Svaha, page 17
He closed his eyes and dead faces swam in his vision. "Guess I don't feel right, darling."
"Was…was there someone with you up on the roof? I wasn't really paying attention till I heard you screaming, but I thought I saw the drones catch someone in their beams."
"Jaenie Lash," the Ragman said.
"Aw, shit."
"Lotta good people dead, darling."
Lisa nodded. "Let's get outta here. I need your help, Ragman."
He laughed. "You came at a bad time."
"I'm serious. I've got a Claver and I gotta get him outta here."
"A Claver?"
"Big as life, Ragman."
"You're not just shitting me?"
A Claver? the Ragman thought. Here in the squats? Just what the hell was going on?
"Are you coming?" Lisa asked.
"Wouldn't miss it for the world, darling."
Already he was figuring on how he could use a real Enclaver's presence to their own advantage. Who needed a chip, when you had the real thing?
2
While the final cleanup continued in the squats, Tomiji Takahata called a meeting of all the Ho Anzen section heads in the corporation headquarters in the Megaplex. Yip was surprised when orders arrived for his own attendance, but he dutifully signed his Juszuki back in, cleaned up in the locker area, and joined the section heads in the conference room.
Takahata was furious. Never mind that he himself had been the one to give the orders to bring out the riot gear and attack the yaks. He sat behind a computer display, company losses in men and equipment in stark relief on the screen before him, and glared down the length of the table. For forty-five minutes he harangued his staff. They were a disgrace to their uniforms. New training schedules were to be implemented immediately. Company heads and officers were to be docked pay for the equipment losses.
"The head count for squat dwellers was high," he concluded, "but—" he glanced back at the screen, "—apparently only fifteen yakuza bodies have been recovered. Yet we sustained losses of twenty-three men with another seventeen incapacitated for weeks—in one case, months—due to their injuries. I will repeat this only one more time: There is no great skill to killing rats. They are not the problem here. The Goro Clan is our problem, neh? We had an opportunity to legally decimate their ranks, yet through your blundering we have set ourselves back, not the yakuza.
"I will not tolerate such incompetence in future. Do I make myself clear?"
A sharp chorus of Hais rose in response around the table.
"That will be all," Takahata said. As Yip rose to leave with the other heads, he added, "Yip-san, matte zo."
Yip remained in place, face expressionless. Takahata must know that he'd killed Aoki. His mind worked furiously, but he could find no reasonable explanation that the Ho Anzen owner might accept.
"Aoki-san was killed by a yakuza?" Takahata asked when the others were gone.
"Hai, so desu," Yip replied. Yes, that's right.
Takahata slowly shook his head. "We should have had them tonight." His hands made fists on the table. "We could have dealt that neijin Goro such a blow..."
Yip remained silent, waiting. Takahata's face was flushed, eyes clouded with anger. Finally he let his fists unclench. He looked at Yip.
"Your partner—Huan Som. He came to us with a tale of your treachery, neh?"
Yip found a look of surprise to put on his face. "I was not aware—"
"Oh, yes. He came to us with a tale of you selling secrets to the yakuza. But Aoki-san spoke in your defense, and it appears he was correct, for not only did you deal with the DMC problem efficiently and quickly, but it appears that it was Som himself who was dealing with the yakuza and subsequently had a falling out with them."
Yip studied his employer, looking for the lie in his words, but Takahata's features appeared free of guile. Still, that meant nothing. Old as he was, he would have had years of practice playing the grey man. But it made Yip wonder. What if Aoki had been working on his own…?"
Takahata sighed. "I need good men, Yip, and they are hard to find. Sa, I admit that due to your mixed blood, I have seen fit to pass you over for promotion more than once, but I believe now that your mother's Nipponjin blood runs stronger in you than your father's Chinese, and I mean to rectify any past slights. In Aoki's memory, you will be your section's new head."
