Amazon Slaughter & Curse of the Ninja

by Piers Anthony

  Beyond the entertainments, at the very tip of the torso, was the newspaper and printing complex. And again my unruly imagination ran rampant, as I visualized scandal sheets and propaganda being ejected from the feathered anus of this roc-like bird. I'm just a natural lowbrow, I guess, especially when I've spent two wearing days being rattled in a fish truck with an aggressive lobster and a girl who doesn't speak my language.

  But Oba was acting out an episode of the city's history. It seemed there was a big contest, open to all the architects in Brazil, with a large cash prize: to design Brasilia. The leading firms of the nation spent months preparing designs and drawings and models to submit to the judges. One person who was too modest to enter was Lucio Costa, though he was known for his architectural brilliance. But his friends coerced him to enter, and finally, reluctantly, at the very last moment, he spent twenty-five cents for paper and pencils and quickly sketched his plan, just to shut them up. Well, at least it was an entry.

  "Now, don't tell me, let me guess!" I said. "The winner—"

  Oba smiled. Right: the Selection Committee, experts drawn from all over the world, awarded first prize unanimously, to the two-bit effort. And that selection was hailed all over the world as an innovation in city planning, imaginative yet basically simple. Costa's design became Brasilia.

  I was impressed all right. We were now driving past the superblocks, each containing a dozen trees and surrounded by gardens and playgrounds. Each superblock, Oba let me know, was supposed to be virtually self-contained, with its own stores and schools. At least, that was the theory; I wasn't clear from her gestures and my observations whether it had actually worked out. If it had, why the favelas?

  There was no traffic congestion, even in the high-rise center of town. Of course; we had arrived at dawn, too early for slothful government workers to be up. Later in the day it might be a different story. Cloverleaf loops and ramps made stoplights unnecessary, and the sheer geography of the layout facilitated movement.

  We pulled up behind the monstrous theater and restaurant section in the heart of the city where the load of seafood was to be delivered. This was as far as our driver could take us. We thanked him, inadequately, and moved out on foot. All the way around to the front of the restaurant, where we entered in order to make contact with the ninja.

  Now I had to order a glass of fresh skim milk, and refuse to settle for anything else. Feeling stupid, I did so. The waiter spoke very little English, so there was a minor hassle, and it turned out the closest they could come was canned milk. Brazilians were not milk drinkers. I was adamant, though conscious of my seedy appearance. Finally the waiter went for a consultation with the headwaiter. Oba was staring at me with perplexity. I was, of course, being quite unreasonable. I wondered what uproar I would have created had I emulated Hiroshi and ordered something really exotic like yak's milk.

  The headwaiter approached, a forbidding figure of a man, and I was daunted. Where was the ninja? Had there been a foul-up in communications? "We have reserved our best private dining room for you, sir," he murmured in English.

  "Oh, we can't afford that!" I protested, uncertain how much money Oba had and feeling like a pimp. I had no money, having lost it all when I fled the sumo exhibition. Kiyokuni would have given me my winnings, of course, but I had been ashamed to face him so soon after the riot, and with the urgent message from Kan-Sen. So I had taken off for Brasilia in my borrowed clothes. Oh there are many things I would do better, if only I had proper time to reflect. Half my problems stem from my own spot misjudgments.

  "There will be no charge," he assured me. "Your friend will be along soon; he asks you to eat well while you wait."

  My friend, Fu Antos? Or one of his ninjas? Must be. "All right," I said. I'd certainly be glad when all this mystery was through. I'm not temperamentally suited for intrigue or high living.

  The private dining room was ornate, fit literally for a king. There was a couch and several easy chairs beyond the huge banquet table, and so many potted plants and even small trees that it resembled a greenhouse. The waiter attended us, then discreetly retired, giving us romantic privacy.

