Cybernetic Samurai

by Victor Milán

  In the meantime, the MITI team had sent back a secret report that had served to silence the objections of that old fool Kawabe, that the ministry had weakened the fabric of Japanese society for no good end. A special digest of their conclusions, carefully edited so that if all or part of it were leaked it would only reflect well on MITI had been prepared for dissemination among the jealous ministries who were the rulers of Japan. Ishikawa had every confidence that the report had been compiled for optimum effect; it had been personally assembled by his aide Doihara Kazuko.

  Meanwhile, aftershocks of the YTC invasions were still moving through the Japanese courts—slowly, like ripples in amber. It was apparent the courts were going to block Hiryu’s claim of ownership of YTC’s Fukuoka facility and Floating World satellite on the basis of their conquest of the Citadel. Likewise, MITI intelligence indicated the Supreme Court would order Hiryu to divest itself of the castle, and make vast reparations to Yoshimitsu Shigeo and Yoshimitsu Michiko, as well as to YTC workers illegally sequestered after the operation. That didn’t bother Ishikawa particularly. From his days at Yale, he remembered the words of the American President Jackson when faced with an adverse decision by his own Supreme Court: “They made the decision—now let them enforce it.”

  Things were tight in Asia; Indonesian and Brazilian surface craft had exchanged an over-the-horizon volley of missiles near Nauru in the southern Pacific; an army allegedly backed by Indonesians and led by Indonesian advisers was making great headway in the two-front Chinese war against invading armies from the nominally Communist garrison states of Vietnam and Korea. Voices were being raised to demand that Japan’s Self-defense Forces be augmented, and some were even daring to whisper the heresy that Japan herself should once more take a military role in the affairs of her neighbors. In such a climate a ministry would have to act boldly to assert leadership. Ishikawa would not shrink from precipitating a constitutional crisis, at need.

  Besides, Yoshimitsu Shigeo had begun to be seen—and photographed—at his favorite haunts at Kyoto. He’d lost weight, and his loud garments hung on his frame like pillowcases. The plump cheeks had deflated. His eyes were dark, sunken, and not even tinted glasses could disguise the fact. But somehow, in all his pictures, his mouth was warped into a tight little knowing V of a smile. Still, for all the old Mona Lisa trip, the young heir’s public appearances indicated to Ishikawa that the party most affected by the takeover wasn’t seriously going to fight it.

  Finally—though of course it merited little attention in relationship to such weighty considerations—Doihara Kazuko had without fanfare moved into Ishikawa’s lush penthouse apartment in the New City government housing project that had sprung up not far from the Pyramid.

  On the whole, Ishikawa thought, things were going very well. Very well indeed.

  * * * * *

  With the reawakening of TOKUGAWA, the siege mentality in YTC Central began to erode beneath the waves of mutual congratulation among the technicians and administrators of Hiryu Cybernetics Industries and MITI. The occupiers began to address themselves to the problem of the thousands of employees within the citadel, who had been working as virtual prisoners since the assault. Craig and Toda began roughing out a plan to vet them for loyalty to their new employers; those who failed—or proved unwilling to work for Hiryu Cybernetics under the terms offered—would be sent off to the rice paddies with the 250,000 rusticated aerospace workers.

  Meanwhile, both the Citadel and Hiryu’s headquarters received several drafts of technicians recruited in North America. This caused a certain amount of resentment among the Hiryu personnel. Rumors rode the circuit that these new gaijin knew scarcely anything of their jobs, certainly not enough to justify their being imported at considerable expense, into a nation suffering a labor glut. Of course, such sentiments were disloyal to the company, and were never broached to the carefully stage-managed workers’ circle meetings.

  Major Craig’s security complement received a draft of twenty-five men and women newly flown over from her old stomping grounds in what was now EasyCo, the Eastern Seaboard Coalition. The ex-FedPol major, facing the grinding task of winnowing the Yoshimitsu labor force, and inexplicably nervous as well, was grateful to Toda Onomori for having authorized the additional personnel without her having to requisition them.

  Toda, meanwhile, had been only too happy to approve his security chief’s request for added personnel.

  And no one connected with Japanese customs and immigration had ever seen an application for a visa from any one of these new Hiryu personnel—at least, not under the names under which they were entering the country. And yet, when they presented their papers at customs, those names appeared in computer files of those granted legal entry to the home islands.

