Svaha, page 9
Lisa squeezed off a round.
The yak stiffened above her. As he fell on top of her, the full weight of his suddenly limp body drove the remaining air from her lungs. She clawed at his weight, trying to shift his heavy corpse. There were going to be more of the bastards. But she wasn't going to let them do her in, lying here. She meant to face them on her feet, with her Steeljack in her hand.
The whine between her temples started to go around and around her head like a whirlpool. She managed to shift the yak's body enough so that she could wriggle free. But now there was a huge dark well opening up before her gaze. She was lying on her back, but felt as though she was falling up into that well. Gravity no longer holding her. The ground under her just spitting her up.
Hold on, she told herself. Just hold on….
The Steeljack fell from her hand again. Then the sky swallowed her with blackness.
4
There was no answer when Yip tried the door of his partner's apato. He stood in the hallway considering, then returned to the elevator and took it to the roof of the building. It was too late for Huan to be out in the bars, and since he had no current lover, there was only one place he would be at this time of night. For all his fashionable excesses, Huan was serious about meditating, as serious as Yip was for his own T'ai Chi Ch'uan.
Though Huan was a practicing Tendai Buddhist, when he wished to meditate, Yip knew he could invariably be found in the Shinto shrine on the top of his apato jutaku. Most buildings in the Megaplex, residences as well as businesses, had such shrines on their roofs.
The elevator let him out into a cubicle from which a door led to the rooftop proper. The stonework and metal girders were pocked and corroded from the acidic rains. The shrine itself was made of natural stone, centrally placed on the roof. It could be approached through two torii—god gates made of upright posts, one with a single crossbar, the other with a double. Gulls were roosting on them. They flew off from their perches at Yip's approach.
Huan sat on a stone outside the shrine, legs drawn up under him, eyes closed. He was dressed in a plain grey kimono, his feet bare. He didn't look up at Yip's approach.
Yip settled on his haunches in front of him. The memory of Huan's frost habit lay at the forefront of his thoughts.
"How long has it been?" he asked softly.
Huan's eyes opened slowly. His gaze settled on Yip, but for a long moment he held to his silence. When he finally spoke, it wasn't in reply to Yip's question.
"I don't understand," he said. "You're the one that betrayed Takahata, yet you receive the promotion."
"That didn't come from Takahata," Yip told him. "It came from Goro. How long have you been taking frost?"
"What does it matter?"
"It matters to me, neh? Let me help you, Huan."
"I betrayed you," Huan said. "That's the kind of partner I am. Do you still want to help me?"
"Betrayed me?"
"I went to Aoki and told him what you were doing. He took me to Takahata's penthouse."
Yip's eyes narrowed. They knew? He'd just had a meeting with them this evening to go over the Co-Op case file. There had been saki and polite conversation. Takahata had praised him again for dealing with the terrorist threat so quickly. Aoki had mentioned other of Yip's successes to the owner. Neither had betrayed any knowledge of his visit to Goro's lawyer. What game were they playing with him?
"So you're in Goro's pocket now, are you?" Huan went on. "Then perhaps we're not so different as I thought."
"A gift from Goro—hai," Yip said, "but it's a sword with two points. One that he'll impale himself on."
Huan shook his head. "You won't find it so easy to betray the yaks."
"I don't plan betrayal—I plan justice. This is my job, Huan."
Huan merely laughed. "That's what I always told myself. We justify everything to ourselves, Phillip. I tell myself that I take the frost because it makes me more alert and lets me do my job better. I take bribes because it lets me buy the frost. I do what I can to advance myself, a Thai in this Nipponjin company, even if it means betraying confidences. That is the true way of the world, Phillip. Not giri. Obligation is the burden hardest to bear, neh? Then why bear it, I ask myself? Do you think Takahata or any owner cares about giri except what is due to themselves?"
"And our friendship…?"
