"This is incredible,” Sean said. “What did it say? Tell it I'm sorry I don't understand Japanese.” But the creature was no longer watching him with its fantastic eyes. It scowled at Haruki and took off down the street. Haruki waved his fist after it.
"Wait!” Sean said, but when the creature had disappeared into the depths of the alley he turned to Haruki instead. “What was that? That was the most amazing thing I've ever seen!"
"Kappa,” Haruki said. “Stay away from them."
"But, it was ... it was..."
"It was a kappa, man, and they like to rip people's livers out through their anuses. If you hadn't tricked it into spilling its water it would have had you. Trust me."
"But it wasn't human,” said Sean. It was a stupid thing to say. Of course it was human. Some deformed kid. Sean thought of Nagasaki and shuddered.
"Didn't tell you about that in your tour guides,” Haruki said, and smiled, but the smile seemed thin to Sean. “C'mon, man, let's go.” He tugged on Sean's arm, and Sean let himself be led away, feeling like the stupid foreigner he was.
Haruki said, “Shit,” one second before Sean saw them. They stood in front of an ornate gate, touching everyone who went in or out with blunt metal rods. Sculptures, Sean thought, sprays of crystal tubing held together by hundreds of tiny beating hearts; only they moved like they were alive. Sean's head hurt with the strangeness of looking at them. He glanced at Haruki instead, and saw him biting his lip as he stared back at Sean.
"Do you know what those are?” Sean asked.
"Uh.” Haruki looked away.
"You do!” Sean said. “Are they...?” He didn't want to say ‘aliens'. He didn't want to sound crazy.
"Look man,” Haruki said. “I thought I could get you to my family and back home without you having to see any of this, but if they've put guards at the gate to the spirit quarter it means—"
"Spirit quarter?"
"It's just a name, man,” Haruki said. “Don't go sub-orbital."
Sean didn't think he was going sub-orbital. It was Haruki whose skin had broken out in a sweat, and whose hands were clenched at his sides like he might hit Sean if Sean said the wrong thing.
"Okay, okay, calm down,” Sean said.
"Shut up,” Haruki said. “I need to think."
"What's wrong?” Sean was really worried. Haruki's eyes had gone glassy. He looked feverish, or desperate.
"I said shut up!"
Sean, a cold lump in his chest, shut up.
Haruki stared at the gate for a long time, gnawing on his lip. Finally he said, “I'm gonna have to leave you here. No, don't look like that, it's just for a little while. I'll send my brother to fetch you. It won't take long, I promise."
"I'm staying with you,” Sean said, and he shuffled closer to Haruki, the hem of his robe brushing Haruki's polished leather boots.
Haruki growled, low in his throat. “I'm doing this for you!” he said.
"Doing what for me?” Sean said. People turned their heads to stare, and he lowered his voice. “What is the matter with you? I paid a lot of money so you would—"
"Shut up!” Haruki said again, even more fiercely. “I'm trying to protect your fragile, sheltered, poorly-traveled psyche from a bizarreness overload.” ‘Poorly-traveled’ stung. It also surprised Sean, who had always thought himself quite the opposite. “If they've put guards at the spirit quarter, then even they're not sure what's in there."
"Uh,” Sean said, trying to look self-assured.
"Look, I'm gonna level with you,” Haruki said, “so you understand what you're asking. I'm only taking care of you because you don't stand a chance here without me. Now, I have to get home, and home is through that gate, and you can either come along with your eyes closed and your mouth shut and not say I didn't warn you, or you can wait until I send my brother to come get you, and spare yourself a lot of stress."
Sean wanted to ask what was through the gate, but he was afraid to. Besides, he suddenly knew exactly what he wanted. “Then take me home,” he said. “Take me home now."
"No."
It took a moment before Sean understood what Haruki had said, and then he just repeated it, stupidly. “No."
"I'm sorry,” Haruki said. “I really am. But I'm not going back to your world again. You'll have to find some other way. I'll help you if I can, but I'm not jumping back with you."
