Some of the citizens who had been visible a moment ago were blurred out, edited by their own choice from this version of the street. Those that remained were now dressed brightly, even outrageously, in jewels or light or flame or swirling TV images.

There were other versions of the city, though not as many as you'd find in the inner systems. Michael tuned to a religious view and the hawkers and stalls turned into rows of bronze silent Buddhas. The light changed to something limpid and clear and overhead graceful white forms flitted between the clouds. There were very few people visible in this view, most replaced by ghostly cloth-wrapped figures so you didn't walk into them. Once upon a time there would have been NeoShinto shrines here, physically present along with all the other sects of Permanence. But it was illegal for a religion not to charge for its services in the R.E. There was in fact a Church of Permanence here— the bastardized version whose doctrines and rites were «owned» by a cabal of fallen brothers back on Earth. Michael would have had to pay just to walk through its doors.

This view was so crassly deceptive that he couldn't stand to look at it, so he tried a few other views of the city, finally settling on a garden view that emphasized the bowers and fountains that really did dot the streets. He found an outdoor cafe and sat in the sun sipping coffee while gene-adapted finches sang to him from their perches among the crimson leaves of bright bamboolike trees. With some judicious tuning he was able to bring the brightly clad citizenry back into this view and he watched them go by for a while, enjoying the ambience.

The expedition would be leaving for Jentry's Envy in a couple of days. Dr. Herat had given Michael the choice: He could come along or stay behind. The offer was made with seeming lightness, but both knew the implications. This investigation was not like any of the others and it would likely last for years. If Michael stayed behind, he would be leaving Dr. Herat's employ.

Common sense told him it was time to leave. He had to resolve his own problems; he couldn't put it off.

And how would he do that? He could return to Kimpurusha— but the monasteries had become gaming houses and he didn't know if he could find any of the brothers if he tried. Anxious and depressed, he finished his coffee and went walking again.

His footsteps seemed to naturally lead him into the older quarter of the city. Here he was able to switch off inscape entirely, and merely enjoy the architecture for its own sake. Human hands had crafted the stones here for the eyes of generations yet unborn, but not unimagined.

As he was crossing a plaza that had once had an active fountain at its center, he heard a distant clap of sound. At first he took no notice, since the city was full of noises. Then the clap came back to him, from the buildings across the plaza: an echo of a distant and apparently powerful explosion.

Michael shaded his eyes and looked up. A twisting contrail rose up from outside the city, vanishing almost directly overhead. That looked like a rocket launch.

Another bang came from the opposite direction. He turned, and this time he saw the thing rising from somewhere in the suburbs. Michael had time to realize that he shouldn't be standing where he was before the one directly overhead exploded.

The flash was insignificant, merely making him blink. With it came a loud clicking that seemed to come from inside his own head. And the bone behind his right ear felt hot suddenly. That was all: But throughout the plaza, people who had been walking like him only seconds ago were falling to the cobblestones, like dancers obeying music he couldn't hear.

And that was it, of course. He felt behind his ear. The skin there was quite warm— and that, of course, was where his inscape antenna was located, inside the bone. He didn't need to try accessing inscape to know his implants had been fried by the microwave bomb that had gone off a kilometer overhead.

Those who were using inscape at the time— nearly everybody— would have had their world go mad for an instant. There were too many fail-safes in the implant system to permit real brain damage, but these people were as stunned as though lightning had hit right next to them.

Michael took a few steps toward the nearest person, some vague notion of helping in his mind. Then he noticed how the few others who had not fallen were jogging purposefully across the plaza, in the direction of downtown. As he watched, one drew a pistol from inside his tunic.

Only now did Michael start to feel afraid. He was caught outside in the middle of a rebel attack. Common sense told him he should get indoors before real missiles— the explosive kind— started flying. It wasn't the fear that paralyzed him for long seconds, though, but simple déjà vu. He had seen this happen before.

Nor was it fear for his physical safety that had him turning in his tracks, looking for another exit from the plaza, but the realization that if he were caught up in a mass police sweep, they would find his rebel history. Herat might be able to vouch for him; then again, he might not.

Michael ran away from the city center, leaping over people who lay groaning and clutching their heads. He crossed an avenue full of cars, all stopped in orderly lines, drivers slumped in their seats. As he ran he remembered that other time years ago, when he had run through similarly silent, shocked streets carrying dispatches on foot because inscape was down, wire and fiber had been cut, and microwave bombs continued to go off, regular as a metronome. He remembered the echoes, which had bounced between tower and mountain over and over until the louder thunder of government lasers cutting down from orbit had drowned them out.

The rebels would use the current confusion to finish what the microwave bombs had started. They would go on an orgy of destruction in which not a single stone of the city would be damaged, but the values in every nanotag would be wiped clean. Ownership, credit histories, monetary value itself resided in the physical objects traded in these streets. There were no central records, as there might have been in centuries past. In the Rights Economy, information was immanent, and by the time the rebels were done, the citizens of this city would no longer own anything, not even the shoes on their feet. Whole inscape domains would be erased, taking with them jobs and pensions.

Any object that lost its nanotags automatically became government property, so hard-working people and those who had lived for generations in ancestral homes here would see their properties expropriated. The farmers who had brought their produce to sell no longer owned that produce. The government knew this would drive people into the rebel cause in droves, but they had no alternative. Their orders came from Earth, after all. Earth was very far away, and the Rights Owners there would not be sympathetic.

As people climbed to their feet, they would begin to realize all this, and then the rage would come. Within an hour, the city center would be a riot scene. Anyone identified as a rebel would be lynched, but that hardly mattered because resentment against the government economic hardship would drive those who had done the lynching into the rebel fold eventually, in weeks or months.

Michael circled the city, panting with exertion after the first few minutes. People were getting back to their feet, cursing and helping one another up. Some watched him go by suspiciously. And in the distance, he heard the sound of aircars droning low over the buildings.

New echoes came: "R-r-r-remain calm calm calm." Police cars spun in fans of dust ahead of Michael. Officers were leaping out into a milling crowd of workers who were locked out of their office building because its AI doorman no longer recognized them. Michael tried to hang back, but the growing crowd behind him was pushing him forward. Before he knew what was happening he was in a sea of running people, and he heard guns firing. Someone started screaming.