Floating City (58 page)

Then, together, as if they were joined in mind and purpose, they made the second, final cut.

Ushiba felt as if he were made of water. He heard a gentle lapping, and it reminded him of a haiku he had been reading last night at Tanaka Gin’s house. The liquid changed to vapor, Ushiba felt himself rising from the floor of his office. He looked down and could see Haji, white-faced, half-supporting with his hands closed over the hilt of the
wakizashi
what appeared to be a dried-out husk of rice. Who was that? What was he doing?

Flooded with the poignancy of twilight, the brittle first day of autumn, the luminous last day of the cherry blossom’s bloom, he wafted away.

The cage was set up in one quarter of the packed-earth compound around which the main buildings of Floating City were arranged. On its right was the structure in which Rock and Mick Leonforte lived, on its left was the building housing the extensive high-flux neutron laboratories Rock had had constructed for Abramanov, including the hot cell, repository of every ounce that existed of element 114m, and now the place where Torch lay like a sleeping adder.

The cage smelled like a charnel house. Its hard-packed earth floor was stained by blood and feces, and in one corner, as if arranged by an interior decorator with a macabre sense of humor, was a human femur picked clean of flesh and sinew.

Rock picked up this bone as he accompanied Nicholas into the cage, slamming it repeatedly into one meaty palm. A half dozen of his men armed with Russian-made AK-47 submachine guns ringed the cage. It was more than he needed, but there was a kind of show going on, Rock drawing a line in the sand, the demonstration of power. They had searched Nicholas roughly and thoroughly. On the other hand, Rock had come unarmed into the cage with Nicholas, and this manifestation of his courage was duly noted.

Nicholas had been given neither water nor food during the trip to Floating City. He had been blindfolded when he had been taken to Rock’s vehicle, and just after, he had felt a sharp prick on the inside of his elbow. He had concentrated, and as he had done with the Russian V. I. Pavlov, working in the furthest reaches of Tau-tau, he slowly raised his metabolism to prematurely break down the chemicals before they had a chance to tranquilize him.

“I see you’ve recovered from your tranked sleep,” Rock said in an amiable voice. “We’ll remedy that shortly.” He looked at Nicholas with the pragmatic interest of a plastic surgeon. “In the meantime, it might interest you to know that many notable people have spent their last days here. Interestingly, their responses to the treatment imposed were all different. I suppose if I were a scientist, I could make a study of the human mind under extreme duress.” He slapped the femur into his palm. “My partner Do Duc was such a man.”

“He was a killer.”

Rock smiled. “We’re all killers here, Linnear, you and I, just as Do Duc was. Don’t think you can separate yourself from us.”

“But Do Duc
was
different. I know how the Nungs of Vietnam trained him; I know that he had taken the sacred white magpie as his talisman, how he was doomed by this messenger of God. But most of all I know that there was a woman who moved him, a woman he loved despite all the blood and pain he endured. I knew your friend Do Duc better than you think—and it makes me wonder about you.”

Rock said nothing; it was impossible to read the mind behind the mask of his face. “Wonder all you want,” he said at last. “Fuck your wondering.”

He stuck his hand through the bars of the cage, and one of the guards put a hypodermic into it. He walked over to Nicholas while the AK-47s were trained on him. “Fuck thinking, fuck intellectualism, period.”

Staring into Nicholas’s eyes, he jammed the needle home, depressed the plunger. “And fuck you.”

He walked out of the cage, locking the door behind him. Picking up the LAW, he strapped it on, leveled it at Nicholas. There was a war going on inside him. Nicholas could feel it as viscerally as if time had folded upon itself and they were both back in the war. In a sense, that was what was happening. Rock was caught in a kind of time warp; he had never wanted the war to end. It had become his life as well as his livelihood. He had a number of compelling reasons for staying on here in Southeast Asia. Nicholas was willing to bet that the States was death for him—worse, perhaps, a living hell hamstrung by rules, regulations, and laws.

That attitude of civilization had been burned out of him by exfoliants, carpet bombing, and sniper fire at four in the morning. The stench of incinerated flesh clung to him like perfume on a doyenne. It was so much a part of him now it would never come off; he wouldn’t want it to. He wouldn’t know how to live without it. He had built his own world right here in the middle of Vietnam—his own Floating City—and the only thing that would destroy him was taking him forcibly from it.

