This wasn't a new direction. This was just getting back on track. Even though the Emperor had been humiliated and secularized after the Great War against the threatening gaijin, his people still thought of themselves as a single, pure family. For a time they merely had no focus for that identity. Now they had it again.
Well, she thought, why not? National pride. Not so long ago we Americans had the Soviets telling us we were second best, so we blew a few billion in tax money to plant a man on the moon and straighten them out. The space Super Bowl. Why should Japan be any different? For years now they've heard half the world claim they're just a bunch of hard-driving merchants with a bank-account soul, when they knew in their hearts it wasn't true. Now here's the proof, straight from the Sun Goddess. Time to get crazy awhile.
In the middle of all the bedlam and horns and sirens in the street, she yearned for somebody to talk with, somebody levelheaded enough to put this frightening turnaround into some kind of perspective. That's when she thought of Ken.
Of course! He was Westernized; he took the longer view. Why hadn't she thought of him right away?
So off she went for a quick surprise visit with Kenji Asano at the Institute for New Generation Computer Technology, research headquarters for the Fifth Generation Systems Project. He and his staff would probably be in a holiday mood, just like everybody else. Maybe he'd loosen his tie and give her a little off-the-record rundown of what this was all about.
She knew the Institute operated out of the twenty-first floor of a downtown Tokyo skyscraper. She'd been there before. She still had the address, and the subways were clicking along right on time, though the fare machines were off now in celebration. Half an hour later she was there. She pushed her way through the milling lobby and grabbed an elevator.
As she rode, watching the lights tick off the floors, she found herself wondering again what Ken was really up to. And what had happened to Dr. Yoshida? However, it was hard to think about something as boring as MITI and American defense vulnerability when people were whooping it up and passing around paper cups of sake right there on the elevator.
Well, don't jump to conclusions. This paranoia of Allan's is probably just some grotesque misreading. Dr. Yoshida got promoted, and Ken's merely filling in for a while till the Institute can recruit a new director from some university. The work here's too important for politics. Intelligent computers are Japan's lifeline—the "steam engine" of the next century.
How would Ken react to her just showing up? After all, Kyoto was two years ago. He'd claimed to be a widower, but was that merely conference fast talk?
Best thing is just to play it straight, she told herself. Strictly business. Let the rest fall out in time.