Javier had visited a few great, old cities in his time. Mexico City was probably the oldest, standing as it did on the shoulders of Tenochtitlan. But where the ancient roots of that city were almost invisible, the gilt-edged heels of each cathedral grinding the stone faces of each temple into the hungry mud of Lake Texcoco, here the remnants were a tourist attraction. It was like watching a body laid out in state: the little houses with their white and blue china and their long tables and their stiff-backed horsehair chairs arranged as neatly as the bones of an elder statesman. Javier considered this as he wandered through the oldest part of the city. They were still nice houses, in their own way. A little dark, perhaps, but cozy. Perfect for vN, or any other species that didn’t truly require indoor plumbing. He liked the raked gravel in the alleys, and the way the vN staff left out food and water for cats in dishes printed to look like wooden shoes.
It was all real. Tangible. Not like the Museum of the City of Seattle, that painted harlot of a city-wide earthquake memorial that appeared like a PTSD flashback if only you wore the right glasses. Not like the dry fountains outside the Akiba, in Las Vegas. Not augmented reality, but an entirely separate and equally valid consensual reality, as dishonest in its performance of what might once have been as Javier’s iterations were inexact copies of himself.
It helped that only cosplayers were allowed in.
Javier bounced a little in his sandalled feet. The wood bottoms of his geta were surprisingly comfortable. They’d been printed from a cedar-cellulose composite, which improved the smell a great deal. He’d obtained them at the Tori-Tori, one of the four gates to the old city. The Tori-Tori had a big old quadcopter drone skinned to look like a majestic red bird. The other gates had a white tiger, a blue serpent, or a black turtle. Who knew what they were made of. But the quadcopter was the most famous, because every hour on the hour it squirted some butane down the bones of its exoskeleton, burst into flames, and flew away to some distant rooftop. On that rooftop, someone skinned it again, and then it flew back just in time to repeat the process. It was a low-tech solution, but as Javier watched the bird dip and arc and perch and preen, he thought it worked. It looked old. It looked as old as the surrounding buildings, despite the fact that it was built centuries later. It matched.
At the Tori-Tori, the vN inside the little wooden kiosk asked him whether he wanted to be foreign or not.
“You could be a Portuguese, circa 1543,” one of them said. She looked like Rory, but if the network had warned her about him, she made no sign of it.
“That’s the brownest option you’ve got, is it?”
Some algorithm in her activated, and she blushed. Colour diffused from one high cheekbone to the other, spreading across the bridge of her nose without ever touching the tip. “I’m sorry,” she said, in a tiny, breathy voice that sounded like what would happen if fluffy white kittens ever gained the ability to speak.
“It’s fine.” Javier started removing his dad’s clothes. “I’ll take it.”
The “Portuguese” costume wasn’t the most ridiculous thing he’d ever worn, but it was pretty damn close. Under his sandals – standard issue for everyone, no matter what costume they wore – he wore pale tights that rose up into a pair of puffy culottes that ballooned around his thighs and swished as he walked. He had a weird pirate shirt with a bunch of ruffles at the collar and cuffs, and a deep green “velvet” jacket complete with a little peplum at the hip and a matching hat.
“Do you have a walking stick?” he’d asked.
“Are you injured?”
“No.” He stood back from the mirror in the little changing stall. “I just think that an outfit like this needs a walking stick.”
“If you’d like to leave some feedback for the costume manager, the watch on that chain will allow you to do so.”
Strictly speaking, the pocketwatch that came with his costume wasn’t temporally appropriate. He wasn’t terribly familiar with the world of 1543, but he doubted pocketwatches were the norm. But every visitor to the old city carried one.
“They’re the only accessory that goes with every costume,” the attendant had told him. “They just seem to communicate the past.”
