"Who are you?" said Jo Tye, feeling the invader in her brain.
        "This will not hurt," said Lazimuth Ebroneluza.
        "But who are you?" said Jo, unable to stand upright any longer.
        "I will tell you a story," said Lazimuth Ebroneluza soothingly, as she poured herself into the waiting container.
        Poured herself? Was poured. She had no choice in the matter. The machineries had command of her volition. But it felt as if she acted, even if she was as much the acted upon.
        "Selyon," said Lazimuth, Lazimuth-who-was-becoming-Jo. "A maverick amongst the Ukram Dizin. He took control of our darshadeldi. And he transfigured us. He made us masters of the machineries of the Alajalenjis, then made our darshadeldi the controlling master of cosmic orders uncounted."        
        "Uncounted," murmured Jo, helplessly, feeling her nursery rhymes shredding.
        "After Selyon came to power," explained Lazimuth, "Our one virtual world came to control many virtual worlds."
        Dimly, she recollected. And recounted her own rise, her own transfiguration. She became an artist's assistant, a manipulator of universes: restructuring cosmic expanses in the spirit of doodling.   
        "And I am still wired into the, the machineries," said Lazimuth. "If I can escape back to where I came from, I can still control it all. The artist's palette, if you like. Even though our civilization was destroyed, went down to ruin."
        "How?" said Jo, sleepily. "The Mokrombis devoured Selyon, and his people became the slaves of the Mokrombis. The Mokrombis. The patrons of Obro Yelsan. He who became the ruler of Japan. Anyway. I became a slave of Obro Yelsan. I kept my powers because my powers were not suspected. Maybe I even forgot them myself — forgot I was wired into the machineries. It was a time of — of unimaginable traumas."
        "So you were a slave."
        "Yes. Until we broke out of jail together."
        "Together?" said Jo. "I never did anything together with you."
        "Oh, not you," said Lazimuth. "Me and the man. Together. And the resistance helped us. Get as far as. Here."
        And, ready now for what was to come, Lazimuth Ebroneluza began to integrate herself with the physical substance of her new surroundings. And Jo Tye was torn apart, screaming. And, caught in the backwash of that dissolution, Lazimuth felt herself began to come apart too.
        "No!" she screamed, fighting.
        But she, too, was now being torn apart, her own consciousness blurred into that of her victim, her own memories —
        "The Numbers of the Sun!" said Lazimuth. "Remember the Numbers of the Sun!"
        

        He dreamt he was on a train somewhere in Japan. But what was a train? At first, he could not remember. Then the relevant data started to surface. The data was thick and murky, and it tasted confusingly of coffee and unripe peaches.
        A train. A train is a set of interlinked vehicles which moves along rails known as tracks. Commonly pulled by a steam engine. The steam engine was invented by Robert Louis Stevenson.
        Wrong! Error was made of mud. It had octopus suckers. He could hardly breathe. My data has been corrupted!
        The steam engine was invented by —
        By Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
        Wrong!          
        Struggling to remember, Daniel woke. He found himself sitting in a train which was rattling through a nondescript urban landscape. Probably he'd missed his stop, had gone way past Tamagawa —
        "Hiyoshi," said the intercom.
        Hiyoshi? A name of dread: the site of Hiyoshi Castle, the stronghold from which Obro Yelsan ruled over the radioactive ruins of Japan. And there it was! Up on the heights! The familiar barracks and battlements of Hiyoshi Castle, which was —
        Gone, as the train plunged into an underground station, as plunging sleep —
        "No," said Daniel. "I must not sleep."
        But uncontrollable sleep dragged him down into darkness.
        When he woke, the train was pulling into Yokohama.
        "My tenses are damaged," he muttered.
        Narcolepsy. A common side-effect of surfacing. Generally transitory — usually, the narcoleptic episodes ceased after the first week or so.
        "Now you've got to find a train going back toward Tokyo," said Daniel. "Get off at Tamagawa, then find your way to Nirvana House."
        "Oh, so it can speak," said the chic and slinky mid-twenties Japanese woman setting next to him.
        Daniel was as shocked as if a piece of the scenery had jumped up and bitten him. For a start, one datum which was firmly in his possession was the fact that absolutely nobody in Japan could speak any English whatsoever.
        "Who are you?" said Daniel.
        "What do you mean, who am I?" said the woman. "First you stand me up, then you don't phone, then you ignore me when I sit down beside you, and now you do this bizarro role play thing."
        Bizarro? Was that English? Daniel didn't think so. And who was this woman? He had never met her before in his life. But someone had. The previous occupant of this brain had. And, mistily, he seemed to recall ...
        "Naomi," he said, in wonderment.
