The Fifth Profession (58 page)

Akira feinted to the left, then the right, and saw an opening! As he swung, a guard on the floor threw his
bokken.
It glanced off Akira's shoulder, deflecting his aim.

Kamichi's sword sliced Akira's
bokken
in half.

Now Savage did scream.

Akira jumped back.

Kamichi's sword hissed. The razor-sharp blade seemed to miss Akira's neck.

Savage prayed. I'm wrong. Oh, please, dear God! No, I didn't see … !

His frantic plea went unanswered.

Akira dropped the
bokken.
His head toppled off his neck. It struck the floor with the thunk of a pumpkin, rolled, and came to a stop, resting upright in front of Savage.

His eyes blinked.

And Savage lost all control, which in this case meant that he
gained
control, the shock to his mind overcoming the pain that paralyzed his body.

He rose to his knees, staggered to his feet, and stumbled toward Kamichi, shrieking.

But Kamichi shrieked as well.

Because Akira's headless torso impossibly kept moving, lurching toward Kamichi, grabbing the hands that grasped the
katana.
Pulses from Akira's severed brain seemed to persist and compel his decapitated corpse, hate lasting longer than life. At the same time, gruesomely, blood fountained from Akira's neck. His body vomited crimson. Gushing, the blood cascaded over Kamichi, drenching his skull, veiling his eyes, soaking his clothes.

His shriek more intense, a high-pitched shrill of insanity and revulsion, Kamichi released his grip on the blood-drenched sword and pushed Akira's struggling, headless, crimson-gushing torso away from him.

And that's when Savage finished stumbling across the corridor. He grabbed the sword, which came with startling, eerie, tingling ease from Akira's formerly rigid hands—

—as if those hands communicated with Akira's severed head—

—as if those lifeless fingers recognized the touch of the compatriot who gripped them—

—and with all his might, Savage swung the
katana,
wailing in victory as the blade entered, sliced through, and swept from Kamichi's abdomen.

Kamichi whimpered.

Blood trickled.

Spewed.

His torso parted, the top half falling to the right, the bottom half to the …

Savage's vision turned black. A blow to his skull made him double over.

The guards! One of them must have managed to stand, struggle toward him, and swing his
bokken.

Savage fell to his knees but reflexively swirled with the sword. Vision clearing, he saw the guard falter backward.

Savage crept on his knees, aimed the sword, lost strength, and fell.

He landed in front of Akira's head. He couldn't move. Helpless, wincing from pain, he struggled to focus on Akira's face.

I'll miss you.

We tried, my friend.

We learned answers.

But not enough.

There's so much else to know.

A lingering electrical impulse made Akira's eyes blink yet again. Melancholy as ever, though clouded with death. But tears beaded out of them, no doubt a reflex after death, yet almost … impossibly … in good-bye.

A guard swung a
bokken.
Savage's consciousness exploded.

But not before he heard gunshots.

EPILOGUE

THE KEY TO THE MAZE

FORTUNE'S HOSTAGE

What seemed an eternity ago, when Savage had met Rachel's sister, Joyce Stone, in Athens and gone with her to the Parthenon, he'd quoted from Shelley's “Ozymandias” to describe the lesson of those ruins.

“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

… Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Joyce Stone had understood: “Nothing—wealth, fame, power—is permanent.” Indeed. Take nothing for granted. The future confronts, interprets, and more often than not, mocks the past. History. False memory. Disinformation. These issues, as much as his nightmare, haunted Savage. The paradox of, the relentlessness of, the deceit and treachery of time.

The truths of Shelley's poem soon became evident. After the discovery of the massacre at Kunio Shirai's mountain retreat, the Japanese news media inundated its readers, viewers, and listeners with reports and speculations for seemingly endless weeks. Intrigued as much as baffled, the nation demanded increasingly more details.

One item that attracted obsessive attention was the discovery of a diary that Shirai had kept. As he'd said to Savage and Akira, he intended to create a legend, convinced that the nation would talk about it for a thousand years. Of course, in his diary Shirai did not reveal the lie at the core of the legend. Instead he attempted to bolster the legend by comparing himself to great historical figures, to Japanese heroes who'd so boldly altered the course of their nation's history that they'd achieved the magnificence of myth. Shirai's intention had evidently been to release the diary shortly before or after his death, so his followers could revere his written legacy just as they worshiped his
kami.

