Her mother had sighed. "What first to answer? Men are dominant in our culture because that is the way it has been for thousands of years, and the system worked and survived and protected the people. Men are dominant in our culture because the machines that make our rules decided to return to the ancient culture where it was so. It cannot be changed. Even if it is not a good thing, it cannot be changed. That would not be allowed. Any who try to change the system are eliminated. You yourself know this. You saw the attack on the illegal technologist fortress. Every nation, every culture of humanity, is set by command. No alterations are allowed. Everyone who ever tried has failed miserably. That is why your father thinks in the long term. His foundation is his pride. He finds it intolerable to be subordinate. He has risen as high as any can rise in our society-and he is still subordinate and still fearful of the machines who spy on him, and he hates them. He is brilliant enough to know he cannot defeat them. He is idealistic enough to hope that perhaps his descendants, as a mighty dynasty, might find a way."

"But it's not fair! I didn't ask for this!"

"The mere fact that you would make such a statement shows why above all else this must be done. It is not fair that we must live some machine's vision. It is not fair that our destinies are predetermined. It is not fair that my brothers and sisters grub in the mud while I scold maids for improper dusting. No one in this world ever asked for what they got. No one has much choice. It is enough to make the best out of what you have. It must be, for the only alternative is death."

Her mother had paused a moment, then added, "You ask why you cannot continue your work. It is because you are dangerously close now to exposing the whole family. Sooner or later you would try to beat the Master System, and that would be the end of us."

"The Master System can be beaten! We do it all the time!"

"No. The Master System can be cheated, which is not the same thing at all. It knows we cheat. Unless we are incompetent enough or brazen enough to allow ourselves to get caught at it, it doesn't seem to mind because we cheaters do not threaten it or the system. The fact that we can cheat and get away with cheating is our moral authority to be the leaders and our badge of office to Master System. You cannot defeat it, and you cannot resist trying. For your own sake, we must prevent you from trying."

"For your sake, you mean. Mother-this is no template. They are talking about killing me, killing my mind, leaving only my body! My body will live, but someone else, someone totally different, will be inside it! How can you allow it?"

There were tears in her mother's eyes in spite of attempts to suppress them, but her mother had simply sighed. "I cannot stop it," she had replied, then turned away and stalked quickly out of the room, leaving Song Ching alone.

Song Ching took dinner alone in her room, although she barely picked at it and had no appetite. She looked at the silk bedding, the many fine clothes and jewels there, the art and intricate tapestries, the perfumes and the rest, and decided she'd trade them all for peasant's garb and mud and thick rice if she could just stop this from happening.

She needed to get back up to Center while there was still time. There, in her own element, she felt she could cheat her father as she and he both cheated the Master System. She had an advantage there, one which she was certain he did not know about and which might prove useful, but if she was taken away and immediately thrown into reprocessing, she knew she'd never have the chance.

For the first time she considered suicide. It would be honorable, certainly, and would bring no disgrace on her family and friends, and it would be a way of regaining control. They had given her the date of her death, but they expected still to have a daughter and an experiment after that. By taking her own life, she would cheat her father out of his damned dream and maybe make them all regret this. From her point of view she would be no worse off, but she would have a measure of both control and revenge. The more she thought of it, the more attractive it became.

She had trouble getting to sleep, but finally she did doze off. Deep in the night, however, she came suddenly awake, absolutely convinced that there was someone else in her bedroom with her. There was someone! A large, dark shape right at the foot of her bed!

"I see that you are awakened," her father said. He clapped his hands, and a servant brought in a lantern, then bowed and quickly exited. "You greatly upset your mother tonight. This in turn upsets me and threatens the family as well.

You force me to act to forestall drastic and irrational actions on the part of one or the other of you. Get up and dress now for a journey. You are leaving here this night."

She gasped, but there was never any thought of not obeying her father implicitly when in his presence. He was that sort of man.

"Please, honorable father," she said while dressing. "May I be permitted to ask where I am being taken?"

"You will go with a small detail of my most trusted men to the emergency skimmer landing site and there be placed aboard and transported to Center for reprocessing. It was not intended that you know about this at all, to spare you and others mental anguish, but because you discovered it, there is no longer any purpose in postponing it. It will be better for you and for everyone if it is done quickly." He turned to the door. "Captain!"

A young officer, looking only half awake, entered and bowed. "Sir?"

"You have your specific instructions and much latitude in completing this business quickly, quietly, and successfully. You and your men understand well what will happen to you all if anything is the least bit amiss at the end of this?"

