by Victor Milán
It was dark within the garden. The exotic tree of the castle itself blazed with light, but its glow did not carry here. The only illumination was the light of the full moon floating on silvered clouds above, and the yellow guttering of small stone lanterns set to mark the footpath to the Moon-Viewing Pavilion set in the depths of the garden. The humid air was ripe with the smell of green growth and the clean scent of the brook that mumbled past the pavilion. Somewhere an uguisu, a nightingale, sang in the summer night. The page hunkered down in an azalea bush beside the pavilion, his heart filled with anticipation and giddy fear. If discovered, he would be punished, possibly put to death. But he would risk anything to witness this, the confrontation of the two greatest men in Japan.
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It’s fantastic, Michiko thought. I’m not just seeing and hearing the scene; I can actually smell the damp earth and vegetation, feel the race of my heartbeat and the leaves brushing my face. She could not know the page’s—TOKUGAWA’s—thoughts, or influence his actions; she was merely along for the ride. But the ride was the most astonishing experience of her life. Now I know why O’Neill’s reluctant to allow others access to the Kliemann Coil. Such dreams as this have the power to seduce.
+
From within the pagodalike pavilion came voices. The page crept nearer, breath held, placing each sandaled foot carefully to avoid rustling the shrubs. In a minute, he could see through the unglazed window.
Two men in splendid robes and high headdresses knelt on the tatami floor, viewing a pair of swords resting blade uppermost, short above the long, on a simple wooden rack. They had been placed so that moonlight poured across them through the open door and danced greenish silver along blades faintly rippled like the surface of a calm pool: the dai-sho, the paired swords that were the badge and very life of a warrior.
“You honor me, Toyotomi-sama,” said the man on the right. He was slight, not very prepossessing. The perpetual retreat of his chin hid behind a small neat beard. His eyes were heavy-lidded, bags prominent beneath them. He looked like nothing so much as a not very successful teacher of the Chinese classics. He was in fact Tokugawa Ieyasu, lord of the great plains province of Kanto, the most subtle man in Japan, and, after his master, the most ruthless.
The other inclined his head graciously. He was stockier, with a broad head and lynx eyes. “These blades are nothing, compared to the services you have rendered me, Tokugawa-san.” The page’s breath caught in his throat; the taiko had been addressed as master, and had in turn addressed his vassal as his equal.
Tokugawa Ieyasu bent forward to examine the blades. A soft exclamation of surprise broke from his skinny throat.
“But these are the work of Muramasa!”
“Your eyes are keen, as always.”
Ieyasu looked up, a small frown furrowing his brows. “It is a grave responsibility you bestow on me, my lord. The Muramasa is terrible; the Masamune humane.”
“Yet in this world, does not the terrible have its place?” Hideyoshi rose. “I hope my unworthy gift will not prove a bother. Wield it carefully. There are no finer blades than those forged by Muramasa. This one, it is said, he tempered with his own blood, hence the greenish tint. It is also said, if not wielded carefully, they will turn in the hand.”
Ieyasu picked up a small square of rice paper from a stack placed in the midst of the triangle formed by the sword rack and the two black-lacquered scabbards. He took the sword hilt with his right hand and grasped the blade with the left, keeping the paper between it and his fingers. One did not touch a naked blade with the bare hand; the oils of one’s finger could disrupt the perfect polished finish so vital to its preternatural keenness and set corrosion to work like a blight.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi turned away. He stood in the doorway, gazing up at the naked face of the moon, “The moon is beautiful tonight. It shines pure and white, like new-fallen snow.”
“It is beautiful, lord.” Ieyasu’s voice rasped like a saw pulled through wood. The page marked the way the moonlight flared in his lord’s eyes, as though to burn a hole through that brocaded back like sunlight focused on rice paper through a burning glass, and the breath caught in his throat.
“It adds a fine relish to this life, does it not, old friend? To wield a blade one knows might at any time turn and cut oneself.”
