by Cadigan, Pat
EMPTY CUP [VIII]
‘… Lydia Stang, Flo …’
As the newcomer spoke, holo pictures of each person named sprang out of the book in Yuki’s hands and hung in the air, as if to prove the accusations. She knew none of them until the stranger came to the last.
‘… and an individual also known at his death as Tomoyuki Iguchi.’
‘Ash!’ Yuki clapped a hand over her mouth and then looked at Tom, horrified.
He tried to stare back at her and then dropped his gaze.
And then Body Sativa was there beside her, gesturing for the people holding Tom to let him go. ‘Don’t misunderstand,’ she said to the stranger, ‘but you’ll have to find him first.’
The stranger nodded, shoulders slumping resignedly. ‘If he’s here, he’s got to be somewhere.’
‘Perhaps Joy Flower can help you out.’
‘Oh, God,’ Yuki said. ‘Joy Flower. I’m –’
She turned to Body Sativa. ‘Can you – is there nothing … nothing?’
Body Sativa’s face was sad as she held out her arms. ‘Nothing, as long as they have you.’ Something unraveled around the outline of her body and her entire appearance, face and all, slid away like a costume. Underneath was a grand lady in traditional Japanese dress, holding a strangely shaped musical instrument. ‘Now the threads are loosened and I am no longer Body Sativa but Benten, goddess of the arts.’
‘You still look like my grandmother, a little,’ Yuki said. The book that had come to her hands from the stranger vanished and reappeared in Benten’s hand. ‘So you’re Benten now. What does that make me? Besides screwed, I mean?’
The new goddess’s face was compassionate but set. ‘Somebody has to be Boddhisattva.’
Yuki’s mouth dropped open.
Suddenly there was a one-second sensation of being held down on a bed by many strong hands and someone was kneeling on her left, pulling her up and forward with one hand and holding a needle gun at the ready in the other. Only one second, but very clear, incredibly clear and so real. Yuki tried to shout and then twist away. They let her move and then the person with the needle gun was kneeling on her lower back.
‘… faster they go, the faster it wears off … told you be ready f –’
‘… arger dose …’
Someone shoved her head down and forward and suddenly she couldn’t move at all, not even to breathe. The panic burst on her full force and then was gone, but she still couldn’t move though she could breathe again.
Concentrating, she could feel her forehead resting on something hard. A hand on her shoulder pulled her back and a woman that might have been Joy Flower looked into her face, searching. She was so close that Yuki could see her twin reflections in the woman’s eyes, as if they were actually etched directly onto the corneas.
Two tiny Tom Iguchis raised their fingers to their lips in unison, warning her not to say anything.
Where am I?
Yuki jumped back, turned and tried to get up and run, but something clouted her on the back of her neck and she fell forward.
When she opened her eyes, she was still falling.
Below her, she saw an enormous expanse of nighttime city, a multitude of colored lights glittering against the darkness. She wanted to cry with relief; the long fall would end, had to end, and then there would be peace, at the very least, peace. No Tom, but, well, she had tried and she no longer cared. Maybe he was watching her plunge into this city nightscape from some hiding place, some mirror, even someone’s eyes. Maybe if she had a mirror to reflect her own eyes, she would see him in there, twin miniatures –
Abruptly, she realized she wasn’t as high up over the city as she had been, and she could see the lights more clearly now, flashing, twinkling patterns that resolved themselves into gargantuan signs flashing words, flashing pictures, flashing kanji as if in a long and complex display for what universe there might be out there in the dark, to deliver, over and over, the message: Japan lives!
Yes, Japan lives. She closed her eyes again and waited for Japan to take the offering of herself.
DEATH IN THE PROMISED LAND [VIII]
‘What is it?’ Taliaferro asked her from where he stood in the cubicle doorway.
Konstantin was standing with the headmount in her hands as if she couldn’t decide whether to take everything off, or put it back on and go back in. ‘I had the strangest … time,’ Konstantin said.
‘Yeah? What was so funny?’
