Cybernetic Samurai

by Victor Milán

  “Whenever I have the pleasure of your company, Yoshimitsu-san, I always discover a man who truly loves Japan and all that is Japanese.”

  Yoshimitsu crossed kimonoed arms and inclined his head. “You do me too much honor.”

  “Not at all, Yoshimitsu-san. I consider how excellently, for example, the splendor of this garden reflects the national essence.” He gestured with an arm packaged in knife-creased French cuffs, gold lozenge links, and dark blue serge.

  “I fear it’s nothing so grand, Ishikawa-san. It’s merely my poor attempt to create a hermitage, a place of peace and contemplation.”

  “But magnificently achieved, Yoshimitsu-san.” The grass yielded beneath their feet with soft sounds. “One finds that our nation is much like a garden. Much grows here of natural beauty, yet it requires a careful hand to keep its diverse elements in harmony.”

  Smiling, Yoshimitsu gestured toward Takara-yama. “And what hand made the Fortunate Mountain to grow, Ishikawa-san?”

  Ishikawa’s thin lips tightened minutely. He didn’t entirely catch the old man’s drift. He knew that the Yoshimitsu clan had been Christian converts in the seventeenth century, back before the crushing of the Shimabara Rebellion had put an end to such nonsense; he wasn’t sure that the taint hadn’t lingered, and that the old man might not be elliptically espousing a belief in a Western creator-god. Uncomfortable, he hastily changed the set of his metaphorical sails, if not his tack. “Our people are a family, Yoshimitsu-san. Don’t you think this is the source of our great strength, which has permitted us to retain unity and order in the face of the modern world’s collapse?”

  Deliberately Yoshimitsu nodded. “Things are indubitably as you say, Ishikawa-san.”

  “The family, to retain such unity, must be well ordered, each member occupying his natural place in the structure of things. And is it not truly written that each can only find his place under the guidance of a wise and loving father?”

  “We are very fortunate, indeed, to enjoy the patronage of our revered emperor.”

  Ishikawa’s eyes flickered sideways, the closest thing to a look of utter confusion the man would permit himself. Inwardly, Yoshimitsu Akaji was laughing. He enjoyed this hugely: two men alike accustomed to the bullet directness of Occidental speech, forcing themselves to the slow circles of Japanese. Such delicious irony, he thought. This young man was far too smooth to display his impatience and discomfort openly. But his haragei, the communication by posture and gesture that was as much a part of Japanese conversation as spoken words, betrayed the fact eloquently to Yoshimitsu’s eyes. His own “belly language” spoke of nothing but tranquillity; it had been a long time indeed since Yoshimitsu Akaji had said anything he didn’t intend.

  Ishikawa was still trying to force his thoughts to cohere. Has the old man started slipping? He knows as well as I that the Son of Heaven’s an adolescent, and a borderline mental defective at that. Unfortunately, the bomb that hit Tokyo had wiped out the main line of Meiji, Taisho, and Showa; the scion of a none-too-prepossessing collateral line of the Imperial House had ascended at the age of eleven to the position of father and protector of the Japanese people.

  Like the rest of the world, the Japanese nowadays inclined to turn their eyes backward, to older times they fancied were more settled, more secure. Europeans seemed set on reconstructing the Holy Roman Empire; the Islamic world had started reverting to the simple blaze of Jihad faith even before the war: in parts of North America, notably PEACE in the Pacific Northwest, there were those who advocated the return of all mankind to hunting-and-gathering days. Though the reforms of Meiji that forbade the emperor a direct role in Japanese politics were still honored, more and more Japanese regarded him as the true, as opposed to merely spiritual and symbolic, leader of Japan.

  The object of this intense veneration was unmoved by it, preferring to devote his attention to stuffed animals, origami, and video games; the palace gossip for which the bureaucracy was so avid hinted that he was showing some signs of sexual interest in the carefully picked male companions with which he was surrounded. A situation not at all unfamiliar in Japanese history—or in the history of, say, the Holy Roman Empire: a figurehead and frankly feebleminded emperor, totally controlled by those around him. And that was an environment as natural for Ishikawa Nobuhiko as the cool clear water was for the tiny killifish that darted back and forth among the smooth worn gray-white stones at the bottom of the stream.