"You mean my professed love for you, don't you? The long-standing joke." Huan sighed. "That was partially true, once. It's difficult not to admire, and learn to love, a man so dedicated to his work as you. It was like having Kozo Goh as a partner—do you remember him?"
Yip gave a curt nod. Kozo Goh had been a hardboiled samurai detective on the vids when he was young. The series still ran in syndication in every Megaplex.
"But after a time a man grows tired of walking in Kozo Goh's shadow, neh?"
"If you'd spoken to me…"
"You'd have done what? Worked less hard to make me look better?"
"No, but—"
"But nothing. I don't blame you. It was my choice to play the part of your neijin—my shame. But then this opportunity arrived on my doorstep. How could I pass it up?"
"I can't believe—"
Huan's laughter cut him off. "What you are is naive, Phillip. You truly see the world in black and white and have yet to understand that everything is a weave of uniform grey." He lifted a fold of his kimono. "Like this, neh? We are all good and bad, weak and strong, mixed together—all except for you."
"That is the drug speaking in you."
Huan shook his head. "That is the truth speaking in me. Perhaps I need frost to function in my work, and wire to help me relax at home, but I still know the truth when I see it, Phillip. Unfortunately for you, you can't say the same. Because the truth is as elusive as what motivates each one of us, as grey as the world is. To a man who can see only the high contrasts of black and white, truth is something that he will always be blind to."
"If you truly believe that I—"
"Let me make you a wager, Phillip. I believe that our esteemed employer will get rid of me. I thought to further my position, but instead I have merely proven myself untrustworthy. I see that now. He will think, a man who betrays his partner, what else will he betray? But you—he knows you did what you did for altruistic reasons. A man such as you can be controlled. Easily manipulated. They have but to point you in the direction they wish you to take—in this case to rid them of the threat that the Co-Op presents to them. You are useful. This is a truth, neh?"
"What is your point?"
"If he kills me, you'll know I was right—that I speak the truth. If he doesn't, then I will turn my life around and follow your way."
"If you're so certain Takahata will have you killed," Yip said, "why do you remain here?"
Huan smiled wearily. "If I had anywhere to go but down into the squats, I would be long gone. But there is no place left to me, Phillip. Do we have a wager?"
"It's a fool's wager."
"Perhaps, but do we have one?"
"Hai."
"Then go."
Yip didn't move.
"What is it?" Huan asked. "Are you afraid I will throw myself from the roof simply to win our wager?"
"Those drugs…"
"Will make me do or say anything." Huan laughed. "You are innocent. Phillip. Please go."
Yip hesitated a moment longer, then rose smoothly to his feet. He looked down at the man he'd thought his friend, a man he'd thought he knew, and realized that there was more truth in Huan's accusations than he'd like to believe. If, after all these years, he didn't know Huan at all, of what else was he unaware?
"Ja mata," he said.
"Mata," Huan replied.
Yip walked away, through the torii where he disturbed the gulls once more, and across the roof. Stone rattled underfoot, then he was back inside the cubicle again. The door of the cubicle slid shut behind him as he stabbed the elevator's control board with a stiff finger.
Huan listened to the hum of the elevator as it took Yip away, then another faint sound caught his attention and he turned to look at the far side of the roof. A black shape slipped over its edge to glide soundlessly towards the shrine. An augmented yak in ninja black.
So soon, Huan thought.
A thousand regrets flooded his mind. Fear made his pulse drum so fast it was difficult to distinguish the spaces between the beats. It took all his will to close his eyes and try to meditate. Though he had lived a dishonourable life, he meant to die well. Perhaps his death would open Yip's eyes. Perhaps it would not be entirely meaningless. For no matter what he'd told Yip, Huan still loved him. It was his love for Yip that made his betrayal so foul. He almost welcomed the death Takahata had sent him.
He could feel the assassin's presence draw close until the black-clad figure was directly in front of him. He opened his eyes. A katana glinted in the yak's hand, the sword blade silver in the vague light cast from the sky.
