“I try to keep in shape, sir.”

“A wise doctor you are. So many of your profession worry about everyone’s health except their own. But why were you still in bed at this hour of the morning?”

“I was in Karakorum late last night,” Shadrach confesses.

Genghis Mao laughs explosively. “Dissipation! Debauchery! So that’s how you keep in shape, is it?”

“Well—”

“At ease. I’m not serious.” The Chairman’s mood has changed astonishingly in these few minutes. This badgering banter, this light teasing — it is hard to believe that he was weeping for dead Mangu just a moment ago. “You can go and get your shirt, if you like. I think I can spare you for a few minutes, Shadrach.”

“I’d prefer to stay a while longer, sir. It’s not chilly this way.”

“As you wish.” Genghis Mao seems to lose interest in him. He turns back to Avogadro, still waiting by the bedside, and rattles off half a dozen more repressive measures to be put into effect at once. Then, dismissing the security chief, the Chairman summons Vice-Chairman Eyuboglu and outlines, seemingly impromptu, an elaborate program for the virtual canonization of Mangu: a colossal state funeral, a prolonged period of global mourning, the renaming of highways and cities, the erection of costly and imposing memorial monuments in every major capital. All this for such a trifling boy? Why? Shadrach wonders. This is an outpouring of mortuary energy worthy of a demigod, an Augustus Caesar, a Siegfried, even an Osiris. Why? Why, if not that Mangu was a symbolic extension of Genghis Mao himself, his link to tomorrow, his hope of bodily reincarnation? Yes, Shadrach decides. In ordering this bizarrely inappropriate posthumous inflation of the murdered man, Genghis Mao must be mourning not Mangu but himself.

Was Mango really murdered, though? Avogadro, waiting for Mordecai in the hallway when the doctor finally leaves Genghis Mao, is not so sure of that. The security chief, a big-boned, thick-bodied, quick-witted man with cool eyes and a wide, quizzical mouth, draws Shadrach aside near the entrance to Surveillance Vector One and says softly. “Is he on any medication that might be making him mentally unstable?”

“Not particularly. Why?”

“I’ve never seen him as upset as this before.”

“He’s never had his viceroy assassinated before, either.”

“What leads you to think there’s been an assassination?”

“Because I — because Ionigylakis said — because — ” Shadrach pauses, confused. “Wasn’t there one?”

“Who knows? Horthy says he saw Mangu fall out the window. Period. He didn’t see anyone pushing him. We’ve already run playback checks on all personnel scanners and there’s no record of any unauthorized individual entering or leaving the entire building this morning, let alone having reached the seventy-fifth floor.”

“Perhaps somebody was hiding up here overnight,” Shadrach suggests.

Avogadro sighs. He looks faintly amused. “Spare me the amateur detective work. Doctor. Naturally, we’ve looked through yesterday’s records too.”

“I’m sorry if I—”

“I didn’t mean to be sarcastic. My point is simply that we’ve considered most of the obvious possibilities. It’s not easy for an assassin to get inside this building, and I don’t seriously believe that any assassins did. Naturally, that doesn’t rule out the chance that Mangu was pushed by someone whose presence within the building would not seem unusual, as for example General Gonchigdorge, or you, or me—”

“Or Genghis Mao,” Shadrach offers. “Tiptoeing from his bed and tossing Mangu through the window.”

“You get the idea. What I’m saying is that anyone up here might have killed Mangu. Except that there’s no evidence that anyone did. You know, whenever someone passes through a door up here, it’s recorded. No one entered Mangu’s bedroom this morning, either on the interface side or the elevator side. The tracking cores are absolutely blank. The last one to go in was Mangu himself, about midnight. Preliminary inspection indicates no traces of intruders in the room, no strange fingerprints, no flecks of someone else’s dandruff, no stray hairs, no bits of lint. And no sign of a struggle. Mangu was a strong man, you know. He wouldn’t have been easy to overpower.”

“You’re suggesting it was probably suicide?” Shadrach asks.

“I am. Obviously. No one on my staff takes any other theory at all seriously at this point. But the Chairman is certain it was an assassination, and you should have seen him before you got here. Almost hysterical, wild-eyed, raving. You know, it doesn’t look good for me and my men if he believes there’s been an assassination. We’re supposed to make assassinations impossible up here. But it goes beyond whether I lose my job, Doctor. There’s this whole fantastic purge that he’s instituting, the arrests, the interrogations, restrictive measures, a tremendously messy and unpleasant and expensive enterprise, all of it, so far as I can see, absolutely useless. What I want to know,” Avogadro says, “is whether you think there’s some chance the Chairman will be willing to take a more rational attitude toward Mangu’s death when he’s further along in his recovery.”

“I don’t know. But I don’t think so. I’ve never seen him change his mind about anything.”

“But the operation—”

“Has weakened him, sure. Physically and psychologically. But it hasn’t greatly affected his reason in any way that I can perceive. He’s always had this thing about assassins, of course, and obviously he’s assuming Mangu was murdered because it fulfills some kind of inner need for him, some fantasy projection, something very dark and intricate. I think he’d have made the same assumption even if he’d been in perfect health when Mangu went out the window. So his recovery per se isn’t going to be a factor in getting him to reevaluate Mangu’s death. All I can suggest is that you wait three or four days until he’s strong enough to be getting back on the job and go in there with the findings of your completed investigation, show him conclusively that there’s no evidence whatsoever of murder, and count on his basic sanity to bring him to an acceptance of the fact that Mangu killed himself.”

“Suppose I bring him the report this afternoon?”

“He’s not really ready for all this stress. Besides, is such a speedy investigation going to be plausible to him? No, I’d recommend waiting at least three days, preferably four or five.”

“And meanwhile,” Avogadro says, “suspects will be rounded up, minds will be pried into, the innocent will suffer, my staff will be wasting its energies on a foolish pursuit of a nonexistent assassin—”

“Can’t you delay the purge a few days, then?”

“He ordered us to start at once, Doctor.”

“Yes, I know, but—”

“He ordered us to start at once. We’ve done so.”

“Already?”

“Already. I understand the meaning of an order from the Chairman. Within the past ten minutes the first arrests have taken place. I can try to stretch out the process of interrogation so that as little harm as possible will come to the prisoners before I can bring my findings on Mangu’s death to the Chairman, but I have no authority to sidetrack his instructions altogether.” Quietly Avogadro adds, “I wouldn’t want to risk it, either.”

“Then there’ll be a purge,” Shadrach says, shrugging. “I regret that as much as you do, I suppose. But there’s no way to stop it now, eh? And no real hope that you’ll persuade Genghis Mao to swallow the suicide theory, not this afternoon or tomorrow or next week, not if he wants to think Mangu was murdered. I’m sorry.”

“I am also,” Avogadro says. “Well. Thanks for your time, Doctor.” He begins to move away; then, pausing, he gives Shadrach a deep, uncomfortably appraising look, and says, “Oh, one more thing. Doctor. Is there any reason you might know of for Mangu to have wanted to kill himself?” Shadrach frowns. He considers things.