“How is she, doctor? Will she be all right?”

The doctor touched his shoulder in a gesture of sympathy. “It is difficult to be sure, Verner-san. She is undergoing a lengthy Change. Her vital signs are strong, but the ordeal seems far from over.”

“I want to see her.”

"That would be ill-advised. She is comatose and would receive no comfort from your presence.”

“I don’t care. I still want to see her.”

“It is not in my hands, Vemer-san. The Imperial Genetics Board permits only the attending medical teams to enter the Kawaru ward. It could be dangerous should a patient suddenly complete the Change and go berserk.”

“But you could smuggle me in, couldn’t you?” he pleaded. “I could wear an orderly’s gown… pretend to be a medical student.”

“Perhaps. But discovery would be a disaster. For you. For me. Even for your sister. It would almost certainly result in revocation of her relocation funds, should she survive. Her adjustment to the new life she faces will be difficult enough. And you would surely lose whatever status you have left with your corporation.”

“I don’t care about myself. She’ll need me.”

“She will need you to be working and bringing in a salary. You can help her best by obeying your superiors. There is nothing you can do here in the hospital.”

“You don’t understand…”

“No, Verner-san, you are wrong.” The physician shook her head slowly, her eyes wells of sadness. “I understand too well.”

Her image swam before his eyes as she spoke. For a moment, Sam thought it was tears for his sister that blurred his vision, then he realized that the doctor must have directed the bed to inject a tranquilizer.

His earlier dream of the ocean returned, and he was dragged down by an irresistible current, down into a yawning darkness where grinning Trolls and Goblins reached for him. Struggle as he might against it, he only continued to tumble deeper down. A new lassitude crept through his limbs and flooded toward his brain. The visions of monsters faded with his awareness, leaving only a bright circle of pain throbbing at the side of his head. Then that too faded, swallowed up in oblivion.

Darkness had covered the land for some hours when the Elf stepped out under the sky to relieve himself. The forest was full of soft sounds, its life undisturbed by the presence of the lone Elf. A slight breeze meandered among the great dark boles of the trees, tickling their leaves into a soft rustle. The same wayward air played with strands of his white hair and caressed his skin, making the Elf smile with pleasure.

Though he did not call this forest his home, as did many of his kind, he always felt its powerful lure. There was great peace among the looming wooden giants, peace even amid the nightly games of survival unfolding all around him. Sometimes he even wished to remain here, but that did not happen often. His work was important to him, and it was work he could rarely do here.

He looked up at the sky, rejoicing in the multitude of stars showing through the gaps in the clouds to shed their light on him. So many, burning through the cold of space with tantalizing promises of their hoard of universal knowledge. Someday, he promised them, we will come to you.

A slight motion caught the Elf’s attention. A falling star, he thought. Changing his focus, the Elf saw it was not a falling star, but a craft moving across the heavens faster than the celestial objects themselves. Time in motion.

Time.

The thought broke his communion trance and returned him to the mundane world where seconds passed inexorably, hurrying past the now that was the forest’s life. A quick check of star positions told him that the others would be already in place, waiting for him. He stepped back under the canopy and knelt by the small, low table.

He snugged the surgical steel jack into the socket at his temple and his fingers flew across the keyboard of his Fuchi 7 cyberdeck, launching him into the Matrix. His vision shifted to that dazzling electronic world of analog space where cybernetic functions took on an almost palpable reality. He ran the electron paths of cyberspace up the satellite link and down again into the Seattle Regional Telecommunications Grid. Within seconds, he was well on his way to the rendezvous with his companions inside the Renraku arcology.

The lights of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport vanished behind the craft, only to appear again in front of it. The plane was circling. Sam briefly wondered why, but dismissed his concern, sure that the pilot would inform the passengers of any problem. His own life seemed to be circling, too, returning him to the country he had so willingly left for a scholarship to Tokyo University. Around and around he went, chasing his own tail and getting nowhere.

Three hours ago, he had gone through the latest in a week-long series of brush-offs of his efforts to learn the state of his sister’s health. They wouldn’t even tell him exactly where she was being treated. He had lost his temper when his Renraku escorts began to hustle him away from the telecom and along a boarding corridor to the waiting JSA space-plane. It was only the fear that, once away from Japan, he would lose all contact with Janice that allowed him to give in to his anger. His escorts, members of the famed Red Samurai security force, had simply taken his histrionics in stride and deposited him, per their orders, on the aircraft.

Two hours later, Sam was on the ground at his destination, being greeted by a Renraku employee in a fringed synth-leather jacket, floppy pilot’s cap, and pointy sequined boots. The clothing was no less outrageous than the woman’s overly familiar forms of address and rude jokes. First she led Sam through the intricacies of Seattle customs and security checks, then she took him onto the field to a waiting Federated Boeing Commuter marked with the Renraku logo. The woman assured him that the tilt-wing shuttle plane would take them to the arcology in the most expeditious manner. When Sam had boarded and taken his seat in the luxurious passenger cabin, his escort vanished through the forward door to the cockpit. A few moments later, the craft lifted from the ground. Take-off was accompanied by the pilot’s commentary on minor faults in the lower control’s procedure.

Sam decided for the twentieth-or was it fortieth? — time that there was little he could do at the moment. To distract himself, he turned his attention to his fellow passengers. Like him, all were bound for the Renraku arcology.

Seated at the bar was Alice Crenshaw. She had sat next to him during the trip from Japan, but had said little, which suited Sam’s dark mood just fine. What Crenshaw did tell him was that she, too, was being transferred to the arcology project. She was equally unhappy about it, insulting the steward who politely inquired about the reason for her transfer.

Crenshaw had boarded the Commuter a moment after Sam, saying nothing to the others already aboard the VTOL transfer shuttle and ignoring their friendly attempts at conversation. Instead, she had busied herself almost immediately with a bourbon and water.