While driving home under ominously gray skies, I find myself thinking about Melshu. A problem. As Mitodarni says, we need to ask the Family Court to tells us whether Melshu should or should not be regarded as an Udamana. If the answer is yes, then, as a member of the generation aged sixty and over, Melshu will be entitled to half the money which currently looks as if it's heading in Aunt Chariot's direction.
        Egishi probably expects to inherit most of what goes to Aunt Chariot, if not all of it, so if the Family Court were to rule that Melshu was entitled to a cut then that would, at the very least, make Egishi unhappy. Bad. Egishi, when unhappy, tends to make other people unhappy. And what would Melshu do with so much money in any case? Buy himself enough liquor to swim in?
        "It would be infinitely convenient if Melshu died," I say to myself.
        That's a wicked thought and I don't endorse it. The idea came out of nowhere and does not meet with my approval. There's a proposition in ethics, which I agree with, which says you're not responsible for any hypothetical scenario which comes drifting into your mind as long as you don't yes vote it, and I'm certainly not going to yes vote this one.
        "However," I say, "it is the case that Melshu has lived his years."
        If Melshu were to expire of sheer old age -- an event which at this stage is centuries overdue -- then that would be a little sad but no tragedy.
        It's close to twelve noon when, still brooding about Melshu, I arrive back at the Older House in the car. To my surprise, someone has parked a utility van in front of the garage. A new vehicle, painted bright yellow, with a sign painted on the side identifying it as the property of Dewate Menhogo Sheathings, a roofing company.
        Since the Older House has been sitting empty for years, it probably needs work done to the roof. Is someone from Dewate Menhogo Sheathings possibly nosing around outside the place, prospecting for possible business? That reminds me: I haven't been inside the building for months, even though I keep telling myself that I should inspect it for leaks and other damage. Well, if we can sell our land then the Older House will become someone else's problem.
        I lean on the horn, giving a prolonged, sustained blast. As if in response, my cellphone rings, filling the car with the hooting of a howler monkey.
        Being as old as I am, I can remember the days when a telephone had only one way to ring. It's only in the last year that I have begun to program my cellphone so unique ring jingles are associated with certain numbers. So far I've only made a few such associations, but one that was irresistible was, for Tanto, the hooting of a howler monkey.
        "Yes?" I say, answering the phone.
        "Yeah, uh ... dad, I got a message for you," says Tanto.
        "Okay," I say.
        "This is the message," says Tanto. "Do as you're told or we'll cut his fingers off."
        "Say what?" I say, puzzled, confused and already a little bit angry.
        "This is not, like, a stunt," says Tanto, picking up on the fact that I (not unreasonably) suspect him of engaging in a piece of idiot teenage foolery. "This, uh, guy, some man, I don't know him, I got this call on my phone, and he asked for you. I said I was at school so he gave me the message to pass on to you. He had me write it down."
        "And you're at school now?"
        "Yes."
        "Run through this thing from the beginning. You were at school and your phone rang. Right?"
        "Yes," says Tanto. "We were in the locker room, changing after gym."
        He goes through the sequence with me step by step. A message from a stranger. "Do as you're told or we'll cut his fingers off." Whose fingers, then, are "his" fingers? Is this a threat against my son?
        "Okay," I say, at last. "Thanks for passing on the message."
        And I ring off.
        Do as you're told. Do what? And who is doing the telling? This is a prank call, right? But why ring Tanto instead of phoning me direct? My cellphone number is no secret: it's on our web site.
        "Someone is threatening my son," I say.
        That is the only way I can construe it.
        That's when a man comes into sight, coming round the side of the Older House. A guy in his fifties wearing work boots and dirty denims. Maybe the driver of the utility van which is blocking my garage. I get out of the car to meet him. He's got a bristly growth of beard, as if he hasn't shaved for a week, and he smells of whiskey.
        "Yes?" he says.
        "Your vehicle?" I say, indicating the utility van.
        "Yes," he says, wiping his hand across the back of his mouth. "You want to charge me rent or you want me to go?"
        "Go would suit me fine," I say.
        There's room enough for him to back the utility van into the road without me shifting my car. When he's on the road, ready to leave, he bangs his hand on the roof of his vehicle and shouts at me.
        "Hey!" he shouts.
        "What?" I say.
        "Come here!" he shouts.
        This is rude and aberrant. Is the guy dangerous? He's been drinking, certainly, but I don't think he's drunk. Safest to humor him, maybe. I approach the vehicle and walk round to the driver's side, careful not to get close enough for him to grab me. He grins, showing teeth which are yellow with nicotine.