This was madness, Yip thought. "Takahata-san," he said aloud. "I am honoured…"
"You will continue to concentrate on the Jones Co-Op for the present. Speak to Genda-san in the morning. He will see to it that your systems are transferred to Aoki's computer. His office is now yours. If you have any problems, feel free to contact me directly, neh?"
"Domo arigato," Yip said. Thank you very much.
Takahata waved a hand. "You may go now, Yip-san."
Numbly, Yip rose and gave his employer a quick nod, then retreated from the conference room, thoughts spinning. Was it this simple, playing the grey man? Did the benefits accrue so quickly? He felt sick as he walked down the long hall to his own cubicle. Standing in the doorway, he stared at its confines.
It was no longer his. He could move into Aoki's larger office tonight if he wished. The benefit of murder. Position paid for with another's blood.
Turning quickly, he left the building and walked out into the night. Was it possible that Takahata had nothing to do with Huan's death? Then he remembered the number he'd seen Aoki punching in during the riot.
He stopped at the first public com-link he came to. Clearing the screen so that it would accept video, but not broadcast it, he dug out a hard credit and inserted it, then punched in the same number. When Shigehero Goro's features appeared on the screen, he cut the connection and stepped quickly away from the booth.
Again, the yaks. And Aoki had been their man in Ho Anzen.
His thoughts turned to Miko. His asobi woman. A living Mitsui sculpture. Her appearance shifting, depending on one's perspective. On the one hand, a woman he could love. On the other, a Dragon Lady with her yakuza tattoo. Did her loyalties shift as easily?
A certain amount of faith is required…
He had thought of returning to Miko's apato, but now he turned his footsteps homeward instead. He needed to think.
There was an incoming call blinking on his apato's com-link when he got home. He hesitated in answering it, knowing it must be Miko. Standing indecisively in front of the screen, he finally sighed and punched the connection open. When the screen came to life it wasn't Miko's face that regarded him, but that of the oyabun of the Goro Clan.
"Mushi-mushi," Yip said. "To what do I owe this dubious pleasure, Goro-san?" He kept his tone, if not his words, polite.
The oyabun frowned but recovered smoothly. Be careful, Yip told himself. This man is a coiled snake ready to strike. Keeping his hands out of Goro's view, he surreptitiously switched the link to a record mode.
"Be so kind as to not record this conversation," Goro told him.
Of course, Yip realized. He would have surveillance gear on his system. He switched the recorder off.
"As you wish," he said.
"There was some trouble in the squats this evening," Goro said. "Most unfortunate, neh?"
"Especially for you," Yip replied, "considering the death of Kimitake Aoki."
"So you know."
"Hai."
"Aoki-san's most unfortunate death leaves an opening in my organization."
"I don't wear tattoos well," Yip said.
This time Goro made no effort to hide his frown. "I made you," he said. "Don't ever pretend to yourself that it was any different. My influence brought you up from the ranks. And what I make, I can break, neh?"
Yip regarded the screen in silence for a long moment. Here was the real cause behind Huan's death, behind Miko's enslavement, behind ninety-nine percent of the Megaplex's troubles. And he was supposed to join him? Is that what a grey man would do?
"I will think about your kind offer," Yip said.
Then he cut the connection. The incoming light immediately blinked again, but he ignored it. He stood in the middle of his living room and stripped, leaving his clothes where they fell. He began the Thirteen Postures of his T'ai Chi Ch'uan. Once. Then again until the sweat glistened in every pore and finally his mind was still.
He showered, then fetched himself a plastican of Tombo beer and stood in front of the living room window to drink it. Still naked. Skin clean now, tingling in the recycled air of his apato.
That's right, he said to himself. Find peace through meditation, then drown that peace in alcohol. Hai, you are a wise man, are you not?
Downing the Tombo, he went to get another.
DREAMTIME
Smoke.
That was all he could breathe. All he could smell. Not the sacred smoke of the manitou, but roiling dark clouds with an acrid chemical taint.
And there was sound.
Not the drums that spoke to the grandfather thunders. Nor the sounds of the battle in the squats. This was a mechanical sound. Engines roaring. Pistons thumping. Ungreased gears squealing. A deafening cacophony.
