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from the shifting runes of the tea leaves.
    “They’re just different.”
    Nangi shook his head. “The Hong Kong Chinese are different and I deal with them all the time. They’re devious, but I must admit I enjoy their intrigues. I have no feel for the Vietnamese.”
    “Which is why I’m handling them,” Nicholas said. “But just look at the bottom line. Profits from the small amount of goods we now manufacture out of Saigon under Vinnie’s direction are astronomical. Think what these lower manufacturing costs would do for the kobun whose profits are currently in a downward spiral.”
    Of course, Nicholas was right, Nangi thought. He most often was in these matters. Too, he could not minimize Nicholas’s success in predicting trends in business.
    He nodded. “All right. I’ll do what I can to squeeze the capital we need out of some rock somewhere.”
    “Excellent,” Nicholas said, pouring them both more tea. “You won’t regret your decision.”
    “I hope not. I am going to have to call on some of my Yakuza contacts.”
    “If only you knew the Kaisho,” Nicholas said with no little sarcasm.
    “I know you have no respect for the Yakuza. But then again you’ve never made any effort to understand them. I find that particularly curious considering the pains you’ve taken in assimilating virtually every other aspect of Japanese life.”
    “The Yakuza are gangsters,” Nicholas said flatly. “Of what use would understanding them be to me?”
    “I cannot answer that. No one can, save yourself.”
    “What I can’t fathom is your connection with them. Leave them to their own dirty business.”
    “That is like saying, ‘Please don’t inhale nitrogen with your oxygen.’ It’s just not possible.”
    “You mean it’s not practical.”
    Nangi sighed, knowing he was not going to win this argument with his friend; he never did.
    “Go see your Kaisho, then,” Nicholas said, “or whoever he is.”
    Nangi shook his head. “The Kaisho is purported to be the oyabun of all oyabun. The boss of all the Yakuza family bosses. But let me assure you he does not exist. It is a term some clever Yakuza concocted to keep the police in their place.” Kaisho meant “the mysterious commander.” “As long as there is a sense among us outsiders that there is a quasi-mythical boss of all the oyabun, there’s a level of the Yakuza hierarchy no one can penetrate. It aids their mystique, enhances their face whenever the cops stage a gambling-parlor raid or two for the media.” He shifted in his seat. “All of my Yakuza contacts deny any knowledge of a Kaisho.”
    Their conversation eventually turned to the Hive computer, Nicholas’s pet project, which was now on hold because Hyrotech-inc., the American firm designated by the U.S. government to design the computer for all its branches, had inexplicably reneged on the deal Nicholas had negotiated to manufacture it.
    “The most worrisome aspect of this is that no one at Hyrotech will return Harley Gaunt’s calls,” Nicholas said. “I’ve told him to go ahead and institute a lawsuit claiming breach of contract. In addition, I instructed him to name the U.S. government as codefendant.”
    “The government?” Nangi said, concerned.
    “Yes. I think they’re behind the whole thing. Stonewalling is their forte, not Hyrotech’s.”
    He brought Nangi up to date on the company’s progress on the Chi Project. Nicholas had chosen the name Chi, which meant “wisdom.” It had been his idea to turn one entire kobun —division—of the company to the Chi Project. The Chi was a new kind of computer that required no software: it was literally as flexible as its user. It needed no software because it was a neural-net machine. The Chi prototype contained over a thousand minuscule “cubes”—as opposed to chips—composed of sixty-four electronic neurons whose design was based on those in the human brain. This machine operated by example. A “correct” decision as determined