House of the Sun

by Nigel Findley

  "Like I said, Mr. Tokudaiji had biz on the outer islands yesterday," Scott explained patiently. "He's under no obligation to see you at all, see? He could just dust you off, and nobody could say drek about it."

  I digested that as Scott turned the limo onto a northbound highway that soon plunged into a tunnel through a range of hills. Either Scott didn't know on whose behest I was working—this Tokudaiji wouldn't be dusting me off, he'd be dusting off Jacques Barnard, executive vice president of Yamatetsu North America—or Tokudaiji was a very important man indeed.

  "Are you packing?" Scott asked suddenly.

  The Seco suddenly felt heavy on my hip. "Yes," I said slowly.

  Scott made a tsk sound. "Should have warned you about that. You'll have to leave it in the car when you go in to see Mr. Tokudaiji."

  Like frag I will... That's what I wanted to say, but I held my tongue with a sigh. "I'm not sure I like the way this is working out."

  For a moment the old Scott reappeared in his smile. "Hey, brah, at least you won't have to go through a cavity search."

  The highway emerged from the tunnel, and the whole landscape had changed. The north side of the island was much lusher than the south, which implied more rain. (Hadn't I read somewhere that changing wind patterns had really fragged with the weather in the islands over the last half century? Well, whatever.) The highway curved northwest, judging by the position of the sun, then switchbacked to the northeast, descending a hillside. Directly north was a rocky promontory, with something that looked like a military installation at its base. On the west side of the promontory, the coastline opened out into a sweeping bay so beautiful it almost couldn't be real. "Mr. Tokudaiji's got himself a pretty fair view, you ask me," Scott said, again seeming to read my mind.

  We pulled off the highway and followed a harshly weathered secondary road that flanked the bay. After a klick or two, Scott took an unmarked turn, and the quality of the road improved drastically. Private road, I guessed . .. and a glimpse of a surveillance camera tracking the car from a hibiscus bush confirmed it a moment later. I patted my pockets to be sure I hadn't misplaced Barnard's message chip after all this, and, a little grudgingly, unclipped the Seco's holster from my waistband. "You can just leave your piece in the back there," Scott suggested. "It'll be safe."

  The limo sighed to a stop at a security gate, but not any kind of security gate I was used to. No electrified chain-link fences here, no strands of cutwire, no powered metal gate running on reinforced tracks. Instead, we faced a large palisade—that's about the best word I can find for it—made of finely finished dark wood. A Japanese-style arch topped the gate. I saw the motif worked into that arch and into the double gate itself and felt a faint chill in my gut. A chrysanthemum, that was the key image, replicated everywhere. Just fragging peachy.

  As we sat, waiting, I examined the gate and the palisade. Though the whole setup looked like a set from an old Kurosawa flatfilm—Ran, maybe—it didn't take much brains to guess that things were a lot more secure than they seemed. Maybe the façade of the gates and the fence were real wood—if I hadn't noticed the chrysanthemum pattern, I'd have wagered they were cheaper macroplast—but they certainly covered material a lot more resilient. Reinforced ballistic composite at the very least, possibly armored ferrocrete. Though it looked as though those carved gateposts would fall like bowling pins if Scott gunned the Rolls into the gates, I'd have laid a very big bet that even a light panzer would have difficulty taking down Ekei Tokudaiji's first line of defense.

  After a minute or so—enough time for security personnel to scan the car with every available frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum, presumably—a small postern gate opened and two figures emerged. They wore expensively tailored suits, not the ancient Nihonese armor I'd half expected, but their faces, their manner, and the general way they carried themselves wouldn't have seemed out of place in a samurai epic.

  Neither had any visible weapons, but one of them took up a perfect position for covering fire anyway. The second approached the driver's side. Scott powered down the window and gave the guard a formal nod. "Konichi-wa, " the driver said, then went on in Japanese faster than my limited comprehension could match. I heard Tokudaiji-sama once, and my own name—I think—a couple of times, but beyond that I couldn't make any sense of it.

  When Scott had run down, the guard nodded again. "Go ahead," he said in unaccented English and stepped aside to join his comrade. The double gates swung silently back, and the Rolls sighed forward.

