Master Ishi
Tokio Metro
Taihei 37 (Year 2062)
The servant brought Master Ishi his bento box lunch, then quietly withdrew after closing the hatch to the capsule. It was a ritual that dated back seven decades when the servant's grandfather had first begun serving the Old Man in this time-honored fashion.
With his forehead bowed low until it touched the rubber tatami floor and his hips scuttling forward, the servant gently inserted the lacquer tray into the pneumatic-tube with his white monogrammed-gloved hands.
Then his sibilant voice announced the delivery of the midday meal. "Honorable mealtime."
Master Riuji Ishi was a creature of habit as much as he was a connoisseur of innovation. He had converted a sixteenth-century Nipponese tea-ceremony room into an underwater laboratory that afforded him both privacy and a splendid view of the old garden with its ancient grove of cryptomeria trees.
There was an irregularly shaped pond right outside his capsule window, with turtles that rested on the weathered stones, their dark shells catching the rays of a weak afternoon sun.
He kept a moray snowflake eel for company, a dog face puffer fish, and a nurse shark. They were the only living things he shared his space with during the long hours he spent inside his capsule each day.
Master Ishi came up with some of his most successful inventions as the creatures swam in circles around him.
He had more than 42,000 patents registered in Tokio, New York, and in Basle. Every second he stayed under, he was altering the way the world devised its future. He was worth more than all those useless billions in the orbiting banks.
Money meant nothing to him. Less than karma. Less than his own death which he kept postponing for the sake of convenience.
That would come soon enough. He was one-hundred-and-forty-nine-years old, and had seen the last Emperor wearing shorts at the Imperial estate on the Izu Peninsula. He had given His Majesty his first lesson in marine biology, or had tried to. Marine biology was an Imperial prerogative.
It seemed like a useless idea on the face of it, teaching the divine monarchs the secrets of the deep. But from the sea comes everything: power, sex, evolution, delight, cruelty, and finally, peace.
Twenty-five minutes immersed in the tank. That was Master Ishi's record these days, although when he felt the need there was a hose with oxygen dangling from the ceiling of the tea-ceremony room. He could always replenish his oxygen supply if necessary. He had been without air for twenty-two minutes already.
But first, lunch in its plexiglas capsule with its plexiglas straw. Today's menu was the same as yesterday's: Soy paste, algae, various minerals, pureed with-since Master Ishi was old--fashioned in certain respects--the lymph glands of a 'kirin,' that mythical Chinese beast which was half--deer, half--dragon.
Mythical, at least, until Master Ishi had regenerated it in his laboratory. He bred the kirin not for their astounding looks, nor for their primeval amusement value, but strictly for his personal consumption. The next brood was almost ready for hatching. He refused to confirm rumors of their existence even to the Imperial Household Agency. The chamberlain had discreetly requested a specimen for the Emperor's private collection. That was unthinkable, of course.
To merely set eyes upon the kirin would cause His Majesty a major distraction. And His Majesty had best be left to tend to his ceremonial affairs of state. There were enough problems brewing in the land.
Abroad, too, in New Manchukuo, where the troops were getting restless and the Chinese bandits were always making trouble.
Massacres had to be averted at all cost, at least until Master Ishi came up with a workable final solution for the New Kwantung Army. The army hotheads were impatient. Taking Chosen--the Korean peninsula--back into the fold of the Empire had not satisfied them. They wanted to move faster, faster . . . .
Like those antique bullet trains that kept trying to break the sound barrier. From Tokio to Kioto in three minutes! Was that not fast enough? Pagodas had collapsed from the stress. An ancient temple or two had crumbled. Still, they wanted more speed. Master Ishi sneered. Sometimes speed was slower than not moving at all.
Master Ishi customarily photographed the contents of his bento box before taking his lunch. It was a habit going back thirty years. His private photo album contained over 10,950 pictures of every single meal he had ever eaten.
He kept strict records so that, in the event of a particular scientific breakthrough, he could go back and analyze the nutrients he had ingested on a specific day, to see if there was any correlation with his creative output.
