Svaha, page 14
He wrote the number three where the bottom of the cross touched the circle. "Their first born are the plants that live here in the south. Their song is 'give it away and know you are a part of everything,' and so they give us food and oxygen. The second born are the animals in the north—" he wrote the number four where the top of the cross met the circle, "—who realize resonance with all that is. They are happy to be themselves.
"Third born are all sacred humans, and they live here, in the center." He wrote the number five at the joining of the cross's two lines, then looked up at her. "And those are the first five Counts of the Great Mystery."
"Why do you say sacred humans?" Lisa asked.
"Sky Woman," Gahzee began, then he smiled. "Mother Earth is also known as Grandmother Moon—Nokomis, the Sky Woman."
"She's a grandmother and a mother?"
"Is that so odd? When the mother's child has a child, what does the mother become?"
"Okay. You were talking about sacred humans."
"Sky Woman created the People to Walk the path with heart. We are here to bless the land and its children with our care. We speak with drum voices and sacred smoke to the manitou and weave a harmony between the Wheels that are and the Wheels of the Otherworld where the manitou dwell. When the People Walk the path with heart, they are fulfilling their sacred duty."
It all made a certain amount of sense, though Lisa couldn't help but think that these sacred people hadn't been doing such a shit-hot job, or else why was the world the armpit it was? But she didn't speak that thought.
"What are the other Counts?" she asked instead.
Gahzee wrote a six between the one and three, placing it southeast on the Wheel. "This is the place of our ancestors." Seven in the southwest portion. "This is the place of sacred dreams." Eight in the northwest. "Here is where the records of all that has passed are kept—what some call karma, others the Book of Life." Nine in the northeast. "This is the place that balances the male and female sides of each of us—a place of movement." Above the five in the center of the Wheel, he wrote the number ten. "And this is the place of sacred intellect."
He looked up at her again. "Are you with me still?"
"Yeah. I guess."
"It takes time to understand the relationships between the various parts of any Wheel. Let me finish this one and we will explore them."
"Sure," Lisa said. How does he remember all this stuff? she wondered. She was finding it confusing, but at the same time it spoke to something in her.
"The eleventh Count is placed here, beside the first. It is the place of the enlightenment of the collective unconscious. Its placement relates to Grandfather Sun, who provides basic illumination. Beside the second, here in the west, is the twelfth—the collective memory of all humans, which is also the first movement of life."
"Because the moon remembers for them?" Lisa asked.
Gahzee nodded. "Because Mother Earth never forgets. The thirteenth Count is the spiritual essence of all plants and its place is here in the south, where the plants dwell. This is the second movement of life, known as White Buffalo Woman. The fourteenth Count is the third movement of life, and it lives with the animals in the north. Its name is Sweet Medicine, but it is also called 'Death is an Ally.' The fifteenth Count is that of the universal mind, and it dwells in the center with the sacred humans and intellect."
"What do you mean by 'Death is an Ally?'" Lisa wanted to know.
"One should not fear death, but think of it as a friend."
Lisa's face clouded. Think of it as a friend? What about when it took your friends away?
"Easy to say," she said.
"Not with true intent," Gahzee replied.
"I suppose."
"Let me give you the final Counts. Each tribe has its own names for them, but I will teach you those that the Twisted Hairs use."
"Twisted Hairs?"
"They are a council of elders, of medé—shaman—who belong to all tribes and no tribe. Their name comes from their method of teaching—a braiding of knowledges from all the tribes.
"The sixteenth Count is placed here in the southeast. They are the Achaloda-hey—the sacred avatars who represent the last movement of life. Next are the Kachina-hey, the dream teachers, who dwell here in the southwest. In the northwest are the Chulamahda-hey, the magic teachers, who hold the Book of Life in trust. In the northeast are the Hokkshideh-hey, the enlightened ones—what you might call the great Buddhas. And here in the center, is the twentieth Count—Wakantanka, whom my people name Kitche Manitou."