He opened his eyes.
Crouched before him was an elder. His skin was dark, grey braids framing a lean weathered face, so lined that it appeared to be made of parchment, crumpled, then smoothed out once more for reuse. He wore grey cotton trousers, a bandolier of intricate beadwork across his bare chest, scuffed leather moccasins.
He was neither Anishnabeg nor a member of any tribe Gahzee knew.
His skibdagan hung from his belt, fat with medicine bundles. For a headdress, he wore the skin of a coyote, the animal's head on his own like a cap, the pelt falling down past his shoulders to his back. Keeping the coyote pelt in place on his head was a wide-brimmed black hat, worn so that the coyote's head appeared to peer out from beneath it. Under the brim of the hat and the coyote's head, the elder's left eye was blue, his right brown.
"N-nanabozho…?"
Gahzee's voice was dry, the words came out as a croak. The roar of the pounding machinery stole them away with its wash of sound.
Does your every trick have but the one name? the elder replied.
His lips never moved, but Gahzee heard him all the same.
What is this place? he asked, thinking the words rather than trying to speak them.
Dreamtime.
It was so hard to think, with the roar of the engines, the crash of the machines.
I have never seen such a Dreamtime, he replied.
The elder grinned. Hey, Gahzee. And are you so wise? Has your Walk taken you everywhere, and you still so young?
These machines…?
The elder replied with his own question. The workings of the world?
Gahzee shook his head. I don 't think so.
Come with me, the elder said.
He stood smoothly, not a stiff joint in his ancient frame, and set off briskly, taking a path through the pounding machines. Gahzee followed, looking left and right. The machinery appeared to serve no purpose beyond its noise, the foul fumes it released into the air, the ceaseless motion. Their roar deafened him.
The elder led him out of the vast building into a flat square. All around stood buildings similar to the one they had just quit, manufacturing nothing but noise, pouring filth into the air from their smokestacks. In the center of the square was a lodge made of deerskins tied to birch poles.
Sitting cross-legged in the lodge was a curious being, hairless and white, smooth-skinned, fat body round as a ball of jelly, with a smaller ball of a head attached to the torso without the benefit of a neck. The being wore not a stitch of clothing. His penis, long and fat like a white snake, lay across his ankles. His eyes were black, like two daubs of tar dropped onto that jelly face, his nose flat, his mouth a slit.
Beside him was a war club. Hanging from the leather thongs that kept the deerskins in place were many severed hands, some mummified and dry, others rotting and covered with flies. In the dirt in front of the lodge was a flat wooden dish upon which stood four carved figures.
He is the Great Gambler, the elder explained to Gahzee. And in his dish you see the four ages of man.
"Hey, Whiskey Jack," the Great Gambler said. "Have you come to try your luck? You don't think I'm so good anymore?"
He began to laugh, a horrible sound like fingernails on glass, and his white jelly body shivered like pudding.
Gahzee regarded his companion. Whiskey Jack, was it? That was a white man's name, but it was phonetically similar to a name in the tongue of the People—Wee-sa-kay-jac. It meant Bitter Spirit and belonged to a trickster manitou.
"All these hands you see," the Great Gambler went on, waving to his collection, "belonged to those who came to gamble. They all thought they could win, thought they had nothing to lose. But I don't gamble except with those who gamble their lives. I keep their scalps and ears and hands and give what's left to the windigo. And their spirits—" he grinned, confident, the flesh of his face and torso moist like a poisonous mushroom, "—I feed to the darkness.
"Do you still want to play the game of the four ages of man with me, Whiskey Jack?"
"Tell us the rules," Whiskey Jack said. He looked at Gahzee and gave him a wink.
"Here are the four figures in this dish," the Great Gambler said, picking up the wooden dish. "One for each age of man. I'll shake the dish four times, and if they remain standing each time, then I'm the winner. If they fall, then I lose."
Fat sausage fingers tipped the figures over so that Gahzee and his companion could see that they were loose in the dish.
