Wild Cards: Aces Abroad

by George R. R. Martin

  “It won’t happen again,” Hiram said. He obviously didn’t even believe himself. “I’ll know what to look for. He couldn’t fool me twice.”

  “We can’t risk it. Leave everything. You can buy some new clothes this afternoon. I want you to hit the street and keep moving. Around ten o’clock go into the first hotel you see and get a room. Call Peregrine and tell her where you are.”

  “Does she . . . does she know what happened?”

  “No. She knows it’s money trouble. That’s all.”

  “Okay. Fortunato, I . . .”

  “Forget it,” Fortunato said. “Just keep moving.”

  The shade of the banyan tree had saved a little coolness from the morning. Overhead the milk-colored sky was thick with smog. Sumoggu, they called it. It was easy to see what the Japanese thought of the West by the words they borrowed: rashawa, rush hour; sarariman, salary man, executive; toire, toilet.

  It helped to be here in the Imperial Gardens, an oasis of calm in the heart of Tokyo. The air was fresher, though the cherry blossoms wouldn’t be blooming for another month. When they did, the entire city would turn out with cameras. Unlike New Yorkers, the Japanese could appreciate the beauty that was right in front of them.

  Fortunato finished the last piece of boiled shrimp from his bentō, the box lunch he’d bought just outside the park, and tossed the box away. He couldn’t seem to settle down. What he wanted was to talk to the rōshi, Dogen. But Dogen was a day and a half away, and he would have to travel by airplane train, bus, and foot to get there. Peregrine was grounded by her pregnancy, and he doubted Mistral was strong enough for a twelve-hundred-mile round trip. There was no way he could get to Hokkaido and back in time to help Hiram.

  A few yards away an old man raked the gravel in a rock garden with a battered bamboo rake. Fortunato thought of Dogen’s harsh physical discipline: the 38,000-kilometer walk, equivalent to a trip all the way around the earth, lasting a thousand days, around and around Mt. Tanaka; the constant sitting, perfectly still, on the hard wooden floors of the temple; the endless raking of the master’s stone garden.

  Fortunato walked up to the old man. “Sumi-masen,” he said. He pointed to the rake. “May I?”

  The old man handed Fortunato the rake. He looked like he couldn’t decide if he was afraid or amused. There were advantages, Fortunato thought, to being an outsider among the most polite people on earth. He began to rake the gravel, trying to raise the least amount of dust possible, trying to form the gravel into harmonious lines through the strength of his will alone, channeled only incidentally through the rake. The old man went to sit under the banyan tree.

  As he worked, Fortunato pictured Dogen in his mind. He looked young, but then most Japanese looked young to Fortunato. His head was shaved until it glistened, the skull formed from planes and angles, the cheeks dimpling when he spoke. His hands formed mudras apparently of their own volition, the index fingers reaching to touch the ends of the thumbs when they had nothing else to do.

  Why have you called me? said Dogen’s voice inside Fortunato’s head.

  Master! Fortunato thought.

  Not your master yet, said Dogen’s voice. You still live in the world.

  I didn’t know you had the power to do this, Fortunato thought.

  It is not my power. It is yours. Your mind came to me.

  I have no power, Fortunato thought.

  You are filled with power. It feels like Chinese peppers inside my head.

  Why can’t I feel it?

  You have hidden yourself from it, the way a fat man tries to hide himself from the yakitori all around him. This is how it is in the world. The world demands that you have power, and yet the use of it makes you ashamed. This is the way Japan is now. We have become very powerful in the world, and to do it we gave up our spiritual feelings. You have to make the decision. If you want to live in the world you must admit your power. If you want to feed your spirit, you must leave the world. Right now you are pulling yourself into pieces.

  Fortunato knelt in the gravel and bowed low. Domo arigatō, o sensei. Arigatō meant “thank you,” but literally it meant “it hurts.” Fortunato felt the truth inside the words. If he hadn’t believed Dogen, it wouldn’t have hurt so much. He looked up and saw the old gardener staring at him in abject fear, but at the same time making a series of short, nervous bows from the waist so as not to seem rude. Fortunato smiled at him and bowed low again. “Don’t worry,” he said in Japanese. He stood up and gave the old man back his rake. “Just another crazy gaijin.”

