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Defender
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Текст книги "Defender "


Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh



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DEFENDER

Caroline J. Cherryh

the fifth in the Foreigner sequence


Chapter 1

Firelight went up to the red figures of an ancient frescoed vault, smoke-hazed from the braziers on either side of the black stone tomb. In the dark congregation, watchful eyes now and again caught the firelight and reflected it, gold fire brighter than the sheen of light off opulent brocade.

It was an atevi place—and solemn tribute to a decades-dead aiji. Decades in the past, Valasi might be, but the association he had created had only grown wider at his death. It spanned the continent now. It reached around the world. It shared the heavens with strangers.

An atevi place, an atevi ceremony, an atevi congregation… but one human, one pale, blond, very small and conspicuous human stood in a crowd of towering atevi lords, some of whom had often and fairly recently entertained the idea of killing him. Under the court attire, the frock coat and the lace and the brocades, Bren Cameron wore ten pounds of composite that would stop most bullets, if any of these very adept gentlemen and ladies ventured an assassination without proper Filing of Intent.

The Assassins’ Guild, on the living aiji’s order, would not allow that to happen. The tall atevi on either side of him, Banichi and Jago, in the black and silver of that Guild—they knew the odds, they knew all the agreements and contracts currently in force—knew the likelihood of illegal risks as well. And while assuring him there was no contract Filed, and that no Guild actions but surveillance could be taken for days on any side of this gathering—they still insisted on the armor.

So Bren complied, uncomplaining, with not too many questions, and kept his head generally down, evading any too-direct stare that might draw attention.

Deference, respect, solemnity… in a place where humans least of all belonged.

Tabini-aiji had decreed this honor to his father’s tomb, so the invitation declared, for a memorial and a reminder of the origins of the Western Association—well and good. Humans and atevi alike honored their dead, and they held memorials, particularly at points of change or challenge.

But what was changing? Or where was the challenge?

But predictably enough—they could hardly ignore the call to venerate the aiji’s father—the loyal lords of the western aishidi’tathad come in with no trouble. Those from the south shore and from the farthest eastern reaches of the Association arrived in far more uneasy duty, surely with questions of their own. They had been Valasi’s allies, most of them—and saying so had been unfashionable in the west for decades.

The aiji-dowager, too, had flown in from the east for this solemn event. If she hadn’t, rumors would have flown.

Ilisidi, aiji-dowager, Valasi’s mother.

Tabini’s grandmother.

And the whole world knew that one of the two, Tabini or Ilisidi, had almost certainly assassinated Valasi.

Well, grant she came: no mere opinion of men perturbed her. If one was an atevi lord—and she was among the highest of atevi lords—one rigidly observed the proprieties and courtesies that supported all lords, whatever the circumstances. One consistently did the right thing.

And if one were the human paidhi-aiji, the official translator, the point of contact between two species, one also did the right thing, and came when called, and kept clearly in mind the fact that this was nothuman society. A paltry assassination by no means broke the bonds of an atevi association, no more than it necessarily fractured man’chi—that emotional cement that held all atevi society together. A judicious, well-planned in-house assassination only made the association more comfortable for all the rest—eased, rather than broke, the web of association and common consent—in this case, the family bond on which the stability of the world depended.

A well-chosen assassination might make unity easier, once the dust settled, and a species that did not, biologically speaking, feelfriendship… still felt something warm, and good when its surrounding association settled into harmony.

Were they here to meditate on that fact?

To renew the bond?

A human couldn’t possibly feel it. Wasn’t hard-wired to feel it. Tabini had called him down from the orbiting station for this service, which he’dtaken as a simple excuse covering a desire to have some essential conference, some secret personal meeting which would make thorough sense.

But thus far—there was no meeting. There was going to be a special session of the legislature—and that had made sense, until it was clear he was dismissed, and would not attend. There’d been one intimate audience with Tabini on that first day, in which Tabini had entertained him in his study, a great honor, talked about hunting—one of Tabini’s favorite occupations, which he never actually had time to do—and asked in some detail about the welfare of associates on the space station. They’d had several drinks, become quite cheerful, shared an hour with Lady Damiri, the aiji-consort, and discussed the weather, their son’s education, and the economy, none of which he would have called critical—nor ever discussed with that much brandy in him if he’d thought it would become critical.

