by Victor Milán
“The Indonesians?”
Doihara shrugged. “I doubt it. They’re too obvious a target, and given the mood among the populace that brought the National Labor Party to power, it’s not inconceivable Australia might launch on suspicion against its most obvious enemy. In a way I’m surprised they haven’t done so already; they have a hair trigger these days, and losing one’s national capital for the second time is enough to make anyone touchy.”
At one time Michiko would have appreciated Doihara’s touch of cannon’s-mouth humor. But the strain of the last month had eroded too much of her. She only drained her spiked coffee and said, “Come with me, down to the operations center,” she said. “It’s time to pay a call on the opposition.”
* * * * *
“A pleasure,” General Ushijima said, “to meet the most powerful woman in Japan since the Empress Jingo.” The flattery was startling, coming as it did in the gruff old-soldier voice of a man known to have notoriously reactionary views on women. Still, Michiko didn’t permit herself to be put off balance. She knew a good deal about the general, who had retired from command of Japan’s Land Self-defense Forces a decade before to go into private industry. Despite the fact that he was attired in immaculate civilian business clothes, as though he was always up and about at this hour of the morning—which he probably was, at that—he affected a brusque, no-nonsense military manner, well set off by his close-cropped iron-colored hair and trim mustache, and the scar running down the right side of his seamed and weathered face. It had been cut into him by shrapnel from an NVA 29th Regiment 120mm mortar round during the storming of the Hue Citadel by the First Air Cav Division, with which he was serving as a captain on covert detached-duty loan to the U.S. Army, at about the same time the young Tranh Vinh was digging trenches outside the wire at Khe Sanh. All told, he looked and acted like another hard-ass militarist, which made most people overlook the fact that he was capable of great subtlety. That was a mistake Michiko was determined not to make.
His face expanded to embarrassing pore-counting dimensions on another color LCD screen in YTC Central’s nerve center. Miyagi Taro blinked owlishly at images of his rivals on his own screens. “Exactly what do you have on your mind, Dr. Yoshimitsu, calling at this hour?” He was a rumpled pale man with hair that stood straight up on his head and a thin neck, so that his head looked like a balloon on a string. His collar was open and his coat looked as if he’d been sitting on it.
“You’ve heard the news?”
Ushijima nodded crisply.
“The bombing in Australia?” Miyagi said. “What of it?”
“Does it not seem likely to you that it will precipitate a major thermonuclear exchange within days, if not hours? And does it not seem to you gentlemen that the country must be united to face the threat of renewed world war?” Briefly, she outlined the predictions Doihara had made to her little more than two months before; the world situation had done nothing to contradict her forecasts, except to prove them slightly sanguine.
“You’re telling us this is why you’ve embarked on your campaign of aggression?” Miyagi demanded, when she had concluded. “An elaborate rationalization, Doctor.”
“Our esteemed colleague appears too distracted by the earliness of the hour and the urgency of events to express himself with as much delicacy as I’m sure he customarily would,” said Ushijima. “Still, he points to a pertinent question. Even given the truth of your prognostications, why should the last two significant economic blocs in the nation that retain any meaningful independence acknowledge your sovereignty? Either of us might as justifiably make the same claim upon you, in the national interest.”
Michiko took a deep breath. “We have something you don’t: an artificially self-aware computer program. He—it’s what has enabled us to take control of such a large number of companies without apparent struggle, It’s what I’m counting on to preserve the Japanese people and nation in the face of attacks I feel to be inevitable. Yet even such a device will prove powerless if the nation can’t stand united.” It made her feel strange to talk about TOKUGAWA like that, as if he were a mere mechanism.
Miyagi inhaled through his teeth, a sound like a bike tire leaking.
“The TOKUGAWA Project,” Ushijima said. “So the speculations in the sensational press about Yoshimitsu Telecommunications’ inexorable advance aren’t so wild after all.” He rubbed his blunt chin. “Do I infer correctly that Miyagi-san and I owe our continued independence to the extraordinary—and expensive, I assure you—data-security measures we employ in our facilities?”