Konstantin smiled, staring past him. ‘Life. Everything. That and the fact that for several hours in a row, I didn’t once think about my ex.’ She took a breath and exhaled heartily ‘Do we have any intelligence on someone named Joy Flower?’
TEA
She woke on a futon in a pleasant though austere room with paper walls framed in bamboo and the slightly astringent aroma of green tea in the air.
A little later, someone helped her sit up so she could drink the tea. Though it smelled even more strongly now, it didn’t have much taste at first, though the more she drank, the stronger the taste of it on her tongue became. And it must have been a much larger cup than she had thought, for it seemed as if she drank forever before stopping, and yet she still had not finished the tea. The aroma remained, stronger than ever.
She lay back and found herself staring at another person also lying on a futon, somehow suspended on the ceiling. Or perhaps she was the one on the ceiling and the other person was the normal one, lying on the floor. There was actually no way to tell which of them was up and which was down, no matter how long she stared, or how much she thought about it. The person always mimicked her actions, as if this were an exercise in dance mirroring. But sometimes, when her attention wandered, she thought she saw the other person make a furtive move that had nothing to do with her. She waited for someone else to come and tell her about this peculiar situation.
Eventually someone else did come. A woman stood over her and, taking no notice whatsoever of the person on the overhead futon, told her she was actually a young man named Iguchi Tomoyuki who had been lost in a strange country for a long time. And for another long time, Yuki found no reason to doubt her.
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Also By Pat Cadigan
Novels
Mindplayers(1987)
Synners (1991)
Fools (1992)
Tea From An Empty Cup (1998)
Dervish is Digital (2000)*
Collections
Patterns (1989)
Home by the Sea (1992)*
Dirty Work (1993)
Dedication
For:
Ellen Datlow,
The sister I never had
The editor I’ve always needed
Keith Ferrell
Who made me start it
In the first place
And then kept demanding more
Beth Meacham
For patience, insight, patience,
Good humor, intelligence, patience,
Excellence in editing, and did I mention patience?
Joy Chamberlain
For reading it so conscientiously and
Naming it so perfectly
Merrilee Heifetz
Who endured every moment
Right along with me
And didn’t complain
Although she could have
I know, that’s a lot of dedication
For one book –
So are they.
These people, each in their various direct and/or indirect ways, made my world a better place. Thank-yous to:
Gardner Dozois and Susan Casper (for decades of friendship and good times), Cindy Wike (a real supe
rhero), John and Judith Clute (for the upstairs room), Mike Harrison (for being so supportive), Mary Ellen Rose (I’m proud to call you my friend), the Kansas City Science Fiction Society (especially for all that help on the last night), overlapping with the Borders SF Book Club 1994-6 (we miss you all), Jack Womack (for last-minute accommodations and great conversation), Maggie Flynn (for her usual wonderfulness), Kim Newman (for incitement to emigrate), Paul McAuley (for having talent and class), The Artist Formerly Known As Jael (for improving the quality of our Sundays), Oisin Murphy-Lawless (for energy and enthusiasm), Mic Cheetham (more fabulous in an hour than most people are in their whole lives), Tricia Sullivan (you go, girl), Jeannie Hund (girlfriend, you’re world-class), my son Bob and his Grandma Helen (for putting so much life in my life), our friends at Harringay Cars (for making sure Bob and Grandma get there and back again safely), and my husband, the Original Chris Fowler (for the rose, and everything after).
Pat Cadigan (1953 -)
Pat Cadigan was born in Schenectady, NY, and grew up in Fitchburg, MA. Attending the University of Massachusetts on a scholarship, she eventually transferred to the University of Kansas where she received her degree. Since embarking on her career as a fiction writer in 1987, her Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated short stories have appeared in such magazines as Omni, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine as well as numerous anthologies. Her first collection, Patterns, was honoured the Locus Award in 1990, and she has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1992 and 1995 for her novels Synners and Fools. Pat Cadigan moved to the UK in 1996 and now lives in London.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Pat Cadigan 1998
All rights reserved.
The right of Pat Cadigan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 12027 3
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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* Not available from SF Gateway