Linnear 03 - White Ninja (51 page)

'Omukae!' The weasel shrieking at her in a potent mixture of terror and relief. 'Commander Senjin Omukae!'

When Killan left the Nippon Keio Building some hours after she had entered it, there was no question as to what the Pack Rat's next move was going to be. He followed her. She was the key, he.was sure of it, the enigma whose solution would bring into perspective everything he had heard up until now.

It was a moon-drenched night, the air unnaturally clear and calm after the days of rain, gloom and suspended petrochemical ash. The Pack Rat encountered

no difficulty in tailing Killan as she went across town into Asakusa, to the Scoundrel's usagigoya.

This time the Pack Rat would not be shut out. He had run a check on the Scoundrel, had found to his intense curiosity that he was a member of Nakano Industries' research and development department. He was also Killan Oroshi's friend. What were the two of them up to? It seemed clear now that Killan had wanted to be at Nakano, not Chiyoda, all along. Why? The Pack Rat meant to find out.

He scouted the hallway. On one side of the Scoundrel's apartment was a stairwell, on the other, another tiny apartment. The Pack Rat chose the stairwell first, finding the common wall with the Scoundrel's apartment. He knelt down, got out his miniature listening equipment. He got nothing. He put his hand against the ferroconcrete of the stairwell wall. There must be a ton of structural iron in there, he thought, blocking transmission.

He gave it up, went back into the hallway. He listened with his ear, then with the electronic equipment at the door to the adjacent apartment. Silence.

It took him fifteen seconds to get through the lock. Cautiously, he pushed the door open just wide enough to allow him to slither through sideways. Darkness and the smell of plaster, fresh paint, kerosene. There was debris on the floor, which he could see in the moonlight filtering through the blindless window had been taken down to the rough concrete underflooring. There were no lights, no electricity. Obviously the place was deserted, awaiting construction.

The Pack Rat went to work. Crouching beside the common wall with the adjacent apartment, he put his electronic 'ears' on.

Immediately, he heard Killan's voice, very loud, filled with the harsh sibilants of the 'ears'.'.. telling you, life wouldn't be the same without you, Scoundrel. You're the

only person who really sees me. All the women I know despise me, and all the men want to fuck me. Except you. You want to listen to what I have to say.'

'And then 1 want to fuck you.' It was a male voice, no doubt belonging to the platinum-haired Scoundrel.

Killan laughed. 'You're the only one who can make me laugh, you know that? It's a gift, like your genius with computers.'

As he had done in the Nami offices, the Pack Rat was taping all this, avidly preserving Killan's aural history as if that would allow him to capture her like a butterfly in a bell jar.

'Look at all this equipment,' Killan said. 'I sure hope it's going to do us some good. Are you sure this virus thing is as powerful as you've said?'

'You bet. More. mantis, the Manmade Nondiscriminatory Tactical Integrated-circuit Smasher. Not a virus-thing, a borer,' the Scoundrel said. 'But mantis is a unique kind of borer virus. It only attacks computer software programs with virus-prevention encryptions. It actually cannibalizes the software's own security systems, mutating them so that they turn on themselves. The deeper the encryption, the harder my borer works. I've told you, mantis is very sophisticated, very experimental stuff.'

The Pack Rat heard Killan's laugh. 'Listen to you. You're a genius in the lab. But in the real world, forget it. When you first told me about this, you weren't even going to get a piece of the action.'

'That's right,' the Scoundrel said, sounding defensive. 'I was told the mantis project was strictly for governmental use.'

'And I said, fuck the government,' Killan said. 'I said, let's take this shit and go private. We'll make a fortune. Do you know how many Western conglomerates will deliver a year's assets in order to get an edge on their

competitors? Jesus, the American market alone for this virus will make us millionaires!'

'If we live long enough,' the Scoundrel said. 'Which we might not. I'm not so sure we're doing the right thing, Kalian. This is the real world. Besides, mantis isn't perfected yet.'

'Real world. My God, listen to us!' Killan said. 'Next thing we'll be discussing is getting married, having kids, which brand of-nappies and rash ointment to buy. We'll be dead! Or something even worse: entombed by kata, the rigid rules of our society.'

