Svaha, page 5
With Goro, you were either for him, or you were dead. And she didn't think Yip to be the kind of man to forsake his duty, no matter what the threat. In that sense, he and Goro were very much alike, except that Goro's sense of duty wasn't remotely as altruistic as Yip's. Goro's duty was to himself. All else bowed to his will. Sooner or later.
Either that, or it was broken.
2
The collar of Huan Som's tailored bodysuit seemed too tight just now. He sat on the edge of the plush chair and plucked nervously at his jacket while the owner of Ho Anzen Securities and his own section head studied him. The three of them sat in Tomiji Takahata's penthouse in the Tonda District, an opulent apato that would take a lifetime of Huan's salary merely to purchase, let alone furnish.
Takahata sat at his ease across from Huan, a drink in one hand, half his attention on the porn vid playing in one corner. His kimono, a translucent blue, Huan could only dream of owning. Natural silk, natural dyes. Beside Takahata, Huan's section head looked as out of place in his plain grey bodysuit as Huan felt. But Kimitake Aoki showed no sign of discomfort. He sipped his saki, lean features unreadable.
"And why have you come to us with this information?" Takahata said suddenly.
"P-pardon?"
"What do you want?" Aoki translated.
"Why, nothing, Takahata-san. My loyalty is first to you—to the company. What Phillip does is wrong."
"Hai," Takahata said. "Well, we thank you for your concern, Som. You can go now."
Aoki waited until Huan had fumbled his way out of the penthouse by way of the elevator before laughing.
"You see humour in this?" Takahata asked.
Aoki shrugged. "That one has the soul of a neijin," he replied. A toad-eater. A flunky.
"Hai. And to think we must give their kind employment."
The Equal Employment Act ensured that no citizen could be denied work, so long as he was qualified and had compatible shares with the company where he sought employment.
"It will change," Aoki said. "Mata. Everything does."
"But not always for the better. Imagine Shigehero Goro in control of the Megaplex." Takahata sighed and returned his gaze to the vid. "What do you think of his story?" he added absently.
"It bears looking into. But Yip's a good worker—solid, loyal."
"A company man?"
"A man dedicated to his job."
Takahata looked away from the vid. "That's not necessarily the same thing, neh?"
"Domo. But a man who would turn in his own partner—how can he be trusted?"
"You think he plays a subtler game? Could he have taken the information to Goro himself and is merely sacrificing his partner to keep himself safe? Or has he fabricated the entire thing?"
"Areya-koreya." One thing or another. "It bears investigation. But either way, Huan Som must go. A man who will break one loyalty will break others."
"I don't like the idea of him taking Ho Anzen material with him when he goes. Kokusai would leap at the chance to take our place the next time the franchise comes up for review."
"There are other ways to remove an employee," Aoki said.
Takahata smiled. "See to it, Kimitake."
Aoki remained until Takahata's geisha for that evening arrived. Politely declining his employer's offer to make it a threesome, he found himself a public com-link on the way home. After assuring himself that he had a secure line, he put a call in to Shigehero Goro, his other employer.
FOUR
1
With the coming of dawn, and the memory of the Dreamtime still moving inside him, Gahzee saw the wastes of the Outer Lands through new eyes. He had come to them from Kawarthas Enclave with loneliness weighing on his heart, seeing their ruined reaches through his new lack of a tribe, through what he had lost. His understanding of them had been coloured by his own past. Now he perceived them for what they were: not simply lands ruined by their present keepers, but also lands abandoned by the People.
If not for the People, all of Mother Earth would wear this shroud. And yet…was it proper that any part of her should? Was not the loss of even one small tract of land a cause for shame? Then what of these vast reaches?
"Hey, Nanabozho," he said to the coyote who lay near the dead embers of his campfire.
The coyote regarded him with one eye—the blue eye of the north quarter, the colour of peace.
"What medicines do the manitou maintain in this place?" Gahzee asked. "Do they remember the People?"
