by Неизвестный
“Weeds are pirates, while pirates spread like weeds.”
“That’s pretty clever,” said Yoshida.
“I read that in your newspaper.”
“I’ve got a real way with words,” Yoshida agreed. He gazed around, alertly smiling. “It’s incredible how fast the weeds grow during climate change. Turn your back, and the weeds just take over the world! Post-atomic Tokyo is one huge vacant lot now, a vast dead city full of weeds. Fukushima has mutant trees ten meters high!”
“Fukushima is not so bad as that,” Miss Sato said. “I’ve been to Fukushima. Fukushima is very peaceful and pretty. Fukushima has no people, but it is full of wildlife.”
Yoshida scowled. “What kind of wildlife is in Fukushima? Glowing, three-eyed dolphin mutants?”
“Whales are in Fukushima. Siberian cranes. Wild monkeys even.” Miss Sato laughed. “Monkeys are so funny. Monkeys are much kinder to each other than people are.”
Yoshida glanced up at the clouding sky and shifted his bundle of newspapers. “Now it’s trying to rain on us. All you have to do is talk about the ‘sacred wind,’ and here it comes to get you, the kamikaze! Did you ever notice that, when you speak the words ‘climate change,’ the weather will actually change?”
Miss Sato nodded. “Oh yes. Everybody says that nowadays. Even on the mainland.”
“I spotted some roofs on the far side of that ravine,” said Yoshida. He picked up his dog in one arm and hefted his newspapers in the other. “So I bet there’s a village where I can deliver my newspapers. We’ll be uphill of the sniper nest too. So maybe we can see it by looking down at it from a position of vantage.”
Yoshida was young and energetic rather than reasonable, but his thrashing through the tall weeds was soon rewarded. He led her from the choking, tangled overgrowth into a clearer area.
Boss Takenaka had built a concealed guardhouse here to defend his mountainside drug farms. Faded warnings of land mines were nailed to the larger trees.
A warm, sticky drizzle began to fall. It was the premonition of much worse weather to come.
“Land mines,” Miss Sato murmured.
“Those signs are probably lying,” Yoshida advised. He scampered forward along with his yapping terrier. Miss Sato followed, treading with care in his footsteps.
The pirate guardhouse was almost invisible, built to fool aerial surveillance by military drones. The big hut was roofed with a dense thatch, thoroughly smeared with mud and festooned with flourishing gourd vines. Crooked sniper holes allowed a few rays of daylight.
The yawning door was hung all over with lucky pirate amulets. Superstitions had arrived here from all over the planet: wreathed anchors, topless mermaids, see-no-evil monkeys, marijuana leaves, hooded skeletons. Crossed revolvers, hypodermics, bloody dice, Taoist yin-yangs, lightning bolts, ninja masks …
Inside the guardhouse were three stone steps leading downward.Dried herbs and spider webs dangled from the rafters. The uneven floor of the hut—just simple, damp, pounded earth—was strewn with rotting tatami mats.
The terrier trotted down the steps and barked at a pile of damp hay in the hut’s darkest corner. The hay-pile sat up. It revealed itself as a slumbering derelict under a thick straw raincoat.
“Nice dog,” the blind man said mildly, grasping at a long stick. “I know your voice, doggie! If you are here, then your master, that journalist, must be nearby.”
“That’s right,” Yoshida admitted, “and fancy meeting you in here, Zeta One.”
“The sacred wind always makes me sleepy,” said Zeta One. He crowned his dented head with a rain hat. His conical hat was the size of a bicycle wheel and, from above, made him resemble some harmless patch of weedy island sod.
Zeta One sniffed aloud. “So, what brings you to this lonely place, with your pretty female friend, who is standing there? Should I ask that?”
“She is not my girlfriend,” said Yoshida. “She is Miss Sato from the Federation of Nine Relief Societies. She’s a peace activist from the mainland.”
“So then you’re from Nagoya, Miss Sato,” said Zeta One, fingering his pilgrim’s sacred cane. “I can tell that by the way you talk.”
“But I haven’t said a word,” Miss Sato said.
“See, you really are from Nagoya.”
