Island Worlds (5 page)

Ronin Hall was located in the shabby, rundown Beverly Hills section, an area of thronged streets, shops selling cheap goods and old mansions cut up into slum housing for immigrants. Signs glared and flashed in multilingual profusion, projecting holographic images of goods or entertainments to be had. The dojo was located in a wing of a building which had once been the palatial home of a series of briefly famous flat-screen stars.

He saw no sign of Fu outside, so he went in. The place was arranged on several levels and from somewhere he could hear the clatter of a kendo class. In a side room, he caught the glitter of real swords, wielded by iaido practioners. A short Japanese with a slightly pockmarked face walked to Thor and bowed slightly. He wore a lightweight gi of the karate practitioner. "May I help you, sir?"

"I was to meet Chih' Chin Fu here," Thor said.

"He should be here in a few minutes for the jodo class. Are you a jodoka?"

"Aikido. I'm here from out of town and Fu said I might find an instructor for an aikido workout here."

"We might be able to accommodate you," the man said. "Dr. Kobayashi will be finishing his iaido class in five minutes. He's always looking for someone new to practice Tomiki system with. If you'll let me have your card, I'll put you down for an hour and get you an outfit." The man walked away with his card just as Fu walked in the door.

Fu was a bit taller than he had appeared on the screen. He still wore the silver coverall, with the addition of a beefeater hat and a brass-tipped walking stick. He grinned toothily as they shook hands. "You find somebody to practice with?"

"A Dr. Kobayashi," Thor affirmed.

"That old guy will work you to death. He just loves it. Look, I have to go change. We'll get together when the class breaks up and we'll go someplace where we can talk, okay?"

"Fine," Thor said. The manager came back with Thor's card and sparring clothes. In a dressing room, he changed into the long, black hakama trousers and white jacket. An elderly man with a white goatee introduced himself as Kobayashi and conducted him to a side room floored with straw mats. On the way, they passed the jodo class, which Fu was teaching. The students were sparring vigorously with fifty-one inch sticks and, by ancient custom, they wore no protective gear. Many of them already sported red marks and swellings where they had not defended quickly enough.

Kobayashi proved to be far stronger and fitter than he looked and was every bit as fierce as Fu had predicted. It was a long, hot, sweaty hour and Thor finished it sore and bruised, but he was feeling much better. He showered and resumed his street clothes.

Fu met him at the entrance. "You had dinner yet?"

"No. I'm starved." He realized that he was truly ravenous.

"I know a good place a few blocks from here. We can walk if you like."

"That sounds good. I need to work out some of these bruises. I'll leave my car here."

On the street, Fu studied him. "First thing, though, we have to find something for your head."

"My head?" Thor said, mystified.

"No question about it. You're trying to pass as a prole, aren't you? The clothes are okay, but the haircut's all wrong. Come on." A few doors down, Fu led him into a clothing shop where he selected a black silk bandanna and tied it around Thor's head buccaneer-fashion. "That's better." He turned to the girl at the sales counter. "You got any lipstick, my sweet?" he asked.

"What color?" she said, flashing iridescent eyelids.

"Yellow?"

She reached into her beltbag and came up with a stick of the requisite color. He drew a horizontal stripe beneath Thor's eyes and across his nose. "This is an Apache stripe. Face paint is very subdued this year."

"You aren't wearing any at all," Thor said.

"California students aren't wearing it this semester. Come on, let's go get something to eat."

On the way, they stopped in front of a bank and put their cards into the row of slots set into the facade. Thor keyed the instrument to transfer the forty thousand dollars from his account to Fu's. Fu handed over a plastic carrier with a tiny crystal imbedded in its face. Thor stuck the carrier into his pocket.

"That's the cheapest piece of first-rate scholarship you'll ever buy," Fu assured him.

Thor noted a glowing graffito on a stained brick wall, painted over the faded graffiti of years past. "What's that?" he asked. "I've been seeing that symbol everyplace since I got to L.A." The symbol consisted of two figures: ©1.

"You haven't run across that one before? It's been the top graffito for months!"

