This time.
There was an answer she’d seen somewhere in the mess of data she’d reviewed these last few years. Some possibility that hadn’t yet revealed itself. But she knew it was there. If only…
A gentle call sounded from her door.
She opened the toggle and Ri came in. The guard who always accompanied her dropped into parade rest out in the hall. But he was an escort, guaranteeing her safe passage, for the lethal young woman needed no protection.
“Angel-lady?”
Suz had been totally unable to stop her from saying that.
“Why must they follow me? I do not get lost. I will not run away.” Ri settled to the floor, she’d never sit in a chair by choice. Suz always felt as if she had a supplicant squatting at her feet.
“It is not you that Levan doesn’t trust. It is us.”
The pretty child tilted her head to one side releasing a long cascade of midnight black hair that shone from repeated washings and brushings. Ri could not get enough of the pouring hot water. She showered both before and after workouts, even both sides of meals if she had the time.
There was a sharp mind at work here, and Suz gave her time to gather the various pieces.
“Why are people so afraid of me?”
Before Suz could open her mouth.
“But the Crash was sixty years ago,” she squawked in protest.
“Yes, and you are the only pureblood Japanese the world has seen in all those years. Anyone with any sign of Japanese heritage was herded back like an animal during the Food Wars. Innocents who had not been to Japan in three generations were shipped there. There are still some who remember those wars from personal experience. Most would fear you. Some might treat you as an exhibit. A few might yet seek to kill you in retribution against your ancestors.”
Ri was nodding. “The Zenbu spoke truth. We were the gods who walked the earth and they envied us our power. I understand now. I will submit.”
“No,” Suz barely knew where to begin. Modern history still eluded Ri no matter how she struggled to please her teachers, especially when that history conflicted with her own sense of Japan’s history. That the cannibalistic Zenbu scum, who preyed upon their own race, should be trusted for any knowledge was beyond sanction.
She took a deep breath. Those weren’t the important lessons.
“Ri. You must never submit.”
“But they fear me. I understand that now. The guard is for them, not for me.”
“Yes. The guard is assigned to hide you as well as may be. But never submit. Never let others control that which you wish and that which you don’t. You must always strive to better yourself, your life, and the life of those around you.”
Ri kow-towed her head to the floor and wouldn’t budge until Suz bent down on her knees and forced the girl’s head up. Her face was contorted with such pain and sadness, that Suz did not know how the girl didn’t cry from such agony.
“That. The striving.” Her voice was broken with the sorrow. “Mother Tinnai taught us so. Please can we not yet go and save them? Please, Angel-lady. They are so desperate.”
Suz thought her heart would break. She and Commander Levan had gone around and around on this subject until he pointed out the true problem. It was too dangerous having a single Japanese out in society. Two dozen of them, uneducated, trained as a fighting cadre would be too hazardous to manage. If word got out, their existence could topple the government. And even if it didn’t, it would resurrect racial terrors that rode deep in the world’s memory.
At first, Levan had wanted to dump the girl back into Japan. He feared that even the one example could get Suz and all her people killed as traitors. Who would think that a single child could be perceived as so dangerous.
Levan insisted that he didn’t care that these were people, people loved by the girl they had rescued. It was the one and only time she had seen him truly angry, punching his steps back and forth across her office floor until she feared he might stomp right through into the basements beneath.
She took the girl into her arms and held her tightly. “In a little bit. We’ll go and get them in a little bit. I promise. The Angel-lady promises. We’ll find somewhere that’s safe for your cadre. We’ll build them a spaceship, if we have to.”
Ri nodded in her arms, but still there were no tears.
# # #
Bryce left Teri asleep, wrapped up in nothing but her woolen sweater. The pure white wool against her naturally dark skin was more startling than Connie’s yellow bikini against tanned skin, or black leather against Patricia’s white hair and bleached-to-near-white skin or... He headed down the creaking old staircase.
There was something sad about his existence. Bryce Jr. become a connoisseur of how women looked and felt. But it was getting boring. Actually long past that point, he had to admit.
Parna’s sadomasochism blended dully with the timidity of Shelia and Shawna, twins in every way; he couldn’t tell them apart in or out of bed. Kendra’s playfulness or Ivana’s brutal hugs. He wondered if he could even list them all, but he doubted it. They blended together into a painfully tedious monotony. Teri probably would be joined right in with the rest of the mush inside of a year, or a month. He should just leave, rather than getting some food for a meal, but he had nowhere better to go.
He swung the steel security door aside, dislodging little curls of gray paint, and slammed into a pair of WEC guards. Bryce struggled for a moment but stopped. Even if he could overpower the two of them, not a chance, he’d always known his parent would fetch him back at some point.
His time had come to go home, he almost felt relieved. If only the Old Bastard wasn’t at the end of this journey. Maybe his parent’s plan to wipe Bryce’s personality clean had come together ahead of schedule. What would such a death be like? One in which you died but not your body? Did he care?