"Sir, they have all been informed and are eager to carry out your orders."

"Then take this spoiled, self-centered brat with no honor within her and bring me back a proper daughter!"

The captain simply snapped to attention.

She was led out into the night and placed in a closed carriage. Two nasty-looking and very determined soldiers sat across from her, and more were stationed on the rear and atop the driver's seat. No words were exchanged; they were off as soon as she was aboard.

The night was cloudy and dark, so there would have been nothing to see of the countryside even had the shades in the coach not been drawn. It took less than an hour to reach the landing site, and the skimmer was already waiting. Her father was never one to let the details slip.

The site was rarely used; in fact, she could not remember it ever being used. It was there only because it was both out of view of the main roads and villages and close enough to the big house for her father's use in an extreme emergency.

Ordinarily, the rule was that no one see the skimmers if at all possible, and the craft generally flew at high altitudes where they were invisible from the ground and landed in remote, sealed-off areas.

Everything had happened so suddenly that she hadn't had much chance to think, and even though she was wide awake now, the whole scene still had an unreal, dreamlike quality about it, as if it were happening to someone else and observed from a distance.

The skimmer was a small five-seat courier ship built for speed rather than cargo. There were pilot and copilot, then three seats across immediately in back of them. Song Ching was flanked by the captain of the guard on one side and one of the beefy soldiers from inside the coach on the other.

The captain got up and leaned over her, then pressed hard on her wrists. She was startled and looked down to see that her wrists were now secured with thin but very strong metal bands coming out of the seat.

"A thousand pardons, my lady, but this was ordered," the captain said, sounding really apologetic.

Her feet were positioned and strapped in place, then her seat harness was drawn down and attached. None of the restraints were tight or really uncomfortable, but she couldn't move. "This is not necessary, Captain," she protested, trying to sound brave.

"It is necessary because it is ordered, my lady," the man replied, settling back into his seat and fastening his own harness. "Your father believes that you are very resourceful."

Resourceful, she thought glumly. Resourceful enough for what? To somehow overpower all four men, steal the skimmer, and make a break for some place he couldn't find me?

The door closed with a solid chunk, the cabin was pressurized, and they took off, rising straight up in the air, in a matter of minutes. The whole affair was so well organized, she had to wonder about it.

"Captain? Excuse me, but just when did my father give orders for all this?"

He looked uncomfortable. "Two days ago, my lady."

She nodded to herself. Two days ago. When she had first let slip that she knew what was planned for her. Somehow that figured. Made her mother upset, huh?

The craft attained its approved altitude, then went forward, slowly at first but with ever-increasing speed, pressing them all against their seat backs. She could see the instrument board from her seat and watched the air speed indicator climb until it finally slowed and halted at their cruising speed. She hadn't known that skimmers could go that fast. It was close to the speed of sound.

At this rate, they might well be back at Center by dawn.

If there was one place where Center was not, it was at or near a center. It was, in fact, on the site of a former small nomadic village on the edge of the northwestern desert. Sinkiang was a beautiful, exotic province, but it was not a place that could ordinarily support large numbers of humans except in a few isolated spots.

It was light before they reached Center, and ordinarily she loved to look out at the vast expanse of mountains, tablelands, and desert from which the great dome of the city rose, but she felt nothing now, not even apprehension. It was as if something within her was already dead, and she had even managed an uncomfortable and intermittent sleep on the journey.

They landed in a special security zone after clearing the shield. The door opened, and the flight crew shut down and got out, then the captain undid her restraints and helped her up. She was stiff and sore from being held in one position for so long.

Although she knew the great city well, she had never been in this area before.

She had known it was here, of course, but the area had held little interest for her before.

They marched her down a long corridor with automatic security gates every ten meters or so, each one opening easily before them but closing behind with a strange finality. The corridor led down far below even the maintenance level of the city. Finally, they reached a reception room of sorts, where the captain and his guard were relieved of their responsibility. There they were met by a five-member squad of military women, all of whom looked like they loved torturing small children and animals. All five wore the loose-fitting tunic and baggy trousers commonly worn in Center, but these clothes were white with broad red stripes on them. She wondered why they would wear such strange and ugly things.

"Honorable lady, I apologize for the journey and thank you for allowing us to do our duty," the captain said sincerely, clearly glad that his part of things was over. "I wish you only the best fortune."

She felt as if she were expected to thank her executioner, but the man was clearly in a spot himself and had treated her with respect. "Return with my blessings, Captain," she responded. "Thank you for your courtesy." And with that, the two soldiers got a signed receipt from the head of the squad, bowed, and left.

