The Art of Arrow Cutting Page 7

  She knew she was being chased. Okay. She didn’t want anyone to find her, not even him. Again okay. But had she set him up? Did she expect him to divert her pursuers, maybe die in her place? That, he refused to accept. She hadn’t looked the kind, and Mage trusted his eyes—trusted them more than any facts.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?”

  “You looked sort of stunned for a minute there.”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m okay. Maybe a little tired.”

  “You want to stay here the night?” she asked. “Amanda’s bed’s made up.”

  He smiled. “Thanks.”

  It was only a single bed, made exclusively for sleeping in, but sleep eluded him. Every footfall upstairs, every gurgle of water in the pipes, rang in his semiconsciousness like a burglar alarm. The temptation to creep into Jenny’s room was almost overpowering, and he spent his wakeful moments wondering why he didn’t simply yield to it. He doubted that she’d scream rape, but she might throw him out—and quite apart from the possible dangers, it was bitterly cold outside; he could even see snow falling past the window. Furthermore, he suspected that Jenny also had a single bed, and the occasional creak and murmur from her room suggested that she was a restless sleeper.

  The sun was rising over Calgary and Mage was finally falling asleep when Yukitaka Hideo was ushered into Tamenaga’s quarters by the blank-faced Sakura.

  Tamenaga was naked except for a fundoshi, an ornate loincloth, and his tattoos shone slightly with sweat: the cobra on his right arm, the meter-long centipede, or mukade, on his left, the weighted chains around each wrist, the python coiled around his hairless chest, and the vest of ninja ring-mail. Yukitaka bowed and waited.

  “So,” said Tamenaga softly, his face almost as unreadable as Sakura’s. “You failed.”

  Yukitaka nodded and apologized profusely in hurried Japanese. To his immense relief, Tamenaga did not interrupt him. A less indispensable employee would have been silenced in mid sentence. Yukitaka knew of no rukoro-kubi outside of his own family and doubted that any others survived. Rukoro-kubi could live for years without a taste of human flesh, but they soon lost their ability to heal, eventually bleeding to death (their deaths, if not disguised, were usually taken for particularly gruesome suicides; their bodies were always cremated).

  Rukoro-kubi females could interbreed with human males, but their offspring were mostly mere humans, or sometimes deformed monsters; no human female had ever carried a rukoro-kubi baby to term, and few survived the pregnancy. Yukitaka Hideo’s parents were long dead; his sister, Sumie, worked as an industrial spy in Tokyo. None of her employers knew her secret; none had dared to ask. Occasionally she would visit Hong Kong and feast on children and junkies in the slums, her attacks mistaken for rat bites.

  Sakura, behind Tamenaga’s back, opened a mouth to yawn silently. There is little love lost between monsters, but Yukitaka disliked Sakura less than any human female, and she returned his indifference and small respect in full measure.

  “I accept your apology,” Tamenaga said politely, “but I am curious. Who was the knife-fighter?”

  Yukitaka bowed deeply, more to hide his relieved expression than as a gesture of respect. “His name is Charles Willis Takumo. He’s a small-time stuntman from California, mostly impersonating women and children, or playing at being ninja.”

  “Japanese?”

  “Half Japanese. His father is unknown; probably an American hippie. His mother left him with her parents, who raised him. She died in a commune in ’75, and her father died in ’88. His grandmother is in a hospital, nearly senile. Takumo has no other family, no wife, no regular job—he is currently suspended from the stunt performers’ union for taking drugs—and no allegiances. So, in short, another drifter.”

  “Where did he meet Magistrate?”

  “I don’t know. They spoke like strangers. It seems that they met for the first time in the hostel, by coincidence.”

  “Coincidence?” Tamenaga raised an eyebrow slightly at that. “Coincidence, like a gun jamming so opportunely?”

  Yukitaka was silent.

  “It seems,” said Tamenaga quietly, “that the girl diverted us and that we have underestimated Magistrale-san.”

  “The girl,” said Sakura politely but flatly, “is no longer a problem.”

  “And the knife-fighter?” asked Yukitaka.