"I'll play," Whiskey Jack said. "But it's the custom where I come from that the one who's challenged has the last play."
The Great Gambler nodded his agreement, fat flesh moving across his torso in waves at the movement. Taking the first play, he stood up the figures once more, then struck the ground with the dish. The four figures remained standing. He repeated this two more times and each time the four figures representing the four ages of man remained standing in their wooden dish.
He's cheating, Gahzee said. He must be.
Whiskey Jack winked again. Of course he is.
But if the figures remain standing a fourth time, he'll win. He'll kill you.
And not just me, Whiskey Jack replied, but you as well and all of the People. Our spirits will go into the darkness and the windigo will feast on our flesh—all except for those parts the Great Gambler keeps for himself.
This is madness. Why are you gambling?
Whiskey Jack turned to look at him. Because it's that kind of Dreamtime, grandson.
At that moment, he sounded exactly like the squat rat, Lisa Bone. Gahzee wondered if he'd stepped from a Dream Wheel into a hallucination. The gambler, the elder, their surroundings, this dish game—they were all the makings of a peyote vision gone mad.
The Great Gambler brought the dish down a fourth and final time. Gahzee tensed. The sound of the machinery from the surrounding buildings was suddenly very loud, twinning the accelerating jump of his own pulse. The dish hit the ground and the figures remained standing. But then Whiskey Jack whistled through his teeth and a wind sprang up, blowing the four figures down.
They fell into the darkness of the dish. The Great Gambler shivered. His rotund shape seemed to grow brittle, pieces of it flaking off as he turned his black-eyed gaze to the elder.
"I win," Whiskey Jack said. "Now it's my turn." He took the dish and righted the figures, then handed it to Gahzee. "You will play for me."
Gahzee took the dish with shaking hands. The figures trembled, ready to fall at the slightest motion. He brought the dish down. When it hit the ground, the dish shattered. He held only a piece of it in his hand. The broken shards lay spilled across the ground, but the four figures remained standing.
Oh, very good, Whiskey Jack said. You've broken the past, grandson.
The Great Gambler was no more than a dried gourd now. Cracks ran up and down his fat brittle body. He split open, the two halves of his body shattering when they hit the ground. A stink of old decay rose to clog Gahzee's nostrils. Slowly he lay the last shard of the dish upon the ground.
I don't understand, he said.
It's simple, Whiskey Jack told him. You must take your Walk into the future that you have made, upon the broken pieces of the past.
But there is no past, Gahzee said, repeating the lessons that the Twisted Hairs taught. Only now.
And the path with heart? Whiskey Jack asked. Does it follow only one route?
Gahzee shook his head. All deeds are Walks.
And all men?
Can be sacred humans? Gahzee tried.
Whiskey Jack grinned. Above his brow, under the brim of his hat, the coyote headdress appeared to be grinning too.
Exactly, the elder said.
He took a step back. When Gahzee moved to follow him, he heard Whiskey Jack whistle through his teeth again. This time the wind blew clouds of roiling smoke between them.
Gahzee choked and coughed. His head ached to the rhythm of the pounding machinery. He waved the smoke away from his face until he could see once more. He found himself standing on a wide open plain. Alone. The elder was gone. As were the lodge and the fragments of the wooden dish and the Great Gambler. The buildings housing the machinery.
All that remained was the pounding between his temples. The thick taste of smoke in his lungs.
He fell to his knees, then laid his head upon the ground, the dirt pressing against his cheek. Closing his eyes, he let the pain take him away.
FIFTEEN
1
At the commencement of business hours, Chien Foo arrived promptly at Okado's office in the IBN building in the Jimu District. Okado's secretary showed him into the office where Okado and his aide Muato Kamo were waiting. Okado stood by the window, turning only slightly at the Ho Fung representative's entrance. Once he saw who it was, he looked out the window once more.
Kamo stood behind the desk. Without preamble, he placed a briefcase on its glass surface.
"The full amount," he said. "In hard credits, as specified." Laying an envelope on top of the briefcase, he added, "And these are the IBN shares."
