Shisei lived in a brownstone just off Foxhall Road in Georgetown. It belonged to one of the main benefactors of her environmental lobby, but she was rarely in it, preferring St Moritz in the winters and Cap Ferrat in the summers. She had sumptuous villas in both, caring more for Europe than her native Washington.
Shisei lived in the house alone. Every Wednesday a couple came in to clean and, if she wished, cook food for the week, as they had for the past eighteen years.
The downstairs was all carved panelled walls, painted boiserie, ornate marble mantels upon which rested eighteenth-century French bronzes, ormolu-mounted Chinese porcelain, among other priceless knick-knacks. But upstairs, the bedroom Shisei had chosen was relatively simple. It overlooked a small but exquisite garden overseen by a Japanese gardener who loved his charges as he did his children. Sunlight filtered through the tall honey locusts riming in gold the peonies and azaleas.
Coming out from the bathroom barefoot, Shisei went to her closet, rummaged behind the boxes of shoes she had piled up, pulled out her equipment. She set her portable computer on the small French desk, plugged it in, set up the telephone modem. She sat down, inserted a specially modified RCA jacket into the back of the computer, wrapped the featherweight headset around her head.
She began the access procedure not by using the keyboard but by speaking into the microphone of the headset. The powerful computer hummed along to her complex instructions. As it did, the screen went dark, then began to brighten as streams of characters began to fill it. At last, she downloaded the mantis program from hard disk memory. There it sat in the centre of her screen, pulsing like a dark, dangerous jewel.
Shisei took a deep breath, spoke into the mike. The computer accessed the phone line and she gave it a
number. A female voice answered on the second ring.
'Johnson Institute. How may I help you?'
Shisei hit the enter key on her computer. The Institute operator heard only a dialling tone; but Shisei was inside, connected to the Institute's phone lines via her computer, its modem, and the program activated in the small cylinder she had secreted beneath the desk where the Hive brain sat. The cylinder was her link, via the phone lines, to the Hive computer.
Shisei wiped a drop of sweat from her forehead. Her shoulders were hunched, her eyes staring at the screen as she checked and rechecked. It was time.
She spoke a code into her mike, then hit the enter key again. The version of the mantis virus program she had been given was released, transmitted instantaneously through her link-up to the Hive brain.
She could see on her screen the two interfaces - the honeycomb gridwork of the Hive brain and the spirals of the mantis virus - beginning to merge. She saw the spirals breaking down the gridwork, sector by sector, as the virus began to mutate, feeding on the Hive security program, and she began to exult, thinking, It's working. It's going to work.
Then something happened. The honeycomb gridwork began to phase in and out of focus. At first Shisei thought that there was a malfunction in the link-up - a phone man working on the lines in the area would do it - but her computer told her otherwise. Everything was secure. She stared at the screen. Now the gridwork seemed to have quadrupled, sextupled, on and on, until it filled up the screen, and the virus, overwhelmed, self-destructed as per its built-in instructions. In an instant, there was no sign it had ever existed. A heartbeat later, the Hive gridwork was back to normal. Shisei dissolved the link. What had happened?
Then she remembered what Dr Rudolph had said
about the construction of the Hive brain. Not only was its design radically different, but its components, its transistors, were unique, perhaps a thousand times faster than the standard silicon chips. That's how the Hive overcame the virus. Its security program ran at such hyperspeed, it overwhelmed even a virus that could feed off it.
Shisei sat back for a moment, digesting the entire event, reviewing every instant in her mind. Then she shut down the computer, and picked up the phone. She had some calls to make.
Nangi waited until the last minute, risking being late, waiting for the Pack Rat to call or to walk through the door to his office. When neither happened, Nangi put on his hat, and walked out of the door. His lawyer was waiting for him. When they got to the street, the lawyer opened an umbrella.
It's always raining lately, Nangi thought. He was unconcerned by the Pack Rat's failure to get back to him. It would have been nice to go into the meeting with some ammunition, but it was hardly a requisite.-Nangi lifted his head up to the rain, and laughed silently.
His car took them the half-mile to the Nippon Keio Building. Before he got out, he called Tomi, set up a time that evening for them to meet at The Silk Road, when everyone they would need to interview would be there. He sat still for several moments, hoping that the Pack Rat would catch up with him. Perhaps he prayed. He spoke with his lawyer about several last-minute matters, then they emerged from the car, went up to Nami's offices.
Kusunda Ikusa had suggested his offices as a neutral site for the merger signing. They were all waiting for him in the big conference room: Ken Oroshi, Ikusa, the lawyers.
The deal was, on the surface, simple, but in fact it was extremely complex. It had to accommodate clauses that Ikusa insisted on; it had to include the clauses Nangi needed to complete his subsidized takeover of Nakano Industries and their priceless Research and Development department.
Everything was in order. Nangi, Ikusa and Ken Oroshi chatted informally like the best of friends while the lawyers pored over their arcane wordings, nit-picking each other to death.
Tea was served on an enormous silver tray, out of English silver cups. Ikusa led the conversation, discussing green fees at his golf club. This is all nonsense, Nangi thought, but it is worthwhile nonsense. Like being in the dentist's chair, the pain is a necessary evil.
In fact, his mind was not fully focused on the signing. He was thinking of Tomi and of Mariko, the dancer who had been raped and flayed at the tokudashi club, The Silk Road. What was the connection between Mariko's and Dr Hanami's deaths? Was he Mariko's last lover, the man for whom the message this could be your wife was meant? If so, if the dorokusai had also murdered Mariko, then it was clear that he had coerced Dr Hanami into doing what to Nicholas? What had happened to Nicholas that Nangi did not know about? He burned to find out the answer; he worried about Nicholas as if the younger man were his .son.
At length, the lawyers called to their respective clients, who looked over the contracts one last time.
Then the two principals, Nangi and Ken Oroshi, signed the merger papers. Kusunda Ikusa, looking smug, bowed to both of them, presented them with small gifts. The Sphynx computer chip manufacturing kobun and Nakano Industries were now one.
The Kan, the businessman's hotel on the seedy outskirts
of Tokyo with which Senjin was so familiar, had a health service that hotels in the better districts did not provide. It was not a spa, not a massage parlour, not a gym. It was a sensory deprivation tank.
The tank was one-third the size of the Kan's coffin-like rooms. It was filled with water at blood-heat temperature. Slipping naked into its depths, Senjin felt nothing. Nothing at all.
A net suspended him at a level so that only his nose and lips were above the water. When the lid came down, he heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing. Neither was there anything for him to smell or to taste. His mind was cut off, set adrift - inasmuch as modern-day man can be - from his body.
Without a shell to bind him, Senjin floated in the Void. His childhood sensei would have been appalled at his practice of sensory deprivation which, no doubt, they would have viewed as an artificial stimulus,, a path but not the Path, and therefore strictly forbidden.
But for Senjin nothing was forbidden. He had passed beyond such delusory boundaries the moment he had outgrown the pedantic philosophies of his teachers, the moment he had begun to formulate his own philosophy, his own Way. He had been pursuing this singular Path for years now and, in so doing, his power had been growing.
Once he had the nine mystic emeralds in his possession, he would become unstoppable. Even those tanjian masters from whom he had learned the last esoteric nuances of Tau-tau would not be able to defy him.
They had believed that their lessons would irrevocably bind him to them. This had been the way of Tau-tau for centuries, part of the reason for its continued survival, a clever, mechanism embedded in the very heart of the basic twenty-four principles.
Others, before Senjin, had defied the code of Tau-tau. All had suffered greatly for their transgression - Senjin
knew this because their sorrows had been told to him and to his sister when they were young. It had become part of their training, a subtle warning, as if even then their tanjian sensei might have suspected that they would seek to follow in those foolish footsteps.
And Senjin had. Not without terrible suffering, of course, bitter years of struggle, but this had been expected. Yet he knew that with the emeralds in his possession, the suffering would cease. He would be the first to have broken with the traditions of Tau-tau and been truly free.
For it would be he now who would rule the tanjian elders, dictating his own law to them as they had once inflicted their antiquated canon on him.
Freed of this weight, floating in nothingness, Senjin could now think about his mother - his true mother -whom he had never known, and whom he hated. Into his mind swam the directive of a poster put up in the subway station near his Metropolitan Police office. 'Marriage is duty,' screamed the headline. 'The ultimate act of filial piety.' To disobey this imperative, the poster implied, was to dishonour one's parents who still, in one family out of two, chose the mates for their children.
Senjin had never married. He had always felt it was a slap in the face of his mother - the mother he never knew. That it had broken the heart of Haha-san, his aunt who had raised him, was of no interest to him. Haha-san .was of no moment; his mother was.
Floating in the nothingness that was water at blood-heat, Senjin remembered the photograph of his mother Haha-san had once given him as a keepsake, 'a method,' she had said, 'of keeping your mother alive.'
Senjin had stared at the black-and-white image for some time, trying to find even a minute speck of himself in that plain, expressionless face. Finding none, he had taken a knife and had carefully cut the image into
ribbons. Where his mother's lips pressed together in a tight, unrelenting line, he had left intact a central core the size of a dime. He had placed the photo in the bottom of his dresser drawer beneath a meticulous stack of snowy white undershorts, which he wore once and then threw away.
Senjin had never loved anyone, certainly not his mother. Love had about it a certain morality that even marriage did not, a morality that he despised.
But he did not need love; he had had something else far more precious.
Once, Senjin had regularly merged with his sister. (Oh, how painful it was to think of her!) They inhabited each other's spirit, closer than two human beings had ever been. Now she was gone, and there was an emptiness in Senjin's spirit he was driven to fill. To try and try again - and to fail. But try he must, for it was an emptiness so terrible that its dark heart had inured him to loneliness even while it was turning his heart to stone.
And why not? Everything else in what humans laughingly called society was monstrous: grotesque, pointless, suffocating.
He recalled Haha-san taking him to a movie in which he saw a white-faced, expressionless young woman being prepared for the marriage ceremony in very much the same way as the Christian knights of medieval England had been dressed by their squires for battle.
Trussed tightly into restricting layers of cloth before the heavy, armour-like wedding kimono was wrapped around her, the young woman stoically endured the ceremony and its aftermath with a bravery Senjin found as admirable as it was foolish. Why didn't she kill her lout of a husband, he wondered, at the moment of painful penetration? Why had she allowed herself to be violated by desire and custom?
Senjin, too, had been trussed tightly into restricting
layers - the strata of Japanese society. He despised those restrictions because they represented both the definition of his world and the limitation of his power. All that Senjin had needed to create his Path was a starting point. His sensei had obh'ged him, unwittingly giving him this and more, a foundation from which to work. His extraordinary mind had accomplished the rest, grasping what they had not, plumbing the unknown depths, forging a new spirit, reshaping himself into an image cast in his mind at the moment of his birth, his consciousness bursting into the world like the blazing trail of a comet.
Hie Tau-tau training of his childhood and adolescence had not been enough for Senjin. In teaching him what they knew, his sensei had inadvertently exposed to his restless mind the limitations of their magic. In being made aware of the limitations, he had automatically taken a leap of faith, going beyond the boundaries of Tau-tau. And he had found another world.
It was based upon the ancient principles into which Tau-tau tapped, but it used them in a wholly new way, a way of which only Senjin could possibly conceive.
Senjin had come to his tanjian sensei through Haha-san who, thinking that she understood the nature of his melancholy, had done her best to discover some way in which to motivate her 'son'. She had, in fact, correctly recognized the scope and depth of his intellect, and was certain that only Tau-tau would be a strong enough discipline to challenge him, sustain him, and, ultimately, contain him.
Being tanjian was a matter of bloodlines. One could not learn Tau-tau without being of the blood, and tanjian blood was passed down through the mother.
This was another reason why Senjin hated his mother. She had had the effrontery to bequeath him a legacy even though she had abandoned him. It had taken all of Senjin's skill not to master Tau-tau (which had come easily to him),
but to mould it into something he could find useful.
Senjin had grown up with dogs, or so it seemed to him, and that, too, he laid at his mother's feet. If only she had lived, if only she had not abandoned him, casting aside her sacred duty to keep him safe from harm.
But she had been weak; she had allowed her life to come to an end, cowardly wriggling out of her responsibilities to him. From the day he became aware of her sin against him, of how wickedly she had robbed him, Senjin had, like a tireless stoker, fed his hatred with the singular obsession of someone fearful that without constant attention it would in time fade like memories.
Haha-san had been a tanjian miko, an adept at a certain kind of magic. But she had been bound up in obedience. Often, Senjin wished only one thing in life: to cut her free of her moorings, to beat out of her the obedience that defined her life. To make of her something she was not and never could imagine being.
The first time this happened was when he came upon her fresh and dewy after her bath. She had turned her back to him, demurely slipping a cotton kimono around her shoulders. But not before he had had a glimpse of her naked torso.
Senjin was twelve when this occurred. He had not seen her naked since he was six when he still took baths with her and, sometimes, when he was frightened or was awakened by a nightmare, was allowed into her bed where he fell back to sleep with his arms around her.
He was aroused not only by Haha-san's naked torso, but by how she had deftly turned her back on him in a gesture that was as coy as a coquette's. He burned then to press himself against the suffocating pillows of her white breasts, to expel his breath into her, to slide into her warmth, to be intoxicated by her intimate scent.
But this was all fantasy on Senjin's part. It could never occur because of Haha-san's chasteness, which came not
from any philosophical, religious or sociological strictures, but simply because she was following the dictates set down for her by her mother. As far as Haha-san was concerned, these laws were carved in stone, so inviolate that Senjin could never even know whether in her heart she wished to join with him in sexual congress.
When, years later, he entered his first woman, he found that only through thinking of Haha-san could he find release. Yet thinking of his surrogate mother enraged him. Inevitably this led his mind back to his real mother, and his rage would become uncontrollable, overtaking him like an eighteen-wheel truck bearing down upon a tiny car, swallowing him whole.
Death and the imminence of death was all that could satisfy him then.
The slight ammoniac smell caused him to reach up, crack the lid on the sensory deprivation tank. He could feel before he saw it the slick, viscous strings of his semen crisscrossing the water that lapped at his belly. Sliding his fingertips along the velvet length of his still quivering erection, Senjin sighed in contentment.
Naked, Shisei lay upon her stomach. Sunlight, slanting in through the bedroom window in Branding's Georgetown townhouse, struck the giant spider's carapace, firing the coloured ink embedded beneath her skin. It was the last day of the month, almost high summer.
She stirred, luxuriating in the feel of the bedcovers, and the insect stirred to life, articulating its hairy legs with the rippling of her muscles. The rhythmic expansion and contraction of the cephalothorax, the eight ruby-coloured eyes alight as if with intelligence, completed the illusion.
Cotton Branding watched with a combination of fascination and horror. He reached out as if in a dream, his hand upon the spider, feeling only Shisei's warm skin. The feeling was eerie, like the fly in the depth perception test
optometrists gave kids, which appeared three-dimensional until you tried to grasp its wing.
'You promised to tell me,' Branding said, 'how you got the spider.'
Shisei turned over, and the creature was gone, like that, a door banging shut. Her clear skin, her firm flesh was burnished in the early morning sunlight.
'Why can't you see me tonight?'
'I have to work,' Branding said. 'As long as you've brought me back to Washington, I've got to attend this state dinner for the West German chancellor. Don't be upset.'
'But I've already made plans. Dinner at The Red Sea, then home for some dancing. I went to the record store yesterday and spent a fortune on music for us.'
Branding smiled. 'It sounds wonderful, but tonight it's just not possible.'
'How long will you have to stay? I'll wait up for you. We'll dance when you get home.'
He saw the need on her face, and marvelled at its childlike quality. 'All right,' he said. Til do my best to be home by midnight. But if I'm not, go to bed.'
She reached up, locked her hands behind his neck, drew him down to her. Her body writhed up against his in an almost uncontrollable spasm, or so it seemed to Branding as his mouth was filled with the taste of her.
But he could not imagine making love to her again without knowing the origin of the spider tattoo. Tell me,' he whispered in her ear. 'Tell me the story.'
Shisei broke away from him long enough to search his eyes with her own. 'You really want to know, don't you?'
'Yes.'
'Even if it means being shocked. Even if it means that afterwards you might-come to hate me.'
'Shisei,' he said, moving against her, 'do you believe that I could hate you?'
'Hate and love, Cook, are often so close that one cannot tell them apart.'
Trust me,' Branding said. 'I know the difference between the two.'
Shisei closed her eyes. For a moment, he could feel her breathing, his body rising and falling upon hers. Somewhere in the house a phone was ringing. He ignored it, letting the answering machine do his work.
Tell me,' he urged her. 'I want to know.' He understood that in a basic sense that was a lie or, at least, not the whole truth. He needed to know how she came by this strange and eerie device, as others need to know by word or deed that they are loved.
Branding wanted to understand this enigmatic creature who had so captivated him, not only because he would then be closer to her but also because he clearly recognized the enigma as her ultimate protection. And he knew that he would never pierce to the core of her until she revealed to him the secret of the spider.
Shisei took a deep, shuddering breath. 'Like everyone else,' she said at last, 'I was born of the union of a man and a woman. But unlike most people I never knew my parents. The family who raised me cared nothing for me. Had they shown me any emotion, even cruelty, I would have been grateful. As it was, I grew up feeling nothing. I did not understand emotions save the most basic one: fear. I ran away from the family and, as far as I know, they did not try to find me. When I was hungry I sought out food; when my bladder was full, I urinated in the shadows; when I was tired, I sought out shelter. I was an animal, nothing more. I was, in essence, a blank canvas.'
Shisei moved and, each time she did, Branding was suffused with her scent, a spicy musk that made him dizzy.
''Karma is unfathomable, but sometimes it is also strange,' Shisei whispered. 'A man found me. He was
an artist, but he did not put paint on canvas. He did not chisel figures out of stone or with a blowtorch bend metal into sculpture. He was a tattoo artist.'
'He drew the spider,' Branding said.
Shisei gave him a sad smile, brushed a lock of hair back from his face. 'Life is so simple for you, Cook. Things happen and there is a reaction, a direct consequence, like a theorem in physics.'
'You met an - artist and he saw in your body the perfect canvas for his art. You are perfect, Shisei. You don't need me to tell you that.'
She stirred restively, as if she could not bear the weight of his words. "The spider was the greatest tattoo he had ever produced, the pinnacle of his art,' she said. 'In that you are right.'
'And the rest?'
"The rest is unknown to you.' Shisei's body was slick with sweat. 'And now, as you wished, you will hear it.'
Branding had sudden misgivings, as if he had come too near the fire, and was suddenly in danger of being burned.
Then it was too late, because Shisei was saying, 'The artist's name was Zasso. Zasso means weeds in Japanese so it must have been a name he had taken rather than been bora with. It was a kind of political declaration typical of artists who, by necessity, live apart from the rest of mankind.
'Zasso, as I came to find out, loved the theatrical. Artifice was his first line of defence against the world, which he considered to be hopelessly entangled in its own entrails. He often referred to people on the street as cattle grazing in a field. They had, he maintained, no more conception of what was important or beautiful than did a cow.
'Beauty - or the pursuit of it - was Zasso's life study. He was an aficionado of matsuri, which is a
land of phenomenon one can find in Japan either on the theatre stage or in the whorehouse bed. It is wholly Japanese, meaning one must view it on many levels. Most often it involves the sort of brutality for which we Japanese are justifiably infamous. In the old days, however, it was different. The matsuri was performed in every village in the country. It began as a primitive tribal ceremony, a dance of chaos. Our novelist, Yukio Mishima, once called the matsuri an obscene attempt to join humanity and eternity. But I think he was afraid of the implications, that through chaos man had the potential to be godlike. Mishima abhorred chaos.'
'As do we all,' Branding said.
Shisei's golden nails scored white lines in his flesh. 'No,' she said. 'Not all.'
'You know what I mean.'
'No,' she said, 'I don't.' Her nails dug into him.further. 'Tell me, Cook, if I hurt you with these - really hurt you - will you love me or hate me?'
'That's an odd question.'
'Nevertheless, I want you to answer it.'
'But why would you want to hurt me?'
That's not the question.'
'I don't know how I would feel,' he admitted.
'How easily love can be turned to hate. How fragile is existence, that it can be instantly turned inside out!' Shisei's eyes were glittering, cat-like. 'Now the doorway to chaos has been opened. It would take only the smallest nudge to loose it completely.'
'You're not taking into consideration the psyches of human beings.' Branding said. "The essential fairness of the vast majority of them keeps chaos hi check.'
'You were-right about one thing,' Shisei said, abruptly switching topics, 'Zasso was attracted to my beauty. He presented himself as a kind and compassionate benefactor
who understood my state and wished to, as he said, "save me from the life that had been thrust into me like a knife".'
Shisei was trembling. Branding held her close. 'I don't want to go on,' she whispered. 'Oh, Cook, please don't make me.'
'I can't make you do anything you don't want to do,' Branding said. He thought he could feel her suffering almost as if it were his own. 'But I think it would be beneficial for you as well as for me if you told me what happened.'
'Cook, I-'
'You need to unburden yourself,' Branding said gently, in his lust for forbidden knowledge imagining himself a priest-confessor, uninvolved hi the emotions being invoked. 'This incident isn't a scar, but an open wound. It requires healing.'
'Is there no other way?' she said in a small voice.
'No.'
Shisei closed her eyes, and he wiped the sweat from her face. 'It's all right. You can tell me.'
Her eyes flew open, and he thought he glimpsed a dark-red flame flickering within them. Then she said, in a hissing exhalation of breath, 'Zasso was an artist, a connoisseur of beauty and of pain. He became my gaoler, my tormentor, my demented lover. I had no choice. I had to submit to everything. The moment I stepped across his threshold, I became a prisoner.'
'Of course you mean that figuratively,' Branding interjected.
'No. I mean prisoner in the literal sense.' She saw the look on his face. 'I knew this was a mistake.'
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'It's difficult absorbing everything you're telling me.'
Shisei's eyes were focused inwards and, as she began to speak, Branding could almost feel the past being resurrected. 'Zasso debased me so that when he exalted me he
would know from what abominable depths he had raised me up. And with each further debasement, he said to me, "I am saving you." '
'You mean he raped you?'
'I was ten when Zasso found me. I suppose that carnal desire was a component of the "radiant beauty" he saw in me. But not right away; I was still too unformed, too far from the ideal into which he was determined to fashion me.' Shisei licked her dry lips. 'No, he treated me like an animal. "You are a creature of the streets," he said to me. "Some wild thing. It is my duty to train you." He made me crouch in a corner. When I moved it was on all fours; when I ate it was from a bowl he put on the floor; when I urinated or defecated I did so on sheets of newspaper. He insisted I speak in grunts and barks. "Animals have no knowledge of civilized language," he told me.'
Branding was horrified. 'It's sick,' he said. 'Why didn't
you escape?'	,
'It was impossible while he was with me,' Shisei said. 'And when he was gone, he chained me up.'
'But surely you must have tried to get away.'
Shisei let out a breath, and he felt her beginning to tremble. 'You still don't understand, Cook. Without him I had nothing. I would have been lost. I might have died.'
'But, my God, Shisei, how he treated you! How you must hate him!'
'How easy life must be for you, Cook,' she said sadly. 'Everything is either pure or perverted.'
'Well, there's no mistaking what went on between you and the tattoo artist.' His voice was righteous, filled with moral outrage.
'But that's the point, you have no idea what went on between us. Zasso saw me in the street and recognized in me a perfection he had been seeking all his life.'
'You're wrong,' Branding said. 'He thought he could
make you perfect. But perfection is God's province, not man's. The fact is that this man needed you. What he did to you was a consequence of his own inner perversion, nothing more. He did to you what his own demons forced him to do.'
Shisei, looking into Branding's face, was reminded of the quote from Nietzsche she had discovered in Douglas Howe's library, 'All idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity.' And for the first time she came face to face with doubt, the lurker in the shadows, the enemy.
What if Branding was right? she asked herself. What if her whole life was a facade of that perversion, if her karma was not in fact her own, but one she had been duped into accepting? A chill raced through her. It would mean that her whole life was a lie. She used her discipline, turned her mind away, unable to face the horrific possibility.
'How does this story end?' Branding asked her.
She put her face into the hollow of his shoulder. 'Cook,' she whispered, 'I want you in me. Now.' When she felt him hesitate, she said, 'I need to know that you still love me, that you'll love me when all this has been said, when you know what I have been and what I am.'
She felt his powerful body fit against hers, covering the shadows that pooled in the dells of her flesh. She was wet, and he entered her easily. The pleasure began to pool in her lower belly, and she gasped. She kissed his shoulder, shuddering. Then she said, 'When Zasso "saved" me from degradation, when he judged me purified, ready, he said to me, "I have performed the matsuri. Now it is time to transform you into the Dread Female of Heaven, to make you into that which pleases the gods."
'He lay me down on a straw pallet, and began his masterpiece. He did not chain me up after that. He did not have to. And each day, he would work on my back, giving painful birth to the giant spider.
'When, after two years, he was finished, Zasso believed
that he had transformed me, that the soul of the spider had sunk into me as his inks had, that he had conferred on me a kind of godhood, or' - she shuddered - 'something far more frightening. Zasso said to me, "Now you may stay or go, it makes no difference to me. You are no longer human. You are a weapon. The Dread Female of Heaven, the demon woman who destroys all men she entangles in her web."'
There was silence for a time. Then Shisei, feeling him slipping out of her, clutched Branding. 'Don't leave me, Cook! Oh, please!'
'Is this what you believe, that you are a demon woman?'
'Dear God, if you leave me now I'll die!'
Branding, attuned as he was to her, felt the fear emanating from her in waves. 'I want to know if you believe this nonsense.' He seemed angry.
Shisei was bewildered. 'It's not nonsense. It's Shinto-ism.'
'No,' Branding said firmly. 'It's the product of one man's sick mind, that's all.'
To contemplate such a thing, Shisei knew, was to look into an abyss beyond understanding. It was to contemplate the thought that her life was a hideous parody, warped beyond all comprehension. The product, yes, of one man's mind.
'Cook,' she gasped suddenly, 'I want to be with you tonight. I cannot stand the thought of being alone. Take me to the dinner with you.'
Branding looked at her. He had been certain that knowing the origin of the spider tattoo would unlock for him the mysteries of this fascinating, enigmatic woman. But now he became aware of the many layers of mystery that overlaid Shisei's personality. Perhaps he would never be able to understand her fully, but that knowledge only drew him on, a seductive siren's song as ancient, as irresistible as the one that had lured Odysseus.
'Oh, God, Cook!' Shisei was crying.
Nicholas thought, I have dreamt it all: my rescue, the warm house, Kansatsu-san. Panic gripped him in its icy fist, and he shuddered. A blast of wind hit him full on, and his rear foot slipped off the rock groove. He could feel his position deteriorating. If he fell off the Black Gendarme he had no way of knowing how far he would drop. Mist occluded his vision. He could not see Kansatsu's stone house built into the side of the rock. There was no trace of Kansatsu himself, and Nicholas was frightened that the bone-chilling cold had combined with his deteriorating condition to make him delirious. In that case, there was no Kansatsu, no warm house on the mountainside that would provide him with shelter, no salvation from Shiro Ninja.
Falling, endlessly falling . . .
Desperately he reached up, feeling with his fingertips for purchase, but the rock had turned to glass. He encountered only layers of black ice which, indifferent to his plight, shrugged off his grip.
He could not see: snow, lying long in the dark hollows of the Black Gendarme, swirled up by the wind, blinding him. He could not hear: the howling of the wind in the crags was incessant. He could not feel: the cold penetrated his gloves, numbing his fingertips. In the thin, frigid air he could smell nothing, not even himself or the matted fur collar of his parka. He opened his mouth, put his lips against the stone, trying to taste the minerals which would tell him where the Black Gendarme was the most solid, where there were dangerous fissures that might crack beneath his weight. He-stroked on the dark granite but he could taste nothing. Now, with Shiro Ninja blocking his sixth sense, he was truly defenceless.
He clung to the rock face like a fly on a window-pane, with a blind tenacity that came solely from instinct. But the
wind was increasing in intensity, its gusts raging, scouring all in its path. His foot slipped again and be almost pitched headfirst into the abyss. It was at precisely that instant, with the sensation of being jerked awake, that Nicholas knew that he was not ready to give up.
I am strong, he thought. I am weak. It isn't that the two are indistinguishable, it is that they don't matter. And then he understood what Kansatsu-san had said about life and death. They did not matter.
This is what mattered: the Darkness.
His heart hammering painfully in his chest, Nicholas looked into the Void. He was so far up he could not see the base of the Black Gendarme. He was terrified, but he knew that this was what he had to do. The Path lay in only one direction. Or, all directions were the same. They led to this terrifying place. The Black Gendarme. They led to this moment in time.
Then the wind, howling in fury, tore him free from his tenuous grip upon the rock. In a sense, perhaps, he let go. He would never know.
Into the abyss he fell. Falling, endlessly falling . . .
Justine was on her way to church, backing her car out of the long driveway to her house, when she almost ran right into a man on a bicycle. He had appeared out of nowhere, emerging, it seemed, from the thickets lining the road.
She braked hard as, startled, he swerved into a stand of cryptomeria. He lost his balance, was flipped head over heels into the underbrush.
Justine said, 'Oh, God,' under her breath, put on the parking brake, and jerked open the car door. She ran to where the cyclist was lying, knelt beside him. She could see that he was conscious, said a little prayer for that.
'Are you all right?' she said in passable Japanese.
The cyclist nodded, immediately groaned, rubbed the
back of his head. He got up slowly, and Justine rose beside him. He was a relatively young man, handsome, smooth-skinned, with the kind of face Justine had seen many times on Japanese TV and posters. There was something slightly feminine about the fullness of his lips, the flare of his delicate nostrils, but this merely made him seem gentle, in need of help. He wore black shorts, a loose, short-sleeved white shirt, American sneakers.
He bent to pick up his bicycle, gave another tittle groan, and Justine instinctively reached out to steady him. He looked at her sharply, and she dropped her hand, abruptly remembering the Japanese prohibition against members of the opposite sex touching in public.
She wondered what she should do. Obviously, the man was shaken up - at the very least - and it was her fault. She was at once wary and eager to do the right thing, to not walk away from an incident she had caused. Then she understood that she was thinking like an American. Here, in Japan, there was so little crime that one did not worry about strolling around any area of Tokyo at night. Tokyo was perhaps the safest city in the world and the Japanese thing to do, of course, was to offer the cyclist rest and some tea. It was the polite, the civilized way to act.
'I-I'm sorry,' she said, flustered. 'Would you like to come up to the house for some tea? I live right here.'
'Thank you, no,' the cyclist said. 'I'm all right.'
The denial was also the Japanese way. The polite, the civilized way to act.
'It would be no trouble at all,' Justine said. 'In fact, it would make me feel a good deal better. Don't you think we should make sure you aren't really injured?'
He turned to her, nodded somewhat stiffly. 'How can I refuse such hospitality?'
He followed her at a sedate pace up the driveway.
'Why don't you make yourself comfortable on the porch,' Justine said. 'I'll bring the tea out.'
'I guess I am a bit more bruised than I thought,' the cyclist said. 'Perhaps there are some pillows inside I could use.'
Justine hesitated only a moment. 'Of course. It will be more comfortable for you inside.'
They removed their footwear in the small stone-paved entrance-way and Justine placed them within the bamboo cabinet against the wall. She led them into the living-room.
The cyclist said nothing until the tea had been brewed, served and they had both finished a cup. As Justine was pouring more tea, he said, 'You have a beautiful home.'
'Oh, but it isn't much,' Justine said in ritual response. 'Are you feeling better?'
'Much better, thank you,' he said.
'I wonder if you speak English. It is easier for me.'
'But of course.' This elicited a smile from him. He really was quite handsome, quite striking. 'It would be my pleasure, Mrs - '
'Oh, I forgot,' Justine said. 'My name is -{ She had to stop herself from giving him her Christian name. That would have been most impolite. 'Mrs Linnear.'
'I am Mr Omukae,' Senjin said. 'I think we found the worst possible way to meet, don't you?'
Justine laughed, grateful that he could speak lightly of her almost hitting him with the car. 'I'm afraid so. I can't think why I didn't see you until the last minute.'
'The driveway bends and so does the road,' Senjin said diplomatically. 'It is difficult to see traffic coming from that direction. If I may make a suggestion ....?'
'Yes, of course.'
'A mirror hung on that large cryptomeria would show you enough of the road to give you warning.'
'Why, that's a wonderful idea,' Justine said. "Thank you, Mr Omukae.'
'It is my pleasure,' he said around his teacup. He looked around. "This is a large house for one person,' he said.
'Oh, I don't live alone,' Justine said. 'My husband and I live here.'
Senjin sipped his tea. 'What does your husband do, Mrs Linnear?'
'He runs my father's company. It's diversified: computer chip manufacture, steel, textiles. My husband's taken it a step further, into advanced computer research.' She cocked her head. 'And what's your line of work, Mr Omukae?'
'Oh, I'm afraid it's nothing so innovative or interesting as your husband's,' Senjin said. 'I'm a bureaucrat. I work at the Industrial Location and Environmental Protection Bureau, hi the Safety Section.'
"That sounds interesting enough,' Justine said.
He gave her an odd smile. 'Actually, it's quite dull.'
When he got up, she said, 'If you don't mind me saying so, Mr Omukae, you certainly don't look like a bureaucrat. My husband studies the martial arts, and your body is much like his. It looks like a well-tuned instrument.'
He turned, gave her a little bow. 'Since you are Western I can assume that is a compliment,' he said. 'Cycling is a hobby almost anyone can benefit from. But to me it is more. It is a sport; an obsession, perhaps, one could uncharitably say. Did I say that right? I am often not certain of my English.'
'You said it better than most Americans would have.'
"Thank you, although I'm sure you are merely being polite.' That smile came again. 'My obsession keeps me fit in mind as well as in body. I find that my obsession is akin to meditation: it is hi constant motion, providing a cleansing of the spirit.'
'The way you put it,' Justine said, 'I could use an obsession like that. Too much time alone with nothing to do, nowhere to go breeds its own kind of inertia which seems at times impossible to break.'
Senjin nodded. 'If I were your husband I would not leave you alone so often.'
'His . . . work is often difficult, demanding,' Justine said, abruptly annoyed at having to defend Nicholas to a stranger. Didn't Japanese have better manners?
'Of course,' Senjin said. 'That is most understandable. Life is never perfect. One must often make sacrifices.' He shrugged. 'This is natural; it is to be expected.'
Justine, close to him, was suddenly curious. 'What is it, I wonder, that I see behind your eyes?' She was stunned that she had spoken in such an intimate way to a virtual stranger. What, she wondered, had made her do that?
Senjin looked down into her Western face. 'What do you mean?'
She hesitated a moment, but found that she could not help herself. She felt abruptly lightheaded, the pulse of her heart like a, drumbeat in her ears. 'Despite what you've said about your English, you're very self-assured in any language. I can tell that just by the way you move.' Startled by her own revelation, she blurted, 'It's uncanny. You remind me so much of my husband.'
'Thank you, but I am sure it is merely your imagination,' Senjin said, with that note of humility only the Japanese can project.
His face in the waning light had the aspect of a statue of a hero long forgotten. There was about him a blend of the stoic and the melancholy that pulled on Justine's heartstrings.
'One learns in America,' Justine said, 'never merely to accept an unpleasant situation, but to strive to overcome it.'
'Unpleasantness, Mrs Linnear, is an inescapable element of life. The Japanese understand this implicitly.'
She watched him as he slowly circled her. 'Surely suffering is a natural part of life. But do you really believe that unpleasantness is natural? That it must be accepted?'
'Oh, yes,' Senjin said. 'Unpleasantness is essential to existence. Perhaps I should say human existence to be perfectly correct. By unpleasantness I mean pain. Without pain, Mrs Linnear, there can be no pleasure, certainly ecstasy would be entirely unknown because there would be nothing with which to contrast it. Do you see this?' He was smiling, but in a wholly different way. This was not the smile of the open innocent, but the knowing expression of a worldly man.
'Of course 'you have followed me so far. But there is more. Much more. Because it follows that pain can in itself be pleasurable. It can, in fact, provide a release of a magnitude never touched by ecstasy. You do not believe me? I can see that you do not. How can I persuade you save by example?'
Alarmed, Justine said, 'Just what are you talking about, Mr Omukae?'
The cyclist gave her a small bow. 'Call me Senjin,' he said, taking her hand in a very Western gesture. 'We are on sufficiently intimate terms to use our first names, don't you think, Justine?'
'Was I ever outside?' Nicholas asked. 'Did you lead me there?'
'You were outside,' Kansatsu said. 'Yes.'
'But you were with me, I know that. I just couldn't see you.'
'You were alone, Nicholas,' Kansatsu said. 'Just as you are alone now.'
'I don't understand.'
They sat in a plain stone-walled cell within Kansatsu's monastery, just within the circumference of illumination from several fat votive candles. The light seemed ancient, given a three-dimensional quality by the scent of the burning candles.
'Remember,' Kansatsu said, 'you have come many times to my retreat here on the Black Gendarme.'
'Did I also jump many times?' Nicholas asked. 'Did I let go many times?'
'Ripples,' Kansatsu said, 'spreading outwards until they are spent upon the shore.'
'I let go,' Nicholas said. 'At some point in time I let go.'
'But you did not fall,' Kansatsu said, 'as you were afraid you would.'
'No,' Nicholas said, wonder still in his voice. 'I hung in the Void, above the abyss that still terrifies me. All around me was the Black Gendarme, below and above. I was separated from it yet a part of it. It was as if I could
fly.'
'Or suspend gravity.'
'What happened to me, sensei? Please. You must tell me. I am in an agony of knowing.'
'Find the answer, Nicholas. My answer will not be yours. Think.'
'I found-.
'Go on.'
'I found the Darkness.'
'Yes,' Kansatsu said. 'This is what I meant you to find when I sent you to Kumamoto in the winter of 1963.'
'Instead, I confronted Saigo.'
'Forget the ox, Nicholas. The ox does not exist. I sent you to confront yourself.'
'No!' he shouted. Darkness was turning by degrees into light. But Nicholas was sickened by what was revealed.
'Think of the Darkness,' Kansatsu said. 'There is only
one law, one Way. You gave yourself up to the Darkness and it protected you. The Darkness is what you have shunned for all your life. You have always known of it, Nicholas. You have chosen to turn away from it.'
'If what you say is true, that you sent me to confront myself, it would mean that Saigo and I are the same. He is me; I am him.' He thought in terror of Saigo's enormous capacity for depravity and evil. That cannot be!'
'Ah, but in a sense it is!' Kansatsu said. 'And now you have the proof. Think back: it was your mother who explained the legacy of your grandfather's emeralds to you, your mother who was tanjian just as your grandfather was, your mother who passed her gift and your grandfather's legacy down to you.'
'But even though she was his favourite,' Nicholas said, 'my mother was adopted by my "grandfather". No one knew where she came from.'
'That was what she told you,' Kansatsu said, 'and no doubt there is much truth to the story. However, I would wager that your grandfather - if no one else -knew precisely her origin. And she became his favourite because he was tanjian and so was she. He could not pass down his gift through his genes, I'll put another wager on that; the wife he took was not tanjian. But your mother was, and he saw in her the cycle renewing itself, and he loved her all the more for what she would provide for him.'
Nicholas stared at Kansatsu. Chunks of memory, stories of her past Cheong had told him in his youth that heretofore had made no sense, were now dislodged, rising, coming together into a recognizable whole.
Kansatsu accurately read Nicholas's expression. He said, 'Think back: you found the Darkness even though you are Shiro Ninja. This is impossible. Yet it has happened. You know that it has happened. Take no one else's
word for it but your own. The Darkness is the Way. It is that part of your true self that up until now you have not been able to face.
'Now you know the whole truth.' Kansatsu's face was shining, lit by something more than the candles' glow. 'Nicholas, you are tanjianP
Justine felt a sudden, almost painful stab of fear. 'How do you know my first name? I haven't told it to you.'
Senjin watched her in the last of the light. 'Pain and pleasure. This is the way my mind works: on all possibilities at once. Or is it the only possibility?'
'Who are you?' Justine's voice was tight. She was thinking, How do I get to a phone? Who do I call? Is there an emergency number in Japan? My God, how little I still know of everyday life here. 'You're not just a cyclist I almost hit.'
Senjin advanced on her, said, 'I am alone. I have chosen to be alone.'
The taste of brass was in her mouth, a storm was brewing in her heart, and she tried to move away from him, as if she might free herself from a kind of palpable magnetism that seemed to have gripped her, to suffuse her with a frightening lassitude which increased the closer she was to Senjin. ,
Her cheeks were hot. 'I ... was thinking of my husband.'
'Were you? Are you certain of that?'
Justine looked up into his long, black eyes. She
glimpsed an animus, iridescent as the scaly side of
a fish, that drew her to its centre like Theseus in
the Cretan labyrinth, where crouched the Minotaur,
breathing, waiting, patient as a god.	<
His eyes, as large as moons, seemed to burn with a cold light. Justine could not avert her gaze; in a moment, she did not want to.
'I take no wife,' Senjin said. 'I will have no family of my own.'
'So instead you live your solitary life, drifting like a cloud above the jam-packed earth.'
'I think I know your meaning.'
'You're so terribly alone. How do you stand it?'
'When I was a child I was always lonely,' Senjin said. 'I cried often, and was ashamed of my weakness. In time I overcame that.1
'And that's your answer?' Justine said incredulously. 'You see loneliness as a character flaw?'
'Certainly it is not a virtue,' Senjin said. 'What else can it be?'
'It is, I think, the pain behind your eyes.' They were so close that she was breathing him in like the scent of an exotic orchid, blooming in the night. 'It's a scar on your soul.'
'Japanese do not believe in a soul.'
'Your spirit, then.' Justine knew that she should move away from him now, this instant, because she felt as heavy as lead. She recognized with a start the taste of brass in her mouth as lust. 'I know you have a spirit if not a soul.'
'My spirit is pure,' Senjin said. 'It is without emotion, therefore it requires no solace.' He put his hand gently over hers. For a moment, Justine was paralysed. Fantasy had now begun to spill over into reality, and the sudden presence of the two, as disparate as oil and water, made her feel queasy. She had no feeling in her legs, and she leaned against the wall, feeling its coolness against her burning skin.
'Justine?' Using her Christian name again, as intimate as a caress. His lips close to hers. Night coming, down, a pull like the tide. Desire, mindless, savage, burning like a jewel at her throat.
Dear God, she thought, what's happening to me?
* * *
'No!' Nicholas cried. 'I can't accept what you're saying! I can't be tanjian!'
'You are'what you are, Nicholas,' Kansatsu said. 'Karma. There is nothing I or even you can do about it.'
'I refuse to accept my karma. I reject any notion that I am tanjian. It simply cannot be!'
"Think of the Darkness,' Kansatsu said. 'Remember what it felt like to hang suspended above the gorge.'
"It didn't happen!' Nicholas shouted. 'I dreamt it! I must have! Or I am dead. I died upon the Black Gendarme, as I suspected earlier.'
'You are alive, Nicholas. But the truth is that before this is over you may wish that you had died there.'
'Stop talking like that!' Nicholas was so agitated that he could not sit or even stand in one place. He paced back and forth like a wild animal made suddenly captive. 'I have no wish to hear any more of this!'
'On the contrary, that is your only wish now,' Kansatsu said with great patience. 'It is why you came here, why you risked a perilous journey in your currently fragile physical state.'
'I am Shiro NinjaV Nicholas shouted in anguish and fear. 'Why do you talk when you can act? You can save me. Use Tau-tau. Undo what has been done to me!'
'Don't you understand?' Kansatsu approached Nicholas, his aura, dark, iridescent blue-green like the body of an insect, preceding him. Nicholas shrank from him.
'Why should you fear me?' Then Kansatsu straightened. 'It is not me you fear, Nicholas. It is that part of yourself lying long buried in the centre of your spirit. Is it so hideous that you must fear it so?'
'I don't know what you mean,' Nicholas said, his misery clearly etched on his face.
'But you do,' Kansatsu said. "The Darkness is your
friend, Nicholas. It saved you when the wind tore you off the face of the Black Gendarme. Why can't you believe your own senses?'
'It was a dream, I tell you! What I saw, what I felt - it couldn't have happened!'
"That way lies madness,' Kansatsu said. 'Your senses are all you have to rely on.'
'But I can't rely on them now. I am Shiro NinjaV
'You are still Nicholas Linnear,' Kansatsu said. 'Nothing will change that. Your spirit abides, Nicholas. It is indomitable. Only your own mounting fear can crush it.'
'The fear entangles me, sensei,' Nicholas whispered. He shivered suddenly, and his teeth began to chatter furiously. 'It will not let go its hold.'
'No!' Kansatsu said so sharply that Nicholas started. 'It is you who are holding on to the fear. This fear is known and therefore can be handled. This other fear - the fear of the Darkness - of your heritage and all it implies - is the unknown. Better by far the former than the latter.'
Nicholas drew his legs up to his chest. He trembled as if he had the ague. 'I am afraid, sensei.'
'Of what?'
'What if I am tanjian?'
'If that frightens you, Nicholas, let yourself feel the fear. At least give yourself that much freedom. Reach out once again and touch the Darkness.'
'I can't. I seem paralysed.'
'If you feel up to it,' Kansatsu said softly, 'tell me what happened to my elder brother, Kyoki.'
Outside, a storm was whistling through the ravines and narrow gorges on the approach to the Black Gendarme. Hail rattled against the thatched roof of Kansatsu's monastery. Real time had seemed to vanish, retreating down a wall of gravity that kept the two of them in an orbit all to themselves.
Nicholas told Kansatsu what had transpired from the moment he saw Kyoki's castle to the moment he left. When he bad finished, Kansatsu said, 'How long do you think my elder brother had been dead when you discovered him?'
'Half a day. Perhaps less than that. Six hours/
Tell me, Nicholas, who knew you were going to the Asama highlands?'
'Only my wife and my close friend, Tanzan Nangi.'
'Do you trust this Nangi?'
'With my life,' Nicholas said.
Kansatsu fixed him with a stare. 'It may yet come to that. I advise you to choose your words - and those you trust - most carefully.'
'I stand by what I said.'
Kansatsu said nothing.
Nicholas, growing anxious, said, 'What are you thinking, senseiT
'He must be an individual of enormous personal power, this murderer of my brother. He got to my brother before you could talk to him, so he must have known where you were heading. How was that accomplished? Did someone tell him, your wife, your friend Nangi? Or did he already know?'
'What are you saying,' Nicholas said, angrily, 'that Tanzan Nangi, with whom I have trusted my life, who is so crippled that he must walk with a cane, this man could be a dorokusai, a tanjian fanatic?'
'Someone managed to breach the castle's defences,' Kansatsu went on as if Nicholas's outburst had not occurred, 'to defeat my brother, a tanjian adept. We do not know how that was accomplished, either. Yes, there are many mysteries here that must be unravelled.'
Thinking Nangi was right, Nicholas said, 'One thing is certain: my enemy is a dorokusai.'
'Oh, yes.' Kansatsu nodded. 'All things are possible
in this universe, Nicholas. Even the unthinkable: the existence of a dorokusai, the most feared of tanjian. As you must know, a dorokusai is a loner, a rebel who has deliberately turned away from the discipline of Tau-tau -from all discipline. He is the master of deceit and disguise. Often, he appears in a benign guise. Always, he is not what he seems.'
Here Kansatsu paused, and it seemed to Nicholas that he had at last answered his question.
'A dorokusai inhabits his own universe,' Kansatsu continued. 'He has1 created his own laws, his own Way. Even the tanjian sensei fears the dorokusai because he has such power that he cannot be killed - he must be destroyed.'
'What is the difference,' Nicholas asked, 'between death and destruction?'
'That is one of the reasons you have come to me,' Kansatsu said. 'It will be the last lesson I teach you, Nicholas. But know this: if you begin your lessons here, then you choose to place yourself squarely in the Path this dorokusai is bent on pursuing.'
Nicholas considered this. 'I have already been placed in the dorokusai's path,' he said at last. 'My only choice is whether to fight or to die.'
'If you have found the conviction,' Kansatsu said, 'then reach out. Find the Darkness again. It is your special friend.'
There was a silence of such duration that the light changed in the chamber before Nicholas gave a sharp cry. 'I felt it,' he whispered. He was covered in sweat but was no longer trembling. 'I felt it.'
'Hold out your hand,' Kansatsu said. When there was no response, he said again, 'Nicholas, hold out your hand.'
Slowly, Nicholas extended his hand until it had crossed from the light into the shadows on Kansatsu's side of the chamber.
Kansatsu touched the tip of his forefinger to Nicholas's. 'Here is your fear. Touch it, breathe it, own it. Understanding will come only in this way.'
After a time, Nicholas said, "The fear comes from inside myself, not from the Darkness.' His voice was filled with a kind of wonder.
Kansatsu said, 'Now your spirit hangs suspended over an abyss just as, before, your corpus was suspended over white snow, grey ice and black rock.' He waited a moment, then said in an entirely different voice, 'Tell me what you are thinking at this moment.'
'I don't want to believe that I am tanjian,' Nicholas said. He took a deep breath. 'I'm afraid that if I do, I'll be no better than my cousin Saigo, whose spirit was warped and corrupted by the evil inside him.'
'Is that what you believe, that the Darkness is evil?'
'Isn't it?'
'I admit that it has the potential for great evil,' Kansatsu said. 'The dorokusai who pursues you is ample evidence of that. But that is not all the Darkness is. The universe, Nicholas, is neither good nor evil; rather, both moral extremes exist within it.' Kansatsu's voice was soft, a tide calming the-racing of Nicholas's terror-driven heart. He kept the physical connection between them. "This was one of the first lessons I taught you, remember? It is the most essential of all the truths.
'The same is true of the Darkness. It, too, is a universe, but because it is one of almost limitless power, its potential is often abused, corrupted. That is the nature of power.
'All power is transitory. In its ephemeral nature lies its infinite malleability, and its potential to warp the spirit of human beings. If you touch it, you will not die. But you will change. In what ways even I cannot say.'
'I am afraid to change,' Nicholas confessed.
'If you do not change,' Kansatsu said simply, 'I cannot help you. If you do not change, the dorokusai who pursues you has already won. You will never be able to use the emeralds your grandfather bequeathed you. You will remain Shiro Ninja forever.'
Nicholas was shaking as if with a fever. The minutes stretched on, building into an agonized silence. At last, slowly, Nicholas bowed his head.
Kansatsu closed his eyes. He seemed to resume breathing after a very long time. 'All right then,' he said. "The first thing you must do is to learn to speak all over again. You must learn to think in a new language. It is called Akshara, the language of eternity.'
'It is part of Tau-tau?'
'It is the very essence of Tau-tau,' Kansatsu said. 'Without Akshara nothing else is possible.' He looked at the whiteness of Nicholas's face. 'Tell me, Nicholas-san, are you afraid?'
'Yes, sensei.' It was a hoarse whisper. The fear was coming in a flood, but then Nicholas realized that Kansatsu had called him Nicholas-san, and he could breathe again.
'Good,' Kansatsu said. 'You should be frightened now. Your spirit is no longer suspended. The time has come to plunge yourself into the abyss.'
Nangi and Tomi arrived at The Silk Road after midnight. The tokudashi parlour was packed with sweating businessmen, a colony of milling ants, dressed alike, wreathed in acrid cigarette smoke.
Tomi paused for a moment, fascinated by the expression on the men's faces, replicated over and over. She knew what they were watching, knew what was in their minds, and she marvelled at the power behind that one image. She wondered whether women could become so obsessed over one portion of the male anatomy. She did not think so. Women were not so much involved with the
physical as they were with the emotional. Not that they couldn't be sex-driven, bat certainly not in the way men often were.
Mega-amplified music almost blasted them back to the entrance-way; the strobes came on, momentarily blinding them. Tomi blinked, flashed her credentials at the bouncer. She had to shout to be heard over the music.
She led Nangi around the perimeter of the main club room, past a stained and greasy cardboard sign marked
NO ADMITTANCE.
The warren of corridors was like a catacomb carved from the earth. Nangi followed Tomi as she wended her way past identical-looking doors. The corridors were shabby, the walls filthy, paint peeling, air vents clogged with soot and grime fluttering feebly. Bare light bulbs hung on twisted lengths of flex from the exposed sockets in the blackened ceiling.
Tomi paused at a door. She had to pound on it in order to be heard over the rock music. She heard a response, and opened the door. Inside was a tiny room furnished with a slab dressing table, a mirror surrounded by several lights, one cane-backed chair, a rusty sink. A young woman in a thin, ratty robe stood staring at them.
'Oh, it's you,' she said in a dull voice, and turned away from them to apply make-up. She watched their reflections warily in the mirror.
'Atoko,' Tomi said, 'this is Mr Nangi. He's a friend of mine.' She turned to Nangi. 'Atoko shared Mariko's dressing-room with her. She found the body.' Then turned back. 'We'd like to ask you some questions.'
'About what?'
Tomi slipped a photo of Dr Hanami out of her pocket book, placed it on the dressing table in front of the girl.
Atoko glanced down at it, said, 'Who's this?'
'I thought you could tell us,' Tomi said.
Atoko shrugged, went back to applying her make-up.
Nangi, with his limp exaggerated, walked over beside
the girl. He reached up, plucked a photo stuck between
the mirror and its frame.	-
Atoko said,'Hey!'
Nangi allowed her to take the photo from him. 'Your brother or a boyfriend?'
Atoko pushed her lower lip out sullenly, stuck the photo back in its niche.
'You know,' Nangi said, 'I had a sister once. She had a lot of boyfriends when she was young. Just about your age, I should think. How she loved the boys to come around! How she encouraged them! Not, I think, with any evil intent. She was a good girl. She just enjoyed their company so.' He took several limping steps away. 'Sometimes, though, she would get into trouble.'
Atoko cocked her head in his direction. 'What kind of trouble?'
Nangi looked at her, as if startled that she had actually been listening to him. He waved his hand. 'Oh, well, sometimes another girl's boyfriend would be sweet on my sister. Not that my sister did anything to encourage them. Oh, my, no. It just happened.' Nangi gingerly took another step. 'But her girlfriends never understood. They blamed her, of course, because they could not bear to blame their own boyfriends.'
'But that's exactly what happened!' Atoko exclaimed. She put down her eyeliner, stared at Nangi. -'Mariko and I were such good friends until..." Her eyes lowered, and she pointed to the photo of Dr Hanami. 'Until him.'
'He preferred you to Mariko?' Nangi asked.
Atoko nodded. 'For a time. Then he switched back and forth, without us at first knowing. In rthe end, I think he believed he was in love with Mariko, but by then it was too late. Mariko wanted nothing more to do with me.'
There were tears in Atoko's eyes; she would not look at herself in the mirror. 'Poor Mariko, she was a good girl. She didn't deserve . . . Oh, damn!'
Nangi and Tomi exchanged glances, and Tomi went to hold Atoko while the tears streamed down her face.
'I'm all right,' Atoko said at last. She took a handful of tissues, dabbed at her face. 'Oh< shit, I can't go on stage like this.' She began to cry again. 'I thought I had finished'grieving for her.'
Nangi waited a moment, then said, 'Can you tell us anything about the man in the photo Detective Yazawa showed you?'
Atoko shrugged. 'What's there to tell? He was a rich guy who loved to cheat on his wife. I got the impression that he liked being around us because we were young. He soon grew tired of me. But hi a way it was different, I think, with Mariko.'
'Different in what way?' Tomi prompted.
'Like I said, he thought he was in love with her.'
'Do you think he'd do anything for her?' Nangi asked suddenly.
Atoko paused in reapplying her make-up. She stared into the mirror at nothing, at the past. Then her eyes cleared. 'You know, the funny thing is that when he was with me, practically all he talked about was his wife. I think he would have done anything for her.'
'Was he here the night of Mariko's murder?' Tomi asked.
Atoko would not meet her gaze. She nodded at last. 'I lied about that. I... was ashamed of how my friendship with Mariko had ended. I ... didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want anyone to know.' She took a deep breath. 'But, yes, he was here that night. He had a date with Mariko. I saw him, his face white as milk as he rushed out of her dressing-room. I heard him vomiting in the alleyway outside. That's when I went into Mariko's
dressing-room and . . . found her.' She bit her lip, looked away from them. 'I'm sorry. I should have told the truth from the beginning.' Her eyes met Tomi's in the mirror. 'I'm a good girl.'
