. Show me!
     =My service preserves our separate and joint sanities, a barátom. I control its conduct, ensure its success, repair its defects. You benefit, I serve.=
     What — ?
     =Remember this, barát, when you go back. If she remembers, if she connects your face to my time with her, we lose the tlaxtli league.=
     Roster names rose to Dain's lips. Yaxchilá, Izapa, Copán, Mapilca. And more. He shared the league's creation with JDB. They had devised its rules to inspire individual achievement — topador, golpe, and chivero played as a triad only as often as permutation required it. They orchestrated its underlying discipline to promote sacrifice and ruthlessness.
     Abruptly, JDB appeared, displacing all other sensations, his internal body tall, muscular, flowing hair, his persona terrible, powerful, drenching Dain with his machismo.
     Each ulama a brief, intense collision between players sending a hard-rubber ball at each other. Each tournament a furious layering of separate games, each round forcing half of the triads to climb the walls and pace, the set of rounds leading to a final elimination. The whole league a relentless iteration, a drumming that cured the players into an ever tauter pattern for action, action against this continent's culture, to shock it into making way for them, Dain and JDB, JDB and Dain.
     They would renovate this society that had fractured their psyche. They would rebel against its power structures, the consortium that actually controlled life and the Collectives who were supposed to. They would use this league of theirs as an army of shocktroops to enforce their will on everyone, when for so many years, it had been the other away around. They would —
     =Stay away from 8'Issaw,= JDB ordered. =I will eliminate her threat later.=
     I govern the tournament. I can't just disappear.
     =Minimize your involvement. Her triad will soon lose. She will fade into the mass of spectators. After she returns to her barracks, I will tend to her as a weed among roses. She no longer deserves being rescued from the depredations of our culture. No party and cakes to celebrate — and ease — her departure.=
     Dain recognized that JDB reigned in these dark matters. He realized that some time in the near future he would find himself exhausted, possibly injured, with time lost out of his life — and the threat of 8'Issaw gone. He grappled toward the mnemonic steps.
     =Hold!= JDB thundered, then passed a hand between them, in its wake a sparkling swirl of delusion that swept over Dain even as JDB said, =Lest you forget our fears, our beliefs.=
     A prisoner of dementia — too appalling to be his, too familiar to be another's — Dain plunged into a headlong descent through images of isolation. A galaxy bloomed out of the universal ocean in a blink, Dain cringing from the apparent explosion. A star system swelled to dominate the galactic swirl, then a planet replaced the stellar eddy, Dain shivering with the speed. A continent stood alone in a global sea, then displaced it, Dain quivering from vertigo. A plateau jutted above continental plate. A butte flared from its center.
     Dain thudded onto this pinnacle. Suddenly motionless, stinging from impact, he peered around its sere, heart-breaking surface as subtext — written by whom? — seeped into his consciousness. This surreal flat-top represented the climax of existence on the Continent Popovich, the Team of Partners for Byukan-Hamil Consortium. He took a step, flinched — a train of mental images sprang out behind him like a trek through the treacheries and toil that brought him here, to a flat, unimaginative nest of vipers all courting a single Queen Snake.
     He peered around at an immense stretch of dry grass, punctuated with a few shrubs, and dotted with straggly trees. No waterholes relieved the dusty, throat-parching ground that had to be crossed, and recrossed, even memorized, to understand its slight varieties of gully and mound, so that each could be accorded its stroke and lick so it wouldn't be offended and crush him when his back was turned. So difficult was the terrain, not from physical or mental challenge, not from towering egos or devious talented depths, but from the thimbles of nuance in hectares of sameness, that it felt huge from the penalties it inflicted, from the concentration and effort it demanded, from the austerity of its yield.
     Yet it also felt narrow, a tiny apex thrust into a starless, moonless night so that one misstep would drop him over the edge into the uncertain terrain below. Murk obscured the footing, murk brewed from the litter of time already invested by the other Partners. How could he tell where the ground was solid, a vein of granite held in place by long practice and acceptance, and where the ground was shredded shale, slippery from its own jumble of loose bits gathered in the ruts and ridges of secret custom?
     Bitterness dripped from these questions, hinting at the splinter of psyche that asked them. Born to handle the perverse reward of corporate power, JDainB filtered toxins through manic metaphor. He siphoned off wastes of resentment and frustration that Dain secreted as he climbed through the consortium's bureaucracy, as he perfected deft simulation of attitude and knowledge, as he employed the Richelieu sock-of-shit approach to work and interaction, as he attained the esoteric rank of Partner and sat with Norma and the others as they decided a continent's fate.
     As if to mock Dain's rationalization, JDainB tittered and enveloped his maker in a deluge of frustration, welling up from the knowledge that he couldn't disrupt or usurp or even imitate the entrenchment of power and custom that already existed. In an apparition brighter than a noon when En-ki stood behind Anu, JDainB simmered this dilemma of ambition and entrapment into loathing of Har Norma Byukan.
