Coming of Age: Volume 2: Endless Conflict

by Thomas T. Thomas

  Antigone arranged herself on the sofa, pointed to a chair opposite.

  “Today I discovered a very shocking thing,” she began.

  Here it comes, he thought, bracing himself.

  “When I came back here, I surprised my niece, my ward, in flagrante delicto with your great-grandson Kenneth.”

  “Oh, my!” he said. That changes everything. “Are you sure?”

  “He was half-dressed, in her bathroom, vainly trying to cover himself. She was even more dishabille. There is no doubt at all about what they had been doing.”

  Praxis’s first thought was, Good for her! He had long sensed that the young woman was not as dutiful or compliant as Antigone imagined. She had decided to strike out on her own—even if it was with a putative cousin. For, of course, he knew Angela’s origins as well as Antigone did. His second thought was for young Kenny: You had better be good to her! She doesn’t have your experience. Somewhere in this mix of emotions, Praxis must have lost control of his face.

  “Why are you smiling?” Antigone demanded. “This isn’t a laughing matter.”

  “I’m sorry. I was just thinking … at least I can be happy for the young people.”

  “You know his reputation! He’s a cad, a womanizer. And she’s just a young—”

  “She’s not a young girl anymore! You can’t keep her wrapped in cellophane.”

  “She is my ward, my responsibility, and … my daughter.” That last in a whisper.

  “Angela is my daughter, too, is she not?” he said. “I recognize her features.”

  “That makes it all the worse. She’s practically Kenny’s half-sister. The recessive genes alone should worry you.”

  “I don’t think we need to worry about cross-eyed children just yet. And anyway, there are a few generations of women and their X chromosomes added into the boy’s genetic mix—my wife Adele, Brandon’s mother Elizabeth, and then Kenny’s mother Penelope. At that remove, about all he and I share is probably my Y chromosome.”

  “You just don’t understand. The affair is unseemly.”

  “I figure it’s nobody’s business but theirs.”

  “It happens to be my business, too.”

  “Why, as Angela’s guardian?”

  “Because she is mine.”

  In that moment, Praxis had another epiphany, two in one day. Antigone thought of Angela not just as a daughter, he realized. Every mother, at some point, had to acknowledge that her children—the daughters especially—were actually separate people, with their own likes and dislikes, their own loves and hates, and especially their own private lives. At some point—long after Angela’s true age—they had to leave and become something other than children. Perhaps they became friends and colleagues, as his own daughter Callie had remained for Praxis. Perhaps, in other circumstances, they became competitors and enemies, as in the case of his sons Leonard and Richard. Sometimes they simply became strangers. But they didn’t remain children forever.

  And yet, for Antigone, this girl was something more than a child. Angela was her creation. Antigone had tried to create a beautiful young woman in her own image, one who could live the life she only imagined, one without risk, or damage, or heartbreak.

  John Praxis felt sorry for the girl.

  “I think I’ll go now,” he said.

  “But you’ll talk to Kenneth?”

  “I’ll have to think about that.”

  * * *

  Hsu Bolin had settled in to watch the condominium tower on Rincon Hill from a tiny coffee shop that was positioned obliquely across the street. It served no tea and offered only surgery, white-flour pastries, but a window seat there gave him an excellent view of those who came and went through the tower’s glassed-in lobby. And the café was open late into the evening.

  At seven o’clock he saw a military-style vehicle pull up in front of the lobby entrance. A young woman with the bronze hair alighted and waited for a man slightly older—Hsu’s primary target—to step out. She led him across the sidewalk and into the building. Once they were inside, however, she took up station in the lobby while the elder Praxis went to the elevator bank. So this was not the daughter. He had suspected as much, because the hair was wrong—although western women were notorious for changing the color and style of their hair all the time. From the body language, he deduced she was some kind of servant, perhaps even a bodyguard. No matter. He had dealt with women before.