Justine was staring into Senjin's lambent eyes. It was like staring into the night sky, strewn with mysterious stars, filled with shadows whose shapes so familiar in daylight had taken on hidden meanings, extracted from the depths of her own imagination.
Tau-tau, and more than Tau-tau, the forbidden magic of the dorokusai, was at work here. She could not know and, if she had known, she would not have understood.
Senjin, the vampire, continuing what Haha-san had begun, was doing, to Justine what he did to all his women - what he had done even with Dr Muku before he had plunged the phosphorus-laced cigarette into his eye socket, into his brain - he was sucking out of them their life, seeking as he did so the key to them (the key, had he but known it, to himself): their secret fears, their humiliating weaknesses.
Justine, taken out of time by Senjin's conjuring, looked down upon her life, observing, much as Nicholas had many months before while undergoing his operation.
Now she did Senjin's bidding, as Nicholas had while Dr Hanami's scalpel had probed his brain for the tumour.
'Where does your husband keep the box, Justine?' Voice like a silken whip, urging her to speak. 'Where has he hidden the emeralds?'
Justine knew - or, in any event, she remembered Nicholas frantically rushing into the house, digging beneath the floorboards, seizing the box. His sigh of relief when he opened it. How could she forget? But there was something she was forgetting. What was it?
'I'll take you,' Justine heard herself saying. 'Come with
me.' Taking his hand, her body filled with an energy that made her teeth chatter.
She showed him the spot in Nicholas's workout room, showed him how to push aside the post, how to unearth the box. Just as Nicholas had... what was she forgetting?
Senjin brought up the box into the light. He realized that his hands were trembling. At last, he told himself, the emeralds! The last link with Eternity, for which he had been searching, it seemed, all his life. Ever since, at least, he had been told of the mystic emeralds' power and what it could unleash.
He opened the box, and gasped. Six emeralds, only six. Where were the other nine? He needed nine. His hands scrabbled over the dark blue velvet, tearing it into shreds. Six were not enough; in fact, as he knew, the number could be quite deadly. But not for him.
He scooped up the emeralds, put the empty box back in its cache.
Senjin turned to Justine. He could see the Tau-tau imprisoning her, colouring her eyes, making her do what he ordered. 'Where are the other emeralds?' he said sharply. "There are only six here.'
'I don't know.'
Senjin studied her bewildered face. 'Are you certain? Think hard.' But she must know. Some part of her perhaps had seen or heard something, a tiny incident that she could not connect with the disappearance of the remaining gems. He would have to find out, look into her mind, dig deep as a surgeon might for what he was looking for.
'I am,' Justine said. 'I don't know. I thought they were in the box. I saw them in the box when Nicholas - ' She stopped abruptly.
'What is it?' Senjin asked. 'Go on.'
'I - I.' She grimaced suddenly, put her hands to her temples. 'Oh, my head hurts!'
Senjin knew immediately what was happening. Some
deeply buried part of her was fighting him, resisting this direct approach. Perhaps Linnear had told her directly that she must never reveal the emeralds' hiding place. That would be enough to set up the moral conflict. He decided to try another approach. After all, he had the time. And, in any case, it might prove interesting on other levels.
He pocketed the emeralds, put the workout room back in order. Then he took her out of there, out of the house entirely. On the engawa the night had settled in. The cicadas were buzzing and, here and there, fireflies danced among the cypresses and the cryptomeria.
'Talk to me,' Senjin said to Justine. Tell me about yourself; tell me what you can't tell anyone else. Above all, I want you to remember.'
Justine sat on a cedar lounger Nicholas had made just after they had moved in here. It was her favourite spot, looking out as it did on Nicholas's garden.
'When I came here to Japan, I loved it,' she whispered. 'Why not? It was exciting, exotic. I was filled with the unfamiliar sights, smells, sounds of the country, and that was enough to sustain me. A year later, I seemed to hit a wall. I had taken care of setting up a household in a foreign land, or so I thought. My husband hired a Japanese woman to help. I became pregnant. It all seemed to be on track. But it wasn't. It was terribly, terribly wrong. I missed my family and my friends. There was no one here but my husband and his friends. They weren't enough, and then my daughter was born and I lost her. I became negative about everything. Now I hated Japan; now all I could think about was going home to our house on the ocean in West Bay Bridge on Long Island. Oh, how I longed to be there! How I long to be there now!'
Justine was trembh'ng with the force of the emotions these memories were exacting from her. She felt a need to catch her breath. But she suspected that if she stopped,
she would not finish, and now she needed to do that more than anything else, because that was what Senjin was willing her to do. 'Then old disturbances I thought I had successfully dealt with when I was younger began to resurface and I felt as if I were back where I had started so many years ago.'
She felt now as she had felt then, a resurgence of the past, the ripping asunder of the fabric between past and present, the rushing of something hidden overtaking her.
'When I was much younger,' she continued, 'and also at a low point in my life, I turned in desperation to analysis. I hated my father for paying no attention to me, for despising my weak-willed mother. I needed someone to talk to, someone who could set me straight.' She looked at Senjin Omukae. 'I suppose you wouldn't understand.'
"There are many psychiatrists here in Japan,' Senjin said non-committally.
Justine rolled her head away from the moonlight. "The doctor I saw was a woman. She looked like a dark-baked gypsy. I felt embarrassed coming to her, the rich lapsed Catholic, emotionally bankrupt, my pockets bulging with money. Funny. I remember what I was wearing on my first visit: a Mary Quant mini-skirt and polka-dot blouse I had just brought back from a shopping spree in London. Afterwards, looking at myself in a full-length mirror, I was so appalled I turned up the next week in jeans and a work shirt, and never let Honi see me hi anything else again.'
Justine paused. It was hard work dredging up the past, facing up to the unhappy, spoiled brat she had been. She had never even spoken of this to Nicholas. How was it, she asked herself, that she was able to confess her sins to this man? Then the question slipped, unanswered, from her drugged consciousness.
'Honi wore huge silver earrings from Mexico, multicoloured peasant skirts woven in Guatemala. She was totally unconcerned with how she looked, and I learnt by example. She taught me to look inward at those dark, dank places inside myself I would rather ignore. It was hard work - at times impossible, I thought. Many times I broke down and sobbed, unable to go on. But Honi was always there, and her strength eventually became my strength, as if she were empathy itself, able to draw the inner pain out of me and into herself.
'She had an infinite capacity to absorb pain, like an icon or a saint. Often, when I was with her, I thought of myself in church, my idealized church which accepted suffering rather than -displaying it in numbing profusion. I thought of Honi as a him in a holy order, myself as a novice who must pass test after test in order to prove herself worthy.
'That was my problem, you see - I could never think of myself as being worthy of a decent relationship. Loving someone else and being loved in return was simply out of the question. But gradually I came to see that Honi loved me. She saw all my flaws, digested all my sins as I disgorged them. And still she accepted me. Still she loved me.
'What a revelation that was! Of course, at first I couldn't, or wouldn't, believe it. But Honi wore me down. I came to her like a wild animal intent on gnawing itself to death. She taught me not to bite myself, then she healed my self-inflicted wounds.
' "I will bear the weight of your sins when you cannot," she told me. "Justine, it's important for you to realize that you're not alone any more." And, of course, I thought, where's the catch? What does she want from me?
'Honi was the only person in my life who wanted nothing from me. She loved me so that I could learn to love myself.' She turned her head back. 'Do you love
yourself, Senjin? It seems to me that you don't. It seems to me that you're too involved with the mechanics of keeping your environment in check. Nicholas is the same way. He melts into the darkness, he treads silently, at times I am certain that he has stopped his breathing. He has mastered all these things, yet he is not the master of himself. I sense the'same thing in you, Senjin, am I wrong?'
Senjin said nothing.
'Being with you is like being with my husband. Can you tell me how that is possible?'
Senjin knew but he would never tell her. Instead, he reached out for her. He had known that this evening would turn interesting.
Justine felt suspended above an abyss, entangled in her own roiling emotions. She felt Senjin's touch like an electric current surging through her, and she thought in disbelief, This is not happening, I cannot feel what I am feeling, my body is betraying me, just as I am betraying Nick. She felt as if she had a fever, her legs weak, her lungs raw, coherent thought as distant and unreachable as a star.
Moonlight drifted like lace through the trees. I should be alone, waiting for Nick to return, she thought, but I'm not. I'm with this strange Japanese man and I want him against me, on me, in me.
Justine wept into the soft, fragrant hollow of Senjin's neck as she clung to him, as he lay her on the porch, bound her wrists and her ankles. Her mind was on fire, but it could not match the heat of her body.
Senjin felt the heat as if it were emanating from a forge. This moment was very sweet for him. He had dreamt of just this triumphant moment, a transcendent experience, surely.
'I promised you an example,' he said, 'of the mingling of pleasure and pain. The oneness.'
At that moment a twig snapped. They both heard
it and, startled, Justine's eyes sparked. Her chest was heaving, and he could see the fear-lust like a drug dilating her irises. He wondered what his own eyes looked like, and was glad he had no mirror in which to look.
He put one finger across his mouth to stop her from talking. He signed to her to stay silent, then went without a sound off the engawa info the swath of pebbles, the border of the front garden.
Anyone else would have made noise, weight crunching down on the pebbles, but Senjin seemed to have no weight. Justine watched him gliding across the garden, and saw in him once again an aspect of Nicholas that made her desperately uneasy.
She was shaking from the cool night air and the release from forces so unknown and intense that they seemed to stop the normal functioning of her mind. She felt them even now, though they were less intense, like the tendrils of a dream that entangles you in its mood throughout the day.
If she had expected to be free from them the moment Senjin left her, she was wrong. There was about her the sense of lying in a hammock, swaying rhythmically in erotic indolence. She lay as if entranced, glutted with the throbbing of her body, rolled on her side, staring at the spot where Senjin had blended into the darkness, waiting for him to return as if he, not Nicholas, were her
husband.
*
Han Kawado cursed himself. Crouching in the bushes beside the Linnear house, he drew a long, thin-bladed knife. He had done some work on the hilt so that it was covered with a dark abrasive material that would not slip or twist at a crucial moment even in the sweat of fear or the flow of blood.
Fear was what Han Kawado felt now. His mind, numbed by the long hours of surveillance, had begun to
slip into a twilight fugue. Memory had merged with the present, and his wife, dead now six months, had been reborn in his mind. She had died suddenly while Han was off on a job for the Pack Rat. Hie doctors who attended her last hours had assured Han that had he been with her when she was stricken, he could have done tittle to prolong her life. A massive heart attack was like an earthquake, they told him, one had but to assess the damage in retrospect. Karma.
So they said. But Han could not help but blame himself. Because of the nature of his work, he was .hardly home, and then it was apt to be for odd hours, the sporadic day or so. In retrospect, he realized that he loved his work more than he had ever loved his wife. That was his karma, knowledge that he could not allow himself to forget, a kind of legacy from his wife, a justification, however tenuous, for her death.
And ever since, he was conscious of how alone he was. Previously, he had chosen to live his life in this manner, a shadow man, lurking in the night, inhabiting a nether world forever apart from the bulk of mankind. He wore his solitary life like a badge of courage, certain of his heroism. Now his aloneness preyed upon him, withering his spirit as time lined his skin. At times, he felt older than his own father, survivor of Bataan and of Hiroshima.
Still, surveillance work was the only thing he knew; and he was good at it. He had taken the Linnear job when the Pack Rat had offered it. But the hours were long. They weighed upon him mercilessly. His legs were stiff, the joints painful from holding one position for so long.
Han had been witness to everything: the almost collision, the talk over tea, the enigmatic seduction on the engawa. Tiredness and his guilty thoughts-had conspired to make him careless. He had moved to get a better view
of Senjin tying up Justine, had not looked where he was putting his feet, and snap! A dry, dead branch had cracked beneath his weight.
It was impossible to judge just how loud the sound had been to others or to know bow disastrous his misstep had been. He had no clear idea who the Japanese cyclist was or what his interest in Justine Linnear might be. His job was to report to the Pack Rat any suspicious contact Justine had with anyone outside a circle of people he had been briefed on.
Perhaps, he thought now, as he crouched in the thick darkness, I should have reported this contact immediately. But he dared not leave Justine alone with this unknown man until his identity could be cross-checked. Now Han braced himself for the worst. If no one came looking for him, so much the better. But his instincts were too sharp to rely on a chance. He had to assume that his misstep had been heard. If the man named Senjin Omukae had any designs on Justine Linnear he was sure to be suspicious, and would want to check out the sound.
Well, Han thought, let him come. He strained for any hint of approaching noise, hefted the knife. I'm ready for anything. Then something as hard as steel was across his windpipe, and he could no longer catch his breath.
Senjin had ceased to breathe in the normal sense. Instead, he inhaled and exhaled tidally so that there was no rushing in his ears, no discernible throb of his pulse. In this way he heard far more than any other human, more even than most animals.
He found the man hidden within the underbrush. This proved no great difficulty for him, though by the manner in which he had secreted himself Senjin could tell that the man was a seasoned professional in matters of sur-
veillance. Any normal man - or even a team of men -would have overlooked him.
But Senjin was not a normal man. Senjin scented him first, the sharp man-odour wafting his way mixed with the soft-edged scents of camellia, jasmine and pine, and knew that he was being spied upon.
Senjin heard the spy's breathing within the gentle sigh of the wind, between the infrequent hoot of an owl. Senjin stood still as a rustling overhead in the branches of a cryptomeria momentarily disturbed his concentration. Then, glancing upwards, he saw the owl's great wings, black sails in the moonlight, dipping down, impaling a trembling vole in its talons, settling back in the cryptomeria to begin its nocturnal feast.
Senjin felt a special kinship with the owl, as he did with the cryptomeria. Both were sentinels as well as symbols of the solitary existence of the warrior, the last bastion against decay.
Scenting blood and then the sharp man-odour, so out of place in this environment, reminded Senjin of what he must do. He moved on.
He stole up behind where the man crouched in the underbrush, hidden; so he thought, in dense shadow. Senjin slipped one arm around the man's throat.
'Who sent you?' Whispered into the spy's ear. 'Why are you here? Who are you working for?'
The man said nothing, and Senjin repeated his questions, inflicting a great deal of pain as his free hand hit a series of pressure points on the spy's body.
Senjin had very little time - something the spy knew - and so was at a disadvantage. He needed answers to his questions but, unable to get them, he progressed to the next logical step.
His eyes closed to slits. Only their whites showed. A beat became palpable, a dimple in the fabric of the
night. He plunged the stiffened fingers of his free hand through the man's eyes. The spy's body gave a powerful galvanic leap like that of a bucking bronco. Bunched muscles spasmed then, all at once, let go. There was an abrupt stench, and Senjin stepped quickly away, letting the corpse fall into the bushes. He went hurriedly through the man's pockets, taking anything he thought might give him some clue as to the man's identity, what he was doing here or who sent him.
Then Senjin went back to where Justine lay, bound, on the porch.
Her drugged eyes opened, her irises huge. 'Where did you go?' she asked.
Senjin said nothing. He wound a silken cord around her neck.
The horned moon, melon-coloured, bloated as it neared the horizon, seemed alive, malevolent, a mute, unforgiving witness to what was about to take place.
'The sex act,' he said, 'can often be cruel, brutal, inhuman. It can so easily become a weapon. Some speak of it as rape, not the act of love. But love and sex are so far apart that they're not in the same lexicon.'
'Sometimes,' Justine said, her lips opening. 'Only sometimes.'
Senjin looked directly into her eyes. 'But sex is only interesting when it is used as a weapon,' he said, thinking more about himself, about this moment, suspended in time, than he was about the missing emeralds.
There was blood on his hands, blood in his nostrils. The proximity to death, the act of killing made bun feel more alive than ever, close to the edge where eternal mystery reigns, where the end becomes the means to controlling the destiny of others, and in so doing of ensuring his own destiny.
He began to tighten the cord around Justine's neck.
* * *
'You look like someone I should avoid at all costs,' Kusunda Ikusa said, eyeing Killan Oroshi, as the Pack Rat began to record. They were in Ikusa's office in the Nippon Keio Building in Nishi-Shinjuku.
Killan laughed, 'I always try to read your mind if not your heart.'
He swung his chair around to face her. 'Every once in a while it occurs to me that I should kill you before you have a chance to destroy me.'
'Perhaps one day you'll try,' Killan said, apparently unfazed. 'It would be fun to play that game with you.'
Ikusa scowled. 'Death is no game, Killan. No matter what I do, I can't seem to make you understand that.'
'Oh, I understand, all right,' she said. 'I just don't give a shit.'
'One day,' Ikusa said, 'you'll see that it's the same thing.'
Killan Oroshi dropped her coat on to Ikusa's desk, took a chair near him. She was facing the large window behind his desk, and she said, 'Tokyo is like the sister I always wanted and never had. I don't think I could survive without her wildly beating heart: the post-punks strutting their stuff in Ueno, the eternal electronics bazaar in Akihabara, the city of neon signs and deified symbols that mean nothing at all. Japan is the land of the empty hand, of the primitive, the sexual throbbing just beneath the obsessively ordered surface. Welcome to the future: the post-atomic society.'
Kusunda Ikusa watched her with the gravity of an incumbent politician observing his rival's election campaign. 'It is a pity you were born a woman,' he said. 'You have such a male mind and, worse for you, a man's ambition.'
'Ambition - or the lack of it - is my father's ruination,' Killan said. 'I have to make up for that lack. He would
never be dependent on you if he'd had an ounce of conviction. He let others talk him into deals that destroyed Nakano's reserves. Then his only recourse to bankruptcy and seppuku was Nami.'
'He could count himself lucky that Nami's Chiyoda Central Bank stepped in, lending Nakano Industries enough capital to get itself back on its feet.'
'With your policies implemented by your officers.'
Ikusa shrugged. 'You yourself have recounted the bad deals.'
'Not my father's fault!' she cried. 'Others made those decisions.'
'Sometimes, it's possible to forget just how young you are,' Ikusa said. "Then you make a naive statement like that. One would almost think you love your father, rather than hate him. He was the chairman of Nakano, Killan. His was the ultimate responsibility for all decisions implemented by the company.'
'You ruined Nakano. Broke it into fragments.'
'Did you expect us to throw good money into a situation that was fast deteriorating? We had to protect our investment. That meant getting rid of the old regime, installing a new one.'
'Handpicked by Nami.'
'We knew what we wanted of Nakano when your father came to us,' Ikusa said. 'It was a business deal, plain and simple.'
Killan laughed. "There's nothing plain and simple when it comes to Nami.'
Again Ikusa shrugged. "Think what you will. The outcome will be good for you. I promised you a position of importance within Nakano in exchange for your help.'
'But I don't want that.' Killan got up, stood in front of Ikusa. Though she was dwarfed by his bulk, she was not overwhelmed by it. On the contrary, by the way in which Ikusa gave her his anention, her eminence seemed
to grow within the confines of the office. 'I want to be inside Chiyoda.'
Kusunda Ikusa laughed. It was a heavy, rumbling thing not so much different than the sound presaging an earthquake.
Killan's expression appeared cast in granite. 'It is a mistake to mock me,' she said.
'Oh, Killan, I do not mock you.' Ikusa wiped his eyes with a sausage-like finger. 'I am merely astounded by the scope of your ambition. Every time I think I've calculated your limit, you step past it.'
'I'm only making the logical choice,' she said. 'Nakano is nothing. Not now, anyway. It's a shell that Nami has filled up. It doesn't interest me. Why should it? Chiyoda is where all the money, all the action's at. Chiyoda, as a central bank, owns many conglomerates because it holds their purse-strings. Chiyoda is where the power resides, and I want in.'
Kusunda Ikusa ran a finger along the line of her jaw. 'Even though you speak like an adult, in some matters you are only a child,' he said at last. 'I can't fault your mind. But you must accept that there's more information than you or even your father know.' He grunted. 'Now that the merger of Nakano and Sphynx has been effected, we have moved into our end-phase. The shell of Nakano will begin to fill up, not with personnel, but with intelligence, the greatest intelligence-gathering network the world has ever seen. And it all emanates from what you quite rightly call the shell.
'Nakano is research and development, that is what we left when we began to dismantle it as Ghiyoda's money began to be used. We used your father's company as bait, Killan. Even he never understood.
'We wanted - needed - Tanzan Nangi's Sphynx technology. But how to get it? Nangi had made too many fail-safe provisions against a takeover; he could not be
co-opted, the damnable man is: incorruptible. We had to catch him unawares. So we set the Nakano shell with its legendary research and development department as bait. Then I applied pressure on Nangi.
'The result is the merger between Nakano and Sphynx. Nangi believes he will exercise certain options to take over Nakano. He wants their research and development as much as we want .Sphynx. But he won't get them. Instead, we'll own Sphynx and that will be the end of Nangi. The warrants he will exercise are worthless because, as of a week ago, the R and D department was moved from Nakano Industries into a semi-dormant subsidiary not covered by the warrants. That was all right with Nangi because as far as he knows the subsidiary owns only rusting refineries in Kobe.'
The Pack Rat's hands were trembling. Ikusa had set a trap for Nangi all along! He double-checked his recorder to make sure he was getting every word they spoke. He wanted to get out of there immediately, get this information to Nangi, but something made him pause, his sense that Killan Oroshi was more than either he or Kusunda Ikusa knew. She had a part to play in this drama, and he was determined to discover what it was.
Kusunda Ikusa laughed. 'Be patient, Killan. Be content with the post I have secured for you at Nakano. You'll find an outlet there for all your restless energy. Chiyoda will always be there. Besides, isn't there a risk? I wonder what your revolutionary friends would say when they found out where you'd be working. No doubt they'd believe you'd been co-opted by the establishment.'
'Fuck them,' Killan said. They've become boring, anyway. They're little people with minds as dogmatic as those in the establishment they hate so much - the same establishment that feeds and houses them, I might add. Of course, they don't recognize the irony of that, or the hollowness of their so-called philosophy. They want
to bring down the establishment by violent means but what do they mean to replace it with? They can't tell you because they^don't know.'
'You're so young,' Ikusa said, 'to understand so much.'
'We're both young, Kusunda. That's our curse, isn't it? Another thing to bind us together so we can gather the courage to ride the dragon's back.'
'Come here.' Ikusa gestured.
'Not yet,' Killan said. 'Be patient.' Mocking him. 'I want what I want, Kusunda.'
'I cannot get you inside Chiyoda,' Ikusa said. 'Not yet.'
'All right. I can accept that. What I can't accept is a shitty publicity job at Nakano.'
Kusunda Ikusa sighed. 'What would make you happy?'
'For the time being? Though it's a secret to the outside world, I know the emphasis you're putting on new product development. That's the new thrust of Nakano - you want to go head to head with Sato International. A formidable task, since Sato is number one in its fields of electronics, computers and chip manufacture. I think you're going to need all the help you can get. I want to be involved in the battle.'
'But, Killan, you are no scientist.'
'No, but I know how to reach people. If I can work with the Nakano R and D staff, I can devise the best ways to market Nakano's arsenal of upcoming products.'
Ikusa thought for a moment. 'Your suggestion has merit,' he said at length. 'I will take it up with Nami.'
'Which means you'll set it up,'she said.
'You give me credit for wielding more power than I do,' Ikusa said, but he was chuckling, obviously pleased.
'You know I'm right.' Killan slipped on to his lap. The chah- squealed beneath their combined weight as slowly it turned. Ikusa held the girl to him, his face lost in her hair.
In this position, the Pack Rat could look directly into
Killan's face. He saw that her eyes were open, burning with a hatred so intense that it made him shudder. And then he understood that it was not hatred of Killan's father that he saw filling her eyes, but her hatred of Kusunda Ikusa. She was still the dangerous revolutionary at heart, despite the convincing lies, the show of disaffection.
He remembered Ikusa's words, Every once in a while it occurs to me that I should kill you before you have a chance to destroy me. The Pack Rat now knew what Kusunda Ikusa obviously did not: this was Killan Oroshi's goal.
In Mariko's bleak dressing-room at The Silk Road, Tomi said to Nangi, 'This is where she was found, where she was tortured, raped and ultimately killed.'
Nangi crossed the room with some difficulty. It was late, and his leg was giving him some pain. 'Right below this network of pipes?'
'Yes.'
"The murder occurred some months ago.'
'Almost ten. But it seems nothing much has changed since then. The girls are superstitious. No one's willing to use this dressing-room now.'
Tomi watched as he looked upwards, something she had never done. He seemed to be examining the pipes.
'Would you do me a favour?' he asked. 'Get down on the floor in approximately the same position in which you found Mariko.'
Tomi did as he asked. To do so she had to slither herself between his legs.
Nangi said, 'Was there any evidence that Mariko was either tortured or raped elsewhere in this room before being dragged over here?'
'None,' Tomi said. 'It all happened here where we are.'
Nangi nodded, as if satisfied with something. He tapped a point on a horizontal pipe with his cane, extended the cane down until the tip almost touched her. 'This point is
just about where your neck is. You are more or less the same height as Mariko was, aren't you?'
'Yes.'
'I don't remember seeing any neck bruises in the photos of Mariko's corpse.'
'You've got an excellent memory,' Tomi said, impressed all over again. 'There weren't any.'
Nangi moved the cane over, began tapping the pipe rhythmically now. 'It is also approximately where the neck of the person who tortured and murdered Mariko would be when he was raping her.'
"That's logical,' Tomi said. She was at a loss as to where this was leading.
Nangi had his free hand beneath the pipe. He kept tapping the pipe with the head of his cane, then pulled up a chair, lowered himself into it.
Tomi sat up and he poured what was in his hand into hers. Tomi looked at it. It was rust. She looked up at Nangi. 'So the pipe is rusty. That's only normal for a dump like this.'
'Exactly,' Nangi said, 'but come here. Look at the spot that was just above your neck.'
Tomi rose, stood on tiptoe. 'There's no rust there.'
'The only spot on the pipe where that's so,' Nangi said.
Tomi turned to him. 'Do you know what this means?'
'I'm afraid I'm getting to know this murderer far better than I'd like to.'
'What on earth do you mean?'
'I've made the connection between Df Hanami's and Mariko's deaths,' Nangi said. 'To understand, you must recall the note found on the unfortunate girl's body.'
' "This could be your wife".'
'Yes. I told you I thought it was a warning. Now I know it to be a warning for Dr Hanami. He was being blackmailed by the tanjian, the dorokusai.'
'Are you telling me that this tanjian who attacked
me and Mr Linnear in Dr Hanami's office is the same person who murdered Mariko?'
'Tortured, raped and murdered her, to use your own words,' Nangi said. 'Yes, that's precisely what I'm telling you.'
'But how could you possibly know that?'
'This told me.' Nangi tapped the shiny spot on the horizontal pipe. 'This was made by a rope, weighted at one end, abrading the metal, flaking off the rust.' Tomi remembered the line buried in the forensic report about flecks of rust found on some of Mariko's wounds, specifically around her upper torso. 'The dorokusai will use a specific methodology, self-asphyxiation, during the sex act.'
'But there's no such term as self-asphyxiation,' Tomi pointed out. 'Long before death, the autonomous nervous system will kick in. The person's grip on the rope will loosen, and he will continue to breathe.'
'Oh, yes, true,' Nangi said. 'But even before that happens, the carbon dioxide build-up in the dorokusai will bring him close enough to death for him to achieve orgasm.'
'It's disgusting.'
'It's part of his training. He practises it regularly - not only during the sex act - until it becomes as basic as aiki taiso in aikido,' Nangi said. 'It is another area in which the tanjian are taught to attack the Void.'
Tomi hardly heard Nangi now. Something had caught in her mind. She fought to bring it to the surface, but it slipped away from her and was gone.
Nangi, watching the intensity of her expression, wanted to ask her what was on her mind, decided to observe instead.
In a moment, there was a knock on the door. Tomi opened it. The owner-manager of The Silk Road stood in the dim light of the busy hallway.
'Back after so long, Detective? This is a surprise. I thought the case had been closed,' the man said/bowing with exaggerated humility. 'Can I be of service in some way?'
Tomi stepped back, beckoned him inside.
He looked around the room, taking stock, as if needing to assure himself that they had not appropriated anything. He was a thin, weaselly individual with bad breath and an obsequious manner.
Tomi had taken an immediate dislike to him, and nothing about her subsequent relationship with him had changed her mind. In fact, as she studied his anxious face now, a door clicked open in her mind. She began to suspect that there might be something here that she had overlooked or had been deliberately hidden from her. Now she thought that Nangi's presence might give her a chance to find out.
Td like to ask you a few questions,' Tomi said.
'Again?' The weasel made washing motions with his hands. 'But of course.' He frowned. 'But after all this time I can't imagine what it is you expect to find-'
'This is Tanzan Nangi,' Tomi said, ignoring him. 'He's a professor of psychological criminology at Todai.' She meant Tokyo University. 'He's begun studying the case. Professor Nangi has developed a theory concerning the case that he would like to try out.'
She waited until the weasel's oily eyes flicked from Nangi back to her. 'How long have you been managing The Silk Road?'
'Six years,' the weasel said. 'But you already know this, Detective.'
"This is for the professor's benefit,' she assured him. 'And is that the same amount of time that you've owned the club?'
'No, I bought it seventeen months later. But you already know -'
'How did you originally obtain financing for this establishment?'
'But this is all old ground, Detective.' Hie weasel's hands were working overtime, washing themselves. 'I obtained a loan from a local bank. As collateral, I put up the assets of my small sales business;'
'How long was the dancer, Mariko, working here?'
"Three years, almost,' the weasel said. He addressed Nangi now. 'She was quiet, a hard worker. And the patrons liked her. She never missed a show, never complained. I have a daughter who gave me more trouble than Mariko ever did.'
The three of them waited in the silence of the tiny ferroconcrete room, as small as a doset, as large as a tomb of the wealthy. The muffled rhythmic thump of the electronic bass, the pulsing of an evil heart, was a constant reminder of where they were.
When Tomi could no longer tolerate the oppressive sense of despair inhabiting the room like a kami, she said to the weasel, 'That will be all.'
The weasel looked stricken. 'I thought - I mean, I was hoping to witness the development of the professor's theory. After all, Mariko worked for me. She was like family.'
Tomi controlled a desire to spit in the weasel's face. She said, 'We'll call you if we need you.'
When they were alone, Nangi said, 'What was that with the professor from Todai all about?'
'I'm not sure,' Tomi said. 'A hunch, maybe. You stay here, see what you can uncover. I want to see what that weasel's up to. Something in his face when he saw you made me suspicious.'
'Haven't you already run a check on him?' Nangi asked.
'Yes, and I found nothing in the police computer. Still, when I saw how he reacted just now I decided to put him to a test. It's simple, almost crude, but maybe it worked.'
She slipped out of the room, feeling an uncomfortable weight lift from her chest. She moved quickly down the warren of corridors. By now she knew her way almost as well as did the girls who worked here.
At the weasel's office, she put her ear to the door, but with the muffled thump-thump-thump of the amplified bass she could hear nothing.
She tried the knob but the door was locked. It required nothing more than a paper clip bent just the right way to pop it.
Tomi took a deep breath, swung the door wide open. She saw the weasel on the phone, made a dash across the room. His eyes opened wide and his instant of hesitation was enough to allow her to lunge across his littered desk, grab the receiver before he had a chance to hang up.
'Who were you calling?' Tomi snapped.
The weasel said nothing. His face was pale. She pinned him where he sat behind his desk.
'Moshi,' she said into the mouthpiece, but she could hear nothing. She put the line on hold, punched open a second line, dialled the telephone company maintenance shop, gave them her name, rank and authorization number, told them what she wanted to know.
Within five minutes a technician was back on the line. "The call that was just made from the number you gave me was to the Metropolitan Police.'
The ensuing silence was so long that the technician said, 'Hello? Sergeant, are you still there?'
'Yes,' Tomi said hoarsely. 'Yes.' Gathering her wits. 'Can you tell me which precinct?'
"That's a snap,' the technician said. 'Uchibori-dori headquarters, the main one.' Tomi's offices.
Still in a daze, Tomi thanked the technician, put down the phone. She fought to centre herself, but thoughts kept intruding. The weasel had clearly been nervous at her reappearance. And when she had introduced Nangi as a
new player in the investigation, the weasel had become positively agitated. Then something he had said hit her like a shot: / thought the case had been closed. How would he know that? Unless he had some contact with the Metro Police?
Tomi, staring hard at the weasel, said, 'Who did you call?'
'My mother.'
'Your mother works for the police?'
'Yeah. She's a cleaning lady. She mops out your latrines.'
For a long moment Tomi did nothing. Then, in a lightning move, she snatched the weasel up by his lapels, slammed him against the back wall. Glass shattered in the window.
Tomi put. her face so close to his he had trouble focusing on her. 'You're going to tell me,' she said, 'or you won't leave this room.'
'Big words,' the weasel said.
Tomi jammed him backwards so hard he cried out. Blood began to seep out of his.suit as the shards of jagged window glass punctured his skin.
'Tell me who you called!'
All at once, the weasel began to weep. Sweat slid down the side of his face. 'Oh my God,' he whimpered, 'I can't. Don't you see, he'll kill me.'
'He won't have a chance,' Tomi said savagely. The glass sunk deeper into the weasel, and he gasped.
'All right,' he said, twisting and moaning in pain. 'But you'll have to protect me.'
'Who? Tell me?'
'I demand protection!'
'You're in no position to demand anything,' Tomi pointed out. 'But I'll see what I can do. Who did you call? Who were you going to tell about Professor Nangi?'
The weasel's eyes almost bugged out of his head.
'It's not so easy, damnit!' he gasped. The bastard's a division commander. He used to. come here years ago when he had been assigned this district. He worked out a deal with me so I'd allow him access to my girls, so he could do - ow, God that hurts! - so he could do what he wanted with them. I-I never - God -1 never asked what he did. I didn't want to know. Then this thing with - oh, God! - Mariko happened and I was terrified. I didn't want to be implicated in her - '
'Are you telling me that a Metropolitan Police division commander tortured, raped and murdered Mariko?' Tomi was aware that she was shouting. She didn't care.
The weasel nodded. 'Y-yes.'
Mariko, she thought, all your life you had no one. Now you have me. Your avenger.
'Who was it? Who killed her?' She was shaking him like a leaf. Bursts of adrenaline surged through her, powering her. And a glimpse into the flash of memory that had been eluding her: dim light, the tiny precinct closet, her body entangled with Senjin's. Her mouth opening on to his flesh. The taste of him and ...
'Who killed Mariko? Tell me, you bastard, or I swear you won't walk out of this room alive!' A red haze behind her eyes, the memory, slippery as an eel, winking in and out of her consciousness. Nangi saying, The dorokusai will use a specific methodology, self-asphyxiation, during the sex act. It's part of his training. He practises it regularly . . .
'Who killed Mariko!' Working the weasel on the rack of the shattered glass fragments. The red haze deepening, Mariko, I have him for you, the memory surfacing, Senjin making love to her in the closet, she pulling aside his tie, unbuttoning his shirt so she could kiss his chest, the flesh of his neck abraded as if by a wound. A wound around his neck.
The dorokusai will use a specific methodology, self-asphyxiation. He practises it regularly ...
A Metropolitan Police division commander was a tan-jian, a dorokusai and, dear God, he seduced me in every way it is possible for a man to seduce a woman: he assigned me to a homicide case in which he committed the murder and co-ordinated the police work in its aftermath; he used me as a stalking horse to keep track of Nicholas Linnear when it would arouse suspicion for him to do it himself; he took me like an animal, in the office where even a kiss between colleagues is unthinkable. He made me break all society's rules, all my own rules as well. He made me feel elated and debased at the same time. He used his dark erotic magic on me to penetrate my mind and my flesh, to suck himself into me, to use me over and over again. And I was powerless, as powerless as Mariko must have been.
Humiliation, rage, fear, all combined inside her.
'Who killed Mariko!'
What he did to me. The abraded flesh of his neck. What he did to her.
'Who killed Mariko!'
Used like dolls made of putty he could mould into any shape, Mariko and I and how many others? My God, how many more?
'Who killed Mariko!'
'Omukae!' The weasel shrieking at her in a potent mixture of terror and relief. 'Commander Senjin Omukae!'
When Killan left the Nippon Keio Building some hours after she had entered it, there was no question as to what the Pack Rat's next move was going to be. He followed her. She was the key, he.was sure of it, the enigma whose solution would bring into perspective everything he had heard up until now.
It was a moon-drenched night, the air unnaturally clear and calm after the days of rain, gloom and suspended petrochemical ash. The Pack Rat encountered
no difficulty in tailing Killan as she went across town into Asakusa, to the Scoundrel's usagigoya.
This time the Pack Rat would not be shut out. He had run a check on the Scoundrel, had found to his intense curiosity that he was a member of Nakano Industries' research and development department. He was also Killan Oroshi's friend. What were the two of them up to? It seemed clear now that Killan had wanted to be at Nakano, not Chiyoda, all along. Why? The Pack Rat meant to find out.
He scouted the hallway. On one side of the Scoundrel's apartment was a stairwell, on the other, another tiny apartment. The Pack Rat chose the stairwell first, finding the common wall with the Scoundrel's apartment. He knelt down, got out his miniature listening equipment. He got nothing. He put his hand against the ferro-concrete of the stairwell wall. There must be a ton of structural iron in there, he thought, blocking transmission.
He gave it up, went back into the hallway. He listened with his ear, then with the electronic equipment at the door to the adjacent apartment. Silence.
It took him fifteen seconds to get through the lock. Cautiously, he pushed the door open just wide enough to allow him to slither through sideways. Darkness and the smell of plaster, fresh paint, kerosene. There was debris on the floor, which he could see in the moonlight filtering through the blindless window had been taken down to the rough concrete underflooring. There were no lights, no electricity. Obviously the place was deserted, awaiting construction.
The Pack Rat went to work. Crouching beside the common wall with the adjacent apartment, he put his electronic 'ears' on.
Immediately, he heard Killan's voice, very loud, filled with the harsh sibilants of the 'ears'.' . . telling you, life wouldn't be the same without you, Scoundrel. You're the
only person who really sees me. All the women I know despise me, and all the men want to fuck me. Except you. You want to listen to what I have to say.'
'And then 1 want to fuck you.' It was a male voice, no doubt belonging to the platinum-haired Scoundrel.
Killan laughed. 'You're the only one who can make me laugh, you know that? It's a gift, like your genius with computers.'
As he had done in the Nami offices, the Pack Rat was taping all this, avidly preserving Killan's aural history as if that would allow him to capture her like a butterfly in a bell jar.
'Look at all this equipment,' Killan said. 'I sure hope it's going to do us some good. Are you sure this virus thing is as powerful as you've said?'
'You bet. More. mantis, the Manmade Nondiscrimin-atory Tactical Integrated-circuit Smasher. Not a virus-thing, a borer,' the Scoundrel said. 'But mantis is a unique kind of borer virus. It only attacks computer software programs with virus-prevention encryptions. It actually cannibalizes the software's own security systems, mutating them so that they turn on themselves. The deeper the encryption, the harder my borer works. I've told you, mantis is very sophisticated, very experimental stuff.'
The Pack Rat heard Killan's laugh. 'Listen to you. You're a genius in the lab. But in the real world, forget it. When you first told me about this, you weren't even going to get a piece of the action.'
'That's right,' the Scoundrel said, sounding defensive. 'I was told the mantis project was strictly for governmental use.'
'And I said, fuck the government,' Killan said. 'I said, let's take this shit and go private. We'll make a fortune. Do you know how many Western conglomerates will deliver a year's assets in order to get an edge on their
competitors? Jesus, the American market alone for this virus will make us millionaires!'
'If we live long enough,' the Scoundrel said. 'Which we might not. I'm not so sure we're doing the right thing, Kalian. This is the real world. Besides, mantis isn't perfected yet.'
'Real world. My God, listen to us!' Killan said. 'Next thing we'll be discussing is getting married, having kids, which brand of-nappies and rash ointment to buy. We'll be dead! Or something even worse: entombed by kata, the rigid rules of our society.'
'Ah, Killan, the eternal revolutionary,' the Scoundrel said in a gently chiding voice. 'Revolutions are great to think about. But they don't exist, not in our world. Anyway, there were only two revolutions that meant anything, one in America, the other in France. The others were jokes, parodies that exchanged one form of dictatorship for another. They don't even deserve the name.'
The Pack Rat was paying no attention to the talk of revolution; he let his machines soak up the conversation for him. He was fully concentrated on the fact that this friend of Killan Oroshi's, this platinum-haired post-punk computer genius, the Scoundrel, who worked for Nakano Industries, Killan's father's company, was working on a supercomputer virus. Just the kind that had attacked Sato International's computer banks. Could it have been the Scoundrel's mantis being tested out? he asked himself. He knew there were tons of viruses being born daily, but, according to Mickey, the expert to whom he had given the record of the virus's attack, this particular one was a mole virus, not a destroyer like most others. Was mantis that kind? The Scoundrel had called it a borer. Did that mean it was meant as a communication device? The Pack Rat did not yet know. On the other hand, the Scoundrel was just the kind of genius Mickey had described when she
had talked with the Pack Rat about the virus's creator.
The Pack Rat had a weird sensation of déjà vu, as if he had come full circle: Nangi and the Scoundrel's mantis, Nangi and Ikusa, Ikusa and Ken Oroshi, Ken Oroshi, Ikusa and Nangi, Ikusa and Killan.Oroshi, Killan Oroshi and the Scoundrel. There seemed a connection to be made in the odd and disparate interlocking of relationships but, maddeningly, he could not see it. He knew it was there, though, and his heart beat faster,. Nangi will know, he thought. He knew he had to get all of this to Nangi right away.
He was concentrating so hard that he at first failed to recognize the blossoming geometric shape cast upon the wall in front of him. Then, with a start, he saw that it was a lozenge of light that could only be made by the hallway light coming into the apartment through the front door. But he had been careful to close the door behind him when he first entered.
The lozenge of light winked out. Darkness, again, mitigated by blue moonlight. And the Pack Rat knew that someone was in the apartment with him.
He did not move; he scarcely breathed. He slowly pulled the 'ears' from around his head, letting the recorder continue monitoring the conversation from the next apartment through its umbilical cord suctioned to the wall.
His immediate environment was silent save for the tiny noises all apartment buildings manufacture, the sounds of the night-time street filtered through the cracks between the window sash and the glass. Nothing else.
And yet ...
The brief crackle of newspaper underfoot, the sound as explosive to his ears as that of a match being lit in a warehouse full of gasoline.
Hurriedly, the Pack Rat placed his 'ears' against the wall, covered the paraphernalia with debris. He moved
away from it as a mother wren will from her chicks when she senses danger is near. Her instincts tell her to lure the danger away from her progeny; keeping them safe is her first priority. So, too, with the Pack Rat's recording of events and meetings, the shadow world that Tanzan Nangi had hired him to penetrate and neutralize. He knew that he had to protect his evidence at all costs.
As he moved stealthily across the apartment, he withdrew a dagger with an eight-inch blade whose shape he had designed on the computer. It was thin enough to be easily concealed beneath clothes, yet wide enough to be lethal even on a cut that was slightly off the mark.
Shadows played along the walls and the floor, across the humped shapes of discarded laths, dried plaster and wall-boards, adder-like tangles of wires, exposed phone lines.
Hie Pack Rat heard it coming long before he saw it. The whistle of air being displaced, and the small hairs at the back of his neck stood up. He knew that sound, and he curled into a ball, launching himself forward, towards the direction of the attack, knowing that this was his only hope now.
What the Pack Rat recognized was the sound a tetsubo makes when it is wielded. A moment later, as if to confirm his suspicion, the area of the concrete floor on which he had been standing exploded in a choking shower of particles and dust.
Tetsubo-jutsu was a highly specialized form of the martial arts, primarily because the tetsubo itself - a solid iron bar, its working end covered with iron studs - was so heavy. The weapon had been developed centuries ago for armoured warfare. A warrior would wade into the enemy, swinging the iron bar, opening up their armour or breaking the legs of the mounted enemies' horses.
Nowadays, tetsubo-jutsu was used for only one reason:
to crush an opponent. There were no half-way measures with such a weapon.
The Pack Rat came out of his curled position, struck immediately upwards. It was as if he had encountered a mountain. It took an exceptionally strong man, an enormous man, to use the tetsubo effectively. Without having seen his face, the Pack Rat knew who had followed him from the Nami offices into this vacant apartment: Kusunda Ikusa.
The Pack Rat's blow was deflected, and he found himself thrown hard across the room. He hit the wall with a thud, bounced up immediately. Even so, he could hear the tetsubo humming in the air as it headed towards him. He ducked, and a chunk of the wall splintered, showering him in biting bits of lath and plaster.
To avoid the suki, the weaknesses in defence that could result from tetsubo-jutsu, Ikusa had to strike at the Pack Rat quickly and repeatedly. This could be tiring, even for such a sumo as Ikusa.
But the Pack Rat knew that he could not keep up the pace of evasion in such a constricted space. Eventually, he would duck the wrong way or take a wrong step and Ikusa would crush his skull.
Therefore, he did the only thing he could think of: he got as near to Ikusa as he could manage. He theorized that the iron club would lose much of its effectiveness at such close quarters.
Ikusa's free arm came up, and the Pack Rat batted it aside, struck out with his knife, heard the sound of material being slit, felt the blade bury itself into flesh, and he knew he had a chance.
Ikusa dropped the tetsubo, made a grab for the Pack Rat. The Pack Rat was ready for bun, drove an elbow inwards in a powerful atemi. He whirled, crouching down, beginning his circular entering movement, and got his left hand on the iron club. He began the aikido
immobilization jo-waza, turning outwards, back the way he had come, feeling Ikusa's weight coining forwards, beginning to unbalance as the Pack Rat used his momentum against him, and the Pack Rat thought, Now I have a chance.
Me slid his left leg forwards, shifting the axis upon which his body rotated, readying the completion of the jo-waza that would hurl Kusunda Ikusa's enormous weight to the floor. At that moment a tremendous blow caught him in the side of his head.
He staggered, bis vision blurred. He struck out blindly with his blade, missed, overcompensated, spun helplessly around.
Then he heard the whistle, actually saw the iron bar coming at him, filling his vision. He tried to move his head, but nothing seemed to work.
A crack like thunder from the edge of the world. Time, like existence, as fragile as a candle's flame, was snuffed out.
When Senjin touched Justine's belly with the flat of his hand, he said to her, 'You're pregnant, aren't you?' He might have said, You're dead, aren't you? In fact, for the first split instant, that was what Justine thought he had said, but then she understood that what she was hearing was an echo of her own inner voice. 'Oh, God,' she said, collapsing against him, 'I lied.' Senjin let go of the silken cord, held her as delicately as if she were a fragile-boned bird with a broken wing. He saw the moonlight, slow and thick, falling across her face, illuminating one by one her features: mysterious eyes, strong nose, high cheekbones, full, partly-open lips; her hair in the semi-darkness a shroud rich with promise, below which her breasts rose and fell with her rapid, shallow breathing. The dense moonlight cast purple shadows, creating two other figures on the porch,
elongated, humanoid but certainly not human, winged but certainly not angels. .
This light had come a long way, slipping through the vast wasteland between the stafs, a prehistoric light, though of what alien civilization's prehistory it was impossible to say. But Senjin recognized this light and the power its properties of immense distance and time represented.
'I've lied to my husband all this time, and I lied to you when I said that I went to see Honi because I hated myself. I mean, I did hate myself. That much is true. But that's not all of it, not nearly. I was - how can I put this so you'U understand? I didn't want to grow up. I was afraid of growing up. I had lived my life with a mother sapped of life and of strength. It seemed clear to me that in giving birth to me and to my older sister, my mother had given us the juice of her flesh along with her milk.
'She was dried up, desiccated, devoid of zest. She had bequeathed that to us, had used up her quota of youth and gusto in becoming a mother. She was old before her time, lined, forever tired, forever plagued by vague maladies - headaches, backaches, cramps -that often prevented her from participating in even the simplest family requirements. More often than not she had her meals hi her room, which by then was separate from where my father slept: she claimed the weight of his body on the mattress caused her calves to spasm in the middle of the night.
'She rarely attended parties or family gatherings, never made it to our graduations from high school and college, but sent two trusted servants in her stead, as if believing that quantity would make up for her absence. Funerals were, of course, out of the question - they were too emotionally taxing - and she never went near a hospital until the day she died.
'It was as if, along with her drying up, her giving
us her life fluids, her capacity to take on obligation had dissolved.
This, to me, was adulthood; all I could expect in the coming years. Can you imagine how I felt when I thought about having a baby of my own? All I could see in my mind's eye was the image of my mother, grey-faced, bed-ridden, racked by the kinds of aches and pains only women twice her age start to experience.
' "You're not your mother," Honi assured me. It wasn't enough. I worked hard to want to be an adult, a mother, but it wasn't easy. My God, I tortured myself over it for years. I shed so many tears, you wouldn't believe how many. Finally, I thought I had it down. I thought I knew that I wouldn't turn into my mother. But then I came here to Japan.with my husband. I got pregnant and my little daughter died. I got through the hurt and the guilt just like an adult, I was proud of myself. I stood by my husband when he was in difficulty.
"Then I got pregnant again and everything burst apart. My whole life seemed turned upside down. It was as if I was back in Honi's office, terrified of becoming a mother. I don't know whether I want this baby. I don't know whether I can handle the responsibility. I feel as if I am turning into my mother, that I'm simply incapable of doing it - being a mother - and I'm so ashamed and disgusted with myself I can't stand it. And yet I don't want to be like my mother. I don't!'
Senjin, holding her, feeling her racked with sobs, was mute. I hated my mother, too, he thought. Only my sister knew that, and she didn't understand until I explained it to her, not with words but with actions. My sister is a stubborn, strong-willed woman. So much so that she became used to getting what she wanted. Except from me. I tried to cure her of her excesses. Perhaps I was at least partially successful. But I had to stop correcting her. I saw that if I went too far she would break, rather
than bend. I would not change her spirit, though that
spirit is imperfect, dangerous even. She is my sister, not
my mother. I would have changed my mother, if I had
been given a chance. My mother, like this woman, was
weak, deficient. A cure, no matter how radical, would
have been good for her in the end; anyone who knew
her could see that.	.
I think my whole life has been an effort to be strong in everything I do or say or think. I cannot allow myself even a momentary weakness, it's too much to bear, the thought that I'm carrying some of her inside me. Can weakness be inherited in the genes or passed like poison through the umbilical cord?
With Justine's lips against his neck, her breasts hard against his muscled chest, her thighs against his leg, Senjin thought he felt nothing, just as he felt nothing when he stared down at the nude body of Mariko, the dancer at The Silk Road; just as he felt nothing when he had sucked the innocence out of Tomi, using Tau-tau to seduce her in the office; just as he felt nothing when he had entered the myriad women who had populated his past like signposts in a distant terrain. Without thinking of Haha-san he had never felt even a fleeting atom of carnal desire at the touch of female flesh.
He had intellectually savoured each coupling with the avidity of a cryptographer tackling a new code. For the rest, the wolf in heat throwing his shaggy head back and howling at the night, there was nothing.
Then he heard, with a start, Justine whispering in his ear, 'Save me. Oh, save me,' and he began to tremble with despicable desire just as if she had said, Take me.
Because he thought of someone else: his sister, with whom he shared everything of importance: strength, sin, punishment, the terror of weakness, destiny. And a longing that was pain swept over him.
Justine was lying so close to him that he could feel the
press of her heavy breasts, feel the accelerated beating of her heart. Her face was upraised to his. Starlight picked out highlights in her hair, the waning moonlight coated the soft flesh of her neck.
That was when, with eyes of copper, Senjin again wrapped the silken cord around Justine's neck, jerking her against him. He captured her hips with his powerful thighs. She tried to cry out, but could not. He saw her teeth, white in the moonlight. He imagined blood on them, an animal's mouth thrown back and howling at the soft moon, and knew that he wanted to - needed to - make her as much like him as possible, to merge her being into his as he had pathetically tried to do and failed with Mariko when he devoured her susurrus at the moment of her death, as he had tried to do with the other women he had been with. To possess them in as full a meaning of the word as was imaginable.
Because he could no longer possess his sister in that unique way that, for him, filled the dread place inside him where even he would never venture, where pleasure was pain.
'Pleasure and pain, yin and yang, the light and the dark,' Senjin whispered hoarsely. "This is the world view, the false reality. Kshira showed me the truth: that pain and pleasure can be one, the width of a circle and, when they are, the result is otherworldly, leading to a state beyond even ecstasy.' His breath hard and hot on her cheek. 'I promised you an example. I want you to understand. Now . . .'
Senjin pulled up her skirt, roughly ripped her underclothes. The terror emanated from Justine's wide-open eyes, filled her face like a river swollen to a torrent from spring fains. Her terror exuded from her pores like sweat, its peculiar scent making his nostrils twitch, his mouth water.
Senjin was so hard that he could barely feel his member.
It was stiff, it was numb; he thought of Haha-san. Now not only Justine. But his sister as well.
His sister and possession.
The cord around Justine's neck was making the white flesh turn red and raw. Her neck began to swell as it bruised, as the blood filled it, as he pulled the cord tighter, as it was further abused. The sight made Senjin dizzy with desire and he almost collapsed into her.
He pulled on the cord, cutting off more oxygen, and her head went back, lolling as her eyes rolled up. Drool spilled from the corner of her mouth, her hips lurched inwards against him, against the quivering tip of him.
Senjin was overcome by desire. Never before in his life had its advance been so swift, so overpowering. He was delirious with sensation, about to thrust himself into her when, unbidden, he remembered that he needed her in another way, just as he had once needed Haha-san, and his hot, desperate seed spilled out of him in a paroxysm of need.
Senjin grunted like an animal. His head fell forwards on to her shoulder. With a sob, he released the cord from around Justine's neck, seeing not her but his sister, Haha-san, his sister, they were all fused in his mind because he needed all three, hated himself for that need.
Then the three images became unstuck, drifted apart. Senjin tenderly kissed the already blackening welt, licking it with his tongue, tasting the salt on her skin, already associating it with her wound, the pain he had inflicted on her.
He held her head as she had before, to take away the pain. 'You must tell me,' he whispered hoarsely, 'I must know what the ninja did with the emeralds he took out of the box.' But he could tell that Justine had not heard him, and he put his lips against her ear, said into it, 'Think of the ninja, think pf your husband in his workout room, with the box in his hands. Now he has the emeralds, you
can see them sparkling in the light. What do you see him doing next? Tell me.'
Justine, her eyes only half-open, her mind benumbed with Tau-tau, said, 'I remember . . . something
'What? Wkat!' But Seojin could see it was no good, she would not be able to dredge it up just yet. Not yet.
Staring at her white, sweat-slicked face in the moonlight.
But soon.
Leaving her there, untied in the moonlight, freed, but only for a time.
Shisei, dressed ever so fashionably in the Louis Feraud suit that Douglas Howe had bought her at Saks Jandel, locked the door to her borrowed brownstone just off Foxhall Road in Georgetown, skipped down the steps to the waiting black Jaguar sedan.
Branding himself was behind the wheel. Although he employed a driver to get him across town in rush hour traffic or out to the Pentagon while he did some work in the back seat, he preferred at other times to drive himself, taking pleasure in the purr and power of his own automobile.
'You look tremendous!' he said as she slid into the leather seat beside him. 'I'll be proud of you.'
'What have you planned for Howe?' Shisei asked nervously. 'Or for us?'
Branding laughed, swinging out into the Washington twilight. 'You must know General Dickerson, Howe's pet dog inside the Pentagon? Woof! Woof! Anyway, just about, oh, twenty minutes ago, while Howe was dressing for tonight's dinner, the general called him at home. But, you know, the funny thing is that there's a guy on my staff who does an amazingly accurate imitation of Dickerson's voice. In any case, whoever it was who called, swore that there's a security leak at the Johnson Institute. This
information surely set Howe drooling with anticipation. Greedy people are predictable people.
"The general, or whoever it was, insisted that Howe meet him in the wilds of Maryland where - so Howe's been told - the information is being leaked.'
Branding laughed again. 'It'll take Howe about an hour and a half to get where he's been told to go -longer, even, since this is his chauffeur's night off and he has to drive himself. He'll wait there, oh, I'd say an hour or so, just to make sure he got the time right, that the general hasn't been detained somewhere. Then another ninety minutes back. By then, the State dinner will be over.'