Domo arigato, Takahata-san, Huan thought. You do this gaijin great honour.
Through the slits of his face scarf, the assassin's eyes glittered with the same silver fire as his katana blade. His gaze met Huan's, the metal contact lenses accentuating his dispassion.
"You win, Phillip," Huan said.
The soft-spoken words and Huan's immobility gave the yak a moment's pause. Then he stepped forward, blade descending in an arc.
"Korozu zo!" the assassin cried as his blade bit into Huan's neck.
Huan's head tumbled from his shoulders. He had a final view of his own body, blood fountaining from its headless neck, before the abyss swallowed him.
The assassin wiped his blade on the corpse's kimono, then withdrew from the rooftop the same way he'd come, his katana returned to its lacquered wooden sheath on his back, the nekade cat-claw grips on his hands giving him purchase on the weather-roughened stone sides of the building.
SEVEN
1
Gahzee woke with the lightening sky that passed for dawn in the Outer Lands.
"Hey, Waubun," he said to the dawn, standing at the open door to look out at the empty street. "I miss Mishomis's clean light."
Turning from the depressing sight, he made himself a gruel of oats and dried fruit, then broke camp quickly. With his gear loaded on his bike, he pedaled off through the deserted ruins in the direction where he'd seen the flashes of light the previous night. He made good time here. This close to the Megaplex, the scavengers had been at work for years salvaging the metal hulks of the abandoned vehicles that had choked so many of the streets earlier in his journey.
A klick or so from where he'd spent the night—it was difficult judging distances in these street canyons between the buildings—the coyote rejoined him. Nanabozho was carrying a dead rabbit and when Gahzee brought his bike to a halt, the coyote laid it at his feet.
"My brother is a good hunter," Gahzee said.
He reached out to pet the coyote, but Nanabozho backed quickly away. Gahzee shrugged. He made quick work of dressing the kill, then hung the carcass from his handlebars and started off again.
Not much later, when he went to make a turn down one street to skirt a pile of rubble from a collapsed wall, the coyote yipped sharply to get his attention. Gahzee paused, then circled around the rubble on its far side where the coyote was waiting for him. He let Nanabozho take the lead. By following the coyote he was brought to the source of last night's mysterious light flashes.
He had stepped onto a Stalker's Wheel as soon as he'd woken that morning, so that when Nanabozho suddenly froze, Gahzee brought his bike to a quiet halt. Every sense alert, he leaned the bike against a wall and crept forward to crouch beside the coyote. From that vantage point, he could see a three-wheeled scooter that he recognized as one of the principal means of private transportation in the Megaplexes.
His moccasined feet were absolutely soundless as he moved to a new position. From this one he could see the first body. It lay near the doorway of a building, flies gathered like a black mask on the dried blood that lay thick on its face and torso.
Crossing the street, he crept closer. The bulk of the building in front of which the corpse lay was now between him and the body. He rounded the corner cautiously. Gliding alongside the building, he paused a half-dozen paces from the corpse and listened. Nothing. Except for the buzz of the insects, the day was still.
He waited a full two minutes, then completed the distance between himself and the corpse. Without pausing, he slipped into the building, hugging the inner wall, and moved a few quick paces along its length before pausing to listen again. Still nothing. Nothing alive at any rate.
There were more bodies inside, all clustered around the doorway. Two more men and the smaller shape of a woman, who appeared to be wearing warpaint. From his studies of the Megaplexes and their surrounding squats, he realized that what she wore was more permanent than warpaint—striped messenger's tattoos. There was another three-wheeled scooter inside the building.
What do we have here? he thought as he moved closer to the bodies. A falling out? An attack of one party upon another? Reading the signs, he settled on the latter. The woman and largest man had been set upon by the two wearing kevlar overcoats.