  He waited patiently and observed. He would know when the elder Praxis was returning by the arrival of his transport vehicle, which had already driven away. It would return just minutes before Praxis came down, because so cautious a man would signal for it ahead of his need. Yes, it was an armored car. But even that wouldn’t save him.

  Hsu Bolin paid his bill and moved out, across the street, and into the shadows around the corner from the lobby entrance. He watched the interior through five millimeters of tempered glass. That was all that stood between him and the arrival of his target. Hsu emptied his mind, prepared for the eternal now of combat, of challenge and resolution. It might come in a moment. It might come in an hour. It might not come at all this night. But Hsu was ready.

  In the event, things happened swiftly. The elevator doors opened, and the bronze-haired woman became alert and approached them. At the same moment, the dark car that rode on high springs and had slits for windows pulled around the corner, cruising right past Hsu.

  He started walking casually, toward the same corner, timing his steps against those of the two people he could see inside, crossing the lobby. He loosened the straps that held the traditional weapon, the short-handled hatchet, just below his armpit.

  The side door of the vehicle rolled back.

  The woman preceded her employer out the lobby door.

  The senior Praxis came right after her, preoccupied, looking straight ahead.

  The moment was now.

  * * *

  John Praxis paused at the lobby’s outer door, and Pamela stepped in front of him, as was her custom. Halfway across the sidewalk, five paces short of the HUMV-IX, she turned sharply. He sensed a flurry of motion as well, from somewhere off to his left. A dark shadow was rushing forward, moving directly toward him. The shadow rose up, higher than his head, and all of that motion resolved into a gleaming arc of silvery metal, coming down toward his skull.

  In the space of a blink, Pamela threw herself back across the sidewalk, pushing Praxis away from the danger, back to the safety of the glass door, where he collided with the immobile robot doorman.

  Praxis saw Pamela’s eyes go wide as the blade—a short sword or tomahawk or other hand weapon—cut into her right shoulder. The force of it staggered her. He saw the fabric of her uniform split, the substance of her flesh divide, as the head of the thing go deep.

  Then, in a fraction, her eyes cleared and she whirled around to face their attacker. Her momentum tore the weapon’s haft out of his hand. The man fell back into some kind of defensive stance, one foot out, the other turned, hands raised, palms open.

  Pamela gave him no time to get ready. With her right arm hanging loose at her side, her right shoulder sagging. She kicked once, twice, with her left foot.

  The man crashed backward into the side of the HUMV-IX. And still Pamela did not give him time to recover. She stepped forward with her left foot, sliding with her right, pinned him against the vehicle with her knee, and made three quick jabs, using the fingertips of her left hand like the point of a knife—twice straight into the eyes, once with a hard upward thrust below the chin.

  Then she stepped back and let the man fall facedown on the sidewalk. Dead.

  She turned back toward Praxis, searching for him with her eyes. Her left hand, so skillful in attack, now tried to find her right elbow and hold the arm against her side. That hand was immediately covered with blood. She took two steps toward Praxis and sank down on her knees.

  “Pamela!” he cried and rushed to catch her. He tried to get his arms around her good side without press
ing on the wound. Her right arm, her shoulder, half her body was separated from her trunk. He cradled her as best he could and lowered her to the pavement.

  She looked up into his face, blindly, the light already dimming in her eyes.

  “Good-bye, Grandfather,” she said and was gone.

  5. Test of Loyalty

  John Praxis told the HUMV-IX’s intelligence to hold the door open while he loaded the bodies of Pamela and her killer into the vehicle and transported them back to the Fremont compound. He himself directed the unloading: his former bodyguard to the hospital morgue, the man who had killed her to the Defense Force’s Office of Investigation and Forensics. From the armored car en route, he had already signaled Callie and Paul, respectively, to take charge of each body.

  The next morning, he met with them in his office to hear their reports.

  “The man is not in any of our databases,” Paul said, flashing on Praxis’s comm wall a still of the assassin’s eyeless head, its jaw askew and throat mangled,. “Cyber reconstruction of the facial tissues, as well as genetic markers, suggest he was a Chinese national. But more interesting was what we found in his pocket.”