     Norma had recognized his talent and foiled it by bringing him inside — away from the potential of ignorance, of innocence, of fresh ideas. She annexed his threat and sent it scurrying after the last remaining tendrils of independence on the continent. She hinted at Nirvana and let him build his own two-dimensional replica in a hick imposture barely clinging to the edge of Olympus.
     Trapped in such impotence, Dain and JDB had determined to crack the consortium with sabotage, with competition, and — if need be — with brute force. They plumbed the hierarchy of Byukan-Hamil and tricked out the isolated reprobates, hiding in the guise of reputable executives. They recast these misanthropes into a continent-wide shadow organization that craved true power, not the trickles afforded by the corporate positions. They then used that organization to sift for young misfits and hide them inside the tlaxtli league before the Patterns of society flushed them out. They worked long years to have their revenge, and now, no one, innocent or not, would stand in their way.
     Dain lay still, saturated with essence of hate. He did not move for a long while, until JDB and his demon JDainB released him.

     With a gasp, Dain broke into consciousness, his senses swamping him, his reason for existence solid, his immediate goal certain. But his own many-limbed single-minded creation, the league, trapped him at the edge of contamination, within range of reminding 8'Issaw of their past. The best he could do was confine himself to the Governor's Platform.
     Ulama continued at a hectic pace. Olli rattled constantly in the courts under his lofty oversight. He strolled the platform uneasily, gazing down on the games, signaling each round, eyeing the elimination chart projected by his llevar. He even sneaked glances at 8'Issaw as she dropped into court after court, then hoped each time to see her triad lose. It didn't.
     Time screwed itself down over his temples. Seconds passed painfully through his head. Finally, their pricks of agony flowed constantly as Dain forced himself to stand at the front of the platform. Two triads paraded at either end of the field right below him. They had eliminated all other competition, ollomani who surrounded them now with cheers and keen eyes, still immersed in the play, still honing experience. These six had come before him now for the final elimination, mano-a-mano. And he was required to observe and judge these last five ulama.
     8'Issaw's honey-gold eyes stared potential disaster up at him as he reached out and invited the first game. Her triad split up, topador and golpe dropping onto the field below. As the chivero, she strode along a path cleared to a position opposite the Governor, just above the yachuach that offered immediate victory to either olloman.
     Without further ceremony, the golpe started by kicking the olli across the analco. Her topador opponent intercepted the ball in this rising serve with a round-house blow of his leather-protected wrist. The ulama continued. Dain watched, and occasionally, his uneasy gaze edged toward the opposite wall, afraid to find 8'Issaw studying him, afraid to miss out on any sign of recognition in those dangerous eyes.
     Finally, golpe scooped the ball out of the dirt with her knee and zipped it into an unstoppable flurry of ricochets in one of her opponent's cul-de-sacs. The game point drew cheers that segued into hails for the Governor's attention. Dain acknowledged. The crowd hauled the losing topador from the field. 8'Issaw plunged to take his place. Even as she rolled to her feet, the initial serve rushed toward her head. 8'Issaw threw herself into an aerial somersault and returned the ball with her knee pachcab.
     Dain watched the resulting volley intently. Her success here meant — the Governor always directly honored the final contestants of a tournament — that he would face her with nothing between them, no court, no elevation, no obstacle to her recognition.
     He stirred without taking his eyes from the play. They had confronted each other before, producing nothing but an unfixed fear on her part — what had JDB done to her, that left her alive but amnesic? What if that veil parted this time? Responsibility weighted Dain's gut. He stiffened his spine to compensate. He would protect his future if necessary.
     After a flurry of returns, 8'Issaw won on points as the olli rolled along a wall, untouched one more time.
     An extended cheer, almost impatient, broke from the crowd jammed together atop the walls below him. After climbing up there, 8'Issaw pranced along the way, her clenched hands raised for recognition, her repeating glance upward more distracted than threatening. Dain remembered his manners and turned his full attention on this finalist.
     Panting, sweating, dirty, she halted and bawled out her name.
     Dain bent at the waist in a slight bow of acknowledgment, as expected.
     Immediately, above the yachuach, the other triad, shoulder-to-shoulder amid the crowd, hollered for his attention. The Governor waved an invitation to the field, and two of the trio dropped to their respective sides of the analco. The golpe snatched up the olli and kicked it into play. The topador responded with a slapping wrist shot that sped the olli toward the yachuach's ragged hole. It missed, ricocheting across the center at a long angle. Scampering, the golpe continued the volley.
     But the immediate attempt at coup de grâce crystallized Dain's attention. It was 13'Sao-La again. This player's presence hinted at remedy. How intense, how violent, was 13'Sao-La? Dain leaned on the railing and watched the ulama.