  The wheel turned.

  * * * * *

  A little past ten in the morning on a day in early November, Toda Onomori was perusing a printout of Yoshimitsu assets Hiryu’s legal department had decided were safely in their power. Use of hard copy was regarded as anachronistic in the most progressive Japanese business circles, or reliance on a paper crutch; for Toda, it wasn’t real unless he could hold it between his broad strong hands. The seizure of YTC Central had strapped Hiryu for cash, and he had to make some hard recommendations to chairman Ogaki soon about which assets to liquidate and which to hang onto.

  The former occupant’s pottery was gone from the shelves. To Toda it was just bric-a-brac. He’d replaced it with the ornaments of his own life: books, ponderous volumes, management texts, psychology, law. Redundant, really—nothing in them he couldn’t call up from the bowels of the YTC database, or pay his nickel and tap into the global Net for. But they gave him a feeling of mass, solidity, like the fanfold paper in his hands. Like being able to lift his eyes from his desktop and see the nerve center out there before him like the bridge of an aircraft carrier, to make visual contact with the raw ganglia of the company he controlled. He knew old Yoshimitsu Akaji had disdained to spend time down here, had left that to his playboy son. That was part of the reason the old man had lost the company.

  Some change in the rhythm, a shift in the ebb and flow of serious bodies in pastel jumpsuits, brought Toda’s eyes up from folded sheets of inventory. What he saw went down his back like cold rain dripping from a winter eave. Technicians in headsets were standing up from their work stations, holding their hands over their heads. A mixed squad in security indigo had come into the command center, and was holding down on the techs with submachine guns. They seemed relaxed, casual, as if this were some outing for harvest festival.

  The sheaf of printouts slammed down on the desk top. “Craig!” he shouted to his shosei computer. “What’s going on down here?”

  “She won’t hear you,” a voice said from the speaker.

  Toda sat very still. A trickle of sweat ran down the right side of his face. Outside, the security team was herding the Hiryu technicians to one side of the command center. They weren’t so much as looking toward the big glass windows that dominated the room.

  “What is the meaning of this? Who is this?”

  “TOKUGAWA.”

  Toda slumped back into his chair as if he’d been struck back with a sandbag. The gel molded itself to him, caressing, soothing. “Ridiculous,” he snapped, his resolve springing back. “TOKUGAWA’s just a child. Whoever’s responsible for this—”

  “You killed my lord, Yoshimitsu Akaji,” the voice went on, infinitely calm, infinitely menacing. “You killed Dr. O’Neill.”

  Wildly, Toda looked out through the glass of his office. Some of his technicians were standing clumped beneath the big color LCD displays, staring at him as if expecting him to do something. One of the men in dark blue finally noticed him, gave him a grin and a cheerful wave.

  “Now you’re going to die.”

  And Toda saw his desk come rushing at him at the wave front of an explosion; a bundle of hard copy went flapping over his head like a great white crane, enfolding him in its wings, and he wasn�
�t anymore.

  Sitting outside the door of chairman Ogaki’s office in the center of the Hiryu Cybernetics Industries’ sprawling complex in Osaka, the chairman’s secretary-receptionist looked up from her French lesson as the sound of a scream, high and thin and sharp, cut through the thick soundproofing of her boss’ office.

  A second later, the heavy Indonesian hardwood door blew off its hinges.

  * * * * *

  Throughout both YTC Citadel and Hiryu Cybernetics home complex, newly hired technicians produced automatic weapons and politely suggested that their coworkers surrender. They did. Meanwhile, security details heard their superior officers ordering them to lay down their arms and surrender to parties of polite but firm people wearing the same uniforms as they. Their superiors, in fact, were already under lock and key, having answered summonses by the chiefs of security for the two facilities. TOKUGAWA simply did their voices better than they did—and, in any event, none of them proved willing to go out of his or her way to die for good ol’ Hiryu Cybernetics. It was a point Aoki Hideo had impressed on TOKUGAWA during their strategy-planning session: Major Miguel García was personally loyal to Yoshimitsu Akaji and YTC, and a number of his men might well have fought the Hiryu invaders out of loyalty to their commander. But, basically, the Cubans of the Yoshimitsu security platoon had fought because they were suddenly confronted with men aiming guns at them. Had they been given a chance to surrender, the transition might have been a good deal more peaceful.

