Six metal double-barred crosses hovered three meters above the road, their red spots seeming to watch every move the soldiers and scientists made. Far above, at the center of the plasma tube, something long and black was aligned on the singularity, no more than fifty meters from the opening of the bore hole. Examining it through binoculars, Wu estimated it was 150 meters in length. It had arrived less than ten minutes earlier, prompting Berenson to order the evacuation.

When the truck was full and the tent empty, the soldiers crawled on top and the Chinese took the remaining two seats in the front. Berenson grabbed a handgrip along the roofline and stepped up on the side ladder. The truck jerked forward and swung around to roll up the ramp.

With the chamber deserted, the crosses bunched into a cubic formation, then flew off to circumnavigate the chamber floor.

From the vantage of the flawship, twenty-five kilometers above, an assigned ghost of Corprep Rosen Gardner watched the proceedings, relaying everything by direct beam down the Way to the Axis City.

In the Axis City itself, communications between the three rotating cylinders and Central City had been severed. Axis Nader was completely blocked off from the transport systems. And major sections of City Memory—usually active around the clock—were now isolated and quiet. The tide had turned; the radical Geshels had tripped themselves up in their own haste to take advantage of Olmy's news and the five guests.

The incarnate Corprep Rosen Gardner had moved to the Nexus Chambers a few hours before, risking the uncertain location in Central City to be at the center of all Axis City activity. He had created four partials to handle the details of the revolt.

None of his factioners or supporters called it a revolt; for them, it was a necessary maneuver to protect their rights against action by radical Geshels. Whatever it was called, it was hideously complicated.

Word from the Thistledown was incomplete, but that was the least of Gardner's worries now.

His partials were in the three Axis cylinders and in the offices of the Way Commerce Committee at nine ex six. His militant factioners held all strategic transport sites within the Axis City, and along the Way nearby. Through City Memory and deep within the Axis City's infrastructure, orthodox Naderites and Korzenowski factioners—his people—were consolidating the gains made in the past few hours. Sympathetic personalities in City Memory, including his father, oversaw the interdicted communications nets.

Everything was proceeding as planned. Yet Corprep Gardner was more unhappy than he had ever been in his two centuries of life. He cared little for the accusations of the Presiding Minister or the President. He had opposed them often enough in the past, and felt the sting of their power, to relish watching them squirm.