“Are you living inside this shack these days?” asked Yoshida. “I haven’t seen you in Tsushima City lately. At least, not since that gambling house exploded. The casino that kicked you out.”
“Ah, well then,” said Zeta One, smiling blindly into the dim air lit by sniper holes, “a fine young gentleman like yourself doesn’t frequent the brothels and gambling dens where a reprobate like me passes his time.”
“Well, yes, being a journalist, I do spend my time in there, actually. I was lucky not to get killed.”
“We keep different hours,” said Zeta One. “Poor, blind wretch that I am, I can’t tell any difference between night and day. It’s only due to the kindness of strangers that I get by on humble charity bowls of sweet-potato porridge.”
A flicker of irritation crossed Yoshida’s youthful face. “So—what exactly are you doing in here?”
“I am sleeping the big storm away,” said the blind man with a tender, confiding smile. “I can’t see the lightning, so the lightning might kill me. The sound of thunder on my poor blind ears, that always makes me jump with fear.”
“I don’t believe a word of that,” Yoshida objected. “Miss Sato and I were just discussing you, not one hour ago. And yet here you are, ‘like the daughter-in-law who ate the autumn eggplants.’ ”
“No one believes in your old proverbs anymore.”
“My old proverbs have nothing to do with it! Obviously you knew that we were coming here! You were lurking in here, waiting for us.”
“You’re such nice people,” said Zeta One, “that this must be a blessing from the Goddess of Mercy. You see, in penance for the many past sins of my wretched former life, I have vowed to visit all six temples of the Kannon on Tsushima. Now that I’m on my sacred pilgrimage to the east, west, north, and south of this island. Meeting you is how the Goddess rewards me for my piety.”
“What a sweet thing to say,” Miss Sato interrupted. “I’m glad to hear of such a blessing! Because I’ve been searching for you, Mr. Zeta One. I bring you some personal greetings from Mrs. Mieko Nagai. Mrs. Nagai is an unfortunate hostage who is held captive in chains, as you know. And she told me you were kind to her. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“Well, that’s all for you to judge, miss,” said Zeta One, adjusting a twisted leather thong on his huge rain hat. “This poor old bean of mine took quite a pounding in the old days. So I’m afraid I don’t remember any Mrs. Michiko what’s-her-name … Never saw one glimpse of that lady, can’t remember what I don’t see, please forgive me.” He briefly bowed where he sat.
“Oh stop all that,” Yoshida objected. “You wouldn’t fool a ten-year-old child!”
Zeta One meekly and silently rubbed at his long cane.
“You got that cane from the Mechatronic Visionary Centre,” said Yoshida. “You did, didn’t you?”
Zeta One chuckled. “What, a poor blind wanderer like me, who can’t even read a computer screen? Whatever would I know of your fancy technology?”
“You’re in and out of that damn lab all the time, you big faker! You wrapped that metal antenna in leather, and you smeared it with dirt, but that thing’s packed with circuitry. That cane has got some kind of radar.”
Alarmed by the anger in his master’s voice, the terrier began barking furiously at a spider. The spider, disturbed by the rain, was inching up the timber of a ridgepole.
Without looking at the spider—without listening, without even turning his much-battered head—Zeta One hefted his staff, reached out, and precisely mashed the spider into paste.
“You shouldn’t scold a blind man about his cane, Mr. Yoshida,” said Miss Sato, in the rising patter of rain. “That isn’t decent.”
&
nbsp; “I can tell by your sweet voice that you’re a kindhearted lady, Miss Sato,” said Zeta One as he levered himself to his huge, callused, straw-sandaled, and malodorous feet. “Not like this nosy young man with his Communist scandal sheet. I’ll be on my way to the local temple of mercy. No one cares if an old blind man is soaked to the skin by the typhoon.”
“You’re not leaving until you tell us why you were waiting here for us,” Yoshida said.
“Who, me? But I want nothing from you!” said Zeta One. He shook a leather bag on a belt under his shaggy raincoat. “Unless you want to give me a few gold coins to gamble away at the dice house. That’s my only amusement—to listen to the rattle of the dice and the cries of the yakuza gamblers.”
“I’ll go with you to the temple,” said Miss Sato at once.
