Thomas Hoover - The samurai strategy

Such forthrightness, which was entirely new to Dr. Allan Stern's sheltered existence, so astonished him he apologized on the spot. By week's end he was trying to recruit her out to Stanford. He still was.

Allan was always punctual, to the minute, and that Saturday night was no exception. The doorman downstairs announced him at eight sharp. When she met him at the elevator, her first impression was he looked a trifle worn down. America's foremost futurist was gaunt, as always, but his trademark shock of white hair streamed over a lined face that was more than usually haggard. His hard eyes, which could bore through screw-off Congressional staffers like a pair of Black amp; Decker drills, were actually bloodshot. In short, the man looked awful. Then she remembered he'd just come in on the 747 directly from Narita. Into the teeth of the latest baggage-handlers' slowdown at Kennedy. Give the poor old guy a break.

She made him a drink and then asked, "Okay, Allan, what's up?"

"Later, Tamara. It's a long story." With which he lapsed silent. Very out of character.

About then everybody else started coming up, reasonably on time since Tam was known far and wide to hate the concept of "fashionably late." Also, she was a great cook. Bottles of bargain wine with the prices scraped off collected on the table in the foyer, and coats amassed in the second bedroom. Given that everybody knew everybody, it was mostly elbow patches and open collars. Only the women had bothered to dress. Simpson from Computer Science, whose wife worked in Admissions; Gail Wallace from Business, whose pudgy, skirt- chasing husband had guided two companies into bankruptcy; Alice and Herman Knight, who both taught in Economics (she was dean of the undergraduate college) and published as a team; Kabir Ali from Mathematics and his browbeaten little Iranian wife Shirin who seemed frightened of the world-and her husband. Only Dave had the nerve to be late and hold things up.

While they waited, they knocked off a little Scotch and white wine, trashed the administration, and complained about all the committees on which they were being pressured to serve. Around a quarter to nine Dave finally appeared, sandy curls askew to let her know where he'd been. She didn't even bother offering him a drink, just announced that everything was ready so let's adjourn to the dining room.

There're two kinds of dinners: ones that follow the rules, and ones that break them all. Tarn's were the latter. This time it would be real tallow candles and everybody's wine, including her own. Somehow her craziness always seemed to click; they inevitably came back for more. This time she'd decided to pay an offhand tribute to autumn and American cuisine. Cheddar cheese soup, marinated Ottomanelli's quail broiled with fresh sage, sweet potato fritters and baby peas, homemade corn bread, and then, as a change of pace (keep 'em off balance), an endive salad spiked with coriander. Dessert was an apple- walnut casserole, washed down with pots of McNulty's dark Haitian coffee. At the end she produced an ancient cognac you could inhale forever. By eleven-thirty everybody thought they'd just ascended to paradise.

She ordered Dave to take care of the dishes (since he'd been acting as if he owned the place, let him help), then led everybody back into the living room. In the park below the weather was perfect, and marijuana sales were in overdrive. A couple of joints also appeared around the room, accompanied by withering glares from Allan. Then, while Ed Wallace was chatting up Shirin and everybody else was drinking and smoking, Allan picked up his cognac and motioned her in the direction of the study.

Finally, she thought. This must be some story.

She was right.

It wasn't her book he wanted to discuss. Instead, he wanted to tell her about what he'd just seen, and not seen, in Tokyo.

"Loved dinner." He settled into a leather chair, the one next to her long bookcase, and drained his snifter. "I was afraid I was turning into a fish over there." He laughed, but only briefly. Social hour was over. "Tam, I wanted to ask you if you could maybe help me out with something."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Well, you know I've always thought I was on top of what Tokyo is doing, but now I'm not so sure anymore. I'm afraid things are starting to get away from me."

"Such as?"

"Okay. Now, it's no secret I've been to Japan a lot. I've got my share of friends over there, people I respect and admire very much. But this trip started to get very strange. It's as though I'm suddenly an outsider. Just another gaijin. I'm puzzled, and I wonder if maybe I ought to be worried."

Gaijin. That sounds familiar, she thought. But it wasn't something that usually bothered Allan. She brushed her brown hair back out of her eyes and studied him. He'd never been more serious.

"What happened?"

He paused. "You know about their big artificial intelligence effort, called the Fifth Generation Project. If it goes the way they're saying, before too much longer they'll have programs, software, to design the next generation of computer technology. "

This was supposed to be news? Come on, Allan. Everybody knew. It was the talk of the industry. Japan's goal was computer logic capable of replicating human thought processes, a monumental, maybe impossible, undertaking.

"Allan, don't you remember we discussed doing a chapter on it in the robotics book? And if you-"

"Tamara, bear with me. You also know very well that project is Japan's attempt to leapfrog American technology. Added together with all their R amp;D on chip technology. In my opinion, by the way, our response is definitely too little, too late. More and more we're having to buy essential components for missile guidance systems from Japan. The Department of Defense is already nervous, but not nervous enough. We may have dug our own grave. And now I think our worst fears may be about to come true. Something funny seems to be happening, only I'm not sure what."

"What do you mean?"

"Let me close that door." He got up and did so, then turned back. "Maybe first I ought to tell you about the odd experience I had last week."

"Go on." She heard somebody in the living room put on one of her old Beatles albums-still the middle-ager's idea of hip.

"Well, as always, I scheduled a stop at the Fifth Generation lab to get up to speed on how their effort's doing. But all of a sudden it seems I'm too darned famous to be bothered with the shirtsleeve stuff. I tried to get in there for three days running. It was always the honorable Stern-san this and the celebrated Stern-san that and you must meet the head of every damned ministry and we have to set up this formal dinner and blah, blah, blah."

"Allan, you're the Grand Old Man these days." She laughed. "Get used to it."

"Wash out your mouth, Tamara Richardson. I'm not grand and I'm most decidedly not old." He sniffed. "No, it's as if they were very politely cutting me out. Okay, they didn't exactly say the project was off-limits now or anything, but there never seemed to be a convenient time to drop by the lab."

"Who knows? Maybe they just didn't want some American partisan poking about the place anymore."

"Could be. But why? I'm scarcely a spy for DOD, or the CIA. They know I only do pure science. Okay, maybe I'm old- fashioned, but Dr. Yoshida at least has always claimed to respect me for that. I used to spend hours with him going over his work there and vice versa. We swapped ideas all the time. Now all of a sudden there's this smokescreen." He paused, sipped at his brandy, and then leaned back. "Which brings me to that favor I need."

"What?'

"Well, I was wondering if maybe you could try and get into the Fifth Generation lab yourself, check around a bit. See if you can find out what's cooking."

"Go to Tokyo?"