When the cube had played out, the two men looked long at one another. It was the president who broke the silence. "The Tao has been good to us, allowing us to hear that. And today I learned more than Wyzhnyny technology. Those are people we must war against."

Peixoto pursed his lips. "But it does not change the situation. Alive or dead, they must leave the Commonwealth. And even if they were Eve's children, they would hardly leave unforced. They have too much invested, too much at stake."

"It seems so," Chang said. "But we agreed that if we could, we would negotiate. It was you who said it first. And the Tao is full of surprises."

Peixoto's inner reaction was bleak. Full of surprises, yes, he told himself, but surprises fitting probability equations and natural laws. Some things simply do not happen.

He kept the thought to himself though. There was no point in throwing negativity in anyone's face, certainly not his best friend's. And if an opportunity arose-if the Wyzhnyny were willing to negotiate-he would approach the task honestly.

Ruckus in the Morgue

Esau slogged forward, blaster in his hands and grenade bag over a shoulder. He hadn't slept for thirty hours-hadn't eaten for nearly twenty, except for an energy bar. His belly, he told himself, must think his throat had been cut. But his red-rimmed eyes moved constantly, from the forest half a mile ahead, to the farm woodlots that broke the croplands and pastures, to the Indi tanks moving ahead on their AG cushions. To both left and right stretched other 2nd Regiment companies.

Not all of 2nd Regiment was in his line. The lead rank was 1st Battalion; 2nd and 3rd Battalions followed at thirty-yard intervals, while 4th Battalion sat in armored personnel carriers as a tactical reserve. Esau was glad he wasn't in an APC. They tended to draw heavy fire when they showed up. They weren't supposed to be committed before the tanks and "legs" had the enemy fully engaged, and even then, the enemy would give them serious attention.

As a rule, Esau could immerse himself in these training maneuvers as if they were the real thing. As he was supposed to. He never glanced back at the umpires on their grav scooters, following the action. The sight of them, even the thought of them, weakened the illusion.

No shots had been fired yet from the distant forest, nor from the building and woodlots nearer at hand. Which might mean no one was there, but that seemed unlikely. Surveillance buoys showed things like that. And if no one was there, 2nd Regiment would have crossed in APCs. Only if serious enemy fire was expected would they cross on foot like this.

At that moment, firing broke out from forest, woodlots and steadings-crackling, hissing, thumping-and a voice spoke sharply in his right ear: "Bogies from the rear! Bogies from the rear!" Esau flattened himself as low as he could, then hazarded a glance back past his shoulder. A rank of killer craft swept across the field, slammers flickering. Esau felt a soft pulse strike about at his tailbone, and obediently rolled over, playing casualty. The umpires' instruments recorded all hits, along with the victims' identities, the virtual force, and points of impact.

The assault craft swished by overhead, most of them. A few must have taken "crippling hits" themselves; they landed obediently as casualties. If they hadn't, and promptly, the "enemy" would have been penalized, and the pilots put on report.

The ground was cold but the sun bright, and Esau put a forearm over his eyes. He wondered if Jael had been hit, and if perhaps they should have signed up for bottling. If this had been a real fight, he told himself, and the hit he'd taken had been a hard pulse, signing wouldn't have made any difference. Because surely that had been a slammer. It would have blown his guts, lungs, heart and spine, all to Tophet.

He was aware of 2nd and 3rd Battalions passing him, trotting now. The sound of firing remained intense. It seemed odd to be lying there out of it. He was going to miss some of the action. It occurred to him to sit up and look around, see what was going on. Their own floaters should be up again, suppressing enemy fire.

But it was easier to just lie there with his eyes closed, feeling himself drift into sleep. Then a medic gripped his arm, and he wakened.

"Where are you hit?"

"Tailbone, from behind. It would have been one of the killer craft. If it was real, I'd be deader'n Tophet."

"Okay. I'm going to give you a shot for the pain, just in case."

The man pretended to inject Esau in the side of the neck, then taped a fake syringe to his patient's field jacket and hurried on. Esau let his eyes close again. Who knew, he thought, what would happen when they got into real combat, back home on New Jerusalem. Wyzhnyny weapons were thought to be pretty much the same as human weapons. "Physics is the same everywhere," Sergeant Hawkins had said. Jerries weren't taught physics, but Esau had gotten the basic idea; only certain things were possible. But the Wyzhnyny had four legs under them, and might be stronger than him. Might all of them carry slammers.

"Esau," said Speaker Crosby, "they are way to heck stronger than you are." He patted his horse on the shoulder. "They're near as big as this fella, with arms in proportion."

Esau decided to keep Clancy with him for protection, and looked around for the big hound, but couldn't see him anywhere. Then realized he'd begun to dream. Clancy was a long long ways off, and so was Speaker Crosby. It don't matter, he told himself. You're already dead anyway.

Shortly afterward an armored ambulance landed a few yards away. Without speaking, two medics laid him carefully on an AG stretcher, then took him to the ambulance, where another medic secured the stretcher on brackets and turned on the "warm field."

Soon afterward they arrived at a field "hospital" in the forest, a complex of tents beneath the trees. It was supposed to be protected by a concealment screen so the enemy couldn't find it from the air. The tents were like shallow, upside-down bowls, protected by colors generated by their camouflage fields. The medics moved quickly and smoothly, transferring the casualties to a receiving tent. Calling him dead on arrival, they put Esau in a body bag, and moved him to a morgue tent.

The activity had wakened him again, and because he actually was alive, the bag had been pressed shut only to his waist. He sat up and looked around. There were no attendants in this tent, but the trainee on the floor beside him was also looking around. "Well," the man said. His voice was quiet. "So this is what it's like to be dead."

"Not hardly," Esau answered.

"What's your company?"

"B, 2nd Platoon. Name is Esau Wesley. Yours?"

The other didn't answer at once, as if thinking about it. "Simon Justice," he said at last. "E Company, 3rd Platoon. Can you say bunch of foolishness?"

"What do you mean?"

The man's gesture took in the tent, perhaps the whole hospital, or planet. "All of this. Pretending to fight, pretending to get shot, pretending to be dead. All of it."

Esau decided he didn't like Simon Justice. Didn't like his tone of voice, didn't like his pretense of superiority. "It's not foolishness," Esau replied. He didn't expect to change the man's mind, but the statement required an answer. "We'll be glad we've gone through it when we get back to New Jerusalem."

"Huh! We'll never get to New Jerusalem. The government's going to send us somewhere else, to put down an uprising." His tone suggested scorn for anyone who didn't realize that.

"Where'd you get that notion?" Esau asked.

"Why, it's plain to see. A four-legged critter with a man stuck on the front?" He snorted his scorn.