“Jon, I remember well. But,” the King turned to Alter, “it’s been a while since I’ve seen you this close. I’ve only watched you glittering in the air at the circus, recently.” “I’m happy to see you back at the palace, my King,’ Alter said.

  “It’s boring,” the King said in a confidential tone. “But your presence gives me something beautiful to think about.” “Oh, thank you . . . my King!”

  “Do you like the party, Alter?” asked the Duchess.

  “It’s just . . . beautiful, your Grace!”

  The Duchess bent slightly toward her. “Just Petra, as usual."

  Alter flushed a trifle, and said, “Oh, and Petra, the dress is lovely.”

  "You double its loveliness.”

  “Petra, just what is the purpose of this dance?” Jon asked as Alter beamed mutely.

  The Duchess’ voice deepened. “Primarily to feel out what we can get by way of financial aid from whoever we can. The war’s end has left us in quite a bind.”

  "Especially since it hasn’t really ended,” commented Jon.

  Petra sighed. “But we must appear as though it has.”

  “Petra, shall I open the dancing?” asked the King.

  She looked over the people’s heads, then nodded.

  King Let offered his arm to Alter. “Would you mind dancing with a lame man, to open the ball?”

  “My King . . .’’ Alter said, and glanced at Jon who nodded gently to her. “Of course I wouldn’t mind. Thank you,” and she moved off at his side.

  Jon and the Duchess watched as, beige and white, the youngster reached the musician’s stand. “The limp,” Jon said, “it’s almost gone.”

  “He tries hard to hide it,’’ said Petra. “When he dances, hardly anyone will notice — because he is King.” The bitterness that momentarily filled her voice surprised him.

  “Alter will notice," Jon said. “Her body’s a trained, sensitive instrument.”

  Music began, and the turning figures of the acrobat and the regal youth opened a path through the other guests who, nt the musical signal, themselves broke into bright whirling couples over the blue tile floor. The Duchess’ eyes, however, were down. When she did look up, Jon saw, they were bright with unshed tears. “We are disguising Toromon’s wounds well this evening,” she said softly.

  He watched the figures of the dance bloom like a flower. Then the music ended, and petals drifted back to the edge of the floor.

  “How did we look?” demanded Let, flushed and a bit breathless, when he and Alter reached the dais.

  “Charming," said the Duchess.

  People had again come over for the interminable introductions, and Alter stepped quickly to Jon’s side. “We’ll go now, Petra. I hope it goes well”

  “Thank you, Jon.”

  “Good evening, my King.”

  “Good evening. We’ll dance once more before the evening’s over, Alter.”

  "Oh yes, my King."

  Jon and Alter left the dais and strolled over the floor. “How is it to dance with a King?” asked Jon.

  Her hand was on his arm, and now she squeezed gently. “He’s sweet. But I had more fun practicing with you this afternoon.”

  “Dance with me now, then,” he said, as the music for the partner-changing dance began. She came into his encircling arm, her right hand resting, smaller and warmer, on his left, the tip of her pinkie just pressing the knuckle of his index finger.

  “Don’t go too far away from me,” she whispered. Gowns rustled about them. “I want to be able to get back to you in a hurry."

  Turn, dip, separate, join again; through the recalled steps, her smile was brilliant at him. The music rose, she turned away from him, and a tall woman in blue replaced her in his arms. He nodded graciously and began the figure of the dance again, glancing once at Alter: her new partner was a middle-aged man with short brown hair and heavy lips and whose chest bore the royal insignia of the house of B’rond. Jon exchanged a few civilities with his partner, the music rose again, and a moment later Alter whirled back to him. “Who were you dancing with?"

  “Some industrialist’s daughter. Her father’s in transports; his name rang some sort of bell.”

  “And who was I dancing with?”

  "Count B’rond.”

  “Do you realize in those two minutes he said I was beautiful, he must see me again, and that I was the most graceful person at the ball, and he would be waiting for me at sunrise at the castle entrance?”