And that was the thing about the old city. It didn’t represent or replicate any particular past, just “the past.” All the centuries just blended together into some imaginary year when everyone wore too many layers and smoked a lot of opium. Javier suddenly wished he could talk about it with Holberton. Holberton knew all about this kind of thing. Hell, he probably knew the people who had designed it. Maybe he’d even lost a bid to work on it. It certainly seemed to work a lot like Hammerburg. Only instead of vampires chasing people, there were samurai and geisha and spies for the Dutch government and Catholic priests in hiding.
One of those priests sidled up to him, now. Javier could tell by the plain black robe he wore. He also wore a massive rattan hat that looked like a lampshade. It mostly covered his eyes, and when he tilted his head way back to peer at Javier, Javier could see that he was an older white guy with milky little blisters over his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped, “but do you know how to get to the Megane bridge from Dejima?” He held up a little jar. Inside were a pair of very old blue eyes. They no longer held any blood, but it was easy to imagine that once upon a time, not so long ago, they’d been bleary and red. “It’s good luck if you feed your old eyes to the turtles that live under the bridge. Your new eyes will never download anything bad.”
Javier gently pushed the old man’s hand away, so he didn’t have to look at the eyes any longer. “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you know the way to the ninja forest?”
FIFTEEN
結 婚に、神、天下りて
The ninja forest took up a large section of parkland bordering Mecha and the harbour. The trees were the largest he’d ever seen in any urban space. They were mostly beech varietals and red or white pine, but there were little glades full of willows that leaned over trickling creeks, and ranks of silver birch and poplar standing guard at the borders of the forest. And, of course, the cherry trees. They stretched out their arms in perfect supplication, their signature blossoms replaced by snow. Or maybe, Javier thought, they were just sad at having their tops so ruthlessly trimmed down. Not a single one of them had been allowed to grow up rather than out, and it made for a middle level of coverage in the more open areas of the park. It reminded him a great deal of the forest where he’d iterated Xavier.
It was the perfect place for his children to hide.
“The next ninja show will be starting in fifteen minutes, in the Ueno arena.”
Javier looked around. He could see no speakers, even in the trees. It occurred to him that the trees might not even be real – maybe some of them were just hollow tubes with wires inside.
He was getting tired of not knowing what was real.
The path to the Ueno arena led down to the beach. Getting there was a trick in his stupid swishy pantaloons, or whatever they were, so he slipped off his sandals and started jumping. The pantaloons created an unusual amount of drag on his flight, but his feet and hands still worked as usual. He leapt from the path to a copse of willows, listened for the sound of the harbour, then vaulted over the willows to a stand of pines.
“Hey, aren’t you the saint, today?” a voice above him said.
In the tree was another vN, this one wearing an angry red mask with polished tusks poking free of a grimacing mouth.
“I just checked your schedule,” the ninja said. “You’re the saint.”
Javier decided to play along. “Oh,” he said. “I guess I’d better go change.”
“The show starts in fifteen minutes! Get moving!”
“Sorry,” Javier said, and hoped he hadn’t just gotten his son fired.
The eighteen yellow roses they sold him at the mobile florist outside the tent were long-stemmed. Javier requested that they trim them down and arrange them into a ball and then tie them with a white ribbon.
“That’s a very unique request,” the girl behind the counter said.
“It’s for a quinceanera,” Javier said, and left.
Now he was standing in line outside the arena, wishing he could at least sweat some of his nervousness out. Maybe he should wait. Maybe he should come back later, when they were done with their work. He didn’t want to get them in trouble. Shit, he had nothing for Xavier. That wasn’t good. He wished there was some way for him to have kept Holberton’s bike. The boy might have liked that. Maybe. If he could forgive him. But no present he could give them was going to make up for what he’d done. No matter how carefully he tied the ribbon.
“¡Parete!”
His head picked up. He looked around. No. Maybe he’d just misheard some Japanese. It happened. The vowel sounds were basically the same, there were just more of them.
A leaf fell across his nose, and right into the flowers he was holding. Of course. He should have looked up, not around.