"Stand there and remove all of your clothes," the squad leader instructed in a harsh, nasty voice.

Song Ching was startled. Never in her life had she undressed in front of strangers. "I am the eldest daughter of a warlord and the chief administrator,"

she responded proudly. "I do not get spoken to like that, nor do I disrobe in public!"

"Get one thing straight, little flower," the leader snapped. "You were those things. In here you are nothing. You are the property of the state, and we are the state. We have all sorts of highborns here, many greater than you, and it all means nothing here. If you do not begin to disrobe in five seconds, you will be restrained and forcibly disrobed. From this time on, there will be no second chances. When someone gives you an order, you will obey it or it will go hard on you. Voluntarily or bound and gagged, it is all the same to us."

For the first time she felt really scared, but she still did not comply. Her pride would not allow it. A gesture from the leader was made, and two women moved swiftly, throwing her against the wall and then ripping off her fine silks. She screamed and struggled, but no one came to her aid or seemed to mind in the least. Her arms were brought forward, and light but strong handcuffs were placed on both wrists, each clip fastened to the other by a chain roughly half a meter long. She could use her hands, but only within limits. Nearly identical cuffs were placed on her legs above her ankles.

"Now, will you walk or must we carry you?" the squad leader asked, a note of satisfaction in her voice. Clearly she enjoyed exercising power over those born to a higher and more privileged position than she.

"I will walk," she responded sullenly.

They moved fast; she almost had to shuffle to keep up, her stride limited by the leg restraints. They took her into a room and sat her in a barber's chair, and a woman there quickly trimmed her shoulder-length silky black hair to a short masculine cut. Her long, pointed nails were not cut down, but they were trimmed to a roundness that looked grotesque. She was then given a crude but thorough shower, with the guards doing the scrubbing. The experience was humiliating, and she wanted to scream, but she wasn't going to give them the satisfaction. She decided quickly that what would disappoint them the most would be to keep an aristocratic air and remain fatalistic.

Again she was marched down an endless series of corridors until they reached a line of doors. When the squad leader activated one with a thumbprint, the door slid back and Song Ching was ushered into a cell. Her arm and leg bindings were then undone and removed.

The cell was completely empty. The walls, floor, and even the ceiling were featureless and thickly padded. Lighting tubes at the wall-ceiling joints provided good, if soft, light, but those fixtures were a good four meters up and protected by some sort of opaque material. The whole cell was not more than four by three meters.

"Now, listen well," the squad leader told her. "You will remain here until called for. Your father who committed you ordered this so that you might not do harm to yourself. You will be fed twice a day here, in the cell, under the eyes of a guard. Anything you do not eat will be removed when the guard leaves, and you will get no more until the next scheduled meal, so eat. The cell is soundproof, but that small piece in the door is one-way glass. We will look in on you from time to time to be sure you are all right, but we will not disturb you. If you need to eliminate, go to this corner and sit. A toilet will adjust to you. Do not, however, put your hand or anything else in there. The toilet is a dry one, and anything that should not go there will be trapped and held there until we come and remove you. If you look over here next to the toilet area, you will see a small flexible tube in the wall. If you thirst, suck on it and water will be dispensed in small, measured amounts. The reservoir takes one hour to refill.

Also, any attempt to do yourself harm and you will get far shorter handcuffs and leg chains. Any questions?"

"Yes. How long will I-be here?"

"As long as is necessary. Don't worry. When you leave here, you won't remember any of this, even in your nightmares." With that, the squad left, and the door closed with an awesome finality.

For a while she paced and fumed in frustration. They had it all worked out, their methods honed over centuries of experience. Worse, they really could do almost anything they wanted to her because, as the guard said, she would remember none of it and so could not complain or report it. She even guessed the reason for the guards' odd clothing. Probably workers left their own clothes outside and picked up those uniforms once inside the security barriers. Thus, even if someone managed somehow to get out or make a break while going to and from the medical area and somehow beat the security checkpoints, that person would either be nude or wearing very conspicuous clothing.

What was so frustrating was that her own computer lab was probably no more than a hundred meters up and then a kilometer away. In those rooms she could take control and show them all-if only she could get to them. If, if, if, she thought sourly. If only she'd kept her big mouth shut about this and worked out a way to come back here to finish up a few things. If only she hadn't been so wild that even her mother could no longer see her as anything but a threat. She had been so smart with all things electronic, but she realized she'd been pretty stupid when it came to people. She had always been in command, in control. She'd never had to worry about other people.