        "No," said the woman. "That's not your line. Your line goes like this: Naomi, Naomi, my dearest Naomi, I'm terribly, terribly sorry, and I promise you that nothing like this will ever happen again. Well? Daniel! Don't just sit there! I've given you your line: now let's hear you say it."
         

        By the time Daniel and Naomi reached Nirvana House, Daniel had come to the conclusion that they must be sharing the same room. He liked the idea. He had endured too much by way of hardship and suffering. There were vast carousing pressures inside him — a wish to break loose, to whoop and holler, to unleash the animal.
        But Naomi checked him when he tried to enter her room.
        "Daniel! I've told you! No! You're not coming in here until you've divorced her! And that's that!"
        Divorce. Divorce implied marriage. So I'm married? How did that happen? Well, figure that one out later ...
        Naomi's door having closed in his face, Daniel went in search of his own. He did this by going along the corridor sticking his key into locks until he found one that turned. Now let's hope that this isn't just a coincidence of keys ...
        Daniel looked both ways, checking the corridor. Clear. He pushed the door open.
        Inside, darkness. Heat. A pit of sweat and shadow. He pulled back the curtain, startling a cockroach, which fled. A flash of memory: the sweating walls of the starvation cell. In the prison known as Oubliette. Where he had eaten a cockroach, crunching its twitching resistance between his teeth. And, later, the lizard. The lizard. Real meat! An absolute luxury.
        Daniel switched on the fan, surveyed the room. Books. Many. An intellectual's room. So that was what he had become, in this lifeline: an intellectual. Wonderingly, he let his hands linger on the books, touching, with reverence, Lafcadio Hearn's "On Poets", Joshua Whatmough's "Dialects of Ancient Gaul", Yoshimura's "Tibetan-Japanese Dictionary", and a pamphlet by one Sylvan Cohen entitled "Enjoy Your Goldfish" which was about ... goldfish, apparently.
        An intellectual. You became a goldfish-keeping intellectual. Not a killer, a convict, an executioner, a guerilla warrior, a member of the resistance. In this world, no beatings, no starvation, no jailhouse rape, no Obro Yelsan.
        Obro Yelsan.
        Obro Yelsan is the ruler of Japan, and Geoff Lan is his agent. And Geoff Lan knows you have just come through. Geoff Lan knows you are a member of the resistance. He knows you either have or are seeking the Numbers of the Sun, the Numbers which are Seven. He doesn't yet know that the first of the Seven Numbers is the actual number seven itself.
        These thoughts came swirling up from the great gulf of the lost twenty years.
        Careful. If you remember too much all at once, you'll go mad. You have to sleep.
        A desktop computer.
        He switched it on.
        The screen came up with an unfamiliar version of the iconic desktop concept. He scanned the icons then clicked on a little itty bitty picture of what looked like an open diary. The hard drive chuckled and an appointment diary appeared on the screen, open at today's date. There were three notes.
        "1. Back from mtns by 1000 latest. Phone Jim about the horse — must call by 1100.
        "2. Pay ur med. insurance today. You abs. MUST do this!!!
        "3. Shinobu 7 pm — ecstasy."
        Well, Jim was out of luck, and so was the horse — it was far too late for that phone call, whatever it was. As for the insurance, he would just have to live without it. But this Shinobu — a girlfriend? He remembered ... yes, somewhere in his past there had been a girl called Shinobu, with long dark hair ... a soft voice.
        Maybe the woman he was destined to divorce. But — who says that divorce is compulsory?
        "Seven o'clock, huh?" said Daniel. "Guess I've got time to get some wine."
        Plenty of time: it was still early in the afternoon.
        

        The problem with Daniel's room was that there was no sink. So, being thirsty, he found his way to the kitchen, meaning to get a glass of water. The kitchen was empty, unless you counted the fat and thirtyish Japanese guy who was sitting at the table.
        "Hi, Dan," said the Japanese guy, who apparently counted himself.
        "Hi," said Daniel, cautiously.
        The Japanese guy giggled. "A question for you," said Giggling Boy.
        "Okay," said Daniel.
        "Imagine there's a man in a burning house," said Giggling Boy.
        "Okay," said Daniel.
        "Now," said Giggling Boy, "in the house there's a baby. There's also a famous picture — let's say it's the Mona Lisa."
        Daniel could see exactly what was coming next, but he decided to play along.
        "So what's the Mona Lisa doing in the house?" he said.
        "It was stolen," said Giggling Boy. "Now, my question is — "
        But that was when they were interrupted by a Mormon missionary type, starched and clean-shaven.
        "Hi, Dan," said the newcomer. "How's it going?"   
        "Okay," said Daniel, cautiously.
        At which the stranger smiled, delighted.
        "You don't remember me, do you? You've just come through, haven't you?"
