She let her gaze — how she loved that concept! — wander, following link after link. The skill Dr. Kuroda had noted was clearly coming into play: she could follow these unlabeled paths from one node to the next, skipping like she’d heard stones could across water, and then effortlessly retrace her steps.

“Sweetheart.” Her mom’s voice, soft, gentle, coming from the direction of the hall.

Caitlin rolled over, facing the door instead of the wall — and she was momentarily lost as her perspective on … on webspace changed. “Hi, Mom.”

She didn’t hear her mother turn on the light — although some illumination was doubtless spilling in through the open door. Nor did she hear her crossing the carpeted floor but, after a moment, the bed compressed on one side as her mother sat on it, next to her. She felt a hand stroking her hair.

“It’s been a big day, hasn’t it?”

“It’s not what I expected,” Caitlin replied softly.

“Me, neither,” her mom said. The bed moved a bit; perhaps her mother was shrugging. “I have to say, I’m a bit frightened.”

“Why?”

“Once an economist, always an economist,” she said. “Everything has a cost.”

She tried to make her tone sound light. “The connection you’re using may be wireless, but that doesn’t mean there are no strings attached.”

“Like what?”

“Who knows? But Dr. Kuroda will want something, or his bosses will. Either way, this is going to change your life.”

Caitlin was about to object that moving here from Texas had changed her life, that starting a new school had changed her life, that — hell! — getting breasts had changed her life, but her mother beat her to it. “I know you’ve gone through a lot of upheaval lately,” she said gently. “And I know how hard it’s been. But I’ve got a feeling all that’s going to pale in comparison to what’s to come. Even if you never get to see the real world — and God, my angel, I hope you do! — there’s still going to be media attention, and all sorts of people wanting to study you. I mean, there were maybe five people in the entire world who were interested in Tomasevic’s syndrome — but this! Seeing the Web!” She paused; maybe she shook her head. “That’s going to be front-page news when it gets out. And there will be hundreds — thousands! — of people who’ll want to talk with you about it.”

Caitlin thought that might be cool, but yeah, she guessed it also could be overwhelming. She was used to the World Wide Web, where everybody is famous … to fifteen people.

“Don’t tell anyone at school about seeing the Web, okay?” her mother said.

“Not even Bashira.”

“But everybody’s going to ask what happened in Japan,” Caitlin said. “They know I went for an operation.”

“What did you tell your classmates back in Austin when all the other things we’d tried had failed?”

“Just that: that they’d failed.”

“That’s what you should say this time. It’s the truth, after all: you still can’t see the real world.”

Caitlin considered this. She certainly didn’t want to become a freak show, or have people she didn’t know pestering her.

“And no blogging about seeing the Web, either, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good. Let’s just hold on to things being normal for as long as we can.” A pause. “Speaking of which, it’s way after midnight. And you’ve got a math test tomorrow, don’t you? Now, I know you, being you, don’t have to study for math tests to get a hundred percent — unless you don’t show up, that is, in which case you can pretty much count on zero. So maybe it’s time to go to sleep.”

“But—”

“You’ve already missed a lot of school, you know.” She felt her mom patting her shoulder. “You should turn off the eyePod and go to bed.”

Caitlin’s heart started pounding and she sat up on the bed. Cut off the Jagster datastream? Become blind again? “Mom, I can’t do that.”

“Sweetheart, I know seeing is new for you, but people actually do shut off their vision each night when they go to bed — by turning off the lights and closing their eyes. Well, now that you’re seeing, in a way, you should do that, too. Go do your bathroom things, then — lights out.”

Zhang Bo, the Minister of Communications, fidgeted as he waited to be admitted to the president’s office. The president’s beautiful young secretary doubtless knew His Excellency’s mood this morning, but she never gave anything away; she wouldn’t have lasted in her job if she did. A life-size terra-cotta warrior brought here from Xian stood vigil in the antechamber; its face was as unchanging as the secretary’s.

At last, responding to some signal he couldn’t see, she rose, opened the door to the president’s office, and gestured for Zhang to enter.

The president was down at the far end, wearing a blue business suit. He was standing behind his desk, his back to Zhang, looking out the giant window. Not for the first time Zhang thought the president’s shoulders were awfully narrow to support all the weight they had to carry.

“Your Excellency?”

“You’ve come to exhort me,” the president said, without turning around.

“Again.”

The minister tipped his head slightly. “My apologies, but…”

“The firewall is back to full strength, is it not? You’ve plugged the leaks, haven’t you?”

Zhang tugged nervously at his small mustache. “Yes, yes, and I apologize for those. The hackers are … resourceful.”

The president turned around. There was a lotus blossom pinned to his lapel.

“My officials are supposed to be even more resourceful.”

“Again, I apologize. It won’t happen again.”

“And the perpetrators?”

“We’re on their trail.” Zhang paused then decided this was as good an opening as he was going to get. “But, regardless, you can’t leave the Changcheng Strategy in effect forever.”

The president raised his thin eyebrows; his eyes, behind the wire-frame glasses, were red and tired. “Can’t?”

“Forgive me, forgive me. Of course, you can do anything — but … but this curtailing of international telephony, this leaving the Great Firewall up — it’s … less wise than most of your actions.”

The president tilted his head, as if amused by Zhang’s attempt to be politic.

“I’m listening.”

“The bodies are disposed of, the plague contained. The emergency has passed.”

“After 9/11, the US president seized extraordinary powers … and never gave them back.”

Zhang looked down at the lush carpeting, a red design shot through with gold.

“Yes, but…”

Incense hung in the air. “But what? Our people want this thing called democracy, but it is an illusion; they chase a ghost. It exists nowhere, really.”

“The epidemic is over, Your Excellency. Surely now—”

The president’s voice was soft, reflective. He sat down in his red leather chair and motioned for Zhang to take a chair on the other side of the wide cherrywood desk. “There are contagions other than viruses,” the president said. “We are better off without our people having access to so many…” He paused, perhaps seeking a word, and then, nodding with satisfaction after finding it, he went on: “foreign ideas.”

“Granted,” Zhang said, “but…” And then he closed his mouth.

The president held up a hand; his cufflinks were polished jade spheres. “You think I wish to hear only positive things from my advisors? And so you tread as if on eggshells.”

“Your Excellency…”

“I have advisors who model our society’s future, did you know that?

Statisticians, demographers, historians. They tell me the People’s Republic is doomed.”

“Excellency!”

The president shrugged his narrow shoulders. “China will endure, of course — a quarter of humanity. But the Communist Party? They tell me its days are numbered.”

Zhang said nothing.

“There are those among my advisors who think the Party has perhaps a decade left. The optimists give it until 2050.”