“Perhaps the director…" Sam began haltingly. “If he would be so kind as to inform me of whatever fault has occurred, I could correct it."

"Your request is impertinent,” Sato snapped.

Aneki looked distinctly uncomfortable, then rose from his seat before Sam or Sato could say any more. He sketched a bow to Sam and headed for the door, oblivious to Sam’s own return nod, the best he could manage while lying in the bed, and the doctor’s deep formal bow.

“Enjoy your rest,” Sato said as he followed the bodyguard toward the door. He, too, ignored the doctor. As the vice-president reached the doorway, he paused and turned briefly toward Sam.

“Condolences on your recent loss.”

“Loss?” Sam was more baffled than ever.

“The regrettable incident with your sister, of course.” Sato’s expression was of utterly feigned innocence.

“Janice? What’s happened to my sister?”

Sato turned away without another word, but not before Sam caught the vicious smile that lit the man’s face when he thought no one could see. As Sato retreated down the corridor, Sam’s repeated questions echoed vainly after him.

Sam tried to stand, intending to follow and force an answer, but a wave of dizziness slammed him the moment one foot touched the floor. Head spinning, he fell limply into the arms of the doctor. Struggling with his weight, the woman returned him to the bed and insisted that he lie quietly. He let her rearrange the bedclothes for a few minutes before he reached out to grab her arm.

The doctor stiffened at his presumption. “You are overwrought, Verner-san. You must rest quietly or risk damage to the delicate connections in your neural circuits.”

“Damn the circuits! I want to know what’s going on!”

“Impertinence and physical coercion are not the recommended methods of polite inquiry.”

Sam knew she was right, but he ached with concern for his sister. She was all he had left since their parents and siblings died on that terrible July night in 2039.

He unclenched his hand and lowered it slowly. He was shaking with the effort to control himself. “Please excuse my improper behavior.”

The doctor massaged her arm briefly and smoothed down the sleeve of her immaculate, white lab coat. “Severe emotional states can result in uncontrolled behavior, Verner-san. Such behavior among the wrong people or at the wrong time could be disastrous. You do understand this?”

“Yes, doctor. I understand.”

“Very well. You had a question.”

“If you would be so kind?” He waited for her nod of assent. “Doctor, do you have any idea what Sato-sama meant about my sister?”

“Regrettably, I do.”

She seemed reluctant to continue, but Sam had to know. No matter how bad it was. “Tell me, doctor,” he prodded. “Please.”

The doctor gave him a long, steady look. “Two days ago, your sister began kawaru. We felt it best not to inform you before the operation.”

“Lord, no.” The horror of it washed over Sam. Kawaru… the Change, as the Japanese so politely named it. Goblinization was the word that the English-speaking world used for the process that distorted and restructured an ordinary person’s organs and bones into one of the metahuman sub-species known as Orks or Trolls. Occasionally, the unfortunate victim was warped into something far worse. “How can it be? She’s seventeen. If she were going to change, it would have happened before. She was safe.”

“Are you an expert on kawaru, Verner-san? Perhaps you should instruct the scientists at the Imperial Research Institute.” The doctor’s face was stem. “The best of our researchers have yet to unravel the mystery of kawaru.”

“It’s been thirty years,” Sam protested.

“Not quite. But it has been long decades of frustration for those seeking the cure. We know so little even now.

"When the somatic mutation event first struck, it affected some ten percent of the world’s population, but, in the chaos, few had a chance to study or understand the phenomenon. We are able to make observations now, but because kawaru has become less common, we have less opportunity to do so.

“We lean a little bit with each case studied, but we still grope in the dark of ignorance. There is so much variation. The best we can do is identify those who might change. And even that only after lengthy genetic testing.”

“Testing that Janice and I never had.”

“Even if you had, the results are not completely reliable. Families of ordinary background still produce children who might undergo kawaru.”

“Then there’s no hope.”

“We are still studying the biological changes in the strange new races of man that kawaru has unleashed upon the world. Their reproduction, and the continued occurrences of the mutation event, remain a puzzle to our best minds. How is it that some of the Changed breed true, perpetuating whatever form they have taken, while others produce children who are perfectly normal humans? Still others have offspring who appear to be normal humans, only to experience kawaru later in life, when they metamorphose into some thing else. Even the best genotyping cannot predict who will be affected or what he will become.”

“It must be magic, then,” Sam whispered.

One of Sam’s earliest memories was of a man’s face coming on the family tridscreen to talk with conviction and emotion of a new world, an Awakened World. The man said that magic and magical beings had reawakened in the world to challenge technology-not just for supremacy, but for the very survival of the Earth. The man called on people to abandon their technology, to go back to the land and live simply.

But Sam’s father had never accepted the way the coming of magic had twisted the ordered scientific world beyond anything recognizable. He had raised his son in traditional ways, avoiding almost all contact with the Changed world. Even on their trips to zoos, the family had avoided the paranatural exhibits that displayed grilfins, phoenixes, and other creatures once thought legendary.

“Magic?” the doctor scoffed in perfect imitation of his father’s tone. “There may indeed be magic loose in the world, but only a weak-minded fool relies on it as the explanation to every mystery. Your corporate record indicates that you are no simpleton who believes magical spells are all-powerful and that mystical energies can accomplish anything. The so-called mages who infest our corporate structures have their limits. They may manipulate energies in ways that seem to contravene the physical laws we understood in the last century, but their alleged sorceries must have boundaries and will be understood in time.

“Progress has been slow. We lost so much valuable data when research facilities were destroyed in the chaos that followed the first massive outbreak of kawaru. How could dedicated scientists cope with the unnatural and unexpected when all order was crumbling around them, swept away in the hatred, fear, and loathing that engulfed the world as men, women, and even children were warped?

“Those days of chaos are behind us now. In time, we will understand kawaru, perhaps even be able to prevent or reverse it. But we will do so scientifically. The ephemera of magic offer no hope.”

The doctor was voicing beliefs that Sam had grown up with, but the words had a hollow ring. He felt empty, scoured by despair at what had happened to his sister. Their father had tried to protect his family from the twisting of the Change, but now it was thrust upon them with a violence that tore both Sam’s and Janice’s lives out of joint. Whatever perverse power fueled goblinization had taken his own sister. How was it possible? Sam fought down a scream of anguish.