        "Have you opened it?" he asks.
        "Opened what?" I say.
        "The package," he says.
        "What package?" I ask, getting louder as I get angry. "Who are you and what is this about?"
        "Doesn't matter who I am," he says. "The package, that's what matters. Might be your son's fingers inside. Next time."
        Then he laughs, harshly, like a malfunctioning machine, and spins the tyres on the damp road as he drives off. Fingers inside. And what message did Tanto get? "We'll cut his fingers off." Whose fingers? Whiskey Breath has just told me. It's as I suspected. Tanto's fingers. They -- whoever "they" is -- have made a threat against my son.
        "He has made a threat," I say firmly, insisting on a singular "he" rather than a plural "they".
        It would be irresponsible to conjure a mysterious confederate "they" out of my imagination when I've only seen one shabby drunk with work boots and dirty fingernails.
        What was the name of the roofing company? Dewate. Dewate Menhogo Sheathings, that's right. And the phone number? It was 976-22 ... something. It was on the side of the vehicle and I did take a good look but the sequence slipped my mind as the vehicle drove off. Is that senility in action or merely my short term memory functioning deficiently as usual? Well, no problem. I phone Directory Service and get the rest of the telephone number. Then I phone the roofing company and demand to speak to the manager, who shortly tells me that the utility vehicle I saw was stolen from the company's premises last night.
        So there you are, then. The guy who threatened me may not even have his own car. For all I know, he could be a homeless person. I find myself upset that my enemy (and surely I must construe this tipsy crank as an enemy) has so little class. I want my foes to come from the upper orders. To be immaculate in power suits, chunky gold Gelvetica Dorf watches on their wrists. This thought is absurd but undeniable.
        "The perfect product of a consumer society," I say, denouncing my own elitist urges.
        Maybe that's why Helena likes those dreadful vampire comics she reads. The bad guys, the demonic blood-drinkers, are so patently upmarket, ostentatiously glossy with wealth. Vampiric evil is affluent, never having to worry about credit card limits.
        But I don't have a classy enemy. I'm stuck with this downmarket personage from skid row with his meaningless babble about fingers and packages. Maybe you can go online somewhere and click on something to upgrade to a classier adversary. Or click on something else and get the mysteries explained to you, the leading mystery being the business of the "package".
        What package could Whiskey Breath possibly have been talking about? I know nothing about any package. So the smart thing is to shut down my fantasy facility, put Whiskey Breath out of mind and count the incident as closed.
        So thinking, I put the car away in the garage then cut through the grounds of Permutation Lodge, which brings me to Jalsinkoola Lane and the Moss Mansion's gate. The gate, once white, has gone gray with age, and is scabbed with corrosion. How shabby it looks! The post which sustains the dark green letterbox is canted over at an angle, and has been for months. Yet another thing I've been meaning to have fixed -- I think it's on a to-do list that I made last month and subsequently went and lost.
        Ah! Now I remember! It's the gate and the letterbox which trigger the memory. This morning I took receipt of a package from a motorbike courier. Right here at the gate. And it's still in the car's glove compartment.
        Back at the car, I retrieve the package from the glove compartment and carry it out into the daylight. What could it be? I shake it. A bomb? Well, if it's a bomb, it didn't go off. I open it, with childish thoughts of chocolate dancing in my head. It's the right size and weight to be a bar of chocolate.
        But it's not chocolate.
        Rather, it's a bar of dog food, a Wangabu Authigobibar, rich in vitamins and minerals and complete with "authentic rhinoceros flavor". Really? Well, why not? These days, I guess you can synthesize anything, even rhinoceros flavor.
        Snugged in beside the bar of dog food is a single sheet of paper. When opened, it proves to be a letter which appears to be the output of a laser printer. The font is Boshimoto Clarified, the standard typeface used for almost all business correspondence. The message is anonymous, unsigned. The text is, at one and the same time, very simple and yet cryptic.
        "Ken: you know how it is, right? We're lined up for a contract. We're buying the Udamana land. Four hundred million. That's fair, I think. You'll get your share. Don't try to rejig the deal. We expect to sign a contract at the agreed price. Next week. If the price jumps, someone will be jumping off a cliff. Oh, and remember that you only have ten fingers."
        This both does and does not make sense.
        Suppose someone had lined up a deal to acquire our land for the bargain price of four hundred million. If so, then they'd naturally be upset if I jumped in to insist on a payment of (at a bare minimum!) five hundred million. However, since I'm the only person authorized to sell the land, no such four hundred million deal can be in the offing.