  Outside the compound, the forest had been allowed to run more or less riot. Inside, everything—the position of every tree and shrub, even the proportions of the winding driveway—seemed to be laid out with mathematical precision. I felt like I was cruising through a tropical version of a Japanese formal garden . . . which is exactly what I was doing, of course.

  I gave a heartfelt sigh and shot Scott a sour look. "You could have told me Tokudaiji was a fragging yakuza oyabui pointed out.

  "Hey, don't give me that stink-eye," he protested. "Not my idea, brah. Just following orders."

  "What an original excuse," I muttered.

  The oyabun's mansion nestled up against the steep slope of a greenery-clad hill. He'd obviously got himself a good architect, had the yak boss—every line of the house and its outbuildings harmonized perfectly with the contours of the terrain around it. How many million nuyen would a place like this set you back? I wondered. More than I'd ever see.

  As we pulled up, I found myself looking around for more of the suit-clad samurai who'd greeted us at the gate. I couldn't see any, but I could feel their presence. Nothing happened for almost a minute. Scott killed the Rolls's engine, but he didn't open the door, didn't even move. I figured he knew what he was doing, so I concentrated on doing the same kind of nothing. Again, I imagined invisible fingers of electromagnetic energy scanning the car and our bodies, counting rivets and fillings and the like.

  Finally, a figure emerged from the front door of the mansion—another suit-clad samurai—and stopped a couple of meters from the front quarter of the car. As if that had been his signal—which it probably was, of course—Scott climbed out, came around, and held my door open for me. As I emerged from the air-conditioned comfort of the car, the heat and humidity—and the unmistakable smell of jungle—was like walking into a door.

  "Just take this all chill, okay?" Scott whispered, without moving his lips. I snorted. What the frag did he expect me to do? Go ballistic for no good reason, and try to caek the samurai with my bare hands? Yeah, right. For an instant my left hip felt awfully lonely without the weight of the Seco. Scott took up station to my left and one step back as I walked toward the Armante-clad samurai.

  When I was a couple of strides away, the man turned wordlessly and strode off toward the front of the house, obviously expecting me to follow. With a shrug, I did. Through a set of large double doors we went—the chrysanthemum motif was carved into those doors as well, just in case a visitor hadn't gotten the message already—and into the atrium of the house.

  And "atrium" is exactly the right word. The place was laid out like a Roman villa with a central open area. I guess I expected something more in the neighborhood of a Japanese rock garden complete with fishpond and koi. Wrong, chummer. No rocks growing in the sand, no mutant immortal carp. The atrium was paved with marble and sported a couple of benches plus a handful of classical-style statues. (Suddenly I flashed on the formal garden in the background of Barnard's vidcall. Did he and Tokudaiji share the same fragging decorator or what?) In the bright Hawai'ian sunlight, the white marble glared.

  Our samurai guide turned left down a ... well, if this was a church, I'd call it a cloister—a corridor open on one side, looking out over the atrium. (Weird mixture of styles and symbols in this house. But somehow they seemed to mesh and the amalgam worked.) Two more side-boys materialized out of nowhere flanking me and Scott a couple of paces back. Again, no weapons were visible; but, again, the way they carried themselves co
nvinced me they wouldn't need weapons to take down anything less than a fragging dzoo-noo-qua.

  We played follow-the-leader halfway down the cloister, then hung a left through another heavy wooden door. (No chrysanthemum on this one, as if it mattered.) Two more suit-clad sammies were waiting for us in the room—a small antechamber decorated in muted tones, very serious and elegant. The two new sammies pulled out scanners and went over every centimeter of my body. Very polite about it, they were—as polite as you can be when you're doing something like that—constantly murmuring "Sumimasen, chotto, excuse me." Never once did they touch me—no pat-down, no search of my pockets or whatever. The process took a couple of minutes and evidently they were satisfied with the results, confident that I didn't have a heavy pistol concealed in my left ear or a hand grenade in my cheek. Both sammies bowed formally to me with one last "Sumimasen, " and focused their attention on a resigned-looking Scott.

