It was laughter. How long had she faked it with computer chips, simulated speech and laughter, and never, never knew what it meant, how it felt. She never wanted to stop.

"Val," said Miro.

Oh, to hear his voice through ears!

"Val, are you all right?"

"Yes," she said. Her tongue moved so, her lips; she breathed, she pushed, all these habits that Val already had, so fresh and new and wonderful to her. "And yes, you must keep on calling me Val. Jane was something else. Someone else. Before I was myself, I was Jane. But now I'm Val."

She looked at him and saw (with eyes!) how tears flowed down his cheeks. She understood at once.

"No," she said. "You don't have to call me Val at all. Because I'm not the Val you knew, and I don't mind if you grieve for her. I know what you said to her. I know how it hurt you to say it; I remember how it hurt her to hear it. But don't regret it, please. It was such a great gift you gave me, you and her both. And it was also a gift you gave to her. I saw her aiúa pass into Peter. She isn't dead. And more important, I think -- by saying what you said to her, you freed her to do the thing that best expressed who she truly was. You helped her die for you. And now she is at one with herself; he is at one with himself. Grieve for her, but don't regret. And you can always call me Jane."

And then she knew, the Val part of her knew, the memory of the self that Val had been knew what she had to do. She pushed away from the chair, drifted to where Miro sat, enfolded him in her arms (I touch him with these hands!), held his head close to her shoulder, and let his tears soak hot, then cold, into her shirt, onto her skin. It burned. It burned.

"YOU CALLED ME BACK FROM DARKNESS"

"Is there no end to this?

Must it go on and on?

Have I not satisfied

all you could ask

of a woman so weak

and so foolish as I?

When will I hear your sharp voice

in my heart again?

When will I trace

the last line into heaven?"

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

Yasujiro Tsutsumi was astonished at the name his secretary whispered to him. At once he nodded, then rose to his feet to speak to the two men he was meeting with. The negotiations had been long and difficult, and now to have them interrupted at this late stage, when things were so close -- but that could not be helped. He would rather lose millions than to show disrespect to the great man who had, unbelievably, come calling on him.

"I beg you to forgive me for being so rude to you, but my old teacher has come to visit me and it would shame me and my house to make him wait."

Old Shigeru at once rose to his feet and bowed. "I thought the younger generation had forgotten how to show respect. I know that your teacher is the great Aimaina Hikari, the keeper of the Yamato spirit. But even if he were a toothless old schoolteacher from some mountain village, a decent young man would show respect as you are doing."

Young Shigeru was not so pleased -- or at least not so good at concealing his annoyance. But it was Old Shigeru whose opinion of this interruption mattered. Once the deal closed, there would be plenty of time to bring the son around.

"You honor me by your understanding words," said Yasujiro. "Please let me see if my teacher will honor me by letting me bring such wise men together under my poor roof."

Yasujiro bowed again and went out into his reception room. Aimaina Hikari was still standing. His secretary, also standing, shrugged helplessly, as if to say, He would not sit down. Yasujiro bowed deeply, and again, and then again, before he asked if he could present his friends.

Aimaina frowned and asked softly, "Are these the Shigeru Fushimis who claim to be descended from a noble family -- which died out two thousand years before suddenly coming up with new offspring?"

Yasujiro felt suddenly faint with dread that Aimaina, who was, after all, guardian of the Yamato spirit, would humiliate him by challenging the Fushimis' claim to noble blood. "It is a small and harmless vanity," said Yasujiro quietly. "A man may be proud of his family."

"As your namesake, the founder of the Tsutsumi fortune, was proud to forget that his ancestors were Korean."

"You have said yourself," said Yasujiro, absorbing the insult to himself with equanimity, "that all Japanese are Korean in origin, but those with the Yamato spirit crossed over to the islands as quickly as they could. Mine followed yours by only a few centuries."

Aimaina laughed. "You are still my sly quick-witted student! Take me to your friends, I would be honored to meet them."

There followed ten minutes of bows and smiles, pleasant compliments and self-abnegations. Yasujiro was relieved that there wasn't a hint of condescension or irony when Aimaina said the name "Fushimi," and that Young Shigeru was so dazzled to meet the great Aimaina Hikari that the insult of the interrupted meeting was clearly forgotten. The two Shigerus went away with a half dozen holograms of their meeting with Aimaina, and Yasujiro was pleased that Old Shigeru had insisted that Yasujiro stand right there in the holograms with the Fushimis and the great philosopher.

Finally, Yasujiro and Aimaina were alone in his office with the door closed. At once Aimaina went to the window and drew open the curtain to reveal the other tall buildings of Nagoya's financial district and then a view of the countryside, thoroughly farmed in the flatlands, but still wild woodland in the hills, a place of foxes and badgers.

"I am relieved to see that even though a Tsutsumi is here in Nagoya, there is still undeveloped land within sight of the city. I had not thought this possible."

"Even if you disdain my family, I am proud to have our name on your lips," said Yasujiro. But silently he wanted to ask, Why are you determined to insult my family today?

"Are you proud of the man you were named for? The buyer of land, the builder of golf courses? To him all wild country cried out for cabins or putting greens. For that matter, he never saw a woman too ugly to try to get a child with her. Do you follow him in that, too?"

Yasujiro was baffled. Everyone knew the stories of the founder of the Tsutsumi fortune. They had not been news for three thousand years. "What have I done to bring such anger down on my head?"

"You have done nothing," said Hikari. "And my anger is not at you. My anger is at myself, because I also have done nothing. I speak of your family's sins of ancient times because the only hope for the Yamato people is to remember all our sins of the past. But we forget. We are so rich now, we own so much, we build so much, that there is no project of any importance on any of the Hundred Worlds that does not have Yamato hands somewhere in it. Yet we forget the lessons of our ancestors."

"I beg to learn from you, master."

"Once long ago, when Japan was still struggling to enter the modern age, we let ourselves be ruled by our military. Soldiers were our masters, and they led us into an evil war, to conquer nations that had done us no wrong."

"We paid for our crimes when atomic bombs fell on our islands."

"Paid?" cried Aimaina. "What is to pay or not to pay? Are we suddenly Christians, who pay for sins? No. The Yamato way is not to pay for error, but to learn from it. We threw out the military and conquered the world with the excellence of our design and the reliability of our labor. The language of the Hundred Worlds may be based on English, but the money of the Hundred Worlds came originally from the yen."