Then his eyes focused on Harry standing across the quiet back street with his arms folded across his chest. The evening sun was shining on him as if he were some prideful heaven-sent warrior doubled by his reflection in the glass of the sad little corner grocery window behind him. One of the WEC grabbed Bryce’s hand and jammed a finger into a scanner. There was no jolt, the needle’s prick was deadened by a topically-applied painkiller.
The man stiffened. He glanced nervously from his readout to Bryce’s face and back. He grabbed Bryce’s other hand and ran the test again. He went white behind his face shield.
“What is it, Johnson?” The one who still had Bryce’s arm in a pincer grip turned his head to see the scanner. Johnson turned it toward his fellow WEC, Bryce’s finger still locked in its grip.
The man’s loosened his hold on Bryce’s upper arm without quite letting go.
“He looks a lot younger.”
“But, Sergeant Haung, the DNA is the same and the face is the same.”
The grip loosened further upon his arm. “What’s your name?”
Bryce glanced at Harry across the street. Sensing the uncertainty of the WECs, he was up on his toes but not moving forward.
He kept his voice low, “Bryce Randall Stevens,” he paused long enough for that to sink in, “Junior.”
The two men looked at each other and then looked back at him. “In training they told us that no two are alike.”
“I’m the exception to the rule. I’ll wait if you want to check that.”
The hand slid off his arm and the two men leaned over the scanner and then inspected his face again. His hand following every move and turn of the reader. Harry’s arms hung loosely against his sides. And he’d stepped back as if he’d been punched. Despite the dark shadow cast over him by the tattered green and white awning, Bryce could see his disappointment and confusion; things weren’t going at all as he’d planned.
Both of the WEC jerked as if they’d been stuck with an electric probe. Their attention wa
s wholly on the screen for a moment and then Haung straightened.
“There’s no need to, uh, wait.” The sergeant’s voice was actually a bit high with tightness. He tried to turn the screen for Bryce to see, but his wrist couldn’t flex in the right direction. They hastily freed his captured digit and turned the scanner.
RELEASE IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT HINDER OR FOLLOW.
-by order of WEC Council President,
Bryce Randall Stevens SENIOR
The last word was highlighted. There was no doubting the authentication code, or the time stamp, less than thirty seconds old, with routing data from deep inside Tibet. Bryce did a quick calculation. It must be 2 or 3 a.m. in Lhasa. He didn’t even want to know what the man was doing there. And why had he let him go? It wasn’t like the Old Bastard to miss an opportunity to come by and plug more of his caustic memories into Bryce’s head.
Johnson cleared the scanner, and after a glance across the street, turned toward Harry. The man went white as the two WEC descended on him. They grabbed his nerveless hand and slid the scanner over a limp finger. Harry’s eyes kept widening. The whites were impossibly big yet still growing.
Haung’s voice carried across the street. “Two minor prior offenses.” He read further.
“No violent tendencies, but clear indicators of inciting others to do harm.” Haung pressed another button and Harry’s whole body flinched and then went slack. Bryce knew the drug they’d just hit him with would keep him totally passive but mobile as they escorted him off. The WECs saluted him and walked away.
Bryce returned the salute half-heartedly and tried to feel sorry for the man, but Harry had brought it on himself.
He turned away and came face-to-face with Teri standing in the doorway, dark pants and jacket. No loose wide collar revealing neck and shoulders. All black, angular, and hard. Expression rapidly shifting from smile to frown as she took in the scene. Her face instantly matched the sharp angles of her clothing.
“You turned Harry in. You bastard.”
Bryce raised a hand to correct her on who had done what to whom, but she didn’t stop.
“Harry said you must be a spy to know what you knew. The poor sucker fell for your act just like I did. ‘I just want to help in the struggle against the WEC.’ Christ, I was such a sap. And you, you bastard. You used me.”
“Actually, I think the use was fairly mutual.”
He didn’t even flinch when the inevitable slap smashed into his cheek.
He thought about also pointing out that their group of a half-dozen dilettantes was of less threat to his parent than an already-sated mosquito. He’d wanted to do something against the old man as Suzie was doing, but this little group of freedom fighters had clearly not been practical. He’d needed less than a day to figure that out, but Teri had been fun and he’d hung on so that he could pretend to be on the same side as his mother against their parent. After a week it had grown old. After two, ridiculous. And now, finally, absurd.
“We’re gonna hunt you. Whoever the hell you are.”
So much for make-believe. So much for pretending he belonged anywhere. He wasn’t in danger from them any more than his parent. For Teri and her friends, it was all some mind game, just one step above a net-stim game.
He looked down once more at her face, but the darkness of her clothes and skin had moved into her eyes.
Bryce didn’t even ask for his jacket or knapsack. He jammed his hands into his pockets and headed for the harbor. He’d catch a boat headed somewhere. Somewhere away from Teri’s darkness and wrapped in the night’s.
# # #
Suz sat, as she often did, in the darkened observer’s gallery set high in corner of the gymnasium. No friendly games of basketball or volleyball accompanied by cheerful shouts rang about this room. An array of lethal hand weapons adorned one wall in a thousand shades of steel, black, and gray. The green-padded floors and their ever-present odor of sweat were marked with a series of circles, zones of a person’s awareness.