  “A chambara actor,” replied Tamenaga dismissively, “using an amateur’s weapon. Hardly worth your time, Yukitaka-san—but you’re welcome to him when this is all over, if you wish.”

  9

  Journey of the Sorcerer

  Takumo greeted him cheerfully, “Goood morning, sunshine,” and grinned. “‘Some were born to wild delight, / Some were born to endless night.’”

  Mage grunted, amazed and secretly pleased that the stuntman had turned up instead of taking the key (which he obviously thought valuable for reasons that entirely escaped Mage) and running. “As a matter of fact, I … oh, never mind. Where did you sleep last night?”

  “On a waterbed. A heated waterbed. A—”

  “Oh, shut up.” Mage shook his head and walked over to the vending machines, returning with a caffeine- and sugar-rich Classic Coke. “I thought you were broke. How the hell did you afford a place with a waterbed?”

  “Didn’t cost me a cent.” He reached into his pocket for Amanda’s key and threw it to Mage. “Take a look at that.”

  Mage glanced at the key, then looked Takumo up and down. “You went to a wife-swapping party? I thought those went out with the seventies.”

  “Look, man. You got the eyes. Use them.”

  Mage shrugged and looked more closely at the key. It was shiny and new-looking, like Amanda’s, with the same Volkswagen-shaped Lockwood head with a crooked “A” stamped on one side, and the rough edge, whatever you called that, that looked a little like the Manhattan skyline. So why had he thought it was different?

  He blinked and stared hard at the key, trying to remember. Was his imagination running away with him, or had the edge previously resembled the east coast of South America? Hadn’t this large shark’s tooth previously been M-shaped? Hadn’t …

  “It’s a different key, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?”

  He glanced at the braid of black hair. That hadn’t noticeably changed. “It looks different … at least I think it does. I didn’t look at it that closely before, I could just be imagining it. I’ve been under a lot of stress lately,” he said dryly. “Did you get another key cut?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s the same key—”

  “Yes and no. It changed. It changed to fit the lock. Like it evolved or something.”

  Mage shook his head. “No, that’s impossible. It must be a coincidence, a key that fits two different locks.”

  “Four.”

  “Four?”

  “There were two locks on the door—one of them a deadbolt—and they were different brands, not meant to take the same key. The windows had security mesh screens, and okay, maybe they were all designed for the one key, but that still makes three locks, and the garage door makes four. Okay, all the locks were stiff and kind of reluctant, but the one key shouldn’t have fit them, let alone opened them. I haven’t tried it on any car doors, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work on those too.”

  Mage stared at the key, fascinated. “How did you think of this?”

  Takumo shrugged. “Naturally devious, I guess. I was wondering what could be so hot about a key to start all this hassle. Like, it’s a key, its purpose in life is to open something, unless you need it to launch a nuke or something, and I didn’t want to think of that. So I wondered what that something it could open might be, and I started to think of doors I’d like it to open, and after about three or four, I thought ‘All of the above,’ and … so then I thought, like, ‘Why not?’ And then I saw this pad with the ‘To Rent—Fully Furnished’ sign … and I kind of extrapolated from there.” He grinned. �
�Neat, huh? The ultimate skeleton key, worth a small fortune.”

  “No.”

  “Okay, a large fortune, an outrageous fortune if you’re heavily into possessions. I don’t like to steal from—”

  “No,” repeated Mage.

  “Will you believe it if you see it?”

  “Maybe, but that’s not why. It isn’t ours, and even if you’re right and it is some sort of magic, we’re not going to use it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Amanda had it,” the photographer reminded him, “and she had to borrow thirty bucks to get out of town, so it didn’t make her rich. I don’t know how long she had the key, but no one remembers her having money, and no one planned on sending her any Christmas cards, so it didn’t make her healthy, either. Jenny told me she had leukemia, but Amanda wasn’t telling Jenny everything, any more than she told me everything, but she was crying when I saw her, so it certainly didn’t make her happy. Now, Amanda was a mathematician and I’m not, and maybe I’m screwing up cause and effect here, but I don’t want to use that key at all until I see her again.”

  “Yeah, okay. Like the Hope diamond.”