It was almost eight o'clock, the worst of the rush hour had dissipated, and the monuments were just being illuminated. It was a magical time of day, Branding thought. If you were in New York, you'd be on your way to a Broadway show; in Paris, strolling down the Boulevard Haussmann to the Opera; in Tokyo, in Roppongi, taking in the fashion show on the street while on the way to a glittering dining spot.
Here in Washington they were heading for the seat of power: the White House. The thought never failed to set Branding's heart pounding. He wondered whether one day he would sit in the Oval Office after having been elected to the nation's highest office. As he often reminded himself, that was one of the reasons he had got into politics in the first place.
He knew that with the success of the Ascra bill, with the formidable array of strength he had been able to muster, he now had a shot at the next nomination, less than two years away.
'Cook,' Les Miller, the chairman of the Republican Party, had told him last night, 'I've never seen any one man make an impact on the party the way you have. This bill is just the final touch. Even our most
conservative sunsabitches are mighty impressed with you. They've told me privately that they've been aware of you for some years. By God, you've got their full attention now. We're all tired of the man in the White House. This party wasn't founded to be led by a man who's turned out to be more Democratic than most Democrats.
'I can tell you your last speech on the Senate floor had them spellbound. They saw in it, as I did, the new platform fundamentals to return us to being the party of hard, no-nonsense principle. It's not too early to begin thinking about running for the nomination. Right now organization is half the battle. The sooner you give us the go-ahead, the sooner I can throw the full weight of the party machine behind you and get the process going. That's how sure we are of you, Cook.'
'Oh, God,' Shisei said, 'I've forgotten my bag. I always do that. I think it's deliberate. I hate evening bags.'
'No problem,' Branding said, making a U-turn. 'Anyway, if we're late, it will create a bigger splash.'
Shisei turned to look at him. 'I thought that's exactly what you wanted to avoid.'
'Look at yourself, darling,' he said. 'In that outfit, even a blind man would notice you.' He shook his head as he putted up to the kerb in front of her house. 'Strategy is useless unless it can be changed. And I've changed mine.' He saw her puzzled look, kissed her hard on the mouth. 'Go on, get your bag. Otherwise you'll never get to see how this evening ends.'
Shisei went up her steps, dug in her pocket for her key. She opened her front door, and disappeared inside.
In the foyer, she put the key in her pocket and removed her high heel shoes. Then, on stockinged feet, she crept up the stairs to her bedroom.
The hallway on the second floor was dark. The door to her bedroom was ajar, just as she had left it, but a thick wedge of light streamed out into the hall.
Keeping to the shadows close to the mahogany banister, Shisei went silently past the half-open door without attempting to peer inside. Instead, she went into the adjoining bedroom which shared the huge, luxurious bathroom with her bedroom.
She entered her bedroom through the bathroom. She could look at the full length of the room in this way, saw the vanity unit closest to her, her evening bag sitting on its marble top just where she had left it. She saw the drawers to the antique oak dresser piled hastily one on top of the other, their contents strewn in a jumble across the Oriental scatter rugs and the polished oak floor.
David Brisling was rummaging in her closet, frantically pushing aside her hanging clothes. Soon, she knew, he would reach her shoes and, behind the carefully piled boxes, her computer, headphones, her entire cache of clandestine equipment.
She went across the room so silently that an animal would not have heard her. But in so doing her shadow was thrown partly into the closet's interior.
Just as she came upon the figure, it turned. She saw the muzzle of the pistol and Brisling's face in the same instant.
Shisei ceded all conscious control of her body to Kshira: her mind emptied, to be filled with the Void, the sound-light continuum that was Kshira.
Her left foot blurred out and upwards even as her upper torso twisted away. Her rigid toes struck the inside of Brisling's wrist at the vulnerable juncture where nerves and veins come together.
Brisling's hand went numb even as his brain, in shock from surprise, gave its sluggish command to his forefinger to pull the trigger.
The pistol flew out of his hand, and Shisei dropped down, cupped her hands and, jamming them under his chin, drove upwards with strength emanating from her
hips, her lower belly - her hara - forced upwards into her shoulders, her arms.
Shisei shouted, one quick bloodcurdling cry, a kiai, a giving voice to the spirit, more than a battle cry, a martial art in its own right. At the same time, she shoved Brisling's head backwards with such force that the top of his skull shattered against the edge of the closet door.
Only then, with the threat ended, did Kshira recede, did the Shisei familiar to Cotton Branding reappear. She blinked once and, within the space of a heartbeat, took in the entire scene, ran through her plan again in her mind. She recalled with delight Branding telling her where Howe would be tonight; it was perfect. Plausible deniability. She could find no flaw.
She picked up the phone, completed her preparations.
Four minutes later, she was back in the Jaguar with Branding. 'Sorry I was so long,' she said a bit breathlessly.
'I was getting worried about you,' Branding said, putting the car in gear. 'I thought I heard something, I don't know what. I was just about to come in and get you.'
'It was nothing.' Shisei leaned across, kissed him on the mouth. 'My boss called just as I was leaving. I had the answering machine on but I had to pick up.' She put her hand on his thigh. 'By the way, he says to thank you for taking me to this party. I wouldn't've got in otherwise, and I'm certain I can break some new ground with the people who'll be there.'
'Good,' Branding said, grinning. 'Now you can say I've done my bit today for environmentalism.'
'It's something, Cook. But don't think it's enough. It won't ever be enough until "environmentalist" stops being a dirty word in American politics.'
Outside the tinted windows, north-west Washington - the Washington tourists saw - glittered like a million-dollar necklace. But Branding knew that for the magician's illusion it was. Hidden from sight was the
poverty, the crime and unemployment running rampant in the predominantly black neighbourhoods. While tux-edoed politicians like himself gorged themselves nightly on fine food and power, the real Washington simmered and, like an unwatched kettle, threatened to boil over.
A police car heading in the other direction, its cherry lights flashing, its siren screaming, gave physical weight to his thoughts.
But for this night, at least, Branding wanted to put all that out of his mind. 'How did you get into being a lobby for the environmentalists, anyway?' he asked.
'Murder,' Shisei said. She saw Branding looking at her from the corner of his eye. 'Too many whales slaughtered by my people. Too many seals clubbed to death on the ice and the beaches. The dumping of hazardous wastes into our streams, rivers and oceans. The senselessness and evil in greed was never more apparent to me. I wanted - I needed - to do something. It was important to me to know that what I was doing was making a difference.'
Branding thought about Shisei's life, how she had been imprisoned, tortured, how Zasso, the mad artist, had attempted to remake her in the image of the demon woman. Branding thought mostly of how Zasso had failed, of how Shisei had overcome her past, becoming a strong-willed woman.whose work did make a difference in the world. He realized then just how proud of her he was.
The State dinner was one of those affairs where protocol and diplomacy were the only acceptable currency. Branding had both of these to spare, and he was soon one of the few around whom knots of people congregated to listen, laugh and be seen.
He kept an eye on Shisei as she drifted through the gilt and cream ballroom, a glass of champagne in one hand, talking to one diplomat after another, who listened intently to what she was telling them. They would nod
sagely, smile and in the end give her their cards as if delivering an offering on the altar of a goddess.
An hour after they arrived, Branding drew her aside. He winked. 'Having a good time?' he asked.
'Successful,' she said.
'I noticed.' It was for Branding, too. All the ranking Republicans were in attendance, and they were never far from him, engaging him in conversation, always bringing up the Ascra bill, pledging their support.
Hie only sour note was delivered by Tricia Hamilton, the wife of Bud Hamilton, the senator from Maryland, a good friend and often an ally of Branding's. Like a herald announcing the approach of a still distant army, Tricia arrived at Branding's side with a flourish.
'You're my escort into dinner,' she said.
She wore a formal silk and crinoline dress that must have cost a fortune but made her look ten years older than her fifty-three years.
Her eyes flashed, and he could see her eyeing Shisei with the kind of predatory avidity raised to a high art by Washington wives.
'What a perfectly lovely girl,' Tricia said in a tone that made it sound as if she had said, What a perfect tittle tart.
Branding laughed, in too good a mood to allow Tricia's bitchiness to disturb him. 'She's smart, too,' he said.
Til bet.' Tricia smiled sweetly at him as they headed for the dining-room. "That's an interesting suit she's wearing. A Louis Feraud, isn't it?'
'I have no idea,' Branding said. 'But I like it.'
'Oh, so do I,' Tricia said acidly. 'Funny thing, though. It looks terribly familiar, and I know there aren't too many Louis Feraud suits around these parts. I mean, only Saks Jandel carries them hereabouts and they only get in one in each size. I know because I was there just the other day trolling for a new outfit and, do you know, I believe
I saw that very suit there,' She pulled herself closer to Branding, hugging herself against him. 'Yes, it was that suit. I'm sure of it.' She looked into his face. 'But, do you know, Cook, Senator Howe was buying it. Douglas didn't see me, I'm happy to report, he was in too much of a hurry. A repugnant little man, isn't he, Cook? The thought of him touching me sends shivers down my spine.'
Branding said, 'Despite what you say about Saks Jandel, that can't be the only Feraud suit in all of Washington. I don't know what you're getting at, Irish.'
'Me? I'm just making small talk, Cook.'
He tried not to let what Tricia Hamilton said bother him but, despite his best intentions, he found himself brooding over dinner. Afterwards, he could not remember what he had eaten or what he had talked about with his dinner companions. The President made a speech, then the West German chancellor, but Branding paid them no attention.
In the car on the way home, he was so quiet that Shisei touched him, said, 'Is anything the matter, Cook?'
He thought, then, about asking her where she had got the Louis Feraud suit. Had she bought it herself or had it been a gift? He almost did but, at the last instant, bit back the words. The fact was that he did not want to hear her answer because the chances were it would be a lie.
'Nothing,' he said.
What Tricia Hamilton had told him, her 'small talk', had rocked him. Tricia was a gossip only in the sense that she liked to talk about other people because it furthered her belief that knowing as many intimate things about the power pols as possible put her in the centre of things. But she only passed on verified gossip. She wisely let other Washington wives indulge in innuendo and semi-truths.
What bothered Branding was that if Tricia said she
saw Douglas Howe picking up Shisei's suit from Saks Jandel, that was exactly what had happened.
At first, he tried to think of an innocent explanation, but soon abandoned the idea as improbable and foolish. Then he began to work out the strategy behind Howe and Shisei as a team, and got nowhere. For the life of him, he could not imagine Shisei's personality meshing with Howe's. Something didn't feel right. Not unless Shisei was the greatest actress on earth.
He pulled up at her house, but did not turn off the engine.
'Aren't you coming in?' Shisei asked.
'I don't think so. Not tonight.'
In the almost silence of the engine purring, there was a gulf between them that had not existed when the night began. The street was quite deserted. Arching streetlights cast pools of diffuse illumination at regular intervals. Shadows from the leaves on the elm trees fell across the long hood of the Jaguar.
Shisei put a hand on Branding's arm. 'Cook, what is it? Your entire mood changed during dinner.'
He closed his eyes for a moment. 'I'm tired. I want to go home.'
'Please, Cook,' she said. 'Come inside, if only for a moment. I can't bear the thought of the night ending here.'
Branding waited a moment before turning off the ignition. Inside, Shisei went through the first floor, turning on all the lights as a child will ask to be done when awakened by a nightmare. Branding watched her at this ritual with opaque eyes.
'Drink?'
'I'd rather not,' Branding said. He had not sat down, was standing in the centre of the living-room.
'For God's sake, Cook, won't you tell me what you're thinking?'
'I don't know what I'm thinking,' he said. 'Not yet.'
'You want to go,' she said. 'I can see it in your face. You can't wait to get out of here.'
'It isn't like that at all.'
'Don't lie to me,' Shisei said.
Branding choked on his words.. He was furious at her accusing him of lying. Especially because it was true. 'How dare you say that to me, you lying bitch!' he shouted wildly at her. 'Where did you get that new suit?' He strode into the hallway.
Shisei's heart thudded heavily. Had he found out that the Feraud suit had been a present from Howe? How could he have?
Branding heard her calling his name, then the phone started ringing. He went out of the door. His legs felt oddly stiff, the muscles jumping beneath his skin.
Shisei picked up the phone, shouted, 'What?' into it, and her breath caught in her throat because she heard her brother's voice.
'Senjin,' she whispered, 'I thought we had agreed - '
'Our agreement is at an end,' Senjin said.
'But you'll put into jeopardy everything we - '
'Quiet!'
'What is it?' Shisei said. 'What's happened?'
'Life's liappened.' Senjin's voice was like an engine about to explode. 'The unimaginable has happened. I realize that I need you.'
'What do you m- ?'
'I'm coming,' he said. 'To Long Island, West Bay Bridge.' He gave her an address. 'Meet me there.'
Shisei was about to reply, but the line had already gone dead. She put down the receiver, and shivered. Unconsciously, she fingered her emerald ring.
Outside, Branding had got into the Jaguar, fired it up. As he nosed out into the quiet street he noticed that his hands were shaking. His heart was beating fast, and an
anguish he could identify almost as pain racked him. He longed for his wife's counsel; she would know what was right and what was wrong; who was, figuratively speaking, in bed with whom. She always had.
The thought that Shisei had been sent by Douglas Howe to somehow undermine him in order to send the Ascra bill down to defeat was almost too much to bear. It wasn't until this moment that Branding could admit to himself that he loved Shisei. Almost immediately, he realized just how much he loved her. She had penetrated deep inside his defences, touched the core of him as no one else, not even Mary, had. To find out that it was all a lie was beyond comprehension.
He felt as if his world had been turned inside out, as if the neatly identifiable labels he had prepared for people were useless - worse than useless: false. It was as if he were a child who had been transferred to a new school, only to find that all the lessons he had so painstakingly learnt in his former school were incorrect. He felt stupid, naive, betrayed by the very city of power that had pretended to nurture him.
He knew that it was his Puritan blood that made him all too ready to condemn her, to refuse to hear her answers to his questions, knowing that his love for her would make it all but impossible for him to differentiate the truth from the lies.
He could hear his mother's words as clearly as if she were sitting beside him in the Jaguar, one of many physical manifestations of his work in Sodom: The world is Satan's playground, Cotton. Stay on the narrow path that God has ordained for you, and you will be safe.
Revolving red and blue lights in his rear-view mirror made him start. A touch of a siren and he pulled over. His mind was still full of heavy black thoughts. A Metropolitan Police patrol car, white with the familiar horizontal blue stripe, nosed in behind him. Between flashes Branding
could see two shadowed figures in the cat behind him.
For a long time, nothing happened. Then the driver's door opened and a uniformed cop stepped out. His partner remained in the car.
Branding rolled down his window, heard the cop's footsteps crunching over the asphalt of the street. The cop, all six-foot-three of him, stopped in front of the open window, peered at Branding through mirrored sunglasses. Branding wondered how he could see anything at night.
'May I see your licence and registration, please?'
'I'm sure I wasn't speeding, Officer,' Branding said.
The cop made no reply, and Branding handed the documents over. He noticed that the cop accepted them with his left hand; his right was on the walnut grips of his bolstered service revolver.
The cop signalled to his partner, then said, 'I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to open your trunk, Senator.'
Branding said, 'What?'
The cop backed up a step, said, 'Please step out of the car, Senator.'
Branding got out of the car, walked towards the rear of the Jaguar. The cop was behind him. Ahead, he could see the second cop climb out of the patrol car; he held a .12-gauge shotgun loosely in one hand.
Branding said, 'Can I at least ask what's going on?'
The cop behind him said, 'If you would be kind enough to open your trunk, Senator.'
Branding did as he was asked. He opened the trunk, then stepped back. The first cop shone a flashlight into the trunk's interior. An odd, unpleasant, sickly-sweet smell erupted into the night.
The cop said, 'Jesus.'
Branding heard the twin hammers of the second cop's shotgun being cocked as he stared into his trunk, and saw the body lying curled in the darkness. Sudden nausea gripped him. The flashlight's beam illuminated the patches
of dried blood, the crushed skull, just as it illuminated the corpse's bloodless face.
Branding's mother saying, Stray from the narrow path, and all the good that I see within you will wither and die.
God in heaven, he thought, frozen in shock, I know this man. It's David Brisling, Douglas Howe's personal assistant.
Nicholas, high up in the Hodaka, his bearded face rimed with ice, out of time, assaulted the Black Gendarme. He was living his dream in which he was searching among the bullrushes, for what he did not know. He had found footprints in the black, marshy earth: in reality clues seeded in his memory, recorded, embedded there by his senses. The voice he had heard speaking to him was that of his memory. But with his spirit entangled he had not been able to hear the voice clearly enough to understand what it was telling him.
As Kansatsu had said, it was not Shiro Ninja that was entangling his spirit - that was merely a symptom of the disease. In fact Nicholas was already ill, entangled, when the tanjian attacked him; he was already susceptible, made vulnerable to Shiro Ninja.
Nicholas, with the elementals of Akshara already absorbed, was still Shiro Ninja. That was another thing he had been taught. Neither Kansatsu nor anyone else could 'cure' him of Shiro Ninja.
In fact, there was no cure. Shiro Ninja was a delusion that must be healed from inside himself. And yet, his memory of his martial arts training was little improved.
'Shiro Ninja is one thing,' Kansatsu had said, one evening after lessons were finished for the day. He was examining the scar on the side of Nicholas's head. 'This state you find yourself in is quite another.'
'But why?' Nicholas had asked. 'The main symptom of Shiro Ninja is loss of memory.'
"That is just it,' Kansatsu had pointed out. 'Your problem is not loss of memory but, rather, an inability to get at it. Akshara has begun to disentangle your spirit, yet your memories of ninjutsu and Getsumei no michi are still unavailable to you. Therefore, I believe now that the cause has an organic component.'
'Do you mean my inability, to remember is physical?'
'Yes. Precisely. It is my belief that something was done to you during the operation.'
A chill went down Nicholas's spine. 'You mean the surgeon severed something he wasn't supposed to cut?' The thought of some part of his brain irrevocably maimed was too frightening to contemplate.
'No,' Kansatsu had said immediately, as if he had an intimation of the dread creeping through Nicholas. 'That would be random, and the chance of him damaging the precise part of your brain dealing with memory retention is so infinitesimal it is not worth talking about.' Kansatsu had sat very still. His eyes were brack specks, a pair of ravens seen from afar over an autumn wheat field. There was both melancholy and power in such an image. 'I am speaking now of something deliberate, Nicholas.'
In the stunned silence, Nicholas had heard his heart beating, the blood pounding in his ears, a deafening symphony of terror. 'But the surgeon - '
'May not have been the actual instrument,' Kansatsu had said, interrupting him. 'Although it would seem that he must be implicated.'
Nicholas had an image of Dr Hanami's bloody face, his broken-boned body crumpled on the pavement.
"The surgeon who operated on me,' he had said. 'He was pushed from his office window.' Then he told Kansatsu everything, from the moment Dr Hanami pronounced his diagnosis like a sentence, to the battle with the tanjian in Dr Hanami's office more than six months later.
'Ah, everything is falling into place,' Kansatsu had
said. He produced an anatomical text, opened it to a section entitled, Hemispheres of the Brain. 'Let us take this chronologically. According to what you have told me, your tumour lay along the second temporal convolution - ' he pointed ' - here. Now you will notice that this is just above the hippocampal fissure - ' he pointed again ' - here.
Tanjian have known for centuries that the brain is a kind of computer whose myriad functions are precisely divided into well-defined sections. A certain section of the brain, for instance, is involved in the formation and maintenance of memory. This area is relatively small. It resides in what Western science has termed the hippocampus.'
'But my tumour was right above the hippocampus,' Nicholas had said. 'It's becoming increasingly likely that Dr Hanami made a mistake, a slip of the scalpel.'
'On the contrary,' Kansatsu had said. 'Put such negative thoughts aside, Nicholas, and concentrate on the evidence. The hippocampus is so far beneath the area where your tumour lay, it is impossible for a qualified surgeon to reach it accidentally. No. For the hippocampus to be invaded it must have been deliberate.'
Kansatsu had turned to another section of the text. 'The hippocampus is crucial to memory, modern science has discovered, because the brain cells there are rich in a peculiar molecule, the NMDA receptor. It is called that because scientists use the chemical, N-methyl D-aspartate, to detect the receptor's presence. The NMDA receptor accepts memories and encodes them into the cells for later recall. This can only be done if the brain's cells - or neurons - are allowed to link up, firing neurotransmitters across synaptic bridges. If something interferes with the synaptic spark, new memories cannot be retained. But, as in your case, if something destroys these cells or interferes with the NMDA receptor, memories already residing in the
brain cannot be accessed. The result is what you think of as memory loss, but is actually nothing of the sort.'
'What happened to me?' Nicholas had asked.
'Here I can only hazard a guess,' Kansatsu had said, 'but I believe it's an educated one. I believe that while the surgeon was working on your tumour, someone else inserted a suitable object, say an optic fibre, coated with a chemical, an NMDA receptor-inhibitor, into your hippocampus.'
'But wouldn't random memories be affected, not just those involving my ninja training?'
'Normally, yes,' Kansatsu-san said. 'But we are talking now about not only a tanjian, but a dorokusai. Just as you are able to inhibit those areas where you feel pain and not others, so the dorokusai was able to interfere with your deepest memories. Besides,' Kansatsu added, 'your mind has been almost entirely focused on your state of Shiro Ninja. I think you will find it difficult, if not impossible, to dredge up certain deeply inlaid memories of your very early childhood.'
Nicholas considered this. It was true that many details of his childhood memories were unavailable to him. He knew they were there, but try as he might he could not bring them into the light of consciousness.
Nicholas shook his head, dismayed. 'But Dr Hanami was right there beside the dorokusai,' he said. 'He must have known what was happening.'
Kansatsu nodded. 'This is true enough. But, Nicholas, if what you tell me about him is true, then we must consider the possibility of extreme coercion. Perhaps he was forced to allow this person access to your brain.'
Nicholas considered this for some time. 'Could the tanjian, the dorokusai who attacked me, be capable of such surgical skill?'
'Yes,' Kansatsu had said. 'Indeed, it is quite likely that such an individual would possess great surgical skill. As a
ninja, your own knowledge of anatomy and the workings of the mind and body is quite extensive.'
'I couldn't insert a poisoned optical fibre into a hidden area of the human brain.'
'Thankfully. You are not dorokusai. You do not have such reckless disregard for human life.'
Though Kansatsu had begun giving him a mix of natural powders as an antidote to the NMDA receptor-inhibitor, Nicholas was still forced to rely almost exclusively upon Akshara for his mental discipline. It was akin to learning to speak or to walk all over again - so basic, yet so painfully difficult. His brain was like an open book, blank pages ready for the script of the maker's hand. Rapidly, Akshara was filling it, creating its own subtext.
Oddly, his body - not his mind - was his greatest ally in this battle. It was so superbly trained he found that it could do whatever Akshara asked of it: neither lightning response nor stamina were now problems, and Nicholas was heartened by this change in him from when he first began his journey to find himself.
Then, all at once, as he ascended his nemesis, the Black Gendarme, he felt himself growing heavier and lighter at the same time. He was aware of his body sinking into the rock face, seeping into the minute cracks and fissures so that even a high wind could not dislodge him. At the same time, he felt his spirit soaring free. And he was in Getsumei no michil Remembrance flooded bun; his body and mind were once again one. Power suffused him. He was no longer Shiro Ninja.
The feeling of elation was so overwhelming that Nicholas threw back his head, shouting into the wind, stirring the clouds. The jumble of images inside his mind concentrated, coalesced, resolved themselves into insight.
The footprints among the bullrushes: the voice of his memory. He was back in Kyoki's castle, passing through the moon gate in his study.
What did the voice say? Kansatsu had said.
I can't remember, Nicholas had said.
Was the voice my brother's voice?
Not his, but the source was close.
How close? Akshara gave him the answer: very close. And now the voice spoke to him and he heard every word. It was his own voice saying: Time. Like the chiming of a grandfather clock, like the tolling of a bell, like a shadow emerging from out of the mist. Time to team, time to absorb, time to be. This is the end: of fear, of confusion, of death.
And Nicholas, the wind from the north whistling in his ears, his body charged with the newfound strength of Akshara, thought: Where are you, dorokusai? Wherever you are, I'll find you now. I'm coming to get you. I'm coming.
SUMMER, 1970-WINTER, 1980
Asama, Japan/Zhuji, China/Tokyo, Japan
'Is that all you're going to tell us?' the young girl said.
'You promised to tell us the end,' her brother said.
Hie sensei looked at diem with some humour. 'This is a story that has no end,' he said.
'But you promised,' the boy, Senjin, always the more impatient of the two, said.
'What happened after they went over the waterfall?' Shisei, his sister, asked.
'Ah, the waterfall,' the sensei said, as if her words reminded him of why they were there, not just there at this moment, but there on the planet.
He was the River Man. At least that is the only name Senjin and Shisei knew him by, although to his face they always called him sensei, teacher. He was father to them, these waif-like twins. He was mentor and companion, tutor and friend. He was Haha-san's brother.
He was, in essence, their universe, and they loved him above all else, even each other.
They knew him as the River Man because that was where he took them to learn, in the depths of a shadowed, leafy valley, by the bank of a wide, snaking river. He was very much at home there, living at times as much in the water as on dry land, as wholly amphibious as the frogs that sunned themselves on the hot rocks of the river, waiting to snatch unsuspecting midges out of mid-air with their lightning tongues.
'The waterfall was like a star in the sky,' the River Man
said, 'resonating with unimaginable energy, an engine of life and of destruction.
'When the two brothers, locked in mortal combat, were taken over the falls, something happened. The universe shuddered. Perhaps it shuddered at the moment when Zhao Hsia died, his lungs filled with churning water as So-Peng held him with the force of his will against the rocks at the base of the waterfall.
'Or then again- perhaps it shuddered when So-Peng emerged, dripping and gasping, upon the black muddy shore. For he had lived and Zhao Hsia, his childhood friend, had not. So-Peng had had it in his power to save his brother, but he had elected to drown him. He had been judge, jury and executioner in the trial of Zhao Hsia.
"There was no justice here. At least, none that we can readily understand. Justice, no matter how harsh, must be admired. Anything less is to be reviled - and avenged.'
So this is how it began. Amid a sylvan river glade, leafy and green, lush in the fullness of summer's heat. Morality imprinted upon two young, growing minds, so full of trust in a world not yet fully defined. But whose morality did they so readily absorb?
Haha-san had no one but her brother, sensei, the River Man. Unlike her sister, the woman who had given birth to Senjin and Shisei, Haha-san had chosen to remain unmarried. She carried with her from childhood a morbid distrust of men.
She did not understand sex, and was afraid of it. She saw in it an innate violence that apparently no one else did. Until, of course, Senjin was old enough to comprehend what he had unconsciously absorbed from her.
Perhaps in her youth Haha-san had been brutally raped.' That would have explained her view of sex. However, life is rarely so neat and tidy, and the truth was perhaps
far more nebulous: Haha-san had developed this belief somewhere within.a childhood she could no longer clearly remember.
What she could remember disturbed her, and her reaction to these surfacing memories, chunks of stinking, rotting debris, was terror. At those times, the household would be charged with menace, as if Haha-san's fear was like a drunkard run amok, violence and chaos strewn in its erratic wake.
At other times, Haha-san, as if appalled at what she had done, would take the twins to her pillow-like breast, rocking them, crooning to them lullabies in a language they could not yet understand.
This underlying unpredictability characterized the twins' early years. Only with sensei, in the sinuously winding river glade, did Senjin and Shisei feel secure.
Is it any wonder that they gratefully embraced the River Man's teachings with a fervour that he found invigorating?
It was only much later, floating free in his sensory deprivation tank in the Kan Hotel in the dingy fringes of Tokyo, using Kshira to place himself out of time, that Senjin came to understand that Haha-san was gifted in just the same way that he and Shisei were gifted.
But Haha-san was in a sense a displaced person. Her parents had been destroyed when the Americans had dropped their atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The doctors said that Haha-san herself had absorbed a lethal dose of radiation. As such, knowing that she was doomed, they contrived through a mare's nest of paperwork to keep her in their laboratories, observing her eighteen hours a day, their chrome and fibreglass instruments monitoring all her vital signs in order to understand better how the radiation broke down the cells, platelets and tissues of the human body.
This living experiment was not entirely the doctors'
doing. On the contrary, it was Haha-san herself who conceived of the idea as if it were a baby in her belly. Immediately following the exhaustive physical examination given to her as it was to all refugees of Nagasaki, Haha-san approached the doctors. She had heard them in consultation, talking about her case as if the radiation had already robbed her of her hearing. She was ten at this time, in 1945, already old enough to understand her own mortality and what it meant to die, the war accelerating her knowledge in the same way atomic fissure accelerated ions.
But it was life that concerned Haha-san. Although her parents and two older brothers had perished, a sister two years her junior was alive, having been out of the Nagasaki area when the sky exploded hi light and in death.
Haha-san understood that she was now the head of the family and, as such, she needed to take care of her sister. She could not count on the authorities who were in chaos in the last days of the war.
She knew she needed money, and this was the way to get it. Haha-san sold herself as an exhibit, a living laboratory for the scientists who were so eager to discover the short- and long-term effects of this new radiation that had been unleashed on the world. The money they paid her she turned over to her sister who, in turn, bought her way into a farming family. Having lost three sons to the war, the farmers were happy to have another body - no matter how small - to help them with their rice harvest.
The experiment was short-lived. After six months, when Haha-san had developed none of the expected signs of radiation poisoning, the scientists abandoned her for more fertile survivors. They believed that their initial findings were wrong, because now they could find no sign of the radiation at all inside her.
Many years later, floating in nothingness, it was clear
to Senjin that this manifestation of her gift clearly terrified Haha-san. More, it had traumatized her. She had been prepared to die and, when she had not even become ill, a sickness of the spirit descended on her.
Perhaps she felt that she had deserved to die in the .bomb blast. She was, she felt, no more deserving of life than her parents or her brothers had been. On the contrary, she felt inadequate to the task life was presenting her. Surely one of her older brothers would be better equipped than she to care for her younger sister.
And yet she was the one who had survived - oh, no, not merely survived, flourished. For Haha-san emerged from the radiation laboratory rosy-cheeked, strong, with lustrous hair and perfect teeth, and was never ill a day in her life.
That was the course her gift took; her sister's took another path entirely. In fact, Senjin believed that his mother never even knew she carried the gift inside her. It was not her karma to possess it at all, merely to pass it on to her children: her twins, Senjin and Shisei.
It was Haha-san who named them, just as it was Haha-san who cared for them. Their mother had no interest or she was too ill to be bothered with them. It was as if her life had a single purpose: to give birth to them. After that occurred she, like many insect mothers, perished; in a sense, consumed by her offspring.
If Haha-san had two brothers and both had died, who was sensei, her brother? Senjin asked this of Haha-san as soon as he was old enough to grasp the contradiction.
Haha-san laughed. 'Sensei is my brother,' she said. 'He appeared on your mother's doorstep a year to the day that she was married. She was already pregnant with you and Shisei. He claimed to have survived the bombing of Nagasaki. He said that he stood at ground zero and was unharmed, that he did it to test himself and the strength of his gift, that if he had not survived, that would have been
all right, because it would have meant that his gift was too weak, and he could never have endured the thought that he was inferior among his own kind.
'He said that once he survived, he went to China, to a place known as Zhuji, to study mental disciplines. In Zhuji, he said, he earned the title sensei.'
Senjin, feeling warm and full of food, for it was near to bedtime, had looked up into her face. 'Is it true, what sensei told you?'
Haha-san had smiled at him. She smelt of milk and of sugar, a unique scent which was to haunt Senjin for all of his life. 'Well, it's not polite to doubt the word of sensei,' she said. 'But I did not believe what he said about the bomb.' She shrugged. 'Perhaps he hid out in the mountains or he was given concussion by the shockwave of the blast. I doubt that anyone could have survived at ground zero, but I don't know what the truth is. The other part is true, however. Sensei did go to Zhuji to study. That's why it was many years, and your mother and I were in our twenties before we saw him. By then a great deal had happened to him.'
What had Haha-san meant by that? What had happened to sensei in Zhuji? Senjin tried by various ways to get Haha-san to tell him (it was inconceivable to ask such a question of sensei, who was so secretive about his life), but each time she managed to avoid answering him.
It was then that Senjin learned that he could not depend on any one person to answer all the questions crowding his brain. Haha-san could answer some, sensei could answer some others. But, increasingly, Senjin discovered that neither of them could - or would - answer the questions that were most crucial to him.
He told only Shisei what he planned to do - journey to Zhuji. Of course she cried. They had always been together, even, especially, in the womb; the thought of a separation terrified her.
'You're weak!' Senjin yelled at her. 'What did sensei tell you about such weakness?'
'I don't remember,' Shisei said through her tears.
Which made Senjin hit her. He did not mean to or anyway had not planned to, which was the same to him. It was the first time he hit her, but certainly not the last. Only later, far away from her, across the South China Sea, did he hear in her response an echo of Haha-san's obfuscations. He could not punish Haha-san - well, not yet, anyway - so he had punished her.
Shisei, his twin; his other half. She.
Senjin was haunted by she: a maddeningly diffuse femaleness that dominated his dreams, which he pushed from his conscious mind during waking hours. At first, he was convinced that this femaleness was the essence of his weak and hated mother, absorbed with her nutrients through the umbilical cord. Later, he suspected that it was that part of Haha-san's gift she found frightening and repulsive, that she had cast off from her. Still later, he thought that perhaps this femaleness contained something of both.
It had nothing to do with Shisei; it had everything to do with Shisei.
Shisei had absorbed everything he had, in the womb. Like a member of the underground searching for a traitor, he suspected her of inheriting their mother's fatal weakness. This was because he could not bear to suspect himself of such a sin, remembering what Haha-san had said about sensei: If he had not survived, that would have been all right, because it would have meant that his gift was too weak, and he could never have endured the thought that he was inferior among his own kind. Senjin knew that she could just as well have been talking about him.
He was as vigilant against any sign that he had absorbed his mother's propensity for weakness as the scientists had
been with Haha-san in their search for radiation poisoning. In so doing, his attention was elsewhere when he incorporated into himself the River Man's moral universe.
He did not, of course, know that he was doing this; no child ever does. But it happened just the same, because in the end Senjin was as needy as any child is, and he took what he needed where he found it, mindless of the consequences.
Perhaps it is too easy to say that this happened mainly as a consequence of his having no father, but what other explanation is there? It is true that both Senjin and Shisei looked like their father. Their mother had been a pleasant-looking woman but nothing more. Their father, on the other hand, was, like them, filled with a luminous beauty.
All Senjin had left of him was a photograph. It was now frayed at the edges; it had a centre crease, and the lower left hand corner bad been torn away. But it was still his prized possession. It showed a sum, magnetic man in a knife-creased army uniform, the tunic of which was so studded with medals it was possible for the young Senjin to believe it was made out of metal.
What had happened to the twins' father? No one knew. He had been a career military man, had survived the many harrowing battles of the war in the Pacific, as the Japanese termed World War II. His bravery in battle was unquestioned, as was his leadership. He had become invisible to the American war crimes tribunal, which convened just after the war, so it was clear that he had many friends in high places.
He began flying planes, experimental jets at Mitsubishi and Kodai, gaining a reputation for nerve that nearly eclipsed his wartime climb to glory. He rode at the edge of the earth's atmospheric canopy, nearer to the sun than anyone save Chuck Yeager. Then the American astronauts burst on the world stage, and everything turned to dust.
One day, he just disappeared. Perhaps, so brave in battle, he could not bear to be eclipsed in its aftermath. He lived his life near the edge, was not otherwise content. Perhaps he, too, had served his purpose in impregnating the twins' mother, and was no longer needed.
Not true. Senjin and Shisei needed him.
"The waterfall,' Senjin prompted the River Man.
'Yes,' Shisei said. 'What happened after the waterfall?'
The waterfall. To the River Man the waterfall was
the apocalypse, the twilight of the gods, Armageddon.
It was at once the end and the beginning. Like a nexus
point in time, all paths led to the waterfall and away
from it.	,
For many years, the twins dreamt of the waterfall as if it were alive, a presence suspended in the twilight of their room.
'It was the samseng, the tong leader, Tik Po Tak who pulled the murderer So-Peng from the boiling waters at the base of the falls,' the River Man said. "The body of Zhao Hsia, weighted down by the force of So-Peng's projected will, never reappeared.
'So-Peng said, "The tanjian we both sought is dead."
'The vile pair returned to Singapore, congratulating themselves on the success of their mission. But everything had changed in the weeks they had been away.
'A rival samseng had taken advantage of Tak's absence to stage a bloody coup in Nightside, the area of Singapore where Tak had held sway. And So-Peng's mother was gone. Terrified by the consequences of what she had done, of pitting one son against the other, she had apparently fled into the dense forests of teak and sandalwood far to the north.'
That was the end of the story, as far as the River Man was concerned. To the twins he had merely tantalized them, and they tried in every way they could think of to get sensei to go on with the story. It had no ending,
he had told them, but they were unsatisfied with such a nebulous answer.
And as far as Senjin was concerned, this was another reason why he was determined to travel to Zhuji. It was in China that he became convinced the end of the story would be revealed to him.
Shisei had other desires. When she dreamt of the waterfall, it was composed not of rushing, turbulent water, but of a forest of bright faces. These faces, all young, all beautiful, were turned in her direction. They were looking at her, not in the way of observing, but with the kind of adoration reserved for celebrities or movie stars. Yet she was neither. But she knew - this was still in her dream - that she required this adoration of the forest of bright faces as a flower needs water or sunlight in order to survive. Without this adoration, there was only an unutterable darkness, filled with fear.
But it was not, as might be supposed, loneliness that Shisei feared - after all, she had Senjin always and forever a part of her spirit. It was that she would never get enough love.
Senjin loved her; but what about anyone else? Haha-san had nursed her, nurturing her, attending to her bask desires. That was duty; but was it also love?
It was not yet clear to Shisei that Haha-san lived in agony, that this agony determined not only her actions but, far more importantly, what lay beyond the actions. Haha-san's agony was like a living thing, an evil-tempered pet or a revolting disfigurement that Haha-san humped around with her wherever she went.
It was as if this inner agony were Haha-san's own twin, the entity to which she was most intimately connected/ It had made of her a freak locked within herself, an automaton subject to irrational bursts of emotional violence.
This violence, a projection of Haha-san's will, took
many forms. For Shisei it usually began with an intense itching inside her head, as if a nest of spiders had crawled inside her mind. Then bright flashes of light would blind her, so that in the beginning before she learned to anticipate tiiis part she would fall to her knees or, if she were in the middle of playing, stumble painfully against some piece of furniture.
But these preliminary manifestations were nothing compared to what was to come: a recreation of the horrors of post-Mast Nagasaki with its stink of burned flesh, its sight of bloated, charred bodies, shrieking wounded, its choking taste of ash composed of human bones and waste, all filtered through Haha-san's disturbed psyche, magnified, warped, embroidered by her own peculiar terror, anguish and rage.
Think of the worst nightmare monster, then imagine it come to life, stalking you through your house, passing through walls and closed doors, seeking you out wherever you hid. Think of it finding you, entering your mind, filling it with hideous images, impressions of terror, despair and death.
The children were affected differently by these chaotic disgorgings of psychic violence. Senjin would run outside, enraged that his environment had been invaded. Here was the origin of his demon woman, soft and seductive on the outside yet, within, seething with malefic destructive force. In the rain and the snow he would curse Haha-san, and vow some day to wreak a terrible vengeance on her. But Shisei, as if paralysed by the onset, could not get herself to leave the house. She would lose control over herself, her own essence contracted into a tight ball, as if her will to resist was subverted by her need to submit to what she believed were the definitions of her life with Haha-san and sensei. She would cower in her room, trembling in fear as each new assault inexorably sought her out. Her eyes were squeezed shut as she prayed for an end.
She endured the monstrous horrors until the fiery psychic attack subsided, and the house returned to a semblance of normality, although always she could hear the crockery continuing to vibrate on the open shelves in the kitchen. For a long time after the attack ended, no one dared go near Haha-san, even sensei.
Gradually Shisei became convinced that these outbursts, terrifying in their power and unpredictability, were a result of some failing on her own part (why else, she reasoned, would they seek her out?), that it was irrefutable evidence that she was somehow unworthy of being loved.
When Senjin fell ill or was overtired and Haha-san pulled him to her pillow-like breast, he felt himself unable to breathe, suffocating in her endless warmth, the smell of milk and sugar. But when Shisei climbed upon Haha-san's lap, she revelled in the proximity of that slowly beating heart which put her to sleep within minutes no matter how agitated her state had been. This inevitable passivity (which came from Shisei's overwhelming desire to please Haha-san and thus gain her elusive love) endeared her to Haha-san who, despite her perseverance over suffering, must have found Senjin's aggressive squirming at her breast unsettling. Her duty was to pacify the children and, when she could not, once again her anxiety blew through the house like a storm.
Ironically, Haha-san's emotional violence led indirectly to the birth of Shisei's own philosophical outlook on life: the struggle to attain seishinskugi, the triumph of the power of the spirit over the physical. Two other factors influenced Shisei: the fear that she would never get enough love to survive; and the fact that she was female, therefore inferior to any male. And it was a male, her twin brother, Senjin, who she was constantly pitted against in her lessons with the River Man.
At night, pointing over his head, sensei would say,
'Look there.' Obediently, the twins would crane their necks, staring into the star-filled sky. 'You are looking outward,' sensei would say, 'yet what you see is in the past. That light, all those lights from the stars, is millions of years old. It took that long to reach us here on this planet. You look outward and see inward.
'This is the essence of Kshira, the language of the sound-light continuum. It is the opposite of eternity because Kshira is never at rest. Take the lesson of the stars to heart; it is the essence of everything I will teach you. The stars are far away both in distance and in time. In a sense, the two are the same. The past - your past and mine -are in another place as well as another time.
'It is the same with the days. Man has names for the different days, but Kshira tells us that there is only one day. It returns again and again, and so may be influenced.
There is a membrane at kokoro, the heart of things. It is not an organ that beats, thum-thum, thum-thum, as your heart or mine does. It is a field of energy that can be influenced by manipulation of the forces inside ourselves.
'The paths are twofold: ritual and meditation. Ritualized actions and meditative thoughts. Both focus energy, harnessing it into a concentrated beam that may be beaten against the membrane of kokoro, exciting it, exerting an influence. The paths must be repeated over and over. And the longer these repetitions go on, the more the membrane kokoro is excited, the more energy is created.'
Firelight played across the River Man's face, making it seem to change aspect with each flicker. 'As an example . . .'he intoned, his eyes closing, his face becoming placid.
The twins, with their extraordinary gift, could feel the emanations, much as So-Peng had felt his mother's force: concentric circles of light that were nevertheless devoid of illumination. The atmosphere became heavy, aqueous. The stars still dazzled, but now it seemed to the
avidly watching twins that their light was being reduced from a shower to a drizzle.
Abruptly, overhead, the stars winked out, a wind, damp and chill, sprang up, and it began to rain lightly. In a moment, it stopped. The fire sizzled and cracked as if filled with bones.
The River Man opened his eyes. 'You see what Kshira can do,' he said softly.
'You made a cloud,' Senjin said.
'Now the night is dear again,' Shisei said.
The River Man smiled. 'I did not make a cloud. That is beyond the powers of any human creature. But Kshira tells us that there are always clouds, even when they are not apparent to the eye. Clouds are part of nature and nature is entirely in flux. Always. Clouds are always forming or dissipating, always there. This is true of everything in nature. One needs but to gather up the requisite energy, focus it against the membrane of kokoro, cause an action to gain a reaction.'
The River Man stood up. 'But I used only thought to generate the energy, one path, and I told you that there are two.' He disappeared into the darkness, returning a moment later with a stoat. The twins had seen stoats many times in summer, their thin brown coats unmistakable in the underbrush. Now, in winter, the stoat was covered in a long silky pelt. It was a magnificent creature.
It squirmed in sensei's arms, clearly terrified, until with a twist of his thumb and forefinger he broke the stoat's neck. Then, producing a small knife, he set about skinning it. He did it not as a hunter might, in the most efficient way, but in long, protracted cuts that were so stylized that their ritualistic nature was evident even to the children.
The stoat's skin came off in thin, bloody strips which sensei carefully arranged like the petals of a flower. Senjin and Shisei could see that his eyes were almost fully closed;
just a thin line of white was visible, and they knew that the meditation, the focusing of energy had begun anew.
Now the two paths, ritualistic action and meditative thought, were combined, and the twins shivered as they felt the first harsh gusts of the gale whipping the tops of the trees. Leaves spun in the night air, and the tree frogs ceased their croaking. There was no sign of the nocturnal insects: fireflies, crickets, or midges.
The night grew black, as if a vast blanket were being pulled across the stage of the heavens, blotting out the starlight. The rushing of the nearby river coalesced with the rushing of the moisture-laden wind to give the impression that the entire world was suddenly in flux.
A moment later, the twins started as a ferocious clap of thunder cracked almost directly above their heads, and the world seemed to tremble beneath them. There was no lightning that they could see, but the thunder continued, short and sharp, very close, very loud.
They became aware of a kind of fabric, perhaps the very membrane of kokoro that the River Man had described to them, its dark vibrations, like beats upon a drum, the cause of the instability that flooded the sylvan river valley.
It was only when the downpour began that the River Man's eyes opened fully. He grinned at them.
'This is your power,' sensei said. 'The power of Kshira, the Way of the Two Paths.'
Time passed, and Senjin dreamt of Zhuji. Soon Haha-san had her own curriculum for them. She began to teach them the strange language that she had used to sing them lullabies when they were younger. It was, she told them, the language of the tanjian.
Senjin now began to see a purpose to his hard, exacting work. The search for the ending of the story of the two brothers, So-Peng and Zhao Hsia, had become a passionate obsession.
The River Man was nothing if not thorough. He delivered to the twins volumes encompassing a broad range of philosophical, theological, moral, political and ethical thought. These included the great minds of Western, as well as Eastern civilization.
The twins, precocious in all aspects of their development, gorged themselves on literature. They continued with their lessons in Kshira. But as for their interaction with the outside world, Senjin soon knew that something was wrong.
He automatically assumed that he would be better at everything than any of the other boys his age. He wasn't, and this crushed him. He could not understand how he could be so smart and so talented in some areas, yet utterly ignorant and inept in others.
Then, during his reading, Senjin came across a volume by the sixteenth-century French moralist, Joseph Joubert. In it, he found the way for him, the separatist, the special, the one, to live comfortably in society, side by side with the common man. 'Great minds are those that disguise their limits, that mask their mediocrity,' Joubert wrote and, from that moment on, Senjin lived his life by that rule.
He ceased to insist on competing in everything but, rather, stuck to his areas of expertise and even, on occasion, allowed himself to lose in order not to bring too much attention to himself. He discovered, much to his surprise, that he had little desire to become a leader among his peers, simply because they were so uninteresting to him. He would much rather practise his martial arts, read or discuss philosophy with sensei or debate morality with Shisei.
This last he did with his sister late at night, when they were in bed. Either he would crawl into her bed or she into his. Initially, this was done so they could talk as long as they wished without disturbing Haha-san, who was
attuned to their psychic emanations even, it often seemed,: in her sleep.
In time, the twins came to understand the shared warmth. Senjin found that he liked to be up against her, revelling in the places where women, even ones as physical as Shisei, were soft. For her part, Shisei loved the press of his hard muscles. There was no give anywhere on his body, and she often dreamt of Senjin's form splayed wide to protect her from unnamed dangers. And, often, when they fell asleep in this way, they dreamt the same dream.
But the warmth was not physical alone. Shisei could feel inside herself a strange sensation, as if someone were massaging her spinal chord and brain stem. Much later, she would be stunned to discover this same peculiarly wonderful feeling flooding through her at the moment of sexual orgasm.
In the warm, formless zone they constructed of then-energies, the twins spoke deep into the night of the nature of good and evil. Because they made it so, there was nothing here but their psyches. They created their own colours, generated light without illumination: the heat of the merging of their twin engines.
They were gods without knowing it. Neither good nor evil had yet touched them (so they could view them with a rare kind of objectivity), but these momentous concepts were lurking, just around the corner, in the slowly opening doorway to adulthood.
Senjin was of the opinion that good and evil were; mutable, denned differently from individual to individual; this, he argued, was endemic to the nature of man. He even likened this to a punishment: the Western concept of original sin, theorizing that at some time far in the past, before original sin, good and evil were immutable.
On the other side, Shisei believed that good and
evil were and always would be immutable principles.
This, she told her brother in an impassioned tone, was what made mankind mortal, different from the gods or from Buddha, who could indeed perceive good and evil as arcs of light that bent to his will.
'We are humbled by the gods, by nature, even by the animals, who are closer to the spirits, the energy, that animate the universe than we can ever be,' Shisei said.
'But isn't that what sensei is teaching us, what Kshira is all about?' Senjin said. 'Learning to manipulate the energy membrane of kokoro.'
'That's the problem with you,' Shisei said. 'You see everything in terms of manipulation. Sensei is teaching us to understand our world as we come to understand ourselves.'
'You still don't see it,' Senjin said. 'All understanding is an illusion, the understanding of the self the biggest illusion of all. And do you know why? Because we don't want to know what sightless worms are squirming in the blackness at the heart of our spirits.'
'You don't know how wrong you are. The beautiful spirits are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things",' Shisei said, paraphrasing Michel de Montaigne.
Senjin laughed. 'The fallacy of that,' he said, 'is that we are not living in a beautiful world.'
'Why is it,' she asked, 'that you see everything inverted?'
Senjin had no answer for her. Instead, he reached out and touched her.
After a time, Shisei sighed. 'That feels good.'
He took one long fingernail, scraped it down the centre of her back until he drew blood.
'And this?' he said. 'How does this feel?'
Two years later, when he was seventeen, Senjin disappeared. Shisei knew, of course, where he had gone: Zhuji.
But she told no one, not even Haha-san, who was frantic with worry, because she knew that if Haha-san found out where Senjin had gone, she would dispatch the River Man to bring him back.
Shisei felt her brother's absence with the keen edge of a blade. Her bed was cold and lonely without the hard metallic circles of his aura surrounding her. Oddly, she felt less innocent with his departure, as if this abandonment were a passage for her from the naivety of youth to the disillusionment of adulthood.
There had been no adolescence in the twins' development. Their rigorous training, eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, precluded some basic hormonal development as well as effectively isolating them from the normal growth patterns of their contemporaries.
Theirs had been a world apart, an odd kind of paradise where their work was endless and arduous yet in everything else they were pampered as if they were the sole successors to the Emperor.
Shisei felt her twin's abandonment with as much force as Senjin did his mother's. Shisei did not feel abandoned by her mother. She never thought of her parents at all or, when she did, it was of a couple in a motion picture, with a sense Of observation rather than obligation. Besides, she had Haha-san, who was Mother, and the River Man, who was Father.
Still, Senjin's departure shattered Shisei's dream world, and at once she saw how like Haha-san she had become, locked within a hermetically sealed environment, feeding only on herself. This disturbed her. Her pursuit of seishinshugi, the triumph of the spiritual over the physical, was perhaps generated by the knowledge of how weak she was. Oh, yes, she had Kshira, and with it she could do many things. But it could not give her brute strength. For that she was, and always would be, dependent on others. She knew that she needed to find a way to do that while
keeping to a minimum the risk of being dominated.
In the stillness of the night, atone in her bed, hugging a hull pillow to her breast, she thought of Senjin, her brother, her twin, of how she was dependent on him, of how she wanted to be dominated by him. A single tear trembled in her eye.
If it had not been for the River Man's detailed description of Zhuji, Senjin undoubtedly would have ended up in the wrong place. The only Zhuji that anyone knew about was a town perhaps forty-five miles almost due sooth of Hangchow, now known by the revolution-obsessed Chinese as Hangzhou.
But this town, engaged in the manufacture of silk and Dragon Well green tea, was hi an alluvial plain, in the lake country of south-east China, and Senjin was certain that the Zhuji he was searching for was a much smaller mountain village in the north-west.
He finally found the Zhuji of the tanjian, in the north of Hean province, in the Taihang Shan, the mountains fifty miles west of Anyang, the cradle of Chinese civilization.
Even the dung-coloured mountains here seemed bent and worn with antiquity. Zhuji, carved into the heart of the shan, was filled with temples. Like grams of salt spilt from a shaker, the temples were identical, spread across the slopes of the mountains.
But it was not only the River Man's description that led Senjin to his goal: it was Kshira. Kshira enabled Senjin to 'see' Zhuji in the past: over distance and time. And when he came to Zhuji, hidden within the dung-coloured mountains of Taihang, he found no Mao jackets, no maddening modern Chinese bureaucracy, no Communist Chinese exhortational slogans, posters, cant, no inefficient government appointed by Peking.
On the contrary, Zhuji seemed encysted in time as
well as in the Taihang Shan. The sad-looking, poverty-riven, grimy, modern-day China was unaware of Zhuji's existence. It abided as it had for centuries, a coenobium, wholly self-contained, entirely self-sufficient. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries had not touched this religious community with its coal- and diesel-smeared hands.
Senjin's presence was announced by the steely rings of his aura. The whole of Zhuji knew of his imminence even while he strode through the rough, dusty foothills of the Taihang Shan. As a result, the tanjian elders were already in the village square when Senjin entered it from the east.
They greeted him in the language he had been taught by Haha-san. He was welcomed like a long-lost son because, after all, that was precisely what he was. And the next morning at sunrise, he began his formal education in Tau-tau.
The tanjian elder assigned to oversee Senjin's training was named Mubao. He was a tall, willowy man with the hard cast of China's harsh northern steppes imprinted on his face. In the quickness of his eyes, the darting movements of his head, he reminded Senjin of a hawk.
Senjin was ushered into his chamber, a rock-walled cubicle, rimed with soot. A fire was blazing in a rough-hewn hearth, for it was chilly at this time of year in the Taihang Shan. Through a tiny, glassless window, Senjin could see the cloud-streaked sky, stained red by the advancing sun.
Mubao said nothing. He did not look up. He sat at his bamboo desk immersed in his papers for some time as if there were no one else hi the room with him.
After a time, restless, Senjin stirred. Mubao was up and moving before Senjin knew what was happening. His first instinct was to use his gift, and he sent his dark, metallic aura outwards in order to intercept the older man.
Much to his shock, he found that he was imprisoned, encircled by an impenetrable wall, featureless, still as eternity of death. In that moment of immobility, Mubao reached him. Clamping a powerful hand at the base of Senjin's neck, Mubao forced the boy across the stone room, thrusting his head at the fire.
Flames danced before Senjin's eyes, the dry heat and coiling, aromatic smoke threatening to choke him. He felt his face grow hot, smelt something burning, realized belatedly that his eyebrows had been seared off.
At last, Mubao thrust his head away from the fire, but he did not relinquish his paralysing hold. 'You come here arrogant, ignorant,' Mubao said hi his deep, vibratory voice, 'ready to use your gift indiscriminately, injudiciously. You are selfish, vain, mistakenly self-assured. You are a danger to us and to yourself. Have you anything to say in your defence?'
The moment Mubao turned him loose, Senjin bridled. The anger gushed through him, a hot and milky substance, as sweet and thick as honey. For an instant he contemplated reaching out with the steely rings of his aura, using what the River Man had taught him to inflict punishment for his humiliation.
Then, like an animal appearing from the depths of a forest, his instinct for survival surfaced. Senjin knew without quite knowing how that were he to use his gift in such a fashion, it would strike only that puzzling featureless wall, rebounding back, disabling him.
Then everything changed. Senjin's aggression dissipated. He averted his eyes and hung his head. 'I have no defence,' he whispered hoarsely, 'in the face of the truth.' But it was not humility that had overcome him; it was greed. He wanted the power that Mubao obviously possessed, and he vowed that whatever it took to attain it, he would do.
'That being the case,' Mubao intoned, 'I now pronounce
sentence. You will shave your head, and keep it shaved to publicly show your unworthy nature until directed to do otherwise. You will work and make your bed in the kitchen, an assistant to the apprentices. You will follow their direction without question. You will perform whatever tasks are set before you, no matter how menial, for as long as you are in the kitchen or wherever you are directed to go.'