"What does the 'hey' mean in those names?" Lisa asked.
"It comes from the Lakota word heyoka, which means manitou or spirit. The Iroquois use orenda. Many words with one meaning."
Lisa looked down at the finished Wheel that he'd drawn in the dirt.
"This last one—Wakantanka," she said, pointing to the number twenty. "Isn't that what all the Counts are supposed to be—just parts of the Great Spirit?"
Gahzee nodded. "Collectively, the Twenty Count is the Great Spirit, but it still has a place on the Wheel. You see its placement? It shares the center with the sacred humans, intellect and the universal mind—again, all parts of the same thing."
"It's confusing."
"Then let me show you a simpler Wheel—one that compares man's studies with the Wheel of nature." He made another circle in the dirt. "In the center we have a catalyst that compares to man's math and language. North, we have wind and science. East, we have fire and media communication—writing and art. South, we have water and music. West, we have earth and magic."
"Magic? You guys believe in magic?"
"Magic works by will, focus, and intent. If you truly wish something, and can focus on it to the exclusion of all else and concentrate on attaining it, then it will come to you. So, yes, I believe in magic, though it is but a convenient term for something far more complex than what you appear to perceive. When I take you into the Dreamtime, you will understand better."
He smiled, then went on. "Everything fits on a Wheel, just as everything one does is a Walk. The trick is to understand which Wheel you are on and use that knowledge to continue to Walk the path with heart. It can be as simple or as complex as you wish it to be."
Lisa rubbed at her eyes. "I think I'm hitting overload," she said.
Gahzee nodded. "We have talked enough of this for one day. It's time we prepared to visit this Ragman of yours.
"Okay. Just let me copy down these Wheels."
She took out the com-link that Gahzee had returned to her and switched it to its internal memory mode that could hold a limited amount of data—enough for notes and the like. Outside, the rain had let up again.
Gahzee rose smoothly to his feet. "Do that—but don't work too hard at remembering. The Wheel of the Twenty Count lies in your subconscious now. As we move on to further lessons, it will rise to the fore of your thoughts when needed, and you will understand it and its relationship to every other Wheel you find yourself on."
"Where are you going?" Lisa asked.
"I wish to look over the terrain from the roof."
"Yeah," Lisa said as she bent back over her com-link. "Take a good long look for some more yaks. We don't need their grief."
2
Was it to be this simple, doing the work of a Twisted Hair? Gahzee wondered as he made his way to the roof. He was still young and the Twisted Hairs were all so old, but the lesson he was teaching Lisa was no different from the lessons he himself had learned. Perhaps this was how one began the Walk to become an elder. You took the Walk of a teacher and accepted the responsibility of guiding another into the mysteries.
Simple and complex, he thought. All at once.
The Twisted Hairs taught that any human could learn the Walk and understand the Wheels. The reason that the knowledge wasn't passed on to those who weren't born of the People, before the People had withdrawn into their Enclaves, was simply because few of them had ever professed an interest before. Unless it was to study the quaint customs of a primitive people. Unless it was to catalogue and list every nuance of a Walk, and store it away in some book or museum where it became merely a dry shell of what it once had been.
Those who weren't of the People always seemed to find it easier to take than to give.
Could that change?
A tribe of three.
A squat rat learning her Walk. What would be her totem? Would she even have one? A coyote with mismatched eyes, partly tame, it seemed, and all trickster. And a scout of the People that the Kachina-hey were leading on to a new Walk.
They seemed as mismatched as Nanabozho's eyes.
On the rooftop, Gahzee looked across the dull smudge of the sky. He missed his home with a sudden ache so sharp that his breath caught in his throat. Never to see the blue again. Grandfather Sun hidden from sight. Nokomis and her stars, gone as well. No more the clean rain that the animiki brought.
He forced air into his lungs, let it out in a long slow sigh. This is my Walk now, he told himself. Make do.