  “What?”

  “You know how it’s supposed to be cursed? Like ever since it was stolen, everyone who owned it found a nasty way of dying young. So, after the French Revolution—Marie Antoinette had inherited it—the diamond disappeared for about forty years, then someone gave it to a diamond cutter in Amsterdam to cut down. Which he did, but his son stole it and took off for London. So the cutter committed suicide, and the son’s money ran out, but he couldn’t work up the nerve to sell the diamond. He ended up taking a job as a street sweeper—with a diamond worth about half a million in his pocket.”

  Mage shivered.

  “Maybe magic has a way of doing that,” Takumo mused. “Like, maybe there’s a price tag, a catch, a first and second law of thermodymagics, or something. Conservation of power. Action and reaction. Yin and yang.” A shadow fell over him and he looked up to notice the bus driver staring at him. “Then again, what do I know?”

  “About magic? More than I do,” said Mage quietly after the driver had turned away. “Doesn’t this scare you shitless?”

  “No,” said Takumo cheerfully. “I always wanted there to be magic in the world. You?”

  Mage shrugged. “I was doing okay without it.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Mage slept until they reached the border, while Takumo kept watch—an unnecessary precaution as it happened, but it made for a more interesting journey.

  The Rocky Mountains at close quarters are as frightening as any monster. Man’s first goddesses, Takumo knew, had been earth mothers, bountiful and supportive, but his first gods were mountains, arrogant and unproductive— except, perhaps, of smoke and lava and falling rocks. The goddesses were to be thanked and loved; the gods, appeased and feared.

  Later races of men, more confident, reduced their gods to human scale and placed them atop the mountains, new gods on the shoulders of old—Zeus on Olympus, Yahweh on Sinai. Still later, of course, men even less prone to awe would regard mountains as mere obstacles, to be flown over or tunneled through—but not Takumo, who had never regarded his economy-sized physique as the measure of all things, had never felt the modern urge to leave nothing standing on earth that was taller or older than himself. He despised flatness and sameness, preferring mountains, and dinosaurs, and the towering redwoods that had miraculously survived the Reagan era. Takumo’s deities were not economists, but giants: gods, goddesses, and Godzillas. He felt no urge to swim the deepest oceans or to cross the burning deserts, any more than he would have willingly killed the last whale. It was enough for Takumo to know that they were there.

  Charlie? You okay?”

  “Yeah, fine,” replied Takumo quietly without taking his eyes from the view. “Why?”

  “You weren’t breathing.”

  “Prana-yoga. Breath control. It’s good exercise. Helps you concentrate, and comes in real useful when there’s a smog alert. Remind me to teach it to you sometime.” He watched the sun setting and smiled. “You know, the nearest thing I ever had to a religious experience came when I was flying over those mountains.”

  Mage, who had wakened in time for lunch, merely nodded.

  “It was early morning,” Takumo continued, “about four o’clock, the time when the nightmares come for me whether I’m asleep or not, and I had the window seat, and all I could see was this magnificent triangular shadow. And I thought, ‘Oh man, we’re flying much too close to that mountain.’ Like, I’m not scared of flying, but this was awesome, so I just had to shut my eyes—and it was four a.m., like I just said, and I always planned to die in my sleep.

  “So I sat there, and a few minutes later I opened my eyes again and there was the mountain, still—same size, or maybe bigger. Okay, so a mountain range isn’t one mountain wide or anything, and so I shut my eyes again, and I think that this time I fell asleep. When I looked again, it was a little lighter, but the shadow was still there, big as life. Bigger. Big as life and death and sex in one. Man.

  “So, like, I just sat there and meditated quietly, and the shadow just sat there like all the bad karma in the world, and finally the sun came up, sweet as a kiss—and I looked out, and the ground below us was flat, not a mountain in sight. I must’ve sat there for hours, and had seven years’ growth scared out of me, staring at the shadow of the wing of the plane.” He laughed. “One day I’m going to have to really go into the mountains. The Japanese used to think there was a god—well, a kami, demigod—in every mountain. A yama-no-kami. Did you ever read this Hermann Hesse story called ‘Faldum’?”