"Was…was there someone with you up on the roof? I wasn't really paying attention till I heard you screaming, but I thought I saw the drones catch someone in their beams."
"Jaenie Lash," the Ragman said.
"Aw, shit."
"Lotta good people dead, darling."
Lisa nodded. "Let's get outta here. I need your help, Ragman."
He laughed. "You came at a bad time."
"I'm serious. I've got a Claver and I gotta get him outta here."
"A Claver?"
"Big as life, Ragman."
"You're not just shitting me?"
A Claver? the Ragman thought. Here in the squats? Just what the hell was going on?
"Are you coming?" Lisa asked.
"Wouldn't miss it for the world, darling."
Already he was figuring on how he could use a real Enclaver's presence to their own advantage. Who needed a chip, when you had the real thing?
2
While the final cleanup continued in the squats, Tomiji Takahata called a meeting of all the Ho Anzen section heads in the corporation headquarters in the Megaplex. Yip was surprised when orders arrived for his own attendance, but he dutifully signed his Juszuki back in, cleaned up in the locker area, and joined the section heads in the conference room.
Takahata was furious. Never mind that he himself had been the one to give the orders to bring out the riot gear and attack the yaks. He sat behind a computer display, company losses in men and equipment in stark relief on the screen before him, and glared down the length of the table. For forty-five minutes he harangued his staff. They were a disgrace to their uniforms. New training schedules were to be implemented immediately. Company heads and officers were to be docked pay for the equipment losses.
"The head count for squat dwellers was high," he concluded, "but—" he glanced back at the screen, "—apparently only fifteen yakuza bodies have been recovered. Yet we sustained losses of twenty-three men with another seventeen incapacitated for weeks—in one case, months—due to their injuries. I will repeat this only one more time: There is no great skill to killing rats. They are not the problem here. The Goro Clan is our problem, neh? We had an opportunity to legally decimate their ranks, yet through your blundering we have set ourselves back, not the yakuza.
"I will not tolerate such incompetence in future. Do I make myself clear?"
A sharp chorus of Hais rose in response around the table.
"That will be all," Takahata said. As Yip rose to leave with the other heads, he added, "Yip-san, matte zo."
Yip remained in place, face expressionless. Takahata must know that he'd killed Aoki. His mind worked furiously, but he could find no reasonable explanation that the Ho Anzen owner might accept.
"Aoki-san was killed by a yakuza?" Takahata asked when the others were gone.
"Hai, so desu," Yip replied. Yes, that's right.
Takahata slowly shook his head. "We should have had them tonight." His hands made fists on the table. "We could have dealt that neijin Goro such a blow..."
Yip remained silent, waiting. Takahata's face was flushed, eyes clouded with anger. Finally he let his fists unclench. He looked at Yip.
"Your partner—Huan Som. He came to us with a tale of your treachery, neh?"
Yip found a look of surprise to put on his face. "I was not aware—"
"Oh, yes. He came to us with a tale of you selling secrets to the yakuza. But Aoki-san spoke in your defense, and it appears he was correct, for not only did you deal with the DMC problem efficiently and quickly, but it appears that it was Som himself who was dealing with the yakuza and subsequently had a falling out with them."
Yip studied his employer, looking for the lie in his words, but Takahata's features appeared free of guile. Still, that meant nothing. Old as he was, he would have had years of practice playing the grey man. But it made Yip wonder. What if Aoki had been working on his own…?"
Takahata sighed. "I need good men, Yip, and they are hard to find. Sa, I admit that due to your mixed blood, I have seen fit to pass you over for promotion more than once, but I believe now that your mother's Nipponjin blood runs stronger in you than your father's Chinese, and I mean to rectify any past slights. In Aoki's memory, you will be your section's new head."
This was madness, Yip thought. "Takahata-san," he said aloud. "I am honoured…"
"You will continue to concentrate on the Jones Co-Op for the present. Speak to Genda-san in the morning. He will see to it that your systems are transferred to Aoki's computer. His office is now yours. If you have any problems, feel free to contact me directly, neh?"