     13'Sao-La had completed — and won — sixteen games, yet he dashed colt-like around the court. He always tried to set up his return so that the yachuach hung in his line of fire, even if it meant covering twice the distance, daring a difficult shot. Again and again, this champion olloman aimed at sudden victory, then at last, he holed the stone circle cleanly. He had the energy to overwhelm any opponent, but was he ruthless enough?
     Dain signed victory and invited the next ulama even before the olli settled in a back corner. Chivero replaced golpe on the scuffed field — and flinched as 13'Sao-La drove a quick serve at his face and scored. A moment later, 13'Sao-La scored again with a lightning olli. No more yachuach, just fierce concentration and skill that guaranteed victory in the shortest possible time. His former teammate never returned a shot.
     Silence spread through the spectators like a crown-fire. Every face swung toward the Governor. Every pair of eyes sent a mix of fealty and blood-lust. Every pair of hands came together waist-high, fist on open hand, in a version of the customary Yeibichai greeting gesture.
     Even in his distraction, Dain savored the moment, the acme and proof of his power in this select company. He lifted both hands slowly, as though reluctant to yield the spotlight, and drew the finalists as with virtual strings along the walls and up stone steps to the platform.
     Tradition required a brief ceremony, representing past attainment, present peace, and future risk. As the ollomani climbed, Dain turned aside to a small enclosure and brought out a tall table, its round top barely big enough for two handleless cups and a plate, all empty for now.
     13'Sao-La and 8'Issaw stepped solemnly to their places beside the table. Behind and below them, the losers in this tournament stared up, with longing, with recollection, with devotion. Within a silence that stretched to the horizon, Dain served the winners, a dollop of pulque in each cup, a small powdery cake on each side of the plate.
     He signaled them to drink and eat. 8'Issaw stiffened. Her face twitched toward him. Their eyes caught. Recognition dawned briefly, then horror chased its light from her face. She jerked her eyes back to the offering, crumbled the cake without eating, spilled the liquor without drinking, then pivoted away. 13'Sao-La, attuned only to ceremony, drank, ate, then made his way down the steps, each pace tallying a second.
     Dain slid his hand into the waist pouch that came with the Governor's tunic. He touched the knobby ball resting there. Within its tacky, yielding surface, the device contained electronic circuitry to project radiation that triggered specific biologic circuitry in the human brain. This outlaw ball would plunge every person within a two-meter radius into a dream state with the accompanying natural paralysis.
     The last contest was not tlaxtli. It required unarmed mortal combat. Only the dreamball would prevent a death. Dain was supposed to balance a good fight — rewarding both spectators and contestants — with the loss of one or both of their most skilled players. Normally, the high responsibility rested easily on Dain's shoulders. Today, it saved his — and the league's — future.
     Dain gripped the dreamball — his senses dissolved. Cut down to a pinpoint of consciousness, losing control over their shared body, Dain fought against JDB, a new experience for them both. He shaped words from the sparks of their struggle: "I work in the light, JDB; you work in the dark. We must resolve this matter now, in the sunlight."
     With that, Dain reached for his belly and drew a growl up from it, sparking a surge of bio-chemicals. He rode their spread into sensation and control — and interface with the world.
     JDB left behind a taste, righteous anger muted by grudging respect, hot steel blended with lima beans.
     With refreshed determination and feeling, Dain carried the dreamball past his chest and face till his arm stretched out overhead. The gesture did not release the crowd, but tightened their focus.
     8'Issaw launched herself out of the taut mass onto the field. She had shed her palmas and pachcab, leaving only her groin and breasts swaddled. Across the analco, 13'Sao-La flung his protections up and away; he wore only a band of cloth. Then, in unison, the pair of contestants faced the Governor. Knuckles on palm, each one shouted to the man holding the dreamball.
     "The Other will die!"
     Dain twitched the dreamball in a commencement gesture.
     13'Sao-La dashed across the analco. 8'Issaw braced. He threw himself into a tumbling kick. She swept his flying legs with a bone-cracking blow. Twisting, he took the ground with a shoulder, then a hip, and fetched up hard against the stone wall. Blood streaming from scrapes, 13'Sao-La filled the air in front of him with handfuls of dirt and rolled away to his feet. Arms across her face, 8'Issaw whirled out of the dust screen — and took a ramming skull in the belly. 13'Sao-La scraped his crown up along her front and snapped her lagging jaw closed with the back of his head. 8'Issaw hung stunned, balanced on her toe tips, but managed to duck away from a backhand blow, her stagger propped up by fingertips. 13'Sao-La followed her instantly, his stiff, gnarled hand raining blows on her back.
     Dain stepped away from the Governor's Platform. He marched to his aircraft and climbed deliberately into its passenger compartment.
     "Get me out of here!" he ordered.
     He was airborne before he felt the knobby dreamball in his hand. Without it to stop him, 13'Sao-La would kill 8'Issaw. His bloody victory would ignite the entire league. They would be more ready than ever, ready for assault, ready to carry Dain and his compatriots to conquest, if Norma ever exposed a flank.

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