And if they did, of what did that memory consist? A good thing lost? Or an anger at their abandonment?
The coyote appeared to consider Gahzee's question. A questioning look rode his canine features, but suddenly he stood, both eyes open in the dull morning light, blue and brown, their gaze travelling past the medé. For a long moment he held that watchful pose, then he turned and vanished into the rubble.
Gahzee turned slowly, nape hairs prickling. Empty ruins lay spread out before him—the same unrelieved view as enclosed him on all sides. The shells of deserted buildings. The brown vegetation, bled dry of colour. The emptiness. But there was a sense of something else in the air as well. A shift of the wind. A change in the even tempo of the morning air. And then he saw what his new brother had sensed and acted upon. The coyote's genetic makeup kept his reflexes as fine-tuned as a taunt bowstring. He survived not so much by standing firm against the current, as flowing with it.
It was too late for Gahzee to follow his brother's example.
Animkwan, was he? Dog-scout for the People in the Outer Lands? The thin smile that touched his lips was self-deprecatory. A child still to earn his name would have been more careful.
The people of the Outer Lands had finally discovered his presence.
First one, then another shuffled from doorways that gaped like ragged maws in the fronts of the buildings. Without Enclave immunity boosters, the elements had ravaged their limbs and features. Their skin was pocked and peeling, with many red and open sores. Some had one leg shorter than the other. Others no legs. Those walked on their arms, weaving back and forth in a rolling forward motion like drunken apes. There was one with a third arm growing from his chest, the limb hanging flaccid against the blistered skin. Another with the shriveled remnant of a second head still dangling from its shoulder. Women with patchy bald spots in their dirty hair. Men with bleeding lips and eyes clouded to a milky white. All of them stick-thin, bellies swollen.
Gahzee counted a dozen as he bent and shucked into his jacket. His backpack had been ready for travel. He slung it on with an unwasted motion, judging the slow progress of their approach. If he moved quickly he might still be able to escape without a confrontation, but glancing about, he saw that they were approaching him from all sides.
Avoid those who still dwell in the Outer Lands, Manitouwaub had warned him. They listen to voices other than reason.
Now was the time to wish he'd argued longer at the Elder's ruling that no piece of Native technology should leave the Enclave except for the biochip com-link implanted behind his left ear. With just one laser rifle… He picked up his unfinished bow, holding it with a two-handed grip.
"Hey," he called softly, then added in their patois which he had studied before leaving the Enclave in preparation for his trip, "What people are you?" It was the closest he could come in their language to asking the first question one of the People asked upon meeting a stranger. Waenaesh k'dodaem? What is your totem?
They stopped at the sound of his voice, but made no reply. Perhaps, he thought, his accent was making his words indecipherable.
"Do you have a leader? A spokesman?" he tried, speaking slowly, carefully enunciating every word.
There was new movement in one of the doorways. Shuffling aside, they made way for a young man who walked like an old man. He had a crutch under his left shoulder, his left leg dangling loosely from the knee and dragging in the dust behind him as he came forward. Parts of his scalp hung from his head by tenuous strips of skin. His face was as pocked as mud baked in the sun, red sores set off by blue tattooing. His clear grey eyes were disconcerting, as much for their piercing clarity as for their incongruity in that horror face.
He stopped a half-dozen paces from the medé. The others continued their own hesitant approach.
"You are the spokesman of these people?" Gahzee asked.
He kept his features calm, but he watched for an opening—any opening—to make an escape.
Leaning on his crutch, the man grinned. All around, the others began to bob their heads. The man touched his chest with a closed fist. His shuffling companions pressed closer.
"I am a stranger," Gahzee said. "I did not mean to trespass in your lands."
The leader's eyes grew strange, darkness gathering in their clear depths. He thrust his face towards the medé.
"I'll eat your fuckin' heart!" he screamed suddenly.