"Domo arigato," Yip said. Thank you very much.
Takahata waved a hand. "You may go now, Yip-san."
Numbly, Yip rose and gave his employer a quick nod, then retreated from the conference room, thoughts spinning. Was it this simple, playing the grey man? Did the benefits accrue so quickly? He felt sick as he walked down the long hall to his own cubicle. Standing in the doorway, he stared at its confines.
It was no longer his. He could move into Aoki's larger office tonight if he wished. The benefit of murder. Position paid for with another's blood.
Turning quickly, he left the building and walked out into the night. Was it possible that Takahata had nothing to do with Huan's death? Then he remembered the number he'd seen Aoki punching in during the riot.
He stopped at the first public com-link he came to. Clearing the screen so that it would accept video, but not broadcast it, he dug out a hard credit and inserted it, then punched in the same number. When Shigehero Goro's features appeared on the screen, he cut the connection and stepped quickly away from the booth.
Again, the yaks. And Aoki had been their man in Ho Anzen.
His thoughts turned to Miko. His asobi woman. A living Mitsui sculpture. Her appearance shifting, depending on one's perspective. On the one hand, a woman he could love. On the other, a Dragon Lady with her yakuza tattoo. Did her loyalties shift as easily?
A certain amount of faith is required…
He had thought of returning to Miko's apato, but now he turned his footsteps homeward instead. He needed to think.
There was an incoming call blinking on his apato's com-link when he got home. He hesitated in answering it, knowing it must be Miko. Standing indecisively in front of the screen, he finally sighed and punched the connection open. When the screen came to life it wasn't Miko's face that regarded him, but that of the oyabun of the Goro Clan.
"Mushi-mushi," Yip said. "To what do I owe this dubious pleasure, Goro-san?" He kept his tone, if not his words, polite.
The oyabun frowned but recovered smoothly. Be careful, Yip told himself. This man is a coiled snake ready to strike. Keeping his hands out of Goro's view, he surreptitiously switched the link to a record mode.
"Be so kind as to not record this conversation," Goro told him.
Of course, Yip realized. He would have surveillance gear on his system. He switched the recorder off.
"As you wish," he said.
"There was some trouble in the squats this evening," Goro said. "Most unfortunate, neh?"
"Especially for you," Yip replied, "considering the death of Kimitake Aoki."
"So you know."
"Hai."
"Aoki-san's most unfortunate death leaves an opening in my organization."
"I don't wear tattoos well," Yip said.
This time Goro made no effort to hide his frown. "I made you," he said. "Don't ever pretend to yourself that it was any different. My influence brought you up from the ranks. And what I make, I can break, neh?"
Yip regarded the screen in silence for a long moment. Here was the real cause behind Huan's death, behind Miko's enslavement, behind ninety-nine percent of the Megaplex's troubles. And he was supposed to join him? Is that what a grey man would do?
"I will think about your kind offer," Yip said.
Then he cut the connection. The incoming light immediately blinked again, but he ignored it. He stood in the middle of his living room and stripped, leaving his clothes where they fell. He began the Thirteen Postures of his T'ai Chi Ch'uan. Once. Then again until the sweat glistened in every pore and finally his mind was still.
He showered, then fetched himself a plastican of Tombo beer and stood in front of the living room window to drink it. Still naked. Skin clean now, tingling in the recycled air of his apato.
That's right, he said to himself. Find peace through meditation, then drown that peace in alcohol. Hai, you are a wise man, are you not?
Downing the Tombo, he went to get another.
DREAMTIME
Smoke.
That was all he could breathe. All he could smell. Not the sacred smoke of the manitou, but roiling dark clouds with an acrid chemical taint.
And there was sound.
Not the drums that spoke to the grandfather thunders. Nor the sounds of the battle in the squats. This was a mechanical sound. Engines roaring. Pistons thumping. Ungreased gears squealing. A deafening cacophony.