        "Let's get this sorted out," I say.
        First, I phone Atakana, tell him what's happened, and ask if he could possibly have said something to someone which might have been misconstrued as an offer to make a deal. No, he says. He'd never make that kind of mistake. The land deal is mine to manage and he has no intention of messing with it. That's what I expected to hear, but, given Atakana's history of alcoholism and general unreliability, I had to make sure.
        My next call is to the police. On the phone, I explain what happened and what I want. I want them to find out who paid Prompt Com Nizon to deliver the threat package by courier. Additionally, I want them to interrogate the telephone company and discover exactly who it was who phoned my son. As far as I'm concerned, the "jumping off a cliff" comment represents a murder threat, and I expect the police to take this seriously.
        The good news is that the first law enforcement officer I get to speak to on the phone confirms that, yes, I'm very sensible to take this seriously. The bad news is that the process then starts to become complicated and time-consuming.
        In a convenient world, it would be possible to transact this piece of business over the telephone, but I end up having to drive to the Oikura Police Station to sign a formal written statement. At least it's close: you only have to drive down Travahimamak Road as far as the Infinite Turtle, hang a left, then carry on down Oskayamodo Straightway past Gryptacom and past the Yaplama, and the cop shop is on your right.
        At the police station, Chobber, our assigned patrolman, is absent. He's busy elsewhere, sorting out a domestic dispute. So I end up dealing with a police officer who goes by the name of Agawa.
        Unavoidably, I have to fill Agawa in about the Udamana money situation, otherwise the statement about "buying the Udamana land" will not make sense. Making these disclosures gives me a sense of being violated, even though I'm doing so at my own volition. Our family privacy is being crowbarred open. It's not a pleasant experience.
        I can see how we must look from the police officer's perspective. Like a bunch of greedy children eyeing the big fat creamy slices of the money cake, each of us determined to get our hands on the biggest piece. Well. That's human nature, isn't it? Nothing to be ashamed of. But I am ashamed.
        With the background filled in, Agawa is able to get to work. Who originated the couriered package? Agawa gets a quick answer from Prompt Com Nizon. Someone turned up at the courier company's central depot and paid cash to have the package delivered, giving the return address as Atakana Udamana, The Tokugawa Nashamori, Jalsinkoola Lane.
        "My brother's name and address," I say. "I've already spoken with my brother about this. He says he has nothing to do with this."
        "Well, we can phone him later," says Agawa.
        Next, Agawa asks me for Tanto's cellphone number. He punches it into his computer and finds that Tanto is a customer of Javajapriko Nizon, a telecommunications company which has been in the news recently for its aggressive efforts to target the teenage market. A little more keyboard work, and Agawa has on his computer screen a list of all the numbers which have called Tanto's phone today, and, additionally, all the numbers he has phoned.
        A few years back, Agawa would have needed a warrant to get this data. But the magic monster word, "terrorism", has seen a lot of law changes in Nizon. As a nation, when it comes to terror we've got off lightly compared to Merlercia. But the fear dynamic has still been doing its work, revising our consensual reality. It's a little scary to see this police power in action. Whatever happened to the notion of privacy? Still, under the circumstances, it's convenient.
        Tanto's had quite a few phone calls today: kids are always phoning each other. The likeliest candidate for the "fingers" call came in at 11:50. That call was followed almost immediately by a call from Tanto to my own cellphone. With Agawa watching, I phone Tanto and confirm that, yes, 11:50 was about when the "we'll cut his fingers off" call came through. Tanto phoned me almost immediately after getting that call.
        "So let's see who this number belongs to," says Agawa.
        And hits a button, which brings us to a dead end: the number belongs to a prepaid cellphone, one of those things you can buy at any convenience store with no paperwork and no questions asked.
        Then Agawa asks me the logical questions. Have there been any other threats? Who do you know who might plan to threaten your son? And what is the story with this land deal?
        We've already been over the land deal but Agawa wants to go over it again, which makes me glad I told the truth the first time round. Otherwise I'd be having difficulty keeping track of my lies. Then Officer Agawa returns to the question of phoning my brother Atakana to ask what he knows of this.
        "I've already spoken to my brother," I say.
        "So you've told me," says Agawa. "But I still think I should touch base with him."
        That's logical enough. From a police officer's point of view, me interrogating my brother is not the same as the police interrogating him. So I can hardly protest. However, I get the feeling that this business is getting bigger than it should be.
