Since Christopher Ransom has been living in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, he has devoted himself to the study of karate. He doesn't just want to be good, he wants to be transformed. Two years after a lapse in his scruples drew him into crisis on the Khyber Pass, it is through karate that Ransom has regained some control, beginning to subsume his disillusionment and assuage his guilt. But soon he finds himself threatened by everything he thought he had left behind - a sequence of bizarre events whose consequences he cannot escape.