June 1, 1520 hours, Osaka, Japan

Dr. Uemurea knelt beside the low table in one corner of his office, his untasted tea in front of him. He touched the stout white-oak stick he always carried and looked at Aya Jishin who knelt opposite him. She was explaining how Japan could overcomeAmerican competition in computer development. She explained hoarsely, fervently and urgently.

Uemurea knew he would have to kill her.

He looked attentively at this woman, his face carefully impassive. Behind the mask of polite intentness, he let his mind wander. Again he touched the stick; he had great faith in it.

Uemurea was Japan's top computer researcher, but to him technology was only a thing of the mind; it meant nothing to the soul. Uemurea's soul yearned to observe the old ways, to once again find the glory that had been Japan's in past centuries. So, he had a traditional tea table in one corner of his office, while all his colleagues had American chrome clutter. Every day he went to the dojo to practice bojitsu, the deadly art of the staff, while others at the research facility collected pulled muscles playing squash and racquetball.

Then this creature, this Aya Jishin, had come to him with a repulsive proposition. She knew he would refuse, refuse curtly, and that could only mean she did not intend to let him live to repeat that proposition to anyone else.

He looked at the hands of Aya Jishin — blunt fingers, huge ridges of calluses. They were ugly, deformed hands that had been plunged again and again into beans, rice, sand until they were little better than maces on the end of her muscular arms. The arms swung from wide shoulders.

Whatever this thing kneeling, facing him was, it was not a woman. The bland, expressionless face, the perfect dark eyes, were not meant to be accented by a nose that had been improperly reset and a cauliflower ear. Suddenly it occurred to him that he was looking at the type of Japanese woman he pretended to honor. In the past, the samurai women had fought as well as the men. Some had been extremely proficient warriors. Was this repulsive creature actually a throwback to the times he wished he had lived?