  The screen showed a piece of red paper with Chinese characters.

  “That’s rice paper, dyed red,” Paul continued. “The letters spell out—crudely attempting to phoneticize—your name and Callie’s, as well as certain dollar amounts. A red poster or card was the ancient technique used by the tongs, the community associations of old San Francisco’s Chinatown, to identify a target for assassination. The weapon—a hatchet with a triangular blade—fits that profile as well.”

  “There are no more San Francisco tongs,” Callie said.

  “No, the nearest one is in Seattle, Xin Dalu Tong,” Paul agreed.

  “And they’ve decided they want Callie and me dead,” Praxis finished.

  “It would appear so,” his general replied.

  “All right,” Praxis said. “We’ve been down this road before—although it’s been a while since the Chinese have tried covert action. Put extra guards on all senior family members, Paul, and alert anyone traveling alone.” Then to Callie: “Put Stacy on the job of finding out why we’ve incurred the wrath of the Chinese government.”

  “Xin Dalu is very carefully not a government agency,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “So they say—and so nobody believes.”

  Praxis nodded for Paul to go, but lifted a finger toward his daughter, indicating she should stay.

  “I’m very sorry to hear about Pamela,” Callie offered when the two were alone.

  “She was one of the best of our retainers, I think. Good at her job. Loyal, too.”

  “She was with us for, what? Almost seventy years,” she said. “A long time.”

  “Pamela said a funny thing just as she died. ‘Good-bye, Grandfather.’ Isn’t that sweet? As if, in her delirium, she actually thought she was one of my granddaughters.”

  Callie stirred uncomfortably. Her eyes were shining.

  Praxis stared at her. “What is it?”

  “Do you remember the time after your heart attack, all those years ago? You were in the hospital for weeks and weeks, and Leonard had just taken over the company.”

  “Yes. His first taste of real power—”

  “It was Leonard who brought Pamela in as receptionist on the thirty-eighth floor, the executive offices. She wasn’t very good at the job. Not at the beginning.”

  “I remember now. A headstrong young woman.”

  “We all heard rumors at the time …”

  “What rumors?” he asked.

  “That Pamela was Leonard’s natural daughter by one of his early mistresses. She was supposed to be a woman named Skinner or Skelton—maybe Sheldon, or something like it. The stories all differed. I never met the mistress, of course, because I would have been about twelve at the time. And I was too young to hear the really good family gossip. But ever since then, every so often, when I looked at Pamela, I thought I caught a resemblance to Leonard.”

  “Why did no one ever tell me?” Praxis asked.

  “Because we never knew for sure. And then Leonard was dead.”

  Praxis remembered the stories of Leonard’s infidelities. He recalled there was supposed to be a child somewhere, sometimes more than one. But when Pamela Sheldon appeared as a receptionist on the executive floor, he never gave it a thought. And though he had worked with her for all those years, he never noticed any resemblance. If he had, he might have done more for her.

  And Pamela herself never presumed, never hinted at her status, never complained about her fate. She simply stood at his elbow, watched his back, and took a blow for him that cut halfway through her body. She was, indeed, the best of them—and he never even knew.

  “See that she is honored,” he said now, his eyes suddenly filling with tears. “A place at the lake, I think, on the edge of the woods.” He paused over that for a moment. “Make it the start of a new family gravesite.”

  “And what do we put on the stone?” Callie asked.

  “ ‘Pamela Sheldon Praxis,’ ” he quoted. “ ‘Most loyal of all.’ ”

  * * *

  Knock, knock, came the thought in Instant Memory.

  Who’s there? Stacy replied, although of course she knew.

  It didn’t work.

  She paused mentally. It didn’t work … who?

  Your plan. It didn’t work, Jay-Jay sent, ignoring the punch line. I mean, the Chinese took the bait, they sent an assassin, but he mucked it up.