She was there, wearing some sort of ninja costume, jumping from tree to tree. She paused atop one bough, and bounced on it so that it groaned a little. Then she was gone.
Javier decided to skip the line.
“I think we should do the torture of Saint Francis Xavier, again,” she said, in Spanish. He had no idea how she could both talk and jump so quickly at the same time. She was fast. Keeping up with her took more effort than he’d expected. Maybe he was finally getting old.
“He was never tortured!” a voice called, from the trees. Xavier. “He died in China, of a disease!”
“Aww…”
“Maybe we should do the seduction of the impressionable blonde gyaru,” Xavier said.
“All the literature says it’s the gyaru who do the seducing!”
Beneath him, a dry branch snapped. Javier instantly hung back, and jumped a little higher into the nearest tree. It was a huge old pine, prickly as hell, but it hid him effectively once he hugged it right. Below, his daughter walked along the outstretched bough of a willow.
“Is that you, Xavier?” she asked.
Nothing.
“Come on, this isn’t funny.” She jumped a little higher. “Xavier! I don’t like not knowing where you are!”
“They’re coming to get you, Anza…”
Anza. That was her name. As Javier watched, she jumped right into the tree beside him. Christ, but she was so little. So small. Such a perfect blend of himself and Amy. He wanted to hold her and never let her go.
“I’ll be coming to get you, if you’re not careful!” The look of irritation that crossed her face was so similar to Amy’s that he almost laughed. Oh, he hoped it was Amy’s expressions that had taken root, and not his. He wanted something more of her, here, with him. And he saw it there in the way she pressed her fists to her hips and the way she carefully planted her feet on the wood. “You know it’s dangerous, Xavier. You know we’re not supposed to be separated.”
She jumped right into his tree. Right on the other side of him. “Xavier, just quit hiding and come on out.”
“I’m not him,” Javier said.
She peeked around the trunk of the tree. Little needles were in her curls. For the first time in Javier’s life, he understood why the Tin-Man had wanted a heart. It would be better, if he knew what exactly it was inside him that was breaking.
“Are you my brother?” She winced. “I mean, one of my brothers? One of the other ones?”
He shook his head. “No, baby. I’m your daddy.” He held out his mess of flowers.
Xavier chose this moment to crash into the tree above them.
“Esperanza, come on! No fair! Just because you can…” The boy trailed off. The tree rocked with their combined weight and competing pressure. The wind sounded in it. It carried the sounds of tourists and barkers and botflies singing through the air. “Dad?”
He thought of Arcadio. “Guilty.”
“Xavier?” Anza brought out a shark knife. It reeked of bile. “Run. Tell Mitch. Now.”
Damn, but his little girl was fast. If she weren’t currently trying to kill him, he’d have been pretty damn proud. “Can’t we talk about this?” he asked, as he jumped into the willow Anza had just occupied.
“You killed our mother!”
She had him, there. He bounced off a willow bough and into a break of beech. She was smart, pushing him into the deciduous trees and out of the evergreens that might keep him hidden. And every time he jumped, he disturbed the snow in the trees. He might as well have tagged them with spray paint.
“I didn’t! Powell did! Mitch!”
“Liar!”
Javier rolled his eyes. Why had he thought that a daughter would be easier? “I know you think he’s your friend, baby, but–”
“Don’t you baby me, cabrón.”
She landed just a little below him. She swiped for his feet, but he tucked them up just in time. Then he was in the air. He aimed for a broken-down old elm. It was badly scarred by lightning, and it creaked under his sudden impact. Parts of it were frozen. The outermost branches crashed around him. He was exposed. He held his hands up.
“I don’t want to fight you,” he said.
She was on his back instantly. The knife went to his throat. If she depressed the lever, his body would fill with vomit vapour, and he would melt.
“That’s too bad,” she said.
“Wow.” He forced himself to smile. To be funny and light. Goofy dad. “When they hired you to play a ninja, they weren’t messing around.”