'What about my instruction in Tau-tau?' Senjin asked.
'It has already begun,' Mubao said.
I will not give in to humiliation, Senjin thought.
And there was a great deal to give in to. The apprentices hated him: he was Japanese, after all. They made fun of him, these stupid boys with their stunted auras and their backward minds. Senjin despised them, all the while acceding tp their endless demands on him. They made him handle the rotting garbage, spread animal manure with his bare hands on the delicate plantings in the extensive vegetable and herb gardens. Once they even ordered him to dig a new cesspit and, while he was at it, lined up above him at its Up, urinating on him in concert. Another time, he found a turd in his bed. Routinely, there were insects in his food; he ate them with a great show, relishing their taste as if they were a delicacy.
All this humiliation was meant to make him a better person, but it did not. Senjin was oblivious to the mirror of his self that Mubao was determined to hold up to him. It was as if Senjin were a mythical vampire who had no reflection to be thrown back into his face.
Neither, it seemed, did he have a shadow. The substance of his life at Zhuji had no meaning for him. He might as well have been in prison or in paradise, it was all the same to him. Only his internal questions, ticking like timebombs within his mind, were of any importance. As for the rest, he was as an automaton or, more accurately,
an exquisitely trained actor, whose greatest triumph is the illusion of normality his art allows him to create.
So it was that even Mubao, with all his skills and power, was taken" in by the master illusionist. He believed, as did all the tanjian elders, that humility was at last coming to arrogant Senjin, that the baseness of his existence in Zhuji was an important lesson well learned.
How wrong they all were, and how ignorant of their mistake they were. Perhaps there was a lesson for them in Senjin's stay. Their own arrogance in their time-honoured methods caused them to treat him as they treated all novices in Tau-tau. But Senjin was unlike any other novice who had been born to their community. The tanjian elders had, though, over time, become comfortable with their powers, which had stymied even great Mao. How were they to guess that a mere boy could evade their methodology? They had taken a viper into their midst, and were unable to see themselves in the scales gleaming dully beneath his illusory facade.
Senjin rarely slept for more than an hour or two a night. By day, he was the willing slave of the kitchen apprentices who hated him. By night, he delivered himself up to Mubao or whichever tanjian elder was involved in the different phases of Tau-tau.
It was not Kshira, the form of Tau-tau that the River Man had been teaching him,-though, to be sure, there were certain similarities. Senjin saw-immediately how the discipline, despite the best intentions, had been corrupted by time, the vagaries of oral transmission, the needs and necessities of the Japanese culture.
What were the questions that neither Haha-san nor the River Man could answer, the questions that had driven him to seek out Zhuji and the tanjian? When he had arrived here, Senjin thought he knew: what had happened to the River Man here? Wasn't there more to learn than the musings of dead men that passed for phi-
losophy? Where was the Truth in the world, the answer to the universal questions: why am I here, where am I going, what will I become afterwards?
But now Senjin knew that he needed to know more even than that. Why am I rage? he kept asking himself, his hands full of manure. Why am I anger? his mouth filled with beetles. Why am I fury? crouched in the night, his dark metallic aura clamped tightly around him, a bird with its wings bound.
Neither Mubao nor any of the other elders took the slightest notice when Senjin asked them about the experience of the River Man in Zhuji. He had been scheming for some time to find some way to get them to open up, when an opportunity presented itself from an unlikely-source.
There was a strictly enforced ban against the younger males and females getting together save for mealtimes which were always communal. Still, here and there boys and girls managed their-trysts. Senjin could never quite figure out whether these clandestine affairs went unnoticed by the elders or whether the lengths to which the couples went in order to hide their meetings were part of the Tau-tau training.
It happened there was a girl who seemed confused by much of the instruction. She seemed never to understand her lessons fully or to perform to the standards set by the elders. As a result, she was reviled and ridiculed in much the same manner as Senjin.
Her name was Xu, and she was very beautiful. She had porcelain skin and the face of a doll, almost hypnotic in its perfection. It seemed ironic to Senjin that she was so physically perfect yet so inept at her lessons. Senjin, ever the consummate liar, told himself that he was drawn to her because he adored perfection in any form. He saw himself as a sculptor and Xu as a half-formed lump of clay from which he could fashion a masterpiece. The truth was that in this strange community he could not bear his absolute
isolation. Yet he could not admit to himself that this inner pain drove him to seek out someone who was very much like himself: reviled, scorned, a beautiful outsider. And it was his own need for companionship that blinded him to her own weaknesses which in other circumstances he would have despised. He was aware only of Xu's degradation, and saw in her suffering face his own reflection.
At first, he observed her humiliation as the others did, although not enjoying it as they obviously did. But soon her treatment became so painful for him that he was obliged to intervene. He saw the concerted cruelty as a transgression, not against any spoken or implied law of the tanjian, which meant nothing to him, but against his own internal code, which was becoming more manifest to him, day by day.
Outside, in the cold surrounding the privies, he watched as Xu was taunted by a group of girls. They began by verbally abusing her. This quickly escalated to pushing and shoving, sending her stumbling over the rocky ground, until she slid into the cesspit he was digging.
Senjin stopped what he was doing. He saw Xu biting so hard on her lower lip that it began to bleed, trying desperately not to cry. She pulled herself into a ball, thrusting herself into the dirt of the pit's side in a pathetic attempt to hide from the laughing, mocking girls.
These girls were now standing at the edge of the cesspit, bending over, hands on their knees, calling out to Xu. One of them spat in her direction; it struck Senjin, on the cheek. This made the girls laugh even more.
'Oh, look,' they cried, 'it's Shit-boy! We didn't see you digging there, Shit-boy!' Tears of laughter streamed down their faces.
Senjin looked down, saw Xu trembling, staring up at the gob of spittle on his cheek. He saw the tears which she had been so valiantly holding back begin to
slide down her face. She wept for him where she would not weep for herself.
Senjin closed his eyes, found that place inside himself where dwelt the dark metallic rings of his aura. This place was distant in both time and place, very near the place where the membrane kokoro hung suspended. Now Senjin began his repetitions, and soon the energy he emitted began to excite the membrane, setting it vibrating.
Now he moved his essence outwards, grabbing hold of his aura and casting it into space and time. A moment later, the earth gave a lurch in the way a wild boar will convulse when a spear is struck through its back,
Senjin heard screaming, a rumble and, opening his eyes, he observed through slitted lids that the ground had given way beneath the feet of the gaggle of girls so that now they lay in a tangled heap below the level where he stood. They were screaming and crying in terror.
He laughed, threw down his shovel. 'Look, Xu,' he said, 'my morning's work is done. The new cesspit has been dug for me.'
Xu was wide-eyed beside him. He leapt up out of the shallow pit and, bending, drew her upwards beside him. He watched, content, as Xu lifted up her skirt, squatted and inaugurated the new cesspit.
Xu, her self-respect restored, took his hand, leading him wordlessly up along a twisting path. Solemn mountain goats, munching tufts of dried grass, observed their ascent with huge liquid brown eyes. Rabbits bounded out of their way and, once, they caught sight of a thick ruddy tail, then a glimpse of a large triangular head as a fox sought to avoid them.
She took him off the path a distance before it petered out on bare rock, and they moved carefully down the scree. Behind a pair of enormous boulders they came upon a small grassy clearing. It was shielded in every direction, utterly private.
'How do you know of this place?' Senjin said.
'I come here when I want to be alone, when I can no longer bear the taunts.'
'You won't have to worry about them any more.'
'Oh, no one else would have done that for me!' Xu said, then immediately blushed.
'You could have done that yourself,' Senjin pointed out. 'You didn't really need me, or anyone.'
'Oh, yes. But I do,' Xu said. Her eyes darted away at him as she spun around. 'It's so beautiful here.' She took a deep breath. "The air is so different high up, so sweet, like a baby's smell.'
Senjin had other things on his mind. He watched her, wondering how he could change her so that she would reach perfection. But then a sad thought crept into his mind: if he should ever form her into a masterpiece, he would have no choice but to destroy her.
He grabbed her wrist. 'Why did you bring me up here?'
'Why?' She seemed confused, as she did when asked to perform with her gift what the elder had just demonstrated. 'Oh, to share all this with me.'
'Share all what?'
'Well, this.' Xu threw out her arms to encompass everything around them.
'This patch of dirt and rock looks like every other one.'
'No,' Xu said, catching his eyes with hers. 'This one is different, special. Like you.' She took his hands in hers. 'Because it's mine.'
Then, for the first time, Senjin felt her gift. He thought that it must be very weak although, much later, after he had left Zhuji, he began to suspect that perhaps she was expert in shielding the existence of her gift from other tanjian, and he regretted not getting to know her better.
But for the moment he felt only pity for the feebleness of an aura that needed all this space and solitude to make its presence felt. Still, it was beautiful, as striking as Xu's
face, and he surrounded it with the powerful rings of dark steel so that its light would reflect back on itself, better illuminating it. Immediately he saw that Xu had been right: this spot was made beautiful by the projection of her will.
'It is said that you come from Asama.' Xu looked up into his face. 'Is this true?'
'Yes.' He felt the tension come into her frame, and decided to allow her to ask all the questions of him she desired.
'Do you know a tanjian from there known as Aichi?'
'No.' But instinctively Senjin knew that he had made a mistake. 'What does he look like?' he asked.
Xu described the River Man.
'I know him,' Senjin said. 'For many years he has been my father.'
'Your father!' Xu exclaimed.
Senjin explained how the River Man was Haha-san's brother, and how he had been his first sensei.
'Oh, that explains it, then,' Xu said. 'Why the elders are afraid of you.'
'Mubao and the others are afraid of me?' Senjin was incredulous. 'Then why did they take me in?'
'They were bound to accept you,' she said. "They had no choice. You are tanjian and they cannot refuse you. But coming as you do from Aichi, the man who tried to steal the emeralds of the tanjian - '
'Wait,' Senjin said. 'I thought the sixteen emeralds had been stolen many years ago by a traitorous woman named Liang.'
'There were originally twenty-four emeralds,' Xu said. 'Eight still reside here. These were the emeralds that Aichi tried to steal.'
'What happened?'
'He was caught,' Xu said. 'He was tried, sentenced and banished. Now I see that he returned to Asama and
has begun teaching his own version of Tau-tau. This is strictly forbidden.'
'It hasn't stopped him.'
'Obviously,' Xu said.
Then something occurred to him. "This law you mentioned, that the elders were bound to take me in. I have not heard of it.'
'It exists, I assure you.'
Something in her eyes drove him to say harshly, 'But that's not all of it.' He evoked the projection of his will, just a little bit.
'No,' Xu whispered, 'it's not all. The law affects only tanjian descended from the prime line.'
Senjin was stunned. 'Are you saying that I am - ?'
'You are descended from Zhao Hsia, the martyr who - '
'Was drowned in the falls by So-Peng.'
'Yes.' Sunlight drenched Xu. Her eyes were liquid. Her face was pure gold. She broke from his grip, moving until she was against his chest.
He felt a stirring of his darkness, the metallic rings that were the projection of his will, which still enclosed her aura. He felt a kind of expansion, a rhythmic pulsing that flooded him with pleasure.
Senjin had already discovered that he could enjoy an odd kind of non-tactile sex with his sister. For him, if not for her, it was a game of sorts, of mastery, of dominance. He had loved to feel Shisei's will dissolving beneath the onslaught of his own prodigious aura, his massive coils which encircled hers, until her pleasure was so great that it spilled over into him.
But this was something very different. It was happening to him, from the inside out, his coils being manipulated by that which they enfolded, and the intensity was so great that for an instant he was totally disoriented, floating in time as well as in space. He had no control, had ceded all movement to this other will which possessed him utterly,
which made even the questions that had burned themselves upon his spirit disappear behind a veil of delight.
"When it was over, Senjin was so shaken that he could not stand up. He slid down Xu's form, grasping weakly at her ankles. He closed his eyes and, for one brilliant moment, he was at peace. Then, the questions began to reassert their dominance over him, and he was himself again.
Senjin and Xu never returned to that spot in the Taihang Shan; they never came together in that way again. Perhaps she would have wanted to, but Senjin never gave her the opportunity to suggest it. Part of him revelled in the rape (for there was no other word to adequately describe what had happened), in the kind of wild pleasure she had given him. But another, deeper, more dominant part of him remained so terrified of the experience of ceding all control to another that it would not allow the merging to be repeated.
Three months after coming to Zhuji, Senjin saw that the River Man's truth was not the truth. Three years after that, he discovered that the Tau-tau truth was also not the truth.
Then he thought of Shisei, whom he had not thought of in a very long time. He recalled their conversation when she had asked him, 'Why is it that you see everything inverted?' He had had no answer for her then, but he suspected that he did now. He longed to drink her in with all his senses, with his finely-attuned aura, and while thus merged with her, say to her, 'I see everything inverted because I know that in this world there is no truth, only many supposed truths. Each man has his own or appropriates another's, and this is why life is based on conflict.'
Three years and three months after Senjin began his work in Tau-tan at Zhuji, the elders cast the runes.
This was a neolithic ritual which took place over the course of a week. It was a week of constant repetitions, constant chanting; and Senjin saw in the elders' rituals the increased excitation of the membrane of kokoro, a building of energy that rang in his ears like a silent shout until sleep was out of the question and every movement, every gesture was put towards the beating of kokoro.
At the end of this time, the elders met within the centre of one of the stone temples set high up in the side of the mountains. Here a massive fire had been lit by the women, who tended it constantly. Senjin, when he was led in, could see the stars through a hole high up in the roof of the room.
Here the elders were hard at work, etching runic messages on the inside of long shards of tortoiseshell. Senjin was reminded of the River Man's story, of how So-Peng and Zhao Hsia, as boys, had stolen and eaten the tortoise eggs on the beach at Rantau Abang.
These messages were questions the tanjian elders wished answered about the future. When they had finished their etching, the week-long rite culminated with the elders throwing the shards into the fire. The chanting rose to a crescendo, then slowly subsided.
Afterwards, the women were dispatched to retrieve the tortoiseshell from the ashes of the fire, and by the way each shard had been cracked by the heat, the elders thus could read the future.
Mubao was brought his tortoiseshell, and he signalled for Senjin to join him. When Senjin had squatted down beside Mubao, the elder said, 'This is your future.'
Senjin, staring at the sooty shard-of tortoiseshell could see nothing but a fine network of cracks bisecting the etched runes. 'What is predicted?' he asked.
'A flood, a torrent, a rage of thunder, a detonation of energy,' Mubao intoned. 'And after the deluge, xin.' By xin he meant the centre or heart of things. Kokoro.
Senjin's heart beat fast. 'Is this what lies in wait for me?' Mubao nodded. 'In part.' His calloused thumb rubbed the cracked tortoiseshell. 'Death is strong. Its tone permeates the silent echoes we hear and which guide us. Death and more death.'
Mubao's thumb paused over one spot on the shard. He looked at Senjin and said, 'You must leave here. Our time of the day has passed.'
Senjin found it no hardship to leave Zhuji. In fact, he had in recent weeks grown bored with his schooling. He had absorbed everything that Mubao and the other elders had sought to teach him. Now, in his heart, in his own kokoro, he wished to teach them. They did not know the Truth, but he, Senjin, did. Then, after the casting of the runes, after Mubao had, in effect, delivered his sentence, Senjin understood that they would not understand even if they had given him a chance to tell them what he now knew: that there was no Truth.
It was not that what he had learned was either false or useless. Far from it. But the fact that both forms of Tau-tau were valid and were believed in wholeheartedly delivered the reality of life to Senjin with the force of a hammerblow.
Nothing was true; nothing was sacred. In that case, there was no Law.
Thus did Senjin return to Japan, at the age of twenty a dorokusai. And, to satisfy both his sense of yin-yang and his desire for irony, he became a policeman in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Force.
He did not return to Asama, to where he knew Haha-san and the River Man were like death, waiting for him. He did not return to Asama, where he assumed Shisei would be waiting for him. It did not matter; they met in Tokyo, on the glittering Ginza, where giant signs of snaking neon advertised the icons
of a new age: sony, matsushita, toshiba, nec and cbs/sony.
They were drawn together, amid the winking, blinking electronic jungle, by the concentric circles that had bound them as children, the dark, oiled steel and the coil of sinuous perfume.
Their reunion was a joyous one, though no one looking at them could tell. There was no expression on their faces; everything was internalized. And everything was mended, settled.
Or so Shisei thought.
Senjin moved- into his twin's apartment. It was in the most fashionable area of the city. It was huge, filled with Western furniture covered hi luxurious, snow-white fabrics. On the way to it that first night of their reunion, Senjin came across three enormous posters with Shisei's face. He saw her on television, singing before a gargantuan crowd of screaming youngsters.
'I'm a talento,' Shisei said. 'The most successful talento in Japan.'
Having been away for some time, Senjin did not know the term.
'I'm a kind of media star,' Shisei said. 'I sing a little, dance a little, a dilettante entertainer. I give concerts, I'm about to star in my own television soap opera, I do commercial endorsements for all the big companies. Anything and everything. I'm a role model, held up to the hungry public for their inspection and adoration.'
'Does it make you happy?' Senjin asked. He was riveted by her image, blue and gold, moving across the screen, caressed by the television cameras. He was certain that the director must be in love with her.
'They're all in love with me,' Shisei said. "The audience, the crew, the publicists, the corporate executives. Especially the corporate executives. That makes me very happy.' Her face clouded. 'But as wonderful as it is, I
know it can't last. A talento must be young, dewy-fresh, virginal. Time is my most vicious enemy.'
'But how did this happen?' Senjin asked.
Each wanted to know everything that had happened to the other during the three years they had been separated. In a way, since the texture and complexities of the energies they threw off had changed, they knew. In other ways, they needed to be told verbally. Oddly, they were both reluctant, just as if they were shy newly-weds come to the moment of truth: their marriage bed.
But Senjin, ever the more impatient Of the two, was eager to share with Shisei the end of the story of So-Peng that the River Man had begun so many years ago.
'I was right to travel to Zhuji,' he told her that night. 'They knew what had happened there, and they told me.'
It happened (Senjin began) that Tik Po Tak was so incensed by his rival's usurpation of his territory in Nightside that he discovered where the man went to have sex and, invading the brothel just before dawn, he singlehandedly slew the man, his three bodyguards and their lovers while they slept.
At least, this is what the Singapore police thought and, though they had had a lucrative deal with Tak, this bloody carnage he had wreaked was too much even for their avaricious stomachs. They pursued Tak with all of their resources. They were aided in this by the remnants of the slain rival's tong.
Now it must be remembered that So-Peng had a cousin, Wan, who cleaned the offices of the chief of police. Several days after the hunt for Tik Po Tak was begun, newspapermen, following an anonymous note, discovered the tong's involvement in what was a police murder investigation. The scandal rocked Singapore. The British chief of police, of course, disavowed any knowledge of the
involvement of criminals with elements of his department. But the information was too damaging, and he was forced to fire, arraign on charges of misconduct or reassign two-thirds of his force. This, naturally, left him little time to pursue Tik Po Tak, who eventually returned to Nightside, consolidating his power, and then expanding it.
Now, however, Tak was not alone. He had So-Peng behind the scenes to guide him. The tanjian elders at Zhuji say that So-Peng was behind everything. It was he who conceived a way into the closely-guarded brothel, bribing the kitchen staff, who laced the wine drunk by the rival samseng and his bodyguards with a sleeping potion.
It had been So-Peng as well who had his cousin secrete the incriminating documents in the chief of police's office. And it was So-Peng who applied for the vacancy left by the departing deputy chief of police.
It was ludicrous, on the face of it. After all, So-Peng was only a lad (no older than I am now, Senjin said). But So-Peng was aided by the nature of the emergency in which the chief of police found himself. The chief was under enormous pressure to restore not only order
- which a grand show of British soldiers could accomplish
- but confidence in his administration. And military might certainly would not do that. Already the governor had met him twice, threatening to relieve him of duty, sending him back to England in disgrace. Besides, no one else had applied for the job.
The chief of police, desperate, at his wits' end, gave So-Peng the job 6f deputy, even though So-Peng had not had even one day's experience at police work. But for So-Peng such training was superfluous. He had his extraordinary gift. And he had Tik Po Tak as his staunchest ally.
So-Peng's plan was brilliant. Using the Singapore police, he did Tak's work for him, effectively decimating
all of Tak's rival tongs. The other samseng could do nothing but acquiesce to Tak's sovereignty.
In this way, inside a week, order was restored in Nightside. Within two weeks, a suspect in the multiple brothel murders had been apprehended. The major surprise was that it wasn't the samseng Tik Po Tak at all, but an overly-ambitious member of a rival tong. The evidence against the tong member was overwhelming, and the chief of police and the governor made sure that the murderer's subsequent trial and execution were given maximum exposure. That way, the alarmed townsfolk were given a finite focus for their fear, and rage.
A month from the day So-Peng was hired, life in Singapore had returned to normal, and So-Peng, at the age of twenty, became the most celebrated man in the Colony.
He had used his gift to bury from sight the murder of his half-brother which he had committed, and the murder he was responsible for planning.
So-Peng had advised Tak to pull his money out of the poppy-growing business. He had, with Tak's money, begun to buy up acres of land just north of the Colony. He hired H. N. Ridley, the director of the Singapore Botanical Gardens, whom So-Peng had met on the tiger hunt Tak had taken him on on their way to find the tanjian who turned out to be Zhao Hsia.
So-Peng set Ridley to work planting his beloved Para trees, and within five years they had the beginning of what was to be the largest rubber plantation hi the area. So-Peng left his civil post to devote himself full-time to his business. He hired the flat-faced boy he had met in the streets near his house. They soon became friends as close as brothers. He allowed his brothers to come and work for him. His father had recently died of dysentery in Java. There was no word about his mother, although
it seemed clear that So-Peng had spent a great deal of money trying to find her.
Time passed, and while the plantation was developing, So-Peng, still using Tik Po Tak's tainted money, bought up other businesses, always at the most strategic time -times of stress for the seller.
He met and married a Chinese woman, and like a machine she began to drop a female child in his lap every year. But still, it seemed, So-Peng was not content. The tanjian elders say that friction developed between So-Peng and Tak as to how to handle the legitimate businesses. The disagreements became protracted, bitter. Tak wanted out, and apparently So-Peng obliged him.
The authorities discovered Tik Po Tak's bloated corpse floating in the bay one morning. Whatever investigation might have initially arisen was quickly terminated. Even though he had left the police force, So-Peng had maintained close ties with those who had succeeded him . . .
'But what of the most important part?' Shisei asked. "The tanjian emeralds?'
Ah, the tanjian emeralds (Senjin said). Well, it happens that the tanjian were not idle during the time of their enemy's consolidation of power. They sent out others after Zhao Hsia failed to return. They saw their mistake. They had assumed that the son of the traitor, Liang, would be able to persuade his mother to return the tanjian emeralds she had stolen from her father. They thought that Zhao Hsia would be able to convince his half-brother to return with him to Zhuji to begin properly his studies of Tau-tau, as was his right, privilege and duty.
Instead, only death had come of their attempt at forgiveness.
Still, they were loath to assert the full extent of their power. Both Liang and So-Peng were tanjian. Moreover, they were of the prime lineage, and the imperative to keep
them alive overrode even the most energetic arguments to the contrary.
So the tanjian elders sent emissaries to find Liang and her priceless cache of power. All efforts failed. They did not find her or the emeralds. So-Peng and the members of his family were watched to see if they had somehow acquired the gems, but there was no sign that they had. The tanjian even kept watch over So-Peng's flat-faced friend, now the foreman of the rubber plantation. They observed as So-Peng's wife died, as he courted and wed a second wife, as she began to deliver sons to him even as, one by one, his daughters died of a virulent plague sweeping the Malaysian peninsula.
The tanjian kept their silent vigil, careful not to interfere, waiting for some sign of the emeralds. What else was there to do?
Zhao Hsia had been telling the truth at the falls. His grandfather, and So-Peng's, was slowly dying an agonizing death. He needed the power of the emeralds, which were like a magnifying glass or a mantra engine: they absorbed energy from the kokoro membrane and stored it. Within those emeralds was the energy of the millennia, growing, bouncing from perfect facet to perfect facet, from gem to identical gem, the repetitions expanding like ripples upon a lake.
The number nine was significant since that number of emeralds set up a complex three-dimensional figure whose angular harmonics actually multiplied the energy from the kokoro membrane. On the other hand, any number below nine would create another figure, whose discordant angles would actually attack the membrane, robbing it of energy, and eventually threatening its very fabric ...
'What would happen if the kokoro membrane were to shred?' Shisei asked.
Senjin looked at her. 'Death would happen,' he said.
'Its tone would permeate the silent echoes we hear and which guide us. Death and more death.'
Shisei was seeing someone. It came as a shock to Senjin that time hadn't stood still while he had been away in Zhuji. He was so self-absorbed that it was difficult to believe that events were not held in limbo when he was not there to affect their outcome.
Senjin never said a word against Shisei's boyfriend; he didn't have to. She could feel the oiled steel of his aura darkening like the fall of night, contracting like an adder whenever Jeiji was around.
Jeiji was in his last year of law at Todai, the country's most prestigious university. He was in the top ten in his class. He was the lucky beneficiary of two of the most important bonds in Japanese society, gakubatsu, between classmates and kyodobatsu, between townsfolk: his father went to school with the law school dean, his mother came from the same prefecture in Nara-as the head of Tokyo's most prestigious law firm. This man had already pledged to hire Jeiji upon his graduation from Todai. And Shisei was in love with Jeiji. Jeiji had everything, except what he needed most - Senjin's approval.
Jeiji openly adored Shisei. Of course. This was a prerequisite for any relationship she might enter into. The adoration she felt at a distance when the rich spotlights fell upon her must be replicated in more intimate detail, so that she could run her hands over its each and every contour in order to satisfy herself that it really did exist.
Jeiji was made to order for this role. When she met him, he had been devoted to only one thing: his career. In no time, he had become devoted to Shisei as well. But this was not enough for her. This was perfectly clear to Senjin, although he doubted very much whether it was to his sister. She still saw herself in that exalted
virginal state of childhood that existed for them both in Asama; she could not imagine that she had yet within her the seeds of good and evil, let alone the power to wield them. Senjin, of course, knew better.
He watched with studied interest Jeiji's slow slide into wretchedness. Oh, he was sure that Shisei did not fully understand what effect the projection of her will, that seductive coil of perfume, had on someone such as Jeiji. In fact, Senjin became convinced that she did not even know she was flexing her aura each time Jeiji was drawn deeper under her spell.
Jeiji's disintegration, the utter dissolution of his sense of himself, came as a delight to Senjin, especially because he saw the young man as a threat, an interruption of the psychic continuity he sought with his sister. And it pleased his heightened sense of irony that he needed to do nothing but sit back and watch Shisei destroy that which she coveted.
Thus it came as a shock to her when Jeiji was thrown out of Todai for his failure to attend classes, hand in the requisite number of papers, participate in the highly intensive series of debates on matters of law that were an integral part of the senior year curriculum.
Was it possible that Shisei did not understand that her beloved Jeiji could only be in one place at once, that if he were with her he could not be at school or studying or writing his papers? Apparently not. And Jeiji, for his part, had given up all interest in the law. His adoration of Shisei was now slavish; the more he gave her, the more she wanted.
Senjin observed with fascination her sucking him dry. She was as wanton, as reckless, as a whore. She flaunted her gift without even knowing it. She was as unconscious about this as Haha-san had been about aspects of herself. The parallel was striking, and the more Senjin thought about it, the more convinced he was that he must save Shisei from herself.
That was when he decided to kill Jeiji.
Well, not just kill him - that would have been useless; worse, foolish - but to do it in a meaningful manner, a manner which would bring Shisei out of childhood, which would open her eyes to the reality of what she was, and what her gift might cause her to become. After all, he thought (unconsciously, inevitably taking on the mantle of Haha-san), it is my duty. Who will take care of her if I fail to?
And what was going through Shisei's mind during this time? Was she as oblivious to her effect on Jeiji as she seemed to be? Or was she deliberately blinding herself to the truth of her needs?
What she thought of during this time was neither Jeiji nor Senjin. The impending storm of them both being in her life was beyond her powers of observation.
Her mind was dominated by the monster of Haha-san - whom she loved, whom she still considered running to; climbing upon her lap, pressing her face into the pillows of her breasts, to listen to that slowly beating heart, to close her eyes and to sleep in blissful silence.
And yet, like a scrim pulled across a theatre stage, the bursts of Haha-san's emotional violence followed her, pulsing in the darkness of her bedroom, filling the end of the night with pieces of the enigma, bludgeoning her with questions she could not answer: How did I fail her? How could I have pleased her? Does she love me? Does she love me?
And each time an unanswerable question assailed her, in reflex she asserted the sinuous perfumed coils, drawing them ever tighter around Jeiji.
Long before Senjin. decided to kill Jeiji, Shisei was bent on destroying him, but how could she know that? She would not have believed anyone - even Senjin, had he been foolish enough to point it out to her - had they told her. Would she understand that she needed to destroy
Jeiji, who adored her so, in order to save herself from the wintry monster of Haha-san which still blew through her heart, shutting down a part of her each time it asserted itself? Not yet. But soon.
Senjin determined that if Jeiji's death were to serve a purpose, it would have to serve Tau-tau; it would have to excite the energy at the membrane kokoro, the heart of things.
As he set to work, it was not lost on Senjin that Jeiji was in many ways the perfect sacrifice. He was, if not a physical virgin, pure in other ways. His adoration of Shisei was without ulterior motive. When Shisei had met him, he had been a rather arrogant young man, as certain of his superiority to others as he was of his place in the world. Shisei's sinuous coils had stripped him of his arrogance, of all artifice, in fact; ironically, at the edge of destruction he was a more virtuous human being.
. When Senjin killed him, he was as unprotesting as a lamb. Until the last, he was immersed in his adoration of Shisei, oblivious to any and all unrelated stimuli.
Senjin had spent much time deciding on the moment of Jeiji's demise. But, in retrospect, he thought that perhaps he had failed to take into account the effect it might have on his sister.
Senjin had a perfect view of working limbs and pumping buttocks as he climbed upon the bed in which they were industriously making love. He would never forget the look in Shisei's eyes when he wrenched Jeiji's head right around, snapping the third and fourth cervical vertebrae. He was reminded of saplings snapping in a stiff wind.
Shisei's eyes were pale, which they always were when she was making love, and they stared into Senjin's with a combination of shock, disbelief and horror. It was this last that, later, made Senjin think that he had made a mistake in his timing.
The truth was in this he had been selfish, wanting this
much for himself, to interrupt forever the one act Jeiji could perform with Shisei that was forbidden him. It was a dream he created out of smoke and spun thought, as he pushed Jeiji off Shisei, rising over her so that his shadow fell across her naked body, entering its mysterious hollows as his body could not.
Shisei covered herself as if he were some leering stranger, and this hurt him terribly, so that now he tasted only his own bile in his mouth, and he considered giving it up, throwing away this opportunity to gather power to him, to teach his sister about herself, to force her to grow up.
She spat in his face, and Senjin hit her. Then, because she was becoming unaccountably hysterical, he bound her wrists behind her back, her ankles with strips ripped from her own silk pyjamas.
The chanting of the ancient runes had already begun in his head. Now he spoke them, the repetitions turning the air dark, setting it vibrating. He worked to prepare them both for what was to come, as Shisei stared wide-eyed at him, shouted invective at him. That was repetition, too, and served his purpose, so he did not hit her again. Besides, she would, soon enough, understand what she might have become without his intervention.
This was at a time before he had forged his own blades. He used a factory-made knife, kneeling before Jeiji's corpse and ritually stripping the flesh from it. Shisei's eyes bulged, she made little choked clicking noises in her throat. Then she vomited. But she could not avert her gaze, could not even voice her opposition to what he was doing.
It had already gone too far. She, too, close to kokoro, felt the reverberations as its energy was excited, bouncing off the membrane at the heart of things, creating the presence in the room that was power, that was much more
than power, that made them what they were, more than the others all around them.
Gasping, Shisei slipped her bonds and, as if in a fever, extending across the bloody bed, her muscles flexed in spasm, reached out for Senjin.
They had crossed the boundary that separated those who were aware of kokoro and those who used it. Yet this was not Kshira; nor was it Tau-tau. It was something else, something new, something of their own creation.
On that day in 1980, a severe earthquake hit Japan. Tokyo was its epicentre. The violent paroxysm of the earth took seismologists completely by surprise.
Across the ocean in China, the tanjian elders, locked away in their sanctum in Zhuji, felt the convulsion at kokoro and looked wordlessly at one another.
One, Mubao, especially was filled with dread. He was remembering the casting of the runes, and what the fire-induced cracks on the etched tortoiseshell foretold: A flood, a torrent, a rage of thunder, a detonation of energy. And after the deluge, death. Its tone permeates the silent echoes we hear and which guide us. Death and more death.
BOOK III
Before Dawn/Akegata

The man who fears nothing is as powerful as he who is feared by everyone.
Friedrich von Schiller
SUMMER, PRESENT
Tokyo/Washington/West Bay Bridge/New York
When Nicholas returned home he found that it had been turned into a battlefield. The house and grounds were surrounded by concentric circles of officers from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Force. They did not recognize him, and so detained him at the outermost ring until someone in a position of authority could be contacted to tell them what to do.
His first thought was for Justine, and his heart froze in his chest. 'Can anyone tell me what's going on?' he asked, but they couldn't, or wouldn't. They just stared at him, with stony, colourless eyes.
The longer they held him here at the perimeter, away from his house, away from knowing what had happened there, whether Justine was safe or ... the more agitated he became.
Then he saw Tomi emerging out of the throngs of police officers, and he called out to her. She was heading his way, saw him and hurried up.
'Linnear-san?'
'Hai. You look surprised to see me, Detective.'
'Not surprised; curious. You look different.'
He rubbed the back of his hand over his furry cheek. 'It's the beard or the windburn.'
'And something besides,' Tomi said, peering into his eyes. 'This is a happy moment. Your coming now must surely be a sign from heaven. Your expertise is sorely needed.' She nodded to the men barring Nicholas's way,
and they stepped dutifully aside.
'What's going on here?'
'I will take you to Nangi-san,' Tomi said. 'He's inside the house.'
'My wife,' Nicholas said breathlessly. 'Is she all right? What's happened?'
Tomi glanced at him. 'Every bad thing. But do not fear, your wife is unharmed.'
'Then she's inside with Nangi-san?'
But Tomi was busy threading their way through the phalanxes of policemen. They went up the steps of the engawa, through the door guarded by two officers wearing riot helmets and bullet-proof vests and holding machine pistols.
'What is this?' Nicholas asked, indicating the guards.
'It's war, Linnear-san,' Tomi said, taking off her shoes. 'All-out war.'
Nicholas threw aside his muddy, scored mountain boots, shrugged out of his backpack, threw aside his parka which he had taken off as soon as he had come down from the high altitudes.
'Justine?'
A rice paper door slid aside and Nangi stepped through.
'Nicholas! Thank God! My prayers have been answered!'
'Nangi-san.' Nicholas bowed. The two men embraced one another with their eyes. Tomi had never seen Nangi's face take on such a glow. Watching this extraordinary meeting, she began to understand the singular link between these two men: the closeness between a father and a son. 'Where is Justine? Where is my wife?'
'Gone,' Nangi said. 'She left eight hours ago for America.'
Nicholas, aware of the stricken look on his friend's face, said with a sinking heart, 'Why did she leave now?
What's happened here? Tomi said we're in an all-out war.' 'And so we are,' Nangi said. He was leaning heavily on his dragon-headed cane, and Nicholas saw how lined and tired his face looked. Nangi gestured. 'But come inside, Nicholas. Umi is here. There are tea and cakes. There is food. Come reclaim your house. We will eat, and I will tell you everything that's happened - at least, so far as I know, which, I readily admit, is not nearly far enough.'
Shisei had had only one friend in her life. Kiku was indeed as fragile as the cherry blossom for which she was named, or so it at first seemed to Shisei. Kiku was studying to be a geisha. Shisei had met her in her dancing class. This had been during the years that Senjin was away in Zhuji. Since dance was one of the fundamental gei, or arts, from which the term geisha derived its name, it was not surprising that Shisei should come across geisha students in the class.
Kiku had about her a stillness - a sense of a flower preparing to open its petals to the sun or a bird waiting to spread its wings into the wind - that Shisei admired. Kiku was the best student in the dance class. This was, Shisei deduced, because dance was about stillness as much as it was about movement. Like the play of' shadows ornamenting an otherwise austere room, stillness augmented the dance steps, set them off, showed them at their most electrifying.
Kiku was able to sit in the proper geisha position -legs folded directly beneath the hips - for many hours, with only the slightest, barely discernible movements of her feet (a subtle shifting of her weight) to ease the awful tension that stillness built in muscles, tendons and joints.
To the extent that Shisei became an acceptable dancer, it was due not to her dance instructor, but to Kiku. In revealing to Shisei the secret of stillness, Kiku taught her a valuable lesson that was to prove useful her entire
life. To know when not to move was just as important as to know when to move. Later, this ability impressed Shisei's talento managers and, ultimately, her sponsors, the chairmen of Japan's top business conglomerates.
Shisei was thinking of Kiku and stillness when Douglas Howe burst through her door, rupturing the aura of silence and contemplation she had carefully constructed around herself following the phone call from her twin brother, Senjin.
Their abbreviated conversation, like blood poured into shark-infested waters, had disturbed dangerous but up until now controlled elements in her life. The waters, which had been calm, therefore predictable, had abruptly become roiled, menacing, unsure.
Into this potentially treacherous emotional sea walked Douglas Howe. His face was suffused with triumph, his eyes so filled with his delicious victory that he failed to see the tears glistening in the corners of Shisei's eyes.
'I came as soon as I heard! I couldn't believe it!' He was shouting, and his face was florid with his excitement. 'This-is too good! Too perfect!' He swept her up in his arms, hugging her to him in a grip strong enough to be painful. 'Involved in a murder! Oh, Shisei, it's too good, better than I could have imagined! It more than makes up for the goddamned wild-goose chase I've been on-tonight.' He swung her around and around. "This is what you had planned all the time, isn't it? Jesus God, I swear my luckiest day was the one when you walked into my office!'
Shisei had always known Howe was a pig, but as with all negative facts presented to her, she had filed it away as something she could eventually use for her own purposes. It had never occurred to her that Howe's cruelty would affect her personally.
Here was Douglas Howe, gloating and grinning like
a monkey over a tree full of bananas. It disgusted her
even as it shamed her. There was nothing surprising in his reaction, yet it strengthened Shisei's resolve to tread the treacherous path she had carved out for herself. And she used her anger as a shield against the abrupt turn her life had taken with just one phone call. Senjin was coming; he needed her. What did it mean? Did it put Shisei's own plan into jeopardy? Better not to think along those lines, she knew, or her reserve of courage would dissipate like smoke in summer.
Summer. Shisei was once again swimming in the past, in her summer with Kiku who had dedicated herself to making her life into a work of art. But it was not merely this that attracted her to Shisei. In so early expressing her desire to become a geisha, Kiku was not only embracing a kind of discipline and fealty to duty with which Shisei could identify, she was also exhibiting her own iron will in defying her parents and the collective dictates of a society that decreed that at tekirei, the appropriate age, females should find a suitable man to marry. The strength of this defiance was enormously charismatic to Shisei who, in all respects, felt herself to be an outsider in a society with a decidedly inward bias. ,
That Kiku should choose the far more difficult path of dedicating herself to art, so that each movement, mode of dress, gesture and syllable of speech was painstakingly polished like a facet of a stunning and perfect jewel, meant as much to Shisei as that she was choosing independence over submission. It was further proof to her of the validity of seishinshugi, the triumph of the will over the physical, a philosophy she had embraced since her frightening encounters with Haha-san's emotional violence . . .
'I merely did what you hired me to do,',Shisei said with becoming modesty. 'What you yourself would have done had you been in the position to do it,'
'But you did it so cleverly!' Howe exulted.
'I took my cues from you,' Shisei said truthfully.
'You gave me everything I needed to do the job well.'
. . . The two youths, Shisei and Kiku regularly spoke for hours of many deeply felt matters. For Shisei, these talks, inasmuch as they were able, took the place of her mergings with Senjin.
Nothing lasts in this sad world, Kiku once told Shisei. The world of flowers and willows that I have chosen is built of illusion so it makes sense that what matters most to me are taste and style. So she taught Shisei to revere iki, that wholly Japanese form of chic best exemplified by the finest geisha, artful and understated. Again, the stillness amid the movement, the silence amid the noise, the shadow amid the light: all transmogrified their opposites, not only setting them off, but creating something more, a greater whole, an art-form that might take a lifetime to achieve.
On the other hand, Kiku, disciplined as she was, was always lonely. She craved a man's company the way most people needed food in order to live. It was Shisei, with her gift, who exposed to her friend the astonishing array of subterfuges young men would use in order to worm their way between a young girl's thighs. Kiku could not, of course, sleep around; even though she was merely a geisha trainee, she was obliged to keep her reputation spotless.
At some point, it became clear to both girls that love -the romantic love about which stories were written, songs composed, dramas created - could play no part in their lives if they were to adhere to seishinshugi and art, the principles that fired them. Not, they realized one breathless summer afternoon, that these two principles were so fundamentally different ....
'I'm glad you're so pleased,' Shisei said to Howe.
'Pleased?' Howe shouted. 'My God, woman, I'm^le-lighted, ecstatic! You've solved all my problems at once! Brisling was expendable. He was never content with what
I gave him, he always wanted more. I was setting him up as a buffer. I didn't want to be traced to the investigations I had ordered into Branding's Hive advanced-computer research people at the Johnson Institute.'
'Why the investigations?' asked Shisei. Stillness at kokoro, the heart of her. A sheet of iron forming, bitter, reflective, the gleaming carapace of a wholly alien creature. The world, her world, turning on the axis of this moment.
'Isn't it clear to you yet?' Howe replied. Til do whatever I have to in order to destroy him utterly. This isn't a game I'm playing with Branding. I think you understand.
'I've distanced myself from the operation. It's strictly Brisling's baby. I've got plausible deniability. But/that didn't work out. You were right about that, I never should have tried it. Branding got wind of it. This is better - much better! Branding and Brisling dealt with in one pre-emptive strike!
'Forget the environmentalists you work for, Shisei. That mind of yours is wasted there. When the vote for the Ascra bill is over, and I know it's as dead as Branding's political career, I want you to sign on with me.' How easy it was when it suited him to elevate her above the status of slave, Shisei thought. 'I could use your talent on a permanent basis. You'll insulate me from any danger; you'll guard my domain like a well-trained mastiff. You'll scare the shit out of anyone who tries to cross me.'
And Shisei thought, How dangerous it is to make assumptions. Perhaps I am lucky to have already learnt that lesson . . .
There was something else about Kiku that drew Shisei like a magnet. She was aware of it even before the night of the moon-viewing festival when she came upon a delicate-boned young samurai warrior kneeling on the tatami of the
living-room of Kiku's house. Her heart seemed to cease to beat, to turn to liquid, to be drained entirely out of her body by the aching beauty of that warrior. That warrior who was Kiku.
Kiku smiled deeply when she saw the look on her friend's face. This also is a gei, an art of the geisha, she told Shisei. She turned her head this way and that so that the light played across her heavily made-up features. Do you like it? They say that only women can successfully portray men on the stage because only women have the purity and the perfection required of a hero. Have I done well?
She had done more than well; she had caused Shisei to fall in love with her. This was another important lesson that Kiku taught Shisei: there is only one thing more important in life than artifice, and that is kokoro, the heart of things. To control artifice, to be the master of illusion is to control the thinking and the emotions of men. This, for a female, is the height of power, the ideal to which one must dedicate one's life. It was, in effect, the ultimate outward manifestation of seishinshugi, the triumph of the will...
With consummate iki, so that even one such as he could not possibly take offence, see through her artful facade, Shisei said, 'You don't want me, Howe. Not really.' She immediately turned and walked away to make them both drinks. She needed time away from his incessant kineticism to allow the stillness to coalesce again, to accumulate in the dark corners of her psyche, to infuse her with strength, a sense of what she needed, step by step, to do.
'What would you like?' she asked him. 'Scotch or vodka?'
'Clear liquor tonight,' Howe said, lurching after her. 'I can drink more vodka, and tonight, while Branding's locked away in a cell, we're gonna celebrate! We're gonna get stinking drunk because now all my problems are solved!'
... Shisei had realized that with her gift and with the doorway Kiku could provide for her, she could become the greatest geisha in Japan. But to what end? The power she could wield - considerable in those circles - was too limited. Her audiences would be too small to satisfy her thirst for adulation. Though she might entertain - and be able, ultimately, to influence - the rich and the powerful, these were, after all, only individuals. The stage of the geisha was already too small. Shisei needed to act out her life on a far wider-reaching scale.
And, of course, there was Senjin to think of. In retrospect, she saw that he would never have allowed her to devote her life to the willow world. He had a master plan, and she was an integral part of it.
How many times, years later, had he repeated to her, Shisei, I cannot do this without you, as if those words, whispered into the delicate whorl of her ear, could ameliorate the pain he was inflicting on her with the bundle of ink-dipped needles that pierced her skin over and over for hours, days, weeks, months on end . . . ?
Howe slopped half his drink over his shirt front in his excitement, and Shisei had to mix him another. In the meantime, he had ripped off his stained tie and shirt, and now, bare-chested, reached for his glass.
He was covered in curling black hair, even over his back and throat. Shisei, for whom smoothness of flesh was an ideal, was nauseated. She was reminded of the stoat whose neck sensei had cracked just before he had skinned it in thin delicate strips.
She had never before seen Howe naked, and she wondered why he should want to reveal himself to her, the mastiff, now. It could not be for any sexual purpose, for she knew that Douglas Howe was a man for whom sex's pleasure was defined strictly by the amount of power it gave him. Otherwise, he was content to satisfy himself; who knew better than he
what gave him pleasure? He would never take a mastiff to bed; he was too class-conscious to ever again lie down with dogs.
Perhaps, she thought, it was her triumph over Branding that gave her, at least for now, a position above the dogs, a kind of status with which Howe would wish momentarily to mingle.
Smiling at his hideous masculine fur, Shisei imagined herself back on stage, swathed in the burning spotlights, aflame with the adoration of young Japan, acting the coquette and then, as the powerful lights turned the amphitheatre into a bowl of seething energy, illumined that vast seething throng, their arms outstretched, their faces yearning towards her, towards her, and she drawing from them, like milk from an udder, their innocent ardour.
There was a certain pleasure close to her heart in seeing his response, how he melted and strutted at the same time. But he was such a gross, despicable creature that Shisei's secret triumph was demeaned, made meaningless, and she wanted only to be rid of him, to end as quickly as possible this shameful charade she had been duty bound to play.
He finished off his drink, pulled her to him, swinging her around, pushing his face into hers. His breath stank of liquor and decay. She was dizzy from his baseness, faint from his brutality as if these traits were a kind of radiation he gave off that had begun to affect her in much the same way the atomic radiation at Nagasaki had affected Haha-san.
She gently disengaged herself from his clumsy embrace, said, 'Why don't we save this victory celebration until my job is done?'
Howe stared at her. 'What do you mean? It's over. Branding's in jail.'
'But nothing's been proved yet, and it won't be until I
do my job.' She smiled, thinking of the stage where she had reigned until Senjin had come for her. 'You want me to finish what I started, don't you? It's what you pay me for. You want it all nailed down, so there's no chance of escape, no way that the outcome can be changed, don't you?'
And, Howe nodded, not understanding what he was agreeing to ...
One day, Shisei had gone to Kiku's house and found that Kiku was gone - she had not been at dance class for over a week. There was no trace of her mother and father and sisters, and the family of farmers that now inhabited the house had no idea who had lived there before them: the house was empty when they had moved in three days before. It was as if Kiku and her family had never existed, had been, instead, a figment of Shisei's imagination. This was impossible, but what other explanation could there be? Shisei's dancing instructor ignored her questions about where Kiku had gone, and when she asked Haha-san to make enquiries throughout the neighbourhood, Haha-san told her that she could find out nothing of what had happened to the family. But Haha-san had lied . . .
Howe's sweating palms left dark stains on the bartop as he scrabbled for another drink. He was shaking with elation.
Howe began to laugh. 'He didn't know what he was
up against when I sent you after him. Poor Branding,'
he said thickly.	'
Shisei continued to smile at him, the talento again, the perfect icon, as her future, meticulously planned, resolved itself like a reflection in a pool. . .
How had Haha-san lied? She not only knew where Kiku had gone, it was she who had sent her away. Why? Shisei learnt this many years later, when it was too late, when her life had already taken too many turnings for it to matter.
But it mattered.
How Shisei wept in the silence and the loneliness of
her room, when no one could see, when sensei would
not scold her for being weak, when Haha-san would
not enquire what was troubling her, pulling Shisei to her
pillow-like breast to console her when she did not want
to be consoled.	'
She wanted Kiku.
If, as Senjin later surmised, Haha-san survived by pawning her weaknesses off on them, her charges, who she was duty bound to raise, to love and sacrifice everything for, then surely she needed to pull them periodically to her breast? For all human life, even Haha-san's, must wither and die without a reciprocity of emotion, even if that emotion be so savage as hate.
And would it not then be understandable that Haha-san would not wish to share her one source of nourishment with another? For this is what had happened. When Haha-san could no longer bear the threat of the relationship forming between Shisei and Kiku, she dispatched sensei to rid her of her fear. She had no more thought of Shisei's happiness than she ever had. Only her children's welfare was uppermost in her mind, which is why she sacrificed herself as she did to raise them as her sister would have raised them herself if she had had the strength and the courage.
Happiness did not enter into this equation. After all, Haha-san had no clear idea of what happiness might be. Whatever glimmering of this emotion she might have had as a child had been obliterated by the atomic detonation that had overtaken her and her family at Nagasaki.
In a very real sense, life had overtaken Haha-san before she was ready to accept it. No matter. It had overtaken her anyway, twisting her still unformed personality, lashing her to the unyielding mast of her duty. In the process, her heart had turned to glass. And with
each agonizing gale of recollection that blew through her, it was shattered into ten thousand fragments.
Shisei, of course, knew none of this at the time of Kiku's disappearance and, if she had, it would have made no difference. She would not have understood, or been able to forgive Haha-san's selfishness masquerading in the guise of altruism. She would have done what she ended up doing, her path had been set, karma.
She, like Senjin before her, abandoned the nest, the sanctuary, the prison that had been her world virtually since the day she was born.
And Haha-fan and sensei were gone from her life. But not forgotten. Never forgotten ...
Shisei, looking down at Howe, said, 'Stay here. I'll get Michael, your driver, to get you out to the car.'
But Howe was already shaking his head. 'It's Michael's night off.' But, of course, Shisei already knew this.
'Well, you can't stay here,' she said, bending to lift him off the floor. Til take you home.'
Nicholas said, 'If Justine's gone back to West Bay Bridge, then I've got to go after her.' He folded the note Justine had hurriedly left for him. Maddeningly, it said nothing of what had happened or how she felt, just where she was going. It was written as if she did not expect ever to see him again.
Nangi and Tomi exchanged glances. 'Until we discover the whereabouts of the dorokusai, I don't think that would be a good idea,' Nangi said. He had already told Nicholas all he knew: the computer virus attack on the company's core computers; the suspicions Kusunda Ikusa and Nami had of Nicholas; Ikusa's order to dissolve the Sphynx joint venture, disassociate Sato International from Tomkin Industries; Nangi's idea to bring in another company in order to salvage the merger, the agreement on the floundering Nakano Industries, the signing of the papers
in Nami's offices; the Pack Rat's information concerning Ikusa and Killan Oroshi, Nakano's chairman's daughter.
'I haven't heard from the Pack Rat in three days,' Nangi concluded. 'We have been trying to find him ever since.'
'But what happened here?' Nicholas said. 'You still haven't told me - '
Nangi gestured. He had already risen. His legs must have been stiff, for he limped more than usual as he led the way outside, around the side of the house. This area among the trees and bushes had been staked off, and was being guarded by more Metropolitan Police officers in riot gear.
Nangi pointed to a dark patch on the ground that had
been carefully outlined in lime. He nodded to Tomi, who
produced a set of black-and-white prints.
Nicholas took them. They were forensic photos. 'Who's 
this?'	|
'A man named Han Kawado,' Nangi said. 'He was
one of the Pack Rat's men. Very good. At my request, 
the Pack Rat had him keep track of Justine - '
Nicholas's head snapped up. 'Guarding her?'
Nangi nodded. 'Even though I did not truly believe she was in any danger, I felt it prudent to - '
'Damnit, what happened here?'
'The dorokusai happened,' Tomi said. 'He was here
with your wife. We don't know what happened, except 
that Han Kawado saw them. The dorokusai must have
become aware of Kawado.' She tapped the photos. 'This 
is the result.'	
'And Justine?'	
'Unharmed,' Tomi said. 'As far as we can determine.'
'What do you mean?' Nicholas turned to Nangi. 'Didn't
she call you?'	
'No,' Nangi said. "The first thing I knew was when Immi-
gration informed Yazawa-san she had left the country.' 
'Immigration had been alerted some time ago when we became aware of what now seems to be the bogus threat on your life from the Red Army,' Tomi explained. 'We wanted as best we could to be able to monitor your and your wife's movements.'
Nicholas handed back the photos. 'Well, that's it then. I'm going after her. I've got to know that she's all right. I've got to be with her.'
Nangi said, 'As much as I sympathize with you, Nicholas, I have to disagree. You know she's heading home to your house in West Bay Bridge. A simple phone call there will ascertain her condition. On the other hand, you're needed here. This is where the dorokusai is. This is where the war is. Obviously he was trying to get to you through Justine. Don't you see it's a blessing that she's gone out of the war zone? Do you really want to bring her back into it? Because that is precisely what you will do if you follow her home.'
Follow her home. Why did that stick in Nicholas's mind? Oh, Jesus!
He broke away from them, headed into his workout room. He pushed aside the post, knelt as he threw the tatami this way and that. Tomi and Nangi came into the room, stared at him.
He dug down, found the box. But when he opened it, he found the six emeralds gone, their blue velvet bed in shreds.
'Jesus God,' Nicholas whispered. 'That's what he wanted. The emeralds. Kansatsu was right. He needs them. But what for?' It was clear that the dorokusai had somehow got Justine to show him where the box was hidden. He did not blame Justine; with the dorokusai's powers, Justine would have been helpless.
Privately, Nicholas thanked whatever forces were looking out for him that he had decided to split up the cache. At least the remaining nine emeralds were safe. For now.
With a dismaying lurch, he remembered that Justine had seen him wrap the package. Could she- have seen the address? Even if she hadn't, she could reason it out. She knew, even if she didn't know she knew, to whom he had sent the emeralds for safekeeping.
Nicholas got up. 'I've got to go,' he said. 'I've got to find Justine.'
'Correction,' Nangi said. 'Your first priority is keeping yourself safe. You won't be able to protect Justine or the company her father willed you if you're dead/
'What does Tomkin Industries have to do with this?'
'Everything,' Nangi said. 'It's part of the war. It's being attacked along with Sato International, as surely as the dorokusai has attacked you.'
Nicholas still looked doubtful, and Nangi said, 'Hear me out, at least, before you decide anything.'
Nicholas nodded.
Tomi glanced at the doorway. Several of the guards were close enough to overhear the conversation. 'I think we should continue this discussion elsewhere,' she said.
Deeper inside the house, in the private areas where not even the police guards were allowed, Umi sat in a six tatami room. When the three of them came in, she rose, made to leave them to their difficult, painful talk, but Nangi stayed her. 'You are needed here,' was all he said, and Umi sat back down.
'Even before you encountered the dorokusai,' Nangi
said to Nicholas when they had settled themselves on the
tatami, 'Umi had intimations of danger. She saw a dark
ness forming beyond the night. She felt the encroachment
of emptiness and an evil so great it threatened the stability
of the world. She heard the voice of the Spider Woman of
the Amerindian Hopi. She felt ice coming.	
"The Hopi believe that the Spider Woman raises her voice only at the instigation of inordinate evil. In the Hopi myth of creation, the Spider Woman's voice turned
the second world - the one before this - to ice, in order to destroy its evil inhabitants.'
Tomi was fascinated. 'What does all this mean?'
