Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman (26 page)

Instead of a desert, where I usually encountered the Wolf, I found myself in a walled oriental garden, surrounded by bonsai trees. In size they varied from eight or ten inches tall to some relative giants nearly a full three feet in height. It was like walking through a miniature forest. Some of the trees stood in individual pots on pedestals; others were planted in numbers in large trays that were sculpted and landscaped like tiny parks. The Wolf appeared through a gate at the other end of the garden, this time in the guise of my old sensei, short, bald, and muscular, though he wore a formal kimono rather than the gee I was used to seeing him in.

“
Bonsai trees?” I asked.

“
Almost every possible style and variation,” he said. “Koten and Bujin; Shakan, Kengai, even Netsunari.” He gestured at one in one of the larger trays, where several trees appeared to be growing out of a fallen log.

It was weird, hearing Wolf’s voice come out of my old sensei’s body, seeing the formal movements of the dojo I was used to, but also the looser, more casual body language Wolf used in his human guises.

“
Sorry, that’s all Greek to me.” He raised an eyebrow. “Well,” I amended, “Japanese, anyway. I mean, I can count to ten, but…”

“
Do you know how bonsai are created?”

“
Genetic manipulation?” I ventured.

“
No. It is all simple horticulture—pruning, trimming, guiding the branches’ growth, taken to the level of an art. Some of these trees are hundreds of years old.”

“
So they’re fragile and delicate Elders.”

“
Hardly. A well tended bonsai is hardier than a full-sized tree, and will outlive normal trees by many decades. But it still remains an artificial product. Just like you.”

“
Me?”

“
What would you be, if you had not found the Railwalker Order?”

“
I dunno. Not an itinerant gambler. Probably I would have continued in construction. Maybe if I was lucky enough or smart enough I’d have saved enough to go to school, become an architect.”

“
In some ways,” he said, “you are like these trees. You have been shaped and pruned by your teachers, your natural tendencies enhanced, energies taught to flow in certain directions they might not have found on their own.”

“
Okay,” I said slowly, wondering where this was leading. “I can see that.”

“
Now,” he said, “in what way are you unlike these trees?”

I pondered that one. I was sure he didn’t mean that I could move around from place to place, or that my height was normal for someone with my genetics. Whatever he meant, it wouldn’t be something that obvious. I shook my head, shrugged.

“
You give up too easily.” He smiled. “Sit. Meditate. Talk to the trees. We’ll talk again later.” He turned and left the garden.

I gazed around the garden, feeling for the right spot, the right tree. There was a warm, comfortable feeling about one particularly gnarled and ancient-looking tree that sat at the end of one of the larger landscaped trays. I walked to it and sat down with my back to the tray, leaning my head back against it carefully, as I would have if I was going to commune with a full-sized tree. I couldn’t quite touch the tree, and I wondered if that was important; in all my previous communications with trees I had been in physical contact with the trunk. I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing.

Trees are living beings that house a form of consciousness just as humans or animals do, but they’re not at all like us. Communication with individual animals isn’t quite like talking, the way the Wolf Spirit and I talk, it’s more like a series of feelings and pictures. With trees and plants, communication is even less like talking, and I barely know how to explain it in words. It’s more like direct knowing is transferred, and even the content of that knowledge is often strange and unexplainable. This time, however, the tiny and ancient tree infused me with memories. Hundreds of years of memories. For trees time is different than for humans. Days pass for them like seconds for us. Yet in this tree, something was different. It seemed to understand time, if not like humans do, at least in a way that was closer to human or animal perception. That was strange, I thought.

Until the tree’s history began to unfold within me, I didn’t realize I had already formed expectations. I had imagined the tree as a prisoner, subjected to tortures, distorting its shape and natural intentions into an arbitrary pattern imposed by its gardener. Instead, I discovered a mutual shaping between the gardener and the tree, the human’s faster, smaller consciousness adapting to the slower, wider scope of the tree’s, even as the tree cooperated with the gardener’s intentions. Trees don’t have emotions quite like humans or animals, but as close as I could approximate it, this tree seemed almost fond of its original gardener. The gardener had been like a teacher, coaching the tree in understanding something of the humans’ faster consciousness. I felt the human consciousness touch that of the tree, exploring, investigating, seeing into the future patterns the tree contained, considering how to reproduce those patterns in miniature in both time and size.

To a tree, the shapes of its branches and the patterns of its leaves are something like the patterns of neurons and synapses in the human brain. The pattern of the tree’s growth is the pattern and template of its consciousness. The effect of the bonsai process on the tree was to age and mature it at an accelerated rate. Accelerated aging in humans, as in progeria or Werner’s syndrome, doesn’t usually affect mental processes; the patient exhibits an aged appearance, but mentally remains their chronological age. While the bonsai might be a fraction of the size of its brothers in the wild, the maturity of its appearance coincides with the maturity of its consciousness. By the time this tree was thirty or forty years old, it held the consciousness and wisdom of a tree hundreds of years older.

I opened my eyes to find myself sitting in the stone circle overlooking the bay. It took me a minute to come completely back to myself and overcome the feeling of being rooted in the earth at that spot. I thought about what I’d learned. On the level of analogy, I had found more parallels than differences between my own training in the order and the bonsai tree’s cultivation. Perhaps I had not matured at as accelerated a rate as the tree had, but my training had certainly brought me to a deeper self-understanding more quickly than I would have gotten to on my own, which seemed to fit. Neither the training nor the wired shaping of the tree’s limbs had always been comfortable, but there was an equivalency to the knowledge that the discomfort was a necessary part of the process, and a minor inconvenience in the larger perspective.

