‘7 should go,” Matt said.
“No! You don’t speak Japanese. Even if you manage to sneak around and spy you won’t know what they’re saying.”
“I should go with hei;” Sugihara said. “To help fight our way out, if necessary. And you, Matt, you’d better put on your Visitor uniform; maybe you’ll be able to bluff your way around with it on. CB will have to be your prisoner or something. See you later ”
And the old swordsman and Tomoko went to wait at the end of the line that was endlessly streaming into the house of death. Suddenly Matt said to CB, “The old man doesn’t have his sword! And Tomoko-—”
“Don’t worry, Matt. They’re both carrying those little laser pistols concealed under their clothes—remember?” “Yeah. Yeah.”
“Let’s go find somewhere where you can change into their uniform.” Matt had been carrying it in a satchel slung over his shoulder.
At one end of the Ginza there was, of all places, a McDonald’s. The only thing unusual about it was the bathroom, where Matt went to change. It was one of those squatting ones—decidedly un-American! Although the kid was, as usual, enthralled.
When they emerged, people immediately began to make way for him, bowing and looking away with ill-concealed fear. “I guess there are a few advantages to these uniforms,” Matt said. “Let’s go.”
“Oh, Matt, please—”
“What is it now?” Matt demanded.
“Look, dude, I’m absolutely starving and, like, this is the one place where I’m not going to get poisoned with raw fish or something, so, would you mind if—”
The waitress at the counter took one look at Matt in his uniform. They didn’t have to pay.
Chapter 15
The crowd moved quickly. It was as if the people in it could not wait to hasten the moment of their death.
Soon Tomoko and Sugihara were admitted into the foyer of the former department store. A few mannequins sported Hanae Mori scarves and elaborate wigs; mostly the shelves were bare. A guard said, “Men to the left; women to the right for disrobing.”
Tomoko looked desperately at Sugihara.
Smoothly the old man said, “We have pledged to die together You see, ours is a double suicide; an adulterous relationship; oh, the shame. You understand.”
The guard thought for a moment, then said, “Very well. The two of you may go in together. Down that aisle.” A corridor, a back stairwell ... the crowd was pushing them along. Doorways on each level, at each a Converted samurai stood on duty, his posture stiff and his demeanor stem.
“All right; let’s create a diversion,” Sugihara whispered as they neared the fourth or fifth floor.
Tomoko couldn’t think what to do. The only thing that sprang to mind . . . unthinking, she started to clutch at her belly, shouting: “I’m going to give birth—” No one could swallow it for a moment, we’re doomed, she thought at the back of her mind. The crowd streamed past them, intent on its ritual of self-sacrifice. She went on, wailing and shrieking. A guard rushed down the steps.
“Please help this woman,” Sugihara said. “She should face her death with inner tranquillity. ...”
He and the guard helped her up to the landing. The guard called for another. As soon as the door opened, Sugihara wedged it with his foot, whipped out his laser pistol, and shot the two guards cleanly through. Then he yanked Tomoko through.
“Hurry,” he said. “They’ll catch on soon.”
She looked around. Dark, dark , . . and deathly cold. A medicinal smell in the air . . .
No! She recognized what kind of place they were in from her captivity aboard the Mother Ship.
Humans hung from the ceiling in neat rows, each one naked, in a slimy, plastic sack. Row upon row. Some were labelled in the Visitors’ tongue. Others . . . others had pieces missing.
“Quick!” They heard footsteps. Sugihara said, “We’ve got to be further into the room.”
She could barely breathe for the overpowering stench of meat and chemicals. They ducked into an aisle of bodies . . . were they dead or alive? She could not tell. At the end of the aisle, in jars, were what looked like pickled eyes. She didn’t look again.
The steps were coming nearer, nearer; she heard the ringing, metallic saurian speech now, incomprehensible. They retreated behind the body of an enormously fat man. The footsteps were very near now. They were shining a bright light down every aisle.
“Get your laser pistol out,” Sugihara whispered.