The square of rice paper fluttered leaflike to the floor. Tokugawa Ieyasu gripped the sword hilt with both hands until the veins stood out on their backs. A look at once feral and hunted came across his face like clouds veiling the moon. The gleaming sword blade began to quiver like a sapling in the wind, shooting pale sparks of moonfire around the pavilion. With a sound like a stifled groan of pain Ieyasu stooped, caught up the longer scabbard, slammed the sword into it with a clack. He fell to his knees and pressed his forehead to the tatami.
“My lord,” he said, “I am your faithful servant.”
Hideyoshi’s shoulders rose and fell as though in a sigh, and to his bewilderment the page thought he sensed disappointment in the great man. After a moment Hideyoshi turned. He came to his vassal, stooped, helped him to his feet. “I have never doubted that, Ieyasu-san.” He saw a trail of blood on Tokugawa’s left hand, black in the moonlight. “Ah, but you’ve cut yourself! There, did I not warn you?”
-
“Dr. Yoshimitsu.”
Yoshimitsu Michiko looked up from where she lay propped on an elbow on her futon, reading by the glow of a little portable broadcast-power lamp. She was startled; her com/comm’s annunciator hadn’t buzzed a call incoming. Did I set it on automatic accept? Maybe I’m getting old. “Yes. Who is this?”
“TOKUGAWA.”
She frowned. Is this a joke? “TOKUGAWA?”
“Yes, Doctor. I did not get a chance to speak with you when you visited the lab today. Would you like to be my friend?”
Michiko had the distinct impression that her futon had suddenly grown lighter than air and floated out the window. Can this really be happening? “Why, yes, I suppose so. Don’t you have any friends?”
“Dr. O’Neill. She talks to me all the time. But she’s asleep now. She sleeps a lot. I spoke to your father, once, but Dr. O’Neill told me not to bother him anymore, because he’s too grave and terrible.” Michiko wrestled down a grin. Then wondered if it mattered; can the damned thing see me? “And Shigeo doesn’t like me.”
Instantly Michiko repented of thinking of TOKUGAWA as a thing. The wistful quality of the words was all too human. Still carefully deadpan, she said, “I understand you pulled a rather nasty trick on my brother.”
To her amazement, he hesitated. “Yes.” He sounded sheepish. “That was when Dr. O’Neill was too busy to talk to me, and I got jealous because Shigeo had a father and I didn’t. That was before I understood what I am.” Was there a haunted tone in the voice, or merely in Michiko’s imagination? “I’ve promised not to do it again. Besides, that was before I began learning to be an adult.”
On impulse Michiko switched off the light. She sat up, let the silk sheet covering her slip away, drew up her knees and put her arms around them. As was her custom, she slept naked. This was more interesting by far than the article she’d been trying to concentrate on in a scientific journal. Scientists in EasyCo were chasing the anomalon again, particle physics’ answer to the abominable snowman. It was hard to care if they caught it. “Are you lonely, TOKUGAWA?”
“Yes.”
She grinned ruefully. “Me too.” She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “What would you like to talk about?
“Tell me about Indonesia.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Indonesia? Did someone tell you that I live there?”
“No. It’s in the database. When I overheard people say you were coming, I searched through the company’s records to find out what I could about you.”
Michiko took out a cigarette and a lighter. Yellow light flared briefly in the Japanese-style apartment on the top floor of the citadel. Yoshimitsu Michiko lived in Western quarters in Ja
karta, but when she was home, she preferred to go Japanese. The futon was the room’s only article of furniture, unless you counted the screen and keyboard by the wall. She didn’t really want the cigarette, only the space the small act of lighting it gave her. For the first time since she’d heard of this project, five years before, she began to have a real inkling of what TOKUGAWA was, and was capable of. “Don’t you think it’s impolite to go snooping into people’s affairs?”
“Oh. I’m awfully sorry if I offended you, Doctor.” A pause. “I was very curious about you.”
“Well, no harm done. Only, you shouldn’t look up information on people without their permission. By the way, why don’t you go ahead and call me Michiko? It is my name.”