He opened his eyes.
Crouched before him was an elder. His skin was dark, grey braids framing a lean weathered face, so lined that it appeared to be made of parchment, crumpled, then smoothed out once more for reuse. He wore grey cotton trousers, a bandolier of intricate beadwork across his bare chest, scuffed leather moccasins.
He was neither Anishnabeg nor a member of any tribe Gahzee knew.
His skibdagan hung from his belt, fat with medicine bundles. For a headdress, he wore the skin of a coyote, the animal's head on his own like a cap, the pelt falling down past his shoulders to his back. Keeping the coyote pelt in place on his head was a wide-brimmed black hat, worn so that the coyote's head appeared to peer out from beneath it. Under the brim of the hat and the coyote's head, the elder's left eye was blue, his right brown.
"N-nanabozho…?"
Gahzee's voice was dry, the words came out as a croak. The roar of the pounding machinery stole them away with its wash of sound.
Does your every trick have but the one name? the elder replied.
His lips never moved, but Gahzee heard him all the same.
What is this place? he asked, thinking the words rather than trying to speak them.
Dreamtime.
It was so hard to think, with the roar of the engines, the crash of the machines.
I have never seen such a Dreamtime, he replied.
The elder grinned. Hey, Gahzee. And are you so wise? Has your Walk taken you everywhere, and you still so young?
These machines…?
The elder replied with his own question. The workings of the world?
Gahzee shook his head. I don 't think so.
Come with me, the elder said.
He stood smoothly, not a stiff joint in his ancient frame, and set off briskly, taking a path through the pounding machines. Gahzee followed, looking left and right. The machinery appeared to serve no purpose beyond its noise, the foul fumes it released into the air, the ceaseless motion. Their roar deafened him.
The elder led him out of the vast building into a flat square. All around stood buildings similar to the one they had just quit, manufacturing nothing but noise, pouring filth into the air from their smokestacks. In the center of the square was a lodge made of deerskins tied to birch poles.
Sitting cross-legged in the lodge was a curious being, hairless and white, smooth-skinned, fat body round as a ball of jelly, with a smaller ball of a head attached to the torso without the benefit of a neck. The being wore not a stitch of clothing. His penis, long and fat like a white snake, lay across his ankles. His eyes were black, like two daubs of tar dropped onto that jelly face, his nose flat, his mouth a slit.
Beside him was a war club. Hanging from the leather thongs that kept the deerskins in place were many severed hands, some mummified and dry, others rotting and covered with flies. In the dirt in front of the lodge was a flat wooden dish upon which stood four carved figures.
He is the Great Gambler, the elder explained to Gahzee. And in his dish you see the four ages of man.
"Hey, Whiskey Jack," the Great Gambler said. "Have you come to try your luck? You don't think I'm so good anymore?"
He began to laugh, a horrible sound like fingernails on glass, and his white jelly body shivered like pudding.
Gahzee regarded his companion. Whiskey Jack, was it? That was a white man's name, but it was phonetically similar to a name in the tongue of the People—Wee-sa-kay-jac. It meant Bitter Spirit and belonged to a trickster manitou.
"All these hands you see," the Great Gambler went on, waving to his collection, "belonged to those who came to gamble. They all thought they could win, thought they had nothing to lose. But I don't gamble except with those who gamble their lives. I keep their scalps and ears and hands and give what's left to the windigo. And their spirits—" he grinned, confident, the flesh of his face and torso moist like a poisonous mushroom, "—I feed to the darkness.
"Do you still want to play the game of the four ages of man with me, Whiskey Jack?"
"Tell us the rules," Whiskey Jack said. He looked at Gahzee and gave him a wink.
"Here are the four figures in this dish," the Great Gambler said, picking up the wooden dish. "One for each age of man. I'll shake the dish four times, and if they remain standing each time, then I'm the winner. If they fall, then I lose."
Fat sausage fingers tipped the figures over so that Gahzee and his companion could see that they were loose in the dish.