  “He and his seven wives?” Jon asked. “At least he had had seven before I went to the mines. I think he killed a couple of them, though — accidentally, of course.”

  “That’s him!" exclaimed Alter. “Wasn’t there some scandal a few years ago, some sort of expos^ of decadent aristocracy. It was swallowed up with all the business over the emigration from the mainland. They kept talking about some B’rond.”

  Jon nodded. "Apparently, he hasn’t changed his habits much, either.”

  Alter pulled her shoulders in and shivered.

  “The blue blood of Toromon isn’t in all that hot shape. You remember the late King Uske, not to mention the Queen mother. Both of them were batty. Petra’s pretty much an exception.”

  “I guess so,” Alter said, moving away to the music, coming back, then whirling off. Jon turned to receive his next partner as Alter’s beige silk opened like a whispering rose.

  Then the windows in the west wall went white: light like sword blades leapt across the floor. Women cried out; men stepped backwards, throwing their arms over their faces. The shells ceased sounding and the theramin squacked to a stop. A moment later thunderous rumbling replaced the music, growing, then fading, as darkness filled the high, coffin-shaped windows once more.

  Jon was the first to run forward. Alter was beside him. After them, the others flooded to see.

  Jon reached the middle window and pushed away the heavy edging. Alter’s shoulder jostled against his as others rushed against her to look.

  Far among the city’s towers flames flicked through the ruptured skyline.

  “What in the world do you . . .”

  “Now just which direction are we facing . . .*

  “It’s the General Medical building . . .

  “No, no, it couldn’t be. Isn’t that over . . .”

  “They’ve destroyed the General Medical building! Can’t you see! That’s where the General Medical building used to

  Jon pushed his way back through the crowd. Alter, her skirts held to her legs, pressed after him. “Jon, was it the General Medical?” He nodded shortly to her over his shoulder.

  Petra intercepted them from another window. "Jon!”

  Reaching him she caught his aim. "You saw that!” She shook her head, like a confused beast, red hair leaping sideways brighter than the flames across the night. "There’s no time, Jon. You’ve got to go to Telphar. That’s the only thing left. I would go with you, but somebody must stay to help Let hold the city together. Alter, will you go with him?”

  Amazed, she nodded.

  “If you can stop the computer, stop it. If you can find out how it might be stopped, tell me and I’ll stop it. Jon, even the records have ceased coming in. The military is threatening to withdraw.”

  “Can we take Arkor?” Jon asked. “Maybe we can use him?”

  Petra hesitated, her white teeth catching her lower lip as she dropped her head in thought. It raised quickly. “No. I can’t send him with you. I haven’t wanted to, but I may have to use his powers to pry things out of the council. One more attack like this and we will have to evacuate the City. I can’t let the whole population risk getting blown to bits. The council will be panic-stricken, and nothing will get done unless I use every method available."

  “All right,” Jon said, pulling in a breath. About them the ballroom was frantic. “Well leave immediately.”

  “Good-bye, Petra,” Alter said.

  The Duchess took her hand with sudden urgency. “Goodbye,” she said quietly, “and good luck.”

  At the great arched doorway, Alter, catching up to Jon, said, “The General Medical building, Jon. Won’t that mean —1"

  The conversation in the room was rising toward hysteria.

  “It’ll mean the major source of medical supplies for the City is cut off. Let’s just hope there isn’t a plague before they get it operating again."

  The stately industrialist’s daughter in blue had been accosted by Alter’s ex-partner, Count B’rond. "It’s so terrifying,” they heard her moan. "It reminded me of something I saw a little girl scribbling on a wall this afternoon, something about being trapped at a bright moment . . . trapped—” The lower voice of the Count interrupted as he leaned toward her ear: “You are still the most beautiful woman I have seen during the whole evening." His gloved hand was a great gray moth on her shoulder. “Will you let me see you again . . .

  Jon and Alter gained the door and went first to the Duchess’ suite. Arkor opened the door for them.

