Los Angeles 2170, page 5
Twentieth Century California, the land of the endless summer.
It was not a good sign when the Lord of the University himself, Umizawa-sama, took over the call from Kumiko’s head teacher, Ize-sama. She had already reported the situation once: the request, the rejection on personal grounds, the attack.
“I have just finished speaking with Abe Ichiro,” Umizawa-sama intoned grandiosely. “According to him, you tried to kill the man, and wounded three of his bodyguards before you were driven off.”
“He offered me a contract to assassinate someone,” Kumiko fought to keep her voice calm and precise. “I rejected the offer. His men attempted to kill me, failed, and I escaped. They have my passport and handheld. I am currently forlorn.”
“Who is the person you killed, in order to steal the car and this handheld?” the Lord asked dryly.
“I have killed nobody today, Umizawa-sama,” Kumiko felt her voice grow thin with contained rage. “His name is Norville Grolsch, and he has just finished first aid on my arm, where Abe’s men shot me.”
She felt a pause, as though the man was writing the name down. It did not bode well.
“To be clear, you refused the contact offered by Abe-sama?” the Lord asked in a heavy voice.
“That is correct, Umizawa-sama,” Kumiko replied tersely. “The target was Rosamond Watanabe.”
“I am aware of that, child,” the man growled. “I had hoped you would complete the contract. Abe-sama has already paid. It will be necessary to send another in your place.”
Kumiko felt the ground shift beneath her feet.
Rosamond.
The woman who had taken a young girl and turned her into a dancer. Transformed her beyond mere human until she was the best of her kind. The greatest, living Shirabyōshi, as such things might be measured.
Rosamond who had become her one, true love, even if they had to force an entire season into the rare times Rosamond’s superiors would budget such a frightful expense as forty-eight hours with Kumiko.
The woman who had promised her possibly forever. Together.
“Why?” Kumiko finally managed to gasp.
Norville had been resting against the side of his vehicle watching. Now he was upright, as though he might need to catch her.
He might.
“You have grown too emotionally attached to a client, Kumiko,” the Lord of Kyoto Cultural University said. “That is unprofessional. If you cannot break that chain, then we must do it for you. It was for your own good.”
“I see,” Kumiko said, as though from a kilometer away, perhaps through the kind of good optics that the Swiss still made for rifles. “You are correct, Umizawa-sama. I have been too attached to people, and places. I should sever such connections as part of my growth.”
Something in her voice caught his ear.
“What are you saying?” he demanded hotly.
“If anything happens to Rosamond Watanabe, I will also be coming for you, Umizawa-sama.”
“Also?”
“First, I must have a conversation with Abe Ichiro,” she said in a cold, ugly tone.
“I am still not sure this is the wisest course of action,” Kumiko repeated.
She felt, rather than saw, Norville’s shrug. Too much of her attention was on the strange city around them as they drove.
The sign said Costa Mesa, so they were still in the region known as Orange County, but the neighborhood was terminally run down with age and poverty. She had lost count of the number of buildings that were at risk of falling in on themselves, or tumbling into a neighbor like a run of dominos.
“You don’t know how to find this guy, right?” Norville replied.
“That is correct,” she said succinctly.
“So let them find us,” he continued. “Your old bosses have probably already given you up, from what you said. It’s just a good thing that my car’s too old and cheap to have a good auto-driver built in. Had one, twenty years ago, but it was broke when I bought it. They can’t track us this way.”
“But allowing you to use yourself as bait is unethical on my part,” she tried a new tack.
“Do I get to help you stick it to the man?” he asked.
It took Kumiko a moment to parse the vernacular. It was such an American idiom that had no cultural equivalent in Japanese.
“Hai,” she finally agreed. “Indeed, I must stick it to the man. Several men.”
“There you go,” he said. “And here we are.”
The vehicle turned into a parking lot, a vast expanse of space dedicated to parking cars, just so people could walk to a thin row of stores around the outer edge of three sides, facing in. That peculiar American invention known as a strip mall.
Generica, to use the insulting term for such a place.
The sun was fully down, but this city, like most, kept unlikely-long hours, as jobs were no longer an office thing, unless you worked and lived in one of the grand Arcologies that the corporations maintained. People needed to provide services at any and all hours.
Norville parked the car and opened his door. Kumiko joined him, conscious of how overdressed she was in her black slacks and blazer, and ruined, sky-blue, silk shirt.
The weight of the pistol in a pocket reminded her why this was necessary. Eighteen bullets remained.
Only in America would there be a store like this, she thought as they entered. Cast-offs donated to a charity and resold to fund job training and make investors rich.
A more mature civilization would simply provide for those in need, but those without power had been neutralized by those with, and could no longer rise up with pitchforks and guillotines to fix imbalances in things.
Kumiko paused, surprised at the thoughts, so alien to her teaching. The university was all about the common good. The extended family. Wa, or harmony. She ground her teeth.
This same family had proscribed Rosamond’s death for having the audacity to say No to these men.