Reaching up, he pressed the control of the biochip com-link implant behind his left ear, sending out a signal that was bounced off an Enclave satellite, back to Kwarthas. A moment later, the response came—a tinny voice that resonated against the bone of his skull and was relayed through his ear to his brain's auditory center so that he could understand it.
"We are receiving, animkwan." Distorted as the voice was, Gahzee still recognized it.
"Hey, Manitouwaub," he said aloud, so that the implant could pick up his voice from its resonance in his own ear and pass it along on its signal beam. Speaking quickly in the language of the People, he passed on the information he had gotten from Lisa and how he meant to recover the stolen chip from the downed flyer.
"Proceed as you see best," came the reply. "And be careful, brother."
Gahzee wanted to ask his mentor about the visions he had seen in the Dreamtime, about the Kachina-hey advising him to become a Twisted Hair, and his teaching Lisa a Walk, but there was no time. The transmission had to be brief or else the Megaplex's security might get a fix on him. He reached up and touched the implant's control once more and his head filled with silence.
He stood for a long time staring out over the abandoned city, then finally went back down where he put on the yak gear over his own, and started up one of the Usaijin scooters. Lisa sat behind him, arms wrapped around his waist and giving him directions as he pointed the machine toward the squats outside of the Trenton Megaplex. He kept their pace slow to let Nanabozho keep up with them, but all too soon the lights of the Plex still seemed to grow bright and tall before them.
3
Yip couldn't sleep. He lay awake long after their lovemaking, listening to Miko's quiet breathing beside him, watching the play of the shadows in an unfamiliar room, the sounds of an unfamiliar apato all about him. After a while he slipped quietly from the bed. Naked, his bare feet cool on Miko's hardwood floor, he ran through the Thirteen Postures of his T'ai Chi Ch'uan.
He breathed slowly and evenly, allowing his ch'i—his breath—to sink calmly through his body and permeate his bones, while his shen—his spirit—was gathered internally. His movements were slow; his entire body grew light and agile. Now his i—his mind—and his ch'i were king, his bones and muscles the court. The deliberate motion of his body as it moved gracefully across the hardwood floor was a picture of contained power, harnessed in beauty.
When he was done, he sank slowly to the floor, buttocks on the hard wood, legs assuming a half-lotus while his thoughts floated with a sense of peace through the once-tangled corridors of his mind. When he finally opened his eyes, it was to find Miko sitting up on the futon, regarding him.
"Now I know what I saw in you when you first entered my office," she said. She touched a closed fist to her chest. "It was your ki shining out at me." She used the Nipponjin term for ch'i which, while it meant breath, could also mean energy.
"Domo."
She smiled. "When I was younger, I studied Taoism, for I was curious about the fact that Tao cannot be defined. It cannot be conveyed by either words or silence. When I watched you just now, I saw that same mystery shine, not just from your eyes, but your whole body."
"My father was disappointed that I chose T'ai Chi over his own Kung Fu," Yip said. "He thought it not manly enough, though it utilizes many of the same movements."
"And your mother?"
"She was pleased."
"Because she was soft?"
Yip shook his head, seeing the trap that she was laying for him by the gleam in her eyes. "Because she understood that one who studies T'ai Chi also studies Kung Fu, though the reverse is not necessarily true. Defense/attack…yin/yang. They are but parts of the Yung Ch'uan—the bubbling well inside us from which our energy springs. To be complete, a man needs inner peace as well as outer strength."
"I knew I should have introduced you to Mitsui earlier this evening—you speak the same language."
Thinking of Mitsui's sculptures, Yip nodded. There were two halves to every whole—a simple concept that appeared over and over in Mitsui's art, but also in life itself. Like the two sides of Huan Som—one his friend, the other a betrayer….
Miko rose from the futon and slipped into a dark green kimono. "O sake-wa?" she asked.
"Dozo."