  Yoshimitsu Akaji’s sandal plunked hollowly on the first plank of the arched footbridge.

  “It is the earnest desire of the government to discharge its responsibility as wise and loving father well,” Ishikawa said, finding his bearings again.

  “Wise government is a blessing to the nation,” Yoshimitsu murmured. Their footsteps echoed beneath them, amplified by the wooden vault of the bridge, breaking into the sound of the running water like the ripples of a stone cast into water breaking into backwash from a shore.

  They crossed the bridge onto worn stones arranged with apparent casualness, but so placed that one traversing them must pick his way slowly, coming more fully into resonance with his surroundings. The stones led through undergrowth maintained painstakingly in an attitude of primeval profusion. Water dripped from the branches of the pines, and Ishikawa prided himself a little on the way he concealed his anxiety for his suit.

  “You as a father must know, Yoshimitsu-san, that sometimes a parent has the distasteful duty of chastening an offspring whose unruly behavior threatens the unity of the family.”

  Yoshimitsu chuckled. “It is said, with some correctness, I fear, that we Japanese are among the most indulgent parents in the world. Yet, for the most part, I think we don’t turn out too badly.” A shadow passed briefly over his face.

  “Yet there comes a time when even the most cherished son may be indulged no more.”

  The path had begun to mount upward. Beside it a tiny rivulet skipped down a course defined by stones to join the larger stream. Ahead of them an artificial spring bubbled up amid a clump of boulders arranged in a cliff jutting from the eastern wall. A two-meter bamboo pipe angled down from it on a light trellis of bamboo splints. Water splashed into a smooth depression hollowed in the top of a barrel-size stone, overflowing the stone basin to give rise to the runnel. Next to the basin lay a bamboo ladle.

  Yoshimitsu Akaji picked up the ladle, scooped up water, washed his hands in the ritual ablution preliminary to performing the tea ceremony in the small pavilion nestled among the azalea. “A wise father, like a wise gardener, intervenes as little as possible in the natural growth of his charges,” he said. “Come inside, Ishikawa-san. I’ve a new tea service, commissioned from that fellow in Sapporo, Moriie. I humbly await your verdict on it.” In fact, Shigeo produced finer neoprimitive earthenware of the type currently fashionable for the tea ceremony than the trendy Moriie, but Yoshimitsu would never even have considered his son’s work. He bent below the swept eaves of the pavilion and stepped inside.

  Standing by the stone basin, once-immaculate shoes streaked with mud and clotted with bits of earth and grass and rotting leaf, Ishikawa gazed after his host. “If that’s the way you want it, old man,” he said softly, then stooped and painstakingly washed his hands.

  * * * * *

  The few furtive lights there were went out, dropping the room into darkness congealed by smoke and brassy conversation, Hard-edged clamor softened in anticipation. Synthesized music smashed the darkness like a fist breaking through glass. Above the stage horizontal bands of light suddenly flashed on, sword-blade sharp, one above the other like centimeter-thick sections of a human body taken at handsbreadth intervals.

  As the eyes of the men at the table dead center on the railing of the low platform facing the stage grew accustomed to the dimness, they discerned that round human contours fleshed the interstices between the parallel light bands, the body of a naked woman, glossy-skinned, full of hip and breast, shaven to vinyl smoothness above and below, undulating to the
throb of the bass line. Aural fireflies of applause sparkled in the darkness.

  The man who had taken his place at the table just before the lights checked out swept eyes over the three men who awaited him. “The old man won’t see reason,” Ishikawa Nobuhiko said, pitching his voice to punch a hole in the cacophony. “There’s nothing for it. You go in tomorrow, Colonel”

  Watching with hooded eyes through a thin screen of cigarette smoke, Tranh Vinh nodded shortly. It was poor practice to meet with his principals like this, in public, but they had insisted. There was probably no harm in it; after all, the ministry was one of the principals, and if the vice-minister felt no reluctance to be seen in public with a notorious doitsu, then it probably wouldn’t hurt Tranh to be seen with a vice-minister.