The cell was an effective prison. She examined it closely, every joint and junction, until she saw a small dark spot hidden behind the light guard in one corner. The others were harder to make out, but there seemed to be one in each corner. Somewhere, perhaps not far off, someone was sitting in a chair and looking at her in the full three dimensions, probably recording her and analyzing her every movement with computer psych analyzers. She had never felt so exposed or humiliated in her entire life, and she hated them for it and hated her father for ordering this. Just a laboratory animal, that's all she was to him. The imperial ducks were the most pampered and protected of pets-until it came time for the formal dinner. The difference, the only difference, here was that the ducks didn't-couldn't-know their fate as she did. It was a difference that would be of no relevance to her father, she knew.

She was fed in a little while. The starkness and absolute soundproofing of the cell had already made her lose all track of time. They used two female matrons, one to serve and the other to stand guard with a nasty-looking baton that, Song Ching was warned, gave a nasty but temporary shock and left no marks. The meal was a large bowl of extremely gummy white rice topped with some light soy sauce and a few lumps that pretended to be vegetables. She was not given chopsticks, another indignity, and had to eat with her hands. She ate very little of the first meal, and it was then taken away, and she was left alone for what seemed like an eternity. Within a very few feedings, though, she was eating quite well and even anticipating the next meal, not only because she felt as if she were starving but also because no matter how nasty and terse the guards were, it was some interruption, some human company.

After a while she had no idea how long she had been there or whether or not her system was being disrupted by irregular feedings, but after a while the cell and the routine became her only reality; her old life and family already seemed far away.

When the door opened the next time, she thought it was for another meal, which seemed overdue. She was starved, but it was not for feeding. They stood her up, gave her a hospital gown to wear, then placed the handcuffs and ankle restraints on her and led her out. She still felt distant, in a daze, not really able to do more than go along with her captors.

She was given a thorough physical exam by both human doctors and machines, and she understood now why she'd left a meal out. They injected tracers, then placed her in small chambers for analysis. Then it was back to the cell and mealtime.

They repeated everything several times, at least twice after a meal to compare some results with others, but it was always back to the cell.

Finally satisfied, they took her to a small room and had her lie on what seemed to be a giant bed of cotton. Her head was covered with some kind of scanner, a top was brought down, and then they began doing odd things. Her nipples and other arousal spots were gently stimulated. Various areas received pressure, some uncomfortably, some not, and at one point she felt as if someone had stuck a pin in her behind. Later, humans would be there with some of the same unpleasant stimuli, and she resisted a bit and tried to avoid the needles, the pressure pads, and the rest. Finally she was bathed and then taken down to the place she dreaded most, which was simply referred to as the surgery.

When she and her guards arrived, though, the previous project or whatever it was was still going on, and they had to stand and watch. There was not a lot to see; two young boys, it appeared, were strapped on cots while technicians monitored them. Song Ching looked around and found much familiar in the surgery. There was medical equipment, of course, but the computer interfaces were the same as Center standards. Center stage, as it were, was a set of the latest mindprint machines. If I could get loose in here, even for five minutes, I might escape this thing, she thought wistfully.

"If I may humbly ask," she whispered to the chief guard, "who are those boys, and what have they done?"

The guard surprised her by answering. "They are the children of a tech cult. The only survivors. They are being mined of all they know, and then they will be sent to Melchior. Be happy, little flower, that you are not in their place instead of your own."

Melchior. She had heard of it in her father's business. The prison from which none returned, under the control not of Master System but of the Earth Council, which included her father. Rebels, deviants, and political prisoners were sent there, it was said, for unauthorized medical experimentation. A chamber of horrors, she knew, but a chamber of horrors not on Earth but in space, inside one of the asteroids. In space...

"We can't wait all day," one of her guards snapped. "Let's just log her in and leave her. These doctors always keep their own schedules."

The leader nodded, and she was taken to a comfortable chair, not unlike one in a barbershop, and her regular restraints removed. They then logged her in to the security computer.

"Subject Priority one nine seven seven," the guard said to the computer board.

"Log in and secure in Chair Two subject only to Doctor Wang's or the master security code."

"Acknowledged," the computer responded in a crisp, human-sounding, but expressionless voice. Clamps came out from the chair as the guards held her in position, securing her arms, legs, chest, and neck.

"The doctor will be in to see you when he's ready, little flower," the guard told her. "Just sit and relax and watch the show." And with that, they left her.