Yoshida was scandalized. “You can’t wander off with this sleazy character! You can’t trust him. How can a blind man gamble with dice? He can’t even see the spots!”
“You might as well ask why this pirate island has gold coins!” Miss Sato shouted. “Nobody wants Tsushima’s stupid coins. Mint all the fake treasure you want, your gold has no legal value with any government! Pirate gold is worse than trash!”
Zeta One rumbled with laughter. “I do so enjoy the witty chatter of clever people. Sadly, since my brain was damaged, I can’t keep up with the likes of you. Goodbye.” He tapped his way toward the stairs of the guardhouse.
Yoshida blocked his way. The two men confronted one another for a moment, Yoshida glaring and Zeta One mildly turning his ravaged face to the dirt floor. Then, reluctantly, Yoshida stepped aside.
Zeta One found the yawning door of the hut with the tip of his stick. Then he left.
Miss Sato followed him. The forest trail was a sinister maze of briars, loose rocks, and rain-slick muddy slopes. Also, it was raining. But Zeta One moved at quite a brisk pace, setting his huge, sandaled feet with firm decision, like a man placing go stones.
“I’d appreciate it if you stopped following me,” Zeta One said at last, stopping but not turning to face her.
“Now that I’ve finally found you,” said Miss Sato meekly, “I’m so afraid to lose you.”
“Maybe you’re falling in love with me.” Zeta One chortled. “Young ladies often do that, you know.”
“I might do that,” said Miss Sato. “Because I’m a woman with so many troubles, and you’re such an interesting man.”
The sun emerged from between two swirling fronts of the oncoming storm. Birds sang out in relief, and the trees dripped. “There are land mines all around us here,” said Zeta One. “Even your dainty little feet can set one off.”
“Oh, that’s quite all right. I’m not afraid when you’re here. I’ll just come along with you.”
“Maybe you’d like it if I sang you a song as we walk through these land mines.”
“A song? That might be nice.”
“Yes, I know an old song from old Tsushima. When it was just an innocent island, long before any satellite positioning or any bomb-targeting maps. You see, my girl, back in the good old days on Tsushima, the trails in this island’s great forests were dark even at midday. So every Tsushima boy, and most every girl, knew a song of all the roadmarks. That’s what I sing to myself as I make my pilgrimage.”
The blind man sang in time with his sandaled steps. Every dozen paces, he would whirl the cane above his head. He poked it about from one side to the other, tilted his rain-hatted head this way and that, sniffed at the air, muttered, and sang. The Korean-flavored, Japanese island dialect was impossible to understand.
“How did you learn such songs?” Miss Sato said at last.
“From old wind-up Victrolas,” Zeta One said. “Those old songs were collected by Mr. Miyamoto Tsunekazu, for whom they made the famous Daffodil Festival. But of course stupid old island songs are of no interest to a fine Nagoya girl like yourself.”
“I can sing,” Miss Sato volunteered.
“That would be a kindness, since we blind men are so appreciative of music. What songs do you sing?”
“I sing protest songs,” said Miss Sato. “Peace songs, resistance songs, nuclear disarmament songs, and civil rights songs. Also, many personal singer-songwriter songs about how difficult it is to be a contemporary Japanese woman.”
Zeta One cocked his head. “Don’t you know any happy songs?”
“You mean children’s songs? Yes, I still remember a few.”
Zeta One reached under his baggy straw cape and grubbed around through a set of pockets on a bandolier. He munched a brown handful of shredded squid. “Would you like some?”
“Yes,” said Miss Sato, plucking the tangled mess out of his hand but not eating it.
“I want you to do something for me.”
“What is that?”
“There are solar panels concealed somewhere near here. Those are great treasures because they have power … but I can’t remember where I put them. The panels are hung high up in the trees. People never look up when they search for pirate treasure. They always think it must be under the ground.” He chuckled.
“How can a blind man climb a tree?”
“I’d like you better if you didn’t ask questions,” Zeta One said simply.
Miss Sato obediently gazed at the tops of the forest trees. It took a while, but she was patient and persistent. At length she spotted a gleam in the canopy. Two solar panels were visible. A monkey couldn’t have carried them any higher. A man of Zeta One’s bulk, and blind, clambering so high up there while carrying solar panels? Incredible.