“You do.”
“My own experts theorized that certain intrusions being attempted into our database were consistent only with an agency considerably more potent than any human fifth-generation synergy,” Miyagi said. “I resisted such notions as farfetched.”
“Your experts were very astute, Miyagi-san,” Michiko said. “Now can you see, gentlemen, that our only hope for survival as a people is to work together under the guidance of TOKUGAWA?”
Ushijima inclined his grizzled head. “As that great Western roshi Napoleon said, God fights on the side of the big battalions. You muster the biggest I can see on hand. I offer alliance.”
“That’s not good enough,” Michiko said, thinking, he’s good, damn him, Not even a flicker. “I require submission. No, not to me—to TOKUGAWA.”
For a moment she thought he’d burst out laughing. I wonder how TOKUGAWA will take my latest bit of improvisation, she wondered. It could be academic…
The corners of Ushijima’s mustache crinkled. “So we’re to have a TOKUGAWA shogun again, eh? Very well. That could be just what we’ve needed for quite some time. Permit me the honor of tendering my submission to our new sei-i-tai shogun, in the wholehearted hope that our new generalissimo can truly subdue the barbarians.”
“Ridiculous,” Miyagi sneered. “Mummery. It’s not enough that you’re asking us to swallow dictatorship; you have to garnish it with feudalism. And the notion of swearing fealty to a machine—really, Doctor, you astonish me.”
Sometimes I astonish myself. She fought a manic urge to giggle. “I’m not trying to impose a dictatorship.”
“What do you call it? Expropriations, violence against rivals, suppression of dissent—what name do you put upon it?”
“It’s only temporary,” she almost shouted. “Only until the crisis is past:”
“When such terms are laid down,” Miyagi said, “crises can display a startling longevity.”
“The time sometimes comes,” Ushijima said, “when we have to look beyond our own benefit”
“I reject your premises, General! I don’t see that the common good will be well served by Japan’s joining the already crowded ranks of the world’s dictatorships. National unity didn’t do one damned bit of good in keeping the fire bombs off us in ’45—and you’re old enough to remember when the B-jükyu ruled Japanese skies, just as I am.” He shook his head. “I’m deeply puzzled, Dr. Yoshimitsu. There was a time when your family name stood for economic freedom against the might of MITI. Now it appears that YTC has replaced the ministry as the greatest threat to those who seek to keep some distance between the government of this country and its corporations.”
Her eyes stung as if she’d been slapped in the face. “And where were you when the ministry sent gaijin hirelings to murder my father in his own garden?”
His mouth tightened into an expression that wasn’t a smile, though it curved upward. “I accept your reproach, Doctor. Perhaps I should have acted then. I did not. But now, belatedly perhaps, I draw the line. I will not surrender my autonomy, nor acknowledge your brummagem generalissimo as anything but a scientific marvel.”
“You’ve dug in your positions, Miyagi-san,” Ushijima said with uncharacteristic softness. “Do you think you can defend them?”
“I’m a Japanese, General. Does that answer your question?”
Michiko held up her hands. “This bitter-end talk won’t get us anywhere. Miya
gi-san, we have to work this out. Let’s meet, talk this over in person.”
“Where? Given your firm hold on the upper hand, it would be imprudent of me to meet with you on any grounds chosen by yourself.”
“I’ll come there.” Japanese or not, his face writhed with the effort it took not to accuse her of planning treachery. “No trick. I’ll come alone. Put myself wholly in your power.” Anything, she thought, there’s been too much strife already.
His thin shoulders pushed up his disheveled coat, fell away. “Very well, Doctor,” he said. “My people will arrange it with yours. But I tell you, it will do no good.”
* * * * *
“Don’t go,” TOKUGAWA said.
A bird passed overhead on a soft drumming of wings. She squinted briefly at the sun through the filigree of boughs above. “I have to.”
“Do we need this Miyagi so much? Ushijima’s gone along with you—though I wish you hadn’t made that talk about him swearing allegiance to me. It makes me uncomfortable.”
