The street was five meters below, but just as Kristen was struggling to force her way through the groaning frame, she felt rough, hard hands gripping her legs. With a mighty effort of will, she just managed to draw one knee forward and then kick backward with every bit of her strength. The kick hit hard, followed by the sound of a pleasing groan, but she overbalanced and toppled downward even as the hands released her. Rushing up to meet her was the pale stone of the street.

The old monastery nestling amid the conifers was truly beautiful. Even in the summer, misty haze swam around it from the ferns and grass, saturated by mid-afternoon rain and now gleaming in the evening sunlight. The Rolls-Royce purred along the gravel drive, throwing up a splatter of stones. As the car came to a halt outside the building's arched rear doors, two men in blue suits stepped out of the shadows almost in synchrony. One of them, darker and smaller than the other, entered the monastery as the door opened before him. His fellow joined the peak-capped chauffeur busily making preparations to deal with the occupant of the auto's customized rear seat.

"His Grace will see you now," the butler said to the dark-haired man, who ignored him and stepped up to the library doors, where he knocked and waited for the familiar voice from within. The summons soon followed.

He entered and went over to stand before the figure seated at a desk in front of huge arched windows completely covered with heavy drapes. Luther sat browsing through a dusty tome in the candlelight he always favored here. His entirely bald head lifted almost imperceptibly. He stared at his returning servitor, as if silently bidding him make his report.

"It is done, Your Grace. Lothar will be making the preparations now. Everything went perfectly, sir."

"Good, Martin." Even just those two words betrayed the strangeness of his voice. The inflection of the name was subtly wrong, somehow, but any listener would have had difficulty pinpointing exactly how. The words came as if from some voicesynth that fell just short of perfect

only because its maker had deliberately not completed the final adjustments.

"I have missed you," Luther said, letting the book slip from his hands.

Martin Matthaus felt a wave of relief ripple through his body. In more than a century of serving this great man, these words were the closest to anything resembling sentiment he'd ever heard him utter. It was more than he deserved.

"There is much work to be done," Luther said simply. He stood up, running his hands with their crooked fingers back across his brow and pointed ears, smoothing his sleek skull. "You must take care of the downloading from the Nongoma field trials. I need the last of the data tomorrow. It is regrettable that I was forced to take such drastic measures."

Panic began to well up in Martin. As yet, Luther had not punished anyone for the bungled kidnapping. He must be biding his time. Martin hadn't been part of that, but he knew perfectly well that once Luther's icy rage had built to the point of physical action, he would delight in adding caprice to his sadism. And, after Heidelberg, Luther's anger would be growing. Two serious failures in a month would call for a victim, maybe more than one. The crucial moment would come when Luther had fed, when his energies were high and he burned. But then, surely, Martin would be at one with the computers and databases and Luther would not come looking for him.

"When you're done, return here," Luther said forbiddingly, his tone momentarily increasing Martin's anxiety. Fortunately, his next words allayed those fears.

"I think we shall have to monitor the Americans," Luther went on. "I doubt they will do anything out in the open yet. But they may well send some kind of spy. Most likely, they'll try to deck into our matrix systems. I wish to review the security with you."

"Yes, Your Grace," Martin replied gratefully. It would mean more work, but it would also keep him safe, not least because he would be able to lock himself into the computer laboratory and justify his seclusion on security grounds. The locks wouldn't stop Luther, of course, but if

he came after Martin in fury they might slow him down enough to cool his rage. Martin knew all the signs of a frenzy building in Luther, and he could see a mighty one coming over him this night.

"Will that be all for now, Your Grace?" he said hopefully. Luther dismissed him with a wave of a hand. Martin bowed as he left, then scuttled away down to the old crypts.

Luther coughed drily, smoothed his suit and adjusted his black tie. He had a funeral to go to, after all.

Michael came around, trolls hammering on the anvil that was his head, just as the door opened. Serrin and Tom found him on his knees, still trying to get to his feet. His eyes were bloodshot and his pallor deathly. Tom raced to help him, hauling the limp body up under the arms, lifting him with ridiculous ease.

"Don't make a song and dance about it, old boy," Michael joked weakly. He felt the healing hands of the shaman gripping him, power flowing through the troll. The weakness faded, and the pain in his head dulled to a throb rather than the violent pulsing with which he'd awakened. He took a deep breath and shook his head to clear his senses.

"I'm all right. My software for automatically taking me out of the circuit has to be the best on the planet," he said. "Crikey, but that system was running some serious 1C. There must be something they really didn't want me to find. Now let's see what that is."

"Wait a minute," Serrin said. "Take a rest. You've only just come around. Get some coffee down you first."

Michael shook his head. "I don't need to deck in again. All I have to do is use Norman through the I/O and download it." Serrin and Tom smiled at each other.

"Don't you think that giving names to your frames is a bit, um, eccentric?" Serrin chuckled. "It's not as if they were real people, you know."

"They've got more personality than some allegedly real ones I know," Michael snorted. "Especially in New York. Of course it's eccentric. I'm bloody English, after all. I'm supposed to be eccentric; it's in my contract." Sit

ting himself down, he began tapping in his instructions through an ordinary console, the wires from the Fairlights now unattached and dangling.

Printouts churned from the array of machinery as Serrin made his choice between Kenyan and Costa Rican. The African blend seemed more appropriate somehow. By the time he carried the tray into the room, Michael had generated yards of facts and figures. As he scanned through them eagerly, his face became more and more perplexed.

"I don't understand this. Half this drek is irrelevant. They beat my browse program! All I managed to collect was a pile of junk. Oh great, some Umfolozi schoolkid reported missing by concerned parents. What is this drek? And why would anyone want to go to such trouble to coat it in 1C?"

He sat back, eyes cast up toward the ceiling. Serrin could almost see the neurons firing.

"There has to be a buried codesort in this. No way would a database lump all this stuff together. There has to be some limbo coding or something," he muttered.

Tom shot Serrin a puzzled look by way of a question. Serrin gave him his best "I don't know what the frag he's talking about" look by way of a reply.

They couldn't stop the Englishman from jacking back in, distrusting his smart frames now, after their initial failure. Five minutes later, he jacked out with a big smile on his face. The printout churned out just three entries.

"Cunning little code. Uses a recursive " Seeing the looks on their faces, he stopped short. "Ah, sorry. Let's just say it's cute, as you seps would put it."