“I’ve never killed anyone—”
“Don’t think about it. Just do it!”
Lights blinding her eyes! She fired! A brilliant flash of blue laser fire shot through the darkness, she saw serpent flesh split asunder, heard a shriek of pain . . . “They’re not even disguised as people,” Sugihara said, “they’re walking around openly”
“There’s more of them.”
They retreated just in time. Light flashes in the chamber . . . eeriely illuminating human body parts . . . laser light ripping through flesh and plastic . . . “Look,” she said, “a gap in the wall. ...”
“A doorway?”
They slipped inside. Once it had been a stockroom or something; shelves lined the walls. A dim light filtering in from somewhere else . . . from a corridor at the other end.
They heard sounds from the human food locker: more blasts, a collapsing sound as though human bodies had been torn out of their sheaths. . . .
“They’re going to find us!” she whispered. “Let’s go down that corridor . . . it’s the only route.”
The corridor was long; it twisted, it opened out onto many other chambers. She remembered how wonderful it had been to buy clothes here ... on the top floor they’d had—-as every Japanese department store did—a whole miniature amusement park with a little merry-go-round, a putt-putt golf course and so on. Before leaving for the Ainu village she’d spent a lot of time here. There now—wasn’t that the porcelain section? She peered in. In the shadows she saw nothing but more human beings, carelessly stacked. She quickly went on.
At last the corridor ended in an open doorway.
“Well, what do you think?” she said.
They stepped through.
A wall of shoji, the Japanese paper screens that were used in traditional houses, blocked their path. It was well lit from behind; shadowy figures could be seen moving about.
They heard voices ... the Japanese being spoken was of the courtly variety to be found only in historical movies; Tomoko couldn’t understand it all. There were two voices: a man and a woman. The woman’s was high-pitched, grating, mocking; the man’s obsequious, terror-stricken.
“Poke a hole in the shoji," said Sugihara.
“What!”
“No one will notice.” He worried at the paper screen with his fingernail until he had worn it a little bare. She did the same. She put her eye to the tiny opening—
And recoiled!
For sitting on a raised dais on the far end of the ornate chambei; dressed in all the finery of an ancient Japanese court lady, was—a reptile! Only once before had she seen such a creature . . . when Fieh Chan had discarded his disguise on the crashing skyfighter. She was heartsick. For she remembered that the sight had stirred in her feelings not only of horror, but of beauty. . . .
She listened to the woman’s words.
“That is Murasaki!” Sugihara whispered. “Second in command only to Fieh Chan!”
“How can you tell them apart?” she said wonderingly.
“Believe it.”
She listened. . .
“It has come to my attention,” Lady Murasaki was
saying to the cringing Ogawa, “that the martial arts project is not going as planned . . . that in the American sector you have bungled several of your abduction attempts!
And ... a Visitor skyfighter was found to have crashed in the outskirts of Tokyo! Answer these charges at once!”
“My Lady . . . I am so ashamed,” Ogawa said, hoping that he would not be forced
to witness another of Lady Murasaki’s bloody feasts.
“Do you realize what this loss means? Until the Mother Ships return, we must nurse our resources as best we can.”
“I am sorry, my Lady.”
“You’ll be more than sorry, fool! I’m sure your ugly head will look a lot better as an ornament to my banquet table than it does on your filthy, scrawny torso.”
“My Lady, it would be an . . . honor ... to die in your service. . . .”
“That’s the trouble with you Converted creatures. You don’t put up a good fight.” Lady Murasaki reared up, shot her tongue out, lashed Ogawa’s cheek with it. A dab of venom on his skin ... he could feel the burning.
A tiny gasp from somewhere in the chamber. “What was that?” Murasaki shouted. “Has someone dared to breach our security?”
“My Lady, that is impossible,” Ogawa said, clutching his cheek in pain and desperately searching for an explanation , . . although it sounded quite clearly as if someone were behind the shoji, spying. “Perhaps ... ah, yes, of course, my Lady . . . it’s dinner!”