  We were served crab cocktail with plenty of red sauce, onion soup with thick cheese floating on it, a salad of heart-of-palms, the hearts being tubular and white and probably very tasty; filet mignon with black beans, and plenty of Brazilian wine. In short, an elegant Latin American meal. I'm really no gourmet, either, how I wished for a cheap U.S.A.-American type snack! I wondered uncomfortably whether my friend the pinching lobster was buried somewhere in this repast.

  That started a disconcerting chain of thought. This was too similar to the meal I had had with Dulce. Not in detail but in atmosphere: strange, delicious dishes, in private with a pretty girl. I had no reason to be suspicious, yet, when I contemplated all that fancy food, my hunger left me. Also, for no reason I could fathom, I remembered the Iado Master and the sudden slaughter of the Death Squad. All that blood and guts. Maybe I was getting paranoid, but I couldn't eat.

  Oba had no such reservations. Even if I could have explained my concern to her, I wouldn't have. I knew it was just my foolishness, an overdose of suspicion; James Bond never suffered loss of appetite, did he? And this was probably the best meal she had been offered in a long time.

  "Comer! Comer!" she urged me, gesturing with her fork. No mistaking her meaning: Eat, eat!

  So I did something I wasn't proud of: I faked it. I shoveled bites of food into my pockets when she wasn't looking, and made chewing motions. Messy as hell, but when I get hung up, I get hung up all the way. I poured my soup into the big flowerpot beside my chair, hoping it didn't kill the plant. Same with the wine, the palm tree behind me drank that. I felt disgusted with myself.

  Actually, Oba wasn't paying much attention, or I never could have gotten away with it. She ate with such gusto I wondered whether she had ever had a chance at such a repast. And my forebodings seemed less and less sensible, until I was chagrined at my foolishness. Here I was with a soggy pocket, passing up a wonderful meal.

  Yet there is an ornery streak in me that sometimes just won't let go. If I ate now, I would be admitting that I had been wrong not to eat at the start, and it can be very hard to admit something like that. So the nonsense compounded itself. I had started out not to eat, and now I was perversely determined to finish out that way, going to hell and hunger in my own fashion. I knew I would regret it, for there was likely to be much work after I met the ninja representative. I had not been summoned all the way here for nothing, after all. There had to be some hugely important task, something only I could do. Perhaps I would be instructing the ninjas in special judo and karate techniques, so they could better defend their secret Black Castle from intrusions. Yes, that must be it, and I was glad to do it for Fu Antos, the unique man who had saved my life from the effects of the delayed-action deathblow, not so long ago. I owed him my life, literally. Though there were times when I wondered about the ninja master.

  Oba sank onto the table. Her nose pressed into the egg custard. Startled, she jerked up, wiping her face. But then she swayed forward again.

  Suddenly alarms were clanging stridently in my brain. She had been drugged! Just as before, the food, the drink, the same pattern. Someone knew about us and had arranged the same trap that had suckered me before; only this time my subconscious had warned me off. There are limits to how many times I will fall for the same stunt, it seems. Sometimes my unconscious mind is smarter than I am.

  Who could have arranged this, except another Death Squad? Mirabal's men must have intercepted Kan-Sen's message, and eliminated the ninja assigned to meet me here. I had to get out!

  But how could I get Oba free of this trap? She was an innocent girl, not involved in my mission. She had only wanted to help me. Well, I'd make do. I stood up.

  Too late. Someone was coming.

  I could fight, but suppose there was a whole crew, as before? Oba would be sure to suffer, even if I got away. I couldn't desert her; she
might be tortured, having her teeth pulled out, or worse. Then I had an inspiration. I dumped my platter of food on the table near my place, knocked over my glass, and threw myself to the floor half under the table. It would look as if I had eaten half my meal, fought the drug, and succeeded only in making a mess before losing consciousness.

  I kept my left hand over my face, as if accidentally, so that I could peek through my fingers, unseen. I wanted to know who my enemy was, where he was, and how he was armed, before I made my move. If it were Mirabal...

