To a tree, the shapes of its branches and the patterns of its leaves are something like the patterns of neurons and synapses in the human brain. The pattern of the tree’s growth is the pattern and template of its consciousness. The effect of the bonsai process on the tree was to age and mature it at an accelerated rate. Accelerated aging in humans, as in progeria or Werner’s syndrome, doesn’t usually affect mental processes; the patient exhibits an aged appearance, but mentally remains their chronological age. While the bonsai might be a fraction of the size of its brothers in the wild, the maturity of its appearance coincides with the maturity of its consciousness. By the time this tree was thirty or forty years old, it held the consciousness and wisdom of a tree hundreds of years older.
I opened my eyes to find myself sitting in the stone circle overlooking the bay. It took me a minute to come completely back to myself and overcome the feeling of being rooted in the earth at that spot. I thought about what I’d learned. On the level of analogy, I had found more parallels than differences between my own training in the order and the bonsai tree’s cultivation. Perhaps I had not matured at as accelerated a rate as the tree had, but my training had certainly brought me to a deeper self-understanding more quickly than I would have gotten to on my own, which seemed to fit. Neither the training nor the wired shaping of the tree’s limbs had always been comfortable, but there was an equivalency to the knowledge that the discomfort was a necessary part of the process, and a minor inconvenience in the larger perspective.
Then it struck me: The gardener had found the tree and appealed to it to join him in this bonsai process. The Railwalkers did not proselytize; in fact, they would never even extend an invitation. I had sought out my teachers, applied to the order for entrance to the Academy.
Not that I understood what this might mean to my current problem.
21. AUDEN
Investigator Auden was collecting some printouts from the data center when the tech, Shamir, gave a hoot.
“Son of a bitch! Someone’s actually trying to hack Roth’s private files,” he said to no one in particular.
“You have access to Roth’s private files?” Auden said.
Shamir glanced up briefly from the screen as his fingers flew over the keyboard. “Duh, no, idiot. But they send me a signal if someone’s cracking them.”
Auden stepped into the hall, pulled out his communicator, and called the Railwalkers’ suite. Rok answered.
“Give me your prof,” Auden said. “Emergency.”
A moment later Morgan was on the line. “This isn’t really a good—”
“Are you hacking Roth’s files?”
“How did you—”
“Get out now. You’ve been nailed.”
“Shit,” she said.
He heard the clacking of keys. From the data center, he could hear Shamir’s voice. “Shit! I lost him.”
“I’m out,” said Morgan. “Talk to me.”
“I was in the data center when the tech caught wind. Now you talk to me. Why were you hacking Roth?”
“You never know where information is going to lead.”
“Your boss Wolf thinks this all has to do with Roth’s history, doesn’t he?”
“If you knew that, why did you ask? And how did you know that?”
“Guards talk. Look, you believe that?”
“Enough to try to hack Roth, see what I can find. He’s not telling the whole truth about something.”
“You don’t think he’s involved?”
“No. We think he’s the ultimate target. Whatever he’s concealing may have nothing to do with the Beast. But then it may.”
There was a long silence. Finally, Auden said, “Okay. As long as you share anything pertinent you come across. Try again around ten. The night guy is a lot less conscientious. He likes to toke up and play games.”
“Thanks,” said Morgan, and disconnected.
22. THE ZONES—Ten Years Ago
He traveled in his human shape, which made things a little more difficult, but he was used to hardships. There had been training excursions with Evreyt into Bay City, and sometimes into the nearby desert, but he had never traveled this far alone before, nor had he ever ventured so far from the Cave, or the Baja Bay area. He was now many days’ walk into the zones, carefully following the directions he had been given. For long stretches he was able to follow the ancient roads, in one place walking for nearly two days along a parallel pair of roads, wide expanses with four lanes each, though the pavement was broken in many places, scrubby plants and grass poking up. Now and then he had to make his way around the rusting hulk of an ancient vehicle, sometimes a group of vehicles. Once, when a scaledust storm blew up, he took shelter inside one of them, covering up with his tarp.
As the wide, flat spaces with Joshua trees and creosote bushes had gradually given way to higher desert, rolling hills dotted with sagebrush, scrub oak, and juniper, he had sighted the range of mountains he was looking for, the profile of which had been drawn for him, and which he had memorized.
In the foothills of those mountains lay the House of Katana.
Its back to the slope of a foothill, the house looked out over the desert, and the distant mountains on the opposite horizon. It was a moderately sized adobe house, with a small barn and a large garden. Beside the front door was a plaque with the kanji for “Katana.” No one answered his knock at the front door, so he walked around the side of the house to the garden.
There was a figure bent over in the garden, an old woman wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat. Tiny and birdlike she crouched, pulling weeds.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I’m looking for the Master Katana.”
“See that well over there?” She pointed without turning, her other hand continuing to pull weeds. “There’s a bucket behind you. Go fill it and bring it here.”