        Atakana's cellphone signals that it's either switched off or out of range but Agawa manages to get through to Atakana at home, on the Tokugawa Nashamori's landline. Agawa puts the conversation on the speaker phone so I can follow it.
        "I've already been over this with my brother Ken," says Atakana, making no effort to hide his displeasure.
        With no real responsibilities in life apart from making sure that he records Valencia's favorite TV programs, Atakana has grown lazy, disinclined to make any kind of effort unless he really has to. However, when Agawa politely persists, Atakana cooperates, albeit with a bad grace.
        As expected, Atakana says, no, he knows of no plan for anyone to sign any land sale contract next week.
        "Or at any time," says Atakana. "The sale of the Udamana lands is the sole responsibility of Brother Ken. I've no plans to get involved in the hands-on side of things."
        No, Atakana has not received any threats from anyone. Fingers? He's heard no threats about fingers.
        "Let me look at my hands," says Atakana. "Anyone home, hands? Yep, ten fingers. I still have all ten of them."
        Agawa does not smile at this embarrassingly childish foolery.
        Under further interrogation, Atakana states that he does not know of anyone who might be motivated to make a threat against any member of the family. As for our family meeting this morning, Atakana says that he thought it was friendly, amicable, and resulted in a mutually satisfactory conclusion.
        Agawa plainly does not buy into my brother's picture of the harmonious Udamana family, but there's not much he can do about it. Here in Nizon, the police are not resourced with acid baths and electric shock generators.
        Once Agawa is done with Atakana, he looks at me.
        "Let me run a hypothesis past you," says Agawa. "To be blunt, Chariot Udamana is not long for this world. If the land sale is deferred, she exits the picture. If the finger threat leads to a deferment then someone in your family gets richer."
        Unspoken are the words "maybe you". It's uncomfortably clear to me that if Agawa knew more than he does -- if he knew that I've been letting Bamboo Horses trade while it's technically insolvent, and that my financial liabilities are enormous -- then he would be even keener on the "maybe you" hypothesis.
        "Okay," I say, conceding. "What you say makes sense. Maybe this is a delaying tactic on the part of one of the Udamanas. But it wouldn't be bright to delay too long because we've got the Doomsday Tax on the horizon."
        This is a mistake. Officer Agawa knows nothing about the Doomsday Tax, the "nine percent of assessed value" assets tax which will fall upon "privileged land classes" very soon. How soon? Just two years from now. Much to my surprise, Officer Agawa is keenly interested in this new tax and its impact on our money world, and I find myself having to trudge through the details of the Groker-Ribnold Levy, a task I'd rather leave to Mitodarni.
        Once satisfied that he has the full story, Officer Agawa says he will talk with "the other people involved", which apparently means everyone who was at our family meeting his morning, and he counsels me to keep him informed of "any developments".
        By the time I escape from the police station, I'm feeling distinctly unhappy. Officer Agawa was courteous, diligent and thorough. He took my complaint seriously and did his best to check it out. We all know (it's an ongoing news story) that the police are underfunded and overworked, struggling to cope with a rising crime rate. But, even so, I was treated with patient courtesy, as if police time was infinite and unrationed.
        Objectively, I can't fault Officer Agawa's performance. And I certainly can't think of any reasonable step that he's missed. But the result, for me, is that I feel tired and stressed. A big hole has been punched in my afternoon, my privacy has been invaded, and I've been putting out effort for no return. On top of that, nobody in my circle is going to be pleased at having the police come snooping into our private arena.
        So should I have simply ignored the phone call that Tanto got, Whiskey Breath's visit and the dog food message? No, I don't think so. Added together, they amount to something serious. But what?
        On reflection, Officer Agawa's hypothesis makes sense. Someone in the family wants to sabotage the proposed deal with the Merlercians in the hope that Aunt Chariot will die, making us all richer. But which family member? I think of Whiskey Breath, of the vehicle stolen from Dewate Menhogo Sheathings, and of the threat to Tanto's fingers.
        I close my eyes and two faces swim into the arena of my mind. One is my brother-in-law Molo, who spent all too many of his earlier years as a career criminal. The other is Cousin Po, who has taken the disturbing step of embroiling himself in the murky world of party pill sales, which exists at the outer fringes of legality. And Molo has been acting as Po's bodyguard in the nightlife world in which the party pill sales take place.
        So maybe Molo and Po are working in tandem. Maybe those two are my enemies. And, if so, how far would they be prepared to go?