She would find it necessary to say No, as well.
Kumiko followed Norville deeper into the huge space, filled with racks of apparently used clothes, among other things.
“Would you work better with tight clothes, or loose?” he asked, drawing her into an aisle that was hundreds of things on hangars.
She thought about the needs of the dance, and that bastard Thai kickboxer with the smug face.
“Looser,” she decided. “Flexible enough to move.”
He pointed.
“Pants on this side,” he said. “Tops over a row. Plus, we’ll need to get you a hat.”
She shopped carefully cognizant of the amount of cash in his pockets and intent on using as little as she could. He had credit as well, but they needed to save that for later.
In the end, she settled for a pair of blue jeans in the ancient style, comfortable and stretchy, loose enough in the waist and hips, rather tight through the thigh and calves.
Most women, apparently, were not built with muscles.
She chose a long-sleeve, knit t-shirt, heavy enough to be warm, as Norville had warned her that it would grow chilly once the sun was fully down and the ocean winds came ashore. It was darker than the pants, and would hide her will in the many shadowed places that existed when lights were too expensive to maintain, even the cheap ones that would last for decades.
Rich people needed poor people to feel superior.
A floppy hat in maroon completed the ensemble, making her look like enough like a local to be invisible amidst the sea of Japanese-American faces, families that had been in this country since the nineteenth century in places.
She emerged from the changing room to find Norville waiting.
“How do I look?” she asked, somewhat timid at the bizarre situation she found herself in.
“Sixteen,” he said. “I know you’re older, but seriously, you almost look like you could be my niece, if I had any.”
She took that at face value. The goal was invisibility, until she needed to appear. This would help.
They paid. He paid and she thanked him for doing this thing.
Outside, he waited outside the car while she quickly changed into the new clothes. Many men had seen her nude. Frequently, entry into an Arcology like Pojar required that she bring nothing inside, not even a scrunchy for her hair, so she would strip for inspection before donning clothes provided inside.
She had no modesty about the task, save that she might now have a single blemish when the wound healed. A darker line as a scar.
Hopefully, she would not have many more before this task was complete.
Norville entered the vehicle and smiled.
“Let’s do this,” she said.
He nodded and began to drive.
It was time to bait the trap.
They had not returned to Norville stack. That would be too obvious. Instead, he had picked out a thing that did not exist in Japanese culture, at least not save when they had aped the Americans at one point.
It was a roadside motel. Another bizarre invention, like the strip mall. A single story building, horseshoe shaped, with an office at the near corner, and small suites that could be rented nightly by travelers driving vast distances in personal vehicles.
America had never grasped hold of bullet trains, at least until it was too late to afford them. In Japan, as in Europe, one did not drive cross-country. You might fly, if speed was of the essence, or take a train.
Americans were simply unique historically. Sometimes, for the better. Sometimes, merely idiosyncratically.
But rooms were cheap. Questions were not asked. They had a bed, a bathroom, and an entertainment unit.
There was enough of a neighborhood surviving in these slums for a few diners and a coffee shop, plus a Hmong market and an insurance agency.
And people.
This would only work if there were enough locals moving around that nobody stood out.
She and Norville ended up at the coffee shop. The diner was too well-lit inside, with big walls of glass, that someone outside might see them. The coffee shop was one of the global chains, known for a roast so dark it mimicked asphalt, and so impersonal and American that Abe and his men would never set foot inside.
Norville had used his handheld to pay for the room. They debated whether or not to leave it over there, unsure how well it could be tracked. In the end, he set the Do Not Disturb function and closed it up in the bathroom at the very back of the tiny suite.
Closed curtains and lights on would suggest to someone outside that the room was occupied, as would the television they had left on.
Kumiko did not expect anything from Abe except taunts and threats anyway. Better to just let his thugs work in silence.
“What happens if they don’t show up?” Norville asked over a cup of exotic syrups and caffeine.
“Abe loses tremendous face,” Kumiko replied.
“Face?”
“Honor, standing, power,” she tried a different tack. “He must be feared. That does not happen if I escape him. People will begin to wonder if he had lost his dominance. Others might begin to challenge him.”
“Got it,” Norville acknowledged. “Over the hill.”
“Something like that, yes.”
Kumiko considered the thing this chain called tea. It did involve leaves of a tea plant, infused in boiling water. And had about as much relation to tea as a child’s drawing stuck on a refrigerator had to the Louvre. Still, it had heat, fluid, and caffeine. That was perhaps as well as she could expect.
Kumiko wasn’t sure she would be going home.
Yesterday, home had been her family at Kyoto Cultural University. Guardians of the long and rich history of Japan itself, stretching back to the Sun Goddess. Purveyors of knowledge and art.
Before they decided that she should kill the woman she loved.
Home might become bad tea in American chain restaurants.
Ronin beckoned.
Samurai who had failed their Lord, allowing him to be killed. Traditionally, bushido required that such failure be paid by seppuku. Ritual suicide done to regain honor.