  But it was only the headwaiter. Still, that was significant, for he evinced no surprise at what he saw. That meant he was in on it. He spoke to the waiter behind him. That was all, just the two of them, and neither one armed. I could handle them readily. But I waited. Surely these two men were not the conspirators. They were employees of the restaurant. They might have been bribed or threatened, but the ones I wanted hadn't shown up yet. Useless to tilt at the flunkies.

  The headwaiter spoke in Portuguese. How I wished I could understand him! The two men came and dragged me out and turned me over, and I remained limp, only groaning a little as if trying to fight out of it. Too complete an unconsciousness might be suspicious, assuming this was the same drug as before; I had been able to fight it off for a while, then. Unconsciousness is not necessarily total; it only seems that way in retrospect because of memory blackouts.

  They picked me up and dragged my trousers off. I didn't like this, but allowed it; obviously they had something in mind, and I doubted it was homosexual rape. Maybe they were going to dress me in something else? Why? What if they discovered my pocket full of food, already well mashed? But they didn't; they merely hauled me over to an easy chair in the corner and went to work on Oba.

  They stripped her all the way naked, cleaned the custard off her face, and carried her over to me. They lifted her up, bent her knees, and set her in my lap, facing me.

  What the hell? They surely knew—or thought—I was in no condition to take advantage of this opportunity. I hoped my masculine reaction would not give me away, but it was all right, because her firm buttocks rested on my thighs and concealed that region. The position brought mixed memories, though!

  They propped her head on my shoulder and draped her arms and hair around me as well as possible. An unconscious girl does not hang on too well, so they had to draw me up a bit and pin one of her hands between my back and the chair. Her handsome breasts pressed against my chest, and I felt her bare abdomen swell rhythmically against mine with her breathing. What a posture!

  Then the two men quickly wheeled out the table and replaced it with a fresh one. Presto, no more mess!

  But what could it all mean? Eventually Oba and I would wake up, and perhaps be under the impression we had made love. But would that be so shocking? We had made love before—and how!—so there was nothing shocking about that notion. Actually Oba was as thoroughly lovable a creature as I've encountered, and I don't mean just her fine dancer's body or her pretty face. So this careful pose made little sense; left to our own devices, we just might have assumed it on our own.

  The waiters set an open bottle of liquor on a little table beside us, after pouring out two glasses, half full. So it would look as if we had left our drinks in favor of more intimate entertainment. But still, that was only appearance. Unless someone else spied us. That was it! We were being framed, just as I had been framed on the homosexual charge before. Certainly the same sort of mind had concocted this trap, the Death Squad mind.

  Well, I could foil that. As soon as the waiters left, I'd get dressed and take Oba out... and never find out who had engineered this. Yet if I stayed, who knew what mischief was in the offing? Too late, again. Someday I'll have to learn to make difficult decisions fast, or I may not live to make more slow ones. The waiters ducked out, and someone else was coming down the hall. No time to get out. Well, nothing I could do now except to play it through.

  A figure appeared in the doorway. Two figures.

  Someone screamed. A woman.

  Through slitted eyes, peering past Oba's luxuriant hair, I saw the people, and received my worst shock of the day.

  Dulce!

  She was staring at the two of us, so suggestively arranged, and I knew there was only one conclusion she could draw. She was the very last person I would have wanted to show up at this moment. Beside her was a man. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place him, and of course I didn't know anyone in this city. It hardly mattered, for he screamed and charged. Instantly I recognized the mode of the martial artist; his muscular development and the manner he moved gave it away. And there was no doubt of his intention. He was out to kill. I may be slow in some respects, but in combat I catch on quickly.

  I exploded out of that chair. Or tried to. Oba was in my arms, and I had either to drop her or use her as a shield, and I balked at either. So as the man's fist came down, I turned, catching the blow on my shoulder. Then I set Oba in the chair, somewhat roughly, but speed was of the essence. I straightened, about to whirl into my antagonist, and he caught me with a hard kick to the side. It scored right under my ribs, and his calloused toes smashed in with appalling force, half stunning me. A man does not have to get struck on the point of the chin to suffer disorientation.