Good night, Tabini had said then, good fortune, not forgetting there wasa memorial service involving, oh, the entire continent, and would he kindly sit among the foremost in attendance?

Not quite news to him. He’d known it would take place—hadn’t quite known, before landing, that it was quite so extravagant, televised, or followed with a special session.

So he was on temporary display at the edge of the aiji’s household, wearing that white ribbon in his braid that reminded all parties he was the paidhi, the translator, the neutral, not an appropriate target.

He represented to those present, among other controversial things, the full-tilt acquisition of technology over which Tabini and Valasi had had their fatal falling-out.

So Valasi died under questionable circumstances, and instead of declaring any decent period of mourning and reconsideration, Tabini had immediately opened the floodgates of change: television, trade with Mospheira… railroads. Valasi’s paidhi, a human whose modest advocacy of airplanes, an expanded rail system and limited television broadcasting had scandalized the traditional-minded among the atevi—had quit, retired, and left the job to him.

Tabini had immediately taken—well, with atevi, a likingto him didn’t translate, but certainly Tabini had sensed that he could work with him. Occasionally he had wondered if Tabini had spotted the world’s greatest fool and thought he could get the sun, the moon and the stars from him…

The stars—considering that not so long afterward Phoenixhad shown up in the heavens, the colony ship returned to its lost human colony on someone else’s world.

Things out there, Phoenixreported, hadn’t worked out. Thingshad involved an alien encounter gone very wrong at a space station that never should have been built. And while the paidhi asked himself how he had ever gotten into this, Tabini’s close cooperation with humans spiraled wider and wider.

It took atevi into space, into a near-unified economy with the human enclave on Mospheira. It took two species and three governments to the very edge of union.

And atevi had never forgotten the hazards of swallowing foreign answers to local problems.

Ilisidi entered the tomb, among the last, just behind Lord Tatiseigi of the Atageini, uncle of the aiji-consort. She walked with a cane, went in the company of Cenedi, her chief of security.

And Cajeiriwas with her. Bren noted that—the boy, almost lost in the company of adults, took his place with Ilisidi’s party.

There was a change. The aiji’s heir took his place, not with uncle Tatiseigi, but one place down, still in the front row, with great-grandmother Ilisidi.

Cameras were discreet, but in evidence, and cameramen shifted slightly to get a good view of Ilisidi and the boy. This was going out across the continent: a ceremony of national unity and a memorial in respect for the past, it might be: but it was also a public function in which the alignment of public figures was highly significant.

So the aiji-dowager stood there now before Valasi’s sarcophagus, just visible in the tail of his eye. She was diminutive for an ateva, white-haired with age, leaning on that cane… sharp eyes taking in every nuance of expression and surely conscious of the camera. The boy stood stock still, just visible past Cenedi’s black uniform—Cenedi also being Guild security, oh yes. Guild security was all through the assembly, despite the limited seating.

A war of flowers out there in the corridor: of colors, of position in here—and a sense of progress and opposition in delicate balance, with the Assassins’ Guild to guarantee good behavior.

But far, far better than the alternative.

The aiji’s immediate household filed in. That was Tabini, Lady Damiri, and theirattendant security. Tabini-aiji was in black and red, his house colors. Damiri wore gold and green, the Atageini colors, and carried a lily in her hands, strong contrast to her black skin, amid the glitter of emeralds. They took their places, finishing the first row.

All seats were filled. There was a little murmur of expectation.

Then a bell sounded.

Utter silence descended. A camera changed focus. That was the only sound now, lamplight momentarily gilding an imprudent lens.

That stroke of the bell called for meditation.

Next would come a statement from the head of house—Tabini, in this case. Bren had read the program somewhat before he entered a shadow too deep for humans to read.

And whatever the aiji had to say, the gathered lords would parse it for every detail. It was important—an address that could, if it went wrong, break the union of lords apart. It always could. Any chance word, gone amiss, could break the Association at any time—and in this context, bets were doubled. Tabini had made deals with human authorities, sent atevi to work on the space station, admitting a flood of new technologies. He’d had to, for a whole host of economic and practical reasons that sliced right across the ordinary order of politics, throwing conservatives into alliance with the most liberal of western powers.