  His anxiety about a cavity search was misplaced—they never so much as touched him either. Granted, they were a little more intrusive in terms of how close they brought the scanners, and they didn't give him even one "Sumimasen," but there was nothing invasive or proctological about the procedure. One of the sammies, an older slag, with strategically silvering hair and hollow cheeks, showed specific interest in a stickpin Scott wore in his lapel. To me it looked like some kind of Hawai'ian idol, a pot-bellied little guy with big wide eyes, made out of sterling silver. The old slag didn't scan it with his detectors, but just stared at it for a while, a slightly puzzled frown on his face. Then he shrugged and moved on. I shot Scott a questioning look. The big ork just shrugged.

  Finally, the scanning and examining was done, and the door on the other side of the antechamber swung open. One of the Armante-garbed sammies gestured us through. As I stepped forward, Scott again took up his position a step back and to my left. I strode through the door ...

  And stopped. I've always been a sucker for books. Real books, the paper-and-ink kind, the kind you can hold in your hands, the kind with real covers and bindings. (Sure, I know, it's the content that really counts—you can't judge a book, drekcetera—but if you don't already understand the pure, sensory pleasure of opening a book and flipping the pages, you probably never will ... and your loss.) As a bibliophile, it's always been my dream to have a library—one room devoted entirely to books. If I had to envision that room, it would have a couple of large windows for natural light, but every other square meter of wall space would be taken up with bookshelves. There'd be one chair specifically for reading—a big old wing chair, preferably (although I'd probably retrofit a massage unit)—a couple of small tables to hold decanters of single-malt Scotch, and maybe two or three other (lesser) chairs in case I ever invited friends into my sanctum sanctorum.

  Rescan that description. That's exactly the room we were ushered into, all the way down to the cut-glass decanter of smoky amber liquid on the side table. My first reaction was, "Yeah, all right." My second, "There ain't no fragging justice." And then I suppressed both those reactions and focused all my attention on the slag watching us from the wing chair.

  He looked old and frail with bones as thin and fragile as a bird's, his skin pale and parchment-thin. He was nearly bald, and his hands—steepled thoughtfully before his lips—were scrawny and fleshless. It was his eyes that caught and held my attention, though; dark, intense eyes, the eyes of a hawk. Intelligence and awareness glinted deep in those eyes, like windows into the soul of a young and vibrant man who only happened to be wearing the body of an octogenarian. Strength of personality radiated from him in waves. Here was a man to respect, I realized—a man to fear, perhaps, but also a man to like.

  I felt Scott's presence at my elbow. Behind us, I heard the library door click shut. I blinked, and for the first time I noticed the aide—another twenty-first-century samurai—standing silently behind the oyabun's chair.

  Mr. Ekei Tokudaiji was silent for a few moments as his eyes scanned my face and—that's what it felt like, at least—probed the depths of my soul. Eventually, his thin lips drew up in a gentle smile. "Mr. Montgomery," he said. His voice was smooth as velvet, not loud—but then it didn't have to be—and totally accentless. "Welcome. Please." He gestured to a chair—another leather wing chair, but smaller than his—that faced him.

  "Thank you," I told him.

  The yakuza boss watched me as I seated myself. The oyabun never so much as glanced at Scott, I noted, as if the big chauffeur didn't even exist. (No, I corrected, as if Scott were as irrelevant to our discussion as a piece of furniture ... or as his own aide.)

  I pointedly scanned the room with my gaze, nodded approvingly. "Nice decor."

  He smiled as if my opinion pleased him, as if it really mattered one way or the other. "Thank you." He gestured at the books. "A man needs a refuge where the great thoughts of the past shield him from the chaos of the world." He paused. "I apologize for ..." He inclined his head toward the door to the anteroom. "Necessity. No dishonor was intended."

  "None taken." I forced myself to relax, to wait him out. I never felt really comfortable with the initial meaningless protocol of high-level meetings. Why not just cut to the fragging chase and get on with things? But it was the oyabun's game, his rules.

  "How is Mr. Barnard?" Tokudaiji asked after a moment.

  "Tired," I responded, remembering the way the corporator had looked on the telecom screen. "But he's got a nice setup in Kyoto."

  "A beautiful city," the oyabun said, inclining his head, "with much history and culture. Have you visited, Mr. Montgomery?"