Then it struck me: The gardener had found the tree and appealed to it to join him in this bonsai process. The Railwalkers did not proselytize; in fact, they would never even extend an invitation. I had sought out my teachers, applied to the order for entrance to the Academy.

Not that I understood what this might mean to my current problem.

21. AUDEN

Investigator Auden was collecting some printouts from the data center when the tech, Shamir, gave a hoot.

“
Son of a bitch! Someone’s actually trying to hack Roth’s private files,” he said to no one in particular.

“
You have access to Roth’s private files?” Auden said.

Shamir glanced up briefly from the screen as his fingers flew over the keyboard. “Duh, no, idiot. But they send me a signal if someone’s cracking them.”

Auden stepped into the hall, pulled out his communicator, and called the Railwalkers’ suite. Rok answered.

“
Give me your prof,” Auden said. “Emergency.”

A moment later Morgan was on the line. “This isn’t really a good—”

“
Are you hacking Roth’s files?”

“
How did you—”

“
Get out now. You’ve been nailed.”

“
Shit,” she said.

He heard the clacking of keys. From the data center, he could hear Shamir’s voice. “Shit! I lost him.”

“
I’m out,” said Morgan. “Talk to me.”

“
I was in the data center when the tech caught wind. Now you talk to me. Why were you hacking Roth?”

“
You never know where information is going to lead.”

“
Your boss Wolf thinks this all has to do with Roth’s history, doesn’t he?”

“
If you knew that, why did you ask? And how did you know that?”

“
Guards talk. Look, you believe that?”

“
Enough to try to hack Roth, see what I can find. He’s not telling the whole truth about something.”

“
You don’t think he’s involved?”

“
No. We think he’s the ultimate target. Whatever he’s concealing may have nothing to do with the Beast. But then it may.”

There was a long silence. Finally, Auden said, “Okay. As long as you share anything pertinent you come across. Try again around ten. The night guy is a lot less conscientious. He likes to toke up and play games.”

“
Thanks,” said Morgan, and disconnected.

22. THE ZONES—
Ten Years Ago

He traveled in his human shape, which made things a little more difficult, but he was used to hardships. There had been training excursions with Evreyt into Bay City, and sometimes into the nearby desert, but he had never traveled this far alone before, nor had he ever ventured so far from the Cave, or the Baja Bay area. He was now many days’ walk into the zones, carefully following the directions he had been given. For long stretches he was able to follow the ancient roads, in one place walking for nearly two days along a parallel pair of roads, wide expanses with four lanes each, though the pavement was broken in many places, scrubby plants and grass poking up. Now and then he had to make his way around the rusting hulk of an ancient vehicle, sometimes a group of vehicles. Once, when a scaledust storm blew up, he took shelter inside one of them, covering up with his tarp.

As the wide, flat spaces with Joshua trees and creosote bushes had gradually given way to higher desert, rolling hills dotted with sagebrush, scrub oak, and juniper, he had sighted the range of mountains he was looking for, the profile of which had been drawn for him, and which he had memorized.

In the foothills of those mountains lay the House of Katana.

Its back to the slope of a foothill, the house looked out over the desert, and the distant mountains on the opposite horizon. It was a moderately sized adobe house, with a small barn and a large garden. Beside the front door was a plaque with the kanji for “Katana.” No one answered his knock at the front door, so he walked around the side of the house to the garden.

There was a figure bent over in the garden, an old woman wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat. Tiny and birdlike she crouched, pulling weeds.

“
Excuse me,” he said, “I’m looking for the Master Katana.”

“
See that well over there?” She pointed without turning, her other hand continuing to pull weeds. “There’s a bucket behind you. Go fill it and bring it here.”

“
I was supposed to meet the Master Katana and become his apprentice.”

Now she stopped and looked up at him. “No shit?” she said. “Well, I don’t see no Master Katana here. Just me. I’m the mistress of this house, and until the Master Katana sees fit to put in an appearance and invite you into his dojo, you belong to me. Understood? Good. Now go get that water.”

The woman put him to work, helping her weed and tend the garden. She would answer no questions about the Master. When it became too dark to work, she gave him bread and water and pointed him to a sleeping palette on the ramada of the house.

Days passed, and the Master did not appear. He soon fell into the routine of chores around the small farm. There were chickens and goats to be tended to, the garden to be weeded and watered, food to be prepared. He found time to work out as well, doing his exercises and kata daily, as well as his rituals for the Four Quarters of the Day. As the days went by, he began to wonder if the Master would ever appear.

Then one day, when he had been there several weeks, he was taken by the idea that there was no Master Katana. Either that, or the old woman herself was the Master. Perhaps she was testing him. He decided he would test her in return. He would strike at her with something—a broomstick, perhaps. If she was indeed the Master, she would block it easily. If not... Well, if it turned out she really was just an old housekeeper, he could pull his strike and avoid hurting her. But he didn’t expect he would need to.

To his astonishment, he did have to pull the strike, but he hit her anyway, and she went down on the brick paving of the ramada. She was up again pretty quickly for an old woman.

“
What the hell is wrong with you, you stupid bastard?” she howled. He apologized profusely, but she told him to get out of her sight for the rest of the day.