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Bank want?"
    "Money. Power," Ryumin said. "And the ruin of their rivals, who happen to be the Black Medicals."
    "Three lines of attack." Lindsay smiled. "This is what they trained me for." His smile wavered, and he put his hand to his midriff. "That soup," he said. "Synthetic protein, wasn't it? I don't think it's going to agree with me."
    Ryumin nodded in resignation. "It's your new microbes. You'd better clear your appointment book for a few days, Mr. Dze. You have dysentery."
Chapter 2
    THE MARE TRANQULLITATIS PEOPLE'S CIRCUMLUNAR ZAIBATSU: 28-12-'15
    Night never fell in the Zaibatsu. It gave Lindsay's sufferings a timeless air: a feverish idyll of nausea.
    Antibiotics would have cured him, but sooner or later his body would have to come to terms with its new flora. To pass the time between spasms, Ryumin entertained him with local anecdotes and gossip. It was a complex and depressing history, littered with betrayals, small-scale rivalries, and pointless power games.
    The algae farmers were the Zaibatsu's most numerous faction, glum fanatics, clannish and ignorant, who were rumored to practice cannibalism. Next came the mathematicians, a proto-Shaper breakaway group that spent most of its time wrapped in speculation about the nature of infinite sets. The Zaibatsu's smallest domes were held by a profusion of pirates and privateers: the Hermes Breakaways, the Gray Torus Radicals, the Grand Megalics, the Soyuz Eclectics, and others, who changed names and personnel as easily as they cut a throat. They feuded constantly, but none dared challenge the Nephrine Black Medicals or the Geisha Bank. Attempts had been made in the past. There, were appalling legends about them.
    The people beyond the Wall had their own wildly varying mythos. They were said to live in a jungle of overgrown pines and mimosas. They were hideously inbred and afflicted with double thumbs and congenital deafness. Others claimed there was nothing remotely human beyond the Wall: just a proliferating cluster of software, which had acquired a sinister autonomy. It was, of course, possible that the land beyond the Wall had been secretly invaded and conquered by—aliens. An entire postindustrial folklore had sprung up around this enthralling concept, buttressed with ingenious arguments. Everyone expected aliens sooner or later. It was the modern version of the Millennium.
    Ryumin was patient with him; while Lindsay slept feverishly, he patrolled the Zaibatsu with his camera robot, looking for news. Lindsay turned the corner on his illness. He kept down some soup and a few fried bricks of spiced protein.
    One of Ryumin's stacks of equipment began to chime with a piercingly clear electronic bleeping. Ryumin looked up from where he sat sorting cassettes. 'That's the radar," he said. "Hand me that headset, will you?" Lindsay crawled to the radar stack and untangled a set of Ryumin's adhesive eyephones. Ryumin clamped them to his temples. "Not much resolution on radar," he said, closing his eyes. "A crowd has just arrived. Pirates, most likely. They're milling about on the landing pad."
    He squinted, though his eyes were already shut. "Something very large is moving about with them. They've brought something huge. I'd better switch to telephoto." He yanked the headset's cord and its plug snapped free.
    "I'm going outside for a look," Lindsay said. "I'm well enough."
    "Wire yourself up first," Ryumin said. "Take that earset and one of the cameras."
    Lindsay attached the auxiliary system and stepped outside the zippered airlock into the curdled air.
    He backed away from Ryumin's dome toward the rim of the land panel. He turned and trotted to a nearby stile, which led over the low metal wall, and trained his camera upward.
    "That's good," came Ryumin's voice in his ear. "Cut in the brightness amps, will you? That little button on the right. Yes, that's better. What do you make of it, Mr. Dze?"
    Lindsay squinted through the lens. Far above, at the northern end of the