However, she asked no more questions. She guided Zeta One to the tree trunk.
The power cable’s plastic sheath was dappled with forest camouflage. It had been hidden with devious cunning—writhing through leaf litter, ducking under thorn bushes.
This power cable led, dodging and wriggling, to a spider hole buried in the hill-slope. This cunningly hidden death trap was all vine-covered sandbags, with just one wide leafy slit, like a mouth in an eyeless skull.
The vision-slit commanded an impressive view over the bay of Tsushima City, a splendid vista of East China Sea blue, with a lacy, roiling storm front stretching toward distant Japan.
The spider hole smelled of damp earth and ruin. Inside it squatted a stark mechanism, a long muzzle with legs, cogs, and exposed wiring. The rains and island damp had been at the robot machine gun. It had rusted to junk.
“You built this,” said Miss Sato. “You knew it was here, so you’re the one who built it.”
“I don’t remember about that,” said Zeta One, “but it would be a good idea if it wasn’t here anymore. It would bad if someone sullied the memory of Boss Takenaka, that yakuza man-of-honor. Also, Boss Murai; Murai was killed too, so one shouldn’t speak ill of him. Boss Shosuke was never a friendly man, but after the way he perished, it’s better to say nothing about that.”
Zeta One heaved and pried at the heavy sandbags. After much grunting, hand-groping, and ripping of snarled vines, he hauled the sniper gun from its camouflaged lair. He patted the lethal mechanism from stem to stern, muttering to himself.
Then he briskly dismantled the big, rusty gun, like a sushi chef boning a tuna.
Miss Sato spoke up. “My friend, the journalist, says that this robot gun killed many pirates. They died in the streets of Tsushima City, far away, far downhill there. Farther than a human eye can see.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Zeta One, “as I was never here or there when that happened. I’m always far away when bad men come to bad ends.” He bundled up the gun’s stripped components, wrapping them with rotten strips of sandbag. “Now, I need some deep water. Even a blind man knows that water always runs downhill …” He chuckled to himself. “But I can’t carry this gun because I need my staff to walk.”
“I’ll carry the gun for you,” Miss Sato volunteered. “Getting rid of guns is always a good thing to do.”
“Don’t carry the muzzle like that,” he said, gri
pping her hand. “If you show any silhouette with a heavy weapon, we might both be struck by a drone. Stay below the ridges, because your body might be outlined to a flying robot. Don’t walk like a human being walks. The flying machines know what that gait is like. Bend down. Walk like an animal.”
Miss Sato’s clumsy efforts to skulk didn’t please him. He unknotted his shaggy straw cape and wrapped her up in that disguise. His cape reeked of sweat and mildew.
Beneath his cape Zeta One wore crossed webbing bandoliers. Most patches on the bandoliers were empty, and others smelled like rotting squid, yet among this derelict jumble was a personal belt-bomb. A clipped-together set of wires, a battery pack, and seven little cartons of plastique.
She knew better than to ask him about that.
The two of them lurked and skulked downhill until she spotted the slumped ruins of a vacation house. “I can see a big swimming pool over there,” she told him. “It’s full of mosquitoes and mud.”
“When it comes to buried treasure, mud is even better than dirt,” said Zeta One. “I’m sure a dainty lady like you doesn’t want to touch any filthy mud. But if you will kindly help me into that smelly morass and give me that robot gun, then I’ll wallow about a bit and bury it.”
Zeta One carefully leaned his long cane at the rim of the dead swimming pool. Then, splashing and snorting like a walrus, Zeta One buried the ruined weapon. He trampled it deep into the all-obscuring muck.
“Can you see anything of the treasure now?” he asked her at last.
“No. No one could possibly see it.”
“You’re sure,” he said. He slapped at a few hungry mosquitoes.
“I’m sure. You are waist-deep in that mud, and the robot monster is deep under your big feet. No one will ever see.”
“It’s always good to hear,” said Zeta One, “that everyone else is just as blind as me.” He chuckled. “That means that everyone will forget. My work here is done, and now I have to get out of this mud. For a tired old man like myself, that’s not so easy.” He stretched out one mud-caked hand.
“I can’t reach you,” said Miss Sato.