Master Ishi angled his camera for a perfect shot, his flat feet steadying his frail body on the smooth surface of the aquarium floor. His long white hair cascaded its tendrils as the nurse shark swooned past him, casting an unnecessary shadow. He aimed the camera again.
Another shadow shattered his concentration, and he looked up. A man in a blue suit was peering at him through the window. As they made eye contact, the man bowed to his waist.
Flustered, Master Ishi pulled up his loincloth self-consciously. What on earth did he want? He waved his hand at the stranger. Go away.
The man rapped his knuckles on the glass.
Master Ishi's face scowled through the sea water that had been piped in for him from the Inland Sea. He placed his underwater camera back on its tripod, and gestured at the man with ill-concealed anger. What do you want?
The fool would not leave. Very well, he would step outside. If this intruder had no suitable explanation for his behavior, he would summon Toga, his chief of security, to deal with the matter in the usual way. Toga would have him escorted into the woods and dropped into the ancient well, a thirty foot drop into the plain of Musashi where the bones of miscreants and errant vassals had been collecting for over three centuries.
The stranger waited for Master Ishi to float to the exit at the top of his underwater tearoom laboratory. A few moments later, the Old Man stood on the verandah. His long white hair was swept back over his carved forehead, his bony frame shivering slightly in the October air, as water dripped from his arms and shoulders and legs. He eyed his visitor.
The man was an operative of some sort. Somewhere in his mid-thirties, a senior official in the standard blue suit and the lapel pin of the Tokko, the Special Higher Police whose mandate was to eradicate radicals, leftists, subversives, and other rabid antisocial elements in New Nippon.
Master Ishi noticed that although he bowed with considerable deference, he was not sighing at the very core of his being. Not trembling.
Therefore, it meant some extraordinary news that required his immediate attention. There was an informal pipeline of communication between Master Ishi and the members of his clique. An unspoken understanding that they could call on him at any time in the event of an emergency.
"Yes? What do you want?" Master Ishi demanded brusquely.
The officer gave him a crisp bow as he introduced himself. "Hiroaki Tanaka, colonel with the Tokko, B-section. Special liaison with The Camellia Group."
"I see," Master Ishi nodded. Just as he suspected, the man was an emissary from the ultrapatriotic group to which the Old Man unofficially belonged. Its members comprised the top echelons of government, select members of the aristocracy, the most reliable army officers, various barons of the info-industrial complex, the ideological cream of the intelligentsia, and less overtly, the shadowy 'oyabuns,' the bosses of the Forum, the coalition of Nippon's underworld.
They were the clandestine trust that ruled the land since Imperial Nippon's delegation walked out of the International Planetary Union in '46. That was after the IPU's arrogant rejection of Nippon's bid for a 'fraternal management contract' to rule East Asia.
Now there was no turning back. It was the Camellia Group's sacred duty to foster "Kokutai," or national polity, on a global scale. Master Ishi was their "Genro," their visionary elder statesman. The man who could make it all happen with the bold plan which he had code-named "Fingermoon."
They had already witnessed some of Fingermoon's amazing properties. Master Ishi enjoyed titillating his cronies with samples of his work-in-progress. If the program could be completed in time for its official launch date, there was no question in their minds that the balance of power in the world would shift to Imperial Nippon.
Colonel Tanaka sighed for half-a-second as per the required protocol. Then he delivered the news that Master Ishi did not wish to hear.
"I must report that the Butoh dancer has manifested again. This time, in a corporeal way."
Master Ishi turned to look at the smoke of burning leaves rising in the far corner of the compound. He no longer felt the chill on his crawling skin. He felt it instead in his 'hara,' in the very pit of his abdomen where his consciousness was lodged.
Colonel Tanaka continued. "Last night, at Baron Kimura's villa in Shiroganedai, when the Baron was celebrating--ahem--" he coughed, "your latest breakthrough with Fingermoon . . . He was assassinated while he was dancing a waltz."
Master Ishi was not personally upset to hear about the Baron's demise. The man was a degenerate. He curled his lip contemptuously. "They actually saw the Butoh? In person?"