He picked up an auto-pistol and studied it for a moment. Safety-coded with smart circuitry. No use to him. The others would be the same. Setting it aside, he rolled over the nearest man. Tugging off the overcoat, he stripped the corpse to its waist. When he saw the tattoos covering the entire back and upper arms, he realized that the two attackers were yakuza. That made it easier to choose sides to sympathize with. There was a great deal of information on the criminal yakuza in the Enclave library files.
Going from that corpse to the woman's, he reached out to touch the tattoos on her cheek. It was when his fingertips touched her skin that he realized with a shock that she was still alive. A quick study of her body showed that she was bruised, but otherwise unhurt.
He sat back on his heels and considered for a long moment. Did he wish to get involved? Closing his eyes, he could hear his teacher Manitouwaub giving a lesson as though the old medé were standing beside him, rather than a hundred or more klicks away.
To stalk well, one must be able to heal well. To dream well, one must be capable of true complete awareness when awake. As a medé we have no choice. Either one always heeds the medicine, or one never does. We are never parts of a Wheel—we are the whole Wheel.
So there was no choice. Simply being here, he was already involved.
He left the woman where she lay for the moment while he dragged the corpses outside and out of the way into the next building. After a few moments of playing with the scooter's various controls, he started the machine up and brought it inside the building, parking it beside its mate. He gathered all the weapons and the woman's com-link, and hid them behind some rubble. Then he fetched his own bike.
He started a small, almost smokeless fire on one side of the building, where what little smoke there was could escape through a window, and set to boiling water. Thrusting a stick through the rabbit, he started its roasting, then went back to the woman, stepping onto a Healer's Wheel.
He unrolled his bedroll and carefully carried her to it. Stripping her, he brought the boiling water from the fire and used it to heat poultices and make pastes from the various healing powders he carried in his pack. He rubbed the paste onto her bruises—the worst were on the small of her back, her right arm, and around her neck—covered them with the crushed leaves of Joe Pye weeds, then wrapped the wounds with strips of cloth soaked in a solution of herbs and dogbane.
When he was done he covered her with a blanket and went back to the fire. Nanabozho came into the building and settled near the woman. Gahzee turned the spitted rabbit, this time collecting its juices in a small metal bowl to which he added more herbs along with dried vegetables and mushrooms to make a thin broth. He set both the broth and half the rabbit beside the fire to keep them warm and returned to the woman's side. Squatting on his haunches, he chewed on rabbit meat and waited for her to wake.
2
Utter dislocation greeted Lisa when she first opened her eyes. Someone was pounding on a steel drum inside her head. She had flares of pain in her back and right arm when she tried to move. Her throat felt thick, as though someone had stuffed it with rags. Then her vision came into focus and she was sure she'd dreamed herself into an action vid as the helpless captive of a Claver.
Because that's what he was, she realized, this man with his coppery skin sitting on his haunches beside her.
He had a flat, open face that was almost round, twin black braids, the hair greasier near the scalp, hanging on either side of it. His jacket and trousers looked like genuine leather, the shirt real cotton. He had a beaded belt, more beadwork on the jacket, a leather bag hanging from the belt, leather moccasins. He was as big as a squats strongarm, but another kind of power hung about him—something she couldn't put her finger on, but it wasn't just physical.
His eyes were a deep, dark brown—liquid pools that sucked her in as she met their gaze. When he smiled down at her, his entire face became animated, but it was the humour in his eyes that tugged an answering smile from her. Never mind the pain. Never mind that she was only dreaming and that he'd captured her.
She started to sit up, winced at the sudden pain in her lower back, and then realized that she was naked under the blanket.
"You must take care not to attempt any quick movements," the Claver said. His accent was funny. He spoke patois, but it came out sounding formal—like a Plex baby new to slumming in the squats.
"Are you…for real?" she asked.
He nodded and then that smile returned to his features, but this time Lisa didn't give one back. Her head was throbbing again. And she was starting to remember. The yaks. Donnybrook turning in the doorway, his face shot off…
"Oh shit…" she began, tears welling in her eyes. First Kay, and now Donnybrook.