Powerful narcotics again spread through Nicholas. Now he repeated the process he had used on his journey here to hypermetabolize the drugs. It was a strain on his system, but that couldn’t be helped now. Night fell in a tropical rush. Insects buzzed busily, birds chattered in the trees, the occasional growl of a prowling predator punctuated the darkness flickering with torchlight and generator-powered light bulbs. Cooking fires brought the scent of food, as no doubt Rock intended.

Lying on the noisome floor of the cage, Nicholas could see through slitted eyes four guards armed with AK-47s, and he began to calculate the odds, work out the vectors, while he summoned the inner strength he would need from
kokoro,
the heart of Tau-tau.

“Still here?” a voice said from close by. “No, that’s right, don’t move. I believe you’re supposed to be tranked into a stupor. At least, that’s what Rock believes. But he has a bit more faith in himself than I do. Ever since Do Duc initiated him into the cult of the Messulethe, Rock thinks he’s Superman. You and I know he isn’t. He doesn’t have Do Duc’s extraordinary mental discipline. And, of course, you killed Do Duc. Extraordinary.’’

Nicholas could hear the sounds of someone settling down just outside the cage.

“I have been curious to meet you. I’d heard so much about you. I know more about Tau-tau than Rock does, of course. But then he’s quite a bit more monodirectional than I am. I knew that narcotic he injected you with wouldn’t do any good. He could have made it cyanide and you’d still be here, breathing, wouldn’t you? It’s that hypermetabolizing thing you can do. Quite astonishing. It would rock a Western doctor to his foundations.” There was a little laugh. “Oh, I’d like to see that.”

Silence for a time, interspersed with the chatter of the birds and the monkeys.

“Why don’t you—ah, there we are. I was certain you’d want to take a look at me.”

Nicholas saw a man with a handsome face fronted by a prominent nose and clear gray eyes that were positively feral. His salt-and-pepper hair was long, and he wore a neatly cropped beard. It was a face born to give orders, the face of a man who harbored radical philosophies, whose personal worldview was iconoclastic and unshakable. Nicholas could already tell that he was a man who loved words and was therefore likely a disciplined and persuasive public speaker. His years in the Vietnamese highlands had changed him, perhaps, hardened his philosophies even as they had honed them. This could only be one man: Mick Leonforte.

“You’re assessing the danger, aren’t you? I think I can feel your Tau-tau at work, the projection of your
ki,
but that may only be something of self-hypnosis.”

Mick took out a cigar, bit off the end, and lit up. He contemplated the blue smoke for some time before continuing. “I know something of hypnosis. Mass hypnosis, actually. All philosophers learn the art in one way or another. And d’you know why? Because a philosopher is nothing without disciples, and as in religion, the more the better. And as in religion, philosophy is revolution. That’s what I am. A revolutionary.” He blew out smoke. “You should be familiar with revolutionaries; you were brought up by one.”

He smiled as benignly as an uncle tucking his young nephew in for the night. “I have made an exhaustive study of your father. It hasn’t been easy, stuck here in the back of beyond. And the Colonel was the most secretive man I have come across. More secretive, even, than my own father, who changed identities so often I wondered finally if he remembered who he really was.”

He shrugged. “But, of course, secrecy was the beginning and the end of the similarities between Johnny Leonforte and Colonel Linnear. They were very different creatures.

“You may not want to believe this, but I admired your father deeply. I wish
I
were related to him. What a remarkable mind. He more or less single-handedly created MITI. You didn’t know that, I see. Your father had a profound dislike for MCI, the old Ministry of Commerce and Industry, because it was a safe haven for so many war criminals. It had had almost absolute control over the wartime economy and the military. So your father got the bright idea of merging MCI with the Board of Trade, which he knew intimately because its English-speaking personnel interfaced with SCAP. BOT was essentially an import-export ministry set up to handle trade with SCAP—meaning America. But your father realized that it had control over the Foreign Trade Fund, which funneled U.S. aid with export receipts into one account.