The hero whom Shirai most identified with was Oshio Heihachiro, a political activist in the nineteenth century. Outraged by the poverty of the lower classes, Oshio had organized a revolt, so committed to his cause that he'd sold his belongings to buy swords and firearms for starving farmers. In 1837, his rebels sacked and burned rich estates. The city of Osaka was soon in flames. However, the authorities managed to defeat the revolt. Oshio's followers were executed, but only after being tortured. Oshio himself was caught and avoided dishonor by committing
seppuku.

Shirai's decision to compare himself with this particular hero seemed puzzling at first, and Shirai admitted as much in his diary. After all, Oshio's rebellion, though brave, had ended in defeat. But Shirai went on to explain that the cause for which Oshio sacrificed his life had consequences of which Shirai greatly approved. After Commodore Perry's “black ships” anchored in Yokohama Bay in 1853, a new generation of rebels protested America's demand that Japan lift its cultural quarantine and allow foreigners to import mechandise, to become a satellite of the West. Inspired by Oshio's principles, these new rebels reaffirmed the cultural purity of the Tokugawa Shogunate. They insisted on the mystical uniqueness of their nation, their god-ordained
nihonjinron,
their divine Japaneseness bequeathed to them by the sun goddess, Amaterasu. Warriors, masterless samurai who called themselves
shishi,
swore to expel all intruding foreigners and in some cases slaughtered Western settlers. Shirai emphasized deceitfully in his diary that he didn't advocate bloodshed but rather an overwhelming political movement in which the Force of Amaterasu would accomplish the dream of Oshio's later followers, “Expel the barbarians,” and return Japan to Japan.

When put in this context, Oshio did seem the proper hero for Shirai to emulate. But there were ironic disturbing implications that Shirai either didn't recognize or didn't want to admit, for his diary abruptly changed topic and described its author's patriotic zeal in conceiving, organizing, and unleashing the Force of Amaterasu, which his diary took for granted would be successful. The implications that Shirai's diary ignored were that Oshio's later followers had taken their dead leader's principles—”Feed the poor”—to such an extreme that “Expel the barbarians” and “Keep Japan pure” became synonymous with “Revere the emperor.” Since 1600, the Tokugawa Shogunate had insisted on keeping the emperor in the background, in Kyoto, far from the
shogun's
center of power in what is now called Tokyo. But the zealots, who unwittingly perverted Oshio's intentions, so identified their Japaneseness with the former sanctity of the imperial institution that they insisted on reinstating it, on bringing the emperor from Kyoto to the
shogun's
capital, and on reaffirming him as a symbol of the greatness of Japan.

Thus in 1867 the Meiji Restoration occurred. After more than two and a half centuries, the Tokugawa Shogunate fell, and calculating bureaucrats realized that they could benefit financially and politically from this amazing shift in power. Secluding, surrounding, and above all controlling the emperor and his attitudes, they embraced what they saw as the lucrative pronationalistic consequences of Commodore Perry's “black ships.” In the words of Masayoshi Hotta, who'd seen the future in 1857, four years after the “black ships” arrived:

I am therefore convinced that our policy should be to stake everything on the present opportunity, to conclude friendly alliances, to send ships to foreign countries everywhere and conduct trade, to copy the foreigners where they are at their best, and so repair our shortcomings, to foster our national strength and complete our armaments, and so gradually subject the foreigners to our influence until in the end all the countries of the world know the blessings of perfect tranquillity and our hegemony is acknowledged throughout the globe.

Shirai—attempting to change history—had been blind to it.
Akira,
though, had recognized the truth. As he'd told Savage en route to their destiny at Shirai's mountaintop retreat, “We can try to learn from history, but it's impossible to reverse its trend.” In other words, we move forward, Savage thought. Relentlessly. We can try to build on the past, but the present—a wedge between then and soon—makes all the difference, contributes new factors, guarantees that soon will be different from then.