Umi turned her beautiful unlined face towards her, said, 'The nemesis of the Spider Woman is awake and active. He threatens the fabric of life. I can hear his footsteps; they are the tolling of a bell.'
'Umi feels the dorokusai,' Nangi said. 'She felt him that night; she feels him now. You see, Nicholas, all myth is intertwined like the branches of one tree, old, gnarled, sprung from one source. I suspected then that there was a relationship between the personal attack on you by the dorokusai and the imminent raid on Sato by Nami. If you were Shiro Ninja, then you were rendered helpless, therefore useless in a coming war. I was right.
'Nami has attacked us - Sato and Sphynx - in your absence. I don't believe that to be a coincidence. Ikusa boxed me into a corner and I was sure I had found a way to fox him. By taking in failing Nakano Industries I felt sure I could appease Nami and still keep you as a partner. But the real lure was Nakano's research and development department, which I've coveted for years. I thought I had found a way to gain control of Nakano through the exercising of an obscure warrants clause that was buried in the merger contract.
'Apparently that is just what Ikusa was counting on. Yesterday, I exercised those warrants. What I got was Nakano, all right, but Nakano's now just a hollow shell with nothing of value in it. The R and D department was secretly switched several weeks ago into a holding company that had owned some rusting and outdated oil refineries. That holding company was not part of the merger. I don't own it, and now I never will.'
"Then the whole deal was a set-up,' Nicholas said.
Nangi nodded. 'I was in a war and I didn't even know it. Now I understand Nami's involvement in Nakano
Industries; it wasn't merely good business practice to bail; oat a failing company with one asset too precious to allow to fall apart. Nami has used Nakano as bait to snare us, Nicholas-san.'
'But you own a majority stake in Nakano now,' Nicholas said.
'I own nothing of value,' Nangi said mournfully. 'In fact, Nakano as Nami has set it up without the R and D department will be in the red this fiscal year to the tune of more than four hundred million yen. That, combined with the highly leveraged bonds I had to float in order to buy the worthless warrants, threatens the entire structure of Sato International and, because we are so tightly linked, Tomkin Industries as well. I'm afraid that unless we can come up with a solution, I'll be forced to find someone to bail me out.'
'You mean Nami?'
Nangi nodded. 'You can bet Nami stands ready, willing and able to come to my rescue. Except it won't be a rescue but an out-and-out corporate takeover, just like what happened at Nakano.'
'Nonsense,' Nicholas said. 'You can have access to Tomkin International's assets. We can set up a loan. Structure it -'
But Nangi was already shaking his head. 'Don't you think Ikusa hasn't already considered that? There is a MITI prohibition against Japanese companies accepting loans from foreign firms or banks.' The Ministry of International Trade and Industry, was, along with Nami, one of the two most powerful business entities in Japan, in effect setting economic foreign policy for the country. 'Should the borrowing firms default, such an arrangement could lead to foreign takeovers of Japanese companies, something MITI - and, of course, Nami - is adamantly against. Unless we do something fast to stop the bleeding, both our companies are in jeopardy of being targeted for a
massive leveraged bay-out. Which, I see now, is just what Kusunda was after all along. He wants the secret of the Sphynx t-pram computer chip. But it's proprietary, and not even Nami could get it from us. So Kusunda decided to buy us out. Once he owns us, he owns the secret of the t-pram.' Nangi exhaled deeply. 'I am most sorry, Nicholas-san.'
'History,' Nicholas said, 'is only profitable when one uses it as a lesson for the present.'
'Hai. Yes.' Nangi bowed deeply. He was grateful for Nicholas's understanding. Hie understanding of a Japanese. "The present is what must concern us now.'.-
'Pardon me, Nangi-san,' Tomi interjected, 'but there is still the dorokusai to consider.'
'Yes,' Nangi said. 'The dorokusai. We know quite a bit more about him than we did before you left, Nicholas. He described their tour of The Silk Road and what they had found there: the link between the rape-murder of Mariko, the dancer, and Dr Hanami; of how they suspected that the dorokusai had blackmailed the surgeon.
'You're right,' Nicholas said, and told them what he had learnt of his condition, of how the dorokusai had, in effect, poisoned his brain or, at least, one tiny piece of it.
"There's more,' Nangi said. 'We know the identity of the dorokusai. He - '
At that moment, a uniformed policeman hurried into the room. So agitated was he that he failed to observe the formalities. Instead, he thrust a folded slip of paper into Tomi's hand. When she read it, her face went white.
'What is it, Detective?' Nangi said.
'He's gone, Nangi-san,' Tomi said, dismayed.
'Who are we talking about?' Nicholas asked.
'The dorokusai,' Tomi said.
'His name is Senjin Omukae,' Nangi said. 'He is a
division commander in the Metropolitan Police Force. At least he was up until his encounter with Justine. He did not report for work this morning. Something we don't know about happened - '
'That tanjian is a policeman?' Nicholas was stunned.
'Yes,' Tomi said. 'He was my boss. Which made it easy for him to forge that phony communication concerning your assassination by the Red Army.' She waved the message. 'Now we know where he's gone. He was spotted boarding a JAL flight late this morning. He used a phony passport, ID. With his abilities, it wasn't particularly difficult.'
'Where was Omukae heading?' Nangi asked.
'The United States.' There was a kind of despair in her voice. 'New York City.'
And Nicholas cried, 'Justine!'
The Scoundrel held the artefact in his hand and wondered what he should do with it. He studied it with all the horrified fascination one displays towards a scorpion moving in one's palm.
He thought of the object as an artefact because he had unearthed it, not from an archaeological dig, but from the rubble in the apartment next door. He had found blood there, as dark and dry as wine, and bits of matter that might have been bone, but the Scoundrel could not be certain. His field was computers, not anatomy.
He had got the idea of taking a peek into the apartment the night Killan had visited, when he had heard the loud thunk!, a thick, wet sound against the common wall with the adjacent apartment, something he had never heard before, yet which seemed weirdly familiar. He knew no one should be in the apartment which was at the moment deserted. The rumour was that a Yakuza oyabun had bought the place for his daughter, had ordered extensive renovations, then had a falling out with the contractor.
As a result, the apartment, stripped and uninhabitable* had been lying dormant for more than a month.
Killan had been in the bathroom, so she had not heard the sound, and the Scoundrel had said nothing about it to her. What was there to say? Besides, he needed time to decide what, if anything, hie wanted to do about it. So what had made that noise, thunk!, a sound not unlike a melon hitting the pavement from a height?
A dream had woken the Scoundrel this morning. He did not remember all of it, only the sense of it. Thunkl The sound, given weight by his dream, had made him break out into a sweat.
Perhaps it was the dream that, in the end, decided bun to take € look inside the apartment. But not until the next day, when Killan was gone, when the building was nearly empty, still as a Western church.
The front door was unlocked, which in itself was odd. The Scoundrel could imagine himself in a film, a detective on an important case: a girl in a black moire' dress comes into his office, smokes a cigarette, asks him to tail the man who's been trying to murder her. Now he's trailed the man to his lair. Cue the sound effects, cue the music. Do not cue the villain.
Laths and broken sections of wall-board were strewn across the rough concrete underfloor. Bundles of wire starting nowhere, going nowhere, snaked over debris. Old cans of paint, crusted and beginning to rust. The stink of plaster dust - and something more. If this were a film, the Scoundrel thought, squinting through the gloom, this scene would be shot in black and white.
But unlike the hero of a film noir, he was very frightened. The beat of his heart seemed so loud to him that he imagined someone standing in the hall outside could hear it. In fact, he went back through the tiny apartment, peeped out of the front door. The silent, deserted hallway yawned. He could not even hear the whine of the lift.
He was alone with his thoughts, frightened by his own imagination. That's what I get for spending my youth in the cinema, he told himself.
Back in the apartment, he concentrated on the section of the wall from which he had heard the thick wet noise, the thunk! that had haunted his dreams last night as if it were a person, not a sound.
The first thing he found was the dark stain: a spidery-looking shape. In its centre, the wall-board had been smashed inwards. He bent closer. On the jagged filaments of the wall-board, and soaked into the insulation behind it, the Scoundrel could see what appeared to be tiny fragments of bone, skin and some kind of tissue. Someone had been slammed, thunk!, into the wall here last night. That was what he had heard: a fight. But here, in a deserted apartment? Why?
There was a great deal of junk piled up against the wall, and the Scoundrel, though he was looking for more evidence of the extent of the fight or who its participants might have been, would have missed (as Kusunda Ikusa had) the tiny tape recorder the Pack Rat had so carefully hidden inside an empty paint can, had he not stumbled over the stubby end of a plank.
The plank barked his shin and turned over the paint can hidden beneath crumpled, stained sheets of last month's Asahi Shimbun, and out tumbled the artefact: the miniature tape recorder with its ultra-sensitive suction cup for picking up conversations through walls. Staring at it, the Scoundrel thought, through my wall. He had scooped up the artefact, and hurriedly slipped out of the apartment. But not before checking the hallway again to make certain he was unobserved.
Now, as he remembered once again how he had discovered the artefact, and what it portended, the Scoundrel's hand closed around the micro-recorder. He knew that he should listen to what was on the tape, but he was
afraid. His bosses at Nakano had briefed him, of course, on the astonishingly complex security measures at work in the office. They had similarly cautioned him against taking his most sensitive work - mantis - home where it would not be protected by the Nakano security system. The Scoundrel, staring at the micro-recorder now, felt a rising urge to throw it away and forget about it. It made the most sense. After all, what he was holding here was probably an indictment against himself, a detailing of the many ways in which he had deliberately flouted the well-outlined security measures he had a duty to uphold. What would his superiors do were they to become aware of his transgressions? They were fanatic about security. Time and again he had heard the phrase, 'Breaches of security will not be tolerated at Nakano'. The trouble was, he had paid no attention; he had been busy with his work.
Yes, the Scoundrel thought, self-preservation uppermost in his mind, I will dispose of this as if I were a criminal destroying the evidence of his crime. How had he made the jump from detective to criminal in so short a time? he wondered. He was overwhelmed by self-disgust, and he went to throw the thing away, the sooner the better. He was sorry he had ever let his curiosity get the better of him.
Yet when the moment came, he could not throw the micro-recorder away. He had to know what was on that tape. Shit, he thought. His finger hovered over the play button, then hesitated. If this recording had been made of him, then his apartment might still be under surveillance.
Stuffing the artefact in his trouser pocket, he went out, losing himself inTokyo's smoggy sprawl. He was heading for Ueno Park, then thought better of it. If his apartment was under surveillance, perhaps he was as well. It would not do to play the tape in public. Where to go then?
He had no idea. In fact, he was in a bit of a panic
All of a sudden, he had been thrust into the muzzle of a gun. People - he had no idea who - were watching him, bugging his conversations; for all he knew they were following his every move. Why? Of course it must be the mantis virus program. The Scoundrel knew he did not want any part of this. He was a certified genius on the computer, and that was what he wanted to work with. He had already begun to work on the next phase of the program. According to Shisei, the Hive brain was so fast that its internal security program could still overwhelm mantis. Laser transistors composed of atomic layers not of indium phosphide and aluminium gallium arsenide but of a monocrystalline diamond film were all well and good for high electron mobility (in fact, he was astounded that the Americans actually had perfected them) but, the Scoundrel knew, under the right circumstances they actually could work to his advantage. The very tunnelling effect - turning the electrons that carried the data inside a computer into a light wave rather than separate particles -that made these transistors so fast, could be used to carry the mantis spirals more swiftly into its midst. What the Scoundrel had to do was modify his virus program to accommodate the Hive laser chips.
But now consider what he was doing: looking over his shoulder in constant fear that someone was watching him, rather than getting on with his work. He thought about films he had seen, then decided on a course of action.
He spent the next hour and a half doubling back on his own trail, ducking in and out of stores, hurrying down narrow alleys where he had a view of anyone in front or behind him. He used the subways and the buses as well, getting on them, and off, at the last possible instant.
In the end, he was certain that no one was following him, assuming anyone had ever been. Then he headed for Killan's.
* * *
Nicholas asked that Nangi go with him to the airport. When Tomi offered to drive them, Nicholas said only, 'You're needed here, Detective. You know your duty.'
Nicholas had brought up the question of Tomi contacting die New York City police, getting them to detain Senjin at Kennedy Airport, and Tomi had done this. On the basi| of the testimony of The Silk Road's owner, there was enough hard evidence to indict him. She gave Nicholas the name and number of the homicide detective she had contacted in New York.
Umi came into the bedroom while Nicholas was hurriedly throwing clothes, passport, money and other paraphernalia into a hold-all. She said to him, There are many matters Nangi would discuss with you but, because of matters of propriety, will not. He is of the old school, while I am... Well, I understand the old school well, and I respect it. But I see beyond its confines. I see more, but I am less. Do you understand?'
Nicholas paused, several shirts in his hand. 'I listen whenever you speak, Umi,' he said. 'Hasn't this always been so?'
Umi came close to him then, and with her hand on his chin, turned his head to the left, then to the right. 'What do I see there, Nicholas? You are different.'
'I am tanjian,' Nicholas said.
"This has not made you different,' Umi assured him. 'You were born tanjian, inheriting this from your mother.'
Nicholas was startled. 'You knew this?' She nodded. 'And Nangi?'
'Nangi as well knew.'
'And neither of you told me?'
She smiled. 'You would not have believed us,' she said with conviction. 'It was not our place.'
Nicholas threw the shirts into his luggage. 'Sometimes,' he said, 'I still don't believe it.'
'Being tanjian,' Umi reiterated, 'is not what has made
you different.' She was looking into his face in the same way she studied her texts on cultural mythology, with an eerie intentness, as if she were devouring it whole.
'I am stronger now, Umi. Stronger than I've ever been as a mere ninja.'
Umi's eyes regarded him directly. The dorokusai is close,' she said. 'Closer than you believe, or can imagine.'
'He's akeady half a world away,'- Nicholas said, resuming his packing. 'I've got a lot of catching up to do.'
'Beware. Your new power may at first blind you, until you understand that such power can be a weakness as well. You still have much to learn, Nicholas.' Umi watched him at his work, never taking her eyes off his face. 'It is useless to speak of distance or of time when one speaks of a dorokusai, because one must focus on the power of the mind. And of illusion. Both are trademarks of the dorokusai.'
'So I have been warned.' He was finished. He zipped up the bag, lifted it.
'Do not take lightly this threat to your joint venture,' Umi said.
Nicholas smiled for the first time. 'Believe me, I'm not. That's why I've asked Nangi-san to accompany me to the airport. I have an idea, but it's very dangerous, not only for me but for Nangi as well. I want you to know this now. Before I tell Nangi-san.'
'I trust you, Nicholas,' Umi said. 'As does Nangi.' That was all she needed to say, and Nicholas was grateful for her support.
'There is something for you to do, Umi,' he said. 'I may need some help in New York. After I leave for the airport, I want you to make a call for me. Don't use this phone, or yours, for that matter. Find a pay phone and use that. I want you to memorize this.' He gave her the Manhattan phone number. 'Let it ring for as long as you
have to. Whatever you do, don't hang up. Someone will pick it up eventually. If you hear a man's voice, tell him, "Be ready tomorrow." Exactly that. If a woman answers, say you're a friend of Tik-Tik's. Ask when the man will be in. Get a definite time, and remember to translate it to Japan time. Say you'll call back, and hang up. When you hear his voice, say, "Be ready tomorrow." Will you do that?'
Umi nodded. 'Hai.'
Nicholas was grateful again for his network of friends. He turned as he was about to leave. 'And, Umi? Don't tell Nangi-san. He'll only worry.'
Umi watched him with her intelligent black eyes. He thought she was about to say something, then appeared to change her mind. She bowed, her hands together. 'Goodbye, Nicholas-san,' she said, using the formal construction, the respectful inflectives.
Nicholas bowed in return. 'Domo arigato, Umi-san.' Thank you.
Justine sat in the third window seat in the giant 747-SP. She stared out of the window at billowing clouds, but her vision was turned inwards, backwards.
What did she remember of her encounter with Senjin Omukae? It might be more accurate to ask what she was allowed to remember. The Tau-tau that Senjin had worked on her still drifted through her mind, keeping her conscious thoughts away from him, from what she had been made to do at his behest.
Instead, she thought of her coming to Japan. She felt now as if her time there had been compressed, so intense that she felt as if she had lived a lifetime there, although it was just under four years. She had read, once, an account of a grunt's - an infantry soldier's - time in Vietnam during the war, and it seemed to her now that the experience curiously, eerily resembled her
own. In the end, both she and the grunt had felt that
disorienting compression of time, a lack of community,
an acute sense of being overwhelmed by the wholly alien
culture, in short, an insidious destabilization of day-to-day
life that could, and too often did, lead to the breakdown
of reality.	.
This, Justine assured herself, was what had happened to her. It was why she was flying home now, wasn't it?
All of a sudden, her head hurt, and she dug a couple of aspirin out of her handbag, stumbled down the aisle to wash them down with the plane's tepid, stale-tasting water.
She returned to her seat, stepping past the child in the seat next to her, settled back down. She closed her eyes, and was soon asleep.
She dreamt of Senjin. He was a white tiger stalking her through a sun-streaked jungle.
As a child, Justine had always loved the tigers best at the zoos she had been taken to. Despite that, she had never seen a white tiger except in photographs. Thereafter, she had attached a special significance to their splendid colouring: at once more powerful - stark and somehow sad - and less beautiful than their tawny brethren. It seemed to her as if the albino tigers had to give up one thing to gain the other. She thought that was how it was for people, too.
Senjin, the white tiger, came for her. He bounded through the thick tangles of growth that were impeding her flight. He quickly closed the distance between them. When he was close enough to leap upon her, he opened his enormous jaws.
But instead of biting her, he spoke to her. When he did so (did white tigers talk?) it was with Honi's voice. I will have no family of my own. I am alone. I have chosen to be alone, the white tiger with the therapist's voice said. The white tiger, its lambent eyes
upon her, crouched, breathing, waiting, patient as a god.
And Justine felt only pity in her heart for this great beast, so stark, so sad. You're so terribly alone, she said. Drifting like a cloud above the jam-packed earth. How do you stand it?
The white tiger's tail went thum-thum, thum-thum, like a heart against the black earth. When I was a child I was always lonely. I cried often, and was ashamed of my weakness. In time I overcame that.
A weakness? Oh, no! Justine said. The pain behind your eyes is a scar upon your soul. And she wanted to reach out to touch, comfort the beast.
It smiled at her. My spirit is pure, the white tiger said. It is without emotion, therefore it requires no solace.
But Justine saw through this deception, and she swallowed her fear, went to put her arms around the great beast.
At that moment, the white tiger began to come apart. Beneath the mask of the beast stood Honi. She began to say something to Justine, and Justine knew that it was important. She strained to hear. But fissure lines were already forming in Honi's face, and it too burst apart to reveal the face of Senjin Omukae. Even in the midst of her dream, Justine asked herself, Do I know this man? Have I seen him before?
But before she had a chance to come to a conclusion, the mask of Senjin Omukae began to melt as if it were made of wax, had been held too near the flame of her scrutiny.
And now she could see this creature's true identity, one that it had by deviousness and trickery sought to conceal from her. All else, she knew, had been illusion but this.
She beheld the countenance of her pursuer and her heart froze in her chest. She felt a scream beginning
to form, her throat ached from the effort. She tried to back away but she could not move. She knew that she was going to die unless she could move, but there was nowhere to go.
And impaled upon the symbolism of her dream, she started awake. 'Huhh!' A great exhalation, an equally great shuddering breath.
'Are you all right?' -'What?1
'You're shaking.' A little voice, the girl in the seat next to her, the one who had been reading a book from the moment they had taken off. 'Are you sick?'
'No,' Justine said, doing her best to smile. She put her head back against the seat. 'It was just a dream.'
'My mother says not to be afraid of anything you dream,' the little girl said. 'Is that why you're afraid?'
'Yes,' Justine said, her smile a bit brighter. 'I suppose so.'
The girl rummaged in her backpack, pulled out a chocolate bar. 'Have a Snickers,' she said. 'They always make me feel better.'
Justine had to laugh. 'Thanks.' She took the chocolate, began to unwrap it. 'You know, this looks awfully big for one person. How about we share it?'
'Great!' The little girl squirmed with delight.
Justine, watching the tiny mouth devour the sweet with such unalloyed enjoyment, found that this gave her more pleasure than eating her half. 'What's your name?'
'Martha.'
'Mine's Justine.' She smiled. 'I'm glad we met.'
'Me, too!' Martha said, licking her lips of the last of the bar's chocolate coating.
'You're travelling alone?'
Martha made a face. 'My mom's in New York and my daddy's in Tokyo.'
"That's a long distance to be separated,' Justine observed.
Martha's face fell. 'They were separated before Daddy ever moved.'
'Oh,' Justine said, feeling as if she had stumbled into someone's very private room. 'Well, at least you get to see them both. And Japan, to boot.'
'Yeah!' Martha brightened. 'I like Japan. I've made some friends there. I'm always sorry to leave.' But her face told Justine that it wasn't her new friends she was sorry to leave.
'I want to show you something,' Martha said, rummaging again in her backpack. She extracted a sheet of heavy paper, rolled and kept with a coloured cord tied in a bow.
Martha slipped the cord off, unrolled the paper, handed it shyly to Justine. 'I made it myself.'
"Why, it's beautiful!' Justine exclaimed. And it was: a painting of the Japanese countryside,/primitive and lovely in the candour of its bold, uncomplicated strokes. It captured something about the culture Justine had never been able to put into words. She thought of it as a kind of austerity but, translated through the child's eyes, it became a purity that was, perhaps, closer to the truth.
'I made one like this for my daddy,' Martha said. 'He was so proud, he put it up right away in his office. This one's for my mom.'
'He should be proud of you,' Justine said, handing it back. She helped the child slip the cord back over the cylinder of paper. 'You're very talented.'
"Thank you,' Martha said. 'But I didn't work so hard on it or anything.'
'Sometimes very hard things come easily to people,' Justine said, thinking of Nicholas, and of how proud she would be of Martha if she were her mother and were
presented with this painting. 'I think it's wonderful.'
Martha squirmed in her seat again as she returned the painting to her backpack.
Justine, wanting to keep her attention, said, 'What are you reading? It must be interesting. You've had your head stuck in it all the time we've been flying.'
'Oh, it's a book about two girls,' Martha said. 'One has no friends.'
"That's terribly sad,' Justine said, meaning it.
'Yes, but it's sadder for the other girl,' Martha said. 'She has no family. I think that's the saddest thing of all, don't you?'
Justine looked at this little girl, at her freckled face, her innocent eyes, the tiny blue-and-white outfit she wore: blouse, skirt, shoes and socks, so accurately mimicking an adult's ensemble, and her heart melted. For the first time in many months she touched her belly without any sense of loss, guilt or anxiety.
One of you is in here, she thought. Growing inside me, being nourished by me. When it comes out it will be tiny and helpless and in need of love. Martha's words, / think that's the saddest thing of all, don't you? echoed in her mind.
'Yes,' Justine said, meaning it, 'you can always make friends - like your friends in Japan; like us. But not having a family is the saddest thing of all.'
The Scoundrel listened to what was on the micro-recorder while he waited for Killan Oroshi to come home. He had let himself into her apartment, which wasn't difficult for him since he had designed the computer-generated digital locking mechanism that served in lieu of the conventional key and tumbler lock system. 'You never have to worry about walking out without your keys,' he had told Killan when he installed the new system. 'Besides, it's far more secure.' Except for him.
White-faced, the Scoundrel went into Killan's minuscule kitchen, poured himself a stiff shot of Suntory Scotch while he tried to digest everything he had heard on the tape. Talk about incrimination, he thought. But then he wasn't the only one incriminated. There was Kusunda Ikusa, as well. Christ!,
The Scoundrel downed the liquor, hurriedly poured and drank another. Then he went back to where the tape recorder sat on Killan's free-form ferro-concrete coffee table like a malevolent beast, waiting to be unleashed. He played the whole thing again.
He was sitting, his face in his hands, staring at the beast, when Killan walked through the door.
'Howzit, Scoundrel,' she said. If she was surprised to see him, he couldn't tell it. Anyway, they were always popping up at each other's places. 'What d'you have there?'
'Our pasts,' he said, not taking his eyes off the black metal shell of the recorder. 'Also maybe our futures.*
He played her the tape.
Killan said nothing until it was over. He could read nothing on her face; it was as if she were dead, or concentrating. Then she said into the silence, 'Where the hell did you get that?'
He looked at her. 'Had no idea you were being tagged, did you?'
'Shit, no.' She pointed at the beast. 'Whose is it?'
He shrugged. 'It belongs to me now. I found it next door. In the deserted apartment.' He told her of the sound he had heard while she was over, the thunk! like a melon hitting the pavement from a height. 'Or a man's head being smashed into the wall.' He told her what he had found, the dried blood and human matter in the hole in the wall.
'Must have taken a lot of force to do that to a human head,' Killan said.
'Yeah. A whole helluva lot.' He could see her brain working overtime even as he said it. 'Hey,' he said, 'what're you thinking?'
'I'm thinking about what could have gone on in there; and who could have been strong enough to smash a human head hard enough to break through the wall. Brute strength rather than finesse.'
'You mean you know someone who could do that?'
'Maybe,' she said. 'Yeah.' She gestured. 'You worked out what you're going to do with that tape?'
The Scoundrel said, 'I was thinking of giving it to someone I know.'
'Yeah? Who?'
The Scoundrel hesitated. He had been dreading this
moment. 'Tomi.'	v
'Ugh! That bitch?' Killan cried. 'No way. I've got a better idea.'
'Yeah? Better for me or for you?'
'You're too cynical sometimes,' Killan said, sitting down beside him. She smiled. 'Are you having second thoughts now, after all this time? Whatever I do it'll be what's best for both of us.'
'I don't know about that.'
'Why did you come here, if it wasn't for my help?'
'I needed a safe place to play the tape. I couldn't tell if the surveillance on me was still in force.'
Killan looked from him to the micro-recorder. 'The tape tells us that you weren't the only one being monitored,' she said. 'In other circumstances I suppose I'd think having my sexual couplings taped was kinky.'
'Jesus, d'you think this apartment's being watched?'
'I have no idea.'
'I was very careful.'
Killan laughed. 'Sure. I know you. The last detective.'
The Scoundrel grunted, contemplating the beast on the table. 'So,' he said at last, 'what do you want to do with it?'
'Take it to the person who'll want it most.'
'Who's that?'
Killan's eyes began to spark, and there was just the hint of a smile on her lips. 'Kusunda Ikusa,' she said.
The Scoundrel jumped just as if she had struck him with a live wire. 'I always knew you were nuts,' he said. 'But I didn't know until now just how nuts.'
'Calm down and think about it,' Killan said. 'Ikusa will give us everything we want for that tape. And why not? It's bad enough that his affair with me would come out if it were made public, but the evidence of his manipulation of Nakano Industries for his own ends would destroy him utterly.'
The Scoundrel got up, paced back and forth in front of her and the dully gleaming beast on the ferro-concrete table. 'You know, I remember once years ago when you were just a kid and wanted to hang out with us on the street, one of us dared you to put your hand in a fire. We thought you'd chicken out and we'd get rid of you.' He reached out, turned her right hand palm upwards. His thumb traced the old raised scars there. 'But you called our bluff. And we let you run with us. We called you Bad Company then. But, Killan, that was then and this is now. We were all so young, we didn't know any better. Now we do.'
Killan, looking directly into the Scoundrel's eyes, said, 'How can you talk like that? Or are you blind to how you're being exploited by Kusunda? He's the real power behind Nakano Industries; my father is history. You're being paid shit for your work, and it's Kusunda's doing. You've created mantis and what do you have to show for it? Nothing. Worse, there will never be anything but nothing for you. How many times do I have to remind you? You work like a dog for Kusunda. And for what? Who's profiting from what you create? Who should be profiting from it?'
She gave him a cynical look. 'Besides, I love those scars. They're a part of me, an important part, like a badge or a medal. They say I didn't back down then; they say I was as good as any boy on the street, I was as tough, and a whole helluva lot smarter.'
'Crazier, too.'
She laughed. 'But I survived. It's my karma to survive. I've got the brains to beat them all, Scoundrel.'
'But Kusunda Ikusa.' He shook his head. 'He's different. Hasn't it occurred to you that Ikusa might be smarter than you?'
Killan shook her head. 'Uh uh.' Then she grinned, in one motion pulled away from him and scooped up the micro-recorder. 'Trust me.' She kissed him lightly on the cheek. "This is our ticket to the promised land. Everything we ever wanted.'
The Scoundrel looked down at the empty table. In a moment, he said, 'I have everything I want.'
But Killan had' already gone.
The police came for Shisei, polite, deferential even. She was expecting them, and went with them without fuss. A bearded, porky detective questioned her concerning her whereabouts during the night before. Shisei watched his eyes, which were intelligent and penetrating. He inhabited a crumpled, ill-fitting suit the way other men wore robes; he was comfortable, relaxed. Shisei, dressed in a short black skirt, wide black cloth belt and a fire-red cap-sleeved blouse, spent some time taking him in.
He was eating a sloppy hamburger while they talked, but Shisei got the impression this was trapping, like a good actor using a bit of stagecraft. She wondered whether he was trying to put her at ease or attempting to catch her off-guard.
They sat at a scarred wooden desk, set in the centre of a featureless room painted a dull institutional green. A
water cooler stood in one dusty corner, a greasy hotplate with a glass pot of coffee in another. There were heavy metal grilles across the windows.
Although the detective, who told her his name was Albemarle, did not say it, it was clear by the direction of his questioning that Branding had given her as his alibi. Albemarle said that the police had received an anonymous tip about the body in Branding's car. Nothing was known about the caller other than he had a male voice. Right now, he said, they were holding Branding for the suspected murder of David Brisling. Because of the much publicized, often rancorous enmity between Branding and Howe, there was cause to question Branding at length. Shisei understood the implication that the police still needed to establish motive and opportunity. Which was why they wanted to question her.
Of course they would never discover the truth. The call she had made from her house on the night she had killed Brisling had been to a support group whose number she had memorized when she had first been given the assignment to help infiltrate the Hive Project. She had left for them a copy she had previously made of the ignition key to Branding's car.
While Shisei and Branding were at the State dinner, the group had taken the car, deposited Brisling's corpse into the trunk, and had driven it back. They had left their car in Branding's parking space so that his car would be just where he had parked it at the beginning of the evening.
Shisei answered all of Detective Albemarle's questions as fully as she was able, omitting only her discovery of Brisling in her house when she went back for her purse. But she did tell him about the oversight because she wanted him to see that she was giving him everything she had. Also, she didn't know how full a statement Branding had made, and there was no point in giving him a discrepancy that he would start thinking about/
'You and Senator Branding are good friends,' Albe-
marle said after a while. He did this while wiping tomato
sauce off his lips.	.
'We went to the State dinner together,' Shisei said. 'It's not the first time we've been together after business hours.'
Albemarle took a long look at her. He grinned, showing a set of broad teeth; 'I admire the senator's taste.'
'Excuse me, but how is our relationship interesting to you except from a voyeur's standpoint?'
Albemarle laughed to show that he had a serviceable sense of humour, but he sobered up fast. 'You're the senator's alibi.'
'Are you implying that I would lie for him - out of love?'
The detective shrugged. 'It wouldn't be the first time.'
'Two hundred and fifty other people saw Senator Branding at the State dinner.'
'But according to your statement' - Albemarle's eyes flicked down to the note pad on which he had been writing - 'you and the senator arrived at the White House at approximately eight-thirty. Is that right?'
'Yes.'
'Well, the doc said Brisling was iced anywhere from seven to nine pm. That leaves a lot of time before eight-thirty.'
She was aware of how long he had withheld that information from her. 'We were together from a quarter to eight on.'
'Couldn't have taken but, what, three minutes to murder Brisling?' Albemarle drawled. 'Give me your best guess. What did Branding do for the other forty-two minutes?'
Shisei could feel Albemarle baiting her. They had come to the crucial time hi the interrogation. He was tired of sparring with her. He had taken off his gloves;
it was time for her to do the same. 'Senator Branding didn't murder David Brisling,' she said.
Detective Albemarle's brow wrinkled, the sole sign that she had surprised him. His eyes held steady on hers, as if they could detect a lie at twenty paces. Shisei thought that might be precisely what he believed. 'Now how would you know that for a certainty?' Albemarle drawled.
'Why would he carry Brisling's body in the trunk of his car all night? He's not stupid and he doesn't have a death wish.'
'He'd want to dump it somewhere. He didn't have time to do it before he went to pick you up.'
'You told me he had forty-two minutes.'
Albemarle said nothing, but his eyes said he wasn't giving ground - yet.
It's too convenient, too like a set-up, Shisei wanted to say, would have said to a detective less discerning than Albemarle. But she had to be careful not to let him see her do too much of his work for him.
She reached into her pocket, drew out an audio cassette. 'Do you have something to play this on?'
Albemarle stared at the cassette for a long moment then, as if making up his mind, he grunted, reached into a drawer of the scarred wooden table, pulled out a tiny tape recorder. 'You've been singing fot the birdie.' He grinned, snapped out a cassette of his own. 'I don't trust my shorthand. It's been so long since my Kelly Girl courses.'
He inserted Shisei's cassette, pressed the 'Play' button.
'Brisling was expendable,' Douglas Howe's voice said. 'He was never content with what I gave him, he always wanted more.'
Albemarle stopped the tape. 'Who's this?'
'Senator Douglas Hpwe.'
'Ah.' Albemarle nodded.
Shisei liked this man. She didn't have to tell him that
Howe was Brisling's boss or that Howe and Branding spat at each other every time they met. He knew all that.
Albemarle's finger stabbed out. 'I was setting him up as a buffer,' Howe's voice continued, a disembodied voice at his own trial. 'I didn't want to be traced to the investigations I had ordered into Branding's Hive advanced-computer research people at the Johnson Institute.'
'Why the investigations?' Shisei's voice said.
Isn't it clear to you yet?' Howe replied. Til do whatever I have to in order to destroy him utterly. This isn't a game I'm playing with Branding. I think you understand.
'I've distanced myself from the operation. It's strictly Brisling's baby. I've got plausible deniability. But that didn't work out. You were right about that, I never should have tried it. Branding got wind of it. This is better - much better! Branding and Brisling dealt with in one pre-emptive strike!'
Albemarle stopped the tape. 'How'd you get this?'
Tve worked for Howe on and off,' she said. 'Nothing official. I liked the money, I admit that. But this thing between him and Senator Branding was getting out of hand fast, I could see that. I tried to warn him, to stop him, but he simply wouldn't listen. Howe was obsessed with his feud. All he could think of was destroying Branding. I wanted out before Howe did something really stupid.'
'Like murder his assistant and try to pin it on Branding.' Albemarle tapped his forefinger against his lips. 'What exactly did you do for Howe?'
'When my environmental interests and his overlapped, as they sometimes did, we pooled resources, got bills passed up on the Hill. That sort of thing.'
Albemarle nodded. 'Go on.'
She leaned over the desk, started the tape running again.
'Forget the environmentalists you work for, Shisei,' Howe's voice went on. "That mind of yours is wasted there. When the vote for the Ascra bill is over, and I know it's as dead as Branding's political career, I want you to sign on with me. I could use your talent on a permanent basis. You'll insulate me from any danger; you'll guard my domain tike a well-trained mastiff. You'll scare the shit out of anyone who tries to cross me.'
The tape ran out, and Albemarle turned off the machine. There was a thoughtful look on his face. 'What'd he mean by that?'
'Howe saw me in the same light he saw Brisling. We were dogs to be trained to do his bidding. He's loathsome.'
'No. I meant about scaring the shit out of people.'
Shisei shrugged. 'I know some martial arts. Howe liked that; k made him feel more secure to have me around.'
Albemarle grunted again. Til say one thing for you, you sure ain't worried about implicating yourself.'
'In what?' Her voice was absolutely neutral. Shisei knew to be more careful than ever now. She could see the sheet of ice Albemarle was leading her towards, waiting for her to hit it with her backside.
'You're so good with your hands, so scary, how about you iced Brisling for Howe?'
She made sure her eyes didn't waver from his, but there was nothing aggressive in her look. 'Tell me again how Brisling died.'
'Something thick and square crushed the back of his head,' Albemarle said as if he were describing the features of a new car. 'You know, like you do with an eggshell on the edge of an iron skillet.'
'That sounds to me like a crime of high passion, done in a fit of rage or at least with a sense of premeditated hate,' Shisei said. 'Besides, I had no motive.'
'You told me you work for Howe. You like the extra bread.*
Shisei was good at putting venom in her voice. 'When I was young, I was used by a man. Abused, you might call it. 1 vowed then I'd never let it happen again. No one has the right to do that to me. When I realized that Howe was using me, I called it quits.' She allowed her face to relax a little. 'In any case, I would have been more circumspect in what I did.'
'Meaning?'
'Do you know anything at all about the martial arts, Detective?'
'I've taken some karate - the usual departmental thing.'
'If you don't mind my saying so, that isn't martial arts. That's putting your hand through a board or subduing a perpetrator.'
'Perps're my business.'
'But they're not mine, Detective. The true martial arts, the way they should be taught, are eighty per cent mental. In any case, they're reactive. I was never trained to be the aggressor. If David Brisling, or one of your street perps, came at me I'd know what to do to protect myself, but I certainly wouldn't smash the back of his head in. I wouldn't have to work that hard.'
Albemarle was silent a long time. He produced a toothpick, began to twirl it around in his mouth. Then his finger tapped the tape recorder. Til need to impound the cassette. Evidence.'
'It's yours,' Shisei said.
'When I bring Howe in, I'll want you with me.'
'Well.' She let something new into her voice. 'I wouldn't mind that at all.'
When Nicholas cleared Immigration and Customs at New York's JFK airport, he heard his name being called over the loudspeaker. He went to a courtesy phone, and
was given a telephone number. He went over to a bank
of chrome and graffitied pay phones. He needed to go
to the far end of the baggage carousels to do so. He had
got yen changed to American dollars at Narita Airport.
He dialled the local number he had been given.	-
'It's me,' a voice said. 'I'm at a phone on the other side of the place. I can see you. No one's tagging you.'
'I didn't think it was that kind of situation,' Nicholas said. 'We can meet.'
Nicholas dialled the number Tomi had given him. Homicide detective Mel Branca was working nights, and he took Nicholas's call. 'Bad news, bud,' -he said in a smoky voice. 'I met this Japanese yo-yo's plane like Tomi asked me to, but couldn't find the guy. He was on the passenger manifest all right. I checked that. I even polled the flight crew, but none of them could remember him. The seat assigned to him was filled, though, that's all they could tell me. Best I could do, bud, at such short notice. My in tray's higher than a cokie with a head on.'
Nicholas thanked Branca, hung up. He was about to call Justine at their house in West Bay Bridge, then thought better of it. If Senjin were loose here, there was no point in giving him any advance notice of his, Nicholas's, arrival. But the thought of the dorokusai with Justine out in the beach house was almost too much to bear.
Patience, he thought. Your time is coming.
He turned, saw Conny Tanaka striding towards him. It had been Conny who, through Umi, Nicholas had arranged to meet here at the airport.
Conny was Terry Tanaka's older brother. He had been living in Vancouver when Saigo had come to New York in 1980, challenged Terry in Terry's own dojo and subsequently killed him. Afterwards, Conny had left Vancouver to get his brother's martial arts school back on its feet. But he had never gone back to British Columbia,
preferring the highlighted kineticism of New York. Conny loved to party, but that didn't mean he wasn't serious about business.
Tik-Tik,' he said, taking Nicholas's hold-all from him, 'I got your message.' Only Conny called Nicholas Tik-Tik, because, as Conny had once told him, 'You're like a bomb, man, ticking away beneath that ultra-cool exterior. Nobody has a chance against you.'
Conny had no trouble recognizing him; Nicholas had shaved off his beard 30,000 feet over the Hawaiian Islands. 'What's up?' Conny said now.
Trouble,' Nicholas said as they weaved their way out of the terminal. 'A whole bellyful of it.' It was already night, the sodium-arc lights bathing everything in their unnatural bluish glow. Windshields were haloed and people's faces looked ghoulish, drained of blood.
Only Conny looked the same, short, squat as a fireplug, muscular shoulders and arms, slim hips. He moved like a dancer with his centre of gravity low to the ground. His square, even-featured face, so like Terry's, yet so much more massive, seemed intimidating to those who did not know him. Yet, as Nicholas knew, Conny was capable of great tenderness and concern. It had been his idea to give a third of the dojo's profits to Eileen Okura's family. Eileen had been Terry's girlfriend before Saigo had murdered her.
It had begun to rain. The access road looked filthy, clotted with soggy rubbish. They crossed it, dodging limos, cabs and lumbering buses, picked up Conny's battered Buick in the short-term parking lot. 'I've got a lot to do and very little time to do it in.'
Conny threw Nicholas's hold-all in the back seat, started the engine. 'We'd better get rolling,' he said.
In the privacy of the car's interior, Nicholas turned to Conny. 'It's good to see you, Tanaka-san,' he said formally.
Conny bowed. 'You honour me, Linnear-san.' There was a debt for which Conny could never repay Nicholas, for avenging his brother's death. It was unspoken, and would forever be, but it was always there, cementing the boundaries of their friendship.
'First things first,' Nicholas said. 'West Bay Bridge. You know where.'
Conny nodded as he paid the parking lot attendant, and they joined the line of vehicles on the airport ring road. 'Everything's as you left it. It's cleaned every week, and someone comes to check up every other day.'
'And my car?'
'I go out and run it myself each weekend,' Conny said. 'It's in beautiful shape.' He swung around a rental car mini-van which had stopped to pick up passengers. 'I miss that old house. You were smart to buy the place you'd been renting. Bought at the right time, too, when the market was soft. Beach houses are hard to come by now, unless you want to build one from scratch. Then you've got to want to part with two, three million easy.'
'Ouch.'
Conny gave him a look. 'What d'you mean ouch, man? Did you ever count how many millions you're worth?'
'No.' Nicholas grunted. 'To tell you the truth I've never got used to the wealth. I'm not entirely comfortable with it.'
Conny nodded. 'Yeah. Money's got a karma of its own. Well, you've got to ride it like an unbroken stallion.'
'Doing my best,' Nicholas said as they accelerated, heading east on the Van Wyck Expressway.
The windshield wipers made a kind of music, a rhythmic undercurrent. It wasn't until they were past Patchogue that Nicholas spoke again. 'There's some very bad news headed my way. In fact, it's already here. It's the kind I don't want you to touch under any circumstances. The
way you can help me best is to stay at the periphery.'
'Just how bad is it?' There was no inflection in Conny's voice.
'I'm in a tunnel,' Nicholas said, 'and truthfully I don't know if I'm coming out the other side.'
'That bad,' Conny said. He flashed Nicholas a grin. 'It's a good thing you've got friends, man.'
'I know.'
'But you don't say "don't touch" to friends, Nick. You don't keep them on the periphery when they can help you stay alive.'
'Conny -'
'I'm not about to let you tie my hands behind my back just so I can watch you die.'
Not a word was said about Terry Tanaka, and the debt Conny owed Nicholas. It didn't have to be. It had its own life in the minds of both these men. Giri was never spoken of among Japanese. Everyone knew that it existed along with the air that one breathed, and was just as essential to life.
'OK,' Nicholas said.
Nicholas kept to himself the rest of the way out. When Conny swung the Buick off Montauk Highway into the parking lot of the A&P in West Bay Bridge, he said, 'The place looks the same.'
Conny trod hard on the brakes. The Buick's headlights illuminated empty spaces. 'It's not here, man,' he said. 'Your car's gone.'
'That's a good sign,' Nicholas said, knowing that Justine must have taken it. 'Just drop me off at the house.'
'I can hang around if you want.'
Nicholas knew what Conny meant, wanting to be there if there was going to be trouble. 'You'll be more use to me in the city. I've got a couple of things I want you to do.' He handed Conny a sheet of paper folded around
an audio cassette Nicholas had taped on the flight over. 'Take a look when you get home.'
Conny took the cassette and the note as he wheeled out of the parking lot, heading for Dune Road and the Atlantic Ocean. It was late, quiet. Just some kids hanging out against their cars, smoking, drinking, perhaps. But the little town had a peaceful look, like something out of a children's story, waiting for teddy bears to begin dancing along the streets. Nicholas thought of Justine.
He remembered the Christmas they had spent out
here just before leaving for Japan. They had needed
to be alone, away from the city and, in the aftermath of
the holocaust caused by Saigo, everything it had come to
represent.	
How beautiful the town was, with Christmas trees, strung with coloured lights, all along the streets, a dusting of snow on Christmas morning and then brilliant sunshine, the beach so cold and windy that they couldn't take their usual early walk, so they retreated to the house to drink steaming glass mugs of mulled wine Justine had made while they opened presents. She had given him a watch, the one he still wore now; he had given her a ruby necklace from Tiffany's. He remembered how much time and care he had spent in selecting it for her, the look on her face when she had opened the blue box.
What's happened to us since then? Nicholas asked himself. Where did we get lost inside ourselves? When did we stop being a couple?
'We're here,' Conny announced.
The Buick's headlights illuminated Nicholas's car, a 1962 white Corvette with red side scoops. Nicholas had had it completely reconditioned a year after he had bought it, and it ran superbly.
'Hey, someone's in there,' Conny said. His voice was wary, and Nicholas could feel the tension come into his frame.
The lights were on in the house, but Nicholas could not see anyone moving around.
'It's OK,' Nicholas said, getting out of the Buick. He reached in, pulled out his overnight bag. 'Go back home, Conny. You've got a lot to do.'
Conny nodded, waited until Nicholas stepped back, then reversed out of the gravel driveway.
Nicholas went up the steps to the house. Behind him, the black Atlantic pummelled the shoreline unmercifully. Out here in winter, he knew, the beach could lose two to three yards to the sea and to storms until spring came and the winds and tides turned more favourable. It was ten to fifteen degrees cooler than it had been at the airport, and he was grateful for the relief from the sticky heat. He was hungry and he needed a shower.
On the porch, he used his key without ringing the bell. Despite what he had told Conny, he was cautious. He did not know where Senjin Omukae, the dorokusai,. was, or even what he really wanted beyond the rest of So-Peng's emeralds.
If you die now, if you die too easily, you will never understand. What had the dorokusai meant? Nicholas thought he was closer to finding out.
He crossed the threshold, heard music coming from the stereo, Tracy Chapman singing 'Fast Car'. One of Justine's favourites. He knew he should relax a bit, but he could not.
He looked around the wide, open living-room, dining-room and kitchen. The space looked huge, yawning after so much time in Japan where everything, it seemed, was in miniature, exquisite mini-worlds standing shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, in a land where for centuries chronic overcrowding had been a way of life. Amazingly, the large fish tank, the demarcation between the living and the dining areas, had been maintained. A trio of lacy angelfish swam regally by, and
his ancient whiskered catfish was wiggling up one side, vacuuming algae as he went.
'Gus, old buddy,' Nicholas whispered to the catfish. 'It's good to see you.'
He put his bag down, went silently all through the house. When at last he came to the master bedroom, he found Justine's suitcases opened on the bed. She had not unpacked, but clothes had been laid out. He heard the shower running. In a moment, it was turned off.
He stood there in the semi-darkness, in his own house, listening to his wife moving about in the bathroom. Yet he did not move. It occurred to him that he felt like a stranger here, and the realization saddened him. He had no home, no family. The only thing he seemed connected to was Japan.
He abruptly realized what this connection had cost him, and he wondered whether it was worth it. Japan was his milieu, but it was not Justine's. Until this moment, he had not realized what a fundamental difference that could make. Now, standing here, alone, in the midst of everything that should have been familiar and comfortable and was not, he could put himself in Justine's mind, see as she saw the alien in the familiar.
At that moment, he almost turned and walked away, but he could not. She rooted him to the spot as much as did his anomie, an ironic juxtaposition that he could not yet come to grips with.
Nicholas did not know what to do.
Then the door opened and, in a billow of fragrant mist, Justine came out. She was wrapped in a bathsheet, a towel turbaned about her hair. She stopped dead when she saw him.
'Oh, my God, Nick!'
Then she was in his arms, sobbing, kissing him all over his face, her warm, damp body pressed close to his. He could feel the tremors of her muscles, smell her
through the soft scents of the soap and the shampoo and the body talc.
Nicholas, enfolding her, warmed by her, felt his love for her, felt that it had never died. But whether it had merely receded on its. own by time and circumstance or he had pushed it away he could not say.
He recognized that, in a way, his withdrawal from her - indeed, from everyone around him - had been a necessary part of his awakening to his own destiny: the knowledge that he was tanjian. And this thought saddened him in a way he could not fully explain and was, as yet, unprepared to explore.
All he knew was that he was drenched in Justine once again, just as he had been so many years ago when they had first met along this stretch of beach only a few yards from where he was now standing, their feet wet, their psyches wary, suspicious of each other and any incident that would so wildly, wilfully bring two people together with such breathless abandon.
All he knew was that he was whole once more, and a kind of exultation, fierce and undeniable, gripped him so that he held her to him all the tighter.
'Dear God, I love you, Justine.'
And she was crying. 'Nick, Nick, Nick,' she whispered as if the mere evocation of his name would assure her that he had really returned to her. 'I was so afraid that I would never see you again. I - '
'Why?' He pushed her a little away from him so that he could look into her face. He wanted to see, he needed to see that she was all right. 'Where would you get an idea that I wasn't coming back?'
'I - I ..." Justine shook her head, the towel turbaned over her hair coming down around her shoulders, her dark hair, damp, tangled, an erotic web, coming free. 'I don't know. I think - '
And he could see it in her eyes, the green hidden and
murky in the dominant brown, the red motes in her left iris, dull, remote. He could see the Tau-tau lurking there like a spider crouched in its web, and his heart broke, and he had to fight the fear because this was so new to him that he lacked the confidence to know whether he could free her, really free her as he had freed her from the ninja hypnosis that Saigo had once worked on her.
'Someone told you,' he said. 'Someone put it into your mind.' To shock her because he knew this much: that he would need her help, he could not exorcise the Tau-tau on his own.
'Yes . . .' Justine looked bewildered, as if he had pulled her roughly out of a deep sleep. 'I remember ... something.' She looked into his face. 'Like a dream or a painting in smoke, shimmering, shifting, dancing away when I try to look it full in the face.'
He saw the fright steal into her face, darken her eyes, obscure the red motes. 'Nick, what's happening to me? I feel ... I feel like I'm living in two separate worlds. I feel, I don't know quite how to say this, but as if I'm locked up and been set adrift at the same time. Crazy, huh?'
'Not nearly as crazy as you think,' Nicholas said. 'Why don't you get dressed, and I'll see what kind of food -'
'Don't leave me.' Justine reached out for him. 'Please, I - Nick, I don't want to be alone now that you're here. I just want to look at you, touch you. I - It feels like it's been so long since I've seen you, years instead of weeks. I - ' She held her head. 'I don't know what's happening to me.'
'Get dressed, honey,' Nicholas urged her. 'You'll get cold standing around like that.'
Justine smiled, slipped into jeans and a black cotton turtleneck sweater. 'Better?' She came over to him. 'Nick, what is it? What's happened?'
He put his arms around her. 'Remember Saigo? Remember what he did to you, hypnotizing you?' She nodded. 'Somewhat the same thing has happened,.! think. Though you don't remember it clearly, the dorokusai who is after me came to the house in Tokyo. He spent some time with you.' He saw the puzzled look on her face. 'You don't remember someone new, a stranger coming to the door?'
'No,' Justine said. "There was only the cyclist. But I don't remember what happened to him.'
'What cyclist?'
'I - Well, I almost ran him down, I think. I was coming out of our driveway and didn't see him. I was lucky and so was he; he just went into the cryptomeria on the other side of the road. He said he was OK but I insisted he come and have some tea.' She gave Nicholas a little smile. 'I was practising being more Japanese, thinking to myself his refusals were just his way of being polite. He came, though.'
'And then what happened?'
'What?' Justine looked startled. 'Oh, I don't know, really. I can't seem to remember. I guess he came with me to the house, had some tea, and left.'
'No, that's not all that happened,' Nicholas said. "The cyclist was Senjin Omukae.' "
'Yes. That was his name. I remember that now.'
'He's the dorokusai, Justine.'
He felt her begin to shake all over again. 'Oh, Nick.' Tears welled in her eyes. 'Nick, what's happened? What's he done to me? I can't remember . . .'
'I know exactly what he's done,' Nicholas said, although he didn't. 'I'll take care of it.' Although he had no way of knowing whether or not he could. He wondered, then, how much he could - or should - tell her of his own new circumstances. Would it make her feel more secure or just deepen her fright if he were to
tell her that he himself was a tanjian? He did not know.
He led her into the living-room, where there was more light and more space. He poured her a whisky, brought it to her.
'But what has he done to me?' Justine insisted.
'He wants to get to me through you.'
She took a sip of the Scotch, shuddered. 'Maybe he wants me to kill you, like Saigo wanted."
'I doubt it,' Nicholas said. "This one wants me all to himself. There would be no satisfaction for him in a murder by proxy.'
Justine's eyes were wide and stating. 'Nick, do you realize what we're talking about?'
Nicholas knew that he had never loved his wife more deeply or completely than he did at that moment. He kissed her hard on her lips, feeling hers soften, open beneath his. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'Senjin had one chance to kill me up in Dr Hanami's office and he didn't do it. Good for me; too bad for him. There's an old Japanese saying: If you fail to kill an enemy, you had better dig two graves.'
Justine collapsed into his arms. 'Oh, God. Death and more death.' She put her head against his chest. 'Isn't there another way? Oh, there must be.' She looked up at him. 'Can't we just run away somewhere, anywhere, I don't care where, I swear it, just so long as - ' But she stopped, seeing the look on his face that confirmed her own inner sense.
'No, I see this is the only way now. Because of your life, Nick, and how you've got to live it. All right, then.' Slowly, she covered his hand with hers. 'I accept whatever must be, whatever is to come. Karma. Because I love you and only you.' She drew his hand down to her belly. 'But I want you to remember that whatever happens, our future - or part of it - is in here, waiting for its time. Promise
me you won't do anything to jeopardize that future.'
'Justine, are you saying - ?' But he already knew, could tell with his gift, just as Senjin had, that she was pregnant. 'My God, a baby.'
'Are you happy?'
'Yes. Oh, yes!' He kissed her. 'When is it due?'
'Early in the spring.'
'A baby,' Nicholas echoed, his hand still on her belly.
"This one well keep, Nick.' She pressed herself hard against him. "That's my promise to you. This baby will live, grow up, be our future . . . together.'
Nicholas picked her up, carried her over to the long modular couch. They lay together, entwined, twinned, each reaching for that part the other had withheld during the past bleak months out of anger, frustration and fear, but not indifference, never indifference.
Above them, in their floating city, the angelfish rippled their translucent fins, darting serenely in and out of the vertical water plants, while Gus, the catfish, slept, sated, in his niche between two plastic spars of a mock shipwreck.
The heat rose in them, the same delicious fire they had first felt when they had coupled frantically, knowing little about each other except that they burned to be closer than close. 
Justine's fingers were already unbuttoning his shirt, pushing it back off his chest and arms. He licked her lips, her ears and, when he pushed aside the turtleneck, the hollow of her throat.
'I want you.'
Nicholas began to lift up her sweater, but she moaned, 'No, no, I want you now. This instant.' Unbuckling his belt, pushing all his clothes down as he worked at her jeans.
She wore nothing underneath, and he was inside her almost immediately as she urged him on top of her with
her fingertips and her thighs. She thrust up hard, once, twice, three times.
'Oh!' she cried, her neck arched, her eyes fluttered closed. 'It's been so long.' Her hips moved with his, and she grew hotter, her inner muscles working at him frenziedly, her mouth whispering, 'Yes, yes,' almost a religious chant or a prayer of thanks, her hips bucking out of control until he could do nothing else but explode inside her, filled with her, and her with him, all they had now, but everything they ever wanted.
Kusunda Ikusa was in the Imperial Palace East Garden but he wasn't there to jog. This was the only part of the Palace open to the public, filled with traditional flower-bearing shrubs and trees, tiny ornamental buildings as old as the Palace itself. From here one had an excellent view not only of the Imperial Palace but the circular path around it, a favourite track for many of frenzied Tokyo's avid joggers. Of course, they ignored the pall of exhaust fumes from the monstrous convergence of vehicular traffic beyond the moat.
