Is Prion's presence on this plane a frank anomaly?

Only, she decides, if she thinks of herself as the center, the focal point of something she doesn't, can't, understand. That had always been Win's first line of defense, within himself: to recognize that he was only a part of something larger. Paranoia, he said, was fundamentally egocentric, and every conspiracy theory served in some way to aggrandize the believer.

But he was also fond of saying, at other times, that even paranoid schizophrenics have enemies.

The danger, she supposes, is a species of apophenia.

The damp white cloth has grown cold in her hand.

She places it on the armrest and closes her eyes.

- /

Electric twilight now, and some different flavor of hydrocarbons to greet her as she exits Shinjuku Station, wheeling her black carry-on behind her.

She's taken the JR Express in from Narita, knowing that this avoids bumper-to-bumper rush-hour freeway-creep and one of the world's dullest bus rides. Pamela Mainwaring's car would have been equally slow, and would have meant contact with Blue Ant personnel, something she hopes to keep to a bare minimum.

Having lost sight of Prion and his girlfriend shortly after deplaning, she hopes they're now stuck in the traffic she's managed to miss, whatever their purpose in coming here might be.

Looking up now into the manically animated forest of signs, she sees the Coca-Cola logo pulsing on a huge screen, high up on a building, followed by the slogan "NO REASON!" This vanishes, replaced by a news clip, dark-skinned men in bright robes. She blinks, imagining the towers burning there, framed amid image-flash and whirl.

The air is warm and slightly dank.

She hails a taxi, its rear door popping open for her in that mysterious Japanese way. She swings her carry-on onto the backseat and climbs in after it, settling herself on the spotless white cotfon seat cover and almost forgetting not to pull the door shut after her¹.

The white-gloved driver closes it with the lever under his seat, then turns. /

"Park Hyatt Tokyo." ^

He nods.

They edge out into the dense, slow, remarkably quiet traffic.

She takes out her new phone and turns it on. The screen comes up in kanji. Almost immediately, it rings.

"Yes?"

"Cayce Pollard, please."

"Speaking."

"Welcome to Tokyo, Cayce. Jennifer Brossard, Blue Ant." American. "Where are you?"

"Shinjuku, on my way to the hotel."

"Do you need anything?"

"Sleep, I think." It's more complicated than that, of course, soul-delay coming in from some novel angle here. She can't remember how she'd dealt with jet lag when she was last here, but that was ten years ago. Dancing and quite a lot of drinking, possibly. She'd been that much younger, and that had been in the heyday of the Bubble.

"You have our number."

"Thank you."

"Good night."

"Good night."

Alone again, suddenly, in the crepuscular calm of a Tokyo taxi.

She looks out the window, reluctantly admitting more of the alien but half-familiar marketing culture, the countless cues and clues proving too much for her now. She closes her eyes.

More white gloves at the Park Hyatt, her carry-on lifted out and placed atop a luggage cart, then draped with a sort of bulky silken fishnet, its edges weighted, a ritual gesture that puzzles her: some survival from a grander age of European hotels?

White gloves in the vast Hitachi elevator, pressing the button for the lobby. Eerily smooth ascent, the speed of it pulling blood from her head, past floors unmarked and uncounted, then the door opens silently on a large grove of live bamboo, growing from a rectangular pool the size of a squash court.

Through registration, imprinting the Blue Ant card, signing, then up, that many more floors again, perhaps fifty in all.

To this room, very large, with its large black furniture, where the bellman briefly shows her various amenities, then bows and is gone, no tip expected.

She blinks. A James Bond set, Brosnan rather than Connery.

She uses the remote as demonstrated, drapes drawing quietly aside to reveal a remarkably virtual-looking skyline, a floating jumble of electric Lego, studded with odd shapes you somehow wouldn't see elsewhere, as if you'd need special Tokyo add-ons to build this at home. Logos of corporations she doesn't even recognize: a strange luxury, and in itself almost worth the trip. She remembers this now from previous visits, and also the way certain labels are mysteriously recontextualized here: Whole seas of Burberry plaid have no effect on her, nor Mont Blanc nor even Gucci. Maybe this time it will even have started to work for Prada.

She thumbs the drapes closed and sets about the unpacking and hanging up and putting away of CPUs. When she's finished, there is no sign that the room is occupied, save for her black East German envelope and the black iBook bag, both resting now on the ecru expanse of the enormous bed.

She examines the instructions for the room's Internet connection, gets out the iBook and goes to hotmail.

Parkaboy, with two attachments. /

She'd e-mailed him from Damien's telling him she was on her way here, but not under whose auspices. Parkaboy is one of the few F:F:Fers who she's certain would know exactly who Bigend is and what Blue Ant is about.

She'd asked him for his and Musashi's best advice on how to go about contacting Taki and obtaining the mystery number. This will al-most certainly be that.

It's titled KEIKO. She opens it.

How'd you manage Tokyo? But never mind, because the 'Sash and I have been burning the midnight oil for you in the meantime. Well, mostly the 'Sash, cuz he's the one had to find us a Keiko. Cept she's not a Keiko but a Judy…

Cayce opens the first attachment.

"Parkaboy, you are outrageous."

A multilayered confection, message within message, and all of it targeting Taki, or Taki as Parkaboy and Mushashi imagine him.

Keiko/Judy is simultaneously pubescent and aggressively womanly, her shapely yet slender legs spilling out of a tiny tartan schoolgirl kilt, to vanish, mid-calf, into shoved-down, bunched-up cotton kneesocks of an unusually heavy knit. Cayce's cool-module, wherever it resides, has always proven remarkably good at registering the salient parameters of sexual fetishes she's never encountered before, and doesn't in the least respond to. She just knows now that these Big Sox are one of those, and probably culture-specific. There will be a magazine for Japanese guys into big socks, she's sure of it. The big socks go into retro faux-Converse canvas, but with platform soles to balance the very sizable bulk of sock-scrunch around the ankles, giving Keiko/Judy a knees-down look recalling a baby Clydesdale.

Keiko/Judy has pigtails, huge dark eyes, free-sized sweatshirt making her breasts a mystery, and something so determinedly carnal in her expression that Cayce finds it unnerving. Bigend would recognize the image-toggle instantly, childlike innocence and hardboiled come-on alternating at some frequency beyond perception.

She goes back to Parkaboy's e-mail.

Judy Tsuzuki, five-foot-eleven and about as Japanese as you are, aside from the DNA. Texas. Twenty-seven. Bartender in this place down the street from Musashi's. What we did to up the wattage for Taki, aiming to maximize libidinal disturbance, we shot this long tall Judy then reduced her by at least a third, in Photoshop. Cut'n'pasted her into Musashi's kid sister's dorm room at Cal. Darryl did the costuming himself, and then we decided to try enlarging her eyes a few clicks. That made all the difference. Judy's epicanthic folds are long gone, the way of the modest bust nature intended for her (actually we've got her wrapped up in an Ace bandage for the shot, but nothing too tight) and the resulting big round eyes are pure Anime Magic. This is the girl Taki's been looking for all his life, even though nature's never made one, and he'll know that as soon as he lays eyes on this image. The other attachment…