Svaha, page 13
Lisa didn't say anything. She closed her eyes while he replaced the bandage over the new poultice. Turning around, she sat up, pulling up her sleeve so that he could replace the one on her arm. But before he could begin, she laid a hand on his arm.
"Can you teach me that stuff?" she asked. "You know, the path with heart and the quahey-whatever?"
"Why would you want to learn?"
She shrugged. "I dunno." But then she smiled. "No, that's not true. It…it's got meaning, I guess. That's the best way of putting it. And I'd like to be a part of that. Things don't mean a whole lot in the squats, and I don't want to be one of that people that doesn't care about…the Beauty."
He held her gaze for a long moment, then glanced towards the doorway where Bozo was sitting.
"A tribe of three," he said softly to the coyote.
"Say what?" she asked.
His gaze returned to her. "I would be honoured to teach you what I can," he said.
3
The opening at the Ojika Gallery was in honour of a new showing of Kimitake Mitsui's work. His three-dimensional art celebrated a return to the old asobi style of work—sculptural puzzles, visual puns, and geometric paradoxes of the Fukuda School that took its inspiration from the twentieth-century Kamikitazawa master, Shigeo Fukuda. They ranged from sculptures no larger than one's hand—such as "Elemental," which when viewed from one side showed a woman rising from a crouched position, but when turned one hundred and eighty degrees, became a clenched fist—to an entire room of red and white tiles that proved, only when one slowly ascended the stairs on the side of the room to the second level and looked down, to be an illustration from the Kojiki, showing Urashima rescuing the Dragon King's daughter while she is still in the shape of a tortoise.
Yip's favorite was a small black and white statue of the trickster Tanuki. Viewed one way it was a black badger, from another angle it became a white teakettle such as the one that, according to the old folktale, Tanuki was capable of transforming himself into. The price was merely five thousand credits.
"Are you enjoying yourself?" Hirose asked.
Yip thought, rubbing elbows with the Megaplex's Nipponjin elite, viewing such masterpieces of art, on his arm the most beautiful woman in the room—was there any question?
"Very much," he replied. "This is all marvelous."
"We should meet the artist," Hirose said. "He considers his work a part of a twofold Zen process. It is a transmission not dependent on words or phrases as much as a direct transmission from mind to mind. He says you should not rely on what is written about art; you should take your vision directly from the mind of the artist into your own mind. Do not interpret—sympathize. The vision that can be explained in words is banal."
"And yet you use words to explain the process of appreciation," Yip said with a smile.
Hirose replied with an eloquent shrug.
Yip nodded. "Domo."
"Have you see enough?" Hirose asked.
"Can one ever see enough of such work?"
"I thought perhaps you might be hungry—or did you eat before we met?"
Yip shook his head.
"If you would like, I have the makings of a simple dinner at my home. Shumai and noodles. Fresh octopus…"
"Fresh?"
"Goro has it sent in," Hirose said, then she hesitated, obviously uncomfortable.
"Fumiko," Yip began.
"My friends call me Miko."
"Hai. Miko. I am trying hard to follow your advice, but when I look at what you are and what I am, and consider us together, my ability to keep faith falters…."
The spectre of Shigehero Goro lay between them. Yip glanced at the nearest of Mitsui's statues and thought, the same object viewed from different perspectives…were people really any different? Hirose caught his glance.
"Dozo," she said, "Please. Let tonight belong to us."
He met her gaze for a long moment, then inclined his head slightly. "I would be honoured to have dinner at your home," he said.
* * *
It was after the meal, while they lay together still entangled in each other's arms on the round bed in Hirose's apato, that the spectre of Goro rose between them again. It was Hirose who spoke of him, breaking her earlier request of Yip. She ran a delicate finger along his chest, then sat up, breasts bare as the sheets fell away. She drew her legs up to her chest and faced Yip.
"Goro told me to nurture a relationship with you," she said.
Yip sat up slowly. He began to reach for her, then let his hand fall to the futon. "Why?" he asked softly.
