The Samurai Strategy Part 7

This place is my home. She then told him to pack. The apartment was hers, and she wanted all signs of him out by Monday.

Then she'd invited him back for the dinner. Why? Could Humpty-Dumpty be put back together again? Crack eggs, make an omelet . . . she half smiled at the odd way your mind connects absurdities when you're a little overworked. . . .

That was when the phone rang.

Was it Dave, dropping out at the last minute to prove he could still p.i.s.s her off, one more time? She headed for the kitchen, so she could at least chop some veggies while they argued for half an hour on the phone.

It wasn't Dave. Instead it was a scratchy old voice, one she loved.

Shouting into a cell phone at Kennedy was Allan Stern, who announced in his staccato tones that he'd just stepped off a JAL flight fresh from some conference in Tokyo. He had to see her tonight.

"Tonight?" When it rains, it pours, she thought. "Allan, I'd love to, but I'm having some people in from school . . . What? . . . Well, sure, nothing that special . . . Allan, I adore you dearly, but you wouldn't know any of the . . . Okay, okay . . . Can you get down by eight?"

"See you then, Tamara. You're a dear."

Stern was an old, old friend, and a guy everybody in the country had probably heard of vaguely. Any freshman in computer science could tell you he was one of the unofficial founders of the field known as artificial intelligence, now usually shortened to "AI." As it happened, she had convinced him the previous spring that they ought to collaborate on a book about the growing use of smart robots in the workplace, but for some reason his input had never made it past the talking stage. She'd decided just to go ahead on her own with the writing.

Well, she thought, maybe he's decided to pitch in after all. Great.

That would mean it might be adopted for a lot of college courses. Allan had plenty of respectability with the establishment.

He was probably the closest friend she had, her mentor almost. They went back to a Denver conference fifteen years agp, when he'd stood up in a session and challenged the conclusion of the very first paper she ever gave, though he'd come in midway through. Even then he had been a powerhouse in Washington, chairing one of the technical committees that reviewed federal grant applications submitted by university researchers. The inside talk on campuses was: love him or hate him, but think twice before you cross the opinionated b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

She was so mad she didn't care. She had sidled up to him at the coffee break and introduced herself, saying what an honor it was to meet a scholar so highly regarded, a man whose reputation was so well established. He nodded in absent acknowledgment, sipped at his Styrofoam cup, and stared over her shoulder. She then proceeded to advise the celebrated Allan Stern that he'd missed the whole thrust of her talk, which she'd explained in the introduction, and furthermore-- judging from the data at hand--he struck her as a pompous a.s.shole.

Such forthrightness, which was entirely new to Dr. Allan Stern's sheltered existence, so astonished him he apologized on the spot. By week's end he was trying to recruit her out to Stanford. He still was.

Allan was always punctual, to the minute, and that Sat.u.r.day night was no exception. The doorman downstairs announced him at eight sharp. When she met him at the elevator, her first impression was he looked a trifle worn down. America's foremost futurist was gaunt, as always, but his trademark shock of white hair streamed over a lined face that was more than usually haggard. His hard eyes, which could bore through screw-off Congressional staffers like a pair of Black & Decker drills, were actually bloodshot. In short, the man looked awful. Then she remembered he'd just come in on the 747 directly from Narita. Into the teeth of the latest baggage-handlers' slowdown at Kennedy. Give the poor old guy a break.

She made him a drink and then asked, "Okay, Allan, what's up?"

"Later, Tamara. It's a long story." With which he lapsed silent. Very out of character.

About then everybody else started coming up, reasonably on time since Tam was known far and wide to hate the concept of "fashionably late."

Also, she was a great cook. Bottles of bargain wine with the prices sc.r.a.ped off collected on the table in the foyer, and coats ama.s.sed in the second bedroom. Given that everybody knew everybody, it was mostly elbow patches and open collars. Only the women had bothered to dress.

Simpson from Computer Science, whose wife worked in Admissions; Gail Wallace from Business, whose pudgy, skirt- chasing husband had guided two companies into bankruptcy; Alice and Herman Knight, who both taught in Economics (she was dean of the undergraduate college) and published as a team; Kabir Ali from Mathematics and his browbeaten little Iranian wife Shirin who seemed frightened of the world--and her husband. Only Dave had the nerve to be late and hold things up.

While they waited, they knocked off a little Scotch and white wine, trashed the administration, and complained about all the committees on which they were being pressured to serve. Around a quarter to nine Dave finally appeared, sandy curls askew to let her know where he'd been.

She didn't even bother offering him a drink, just announced that everything was ready so let's adjourn to the dining room.

There're two kinds of dinners: ones that follow the rules, and ones that break them all. Tarn's were the latter. This time it would be real tallow candles and everybody's wine, including her own. Somehow her craziness always seemed to click; they inevitably came back for more.