  I pitched forward. I was not unconscious, but at this stage it was easier to take a fall than to fight the pain; in a moment I would recover from the shock of the blow and be able to function better. And it wouldn't hurt at all if he thought I was out for the count. But as I landed, he kicked me again, in the small of the back. And again the pain blossomed. A girdle of paralysis clamped about my waist; I felt like dying. Something internal had ruptured, or maybe a nerve was crushed; I couldn't tell, but it was awful. I was really taking a beating.

  A third time he kicked me. He didn't care whether I was awake or asleep; he just wanted to bash me to death. And he was pretty well succeeding. I knew then what I faced: this was a renegade Capoiera fighter. Capoiera is a Brazilian specialty, said to be the dirtiest martial art in the world. Anything goes; the glass-sharded feet of the man I'd fought in the Rio prison had been an example. This bastard would pulverize me if I remained a target.

  I had no choice. I had to fight back or be demolished. I gritted my teeth against the pain in my back, and when his fourth kick came I whipped my arm about and caught his foot. That made him stagger, and I was able to get to my knees.

  He cuffed me on the ear, and I let go, hoping I didn't have a cauliflower ear like Oba's now. The old schoolboy punishment of boxing the ears was a painful one. As I stood up unsteadily, he performed another Capoiera specialty: he fell back on one hand and one foot, and then shot the other foot at my face. But I had anticipated this, now that I had identified his style of combat, and I countered instantly. I knocked his leg aside with my forearm, then leaped forward, onto his body.

  We crashed to the floor together, him underneath. A hitting specialist is at a disadvantage when encumbered, which is one of the reasons judo is such an effective all around martial art: it includes striking and wrestling forms. He was like a python, whipping his body back and forth, trying to shake me loose and get his finger in my eye or his elbow in my throat or his teeth anywhere, but I whipped with him, and used his contortions to my own advantage.

  First I got behind him, straddling his body, pressing him down; he countered by heaving up violently, to throw me off. But as his body cleared the floor, I hooked my left leg around his left arm, slid my right arm around, his right shoulder and up to grab my own lapel (lucky they hadn't stripped me of that, too, but actually I know plenty of "naked" techniques too), and thus had both his arms entangled from behind, with his feet out of the way. That's the secret of judo, using your opponent's own strength against him, so that the more he exerts himself the better off you are. He didn't like that position, so he tried to buck me off, and again I took advantage of his power. I took a forward roll, landing beneath him, giving him the sensation of success, but it was illusory, f
or I had not relinquished my control of his arms. He lay face up, his arms pinned, his head on my belly. Not uncomfortable, but not much for carrying the attack to me, either. But I had no such restriction; I shifted my right leg to control his right arm, freeing my left leg. That gave me both my left leg and left arm to work with. I grabbed his collar and pulled across his throat, putting my leg around his head for leverage. There was a lot of leverage in that leg, too.

  Now this may sound complicated, so I'll put it in simpler terms: it was the Jigoku-Jime, or "Hell Strangle", so named because it is hell on the victim. His arms were entangled, his legs thrashed helplessly, and I was applying terrible leverage to his neck. Hercules himself could not have broken that hold.

  Meanwhile, Dulce had gone over to Oba and hauled her out of the chair, probably intending some sort of mayhem herself. But she had discovered the girl was unconscious. Dulce was not the sort to beat up a helpless rival, no matter how angry she was. So she was contenting herself with shaking. Oba violently, waking her, still thinking it was the effects of the liquor.

  Oba's eyes opened slowly; obviously the drug was still on her. I hoped there would not be a woman-woman fight; I was in no position to break it up promptly. But then Oba saw me with my strangle on the struggling man, who was almost out though resisting heroically. She made an anguished little cry and staggered to her feet, fell, and crawled toward us on hands and knees, her handsome breasts drawing down. I thought she had mistaken our position, supposing I was the one getting wiped out, since I was on the bottom, but it was not so. She threw herself on me, trying to wrench my leg from the man's neck. She screamed something in Portuguese.