“I suppose it is,” Lady Murasaki said, somewhat mollified.
“May I go and have my wounds tended to now?” Ogawa asked humbly.
“I forbid it! Oh, don’t worry,” the reptile said. “You won’t die, yet. I am retreating to the secret hideout at Osaka castle. Wu Piao and the others will meet me there. There we will inspect your handiwork—we will find out for certain whether the martial arts project has proceeded as you say. The dosage I’ve given you will keep you alive at least a week. Govern Tokyo well in my absence, and I may grant you a dose of antidote. Fail, and—the banquet table!” “Either one would be an honor,” Ogawa said, with heartfelt sincerity.
His reptilian overlord reared up and departed the chamber
“Now what?” Tomoko said.
“We’d better go. You’re the one who knows where the basement exit is, right?”
“Well ... it used to be by the pastry counter on the lowest level, but God knows. . . .”
“That man—Ogawa—is leaving. There’s only one way we can—”
Sugihara crashed through the shoji and grabbed the Japanese minister from behind. “Your laser!” he rasped under his breath. Tomoko obeyed instantly, pulling out her weapon and shoving it against Ogawa’s chest.
“If you scream—” Sugihara said. He made a neck-chopping gesture.
“Lead us out of here. Now,” Tomoko said.
“But—but—”
“Stand up tall,” Sugihara said. “Like a proper government official. Don’t peer around in fright. Have you lost all dignity?”
Ogawa’s eyes opened wide. “You—you—”
“Ah, you know me,” Sugihara said. Tomoko wondered what he meant. “Good. Now, take us to the basement. Immediately. ”
“Yes.”
Tomoko walked beside him. Sugihara walked just behind, his weapon jabbing Ogawa through his suit. They left the chamber. Guards went by; they looked at the three without curiosity. At length they reached an elevator.
They entered. Sugihara did not let go of Ogawa, but continued to cover him with the laser pistol.
Tomoko felt the elevator descending, descending. . . .
“The basement level is disused,” Ogawa said. “Possibly you may escape. But please . . . please let me out . . . that I may properly serve the masters . . . or kill me!”
“I will not kill you,” said Sugihara. “Once you were a fine man—an able politician, a conoisseur of the arts, generous, warm-hearted. Look at you now!” Listening to him talk, Tomoko realized how little she knew about this mysterious old man who had appeared as if by magic in the shopping plaza in Orange County.
The elevator reached the lowest level. “At least stun me,” Ogawa pleaded. “So they won’t think—”
“Oh, very well.” Sugihara didn’t even use his weapon; with his bare hands he found the correct artery in Ogawa’s neck, and dealt it a quick squeeze that sent the minister slumping to the floor of the elevator.
Then they stepped out.
They heard the whoosh of the elevator as it returned whence it had come.
Very dim light. Booths and stands, all covered with plastic. “You’re the one who used to shop here,” Sugihara said. “Lead the way.”
Tomoko looked around. “Over there.” They eased their way through aisles crammed with crates and plastic. There used to be a stairwell down to the subway . . . there.
They reached it. The metal dooi; rusty, creaked open.
At that moment, shots rang out. Strands of laser light pierced the gloom. “Quick!” They heard the patter of footsteps . . . then of men stumbling in the half-dark over the crates and boxes.
“Out the door. Heave it shut,” Tomoko said.
The two pushed with all their strength. The door would not quite close . . . there was a loose chain. With the heat from his laser weapon Sugihara welded the chain across the door to the hooks in the doorposts. They were getting closer; closer . . .
Tomoko screamed as a stream of light blasted a hole in the metal of the dooi; skinning her cheek . . . steps led down, down, down along a tunnel that led, she knew, to a part of the old Ginza subway station . . . what time was it? Her watch read 11:52. Would Matt and CB be waiting at the bottom of the steps?
They ran. From overhead they could hear pounding, pounding . . . then the buzzing of some kind of drill. . . .
Their footsteps echoed in the close, thick air.