He’d had to reach across traditional lines, across ethnical lines—across associational lines.

And so the agreement with humans widened, policy deliberately blind to the causes of the last world war, dancing across the shards of old resentments, skipping over divides of opinion that had once swum with blood.

Most of all, the crisis in the heavens and the need to secure a voice in that resolution had shoved the whole economy into a hellishly scary rush, a fever pitch run that no one at first had thought would last more than a month.

No longer than three years.

Then no longer than six.

As yet there was no slowdown, no cooldown, no pause for breath—and no meeting of the associated lords—until this.

The silence after that bell was so absolute that breathing itself seemed a disturbance… and in that silence, of all things, someone dropped a program, a crack of parchment on stone that set a twitch—if not a killing reflex—into every hair-triggered, Guild-trained nerve in the chamber.

Every Guild member had to skip a heartbeat. Every lord present—had to make a conscious decision not to dive below the benches.

But it was only the next aiji, theirsomeday ruler, diving almost to the edge of the flower-decked sarcophagus to rescue that wayward, unseemly folio.

In his haste it escaped his fingers on his retreat. Twice.

Bren winced.

Three times.

The boy had it. Scrambled back to his place in the standing line.

Cajeiri, Tabini’s and Damiri’s, the hope of the Association, Tatiseigi’s grand-nephew—was the height and weight of the average human teenager—but not, by any means, average, human, or teenaged. Cajeiri tried—God knew he tried, but somehow his feet found obstacles, his hands lost their grip on perfectly ordinary objects, and when Cajeiri would swear to all gods most fortunate that he was standing still, everyone else called it fidgeting.

Now of all times… in front of the whole assembled Association, the lords of the aishidi’tat, this was notime for boys to be boys, or for a child to be—whatever he might be.

Cajeiri was invisible in the first row again. Silence hung all about him. The dignity of the highest houses settled on his young shoulders. Tabini, Tatiseigi—now Ilisidi, in whose care the young unfortunate attended the ceremony—were all in question in that behavior. Fosterage was the rule of the great houses, once a child of rank left the cradle. Tatiseigi, the maternal uncle, had had a go at applying courtly polish, in the rural, rigid politics of the Atageini stronghold in the central west. Now Ilisidi had him: in her district, modernistmeant someone who installed a flush toilet in a thousand-year-old stronghold.

God help the boy.

A second bell. Solemnity recovered. This was the second point, fragile second, unfortunate second: atevi lived by numbers, died by the numbers. Twoof anything presumed there would be a third. There mustbe a third. The very note, echoing in the stone recesses of the place, on this occasion, gathered up the tension in the air and prepared to braid it into a cord… if the third bell, please God, would only ring without unfortunate omen.

Cajeiri held himself absolutely still. Two would ring ominously even in an atevi six-year-old’s brain. Twoalways meant pay attention: another will follow.

Bren had been to Malguri himself. In a way, he wished he could go back there, have another try of his own at a life a human wasn’t regularly admitted even to see. In a certain measure he so envied the boy that chance.

Ilisidi had her hands full. He did know that. The boy, thus far, with the best intentions, had destroyed two historic porcelains, set off a major security alarm, and ridden a startled mechieta across newly-poured cement in Tatiseigi’s formal garden.

Finally, unbearably, with the least shifting of bodies in anticipation, Tabini, head of house, foremost of the Ragi atevi, aiji of the whole aishidi’tat, moved out of the row to the single lighted lamp that sat before the sarcophagus.

Tabini, tall shadow, took a slender straw, took light from one lamp and lit one of two others.

Two lamps lit.

Jago, armed and informed, nudged Bren’s hand with the back of hers. Pay attention. Be on your guard.

Banichi, on his other side, didn’t move.

Every bodyguard in the whole chamber must be thinking the same, prepared for anything. It was in all the machimi, the history-plays: in the feudal age, in Malguri’s age, the time of bright banners and heraldry, assemblies thus invited had been murdered wholesale, slaughtered by hidden archers. Whole tables of diners had fallen ill at once. Ladies had perished in poisoned baths—name the death: someone had delivered it.

Hearts beat, atevi, and in one case, human, with utter trepidation.

Tabini, damn him, knew it. The third bell had not yet rung. And Tabini turned, in that terrible, unprecedented interval.