He blew some water out of his right nostril with his fingers. Jeweled gobs of spray flew down from the verandah. "Are you sure he wasn't just . . ."
The Old Man hesitated as he sought the correct slip of tongue. "An image? A bio-anime?"
It would be nice if the Butoh dancer was still in a cocoon stage, Master Ishi thought to himself. Then he might be manipulated, and his allegiance reformatted.
The chill air prickled Master Ishi's skin again. He watched as the weak sunlight rested its exhausted rays on the potted chrysanthemums in the garden.
White light on white 'mums that reminded him of bandaged Nipponese soldiers in their hospital tents on the New Manchukuo front in Northeast China.
He sighed to himself. It wasn't very clear yet-even to him-how some images came to life. Leaped into it, in fact. With a gusto. While others remained what they were meant to be: Mere impostors of the life force. Bodies without a soul.
Plenty of those around, he sniffed again as he watched a cloisonne-winged dragonfly buzz around the stiff green stalks of the chrysanthemums.
He snapped his fingers at it and enjoyed the look of surprise on the Tokko's face when the holosect strobed into a puff of light.
"Don't worry," Master Ishi said to Colonel Tanaka. "Their light source is recyclable. I suppose the Baron had a swarm of them buzzing around at his soiree?"
"I don't know, I wasn't invited," Colonel Tanaka replied curtly.
Master Ishi grunted. No, it was better that the Butoh be real, he decided. That way, his death would be more real, too.
Colonel Tanaka continued with his report. "The guests at the party definitely saw him. But just for a split-second. He passed through the heavily guarded perimeter of the Baron's estate without being detected. He managed to evade three rings of our tightest security before he finally materialized in the Baron's private ballroom."
Master Ishi closed his eyes and listened to the faint sound of a cuckoo as its song was overshadowed by the grainy cawing of the black crows that lorded over the sprawling forest.
He forced himself to think uncompromising thoughts. That Project Fingermoon was now jeopardized. That the Butoh was getting closer. That there was another force at work here--from Nippon's past, or was it from its future? -- that might throw a disastrous wrench into their best--laid plans.
Master Ishi now pictured the naked Butoh dancer. His chalk-white body, his shaved head, and his eyes glowing like the eyes of those black crows.
He had seen those eyes once, years ago, at the time of the Neo-Imperial Restoration when the Revolution began to spread throughout the land. He should have killed him while he was still a child. No, he should have recruited him . . . .
" . . . And then he vanished," Colonel Tanaka concluded, as he gave the Old Man a curious look. He wasn't sure if he had been listening to him or not.
Master Ishi opened his eyes with childish curiosity now. It took a child to think like a child. "How did Baron Kimura die?"
"His throat was cut with a rare finger-blade. A 'kamaitachi.'"
Master Ishi knew very well what a kamaitachi was. It was a small invisible animal, a mythical weasel that was believed to attack people in the rice paddies of the Tohoku province in the north of Nippon.
When the weasel pounced on its victim, their flesh would be sliced to the bone as if by a sharp sickle.
The Old Man nodded. The kamaitachi was the weapon of choice of the "Jigoku Butoh"--the Butohs from Hell. Compared to them, the ninjas of Old Nippon were ineffectual. Even the photon ninjas--the on--line spies that Master Ishi had created himself--were no match for them.
Having delivered his report, Colonel Tanaka patiently waited for Master Ishi's instructions. He would convey them to his superiors. To say they were concerned would be an understatement, almost like saying the snow in the North Country could not wait for the spring to melt.
The servant arrived with a purple fleece-lined cloak, which he proceeded to drape over Master Ishi's shoulders. The old man grunted and turned to take his leave without taking any further notice of the Tokko officer.
He was going to leave his lunch uneaten. The moray would finish it off for him. The creature had mastered the suction mechanism on the plexiglas straw.
"Your Excellency?" the colonel called out to Master Ishi, alarmed to be dismissed without a word. "What would you like me to inform the members of the Group?"
Master Ishi turned around as though he had never taken his eyes off the man.