  “No.”

  “It’s about a man, a kind of wandering-magician type, who comes out of nowhere really and rolls up at a fair in this village called Faldum. He sees these girls looking in a mirror and making wishes, so he makes the wishes come true—one wish for everyone in town. So there’s one guy who wants to stay there forever, so he wishes that he gets turned into a mountain. And he does. The rest of the story is about the thousands of years it takes for the environment to recover. I really dug that story.” Takumo shook his head nostalgically. “Hey, if you had one wish, what’d you wish for?”

  “I don’t know.” Mage shrugged. “I guess I never really thought about it. To see the world? No, they’d probably dump me in orbit without a space suit. Isn’t that the thing about wishes? Be careful what you ask for, ’cause you might get it?” Mage knew the truth of that well enough. “A solar-powered Lamborghini? No, not a Lamborghini, a Winnebago, something I could sleep in … no, something two people could sleep in.”

  “Only two?”

  “Yeah, only two of us—at a time, anyway. I’m not greedy. Or Californian.”

  Takumo smiled. “Then why don’t you just wish for the perfect woman?”

  “They’re all perfect,” Mage replied without cracking a smile.

  In every city and town where the bus stopped between Calgary and L.A., Mage asked after Amanda—to no avail. Even in towns where the population doubled every time a bus went through, no one remembered seeing a tall, beautiful blonde.

  The weather became warmer as they traveled south, but the air also became dirtier, and Greyhound stations, like airports, are usually located in the poorest and ugliest part of any city. Mage, who had never been prone to depression, was looking extremely dispirited when they finally disembarked in Santa Monica. Takumo’s small apartment, however, was an eye-opener; tatami on the floor, posters on the walls and ceiling, paper light-shades, a large-screen (Japanese) TV and VCR, a laser-disc player, a futon and a Wing Chun wooden dummy in the bedroom, bookshelves randomly stuffed with paperbacks and laser discs and incense burners. The kitchen contained enough knives for three productions of Julius Caesar. Cushions of various sizes were piled in the corners, but there were no chairs, and only one low table.

  “When do I remove my shoes?” Mage asked.

  “Now, if you would
,” replied Takumo, glancing at his time-dishonored Reeboks.

  Mage shrugged and complied. “You must be better off than you look.”

  “If you mean moneywise, yes, I am. Or I was, anyway. I haven’t worked much recently.”

  The photographer walked into the sitting room and stared at a row of movie posters. Age of the Sword (“When the ammunition had gone, but the fallout hadn’t.”). Moon Camp. Robocop 3. Red Ninja. Red Ninja II. Jonin (“Master of Ninjitsu—and a Hundred Ninja!”). “You used to show these movies?”

  “I was in them.”

  “As a ninja?”

  “Yeah, sometimes. I’m pretty good at the spectacular stuff, chambara fighting, particularly yadomejutsu, arrow cutting.”

  “Arrow cutting?”

  “Parrying arrows, shuriken, throwing knives, stuff like that—or catching them, if you want to be really flashy. My grandfather taught it to me; he said it was good practice for baseball. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work with bullets.” He removed his sneakers and socks, shut the door behind him, and then stood on his head and wiggled his toes. “And I double a lot for kids because I’m small, and sometimes for women.”

  “What were you doing in Calgary?”

  “Passing through. I’d been doing a lousy movie in Edmonton. You know the aquarium in the mall, the one with the sharks? I was doubling for the star because I made the sharks look bigger. They were making it in Canada because it was cheaper—no union problems—and I needed the work. I was suspended from the union back in June and I was getting low on cash.”

  “Why were you suspended?”

  “Drugs.”

  Takumo didn’t seem the sort to need cocaine, or any other stimulant. “Grass?”

  “Codeine. I don’t use grass when I’m working. Like, I hurt my back doing some spacewalking stunts in Moon Camp, and the X rays didn’t show any damage, so no union benefits, but the pain got to me occasionally. They threw me off Ronin, which was a real bummer, but I was nearly finished. I played one of the komuso in the first scene, so you don’t get to see my face, but it’s the biggest break I’ve had since … do you know the book?”