Gahzee took a quick step back, raising his unfinished bow as a club. Before he could swing it, they were all over him, bearing him to the ground. The stink of their unwashed bodies clogged his nostrils. He shrank from the contact of their sores against his skin. He fought the press of their clawing hands, but there were simply too many of them.
They tore his pack from his back. They fought each other over its contents. Over the jacket they ripped free. Over the moccasins they pulled from his feet. They bound him with the straps of his own pack and left him lying in the dirt, bruised and choking on dust, while they continued to jabber and argue over his gear. Through their melee, their leader dragged himself closer until he stood over Gahzee. He leaned on his crutch, wheezing heavily.
"Didn't think you fuckers really existed," he said when he finally caught his breath. "But I seen the vids—I know what you Clavers look like. Out looking for blood, was you? Counting coup—that whatcha call it? Didn't think a bunch a' poor fucks like us'd be any problem, didja?"
"I came in—" Gahzee choked on the word "peace" as the man spat in his face.
"You came to fuck us over, Claver—plain and simple. But we gotcha now. You just think about what we're gonna do with you. We'll get us a big fire goin' an' roast you good. Get that healthy meat in us. It's gonna clear up a lot of pain. Medicine you call it—right? The shit that's in you that keeps you clean. Well, it's gonna medicine up a bunch a' poor fucks, Claver. You just think on that."
Gahzee fought the bonds that held him, but whatever else these people knew, they could tie a knot that held. He laid back in the dust to conserve his strength then, head turned to watch as the leader sent his shuffling people out to gather wood.
There is no death for the People, the Elders taught. Only a change of worlds.
Gahzee understood and believed that. He just hadn't expected it to come so soon.
2
It was like being a whole new person, Lisa thought, when she first admired the effect of the swagger girl gear in a mirror.
The white Kabuki-like mask effectively hid her striped messenger's tattoos, leaving only the sapphire blue of her eyes showing through the eyeslits. Built into the lower part of the mask was a miniature air filter and a speaker grid, which gave her voice a slightly mechanical rasp. The purity of the air bothered her at first—the antiseptic taste burning a little in her throat—but she soon got used to it.
The baggy red synthesized leather jacket effectively hid the bulge of the newly encoded Steeljack under her arm, while fitting snug at her waist. Tight black pants of the same material hugged her legs and butt, with the short metallic buzz-stick poking up out of a rear pocket. The yellow boots, steel-toed and flaring at the ankles, were the latest swash style, while the headdress of spiked black feathers added just the right finishing touch.
"I don't take orders real well," she told the Ragman when he tried to dissuade her from showing off the gear to Kaoru. "But don't worry. Donnybrook'll take real good care of me and we'll be hitting those china bars just as soon as Kay gets an eyeful. I promise."
It wasn't until she was out on the streets with Donnybrook in tow that she realized just how effective the get-up was. She'd see people she knew and they never looked twice at her—or if they did, it was just to sneer at the swagger girl, out slumming with a strongarm to keep the big bad rats at bay. But her initial pleasure wore off quickly as the hostile stares continued, block after block. She began to just feel weird behind the mask, breathing the purified air while everyone she passed was sucking back the squat stink.
She passed more than one old rat holed up in a doorway, wheezing for breath, skin getting splotchy and pocked. Too poor to afford vaccine tablets, they had to make do the best they could. It made her think twice about the toms' purported goal with their Jones Co-Op. A little bit of everything for everybody. It didn't seem quite so altruistic anymore. Not when you thought about it. It was more, why the hell hadn't something been done a long time ago, before things got this bad?
She had a tense moment when two yaks passed them on their black and chrome Usaijin scooters, but neither gave the pair of them more than a cursory glance.
"Why aren't you walking up here with me?" she asked Donnybrook when the yaks were gone, "instead of trailing along behind like some Plex drone playing bodyguard?"
"I just like to watch your ass in those leathers, babe."
"This gig's strictly business," she told him, but she was secretly pleased.