  So? We try again. Eventually our luck has to—

  Luck! Are we relying on luck now? Some sense of his indignation came through the memory system’s neutralizing filters. Father now has instructions, direct from the Patriarch, to boost surveillance on everyone. And you will be asked, through Aunt Callie, to find out what the Chinese are doing.

  She hasn’t approached me yet. In truth, Stacy was less concerned with her great-grandfather John’s reaction than with her great-aunt Callie’s. Her aunt was the tougher nut and more astute. But I can handle her, she sent back. She has nothing to go on. The Chinese were acting alone, and I can verify this through our diplomatic contacts.

  At least that bitch Sheldon is out of the way.

  She was just collateral. The target was always John. After him, Callie.

  Yes, but only if your plan had worked, Jay-Jay sent. Getting rid of them was supposed to prevent this kind of blowback. Now the target’s aware. They have heightened security, are making inquiries—

  All of our links to the action are sealed. Besides, none of the older generation understands how this brain-to-brain stuff works. They will be looking for a document, written notes, a trace recording—some kind of physical evidence. And there isn’t any.

  I hope you’re right, he replied.

  Trust your big sister.

  * * *

  The argument from the night before, when Angela had returned to the apartment she shared with Antigone, after leaving it with Ken that afternoon, had been terrible.

  First, her aunt had accused him of being a shallow, unfeeling man. She told Angela about every woman Antigone knew he had bedded and about the feeble excuses he had made for his behavior. He was a womanizer, addicted to sex, and there was no true love in him at all. Angela knew this was false, because she had grown up with Ken, had seen over the years that he was a serious, sober man, and sensed that he loved her deeply. She would be the last woman in his life, Angela said—but her aunt had just laughed at that.

  Then Antigone had accused Angela herself of gross ingratitude, and that was untrue, too. Angela said she owed everything—the clothes on her back, the food in her mouth, the sum of her life experience—to her two aunts who had taken her in as a baby when her father and mother had died. But still, she was a separate person. She had to find her own way, her own life, not Antigone’s. She could not be a child forever—no one could—and now she had said as much.

  And finally, in desper
ation, Antigone had accused Angela of having base and unnatural appetites. She had been betrayed by her hormones rather than her heart, when it should have been her head making the decisions. And again, Angela said she could see her future life most clearly, and it lay with Ken and his connection to the Praxis family, not in Antigone’s apartment in San Francisco.

  “That will never be,” her aunt had said darkly.

  With this final verdict, the two women had gone to their separate bedrooms and closed their doors. But while Antigone may have gone to sleep that night, Angela became busy. She took two suitcases from the back of her closet—luggage bought for the trips that she and Antigone had planned but never seemed to take—and began filling them with her life. And in the early morning, not yet five o’clock, she let herself out of the apartment. She left her key with the doorman and took the first ferry of the day across to Oakland, landing at the terminal on Jack London Square. From there it was a short walk down to the converted warehouse where Ken kept a studio loft.

  She rang the buzzer on the outer door and, when he answered in a sleepy voice, said only, “It’s me.”

  The lock clicked immediately. As she climbed the stairs to the third floor, lugging her suitcases, she prayed that she was right, Antigone was wrong, and that he would be alone.

  He opened the door before she could knock. He was standing in a pair of pajama bottoms, his face lined with sleep, his hair mussed. “What time is it?” he asked.

  Before she could answer, the nails in his head told him. “Early,” she said anyway.

  Ken looked at the suitcases on the floor at her feet. “You’ve made a choice.”

  “Yes, I did.” She did not look past the door to see if it was the right one.

  “Come in then.” He swung the door wide. “You want some coffee?”

  The apartment was empty. She breathed again. “Yes, please.”

  * * *

  With some misgivings, John Praxis determined that he must take the initiative and seek a meeting, under a flag of truce, with representatives of the Xin Dalu Tong. He suggested the Oyasumi Inn in Eureka, California, as the closest thing to neutral territory. It had once been the Holiday Inn, but the franchise was bought out by years ago the Japanese.