"The man in the vest—he was your companion?"
The yak stiffened above her. As he fell on top of her, the full weight of his suddenly limp body drove the remaining air from her lungs. She clawed at his weight, trying to shift his heavy corpse. There were going to be more of the bastards. But she wasn't going to let them do her in, lying here. She meant to face them on her feet, with her Steeljack in her hand.
The whine between her temples started to go around and around her head like a whirlpool. She managed to shift the yak's body enough so that she could wriggle free. But now there was a huge dark well opening up before her gaze. She was lying on her back, but felt as though she was falling up into that well. Gravity no longer holding her. The ground under her just spitting her up.
Hold on, she told herself. Just hold on….
The Steeljack fell from her hand again. Then the sky swallowed her with blackness.
4
There was no answer when Yip tried the door of his partner's apato. He stood in the hallway considering, then returned to the elevator and took it to the roof of the building. It was too late for Huan to be out in the bars, and since he had no current lover, there was only one place he would be at this time of night. For all his fashionable excesses, Huan was serious about meditating, as serious as Yip was for his own T'ai Chi Ch'uan.
Though Huan was a practicing Tendai Buddhist, when he wished to meditate, Yip knew he could invariably be found in the Shinto shrine on the top of his apato jutaku. Most buildings in the Megaplex, residences as well as businesses, had such shrines on their roofs.
The elevator let him out into a cubicle from which a door led to the rooftop proper. The stonework and metal girders were pocked and corroded from the acidic rains. The shrine itself was made of natural stone, centrally placed on the roof. It could be approached through two torii—god gates made of upright posts, one with a single crossbar, the other with a double. Gulls were roosting on them. They flew off from their perches at Yip's approach.
Huan sat on a stone outside the shrine, legs drawn up under him, eyes closed. He was dressed in a plain grey kimono, his feet bare. He didn't look up at Yip's approach.
Yip settled on his haunches in front of him. The memory of Huan's frost habit lay at the forefront of his thoughts.
"How long has it been?" he asked softly.
Huan's eyes opened slowly. His gaze settled on Yip, but for a long moment he held to his silence. When he finally spoke, it wasn't in reply to Yip's question.
"I don't understand," he said. "You're the one that betrayed Takahata, yet you receive the promotion."
"That didn't come from Takahata," Yip told him. "It came from Goro. How long have you been taking frost?"
"What does it matter?"
"It matters to me, neh? Let me help you, Huan."
"I betrayed you," Huan said. "That's the kind of partner I am. Do you still want to help me?"
"Betrayed me?"
"I went to Aoki and told him what you were doing. He took me to Takahata's penthouse."
Yip's eyes narrowed. They knew? He'd just had a meeting with them this evening to go over the Co-Op case file. There had been saki and polite conversation. Takahata had praised him again for dealing with the terrorist threat so quickly. Aoki had mentioned other of Yip's successes to the owner. Neither had betrayed any knowledge of his visit to Goro's lawyer. What game were they playing with him?
"So you're in Goro's pocket now, are you?" Huan went on. "Then perhaps we're not so different as I thought."
"A gift from Goro—hai," Yip said, "but it's a sword with two points. One that he'll impale himself on."
Huan shook his head. "You won't find it so easy to betray the yaks."
"I don't plan betrayal—I plan justice. This is my job, Huan."
Huan merely laughed. "That's what I always told myself. We justify everything to ourselves, Phillip. I tell myself that I take the frost because it makes me more alert and lets me do my job better. I take bribes because it lets me buy the frost. I do what I can to advance myself, a Thai in this Nipponjin company, even if it means betraying confidences. That is the true way of the world, Phillip. Not giri. Obligation is the burden hardest to bear, neh? Then why bear it, I ask myself? Do you think Takahata or any owner cares about giri except what is due to themselves?"
"And our friendship…?"