“I was supposed to meet the Master Katana and become his apprentice.”
Now she stopped and looked up at him. “No shit?” she said. “Well, I don’t see no Master Katana here. Just me. I’m the mistress of this house, and until the Master Katana sees fit to put in an appearance and invite you into his dojo, you belong to me. Understood? Good. Now go get that water.”
The woman put him to work, helping her weed and tend the garden. She would answer no questions about the Master. When it became too dark to work, she gave him bread and water and pointed him to a sleeping palette on the ramada of the house.
Days passed, and the Master did not appear. He soon fell into the routine of chores around the small farm. There were chickens and goats to be tended to, the garden to be weeded and watered, food to be prepared. He found time to work out as well, doing his exercises and kata daily, as well as his rituals for the Four Quarters of the Day. As the days went by, he began to wonder if the Master would ever appear.
Then one day, when he had been there several weeks, he was taken by the idea that there was no Master Katana. Either that, or the old woman herself was the Master. Perhaps she was testing him. He decided he would test her in return. He would strike at her with something—a broomstick, perhaps. If she was indeed the Master, she would block it easily. If not... Well, if it turned out she really was just an old housekeeper, he could pull his strike and avoid hurting her. But he didn’t expect he would need to.
To his astonishment, he did have to pull the strike, but he hit her anyway, and she went down on the brick paving of the ramada. She was up again pretty quickly for an old woman.
“What the hell is wrong with you, you stupid bastard?” she howled. He apologized profusely, but she told him to get out of her sight for the rest of the day.
The following day, the old woman acted as if nothing had happened, and would not let him mention it, either.
Two days later, she broke his fingers.
He was carrying wood for the fireplace and she appeared from nowhere. She laid a broom handle across his right fingers, so fast he hardly saw it, only heard the resounding crack and felt the pain. The woo
d nearly fell, but he got his left arm around it, holding his right hand out to one side. He didn’t cry out or grimace with pain; he was already too disciplined for that. But he looked a question at her.
“You’re right-handed,” she said. “Get over it. Make your left as strong and smart as your right.”
He stared at her. “But....” he said, “you did not block my strike.”
“Expectations are weapons, like surprise,” was all she said.
There was no further pretense. The next stage of his training had begun.
23. WOLF
My Pa didn’t like the Railwalkers, or the supernatural stuff they often dealt with. “I don’t mess with that sort of thing,” he’d say, holding his palm out like a guardsman’s “stop” signal. But kids notice everything, particularly the things you don’t want them to notice, so naturally I realized early on that he never actually said he didn’t believe, even though he sometimes seemed to imply that. To my child’s mind, it seemed my father chose to avoid this aspect of life as a matter of practical good sense, the way you’d avoid taunting a dangerous animal, or drawing to an inside straight.
He had his own superstitions, his lucky cigarette lighter (he’d never gamble without it), and his lifetime membership in the Order of St. Bernardine (the patron saint of gamblers, naturally), but he avoided the Railwalkers, never went to the High Holiday celebrations. He would acknowledge some of the holidays, giving presents at Winterpeak or taking me to see the fireworks on Forge Lie Day. Generally, though, Pa kept himself, and me, out of the way of any sort of religious or spiritual activities. Which is why I managed to live twenty years before having more than a brief glimpse of a Railwalker, or even an Allworld priest, come to that.
First time I saw an actual Railwalker, I was working a construction site outside the city of Two Suns. The building was to be both warehouse and offices for a transit company. We’d had lots of problems putting the thing up. So much so that the bossman on the job was starting to look worn and harried. Slim Harnett wasn’t really all that slim, but he was one of the tallest men I’d ever seen, and his extreme height made him seem thinner than he actually was. A saturnine fellow with short salt-and-pepper hair and a goatee, Slim wasn’t one for talking much. He usually spoke just enough to convey whatever instructions he needed to give the hands. Unless you caught him off-hours and got him started on hunting. Slim was an avid hunter, and this was the one subject he would sometimes open up about. During work hours, however, he was silent and taciturn. Not rude or curt; he was always polite. In fact, the second time the northeast end of the framing fell down on this job was also the first time I’d ever heard Slim swear.
“Fucking butthole-sucking architects.”
I stared at him. I was just some guy pouring plascrete for Slim’s outfit, who happened to be standing there. It was none of my business what Slim muttered to himself, but I stared anyway, as this was such an uncharacteristic outburst, even uttered quietly the way it was. He noticed me staring. Then he spoke to the air again. “They didn’t have a Railwalker check the site first.”
It was hard to tell whether this was for my benefit, or he was still talking to himself. Slim had this odd quirk of never looking at you when he talked. He’d be talking to the air over your shoulder. I wasn’t sure I should venture a question, but it popped out anyway.
“Are they required by law to do that?” I asked. I was still learning the business. Construction laws varied greatly from city to city, zone to zone. In some places the laws were convoluted and labyrinthine. Having a Railwalker or a Feng Shui practitioner check over a potential construction site was not uncommon; it was possible some city ordinances required it.
