Steel Rain (20 page)

"I bring him a gift."

"What gift?"

"An item from a dead man."

The one with chrome eyes gives no immediate response. Perhaps he makes use of headware communications. "I will take you to Lau Tsang. This way."

The Pavilion's ground floor is half restaurant, half club. A posh womb lined in velvet red. Music rampages like a factory raging out of control. Lasers flicker incessantly. Hostesses in revealing electro-bodyware parade around with chrome-mirrored trays, necklaces of sensechips diving into incongruous depths of augmented cleavage.

Yet, in spite of all this static, Machiko notices many heads turning, people looking and gaping at her. The trappings of the Guard make her an outsider, a foreign enemy. Her genes make her
kawaruhito
, less than human. Machiko notices no other metas, nothing but norms, Asians, primarily Chinese. Even the tallest look no taller than her.

The man with chrome eyes leads her into one of a bank of escalators. At the second floor, they enter an elevator. This ascends to the fourth floor. A few steps along a corridor furnished all in red bring her to a private office paneled in red satin. She is left here alone for some minutes.

Then a side door opens and in steps a man, a norm, Chinese. Machiko knows him as Lau Tsang, the League's chief of enforcement. He looks rather like a corporate finance officer. His suit is gray and black and conservatively cut. He comes alone to show that he is not afraid. He moves to the side of a desk that appears hewn out of black marble and, affecting a casual manner, lights a cigarette. He hold Machiko's gaze for the space of two long drags on the cigarette, then says, "You're the chief Serpent now."

"For the moment."

"I hear it may be permanent. As permanent as these things ever get."

The sense in which his words might be construed as a threat seem incidental, but they give Machiko a thought. Just briefly, she considers taking the man's head. She could certainly do it. The man would be dead and growing cold before the guards in the corridor outside knew what had happened. She would probably be killed before she could fight her way out of the building, but Lau Tsang would still be dead.

The thought that keeps her sword in its scabbard is that killing Lau Tsang would not serve Nagato Combine. Wars are rarely won by killing the general, for there is always another general. It is the army that must be defeated. It is the ability to wage war that must be destroyed. It is the will of the ordinary soldier to fight that must be crushed.

She takes one of the credsticks from Jank's room, holds it up for Lau to see, then places it on his desk.

"Some gift," he says.

"Scan it."

Lau takes another drag of his cigarette. He moves around to the rear of the desk and slots the credstick into a port on the desktop telecom. His expression reveals only mild curiosity. "Where did you find this credstick?"

"On the person of a man called Jank."

"I do not know the name."

"Yet he had the credstick for a Red Pavilion account."

Lau shrugs. "Credsticks may be stolen. Account data can be forged. Why do you bring this to me?"

"To ask if you seek war."

Lau takes a drag of his cigarette. He appears very calm and cool. He opens a drawer of the desk and then lays a heavy automatic on the desktop and then quietly closes the drawer. He waves briefly at the automatic. "I have many guns," he says. "If the competition wants war, they will have it. The current troubles between your Toki-clan yakuza and my League will seem like minor disagreements compared to any war, if it comes."

Machiko watches the man. He does indeed seem prepared to make war. Machiko doubts he would fight it personally. "We have drawn a connection between this man Jank and the bombing attack on the clan headquarters in Newark. We have also identified Jank as one of the assassins who attacked members of the Guard."

"Is this to justify a threat of war?"

"Warriors do not make threats. They make war. If I had come here to make war, your head would be lying on the floor."

"And if I told you that the League has nothing to do with any of this, the attacks on your headquarters, on the Serpents, what then?"

"I would ask how this man Jank obtained a Red Pavilion credstick."

"Perhaps, at one time, I knew this man, under a different name. I have not heard of him for many months." Lau takes a deep drag of his cigarette and gazes briefly at Machiko, and says, "Men develop bad habits. They utilize excessive amounts of chrome. They grow unstable, and unreliable."

"And you let this man live?"

"We do not kill every person who fails us. It would be inhumane." Lau again pauses, gazing steadily at Machiko, then says, "Allow me to put this in perspective for you. My problem with the Nagato Combine involves only your Toki-clan. They tread on League territory. We have competing interests. I would not order these attacks you mentioned because I see no profit in going to war with the whole Nagato Combine. Small skirmishes can be useful in determining market position. A war would involve other interests that are currently content to leave us to our business. A war would have no true winner. Do you see?"

A gangster speaking of profit. Machiko can imagine nothing that would seem more natural. It is as natural as a gangster describing another's territory as his own. As natural as murdering one's competitors, assassinating entire families, in order to steal lucrative businesses, in order to amass power and wealth. The Large Circle League, like the other Triad organizations, has been many years rising out of the bloody gutters of the plex. Only in recent years have they managed to finally eclipse the Seoulpa Rings, formerly their closest competitors. Only now, as they finally become significant, as they reach a position where they may confront a potentially dangerous opponent such as the Toki-
gumi
, does Lau Tsang grow cautious, and in this he is indeed very wise.

Were the Yoshida
-kai
to extend the aid offered to the Toki-
gumi
, they would begin by sending enough
kobun
that Lau Tsang's "League" might well be smothered. Were the complete forces of Nagato Combine to be marshaled in the effort—including the military-grade units of the Security Defense Force—Lau Tsang would beg for peace, peace at any price.

But of course the need would have to be very extreme before Honjowara
-sama
would allow SDF units to roll on the Bronx. It would have to be morally just—a necessity to defend honorable working people from the violence of murderers and other vile felons. For any true military-style response would have inevitable consequences, not the least of which might be the loss of innocent lives,

"How did Jank fail you?"