"You mean my professed love for you, don't you? The long-standing joke." Huan sighed. "That was partially true, once. It's difficult not to admire, and learn to love, a man so dedicated to his work as you. It was like having Kozo Goh as a partner—do you remember him?"
Yip gave a curt nod. Kozo Goh had been a hardboiled samurai detective on the vids when he was young. The series still ran in syndication in every Megaplex.
"But after a time a man grows tired of walking in Kozo Goh's shadow, neh?"
"If you'd spoken to me…"
"You'd have done what? Worked less hard to make me look better?"
"No, but—"
"But nothing. I don't blame you. It was my choice to play the part of your neijin—my shame. But then this opportunity arrived on my doorstep. How could I pass it up?"
"I can't believe—"
Huan's laughter cut him off. "What you are is naive, Phillip. You truly see the world in black and white and have yet to understand that everything is a weave of uniform grey." He lifted a fold of his kimono. "Like this, neh? We are all good and bad, weak and strong, mixed together—all except for you."
"That is the drug speaking in you."
Huan shook his head. "That is the truth speaking in me. Perhaps I need frost to function in my work, and wire to help me relax at home, but I still know the truth when I see it, Phillip. Unfortunately for you, you can't say the same. Because the truth is as elusive as what motivates each one of us, as grey as the world is. To a man who can see only the high contrasts of black and white, truth is something that he will always be blind to."
"If you truly believe that I—"
"Let me make you a wager, Phillip. I believe that our esteemed employer will get rid of me. I thought to further my position, but instead I have merely proven myself untrustworthy. I see that now. He will think, a man who betrays his partner, what else will he betray? But you—he knows you did what you did for altruistic reasons. A man such as you can be controlled. Easily manipulated. They have but to point you in the direction they wish you to take—in this case to rid them of the threat that the Co-Op presents to them. You are useful. This is a truth, neh?"
"What is your point?"
"If he kills me, you'll know I was right—that I speak the truth. If he doesn't, then I will turn my life around and follow your way."
"If you're so certain Takahata will have you killed," Yip said, "why do you remain here?"
Huan smiled wearily. "If I had anywhere to go but down into the squats, I would be long gone. But there is no place left to me, Phillip. Do we have a wager?"
"It's a fool's wager."
"Perhaps, but do we have one?"
"Hai."
"Then go."
Yip didn't move.
"What is it?" Huan asked. "Are you afraid I will throw myself from the roof simply to win our wager?"
"Those drugs…"
"Will make me do or say anything." Huan laughed. "You are innocent. Phillip. Please go."
Yip hesitated a moment longer, then rose smoothly to his feet. He looked down at the man he'd thought his friend, a man he'd thought he knew, and realized that there was more truth in Huan's accusations than he'd like to believe. If, after all these years, he didn't know Huan at all, of what else was he unaware?
"Ja mata," he said.
"Mata," Huan replied.
Yip walked away, through the torii where he disturbed the gulls once more, and across the roof. Stone rattled underfoot, then he was back inside the cubicle again. The door of the cubicle slid shut behind him as he stabbed the elevator's control board with a stiff finger.
Huan listened to the hum of the elevator as it took Yip away, then another faint sound caught his attention and he turned to look at the far side of the roof. A black shape slipped over its edge to glide soundlessly towards the shrine. An augmented yak in ninja black.
So soon, Huan thought.
A thousand regrets flooded his mind. Fear made his pulse drum so fast it was difficult to distinguish the spaces between the beats. It took all his will to close his eyes and try to meditate. Though he had lived a dishonourable life, he meant to die well. Perhaps his death would open Yip's eyes. Perhaps it would not be entirely meaningless. For no matter what he'd told Yip, Huan still loved him. It was his love for Yip that made his betrayal so foul. He almost welcomed the death Takahata had sent him.
He could feel the assassin's presence draw close until the black-clad figure was directly in front of him. He opened his eyes. A katana glinted in the yak's hand, the sword blade silver in the vague light cast from the sky.
Domo arigato, Takahata-san, Huan thought. You do this gaijin great honour.