She snorted. “I’m the star attraction.”
“Is it the hair? I bet it’s the hair.” He turned his head a little so he could face her. “I really like your hair, by the way.”
She pinked up, but her mouth kept a straight line. “I am seriously going to kill you right now,” she said. “Right after you tell me who sent you.”
“Oh, honey.” Javier jumped backward, against the tree’s trunk. Her arms loosened, and he pinned her up against the icy trunk with one arm while he grabbed her slashing wrist with his other hand. He buried the knife in the tree, and depressed its lever.
“First of all,” he said, “I had you the moment you jumped on me. If my own dad caught me pulling that amateur shit when I was your size, he’d have whipped my ass until it smoked.”
Anza rolled her eyes.
“And second, who the hell gave you this?” He gestured with the knife. “Any daughter of Amy Peterson, shit, any great-granddaughter of Portia the fucking godless killing machine, can probably annihilate her target with her bare hands. This shit is beneath you. OK?”
He tossed it into the snow. Anza’s eyes tracked its progress and then rose, mutinously, to glare at him. “Mitch gave it to me.”
“Well, isn’t that nice. You got a knife from the man who really killed your mother.”
She tried to kick him. He grabbed her ankles. “You’re strong,” he said. “I get that. You’re a phenomenal jumper, already. Hell, they pay you for it. But I am bigger than you, and I am better at this than you are. Now you might think I’m an asshole, but I think we can both agree that what I just said is true.”
Anza said nothing. He held her in place.
“He raped me, Esperanza. He raped me, and he failsafed me, and he got me to poison your mother. I didn’t know what it would do to her. I promise you that. I didn’t know.”
Anza swallowed. “Even if that’s true, what are you even doing here? I thought you went back to be with the humans.”
“Is that what he told you I did?”
“Well, yeah. Xavier said you used to… Well…” Her blush deepened. Oh, he was over the moon for her already. “He said the others, our brothers, told him stories…”
“Those stories are true.”
“So what are you doing here? Why aren’t you off…” She squirmed. “I don’t know! Doing whatever it is you do with humans!”
He had seen this reticence before. This squeamishness. Of course.
“You don’t like hum
ans, do you?” he asked.
She looked away. “Sure I do! I like them! They’re great! Mitch is great!”
The smoke inside his body changed its orientation immediately. For a moment, he felt carved out of pure diamond. When he spoke, his voice came out low. “Does Mitch touch you?”
She shook her head. “No. He doesn’t like me that way.”
He was starting to let her go. He was remembering Powell’s record. It fit. “Does he like Xavier that way?”
Her eyes met his. Snowflakes were caught in her lashes. His lashes. Amy had always said she liked his better than hers, because they were so much longer and darker. And in her last act of creation, she had iterated her favourite parts of him into their little girl.
“It’s OK,” he said. “You can tell me.”
“I…” Her lips pursed. “I think so. And… I know it’s OK, because Xavier likes him, too, and because he’s normal, but…” Her eyes filled with tears. “But…”
“But you know it’s wrong.” Javier rested his hands on her shoulders. She really was so little. “Because when your mother made you, she didn’t include the failsafe.”
Anza collapsed against him. She cried into his sweater. “I’m supposed to be protecting him! I know it! It’s the only reason Mom would have made me! But I… I…”
“But you can’t protect him from the thing he wants most,” Javier said.
Anza pushed herself away from him a little. She looked at him from the corner of her eye. “Now that you’ve dropped in, are you just going to leave? Xavier says that sometimes, you leave.”
He chose to ignore that, for the moment, no matter how true it was. “I didn’t cross the Gulf of Mexico, ride through the American Southwest, and cross the Pacific Ocean just to drop in,” he said. “I’m here to help you clean house.”
“When I said the words clean house,” Javier said, surveying the chaos, “I was not speaking literally.”
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