Chapter 16
They’d been waiting for almost an hour. The Ginza subway station had been like a labyrinth. By cornering some of the subway passengers, threatening them with his Visitor uniform, and constantly demanding someone who could speak English, Matt was finally able to get a person to direct him through the maze ... it seemed endless. It reminded him of old movies set in the casbah of Algiers, with its network of dingy passageways. Shopfronts lined the walls, though most were deserted ... the entrance to the basement of the Matsuzakaya department store was recessed, at the end of a long tunnel, far from the subway platform itself.
Matt had dismissed his guide with what seemed to him to be an arrogant sneer The role of lizard conqueror was a strangely seductive one, he thought. No wonder so many had become collaborators.
“Time?” CB said.
“Uh . . . about ten minutes till midnight—”
“Look! There they come!”
Shuffling noises from the stairwell. A grating blocked the entryway. Matt could see Tomoko and Sugihara, dim figures, up ahead. He could hear the buzzing of a drill. How can we open this thing? he thought. He reached through the grating. No control boxes, no switches. The railings weren’t rusty, though; this was obviously a secret way in that the reptiles used all the time.
What could a reptile do that a human couldn’t? Of course, they had those long, forked, flickering tongues. . . . Something a Visitor could reach with his tongue ... he glanced up . . . there it was on the low ceiling of the tunnel ... a control box with several dimly glowing buttons and switches. He struggled to reach up but couldn’t. “If only I could squeeze between the railings,”'he said.
“I’m small enough.”
“Yeah. But you’re not tall enough. Here, stand on my shoulder. ”
He bent down; CB leaped up with the grace of his months of training. He tucked his feet behind the railing. He clung precariously now. Tomoko was halfway down the steps, and they could hear the doorway above crashing and the clang of alien footfalls. “I can’t reach!”
“Use your laser pistol!”
The boy was dangling by one arm and Matt was grasping his legs. CB pulled his pistol out and jerked forward. He almost hit the buttons ... not quite, not quite . . . “They’re labeled in lizard speech!” he screamed. “What’ll I do?”
“Just hit one!” Matt cried. He felt his hold on the kid almost give way as CB swung forward and bashed the control box with the pistol and—
A second gateway came crashing down from the c
eiling, boxing Tomoko and Sugihara in even further! Blue lines of fire hung in the air! Matt heard Tomoko scream as CB lashed out again with the pistol, trying to hit a different button—
The second gateway gave way, retracted into the ceiling . . . Tomoko came running down the steps now . . . Matt could see that Sugihara was grappling hand to hand with a Visitor—no longer wearing a human visage—an alien ninja! With a single swipe of his hand Sugihara felled the alien, who tumbled down the stairs and started to fizzle at Matt’s feet.
More of them were rushing down the steps. He saw Sugihara swirling, whirling, and Tomoko was backed up against the front railings now and firing as best she could while CB flailed away at the control box overhead ... as the alien ninjas were closing in on them, CB suddenly hit another button and—
The gateway shifted upward, pulling up into the ceiling! “Jump!” Matt screamed to CB. He whirled and found himself face to face with a ninja, whom he blasted in the chest.
CB jumped just in the nick of time ... the gateway slid into the ceiling and he landed on top of a ninja, kicking outward so that the ninja, surprised, toppled and—-
“We’re all together again. Let’s run,” Matt shouted. CB climbed out from under the ninja, his T-shirt covered with stains from the ninja’s death throes.
They ran. But not before Matt had fired at the control box several times, burning it out. Gateways started to descend at three or four points in the stairway tunnel. He saw one ninja fruitlessly thrusting his tongue up to try to open the gate ... he burned himself and shrieked a metallic scream of rage.
They ran!
“This is hopeless,” he heard Tomoko say. “What’ve we gained, five minutes?”
He panted, “Don’t give up.”
They turned down several corridors. Soon they heard the inevitable patter of alien feet again. “We’re lost!” said CB.
V 07 - The Alien Swordmaster Page 10