I speak,” Tabini declared, in that resonant, still-young voice, “between the second and the third bell. We live… between the second and the third bell of our associated lives. We live… on the edge of decision and chance. We live… between expectation and fulfillment. Between the second and the third bell of our collective existence, I am Valasi’s son, I am Valasi’s heir… I amValasi’s successor.”

After the hasdrawad and the tashrid, the bicameral legislature, had determined for the second time that Ilisidi would notbe aiji, they had appointed Tabini to head the aishidi’tat.

And the whole assembly, caught between the bells and the lights, heard felicitous, redeeming threes. Every atevi nerve rang as a human could only intellectually comprehend—not feel, gut-deep: felicitous one, then the two strokes of we live. Then I speak, disastrous two—felicitous threeof we live. And now no resolution of the first cahi, the first proposal, at all, but the infelicitous twoof I am. A human brain could short-circuit keeping up with the bracketing structures, but Bren swore he felt it in his own nerves: and he felthis knees go weak when Tabini gave the assembly that third, redemptive I am. The whole audience held its breath, angry as they must be at this tactic. That, in this audience, didn’t matter. They were caught up, snared, and couldn’t move. Daren’tmove. Feltthe aishidi’tatthreatened—and were drawn, unwillingly, to hope that it, and their lives, continued.

I speakas your appointed guide into time to come,” Tabini said. And delivered the nextthird stroke, that painfully woundup, merciful third: “ I speakfor the unity of the assembly of us all.

“We do not forget,” Tabini continued, as nerve and flesh all but liquified in relief and bodyguards stood down from red alert. Tabini swept on in possession of all attention. Thank Godno program dropped. Breathing itself was at a minimum. Tabini’s oratory was all fortunate threes now, rapid, hammering into nerves still resounding to two strokes of the bell, still waiting for the resolution of their universe. “We do not break our strong connections with all that Valasi-aiji built. We do not abrogate our traditions. The more knowledge we acquire, the more we rationally comprehend the universe, the more we control our own destiny—”

Sensitive spot: the number-counters who so powerfully ruled the traditional world had long discounted the numbers of the heavens, meaning they had deliberately, scornfully dismissed the work of astronomers, who had failed to foresee the Landing.

But the modern-day Astronomer Emeritus, a genius of his age, brandished numbers that confounded the number-counters—those mathematicians who claimed to guide the less talented to understand the balance of the universe. The newly respectable Astronomer Emeritus was Tabini’s. And with Tabini’s blessing, the Astronomer Emeritus worked to understand the stars and make reliable paths through the heavens. The numbers flowing down from the heavens now ran a starship and promised to connect atevi to a rational universe that also accounted for humans—

To a universe, what was more, that brought them a secondforeign species. That this new species happened to be hostile—well, well, but the soaring optimism of good numbers insisted the difficulties could be overcome, irresistibly so.

Atevi relied on a rational universe.

Humans on the island enclave of Mospheira had faith in miracles.

Humans on the starship over their heads had more faith in a second armed starship and a planetful of allies, in a universe otherwise sparse with life.

But atevi being an independent lot, fiercely so, and hating worse than poison to be handed a fait accompli involving someone else’s numbers, had politely declined to make too strong a point that a human species that had misplaced its own home planet was not infallible. In the main atevi were impressed by what they saw going on in the heavens—what, at least, the dedicated and the suspicious alike, armed with binoculars, could make out as going on in the heavens. It was at least a personal enough contact with the presence up there to make it a national obsession, and binoculars and telescopes enjoyed a vogue at garden parties and secret meetings.

The latter—since a last die-hard cadre of the traditionalists wanted their world back the way Tabini had inherited it, sanstelescopes, sansautographed roof tiles– sansthe frantic push of atevi interests skyward. But the majority even of the conservatives had dropped the traditionalist fight over the very concept of Air Traffic Control: they’d lost that argument, long since, and scrambled to get aerospace industry in their own districts.

Yet did the builders of such facilities properly consider the numbers? They derived them from new-fangled computers, to the contempt of the die-hard traditionalists and the dedicated ‘counters. Dared one trust them?

