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?

He shook off the dreadful notion, at the same time mechanically shaking his head. He was not aware that he had shaken his head until Aya Jishin stopped in mid-sentence, respectfully waiting for him to voice his objection.

The scientist found himself reluctant to state his view. It was not that he did not know the only course permitted by honor, it was just that he suddenly felt his fifty years and did not look forward to the exertion of physical violence. A workout was one thing, actually having to fight for one's life was something else.

Dr. Uemurea was just opening his mouth to speak when there was shouting and screaming from outside his office. He rose quickly, perturbed by the nature of the sound, but thankful for the interruption. Across the table, Jishin rose smoothly, easily.

"It is the New Red Brigade," she said. "We are destroying this place." Her speech was still quiet, her voice still hoarse, but the speech form had changed from a person speaking to a superior to a person speaking to an inferior.

"You never expected me to go along with your plan," Uemurea said.

She shook her large head. "No, but your research will put the plan into operation. You deserved the right to refuse."

The scientist was amazed by the cultural correctness of her action. In a flash of insight, Uemurea realized that while he had been romanticizing about Japan's past, this terrorist had been living it.

"What is happening out there?" he casually asked, leaning on his cane.

"The workers are being killed so they can identify no one. The electronic files and the paper files will then be loaded into trucks. As I explained, we must use them if we are to defeat the Americans in computer sales."

"But you're not really interested in who sells the most or the best computers, no more than I am."

She shrugged. "Not computers, as opposed to cars, televisions, or anything else. But the ability to manufacture is power. Being able to manufacture the best is more power. I am interested in that."

"Thank you for your honesty. Then you really think you can speed the disintegration of America?"

She grinned, an ugly gap-toothed grin. "I shall bring about that downfall, myself. First, they will lose their computer researchers, then other researchers, then those who manufacture things."

"And where will a disfigured Nipponese like yourself be able to hide in the United States?" he scornfully bated her. "You'll stand out like one of their neon signs would stand out in one of our temples."

"I'll be safe within WAR," she replied.

Uemurea attacked. One moment his hands were idly toying with the jo, the breaker of swords, the next moment it was whistling at her head with skull-crushing force.

Aya Jishin moved her clenched fists together to form one elongated fist. Her movements were perfectly executed. The mountainous ridge of hardened knuckles suddenly was in the path of the striking stick. With a crack like a high-powered rifle, the seasoned oak broke over the knuckles. Half the stick spun away, burying itself in the plaster of the office wall. The other half stung Uemurea's hand. He let it drop and it rolled behind him. Uemurea turned sideways, exposing fewer vital areas to those pile-driving fists. His arms came up to protect throat and face, elbows in to protect the upper body.

Jishin grinned and struck his forearms with a lightning left-right. The scientist could hear the bones in his forearms snap. Before the pain could catch up, the fists flashed again. The first blow caught his left biceps, turning muscle into mush. The force of the blow spun him halfway around. The other fist mashed muscle in his right arm. Suddenly his arms fell, helpless.

The vital spots were all open now.

Jishin was wearing the uniform for members of the company below management level. It was a tailored coverall in gray denim. On her feet she had jogging shoes. One of those joggers crushed the muscle along Uemurea's thigh.

He went crashing into the wall, only to rebound into a high kick that broke his sternum. He collapsed to the floor where more bone and muscle jellied under the impact of jogger heels.

When Jishin finally strode from the room, Uemurea was still partly conscious, drifting in and out of trauma shock. His body had no vital parts broken, but it would not survive the huge trauma to muscle and bone. The scientist's last coherent thought was that America was doomed.

July 2, 1023 hours, Fremont, California

Ryan von Stradt could not keep a smug look of satisfaction off his face as fellow researcher, Doreen Morrison, prattled her jealous congratulations.

"I had no idea you were so close to a breakthrough, Ry. It's all so sudden."

"If you keep plugging, the details come together eventually," he assured her. But, he said it as though she had not been working hard.

She turned and strode down the hall, her heels beating an angry tune on the tile of the corridor. Von Stradt laughed as he unlocked the door to his electronics lab.

He locked the door behind him. He was not going to risk having someone barge in and find the source of his breakthrough thinking. He sat down at his personal computer.

Quickly he hooked up the telephone modem and instructed the computer to dial Small Chips.

He had received a brochure in the mail a week before. It had expounded the glories of a new data bank, designed especially for researchers in the electronics and computer field. The name, Small Chips, and the method of advertising had almost put him off trying it, but the introductory price was low, and Ryan von Stradt had been desperate — his computer research was going nowhere. So he had subscribed to Small Chips, and as soon as his access code arrived, he had scanned the contents of the bank with great eagerness.