Svaha, page 25
"You gave them Gahzee's chip?"
"Nah." He dropped the chip from his sleeve into his palm and tossed it to the Claver. "I just left 'em with what they thought they wanted. It was just the sweetest scam in a long history of sweet scams, darling."
"How long do we have before they find out what you did?" Gahzee asked.
"Well, the recording they made of what I was doing should burn out in about another half-hour. But if they spend their time trying to crack the code on the chip I left—and we're talking random crap here, Jack—we've got until morning at the latest. But you see—the real sweetness in this deal is, they got no way of tracking us down. All they got's a name—Spook. That ain't gonna take 'em far."
"I've never been on a sub before," Lisa said as they reached the station.
"You're gonna enjoy it, darling." The Ragman looked around. "Don't see your dog, Jack, but it's just as well. Couldn't ride the sub anyway."
"He can find his own way around," Gahzee said.
He paused at the top of the stairs leading down into the station. The Ragman looked at him.
"You still with us, Jack?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you got what you wanted."
The Claver looked from him to Lisa. "That's true," he said.
He dropped the chip on the street and ground it under his heel. With what he was wearing, the Ragman thought, that's got to have hurt.
"You seem disappointed," Gahzee said.
The Ragman looked down at the ruined chip. "Yeah, well I hate to see good tech go to waste."
But I'm one up on you all the same, Jack, he thought, 'cause I got the way to break your Claver codes right up here in my head and one thing the Ragman's real good at, and that's remembering.
"You still didn't answer my question," he added aloud.
The Claver shot another glance at Lisa. "You've helped us," he said. "Now we will return the favour."
"What did you think, Ragman?" Lisa asked. "That we were gonna take the goods and run?"
"What the hell do I know, darling?" The Ragman asked, then he gave them another wide, toothy grin. "Let's go meet ourselves a drone."
He led the way down to the sub station.
4
The streets of the Plex were dark and no longer seemed familiar. Miko cut through their shadowed lengths like a katana cutting through flesh. Above her, the fouled sky roiled with clouds threatening rain, but she continued to travel by foot. Each step served to imprint her task deeper in her mind, sharpening her ki.
Giri.
Debt and duty.
Giri.
The word rhythmed inside her like a heartbeat. Her missing finger throbbed in time. Memories of Phillip ran through her thoughts, entwined with the heartbeat.
If I asked you to stand by me against Goro, he had asked her, what would be your reply?
I was a fool, she thought. But their relationship had grown too quickly for her. A long life without him, a few days with him. How could he have become so precious so soon?
If I leave, Miko, it will only be because you have sent me away.
I would not send you away, Phillip. I could never have sent you away.
The sweet languor of lying next to him after making love. Regrets? he had asked.
Never.
The steel of Goro's yaks cutting him down in her apato.
She had not sent him away—Goro had taken him.
You were my father's oyabun, Goro, she thought, and you thought you were mine as well, but tonight you will truly understand where my loyalties have always lain.
Michi, the road of obligation, had to be earned. The old yakuza knew that. They had a Code. But Goro only remembered the parts of the Code that suited him.
Giri.
The heartbeat drummed her duty inside her. The palm of the hand that gripped the katana under her raincoat remained dry. Her ki made her aware of every small movement in the buildings that enclosed the street upon which she strode. She could sense a distant spark in the Plex now—Goro's ki. It was a pinprick of fire that drew her across the cityscape. Her lips shaped a cold smile, but otherwise her features remained expressionless. She concentrated on her sei, wore her calmness like a cloak.
Can you sense me coming, oyabun?
Giri.
My name is death.
5
"Stalking Death walks this city tonight," Gahzee said.
They had reached the front door of Fumiko Hirose's apato, but the medé turned away, looking down the street. Following his gaze, Lisa didn't see anything. Then she caught movement from the corner of her eye and saw Nanabozho appear from the mouth of an alleyway across the street. The coyote sat on the pavement, watching them.