It was just past six on a pink pointillist morning, and Ikusa had no difficulty in discerning Masuto Ishii in the shell-coloured haze. Ishii was Sato International's vice-president of operations, a key man in Tanzan Nangi's operation, perhaps even in his strategies, and when he had called late yesterday, Ikusa had immediately agreed to meet him.
Ikusa was wary, as he approached the little man, but not as suspicious as he might have been in other circumstances. Normally, Nangi's people were notoriously loyal in a land known for its loyalty. But the Nakano deal, especially the detonation of the bomb Ikusa had left hidden in the contract, had shaken a lot of leaves off the tree. For the first time in its history, Sato International was in real trouble. Everyone knew where the trouble came
and what it would take to get rid of it. Ikusa, so secretive before, had wanted this public now; he wanted Nangi's confidence shaken, his people anxious.
So, in a sense, Masuto Ishii's call had not been unforeseen. The one surprise was that it had come from someone so high up in the Sato keiretsu, someone so close to Tanzan Nangi. Ikusa was inclined to take that as a very good sign. Over the course of the last few days - ever since he had done away with the man spying on him and Killan - he had allowed his feeling of elation full rein. He was on the verge of obtaining everything he could hope for, everything he ever wanted. The thought sent shivers down his spine.
The two men made their ritual greeting at the break of day, with the city waking all around them. They began their circumnavigation of the garden. Ikusa could feel the nervousness emanating in waves from the other man.
Though he had familiarized himself with all of Sato International's top management months ago in preparation for his raid, Ikusa had brought Ishii's file up on his computer screen just before meeting him to make certain he remembered every detail.
Ishii had been at Sato for twenty years, and was an integral part of its growth during that time. He was a small, almost tiny man, wiry, with quick, intelligent eyes magnified from behind thick glasses. His only vice appeared to be gambling, an all too common Japanese pastime as far as Ikusa was concerned.
Ishii was a quiet, family man, but was by no means meek. There was a story about him that during the communist riots down by the docks just after the war he had, as a twenty-year-old boy, swung a crowbar into the side of the communist leader's head. 'Anyone who wants to overthrow the Emperor has to kill me first,' Ishii was reported to have said. The dock workers were back at their jobs that afternoon.
'Ishii-san, it comes as some surprise that you would want to meet with me,' Kusunda Ikusa said as they passed a sheared dwarf azalea in full flower. 'Aren't I considered by some to be the enemy?'
Ishii responded to his ironic tone with the trace of
a smile. 'Enemies are often a matter of semantics,' Ishii
said.	.
And Ikusa thought, What you mean is, a matter of convenience. But he said nothing, confident that he could allow Ishii to do all the work at this meeting.
The day had just begun, and already it was growing hot. Ikusa could see Ishii sweating beneath his dark grey pinstripe suit. The collar of his white shirt was damp.
The little man did not disappoint Ikusa. He said, 'May I speak candidly, Ikusa-san?'
'Of course. We are all part of one family now.' Radiating benevolence. "There is no difference between us.'
"The matter is simple, really. That is, it is a straightforward one.' Ishii mopped his perspiring brow with a handkerchief.'It involves money.'
Ah, Ikusa thought, seeing the point at which he could ford the stream. He disguised the distaste he already felt for Ishii's weakness of character. 'If I can be of assistance.'
'I'm afraid I am an inveterate gambler. Often, I regret to say, my desire exceeds my means.'
'Have you tried to curb this desire of yours, Ishii-san?'
'Oh, yes,' the little man said, mopping his brow again. He could not seem to keep it dry. 'Many times. Nangi-san was kind enough to pay for my rehabilitation.'
'And yet?'
Ishii shrugged. 'I do my best, but I cannot overcome it. No matter how long I stay away -I once abstained for a year -I must go back.' He shrugged again. 'Karma.'
'Yes, unfortunate karma,' Ikusa said. He turned a corner, Ishii following as obediently as a dog on a leash.
'But, tell me, why come to me? Surely Nangi-san can obtain a loan for you. I assume he has done so in the past,'
'Once or twice,' Ishii admitted. Now Ikusa could discern a trace of despair in his voice. 'Frankly I was afraid to approach him this time. The recent turn of events has him off-balance, angry. But finally I brought myself to ask. Nangi turned me down. He said I had a lesson to learn. I understand his anxiety over other matters, but I feel this was not right. I have been a loyal member of the Sato family for years. It is my life. Now he has turned his back on me when I need his help the most. It is unfair.'
'Ah, well, the most accommodating of employers . . .' Ikusa left this thought deliberately open-ended. 'And the banks, Isnii-san? Can they not be of service?'
'I need the money by the end of the week, Ikusa-san. No bank will pass a loan that quickly.'
They passed beneath the shade of a plum tree. 'What size loan would satisfy the debt?'
When Ishii told him, Ikusa spent some time pretending
to consider. 'Well, I think you've acted correctly coming
to me, Ishii-san. I'm sure we can work out an exchange
of services.'	,
'Oh, Ikusa-san, I would be most grateful, most grateful,' Ishii babbled with embarrassing emotion.
Ikusa looked at him out of the corner of his eye as if the little man had dropped his pants and defecated in the azaleas.
They walked for some time in silence. Ikusa watched the joggers on their circuit, their lungs soaking up the carbon monoxide. What possible health benefit could be derived from that? he wondered.
'By the way,' Ikusa said, breaking the contemplative silence, 'what exactly is Nangi-san thinking? He's lost the heart of Nakano, and he can't sell the worthless shell he's bought so dearly. What is he going to do?'
'Well, it's not just him now,' Ishii said. He seemed to be a different person, relieved of the burden of his gambling debt. It was, of course, a matter of face that he should be able to pay on time and in good faith. 'He and Linnear-san have got together to plot strategy.'
'Nicholas Linnear is back?' Ikusa was momentarily so nonplussed by the news that he blurted it out. "That is to say, I had heard reports that he disappeared.'
Ishii shrugged. 'I don't know about that. But if they were true at all, he's back.'
Damnit, how is it I didn't know about this? Ikusa asked himself. And where the hell is Senjin? He was supposed to be taking care of Linnear. If Linnear has returned, he should have informed me. That could be trouble.
'Do you have any idea what Nangi and Linnear are planning?'
'Not specifically,' Ishii said. 'I do know that a number of MTTI officials came to see them yesterday.' This could be more bad news, Ikusa knew. Nangi was a former vice-minister of the powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry., Though Mill and Nami professed to be essentially on the same course, Ikusa knew that this was not always the case. He did not actually know how strong Nangi's ties remained with his erstwhile ministry, but Ikusa was not hi the habit of underestimating bis enemies. Nangi had been in his day a fierce practitioner of kanryodo, the art of the bureaucrat. What strings he could still pull were as of now a matter of conjecture.
'Ishii-san,' Ikusa said. 'If you meet me here at this time tomorrow, I will have your money.'
The little man bowed. Domo arigato, Ikusa-sama. I will of course sign a note agreeing to any rate of interest you see fit.'
'Oh, that will not be necessary,' Ikusa said, taking the opening. "This is a matter of trust between equals.*
He used an inflective, the Japanese equivalent of a wave of the hand. 'And as for interest, there will be none.' He looked into Ishii's wide-eyed face. 'But if I might ask for an alternative form of payment?'
'Anything, Ikusa-san. I am most grateful for your
understanding and generosity.'	,
'It is very little,' Ikusa said, making the ritual response to a compliment. 'This is what you might do for me: when you meet me tomorrow, I would appreciate knowing what strategy Nangi-san has decided on.'
At approximately the same time that this meeting was taking place, but in an eastern section of Tokyo, Tomi and Nangi were making their way along the water-slick pavement dockside at Tsukiji, the sprawl of single-storey buildings on the bank of the Sumida River which winds through the city.
Tsukiji was Tokyo's vast wholesale fish market, where more than $12 million-worth of fish was sold every day. Today, however, there was something other than fish at Tsukiji.
Using her credentials, Tomi pushed their way through the police barriers, around the Medical Examiner's ambulance. Lights blazed, creating pools across the slick docks. Workers in black slickers and high boots, carrying curved fish hooks and water hoses to spray the lines of fish lying on their sides, gleaming in the hazy morning sunlight, stood around staring, talking among themselves as their open-mouthed catch piled up on the dock.
Nangi walked slowly. He leaned heavily on his cane, and his face was lined and drawn tight by concern. The sky was suffused with the milky light that presages sunrise, the illumination of preconsciousness that gives everything a surreal quality, blurring edges, making definition indistinct.
Tomi stopped at the edge of the indigo river. Boats
bobbed at their slips as their cargo was off-loaded to be inventoried, sprayed, priced for the morning's sale.
Nothing, however, was going on. The men on the boats were staring at a mounded plastic sheet spread over a six-foot length of the dock.
'They polled him out of the Sumida not more than forty minutes ago,' Tomi said to Nangi. "That's when I was called.' She pointed. 'He rose up to the surface, bumped against the side of this boat here. The captain looked over the side, called the police.'
With that, she gestured, and the plastic tarp was thrown back.
'Dear God,' Nangi breathed.
'Is it him?' Tomi turned to him. 'Can you make a positive identification?'
'Yes.' Nangi had difficulty swallowing. 'That's the Pack Rat.'
Tomi nodded, as if to herself. She pointed. 'I don't know what happened, but you can see where he was weighted down with something, maybe iron bars. That's how they do it.'
'Who?'
'Yakuza.'
Nangi was bent over the Pack Rat's bloated corpse. 'This wasn't a Yakuza hit.'
'You seem sure about that.'
'I am,' Nangi said. "The Pack Rat had too many friends among the Yakuza.'
'Where there are friends, there are bound to be enemies,' Tomi pointed out. "That's the law of the jungle.'
'No doubt,' Nangi said. 'But look here - and here - these wounds. A blunt and heavy Weapon was used.' He looked closer. 'It seems to me these are the wounds inflicted by a tetsubo.'
'Isn't that a feudal weapon? If I recall my history, it was used for opening up armour plate and breaking war
horses' legs,' Tomi said, coming closer. 'I've never seen one at work.'
'Well, I have,' Nangi said. 'A long time ago. A real tetsubo match isn't pretty. It's a matter of great skill combined with brute strength to successfully wield a solid iron bar mounted with iron studs.' Nangi put bis cheek against the dragon head of his cane. 'Poor boy,' he said softly. 'It takes a nasty mind to want to use one of these things. You have to want to inflict fatal damage. Tetsubo matches are invariably to the death.'
'You mean they still exist?'
'You're looking at evidence that they do,' Nangi said, straightening up. He had said his goodbye to the Pack Rat. They walked away from the forensic team, so they would not be overheard. 'What was found on the body?'
'Not a thing,' Tomi said. 'He was either carrying nothing or he was stripped before being dumped in the river. My guess is the latter.'
'I agree,' Nangi said. 'Though the Pack Rat was very careful. He would not have been carrying anything but false identity papers, some money. Nothing incriminating that would let anyone know what he was doing.'
'He popped up like a cipher, but the description you gave us was what caused the investigating officers to call me,' Tomi said. 'I'm sorry, Nangi-san.'
Nangi nodded. 'It's sad. And terribly bad luck for me. The Pack Rat was my eyes and ears inside Kusunda Ikusa's strategies. He gave me only a broad outline of what he had discovered at our last meeting. I'm sure he had so much more.' But perhaps it doesn't matter, Nangi thought. He had solved the riddle of Ikusa's raid: to gain control of Sato International and its Sphynx t-pram division.
And yet, this was only an assumption. Nangi longed for outside confirmation. If only the dead could talk, he thought bleakly. What secrets would you tell me, Pack Rat, if you could?
Nangi said, The one thing of interest he did mention was that somehow Killan Oroshi, the daughter of Nakano's chairman, was involved with Ikusa. That struck both of us as odd. She might be the only lead we have left now.'
'Detective Yazawa!'
They both turned to see one of the investigating officers gesturing frantically to Tomi. They went back to where the corpse was being loaded on to a folding stretcher, before being taken away in the ambulance.
'Look at what we found,' the officer said. 'The man's left shoe must have been ripped off when he came to the surface. Look at the space between his big toe and the others.'
Tomi and Nangi bent to look. The Pack Rat, as was his habit, was not wearing socks. His foot was so bloated, one could hardly recognize it for what it was. Taped to the inside of his big toe, lying against the white flesh, was a tiny metal key.
Tomi took out a pocket knife, slit the tape. Carefully she peeled the key off the dead man's flesh, dropped it into Nangi's palm.
'Now,' she said, 'maybe we have another lead.'
*
'There's no time like the present,' Detective Albemarle said. 'How about we locate Senator Howe right now?'
Shisei nodded. 'Anything you say.'
"This is Sergeant Johnson,' Albemarle said, as a big black cop joined them on their way outside.
'I remember him from the interrogation room,' Shisei said.
'You're quite some woman,' Albemarle said as they went down the steps of the precinct house to an unmarked car. It was hot and sticky, with little breeze coming in off the Chesapeake: a typical summer night in the nation's capital. 'Still, you sure you're up to this?'
'You want me there, I'm going. It's as simple as that.'
Albemarle grunted. 'Nothing's ever simple.' He pulled out on to the street. 'Howe's got some rep when it comes to his people crossing him.'
'I'm not crossing him,' Shisei said. 'I'm turning him in.'
That got a smile out of Albemarle. 'I'll say this for you, you've got guts. Ain't she got guts, Bobo?'
'Damned if she don't,' Sergeant Johnson said from his position in the back seat. Shisei got the impression that he was staring intently at the back of her neck.
Albemarle went on, 'I assume you know that Howe has enough juice to pull your career out from under you for what you're doing. Does anything scare you?'
Shisei looked at him in the night.
He drove very fast but not recklessly. Within minutes he pulled up outside Howe's residence on Seventeenth Street in the north-west district.
'Place should be a museum, not a goddamn private house,' Albemarle muttered as they got out of the car. Looking up, they could see lights on on the third floor. Albemarle pointed. 'You know your way around here, I imagine?'
Shisei said, 'I'm familiar with the offices on the ground floor. The senator's private apartment is on the third floor. I've never been up there.'
Albemarle grunted as they went up the stone steps. He rang the bell. They waited. When no one answered, he rang again, this time leaning on the bell. Nothing. He turned the doorknob, and the door opened inwards.
Immediately, Albemarle and Johnson drew their guns. 'For a paranoid like Howe this is decidedly not kosher.'
'I'd better call for a back-up,' Johnson said.
'Nix,' Albemarle ordered. "This is ours. I'm not in a sharing mood tonight.' He gestured to Shisei. 'You stay here.'
'I want to go with you,' she said.
'It's against regs,' Albemarle told her, already inside. Sergeant Johnson glowered at her, then followed his boss into the house.
In a moment, Shisei followed them.
The downstairs offices were dark. She could see that the two cops had found the curving staircase, went slowly upwards. She was a shadow behind them. The second floor was also dark, but now they could see more clearly as light from the-third floor seeped down the spiral stairwell.
'Keep your head down,' Shisei, close behind them, heard Albemarle whisper to Johnson before they began to ascend.
Light flooded the third floor landing, emanating from the open doorway to a room that was obviously Douglas Howe's study. Floor to ceiling bookcases surrounded a pair of facing leather sofas, a matching high-backed chair. A massive antique fruitwood desk and leather swivel chair were set in one corner. A brace of English hunting paintings hung on the deep green walls. Lamps glowed here and there.
An antique Isfahan rug lay behind one of the sofas, but it was now worthless, stained beyond repair with blood and brains.
Senator Douglas Howe half-sat at an unnatural angle on one of the leather sofas. His legs were incongruously crossed at the ankles, as if he were at repose, which, in a sense, was the case.
His arms were flung wide as if in shocked reaction. A .357 Magnum lay just beyond the reach of his right hand. Tfiere was nothing left of the back of his head. Some of it clung to the spines of books in the cases three feet away.
'Jesus,' was all Albemarle said. Then he said to Shisei, 'Don't move and don't under any circumstances touch or move anything.'
He went over to the desk, used his handkerchief to
pick up the phone. He dialled, using his pen to hit the push-buttons. 'Bobby? It's Phil,' he said into the phone. 'Ambulance, full forensics, ME's office and back-up.' Then he gave the address. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Senator Howe himself. He won't be running for re-election, so for Christ's sake let's keep this quiet for as long as we can before the press starts treading all over us, OK? Who can you get to cover this? OK, good. Yeah, yeah. And I want you here five minutes ago.'
Albemarle put down the phone. He studied Shisei for a moment, just to see whether she was taking her instructions seriously. Then he went and knelt beside Johnson, who was staring at Howe. He peered down at the .357 Magnum, then at Howe's right hand.
'What are you looking for?' Shisei asked.
'Usually these handguns aren't used much, but they have to be kept in working order,' Albemarle said.
'There looks to be traces of gun oil on the senator's fingers,' Johnson said.
Albemarle stood up, looked at her. "That's crucial to establish because if Howe fired the gun, it's suicide. If it was put in his mouth, it's homicide. Big difference, especially for me.'
'But not for Howe,' Shisei said.
Johnson barked a laugh.
'You've got some sense of humour,' Albemarle said.
'I wasn't being funny,' Shisei said. 'Just making an observation.'
Five minutes later they heard the sirens, and a commotion downstairs. Detectives, uniformed police, a forensics team, a cadaverous doctor from the Medical Examiner's office all trooped into the room. They worked swiftly, efficiently, taking photographs, prints, measurements, statements from Albemarle, Johnson and Shisei.
Of course, they found Howe's permit for the .357 Magnum. The assistant ME said to Albemarle, 'This is
only a prelim, off the top of my head, Phil, but if this doesn't turn out to be a suicide, I'm a monkey's uncle.'
Shisei looked over the scene with some satisfaction. She knew that the doctor's final report would not note anything out of the ordinary, certainly nothing to point to homicide.
The fact that hours earlier she had driven Howe home, had taken his gun out of the drawer in his desk, put it in his hand, shoved the barrel into his mouth, put her forefinger over his, squeezed slowly, until the report of the explosion cracked the silence of the night, would never be revealed. It was nobody's business but hers.
She stood in one corner, out of the policemen's way, waiting patiently for Detective Albemarle to take her back to the precinct. She wanted to be there when they released Branding.
Her work here was almost done, but there was still the question of Branding. Cook, she thought, have you lost faith in me? Do you still love me?
She was impatient now to find out.
Senjin watched Nicholas and Justine making love with the kind of envy one feels for a peer whose ease with other people makes him the constant centre of attention.
It was the envy, perhaps, that made Senjin want to kill Nicholas now, to forget his vow, to wreak wholesale vengeance of a sort that would appease his growing appetite for chaos.
He was stopped from exercising this self-indulgence by a new element. Reaching out with the projection of his will as he had in Dr Hanami's office, he encountered not that withdrawn, uncertain psyche that had caused him to feel such elation, but a black, featureless wall beyond which nothing was discernible.
Nicholas had ceased to exist, as far as Senjin's gift was concerned.
What had happened? Senjin was certain that he had effectively destroyed Nicholas's one avenue to salvation when he had ritually murdered Kyoki, the tanjian living in the castle in the Asama highlands. But where had Nicholas gone after Asama? He had not immediately returned to Tokyo the broken man, as Senjin had thought he would. Had he gone further into the Alps? And, if so, why?
In the end, Senjin knew, the answers to these questions did hot matter. All that need concern him was this new and wholly unexpected element: Nicholas had somehow come to terms with his being a tanjian. For the featureless wall that blocked out any psychic foray was only possible from a tanjian.
That meant that Nicholas knew Tau-tau. Senjin considered. What hadn't he been told of this? Again, his training told him that this did not matter. He needed to reassess the situation, fashion a new strategy accordingly.
Kshira, the sound-light continuum, teaches: Yang, the First Son, inciting motion, light gives birth to fire, and thought gives birth to light; thunder gives birth to sound, and anger gives birth to thunder. Yin: the Mother, yielding, fluid, the earth is the receptacle for thought, the crucible of idea.
One cannot exist without the other, Kshira teaches. But Senjin knew better, for Yin gave to Yang weakness as well as strength, a weakness Senjin saw as fatal. Thus he had spent so much time in ridding himself of Yin: the Mother, yielding, devoted.
He had sought to stop the cosmic order of Yin flowing into Yang, to still the eternal flux of the two forms of energy. Thus had he become dorokusai, the scourge of tanjian.
As he watched from the rafters like a predatory owl in the crotch of a tree, Senjin assumed the position of repose. He watched Nicholas and Justine asleep, entwined, and he thought of himself, as Justine had said, as a cloud drifting
above the jam-packed earth, separated from the joy, cares and desires of those whom he observed. Kshira allowed him to see this, but his own special philosophy made it so.
He inhaled deeply. Death was not in the air. At least, not yet. There were private hells, degradations of the state of being alive that needed to be traversed before Senjin could allow death to come to Nicholas Linnear.
But there was purpose here, and Senjin's nostrils dilated as if he could scent it. Senjin had come for the remaining emeralds. He had hoped that Justine would be able to tell him where they were. But now that Nicholas had appeared, Senjin saw another path, a powerful attack, both a way for him to know if the emeralds were here inside the house, and the first hell for Nicholas to inhabit on his journey towards his own demise.
With the stillness of the dead, Senjin left his perch and, keeping to the shadows, went about his business. When he was finished, there was light where none had been before, and there was heat, a warping of the atmosphere, sucking the oxygen out of the house.
A moment after Senjin left, Nicholas awoke with a start. He coughed, his lungs already filling with smoke. Flames licked along the floor, devouring the night.
Killan and the Scoundrel stood on a street corner on the seedy outskirts of Tokyo. Across the dark, infrequently travelled avenue they could see the flickering neon entrance to a dive called the Kan.
'Kusunda said that I should come alone,' Killan said for the fourth or fifth time. She stood on one leg, then the other, a sure sign that she was nervous. 'Maybe you shouldn't have come.'
'I-wasn't going to let you do this on your own,' the Scoundrel said, also for the fourth or fifth time. Then, 'Do you think he'll give us what we want?'
'Of course he will,' Killan said, with the wholehearted conviction of the revolutionary. She scanned the sparse traffic in both directions. 'What other choice does he have?'
The Scoundrel said nothing, fingering a bulge beneath his nylon windbreaker.
When Killan had played the tape she and the Scoundrel had created from carefully culled excerpts of the tape the Scoundrel had found in the apartment next to his, Kusunda Ikusa had smiled.
'Where did you get that?' he had said.
'It doesn't matter,' Killan told him, her voice full of authority. 'What matters is I have it. Interested?'
'Naturally.' Ikusa's eyes, half-hidden in his folds of flesh, regarded her with reptilian solidity.
'Don't you want to know what I want for it?' Killan asked, growing impatient.
'Whatever it is, it is sure to be outlandish.' That smile again, as if he did not have a care in the world.
Killan said, 'I want authority. Not just an entry-level job at Nakano, not a job in publicity convincing jerks they ought to buy your new products.'
'I thought - ' Abruptly, Ikusa's jaw snapped shut; he wasn't smiling now.
'The trouble with you, Kusunda,' Killan had said, 'is that you see me as a female. You make beautiful noises about my abilities, my mind, my ambition, but you always temper that by saying it's a pity I wasn't born a man. Do you understand how that makes me feel, how it shames me? No, of course not. How could you have any idea?
'Well, you're going to understand now, because I'm going to exact a heavy price to save your face. I want a position of authority within Nakano.'
'Once a revolutionary always a revolutionary,' Kusunda had said. 'Well, I suppose it was inevitable, but I must say you've disappointed me, Killan.' He pursed his pouty lips.
'On the other hand, I know you now. Like all revolutionaries, you long for the respectability you can by definition never have. Because once you do, you've been co-opted by the establishment, you're a part of it, the revolution's washed away on the tide of inevitable change.' He made a dismissive gesture. 'Take your position, then. Anywhere in the consumer division. Which job do you covet so much?'
Killan had smiled thinly, but the venom so long held in check had come to the surface. 'You think you know me so well, but you don't. There's more. I don't want a position in the bogus consumer division you're setting up as a front, but in the area where it's really happening: the R and D. I want a piece of what's going down with mantis. Ten per cent of profits.'
Killan thought she had seen all the blood drain from Ikusa's face. She had so desperately wanted him to ask, Where did you find out about mantis? But all he said was an address and a time. 'You bring the tape,' he said, 'and I'll have a contract for you to sign.'
It had been that simple.
'What if he doesn't show up?' the Scoundrel asked now.
'He'll show up,' Killan said, moving from one foot to another. 'What other choice does he have?'
'We should have insisted on seeing the contract before the meet,' the Scoundrel said. 'I should have handled the negotiations.'
'Are you kidding?' Killan said. 'You're invisible in this. I don't want Kusunda to know how I found out about mantis. You're my strength and my weakness, so stay back in the shadows when we see Kusunda coming. I don't want him recognizing you.'
It was now two minutes past the time Ikusa had set for the exchange of documents. A black Mercedes turned a corner, headed their way. The Scoundrel retreated to
the shadows. As it came closer, they could see that its windows were heavily tinted.
It was less than a block away. 'Here he comes,' Killan said confidently. She had stopped shifting from foot to foot.
The Mercedes, very close to them now, abruptly began to accelerate.
'Are they crazy?' the Scoundrel shouted.
The Mercedes mounted the kerb, headed directly for them.
'God in heaven!' Killan breathed, rooted to the spot.
The Scoundrel ran at her, grabbed her hard around the waist. At the same time, he jerked the bulge beneath his windbreaker. He lifted the pistol as it came free, aimed it at the windshield of the careening Mercedes.
He put tw_o shots into the glass, then they both jumped to avoid the heavy grille. iWScoundrel, his heart pounding so hard he thought he was going to have a stroke, hit his shoulder on the Mercedes' off-side fender as it shot past, then they were both up and running as hard as they could.
They heard what sounded like a crash but they did not stop, did not even turn around to see what had happened. They reached their car, which they had parked out of sight. The gears ground as the Scoundrel hurriedly started it up. They shot forwards, racing down a deserted street. The Scoundrel was still gulping air. Killan began to cry in terror and relief.
Smoke filled the house. It was so thick, so acrid that Nicholas knew immediately that the fire had been deliberately started.
'Get down!' he yelled in Justine's ear. 'Keep down!' They were on the floor of the living-room, and already the crack and spark of the flame filled the house, eating even the atmosphere. It was impossible to see clearly, and
Nicholas had to pause a moment to remember the layout of the house he had not been in for years.
There was a great deal of glass - an easy exit - but getting to it was a problem. Flames were everywhere, and they were in the centre of a huge space. But the smoke was as serious a problem: the longer they delayed, the worse it would be for them.
He glanced up. The angelfish, as if sensing the danger or merely feeling the heat, were huddled in the centre of the tank, fins rippling in agitation. Gus, the catfish, was traversing the gravel as if frantically searching for something.
Nicholas took Justine's hand. He could see the fear in her eyes, but also the trust in him. He closed his eyes, went into himself, centring. He found Getsumei no michi, that special place where he could see without his eyes, where hidden strategies were eventually made manifest to him. And saw the way out.
'Let's go!' he yelled, leading the way as they sprinted around the partition, leaping over an easy chair and through a narrow patch of flames. The sudden sickening smell of singed hair.
Six feet beyond, he knew, lay the sliding glass doors and safety. He rushed them forward, but a sudden sharp crack filled the air.
Nicholas felt the collapse of a wooden joist, eaten through by the ferocious fire. He did not need to see it coming. He jerked Justine sharply towards the kitchen, moved himself. The heavy, flaming joist crashed down, the edge of it slamming into the meaty upper part of his left arm. His skin began to burn and Justine cried out, wrapped her hands around the spot.
She screamed as an explosion resounded. She covered Nicholas with her body. Glass fragments shot at them as one of the kitchen windows cracked in the fierce heat.
The smoke was much worse now. Justine started to
cough, and Nicholas felt her falter. He scooped her up in his arms, leapt over the flaming joist. He turned sideways, crashed through the safety glass of the sliding door out to the porch.
The night exploded into ten thousand fragments, but the shards were not sharp, and they clattered off Nicholas and Justine like sleet.
On the beach, Justine bent over, retching and gasping oxygen into her lungs. Nicholas took slow, deep breaths. Prana. He had ceased to breathe in the normal manner the moment he woke up.
He stroked Justine's hair, holding her shoulders. All the hair had been burned, off his left arm, but otherwise he was unharmed.
Already he could hear-the sirens approaching. A neighbour must have called the fire department. People were rushing along the beach. They brought first-aid kits and blankets, one of which Nicholas threw over Justine's shoulders. Someone put Polysporin cream on his left arm, but other than that there was nothing to do but watch the house burn. It was wood frame, as were all the houses on the East End of Long Island, and the fire ripped through it with appalling speed.
'What happened?' someone asked. 'How'd it start?'
'I don't know,' Nicholas said. But of course he knew. He could smell the taint of Tau-tau. Senjin Omukae, the dorokusai, had been here; he had started the blaze. Why? To kill them? In such an impersonal manner? Nicholas doubted it. Then what? Nicholas re-entered Getsumei no michi. Allowed his mind to drift towards the answer. The emeralds! How Nicholas reacted after the fire would tell Senjin if Nicholas had hidden the rest of the stones in the house.
Justine, her head on his shoulder, stood beside him, shivering. He put his arms around her. 'Oh, Nick,' she said softly. 'I can't believe it. It's all gone.'
The fire trucks were arriving, the hoses snaking out, connecting up to the water lines, spraying the house from several directions at once. The firemen swarmed, already breaking a sweat. They fought valiantly. But it was useless, Nicholas saw. The fire ate voraciously at the house, seemingly oblivious to the water being poured on it. It was too well entrenched, raging out of control.
'Look out!' a fireman called, as the centre roofbeams collapsed inwards, sending great gouts of flame shooting skywards, followed by a cascade of sparks and cinders. The gathering crowd oohed and ahhed as if it were the fourth of July. 'Everyone stay clear! This is a dangerous area!'
Nicholas, looking sadly at a part of his past, repository of so many memories, knew that Justine was right. It was all gone.
Detective Albemarle opened the holding cell door, stepped back. 'You're free to go, Senator. I'm truly sorry for the inconvenience.' He shrugged. 'We've all got our jobs to do. Sometimes mine's not so wonderful. This is one of those times.'
Cotton Branding looked at him silently. He stood, slung his tuxedo jacket over his shoulders. His sleeves were rolled up, and his tie and cummerbund were stuffed in his pocket.
He walked out of the holding cell, and said, 'Will you kindly tell me what the hell's going on?'
Shisei, who had been standing in the dense shadows of the precinct corridor, moved into a pool of fluorescent light. Albemarle had taken her into the precinct through a side entrance because the front steps and surrounding street were brilliantly flood-lit with hastily erected television lights, jammed with press clamouring for news of Branding's status.
Shisei said, 'Howe's dead, Cook. He shot himself tonight.'
'What?'
Albemarle nodded in response to Branding's look, but he did not say a word.
'Apparently,' Shisei went on, 'Howe, obsessed with your growing success, decided to do something drastic about it. After a fight with David Brisling which ended in Howe killing him, Howe decided to try to implicate you in Brisling's death.'
'Good God.'
"That seems to sum it up nicely,' Albemarle said. He led the way down the corridor. 'There are just some papers for you to sign, Senator, and you can have your personal effects back.' He turned. 'If you want to call any of your friends in the media from here,' he said, 'be my guest. There's a whole bunch of them outside. I don't know how you want to handle them, but it's no sweat to get you out unseen, if you want.'
Branding nodded. 'That's very decent of you, Detective.'
They went through the formalities in the privacy of Albemarle's chaotic cubicle. 'It may not look like much,' he said, 'but it's all mine.'
'After that holding cell,' Branding said, 'it looks awfully, good to me.'
Albemarle left them for a moment to file the forms Branding had signed and to get his things.
Branding and Shisei looked at each other.
'You're all I thought about in there,' he said. 'I thought I really hated your guts.'
Shisei looked at him levelly. 'Does that mean you don't now?'
'What do you care?' Branding said, bitterly. 'You played me for the perfect fool.'
'Is that what you think?'
'Oh, please. Don't deny it. It's what I know.'
Branding noticed Albemarle standing in the doorway, and he and Shisei lapsed into an uneasy silence.
The detective looked from one to the other, concerned. 'You two having a fight?' He sat on the corner of his desk. 'It's none of my business, right?' He slit open the large manila envelope he was carrying, said to Branding, 'Make sure everything's there, OK?'
'It is,' Branding said shortly, putting away his wallet, keys, address book and other items returned to him.
'Sign this.' Albemarle nodded, as if the preliminaries were over. 'Here's what I have to say, Senator. You can take it any way you want or not at all, that's your privilege. This woman's got a lot of guts. I don't know your history, don't want to. Maybe too much water's gone under the bridge.' He shrugged. 'Anyway, you ought to know. She fought like a sonuvabitch to see you freed. She knew you didn't murder Brisling, and she was willing to put herself in my line of fire in order to help prove it.' He spun the sheet of paper Branding had signed on to his desk. 'All things being equal, that ought to count for something. At least, that's the way it seems to me.' He smiled. 'But what do I know, right?'
He got up off the desk. 'Goodnight, Senator, and good luck.' At the doorway, he turned. 'Feel free to use the office. I've got to give a status report to the Indians outside, then I'll be waiting in case you need me to spirit you out. Use the phone, if you want. Dial nine, for an outside line. Like I said, it's up to you. Handling the press is your metier.'
When they were alone, he and Shisei stared at each other for a long time. When, at length, she saw he had nothing to say, she picked up her handbag.
'Wait a minute,' Branding said. 'Don't go.'
'You said that once before,' Shisei told him, 'and look at the trouble it got you into.'
'What trouble?' Branding said.
When she did not answer him, he picked up Albemarle's phone, got an outside line. He went through his address book, calling all his media contacts either at home or at work. He got them all; a good number were outside the precinct house, linked to their offices - and Branding - by mobile phones. These people never took vacations; they were news junkies, it was all they lived for.
Forty-five minutes later, he was finished. 'Well, that's done,' he said. He called his press secretary, briefed her. 'I'll hold a full news conference tomorrow. No, not in the morning. I've given a preliminary statement - that'll have to hold them for the time being. Let's go for the jugular. Yeah, right. Prime time. Take a page from the President's book. And let's do it from SM.' Branding was referring to his coveted hideaway office in the Capitol Building. 'Take the cameras inside. We'll make it very personal. You know. The photo op will be irresistible. And priceless. We'll get massive coverage. I'm going to turn this thing right around, make all the points I can and then some. It'll hit the public like Reagan getting shot and surviving. The news of what Howe tried to do to me will make me a hero. Yeah, and Maureen? I want this Washington police detective, Albemarle -' He looked through the papers on the desk. 'Philip Albemarle.' He gave her the precinct number. 'I want him at the conference. No. Up there with me. Shoulder to shoulder. Right. You know the kind of thing. The press will eat it up, see us as brothers, kindred spirits. Right. OK, do it. See you. And Maureen? Thanks.' He put down the phone, sighed deeply. 'Long night.'
'Where's your lawyer?'
'Oh, he was here through the questioning,' Branding said. 'When they put me back in the holding cell, he went looking for a judge to sign a writ to get me out. I think he's still looking.' He laughed suddenly. 'I guess the
joke's on him.' He got up, looked at Shisei. 'You coining, or what?'
Shisei did not move. 'I want to tell you what happened.'
Branding looked at her. 'Why is it I wonder that you feel you have to lie to me?'
'I hate that Feraud suit I wore to the dinner,' Shisei said. 'I burned it after you left.'
Branding said nothing.
At last, Shisei lowered her eyes from his. 'I don't know,' she said in the smallest voice he had ever heard.
'Well,' Branding said, 'at least that's a start.'
This morning Kusunda Ikusa had no time for formalities. He walked up to Masuto Ishii and said, 'I have your money.' He fairly thrust the thick envelope at the little man. His contempt for the amount of money, so dear to Ishii, was clearly denned by the gesture.
Ishii opened the envelope; they were alone in the Imperial Palace East Garden, so it was all right. "Thank you, Ikusa-san. Thank you.' He could not stop bowing.
'Forget that,' Ikusa snapped. 'What do you have for me?' His nerves weren't what they were yesterday. But then yesterday that stupid spy was on the bottom of the Sumida River. What in the name of Buddha had caused him to surface? Ikusa wondered. Not that the police would find anything on him to link the body to Ikusa, but Ikusa was a believer in omens, and this was an evil one.
'You were right,' Ishii said, pocketing the envelope, 'Nangi-san is planning to move against you.' They began their walk circumnavigating the garden. It was a brilliant morning, sunshine drenching the last of the night's dew drops. To that end he is marshalling all the support he can from his ministerial cronies at MITI.'
'I knew it!' Ikusa said, triumphantly. On the one hand, he was dismayed that after so many years of being a ronin, Nangi still had such close ties to MITI. On the
other hand, he welcomed a showdown with the ministry. If he were to be honest with himself, this battle had been a long time in the making. Ikusa was well aware of the jealousy many MITI ministers felt towards Nami's burgeoning power. Especially now, since the new Emperor had taken power, he was making it known that Nami's important policy decisions had his imprimatur. This was especially galling to MITI which had many decades of smooth sailing in ramming its economic policies down the throat of the industrial sector.
Perhaps the time was right for Nami to put an end to the rivalry. After all, no ship of state could be steered successfully by two captains.
Well, all right, Ikusa vowed, if it's a fight Nangi wants, .that's just what he'll get. But I have the edge because I've got my pipeline into his strategy.
Ikusa said, 'What kind of operation, specifically, is Nangi mounting?'
'I would think financing,' Ishii said, struggling to keep up with the huge man. In his mounting fervour, Ikusa had quickened his step. 'Judging by the people he's brought in' - here he named four of MITI's top ministers - 'that has to be the route he's taking. All of them have ties to central banks. He's going to float his company on their backs.'
'And in return?' Ikusa asked.
'It's brilliant, really. He doesn't have to mortgage even one division of Sato International.' Ishii took a deep breath. 'He's offered them your head.'
The key. The key to what? Nangi had no idea.
'The first thing to do is to search the Pack Rat's apartment,' Tomi said, ever the methodical detective.
'It would be a waste of time,' Nangi said, turning the key over and over in his hand. "The Pack Rat never kept anything of importance at home. It was a matter of
security to him, and he never broke his own rules.'
'Still,' Tomi said, 'it would be poor procedure to assume the key didn't fit anything there.'
Three hours later, they had satisfied themselves that it didn't.
'Phew! This place is a pigsty,' Tomi said, looking around the cluttered space.
Outside, she said, 'There was no evidence that the Pack Rat had a safety deposit box.'
'He didn't,' Nangi assured her. 'In his line of business, that would never have occurred to him.'
'Just what was the Pack Rat's line of business?'
Nangi smiled. 'He was an information-gatherer. He was the best at it I'd ever met.'
'All right. The key opens nothing in his apartment; it's not for a safety deposit box. That makes sense. Obviously, considering what he did, he'd need twenty-four-hour access to everything important.' Tomi shook her head. 'So where does that leave us? Running down lockers in every train and bus depot in the city?'
'No,' Nangi said. 'The key has no number, it can't be to a public locker.'
"Then what does it open?'
Nangi considered. Something Tomi had said stuck in his head. What was it? Then he remembered, and it gave him an idea. 'Come on,' he said. 'We're going to play some pachinko.'
The Twenty-Four-Hour pachinko parlour was in the Ginza, gaudy, loud, smoke-filled, open, as its name said, day and night.
Nangi bought a token from the cashier and moved along the aisles of machines. He counted: seventh row, sixth machine. The machine the Pack Rat always played.
It was being expertly played by a kid of about eighteen with a foot-long Mohawk bristle of hair in flamingo colours down the centre of his skull, his head shaved on
either side. The kid wore shit-kicker boots with spurs, black jeans covered with metal studs, a short-waisted black leather jacket. Lengths of chains appended from the epaulettes clinked rhythmically as he worked the levers that flipped the ball-bearing through the maze of the pachinko field. The kid won big and was rewarded with a gush of tokens.
'This could take forever,' Nangi said.
Tomi flipped open her police credentials, hung them. hi front of the kid's face.
'Hey!' he said.
'Beat it,' Tomi said, 'before I run you in.'
'Yeah?' The kid sneered. 'For what?'
'Your hair's disturbing the peace, sonny,' Tomi said, showing him a glimpse of her gun. The kid beat it out of there.
'OK,' Tomi said. 'What's up?'
'We'll see in a minute,' Nangi said, handing her
the token. 'Here, go crazy.'	'
Tomi slotted the token, began to play. Meanwhile, Nangi slipped around to the right side of the machine, bent over. There was the little door the Pack Rat had opened to get his tokens. His heart beat a little faster. There was a keyhole in the upper third of the door.
'What are you doing?' Tomi asked.
'When we last met, the Pack Rat insisted we do so here. Partly, it was security. So much noise makes even the most sophisticated electronics surveillance impossible. Partly, it was his hang-out. He came here, he told me, when he needed to work out solutions. But he always played this one machine. I wondered why, until he opened a door back here where they keep the tokens.'
'Nice little scam,' Tomi said.
'Maybe,' Nangi said, 'it was a lot more than that.'
Tomi had said of the Pack Rat, Obviously, considering what he did, he'd need twenty-four-hour access to
everything important. That was what had jogged Nangi's memory of the Pack Rat's pachinko parlour, open all day and all night.
He took the key that had been taped to the Pack Rat's big toe and, reciting a prayer, inserted it into the hole. It fitted, sliding all the way in. Nangi tried to turn it to the right. Nothing happened; the key wouldn't move. His heart sank. Then, he tried it to the left.
The door fell open.
Nangi put his hand inside, felt around. And there it was, taped to the metal top of the receptacle that received the tokens. Nangi feverishly pulled it free, took it out and looked at it. It was an audio micro-cassette.
Jackpot!
Nicholas rocketed west along the Long Island Expressway at ninety-five. Justine was curled in the Corvette's passenger seat, the borrowed blanket still across her shoulders. Every so often, as Nicholas glanced at her, she twitched hi her steep and made a little crying sound. He put one hand protectively on her hip.
It was four-thirty in the morning, the sky the colour of the inside of an oyster shell. Clouds along the horizon hi the south were tinged pale orange.
Nicholas had the top down. The wind felt good ruffling his hair; it took the stink of the fire out of his nostrils.
He and Justine wore borrowed clothes; everything had been burned in the fire.
Every twenty seconds or so Nicholas glanced at the miniature radar detector hidden behind, the Corvette's sun visor, even though he knew its beeping would alert him to a police car waiting to pull over impatient drivers just like him. It gave him something to do besides stare at the ugly, featureless highway.
He made the trip back to New York from West Bay Bridge in an hour and fifteen minutes. Justine woke up
as he slowed for the toll for the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.
'What time is it?' she asked, stretching.
'Too early for you to be up,' Nicholas said as they entered the tunnel. 'Go back to sleep.'
Justine rubbed her eyes. Too many dreams,' she said. 'Too many ghosts stalking me.' She looked over at him. 'Nick, I dreamt of Saigo. And then he turned into you.1
Nicholas shivered, thinking of Kansatsu-san saying, The Darkness is what you have shunned for all your life. And his own answer, That would mean that Saigo and I are the same. "This man Senjin is not Saigo,' Nicholas said, 'I want you to understand something. Saigo was evil. Senjin, this dorokusai, has transcended evil - or good, for that matter. The concept of morality is irrelevant to him. He lives or thinks he lives beyond such considerations.'
'Which is it?'
They had emerged into Manhattan, and Nicholas headed downtown.
'I'm not sure I know,' he said. 'But then again I don't know that it matters. What's important now is what's in Senjin's mind. When I know that, I'll know him.'
He went straight down Second Avenue all the way to Houston, then cut west. In SoHo, he turned on to Greene Street, pulled up in front of a line of industrial-looking buildings. Up until five or six years ago, they had been factories owned by dry-goods manufacturers and other companies of light industry. Now they had been converted into spacious, and all too often chicly-designed, co-op loft apartments.
Nicholas took Justine up to a metal door lacquered a deep sea green. Punched into it was a vertical line of three Medeco locks, surrounded by thick brass anti-crowbar plates. Beside the door was a series of buzzers below an intercom grille. High up, Justine could see the glass lens of a video camera.
Nicholas pressed a button that said, enigmatically,
Con Tower. In a moment, a buzz sounded, and the door popped open automatically.
The door closed behind them, and they were immersed in pitch blackness. A minute went by, another. Nicholas did not move, and neither did Justine. She knew better than to say anything. She could feel Nicholas relaxed beside her, and that was enough to reassure her.
Light popped on without warning, and Justine blinked. She saw them surrounded by images of themselves. The hallucinatory, almost vertiginous perspective changed only after a door cut flush into one of the mirrored panels opened inwards. Nicholas took her through.
Inside, Justine found herself in a large but warm space. The ceiling was as high as a cathedral's. The walls were curved, creating concave and convex spaces, untraditional, mysterious, which reminded Justine of the hills and dales of the human form. Enormous canvases hung on some walls, modern paintings of voluptuous sun-dappled countryside done in the post-Impressionist manner.
The space was furnished comfortably and eclectically in contemporary leather, chintzed antiques and functional copies of antiques, none of them Oriental. Scattered throughout was antique Japanese lacquerware, writing boxes. Against one concave wall stood a life-size statue of a Kabuki actor made up as a woman complete with wig and costume. In the centre of the room, a large lacquered and gilded wood Buddha on an ancient Buddhist plinth. Oddly, the place was not a jumble but, through some unknown magic, a harmonious whole.
There was a menacing-looking Japanese man standing in the middle of the room. Justine could feel his tension, realized that he was making no secret of it.
'You're here fast, Tik-Tik,' the Japanese said. 'Too fast.'
Then she recognized him. 'Conny?' she said. 'Conny Tanaka?'
'Hai!' Conny bowed, seemed at a bit of a loss when Justine rushed into his arms.
Nicholas laughed. 'You should see your face, Tanaka-san.'
Conny groaned.
This place is new,' Justine said. 'It's spectacular!'
'You haven't seen anything yet,' Nicholas told her.
Tik-Tik?' Conny was scowling. He glanced at Justine.
'Don't think I'm not happy to see you.' He kissed her,
then turned back to Nicholas. 'I read what you gave me,
Tik-Tik. I'm fast, but I gotta confess not this fast. Why
are you here now when I didn't expect you for a couple
of days yet?'	^
'The timetable has been accelerated,' Nicholas said, flopping down on to an excellent reproduction of a Louis-Quatorze sofa. "The dorokusai burned down our house last night.'
Conny barked an epithet in Japanese that Justine could not understand. 'I'll get tea,' he said.
Justine turned to Nicholas. Her eyes were opaque with fear. He could see her trembling. 'Why didn't you tell me?'
'There was no point before,' Nicholas said. 'What would you have done, except be frightened? You needed your sleep.'
'But, Nick, how did he know where I was going?' She seemed to be begging him to tell her this was all a lie or, at least, a nightmare from which she would eventually awaken.
'I'm afraid you must have told him,' Nicholas said. He was careful not to tell her that he had somehow made her lead him to the cache of So-Peng's emeralds. That bit of humiliation would be too much for her now.
'Oh, my God! Nick, what else did I tell him? I can't remember anything!'
'How can I know that?' he said softly.
Justine's shoulders slumped. She felt abruptly exhausted. It was odd how mentally enervating terror could be, she thought. Then Conny returned with a laden tray, and Justine felt some sense of equilibrium returning.
Each crisis brings its own tea ceremony, she thought. It was very civilized, but it was practical as well. In the time it took to perform the many small but important tasks associated with the ceremony, the spirit could free itself from turmoil, settle in to the accepted pathway of thought that would lead to a victorious strategy.
When the tea had been made, the formalities observed, the tea drunk, Nicholas told Conny what had happened, and what he surmised had happened. This was the part Justine was hearing for the first time as well, and she shuddered as if swallowing bitter wine.
'What do you want me to do, Tik-Tik?' Conny asked after Nicholas had finished.
'You're already doing it,' Nicholas said, looking directly at him. 'But I need cash, credit cards, driver's licence, the works. The office can fix all that up for me. There's still a great deal I have to do, and I've got to do it alone. Will you take care of Justine while I'm out?'
'Nick!' Justine cried before Conny had a chance to reply. 'I want to be with you. I don't want to sit here feeling useless while you - '
Nicholas came and sat beside her. He took her hand. 'Not useless,' he said in that tone of voice she knew so well, which she listened to without question. 'All of us here have our parts to play. But it is essential that we do play them.'
Justine, looking into his eyes, nodded.
'Maybe you lost this guy when you came here,' Conny
said. 'I wouldn't want to try to follow you around town. If you're lost, you can stay lost. Avoid - '
'He'll find me, Conny,' Nicholas said. 'No matter what I do, he'll get here. It's just a matter of time.'
'But we can - '      .
'Forget about avoiding the inevitable,' Nicholas said. 'It's a waste of energy, and we're all going to need a lot of that very soon.' He hunched closer, trying to ignore Justine's terrified face. "The object here is to play a game. Our game. It isn't Hide and Seek; it's Three Card Monte. Illusion's at the heart of this. We show this bastard a seven of diamonds and, when he's close enough to give us a shave, he finds out it's really the ace of spades.'
"The death card.' Conny nodded. 'It's a good plan.'
'It had better be,' Nicholas said. 'It's the only one that'll possibly work.'
Conny cleared the tea cups, disappeared behind an antique Japanese screen depicting white herons in flight above a gold and green sea.
Nicholas turned to Justine, stared into her eyes a long time. Then, he said, 'I wonder whether you know just how precious you are to me.'
'Nick, Nick.' Justine put her head against his chest. Hot tears welled in her eyes. 'I'm so frightened. I feel like I've just got you back. Now, knowing Senjin is so close, I'm terrified. I - '
Nicholas put his hand gently over her mouth.
'Shhh. Be still. Be calm. Have faith.'
'Memo to myself,' the Pack Rat's voice crackled through the micro-recorder's speaker. The entry was dated, as were all the subsequent entries. 'Re: computer virus attack on Sato. Gave floppy record of attack to Mickey for analysis. Said to call her forty-eight hours. . . Memo to myself: Called Mickey. Right now she's, got nothing. Says architecture of virus is like nothing she's familiar with. That's
the bad news. The good news is she's hooked, fascinated with the project. She wants to run this sucker down, taken herself off all other private projects. Call daily . . .Memo to self: Called Mickey. Nothing . . . Memo to self: Called Mickey. Nothing . . . Memo to self: Mickey says this virus mutates. From what she's been able to piece together so far, it seems the virus actually feeds on the host security system, using it as it adapts to it, to actually penetrate the security to get to the protected files . . . Memo to self: According to Mickey, the virus is not designed to destroy or scramble host programs. It's a mole virus, meant as a communication link between the protected files and the user of the virus. This is getting crazier and crazier. Mickey agrees. She's flipped over this thing, working on it eighteen hours a day . . . Memo to self: I think Mickey's close to breaking the virus. From data she's rerun from the magnetic copy Nangi gave me, she's certain now the attack on Sato's computer was a test run. She's also fairly certain the virus is not yet perfected. She says she knows one guy—and only one - who could have come up with this amazing supervirus that adapts to different security programs. He's a certified genius, she says and, guess what? He works at Nakano's R and D department. Coincidence? Must call Nangi soonest. . .'
The tape was over, but a kind of energy, invisible, pervasive, filled the room. The first dated entry was the day Nangi had first met the Pack Rat in the electronic jungle of Akihabara; the last entry was the day before he disappeared.
Nangi sat staring at the tiny black micro-recorder. They were at Tomi's office at police headquarters. Tomi was pacing back and forth with so much agitation that Nangi, despite his preoccupation with the revelations on the tape, said, 'What's the matter with you?'
Tomi gave a sad little laugh. She stared at him. 'Nothing,' she said through tight lips, 'except that if
this Mickey's right, I think I know who created the supervirus.'
Nangi picked his head up. She stopped her pacing, put her hands on her hips. 'Don't look at me like that. I even know what the virus is .called. mantis. It's an acronym for, let's see, Man-made Non-something, Nondiscriminatory Tactical Integrated Circuit Smasher. I think that's right. According to my friend, it's an adaptable virus. It actually uses the security programs to piggy-back into the computer's core. That word, adaptable, is what stopped me cold.'
Nangi said, 'Your friend created this mantis?'
His quiet voice made her wince. She nodded. 'His name's Seji Kikoko but everyone calls him the Scoundrel. He works for Nakano, in their R and D department. I've known him for years. He's an old, trusted friend. I'm just -I can't believe he knows what his program's being used for.'
'He must.' Nangi looked at her. 'This virus is so new, so radical, he's the only one who could possibly evaluate its results.'
Tomi nodded. She slumped heavily into a chair, ran her hand through her hair. She was obviously devastated. 'I've got to talk to him, find out - '
'Not yet,' Nangi said.
Tomi cocked her head. 'What are you thinking?'
'I'm thinking that at this moment we are in way over our heads,' Nangi said. 'We're in the middle of a conspiracy far larger than I had imagined.' He looked at her. 'Now I know what it's like to be standing in front of a bull's-eye. Nicholas was right. It's one of the things he told me in the car on the way to the airport. He and I have been targeted for months. This kind of operation was a long time in the planning.'
'But what kind of operation is it?'
Nangi rested the point of his chin on his hands, which
were cupped over the dragon head of his cane. 'I'm still not quite sure of its ramifications,' he said slowly, 'or even its full intent. It's similar to this quite amazing mole virus. Like the Pack Rat's computer-language whiz, Mickey: I can see the architecture, but I'm not yet certain of its purpose.'
He glanced at his watch, stood up. He pocketed the tape recorder, said, 'Let's go. It's time we started seeing some fruits of our own operation.'
Masuto Ishii, his vice-president of operations, was waiting when he and Tomi arrived at his house. Umi had made tea and sweets for Ishii, making him comfortable in the nine-tatami room that served as one of the formal rooms.
One entire wall was open to a lacquered wooden engawa that led out on to an interior garden. Ishii, who was sipping his tea, staring out at the azaleas and the peonies, scrambled to his feet, bowed deeply, when Nangi entered the room. Nangi made the introductions as Ishii and Tomi had never met.
Umi came and served them tea, then sat beside Nangi. Nangi said, 'What news have you brought?'
Ishii smiled, withdrew a video cassette from a slim briefcase. 'It is all here, Nangi-san,' he said, offering the cassette with a deep bow. 'Just as you predicted,'
Nangi grunted, took the cassette, slipped it into a VCR sitting on top of a sleek twenty-four-inch TV. The electronic gear came on and, using a remote, Nangi set the tape running as soon as he resumed his place beside Umi.
'Watch closely,' he said.
Coloured bars were replaced by an image. Tomi could see immediately that this was no amateur job; it was professional surveillance work all the way.
The image resolved itself. They all recognized the setting as the Imperial Palace East Garden. Ishii came
into the frame and, shortly thereafter, Kusunda Ikusa. As with, all surveillance tape, this had the date and the running time digitalized in hours, minutes, seconds along the bottom of the frame, so there could be no doubt as to when this was being taped, and no allegations of fraud or splicing.
With a sharp gesture, Ikusa thrust a thick envelope at Ishii, who took it.. Ishii opened it up in the direction of the camera which, as if on a prearranged cue, zoomed in. Tomi could clearly see the stacks of yen.
The two men spoke for some time, walking around the garden. There was no sound track to the tape. At length, Ishii and Ikusa parted. The tape followed Ishii as he got into his car. The car was followed to the other side of Tokyo. The tape stayed with Ishii all the way. He made no stops.
Ishii pulled over on a side street, waited. He looked at his watch. A man came into the frame, opened the back door of Ishii's car, climbed in. The image showed him clearly. He was Catch Hagawa, a well-known bookie, gambling operator. Yakuza-connected.
Hagawa spoke briefly to Ishii. Ishii said nothing, handed over the envelope. It was the same envelope that Ikusa had given Ishii. Hagawa took it, counted the money twice. Then he nodded curtly, stuffed the yen back in the envelope, slipped the envelope inside his jacket. He got out of the car. Ishii drove out of the frame. End of surveillance.