She laid her head on his shoulder. “It’s only temporary. Besides, it’s the sort of thing he understands.”
“I don’t want to be shogun.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, smiling. “That’s only melodramatic militarist talk. The public would never accept it.”
“Good. But why can’t we be content with what we’ve got? The big powers control their missiles by direct digital command, so they can switch targets according to satellite-relayed information, to fox defenses or make follow-up strikes. I can get through, deflect most of the stuff headed our way.”
“The nation must be united, TOKUGAWA. It’s the only way.”
He frowned briefly, shrugged. “Very well. But I wish you wouldn’t go.”
“It’s the only way Miyagi will listen. He’s paranoid.”
“I’ll have to send troops, to help you if something goes wrong.”
She sat up abruptly, shedding fallen needles from her bare back and shoulders. “You’ll do no such thing! Why do you think I—we—haven’t tried an assault on Miyagi already? His headquarters and main plant are underground, dug into the northern part of Tokyo itself. They withstood the bomb that hit the Ginza. Unless someone opened the way to our forces, the way Takai did the Citadel, we’d never get inside without a month-long battle and untold civilian casualties. We can’t afford another Niigata. I—I don’t have the stomach for it.”
“But I’d only hold them ready—”
“No! I’ll take my chances.”
“Do you trust Miyagi?”
“No,” she said. “But this is the only thing to do, my love.”
* * * * *
She sat on her unrolled futon and tried to decide whether to go back down to the lab. I have to get sleep, she told herself again. I’ve been losing too much as it is, spending my nights in TOKUGAWA’s dream world. It soothes my mind, but my body needs more rest. Especially tonight.
Her fists clenched briefly in frustration. Australia had issued an ultimatum to Indonesia, demanding reparation for the Brisbane attack. Indonesia denied knowledge of it and claimed Australia was trying to manufacture a casus belli with their main Pacific rivals; they hadn’t quite gone so far as accusing the Aussie military of setting the bombs off themselves. Global speculation pointed to Brazil, Korea, Mexico, and even the fanatics of PEACE as the perpetrators—and all those parties, with the possible exception of Mexico, were either unscrupulous or crazy enough to pull just such a trick. Certain players of the realpolitik fantasy game just might think the risk of blowing up the world worth crippling the two main players of Pacific power chess.
Naïve hope. EuroFront with its back to the wall; the East African Union unable to keep the Afrikaaners from pushing the front line inexorably closer to Nairobi; the various Islamic powers loudly proclaiming that any attack on Indonesia would be an attack on all Muslims, demanding instant retribution, while only the intervention of a half dozen internecine shooting wars among the mujehedin prevented final jihad from rolling over the Russian Christian Federated Socialist Republic… Now that the thermonuclear djinn had been let out of the bottle again, it seemed only a matter of time before someone else called him up, whether or not the Aussies pressed the button first.
Yet with all this coming down, Doihara’s best efforts hadn’t been able to secure Michiko a laissez-passer into the Miyagi stronghold earlier than tomorrow morning.
She started to get up and go to the black-lacquered cabinet where she kept her liquor, then stopped herself. Hell of a way to keep a clear head. She made herself lie down in the darkness, put her cigarette out, and close her eyes.
“Dr. Yoshimitsu.”
She frowned. The voice from the com/comm was familiar, somehow, but it didn’t belong to anyone who’d have a good reason to be calling her at this hour of this of all nights—or who’d be able to get past the AI filter she’d put on incoming calls. Suppose I should see who the hell it is, she thought, and rolled wearily over to where she could see the screen.
She looked into the face of a dead woman.
She lay perfectly still, her heartbeat ticking in her chest as if it were a distinct entity. “If this is a joke,” she said through a throat taut as a noose, “it’s in damned poor taste.”
“This isn’t a joke, Dr. Yoshimitsu,” Elizabeth O’Neill said.
“So you never died.”