"Are you talking about Bozo?" she asked.
Gahzee glanced at the coyote and shook his head. "Out there," he said, with a motion of his hand that took up half the city. "Someone walks a Stalker's Wheel."
"Another Claver?" the Ragman asked.
"No. The…intent is similar to that of the People when they hunt, but not the same."
The Ragman caught sight of the coyote then. "What's the deal with the dog, Jack? I mean, with our taking the sub, there's no way it coulda kept up with us, so how'd it know to meet us here?"
"He is a manitou—a mystery."
"You're telling me. It's starting to give me the creeps."
"He means Bozo's like a teacher," Lisa said. "From the—" she glanced at Gahzee, "—uh, Fourth World, right? One of the Kachina-hey?"
"I don't need this shit," the Ragman said, turning back to the door.
He took a thin band of metal from the pocket of his jacket and inserted it into the computerized lock, popping its cover. Studying the circuitry inside, he connected a couple of wires attached to the back of his com-link to the wiring in the lock and punched in a number. The front door hissed open.
"I thought we were expected," Gahzee said as the Ragman closed up the lock again.
"I kinda like to make my own entrance, Jack—just in case it's a set-up. You coming?"
Lisa and Gahzee followed him inside. Before the door slid shut again, Nanabozho slipped in with them.
"Aw, Jack. We don't need your dog on our ass."
"Then send him away."
"He's okay," Lisa said quickly. "Let's just go."
She didn't like the tension between the two men. New friend, old friend. Why couldn't they get along better? Probably because they were both used to doing things their own way, she decided.
She followed them into the elevator. As the car shot up, she held back a little gasp. Everything was so weird in the Plex. Without the Ragman to help them, she knew they wouldn't have gotten much farther than the checkpoint. Of course, Gahzee and Bozo had found their way in without IDs…
But the Ragman was fast on his feet. In the sub, while it was all Lisa could do but grab the edge of the seat and try not to freak too badly as the rocking car sped through its dark tunnel, the Ragman started talking to the other passengers, inviting them to the costume party they were going to, giving them the address. She wondered if anybody would take him up on the invite, and if they did, where they'd end up, because the Ragman wasn't about to hand out invites to his own squat. Not with his bullyboys waiting for him there, getting all geared up for the attack on the Goro Clan.
The elevator came to a stop, the doors sliding open. Lisa leaned against the wall for a moment until her stomach caught up with the rest of her, then stepped out to join the others in the hall. The Ragman started down towards the left, but Gahzee blocked him with his arm.
"There is something wrong in the air," he said. "Stalking Death has been here."
"Yeah, I'm getting the creeps myself," the Ragman said, "but I want to see this through."
Pushing away Gahzee's arm, he headed off down the hall. Gahzee notched an arrow and fell in step with him. Lisa took a deep breath, then she drew her Steeljack and followed the pair. The coyote brought up the rear.
When they reached the apato, the door was half-open. The smell of blood filled the air. The Ragman glanced at Gahzee.
"No one is inside," the medé said. "No one alive."
They entered the apato. When she caught sight of the corpses, Lisa thought she was going to be sick. She leaned weakly against the doorjamb, Steeljack hanging down at her side, and tried to push back her nausea.
"Ninja work," the Ragman said as he went from corpse to corpse. "See this?" He picked up a bloody fan from the floor. "Nothing but paper, right? But it cut the throats of two of these fuckers all the same. That's a ninja trick—they use whatever's at hand to get the job done."
Gahzee moved to Yip's corpse. "These two yaks killed this one," he said. "The others were slain by Stalking Death."
"That's Yip," the Ragman said as he joined Gahzee. "A coupla yaks, drone lying there by the door. What the fuck's going on here?"
"An assassination?"
"Looks like. Yaks and drones working together? It don't figure. And where's the lawyer lady who owns this squat?"
