There was no need to ask where they were heading.

"Forced march, Sire?"

"Yes. No further talking. Lead off!" A hundred and twenty leagues, ten or eleven days, he thought. Then Kyoto and the Gates.

My Gates.

YOKOHAMA In the late afternoon of the same day Hiraga ducked into the lee of a shack on the edge of Drunk Town where a small, grimy sailor waited nervously. "Gimme the money, mate," the man said. "You got it, eh?"

"Yes. Gun p'rease?"

"One day you's a toff, now you's a poxy nuffink." The man was grizzled-faced and suspicious, a wicked knife in his belt, another in a forearm holster. When Hiraga had first talked to him on the beach, he had been wearing his Tyrer-arranged clothes. Today he wore a dirty laborer's woolen smock, coarse trousers and scuffed boots. "Wot's yor game?"

Hiraga shrugged, not understanding him. "Gun, p'rease."

"Gun is it? I's the gun right enough." The shifty little eyes darted around, across the weed-infested, scrap heap strewn area between Drunk Town and the Japanese village-- called No Man's Land by the locals--but could sense no alien watchers. "Where's brass?" he said sullenly, "The money for crissake, the Mex!"

Hiraga reached into the pocket of the smock, everything feeling uncomfortable and outlandish, the clothes bought especially for today. Three Mexican silver dollars glittered in his hand.

"Gun, p'rease."

Impatiently the sailor reached into his shirt and showed the Colt. "You gets it when I gets the money."

"Bu'rret, p'rease?"

A filthy rag from the man's trouser pocket revealed a dozen or so cartridges. "A bargin's a bargin and me word's me word." The sailor reached for the money but before he could take it Hiraga's hand closed.

"Not sto'ren, yes?"

"'course not stole, come on for crissake!"

Hiraga opened his fist. Greedily the coins were grabbed and examined carefully to ensure they were not clipped or forged, all the time the crafty eyes darting this way and that. When he was satisfied he passed over the Colt and bullets and got up. "Don't get caught with it, matey, or you'll swing, 'course it's stolen." He leered and scuttled away like the rat he resembled.

Hiraga hunched down as he went back to the comparative safety of the Japanese village-- safe only so long as the riffraff and drunks did not decide to rampage. There were no police or sentries to protect the villagers. Only an occasional naval or army patrol passed along their main street and these men rarely took their side in any ruckus.

It had taken Hiraga many days to arrange the purchase--naturally he could not ask Tyrer's assistance. No one in the Yoshiwara possessed one. Raiko had said queasily: "Only gai-jin have them, Hiraga-san, so sorry.

Dangerous for civilized person to be caught with one."

Akimoto said with a grin, "If my cousin wants one, then get him one, Raiko! You can do anything, neh? For payment I will take you to bed without fee..." He ducked as she threw a cushion at him, laughing with him.

Raiko said, fanning herself, "Ah Hiraga-san, so sorry, I beg you to take this naughty man away, two of my girls have already demanded a day off to sooth their yin from the onslaught of his yang..."

When they were alone, Akimoto said seriously, "Perhaps you should change your mind, forget the gun.

Let me try and persuade Ori to meet us here."

Hiraga shook his head, glad for the company of his good-natured cousin. "Ori has a gun, he will use it against us the moment he sees us. I have tried every way to snare him out of Drunk Town and failed. If I ambush him with a gun, there, it will seem a gai-jin did it. Any day he will try to get at that girl again and then I'm finished here."

"Perhaps he will tire of waiting. Every man in the village has been told to watch out for him, and no one is to sneak him in by sea."

"Who dare trust a villager?"' Akimoto said heavily, "Then when you get a gun, let me do it." He was much bigger than Hiraga. Not recognizing him when he arrived, he too had cut his hair in similar fashion.

Eventually Hiraga had accosted the sailor on the beach, pretending to be a visiting Chinese trader from Hong Kong and had struck a deal, his only proviso that the gun should not be stolen. But of course it would be stolen...

Akimoto was waiting for him in their dwelling in a village alley they now rented by the month.

"Eeee, Cousin, please excuse me," he said laughing, "no need to ask if you got it, but you look so funny in those clothes, if our shishi comrades could see you..."

Hiraga shrugged. "This way I can pass for any of the gai-jin coolies, wherever they come from.

All kinds of gai-jin and coolies dress like this in Drunk Town." He eased himself more comfortably, sore in the crotch. "I cannot understand how they can wear such heavy clothes and cramping trousers and tight coats all the time--and when it's hot, eeee, they're terrible, and you sweat a fountain." While he talked he checked the action of the Colt, testing its weight, aiming it. "It's heavy."

"Sak`e?"

"Thank you, then I think I will rest till sunset." He loaded the revolver, swigged some sak`e and lay down, pleased with himself. His eyes closed. He began to meditate. When at peace he let himself drift. In moments he slept.

At sunset he awoke. Akimoto was still on guard. He looked out of the tiny window. "No storm or rain tonight," he said, then pulled out a scarf and tied it around his head as he had seen low-class gai-jin and sailors do.

Suddenly Akimoto was filled with dread. "And now?"

"Now," he said, hiding the gun under his belt, "now for Ori. If I do not return, you kill him."

Most villagers on the streets did not recognize him, the few who did bowed nervously as to a gai-jin and not a samurai as they had been ordered. In his European attire to most gai-jin eyes, he would be just another Eurasian or Chinese trader from Hong Kong or Shanghai or Manila the quality of his clothes and bearing foretelling his position and wealth: "but never forget, Nakama-san," Tyrer had warned him continually, "however rich you appear, smart clothes won't protect you from harassment or insults from riffraff if you go alone into Drunk Town, or anywhere."

The first time he had gone looking for Ori, the moment the shoya had told him Ori had disobeyed him, he had stormed into Drunk Town wearing his Tyrer clothes. Almost at once he had been cornered by a rowdy group of drunks who surrounded him, jeering and cursing him, then started to attack. Only his skill in karate, still an unknown art to gai-jin, had saved him and he had retreated seething, two broken heads and another man crippled in his wake.

"Find out exactly where Ori is! At once," he had told the shoya. "What he's doing and how he's living!"

The next evening the shoya drew a rough map: "The house is here, on this corner facing the sea, near some wharfs. It is a drinking-sleeping house for very low persons. Ori-san rents a room, paying double I was told. Very bad that place, Hiraga-san, always full of evil men. You cannot go there without a special plan. It is important he is sent away?"' "Yes. Your village is at risk with him here."

"So ka!"

Two days later the shoya told him that, in the night, the Ori house had burned down, the remains of three men had been found in the ruins.

"I was told "the native" was one, Hiraga-san," the shoya said easily.

"A pity the whole foul area was not destroyed too, and every gai-jin in it."

"Yes."

So life became calm again. Hiraga continued to spend time with Tyrer, content to learn and to teach, unaware how vastly important and informative his knowledge was to Tyrer, Sir William and Jamie McFay. For half a day he had gone aboard the British frigate with Tyrer. The experience had shaken him and made him more determined than ever to find out how these people he despised could invent and make such unbelievable machines and warships, how such despicable people of such a tiny island, smaller than Nippon--if again Tyrer was to be believed --could have acquired the vast wealth necessary to possess so many ships and armies and factories and, at the same time, rule all sea-lanes and much of the gai-jin world.