Through the slits of his face scarf, the assassin's eyes glittered with the same silver fire as his katana blade. His gaze met Huan's, the metal contact lenses accentuating his dispassion.
"You win, Phillip," Huan said.
The soft-spoken words and Huan's immobility gave the yak a moment's pause. Then he stepped forward, blade descending in an arc.
"Korozu zo!" the assassin cried as his blade bit into Huan's neck.
Huan's head tumbled from his shoulders. He had a final view of his own body, blood fountaining from its headless neck, before the abyss swallowed him.
The assassin wiped his blade on the corpse's kimono, then withdrew from the rooftop the same way he'd come, his katana returned to its lacquered wooden sheath on his back, the nekade cat-claw grips on his hands giving him purchase on the weather-roughened stone sides of the building.
SEVEN
1
Gahzee woke with the lightening sky that passed for dawn in the Outer Lands.
"Hey, Waubun," he said to the dawn, standing at the open door to look out at the empty street. "I miss Mishomis's clean light."
Turning from the depressing sight, he made himself a gruel of oats and dried fruit, then broke camp quickly. With his gear loaded on his bike, he pedaled off through the deserted ruins in the direction where he'd seen the flashes of light the previous night. He made good time here. This close to the Megaplex, the scavengers had been at work for years salvaging the metal hulks of the abandoned vehicles that had choked so many of the streets earlier in his journey.
A klick or so from where he'd spent the night—it was difficult judging distances in these street canyons between the buildings—the coyote rejoined him. Nanabozho was carrying a dead rabbit and when Gahzee brought his bike to a halt, the coyote laid it at his feet.
"My brother is a good hunter," Gahzee said.
He reached out to pet the coyote, but Nanabozho backed quickly away. Gahzee shrugged. He made quick work of dressing the kill, then hung the carcass from his handlebars and started off again.
Not much later, when he went to make a turn down one street to skirt a pile of rubble from a collapsed wall, the coyote yipped sharply to get his attention. Gahzee paused, then circled around the rubble on its far side where the coyote was waiting for him. He let Nanabozho take the lead. By following the coyote he was brought to the source of last night's mysterious light flashes.
He had stepped onto a Stalker's Wheel as soon as he'd woken that morning, so that when Nanabozho suddenly froze, Gahzee brought his bike to a quiet halt. Every sense alert, he leaned the bike against a wall and crept forward to crouch beside the coyote. From that vantage point, he could see a three-wheeled scooter that he recognized as one of the principal means of private transportation in the Megaplexes.
His moccasined feet were absolutely soundless as he moved to a new position. From this one he could see the first body. It lay near the doorway of a building, flies gathered like a black mask on the dried blood that lay thick on its face and torso.
Crossing the street, he crept closer. The bulk of the building in front of which the corpse lay was now between him and the body. He rounded the corner cautiously. Gliding alongside the building, he paused a half-dozen paces from the corpse and listened. Nothing. Except for the buzz of the insects, the day was still.
He waited a full two minutes, then completed the distance between himself and the corpse. Without pausing, he slipped into the building, hugging the inner wall, and moved a few quick paces along its length before pausing to listen again. Still nothing. Nothing alive at any rate.
There were more bodies inside, all clustered around the doorway. Two more men and the smaller shape of a woman, who appeared to be wearing warpaint. From his studies of the Megaplexes and their surrounding squats, he realized that what she wore was more permanent than warpaint—striped messenger's tattoos. There was another three-wheeled scooter inside the building.
What do we have here? he thought as he moved closer to the bodies. A falling out? An attack of one party upon another? Reading the signs, he settled on the latter. The woman and largest man had been set upon by the two wearing kevlar overcoats.
He picked up an auto-pistol and studied it for a moment. Safety-coded with smart circuitry. No use to him. The others would be the same. Setting it aside, he rolled over the nearest man. Tugging off the overcoat, he stripped the corpse to its waist. When he saw the tattoos covering the entire back and upper arms, he realized that the two attackers were yakuza. That made it easier to choose sides to sympathize with. There was a great deal of information on the criminal yakuza in the Enclave library files.