Gahzee crossed the room to where a sword stand stood on the lid of a chest. He recognized it for what it was, including the scroll. Only the short sword was on the stand.
"She did this," he said, turning back to the Ragman. "The woman who lives here. She killed these men, then took her long sword and left. It is her spirit I sense that has merged with Stalking Death."
"We're talking about Goro's lawyer," the Ragman said.
"But then again, if she was in with Yip, setting up a meet with the Co-Op…maybe she's turned on him."
"What's this?" Gahzee asked.
He knelt by Yip's corpse and pointed to a small folded handkerchief, stained with blood. The Ragman hunched down beside him and carefully opened it up. Watching from the door, Lisa lost her battle with her stomach. She turned and threw up when she saw the severed finger lying in the center of the white silk. It was small. A woman's finger.
"Yubitsume," the Ragman said.
"What is that?"
"The ritual removal of the little finger. Yaks use it to earn back their honour. If whoever you owe the debt to doesn't accept it, the guy handing it out commits seppuku—ritual suicide. It's considered really bad form not to accept it."
"It appears that the woman was offering her finger to this dead man—Yip."
"Uh-huh. And that means I can figure out where she's gone—after Goro."
"I didn't realize that there were women in the ranks of the yakuza," Gahzee said.
"Neither did I, Jack. Lemme think about this for a moment. Maybe there's something here we can use."
Gahzee left him by the corpse and joined Lisa. He took her Steeljack from her hand and replaced it in its holster, then put his arm around her shoulders and led her deeper into the apato, looking for a washroom. When he found it, he sat Lisa down on the closed toilet seat and removed her swagger girl mask. Dampening a cloth, he used it to wipe her face and brow. On the floor by their feet, he spied another bloody handkerchief. He kicked it back behind the toilet with one foot.
"Will you be all right?" he asked, going down on one knee to bring his face level with hers.
Lisa nodded slowly. "And I…I thought things were weird in the squats," she tried to joke.
Her face was very pale—almost as pale as the white clay Gahzee wore. Her legs felt all rubbery. When she thought of the corpses in the other room…
"I don't think I'm cut out for this," she said. "I'm way outta my league."
"It's nothing to be ashamed of," Gahzee told her. "We were put on this earth to care for our brothers and sisters, not kill them. Be proud. You have a pure heart."
If she weren't feeling so rotten, Lisa would have laughed. "I'm not pure, Gaz. I've done a lot of shit I'm not proud of."
"But you feel regret for those mistakes, don't you?"
"Well, yeah. Most of them."
"That is the difference between the pure-hearted and the evil. The latter has no regrets. They do not even consider what they do to be wrong."
"I guess."
"Rest here for a few moments until we are done in the other room. I'll come get you when we are ready to leave."
"Okay."
She didn't want him to go. She wanted to be babied, to be held, and told that what had happened to those men out there wasn't going to happen to her, but she let him go. If what they had between them was going to work, she had to stand as tall as he did. She didn't want him to feel that he always had to be taking care of her. She wanted him to accept her as an equal.
Be proud. You have a pure heart.
There'd still be room to be comforted. It just had to wait, that was all.
She looked up suddenly, feeling a new presence in the room, and saw the coyote standing in the doorway, watching her with his mismatched eyes.
"How ya doing, Bozo?" she asked softly. "Is that your real name, or do they call you something else in the Dreamtime?"
She reached out a hand, and Nanabozho stepped closer, allowing her to run her fingers through his thick rough fur. He looked up, blue eye's gaze fixed on hers. A sense of strangeness spread through Lisa as she looked into that eye, a feeling of dislocation. The walls of the small washroom appeared to expand in endless directions on all sides. Her eyes fluttered shut, her head sagged, chin touching her chest.
Consciousness slipped away.
