“Okay, sure,” Kevin said. “We’ve got the holiday weekend coming up. I’ll tell Taki about it, and we’ll see what we can do.”
Kevin’s answer had been mechanical. The eagerness with which he would normally have greeted such a suggestion was noticeably absent.
Ohira rubbed below an ear with a finger and contemplated him in silence. “There’s something the matter, isn’t there?” he said finally.
“What makes you say that?”
“Oh, some of this experience that I have that’s worth something, and you don’t have yet. You think more than usual, but you say less than usual. For the kind of person you are, that says there’s a lot that would like to come out. If you and Taki want to tell me about it, that’s all right.”
Kevin bit his lip. He wanted to talk, even to somebody that he couldn’t immediately see as in a position to be of help . . . but not without Taki around. And even then, the thought of Corfe’s likely reaction was enough to make him not want to think further.
“Is it about Eric’s company?” Ohira said after a pause. “I know that certain people have been giving him problems lately.”
Kevin shook his head. “Thanks. . . . But it’s nothing really.”
Ohira’s wide, strangely flat eyes lingered over him for several seconds longer, giving him the eerie feeling that they were able to read everything for themselves anyway. At length Ohira nodded. “If that is what you wish,” he said. “But remember always that you are family here now as much as Taki is, just as your father treats Taki the same as you. And that means you have many friends who are here to help if there is trouble. We Japanese families look after our own.”
“I’ll remember that,” Kevin promised.
Ohira looked at him for a moment longer, then nodded. “So go and make us a good movie, eh?” he said, standing up. “Maybe first we show it to some of that bunch in the next room. Let’s see if you can get them really screaming.”
Taki reappeared a short while later, and he and Kevin went down to Taki’s workshop. As a test, and on the offchance that the time might be right to learn something new, Kevin used the coupler there to see if he could activate the relay that he had concealed in the trunk of the Jaguar—wherever it was. The relay responded, and moments later Kevin connected himself to Mr. Toad, one of the two mecs that he had left along with it.
The link functioned just fine. He emerged from the mec box and discerned immediately from the sound and intermittent lurching that the car was moving. Warily, he crossed through the space above the trunk and came up behind the rear seat cushion. The interior of the Jaguar loomed above him in shadow like the Hagia Sophia of Istanbul. Outside, it was dark, with not much in the way of other traffic or street lights. There was nobody in either of the rear seats, just a folded coat and the form of a briefcase, rectangular and clifflike, outlined above him in the gloom. By intensifying his vision, he was able to see sufficiently to follow the base of the seat-back to the corner. From there, using his back and legs like a rock climber negotiating a chimney, he wedged his way up the space between the seat and the car wall to the window ledge. As he gained height, he could see Vanessa in the front seat, driving. She was alone. The same feeling of unreality that had affected him before in the yacht, at “being present” as part of events happening miles away, seized him again. Outside was just darkness, trees rushing through the light from the headlamps. Taki was following on the monitor but not making any inane remarks this time.
Then Kevin felt himself thrown forward, then sideways, as the car slowed and made a turn—barely managing to jam a hand into the crack between the window glass and the sill in time to avoid being dislodged completely. Now there was light ahead, with dark shadows of what looked like trees on both sides. He braced himself more securely and turned toward the glass. Where would he find himself this time? . . .