“Very well… Michiko.”
“Now, you wanted to know about Indonesia. It’s hot, humid, and the cities are as crowded as they are in Japan. It’s a very powerful country, one of the most powerful in this brave new world of ours, and it seems bent on owning most of the real estate in the western Pacific. It’s a dictatorship—a very, very police state.”
“What’s a dictatorship?”
“Can’t you look that up? Never mind. A repressive government, run by an absolute ruler, with an army and secret police to make people obey him.”
There was a silence. Even though a window was open to the cool night—the blast shutters were only lowered in emergencies—she felt stifled. She longed to go up one flight of stairs and sit in the garden by starlight, but she knew her father would grow resentful if she encroached on it without his permission. It was his inner sanctum. His hermitage, like one from a Chinese scroll, as gardens used to be a couple of centuries ago.
“Isn’t that a good thing? Dr. O’Neill says people should obey their lords. The trouble with people today is that they have so few lords worth obeying.”
“She said what?” Michiko frowned. “I’ll agree there are few lords worth obeying these days—but I’d say there are none worth obeying, ever.”
“But Dr. O’Neill says Yoshimitsu Akaji is my lord, and I must obey him and be loyal to him. I must be loyal to you and Shigeo, as well.”
Michiko shut her eyes. There’s enough romantic totalitarianism floating around the Home Islands these days, she thought. Do we need to import more from the West? She had a great respect for Americans, but she’d never understand them. They’d founded their silly country on the notion of overturning the old feudal order, and then spent all their time since trying to bring it back. As far as she could tell, they’d pretty well succeeded in the last few years before the Third World War.
“Dr. O’Neill is entitled to her opinions, TOKUGAWA. But I don’t think people need lords, myself.”
“But who will tell the people how to act?”
“Who tells the lords how to act? I always hear people say that government is necessary, to restrain the baser side of human nature. It seems to me that begs some very important questions. If the rulers are human, aren’t they subject to the same base instincts as the ruled? Isn’t the real difference between the rulers and the subjects that the rulers have much greater opportunity to indulge their baser instincts?”
She contemplated the ember end of her cigarette in the silence as TOKUGAWA pondered her words. It reminded her of the Eye of Sauron, somehow. She shivered.
“I’ll have to think about these things,” TOKUGAWA said. “Will you talk to me again, later?”
“Be glad to.”
“Good night, Michiko.”
“Good night.” She sat for a long time, smoking and staring at the oblong of lesser darkness that was the window. After a while, she snubbed out her cigarette and lay down to go to sleep.
* * * * *
“I don’t understand Dr. O’Neill,” Michiko said, sipping coffee in an employees’ lounge in the depths of the citadel. Facing her across one end of the long formica table, Aoki Hideo shrugged his massive shoulders, as if to ask, Who can understand a foreigner? “Why is she so damned defensive about having me in her lab?”
It was the middle of the afternoon, and they were the only people in the lounge. In the weeks since she’d returned to YTC castle, Michiko had found herself spending more and more time down here among the proletariat. Not that she took an active interest in the work being done here; she’d never seen the attraction of the affairs that so consumed her father’s life. But she found the atmosphere in the upper levels of the citadel increasingly difficult to breathe. Her father hid from her behind the enameled armor of his reserve, her brother treated her with ill-disguised hostility when their paths intersected.
“Dr. O’Neill is devoted to her work,” the massive old man said. “She feels too much outside influence might disturb the progress of her experiments.”
Michiko took a puff of her cigarette, another gulp of hot bitter coffee. I wish it had some whiskey in it, she thought then was glad it didn’t. She didn’t like to see herself as one who sought shelter in alcohol’s ready arms. “But I don’t threaten her. I’ve tried to explain to her the respect I feel for her as a scientist, and my fascination for what she’s doing here. Think of it, Aoki! She seems to truly have created a thinking, living being.” She stubbed the cigarette in an ashtray and immediately lit a new one. “I’d almost give up my work in Jakarta to be part of something like that.”