We can never go back, he sadly concluded, recalling the innocent happiness of his youth and the night his father shot himself. But what does that say about ambition, hope, and especially love? Are they pointless, doomed to fail? Because the present emerges, is programmed by, but at a certain point is divorced from the past … and the future is by definition a change, controlled by unanticipated circumstances?

Jamais vu. Déjà vu.

False memory. Disinformation.

For months, I relived a past that wasn't true, he thought.

I then confronted a present that seemed to replay the past. But with a difference. Yes … Savage swallowed … Akira died. (
Dear God, how much I miss him.
) But his death was not an exact replication of my nightmare. He was …

Beheaded. Yes.

And his head struck the floor, rolled toward me, and blinked.

(How much I miss him.)

But before his body toppled, his lifeless hands gave me the sword.

It wasn't the same! It
wasn't
the past!

So maybe we
can
reverse, change, alter,
correct
what's behind us.

But in
that
case, the past was a lie. It never happened. It was all a damned trick played on our memory.

Isn't everything? Remember what you read in the book Dr. Santizo gave you. Memory isn't a year ago, a month ago, a day ago. It's a second ago, as the past becomes the present, about to change to the future. I'm trapped in my mind, in my momentary perceptions. The past can't be proved. The future's a mystery. I exist forever now. Until I'm dead.

So what about hope and love? What about Rachel? What about …?

Tomorrow? Will my dreams collapse, my hopes fall apart, my love dissolve?

I don't think so.

Because Rachel knows the truth. She's told me often enough.

Abraham believed.

By virtue of the absurd.

The alternative is unacceptable. As long as I act with good will—

—and I know there'll be pain, disasters—

—as long as I struggle forward—

—with good will—

—despite the disasters—

—despite the pain—

—with the help of God—

—by virtue of the absurd—

—I won't be fortune's hostage.

A COMPLICITY OF LIES

1

Now Savage's nightmare was twofold, a hideous double exposure, Akira being killed not once but twice, Kamichi dying twice as well. Sprawled paralyzed in a pool of blood, seeing Akira's severed skull, the melancholy, tear-beaded eyes blinking, Savage screamed and struggled upright.

But hands restrained him. A soothing voice reassured him. For a moment Savage wondered if he were back in the hotel in Philadelphia, where Akira had calmed him after Savage wakened screaming from his nightmare. Hope abruptly changed to fear, because Savage groggily realized that if he were still in Philadelphia, then the final disastrous confrontation with Shirai had not occurred. The present was the past, and the horror of the future had yet to be endured.

This terrifying murky thought made Savage want to scream once more. The gentle hands, the soothing voice, continued to reassure him. At once Savage recognized that the voice belonged to Rachel, that he sat weakly on a
futon,
that bandages encased his skull, that a cast weighed down his right arm, that tape bound his chest. He shuddered, recalling the hospital in Harrisburg, where he'd never been, the casts that had imprisoned his body, though his arms and legs had not been broken, the blond-haired doctor who'd never existed.

“You mustn't excite yourself,” Rachel said. “Don't move. Don't try to stand.” She eased him gently back onto the
futon.
“You have to rest.” She leaned down and kissed his beard-stubbled cheek. “You're safe. I promise I'll protect you. Try to stay quiet. Sleep.”

As the mist in Savage's mind began to clear, he realized the irony of the change in circumstance, Rachel protecting
him.
Though confused, he almost grinned. But his head felt as if a spike had been driven through it, and he closed his eyes in pain. “Where am I?”

“At Taro's,” Rachel said.

Surprised, Savage looked at her. He struggled to speak. “But how did …?”

“The two men who stayed with you when you followed Shirai brought you here.”

“I still don't … How … ?”

“They say that you and Akira told them to wait at the bottom of the mountain while you went up to investigate.”

Savage nodded despite the pain in his head.

“Two hours later, they heard shots,” Rachel said. “Handguns. Automatic weapons. They claim it sounded like a war. Shortly after, two cars sped down the lane from the mountain and raced away.”