  The dancer jerked her hips, impaling herself on tumid darkness. The light bands seemed to burn from her very flesh, yellow and red and violet and blue—an effect somewhat spoiled where the computer-driven lasers tracking her, scanning back and forth a thousand times a second to etch the blazing lines, cut bright swaths through the ectoplasmic smoke. Ogaki Mitsuru leaned forward across the table, his face drawn like a katana, laser fires dancing in his eyes. “But the ministry? I understood that the council objected. Will they give the go-ahead?”

  Ishikawa turned his head toward the bare flank of a passing waitress to mask his frown. The old man’s getting familiar, he thought I’ll have to crack the whip over him a bit more,

  “They’ll do what I tell them,” he said.

  A jewelled g-string hostess stooped to take their order. Ishikawa exchanged lewd banter with her, and Tranh marveled at the Japanese propensity for conducting all business of consequence in the demivierge dimness of topless bars. Drinks ordered, improprieties observed, Ishikawa settled back in the deep swivel chair and fixed the colonel with his most penetrant gaze. “You understand, Colonel, YTC Central is to be invested with minimal shedding of blood—especially Japanese blood.” He took a languid puff of his cigarette. “You’d better keep your men in line. Impress on them that they’re only to shoot in self-defense.”

  With difficulty Tranh fended off laughter. How arrogant these flatfaces are! He began to understand the choice of surroundings for business dealings better. Nothing like having one’s masculinity stroked by a mostly naked woman with big tits to charge one up for tough talk. “I trust the administrative vice-minister isn’t doubting his own wisdom in hiring me,” he purred.

  Ishikawa smiled hastily. “No. Of course not.”

  Leaning back in his chair, Ogaki had twisted his thin body to the side and was buzzing to his special accounts executive, Toda Onomori, like an angry wasp. Moonface Toda smiled his beanpaste-bland smile. “We regret that you don’t wish to stay on after securing the citadel,” Toda said.

  Tranh took an agitated puff of his cigarette. They’d been over this time and again. “I’m a specialist. A siege expert. Employing me as a security officer would be inappropriate—rather like putting a tank commander in command of an isolated fortress.” He smiled at the lack of response the comparison drew. None of the three Japanese caught the reference to the French debacle at Dien Bien Phu. Tranh had been a child then, barely more than an infant, but his father and uncles had filled his head with stories as he grew.

  Toda’s well-padded hand made a tight deprecatory gesture. “No matter. The security detachment will fly in by helicopter to relieve you, after you confirm that YTC Central is secured.” The drinks arrived. Ishikawa played a bit more verbal grab-ass with the waitress, while Ogaki hunched in on himself and Toda sat like a pleased Buddha. Tranh addressed himself to his cigarette and watched the dancer onstage. Actually, she didn’t lack in grace—though she was hard put to display it, dancing to this lurching spastic noise—and he had the impression she was Mediterranean, Syrian or Lebanese. He hoped he could get out of here soon, flee back to the balm of taped Mozart in his hotel room. This wretched modern music sent daggers through his brain.

  Ogaki buzzed at his henchman again. Tranh felt amused irritation. After his initial remark, the president of Hiryu Cybernetics Industries had apparently decided it was inappropriate for him to address a merc Hessian directly. “You understand, of course,” Toda said, exuding benevolence from each and every pore, “that it’s vital that the lives of all laboratory personnel be safeguarded.”

  “Particularly the gaijin woman scientist,” hissed Ogaki, unable to contain himself any longer.

  Toda beamed and nodded. “Just so, Colonel.”

  Ishikawa sipped his drink and leaned forward, all intent. “Your men must inflict no unnecessary casualties, Colonel. And they must take special care that no harm come to any member of the Yoshimitsu family, or the YTC board of directors.” He eased back into the chair. “We’re not animals, after all.” A micrometered smile. “Or even Americans,”

  Tranh’s lean left hand, knuckles swollen with nascent arthritis, slipped up to the top button of the khaki bushjacket he affected. Sinewy fingers briefly felt the reassuring outline of a small silver crucifix through the cloth. Like his whole family, Tranh Vinh was a Roman Catholic; like his fathers and uncles and brothers, he had fought the Americans and their Cochin Chinese puppets for the greater glory of the Tonkinese people, not some foreign ideology to which they were compelled to pay lip service. They had rejoiced when Vietnam’s regressive Soviet-line regime was purged, in the disordered days just before the Third World War.