“The more numbers we gain,” Tabini was saying to the assembled lords, “the more I myself appreciate Valasi’s work. Not,” Tabini added, before certain die-hard conservatives burst a blood vessel, “that I would argue less with my father, but certainly that I would listen more. His time was too soon to know everything: but in his wisdom he laid a foundation for the aishidi’tatthat would assure a strong leadership… and now I know that he saw change coming. Now I know that he prepared for it. Now I know that my father was a wise man.”

Oh, thatwas clever: generational authority was a tenet of the conservatives… while the aiji’s increasing power over their lives as a central authority was a continual sore point. Now Tabini equated one with the other, wound the cord of their own argument around a strong young fist, and yanked.

Count your fingers when dealing with Tabini. His enemies and his allies both said that.

“My father warned me,” Tabini said. “He saw us growing reliant on advances that we would never have the chance to make for ourselves. But becausethese inventions, like all real things, come of true numbers, he saw that they use the natural universe, he saw that they were good, he saw that if we did invent them they would be much the same. He had, however, every intent of shaping what came to us into our own design, he had every intent of maintaining sovereignty—” Another sore point. “ And because it follows from every previous inventionhe clearly had every intent of going into space.” The cadence dragged them right into it… and marched on, leaving the fiercest opponents to mull over a very strong point: if not that aim, what aim? “In the new numbers, our economy runs white-hot. We have no hunger, we haveno feuds, we haveno want of employment for the clans. We mine, we build, we distribute, and we have no scarcity anywhere. Thanks to our vantage from orbit we rescue a forest from blight. We warn a village on the coast to put up the storm shutters. We cure diseases we once thought hopeless. In the new numbers we send and speak and travel from one end to the other of every association, without wires or roads that blight the world. In the new numbers, we draw power from the sun’s free light without smoke to obscure the sky.

“Never let us forget what is kabiu, or break the rhythm of the seasons, or of the wild things, or of our own bodies. Let us never forget how to build a fire, light a candle, or use our hands to spin thread. Let no single village forget how to weave cloth, shape a pot, or hunt its own food. If a machine made a pot, it serves for a while. But if hands made it, it is kabiu, and fit to pass to our children. This was the true understanding I learned from Valasi. This is what I now give to my son. This is what he will in his day give to his son. This observance of true value is what keeps kabiu. This is the source of things unseen. This quality, this fitnessremains so long as we have the keen sense of what is real. And in a hundred thousand pots, one is kabiu.

“We canheal the sick, warn against weather, and supply common pots to every village in the world. But let us teach our children to make what is kabiu, and to recognize what is kabiu, and to value what is kabiu.

“This is the unity of one. This is the aishidi’tat. This is our heritage.”

A bell rang. Tabini lit the third lamp in utter stillness.

The whole universe seemed to start again. A camera changed focus. Feet shifted. Breath came in and out.

Tabini turned, faced the assembly and lifted his arms. “Go. Observe silence for this one day on the matters under debate. Meet with me tomorrow.”

Silence on matters under debate. Tabini had just put allthe burning issues in that category. He’d destined the whole damned basket of snakes for debate tomorrow—when the paidhi, who’d worked on all these issues, had to be at the shuttle site within the hour.

Tabini having put every issue under legislative seal—no one could talk. The doors at the rear opened, admitting the brighter light of the corridor outside, rendering all of them, human and atevi, old and young, easterner and westerner, as shadows.

With the opening of those doors the smell of flowers overwhelmed the slight petroleum scent of atevi bodies. The hush now was overwhelming. The outward movement, beginning at the back, proceeded, and row after row, kept going, participants likely wondering what they dared say—or think.

Dared he stop for a word with Tabini? It seemed chancy to Bren even to turn his head and look toward the aiji’s household. He had a side view of Ilisidi and uncle Tatiseigi waiting in starched silence.

The outward movement reached the next to last row, the outflow proceeding with dispatch. At least there’d been no gunshots outside.

Their own row took its turn and moved out.

Bren followed Jago out, and Banichi followed him, the three of them, felicitous three, a unity differently destined than the crowd outside. The sarcophagus, the arcane secrets of death and the atevi’s dealing with it, was at his back. Light was in the hall. The recessional suddenly felt to him like an escape toward life, toward a wholly different world, fleeing questions of eternity and mortality and Tabini’s motives down here…

Tabini didn’t consult him, didn’t invite him to the most important legislative session in a decade—well and good. There was no call for hurt feelings. He had urgent jobs he hadto do, up in orbit, and Tabini was in regional contentions.