  His stomach hurt again. It wasn’t the bentō, he knew. It was the stress inside his own mind, eating his body up from within.

  He was back on Harumi-Dori, heading toward the Ginza corner. He’d been wandering for hours, while the sun had set and the night had flowered around him. The city seemed like an electronic forest. The long vertical signs crowded each other down the entire length of the street, flashing ideograms and English characters in blazing neon. The streets were crowded with Japanese in jogging outfits or jeans and sport shirts. Packed in with the regular citizens were the sararimen in plain gray suits.

  Fortunato stopped to lean against one of the graceful f-shaped streetlights. Here it is, he thought, in all its glory. There was no more worldly a place on the planet, no place more obsessed with money, gadgets, drinking, and sex. And a few hours away were wooden temples in pine forests where men sat on their heels and tried to turn their minds into rivers or dust or starlight.

  Make up your mind, he told himself. You have to make up your mind.

  “Gaijin-san! You like girl? Pretty girl?”

  Fortunato turned around. It was a tout for a Pinku Saron, a unique Japanese institution where the customer paid by the hour for a bottomless saki cup and a topless jo-san. She would sit passively in his lap while he fondled her breasts and drank himself into a state where he was prepared to go home to his wife. It was, Fortunato decided, an omen.

  He paid three thousand yen for half an hour and walked into a darkened hallway. A soft hand took his and led him downstairs into a completely dark room filled with tables and other couples. Fortunato heard business being discussed all around him. His hostess led him to one end of the room and sat him with his legs pinned under a low table, his back supported by a legless wooden chair. Then she gracefully moved into his lap. He heard her kimono rustle as she opened it to free her breasts.

  The woman was tiny and smelled of face powder, sandalwood soap, and, faintly, of sweat. Fortunato reached up with both hands and touched her face, his fingers tracing the lines of her jaw. She paid no attention. “Saki?” she asked.

  “No,” Fortunato said. “I-ie, domo.” His fingers followed the muscles of her neck down to her shoulders, out to the edges of her kimono, then down. His fingertips brushed lightly over her small, delicate breasts, the tiny nipples hardening at his touch. The woman giggled nervously, raising one hand to cover her mouth. Fortunato laid his head between her breasts and inhaled the aroma of her skin. It was the smell of the world. It was time either to turn away or surrender, and he had backed himself into a corner, left himself without the strength to resist.

  He gently pulled her face down and kissed her. Her lips were tight, nervous. She giggled again. In Japan they called kissing suppun, the exotic practice. Only teenagers and foreigners did it. Fortunato kissed her again, feeling himself stiffening, and the electricity went through him and into the woman. She stopped giggling and began to tremble. Fortunato was shaking too. He could feel the serpent, Kundalini, begin to wake up. It moved around in his groin and began to uncoil through his spine. Slowly, as if she didn’t understand what she was doing or why, the woman touched him with her little hands, putting them behind his neck. Her tongue touched him lightly on his lips and chin and eyelids. Fortunato untied her kimono and opened it up. He lifted her easily by the waist and sat her on the edge of the table, putting her legs over his shoulders, bending to open her up with his tongue. She tasted spicy, exotic, and in
seconds she had come alive under him, hot and wet, her hips moving involuntarily.

  She pushed his head away and leaned forward, working at his trousers. Fortunato kissed her shoulders and neck. She moaned softly. There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the hot, crowded room, no one else in the world. It was happening, Fortunato thought. Already he could see a little in the darkness, see her plain, square face, the lines beginning to show under her eyes, seeing how her looks had consigned her to the darkness of the Pinku Saron, wanting her even more for the desire he could see hidden inside her. He lowered her onto him. She gasped as he went into her, her fingers digging into his shoulders, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

  Yes, he thought. Yes, yes, yes. The world. I surrender.

  The power rose inside him like molten lava.

  It was a little after ten when he walked into the Berni Inn. The waitress, the one who’d told him her name was Megan, was just coming out of the kitchen. She stopped dead when she saw Fortunato. The waitress behind her nearly ran into her with a tray of meat pies.