  Yet another high-powered suit wanting to know about my travel itinerary. What was this, a trend? I shook my head. "Never made it."

  Again, the oyabun was silent for a few moments, regarding me steadily. Then something changed subtly in those sharp eyes, and I knew we were getting down to biz. "I understand that Mr. Barnard has a message for me," Tokudaiji said quietly, "something he was unwilling to commit to the Matrix."

  "That's correct, sir."

  The yak smiled gently. "What would it concern, do you suppose?"

  I shook my head. "Do you really think Mr. Barnard would confide in a mere messenger?" Drek, I thought—hang around with people like this long enough and you start talking like them ...

  "Of course not, of course not." Tokudaiji extended his hand.

  In response I reached into my pocket for the optical chip in its plastic holder.

  And that's when the drek dropped into the pot. I felt something happen behind me. It wasn't hearing, it wasn't seeing, it wasn't the sense of touch or smell—it was something else, but it was also totally undeniable. I felt it right down in the core of my being, sort of like the shivery feeling of an overpressure wave, but internal rather than external.

  Magic. I knew that's what it was; somehow I knew.

  I turned my head to the left. In my peripheral vision, I saw Scott move forward, reaching into his coat. The little pot-bellied guy on his lapel was glowing with a strange inner light, and I could feel that shivery feeling emanating from it.

  At that instant time seemed to change. Everything seemed to shift into slow motion, like in an old Sam Peckinpah flatfilm.

  Tokudaiji's eyes widened in surprise and alarm. Behind him his aide was going for his heat. Even in slow-mo, the sammy's move was blindingly fast.

  Not fast enough, though. The sammy's heavy pistol was barely clear of its shoulder holster when his face vanished in a wet red cloud and he went over backward. The concussion of a gunshot hammered my left ear, and I flinched away from the muzzle-plume of Scott's Roomsweeper. (Scott's Roomsweeper! How the frag had he smuggled a drek-eating Roomsweeper past the security check?)

  Still in slow-mo, I felt my own body responding instinctively. I came out of the chair like I was on springs, right hand slapping ineffectually at my vacant left hip.

  Tokudaiji was moving, too, one of his skeleton-thin hands plunging inside his thousand-nuyen jacket. His eyes met mine, and in a flash of instanta
neous communication we both knew he was too late.

  From the corner of my eye I saw Scott's Roomsweeper come to bear, saw it gout flame again. The blast—shot, not a single slug—took the yakuza boss full in the face, slamming what was left of his skull back into the leather chair, spattering blood and tissue across the room. My nose was filled with the smells of a shooting: cordite, blood, drek ...

  I was on my feet, turning, still reaching for the gun that wasn't there. Time clicked back into full-speed mode as Scott swung the smoking muzzle of the Roomsweeper to point directly between my eyes.

  8

  .. . And he said, "Get out of here, brah, I'll cover you as long as I can."

  Through the door to the anteroom I heard the first sounds of alarm—muffled, but still audible. If I could hear that, then the sammies on the other side of the door would certainly have heard the two throaty booms from the Roomsweeper. Obviously the door was locked, and the normal release was somewhere in here—probably close to Ekei Tokudaiji's blood-spattered hand—otherwise Scott and I would already be absorbing high-velocity rounds.

  "Get the frag out of here, ule " the ork barked again.

  I didn't know whether to drek, go blind, or wind my watch. (Actually, I was down to two choices because I think I'd already done one of those three things when the first shot went off next to my head.) My mouth moved, and I think I said something cogent and pithy like, "Gaah?" My right hand was still pawing around somewhere down at my left hip—apparently searching for the Seco that was in the backseat of die Rolls—so I stopped it by clenching it into a fist.

  "Kukae! " Scott swore in frustration. He pivoted and fired two ringing blasts into the nearest window. The first starred the reinforced glass; the second blew it out into the foliage beyond. (Mental note: Some kinds of reinforced glass don't work worth squat if the shot's coming from the inside.) "Get fragging goingl" Scott roared. He crouched, scooped up the pistol that the dead aide had been trying to draw and tossed it to me. Instinctively, I plucked it out of the air.