He and his bodyguard went out those guarded doors among the flowers, into the outward flow of the elite and the powerful of the aishidi’tat, everyone on their way to the two lifts. There was talk, now, and there were guarded looks, brooding looks, satisfied looks—one could practically know the province by the expression.

He still didn’t know what he thought. He didn’t know whether what he’d been dragged down here to do had simply evaporated, and Tabini wasn’t talking—or whether his mere appearance in the ceremony was enough to accomplish some purpose, and Tabini wasn’t talking.

He could damned well bet there’d be conferences among allies who had been here. There’d be frantic opinion-seeking among the news services. He desperately wanted to avoid the news people, and they’d be swarming thick in the halls above.

He was due to be off the planet inside an hour now, and that, at the moment, seemed a very good idea.

They reached the lift, waited, in the murmurous silence of the hall. “Did you see the offering from Keishan?” one lord asked another indignantly.

Bren personally had not, nor wished to look, in this hazardous precinct where looks said it all. He had no idea which among the cloyingly perfumed flowers belonged to Keishan, but Keishan’s neighbors clearly did, and were somehow disturbed by the placement, or the size, or the color, or a hundred other declarations someone could find improper.

“This way, Bren-ji.” Banichi rarely pulled court rank to do his job, but they were late, as was, and with an out-thrust arm and a judicious eye, Banichi shunted him ahead of village nobility. Jago quickly blocked the lift door for him, and to Bren’s dismay and relief, gave them the entire lift car to themselves.

Rude, to the lesser lords. Justifiable, but rude. Bren didn’t know what to say—but when Assassins’ Guild security indicated their charge should move, a wise man moved, and heaved a shaken little sigh of deep appreciation in the little time they rode by themselves.

“Is there a problem?” he asked them. But immediately as he said it the door opened onto another wall of flowers on the main floor—flowers, and lenses, and news service reporters who spotted a high source and meant to have it at any cost.

“What does the paidhi’s office have to say, nand’ paidhi?” was the loudest question, along with, “Is there a crisis, nandi?”

“I am apprized of none,” he answered, his only safe answer. “I’m bound back to the station on the scheduled flight.” He was relieved to let his security whisk him along to another bank of lifts.

The door shut.

“No particular difficulty,” Banichi answered the prior question.

The lift rose up, let them out. They walked down a short hall in the restricted residency of the Bu-javid and took yet one more lift, this one securitied and keyed, down again.

Down and down to the rocky core of this hill which was the Bu-javid, the governmental nerve center, the seat of legislative authority, the state venues and the residence of the aiji and the highest lords… and the place of tombs.

“It should be a quiet ride, nadi-ji,” Jago said on the way down.

He very much hoped so.

“Tabini never did tell me why I’m here,” he said.

“It’s a puzzle,” Banichi said. And what puzzled Banichi decidedly puzzled most people. And gave him no better information.

The lift let them out in an echoing vault of concrete and living rock, a large, heavily guarded hall, a mostly vacant walk toward the Bu-javid’s internal freight and passenger train station—huge spaces, cut into the high hill, with guarded accesses for the trains.

Forklifts carried cargo to and fro. Security offices were constantly busy. Everything here was scrutinized—everything examined.

A red-curtained train waited at the siding—theirs, beyond a doubt, one of the short, well-appointed specials that sometimes had tagged them on to a long-range train, sometimes ran them straight to the airport.

It was the latter, this time, and Bren made a quick check of his wristwatch as they walked.

“We’re just a little late,” Banichi said. “No worry, nadi.”

No worry.

“I need a copy of Tabini’s speech, nadiin-ji.”

“As soon as possible,” Jago assured him, and he hoped that would happen before he was in the air. Absolutely no copies had been leaked, not even to intimates and staff, and he remained marginally uncertain whether Tabini, damn him, might have ad-libbed the whole thing. Tabini was capable of it, completely capable, but it was important enough he thought not. He himself wanted a re-read before the tone cooled in his memory, and neither he nor staff could take time now to secure one by ordinary channels.


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