  You poor fools, he thought. You think you can escape the reality of what you re doing by swaddling tight in humanitarian restrictions. He let the crucifix go, and shook his head. It wasn’t his concern. This wasn’t his country; once the citadel was secured, he’d be gone. Even if his principals attempted the doublecross he was morally certain they’d at least considered.

  Ishikawa leaned over and laid a hand on his arm. “The dancer over there. She’s somethings isn’t she?” He jerked his head toward the nude woman as the music expired in apparent agony. She threw her arms in the air like animated spectral lines, and then the laser dazzle was gone, leaving denser darkness. Ishikawa waited until the applause subsided and went on. “I have an understanding with the management of this establishment. I saw you admiring Leila; if you’d like to get to know her better…” He gave Tranh’s forearm a quick companionable squeeze. “Consider it a bonus in advance for a job well done.”

  Tranh smiled thinly. Slowly the lights came back up, pockets of corpse light in the gloom. At one time, the very thought of closeting himself with an ungainly, overfed Western woman would have repulsed him. But he was a Hessian, perforce a man of the world; he’d acquired many tastes that would once have been alien to a simple civil servant’s son. Also, he knew Ishikawa would be offended if he refused, and that would be impolitic at this stage of the game. He shrugged. “Why not? A little amusement to sharpen my mind for tomorrow.”

  Ishikawa laughed. “Good. And remember, make sure your men understand the need to avoid unnecessary violence. This is meant to be a moral lesson, not a massacre.”

  Toda tipped his round head back and lowered his eyelids. “Perhaps someday the Yoshimitsu will thank us for our grandmotherly kindness,” he said and beamed.

  * * * * *

  She found him where he’d said she would, in a clearing above a little hamlet around the flank of lordly Fuji, out of sight of the shimmer and pall of the crowded Kanto plain. The days had shortened greatly; it was full dark, up here in the heights, by the time she insinuated her little Nissan electric—universally called the Cordless Shaver because of its truncated wedge shape and the buzzing sound it made, like an enormous metal horsefly—into the streets of the tiny village. The narrow lanes were still full of laughing, boisterous townsfolk, some in elaborate ceremonial garb, men in ornate headdresses, women with hair tightly coiled and pierced with pins. It was autumn, and time for the harvest round of those festivals so beloved of the Japanese.

  The villagers directed her up the slope, through trees to a small clearing. The way was set w
ith paper lanterns, most of which had burned their way out. Her destination was cut out of the night by a strand of white lights such as might have decorated a Christmas tree, powered by ration allotments donated for the festival or, more likely, simply stolen through good old-fashioned Japanese ingenuity. Whatever had gone on up here, a dance or poetry recital or whatever, it was well over. The still forms of a half dozen dead-drunk casualties of merriment, were strewn about with leaves and crumpled balls of colored paper piling up against them in the breeze. At the far side of the clearing, Yamada Tatsuhide stood up from his seat on a fallen log, gesturing toward Doihara Kazuko with a half-empty bottle. “Kazuko! So good of you to meet me here.”

  As usual he was clad in a dark business suit, but the impeccably tailored neck of his white shirt was undone, his tie absent. She walked over and sat down gingerly on the log. “We’ve been working late at the ministry. They’re actually going to do it. They’re sending the mercenaries in tomorrow.” She looked up at him, her face strained. “The council’s meeting tomorrow before dawn to give the final go-ahead. You’ve got to do something about it, you’ve got to!”

  The old man looked down at her for a long moment, then tipped the bottle up and drank deeply from it. The liquid sparkled in the moonlight. He pulled the bottle away from his lips with an effort, as if it adhered to them. “‘Phlebas, the Phoenician, a fortnight dead/Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell/And the profit and loss.’”