The only problem so far was that the entire superfamily consisted of Sushi and his trusty computer, a Legion milspec model, but with lots of custom features installed by Sushi himself. Eventually, he was going to make a mistake, and he just had to hope it wouldn't be a fatal one-especially not to himself. It was probably a shortcoming in a would-be criminal mastermind, but he really didn't want anybody to get hurt if he could avoid it. He didn't even really want to pocket more than a tiny fraction of the Yakuza's income. The whole idea originally had been to keep himself alive, and he'd be perfectly happy if he could continue to achieve that goal over the long term-say, seven or eight decades.

Behind him a door opened, and almost by instinct he blanked the screen. Then a familiar voice said, "Yo, Soosh, Okie tells me Dunes Park has a new coaster. Wanna go give it the test?"

Sushi looked over his shoulder to see Do-Wop standing hipshot in the doorway of their shared room in the Landoor Plaza Hotel. "Maybe tomorrow," said Sushi wearily. "Right now, I'm up to my ears in this project."

"Ahh, c'mon," said Do-Wop. "You've been busting your hump on that stuff all week. Time for a break, man."

"Believe me, I'd love to take one," said Sushi. "But this business of taking over the Yakuza is a lot more work than I expected. It wasn't really that hard to get control, but keeping it is turning out to be real work."

"And your ass is grass if it gets away from you," said Do-Wop, nodding in sympathy.

"Right. I've got the families in the sector around old Earth playing along with me," said Sushi, leaning back in his chair and stretching. "They recognize the need for a larger organization, and they aren't picky about who's running it, as long as it doesn't cut their profits. That's the good part." He paused, then added, "At least there is a good part."