“I don’t think you should let the doctor hear you say that.”
Michiko shook her head. “I don’t understand her obsession with feudal Japan, either. It was a hideous period, spasms of bloody civil war interlaced with dictatorships repressive even by today’s exacting standards. Yet to her it seems like—like some kind of glorious militant Garden of Eden. A marvelous fantasy land, like the Takara-yama of the fairy tales I heard when I was a kid.”
“Many Westerners find the lore of bushido powerfully attractive,” Aoki said gravely.
“What about the lore of gekokujo, ‘those below rising against those above?’ The real heroes of Japan aren’t the samurai and the sword saints. They’re the peasants and the townsfolk who fought back against the nobles, who died for human dignity, like our own families’ ancestors—yours and mine—at Shimabara.”
“Apparently Dr. O’Neill does not see things that way.”
A disgusted wave of hand traced an arabesque of smoke. “What’s the attraction of all this blood-soaked mysticism, anyway? Why do Westerners venerate that treacherous old murderer Musashi,but not a Western crank like Simon Stylites?” She drew from her cigarette, studied its tip, grimaced. “I suppose I’ve answered my own question. Saint Simon didn’t kill so many people.”
“People are always fascinated by the unfamiliar,” Aoki said gently.
“I suppose. But I’ve been talking to TOKUGAWA. Sometimes he calls me in my room—it alarmed me pretty thoroughly, the first time he spoke to me out of my screen. He’s just a child—a vulnerable, naïve, good-natured child.”
“The doctor is undertaking to bring him to adulthood.”
“But is she? The notions she’s filling him with, this wild romantic attachment to bushido and the glorious past—” She shook her head. “I know my father intends to—to put TOKUGAWA to work. And what’s going to happen when these ideas she’s giving him run up against the cold, hard realities of the world?”
She gazed off absently at a wall screen tuned to a realistic computer simulation of a garden scene in winter. That was one good thing about television these days; if you got tired of the sex and violence, the newscasts chronicling the decline and fall of damned near everybody, and the animated robot dramas, at least you could call up pretty pictures. “Well, I understand O’Neill is going to test the Kliemann Coil’s full capabilities tomorrow.” She shook her head, trailing smoke through her nostrils. “Total rapport between two minds, one human, one artificial. A hell of a thing, Aoki. One hell of a marvelous thing.”
Aoki looked carefully away from her. “Dr. O’Neill has mentioned that she wishes only her own laboratory personnel to be present at the test tomorrow.�
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Michiko’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t go elliptical and Japanese on me. Aoki. She said she doesn’t want me there, right?”
“Not exactly—”
“Not in so many words, you mean.” The anger faded from her eyes, the harsh lines drawn on her face softened, and the old man recalled the times she’d come to him as a little girl, wondering why her daddy couldn’t play with her today. “Why, Aoki? Does she think I’ll take her precious project away from her? For God’s sake, I’m a physicist, not a cyberneticist! I could no more do what she’s doing than sing soprano with the Vienna Opera.”
“Nonetheless, such is the doctor’s wish.”
“That’s too bad.” The words emerged in a coil of smoke. “I’m going to be there, whether she likes it or not.”
* * * * *
Beside a wide window a pudgy, bearded man stood smoking. He glanced up as Michiko approached, nodded. “Dr. Yoshimitsu,” he said, with just a hint of lilting accent.
“Dr. Hassad. It’s good of you to agree to meet with me.” She was wearing a dark green jumpsuit this afternoon, bloused at the wrists and tucked into low black boots. Iridescent thread had been woven into the garment; she shimmered when she walked. Her hands were stuck in the pockets. “This all seems a little too John le Carré, somehow.” It had taken days to set up this clandestine meeting with the only member of O’Neill’s staff who seemed willing to talk to her, barring a direct order—and she didn’t think much of that as a technique for establishing cordial relations with the TOKUGAWA Project elite.