"I've been out of touch," Thor said, defensively.

"You must've been on the bottom of the Marianas Trench. The cross in the circle is one of the old astronomical symbols for Earth. The other figure, as you've no doubt already figured out, is a one. What's that make?"

"Earth First," Thor said.

"There you go," Fu said. "And here we are." They went into a small restaurant where robot carts wheeled among the tables, bearing trays of dimsum. The place was crowded and noisy. Most L.A. establishments were open twenty-four hours. They found an unoccupied table. A cart came by and Fu reached for his card but Thor made restraining motions. Fu wasted no time in returning his card to his pocket. Thor thrust his card into the cart's slot. "Help yourself," he said. They took bottles of beer from the refrigerated basket on the cart's bottom level and loaded their table with plates of pork buns, shu-mai, spring rolls and stuffed duck's feet.

"It's none of my business," Fu said, "but this study you've commissioned and got with such commendable speed is not what I'd expect from a scion of the illustrious founding families of our expansion into space. It's what I'd expect from a media consulting firm, or a programming survey analyst."

"You're right," Thor said. "It's none of your business." He dunked a pork bun into a sweet dipping sauce. "But, what the hell. I'll tell you anyway." He took the folded Earth First manifesto from his pocket and handed it to Fu. "This is what the Earth Firsters are going to put before the U.N. and the Space Council in a few days. They asked that we refrain from showing this around before they go public, but screw 'em. I don't owe them any favors." He found himself telling Fu the whole story; about his plans, the party, his talk with Bob and his revelatory viewing of holo programs that day. There was no real reason for saying all this, except that he had to talk to somebody, and he sensed a kindred spirit in Fu.

Fu handed the paper back. "I've been wondering when it'd come to this. It's been in the air a long time. It's only the first move, you know."

"I got that impression. Carstairs referred to it as an 'opening campaign.' What I can't figure is why the McNaughtons are backing it."

"I can't help you there. Big-business practice isn't my field. My field is media history and trend, and I know that the fastest way for a government to bring any medium to heel is to threaten to yank its broadcast license. That's the history of control, my friend. Once you control licensing, everything else falls right into your hands." He surveyed the litter of empty plates and bottles atop the table. "I think we've done all the damage we're going to do here. Do you feel up to some slumming or are you too tired?"

"I'm up to it," Thor said. "Are you offering to be my guide?"

"I can save you a lot of time. I'll steer you to just the kind of place your friend Robert Ciano would consider to be most educational. And all of it free, gratis."

"Then lead on." They walked back to his rented vehicle and Fu twirled his walking stick like a baton. The streets were as crowded as ever. Thor looked up and could not see a single star. The air of Los Angeles was clean these days, but it was so ablaze with light around the clock that on the clearest night it was difficult to see a full moon.

Fu examined the battered little electrocar with a critical eye, poking it here and there with his stick. "Good choice," he pronounced at last. "Very inconspicuous. What do you usually drive?"

"'A 2045 Porsche."

"I might've known. Manual drive?"

"The works. I even brake it manually. Or should I say pedally?"

Fu climbed into the vehicle and propped his stick between his knees. He leaned forward and keyed a destination into the dash control. '"Our first stop will be the Watts development. Ever been there?" Thor shook his head. "Well, it can be a rough place. If we should run into trouble, just remember: take no prisoners, call no cops and just walk away from it if you're in any condition to walk. That is, unless you feel like spending the next few months in the never-never-land of the L.A. court system."

"It's that bad?" Thor asked.

"My, my," Fu shook his head in wonderment, "you have been out of touch!"

Thor leaned back in his seat and watched the cityscape go by. All of the most splendid buildings were old ones. With their nighttime illumination, they gave the skyline a fairyland look. But Thor knew that, close up, most of them would be shabby and dilapidated.

"How about you?" Thor asked. "How did you come to do a study on changing attitudes toward the push into space?"

