Svaha, page 11
"Please return our regards to the esteemed Huen Ho Fung," Kamo said, also in Mandarin.
A thin smile touched Foo's lips. "Hsieh-hsieh," he said. Thank you. Formalities over, he took a chair that commanded a view out the window. "To business?"
The two Nipponjin joined him by the window.
"You have the Claver chip?" Kamo asked.
"Shih-ti," Foo replied affirmatively. "But there has been a slight change in price, ma?"
"What kind of a change?" Okado asked.
"Ho Fung desires a certain…presence in your firm," Foo said. "Some shares as well as the previously agreed-upon credits."
Okado shook his head. "Impossible. The shareholders will not accept a non-Nipponjin buying into the company."
"Wo men tung." We understand. "For this reason Ho Fung has acquired a Nipponjin who will accept the shares on our behalf—in name only, ma?"
Okado and his aide exchanged glances. Was it worth it? At this point they really had no choice.
"We must have time to discuss this," Kamo said. "Shall we meet tomorrow?"
"Hen hau," Foo said. Very well. "But if you please, thus far we have kept very quiet about the goods that we have acquired for you. You must understand that there are others who would be interested in them as well, ma?"
"The new price requires new considerations," Kamo said.
Foo shrugged. "Yang-yang hen kuei." Everything's expensive. He stood up. "Until tomorrow, gentlemen."
Okado felt as though his last hopes were leaving the room with the Triad representative. When the door shut behind Foo, he slumped in his chair.
"What do we do now?" His voice was weary, the question almost rhetorical.
Kamo leaned forward. "We proceed as before."
"But to give them shares…"
"Not them," Kamo said. "We give them to their Nipponjin front man. We are not responsible for what he does with them."
Okado stared out the window. He could see his own reflection vaguely present in the glass. The reflection looked to him like his grandfather's face—frowning at him.
"I must think on this some more," he said.
Kamo gave him a sympathetic nod. "Hai. I will see that your agenda is kept free for the day."
"Domo."
Kamo rose to leave. He hesitated at the door as Okado went over to the bar and poured a double shot of whiskey into a glass. Okado turned to look at him, the strain all too apparent in his drawn features. Kamo gave a quick short bow.
"Ja mata," he said softly, and left the room.
2
In Shigehero Goro's office on the other side of the Jimu District, Goro's second-in-command, Yamamoto Ishimine, shifted uncomfortably before his oyabun's impassive features. Only the dark glare in Goro's eyes betrayed his impatience.
The office was spartanly furnished. Goro sat behind a broad wooden desk that held his computer terminal. Ishimine sat on one of the two chairs in front of the desk. The only other furnishing was a table across the room from the window on which a matched pair of antique swords were displayed. Both blades had black lacquered scabbards and were mounted horizontally on a black lacquered rack with red and gold filigree, the shorter wakizashi above the longer katana. The polished lacquer gleamed in the soft light thrown from the window.
"What puzzles me," Goro said, "is that there has not been one word of rumour as to the whereabouts of the Claver chip."
"Which means that the messenger must have it," Ishimine said, "and is too frightened to market it. We will find her."
"I smell something else brewing, neh?"
"Domo, but—"
"One squat messenger does not kill—how many of our men now?"
"Three, Goro-san."
"Three!"
Ishimine sensibly said nothing.
"We still have the ship," Goro went on after a moment, "and our techs can take it apart, but all the software was on that one chip—everything that ran it. Without it we are faced with years of trial and error before we can claim even the smallest success. In the meantime, whoever has that chip will always be ahead of us."
This time he looked at his second-in-command, obviously expecting a response.
"Hai, so desu," Ishimine said. Yes, that's right.
"I am not pleased."
"Hai."
"You will bring me a member of one of the tongs, I think," Goro said. "I believe it is time for me to personally question one of them."
When Goro waved a hand in dismissal, Ishimine immediately rose from his seat and hurried from the room. Goro settled back in his chair and looked at his swords. He could sense that something ran deeply through the Megaplex and surrounding squats—the possibility of a new shift in power. It could be the tongs or the triads. It could be the Co-Op. But whatever it was, he would not allow it to root itself too deeply.
Rising from his desk, he walked to the table that held his swords and ran his fingers across the smooth lacquered wood. His eyes grew distant.
There was only room for one power and that was the Goro Clan. But something was stalking him, something that did not understand that here in this Megaplex, unlike the others, there could be no balance of power. There was only room for the Goro Clan.
"I am not pleased at all," he said to the empty room.
DREAMTIME
Under Nanabozho's curious gaze, Gahzee stripped the yaks of all their clothing and gear before burying them in a shallow grave. To Maki Ota's companion he gave full burial rites, folding the big man's arms on his chest and facing him westward towards Epanggishimuk—Man's Last Destiny, the Land of Souls—before raising a cairn over him. He offered smoke to the grandfathers, then sat cross-legged beside the grave to meditate.
After a time he loosened his medicine bag from his belt. He took his spirit bell out and rolled it back and forth across his palm, letting its fey jingle speak to the four quarters. When his mind had grown quiet, he brought out his dreaming crystal. Interlacing his fingers, he shaped the Dreamer's hand sign—index and little fingers protruding at straight angles from the curved backs of the center four fingers, the dreaming crystal clasped between his palms.