“Nah,” said Slim. “It ain’t required, but it’s customary. And smart.”
Slim set a crew to cleaning out the mess. Turned out the plascrete of the foundation in that section was bad; it had crumbled like there had been too much water in the mix, though I had been there when Red Avery was making up the mix, and it looked to me like it was fine; if anything, a little dry. Once it was cleaned out, Slim set us to working on the other end of the building for the rest of the day, ignoring the northeast corner.
We were shutting down for the night when Red Avery noticed an animal lurking around the edges of the desert chaparral.
“Shit!” he cried. “That’s the biggest goddamn coyote I ever seen.”
“That’s no coyote,” said Armando. Unlike Red, he pronounced the word “Coy-oh-tay.” He shook his head. “Es un lobo—a wolf.”
I looked over Red’s shoulder. I had never seen a wolf, though I had seen plenty of coyotes over the years. This animal was certainly bigger than any coyote I’d ever seen, heavier for his size, with a fuller ruff around his shoulders. He seemed to be looking directly at me.
“Bullshit,” said Red. “Ain’t been no wolves in this area since before the Crash.”
“Armando’s right,” said Slim, who had come up as we stood gawping at our watcher. “That’s a wolf. I seen ’em plenty of times when I was hunting up north.” He grunted. “Strange alright, seein’ one of ’em around here. Especially by himself.”
“What,” said Red, “you never heard of a lone wolf?” He laughed.
Slim’s glare silenced him. “Lone wolves are a myth,” he said. “Wolf is a social animal. They travel in packs. Wolf by himself, without a pack, usually don’t live long.”
I could see Red was skeptical about this, but no one was going to challenge the bossman on his wildlife knowledge. Red kept his mouth shut. The wolf, or big coyote, or whatever it was, vanished into the chaparral.
The following morning the wolf was back, watching us from the undergrowth. By noon it was gone again. Then, just after lunch break, the Railwalker came walking out of the desert.
When I first noticed him, I looked up from the plasteel framing I was bolting together and saw a pale, dust-colored figure off in the distance. I continued to bolt plasteel, glancing up at the approaching figure now and then. As it got closer I could make out the long duster, the headscarf, with the long tail pulled over his lower face like a bandanna. All one color, the shade of the reddish brown desert dust. A pair of crows soared in the air above, circling.
By the time the figure had reached the construction site we were all watching him. He stopped a few feet from us. “Who’s the bossman here?” he asked.
Slim stepped up. “That would be me,” he said.
The stranger unwrapped the scarf from around his face, and you could make out part of the eye tattoo under the dust.
“Hear tell you could use a Railwalker.”
“I ’spect we could,” said Slim.
“Slate am I, Walker of the Rails between Worlds, charged by Corvinus, fifth of his line from Brick, the Red Crow. Twenty-three Blessings of Soul-Are on you and yours, brother. Say your need.”
We were all sent back to work as Slim brought out coffee and tobacco, and the two of them sat down to talk.
While I worked I watched them covertly. The stranger was almost as tall as Slim, and much leaner, practically skeletal, but tough and wiry looking, skin browned by the sun ’til it looked like leather. His lined and hollow cheeks were covered by stubble, though it wasn’t clear whether this was a short beard or a long five o’clock shadow, but from the rest of his appearance, I was guessing the latter. He shared coffee and tobacco with Slim, and then they walked over to the northeast corner where the framing had collapsed and the ’crete gone bad. They looked it over together, then the man from the desert nodded. He walked a few yards out from the site, then began a slow circuit of the place, pacing a large circle around the whole site. When he reached his starting point again he spoke a few words to Slim, then walked off to sit in the shade of a nearby palo verde tree. Slim returned to work.
Come quitting time I hung back as the others left. I walked over to where the stranger was still sitting under the palo verde. “’Scuse me,” I said. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, you can ask
.” He looked up at me. His eyes were so pale blue they were almost colorless. “Don’t guarantee a good answer.”
“Fair enough.” I hunkered down next to him. “So,” I asked, “you know why that foundation gave way?”
“Pretty sure.” He wasn’t giving anything away for free, this guy.
“So... Why did it?”
He looked at me, then looked around at the landscape as if checking to see who was listening, though there was no one around, and nowhere for anyone to hide nearby. He looked back at me again, a long, considering look. Made me feel like my Pa’s look did sometimes when I’d done something wrong.
“See that depression with the brush growing around it?” He pointed to a spot a stone’s throw from the northeast corner. “There was a waterhole there once. Still water there, deep down below. They’re planning to sink a well. Part of the reason they chose this spot, I reckon.”
He stopped speaking as if that had explained everything. I waited a bit. When it became clear he wasn’t going to say any more without urging, I asked, “So, what does that mean? You saying the ground’s not stable?”
Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman Page 19