She gave a considering look over her shoulder, knowing that all he could see was her expressionless swagger girl mask, brows and lips painted, the rest a blank white. Another good thing about the mask, she thought. Nobody could read what went on behind it.
"Well, you know me," Donnybrook said as he fell into step beside her. "I always like to mix business with pleasure." Then he started to sing softly, "Out on the streets, up in her squat; Lisa Lizard, gets me hot. Nobody knows the pleasure I've known, when Lisa Lizard gives me the Bone."
He was wearing a tight brown bodysuit with a Kevlar vest overtop. Flexing the biceps of one brawny arm, he gave her a sideways glance and a broad wink, a big grin on his face. This time her mask hid a blush. Though he looked like a bodybuilder, Donnybrook was a frustrated vidjammer and was forever holding forth with some godawful verse. But bad though his songs were, he still hadn't given up on getting her back, and Lisa couldn't help liking it just a bit. Not that she'd ever let him know, though.
"Yuk, yuk," she said.
"Hey, you're the one that wanted me up here walking with you," Donnybrook said. "A real swagger girl'd have her strongarm either carrying her around on his shoulders, or tagging along behind—everybody knows that much, Lisa."
She shook her head. "Not Lisa—remember? It's Maki Ota now." And she had the ID and Combank card to prove it, though she hadn't tested either yet. But coming as they did from the Ragman, she wasn't worried. The man had connections.
"Maki Ota, come let's grope-a," Donnybrook said with a laugh.
"Gimme a break."
They continued their bantering up the street until they got close to Lisa and Kaoru's squat. Then both fell silent. The deserted warehouse appeared no different than it ever did, but Lisa still sensed some change in the air. Maybe coming back here hadn't been such a good idea.
"I hope Kay's all right," she murmured.
"I don't see any yaks," Donnybrook said. "They probably split as soon as they found out you weren't around."
"Yeah, but what if they—"
Donnybrook laid a finger against the painted lips of her mask. "You're always thinking too much. Let's just go find out—slow and easy."
The hairs at the nape of Lisa's neck prickled all the way across the street, but by the time they reached the front door and hadn't been challenged, her pulse was almost back to normal.
"Wait'll she sees this gear," Lisa said, leading the way up the stairs. "She's just gonna die."
And then they were standing in the doorway of her squat, looking down at Kaoru's corpse, and the words Lisa had spoken on the stairs came back to lie in her mouth like cold ashes. Donnybrook took one look at the body, then he was moving into the room, Steeljack in hand. He covered the room with a broad sweep of the weapon, checking every possible hiding place with practiced ease, before he turned back to Lisa.
She was kneeling on the floor beside Kaoru, cradling the dead girl's head in her arms. Behind her mask, her eyes swam with tears.
"Why…why did you stay…?" she said, her voice choking with grief.
Donnybrook crouched beside her. Reaching out, he closed Kaoru's eyes. "We've got to go," he said softly.
The masked face turned to him. "Why…did they do it?"
"We can't stay here, Lisa. If we don't get—"
He broke off, gaze swinging to the window where Lisa had made her escape. A sixth sense had his gun hand lifting, the Steeljack already spitting fléchettes before the yak was all the way in the window. The yak's augmented muscles brought him in with a blur of motion, but Donnybrook got lucky. His first two shots skidded off the kevlar overcoat. When the third was deflected as well, it went straight up the yak's chest and took off the side of his head. After the speed of his entrance, the yak's body seemed to fall in slow motion, collapsing on the floor with a dull wet thump.
Donnybrook grabbed Lisa's shoulder. "We're out of here," he said, trying to pull her to her feet.
Behind the mask, Lisa swallowed thickly. The brief moment of violence had barely registered. She resisted Donnybrook's grip with a strength that surprised the both of them.
"I'm not leaving her here."
"Lisa, we've got no time to—"
"I'm not!"
The blue eyes that glared at him from the mask's eyeslits were cold now, grief pushed back. Donnybrook started to protest, then sighed. He put away his Steeljack and hoisted the corpse in his arms.
