Now the whole earth had one language and few words. And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the. earth." And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the earth. -Genesis 11:1-9 It had been a long time since God felled humanity's last attempt to build a tower to the heavens, but humanity had now toppled heaven from the sky and raised up a new heaven to replace it. A heaven of glittering satellites and low-orbital factories singing their electronic choruses in praise of commerce and free enterprise, looking down on the Earth with their watchful eyes, seeing all. In the highest throne of the new heaven sat the Zurich-Orbital, home of the Corporate Court. The Court arbitrated the disputes and laws of the vast, multinational mega-corporations straddling the globe and holding the power and prestige once reserved for the nations they had eclipsed. Granted extraterritorial status by the weakened governments of the world, the megacorps answer to no law but their own, embodied in the form of the satellite orbiting high above the mundane concerns of Earth's teeming populace. From their heavenly headquarters, the thirteen justices of the Corporate Court pass their divine judgments on the world below and the megacorporations controlling it. Justice David Hague of the Corporate Court floated in his small office space on board the Zurich-Orbital like an angel sitting on a cloud, but the Justice-a paid employee of Fuchi Industrial Electronics-was anything but serene. Fidgeting in the loose harness keeping him tethered to one wall of the small room, Hague did his best to simulate pacing in a zero-gravity environment. Floating gently back and forth while looking out the room's small window at the vast blue sphere of the Earth below, he was alone for the moment with his worries and concerns. Despite his unease, Hague was very much the image of an angelic figure. His rosy cheeks and wide blue eyes gave him a boyish air that made him look years younger. He'd cursed the "baby face" in youth, but now that he was past fifty, his youthful looks worked to his advantage. Where most of his colleagues were spending huge sums on cutting-edge treatments to keep them looking young and vital, David Hague could still pass for a man in his thirties. Oh, there was a touch of gray in the golden curls, but his hair was so fair most didn't notice it anyway. He sighed and thought wistfully of his native Amsterdam again, wishing he were back home, or at least back on Earth. He longed to be standing on solid ground and wished the whole matter he'd come here for was over. The trip up to

the orbital had been exhausting, as usual. The Z-O operated on Greenwich Mean Time, which meant it was something like four a.m. here, whatever meaning that had for a station in low-earth orbit. Hague's personal body clock wasn't far off, and he wished for the hundredth time that the whole thing was over and done with so he could at least get some sleep. Although Hague, like all of the Corporate Court justices, was no stranger to confrontation or conflict, he felt a deep uneasiness about the events that had brought him to the Zurich-Orbital station. A serpent had entered the Corporate Court's economic and legal Eden, and he feared it might topple their tower to the heavens just as God had toppled humanity's last attempt. The balance of power between the megacorporations was delicate in the extreme, and the Court was entrusted with maintaining it and keeping the peace. An electronic chime drew Hague's attention away from his brooding. He gently pushed off from the wall to grab a padded handle, which let him turn toward the door of the room. "Enter," he said, and the hatch slid open with a pneumatic hiss to allow Hague's visitor to float gently into the room before expertly catching one of the wall handles and hooking her harness to the nearby ring to tether herself. Although the room was small, Hague could normally use all of the space to move and work in, including the walls and the ceiling, rather than being limited to just the floor. But when he had visitors, he preferred to speak to them face to face rather than having people dangling from the ceiling while talking. It made him sick to his stomach. The addition of his guest made the room seem smaller and more cramped, although Hague was not sure if it was her presence or the news she carried. "Hello, David," Justice Lynn Osborne said with a smile. "How are you enjoying your visit?" Like Hague, Osborne was a member of the Corporate Court in the employ of Fuchi Industrial Electronics. Fuchi was one of the few megacorps with two Justices on the Corporate Court. It had been a considerable coup for the computer-industry giant over the past few years and one that should serve them well as they now brought a serious matter before the Court. So serious that Fuchi had invoked the right to have all the justices present in the flesh instead of merely by virtual reality. "Lynn, you know how much I despise freefall. It's a good thing the treatments they're giving out for space-sickness are reasonably effective, or you could never have dragged me up here. Can we just get on with this?" Osborne smiled and nodded. Unlike Hague, Osborne spent considerably more time on board the Zurich-Orbital handling her duties as a justice. Hague preferred to remain on Earth and conduct Court business through the virtual-reality interface of the Matrix via a sophisticated satellite uplink system, but not this time. No matter what he said, he and every other justice would be physically present. When the Court was in session, Z-O would be isolated from the worldwide computer network and inviolate to spying or outside interference of any kind. Osborne's regular presence on board the station had also acclimated her internal clock to the orbital's routines. Where Hague was tired and irritable, she was fresh and well-rested, which only grated further on his strained nerves. Taking a computer pad from a clip on her belt, Osborne touched the flat-screen and brought up an organizational display of the Corporate Court. Eight of the thirteen icons representing the Justices were colored in green while the remaining five were colored in red. "We've got our chance," she said triumphantly. "I've just come from talking with Doi and Msaki, and they're willing to lend their support. That's enough of a majority for the initial hearing to go forward. It's only a formality for the Court to convene now." Hague wasn't overly surprised. The