If one stood in the center, as Ri now did, and faced the northern circle, there was a tiny circle directly ahead. The position of least importance, partly because it was so obvious. Larger circles were ahead right and ahead left of the silent figure. Again to either side and directly behind were smaller circles.
The last had surprised her, but Levan had insisted that was where we expected attack. That heightened awareness aided the fighter in protecting against attacks from behind. It was the left rear and the right rear from which the fighter was most vulnerable and thus had the largest spaces drawn on the floor.
A squad of seven brutes were ranged about her, one each ahead and to the sides, two each on the rear quarters, and one directly behind. Levan himself stood in the eighth and smallest circle directly in front of Ri, arms crossed, casually at rest. The others had a range of knives, machetes, a length of chain, and one even had a handful of bricks.
Ri, nearly invisible due to her diminutive size, stood with a long wooden sword, its tip resting lightly on the floor. Levan nodded, and still Ri didn’t move or turn to inspect her attackers. They shuffled uncertainly until Levan nodded more emphatically. The chain and knife in the back right quarter split a little wider as they moved in.
With a back flip too fast for Suz to see clearly, Ri was between them and her sword slammed the knife-wielder a vicious blow to the side of the head. He fell to the floor like a load of cement despite his helmet.
She raised the sword straight up and the swung chain wrapped around it half a dozen times. She jerked the chain-wielder off balance toward her and then placed a leaping kick in his gut and face that knocked him off his feet in the other direction.
She dumped the chain from the end of the blade into the palm of her hand. Rolling low beneath a swung fighting staff, the chain slung around the machete man’s feet. He fell and she slashed the sword down at his throat.
Suz jerked forward in her seat fearing that she’d actually kill the man even with a blunt training sword. Instead, Ri jerked it to a halt against his neck, leaving him dead according to sparring rules rather than in reality. She jerked the sword free and plunged it behind her, catching the staff wielder in the solar plexus. A sharp rap atop his helmet and four were down. Three remained.
They came in from three points. Each time Ri leaned toward one side to single out an attacker, the tightening circle shifted to keep her at its center. No advantage in isolating them.
The tableau shifted back and forth, yet stayed in fluid balance. And then, when her back was turned, a brick flew, with unnecessary viciousness. Perhaps the guard was sick of being beaten by a little whippet of a girl. A sharp clack resounded in the gym as the sword met it and flung it aside. The shattering blow that followed actually destroyed the man’s helmet, leaving him wobbling and dizzy by the blow.
The two remaining knife wielders moved back-to-back. A defensive position for fighting in large crowds. One small girl, just turned seventeen, had made mincemeat of Levan’s best squad. It was the work of moments to send the two men to the mat wailing in pain.
Levan, who had not moved until this moment, sidled up behind her. Ri slashed back over her head, but too late. The older man had rolled low into the back of her knees. As she fell over him, he twisted and slammed her down into the mat.
The blast of air driven from Ri’s lungs could be heard all the way up to Suz’s vantage point. Ri rolled clear of Levan’s stomping kick and wrenched to her feet. Once more Levan, easily three times her age, stood calmly in his circle with his arms crossed as if he’d never moved.
Ri circled for a long moment, probing this way and that but never attacking. Twice she moved fully behind him seeking an opening. Levan never moved a muscle that Suz could see.
At long last, long after most of the others had been dragged clear to nurse their wounds against the wall, Ri stopped in the center of her circle.
She
slid downward into an easy lotus and laid her wooden bokken across her lap. She leaned forward until her forehead touched the weapon. She held the kowtow until Levan grunted.
Suz wanted to applaud the performance. It had been brutal and yet beautiful, the dance upon the training mat. And the way Ri had decided to acknowledge her teacher by not attacking him unarmed.
“How, master? How do you have no holes in your defense?”
But he’d been unarmed. And Ri had just beat seven others. Suz would have attacked. And perhaps, just perhaps, she’d have been as badly beaten as the men scattered about the room.
Levan answered her only with a non-committal grunt.
She bowed her head once again. A lesson for the student to learn.
Levan acknowledged the second bow with a bob of his head before crossing to a table along the far wall. He tossed back the cloth and pulled out a pair of swords, but these were different. Even from here, Suz could see the ornamentation of the metalwork on the plain black scabbards, one long, one shorter.
He knelt before Ri. With one hand he lifted the wooden sword and tossed it lightly in his palm a few times. Then he cast it aside. It rattled against the training wall and then the room was still.
He laid the two swords between them. Ri leaned forward to gaze at them, and Suz nearly fell from her high perch to get a better look at them as well.
“These are Murasama blades. A shoto for close-in fighting and a full katana killing sword, two shaku and three sun in length. The maker and his disciples were so feared that a Japanese lord outlawed them for three centuries. The fear of their power reached near mystical proportions in the sixteenth century. This pair is believed to have last been wielded by a member of the forty-seven ronin who avenged the unjust death of their lord in 1702. It is my hope that you will keep these safe, and free of death.”
Ri bowed to the floor once again.
“When you wield these, even I would not be so foolish as to attack.”
He rose and departed from the room.
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