She shrugged. "He believes you will be of some use to him. Not today perhaps, or next week, but at some time. Shigehero Goro is a man who looks far into the future."
"Do you…do this often?"
Yip kept the regret from his voice, but he couldn't stop the tightening in his chest. It had been too good to be true, as common sense had told him. Lies in a grey world.
"No," she said softly.
"Why have you told me this? Why now?"
Her smile was sad. "I didn't lie to you, Phillip. I do like you. I would have spoken of this sooner, but I was being selfish. I wanted one evening with you—uncluttered by Goro's presence, by your work, or my work. And now, with that evening behind us, I find I like you better still, and would have no more lies between us."
Yip regarded her steadily. Was this yet another facet she was presenting, another role to be played out? Pretending she sympathized with him, admitting to the orders that Goro had given her merely to draw him deeper into her snare?
"What you are telling me," he said. "It makes trust difficult."
"I know. I will understand if you leave now."
Again he thought of Mitsui's art—the clever sculptures that changed depending on the viewer's perspective. Looking at her now as she faced him, he saw a beautiful woman, untouched by blemishes. But he remembered when she first disrobed, the silky cloth falling from her skin to pool on the floor about her feet, and there on her back, from the nape of her neck to just above the swell of her buttocks, was the ornate rococo design of a yakuza-styled tattoo. A red and green Chinese dragon swam through a gleaming blue ocean, its menacing head drawn back on her right shoulder blade, spitting red and golden flames across to her left.
Depending from which side one viewed her, she was a woman, more beautiful than most, but still much the same as any other he might meet in the Megaplex, or she was a yakuza Dragon Lady, geisha-trained and potentially deadly.
"If I asked you to stand by me against Goro," he asked, "what would be your reply?"
Surprise touched her features. Her eyes darkened as she thought, but her gaze never left his.
"I…I don't know," she said finally.
"Hai," Yip said. "That, at least, is an honest reply."
The question was plain in her eyes, but he merely drew her toward him. As they lay down on the futon once more, his hand moved over her breasts, then down the flat expanse of her stomach to cup the soft triangle of her pubic hair. From this position, he could no longer see the yakuza-styled tattoo.
"If I leave, Miko," he breathed softly into her ear, "it will only be because you have sent me away."
She covered his hand with her own. "Then you will have to wait a very long time," she whispered.
After that, they had no more breath for words, no more interest in Shigehero Goro or yakuza. Only in each other.
TEN
1
The Ragman was holding court in the part of the squats Market that lay closest to the badlands. This was where the junkwalkers sold their salvaged goods, everything from machine parts and scrap metal to computer components and electrical gear in various stages of disrepair. Most of the latter, a Plex tech wouldn't even consider looking at, much less using, but in the hands of a squats tech wizard like the Ragman, the most worthless-looking bits of wiring and outmoded chips were the heart and soul of the amazing computer wares that he jury-rigged in his workshop.
He sat beside a wheelbarrow already half-filled with newly acquired gear, haggling with the junkwalkers, while his strongarm stood behind him, arms folded across his enormous chest. J.D.'s presence kept the junkwalkers honest.
"This is crap," the Ragman was telling Jaenie Lash. He tossed the tangled nests of wiring back at her. "It's all corroded, darling, worn right through in parts. Can't you do any better?"
"It's the best you're gonna find, Ragman. You been out in the badlands lately?"
Jaenie was a small compact woman dressed in baggy overalls, scuffed boots, and a worn synth leather jacket a size too big. She kept her hair dyed orange and cropped short, top and sides, letting it hang down in a long braid in back. She carried her gear in a pack that had to weigh seventy pounds, but she could lift it without any strain. At either hip was a sheathed foot-long knife.
"If I was walking the badlands, darling," the Ragman asked her, "then why would I be looking at this crap you're dragging around?"
"I'm just telling ya—times are hard."
And didn't he know that? the Ragman thought to himself. He took in the gaunt look of her and sighed.