two justices working for Mitsuhama Computer Technologies might have their differences with Fuchi, but they also knew what was at stake in this issue and what could happen if two of the major computer-tech corps didn't work together on this one. He nodded and gave a low "hmmm" of approval. "What about Napoli? How do you plan to handle him?" he asked, and Osborne gave a small pout that made her look almost girlish despite her fifty-plus years. David Hague knew Osborne was one of those people who spent part of her considerable salary as a member of the Corporate Court on maintaining appearances. Her fine features were the best Fuchi's exclusive cosmetic clinics could produce, but she still had not gone the route of entirely concealing her real age beneath some plastic glamour-girl facade. The dark chestnut hair was free of gray and the smooth skin free of lines, but Osborne still looked like a mature woman somewhere in that vague range between thirty and fifty. An observer would be hard pressed to guess her real age. She shook her head. "Don't worry about Napoli. He's isolated on the Court-and he's a lame duck. We can handle him. Renraku hasn't exactly been making friends on the Court lately." That's certainly true, Hague thought. "But it doesn't change the fact that Renraku has a lot of clout," he said. "Renraku has been handing us a lot of surprises over the past two years, and it's just possible they might have a card up their collective sleeve that could trump even the Court. Who knows what Lanier might have given them." "Renraku is out of cards, David. Nobody can stand against the whole Court when we're unified behind a cause. The Veracruz Incident proved that." The event Osborne referred to had occurred ten years ago, before either she or Hague had become justices. The so-called incident consisted of the world's first-tier mega-corps joining forces to punish one of their own for flouting the Corporate Court's authority. A military strike against some of the target's holdings had been carried out with surgical precision, and the message sent was clear: defy the Court's edicts at your own peril. Now loomed the possibility that another megacorp was heading up that same dangerous road. "I wish I shared your certainly," Hague replied. "Francesco Napoli is a pit bull. He's not going to let go without a fierce fight, and by now he must know what you're planning to present before the Court. Renraku's got to know everything by now, including the fact that our case has holes in it. He seems too confident. If he wasn't, he'd never have allowed this hearing to happen in the first place. He'd have come up with some kind of delaying tactic or-" Osborne held up a hand to stop him. "Napoli doesn't know all of the facts, David, and neither do you, just yet. It's what I'm here to tell you." Hague choked off a retort at the interruption, but he wasn't really surprised by her words. He knew that Osborae's loyalty to the Villiers faction of Fuchi put her more in the loop about the corporation's plans now that Richard Villiers seemed to be consolidating his hold on the corp. Hague was allied with the Yamana family, which dominated Fuchi Europe. "What are you talking about?" he said finally. "What do you mean I don't know all of the facts? Has Fuchi been keeping something…" Osborne jumped in again before he could finish. "Not keeping something from you-just protecting our interests. Renraku isn't the only corp with cards up its sleeve. Security on this was too tight to trust to anything but face-to-face communications. That's why we're talking in person. Now, will you listen for a moment?" Hague swallowed his response and only nodded curtly. If Osborne noticed his annoyance at being kept in the dark, she didn't show it. She just continued talking. "The case against Renraku is more than just smoke and mirrors, David. There is real cause to believe they've violated the concords of the Court and that Lanier's involvement is the key to it. We've got a lead on something that could blow the lid off this whole thing and implicate Renraku in serious violations of the balance of power. It's the only explanation for what's been happening." Over the past year and a half, Renraku Computer Systems, one of the world's three computer giants and a member of the Corporate Court, had gone from being a slumbering giant to become a runaway juggernaut on the global market. Renraku had been a powerful and prosperous company for years-one of the top eight in the world to claim a position on the Court-but its methods had been conservative and, most analysts thought, rather outdated. That was before a twist of fate put Miles Lanier on the Renraku Board of Directors. Lanier was a go-getter and an aggressive executive known for his take-no-prisoners attitude toward business. His skill and cunning were well known to Fuchi Industrial Electronics. Lanier had been Fuchi's chief of internal security, the head of the company's most sensitive and important security arrangements and the protector of its most vital information. That is, until he had defected to Renraku two years ago. After Lanier's defection, Renraku research and development suddenly began producing state-of-the-art computer technology that was blowing their competition away in the market. Their Matrix software and algorithms were outselling Mitsuhama's by a good margin, and their computer hardware was threatening Fuchi's dominance of the market, a first for Renraku. The corp's security had also increased to truly paranoid levels. Industrial espionage by the other corps, including Fuchi, had netted them some scraps of useful R amp;D data on Renraku's latest developments, but gave them no clue about where the corporation was getting its phenomenal new products: no names of researchers or information on facilities turning out new technological breakthroughs. Fuchi naturally suspected that Renraku was conducting datasteal operations against them. But if they were, it was being done with such skill and finesse that Fuchi could find no evidence of them whatsoever. Renraku was on a roll and there seemed to be no stopping them. The corporation's annual report showed that they had already surpassed Mitsuhama in power and were quickly gaining on Fuchi's position as the world's Number Two megacorp. Only the vast Saeder-Krupp empire was more powerful, and Hague suspected mat even S-K's dragon CEO Lofwyr had his concerns about Renraku. And that was why the Corporate Court was getting involved.