Fire finger, water finger; spirit and motion. Stalker sides of a Dream Wheel, for he was determined to stalk and hold a waking vision-dream.
He closed his eyes.
* * *
The Kachina-hey brought Mandamin to him.
They stood high on top of one of the abandoned buildings in the TOPQ corridor, looking out across the wounded land. Mandamin had the broad features of the People, but his skin was a burnished gold, his hair the yellow of maize, his loincloth the green of young corn. His eyes were the dark of an Enclave night when Grandmother Moon walked in shadow—black eyes, touched with glinting specks like stars.
"Do you remember the first time I came to you?" he asked Gahzee.
The medé nodded, though he had never met this manitou before. He understood that Mandamin spoke of his first visit to the People.
It was in the long ago.
Upon her deathbed, the grandmother of a young man named Zhowmin foretold the coming of a stranger. "When he comes," she told him, "you must do what he says."
Not long after her death, a stranger did arrive in the village. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with surly features and an irritable manner who demanded to know if there were any good men in the village. After consulting with each other, the village elders sent for Zhowmin and presented him to the stranger.
Because they were of the same totem and he was thus bound to treat him as a brother, Zhowmin took the stranger into his own lodge. There they ate, and they smoked, and then Zhowmin asked the stranger why he had come.
"My name is Mandamin," the stranger told him, which meant Food of Wonder, from manda meaning wonder and meen meaning seed or berry. "The manitou have sent me," he went on to explain, "to test the worth of you and your people. As the most fitting test of your inner strength is through battle, so we will fight, you and I, to prove your merit. If you win, you live; but if you lose, you will die."
Zhowmin, who truly was a good man, shook his head. "I have no need to prove myself to you or any man."
Mandamin sighed. "If you won't fight, then I must take your cowardice as defeat. You will die and I will be forced to return to the manitou to tell them that there is not a single good man among the People."
It didn't matter to Zhowmin that his own courage or worth were in doubt, but he was angered that the overall worth of the People was questioned. And then he remembered what his grandmother had said when she foretold the coming of the stranger. You must do what he says. Partly from anger, partly through obedience, Zhowmin rose to his feet.
"I will fight you," he said.
They went into the forest that night and after selecting a clearing, they stripped to the waist and fought. But they were so evenly matched that by the time morning came, neither had gained the upper hand. They fell exhausted to the ground to regain their breath. Finally, bruised and bleeding from many wounds, they returned to Zhowmin's lodge to rest.
When they awakened it was evening once more. They ate a meal and shared smoke as though nothing had come between them, then returned to the clearing and fought again. Once more they fought until dawn, returning to Zhowmin's lodge with the morning light.
Not until the third night did Zhowmin gain the upper hand. Though both were weak, he managed to knock Mandamin to the ground. Before the stranger could rise, Zhowmin was upon him and had snapped his neck. Exhausted, Zhowmin knelt beside the body and wept for the stranger's pointless death.
In sorrow, he picked up Mandamin's body and buried it beside that of his grandmother, giving it all honour. When he went to the village medé, the medicine man counseled him to look after the stranger's grave as he did his grandmother's, and this Zhowmin did. Each day he went to the grave, bringing offerings and prayers of thanks and sorrow.
Then one evening in late spring, Zhowmin noticed a strange plant growing from the very center of Mandamin's grave—a plant that neither he nor the village medé could recognize, for all their knowledge of flora. As spring gave way to summer, the plant grew. By the end of the summer it was as tall as a man—a slender plant, crowned by a tuft of hair.
When the medé examined the new plant, he opened the wrappings about its seed and ate one yellow kernel to determine if the plant was good or evil. Upon swallowing the kernel, he turned to Zhowmin and said, "Be glad, for you have done the People a great service. You have not killed Mandamin; by demonstrating your worth, and thereby the worth of the People, you have given him life in a new form."
In such a way did the People receive corn from the manitou.
Remembering all of that, Gahzee said, "I have no wish to fight you, Mandamin."
Mandamin smiled. "I have not come to test your worth," he said. "I have come to instruct you. As once I brought a thing of great value to the People, now I bring you something new again. As once Zhowmin proved his worth through his obedience and strength, so now will you become a harbinger of that which is new through your own obedience."
Gehzee sighed. In the Dreamtime, there was no question but that he must listen to what the Kachina-hey had sent him.
"What must I do?" he asked.
"Follow me."
Spreading his arms wide, Mandamin threw himself from the rooftop. As soon as his feet left the solid footing of the building, he changed into a gold-feathered raven and flew off, towards the west. Gahzee hesitated. He looked down at the rubble-strewn street some ten stories below him.
Obedience.
He spread his arms, still looking down.
His teachers had warned him often enough: Stalking Death can find you in the Dreamtime as easy as in any other place. Easier, perhaps. For the Dreamtime was the crack between the worlds, between the waking world and the inner realms of the manitou, and Stalking Death walked the Dreamtime as surely as did the Kachina-hey.
Mandamin was a golden speck in the distance now.
