Less Than Human (19 page)

E
leanor hesitated, then got out of the car. She’d be safe with Ishihara, surely. She hurried a couple of steps to catch up
as he stalked away, keeping her eyes on his stooped back.

They were parked in a narrow street shaded by two- and three-story buildings. Ishihara had stopped right next to the building
wall, but still there was barely room for another car to pass. The gutters were black with dirt and concrete walls bled dark
lines of pollution. Flaking blue plastic bins were chained in a line. Overhead, electricity lines buzzed faintly. It could
have been a scene from the 1980s.

Ishihara ducked inside a narrow entry. When Eleanor followed, she realized it was a path between buildings. She pinched her
nostrils against the smell of mold and urine. The path opened up into a small courtyard, flanked by an old single-story block
of flats sandwiched between the higher buildings in front, rear, and sides.

Each flat was entered by a short path off the courtyard. The building must date from the 1970s at least, with dirt walls and
wooden frame. Eleanor had lived in one of these places when she was a student in the 1990s. It had been an anachronism then.
How could this one have survived for so long?

“Stubborn landlady,” said Ishihara, seemingly reading her mind. “She left it in her will that all tenants had to freely agree
to rebuild before the developers could do anything.”

They passed the first doorway, which was surrounded by neat rows of potted plants. A flowery-lettered sign hung over the second
doorway.
CHURCH OF THE SERENE MIND.

Ishihara rapped on the flimsy wooden door. The only plants near the second doorway were a couple of aloes thrusting their
prickles outward as if trying to hook passersby. Nobody answered Ishihara’s knock, although a curtain in the window of the
far flat twitched.

Ishihara rapped again, louder this time. “Open up, priest,” he yelled.

Another pause. Then the door opened to the length of a fifteen-centimeter chain.

“What?” said a throaty, suspicious voice. The smell of incense wafted out the crack.

“It’s me, Ishihara. You remember.”

“Cop Ishihara?”

“Yeah. Open up, I brought you a visitor.”

The door shut, then opened again. In the dim interior a small man stood blinking at the sunlight. He wore a threadbare cotton
kimono that had once been indigo, open over a gray undershirt.

He glanced up at Ishihara, then peered at Eleanor. “Ooh, a gaijin-san. I’ve only got green tea, y’know.”

“This is McGuire-san. McGuire-san, this is Gen. He’s a bastard priest.”

The “bastard priest” cocked his head on one side and kept his eyes on Eleanor. “By that, he means both my parentage and my
sect.”

His gaze was quite impersonal, and Eleanor relaxed a little.

Ishihara held up the plasbag he’d been dangling in one hand. “We brought snacks. Picked ’em up on the way.”

That got him a gap-toothed grin. “Come in, then.”

Except for the reek of incense and the prominent altar on one wall, inside the flat was very similar to Eleanor’s memories
of her student days. Dark, because both side walls had no windows, and with the musty smell of unaired tatami. At least it
was cooler than outside. There was another smell, too, that reminded her of sushi.

Ishihara, too, sniffed rudely before sitting on the proffered cushion.

From the kitchen on the other side of the patched shoji door, Gen chuckled. “You came on my bath-cleaning day. It’s vinegar.”

Eleanor knelt formally on the other side of the square table. It was the only item of furniture in the middle of the room.
A low bookcase stood beside the altar. She couldn’t read most of the kanji on the spines, although jammed in between the difficult-looking
titles were a few comics.

Presumably Gen had so few belongings they could be stuffed with his futon into the cupboard, behind the sliding doors papered
with a faded water pattern. Tears in the paper had been repaired over the years with a patchwork of picture postcards.

“Here you go.” Gen shoved the shoji impolitely aside with one foot and put a teapot and three cups on the table. He took the
plasbag from Ishihara and opened it with “mmm”s of delight.

“My favorite, kusa-mochi.”

“I know,” said Ishihara. “You remind me every time I come.”

“You haven’t come for a while.”

Eleanor was conscious of Gen’s small, bright eyes flicking over her face and hands. She tried not to stare back, but curiosity
won. A puckered, bulbous nose dominated his wrinkled face. The unevenness of his face contrasted strangely with the smooth,
shaven surface of his scalp. She couldn’t tell how old he was—any age between forty and seventy.

“Tell us about the Silver Angels,” said Ishihara.

Gen finished pouring the tea without a sign that he’d heard. He put one cup in front of Ishihara and one in front of Eleanor.

“Why them? They’re not a religion.” Gen blew gently on his tea as he spoke.

“Never mind why. We want to know more about them,” Ishihara said.

“If the mighty Religious Affairs Department doesn’t know who they are and what they’re doing, how should I?”