She turned her head as much as she could to watch the technicians across the room with the two boys. She wished they would go before the doctor got here.

This was perhaps the only chance she would ever have, and she was anxious not to miss it, although she had no real plan.

A small, thin man with a gray wispy goatee entered, stopped, and looked at the technicians. "Leave that for now. They aren't going anywhere," he told them. "I have much more important work to do. They can be read out on automatic, and I'll call you when it's done."

"As you wish, honorable doctor," responded one technician. After checking their boards, they left as well.

Wang came over to her and gave her a friendly smile. "Hello, there. I realize that this has been most distressing to you, but it should be very many more days until you are rid of us. I am Doctor Wang, Chief of Psychosurgery here. It is an honor to work on someone like you."

She stared at him. He was treating this as if it were a skinned knee or a broken arm. "You are my murderer. I do not find it at all amusing," she said coldly.

"No, my dear, I am no murderer, although you are not the first to make that sort of comment. I'm no butcher like those two will face on Melchior. I am an artist, you might say. I take people like yourself who are a danger to themselves and their families, and I create out of them people who will live full, happy, productive lives. My media are your body and your mind, but what is created will come from you, not from me. I only give some instructions here and there and nudge it in a positive direction."

"I am not insane! You are not curing someone who is sick! You are destroying someone who is well and far more productive than your results could ever be."

"Well, I don't know about that. Insanity, you see, has always been what the ruling culture said it was. In many places advocating that the Earth is round or that it moves about the sun would be absolute evidence of insanity. To be sane is not to be correct but to fit in with one's dominant cultural patterns. You are not insane by Center's lights, but you no longer can be allowed here. You are going into areas dangerous to everyone, and you cannot possibly be stopped without treatment like this, anyway, which would make you valueless here. Thus, you must be rendered sane according to the culture of the people."

He was behind her now, adjusting equipment that came down on either side of her head and touched both her arms.

"We could have the computers do all of this, with no human intervention," Wang told her, "but then it would be destruction, since everyone would come out according to a set of machine statistics. We cannot, however, involve the Master System here until quite late in the exercise since, quite frankly, there is too much in your head that we would rather not have Master System know about.

Nothing in here, for example, is directly connected to Master System. It gets the results we wish to report, not what really happens. I'm certain you know that game by now."

"Yes," she responded sourly. No direct connection. Everything was perfect except she couldn't do a thing about it!

"All right, now let's take a good look at you." There was a click, and in front of her formed a hologram of an amorphous mass.

"That is the part of the brain we deal with first," he told her. "That's you there. Let me make some adjustments."

The image changed as parts of it were eliminated and smaller parts enlarged until there was just a skeletal outline of a single small area in orange outline. In the bottom were a tremendous number of holes, a few of which were filled with solids of many colors in the shapes of jigsaw puzzle pieces.

"Countless thousands of neural receptors are inside your brain," he told her, "all of which are now being monitored by the computer. We are visualizing only a cross section of the basics, but what we see here can tell us what is happening elsewhere. For example, you have high hormonal levels, but your psychosexual level is quite low, meaning that you don't think of physical sex as very important to you. Now, that energy has to go somewhere, so it goes into aggression, a drive to work or achieve, that sort of thing. It's all interrelated, and it shows up quite clearly on my monitor here. You-your conscious self- are actually the result of matching your biochemistry to your memories and experiences. We are far less free than we believe. The brain's biochemistry creates much of our personality, our limitations, our interests, and our inclinations. Before we can ever deal with memory, we must deal with the biochemistry, those receptors. To do it any other way would not give us you to compare things with. It would be hit or miss, trial and error."

She stared at the hologram in horrified fascination. "You are saying we are nothing but machines. That what I see is my Master System, my core program, which was determined by my genes."

"In a way, yes. However, all biological creatures have a multiplicity of sensors and an even more complex set of social and cultural interactions. Key to it all are the receptors for pain and pleasure. In normal cases we would not have to eliminate your expertise in computers, for example. By reorienting, by blocking certain receptors from that work stimulus, and creating unpleasant sensations when it is invoked by the brain, while giving a different activity, such as weaving, an interrelationship with the old pleasure center, we can create someone who knows all about computers but is not the slightest bit interested in them and finds them obnoxious but to whom sitting at a loom would be pure delight. In ancient times some of this could be forced by deprivation and conditioning, but it was brutal, unsure, and sloppy at best. This cuts out the middleman, as it were, and ensures permanency and perfection."

"This-this is what you do?"