Obedience.
Hey, Gahzee thought. I am here to learn, am I not?
He cast himself out from the building. For one heart-stopping moment he plummeted towards the ground, then his body exploded with pain as it twisted into a new shape, arms and legs shrinking in towards his body, fingers spreading to become wings, feathers sprouting from every pore. And then he was airborne, black wings cutting the air as he sped after Mandamin.
The manitou led him a long way across the Outer Lands, over acres of abandoned streets and buildings, until they finally rode a down draft and descended in a wide looping spiral to enter a city square that was sheltered in the shadow of four blocks of tall skyscraping buildings. They perched on a lamppost that was rusted and pocked from acid rains. Gahzee looked around the square.
Amidst the rubble, animals were gathered. Coyotes and rats, a striped-faced badger, and hares, gulls and crows. Small creatures and large creatures. Birds such as robins and jays that Gahzee hadn't seen since leaving the Enclave. Beasts such as otter, beaver and a bear. All gathered, discoursing in their own tongue—a language Gahzee could almost, but not quite, understand.
He meant to ask, what is this place, why have these beasts gathered here, but all that came from the new shape of his mouth was a raven's cry.
This is a council, Mandamin replied, his words echoing in Gahzee's mind. A gathering of the elders of the animal and bird people.
What do they discuss?
The unhappy lands.
Gahzee regarded them all again through the strange gaze of his bird shape that gave him a wide vision on either side of him, but left him blind to what was directly in front.
Why have you brought me here? he asked.
To show you how enemies can gather in council for their overall good. If the hare and wolf can sit together in council, could not men put aside their differences to do the same?
I understand, Gahzee replied. But you have brought this vision to the wrong man. I'm not placed high in any council—the Enclaves are closed to me now. This is a matter for chiefs.
Or Twisted Hairs.
I am not a Twisted Hair.
No. But you could be.
A haze fell across Gahzee's vision. The council of the animals and birds was washed away by a thick grey mist. He lost all sense of body and then—
* * *
—he opened his eyes beside the grave of Maki Ota's companion. He disengaged his fingers from their Dreamer's hand shape, catching his dreaming crystal in one palm. He rolled it on his palm, then returned it to his skibdagan. Pulling the strings of the medicine bag closed, he returned it to his belt and slowly stood.
He was alone by the grave. Even Nanabozho who had accompanied him there earlier was gone.
"I am not a Twisted Hair," he said, "and I don't even know how to begin the journey to become one."
Somewhere in the distance, out of his sight, a raven cried. Unlike his visit to the council of animals and birds in the Dreamtime, this time Gahzee thought he could understand that cry.
If you would only open your eyes, the raven seemed to be saying, you would know that your journey has already begun.
NINE
1
"Hi."
Gahzee turned to find his patient standing at the doorway looking in at him. She was dressed in her imitation leather pants once more, with a white blouse of some synthetic material tucked into its waist, and yellow boots on her feet. Under her left arm was an empty shoulder holster for one of the auto-pistols he had hidden while she was sleeping. The red tattooing on her face still reminded him of the paint the People wore when they went on a vision-quest or to war.
Though she still appeared somewhat worn from her ordeal, he realized, now that he could see her in the daylight, that she was quite attractive even by the standards of the People. She was perhaps too thin for some braves, but she had an indefinable quality that shone in her eyes from which true beauty spoke.
"Hey, Maki," he said. "How are you feeling?"
"Better'n I should. That's some magic mushroom you've got there."
She kept her tone light, gaze studiously avoiding the nearby graves and cairn, but the strain was still apparent. Gahzee moved to join her outside.
"What's your dog's name?" she asked.
"Dog…?"
"The one with the funny eyes—he is your dog, isn't he? I saw you sitting in there—meditating, I guess—so I waited out here throwing a stick for him till you were done."
Gahzee blinked, certain she joking, then looked to see where she was pointing. Nanabozho sat a few yards away, head cocked to one side, tongue lolling. There was a well-chewed stick at his feet.
"He's a coyote," Gahzee said. "He started following me when I left the Enclave. I call him Nanabozho."
"You should just call him Bozo—he's a real fool."
Are we speaking of the same animal? Gahzee wondered. He was sure that Nanabozho was grinning at him.
"Coyote has always been somewhat of a trickster," he said aloud.
Lisa hoisted herself up onto a piece of fallen masonry and sat there dangling her legs, kicking her heels against the stonework. "What's it like in the Enclaves?" she asked.
"Everything the Outer Lands is not. The air is clean. There are forests and fields—everything is green. It's different in some of the others—such as the Nez Ch'ii or Wadi Enclaves where their deserts have a different form of beauty—but that's what it's like in the Kwarthas Enclave where I lived."
"So why'd you leave?"
"I have a…task to perform."
"Uh-huh," she said, when he paused and didn't go on. "What kind of a task?"
Gahzee thought of his experiences in the Dreamtime since leaving the Enclave. "It seems to change, the longer I am in these lands."
"So're you going to the Plex?"
"In its general vicinity, at any rate. Why?"
"I might know someone who can help you find what you're looking for. 'Course it'll cost you."
"How would you know what I am looking for?"