'Good Christ,' Tomi breathed.
Nangi bowed to his vice-president of operations. 'You did well, Ishii-san.'
The diminutive man bowed back, much more deeply. 'Thank you, Nangi-san. The integrity of Sato International must be maintained at all costs. An attack against the corporate entity is a personal attack against every loyal employee. I was humbled by your faith in me. Whatever
I accomplished is little compared with the tasks facing you.'
'Each individual is integral to the whole,' Nangi said, obviously pleased with Ishii's reply. 'Each contribution, if pure in heart, is equally important. This is the way of Sato International.'
Tomi said, 'How in the world did you set that up, Nangi-san?'
Nangi turned to her, smiled. 'It was Nicholas's idea. Are you familiar with the philosophy behind aikido? Aikido is an art of concentric circles. It uses an aggressor's own momentum against him, pulling him in towards you, instead of the more difficult direction, outwards and away.
'We employed the same philosophy here. Instead of fighting Ikusa's attack - pulling away from it to attack him ourselves - we drew him closer to us, we appealed to his essential lust for power, for seeing us utterly defeated. We presented him with a situation of distress.' He told her of Ishii's initial contact with Ikusa. 'Ishii's history made such a story not only logical, but irresistible to Ikusa, because in Ishii's supposed plight, he saw a way to use Ishii against us. As we suspected, Ikusa wished to use Ishii to tell him what our strategy was going to be.' Nangi smiled again. 'Ishii obliged him. Now what we have on tape is visual evidence of Kusunda Ikusa, moral paragon of Nami, passing a great deal of money through an intermediary to Catch Hagawa, a known criminal.'
'But that's not what happened,' Tomi pointed out. 'And Ikusa will be quick to point that out.'
'But he won't be quick enough,' Nangi said. 'You see, on the high moral perch Ikusa has placed himself, there is no room for error. Besides, what will Ikusa say to explain the video away? Whatever lie he uses will be perceived as a cover-up.
'In this case, as it is often, the reality is irrelevant.
It is, rather, people's perception of what transpired that counts. The evidence of wrongdoing is before us. That it is an illusion has no meaning. Believe me, the scandal will be real enough as far as Kusunda Ikusa is concerned.'
Shisei took Branding home to her house, because his was sure to be staked out by reporters.
'I want you with me now,' he said solemnly. 'After what's just happened, I don't want any more surprises.'
'Cook,' she said, 'do you know there's a school in Japan that teaches you to lie with your eyes?'
He looked at her as he began to strip. 'I'm going to take a shower,' he said. 'I feel like I've just jetted in from Hong Kong. I want you in the bathroom with me.'
'I won't walk out on you, Cook.'
Branding was naked now. He rolled his soiled clothes into a ball. 'I don't know where to put these things.'
Shisei held out her arms. 'Give them to me. I'll have them cleaned.'
Branding threw them on the bed.
'You're not going to listen to anything I have to say, are you?'
There was nothing in her voice, no pain, certainly no self-pity, and this is what got to Branding. 'You were telling me about this Japanese school,' he said, padding into the bathroom.
'Can I join you?' Shisei asked.
He watched her as she took off her clothes. Who teaches women how to do that? Branding wondered. Certainly not their mothers.
'I thought you might be afraid of me,' she said.
Branding turned on the water, and soon the bathroom filled with steam. It became uncomfortably warm. He stepped into the shower, kept the door open. Shisei followed him in, shut the door behind her.
'About this school,' Branding said. The hot water felt good on his body, sluicing away the dirt, the sweat of fear. God, but he had been frightened when lie had seen David Brisling's corpse in the trunk of his car. But not as frightened as when the police had booked him. 1 couldn't be a criminal, he thought. I haven't the stomach for it.
The school was in the country,' Shisei said. She picked up a bar of soap, began to lather his body. 'All its buildings were in the style of a Swiss chalet. I don't know why, except the entire place had the air of fantasy about it. It was called Kinsei no Kumo, Golden Cloud. All collaborative enterprises in Japan need a slogan to be often recited by those involved. Golden Cloud's was "Kiyoku Utsukushiku Kanzen", "Pure Beautiful Perfect".
'There were only female students at Golden Cloud, but all the instructors were male. I suppose you could say we were taught acting, although it was nothing like the acting you might think of. Do you remember kata, the rules? Well, everything we did at Golden Cloud was according to kata. This meant not merely our acting, but our eating, sleeping, bathing. Everything.
'We played only male parts. There were many reasons for this. We were, for instance, made to memorize the life of the great actor, Yoshisawa Ayame, whose concept of acting was to express an ideal. Women actors, he said, could not express the ultimate feminine ideal on stage, because they would automatically rely on their external feminine charms: their lips, their hips, their breasts. This would destroy the ideal. Only a man could create the ideal woman on stage.'
'But that's crazy,' Branding said.
'Do you think so?' Shisei's soapy hands circled lower and lower on his back. 'Why? Don't you realize that an ideal expression is impossible unless it is wholly artificial? The ideal is but an illusion, skilfully sculpted by the artist.'
Branding turned around. 'Then the same is true for women? Only they can express the male ideal?'
'Yes.' 
'But you're a female playing a female role.'
'I am a graduate,' Shisei said. 'Not a student. Besides, most of my classmates at Golden Cloud were there because playing male roles allowed them to lose their own femaleness, to become in a sense sexless. They knew only too well the servile place waiting for them as women in Japanese society. Golden Cloud allowed them to escape that fate, at least for a time.'
'And why were you there?'
'By that time, I knew I wanted to become a talento, a celebrity,' she said. 'I remember watching the marriage of the top two talentos. The media coverage was unprecedented in Japan. Not even the prime minister received that kind of air time. They were treated as if they were royalty. The public adulation was like a wonderful surge of electricity, and I remember thinking that these two perfect people must have entered heaven. They had everything. Everything I wanted.'
Shisei's long lashes were heavy with moisture. 'The truth is, I went to Golden Cloud to gain a measure of control over others,' she said, 'because I knew that, as a female, I would otherwise have none.'
Branding watched the water cascading over Shisei's firm-muscled body. In the small folds and hollows, beads of moisture clung to her flesh. 'So this was where you were taught to h'e with your eyes,' he said. 'Did your instructors also teach you to deceive your heart?'
Her head was lifted to his. 'Cook - '
He touched her. 'If only you wouldn't lie to me.'
'Why is the truth so important to you?' Shisei asked.
'The truth is what I have dedicated my life to.'
'But all of life is a lie.'
'Ah, Shisei, you can't believe that.'
'But I do, Cook. I really do. You would, too, if you knew what I knew.'
Branding suddenly gripped her shoulders, drew her against him until their lips were almost touching. He looked deep into her eyes, the eyes that had been taught to lie, and said, 'Who are you, Shisei? Are you the self-confident lobbyist, slipping artfully through Washington society, playing the game better than almost anyone else? Or are you the concerned environmentalist, wonderfully pure of heart? Or the tormented human painting, kept like an animal at the sufferance of a mad artist? Or the hard-edged little girl sent to Golden Cloud to learn how to submerge her sexuality in order to attain some insane ideal?
'Do you know which one of those people you are, Shisei?' He shook his head. 'I don't think so. I don't believe you're any one - or any combination - of those identities. ''
'I don't think you know who you are. Because somewhere along the way, you lost the sense of your own self. You were taught to deceive, of that I have no doubt. The only trouble is in the end you've deceived only yourself.'
Shisei gave a little cry and, twisting from his grasp, collapsed at his feet. Her head hung, the water smashing her hair flat, bringing it like a curtain down around her face.
'Oh, Shisei, don't do that.' Branding knelt down beside her, lifted her up.
'Cook,' she breathed, 'life for me is a lie because the truth is impossible to face.'
'Only for right now,' Branding assured her. 'But you've got to take the first step towards accepting the truth about yourself.'
'I cannot.'
'If you could tell me the truth about yourself,' Branding said, 'if you could see that I can accept it, that would be a start.'
'No!' She clung to him. 'Cook, no. Don't make me!'
'Shisei,' he said, hugging her to him, 'I can't make you do anything. Although I daresay the opposite has not been true.'
Shisei closed her eyes, her heart hammering. 'I'm tired, Cook.'
Branding turned off the water.
She towelled him off before she began to dry herself. 'I think you left Some clothes in my closet,' she said.
Branding padded into the bedroom, opened the closet door. Inside he found his robe, a fresh pair of underclothes. Shirt and slacks of his were also neatly hung on hangers.
He drew on the robe, tied it. As he did so, he found himself looking at the edge of the closet door. There was a dark patch at head height. It had been wiped clean, but the abrasion of the wood was obviously fresh. He stared at the naked slivers of unpainted wood as if they were an accusing chorus. In his mind, he saw again David Brisling's corpse curled in his car trunk, the lethal wound in the back of his head. It had a vee-shape, Albemarle had said to him over and over during the interrogation at the police precinct. And tiny pieces of wood were found in the mashed flesh. Do you know what could have caused that type of wound, Senator? A plank? What's your best guess? Branding hadn't any. He wondered if he had one now.
His face was still thoughtful as Shisei emerged from the bathroom. She was winding her hair into a thick braid, hesitated when she saw his face.
'Shisei,' Branding said quietly, 'do you know who murdered David Brisling?'
'Douglas Howe.'
'That's what the police think,' Branding said.
There was a swathe of lamplight on Shisei's face, but Branding could not tell what it revealed. 'What's
the point of asking? You know I'll only lie to you.'
Branding said, 'I'm asking you not to. If you feel anything genuine for me in that secret, tortured heart of yours, you'll tell me the truth.'
'Cook, I love you.'
He shook his head. 'I'm not sure what that means right now.'
Shisei stood very still but, even at this distance, Branding could sense a change coming over her. There was a tension, a kind of fluttering of the air between them that made his bowels turn to water. What had she said before? I thought you might be afraid of me. If she had murdered Douglas Howe he would have good reason to be. What would stop her from doing the same to him? But he had no real proof, and never would have. Just a dark accusatory spot on her closet door and his overactive imagination which, in time, he might come to terms with.
After a long time, Shisei said, 'What would you do if I told you the truth?'
Branding shook his head. 'You must tell me because you want to tell me the truth, because you want to start life anew, not because of any reaction I might have.'
Shisei's eyes were glowing like amber subjected to the light. She took a deep breath, fighting for prana, for equilibrium. The atmosphere in the room seemed to quake, ripples extending outwards, until they purled against Branding's chest.
'Yes,' she whispered. 'I know.'
Branding gave a tiny sigh, as if he had been holding his breath. He turned away, began slowly preparing the bed for sleep.
Shisei approached him. 'Is that all you're going to ask? Don't you want to know more?'
Branding stood up, looked into her face. 'I already know more.' That tension again, the sweat collecting in his armpits, crawling down the line of his spine.
'I want you to know something, Shisei. I love you. But I'm not yet sure who it is I love. Is it the perfect illusion, one of the many you've conjured up for me? Or is it you, the real you, hidden deep down somewhere with all your weaknesses and flaws?' His eyes never left hers. 'I need your help to find out. I'm already well acquainted with the illusion. Now I need some time with the real Shisei. Tell me. Are you willing to help me?'
Shisei was crying. 'I can't believe you're still here. I can't believe I haven't driven you away. Why have you stayed? I can't understand it. The more monstrous things you learn about me, the closer you seem to me. Is that possible? Oh, my God. Oh, my God.'
Branding wanted to go to her, to take her in his arms, but he hesitated, sensing that to move at all now would be a mistake. He recalled a vacation out west, talking to a cowboy who had just finished breaking a horse. The cowboy told him that the bronco was at his most dangerous in the moments just before he capitulated, accepting the bit, the direction of the reins, the unfamiliar weight of a human being on his back. That's when you can get hurt bad, the cowboy drawled. 'Cause you relax, thinkin' yore work is done, an' you're safe. Let me tell you, bud, that's shore as shit when you git yore neck broke.
Some similar instinct told Branding now that he was at that critical moment with Shisei. He did not relax, watched, instead, the tears streaming down her face, his heart breaking.
'The truth is - ' Shisei stopped, gathered herself, began again. 'The truth is I love a show. I always have. But even more, I love to perform because I can feel loved then, the collective love of my audience.'
She stopped again, and she was so long in continuing that Branding was certain that was all she could squeeze out now. 'My brother,' Shisei said in a strangled voice, 'said that acting would be the death of me.'
'I didn't know you had a brother.'
'A twin brother.' She gave him a wan smile. 'There are many things you don't know about me, Cook. Many things I wish now I didn't have to tell you.'
'What is it? Do you think I'll leave you when I know?'
Shisei hissed air out of her mouth. 'Cook, no one has ever loved you as I love you. No one else will, because no one else can in the way I do. And whatever happens, that at least will never change. I swear to you I'm telling the truth.'
'Yes. I know.'
'I wish I could believe you.'
'Why? I've never lied to you.' He held out a hand. 'Do you see now how completely you're entangled in the snare of your own deception?'
She leaned heavily against the bed, as if she had suddenly lost the will even to stand up. 'Oh, God, what do you want from me? Don't you understand that die truth will destroy me?'
'No,' Branding said. 'It won't, Shisei. That's just an illusion you're using to frighten yourself. What I want is for you to climb out of the pit you've been living in for Christ knows how many years. I'm offering hie, and life only.'
Shisei, trembling, said, 'I have played the siren with you, and the Judas. Now you ask me to abandon my acting, to give up the roles I have lovingly fashioned, to exist only as myself. I don't know whether I can do that.'
'Of course you don't,' Branding said. 'Because you're a stranger to yourself. Given a choice, don't all humans choose the known over the unknown?'
'But I am not human!' Shisei fairly shouted it, terrified, heartsick that he had at last driven her to this confession, one she had vowed long ago never to make. 'I and my brother stand apart from all humankind. We are tanjian.
We possess a gift of the mind. We see things, know things - we can do things others cannot.'
Branding, stunned, moved on a somnambulist's leaden feet towards where she huddled on the corner of the bed. 'You mean you're psychic.'
She gave a bitter laugh. 'Only in the broadest sense. Not as parlour tricksters, able to tell a stranger's birth date from holding a possession of his. No, not that. Our gift is far more potent.'
Branding sat next to her. He felt her pain as if it were his own. He gave her an encouraging smile. 'Is that your secret, the terrible revelation that you thought would make me hate you?'
'No,' Shisei breathed. Then she turned away from him. 'Oh, God, help me.' She shivered once, then said, 'No. My secret is my twin brother. My bond with him. It was my brother - not the mad artist, Zasso, whose name I invented - who imprisoned me, who felt compelled to create upon my back the centrepiece of the dreams that haunted his young life.
'It is my twin brother with whom I have been intimate in ways you could never imagine. It is my twin brother who loves me unto death, who will not let me go, who has destroyed those who would seek to love me as he loves me.
'My twin brother, who is my guardian, my ghost lover, my other half, dark, foreboding, reeking of death.'
Branding looked at Shisei spread across the bed, saw the great spider moving, breathing as she breathed, living as she lived and, for the first time, he understood the extent of her agony, the nature of the prison without walls in which she was incarcerated.
He moved to touch her. 'Shisei - '
'Wait,' she said. 'There's more. My brother called me yesterday. He's here, in America. In New York City. Something's happened. He's called for me.'
'You don't have to go.'
'But I do, Cook!' She rolled over. 'If you know anything about me, you know that I must. Kata, the rules. Giri, duty. These are still the only definitions of my life. Without them, I am nothing.'
She sat up. Her eyes were pleading, not for sympathy, that was not in her, but for something akin to understanding. She seemed to be saying, Cook, don't be Western now. Try to think like an Easterner. Be accepting. Be patient.
She held out her arms. 'Hold me, Cook. I'm frightened.'
'Of your brother?' he asked, as he enfolded her in his arms.
'Yes,' she whispered. 'But now I am just as frightened of myself.'
'I think that's a good sign.' Branding smelt her damp hair, the fault musk of her skin. It was as heady, as dizzying as throwing yourself into a field of wild flowers. He hugged her to him, feeling at last close to the core of her, that torn and battered part of her which she seemed to despise, and which he knew now that beloved above everything else.
'Cook,' she said, and a tremor went through her. 'I will have to go. In the morning. First thing.'
'Will you tell him about me?'
'I won't have to,' Shisei said bleakly. 'He will already know.'
Branding felt that peculiar sensation run down his spine, as if Shisei's spider were now upon his back. 'What will happen?'
'I don't know. My gift does not extend to second sight. I can only feel how powerful your love is. It is like a splendid ache in my heart.'
They rocked together, like children locked hi the aftermath of a disaster.
'I can't come with you, Shisei,' Branding said. 'I can't
run out on the press. And I have the Ascra bill coming on to the Senate floor later today. I'm its sponsor; I have to be there. Kata. Giri.'
'I understand.'
'But I'll be with you, nonetheless.' Branding kissed
her neck with such tenderness that Shisei began to weep
anew.	
Her nails dug into the flesh of his back. 'Oh, Cook, how I love you!'
When Tomi returned to her office to pick up some notes, she was told by one of the uniforms that someone was waiting for her. She remembered the moment just over a month ago when she had been told that and had then met Tanzan Nangi for the first time.
But as she approached her desk this afternoon, she recognized the man sitting beside it. She detoured, made two cups of tea, brought them to her desk.
'Hello, Scoundrel,' she said, handing him a tea. 'How the hell are you?' But she could see in his hollowed, frightened eyes how he was.
'Domo, Tomi-san,' the Scoundrel said. Thank you. He took the tea gratefully, drank it down in three straight thirst-quenching gulps.
'If you want more, you know where the hotplate is,' she said.
Thank you,' he said again, and bowed, very formal now, so unlike his grinning, light-hearted self, a Japanese-featured Billy Idol thumbing his nose at the world.
Tomi watched him as he went to get himself more tea, turning over in her mind the change that had come over him.
When he returned, she said, 'I must say I'm surprised you've come on your own.'
'What?'
'Where's Killan?'
The Scoundrel was so startled, he spilt hot tea all over himself.
Tomi gave him a pile of paper napkins so he could brush himself off. 'Did you get burnt?' she asked.
'It's not so bad,' the Scoundrel said.
'I wasn't talking about the tea.' His head came up, and their eyes locked. 'Why isn't Killan here with you?' She said it softly, the steel inside the glove.
'Killan? Why should she be?'
'Because she's in this thing with you.'
'What thing?'
'Stop it!' Tomi said it so sharply that she froze him, the tea cup half-way to his lips. 'You came here for help. A blind man could tell you're in trouble. So let's save some time. I know about mantis, and I know what it can do. While you've beeH a very bad boy, I've been working with Tanzan Nangi. Do you know him? You should. You tested your mantis virus on his computer system.' Tomi shook her head. 'This is some really bad shit you've fallen into, Seji. I know you, my friend. I know what you're capable of - and what would never occur to you.
'That's how I know that somehow Killan Oroshi is involved. We were all so close once. The Three Musketeers, remember? Haunting movie theatres, hanging out on the Ginza, guzzling beer and pizza.'
The Scoundrel cleared his throat. 'Long time passing.'
'You're telling me, brother.' Tomi put her hands on her desk. 'OK. Bottom line. You've come to me for help. I can give it, but only if you're straight with me. The truth and nothing but the truth, so help you John Wayne.'
That brought the glimmer of a smile to the Scoundrel's lips, but it soon faded. 'You have to understand. Killan's my friend, too. I have an obligation to - '
'You owe her nothing, Seji. Look at her. She's a master manipulator.'
'You two just - '
'Forget about us,' Tomi said. 'Why didn't you come to me before this?'
'Killan said not to.'
'Killan.' Tomi held herself in check. 'I'm your friend, Seji. I would have helped you. I will help you now if you give me the chance.'
The Scoundrel's eyes broke from hers. He could not bear to look at her accusatory face. He put his tea aside, rested his face in his hands. Tomi-san, we were almost killed last night. I -1 found a tape, electronic ears, surveillance equipment in an abandoned apartment next to mine. The guy -I don't know what happened to him - was spying on me, but also on Killan and Kusunda Ikusa. There's a lot of dirt on it about him. Killan got the idea that we should sell the tape to Ikusa. She told me she could handle him. No sweat.
'Instead, he sent his car after us last night, and almost ran us down. For Christ's sake, the fucking thing went up on the pavement to get us! If I hadn't put a couple of bullets through the windscreen, Killan and I would both be dead!'
'Just hold it,' Tomi said. Her heart was hammering so hard, she could barely think straight. Could the tape the Scoundrel found have belonged to the Pack Rat? Nangi said that he had been following Ikusa. But if so, how had the Pack Rat come to spy on the Scoundrel? Then, she had the connection: Killan Oroshi.
Tomi picked up the phone on her desk, dialled an interoffice extension. 'I need a forensics team,' she said. She gave the officer the Scoundrel's address and apartment number. 'There's an abandoned apartment next door. I want it combed from top to bottom. And this is a red priority. I expect the lab results in twenty-four hours.'
Then she dialled another extension. She spoke to the officer on duty, asked him about suspicious car accidents
reported within the past twenty-four hours. He told her about a black Mercedes, that had smashed into a row of seedy stores on the outskirts of the city, killing two occupants. The odd thing was, the officer said, they'd found bullet holes in the windscreen.
Tomi asked if they'd ID'd the victims yet. The officer gave her the names, but they rang no bells. She asked if the names had been run through the computers. 'Yes, and because of what we got, we're referring the case to Homicide, your department,' he said. 'These guys were Yakuza hit men.'
Tomi thanked the officer, put down the phone, lost in thought. She looked at the Scoundrel. 'You're right,' she said. 'Kusunda Ikusa tried to have you killed. I'm taking you into protective custody right now. Where's Killan?'
'I-'
Tomi snatched up her bag, came around from behind her desk. 'You'd better tell me right now, ace, because tomorrow may be too late.'
On the way downstairs, she held out her hand. 'Give it to me.'
And the Scoundrel obediently placed in her hand the audio micro-cassette he had found in the apartment next to his.
Wherever Kusunda Ikusa looked,' he saw his own face replicated as if in a terrible mirror. On the television, he saw himself handing Masuto Ishii an envelope stuffed with yen, then Ishii's hand delivering that same envelope to Catch Hagawa. When he turned on the radio, station after station was serving up commentary on the scandal. If he opened a newspaper, he saw his face, along with the appropriate photos, reproduced from the damning videotape. Ikusa thought, I am some kind of animal, trapped in
a cage where people come to stare at me, to frown and cluck their tongues in disapproval.
The telephone had begun to ring just after the first news reports were aired. Ikusa's blood ran cold. He knew who was calling him. Nami. Nami would want to exact its own particular brand of retribution. He had had the effrontery to drag Nami into the midst of this scandal, and for that he could not be forgiven. The ties that bound him so tightly to Nami, that had once made him one of the most powerful men in Japan, were now about to strangle him.
Ikusa knew that he could not allow that to happen. He had his own path to take.
In the pouring rain, Ikusa slipped out of his house via a side entrance. He was dressed in blue jeans, a UCLA sweatshirt, scuffed Reebok sneakers and a long, hooded PVC raincoat whose deep pockets were filled with more than his fists. He went unnoticed.
Ikusa walked the few blocks to the subway, went underground. During his trip across town he had time to contemplate the fleeting nature of power. How long had he felt invulnerable? He did not know. Time ceased to exist when one was close to being a god. Curious, that. Time and power must be linked in some mysterious equation, he decided, that not even Albert Einstein could fathom.
But there was another, even more interesting element to be considered. Power was so real, so tangible when one had it, so unreal, so ephemeral when one didn't. It occurred to Ikusa, dripping water on the two seats he occupied in the rocketing subway car, that power must then be an illusion. It must exist only in the minds of men if it could be so easily granted and denied.
As Kusunda Ikusa stood in line to get off at his stop, he/came to the conclusion that the only real power a mala had was to inflict death on his fellow man.
Above ground, the sky was black. The rain beat against
the sea of opened umbrellas, the shore of the pavement, with a kind of demonic glee.
This is a city of sheep, Ikusa thought, a country of sheep, all moving in one direction with one purpose. Although he walked among them, moved through their bustling midst, he no longer felt a part of them, no longer felt the pride in their oneness, in his oneness. Now he was cut adrift, a balloon without anchor or rope, drifting aloft, a child of the invisible winds.
Ikusa paused before a shrine, rang the bell. He invoked the intervention of the Shinto spirit-gods who, it was believed, dwelt everywhere. But he felt nothing; he was cut off from even these elementals, a dead man walking among the living.
That videotape, so villainously, treacherously procured, had stripped Ikusa of tatemae, his public image of honour and virtue. Without tatemae, which was so vital to him -and to Kami - he was without standing in the community, without face. The living dead.
As he shouldered smaller people aside, he remembered a song he had heard some time ago, part of one of actor Takakura Ken's most popular Yakuza films which seemed appropriate now to his own situation: My body drifts and wanders/But in the dim lights of home/I can see mother, but then she fades away,
Ikusa wept, as one often does at cherry blossom time, when beauty and sadness are epitomized by the fragility of a translucent blossom, so quickly bursting with life, so soon falling from the tree. From home.
How swiftly time passes, Ikusa thought. How abruptly power diminishes. How soon life ends.
Passing his reflection, distorted in a rain-streaked window, Ikusa was appalled at his tears. He had not wept since he was a child, after his first defeat in a martial arts competition. Certainly he had not thought of home for many years. He had lacked the time and also, he
had to confess, the inclination. As the infusion of power increased, making of him a new man, it had caused him to dismiss his past as unimportant. It was funny now, that was all he could think of.
In the Asakusa district, he came at last to the ferroconcrete building housing an anonymous cheap hotel. Upstairs, he went straight down the featureless hall to the room he wanted, and broke down the door. It was not a difficult task for a man of his size and strength.
Inside the room, there was no place to hide.
'I had you and that traitor, Kikoko, followed,' Ikusa said to the figure standing in the semi-darkness. 'But, in the end, it didn't really matter. I knew you would be hiding like an animal in the dark.'
'I thought I'd be safe here,' Killan Oroshi said.
'You're not safe with me around,' Ikusa said, advancing on her. 'You should know by now that you never were.'
'But I don't have the tape,' Killan said. 'I gave it to Seji, and he's taken it to the police."
'I don't care,' Ikusa said. 'This has gone beyond all that.' He came on, big as a tree in the confined space of the tiny hotel room.
Killan moved, her silhouette changing as her arm came up. 'Stop right there! I've got a gun!'
'A gun won't stop me, Killan. Nothing you can do can possibly stop me from doing what I've come here to do.' His voice was almost gentle, but it possessed a surety, a finality that caused her to bite her lip.
Her arms were extended, the elbows locked. Ikusa caught a glimpse of metal gleaming dully in the werelight. 'I mean it!'
'So do I,' he said.
The rain scratched like a live thing, desperately seeking entrance. The aluminium blinds rattled against the windows, allowing tiny sparks of light into the hotel room, miniature flashes of lightning.
'Stop!' Killan cried. 'You're pushing me to the edge!' The hammer of the gun clicked back, a stark, echoey sound. 'I know you murdered that man who was spying on us. You bashed him to bits, but I won't let you do that to me. You're not going to get that close.'
'You shouldn't have tried to blackmail me, Killan. That was your mistake. I was willing to put up with your tiresome revolutionary cant because I thought I could harness your extraordinary mind. I thought I could channel it into conventional paths. That was my mistake.'
'Your mistake was in trying to use me.' Killan's voice was filled with contempt. "That's all you know how to do. Use people. Well, how does it feel to be used yourself? You used my father, took his company put from under him, the company he helped my grandfather build from nothing. You destroyed his life, trampled him into the mud, all the while smiling like an innocent baby.'
Ikusa frowned. 'I thought you hated your father. Was that a lie, too?'
'You were too dense, too full of your own worth to see that I hated you more than I ever could have hated my father.' Killan laughed. 'You know, you actually did me a favour, you fucker. You made me see my father in a whole new light. With you, I saw his accomplishments, I saw what his company meant to him. In his defeat, his sorrow, I at last came to love him.'
'A poor consolation for your death,' Ikusa said.
'It's not me who's going to die.'
Ikusa lunged for her then. Killan pulled the trigger, and he staggered back a half-step. Then he came on. She fired a second time, and something in Ikusa's left hand struck her shoulder.
Killan cried out as she felt the hot pain run down her arm. Blood erupted through her clothes.
Ikusa, too, was bleeding. He had taken one bullet in the chest, another in his hip. But he ignored the pain,
his feet set firmly on the path ordained for him from the moment the first news of the scandal broke.
Killan had brought him to this sorry abyss. Stripped of his power, his face, his tatemae, he had understood that his sole transgression had been his relationship with her. His hubris had manifested itself in her mocking smile, her passionate embrace, her brilliant, deceiving mind. He had thought, in his arrogance, that he could, as she had said, ride the back of the dragon. But he knew now what he should have understood then: the dragon is too dangerous to be ridden at all.
And this is what he realized at the moment the scandal broke: if he could not ride the dragon, at least he could destroy it. That much power, at least, was left him.
He put his hands around her neck as she struck him across the face with the gun barrel. Blood flowed, blinding him. But he did not need his eyes to accomplish what he had come here to do.
Ikusa squeezed. Killan's scream of anguish was choked off, along with the air. Ikusa saw her jumping like a rag doll. Her muscles spasmed as if with a will of their own. She opened her mouth, then snapped it shut, her teeth clashing together.
Slowly, like a balloon - the balloon Ikusa had been -she was deflating, the air seeping out of her. Ikusa felt as heavy as lead. There was a roaring in his ears. His blood had turned to sludge, his pulse drumming in his ears in slow rhythm.
He saw her hands trembling, her face white and staring, and he wanted her to die more than he had ever wanted anything else. He saw the gun barrel, but did not believe she had strength enough to pull the trigger. He laughed in her face.
Killan snarled, adrenaline pouring into her system. She could hardly see or move. But that face - his face -laughing, deriding her, mocking her, filled her mind as a
harvest moon fills the night sky. She would not give him the satisfaction. She would not be defeated.
Her hands shook so much she did not think she could aim properly. She did the only thing she could do. She squeezed the trigger.
The explosion was very loud. The gun the Scoundrel had given her for protection bucked in her hands, and she was thrown violently backwards. She tried to scream but, as in a nightmare, was unable to utter a sound.
She was on her knees. Her right side was completely numb, and she felt wet as if she had soiled herself. Blood was everywhere, a great tree stump in front of her, staring sightlessly at the ceiling with black, button eyes.
Then Killan became aware of a keening in the room, as if a great knife-blade had been given the power of speech. Then there were people in the doorway. Familiar faces: the Scoundrel and Tomi Yazawa.
In a moment, Killan, so full of pain and dismay, became aware that the keening was coming from herself. She tried to stop it, but she had lost control. She stared upwards at them helplessly.
She felt herself being lifted, people speaking to her, but she could not understand what they were saving, did not want to understand. She wanted only to scream and scream and scream. So she did that.
The fire existed still in Senjin's mind: the dark, crackling flames, cleansing the foul air of calumny. They burned longer in his imagination, but did they burn brighter? He thought not.
It was Senjin's birthday. He was twenty-nine, but there was only one other to mark that date: Shisei. He had called her, left a message on her answering machine without giving his name. She was already late. He had expected her to be waiting for him in West Bay Bridge. Why hadn't she been there? He had been so certain that
he would see her face, grip her flesh, peer from mind to mind, merge as they had merged for so many years long ago.
He longed to gaze at the canvas he had made of her back while he lay with her, minds entwined, sharing as only they could share. A birthday present.
Senjin had never had his birthday celebrated; there had been no special family dinner, no gathering of friends, no present or even a card to set that day apart from all others of the year. When Senjin had first come upon the practice of gift-giving for a birthday he was already grown-up. He was astounded by the custom and he quickly came to hate it because it made him feel melancholy; instinctively he knew that this must be a weakness thrust upon him by Haha-san which he must fight.
But today, Senjin thought that at last he might give himself a birthday present.
Now was the beginning of the end, the last few steps on the road he had been born to tread. Sensei had trained him for this moment, though he could never have suspected it. His mind lacked the breadth, the scope of Senjin's own. Sensei might be tanjian, he might have the gift, but he was not a dorokusai, could not have even an idea what that might mean.
On the other hand, Senjin suspected that Haha-san would. He remembered a day when she took him into town with her. It was a tortuous journey, long and, to his mind, boring. He would have preferred to have been with sensei. But sensei was off on one of the mysterious journeys he undertook periodically, and Shisei was out running an errand for Haha-san.
In the village, Haha-san went to the bank. There, they were seated before a man with a stiff bearing and an even stiffer collar to his black suit. He asked Haha-san some questions about herself, writing down her answers on a square card. Then he gave her a long form to fill
out. Senjin watched. When she went to fill in the section marked date of birth, she wrote Senjin and Shisei's instead of her own.
Afterwards, out on the village street, Senjin asked her about this.
'Did I?' Haha-san said, almost dreamily. She smiled.
'Well, it was a natural mistake. Your birthdate was the
most vivid day of my life.'
It was only years later that Senjin realized what she meant. She had been so wrapped up in her children's rearing, in their lives, that they became her ikigai, the meaning of her own life. But as that happened, she invested them with distant, sharp-edged shards of her own personality, fragments of fear, rage, loneliness and agony: the weaknesses that had already overrun her life.
Senjin put his hand in his pocket, his fingers enclosing the carefully wrapped paper packet of emeralds. They were there, waiting, their power pulsing in his palm. They were six: a bad number, a dangerous, destabilizing number. He knew he was taking a chance carrying them around with him. Given time, they would create the Scorpion, one of the configurations of destruction. Only his own great mass of power made their danger manageable.
He needed to put all the emeralds together, to make the configuration of the nine. Only then would he fulfil his destiny. The last link with Eternity. Invincible, immortal, he would stride across the world, bending it to his whims.
Now, as Senjin studied the converted factory on Greene Street with the sea-green lacquered door, he knew that he must be close to the last of the mystic gems.
That was what he had come for, after all. That and to plunge Nicholas Linnear into a series of hells before he killed him.
But, at this moment, Senjin's mind was only peripherally aware of Nicholas. He was concentrating on Justine. It was Justine, he was sure, who would unlock the
whereabouts of the emeralds. He needed just ten minutes with her to prise the secret out of her brain. And then, when he was finished with her, he would pin her like an insect to a wall.
Obliterated by shadow, Senjin stood silent and un-moving. He .saw the apartment's owner, the squat, dangerous-looking Japanese, Conny Tanaka, emerge from the front door, turn right, walk up to Houston Street, where he hailed a cab, got hi.
Not ten minutes later, Nicholas Linnear opened the sea-green door, went lightly down the steps, headed south on foot. Senjin was momentarily torn. He thought it would be helpful to know where Nicholas was heading, but the building and what it now housed was too tempting a target. Two days ago, Senjin had seen Nicholas going into the front entrance to the Tomkin Industries' tower, then later at the Tanaka dojo.
Senjin knew of Nicholas's ties to the martial arts school, as well as his other New York hangouts; the Tokyo Metropolitan Police computer was extremely efficient, and what it couldn't provide, inter-service intelligence could.
It was Tanaka who had led Senjin home to this block, to this co-op that Nicholas and Justine were using as a base. Was this where the last cache of emeralds lay?
Now, three days after Nicholas and Justine had come to Manhattan from West Bay Bridge, Senjin was on his stakeout. He had taken a room in a midtown hotel but had never actually stayed there. It was the address he had given to Shisei when his plans had changed so suddenly. The fire had been lit, the flames had burned hard and high. There was nothing left for Nicholas in West Bay Bridge. Nothing, too, for Senjin.
Senjin kept his eye on the sea-green door. Tanaka had come out, and so had Linnear, Which meant Justine was still inside, because two hours before Senjin had seen the three of them go into the building. There were no other
exits or entrances; he had checked thoroughly.
Now, whether Justine was alone or guarded did not matter, Senjin knew that he could get to her: it was merely a matter of how much blood would be spilt.
He held his ground while Nicholas disappeared among the pedestrians. He looked at his watch. Where are you, Shisei? Why haven't you come?
The street was not crowded; at least not by Tokyo standards. A Con Edison van was parked midway down the block, the nearby manhole cordoned off with yellow and black strips printed with the words: danger! live wires! do not cross! The back doors were thrown open but the van was empty. Senjin had seen the three men follow one another down the manhole.
It was now nearly two in the afternoon. Senjin had had plenty of time to familiarize himself with all the buildings on the block, then to make a quick trip to the industrial hardware store on the next block.
He left the shadows, crossed the street. He could hear the voices of the workers below as they drifted up through the open manhole.
Senjin climbed quickly into the van. He emerged a moment later, clad in a spare uniform. Then he walked purposefully to the building next to Tanaka's, picked the lock. He could have rung any one of the half-dozen bells, announced himself as a Con Ed maintenance man, but he did not want to risk some paranoid tenant asking him for ID.
Inside, he took an oversized freight elevator, laden with dust, to the top floor, got out. He went swiftly down the corridor to the metal fire door that was the exit to the roof. It was plastered with a red sign that said: caution, emergency door only. do not open.
DOOR IS ALARMED.
Senjin knelt down, located the wire where it entered the metal box on the bar across the door. He made a
loop, attached alligator clips to two sections of the wire. Then he snipped the original wire, opened the door as far as his loop would allow. He slipped through, closed the door behind him. It would hide the loop from all but the most discerning eye.
It was boiling on the roof. The black tarmac was soft, almost sticky, and Senjin was careful to cleave to what shadows existed, treading upon tarmac not quite as spongy.
Where the roof of this building ended, the roof of Tanaka's building began. Senjin examined that new field as if it were enemy territory in a war. His eyes took in every shape, colour, texture; the length of every shadow, the look of the tarmac - it was different from the roof he was on; it was strewn with sharp-edged bluish gravel. In the centre of the roof, there was a large, raised skylight made up of small panes of glass surrounded by a painted wooden frame. He suspected that the anti-burglar devices would be clustered in and around the skylight.
When he was as satisfied as he could be, he climbed over the brick and terracotta wall, into the red zone.
Immediately, he froze. His eyes had picked up something in their periphery. He moved his head, bringing the flash into the centre of his vision. Now it was gone. He went back to looking at it indirectly.
And he saw the flash again, like sunlight catching a strand of a spider's web. This was similar.
Senjin knelt without in any other way moving. Not three inches in front of him a mono-filament wire had been cleverly strung at calf-height. It went all around the periphery of the roof. One step and Senjin knew he would have tripped an alarm inside the building.
The obvious answer to the problem was to step over the mono-filament. But it was so obvious, Senjin hesitated. Out of the snare and into the real trap, he thought. His
head turned this way and that, trying to find out what else was lying in wait for him.
Then he saw it. The electric eyes were cleverly hidden, but he found one, then another. They were at waist height, and anyone stepping over the mono-filament would pass directly through their invisible beam. There was no way for him to disable the electric eyes. Their brain would be within the house, inaccessible to him.
Still in his kneeling position, he measured the height of the mono-filament, then nodded to himself. He produced from his pocket a long coiled length of rope. But it was like no other rope; it was, instead, made of women's hair. It was tremendously tough and resilient, compact, almost weightless, and would not abrade against hard surfaces. Tied to one end was a metal hook.
Senjin produced a two-foot length of what looked like a simple wooden staff. There was nothing simple about it. He gave a quick twist of his wrist, and the staff telescoped out. As it did, its end popped open to form what looked like the talons of an eagle. This was a shinobi kumade, the climbing claw.
Senjin attached the hooked end of the special rope to the climbing claw, shoved both underneath the mono-filament. The claw brought the hook to the far end of a utility vent where, as Senjin jerked the rope hard, the hook grabbed hold. Senjin lay down on his back, his arms over his head, gripping the rope. Then, hand over hand, he began to pull himself along the tarmac.
His head and shoulders passed beneath the mono-filament. He slowed himself, saw that his chest was at the level of the wire. He exhaled, collapsing his lungs. His chest deflated, and he pulled himself all the way through.
He kept going like that, hand over hand, until he was certain he was past the electric-eye beam. Then he knelt, pulled the shinobi kumade towards him. He freed
the hook from the vent, rolled the rope into a ball, put it away.
Then he went to take a closer look at the skylight.
It was rigged, all right. A pressure-sensitive device was hooked up to the skylight. Any weight on it above that of a pigeon alighting would set off the alarm.
The trigger mechanism was in plain sight. This was not good news. Senjin was not apt to take such situations at face value, especially not after discovering how the roof itself was set up against intruders. He wondered what trigger was lurking in the shadows where he could not see it.
He put that thought aside, went to work, disarming the skylight trigger. He froze it with a tiny aerosol of freon, then quickly sprayed it with a fast-hardening foam sealant similar to the kind used by the marine industry.
He cut the wire at all four corners. Up here, it was as quiet as a tomb. The sounds of the city floated up to him only intermittently: an ambulance's siren, a dog's bark, the brief blare of a horn, followed by the squeal of a car leaving rubber. He was a cloud, drifting above the jam-packed earth. Save that a cloud was never so deadly.
Senjin climbed upon the skylight, spread himself out like a starfish. He used his hands as well as his eyes and ears to seek out the old skylight's weak points. In time, he found one: right down the middle.
He took a long, thin blade, inserted it between the centre joints. The dry wood gave way almost willingly, and he worked the blade up and down the length of the seam. The wood split, and Senjin rolled away from the weakened area. He used the blade on the two sides. The wood here was stronger, but not by much. The skylight should have been replaced years ago.
Senjin rolled completely off the skylight, lifted a section off just far enough for him to slip through. He fixed the claw of the shinobi kumade around the lip of the skylight
bousing, let himself down via the telescoped wooden pole.
He paused just within the neck of the skylight. His senses quested outwards, encountered the heat-detecting plate. Any warm-blooded living creature would set it off. The extreme cold of the freon spray would set it off as well. He pulled out a strip of metallic tape, covered the plate. The metal was neutral in temperature, but shielded the plate from registering his own body heat as he passed it.
Senjin completed his climb down.
He found himself in what appeared to be a seldom-used attic space. Once, no doubt, it had housed machinery, but now it appeared to be used strictly for storage,
Senjin found the stairway down. He listened at the closed door, heard no movement. He opened the door a crack, listened again. He took a look. Then he opened the door only as far as he needed to slip out. He closed it behind him.
He was inside the enemy stronghold. So much closer to Justine.
'I don't know why I let you bring me here,' Nangi said.
They could hear the thunder crack and rumble through the canyons of Tokyo even here inside St Theresa's.
'I feel nothing when I am here. Nothing.'
Rain rattled like sleet against the stained-glass windows, so it appeared that the Virgin at the Crucifixion in the window's centre oriel was trembling in her agony.
'Shhh,' Umi whispered. 'You're disturbing the service.'
'What has the service to do with me?' Nangi said. 'I am estranged, an orphan in the house of God.'
'You are not an orphan,' Umi said, close to him, warm against him. 'You are merely blind.'
'What do you know of God?' he said. 'You are a studier of myths, and God cannot well survive myths. Myths are for other religions, the substance of heathen gods.'
'Like Buddha?'
Nangi could see she was mocking him, but he did not care. She had a right to be cynical about his religious beliefs. He was not a good Catholic, he realized sadly, otherwise his belief would be unswerving even -especially - during times of doubt and uncertainty.
'Don't mix metaphors,' Nangi said shortly. 'Buddha is not a god. He's an ideal.'
'Or a myth,' Umi said. 'Like Jesus, the son of God.'
'And what of your Spider Woman, spinning her webs across the centuries of the Hopi Indians? Is she also a myth? You seem to believe in her.'
'I believe in what is real,' Umi said. 'Not in what I can see with my eyes or can feel with my hands, but what my mind, expanding into the cosmos, can absorb. There are certain eternal truths, my love. There is a cosmic clock that measures not the passage of time - because time is merely a human illusion - but the ever-shifting balance between order and chaos. In the end, we must all make that one decision: which side will we fight to preserve?' Umi took his hand. 'Once this decision is made, then we will be able to look into the eye of God. And, recognizing the reflection we see there, we will be able to understand the significance of our own existence,'
'Are you saying that we are only reflections of Him?' Nangi asked.
Umi squeezed his hand. 'You miss the point. We are manifestations only of order or chaos; agents, in some very direct sense. All else is illusion to keep us from discerning the truth. If there is a God, darling, it is He who lives within us.'
Nangi recognized in her words quite an accurate description of the human condition. He rubbed his leg, which suffered in the wet weather. He felt calmer at his core, always Umi's gift to him. At last he bowed his head and began to pray.
When he was finished, he said, 'I wish I knew where Nicholas was at this moment. I would feel somehow calmer.'
'He and I spoke of where he must go,' Umi said. 'He told me not to tell you. He said you would only worry.'
'I am worried now,' Nangi said, looking at her.
'He gave me a telephone number.' Umi recited it. "There is a man there who knows him as Tik-Tik.'
'Yes. Conny Tanaka.' Nangi nodded. 'Nicholas has told me of him.'
Umi said, 'I think you should say a prayer for Nicholas.'
'My prayers always include him,' Nangi said. 'He is the child I never had, my legacy. He is ever in my thoughts, bound to me like my own flesh and blood.'
"Then pray for him again, Nangi-san. Pray that he will outlive you.' Umi's voice lay suspended in the air like smoke. "The dorokusai comes for him. This is the ending that has been foretold in many cultures. Before it is over, there will be death and more death.'
Senjin existed within Conny Tanaka's co-op. He breathed tidally, incidentally, allowing his mind to work. His gift. With it, he searched the entire house without ever moving from his spot at the head of the stairway down from the storage attic.
He found Justine. He moved on. There was no one else in the house, but there was a voice.
Nicholas Linnear's voice.
Slipping something dark and heavy over his right hand, Senjin followed the voice, determined to discover its source, as an explorer seeks the headwaters of a winding river.
Senjin flexed his fingers inside the nekode. It was a leather war gauntlet used by the ninja of centuries ago. It was studded with short metal spikes. It was so tough that,
used in the right manner, it could stop a sword-strike in mid-air.
He went down the stairs.
'Now the spirit is within you, the spirit of grief. Your spirit, bowed before the judgement of Heaven, sinks downwards to the earth. It is heavy with gravity's wish. The tenure of eternity grows, freed from the bonds of time. The voices of light have been heard. The hands of sound lie upon your flesh. Here is the judgement of Heaven: I bind you in chains of iron.'
Nicholas's voice intoned this litany over and over, as if it were a prayer, or a chant. Senjin froze. He is here, he thought, and I cannot discern him. He is invoking kokoro, the heart of tanjian. He is working Tau-tau magic against me. What is his strategy?
'Now the spirit is within you, the spirit of grief.'
Senjin set aside the questions that could not yet be answered. He concentrated on Justine, went down the hall, down another flight of stairs.
'. . . heavy with gravity's wish.'
On the second floor he found her.
'The tenure of eternity grows . . .'
Justine lay on a couch, asleep. The room was not a large one. Nevertheless, it was couched in shadows. The shadows were coloured by Nicholas's voice: "The voices of light have been heard.'
Senjin, a shadow himself, stood at the headwaters of the river, having come as far upstream as he was able. Heavy curtains covered floor-to-ceiling windows. The floor was wooden parquet. Cornices near the ceiling pierced the shadows, thrusting themselves from corners, appearing like lights in the gloom. Persian carpets of black and persimmon were strewn across the floor. Two matching gilt chairs faced each other in empty conversation. Black stereo speakers were almost invisible in two corners of the room. It was from these that
Nicholas's voice emerged like a waterfall at a river's source.
"The hands of sound lie upon your flesh.'
So he's not here, after all, Senjin thought. He has set this litany of Akshara, the language of eternity, as a guardian while he is gone. He took one step towards the sleeping Justine, and thought, But why would he leave her untended?
He stopped so close to her that he could see her chest moving with her slow, even breathing. She is, indeed, asleep, he thought. But she cannot be alone, unguarded.
'Here is the judgement of Heaven . . .' Then he considered all the extraordinary precautions he had encountered on the roof, and thought: But they believe that she is guarded. Safe from me.
'I bind you with chains of iron.'
Justine opened her eyes. She looked at Senjin, sat up. 'I know you,' she said.
'. . . spirit is within you, the spirit of grief.'
Justine said, 'Why have you followed me here, all the way to America?'
'You don't remember me,' Senjin said, moving towards her like a wraith. 'You dreamed me, conjured me out of your own pain and loneliness and desire.'
To float,' Justine said, 'like a cloud above the jam-packed earth.'
Senjin touched her, and she shuddered.
'Your spirit, bowed before the judgement of Heaven, sinks downwards to the earth.'
That voice,' Senjin said, his band spreading upon her. 'Can you turn it off?'
'I hear no voice but yours . . . and mine,' she said.
"The tenure of eternity grows, freed from the bonds of time.'
Senjin left her for a moment, went behind each speaker, ripped the cables from the wall.
'The voices of light have been heard. The hands of sound lie upon your flesh.'
Nicholas's voice did not stop; it seemed to emanate from the walls, the ceiling, the floor, to be inhabiting the very room itself.
'What is it,' Justine asked, 'I see in your face?'
Then Senjin put his hands on her again. 'Where are the emeralds your husband hid?' He asked this in the same tone of voice he had asked the clerk in the hardware store for the aerosol can of freon and the other items he had taken without paying for.
'Wrapped in a box,' Justine said.
'What did he do with the box, Justine? Did he bury it?' Senjin asked, closing the distance between them from arm's length to a hand's breadth.
'No. He mailed it.'
'Where?'
Her brow furrowed. 'I don't know. I - '
'But you do know,' Senjin urged her. 'You saw the address.'
'I didn't. I - '
'Think!'
She jumped as his voice changed, charged her.
'Now the spirit is within you . . .'
'You know, Justine!'
'Yes,' Justine said, 'I think I do. My husband has an old friend, a trusted friend. Lewis Croaker. Lew lives in Marco Island, Florida, now. He owns a fishing boat. He . . .'
The bones in Senjin's neck cracked as his head swivelled around. That sound!
'The tenure of eternity grows, freed from the bonds of time.'
Noises from above. Someone was upstairs. His means of entrance had been discovered.
Senjin closed Justine's eyes with the pads of his thumbs.
He lay her back down on the couch. Quickly, he crossed the room, drew aside first one curtain, then another. There were no windows, just trompe-l'oeil paintings depicting French countryside.
Senjin turned back, went to the door, then through it, into the shadows of the hallway. Someone was coming down the stairs. He cast his mind outwards, but could discern no image, just a black, featureless wall. Nicholas!
He turned, raced down the stairs.
And was plunged into darkness. Senjin stood still, his senses questing outwards in ever widening circles. He ignored the sounds only he could detect, of footsteps on the stairs above him. Nicholas was coming, but his first priority was to get some sense of his environment. He very much wanted this final, inevitable confrontation with Nicholas, but he wanted to do so on territory that was, at worst, neutral.
He found the source of light, activated it. He was surrounded by his own image. Then it was joined by that of Nicholas.
'Now the spirit is within you, the spirit of grief.'
There were five of Nicholas, six. Senjin, used to discerning with his gift, was at a loss. Since he was unable to see Nicholas's mind, he was unable to tell image from reality.
He turned and Nicholas turned. Or was it the image of Nicholas? There was only one way to find out.
'Your spirit, bowed before the Judgement of Heaven, sinks downwards to the earth.'
Senjin crouched. His wrist flicked once, twice, three times. Glass shattered as blade after blade left his fingertips, entering Nicholas's chest - the image of Nicholas, as it turned out - as, one by one, he broke the mirrors.
'The voices of light have been heard.'
Only one Nicholas; only one Senjin.
'Here I am,' Nicholas said, another Nicholas from the
one who was constantly intoning, invoking the vibration of kokoro, the heart of things, the tanjian field of energy that can be harnessed by ritualized actions and meditative thoughts. 'This is what you want.'
Senjin leapt, crashed fnto a mirror. A thousand points of light cascaded over him, a waterfall of sound and image. Then he felt himself whirled around. Other hands were upon him; the touch of a tanjian.
'The hands of sound lie upon your flesh.'
Now he understood Nicholas's strategy. He had ignored the incantation - at his own peril! The invocation of the membrane kokoro was not to be ignored, ever. The taped chanting had lulled him. He had seen it as a diversion only, beneath all but the most cursory notice. After all, it was Nicholas Linnear he was after, not Nicholas's recorded voice.
And yet the voice had had the same power as if Nicholas were speaking it himself. The membrane kokoro responded to repetition, and to words of prayer. This Nicholas had accomplished with his tape, even as Senjin was getting what he wanted: the location of the last cache of emeralds.
'Here is the judgement of Heaven . . .'
Senjin put his left leg between Nicholas's, went into the Serpent, an attack stance. From this, he wove the Rising Cloud, a strike used from one's knees. All thrust was centred in the small of the back, that area on the opposite side of the body's circumference from the hara, the place in the lower belly where all force, all centring energy resides. In a kneeling position the legs and hips are useless, hence the reliance on the torso.
The Rising Cloud, used from a standing position, surprised Nicholas. Senjin could feel the split instant of his opponent's hesitation, and he struck, using elbows, wrist bones, the sides of his hands.
Nicholas staggered, and Senjin, having regained the
initiative, employed the Wounded Dove, using percussive strikes against the nerve meridians in Nicholas's upper arms. It was not Senjin's intention to kill Nicholas quickly, although he felt quite confident that he could do just that had it been his objective. A slow death, by increments -the disabling and death of first friends, then wife, then Nicholas himself - was Senjin's objective.
Then, in two lightning-swift strikes, the initiative changed hands. Nicholas broke through Senjin's attack with the Cross Wind, a downward collapse which took him away from the percussive blows, and inside Senjin's defences.
Senjin's response was to follow Nicholas down on to the floor, to follow up his attack so that there would be no let-up. But this was what Nicholas had in mind, and he was ready. The Double Fence used a weak-looking yin posture as a launch-pad for a vicious attack.
Nicholas lowered his hands and Senjin followed them, taught as all tanjian had been, to follow the flow of the hands, not the twist of a shoulder, a turn of the head, a glance of the eyes, which could all be false. Where the hands resided, there would the next attack commence.
Their hands touched, an instantaneous spark of energy. Nicholas's hands covered Senjin's, and Senjin contemptuously thrust them aside. The instant he did this, Nicholas's hands parted, slammed heel-first into Senjin's unprotected chest.
Senjin reeled backwards. His head hit the wall where
the last mirror had been, and a shard, razor-sharp, jag
ged, sliced into his left ear. He jerked his head away,
but Nicholas delivered two short, sharp strikes to his
sternum, thrusting him back at the shard. It sliced into
him again.
Nicholas struck him again, but now Senjin ignored the pain. Lights were flashing in his head and he was having trouble breathing. He needed time to damp down
the pain and the bleeding, to bring his mind back into line with Tau-tau.
He twisted so his left shoulder was towards Nicholas and, as Nicholas attacked the shoulder, drove Nicholas's hands into his face with an upward swing. At the same time, he smashed his right knee into Nicholas's lower belly.
Nicholas went to his knees, and Senjin leapt over him,
ran up the stairs, back to where Justine lay, entangled in
Tau-tau magic. She was Senjin's shield, his power over
Nicholas.
'. . . I bind you in chains of iron.'
Nangi said, 'I want to talk to this man the Scoundrel. He's the key, though I doubt he knows it.'
Tomi nodded. She led Nangi into an interrogation room inside the police building in central Tokyo. It had been three days now since Kusunda Ikusa attacked Killan Oroshi in the hotel room, but she wasn't taking any chances with her friend's life. Kusunda Ikusa might be dead, but it was still unclear how many people might be involved. Also, Nangi had been in around-the-clock negotiations with Nami in a monumental psychological tug-of-war over the fate of Sato International and Tomkin Industries.
'You'll find everything you asked for here,' she told Nangi, then went to get the Scoundrel.
Her mind was still filled with images of Killan Oroshi and Ikusa. At the moment she burst into the hotel room, her first thought was for her friend's safety. She should never have allowed the Scoundrel to come with her. His own desires were immaterial in the face of such danger. But Killan had been his responsibility. He hadn't wanted to leave her in the first place, but her antipathy towards Tomi had prevailed. Killan had refused to go with him to deliver the tape - and their confession.