        "I don't know what you're talking about," said Daniel.
        "Have it your way," said the stranger. "My name's Geoff Lan, by the way. Suppose you tell me the numbers, Daniel?"
        "Numbers?"
        "The Seven Numbers of the Sun."
        "One two three four five six seven," said Daniel, trying to make a joke of it. "There? Happy?"
        "We will have the numbers, you know," said Geoff Lan. "One way or the other."
        "The hard way or the easy way," said Daniel, automatically.
        "As Obro Yelsan always says," confirmed Geoff.
        Obro Yelsan.
        The name, spoken, had more power than the same name echoed in the realms of imagination. Daniel staggered.
        "Think I've got a headache," he muttered. "Hangover, I mean."
        Masking. Concealing. Struggling to fight against revelation. He was remembering. Too much, too fast.
        He had escaped from Oubliette, together with Lazimuth Ebroneluza. But their escape had been suspiciously easy. So, after Daniel and Lazimuth Ebroneluza had made their way to Lazimuth's secret data stash, and had retrieved the jump code, they had not jumped. No. If they had jumped, then Obro Yelsan's secret watchers would surely have followed them, locating and destroying the hideout.
        Instead, they had sought help from the resistance. And the resistance had helped them make an intermediate jump, and had helped them temporarily lose their own identities in the process to confuse any hunt.
        And, motivated by a need for self-protection, had implanted the self-destruct codes which would unravel their minds into madness unless they were on their way soon.
        "You did that to me?" said Daniel, bleakly.
        "Me?" said Geoff. "I haven't done anything. Yet."
        But Daniel was no longer in a dialog with Geoff Lan. Instead, he was locked up in his own internal processes.
        Yes. The resistance had. He was primed to self-destruct unless he made the next step. Soon. A necessary precaution. Because, if Obro Yelsan ever got his hands on Daniel Ashrami, then Daniel would confess everything, of a certainty. Nobody could stand against the strength of Oubliette when Oubliette got serious.
        So — how much time did he have left?
        He could not remember.
        But he was sure it was not much.
        But what good would it do, now, if he did find the Seven Numbers of the Sun? Obro Yelsan's people had found him already. And who could he turn to for help? The American Embassy? The Japanese police?
        Hi, I'm a refugee from a different world, and I need your help ...
        "See you later," said Giggling Boy, as Daniel staggered out of the kitchen, trying to keep himself from fainting.
        "Or even sooner than that," said Geoff Lan, speaking to Daniel's retreating back. "Remember, Daniel. You can run, and you can hide, but we already know where you're running, and we're already waiting in the place where you mean to hide."
        

        One bottle of wine led to another, and then Shinobu suggested they go out drinking.
        Go out drinking? A totally reckless thing to do.
        But Daniel, heavy with the oppressions of years of prison and suffering, was in a mood for dance, song, music. For riotous gaiety. The hell with this angels and gods business. He was human, and he had a right to live a little — didn't he? Yes, he did. Someone had told him that once.
        "Sure," said Daniel. "Let's go."
        One thing led to another, and Daniel ended up winning a joyful fistfight in the entertainment district of Kabukicho, after which — the last train having long since departed, Shinobu having vanished, and Daniel being too drunk to give instructions to a taxi driver — he checked into a capsule hotel.
        When Daniel finally rolled up to the Shibuya branch of Hello Japan, in time to start his afternoon shift, he checked the roster, and found that Jo Tye had been scheduled for a morning shift. All going well, she should have one lesson to go before she left the premises.
        "Jo Tye?" said Roldo Free, when Daniel asked.
        "Yes," said Daniel. "The new recruit."
        "She's already gone home," said Roldo. "Couldn't handle a full shift. I think we're going to have problems with that one."
        And that was when recollection struck.
        Seven. Nine. Seven. Zero. Now Daniel knew.
        The numbers in his possession where the first, third, fifth and seventh, and they were, respectively, seven, nine, seven and zero. The complete sequence, the Seven Numbers of the Sun, was an access code which would take Daniel and Josephine to a world beyond this world, to a place of refuge which Obro Yelsan had not yet succeeded in locating.
        "Are you all right?" said Roldo, looking at him curiously.
        "I," said Daniel, "had a really hard night last night."
        

        Jo woke with her head wet with sweat. Her pillow was sodden. Summer had heated her room all through the long hours of daylight. Now she was dehydrated, dizzy with loss of fluids. In the bathroom, she gulped harsh, chemical water directly from the tap. In the kitchen, the seven pm news was coming on. She had been asleep since about midnight — had slept for nineteen hours solid.
        But that's not possible, is it?
        But you've just done it. Haven't you?
        "Hi."
