and

Meaningless. Absolutely meaningless. And…

"Shit!"

Hidaka wasn't even aware he'd sworn in English, so great was his shock at the image that met him when he flipped open the magazine.

"So the rumors are true," he mused in Japanese, when he'd recovered from the surprise. "They are blond all over."

The men sniggered, and he might have spent a few minutes confirming the theory if the ensign hadn't gently handed him a small device.

"And there is this, Commander. It glows like a lantern."

A strangely lit screen displayed the cover of Tempo. Hidaka checked it against the pile of paper magazines. Yes, he was certain they were same thing. What an oddity. A magazine in an electric box!

It was apparently written in the same damnable tongue as everything else on this ship, but there in the left-hand margin of the screen was a small British flag and underneath it, the word

Progress at last! Hidaka thought.

He had almost grown used to the magic of these illuminated plates, because they were scattered everywhere aboard the ship. Nonetheless, it was a revelation to find one he could hold in his hand and carry around. But how did it work? What did it do? There were a number of buttons in the base of the thing, but he was disinclined to press them, especially after his experience on the bridge. So he carefully placed the instrument back on the scarred tabletop while he examined the other discoveries.

There was another magazine. Like Hustler, it was printed in rich colors on thick glossy paper. The title appeared to be People. A strange name for a periodical, he thought. An ethnographic journal perhaps.

Most of the pages were dominated by photographs of idiotically grinning barbarians. American or British, he supposed, for the small amount of text was certainly written in English. But there were an amazing number of Negroes and half-bloods, and people of races he'd never seen before. A mud race of polyglot people, he thought, pleased with himself at recalling such an obscure term, even though it had been at least five years since he had studied at Princeton University.

Hidaka attempted to glean some wider meaning from the photo captions, but they seemed as vacuous as the gaijin about whom they were written. The common themes seemed to be who was sleeping with whom, and who possessed the most riches. There were longer articles, but he threw the magazine aside in a fit of pique, because they were just as impenetrable. People would have to wait until he had more time.

He picked up the next item, a much thicker magazine, with the title PC Week. Opening this to a random page and flicking through, he let go an exclamation.

"Ah! Technical documents!"

The crewmen grunted happily in response. If they had discovered something vital, it would bring them great honor and distinction. As Hidaka flicked through the pages, he nodded his head vigorously, though these articles, written in English, were even more unreadable than in the journal of People. At least this time, however, he felt certain his inability to decipher the text was because it so obviously dealt with top-secret technologies.

There were many pictures of those odd floating glass plates, and boxes with wires and boards in them, and even of devices that resembled the gadget with the small British flag on its glass plate. He would dearly love to decipher one of these articles for Admiral Kakuta, but such a task might take weeks-and they had hours at best.

"Good work, Ensign Tomonagi," he said in a clipped, excited voice. "Good work to all of you."

The crewmen drew themselves up, basking in the praise.

"Ensign, detail half of your men to search the ship again. Tell them to look for more of these devices." He held up the portable tablet with the glowing plate. "Assign someone to drag those monkeys in here. I will run the operation from this room now."

"Hai!"

Hidaka took a chipped mug-a sure sign that he was dealing with barbarians-then picked up the glowing device and walked over to a comfortable-looking armchair. He sat with his legs crossed in a very English manner and sipped the tea while staring at the artifact. The technical magazine referred to this sort of device as a "flexipad." The tablet was quite light, given its size, and it was constructed of a material he'd never encountered before. A sort of rubbery leather?

Hidaka sighed deeply as he read the foreign language from top to bottom. He was still no clearer about the content of the tract. There was a picture-of a tank, and another of a venerable bearded gentleman, which he had to assume were associated with the text-but beyond that there was only puzzlement.

For ten minutes he sat and stared at the device, hardly aware of the crewmen's grunting as they dragged the four alien sailors into the wardroom and laid them out on the threadbare carpeting alongside their utterly senseless fellows. Try as he might, he couldn't escape the fact that the only promising clue lay in that little Union Jack and the underlined word English. But what on earth did it mean? What did any of this mean? And how could he uncover the truth without setting off more alarms and causing possibly irreparable damage? Perhaps it was even booby-trapped.

Hidaka became so lost in his own thoughts that without realizing it, he brushed the flexipad screen with his thumb. He flinched slightly, expecting the same blaring alarm that had startled them on the bridge. But nothing happened.

Encouraged, he warily poked the very tip of his little finger at the screen again, touching the picture of the venerable gentlemen, and suddenly the fellow filled the whole screen and began to speak. Hidaka was caught by surprise again but managed to smother his reaction this time. The bearded man spoke for nearly half a minute in some diabolical language that sounded to Hidaka like a choking animal attempting to clear its throat. At the end of the little movie, which amazed him with its colors and clarity, the picture shrank back to its former size and location.

Well, that was something. It took the emboldened Hidaka less than a second to tap the screen where the tiny British flag was displayed. In the blink of an eye the display transformed itself into English. A wide grin broke out on the commander's face.

Excellent! Most excellent.

But his good mood turned gray again as he read the text. It seemed to relate to a struggle-a civil or maybe a religious war of some kind, he thought-being raged on a group of islands. As he read on, the bearded man was identified as the emir of the Caliphate, Mullah Ibn Abbas, and the island of Java was mentioned three times as the location of the most violent clashes.

That simply could not be. There was no "Caliphate," and Java itself had been wrested from Dutch control more than two months ago. It was now part of the empire. Chagrined, Hidaka squeezed his eyes shut, then returned to the article.

There were detailed accounts of bitter street fighting between Indonesian marines and elements of the Indonesian army that had defected to Caliphate forces. Something called suicide bombers were reported to have breached the marines' command center and killed many senior officers, gravely disrupting the secularist defenses.

Hidaka felt as if he had picked up some sort of trashy American novel-this had to be fiction. What were Indonesians? Or secularists? Or Caliphates? Or suicide bombers? What sort of crazy man, given the alternative, would fly his plane into the enemy rather than just bombing them? A desperate one perhaps, he conjectured, but crazy nonetheless.