DREAMTIME
She opened her eyes to find herself on top of a small mesa surrounded by desert on three sides, the emptiness stretching off for as far as she could see, with mountains to the north. The mesa was round, its edges enclosed by a ring of rock slabs that appeared to have been purposely arranged in the pattern they made. She stood in their center. The mesa top was absolutely flat, tufted with short growths of vegetation that she didn't recognize; the soil appeared to be badly leached. The sides of the mesa fell steeply away, a drop of hundreds of meters. Above her the sky was a desert blue—absolute, not a cloud. The sun was so bright it hurt her eyes.
Dreamtime.
It was the exact opposite of the lush forestland and meadow that she'd visited with Gahzee, but she knew that this place had to be in the Dreamtime all the same.
I don't want to be here, she thought. Not alone. Not without Gahzee. I don't want to see any more dead people dancing.
She walked slowly to the edge facing the mountains, stopping in her tracks when she saw a small figure bent over in the dirt. A boy, peering over the steep drop, precariously balanced between a rock slab and the cliff face. Her hand rose to her mouth.
He's going to fall.
His limbs and torso were a dark brown. His head seemed strange, viewed from the back—grey hair on a young child, the head the wrong shape, somehow. When he turned to look at her, her throat went dry. The boy had a coyote's head, eyes the same mismatched colours of Nanabozho's.
A mask, she thought. It had to be a mask, like her swagger girl's mask, but she knew it wasn't.
Dreamtime.
Things weren't real here. Anything could happen.
I don't want to be here, she thought again. What if I never get back?
The coyote-headed boy rose quickly from where he'd been kneeling, tottered, stopped his fall with a hand on the rock slab, and stepped around it to face her. His feet, knees, and hands were dusted with the grey dirt. Cocking his head, he looked at her the way Bozo did, tongue lolling.
"What…what are you?" she asked.
He made no reply.
Kachina-hey. That's who lived in the Dreamtime. The Kachina-hey and the dancing dead. Oh, Gahzee. Get me outta here.
"What's your name?" she tried.
We don't have names in this place. The People name us, but we have no need for such. We know who we are.
His lips never moved—his voice echoing in her head. Lisa swallowed drily. The dust seemed to have lodged a rock in her throat.
"I…I'd like to go home," she said.
The coyote-boy ignored what she said. Look, he said, pointing towards the mountains. What do you see?
"See? I…"
Who the fuck cares? she thought, but she looked and saw only the mountains.
There were four main peaks. She started to turn back to her bizarre companion, but movement on the sides of the mountains caught her eye. She stepped closer to a rock slab, giving the coyote-boy a wide berth. The distant mountains came into sudden sharp focus.
On the side of the first peak, there were infants crawling—hundreds of babies—all trying to reach the top. Of the ones that began the journey, only half seemed to make it to the top. Some hardly started their journey before they collapsed. Others continued on, before they stopped moving and went no farther.
When she looked at the second mountain, she saw much the same thing, except the babies had grown up now. They ranged in age from toddlers to young boys and girls, eleven or twelve. Where the travellers on the first hill were quiet, the boys and girls on the second were full of energy. They played games as they ran up the mountainside, racing, wrestling, hunting. The range of their moods was a broad spectrum compared to the mountainside of babies, but there were deaths here, as well. The survivors seldom stopped to help those hurt. When they did, it was to run back for only a moment, then race on again.
On the third mountain, the children had grown older, but they went up the hill with the same constant pace. There were few games there, and little laughter. Men and women began to walk together, though there were still those who walked alone. And they still died on their journey with the same indifference on the part of the survivors.
On the fourth mountainside, ancient women and old men clambered laboriously upward, stumbling and gasping as they climbed the steep slope. In the end, most crumpled to the ground to move no more. While they lived they looked back, shouting encouragement to the stragglers, but they didn't wait either. Very few made it to the top. There was a heat haze there, a shimmer that those few survivors disappeared into.
Lisa blinked sweat out of her eyes and suddenly the mountains were distant again. She looked at her companion.
Those are the Four Hills of Life, he said. The Four Ages of Man. Look.