Sean stood still for just a moment with his mouth hanging open, his mind trying and failing to rip all the layers off what Haruki had said to get to some core, some essential middle that he could grasp on to. After a few seconds he said, “Where are we?"
Haruki sighed. “Look, can't we just get there first and then talk about this? I haven't been home in—"
"I don't care,” Sean said, startling himself with the volume of his voice. He wasn't used to yelling at people with authority. He continued more softly, glancing at the animated crystal sculptures by the gate. “Just tell me, please. Where are we, and how do I get back to St Louis?"
Haruki squatted on the cobbled street, his wallet chain jangling. “I'm not doing this to spite you, man,” he said. “I'm in way over my head too. How do you think I got the Jetless jump sequencing protocol? How do you think I felt when I realized that in order for their sequence to work I had to take...” He trailed off, looking at Sean with guilty eyes. His Pacific Northwest accent had dropped away, leaving something slightly birdlike in its place.
"Where are we?"
Haruki looked at the ground. “Look, I'm not sure. We're not on your planet, or anywhere in your space-time. That's all I've got.” He closed his eyes and pinched the skin between them. “If I understood it I'd tell you. I don't even know quite how I got there, and I've spent the last three years trying to get back. Now I'm almost reunited with my family, if you'll just come with me. Can you let it rest for just half an hour till then? You'll get everything the fucking brochure says: tea, bowing, raw fish, you name it. Please."
Sean stood for a moment in the middle of the street, waiting for the shaking in his legs to subside. “I'd better,” he said, staring at the ground. Then he followed Haruki past the hundred beating hearts of the guards, and through the gates into the spirit quarter of someplace not quite Tokyo.
Sitting at home in front of the Travel Channel, Sean had dreamed of visiting far-flung corners of the globe, and often, when he'd half fallen asleep with the television still on, he'd dreamed of going farther still, to other planets, galaxies, to other universes entirely, where the laws of physics were different, where he'd see things he knew he couldn't even imagine seeing, from his post on the recliner. He'd imagined himself talking philosophy with aliens. He'd imagined ... well, never this. In his dreams, he could always get back home.
Past the gate stood a world from a dream. Not a single one of the people they passed was human. One had the head of a fox; another, a snake's tail and feathered wings. The ‘people’ stood on the street talking and laughing, or walked arm in arm together, or sat around outdoor tables. Everywhere he looked was a sight he'd never seen before, a sight so strange his brain could not make sense of it. Everywhere a hundred foreign languages rang in his ears. The smells that assailed him were thick and strong, and evoked no memories.
He could barely keep up with Haruki, and a few times only his pink spiky hair in the distance led him along. Now that Haruki'd come clean, it seemed, he had completely given up his role of tour guide and was rushing home with abandon.
Well, I'd do the same thing, Sean thought, if it were me.
Would he?
Sean thought of what he had to go home to. The Travel Channel.
No, he reminded himself, he had friends, and a job he didn't hate, and once a year he got to see something extraordinary. That was more than a lot of people. And if he got home, he could tell people about this place. What if the jump could be used by everyone like Haruki had used it? A jolt of pure thrill went up Sean's spine at the thought. And he could be the one who brought the news to everyone, the mess
enger of a whole new era.
"Haruki, wait up!” he called.
But when he looked ahead, the splash of pink had vanished. Sean stopped in the middle of the cobbled street. A woman with a blue-scaled face jostled him from behind, hissed at him as she went by.
"Haruki, where are you?” No answer. “It's okay,” he said. Haruki would be back for him.
But Haruki had not seemed terribly concerned with what happened to him. The world swam as Sean fought to calm himself; his stomach gripped itself in a vise. He ran forward down the crowded street, calling Haruki's name.
Then two things happened almost at once: A hand thick and rough as bark grabbed his wrist, and a man with a gazelle's head turned towards him from across the street, a concerned look on his face. “Help!” Sean said. He tugged at the hand, which was attached to the skinniest wrist he'd ever seen, and led to a branchlike arm leading to a tree's body. From among the leafy branches peered a gnarled face. “Help me!” Sean said, and the gazelle-man rushed over, waving his arms like a magician prestidigitating on stage.
