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conceive to honor you,
    Father,
    Is to think otherwise and make different mistakes.
    – M USTAPHA S HARIF

Chapter 5

    Dr Frederick Satamori hailed, of course, not from mainland Japan but from Okinawa (again, the association to the concept ‘island’!); there were excellent reasons for that.
    And their meeting was in the Room of the Leopards – leopards their owner had never seen, could scarcely imagine, for they existed in paint on the walls and had been varnished over so that not even the minuscule discontinuity between one color and another revealed the fine detail of the design to Mustapha’s probing fingers.
    Yet imagination populated the room with watchful threat: the alert tension belonging to beasts which must scent, spot, run down and overcome their prey. Sighted or blind, Mustapha who had early grown acquainted with the reality of such abstracts as ‘hunger’, well understood the concepts ‘quest’ and ‘quarry’. To come in here was to taste blood in anticipation.
    Yet he had no known grudge against Satamori. He might have picked the Room of Elephants, or of Fishes, or of Flowers …
    Never mind. They were both here, and there was tea or coffee – the scents mingled – and Satamori had come freshfrom a place that flavored his presence with jasmine, lavender and the smoke of some resinous tree being burned on an open fire.
    And rose and clasped his host’s proffered hand and spoke formal greetings that conveyed less information than the sweat of his palm.
    This man, Mustapha thought, is frightened. So am I. But he, having eyes, is less likely to be aware of the fact.
    Good!
    Relaxing, he sat down and inquired, ‘Fred, why bother to come calling in person when there was a risk of my discourteously making you wait? You should have phoned!’
    ‘There are times,’ Satamori said dryly, ‘when waiting for a call to be put through makes one more impatient than waiting to be let past a privateer. Today is – ’
    ‘My servants made you wait in the skelter?’ Mustapha interrupted in horror.
    ‘No, no! They were the soul of courtesy! Indeed it was not my idea to disturb you, but Ali’s; I was very happy to break my journey.’
    ‘Break …?’
    ‘Why, yes. I have to go around the world today, to its other side. Switching from dawn to evening is no longer easy for me. I’m old.’
    ‘That isn’t true,’ Mustapha said.
    ‘You are kind, but I’m afraid it is. I’m still under sixty, but the strain is beginning to make me understand what old age is.’ Satamori sighed loudly and took a sip of the coffee he had chosen from the range of available refreshments.
    ‘And so,’ he added after a pause, ‘are too many of us.’
    Mustapha waited.
    ‘Anyway,’ the visitor resumed, ‘I felt it worth the risk of interrupting your contemplation and was quite content to hang about for an hour or two until Ali’s patience was exhausted, thinking we might go on together to Chaim’s party.’
    ‘What party?’
    Satamori almost dropped his cup. ‘But – but surely of all people you must have been …?’ His voice trailed away.
    ‘I begin to comprehend,’ Mustapha said. ‘Are you referring by any chance to a treasure-hunt party?’
    ‘What else?’
    ‘I see,’ Mustapha murmured, and relished the conscious irony of the phrase. ‘You too believe that by sprinkling the planet with clues that may come to the attention of random people, and which require a moderately advanced IQ to unravel, we can find the next generation of managers and administrators for Earth.’
    ‘I – I can’t conceive a better way,’ Satamori granted. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned the matter, though. I’m sorry. I simply was not aware that you were opposed to it.’
    Mustapha leaned back, stretching cramped limbs. He said, ‘It is not I who are opposed. It is something deeper, the force which evolved us.’
    Brief blank silence. Satamori said eventually, ‘You are adherent to the Way of Life? One had assumed that you must