Poor Killan. Hie sight of her Mood-streaked face, the sound of her screaming haunted Tomi. It was time to tell the Scoundrel what had happened to her.
His face was white and strained and, when he saw her coming to get him, he said, 'She's dead, isn't she? Ikusa got to her.'
'He certainly tried,' Tomi said, nodding for the guard to open the cell door.
The Scoundrel stepped out into the echo-filled corridor. 'You mean she's alive? Killan's alive?' He blinked in the harsh fluorescence.
'Yes.'
The cell door clanged shut behind him, and he jumped. He gave a little, nervous laugh. He looked awful, like a junkie or a condemned man.
'Your perspective changes awfully fast when you're in here,' he said, as they began to walk down the corridor. 'I know you put me here for my protection, but after what I've done, I could imagine myself in here for real.' He swallowed hard. 'What will happen to me, Tomi?'
"That depends.' Tomi saw the desolate look on his face, touched him briefly. 'Take it easy. I don't know what laws you've broken, if any.'
'Morally -'
That's another question entirely,' Tomi interrupted him. 'Policemen aren't empowered to make arrests purely on that score.'
The Scoundrel took a deep breath, ran a hand through his stiff platinum hair. 'What did you mean by, "That depends"?'
'There's a man here who wants to speak to you. His name is Tanzan Nangi. I know you've heard of him.' There was a peculiar twitch to her mouth. Of course the Scoundrel had heard of Tanzan Nangi. It was Nangi's computers at Sato International that the Scoundrel's mantis virus had first penetrated. 'I think it
will be Nangi-san who will ultimately decide your fate.'
The Scoundrel groaned, hung his head.
Tomi led her Mend into the interrogation room. Nangi snapped off the cassette recorder. He turned to look at Seji Kikoko. I've just finished playing the tape,' he said.
Nangi turned away. He pushed the cassette recorder aside, drew to him a lacquer tray on which sat a pot, three porcelain cups and a whisk. Nangi took up the whisk. 'I've prepared green tea. I thought you might be thirsty. Being inside a prison for any reason is a nasty experience.' His hands moved deftly, turning the water and tea leaves to a pale green froth, turning each cup as he did so.
He pushed one cup towards the Scoundrel. 'Come, Kikoko-san,' Nangi said pleasantly. 'Sit. Drink. Relax. We have much to discuss, you and I.'
Shisei was given the note by the concierge in the mid-town hotel where Senjin had told her he was taking a room.
SISTER,   WHERE   ARE   YOU?   WHERE   HAVE   YOU   BEEN? I AM WATTING FOR YOU. I NEED YOU.
Shisei read this, as well as the address on Greene Street that ended the note, in the public ladies' room in the hotel lobby. She crumpled the note, flushed it down the toilet.
Then, for three days, Shisei had lived in the hotel room her twin brother had reserved. Three days lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, or sitting on the edge of it, the rumpled sheets in her lap, listening to the muffled voices, the varied psyches living their lives on either side of her.
Every so often, when she thought of it, she ordered room service: hamburgers, french fries, Cokes. She invariably vomited twenty minutes after she had gorged herself on these alien and unpalatable meals. The dazed aftermath of her retching was her only solace, because it was
then that she felt pain, and knew that she was still alive.
Instead of the way she felt most of the time, lying in bed, shivering, the covers pulled up to her chin, or sitting on the edge, the sheets pulled protectively with her whitened fists into her lap. Listening.
Doors slamming, voices raised, the quiet, steady tread of the Jamaican maid who twice daily moved through the hallway outside, always passing by Senjin's room where Shisei lay or sat or knelt, her forehead against the cool porcelain bowl, do not disturb on the doorknob warning the Jamaican away.
Shisei listened to the voices of arguments," of banal conversations, of children whining or laughing; to inane television shows, soap operas during the day, quiz shows at night; and later, in the darkness, the pantings and meanings, the rhythmic music of human couplings, just beyond the walls, the boundaries of her prison, her limbo, where she waited, impatient, full of anxiety, for the battle inside her to be decided one way or another.
SISTER,   WHERE   ARE   YOU?   WHERE   HAVE   YOU   BEEN? I AM WATTING FOR YOU. I NEED YOU.
Giri. Duty and independence had gone to war inside Shisei's head. Senjin needed her. She had never before failed to respond when he called for her. But this time was different. When she saw him face to face, he would know without her saying a word about Cotton Branding. Senjin would not allow that relationship to continue. He would seek to terminate it, as he had terminated her relationship with the law student, Jeiji, in the most violent manner.
Shisei rose, went to the bathroom. There were two mirrors there, one a floor-length dressing mirror on the back of the door, the other a make-up mirror over the double sink. By opening the door just so, she could manoeuvre the mirrors opposite one another. In this way, she stared at herself, at the great spider tattooed upon her back.
Senjin's spider: his nightmare and his salvation. It was said that the Demon Woman of Japanese myth had such a spider upon her back. The Demon Woman who was the embodiment of Senjin's only fear. By so marking his twin, Senjin had at once harnessed the threat of the Demon Woman and had bound his sister to him.
It was said, Senjin had told her during one of their mergings, that the Demon Woman was once a fisherman's wife. The fisherman and his father were prosperous. They owned a large boat and, thus, had a crew. It was the wife's duty to rise daily at two in the morning to make the rounds of the crew's houses to make certain they were ready for the boat's departure at three.
Once in a while, in summer with the moonlight dancing on the water, it was briefly pleasant to feel the cool brush of the night, to imagine herself a mermaid cast upon these rocks.
But mostly she was frightened of the dark walk along the seashore with nothing breathing, nothing stirring but the wind in the stunted, twisted pines. In whiter, she shivered with the icy cold. And, often, rain lashed at her, soaking her before she had gone a dozen paces.
It was also her duty to gather the other fishermen's wives at the dock when the boat returned, to help with the unloading, sorting and transporting of the catch to market. In those days, this was most often done on their backs. When a crewman fell ill or departed, it was her duty, as well, to find a new man to fill his job.
In bad weather, she was sometimes late making her rounds. The rain made the path she took extremely treacherous. There was a half-mile stretch of bare rock. The lichen that spread upon it like fuzz on a baby's scalp grew slippery in rain, snow or ice and, in her anxiety to complete her wake-up calls, the fisherman's wife would often fall, scraping herself in the process.
She would lie upon the rocks for some time, dazed
and in pain. Then the realization that she would be late would flood through her, and she would begin to weep as she gathered herself up, stumbling on into the night.
When she was late, she was sure to be reprimanded by her husband or her father-in-law. They depended on her, they yelled. Was she a simpleton or merely lazy? Why couldn't she complete the simplest tasks?
But she never complained, never thought about an alternative. Giri. Her life was defined by duty. Without giri she was nothing. She might have been a wild animal rutting in the brush. She must, she thought, be grateful for giri. In her adherence to duty lay her humanity.
On one particular night, her husband roused her, angry that she had overslept. It was stormy. Rain lashed the shutters of the house, setting them trembling. The fisherman's wife begged her husband not to take the boat out in such dangerous weather. Now you are a fisherman as well? he shouted. We need the money the catch will bring! How will we live otherwise? Will you support us? Lazy woman! You just want to stay in your warm bed while we do all the work! Do as you are told!
The wife stumbled out into the storm, half-running to the first of the crewmen's houses, because she was already late. She was half-way through her rounds, shivering and wet, when she saw a figure on the rocks.
Her heart fluttered in her chest, and she thought about turning back. But giri forestalled her. What would her husband and her father-in-law say if she returned home without having awakened all of the crew?
But she could not bring herself to approach the figure, so she took the longer path that led away from the shoreh'ne. The figure followed her into the woods. The wife, feeling the presence of the figure, picked up her pace. Then, frightened, she began to run. She stumbled over a root, fell into the mud.
She turned, tried to rise. But the figure was already
looming over her. It was huge and, as a hand pulled back a cowl, she could see a bearded face, fierce, monstrous, malefic.
The man fell upon her, and his weight almost crushed the wife. She tried to cry out, but the man hit her with the flat of his hand, then with his fist. Then he ripped her clothes and, like the beast he was, took her there in the blood-spattered mud.
Wind rattled the trees, rain stung her face. It was as if she were in the middle of a wolf-pack. There was a panting all around her, a snuffling, the rank stink of a body too long on the road. And something inside her, battering her over and over, ceaseless as the tide. She slipped into unconsciousness.
A long time later, the wife crawled painfully out of the woods. She lifted her head on an unsteady neck, saw the suck and roll of the sea.
On the rocks that were so familiar to her, she collapsed. Lightning illuminated her battered face, her bruised, naked body. Her mouth was open, and she gasped rapidly like a landed fish. Blood flowed out of her from many places, on to the rocks. It seeped into the lichen before the rain had a chance to wash it away.
Hours later, the fisherman and his father were lashing their boat down against the rising gale. They were alone, having told what crew had straggled down that the weather was too foul to go out.
They were almost finished when they saw approaching them a figure who appeared dressed all in white. But as it came closer, they saw to their astonishment that it was a nude woman. Her skin was the colour of snow, and she was completely hairless, even between her legs. Her black hair fluttered wildly behind her as if it were composed of serpents. Her face was wide-eyed, demonic. As she confronted them, she turned, and they saw upon her back a gigantic spider.
As they watched, dumbfounded, the creature stirred to life, crawling down the buttocks and thighs of the demonic woman. It was gigantic. When it reached the dock, it leapt upon them as if it had wings, devouring them whole.
Sated, the insect returned to the woman, climbing again upon her back. Then she turned and, with the strength of ten men, let loose the fishing boat from its moorings, pushing it out from the dock.
Soon, the storm took the boat against the black, saw-toothed rocks ringing the shoreline. The boat foundered, went under. Was that the wind that howled so chillingly through the salt-stunted pines? As the waves closed over the fishing boat, the Demon Woman, eyes glowing like coals, turned insubstantial.
In the morning, with the rising sun, all that remained was a pale mist that clung to the lichen-covered rocks, and refused to be dissipated even by the heat of the day.
Shisei, lying in bed, staring at the voices beyond the walls in the dark, listening to strangers inhabit Senjin's room, listening to her heartbeat, thum-thum, thum-thum, propel life onwards, felt as insubstantial as mist.
Here, in limbo, in purgatory, she had ceased to exist. What existed were the voices in the dark, the strangers moving, speaking, loving, hating, laughing, crying beyond the walls of her dark room, luminous ghosts whom she passively observed, who, in the inertia of her inner struggle, did her living for her.
SISTER,   WHERE   ARE   YOU?   WHERE   HAVE   YOU   BEEN? I AM WAITING FOR YOU. I NEED YOU.
Giri.
And the Demon Woman's spider etched into her flesh. Senjin's flesh. Wasn't that right? Isn't that what he had taught her when he had murdered Jeiji, her
lover, in the Tau-tau ritual that invoked the membrane kokoro? The ritual that increased their own power exponentially?
'I have done this for you, Shisei. I love you. I need you. We will be together, always.'
But, in murdering Jeiji, hadn't Senjin murdered her future?
Gin.
The Demon Woman.
Shisei stood up, the sheets sliding down around her ankles. The voices beyond the walls had ceased.
The spider moved.
When Senjin returned to the room with the trompe-l'oeil windows, Justine was gone. The couch lay in the middle of the room, mocking him. Speaker wires that he had ripped from the wall lay like copper-tongued serpents on the black and persimmon Persian carpets.
Senjin held the side of his head, feeling the heat of his own blood, the accelerated beat of his heart. He went to the couch, lay down on it. He could smell Justine's scent, even feel the last vestiges of her warmth. He allowed these things to seep into him, to nourish him as he had allowed Mariko's susurrus to nourish him. But they were not enough. Perhaps, had she been here, Justine's susurrus would have sustained him for his final confrontation with Nicholas Linnear. Perhaps.
Now he would have to call upon the membrane kokoro. He would have to begin the meditation without at the same time being able to perform the ritual action that would reinforce his repetitive chanting.
Senjin focused his mind on kokoro, and began. In a moment, his heartbeat slowed. He regulated the flow of his endorphins, cutting his mind free from the pain. Some time later, the blood ceased to seep from his wound. A scab began to form.
The healing procedure under way, he began the gathering of power, the channelling of the vibrational energy he drew from kokoro, the centre of things.
The gathering was not yet complete when his eyes flew open.
Shisei!
She was here! She had come!
Conny Tanaka crouched, saw pieces of himself reflected again and again in a hundred thousand mirrored shards. And dark patches in between. 'I see his blood,' Conny said. 'So this is what happens when the seven of diamonds turns into the ace of spades.'
Nicholas, his back against the entranceway wall, said, 'It wasn't enough.' He hurt all over, but the psychic struggle had been far worse than the physical one. 'Is Justine all right?'
Conny nodded. 'I got her out of the room. She's safe.'
'But he got more from her than I thought he would,' Nicholas said bitterly. 'I gave him too much time with her. It was a terrible risk, but he had to be exposed to the chanting on the tape I gave you to play. I needed the time, and he took it.'
'It looks like it weakened him,' Conny said. 'Just as you suspected.'
'But now he knows where the last of So-Peng's emeralds are.' Nicholas put his head back against the bare wall. 'I can't let him leave here.'
Conny looked at Nicholas, at his myriad reflections scattered like stars all around him. 'It occurs to me that you never had that intention,' he said softly.
Nicholas nodded. 'You're right, of course. I just didn't want to have to face it, not if there was a chance it could end differently. Now I know that I must kill him or he will kill me.'
'How badly are you hurt?'
'I'll survive,' Nicholas said. 'For now.' He glanced up the stairwell. It was unnaturally quiet in the building. 'What's he doing up there, I wonder?' But he could already feel the dark reverberations at kokoro, and knew that he was finished. He had so little experience with the tanjian membrane that, in that theatre of war, Senjin would surely defeat him. For Nicholas, that was the death ground, and he must at all costs stay clear of it. There must be some other way, he thought.
'OK.' Conny rubbed his hands together. 'What's plan B?'
Nicholas looked at his friend, gave him a bleak smile. 'There isn't any. I'm out of ideas. This bastard's not going to give up, and I don't think I can stop him.'
'You need to rest,' Conny said.
'If he gets to me,' Nicholas said, 'I'll have all the time in the world to rest.'
Conny came closer, gave Nicholas some cold tea. 'Something happened while you two were at it,' Conny said. 'I got a call from your friend, Tanzan Nangi. He had a great deal to tell me.'
Conny poured more tea, watched as Nicholas drank it down. There was no point in telling Nicholas of the herbs he had stirred into the tea. They would give him strength while they slowed his metabolism, facilitating meditation and the formulation of strategy. He would feel their effects soon enough.
'First of all, Kusunda Ikusa is dead. And they found the tape the Pack Rat made of Ikusa, Killan Oroshi and this genius, the Scoundrel. It seems that the Scoundrel created a supervirus, a computer program that rides piggy-back on a software's security program. It gets into the software core and acts as a mole, broadcasting otherwise classified information back to its originator.
'You and Nangi, I'm told, thought that Kami wanted into Sato because of the Sphynx t-pram computer chip.
To them, that was just the gravy. What they really wanted was to be inside the Hive Project. Sato and Tomkin have just signed a deal with Hyrotech-inc for the manufacture of certain components for the American Hive Project. Well, according to the Scoundrel, once Nami got control of Sato, they would secrete the Scoundrel's mantis supervirus into .the components. It would act like a time bomb, inactive until given a prearranged, seemingly innocuous electronic signal. mantis would come alive, burrow into the core of the Hive computer and begin sending key data back to Nami.'
Nicholas stared at his friend. 'Good God. The Hive Project is going to be installed in every section of the United States government: the Pentagon, the National Security Council, the CIA, State Department, FBI, you name it. That would mean Nami would have access to every piece of secret data this administration has.'
Conny nodded. 'Pretty neat, huh? Talk about your ultimate mole. The leak would never be found. American security would be irreparably damaged.' Conny took a little tea himself. 'But here's the real kicker. Nami hired two people to help in their scheme. One is upstairs now, probably bleeding all over my couch. It was his job to disable you permanently so that you wouldn't be able to interfere. Nami was scared to death of you.
"The other person, working the opposite end of the pipeline, is this bastard's twin sister. Her name is Shisei. She was sent over here to link up somehow with the senator - his name's Branding - who's shepherding the Hive Project through the Senate, to make sure the Project's funding bill was passed by Congress.'
Nicholas nodded, a thoughtful look on his face. 'That explains a lot. Most everything, in fact, except why Senjin didn't kill me when he could have the first time we met. If Nami hired him to get rid of me, he had his chance and didn't take it. Why?'
If you die now, if you die too easily, you will never understand. That was what Senjin had said to him in Dr Hanami's office. Understand what? Nicholas did not know. Except it was clear that Senjin harboured a personal enmity towards Nicholas. But Nicholas was certain that he did not know this man, had never met him before the violent encounter in Dr Hanami's office.
As he probed deeper into the mystery, Nicholas sank into Getsumei no michi. He thought about Senjin's strategy: Shiro Ninja, the murder of Dr Hanami, the surgeon he had coerced into allowing him entr6e into the operation on Nicholas's tumour; the murder of Dr Muku, a clinical psychiatrist who logically might have discovered what Senjin had done to that small piece of Nicholas's brain; the murder of Kyoki, the tanjian who could have helped Nicholas.
None of this fitted the profile of an independent ninja operative hired to take out an enemy who might otherwise thwart the greatest international espionage coup ever attempted. This was the strategy of a man driven by a torrent of hate, a strategy meant to disable, to destroy by increments another human being.
Nicholas thanked the great good fortune that had led him to Kansatsu. It was fortuitous karma indeed that Senjin had no knowledge of Kyoki's brother, living high up in the Alps, in sight of the Black Gendarme.
But Senjin's strategy contained another element besides Nicholas's destruction: the possession of So-Peng's mystic emeralds. Are they the connection between us? Nicholas wondered. How he wished he knew more about his grandfather.
He felt Conny's hand on his shoulder, and opened his eyes.
'Nick, are you all right?' Conny asked. 'I thought for a minute you'd stopped breathing.'
'Someone's coming,' Nicholas said, rising.
Conny glanced up the staircase.
'Not there,' Nicholas said, walking to the front door. He opened it, looked into the exquisite face.
'Hello, Shisei. I am Nicholas Linnear,' he said, his will still expanding outwards. 'But I suppose you already know that.'
Shisei looked up into Nicholas's face. 'So long the enemy,' she said. 'I thought my heart would cease to beat when I met you.'
They both spoke Japanese, out of some instinct that communication on several levels was essential.
'Come in,' Nicholas said. He did not turn his back on her. Over his shoulder, he made the introductions with Conny.
Conny cursed in gutter Japanese. 'You know who she is, Nick? Why'd you let her in here?'
'I don't think I could have kept her out.' Nicholas had not once let go of her eyes with his. 'Conny, we're all out of tea.'
When they were alone, Nicholas said, 'Now you see that you have looked upon the face of the Medusa and you still live.'
Neither of them had ceased to move. They circled each other slowly, crunching the glass shards, their images picked up and fired in the crucible of tiny mirrors at their feet.
'Circumstances have changed,' Shisei said. 'I have not come here to destroy you, or even, I think, to help my brother.'
'Then why have you come?' Nicholas asked softly.
'To save myself,' Shisei said.
There was more than mere conversation passing between them. Within the interstices of the words, sentences, tiny pauses, silences, their wills met in the centre of the room, creating a kind of psychic whirlpool, so that when Conny returned with the tea, he felt so
vertiginous he almost dropped the tray he was carrying.
Nicholas heard the clatter, like silverware trembling in an earthquake, and he said, 'Stay away, Conny. Leave the tea, but don't come back into this room until it's over.'
'But, Nick -'
'Do as I tell you, my friend,' Nicholas said. 'I don't want Justine alone now.'
'He's a good friend,' Shisei said, when Conny was gone. 'I envy you.'
'I wish we had time to know one another.'
'A pity,' Shisei agreed. 'But there is only time enough to reach some form of accord. I hear the echoes of kokoro, the reverberations are strong. It will not be long now before my brother gains all the power he has been yearning for.'
'He has stolen six of my emeralds.'
'When he gets all of them,' Shisei said, 'he will truly be invincible. He will create the configuration of the nine. Power beyond imagining will be his. The earth will shudder. He will be one with Eternity, he will walk with the gods. This is what he has wanted all along.' She was moving, moving, her body as restless as her psyche. Nicholas wondered whether it was he she did not trust, or herself. 'But then these emeralds have a history of being stolen. First by So-Peng - '
'My grandfather never stole anything in his life!'
'Perhaps,' Shisei said. 'Perhaps not. The truth, now, does not matter. What matters is what is in my brother's mind. He and I are descendants of Zhao Hsia, the man whom So-Peng drowned at the base of the waterfall near Gunung Muntahak mountain a century ago.'
'I am being attacked by a past I do not know.'
'My brother has been taken hostage by that same past.'
'You don't expect me to pity him.'
'No,' Shisei said. 'But understanding is essential now.
It will not be enough, I think, to meet him in Tau-tau. He has gone beyond even Tau-tau. He has created his own system of magic, most of which even I am unfamiliar with.'
'Does he frighten you the way he does me?' Then Nicholas felt the dark pulse, a ripple in the projection of her will, and knew that Senjin frightened his sister. He said, 'How can you love that which you fear so?'
'I cannot help myself.' Shisei was near to tears. 'He is my twin. His flesh is my flesh.'
'But his mind is not yours.'
'We are like two crystal lanterns,' Shisei said, 'burning in the darkness. We are the same, yet so very different. This I did not fully realize until today.'
'Oh, I think you realized it long before this,' Nicholas said. 'It took you this long to accept it.'
Shisei and Nicholas continued to be locked within the width of the circle they traversed. Yin and yang, dark and light, male and female, soft and hard, but now the definitions were becoming more and more blurred.
'Can you tell me why he kills?' Nicholas asked. 'Does it delight him in some unfathomable way?'
'Murder is another means to his end,' Shisei said. 'When he kills, he does so in the ritualistic way he was taught. The constant reiteration of meditative chants, of ritualized action. This is why he skins his victims. The action combines with the chanting to affect the membrane kokoro most powerfully. It is how he draws his strength, why it continues to grow.'
Nicholas shuddered. 'He must be stopped, Shisei,' he said. 'There is no other course.'
'So that is why I am here.'
Nicholas said, 'I am a novice at Tau-tau. Without your help, your brother will surely defeat me.'
'I know.'
Shisei stopped and turned so that her back was to
him. She unbuttoned her blouse, let it fall to her waist. She was wearing nothing underneath.
This is what I am,' she said, revealing the great spider. 'This is what my brother did to me. This is what he fears. The Demon Woman.'
Nicholas went to the tray Conny had left, brought them both tea. They sat cross-legged, facing one another, and drank, silent for only a moment. But the pause was significant, marking a new phase of their engagement.
Nicholas put down his empty cup. 'You must go with me, then, to meet Senjin.'
'No,' Shisei said. "That is for you, and you alone. I can no longer think of myself now. I have someone more important whom I must protect.'
Nicholas did not ask who that person might be. He did not have to. He was contained in the projection of her will: Cotton Branding.
'I must tell you,' Nicholas said, 'that Nami is finished. Kusunda Ikusa is dead. The mantis virus is no longer under his control.'
He felt the sense of relief, more profound than words, flooding through her.
'Come here,' she said.
When Nicholas was very close to her, Shisei opened her handbag, took out her implements. Swiftly, surely, she set about making up his face. She held in her mind the image she had of the Demon Woman as she strode the storm-swept coastline in search of revenge against not only her men but all men who in their baseness had treated her as if she were nothing more than an animal. But what also came to her was the visage of her only friend, Kiku, as she had been that night of the moon-viewing festival when she became the samurai, when Shisei had fallen in love with the perfect male that Kiku had become.
When she was finished, she said, 'You look beautiful;
you look terrifying. But your hair is wrong. It is a man's hair-style.'
'Wait here,' Nicholas said. He disappeared for perhaps thirty seconds.
When he returned, he was dressed in the costume from Conny's Kabuki actor. He carried the elaborate wig. He sat again in front of Shisei, who placed the wig on his head, adjusted it to her satisfaction. When she had finished, she held up a pocket mirror, showed him what he had become.
'It's perfect,' Nicholas said, stunned. 'Where did you learn this?'
'Do you know Golden Cloud?'
' "Kiyoku Utsukushiku Kanzen",' Nicholas recited. 'Yes, I know of it.' He stared at his reflection. 'You have indeed made me "Pure, Beautiful, Perfect".'
The rolling tones, like a bell around the neck of an approaching itinerant priest, were reaching a crescendo.
'He is coming,' Nicholas said. 'I must go.'
'Now you know what it is he fears,' Shisei said. But she had not yet fully betrayed him, her other half, her dark self, her love, her captor, her death, and she knew it. But if she did nothing now, she knew that her coming here was for nothing. Not for her to sit and observe. Her days and nights in her brother's hotel room had told her that.
As Nicholas turned to go, she stopped him with her mind. 'Now there is something else,' she said, one hand clasping the other. 'Something I must give you, something besides my knowledge and my skill, because now I can feel that these things alone will not stop my brother. He is already too strong.'
And she slid from her finger the emerald ring Senjin had given her on the day after he had murdered Jeiji, her lover.
'This is a tanjian emerald,' she said. 'It is the only
thing my brother ever gave me. He presented it to me on our birthday, but it was never mine. I suspected it then. I know it now,'
Nicholas took the ring with its glowing stone set in platinum and in that moment he felt what Shisei felt: the power of the Demon Woman.
Turning gracefully as a woman, as Shisei herself would,
he went out of the entranceway, up the stairs, to look
death in the face.
The energy of kokoro washed over Senjin, laving him as a mother bathes her infant. Once, he felt another presence at kokoro, the centre of things, and he reached out almost languidly, already almost a god, exerting godlike power, and the other presence disappeared.
It was Nicholas Linnear, Senjin knew, who had withdrawn when Senjin himself had reached out with the steel coils of his will to embrace kokoro. Now that he had successfully cut Nicholas off from the central energy of Tau-tau, Senjin was assured of complete victory.
Senjin sat up. The reverberations at kokoro rang in his mind, in his body, setting them vibrating. Even the tanjian elders at Zhuji cannot milk kokoro as I can, he thought. They were afraid to try, afraid that too much pressure on the membrane would cause it to rupture, causing limitless chaos to fill the world. I do not have their fears. I use kokoro as I see fit.
He reached out with his mind to enfold Shisei as he had done with kokoro, so that she could join in the exhilaration of this victory. He wanted her here, had called for her to join him because now was the time to reclaim the present he had given her: the tanjian emerald he had set into a ring for her.
Shisei had been its guardian without knowing it. When he had stolen it just before he had left the tanjian village of Zhuji, he knew that he must not keep it - at least not
initially. The tanjian elders would have used their powers to trace it had he kept it with him. Shisei had never been to Zhuji, had never learned their Tau-tau. They would not find it if she had it.
Senjin could feel her presence, but he needed to be close to her, to merge with her one last time as she gave him the tanjian emerald. Was Nicholas somehow preventing her getting to him?
He went out of the room with the trompe-l'oeil windows. His fingertips were sparking with blue flame only he could see: the power of kokoro.
Senjin paused at the top of the stairs. He heard the soft pad of feet. He extended his mind outwards, felt only a smooth featureless wall. Nicholas Linnear.
But Shisei was closer. He was smiling as he descended.
Light drifted up to him, indirect but increasing in intensity. Recalling the trick with the mirrors, Senjin prepared himself. Light was Nicholas Linnear's only ally, and Senjin was determined to strip him of it, to send him hurtling into the darkness, before he ended his life.
Light shone on -the curving staircase, bathing it as a moment before Senjin had bathed in the energy of kokoro. Into this confined field climbed the actor turned actress, the male who was female, the yang turned perfect yin: light into dark.
Senjin, at the moment of his ultimate triumph, the moment he had been anticipating, dreaming about, relishing for so many years, the moment when he would free Zhao Hsia from the infamy of defeat, when, by gathering up the stolen tanjian emeralds and murdering the treacherous So-Peng's last descendant, he would restore honour to his family line, confronted his worst nightmare.
The Demon Woman.
She rose out of the light, entangled within it, blotting it out as she approached: dark-eyed face, at once fierce and maternal, erotic and vindictive.
Haha-san's face.
Senjin screamed or shouted, he did not know which. This was no play which he was taking his intended victims to see, no play-acting upon a brilliantly-lit stage where he could observe with fear, loathing and fascination the visage of the Demon Woman, safe in the confines of the theatre, spellbound in the make-believe.
This was real. The Demon Woman, evolved from the mist of the shoreline, had at last come for him.
The shock of recognition lasted perhaps only a second. But it was enough to allow Nicholas to make the first assault, a blinding psychic attack using Akshara, the language of Eternity, taught to him by the tanjian sensei, Kansatsu.
Akshara is the centre of the universe, Kansatsu had told him. It is a silence so whole, so complete within itself that it contains the entire universe. When one expresses oneself with Akshara there is, in a real sense, no need for language. For Akshara was in existence long before there was a need for language. To employ Akshara is to be one with the universal force.
Still, though Senjin reeled backwards on the staircase, his mind ripped by the Akshara assault while he was still paralysed by the sight of the Demon Woman, he was not destroyed.
As Shisei had intimated, he was already too powerful. And Nicholas knew that he had waited too long, that he had allowed Senjin too much time to gather the forces of kokoro, that even Akshara was insufficient to stop him now.
Senjin crashed into the wall of the staircase, whirled down several steps. But now his mind had recovered from the initial shock and he extended his will like a vice, surrounding the smooth, featureless wall, exerting more and more pressure, pressing inwards, inflicting pain, until with a thunderous crash of silence, the wall collapsed.
And Senjin was inside Nicholas's last line of defence, in Nicholas's mind, the energy of kokoro manifesting itself by tearing Nicholas's psyche apart.
The end was approaching, more rapidly than Nicholas could have imagined. He fell to his knees. His costume ripped, the elaborate wig fell off his head.
He could not breathe, could not move. Thinking was all but obviated by the pressure Senjin was bringing to bear on him. Darkness was descending.
But there was a central core of light that burned in the darkness: a crystal lantern, the essence that Shisei had given him ...
Now, come to me, my sister, my twin, my love, thought Senjin. Now is when I need you. The dark, sinuous coils of his will expanded outwards, touching the smooth wall of Nicholas's psyche.
But the wall was no longer featureless. Its vast curving surface was aglitter with the essence of his twin sister. Shisei rose to meet him, and as Senjin reached out, he was met with a swirl of mist and vengeance.
Shisei! Senjin's mind cried ...
Nicholas's fingers felt as if they were encased in lead as he fumbled in his pocket. Pain gripped him; he felt his heart thudding heavily in his chest as if at any moment it might burst.
Then the tanjian emerald Shisei had given him was in his palm, on the tips of his fingers. He exerted the last piece of his will.
And now he felt a power outside himself drawing him and it towards Senjin, faster and faster, as if two unimaginably powerful magnets were about to come together.
They touched . . .
Within the firelight dancing in Senjin's mind was a hollowness. He saw her as if from afar, and he knew with a despair that shrivelled his spirit that he had been
abandoned, betrayed by the creature he had created. His
only love. His ultimate nightmare.
The Demon Woman: Shisei ...
It was as if the faceted emerald had become a blade, for as it came into contact with Senjin's chest, it cut through skin, muscle, viscera and bone.
Blood exploded outwards, showering Nicholas, the staircase, the walls. Senjin's body arched like a bow. His eyes bulged out, his mouth opened soundlessly. Then all light and life went out of him, just as if some divine hand had extinguished the spark.
Shisei screamed, spun around. She held on to Conny
Tanaka's broad shoulders so that she would not collapse.
She felt the death of her twin as the earth feels its sun in
eclipse.
She gasped once, sharply. She felt ripped asunder, as if she had been eviscerated, a surgeon's cruel scalpel excising in an instant what had been part of her since birth.
Darkness, the utter chill of an endless night. And then, as miraculous as the emergence through winter's frozen soil of the first tender shoot, light and warmth returning.
One heart beating, thum-thum, thum-thum, instead of two. Silence where there had been shadowy intimations, calm instead of echoes feverishly ringing. Shisei breathed. At last, she was released from the dark, metallic coils of Senjin's will.
'Are you all right?' Conny asked.
'Yes,' Shisei managed to get out. 'Now.'
Immediately Nicholas felt the pain inside him lift. The husk of Senjin Omukae, the dorokusai, lay sprawled across the stairs, as inconsequential as ash. The dark reverberations ceased.
Echoes, then silence. ~
Kokoro was at rest.
SUMMER-AUTUMN, PRESENT
Marco Island/Tokyo/Washington
The sun was shining in south-west Florida when Nicholas and Justine drove their convertible rental car across the San Marco Drive causeway on to Marco Island.
Lew Croaker and Alix would have met them at the Fort Myers airport, but they were out on their boat, chartered for the morning.
Nicholas turned on to Collier Boulevard, heading for the dock where Lew's boat was berthed. They went past lavish private homes, surrounded by lush tropical foliage, many with their own boat slips, then condominium developments that fronted the beach against which lapped the warm, gentle waves of the Gulf of Mexico.
Nicholas pulled into a parking space, turned off the engine. For a time, neither of them moved. They listened to the wind in the palms, the crying of the gulls, watched the serpentine sweep of the pelicans as they skimmed the diamond-lighted waves, searching for food.
'Justine,' Nicholas said. 'I'm sorry. At the beginning of all this, I closed you out. I thought I was doing the noble thing, that I could protect you from what was happening to me.' He took her hand. 'But the truth is that I shut you out long before that. I was so happy to be back in Japan that it simply never occurred to me that you could feel differently - that you must feel differently. You didn't know the language, the customs were strange, there were few friends of your sex and age to be made and, most of all, you must have missed home.'
'Nick-'
'No, let me finish.' He watched the salt breeze take her hair, whip it about her face. 'Ironically, it was through Senjin that I found you again, that I came to understand the core of our estrangement. But then I betrayed you again. I used you to trap Senjin, to blunt his power which was growing each hour. I put you in danger. It was a calculated risk, I admit, because I put you centre stage in a theatre of my own making. But - '
Justine's hand on his mouth stopped him. The sun was shining in her eyes, turning them a vivid green. The red motes swam in her left eye like points of fire. 'Nick, you must know how deeply I love you. Words mean nothing. But you can look inside my mind -I know that now after the events of the last few days. You can feel what I feel about you.'
She brought his hand up to her mouth, kissed his palm. 'I thank God that you've told me what happened, and that it wasn't what I feared. Nick, for a long time I thought you hated me because you blamed me for our daughter's death.'
'Justine, how could you - ?'
'Hush, now. Let me have my say. I was afraid of that because of my own guilt. I projected it on to you and, as we drifted further and further apart, the idea got set in my mind. You never knew, because I couldn't admit it to myself, that I was terrified of having a child. And then when our daughter died, it occurred to me that my fright had somehow killed her.'
She drew a lock of hair off her forehead. 'And as for Senjin, you did what you had to do. You didn't involve me - Senjin did. You just reacted in the only way you could. No one else could have stopped him, I'm certain of that.'
She kissed him hard on the lips. 'Now it's over. There's a new life inside me. Our child, Nick. And I'm not afraid any more. I want it as much as I want you. And very soon,
I'll need you both, and I know it will be a wonderful feeling.'
She rested her head on his shoulder, felt the strength of his arms encircling her. 'How I love you,' she whispered.
Croaker's boat was just turning past the headland. They could see Alix shading her eyes, straining to make them out. They waved and Alix grinned, waved back.
Ten minutes later, the boat was at its berth. Alix raced down the dock to embrace them both. Lew Croaker was helping his clients off with their catch: an iridescent-blue martin.
He looked different, tanned and fit. The constant Florida sun had put a squint in his eyes that looked faintly piratical, and his hair was quite a bit longer than when he had been a NYPD detective.
'Hey, Nick.'
'Lew.'
They shook hands, then embraced.
Later, on board the Captain Sumo, Lew Croaker said, 'We're a couple of miles out. How about doing a little fishing for martin? It's a good day for them.'
Nicholas shook his head. "Thanks, but I'd rather relax another way. I've had enough of killing for a while.'
Croaker squinted at him. 'You haven't turned into some kind of freaking vegetarian in Japan, have you?'
Nicholas laughed. 'Jesus, Lew, it's good to see you.'
'Yeah. Well, for a while there, I thought maybe we'd never see each other again.'
'Friends are too important to lose,' Nicholas said.
'Hey, buddy, you want to see something?' Croaker dipped into the large cooler on deck, brought out two cans of beer. He tossed one to Nicholas, then lifted the other one in his left hand. The titanium, graphite and polycarbonate prosthetic the medical geniuses at Todai had grafted on to the stump of his wrist looked like part
exotic carapace, part erector set. Croaker had said that, at first, he had kept it sheathed in a glove, but soon that seemed foolish, especially in a tropical climate.
'Watch this!'
Croaker's left hand, squeezed. There was a sound not unlike an explosion. A geyser of frothy beer plumed upwards into the clear blue sky. When it came down, it drenched them. The left hand opened and a flattened can fell to the deck.
Lew Croaker laughed at the look on Nicholas's face. 'Maybe that's something even you can't do,' he said good-naturedly.
Inside the cabin, at the helm, Alix said, 'Look at them. Like a couple of kids. It's so good to have you and Nick down here, Justine. How long can you stay?'
Justine, looking wistfully at the two boys at play, said, 'Not long enough.'
Killan woke once to twilight seeping through the open window. Clear liquid dripped into a vein on the inside of her wrist. She saw the silhouette of a figure hunched in a chair. Nothing could be seen of her face, but Killan recognized those old, gnarled hands as the soft light fell upon them. The crooked fingers had lost little of their deftness as they quickly, efficiently folded rice paper back and forth. In no time the hands held a prancing horse. Turning her head slightly, Killan could see a parade of origami animals sitting on the window-sill, lovingly made by her grandmother.
'I'm thirsty.' A dusty croak.
Her grandmother rose, placed a porcelain cup against Killan's lips. Tea, tepid, delicious. She drank deeply.
Killan closed her eyes and slept.
When she woke again, daylight was streaming through the window. Her grandmother was sitting in the same spot, her fingers working, working. There were more
animals. Killan felt movement beside her, turned her head slowly. Her father was standing over her.
'I'm thirsty.' That same dusty croak.
Killan's grandmother rose, but Ken Oroshi said, 'I'll get it.'
He gave her the tea, and Killan drank it all.
Ken Oroshi said, 'I remember feeding you cold tea, just like this, when you were a baby. What fevers you had. Your mother was always frantic with worry.'
He put the tea cup down. 'The doctors have instructed me to tell you that it is a week since they brought you here,' be said as soon as he saw that she was finished. 'They said that when you woke you might be a little disoriented.' His eyes searched her bruised, puffy face. 'The police have told me everything.'
Not everything, she thought, and closed her eyes.
"The doctors tell me that you're full of pain-killers.'
'I don't know,' she said, in a dry husky voice that cracked. 'I don't feel anything.' But she wondered at the anxiety in his voice. It must be the company, she thought. Does it make a difference that Kusunda is dead? Nakano is still destroyed.
'I suppose that's good,' Ken Oroshi said, 'for the time being. I imagine you're wondering about the huskiness in your voice. There was some damage to your vocal chords.'
'That's OK,' she said. 'I'm beginning to like the way I sound.'
He cleared his throat, and Killan wondered what it was he wanted. He always wanted something when he spoke to her, even when it was only to rail against her 'dangerous' revolutionary friends.
'You know, it occurred to me recently that I never treated you in the same way I treat your brothers. Well, you're my daughter. I always thought that was right and proper. Women have their place in society, an important
place, to be sure, but it is not the same as a man's place. This used to be very clear to me.'
He shifted on his feet, as if he were suddenly uncomfortable in her presence.
'I wanted to tell you, since it seemed of some importance to you, that I have come to an accommodation of sorts. Tanzan Nangi, who bought Nakano, has put pressure on Nami. Since the scandal with Ikusa broke, Nami's position has been irreparably undermined. The Emperor has disavowed their policies; he's cut them off completely. Nami had no choice but to void the contract Nangi signed. As a consequence, Nangi's bought all of Nakano, including the research and development department.
'He's asked me to be Nakano's president. Nangi will be chairman, of course, and I'll report to him. But he has assured me that I will have a good deal of autonomy. I can hire my own people, for instance. The company feels like mine, again, for the first time in years.'
Killan heard something new in her father's voice. Was it humility? she wondered.
'Speaking of hiring,' Ken Oroshi said. 'When you're better, I'd like you to come up to Nakano's offices, take a look around. In fact, I'll give you the grand tour myself. We'll be in our new headquarters, then, in the Shinjuku Suiryu Building, where Sato International is. And the R and D department is getting its own floor - I'll show you that as well. Then, afterwards, perhaps we can go to lunch, talk. I would like that, Killan.'
Killan, staring into her father's eyes, nodded, mute.
When he was gone, she closed her eyes again. She heard movement near her, opened them to see an exquisite origami panda sitting on the bed covers. She picked it up, smiled. It was so long since she had done that, her facial muscles felt strange.
'When the police spoke to your father,' Killan's grandmother said, 'they played him a tape. I believe you know
the one. Whatever he heard opened his eyes. He was shocked at what you did; but also I think he was proud of you. For the first time, he saw what it was you wanted. Perhaps it was the first time for you as well.'
Now Killan recognized the new note in her father's voice. It wasn't humility; it was respect.
'In any case,' her grandmother said, 'you have given him his life back. Now, as is right and proper, he wishes to return the favour.'
Killan was silent for some time. At last, she stirred, as if in sleep, or in the midst of a dream. She said, 'Grandma, would you make me monkeys? I always loved monkeys.'
'Yes,' the old woman said, lifting a family of three origami monkeys from the window-sill. She placed them on her granddaughter's chest. 'I know.'
It was a bittersweet homecoming to his beloved Japan for Nicholas. The knowledge that he and Justine might now not stay here permanently was a dark companion that rode on his shoulder. Not that he resented their decision -that had all been worked out in Marco Island. They both had to be happy in Japan, otherwise their relationship was going to suffer. And, Nicholas knew, if it came to that he could become content with trips to Tokyo every few months.
Nangi, Tomi and Umi were at Narita Airport when he and Justine cleared Immigration and Customs. Nangi looked haggard but buoyant.
Umi took Nicholas aside. "The ice has begun to melt,' she said in her enigmatic way. 'I am glad that you have returned. But I sense there is more yet for you to learn.'
In the car, Nangi spoke non-stop about the integration of Nakano Industries with Sato International, the ways in which its R and D department would spur revenues and profits in the coming years.
To this flood of good news, Nicholas said barely a word. In fact, staring out at the countryside, he often seemed oblivious, displaced.
'Nick, what is it?' Justine said softly. Umi, her eyes closed, seemed lost in prayer or meditation. Nangi and Tomi were talking softly between themselves, and Justine and Nicholas had as much privacy as they could reasonably expect in Japan. 'What's troubling you?'
'I stiU don't know enough about my grandfather,' Nicholas said. 'Senjin's sister told me Sehjin believed that So-Peng was a villain, that he was a murderer, that his mother stole the tanjian emeralds from the elders in Zhuji and that So-Penglcept them. I want to know the truth.'
'But who is left to tell you the truth?' Justine asked. 'No one.'
Nicholas, his eyes clouded, shook his head. 'Someone knows the truth, Justine.'
The Hodaka.
The fifteen days of true summer had come to the upper reaches of the Hodaka in the Japanese Alps. Stark black had turned to subtle shades of grey. The rock formations seemed softer, more forgiving. The snow had lost its brittle crust, and here and there the ice formations were melted to frigid water by the sunlight.
Three days after he and Justine landed in Japan, Nicholas was making his way along the last section of the rough path leading to Kansatsu's mountain retreat.
'Have I come here many times before?' Nicholas asked when his mentor opened the door as he approached.
'No,' Kansatsu said, smiling. "This meeting will occur only once.' He retreated into the gloom of his house. 'Enter.'
After tea had been made and consumed, Kansatsu
said, 'In truth, I had no way of knowing whether I would see you again.'
'Your gift could not reveal it?'
'Not this time,' Kansatsu said. 'When it comes to you I have no second sight.' He waited a moment. 'Senjin is gone, then.'
Nicholas was startled. 'You knew his name?'
'I knew him, Nicholas. He was once one of my students. That was how I knew the extent of the danger he presented, and I was afraid. But then you came to me here for the first time, trudging up the Hodaka, craning your neck for a sight of your nemesis, the Black Gendarme, and I knew there was hope.'
'If you knew Senjin was so dangerous,' Nicholas said, 'why did you train him?'
'I didn't, in fact, train him.' Kansatsu's eyes were hooded, unreadable. 'I use the word "student" purely for convenience. Senjin came here to test me, just as he had tested my brother, Kyoki, before me. I had foreseen Kyoki's death, and consequently knew how I must act with this dorokusai.
'At the time he appeared here he was already far more powerful than I. His mind had conceived of another discipline, which he called Kshira, the language of the sound-light continuum - far more advanced than Tau-tau.'
Kansatsu shrugged. 'I did what I could. I humoured him. This was as much as I could manage with him: I withheld my knowledge of the future and my antipathy towards him. This was why, years later after he had made you Shiro Ninja, he murdered Kyoki and not me. Kyoki had made the mistake of threatening Senjin. Senjin did not consider me an enemy; he did not believe that I would help you even if you knew where to find me. On the contrary, I caused him to believe that he was learning from me during his stay here.'
Something in the incense-laden room stirred, hovered
at Nicholas's shoulder, making him uneasy. He shook his head. 'You knew Senjin would one day murder your brother yet you did nothing to stop him?'
'Untrue,' Kansatsu said. 'On the contrary, I did what I could. I created you.'
'Me? How is it I could stop Senjin and you couldn't?'
'Because, my dear Nicholas, you are the One. The last male connected with So-Peng. You are the guardian of the tanjian emeralds.'
'So it's true, then?'
Kansatsu nodded. 'As true as anything can be.'
'I want to talk to you about my grandfather,' Nicholas said. 'Was he the murderer, liar, cheat that Senjin believed him to be?'
'Is that at all important?'
'Yes,' Nicholas said. 'It is to me.'
Kansatsu sighed as he rose. 'Let us continue this discussion outside on the Hodaka.'
They went out, crossing a long, gently sloping shoulder of snow.
"The truth,' Kansatsu said. 'Down there,' pointing into the belly of civilization, 'there is no truth. But of course you have discovered that for yourself. Which is why you have made the journey up here.' As they walked, they left a trail behind them in the snow, a quiet melting that, in the utter silence, could perhaps be discerned. 'But let me warn you, Nicholas, that where one finds the truth, it is often dangerous. Often it is better to turn one's back, to walk away and never look back.'
'I want to know,' Nicholas said. 'I have to know.'
'Yes,' Kansatsu said slowly. 'Of course you do.' There was an odd note to his voice, as if he were reluctantly, sadly accepting the inevitable.
They crossed the snow shoulder, skirted a black, serpentine ridge of rock from which the snow had been
scoured by the constant winds. Below, a four-thousand-foot drop, interrupted only by saw-toothed outcroppings of rock. Above, the sheer, indomitable face of the Black Gendarme impinged upon the purple-blue sky.
Kansatsu stared into a middle distance, at a landscape only he could see, as he began. 'It is true that your great-grandmother, So-Peng's mother, fled Zhuji with the mystic emeralds of the tanjian elders. She took sixteen. They were her birthright, bequeathed to her from the moment she came squealing into the world.
'The tanjian, of course, had other emeralds. But they squandered their power, overtaxed kokoro with their ambition to put emissaries in other lands. There came a time, therefore, when they needed her emeralds back.
'Towards this end, they concocted a story, fed it to a young tanjian named Zhao Hsia. He was talented but, in this case, particularly impressionable. This was why the elders chose him. They dispatched him to Singapore to bring back the emeralds along with So-Peng who, they had heard, was a totally untrained tanjian.
'So-Peng's mother was warned and, fearing the worst, she told So-Peng as much as she dared of his heritage. So-Peng did the rest. He sought out Zhao Hsia. They fought. So-Peng prevailed. But at a high price. Before he died, Zhao Hsia told So-Peng that they were half-brothers. He had come from the same womb as had So-Peng.
'In the months afterwards, knowing that he and his mother would be watched, So-Peng gave over the care of the emeralds to Desaru, the man whose dog's life he had saved on the tiger hunt Tik Po Tak had taken him on. No one else knew of this man or of So-Peng's relationship with him.
'And, true to So-Peng's suspicions, the tanjian elders sent other emissaries to spy on him, to try to get the emeralds back. In this they were unsuccessful. But they
managed in their devious ways to murder all of So-Peng's daughters, those offspring whose sex would assure the continuation of the tanjian gift in his family. So-Peng did nothing; he was one man and the tanjian were many. But his blood-friend Tik Po Tak thought otherwise. He sought revenge against the tanjian spies, and was himself killed by them.
'Only when So-Peng's second wife had died, when he had vowed not to take another wife, when they were assured that he would never have a daughter, did the tanjian spies withdraw back to Zhuji in China.
'But So-Peng was a wily fox, and he fooled them all. He discovered a young orphan girl, recognized in her the tanjian gift. He took her in, nurtured her, taught her, loved her more than he had ever loved his own daughters.
"This girl was your mother Cheong. And, through her, So-Peng ensured the continuation of his lineage.'
'Then everything that Senjin believed was fake.'
'Yes.'
If you die now, if you die too easily, you will never understand. But it was Senjin who never understood, Nicholas thought. 'His hatred, his blood-feud with me was for nothing.'
Kansatsu stopped at the edge of a ridge. His eyes opened wide, and the light, hitting the irises, gave them an iridescent cast, 'Oh no. It wasn't for nothing, Nicholas. It brought you to me.' Kansatsu smiled, and Nicholas felt again the peculiar stirring at his shoulder, as if another presence were with them. 'And not only you: the tanjian emeralds as well.'
'What do you mean?' And still Nicholas did not want to believe it. But at last he looked fully at the presence at his shoulder: the dangerous truth.
'The emeralds in your possession are all that are left/ Kansatsu said. 'Whoever holds them, holds Eternity in his hand.'
Nicholas thought again of Umi's warning to him before he had left for New York. The dorokusai is close. Closer than you can believe or can imagine. One must focus on the power of the mind. And of illusion.
Nicholas took a pace backwards.
'That will do you no good,' Kansatsu said.
'You used Senjin to get to me; then you used me to kill him. He was the only other one who had a chance of getting the emeralds from me.'
'I told you that the only truth was here, and that it was dangerous.'
'You weren't always like this,' Nicholas said. 'Manipulating people, lives, murdering through proxy. I thought you were incorruptible.'
'Corruption is an odd thing,' Kansatsu said. 'It seems an impossibility until that one moment when it becomes irresistible. Then you tell yourself that it is nothing but giving in to temptation.'
'My God, you make it sound like a decision to have an extra-marital affair!'
'Well, that is an accurate analogy, don't you think?' Kansatsu said. 'I've strayed from the path of Akshara. But consider the reward. Now I will have everything!'
'No,' Nicholas raised his fist. 'As you've said, you've made your decision. And it is to have nothing.'
Nicholas opened his hand. In it lay nine emeralds.
'No!'
It was more than a shout, more even than a scream. In that one syllable was contained the shift in tides that had turned white to black, light into darkness, the righteous into the corrupted, the Way into the snare.
And the snare became the pit.
A humming in the air, a spark and crackle as if of a wood fire or heat lightning.
The emeralds in Nicholas's palm stirred, came to life. They were the nine: the mystic configuration venerated,
worshipped by the tanjian since the dawn of time.
The emeralds formed a pattern, complex, three-dimensional. The configuration rose, whirling, into the air of the Hodaka and, with headlong speed, rushed at Kansatsu.
They struck him so hard in the face, that his features disappeared. For an instant, Nicholas could see their glowing facets like a potent constellation of-stars embedded in his flesh.
Then the scent of burning flesh arose as if from a pagan pyre.
A scream, echoing through the vast snow-wrapped canyons of the Hodaka, as Kansatsu was blown backwards as if from the percussion of a cannon. Flung off the ridge of snowy rock, out into the swirling winds, a black mote in the blue, blue sky.
Dwindling into nothingness.
Nicholas, his heart hammering painfully in his chest, took in huge draughts of air. The terrible fear was still with him: the fear of confronting his mentor, in a very real sense, his father, if only in a spiritual sense; the fear of confronting centuries of arcane power, deceit and illusion; of having in his possession the means of destroying that power.
He was, indeed, the One. The guardian of the tanjian emeralds. He had fulfilled his destiny.
'Now it's over,' Nicholas said softly. There was no one there, yet he knew he was speaking directly to his grandfather.
Then he turned, went silently down off the Hodaka. And never looked back at the looming Black Gendarme, inimical, indifferent.
It was just a slab of rock now.
Autumn refused to come to Washington. The leaves on the cherry and plane trees, so lush in mid-summer, hung
limp and unmoving in the stiffing heat. The Potomac seemed gelid, smooth beneath the blanket of oppressive October humidity.
Cotton Branding's Ascra bill had passed both houses by an overwhelming majority, and there was bipartisan agreement that, should the Hive Project pass stringent tests, it would be installed as the one governmental computer system as early as two years hence.
Branding's popularity spread from coast to coast, and he was making the most of his increased air time. He had been on Meet the Press and Face the Nation. CNN had run an in-depth piece on him, and he had done exceptionally well on Firing Line.
He and Shisei were married in a public ceremony in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The venue itself caused a kind of feverish speculation. What was the senior senator from New York doing getting married in the nation's capital unless there was a political motive?
The media coverage was unprecedented, gaining, the lead spot on every TV news-magazine show. Gaily striped tents were filled with laughing people, pop music and the sound of popping champagne corks. Forbes and Fortune fought over rights to an exclusive interview with Branding. Newsweek put Branding and Shisei on its cover with the headline, 'The Golden Couple'. People ran a cover picture of them kissing at the end of the wedding ceremony. The copy asked the question, "The New Administration?' That same week, Time's cover dubbed them 'The New Global Royalty'.
Shisei had applied for citizenship and, a month later, had taken the oath along with a dozen other immigrants from various nations. The ceremony, which also garnered extensive media coverage, moved her more than she could have imagined.
By October, too, it was clear that Branding had an overwhelming mandate from his party. It seemed
likely that after the presidential elections in two years, he would be the one presiding over the installation of the Hive computer from the Oval Office.
That afternoon - a Sunday when Branding and Shisei were finally alone - they had just finished making love. It had been a long and languorous day, the heat from outside seeping into their bare skin as they twined and slept and twined again.
Shisei rose at last, her bladder full, and padded into the bathroom. Beyond, through the open door, was the room they had converted into her study. As she finished, she passed by the open door, saw the red light flashing on her computer. A message was being sent via the modem. Curious, Shisei went to the computer, punched the code to bring up the message on the screen as it was being transmitted.
She sat down hard on a chair, an icy hand squeezing her insides. For there, blossoming on the screen was the unmistakable serpentine architecture of the mantis virus. But this was a new version, faster, with added elements that carried the information in a stream, curling on the crests of a series of waves.
In a moment, the last line of the transmission appeared on the screen, blinking over and over.
MANTIS PERFECTED. IMPLEMENT IMMEDIATELY.
Shisei cleared the screen.
But the new mantis was already stored in her computer as if it were a deadly substance or a genie, sh'pped into a glass phial, waiting, patient as a god, to be let out.
Having returned to Japan. Nicholas Linnear - the Ninja -
is tormented by the past and certain of only one thing: he doesn':
want to kill again. Once the ultimate master ot love and death, he
is now shiro ninja - white ninja - no longer able to summon the
disciplines and powers that enabled him to live a life ot honour an:
truth amidst greed and corruption.
Stalked by doubts and fears - and by an enemy with unheard-of
mystical powers - a torrent of death is suddenly unleashed, dragging
Nicholas downward towards his own nemesis. Only by discovering
the secret of a new, higher power - a power he believed to be myth
but now knows to be real - can Nicholas restore himself. Only then
can the White Ninja find The Way again.
ROBERT LUDLUM
Also by Eric Van Lustbader in paperback from Grafton Books:
THE NINJA   SIRENS
BLACK HEART  THE MIKO   JIAN   SHAN 
ZERO   FRENCH KISS