"Tell them the Butoh is still in the process of generating himself. He may have had enough 'ki' life force energy to take out the Baron, but the Baron was not a strong man, as we know. His vices--"
"But your Excellency, the Baron was not the Butoh's first victim. There have been others," Colonel Tanaka reminded him. "Last month, Vice-Chairman Shido of the Harbin-Kanagawa Savings & Trust was murdered in his room at the New Ocelot Hotel in Osaka. And then there was the young Prince Kido, killed while on holiday in Guam."
A flicker of irritation crossed Master Ishi's brow. "Was the kamaitachi used in any of those incidents?"
"No, sir," Colonel Tanaka looked down at the ground. "But the circumstances were definitely unusual--"
He was at a momentary loss for words. "This man, this being," he corrected himself, "is known to be an assassin who dances his kills . . . ."
"Yes, I know," Master Ishi drew his lips together in a thin sneer. "They had the mark of a heel ground into their throats, their windpipes were crushed. Perhaps those were his first baby steps, who knows? But I repeat: 'Fingermoon' will proceed as scheduled. You may inform my friends in the Camellia Group of that."
"Thank you, Your Excellency. One last question? Your answer may help us apprehend this creature."
Master Ishi gave him a menacing look. "Yes?"
"Do you have any suggestions as to where we might find him? All the Butoh dance groups and theaters in New Nippon have been outlawed and disbanded according to Edict 21, the Anti-Subversive Art law. The jails are full of these deviates and thought criminals. He may have gone underground. But so far he has managed to elude us . . . ."
The Tokko admitted. "We don't know where to look."
The Old Man laughed a bitter dry laugh. "I'll tell you something about him," he said as he recalled the child's eyes again. He would not be a child now.
"The Hanging Butoh is not fully Nipponese, you see. He is still adapting to our native environment. I could have created him myself, you know," he added vainly. "But someone else did. Find that someone else, and he will lead you to the Butoh. That is all I have to say."
Colonel Tanaka waited until the master entered the pavilion at the far end of the gallery. Then he bowed, and his shoes crunched light gravel all the way through the garden and out the side-gate where the Mitsubishi Daimler sedan was waiting for him.
He climbed into the seat beside the driver and the automobile hushed down the winding driveway until it reached the heavily guarded moat that surrounded Master Ishi's estate.
They were waved through at the police checkpoint on the bridge and quickly rejoined the rest of the busy traffic in the streets of Tokio.
Colonel Tanaka picked up the ivory phone and called his headquarters. "Saito?" he spoke to his assistant. "Get me Kuroda. He's one of our best, isn't he? Yes, right away. It's important. I think we may have our first lead."
He listened for a moment to the response, then grunted an acknowledgment. "Yes, yes, we're going to get his eyes. He's been a real pest."
Then he added. "Contact our agents both here and abroad. Especially the image specialists. We haven't much time if we want to stop the Butoh."
Master Ishi entered the pavilion, lost in thought. He stepped onto the tatami-mat floor and stared at the 14th century Nipponese screen that stood at the far end of the room.
The eight-panel Muromachi-era screen depicted an immense writhing dragon that chased the great pearl of wisdom clear across the cosmos.
Beautiful, he thought as he gazed at the image. And a complete waste of time . . . The truth was never meant to be chased. It was meant to be consumed, yes. Absorbed.
The Old Man's eyes flickered with irony. Then it was meant to be shitted out again . . . Truth made the best fertilizer in the world.
Master Ishi loved to engage in these spontaneous anti-meditations. They made him feel strong and kept him defiant.
The cosmos was nothing but a cheap vaudeville show. A slapstick act. The universe was the biggest banana peel in existence, and it provided endless laughs. If there weren't any punch lines, all the better. A joke was much funnier that way.
Invisible hands removed his purple-fleece cloak. The Old Man stood still as his servant slipped the sleeves of a warm quilted kimono over his outstretched arms and wound the sash tight around his middle.
"Leave me now," Master Ishi ordered. He heard the soft scuffling sound of his servant's knees as he retreated on the tatami floor. Then he heard the click of the sliding door as it locked into place, leaving him alone inside the moon-viewing pavilion.