  She stared at his forehead. Fortunato didn’t have to see himself to know that his forehead had swollen again, bulging with the power of his rasa. He walked across the room to her. “Go away,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “The club,” Fortunato said “The one with the sign of the duck. You know where it is.”

  “No. I never—”

  “Tell me where it is,” he ordered.

  All expression left her face. “Across Roppongi. Right at the police box, down two blocks, then left half a block. The bar in front is called Takahashi’s.”

  “And the place in back? What’s it called?”

  “It hasn’t got a name. It’s a yak hangout. It’s not the Yamaguchi-gumi, none of the big gangs. Just this one little clan.”

  “Then why are you so afraid of them?”

  “They’ve got a ninja, a shadow-fighter. He’s one of those what-you-call-thems. An ace.” She looked at Fortunato’s forehead. “Like you, then, isn’t he? They say he’s killed hundreds. Nobody’s ever seen him. He could be in this room right now. If not now, then he will be later. He’ll kill me for having told you this.”

  “You don’t understand,” Fortunato said. “They want to see me. I’ve got just the thing they want.”

  It was the way Hiram had described it. The hallway was raw gray plaster and the door at the end of it was padded in turquoise Naugahyde with big brass nailheads. Inside, one of the hostesses came up to take Fortunato’s jacket. “No,” he said in Japanese. “I want to see the oyabun. It’s important.”

  She was still a little stunned just by the way he looked. His rudeness was more than she could deal with. “W-w-wakarimasen,” she stammered.

  “Yes, you do. You understand me perfectly well. Go tell your boss I have to speak to him. Now.”

  He waited next to the doorway. The room was long and narrow, with a low ceiling and mirrored tiles on the left-hand wall, above a row of booths. There was a bar along the other wall, with chrome stools like an American soda fountain. Most of the men were Koreans, in cheap polyester suits and wide ties. The edges of tattoos showed around their collars and cuffs. Whenever they looked at him, Fortunato stared back and they turned away.

  It was eleven o’clock. Even with the power moving through him, Fortunato was a little nervous. He was a foreigner, out of his depth, in the middle of the enemy’s stronghold. I’m not here for trouble, he reminded himself. I’m here to pay Hiram’s debt and get out.

  And then, he thought, everything will be okay. It was not even midnight Wednesday, and Hiram’s business was nearly settled. Friday the 747 would be off for Korea and then the Soviet Union, tak­ing Hiram and Peregrine with it. And then he would be on his own, able to think about what came next. Or maybe he should get on the plane himself, go back to New York. Peregrine said they had no future together, but maybe that wasn’t true.

  He loved Tokyo, but Tokyo would never love him back. It would see to all his needs, give him enormous license in exchange for even the smallest attempt at politeness, dazzle him with its beauty, exhaust him with its exquisite sexual pleasures. But he would always be a gaijin, a foreigner, never have a family in a country where family was more important than anything.

  The hostess crouched by the last booth, talking to a Japanese with long permed hair and a silk suit. The little finger of his left hand was missing. The yakuza used to cut their fingers off to atone for mistakes. The younger kids, Fortunato had heard, didn’t hold much with the idea. Fortunato took a breath and walked up to the table.

  The oyabun sat next to the wall. Fortunato figured him to be about forty. There were two jo-san next to him, and another across from him between a pair of heavyset bodyguards. “Leave us,” Fortunato ordered the hostess. She walked away in the middle of her protest. The first bodyguard got up to throw Fortunato out. “You too,” Fortunato said, making eye contact with each of them and each of the girls.

  The oyabun watched it all with a quiet smile. Fortunato bowed to him from the waist. The oyabun ducked his head and said, “My name is Kanagaki. Will you sit down?”

  Fortunato sat across from him. “The gaijin Hiram Worchester has sent me here to pay his debt.” Fortunato took out his check-book. “The amount, I believe, is two million yen.”

  “Ah,” Kanagaki said. “Another ‘ace.’ You have provided us with much amusement. Especially the little red-haired fellow.”

  “Tachyon? What does he have to do with this?”