“Your father the visionary, the revolutionary, saw in 1948 that the way for Japan to survive was through international trade. So he and several Japanese created the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. He simultaneously began to put Japan on the right economic track while purging the enemies of the new Japan he had envisaged. With that one stroke of genius the Colonel set in motion countless events that continue their impact to this day.”

Mick inhaled, holding the smoke inside him for an unnaturally long time. “And now the sons have met under what could only be considered unfortunate circumstances. However, that is irrelevant to me. I make it my business to ruthlessly deconstruct the past and re-create it in the image of the future. Do you understand? I doubt it. Rock doesn’t and he’s far from a stupid man. He came in here decades ago. Making him a partner was a smart move on my part.” He contemplated the glowing tip of the cigar. “But all marriages fall apart, all empires crumble, and the future awaits. Rock is like most men, he lives in the present because he is comfortable with it, even when it is only a dream or a memory, a reflection of the golden past into which he has sunk.”

Mick stood up abruptly. “Well, I for one have enjoyed this little chat. We must do it again sometime.” He flicked ash away and laughed, disappearing across the compound.

Nicholas watched him until he went through a door in one of the buildings. He lay on the ground, collecting his thoughts, working on several questions. Why had Mick come to see him? To gloat? Unlikely. He wasn’t the type; Rock was. Perhaps Mick had been telling the truth—he was motivated by curiosity. But there was more. Amid his ramblings on philosophy, the deconstruction of the past, and the astonishing revelation of the Colonel’s supposed role in the creation of MITI, he had revealed that he and Rock were no longer seeing eye to eye. Mick was ready to move on.
Empires crumble.

Trucks rumbled through the compound, their headlights cutting swaths through the darkness. Nicholas carefully turned his head. Men had begun loading equipment in crates or covered in tarps.

Torch was ready to move. And so was Mick Leonforte.

With that one stroke of genius the Colonel set in motion countless events that continue their impact to this day.
What had Mick meant by that? He seemed to be hinting at some vast plan ticking away through time that was still on course. Was such a thing possible, or was Mick simply mad? Mick and Rock had amassed a fortune beyond imagining by working the arms and drug trade from the inside out. They had a proprietary edge over every competitor, many of whom had fallen by the wayside, as a result of either that edge or Rock’s LAW. They were hooked into the U.S. government via Dedalus and the Japanese government via the Godaishu. Now Mick said he was moving on. To what? What could be bigger than the deal they already had going? Before he left Floating City, Nicholas knew he’d have to find out.

He checked the position of his guards. Then, closing his eyes, he sank down and touched
kokoro.
He began the tolling, the beating against the membrane of
kokoro
that would summon Tau-tau.

Now, for the first time, he could feel the split inside him. Akshara and Kshira flowed like two rivers—one light, the other dark and terrifying, twisting and turning upon one another.

The theory of integration is a myth,
Tachi had said that night in Yoshino.
Do not be deluded. Shuken exists and
koryoku
is its only pathway, but what Shuken does is hold the two paths, light and dark, separate in one mind.

Nicholas tried to separate them into parallel streams, but without
koryoku
he could only hold them apart for seconds at a time, and this took so much psychic energy he soon gave it up. But in that time, he had his first glimpse of Shuken from the inside, and it showed him many truths. For one thing, it confirmed that he was still damaged—his
tanjian
training diabolically sabotaged. Having once been so close to Shuken with Tachi, he now knew it was imperative for him to separate the two paths of Tau-tau in his mind. Without Shuken, Kshira would eventually overwhelm Akshara, the darkness of evil consuming him as it had Kansatsu, his
tanjian
master.

Curled in a ball, he lay on the ground, picturing in his mind where each of his four guards was. The smell of Mick’s cigar was still in his nostrils, coyingly rich—too strong to be...

He carefully turned his head, saw the butt on the ground just outside the cage, its end glowing redly with promise.

...the true nature of the present situation. I own you, Daijin, and believe me, I plan to milk your influence and contacts for all they’re worth. Within thirty hours Mikio Okami will be dead and my triumph will be complete. You will be my loyal right hand. I will give the orders and you will carry them out in the arena of international economics both at MITI and in the Godaishu. Is all this quite clear, Daijin?