This time she'd decided to pay an offhand tribute to autumn and American cuisine. Cheddar cheese soup, marinated Ottomanelli's quail broiled with fresh sage, sweet potato fritters and baby peas, homemade corn bread, and then, as a change of pace (keep 'em off balance), an endive salad spiked with coriander. Dessert was an apple- walnut ca.s.serole, washed down with pots of McNulty's dark Haitian coffee. At the end she produced an ancient cognac you could inhale forever. By eleven-thirty everybody thought they'd just ascended to paradise.

She ordered Dave to take care of the dishes (since he'd

been acting as if he owned the place, let him help), then led everybody back into the living room. In the park below the weather was perfect, and marijuana sales were in overdrive. A couple of joints also appeared around the room, accompanied by withering glares from Allan. Then, while Ed Wallace was chatting up Shirin and everybody else was drinking and smoking, Allan picked up his cognac and motioned her in the direction of the study.

Finally, she thought. This must be some story.

She was right.

It wasn't her book he wanted to discuss. Instead, he wanted to tell her about what he'd just seen, and not seen, in Tokyo.

"Loved dinner." He settled into a leather chair, the one next to her long bookcase, and drained his snifter. "I was afraid I was turning into a fish over there." He laughed, but only briefly. Social hour was over. "Tam, I wanted to ask you if you could maybe help me out with something."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Well, you know I've always thought I was on top of what Tokyo is doing, but now I'm not so sure anymore. I'm afraid things are starting to get away from me."

"Such as?"

"Okay. Now, it's no secret I've been to j.a.pan a lot. I've got my share of friends over there, people I respect and admire very much. But this trip started to get very strange. It's as though I'm suddenly an outsider. Just another _gaijin_. I'm puzzled, and I wonder if maybe I ought to be worried."

_Gaijin_. That sounds familiar, she thought. But it wasn't something that usually bothered Allan. She brushed her brown hair back out of her eyes and studied him. He'd never been more serious.

"What happened?"

He paused. "You know about their big artificial intelligence effort, called the Fifth Generation Project. If it goes the way they're saying, before too much longer they'll have programs, software, to design the next generation of computer technology. "

This was supposed to be news? Come on, Allan. Everybody knew. It was the talk of the industry. j.a.pan's goal was computer logic capable of replicating human thought processes, a monumental, maybe impossible, undertaking.

"Allan, don't you remember we discussed doing a chapter on it in the robotics book? And if you--"

"Tamara, bear with me. You also know very well that project is j.a.pan's attempt to leapfrog American technology. Added together with all their R&D on chip technology. In my opinion, by the way, our response is definitely too little, too late. More and more we're having to buy essential components for missile guidance systems from j.a.pan. The Department of Defense is already nervous, but not nervous enough. We may have dug our own grave. And now I think our worst fears may be about to come true. Something funny seems to be happening, only I'm not sure what."

"What do you mean?"

"Let me close that door." He got up and did so, then turned back.

"Maybe first I ought to tell you about the odd experience I had last week."

"Go on." She heard somebody in the living room put on one of her old Beatles alb.u.ms--still the middle-ager's idea of hip.

"Well, as always, I scheduled a stop at the Fifth Generation lab to get up to speed on how their effort's doing. But all of a sudden it seems I'm too darned famous to be bothered with the shirtsleeve stuff. I tried to get in there for three days running. It was always the honorable Stern-san this and the celebrated Stern-san that and you must meet the head of every d.a.m.ned ministry and we have to set up this formal dinner and blah, blah, blah."

"Allan, you're the Grand Old Man these days." She laughed. "Get used to it."

"Wash out your mouth, Tamara Richardson. I'm not grand and I'm most decidedly not old." He sniffed. "No, it's as if they were very politely cutting me out. Okay, they didn't exactly say the project was off- limits now or anything, but there never seemed to be a convenient time to drop by the lab."

"Who knows? Maybe they just didn't want some American partisan poking about the place anymore."

"Could be. But why? I'm scarcely a spy for DOD, or the CIA. They know I only do pure science. Okay, maybe I'm old- fashioned, but Dr. Yoshida at least has always claimed to respect me for that. I used to spend hours with him going over his work there and vice versa. We swapped ideas all the time.

Now all of a sudden there's this smokescreen." He paused, sipped at his brandy, and then leaned back. "Which brings me to that favor I need."

"What?'

"Well, I was wondering if maybe you could try and get into the Fifth Generation lab yourself, check around a bit. See if you can find out what's cooking."

"Go to Tokyo?"

"I realize it's a lot to ask, but who else can I turn to? Tam, you're the only person I know who could pull this off. You know the technology, and they respect you. Also, you understand the language.