  “Yes, I know what’s happened,” he said.

  “Then what’s the best way to get to Telphar?” Jon dropped his black cloak at the feet of the brocaded chair.

  “The transit ribbon’s out of commission, at least from this end. That conversion nonsense has left this side useless for sending." From a closet, while he talked, he took two ordinary sets of clothing and handed them out. “There’s nothing you’ll need I can’t give you here, is there?”

  “I don’t think so,’ Alter said, reaching into the silken folds of her skirt. “This is all I’d want to take, and I brought them along." She drew out a sheaf of papers.

  “Nonik’s poems?" Jon pulled off first one open-toed and heeled boot and then the other. “Reading matter for when things get dull?”

  “Wishful thinking,” Arkor said.

  Alter reached behind her back, snapped open a snap, and the dress was a ring of silk about her feet. She stepped out, stepped into the green tunic, and belted it about her waist with a strip of black leather. “I’d better leave these.” She removed the pearl earrings, started to take off the shell necklace, then bit her lip, shrugged. “I’ll leave this." Arkor handed them sandals and they began to lace them up.

  Jon closed the top buckle around his shin, and stuck the poems in his shirt pocket, before pushing his arms down the oose three-quarter sleeves. “I hold these for you.”

  “I miss my pockets," Alter laughed.

  The video-phone buzzed and the Duchess announced, “All the royal yachts are out. Two reservations are waiting for you on a tetron-tramp at pier 739.”

  They left the Duchess’ suite moments later.

  As they rushed from the palace on foot, open-topped motor sleds carried the more elegant attendants off through the streets. Shoulder to shoulder against the indifferent night they made their way toward the city’s rim.

  VII

  A siren still gnawed at the dark. A water main had broken and the street was covered with a black, glittering rush. Scimitars, orange from reflected flames streets away, flashed in the rills along the curb and about the overturned garbage can.

  A white figure staggered across the sidewalk, whirled absurdly, the soaked hem of the large cloth pulled about her neck, flapping on her skinny legs. The light struck something shiny and askew on her white, ropey hair. As she tottered to the street lamp, it was recognizable as a strip of tin, ripped edge-ragged from a can and bent in a circle. She turned and called into the alley: a sudden splashing followed her into the light.

  A covey of men and women in outlandishly impromptu clothing came hesitantly, blinking, shuffling, flapping through the water. One youngster, whose hair fell into his face, had stencilled over his pyjama chest: WARD 979. Aimless muffled crying came from his half-open mouth, and with one grubby hand he continually twisted his right ear.

  Something struggled in their midst, and the rest fell away. The center of the crowd was an odd duo: one great beefy man in thigh-soaked tom pyjama pants had hammer- locked a frailer figure also in white. But this white was not the helter-skelter of hastily issued night clothes or abruptly snatched bedding, but a short sleeved, well-fitting uniform, though it was wet and wrinkled now. The man’s arms were tied behind him and his squinting eyes attested to a pair of lost glasses. His captor, chuckling, held him by the shoulder and whammed the back of his head with the ham of his hand. The bound figure collapsed to one knee on the streaming sidewalk, shaking like a dog. “Will you please . . . ?” he began, raising his head, tendon’s taut in his brown neck, to watch the tall woman. “Look, you don’t realize, you’re not well, none of you . . . just let me take you back to . . .”

  The tall woman had begun searching the folds of her makeshift cloak. In sudden frustration she cried out, “Oh, keep him quiet I tell you!” The beefy man flung his foot like a club into the kneeling doctor’s back and laughed as the figure splashed forward. Then he bent and hoisted him up.

  “I can’t find it!” screeched the woman. Her face went white, then red. “Oh, I can’t find it! Who has stolen it? Damn it, why will nobody answer me! Don’t you know who I am! How dare you treat me like this! Haven’t you any respect!”

  Despair, like the chill gutter water, gushed over the kneeling physician. “Help!” he cried into the darkness. “Help me!’’ His cry, directed at no one particular, threatened no one, and his persecutor only tilted his broad head curiously to watch this howling plaything. He laughed again and began to chew at his nails, nearly nonexistent.