  The old man, as usual, was right. Within minutes, the entire security complements of YTC Citadel and the Hiryu home offices had been secured and disarmed.

  Except for a heavily armed squad in battle dress moving purposefully along a corridor in the subterranean warrens of the castle.

  * * * * *

  “Dammit,” Major Angela Craig shouted. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!” She slammed her hand down on the top of the com/comm console in her office on the level above the nerve center. It blandly blinked its amber message:

  ALL STATIONS REPORT STATUS NORMAL. SECURITY ROUTINES REPORT TAMPERING: NEGATIVE. INTRUSION: NEGATIVE.

  It was bullshit and she knew it.

  “Barracks!” she barked at the com/comm. It continued to blink idiotically at her. She activated the tiny mike clipped to the breast pocket of her uniform, rapped out a list of stations, demanded reports. The plug behind her ear remained quiet.

  Her heart seemed to be throwing itself around inside her rib cage like a rabbit trying to get free of a trap. Something big’s going down. She jumped up from her desk, hauled on a heavy bulletproof battle-dress jacket. She rammed her coal-scuttle helmet down on her head, switched on its mike, demanded a status report. Nothing. “Shit,” she said, and slammed down the visor.

  Sweeping a bullpup assault rifle out of its rack behind her desk, she went to the door. It slid open obediently. She stepped into the hall.

  A squad of her people, like her in full emergency battle rig with visors down and assault rifles ready, were double-timing down the corridor toward her. They stopped. “There she is!” a voice crackled in her ear.

  She planted her hands on her hips. “You’re fucking-A right, I’m here,” she rasped. “Why the fuck haven’t you jokers answered—”

  “Shoot the traitor!” Toda Onomori’s voice rang like a gong in her ears. “Get the bitch before she gets away!”

  Her rifle dropped from fingers that suddenly had the strength of tofu. She held up her hands before her. “No, no, there’s some mistake,” she gasped. “Don’t—”

  Half a dozen rifles opened up on her at full automatic from a distance of six meters. Later, members of the squad marveled to one another how long their ex-chief had kept screaming.

  * * * * *

  Yoshimitsu Shigeo sat in a low butcher-block chair, watching snow settle out of a sky the color of a dove’s belly, dusting the hilltop compound and the surrounding mountains. He knew the coating of snow would make Takara-yama, the Fortunate Mountain, look especially impressive, bring it right up close. He couldn’t see it from the window of his apartment It was a curious thing; he’d never particularly cared whether he saw Mount Takara or not. Now that he couldn’t see it, he thought about it all the time.

  He glanced around, through the open doorway into his workshop. His treadle-driven wheel sat there neglected, a half-thrown pot dried to khaki on top of it. A month ago he’d simply lost interest in the middle of throwing a pot, and he hadn’t had the heart to do any more, not even go back in and chisel the congealed piece off the wheel. He hardly had the heart for anything anymore, even—or especially—the trips he made to Kyoto to keep his enemies off balance, on the advice of Aoki Hideo and his demon helper. It isn’t going to work, he knew. Nothing’s going to work. He decided he would probably go mad soon.

  The door opened.

  Incuriously, he looked around. No indigo escort squad stood there, nor the all-too-familiar form of Toda Onomori, his face cast in a smile as artificial as one of those awful plastic statues of the god of luck, Hotei, that the gaijin tourists bought in the curio shops. Nor was there any sign of the pair of guards that had stood there, night and day, for more than two months.

  “Yoshimitsu-sama.”

  He recognized TOKUGAWA’s voice. “What is it?” he almost whined.

  “Your father’s death is avenged, Yoshimitsu-sama. The citadel is yours.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Refusing to compromise with the slush piled in the streets of Tokyo New City, Ishikawa Nobuhiko strode the night alone, finding purchase for the leather soles of his shoes on ice-slick pavement by sheer force of will. The streets were empty, as they had been for years—here, under the ever-watchful eye of government ration busting was far less convenient than it was in Kyoto. But the tall buildings rising to every side glowed like vast self-luminous fungi. The ministries they housed knew no rationing—of heat, of light, of power.

