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Firebud has taught her, swinging her broad shoulders in counterpoint to her hips, insinuant animal style. She gives a grin to the muscle and holds her hands palms out to show them she carries no weapons, and then Princess stands before her. She is a good four inches shorter and Sarah looks down at her, hands cocked on her hips, challenging. Princess’s soft blond hair is worn long, ringlets playing with her cheeks, her ears. Her eyes are circled with vast blooms of purple and yellow makeup, to look like bruises, making public the secret wish of a translucent white face that has never known pain. Her mouth is a deep violet, another laceration. Sarah cocks her head back and laughs low, baring her teeth, and thinks of the sounds hyenas make on the hunt.
    “Dance with me, Princess,” she says to the wide cornflower eyes. “I am your wildest dreams.”

    PRACTICE CREATES PERFECTION
    PERFECTION CREATES POWER
    POWER CONQUERS LAW
    LAW CREATES HEAVEN
    –– A helpful reminder from Toshiba

    Nicole has a cigarette in the corner of her mouth and wears a jacket of cracked brown leather. She has dark blond hair that reaches down her back in tawny strands, and long deep gray eyes that look up at Sarah without a flicker.
    Cunningham stands behind her with his two assistants. One is huge, a muscleman with no neck. The other is small, blond, and has even less to say than Cunningham. Sarah thinks the smaller is the more dangerous of the two.
    “You can’t hesitate for a second, Sarah,” Cunningham says. “Not even the fragment of a second. Princess will know it and know there’s something wrong. Nicole is here for that. You are to practice with her.”
    Sarah looks at Nicole for a moment of surprise and then barks a laugh. Anger bubbles in her, whitely, coolly, like flares on the night horizon. “I suppose you plan to watch, Cunningham,” she says.
    He nods. “Yes,” he says. “I and Firebud. You seemed uncertain at first about making love to a woman.” Nicole draws slowly on her cigarette and says nothing.
    “Make a vid record, perhaps?” Sarah asks. “Give me post-game critique?” She curls her lip. “Is that your particular pleasure, Cunningham?” she demands. “Does watching this kind of vid keep your demons away?”
    “We’ll destroy the vids together, if you like...afterward,” Cunningham says. His no-neck assistant grins. The other watches her, expressionless as his chief.
    Sarah has been two months in training, has had her body altered and surgical work done, and all along she has been their willing dirtgirl. But however many candidates had been in Cunningham’s files, she is sure she’s the only hope now, the only charge Cunningham will have shaped by the time Princess next comes down from orbit, and she knows now she has power of her own. They will have to go with her or the project will fail, and it is time they knew it.
    She shakes her head slowly. “I don’t think so, Cunningham,” she says. “I’ll be ready on the night, but I’m not now and I’m not going to be. Not for you, not for your cameras.”
    Cunningham does not reply. He seems to squint a little, as if suddenly the light is stronger. Nicole watches Sarah with smoky eyes, then shakes her long hair and speaks. “Just dance with me, then.” Her words come a little too abruptly, as if impelled by some form of desperation, and Sarah wonders what she has been promised, how she has been made vulnerable to them. When she speaks, her voice gives her away; it is so much younger than her pose. “Just dance a little,” she says. “It’ll be all right.”
    Sarah turns her gaze from Cunningham to Nicole and back, then nods. “Will a few dances satisfy you, Cunningham?” she asks. “Or do we end the program where we stand?”
    His jaw muscles tighten, and for a moment Sarah thinks the business is done, that it’s over. Then he nods, still facing her. “Yes,” he says. “If it has to be that way.”
    “That’s how it has to be,” she