The tree-man fell back as though struck in the face, leaving deep scratch marks on Sean's wrist, and Sean rushed over to the other man, almost crying with relief. But the gazelle grabbed him by the wrist as well, and lunged at his stomach with a syringe. Sean's relief fled and he jerked away, wrapping his arms around himself, cursing himself for a fool.
The features of the gazelle's face twisted with malice, and he approached Sean, who was unharmed but nonetheless could not force himself to run: he was paralyzed with fear. The creature lunged toward him.
What happened next Sean saw with almost supernatural clarity. The tree-man clasped his gnarled hand over the gazelle's onrushing shoulder, and then there was no one in the street except Sean and the milling passersby, who pretended not to look at him and drifted off in every direction. Sean blinked his eyes several times, to make sure it was true, that they had really gone, then took off down the street as fast as he could go.
He headed for the gate. If he was stuck here, he would at least be stuck on his own terms, in the ‘normal’ part of the city, where he looked like everyone else and no one assaulted him on the street.
But Sean couldn't find the gate. Nothing looked familiar on the streets, and they turned and branched more and more as he went, up stairways and over bridges and through archways, until he had no idea whatsoever which way to go.
Finally, exhausted and terrified, he collapsed on a low wooden bench outside a building with the only familiar thing he'd seen in so long it hurt him to think that it might be another deception, like every other familiar-seeming thing he'd seen all day. It was a blue half-curtain, fluttering lightly over the doorway. In all his vids, that was the sign of a Tokyo bathhouse. Sean had wanted to visit a bathhouse more than almost anything else in Tokyo.
He could hardly remember, now, why he had wanted that. All of his reasons seemed brittle, like something from some other century. It had been because Sean was thinking of getting a tattoo, and he had heard that Yakuza used the bath, and wanted to see the tattoos rumored to be hidden beneath their clothes. He'd been both chilled and exhilarated at the idea of seeing the tattoos of a murderer.
Now, the thought left him cold. He didn't want any more thrills.
He should be looking for a place to spend the night. A hotel, an embassy, a goddamn bridge to sleep under. But he didn't really have hope that he'd be able to find any of those things. When he thought about the future his chest seized up till he couldn't breathe. Right here, right now, was some comfort. A blue curtain that might, just might, have a warm bath behind it, a place where he could think.
Sean stood and went inside.
An old woman stood behind a counter just inside. She looked human, although a black hooded robe covered most of her body. When she spoke she shattered the illusion. Like Haruki's, hers was a birdlike voice, high and nasal, only unlike Haruki she spoke in a language that matched the voice. Sean couldn't understand a word of it, but when the woman held out her hand he peeled a bill at random off a wad of crumpled yen and pressed it to her palm. She grunted, and he walked by her without waiting for her to notice that the money was, if his guess was correct, not quite right.
There were no Yakuza in the bath. Actually, there was no one there except him, and he settled back in the hot water and closed his eyes, imagining how wonderful it would be to have baths like this in St Louis. At the thought, tears gathered in his eyes; he wiped them away with the back of his hand as quickly as he could. He didn't want to think like that. He was going home; if he let himself doubt it for a moment he wasn't sure he would be able to do what he needed to do to make it there. Whatever that might be.
Something slimy wrapped around his leg.
Sean jerked upright and tried to pull his leg away, but whatever it was down there only wrapped itself tighter. His leg began to tingle where it touched.
Sean struggled, turned to grip the edge of the pool. His leg felt like it was being squeezed into two pieces. Whatever it was kept pulling him away from the wall, towards the center of the pool. Something long and black, reaching to a black mass in the bottom of the pool that Sean was sure hadn't been there before.
The tingling grew to a weakness in his whole body. The pool got deeper and deeper. Sean stood up on his free leg to keep his head above water. “Help!” he screamed. “Someone help me!"
But no one came.