  “With this?” He pointed to Fortunato’s checkbook. “Nothing. But many jo-san have tried to bring him pleasure these past few days. It seems he is having trouble performing as a man.”

  Tachyon? Fortunato thought. Can’t get it up? He wanted to laugh. It certainly explained the little man’s rotten mood at the hotel. “This has nothing to do with aces,” Fortunato said. “This is business.”

  “Ah. Business. Very well. We shall settle this in a businesslike way.” He looked at his watch and smiled. “Yes, the amount is two million yen. In a few minutes it will become four million. A pity. I doubt you will have time to bring the gaijin Worchester-san here before midnight.”

  Fortunato shook his head. “There is no need for Worchester-san to be here in person.”

  “But there is. We feel there is some honor at stake here.”

  Fortunato held the man’s eyes. “I am asking you to do the needful.” He made the traditional phrase an order. “I will give you the money. The debt will be canceled.”

  Kanagaki’s will was very strong. He almost managed to say the words that were trying to get out of his throat. Instead he said in a strangled voice, “I will honor your face.”

  Fortunato wrote the check and handed it to Kanagaki. “You understand me. The debt is canceled.”

  “Yes,” Kanagaki said. “The debt is canceled.”

  “You have a man working for you. An assassin. I think he calls himself Zero Man.”

  “Mori Riishi.” He gave the name in Japanese fashion, family name first.

  “No harm will come to Worchester-san. He is not to be harmed. This Zero Man, Mori, will stay away from him.”

  Kanagaki was silent.

  “What is it?” Fortunato asked him. “What is it you’re not saying?”

  “It’s too late. Mori has already left. The gaijin Worchester dies at midnight.”

  “Christ,” Fortunato said.

  “Mori comes to Tokyo with a great reputation, but we have no proof. He was very concerned to make a good impression.”

  Fortunato realized he hadn’t checked with Peregrine. “What hotel? What hotel is Worchester-san staying in?”

  Kanagaki spread his hands. “Who knows?”

  Fortunato started to get up. While he’d been talking to Kanagaki, the bodyguards had come back with reinforcements. They surrounded the table. Fortunato couldn’t be bothered with them. He formed a wedge of power around himself and sprinted for the door, pushing them aside as he ran
.

  Outside, the Roppongi was still crowded. Over at Shinjuku station the late-night drinkers would be trying to push their way onto the last trains of the night. On the Ginza they would be lining up at the cab stands. It was ten minutes to midnight. There wasn’t time.

  He let his astral body spring loose and rocket through the night toward the Imperial Hotel. The neon and mirrored glass and chrome blurred as he picked up speed. He didn’t slow until he was through the wall of the hotel and hovering in Peregrine’s room. He let himself become visible, a glowing, golden-rose image of his physical body.

  Peregrine, he thought.

  She rolled over in bed, opened her eyes. Fortunato saw, with a small, distant sort of pang, that she was not alone.

  I need to know where Hiram is.

  “Fortunato?” she whispered, then saw him. “Oh my God.”

  Hurry. The name of the hotel.

  “Wait a minute. I wrote it down.” She walked naked over to the phone. Fortunato’s astral body was free of lust and hunger, but still the sight of her moved him. “The Ginza Dai-Ichi. Room eight oh one. He says it’s a big H-shaped building by the Shimbashi station—”

  I know where it is. Meet me there as fast as you can. Bring help.

  He couldn’t wait for her answer. He snapped back to his physi­cal body and lifted it into the air.

  He hated the spectacle of it. Being in Japan had made him even more self-conscious than he ever had been in New York. But there was no choice. He levitated straight up into the sky, high enough that he couldn’t make out the faces turned up to stare at him, and arced toward the Dai-Ichi Hotel.

  He got to the door of Hiram’s room at twelve midnight. The door was locked, but Fortunato wrenched the bolts back with his mind, splintering the wood around them.

  Hiram sat up in bed. “Wha—”

  Fortunato stopped time.

  It was like a train grinding to a halt. The countless tiny sounds of the hotel slowed to a bass growl, then hung in the silence between beats. Fortunato’s own breathing had stopped.