The slack mouth writhed around a bubble of laughter. “I died. And was resurrected.” The puffy, ruined features flowed like molten wax, realigned themselves into a different face, one never seen before, yet somehow familiar.
“You died and came back—on the third day, no doubt—as a beautiful woman in her twenties. That’s one hell of a job of reincarnation. Maybe there’s something to this Occidental wisdom we keep hearing about.” Part of her was astonished at herself for talking this way, even to something that had to be a hoax or a hallucination. And part of her was too tired to fuck around.
The lovely features warped into a scowl. Jesus, it is O’Neill! As she’d look if she’d been born beautiful. Michiko felt as if the floor of her apartment had begun to drop away beneath her like a very fast express elevator.
“I’m vain enough to prefer this appearance to what—what I had out there.”
“Out here.” Michiko’s voice was a croak. Oh, God, is it possible?
“You’ve a very quick mind, Doctor. But then, I’ve always known that. Under other circumstances we might have become friends—if you hadn’t tried to supplant me in TOKUGAWA’s affections, when you came back from Jakarta.”
“But I didn’t come back until long after you died—oh.” It came rushing over her like a gust of wind, why O’Neill had wanted her out of the castle, so long ago. Her last doubts blew away.
She sat up, combed long unbound hair back from her face with her fingers. “All right, Doctor. I accept that you’re real, somehow. I’m used to dealing with the impossible. So what the hell do you want?”
“To tell you you’re unworthy.”
Michiko shut her eyes, wagged her head once, very quickly, as if to clear water from her ears. “I don’t understand.”
“You’re unworthy of the samurai tradition,” O’Neill’s new face said. “Unworthy of TOKUGAWA’s loyalty. Of his love.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ve lost your nerve. Letting this wretched Miyagi back you down.”
“How do you know about that?”
“What TOKUGAWA knows, I know.”
Worms crawled down Michiko’s nerves as she absorbed the full import of that statement.
“I watched you entice TOKUGAWA into loving you,” O’Neill continued. “I could do nothing, not without destroying what I’d worked for for so long. You’re his lord; he’s yours to command. But I had him too, all that time. When he held you, I was never far.” Michiko closed her eyes.
“But now… you’re weak. Going off to bandy words with a traitor, when you should be acting.”
“So
you want me to blow up half of fucking Tokyo digging him out, and save the Indonesians and the Australians and the Viets and the Brazilians and the goddam Transylvanians for all we know? Is that what you want? Shut it off, lady; you’re crazy.”
“You’d like to believe that.” O’Neill smiled with aching sweetness, so perfect and total Michiko almost found herself wanting her. “You know there’s another way.”
Michiko lowered her head, clasped hands behind her neck, drew them slowly forward, cascading her hair across her face. “You’re jealous. A crazy, jealous ghost. You just want me out of the way.”
That smile, that smile. It seemed to glow, to burn through Michiko’s eyelids like the pika, the thermonuclear flash that took the sun away. She’s enlightened, she knew. She’s mad, but she’s walked through the fire. She has the oneness, the purpose beyond purpose. And she recalled the old Zen proverb: A roshi is an arrow aimed straight at hell.
“You know. I can see through to the center of you. As you’ve slowly begun to be able to feel TOKUGAWA, to reach toward rapport without being near the coil. And I see that you realize the truth. You can never have him again, Yoshimitsu-sama. Not without knowing you’re unworthy of him.”
“And to be worthy—” Michiko raised her head and stared at the screen through eyes that burned in the sockets like coals.
“You know the answer. Farewell, Doctor. I won’t say sayonara—for we both know that it must indeed be so.”
She raised her hand and was gone. Rose petals showered from the screen. From the screen. They littered the tatami beneath the com/comm cabinet, their delicate aroma a shout in her nostrils.
Slowly she cranked her eyes shut. When she opened them the petals were gone. She moistened her lips. “TOKUGAWA.”
“Michiko,” he replied at once. Did he hear that? she wondered, and knew he had not.
“I—I’ve changed my mind. You can send the troops to back me up.”