'Ah, Killan, the eternal revolutionary,' the Scoundrel said in a gently chiding voice. 'Revolutions are great to think about. But they don't exist, not in our world. Anyway, there were only two revolutions that meant anything, one in America, the other in France. The others were jokes, parodies that exchanged one form of dictatorship for another. They don't even deserve the name.'

The Pack Rat was paying no attention to the talk of revolution; he let his machines soak up the conversation for him. He was fully concentrated on the fact that this friend of Killan Oroshi's, this platinum-haired post-punk computer genius, the Scoundrel, who worked for Nakano Industries, Killan's father's company, was working on a supercomputer virus. Just the kind that had attacked Sato International's computer banks. Could it have been the Scoundrel's mantis being tested out? he asked himself. He knew there were tons of viruses being born daily, but, according to Mickey, the expert to whom he had given the record of the virus's attack, this particular one was a mole virus, not a destroyer like most others. Was mantis that kind? The Scoundrel had called it a borer. Did that mean it was meant as a communication device? The Pack Rat did not yet know. On the other hand, the Scoundrel was just the kind of genius Mickey had described when she

had talked with the Pack Rat about the virus's creator.

The Pack Rat had a weird sensation of d?j? vu, as if he had come full circle: Nangi and the Scoundrel's mantis, Nangi and Ikusa, Ikusa and Ken Oroshi, Ken Oroshi, Ikusa and Nangi, Ikusa and Killan.Oroshi, Killan Oroshi and the Scoundrel. There seemed a connection to be made in the odd and disparate interlocking of relationships but, maddeningly, he could not see it. He knew it was there, though, and his heart beat faster,. Nangi will know, he thought. He knew he had to get all of this to Nangi right away.

He was concentrating so hard that he at first failed to recognize the blossoming geometric shape cast upon the wall in front of him. Then, with a start, he saw that it was a lozenge of light that could only be made by the hallway light coming into the apartment through the front door. But he had been careful to close the door behind him when he first entered.

The lozenge of light winked out. Darkness, again, mitigated by blue moonlight. And the Pack Rat knew that someone was in the apartment with him.

He did not move; he scarcely breathed. He slowly pulled the 'ears' from around his head, letting the recorder continue monitoring the conversation from the next apartment through its umbilical cord suctioned to the wall.

His immediate environment was silent save for the tiny noises all apartment buildings manufacture, the sounds of the night-time street filtered through the cracks between the window sash and the glass. Nothing else.

And yet...

The brief crackle of newspaper underfoot, the sound as explosive to his ears as that of a match being lit in a warehouse full of gasoline.

Hurriedly, the Pack Rat placed his 'ears' against the wall, covered the paraphernalia with debris. He moved

away from it as a mother wren will from her chicks when she senses danger is near. Her instincts tell her to lure the danger away from her progeny; keeping them safe is her first priority. So, too, with the Pack Rat's recording of events and meetings, the shadow world that Tanzan Nangi had hired him to penetrate and neutralize. He knew that he had to protect his evidence at all costs.

As he moved stealthily across the apartment, he withdrew a dagger with an eight-inch blade whose shape he had designed on the computer. It was thin enough to be easily concealed beneath clothes, yet wide enough to be lethal even on a cut that was slightly off the mark.

Shadows played along the walls and the floor, across the humped shapes of discarded laths, dried plaster and wall-boards, adder-like tangles of wires, exposed phone lines.

Hie Pack Rat heard it coming long before he saw it. The whistle of air being displaced, and the small hairs at the back of his neck stood up. He knew that sound, and he curled into a ball, launching himself forward, towards the direction of the attack, knowing that this was his only hope now.

What the Pack Rat recognized was the sound a tetsubo makes when it is wielded. A moment later, as if to confirm his suspicion, the area of the concrete floor on which he had been standing exploded in a choking shower of particles and dust.