He took a quick shower while she fetched the rice wine. Afterwards, he joined her where she sat on a cushion by the window overlooking the inner Megaplex streets. They sipped sake and shared a long silence that Miko finally broke.
"You spoke not a word when you saw my tattoo," she said. "Why was that?"
Yip shrugged. "It was not important."
"Most men can speak of nothing else—a woman with a yakuza tattoo. It's a seven-week wonder for them. Now I will tell you what I never told them. I was born into a yakuza family, you see, to a father who wanted only the son that my mother never gave him. So he trained me in that absent son's place. Long hours in the dojo, and then when I turned fifteen, I received the tattoo."
"Do you still practice your father's craft?"
"Every day."
"You seem very much the lady for all your warrior's training."
"Hai. But that came later. My father died and I added to my study of weapons with a study of law, but the yakuza knew of me, and Shigehero Goro decided he had use for a woman yakuza who was also a lawyer. I had no choice but to do as he bid me."
Yip wanted to know why, but he waited for her to tell him rather than ask.
"He threatened my mother—such a simple thing really. He could have threatened me, but it would not have mattered. My father saw to that. I could be as stoic as any of the oyabun's yaks. But with my mother in danger…" She shrugged eloquently. "So at Goro's bidding, I embarked upon a third career—that of the geisha."
Yip filled their small clay glasses with more sake.
"But now…" Miko sighed. "You wanted to know if I would stand with you against Goro if you asked me to."
"The question is no longer important."
"To me it is. My mother is five years dead now, yet still I do Goro's bidding. Where is my father's stoic warrior? Where the lawyer I became on my own, the lawyer with her cunning and strength? I ask myself tonight, why do I still do Goro's bidding, and I realize that it is because I have learned to be afraid for myself now. That is what he has done to me, and for that I can never forgive him."
"Sa," Yip said softly. "Being afraid is nothing to be ashamed of. We are all afraid of one thing or another."
"Do you fear Goro?"
"Hai."
"Yet still you would stand against him."
"Hai."
"Then I will answer your question so: I will borrow of your strength and stand against him with you—but only when you ask me to. Until then, I will do his bidding, for I cannot stand against him on my own."
Yip reached across the small table between them and cupped her chin. Drawing her face towards him, he kissed her gently.
"I would never ask you to stand alone against him," he said.
Miko smiled and rose from her cushion. Letting her kimono fall to the floor, she walked back toward the bedroom. For a long moment Yip stared at the tattoo on her back, then he finished his sake and followed the dragon to where its mistress would take him.
TWELVE
1
The Ragman was always careful about who he killed. So when he heard footsteps in the hall outside his workshop, he aimed his Steeljack at the doorway, but waited as the door opened until he could see the metallic gleam of the yak's contact lenses, the flat grey of his kevlar overcoat, and the black Steeljack in his hand, before he fired.
The fléchette hit the yak between those silver contacts and blew out the back of his head, but the Ragman wasn't watching. He knew he'd hit whatever he'd aimed at. He was already on the move, shifting to a new position, getting ready for the next yak to be coming through the door with his augmented reflexes jacked up to full power.
Instead there was only silence.
C'mon, girls, the Ragman thought. Don't insult me. You gotta have sent more than one little kobun to take in the Ragman.
He crouched in the corner of his workshop under a table laden with wiring and dismantled computer guts, Steeljack steady in his hand, aimed at the doorway.
Nothing.
Why do I get such a bad feeling about this? he wondered as he crab-walked from under the table and slowly straightened to a standing position, gaze never leaving the door.
2
The minute Torogano died, Senjyaku Bannai's augmented reflexes took over. His first instinct was to move in and cut down Torogano's killer, but he wasn't being paid to take the initiative. Let others think for themselves. If they were successful, they reaped the reward. But if they failed, they dared the oyabun's wrath. Bannai liked having all of his fingers and preferred to do his gambling at the Flower Card tables.
