There was a knock at the door. Suzi immediately darkened her viewscreen and floated off to a corner. Hosato swept the room with his eyes as a quick check that there was nothing incriminating in view, then opened the door.

Sasha was standing silhouetted in the doorway. “Come on, Hayama,” she said. “I’ve decided to buy your dinner. Unless, of course, you were planning on doing something else this evening.”

“No. Dinner sounds fine.” Hosato smiled. “Be with you in a minute.”

As he retrieved his shoes, he watched Sasha out of the corner of his eye, remembering Suzi’s oration: “… the most dangerous creatures in the universe.”

They lingered over coffee in a quiet corner of the employees’ cafeteria. It was a huge place with lots of alcoves painted in bright, cheery colors.

Hosato had found Sasha’s company surprisingly pleasant. She had let her hair down off duty, both figuratively and literally. Her dark hair now tumbled over her shoulders, framing her face and contrasting with the beige dress she was wearing. The dress was obviously not a uniform; it was cut too low at the neck for that. It was some kind of jersey material, conservative in style but tight enough to be provocative.

Hosato studied her in a leisurely fashion as she talked.

“So there I was with eight years’ experience and not a black mark on my record. Well the fact I was willing to take the job for less pay than most probably entered into it, too.”

Hosato smiled appreciatively.

“Actually,” she said confidentially, “I think some of the people who signed the authorization were hoping I’d fall flat on my face. To this day I don’t know which ones resented me because I was young and which ones didn’t like me because I was a woman in one of the last fields dominated by men, but the bad feeling was there. They were like a pack of vultures waiting for me to stumble. Let me tell you, Hayama, it’s great incentive not to make a mistake.”

“I know what you mean,” Hosato murmured.

He meant it as a random comment, but Sasha zeroed in on it for some reason.

“How’s that. Oh. Yes, I guess there isn’t much room for error as a duelist, either.”

Hosato smiled and shrugged. He had not intended to turn the conversation to himself. In fact, he was anxious to avoid it.

“It’s very impressive,” he said. “Shoplifter patrol to corporation security chief in eight years. There aren’t many people of either sex who have that kind of a success record.”

“Well, I had a couple lucky breaks.” She shrugged. “I guess I’m just a little more stubborn than most about pursuing them. Darn ill There I go talking about myself again. We’ve gone through an entire meal, and all we’ve done is talk about me.”

“I think it’s fascinating,” Hosato insisted. “I don’t usually get a chance to talk to someone in your line of work. Tell me, why did you go into Security in the first place?”

“No,” Sasha said firmly. “We’re going to talk about you for a change.”

“Why. My life is terribly dull compared to yours.”

“Dull. A professional duelist. I find that hard to believe, Hayama.”

“Really. People tend to romanticize the profession, but it’s quite a drab existence.”

“So tell me a little about this drab existence of yours.”

In the face of her persistence, Hosato changed tack. “Actually,” he said, lowering his eyes, “I’d rather not talk about it. I’ve fought a lot of duels and killed a lot of men. There’s no way of elaborating on that without it sounding like bragging, and I don’t think it’s the kind of thing one should brag about. So, if you don’t mind, let’s just drop the subject and keep talking about you. Okay?”

“If you dislike dueling so much, why did you go into it in the first place?” she pressed.

“Shimatta!” He shrugged, grinning wryly.

“How’s that?” Sasha frowned.

“I said, 'Shimatta,'” Hosato explained. “It’s an old Japanese expression, one of the few I use.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means 'I have made a mistake!'” He smiled, “In common usage, it’s an exclamation or a curse, usually just after a major disaster. That’s how I got into dueling. Shimatta… I made a mistake, and I’ve been trying to correct it ever since.”

Sasha cocked her head at him. “You’re a strange man, Hayama. Most men Fve met would try to use their violent past to impress me.”

“Don’t misunderstand me.” Hosato smiled. “It’s not that I don’t want to impress you. You’re a charming and attractive woman. I guess I was raised differently from most people as to what is included in polite conversation.”

“Okay. Then let’s talk about that Your upbringing. You were raised on Musashi, weren’t you?”

“That’s right.” Hosato felt vaguely uncomfortable. Sasha’s tenacity was disquieting.

“That’s one of the colony planets, isn’t it. One of those where a special interest group established a colony independent of corporation or government sponsorship?”

“I’m surprised you’ve heard of it. Yes, it was originally a Japanese-. American settlement, but it’s pretty homogeneous now.”

“I have a confession to make.” Sasha smiled. “I hadn’t heard of it until it showed up on your personnel form. After we contacted them to confirm your records, I did a little research on the place.”

“That must have been a chore,” Hosato commented, “checking my records, I mean. My family moved around a lot, so my records are pretty scattered, with several gaps in them.”

There was another reason for his family’s frequent relocation and the sporadic condition of their records. Both Hosato and his sister had received their educa- tion under three different names. It added to the completeness of their covers.

“Oh, it wasn’t that much trouble,” Sasha assured him. “I’ve always been fascinated by the old Japanese culture. It was interesting to see what had survived the relocation into space. Do you know much about old Japan?”

“A bit,” Hosato admitted… “had to learn about it as self-defense. A lot of people on Musashi were big on retaining ancestral ties. Fortunately, my family wasn’t so fanatical on the subject as most.” “Do you know anything about Ninjas?” Hosato suppressed his reaction with difficulty. If this was a trap, Sasha had laid it well.

“A smattering,” he replied casually. “I always considered them more folklore than history.”

“Oh, they were real enough. The Invisible Assassins. The main problem is separating fact from fantasy. Even their name, Ninja, comes from the word ninjitsu, the 'art of invisibility.' You wouldn’t believe some of the things they were able to do. That’s how the folklore thing got started. They did the impossible with such regularity that people thought they were somehow supernatural.”

“What I can’t believe is how much attention you’ve given them,” Hosato commented. “I somehow never pictured you as the sort who got wound up over ancient history.”

Sasha shrugged. “Normally I don’t,” she admitted. “But the Ninjas fascinate me… professionally. I mean, security is my main field of expertise, but from what I’ve researched about the Ninjas, I’m not sure I could stop one.”

“Oh, come now,” Hosato chided. “You just finished saying they were human. Surely today’s security—”

Sasha interrupted him with a wave of her hand. “You didn’t let me finish. Let me give you an idea of how the Ninjas operate. The invisibility thing—they had a lot of fairly inventive gadgets that let them move freely where anyone else would be stopped cold, but that wasn’t their main weapon. Their real strength was in their secrecy.”

“They can’t have been very secretive if you’ve found out so much about them,” Hosato interrupted.

“What I’ve found out is probably just the tip of the iceberg,” she retorted. “The Ninjas were very close, organized in clans or families. All their secrets were passed on from generation to generation within the family. Can you read between the lines what that means. The children were raised into the system, trained from birth. Can you imagine someone trained his entire life to be a spy and assassin?”