Sula went toward the entertainment district along the old canals below the High City. She visited a series of clubs and cafés, sitting at the bar where she could encounter people, or at a table where she could overhear others. A number of men wanted to buy her drinks. She sipped mineral water, let them talk, and tried to steer the conversation toward the Naxids.

All showed prudent caution about the topic—one never knew who might be listening—but alcohol eventually loosened their tongues. Several had new Naxid supervisors, but said it was too early to know how that would change things. One man had been demoted, his place in the Transportation Ministry taken by a Naxid: he was on his sixth or seventh drink and in the midst of a deep melancholy. Most were eventually willing to admit they were furious that the Naxids had taken hostages.

“But what can we do?” one said. “We’ve got to cooperate. The whole planet is hostage now.”

None seemed to have encountered the first issue ofResistance, let alone absorbed the wisdom Sula had so hopefully packed into it. By now she herself was depressed, and her steps brought her to a derivoo club, where she could be comforted by the existence of folk with worse problems than hers.

The derivoo singer, face and hands whitened, stood straight beneath her spotlight and sang songs of sorrow. Betrayal, shattered hearts, death, violence, accident, suicide, horror—the derivoo’s palate was cast entirely in dark colors. The point was not so much that these griefs existed as that the derivoo was still able to sing about them. Oppressed by every imaginable catastrophe, weighted down by every fearful memory, the derivoo still stood straight and broadcast a message of defiance to the universe.I am beaten, I am bloody, but still I stand…

Watching the performance was like observing an unforgiving war between passion and control. Too much passion, and the work would tip into melodrama and become absurd. Too much control, and the songs became soulless. The singer tonight was able to walk perfectly the knife-edge between fire and ice, and Sula felt her blood surge in response. She had seen the Home Fleet burn at Magaria, torn to ions by Naxid antimatter. She had brought her team out of the wreckage of the Axtattle ambush as Naxid bullets chewed the building to bits around them. She had watched her comrades die by torture.

Sula had inflicted tragedy as well as endured it. She had killed five Naxid ships at Magaria along with all their crews. “It was Sula who did this!” she had called to the Naxids at Magaria.“Remember my name!”

She had claimed the Sula name then, made it her own, even though Sula had not always been her name. Once, when she was very young—when her name had been Gredel—she’d pressed a pillow to the face of Caroline, Lady Sula, and afterward claimed the dead girl’s name, her title, and her small fortune.

It was not clear in Sula’s mind whether that was a tragedy or not. Probably it was for Caro Sula, though it wasn’t likely Caro would have survived much longer anyway. She had already overdosed once, and would have again.

Whether any of this was a tragedy for her was as yet unclear to Sula. She was inclined to think not. If there were tragedy involved, she intended that it would be a tragedy for the Naxids.

She left the club feeling as if she had gained possession of some primal fact of the universe, something both despairing and joyous, and the elation carried her all the way home. Not to the apartment where she met with her team to plan assassinations and to plunder the resources of the Records Office—that was intended to be used only for meetings—but to a one-room place she’d acquired for herself.

Life on the street was fading quickly in the dim, rationed light. The last food-seller waited only to sell his last few ears of roasted maize before packing up his grill and leaving, and Sula helped him by buying an ear, enjoying its sweetness along with the smoky taste of the charcoal and the coarse sprinkling of salt.

With only a few streetlights burning, it was dark enough so that she was totally surprised by the figure that rose from the shadows next to the stairs. As her heart leaped, she stepped automatically into a strong stance, the corncob held in her fist like a knife…

“Is that you, beauteous lady?”

Sula recognized the voice and relaxed out of her stance. She spoke over the hammering of her heart. “One-Step? What are you doing here this late?”

One-Step replied with dignity. “You never know when someone will want to see me here in my office.”

One-Step’s office was the patch of pavement next to the apartment steps, and whatever business he conducted there remained obscure. Sula forgave him this and other flaws for the sake of his extraordinary black eyes, which were brilliant and liquid and beautiful, and on this night unfortunately invisible in the darkness.

One-Step’s voice turned reproachful. “You haven’t been home, beauteous lady. I’ve been desolated.”

“A friend got me a bit of work in another part of town.”

“Work?” His voice brightened. “What kind?”

“Inventory. But it was temporary, and now it’s over.”

The voice turned accusing. “You’ve been off spending the money, haven’t you? Spending it without One-Step.”

“I went to see a derivoo,” Sula said.

“Derivoo!” One-Step scorned. “That’s all so depressing! You should let One-Step show you agood time. I’ll treat you like you deserve, like the highest Peer of the High City. Like a queen. You’ll never regret a night with One-Step.”

“Maybe some other time. I want to get some sleep tonight.”

“Sleep is a treacherous object. Here’s something that may keep you awake for a while.”

He handed her a plastic flimsy, and she squinted at it as she held it to the dim yellow light of her apartment vestibule.

Resistance,she read.

One-Step had been trying to charm his way into her arms ever since they first met, but even so, he was probably surprised at the joyous hug and kiss.

“Beauteous lady,” he said, “you’ll never regret—”

“I don’t,” she said, backing away. “But you be careful who you give these to, all right?”

He was reproachful again. “One-Step is always careful.”

Sula’s heart was light as she entered the building, went up two flights, and checked her door for signs of intrusion. She entered, switched on the light, and looked at the copy ofResistance, properly printed on perfectly decent plastic. There was no indication where or how it had been printed, and no watermark.“A loyal friend has suggested that we send this to you…” Ah, lovely.

Thank you, One-Step, loyal friend.

The apartment smelled of heat and disuse. She went to the little alcove by the window and put the issue ofResistance on the broad ledge, pinning it with the pot that waited there. She opened the window to clear out the heat of the day, checked to make certain her guns and grenades were in the hidden compartments where she’d put them, then sat cross-legged on her sleeping pallet and admired the pot and news sheet together, the way the pale plastic was reflected in the blue-green crackle of the age-old pot.

The pot wasju yao ware of Earth’s ancient Song Dynasty, an object so valuable that if her neighbors knew of it, they would have bludgeoned each other with crowbars to be the first to break into the apartment and steal it. Just before the Naxids arrived, when sad, dead Caro’s whole inheritance finally came into her possession, Sula bought the pot for fourteen thousand zeniths, a little more than half the total legacy, and much less than it was worth.

Porcelain was one of her passions. She had never owned a valuable piece before, but she’d decided that, given that she was going to throw her life away on what was probably a futile effort to resist the Naxids, she might as well indulge herself in this one small thing.