  Behind him he heard the angry grumble of demonstrators crowded around the base of the MITI Pyramid. How fickle is the public, he thought wryly. When we brought YTC to heel they called us saviors. Now Yoshimitsu Telecommunications has snapped its leash, and the people can think of nothing but how bravely it bore up beneath adversity and oppression. He permitted himself a small smile. The people’s mercurial nature made it all the more necessary they have a strong, wise hand to guide them. As he was fairly sure MITI’s rival Internal Development was guiding this demonstration.

  It had been, as he would have said during his Yale sojourn, a bitch of a day. After so much hard work and frustration, the carefully tended garden of the YTC affair had finally begun to blossom. And then an earthquake knocked it all to pieces.

  The afternoon had grown old before they even knew anything was wrong. The tendrils of the ministry’s domestic intelligence network, spread across the nation like vines on a trellis, had unexpectedly begun to vibrate with ever-increasing urgency. Something was happening at YTC Central… and the Hiryu head office. By six o’clock that dreary, snow-flurried evening, they found out that something was that both facilities had been quietly and peaceably taken over by mercenaries in the employ of Yoshimitsu Shigeo. There had been no violence to speak of, no fatalities except for Ogaki Mitsuru and Toda Onomori, reported dead in unexplained explosions, and a foreign national, head of Citadel security, apparently killed by her own subordinates.

  We’ll never get murder indictments on those, Ishikawa thought bitterly, lengthening his stride. We’ll be lucky if the ministry doesn’t get scooped out like a ripe melon. The press was howling. Internal Development tut-tutted sanctimoniously, and even MITI’s allies among Japan’s ministries were very cool, very cool. Purge was a vivid possibility. The prime minister was taking very serious notice of these proceedings. Normally, that was what the titular minister of MITI was for, to provide a head to roll in the sand if scandal broke, leaving the all-important bureaucracy of his ministry intact. The Hiryu/Yoshimitsu blowup was too comprehensive a catastrophe to avert by a scapegoat.


  Worst of all, there wasn’t a single damned thing Ishikawa Nobuhiko could do to save the situation. He could scarcely call Yoshimitsu Shigeo’s virtually bloodless reconquest of his own property a crime. Nor could he object to their seizure of Hiryu Cybernetics, not without making the ministry look ridiculous—and to forfeit the ministry’s face would be to destroy everything he’d worked for, lived for.

  He’d sent Doihara home an hour before, just before an emergency late-night meeting with MITI Minister Kawabe. The meeting itself was a routine unpleasantness, the snowy-headed old minister very grave and concerned, vowing that the honor of the ministry should not be besmirched. On the wind of his words Ishikawa whiffed the possibility that the old fool had no intention of doing the right thing, claiming full responsibility and committing bureaucratic seppuku. The minister, he recalled, had been a close friend of that damned Yamada Tatsuhide, who’d committed seppuku of a more substantial sort the day YTC Central fell. Is this to be his revenge, bringing down those who led his friend to suicide?

  After the meeting Ishikawa had decided to go home. The normal, safe Japanese bureaucratic procedure would be to stay at the office twenty-four hours a day until the crisis was resolved one way or another. Even in this extremity Ishikawa was damned well going to maintain that special flair that set him apart, marked him as an up-and-corner. Wolves howled in the snow outside, but he was going home as if nothing was the matter. An elementary show of bravado—likewise of realism. There really was nothing he could do.

  The crowd that greeted him when he stepped out through the polarized armored-glass doors of the MITI Pyramid, its collective breath billowing white like steam rising through grates from a subway station, took him momentarily aback. At sight of him the protestors shouted, surged forward; riot police held them off with electrified sticks and clear plexiglass shields. Photo flashes rippled the night like a naval barrage, and then more guards thrust from the building, forming a flying wedge, driving through the crowd with Ishikawa striding boldly behind. The mob was angry, but still Japanese; once he was through they let him go, preferring to concentrate their ire on the visible symbol of MITI rather than pursue the administrative vice-minister indecorously through the streets. Just as well; once clear of the mob Ishikawa dismissed his police escort, overriding their protests with a haughty wave of his hand. Skulking behind a phalanx of cops would tarnish the image he cultivated of a fearless, hard-charging technocrat.