"You'd better give me the whole story."
"Not now. Not yet. It's only guesswork, Tam." He glanced away. "Nothing to bore you with at the moment. But if you can find out anything, we'll write it up as a report I can circulate around the Hill. This could be important, believe me. Already Cray has started having to buy critical chips for its supercomputers from Japan. And while the Department of Defense is pouring billions into research on semiconductors that will withstand nuclear radiation, Japan is forging ahead on speed and miniaturization—what really counts. I think they could be about to have us by the balls, pardon my French. If they've somehow incorporated AI—"
"Allan, it doesn't add up. I once met Asano. In fact it was a couple of years ago at that Kyoto University symposium on
Third World industrialization. He spent a lot of time trying to pick my brain about our specialized silicon-chip manufacturing here. But he wasn't the slightest bit interested in artificial intelligence."
"Well, prepare yourself for a surprise. He's plenty interested now. And knowledgeable. But still, it's not like the Japanese to do something like this, install some government guy to run an R&D program."
"That's certainly true." She strolled over, looked down upon the park, and began to want a brandy of her own as she chewed over the implications. Was MITI setting up some new high-tech industrial assault? If the Fifth Generation had been taken over by Kenji and his planners . . . "Allan, let me think about this for a couple of days."
"Don't think too long. I'm convinced somebody over there is suddenly in a very big hurry. I need to find out the real story. Am I just starting to go nuts in my old age? . . . Well, make that my prime." He grasped her hand for emphasis. "And you really should make it a point to see this Asano fellow. If you already know him from somewhere, I'd say that's even better."
She started to respond, then stopped. She knew Kenji Asano all right. From a little episode at that conference, when he had invited the panel members of a session he chaired to a late-night tour of the endless tiny bars in Kyoto's Gion district. She remembered all the steaming sake and being ignored by flustered bar girls who were pretending that another woman wasn't around. They had no idea what to do about a member of their own sex there in their sanctuary of male flattery. Ken apparently had staged it mainly to watch their reaction, and hers.
Part of the scene was that Ken Asano was actually something of a hunk, as Westernized as they come and attractive in that way seemingly reserved for men of great wealth or great power. He may have had both, but she was sure only about the second. Whenever he handed out that meishi card with the MITI logo, even millionaire industrialists and bankers automatically bowed to the floor.
A lot of sake later, after the other panel members had piled into a cab for their hotel, she decided to show Kenji Asano a few things about women he wouldn't learn from giggling bar girls. She'd always heard that Japanese men were pretty humdrum in bed, quick and self-centered, at least in the opinion of a woman she knew who'd done exhaustive field research on the topic. After her own experience with Ken, though, she wasn't so sure. Still, it had been a passing thing. The next morning she awoke in her own room in the Kyoto International and half tried to tell herself it hadn't really happened—just a dream, a chimera of the sultry Kyoto night, brought on by all those quaint little side streets and red paper lanterns.