Lau shrugs. "A small matter. He failed to complete an
assignment. It does not concern yakuza."

Machiko struggles to maintain a settled spirit. Being referred to as "yakuza" by a gangster such as Lau Tsang is no compliment. It is very near to an insult that cannot be ignored. Indeed, the ancestors of the clans of Nagato Combine could only be described as yakuza, but in this context Lau's remark is a statement of pure arrogance. It shows only contempt for the fact that the days have long passed when the three clans worked like vicious gangsters. It shows only disdain for the fact that Honjowara
-sama
exerts himself relentlessly to see that such times do not return. Machiko lets this insult pass only with great difficulty. She tells herself that the type of "assignment" Jank is likely to have failed probably involved murder and therefore is absolutely antithetical to the ethics of the Chairman's New Way.

And thus the distinction between the Large Circle League and Nagato Combine becomes plain. And thus Lau Tsang is revealed as the arrogant, vile criminal that he is.

"What do you know of Jank's current associates?" Machiko asks.

"They attract Serpents to the Red Pavilion." Lau takes a quick drag of his cigarette. "This I do not like."

Neither does Machiko like it.

The man disgusts her.

20

When she wakes, the Infiniti E9 is parked on a dark street she does not immediately recognize. To the left, a row of low commercial structures like warehouses. To the right, a brick wall and an ornate iron gate. The characters beside the gate read, "Plum Festival Teahouse," and then the memory comes. A teahouse in Brooklyn, maintained by the Yoshida
-kai
.

"Machiko
-sama
. . . please."

She finds the headman of
kobun
leaning in through the open door at her right, inviting her with a gesture to emerge, to follow him to the gateway. She has no reserves of strength with which to argue. She remembers walking out of the Red Pavilion, getting into the car, struggling against the rise of fatigue. Apparently, the battle was lost.

Inside the entranceway of the teahouse wait the woman in charge and two of her geisha. They offer her tea, a bath, a massage. None of this is needed or desired. Flesh demands its due. Exhaustion is overwhelming. Pain returns. Machiko accepts the offer of a place to sleep and follows the geisha to a room, already prepared. The geisha help her undress. They provide a rack for her swords and a small chest for her other equipment. They take her clothes, presumably to see them laundered. She hardly hears them. She lies down on the bedding and closes her eyes, and, in just moments, it seems, goes under.

Sleep is deep and unrelenting, forcing her down, down, down, till even dreams are smothered.

When she wakes, the room is full of sunlight. Sliding
panels off to her left stand open, looking into a small, domed garden. But it is neither the sunlight nor the garden that snare her attention. On the threshold of the room kneels a solitary figure, facing the light, the garden, his back to the room. His hair, black as the darkest heart of metahumanity, flows over his shoulders a halfway down his back. He wears the green
gi
of a master of the Guard. Machiko would know him regardless of such superficial traits as grooming and attire. Kuroda
-sensei
has the presence of a man whose body is made of rock, rooted in the earth, beyond doubt or uncertainty.

Machiko gets to her knees and bows deeply.

"Please dress," says Kuroda
-sensei
. "When you are ready, we will speak."

It is an overt invitation for Machiko to prepare herself properly. The warrior must be as meticulous in her appearance as she is in the condition of her weapons, for this demonstrates fanaticism in the Way. She calls for a bath. Two geisha move to assist, but she refuses all help. She washes, arranges her hair, trims fingernails and toenails and tends to all the other small details that demand her attention. She ignores the lingering aches from yesterday's injuries. Once she has donned her clothes and weapons, she moves to kneel at Kuroda
-sensei
left, just slightly to his rear.

He says, "The ancient masters have written that it is an error to put forth effort, obtain a degree of understanding, then stop. The warrior's tenacity should be excessive. Something done with moderation may later be viewed as insufficient."

The point of this seems clear, Kuroda
-sensei
is familiar with the details of last night's operations. "You say that I should have killed Lau Tsang."

"Why did you let him live?"

"I did not think his death would serve Nagato Combine."

"You grow clever in your opinions. What has happened to the purity of your warrior spirit? Is it not your duty to strike down Nagato Combine's enemies wherever you may find them?"

Machiko bows deeply, shamed to think that she may have failed in this most essential manner. "Perhaps I turn from the Way.
Sensei
, it is hard to know what is right. The situation lacks clarity. The Chairman has charged me with seeking one enemy in particular, but I am not sure where this enemy will be found."

"Your spirit is unsettled."

"Yes."

"The warrior must distinguish between time of war and time of peace. You seek to enter battle before the war is truly begun, before the armies approach the field of battle. This is why you turn to clever opinions to explain why you allowed Lau Tsang to live. This is where you err."

"Yet we have been attacked. Blood has been spilled."

"The work of assassins. No war was ever won by such work. Perhaps it presages war and perhaps it does not. Perhaps the enemy you seek is incapable of waging war on Nagato Combine. Have you considered this?"

Machiko bows deeply. "No,
sensei
, I have not."

"Before battle comes, the warrior must spend every moment learning. She must ask questions. She must confer with others. She must discard all personal bias."

"Who should I consult?"

"Begin with me."

The idea nudges Machiko slightly off-balance. She had always assumed that the masters of the Guard spent most of their time at the GSG academy north of the city, along the banks of the Hudson, training neophytes and contemplating the writings of the ancients. What Kuroda
-sensei
says now suggests another possibility. "You know something of this situation, Kuroda
-sensei
?"

"The Nagato Directorate of Intelligence seeks mercenaries. They seek the White Octagon. They have information that the White Octagon is behind these recent attacks."