        A big man, the prototype of all devil-worshippers, materializing out of the peripheral haze, solidifying himself from heat and nightmare.
        "Who?" said Jo, turning, reaching automatically for her shotgun, and panicking when it was nowhere to be found.
        No shotgun, no grenade, no cyanide tablet. What's gone wrong? Who are you?
        "I'll kill myself," warned Jo, bluffing with the standard threat of the cornered resistance member, which would have been no threat at all if she had had her grenade or her tablet.
        "Relax," said the man.
        Big and tall. Broad and dark. Smelling of marathon sweat, sweat dripping past his sweatband, purging down his face. Mad blue eyes staring. A flash of gold tooth, a rankness of old blood. He was dark, as dark as Wales: black hair, black beard and swarthy features. Gold on his hands, a flash of gold ring. And shockingly old: in his forties, at least.
        "Sorry," said Jo.
        Starting to remember, to recover herself. She was a member of the resistance and she had escaped from Obro Yelsan's Japan for a purpose. She could not afford to crack, to freak out, to break down, to blow it. She had to stay together, at all costs. She had come to Japan bearing a code. A code which —
        "Daniel Ashrami," said the big bearded John the Baptist madman, introducing himself.
        "Laz — no. Jo. I am. I am Jo Tye. Josephine Priscilla Tye. Not. Sorry. Sorry, I'm a bit ... anyway, I'm Jo."
        Jo Tye. Not Lazimuth Ebroneluza. You must not confess to being Lazimuth Ebroneluza. You are the last hope of the resistance. You have hidden your own identify from yourself as an act of self-preservation. You must not remember it too quickly.
        "I need the numbers," said Daniel Ashrami.
        "Numbers?" said Jo, startled.
        "The Seven Numbers of the Sun," said Daniel.
        And that was when Jo remembered. The second number was the number four. But she must preserve this secret with her life.
        "I," she said. "Work. Have to go."
        That blurted, she fled, bolting into the outside world.        

        On the train to Hiyoshi, Daniel wondered how exactly this was supposed to work. Precisely how did Geoff, Roldo and Naomi expect to compel Jo and Daniel to reveal the numbers?
        Daniel was still assuming that the enemy must be in the possession of concealed weapons. On that assumption, he had obeyed. But, before he would give up any code numbers, he would have to see the weapons. He would have to be forced.
        And if there were no weapons?
        Why, he was going to walk away, laughing.
        Because, after all, this was not Obro Yelsan's Japan. This was the Japan of McDonald's and KFC, which was an altogether different place entirely.
        Finally, they detrained at Hiyoshi. Beyond the ticket gates, the roofed plaza of a shopping center, ornamented with a huge glittering steel ball, an anonymous piece of modern sculpture.
        "Okay," said Roldo, smiling. "Now you tell us the numbers. Both of you. I think you both remember by now."
        "Why should I tell you anything?" said Jo.
        "Because you, Lazimuth Ebroneluza, are a polluted murderer," said Roldo. "You murdered Josephine Tye so you could steal her brain space."
        Jo stepped back as if slapped. And Daniel saw a tear come into her eye.
        "It's not that easy," said Daniel. "We're made of tougher stuff that."
        "Oh, sure," said Roldo. "Naomi — will you be the one, or will I?"
        "Me," said Naomi. She smiled. "Daniel — please remember your wife."
        And, on command, Daniel remembered. His wife had cancer: he abandoned her. Then things got suddenly tougher. He needed a sacrifice to throw to the security police. He needed a sacrifice to save his own life. He gave them his wife. Cold logic: she had no time anyway. It has seemed reasonable enough in the doing. After all, the security police had already torn out all his fingernails, one by one. And, that being Obro Yelsan's Japan, that was to be thought of as only a start.
        But now —
        Shocked by revelation, Daniel felt his breath stall in his lungs. Could not breathe for ten, twenty, thirty seconds. Heaved in air at last. It hurt. Hurt to breathe.
        What was he? What kind of polluted thing? He had fought with monsters, and had become a mirror-image of the thing he had fought against. His own wife ...
        "Daniel."
        A strong voice. Who? Shinobu. The fat Japanese guy. Giggling Boy. Mr Beer Belly Slob.
        "What are you doing here?" said Daniel, his voice slurred, like that of a man losing grip on consciousness.
        "Daniel," said Shinobu, "I have a question for you."
        "A question?" said Daniel, wondering.
        "Just this," said Shinobu. "Does the man really have to shoot the painting and throw acid on the baby?"
        "No," said Daniel.
        And Shinobu grabbed Geoff Lan and Roldo Free and cracked their heads together. They collapsed at his feet. Naomi ran. The random scattering of shoppers and students in the plaza rippled away in fear and panic.
        "Now go," said Shinobu.