several years-a situation that the Asian currency crisis has only worsened. He half expects to see executives dropping past the window.

Avi ventures to ask about various tunnels and other stupefyingly vast engineering projects that he happens to have noticed around Tokyo and whether Goto Engineering had anything to do with them. This at least gets the patriarch to glance up momentarily from his wine list, but the son handles the inquiries, allowing as how, yes, their company did play a small part in those endeavors. Randy figures that it's not the easiest thing in the world to engage a personal friend of the late General of the Army Douglas MacArthur in polite chitchat; it's not like you can ask him if he caught the latest episode of Star Trek: More Time-Space Anomalies.All they can really do is cling to Furudenendu and let him take the lead. Goto Dengo clears his throat like the engine of a major piece of earth-moving equipment rumbling to life, and recommends the Kobe beef. The sommelier comes around with the wines and Goto Dengo interrogates him in a mixture of Nipponese and French for a while, until a film of sweat has broken out on the sommelier's brow. He samples the wines very carefully. The tension is explosive as he swirls them around in his mouth, staring off into the distance. The sommelier seems genuinely startled, not to mention relieved, when he accepts both of them. The subtext here would seem to be that hosting a really first-class dinner is a not insignificant management challenge, and that Goto Dengo should not be bothered with social chatter while he is coping with these responsibilities.

At this point Randy's paranoia finally kicks in: is it possible that Goto-sama bought the whole restaurant out for the evening, just to get a little privacy? Were the two minions just aides with unusually bulky briefcases, or were they security, sweeping the place for surveillance devices? Again, subtext-wise, the message seems to be that Randy and Avi are not to worry their pretty, young little heads about these things. Goto Dengo is seated underneath a can light in the ceiling. His hair stands perpendicularly out from his head, a bristling stand of normal vectors, radiating halogenically. He has a formidable number of scars on his face and his hands, and Randy suddenly realizes that he must have been in the war. Which should've been perfectly obvious considering his age.

Goto Dengo inquires about how Randy and Avi got into their current lines of work, and how they formed their partnership. This is a reasonable question, but it forces them to explain the entire concept of fantasy role- playing games. If Randy had known this would happen, he would have thrown himself bodily through a window instead of taking a seat. But Goto Dengo takes it pretty calmly and instantly cross-correlates it to late-breaking developments in the Nipponese game industry, which has been doing this gradual paradigm shift from arcade to role-playing games with actual narratives; by the time he's finished he makes them feel not like lightweight nerds but like visionary geniuses who were ten years ahead of their time. This more or less obligates Avi (who is taking conversational point) to ask Goto Dengo how he got into hisline of work. Both of the Gotos try to laugh it off, as if how could a couple of young American visionary Dungeons and Dragons pioneers possibly be interested in something as trivial as how Goto Dengo singlehandedly rebuilt postwar Nippon, but after Avi displays a bit of persistence, the patriarch finally shrugs and says something about how his pop was in the mining racket and so he's always had a certain knack for digging holes in the ground. His English started out minimal and is getting better and better as the evening proceeds, as if he is slowly dusting off substantial banks of memory and processing power, nursing them on-line like tube amplifiers.

Dinner arrives; and so everyone has to eat for a bit, and to thank Goto-sama for his excellent recommendation. Avi gets a bit reckless and asks the old man if he might regale them with some reminiscences about Douglas MacArthur. He grins, as if some secret has been ferreted out of him, and says, 'I met the General in the Philippines.' Just like that, he's jujitsued the topic of conversation around to what everyone actually wants to talk about. Randy's pulse and respiration ratchet up by a good twenty-five percent and all of his senses become more acute, almost as if his ears have popped again, and he loses his appetite. Everyone else seems to be sitting up a bit straighter too, shifting in their chairs slightly. 'Did you spend much time in that country?' Avi asks.

'Oh, yes. Much time. A hundred years,' says Goto Dengo, with a rather frosty grin. He pauses, giving everyone a chance to get good and uneasy, and then continues, 'My son tells me that you want to dig a grave there.'

'A hole,' Randy ventures, after much uncomfortableness.

'Excuse me. My English is rusty,' says Goto Dengo, none too convincingly.

Avi says, 'What we have in mind would be a major excavation by our standards. But probably not by yours.'

Goto Dengo chuckles. 'That all depends on the circumstances. Permits. Transportation issues. The Crypt was a big excavation, but it was easy, because the sultan was supporting it.'

'I must emphasize that the work we are considering is still in a very early planning phase,' Avi says. 'I regret to say I can't give you good information about the logistical issues.'

Goto Dengo comes this close to rolling his eyes. 'I understand,' he says with a dismissive wave of the hand. 'We will not talk about these things this evening.'

This produces a really awkward pause, while Randy and Avi ask themselves what the hell are we going to talk about then?'Very well,' Avi says, sort of weakly lobbing the ball back in Goto Dengo's general direction.

Furudenendo steps in. 'There are many people who dig holes in the Philippines,' he explains with a big knowing wink.

'Ah!' Randy says. 'I have met some of the people you are talking about!' This produces a general outburst of laughter around the table, which is none the less sincere for being tense.

'You understand, then,' says Furudenendo, 'that we would have to study a joint venture very carefully.' Even Randy easily translates this to: we will participate in your loony-tunes treasure hunt when hell freezes over.

'Please!' Randy says, 'Goto Engineering is a distinguished company. Top of the line. You have much better things to do than to gamble on joint ventures. We would never propose such a thing. We would be able to pay for your services up front.'

'Ah!' The Gotos look at each other significantly. 'You have a new investor?' We know you are broke.Avi grins. 'We have new resources.' This leaves the Gotos nonplussed. 'If I may,' Avi says. He heaves his briefcase up off the floor and onto his lap, flips the latches open, and reaches into it with both hands. Then he performs a maneuver that, in a bodybuilding gym, would be called a barbell curl, and lifts a brick of solid gold into the light.

The faces of Goto Dengo and Goto Furudenendo are transmuted to stone. Avi holds the bar up for a few moments, then lowers it back into his briefcase.

Eventually, Furudenendo scoots his chair back a couple of centimeters and rotates it slightly toward his father, basically excusing himself from the conversation. Goto Dengo eats dinner and drinks wine calmly, and silently, for a very, very long fifteen or twenty minutes. Finally, he looks across the table at Randy and says, 'Where do you want to dig?'

'The site is in mountains south of Laguna de Bay-'

'Yes, you already told my son that. But that is a large area of boon docks. Many holes have been dug there. All worthless.'

'We have better information.'

'Some old Filipino has sold you his memories?'

'Better than that,' Randy says. 'We have a latitude and longitude.'

'To what degree of precision?'

'Tenths of a second.'

This occasions another pause. Furudenendo tries to say something in Nipponese, but his father cuts him off gruffly. Goto Dengo finishes his dinner and crosses his fork and knife on the plate. A waiter's there five seconds later to clear the table. Goto Dengo says something to him that sends him fleeing back into the kitchen. They have essentially a whole floor of the skyscraper to themselves now. Goto Dengo utters something to his son, who produces a fountain pen and two business cards. Furudenendo hands the pen, and one card, to his father, and the other card to Randy. 'Let's play a little game,' Goto Dengo says. 'You have a pen?'

'Yes,' Randy says.

'I am going to write down a latitude and longitude,' Goto Dengo says, 'but only the seconds portion. No degrees and no minutes. Only the seconds part. You understand?'

'Yes.'

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