He awoke, but didn't open his eyes at first. His mind told him, quite logically, that he could not possibly be where he thought he was. I'm not really in a battle. I'm not awake yet, I'm still dreaming.

A clang again, steel on steel, and the kind of shout that demanded attention. Even if this were a dream, he had to see it. Opening his eyes, he peered through the coarse grass and spat out a mouthful of grit.

Yes, ahead there were about a dozen men, or at least there were a lot of waving arms and swinging weapons. I'm dreaming all right, Sulu thought, not daring to believe his eyes. Whatever this dream was, it was a good one. "Ballet of death" was an overused phrase, and yet it fit these samurai in the midst of pitched battle.

Sulu leapt to his feet and discovered he was wearing laminar armor. So much the better. He reached for his katana, with the assurance of a dreamer that it would be there. It was. He ran, or rather waddled, with the ungainly speed armored men had known for the history of warfare, slashing, cutting, screaming at whatever moved. But he was still too far from the center of the fighting to do much more than lop off some branches of offending trees. He called out a challenge to the nearest soldiers -- and in the finest classical Japanese. Yes, this was a super-fine dream. When he woke up, he promised himself to really learn the language of his forebears.

The exertion left him giddy, his thoughts moving like thick mud. He was also sweating and breathless as he took stock of the fight. The adage "fight smart" had been drilled into him too well for him to go tumbling off like this, even in a fantasy battle, although he was beginning to notice that this fantasy was pretty gritty. The cold suspicion that this wasn't a dream flirted with his consciousness, but he told himself that was impossible.

A small column of samurai still held the road some yards ahead. A palanquin sat in the road, defended by four women slashing with naginatas. Then the noblewoman stepped from behind the curtains, a small sword in her hands, joining her personal maids in the final assault. The soldiers were fast giving ground to the attackers, who seemed more like a mob of brigands than anything else.

Sulu shook his head. This couldn't be real. It had to be a dream. Besides, a lady was in trouble, he concluded. Sulu belted out his best kei and ran hell-bent at the attackers, his sword slashing across a man's chest. The man cried out as he went down, and the warmth of the splattered blood stopped Sulu.

And a warning screamed in Sulu's mind: It's no dream! You just cut down a human being as if he were kindling!

Sulu stepped back, reality versus fantasy smashing against his brain. It was real. It couldn't be real. He had been... where? Not here. Fleeting recollections of the Enterprise, and then there had been a flash... There was an empty space in his mind that he could almost feel, as if it were a physical block.

He was alerted by the furious screams of the others attacking him. The first man was still writhing on the ground. Sulu took a defensive stance and knew he was in trouble. He couldn't kill. He wouldn't... except they were clearly not hampered by such constrictions.

The movements came to him as if he'd always known them, and yet he overrode the compulsion to take men's lives. Instead every blow was carefully aimed at an extremity -- to disable rather than kill.

He slashed to his right, cutting down a man who was blindsiding him, while blocking a blow from the left with his sia, or scabbard. With a fluid motion he supported the back of the razor-sharp blade of his sword, blocking a blow from the front, then stabbed another man behind him as he spun the sword around to dispatch still another who raced at him. The blood sprayed from the blade in a haze of red. Too deep, he'd cut too deep. My God, my God...

He blocked the downward slash of a naginata wielded by one of the brigands, sliding down its long wooden haft and disengaging to cut the legs out from his next opponent. It took on an unreal slow motion, each cut and parry by the numbers, a mindless and deadly dance. Very soon he stood alone, the pile of moaning bodies surrounding him.

He found his voice and cried out, "What's happening? What am I doing here? Who are you? Tell me! Now!"

And then, as if on cue, each of his opponents suddenly trembled and died. Just like that.

He spun in place, confused, not understanding. Then he saw their faces, framed in a rictus of death, and he understood. Poison. Possibly concealed under their tongues, or secreted on their person. Death was an acceptable, even preferred, substitute for capture.

His mind struggled to comprehend.

Shaking, he turned back to the palanquin, his head bowed in pain and shock. Sulu forced himself to look up. One man stood protecting the lady, surrounded by his own share of defeated enemy. Two of her maids were still alive, and perhaps a half dozen of the soldiers from the column.

Sulu bowed to the man -- although it was his body, not his mind, that seemed to be in charge.

The man barked out, "Who are you?"

"Suru," he said, and frowned. He wondered why he couldn't pronounce his name correctly, but of course in Japanese there is no "letter l," and he was speaking Japanese. "Heihachiro, my lord," he replied, smiling to himself as he gave the name of "Starfleet's Commanding Admiral," Heihachiro Nogura.

A voice like the tinkling of bells said to him, "I am the Lady Oneko. You have served me well." The woman stood, both fragile as a reed and strong as a sword blade, almost disdainfully ignoring the blood that clung to her silken outer robe. Sulu caught his breath at her beauty. She was an ancient painting come to life, all the more glorious for the exotic, almost jarring perfection of her white-powdered face and red lips.

He noted that she was only a girl, a child-woman probably not yet out of her teens. Her ivory face and almond eyes were framed in demure beauty by a cascade of black hair, artfully draped over her shoulders, where it flowed back to be caught up in a ribbon. She wore an outer silk kimono of peach lined with blood-red, and the layers of her other robes peeked out at her throat like a field of brilliantly colored wildflowers. She was carefully wrapping the now sheathed small sword in a bag of silk brocade. When she was done, she tucked it, cocooned in its innocence, back into the belt of her robes.

She looked up, barely brushing his eyes with hers. Sulu felt as if he had been hit in the gut with a phaser stun. The feeling was not rational, or logical, but it was there. She returned to her palanquin.

A tall gray-haired man, handsome by any standard, strode to his side. "I am Watanenabe Sadayo. 'Suru,' eh? 'The one who tries.' But I think that the word 'suru' is also a pickpocket. Hmm," he said, scanning Sulu up and down. "You will return to the castle with me. The lord will wish to reward you. Take a horse from these brigands and follow me."

Sulu stood there, trying to digest what was happening. Should he just stay where he was? And do what? Wait for more brigands to show up? Perhaps he wouldn't be as lucky the next time.

"Why are you standing there?" came the no-nonsense demand. "Is there something wrong with the offered hospitality and reward of my lord?"

Sulu realized that if he inadvertently challenged someone's honor, there was going to be swordplay... and someone would die.

Which -- if this was a dream -- was immaterial.

But it wasn't. God help him, he was becoming more and more convinced of that.

Sulu bowed quickly. "Of course not. Your hospitality is most gracious."

"Then let us go quickly to the castle before we're accosted again," said Sadayo.

"What castle? Who is the lord?" Sulu asked, trying to shake the image of the woman which was still burned into his mind's eye.

"Fushimi Castle. Torii Mototada-domo," the leader said, swinging up to the saddle.

Wow, Sulu thought, Torii Mototada. Sulu had some favorites among the great samurai of history. His mother had quieted his restless childhood spirit with the stories of Benkei and Yoshitsune, and the fortunes of the House of Minamoto. As a teenager he had discovered the intricate military politics of Hideyoshi and Tokugawa. And bushi, the warrior code of the samurai.

He rode on for hours, his thighs cramping from the unfamiliar activity. Nevertheless, he rode tall and proud as they traveled along the great Tokaido Road to meet with people from history that had died centuries ago.

What in hell am I doing here? he thought.