  Suddenly from the next alley splashed a man in green slicker and rubber boots. “Hey, come on," he ordered indignantly, “we’re trying to keep this area evacuated till we get the water main fixed. Now clear out and stay away from the flooded area.” He cursed, coughed, and flung the rubberized cloak back over his shoulder. “Hurry up before I run you in!”

  “They’ve taken it away from me again,” screamed the tall woman, pawing at her wet sheet. “I can’t find it. They’ve stolen it again! Oh, why won’t they give it back!”

  “Help me, please,” cried the kneeling man.

  The youngster with the hair over his face and WARD 979 over his chest sobbed and twisted his ear.

  The officer came up short “What are you, some sort of nuts?”

  A young woman broke toward him, a pigeon-throated gurgle falling from her pale mouth. When she passed beneath the street lamp, the officer saw she would have been pretty had her eyes not been streaked like an uncared-for puppy. Cooing, she embraced him, and rubbed her head against his wet slicker.

  “Hey, what the hell do you think you’re . . .”

  The tall woman whirled on him. “Young man, do you know who you are talking to?”

  “The Queen of Sheba for all I know! I was telling her to get—” He staggered as the young woman settled herself from him like a pendulum.

  “The Queen! The Queen? Do you know who I am?” demanded the woman again. “Oh, keep him quiet, will you!” She was clutching at her sheet once more.

  The officer was still trying to lose the hanging damsel from his shoulders when he heard a giggle in his left ear. He turned, more from instinct than interest, and saw the full lips with the rim of pink tongue pressed between them, the puffy settings of the small bark-brown eyes, receding hair like com-silk over the wide skull, and coarse hair like hemp on the wider chest, tufting the bulging length of collarbone —

  The beefy man smashed in the side of the officer’s face with his fist; he didn’t see anything anymore.

  “They stole it,” cried the tall woman as he sagged out of the young lady’s arms.

  “You . . . you don’t know what you’re doing!” cried the doctor, who had almost gotten to his feet. “Will you please, will you please let me take you to some place where they can help you? Just listen to me, just follow me to . .

  “Will you keep him quiet?" demanded the tall woman. “How do you ever expect me to find it!”

  Smiling, the beefy man dragged the inert, rubber-covered figure across the sidewalk, his bare feet splashing up water like surfboards. When he reached the doctor, he looked at him happily, tilted his head, blinked like a puzzled bear, then kicked the man's feet from under him so that he flopped onto the sidewalk again, calling out in pain and surprise.

  “Quiet!” screamed the woman, shaking the wet cloth away from her arms and whirling beneath the lamp.

  The beefy man kneeled in the water, clamped his fingers over the necks of both conscious and unconscious figures, lifted them and looked from face to face, one limp and bleeding, the other contorted and gasping. He wet his lower lip, his upper one. Then, slowly, he pushed both faces into the water and held them there.

  The bound figure in white struggled for a while.

  Still sobbing, the youngster with the long hair bent over the glistening rubber back, tugging at the slicker till it came loose. He reached for the officer’s waist, and stood up a moment later with something long and thin in his hand, pointing it at the sky. With his dirty thumb he pressed a button on the hilt and sparks glittered up the double prong of the power-blade.

  Nail-bitten fingers, like sprung clamps, released bruised necks as the beefy man’s face rose in the sparkling light, lips rolled back from yellow teeth, the comers of his eyes crinkled like pinched paper.

  The young woman ceased her pigeon moan, and even the older woman paused, groping vaguely to straighten the tin circle which dimmed and brightened with the shadows on her deep-cut face from the blade’s wavering light. “That," she said after a whispering exhalation, “certainly isn’t it. Hut never mind. Bring it along anyway. Somebody stole it from me, I’m sure. But we’ll find it, don’t worry. Come along, there! Don’t dawdle! Come along!”