But one of the greatest stories in Japanese history revolved around forty-seven men who refused. Who spent years as laughingstocks, drunks in the gutter, harmless and broken men.
Until their enemy let his guard down one night, and forty-seven men snuck in and killed him. In the morning, they fulfilled their duty to their lost lord, taking their own lives ritually.
In spitting in the face of honor, those men had transcended it and become legend.
Kumiko would not tread that path.
Rosamond had promised that she might be young and powerful for many decades. Possibly, Kumiko might live for centuries, if Rosamond’s theories and programming had worked.
She might become Eve, for the changed were genetic. They could be passed on.
Kumiko wondered if Rosamond had created an enhanced male as a counterpart.
She would not throw her life away for Kyoto, and Umizawa.
Not even if she had to destroy them both to protect Rosamond Watanabe from their claws.
“You okay?” Norville asked in a low voice.
“I am, perhaps, finally angry, Norville,” she replied in as calm a voice as she could manage.
“Is there anything I can do?” he continued.
“No,” Kumiko reiterated. “With luck, I will not need your skills tonight. I may need your knowledge of America, tomorrow.”
“Not going home?”
“My heart lies in Seattle, Norville,” Kumiko said. “When we are finished with Abe, I must find a way to protect her from these same men.”
“Sounds like a road trip,” he smiled.
“I cannot ask that of you,” Kumiko grimaced.
“Helping people,” he glared at her seriously. “Plus, I know people. Folks like me, trying to get by outside the corporate world. We probably won’t get rich, but we won’t starve, not with the skills we have.”
“Criminals, Norville?”
“Everything is a crime,” he retorted. “Unless it makes the corporate overlords rich. The other ninety percent of the world has to eat, too.”
“A paramedic and a dancer?”
“I’m sorry,” he got quietly serious. “A dancer who took out three cybernetically-chipped killers and escaped with nothing more than a scratch? There is more to you than dance.”
“No, Norville,” she decided. “There is more to dance than just entertainment. I have killed. Not many people, as I am a very expensive dancer, but enough.”
“Yeah, I know a few calls we could make, if you’re serious.”
“Let us survive this night,” Kumiko observed.
“Time’s up,” Norville replied, nodding past her at the hotel across the quiet street.
Two vehicles had pulled into the parking lot: a gray sedan and a stretched limousine that rode low from the weight of the armor plating. Kumiko was familiar with the model, having ridden in them many times. Small revolutions might not threaten the inhabitants.
The two vehicles went clear to the inner end of the lot, and turned around, the sedan still leading, if the group needed to make a sudden escape from law enforcement.
If the police even came into these neighborhoods anymore.
She rose quickly, leaving the faux-tea behind.
On impulse, she leaned down and kissed Norville on the cheek.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
And then she moved.
Out the door, across the parking lot, into the shadows of an abandoned warehouse, where she could watch.
Five men exited the vehicles: three from the sedan, leaving on the driver; two from the limo, including her friend in the red tie. He had changed now, into tactical gear with a pistol on his hip. The others had a variety of weapons, mostly sub-machineguns, but one carried what looked like a shotgun.
Kumiko picked a moment when all were assembled in a huddle, getting final orders. She raced across the empty street faster than a cheetah and found a spot across from the office.
She had her stolen pistol in hand, but those men looked like they might be wearing armor of some sort. Not full armor, like soldiers, but probably vests with plates. Enough to save them if she shot one in the chest, even at close range.
Red Tie was supervising the others, but it was obvious he wanted the kill himself. Kumiko watched him move to stand close to the door and gesture the man with the shotgun closer. The other three lined up and checked their weapons before nodding.
Red Tie gave the signal.
Shotgun aimed at the frame of the door at chest level and fired. Door-breaching charge aimed at the chain.
He cycled the pump and lowered the weapon, shattering the lock with a second shot before he stepped back.
The three others rushed the door, bashing it in and entering the motel room in a rush, Red Tie at their heels.
Kumiko tucked the pistol into her belt and ran.
The man with the shotgun was facing away from her, so she simply hammered him in the kidneys and skull as she reached him, taking possession of the shotgun from suddenly-nerveless hands.
Door breeching charges from a twelve gauge are explosive loads designed almost as a shaped charge. Impact on a surface and focus a blast through it.
Kumiko let momentum spin her fully around and took aim at the limousine. She put a shot into the left rear tire, crossed the rear of the vehicle, and shot the right rear tire. Modern tires were designed to survive nails and occasional bullets. The armor was wrapped around the engine and the passengers.
Both tires were utterly destroyed in the blink of an eye.
Kumiko dropped the shotgun and drew the pistol. She wasn’t sure how many rounds the long gun had left. A pump might be as few as the four she had fired, or up to six with the tube on the front.
Not time to ask.
A man stood at the door. One of the gunmen, not Red Tie.
Kumiko shot him in the leg as he started to fire at her, his bullets slamming into the side of the limousine as she took cover. She dared someone inside the armor to make the mistake of opening her access.