"Times are always hard," he said. He picked up the wiring again. "Aw, shit. I'll give you a half-dozen credits for the lot—just find me something sweet next time."
The gratitude in her eyes embarrassed him.
"Thanks, Ragman. I—"
He laid a finger across her lips. "You owe me first crack at your next big find, darling—then we're square. Okay?"
"You got it."
The Ragman counted out the credits and handed them over, giving Jaenie a wink and a grin as she left, then he turned to the next junkwalker.
"Hey, Eddie. Whatcha got for me today?"
* * *
By the time he was finished with his business, the day was fading. With J.D. pushing the wheelbarrow, the Ragman returned to his workshop behind the Ch'ing-jen Fan. There he found one of the Co-Op's undercover toms waiting for him.
Sun Hang was a wiry teenager, half china, half who-knew-what. He wore his black hair in an approximation of the Ragman's dreadlock Mohawk, but it was too fine to knot in the same snakelike braids, falling in a wave to one side of his head unless he tied it back. Like a lot of the chinas, his jacket had an ornate design embroidered on its back in bright dayglo thread. His had the Chinese ideographs for ni deh—fuck you.
"You got some news for us, Jack?" the Ragman asked as he settled in behind his desk.
Sun Hang glanced back at J.D., then took the padded crate in front of the desk and drew it up closer. "Nothing on Donnybrook or the swagger girl he was strongarming, but I heard that three yaks got themselves lost looking for Lisa Bone. They were leaning heavy on the chinas, and then Goro pulled in a couple to question himself, and they ain't been back on the streets yet, tung ma?"
"Yeah. All too well." The Ragman frowned. "You got to run them down, Jack. The girl's name is Maki Ota. Goro gets his hands on either her or Donnybrook, and we're looking at some real grief."
"Shih-ti," Sun Hang said with a quick nod.
"So whatcha waiting for?"
Sun Hang jumped to his feet. "I'm gone," he said.
Kowtowing with great exaggeration, a mocking grin on his lips, he slipped out of the room. The last thing the Ragman saw before the door closed behind the departing tom were the ideographs emblazoned on the boy's jacket.
"Yeah, fuck you, too," the Ragman said, a grin tugging at his own lips. But then he frowned again. "What do you think, J.D.?" he asked. "Is Goro gonna send some of his clowns to see us? I'm trying to keep business as usual, but sooner or later he's gonna come looking for the Ragman to find what he lost. He's gonna know, like everybody knows, that if it's tech, it could end up here."
"I an' I's gonna eat dem yaks, dey come in here," J.D. told him.
"I'm wondering if we might not be smarter to find ourselves a little hidey-hole," the Ragman said.
He was just thinking aloud, a habit he'd gotten into when he was alone with his strongarm. Not that J.D. understood half of what he heard. The radiation had seen to that. Nobody knew how long he'd been out frying in the badlands before the Ragman picked him up, but what he lacked in brains, he more than made up for in brawn and loyalty, and the Ragman liked to feel as though he was talking to someone.
"Thing is, we go into hiding and then nobody's gonna be able to find us—not our own people, not Lisa and Donnybrook. I don't know..." But then he had it. "J.D. I want you to run down Jaenie—tell her I need someone to run me a message.
It was simple. He'd hole up and leave Jaenie to watch the place from outside. If the right person came along, she'd show them to where he was waiting. If it was yaks, she'd just do a quick disappearing act herself.
"Who's gonna eat dem yaks if I an' I's gone?"
The Ragman blinked, then he lifted a Steeljack from under his desk and thumbed off the safety. “Me and 'jack, J.D. Get a move on now."
The big man moved quick and soft for all his bulk. He was out the door and halfway across the bar beyond it before the door swung shut behind him. The Ragman scratched a cheek and stared at the door, willing Lisa and Donnybrook to step through it. Three yaks gone, huh? Maybe Donnybrook had taken them out, but maybe they had him and Lisa up against the wall somewhere.
In the pit of his stomach, the Ragman had a bad feeling about how things were going and it just wouldn't go away. He kept the muzzle of the Steeljack pointed at the door, and then leaned his head on the desk, propped up by his free arm.