"Changing popular attitudes," Fu corrected. "The attitudes of people who think seriously about it have changed little if at all, for or against. People who take the trouble to study, to read and keep track of developments, usually form their own opinions. Popular opinion, mass culture, that's something completely different and that's where holovision comes in. The vast majority of people in the First World and much of the Third get virtually all of their information about the world around them from the holos. It's the most effective propaganda tool ever invented." He was gesticulating enthusiastically, clearly onto his pet subject.

"It's replaced virtually all other media. Radio is gone except for intervehicular communication. Television is obsolete because holo is so much more effective. Less than twenty percent of the population is literate because it's too difficult a skill to acquire and who'd read anyway, with their heads plugged into the holo every non-working hour? Those that have work to do, anyway."

He took a deep breath. "Well, you'll get most of this when you go over my study. I chose that subject first of all because it's the most notable trend in holo programming these days, but also because I've wanted for years to emigrate and I keep an eye on developments like that." He began tapping out a snare-drum rhythm on the dashboard.

"Where were you planning to head out to?"

"The Moon. I have relatives in Armstrong and some other places. My clan's a big one."

"You may have to move sooner than you thought, if you don't want to go out as a licensed contract employee. Of course, your field may not be one of the ones they put under government control."

"Don't you believe it, man. Anything having to do with media handling is going to be under their thumb. That's why I plan to get out as soon as I can."

"And what would you do out there? I know there's always a demand for people with technical skills. Is there a lot of media work to be had?"

"Sure. Miners and settlers and convicts need entertainment and information, too. They have their own networks and info services and there are always teaching positions to be had in the schools. But that's not what I expect to be doing."

"What, then?"

"Politics." He seemed reluctant to expand on it, perhaps thinking he had already said too much. Thor knew it wouldn't take much to get him talking again.

"I wasn't aware that there were any politics to practice offworld."

"There will be. Agitation for some degree of independence is already starting. Where there's political agitation, parties are going to form. And what's the first thing a political party needs?"

Thor thought a moment. "Publicity, media exposure."

"In a word," Fu said triumphantly, "propaganda. That's where I come in." He glanced sideways at Thor. "Look, you don't impress me as a professor or a business exec. The way I read it, you're a grad student like me. Am I right?"

"That's right. Space-habitation engineering."

"So you've spent, what, six or seven straight years in university?"

"Closer to eight," Thor admitted.

"Then how come you're so far out of touch with what's going on? Universities are medieval institutions, I grant you, but students are the trendiest people on Earth. Undergrads, especially."

"I got my degree at Yale," Thor said, self-consciously. "I've been doing thesis work at Cambridge and Bern."

"That explains a lot. Where were you hoping to work? But, hell, you're a Taggart. I guess you can just take your pick."

"It's not that easy," said Thor, shaking his head. "I'm headed for the Belt. They won't take any deadwood out there, and family connections don't count for much if you don't have the needed skills. Besides, there isn't much love lost between the Earthbound and offworld branches of my family. There are more Taggarts and Cianos out there than they know what to do with anyway."

"You figure on going to Luna first?"

"That's the way it's looking," Thor said. "This is in strictest confidence, but I may just be going out unofficially and incognito. I want to finish my grad work. By that time, I won't be able to emigrate except as a licensed public servant under contract. But I'll have no trouble getting a temporary visa to go to the Moon for study or tourism. From there, maybe I'll be able to buy a passage out to the Belt. Business is conducted on a pretty freewheeling basis out there."

Fu was silent for a moment. "I may be able to put you onto something. Let me think about it for a while."

The Watts complex was coming into view. It blocked out an unbelievable section of sky. Parts of it blazed with light but large sections were dark. Inaugurated on January 1, 2001, the Watts development was to have been the showpiece answer to the ugliness of urban sprawl and the decay of the inner cities. Touted as "the housing of the Twenty-First Century," the Watts development had called for the razing of an immense slum and replacing it with a forty-story structure of near self-sufficiency. The upper levels were mostly for housing, the lower levels being devoted to shopping malls, entertainment arcades, schools, public services, even light manufacturing. It was to lead the way in solving the urban problems of a century.