Going from that corpse to the woman's, he reached out to touch the tattoos on her cheek. It was when his fingertips touched her skin that he realized with a shock that she was still alive. A quick study of her body showed that she was bruised, but otherwise unhurt.
He sat back on his heels and considered for a long moment. Did he wish to get involved? Closing his eyes, he could hear his teacher Manitouwaub giving a lesson as though the old medé were standing beside him, rather than a hundred or more klicks away.
To stalk well, one must be able to heal well. To dream well, one must be capable of true complete awareness when awake. As a medé we have no choice. Either one always heeds the medicine, or one never does. We are never parts of a Wheel—we are the whole Wheel.
So there was no choice. Simply being here, he was already involved.
He left the woman where she lay for the moment while he dragged the corpses outside and out of the way into the next building. After a few moments of playing with the scooter's various controls, he started the machine up and brought it inside the building, parking it beside its mate. He gathered all the weapons and the woman's com-link, and hid them behind some rubble. Then he fetched his own bike.
He started a small, almost smokeless fire on one side of the building, where what little smoke there was could escape through a window, and set to boiling water. Thrusting a stick through the rabbit, he started its roasting, then went back to the woman, stepping onto a Healer's Wheel.
He unrolled his bedroll and carefully carried her to it. Stripping her, he brought the boiling water from the fire and used it to heat poultices and make pastes from the various healing powders he carried in his pack. He rubbed the paste onto her bruises—the worst were on the small of her back, her right arm, and around her neck—covered them with the crushed leaves of Joe Pye weeds, then wrapped the wounds with strips of cloth soaked in a solution of herbs and dogbane.
When he was done he covered her with a blanket and went back to the fire. Nanabozho came into the building and settled near the woman. Gahzee turned the spitted rabbit, this time collecting its juices in a small metal bowl to which he added more herbs along with dried vegetables and mushrooms to make a thin broth. He set both the broth and half the rabbit beside the fire to keep them warm and returned to the woman's side. Squatting on his haunches, he chewed on rabbit meat and waited for her to wake.
2
Utter dislocation greeted Lisa when she first opened her eyes. Someone was pounding on a steel drum inside her head. She had flares of pain in her back and right arm when she tried to move. Her throat felt thick, as though someone had stuffed it with rags. Then her vision came into focus and she was sure she'd dreamed herself into an action vid as the helpless captive of a Claver.
Because that's what he was, she realized, this man with his coppery skin sitting on his haunches beside her.
He had a flat, open face that was almost round, twin black braids, the hair greasier near the scalp, hanging on either side of it. His jacket and trousers looked like genuine leather, the shirt real cotton. He had a beaded belt, more beadwork on the jacket, a leather bag hanging from the belt, leather moccasins. He was as big as a squats strongarm, but another kind of power hung about him—something she couldn't put her finger on, but it wasn't just physical.
His eyes were a deep, dark brown—liquid pools that sucked her in as she met their gaze. When he smiled down at her, his entire face became animated, but it was the humour in his eyes that tugged an answering smile from her. Never mind the pain. Never mind that she was only dreaming and that he'd captured her.
She started to sit up, winced at the sudden pain in her lower back, and then realized that she was naked under the blanket.
"You must take care not to attempt any quick movements," the Claver said. His accent was funny. He spoke patois, but it came out sounding formal—like a Plex baby new to slumming in the squats.
"Are you…for real?" she asked.
He nodded and then that smile returned to his features, but this time Lisa didn't give one back. Her head was throbbing again. And she was starting to remember. The yaks. Donnybrook turning in the doorway, his face shot off…
"Oh shit…" she began, tears welling in her eyes. First Kay, and now Donnybrook.
"The man in the vest—he was your companion?"