Interesting times, he thought, remembering the old Chinese curse. Nothing ever seemed simple anymore. Maybe things only got simple when you were dead. That being the case, he was happy to keep on living in interesting times. At least it meant he was still alive.
2
In an interrogation room hidden in the back of one of the Goro Clan's warehouses, Shigehero Goro stepped back from the body hanging on the wall. There was blood on the blade of his razor-sharp aikutchi—the small hiltless dagger that he liked to use for such work. The woman hanging by wires that were strung to meat hooks embedded in the walls had died under that blade, just as the other china had done before her. Both of them had told him whatever they knew, but it wasn't enough.
He already knew that the triads were interested in the missing Claver chip. That the tongs were using their own men and hired chinas to search the squats, the same as his own kobun were. That the Co-Op's toms were everywhere, also looking. What he wanted was some hard facts.
Goro plucked a shirt from the heap of clothes that they'd stripped from the chinas and used it to clean the aikutchi. He dropped the bloodied cloth on the floor and sheathed the blade.
He was not yet prepared to launch a full frontal attack upon either the triads or the tongs. There was no profit in such a war. But there were other avenues of inquiry that he could still pursue.
"Torogano," he said softly.
"Hai."
A grey-clad yak stepped smartly forward from the line of six kobun who had watched their oyabun question the prisoners. His silver contacts gleamed in the bright lights of the interrogation room.
Goro regarded him with pleasure. Torogano carried a Steeljack in a shoulder holster, but he also carried a wakizashi—the shorter of the paired swords known collectively as daisho. Goro allowed his men to carry whatever weapons they felt comfortable with, but in his heart he was still a traditional yakuza, and a true yakuza lived by his sword.
"Bring me the one who calls himself the Ragman," Goro said.
"Hai."
Torogano signaled to one of the other yaks, who gave Goro a quick nod then left with Torogano. Goro thrust his sheathed aikutchi into his belt. He glanced back at the two dead chinas.
"Dump them," he said to his remaining kobun. "Ugokuna zo!" Get a move on it.
Ignoring them as they went about their business, he unrolled a straw mat on the far side of the room and sat down upon it to meditate.
ELEVEN
1
Lisa sat on a folded blanket, hands on her knees, knees drawn up to her chin. The firelight gleamed on her striped messenger's tattoos and her eyes were bright with interest. On the other side of the small fire, sitting cross-legged on one of the dead yaks' overcoats, Gahzee was talking. The thin tendrils of smoke given off by the fire were drawn out the door into the dusk where acid rain was hissing on the pavement. Bozo lay a few yards away from them, inside the building, head pillowed on his crossed paws, blue eye watching Lisa, brown eye watching Gahzee.
"Everything fits onto a Wheel," Gahzee was explaining.
"You mean, like everything repeats itself? History rolling in cycles?"
"Not exactly, although there is a Wheel of history. But to the People, the opposite of present is not past, but absent."
"So you guys don't get into what's already gone down, or worry about what's coming up? Sounds like living in the squats. We just try to make it through the day."
"It's not that the past has lost its importance, nor that the future should be ignored," Gahzee said. "Nor is it that the present is so difficult that one has no time to expend on anything but survival. It is that what is here and now is most important, because we are here and now. Everything else is absent."
This was getting spacey, Lisa thought. Now. Here. Put 'em together and you get nowhere. Kinda like Zen. You only hit satori when you weren't looking for it.
"Tell me about the Wheels," she said.
He drew a circle in the dirt, with a cross inside it. "I will show you the Wheel that explains the Twenty Count," he said. "They are the numerical tones that make up Kitche Manitou—the Great Mystery.
"Grandfather Sun rises here in the east—" he wrote the number one where the right arm of the cross touched the rim of the circle, "—giving the world its basic illumination as he moves west to marry Grandmother Earth." Now he wrote the number two where the left side of the cross met the circle. "She is the intuitive go-within power. They make love in the west and move together."