Sean couldn't keep his head up any longer. He gulped one final deep breath, and then the water closed over his head. He reached his hands down and tried to pry the tentacle off his leg, but it just kept getting tighter and tighter.
Blackness closed in at the edges of his vision. He was numb all over. Desperate for air, he reached his arms towards the surface. But the surface was a thousand miles away, the overhead lights of the room above tiny points of light dwindling as he watched.
Someone grabbed his hand. A firm, warm grip. And a face appeared above him, the face of an old bearded man, who reached down towards him, smiling. The old man gripped his elbow with his other hand, then released his hand and pulled himself downwards to hook Sean under the arm. He climbed down Sean like a ladder, fast and sure. When his waist came level with Sean's face he realized the man had the tail of a fish.
The tentacle around his leg loosened, and Sean clawed his way to the surface. In a fit of pure adrenaline he hauled himself over the pool's edge and lay gasping on the tiles. His body burned intolerably, and when he tried to stand his arms and legs only flopped uselessly around him.
The woman from the front counter was nowhere to be seen.
"Help,” he said. He knew something was horribly wrong with his body. He bent his head to look at his leg, and stared unbelieving at the purple and black wound festering there. He waited for the old man to come back to help him, or the woman from the front to realize something was wrong, but the room remained silent but for the water lapping at the tile.
After a long time Sean began to realize no one was going to save him. Where he came from, he was never more than a wall away from others, at work or at home. If he called for help, help would come. A ridiculous fury rose up in him, directed at Haruki, who had used him and then abandoned him to die. But Sean was not going to die. He was not. He gathered all his strength and raised himself to all fours.
He made it one moment at a time, past the pool, which was red with blood and empty of both monster and fish-tailed old man, and past the changing rooms. At the entrance, the old woman stared at him from behind her counter. She watched as he pulled himself foot by foot across the floor, underneath the blue curtain, and into the street.
The city lit up with lanterns and neon as dusk approached. Sean wasn't sure, but he didn't think he'd made it more than two or three blocks, and now he lay, face up in the street, unable to move. He was having trouble breathing, and his awareness of his limbs had faded to a dull throbbing sensation. When a face carved of wood peered into his own, he had difficulty feeling the fear he tho
ught he should feel.
"Go away,” he gasped, his words incomprehensible to his own ears. But to his surprise the tree-man's fingers stopped an inch from his face, and receded from view.
With his head turned to the side Sean could see the tree-man squatting in the street near him. He couldn't tell if it was the same one who had grabbed him in the street earlier. A deep frown creased its ageless face.
It reached into a furrow in its chest and pulled out something. Something small and flat, like an antique laser pointer. He pointed it at Sean's head, and Sean could only watch as a thin red line shot towards him and hit the cobbles beside his face.
Where it hit, the street smoked, and a horrible, acrid smell hit Sean a moment later. He closed his eyes. But the laser never touched him, and after a while the sizzle of the street beside his head died away, and the burned scent faded from his nostrils. He lay there and forced his lungs to take air, in, out, in, out, in, out. He could no longer open his eyes, to check if the tree-man was still there, but the deep silence all around him told him it had gone. Sean knew he was still in the middle of the street, vulnerable, but nothing he said to his body could make it move one centimeter more.
* * * *
Someone kicked Sean in the head, and not gently. He opened his eyes—he was lying in the middle of the street, his body cold and aching. He jumped up, turned full circle to fend off his attacker or kidnapper or thief or whatever the hell, but he was all alone. The street stood empty in the blue pre-dawn light.
It took him a moment to realize that his leg didn't hurt. He pulled up his kimono—pink new skin stretched up his entire leg from ankle to thigh. Had the tree-man done that? Where did he go? Another blow struck Sean in the head, harder this time. He looked around wildly for his attacker, but there was no one else there besides him. He threw his arms up over his face.
"Knock it off,” he said. The next time it nearly knocked him to the ground. “Stop,” Sean said. He briefly considered calling for help, then remembered how much good that had done him the last time. He reached for his money belt—maybe there was someone there he couldn't see, and he could appease them.
Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #214 Page 10