"I'll play," Whiskey Jack said. "But it's the custom where I come from that the one who's challenged has the last play."
The Great Gambler nodded his agreement, fat flesh moving across his torso in waves at the movement. Taking the first play, he stood up the figures once more, then struck the ground with the dish. The four figures remained standing. He repeated this two more times and each time the four figures representing the four ages of man remained standing in their wooden dish.
He's cheating, Gahzee said. He must be.
Whiskey Jack winked again. Of course he is.
But if the figures remain standing a fourth time, he'll win. He'll kill you.
And not just me, Whiskey Jack replied, but you as well and all of the People. Our spirits will go into the darkness and the windigo will feast on our flesh—all except for those parts the Great Gambler keeps for himself.
This is madness. Why are you gambling?
Whiskey Jack turned to look at him. Because it's that kind of Dreamtime, grandson.
At that moment, he sounded exactly like the squat rat, Lisa Bone. Gahzee wondered if he'd stepped from a Dream Wheel into a hallucination. The gambler, the elder, their surroundings, this dish game—they were all the makings of a peyote vision gone mad.
The Great Gambler brought the dish down a fourth and final time. Gahzee tensed. The sound of the machinery from the surrounding buildings was suddenly very loud, twinning the accelerating jump of his own pulse. The dish hit the ground and the figures remained standing. But then Whiskey Jack whistled through his teeth and a wind sprang up, blowing the four figures down.
They fell into the darkness of the dish. The Great Gambler shivered. His rotund shape seemed to grow brittle, pieces of it flaking off as he turned his black-eyed gaze to the elder.
"I win," Whiskey Jack said. "Now it's my turn." He took the dish and righted the figures, then handed it to Gahzee. "You will play for me."
Gahzee took the dish with shaking hands. The figures trembled, ready to fall at the slightest motion. He brought the dish down. When it hit the ground, the dish shattered. He held only a piece of it in his hand. The broken shards lay spilled across the ground, but the four figures remained standing.
Oh, very good, Whiskey Jack said. You've broken the past, grandson.
The Great Gambler was no more than a dried gourd now. Cracks ran up and down his fat brittle body. He split open, the two halves of his body shattering when they hit the ground. A stink of old decay rose to clog Gahzee's nostrils. Slowly he lay the last shard of the dish upon the ground.
I don't understand, he said.
It's simple, Whiskey Jack told him. You must take your Walk into the future that you have made, upon the broken pieces of the past.
But there is no past, Gahzee said, repeating the lessons that the Twisted Hairs taught. Only now.
And the path with heart? Whiskey Jack asked. Does it follow only one route?
Gahzee shook his head. All deeds are Walks.
And all men?
Can be sacred humans? Gahzee tried.
Whiskey Jack grinned. Above his brow, under the brim of his hat, the coyote headdress appeared to be grinning too.
Exactly, the elder said.
He took a step back. When Gahzee moved to follow him, he heard Whiskey Jack whistle through his teeth again. This time the wind blew clouds of roiling smoke between them.
Gahzee choked and coughed. His head ached to the rhythm of the pounding machinery. He waved the smoke away from his face until he could see once more. He found himself standing on a wide open plain. Alone. The elder was gone. As were the lodge and the fragments of the wooden dish and the Great Gambler. The buildings housing the machinery.
All that remained was the pounding between his temples. The thick taste of smoke in his lungs.
He fell to his knees, then laid his head upon the ground, the dirt pressing against his cheek. Closing his eyes, he let the pain take him away.
FIFTEEN
1
At the commencement of business hours, Chien Foo arrived promptly at Okado's office in the IBN building in the Jimu District. Okado's secretary showed him into the office where Okado and his aide Muato Kamo were waiting. Okado stood by the window, turning only slightly at the Ho Fung representative's entrance. Once he saw who it was, he looked out the window once more.
Kamo stood behind the desk. Without preamble, he placed a briefcase on its glass surface.
"The full amount," he said. "In hard credits, as specified." Laying an envelope on top of the briefcase, he added, "And these are the IBN shares."