So it had begun after all, the Old Man thought to himself. After so many years, the Hanging Butoh had reappeared. Where had he been? Dormant? Asleep? Hiding in the Z-Zone? His face contorted when he recalled that fiasco.
The Kobe 'Quake had been his biggest mistake. An early phase of his Fingermoon experiment that had gone seriously wrong. The EM coordinates had obviously been flawed. The gyrotron machines that fired the massive pulses-ten billion volts of artificial lightning hurled into the epicenter-grossly malfunctioned.
Now that Exo-City was out of reach, lost in the ionized fallout somewhere in the depths of Omnispace. A refuge for these outlaws and demons.
His thoughts returned to the Hanging Butoh. All this time, he thought he might actually be dead.
Dead? Well, that was the problem, wasn't it? The Butoh dancer knew the secret of death. He understood that algorithm too well. Understood the fastidiousness of that riddle. The precision of its illusion.
A good teacher had taught him, after all. That made him all the more dangerous. Too bad those members of the Camellia Group were falling victim to him. Carelessness, that was their first mistake. Hubris, well, that came with the territory . . . .
Master Ishi clapped his hands sharply, and the tatami-floor began to descend. It was a medieval elevator operated by a system of pulleys controlled by the Old Man's faceless staff. There was a smooth descent to the floor of the cave that lay four levels beneath the sprawling feudal mansion.
Built into the side of a hill, the cave had been carved out centuries ago by one of Master Ishi's ancestors, one of the original Lords of Fingermoon.
Master Ishi was the eighteenth Lord of Fingermoon. Their lineage dated back to the fourteenth-century when the first master discovered the hidden portal that led into the Hall of Darkness. Generation after generation, each in his own way, they sought to reach the same goal. They were alchemists whose art was to transform ordinary darkness into Darkness Incarnate.
"When Ultimate Darkness is breached, then True Transformation can be achieved." That was the secret motto of their clan.
How do you kill someone who is already dead? Master Ishi pondered the riddle as he stepped out of the elevator. Above him, the trick floor slid into place, replacing emptiness with emptiness.
The vast cave was illuminated not by electricity, nor by the torches that had been set in blackened iron rings that hung in the gallery. The light was generated by the force of his will alone.
He pointed into the darkness and a wing-flapping procession of tiny illuminated butterflies radiated from the tip of his index finger.
As their energy field coalesced, the luminous crescent of a moon flickered into view. Within a few moments, the cave had achieved the brightness of a blazing mirror.
So many things were stirring. He would have to piece them all together. A pattern would emerge. It always did.
But the pattern would have to be erased so as not to leave any clues behind. He was walking this path alone. He must walk it alone. That was the code of the Lords of Fingermoon. Other generations would have to find their own way.
The world must never suspect that the Shift had already taken place. That it had occurred, in fact, eons ago, before the first breath of time. None of the Lords of Fingermoon who preceded Master Ishi had ever come as far as he had. They had entered the many dimensions of Darkness, but had somehow become sidetracked by the spectacular light show.
They had mistaken the finger pointing at the moon with the moon itself. An age-old blunder.
But it was not one that Master Ishi was about to make.
Ka! A bright black flame erupted in his skull and Master Ishi felt the crow feathers spring from the prickly roots that ran down the quill-meridians of his spine. The Noh mask-like beak split his face in two, and a hollow caw rasped from his black throat as he lifted his wings.
He flew down the length of the tunnel until he reached the pile of bleached bones that lay at the bottom of the old well of Musashi, his doorway to the sky.
Among the human remains, a samurai's topknot was still attached to the brittle parchment of its scalp. The skull had been smashed to bits and lay scattered on the ground like a fine rain of porcelain. Femurs and tibia bones rattled as his claws grazed them in passing.
Then he bounded swiftly upwards towards the oval opening where the moss on the lip of the well touched the gray light of the sky.
How do you kill someone who is already dead? The black crow cawed as it circled the grounds of the estate, high above the lightning-spire of the pavilion. The answer was self-evident.
By bringing him back to life, of course. By making him dance again.