"I realize you represent the United Nations and are not to take part in the fighting," Zimmerman said. "But for medical work perhaps you are allowed to use your skills, yah? For humanitarian reasons."

"Of course," Inoguchi said without an instant's hesitation. "Humanitarian purposes come before politics and other considerations."

Zimmerman stopped in front of a lab bench that supported a massive metal sphere connected to a desktop computer by hair-thin fiber optic cables.

"My staff," Zimmerman gestured to the sphere.

Inoguchi understood immediately. "Your processors."

"Yah," said Zimmerman, lowering his bulk onto a spindly-looking stool. "Now we must teach them to build other nanos that will seal wounds quick, before the patient bleeds to death."

"Can you do this?"

The old man nodded slowly. "Yah. I have already done it once. Now I must do it again—in a day or so."

Inoguchi grinned at the professor. "We have much work to accomplish, then."

Colonel Giap did not relish being under Faure's direct supervision. The man is a politician, what doeshe know of military tactics? Giap asked himself. I should report to General Uhlenbeck, through the normal chain of command. Instead I must bear with this politician questioning every breath I draw.

He tried to reassure himself with Clausewitz's dictum that war is merely an extension of politics. It was scant consolation. Yes, politicians such as Ho Chi Minh successfully directed the liberation of Vietnam from the imperialists, he knew. But that was generations ago, and besides, Ho and his comrades had military experience of their own. Faure had probably never even fired a pistol at a target range.

"Was it wise to incapacitate their satellite?" the U.N. secretary-general was asking.

Giap, sitting on the bare floor of his closet-turned-office, replied to the image on his laptop's screen with all the patience he could muster, "It was necessary. Their satellite could observe our time of departure and our route of march. That would be giving the enemy more information than we want them to have."

He waited the three seconds, watching Faure twiddle his moustache. Then the secretary-general replied, "But by disabling their satellite, you have told them that you are ready to march."

"Yes. What of it? Don't you think they have cameras atop their ringwall mountains looking for us to appear over their horizon?"

Faure's face creased deeply once he heard Giap's comment. "Then of what good was it to cripple their satellite? I do not understand your reasoning."

They went around the subject twice more, Giap resolute and implacable, Faure irritable and demanding.

At last Giap said, "Sir, you may consider my action premature or even mistaken, but it has been done and argument will not undo it."

Faure flushed angrily once he heard the colonel's words.

Before he could say anything, Giap added, "If you wish to remove me from command, I understand entirely."

The secretary-general's eyes widened momentarily, then he quickly asserted his self-control. Forcing a smile that narrowed his eyes to slits, Faure made a soothing gesture with both hands.