Tetsubo-jutsu was a highly specialized form of the martial arts, primarily because the tetsubo itself - a solid iron bar, its working end covered with iron studs - was so heavy. The weapon had been developed centuries ago for armoured warfare. A warrior would wade into the enemy, swinging the iron bar, opening up their armour or breaking the legs of the mounted enemies' horses.

Nowadays, tetsubo-jutsu was used for only one reason:

to crush an opponent. There were no half-way measures with such a weapon.

The Pack Rat came out of his curled position, struck immediately upwards. It was as if he had encountered a mountain. It took an exceptionally strong man, an enormous man, to use the tetsubo effectively. Without having seen his face, the Pack Rat knew who had followed him from the Nami offices into this vacant apartment: Kusunda Ikusa.

The Pack Rat's blow was deflected, and he found himself thrown hard across the room. He hit the wall with a thud, bounced up immediately. Even so, he could hear the tetsubo humming in the air as it headed towards him. He ducked, and a chunk of the wall splintered, showering him in biting bits of lath and plaster.

To avoid the suki, the weaknesses in defence that could result from tetsubo-jutsu, Ikusa had to strike at the Pack Rat quickly and repeatedly. This could be tiring, even for such a sumo as Ikusa.

But the Pack Rat knew that he could not keep up the pace of evasion in such a constricted space. Eventually, he would duck the wrong way or take a wrong step and Ikusa would crush his skull.

Therefore, he did the only thing he could think of: he got as near to Ikusa as he could manage. He theorized that the iron club would lose much of its effectiveness at such close quarters.

Ikusa's free arm came up, and the Pack Rat batted it aside, struck out with his knife, heard the sound of material being slit, felt the blade bury itself into flesh, and he knew he had a chance.

Ikusa dropped the tetsubo, made a grab for the Pack Rat. The Pack Rat was ready for bun, drove an elbow inwards in a powerful atemi. He whirled, crouching down, beginning his circular entering movement, and got his left hand on the iron club. He began the aikido

immobilization jo-waza, turning outwards, back the way he had come, feeling Ikusa's weight coining forwards, beginning to unbalance as the Pack Rat used his momentum against him, and the Pack Rat thought, Now I have a chance.

Me slid his left leg forwards, shifting the axis upon which his body rotated, readying the completion of the jo-waza that would hurl Kusunda Ikusa's enormous weight to the floor. At that moment a tremendous blow caught him in the side of his head.

He staggered, bis vision blurred. He struck out blindly with his blade, missed, overcompensated, spun helplessly around.

Then he heard the whistle, actually saw the iron bar coming at him, filling his vision. He tried to move his head, but nothing seemed to work.

A crack like thunder from the edge of the world. Time, like existence, as fragile as a candle's flame, was snuffed out.

When Senjin touched Justine's belly with the flat of his hand, he said to her, 'You're pregnant, aren't you?' He might have said, You're dead, aren't you? In fact, for the first split instant, that was what Justine thought he had said, but then she understood that what she was hearing was an echo of her own inner voice. 'Oh, God,' she said, collapsing against him, 'I lied.' Senjin let go of the silken cord, held her as delicately as if she were a fragile-boned bird with a broken wing. He saw the moonlight, slow and thick, falling across her face, illuminating one by one her features: mysterious eyes, strong nose, high cheekbones, full, partly-open lips; her hair in the semi-darkness a shroud rich with promise, below which her breasts rose and fell with her rapid, shallow breathing. The dense moonlight cast purple shadows, creating two other figures on the porch,

elongated, humanoid but certainly not human, winged but certainly not angels..

This light had come a long way, slipping through the vast wasteland between the stafs, a prehistoric light, though of what alien civilization's prehistory it was impossible to say. But Senjin recognized this light and the power its properties of immense distance and time represented.

'I've lied to my husband all this time, and I lied to you when I said that I went to see Honi because I hated myself. I mean, I did hate myself. That much is true. But that's not all of it, not nearly. I was - how can I put this so you'U understand? I didn't want to grow up. I was afraid of growing up. I had lived my life with a mother sapped of life and of strength. It seemed clear to me that in giving birth to me and to my older sister, my mother had given us the juice of her flesh along with her milk.