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to the Sakai Building, and up
to the tenth floor.
    Then I waited in a lounge, watching waves of
green and blue chase each other across the furniture, while the
floater went on into the inner sanctum. No holoscreen. No attendant
software. No floaters. I sat.
    It was maybe ten minutes before the floater
reappeared through a holographic wall.
    “Hsing,” it said, “you’ll have to leave your
gun.”
    I didn’t say anything for a minute, just
stared at it.
    “You’re not the only one around here who’s
paranoid,” it added helpfully.
    “Hell,” I said with a shrug. I pulled out the
HG-2 and laid it on a table. I considered turning it on, with
orders to refuse handling by anyone but me, but decided that was
pushing it. It was just a gun. If it got nervous and blew someone’s
hand off I could catch some serious grit.
    I did say, “It better still be here,
untouched, when I get back.”
    “It will be,” the floater said.
    I wasn’t particularly happy about leaving the
gun, but it wasn’t any great disaster to give it up. I still had
plenty of other gadgetry on me.
    The big difference—which my mystery man was
probably well aware of—was that almost everything else I carried
was defensive, rather than offensive. And the rest of my offensive
arsenal, such as it was, was relatively easy to defend against,
while stopping an armor-piercing round from the Sony-Remington
could be a challenge.
    Taking the gun and leaving the rest was a
pretty fair balance between courtesy and caution on my host’s part,
and I could live with it.
    Then at last I was shown into the other
room.
    It was a small room, maybe three meters
square. The walls were covered with shielding—not built-in stuff,
but the heaviest portable shielding I’d ever seen in my life. They
weren’t passing anything I could see—certainly no visible light,
and nothing that registered on any of the pocket equipment I had
jacked in. My symbiote wasn’t telling me anything, either. The
floor and ceiling were shielded, too. I was inside a black box.
    Once I was inside the floater extended a
grapple and slid shut another panel, closing the box. I was
completely sealed off from the outside world. Some of my
transponder-based stuff objected; I overrode it.
    The only illumination came from the floater,
which had stepped itself up from running lights to moderate output
and shifted from monochrome to full spectrum; the effect was
eerie.
    In the box with me were two chairs, two of
the strangest chairs I’d ever seen, rigid and angular, and made of
a material I didn’t identify at first—wood. With seats of some kind
of woven string.
    They looked, and presumably were, positively
ancient. Antiques. Real second-millennium stuff. They looked out of
place in that box of shielding.
    Sitting on one of the chairs, and the only
other thing in there besides the floater, the chairs, and myself,
was an old man. A very old man. He went better with the chairs than
with the box, but not very well with either one. He wore a simple
red robe, and I could see no equipment at all. A dimple under his
ear had to be a com jack, but it was camouflaged beautifully. His
hair was white and thinning, his face wrinkled—if he’d ever
bothered with cosmetic surgery, he was past that point now. No
ornamental wiring, no colorants, not so much as an earring.
    I’d seen that face before, on the holo and in
stills, but I’d never met him before, never spoken with him
directly. This was Yoshio Nakada. Grandfather Nakada, head of the
Nakada clan, chairman of Nakada Enterprises.
    “I am honored, Mis’ Nakada,” I said,
bowing.
    “Carlisle Hsing,” he said. “Please sit
down.”
    I sat on the other chair; it creaked as it
took my weight, and the seat felt rough and unyielding beneath me,
not reshaping itself at all, though the woven stuff gave very
slightly. It was like sitting on some random object, rather than a
chair.
    “My floater tells me you are a cautious
woman,” Nakada said.
    I