Lev's brows rose. "Are any of these people actually tourists?"

"A few, I suppose."

At last they stood before the Sunrise Hotel, a quiet little modernistic construction of concrete painted pastel blue on the far end of the beach, away from the gaudier shops and restaurants. The arrangements for the meeting included the requirement that they walk to this hotel from their own corporate-owned condo; no taxi whose trip record could be traced, no ostentatious limousine.

Joanna thought that Yamagata was being melodramatic, overly cautious. It's understandable to want to keep your movements private and avoid the media paparazzi, she thought, but the man's acting downright paranoid.

She noticed that Lev walked up the hotel's front steps stiffly, like a man in pain.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

He looked surprised. "Yes, of course."

"You looked…' Joanna didn't know how to say it without hurting her husband.

"Like an old man," he finished for her. "My dearest one, I am an old man."

"As soon as this mess is over," she said, almost whispering, "we're going back to Moonbase and you are going to start nanotherapy."

Instead of protesting as Joanna expected he would, Brudnoy nodded. That told her worlds about how he truly felt.

Then he said, "Assuming, of course, that there is a Moonbase left standing, and nanotherapy will still be allowed there."

Joanna murmured, "Yes, assuming all that."

Once they stepped into the cool shade of the hotel's lobby they saw that it was completely staffed by Japanese.

"Why do I feel like a fly walking into the spider's web?" Lev whispered to his wife as they followed a smiling young woman in an old-fashioned kimono through the lobby and out into a small but pleasantly decorated restaurant.

It was completely empty. The minimalist decor was decidedly Japanese: polished wood and lacquered low tables with cushions on the floor. No chairs.

They took off their sandals at the door and the young woman led them to a table by a window that looked out onto a garden of raked sand and bare rocks.

"I'm glad I wore shorts instead of a skirt," Joanna said as she sat cross-legged on one of the cushions.

Grunting, Lev slowly lowered himself into the cushion next to her. Once his long legs were settled properly, he pointed through the window. "We could have gardens like that at Moonbase," he said.

"If Yamagata has his way," Joanna whispered, "probably they'll turn the entire floor of Alphonsus into a rock garden."

"An exercise in esthetics," Lev murmured.

The slightest of noises made Joanna turned her head. A middle-aged man in a deep blue kimono that bore the white symbol of a flying heron had entered the otherwise empty restaurant and was striding toward them.

Lev scrambled to his feet. He towered over the Japanese.

"Please, please, be seated. Make yourselves comfortable," said Seigo Yamagata, in strong, deep voice. "I am so sorry to be late. A last-minute call from Kyoto."