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potential for disruptions and discord in our research groups. We have many highly regarded people on the research staff, and they are very devoted to their work. They don’t appreciate interruptions. Hurley-Cooper management has made a deliberate, continuing effort to minimize the impact of business practices on our research groups. Research,” Amy continues, as no one else is speaking up, “is not at all like manufacturing. It’s a process that relies at least in part on creativity and imagination. As one of our leading scientists has remarked, research is half art, half guesswork. Untimely distractions can damage that process, and have the potential to cause irreparable harm.”
    Kurushima gazes impassively at Amy for several moments, then consults a palmtop."Perhaps you refer to Dr. Liron Phalen of the Metascience Research Group?”
    Amy hesitates just for an instant. Kurushima has apparently not come ill-prepared. She wonders why he would name any one scientist. As it happens, his guess is right, but what is his point?
    What is Tokyo really after?
    “Dr. Phalen is an excellent example of what I am referring to,” Amy replies."He has been cited by the Noble Commission for his work in metaserology. His group has provided Hurley-Cooper with some of its most significant patents. Quite frankly, his value to Hurley-Cooper is inestimable. However, he is both a brilliant man and an eccentric man. He could easily triple his salary should he choose to seek employment elsewhere. He stays with Hurley-Cooper because he holds his colleagues here in high regard and he likes the way we do business.”
    At the head-end of the table, Janasova fiddles with his necktie, still smiling, but looking uncomfortable.
    Across the table, Greg Vanderlinde, VP for Research and Development, gives Amy a quick glance and adds a quick nod, as if to confirm what she just said. What he should have said. Greg’s a good man, with a strong science background and an incredible imagination, but he hasn’t got the nerve to stand up to anyone, much less a Tokyo-appointed auditor. How he got the VP post for R&D is really a mystery. Amy suspects he was promoted one step beyond his level of competency.
    Chang’s sweaty sheen has spread to his cheeks. Kurushima gazes at Amy impassively, and opens his mouth to reply, but then Enoshi Ken is on his feet, talking about daikazoku again and how everything can be worked out to the greater benefit of the whole corporation.
    Amy doesn’t believe that for a second. She can see there’s a collision coming. The Tokyo cadre is driving straight at her, whether they know it or not, regardless of what they really want, and she’s put too much effort into her work, and into this corporation, to tug on the wheel and veer off.
    She just hopes her seatbelt holds.

6
    It’s a little past noon when Brian Guemey eases his battered brown and green Mitsubishi Sunset Runner through the intersection and onto some street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Brian’s heard this part of the city referred to as The Pit, and it’s easy to see why. The buildings are pretty decrepit, the streets are strewn with crap, and the streetlife has the look of chiller thriller go-go-go gangbangers.
    There are no street signs. The building numbers are either hidden somewhere behind steel grilles or mesh gratings or buried beneath about forty gazillion layers of multicolored and mostly illegible graffiti. Brian’s supervisor told him what to look for, but the only thing he really recognizes, as he turns onto the street, is the small group of Sisters Sinister gangers on the corner to his right, and the group of Blood Monkeys on the corner to his left. He’s seen them before on Staten Island and in Brooklyn, though what they’re doing here, in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, maybe two blocks from the elevated FDR Drive, he couldn’t guess. And he wouldn’t try to even if he could. The gangers look ugly as usual and they’re carrying submachine