“He bears a grudge because we had to investigate him once,” Ishihara explained to Eleanor. He recrossed his legs into a more
informal pose and picked up his tea. “We know what they’re doing. You can explain why.”

Gen blew on his tea again and sipped it thoughtfully. Ishihara slurped his.

Eleanor burned her tongue on her tea. She didn’t think Mari and her friends would have anything to do with Buddhism. To them,
it would be associated with the dead; with constricting clothes and enforced silence; with priests around whose visits the
year was organized and to pay whom everyone went a little short; with sickly sweet incense—with a world that was nearly gone.

“The Angels,” said Gen slowly, “call themselves the Third Children. Nobody knows about them. Yet.”

There was a short silence, filled with his last word. Somewhere nearby a vacuum cleaner droned. The room didn’t seem cool
anymore. It was hot and still.

“Somebody knows about them.” Ishihara’s voice grated harshly in the quiet. “And four of those are dead.”

Eleanor’s hand shook tea onto the vinyl table surface. If it had been Mari …

“They tried to connect themselves to computers. At least, that’s what it looked like,” Ishihara said.

“I know someone in the group,” said Gen. Before Ishihara could speak, he added, “And no, I will not tell you who. He is a
minor member only.”

Ishihara settled back, frowning, but said nothing.

“They have one guru. He calls himself Adam.”

“We know that,” grunted Ishihara.

“Adam controls several main disciples who give themselves angel names. Samael, Iroel, Gagiel, Melan.”

His precise, un-English pronunciation gave the archaic names a curious solemnity.

“You can get all this off the Net if you know where to look,” he added, breaking the spell. “Adam preaches … do you want the
long version?” Gen cocked a nearly hairless eyebrow at Ishihara.

“No, thanks.”

Gen rolled his eyes and included Eleanor in his long-suffering look. She felt obscurely pleased.

“Adam preaches a kind of asceticism. He advocates merging the human soul with technology to achieve denial of the body in
an attempt to deny desire. Desire being the root of all suffering,” Gen added in an aside to Eleanor.

Ishihara helped himself to another kusa-mochi, but his body was tense with concentration.

“So he is Buddhist?” Eleanor said, confused. Wasn’t Nirvana the goal of Buddhists?

“They use Buddhism, but basically they despise things of the body. You know, blood, spit, shit, wrinkles, dirt.” Gen smiled
at her as if to soften the bluntness of his words. “They flush these things away or hide them. It’s shameful even to speak
of them. They use the excuse that the body gets in the way of transcendence.”

Eleanor remembered a moment of horrible embarrassment as a child, when she had invited one of her Japanese friends over to
play. The child’s mother had whispered obviously that
foreign houses are too dirty, invite her over to our place.

“Adam scares his followers with talk of a plague that will wipe out the human race. Only those with inorganic bodies will
survive. That’s why they try to connect themselves to machines.” Gen looked at Eleanor shrewdly. “They like machines because
machines are clean.”

“Not if you’re a maintenance engineer,” she said.

Ishihara chuckled.

“Machines do not decay,” Gen said. “The Angels fear dirt and sickness because it reminds them that they are mortal.” He picked
up another kusa-mochi and examined it. “They fear death, that’s all.” He popped the sweet into his mouth with relish.

“We all fear death,” grunted Ishihara. “But we all die sometime.”

“Yes, and these children don’t understand that the present is our only defense against the fear of death,” said Gen, licking
the sugar dust from his fingers. “They’ve never learned to live in the present. All their lives they’ve been told to study
for the future, and their parents did the same.”

“Look where it got them,” said Ishihara.

“Exactly. The children see their parents and think, not me. They worked so hard for the future, but in the end, all the future
holds is death. Only the present holds life.”

Eleanor felt sick. She had an awful vision of Mari lying like Nakamura in a pool of blood.
All the future holds is death.

“’Scuse me,” Eleanor muttered. She stood up, wobbling. Her leg had gone to sleep. “Need to go outside.”

She stumbled through a tiny kitchen, down a step, into a corridor lined with bundles of old newspapers tied with string. She’d
come the wrong way. But no, here was a wooden sliding door that rattled when she slid it open onto outside air.

A couple of meters away, a crumbling concrete fence stood between the flats and the side of the next-door apartment block.
The tall building shut out sun and view, but in the tiny courtyard she could breathe easier than inside.

Ornamental bamboo bulged the sides of a faded blue bucket used as a pot. Beside it sat a large, reddish stone surrounded by
dandelions and other weeds. And dirt, raked in a spiral pattern. This brown dirt wasn’t as effective as the white sand of
Ryoanji temple, but the principle was the same. You followed the lines with your eyes and didn’t have to think about anything.
Rather, you followed the lines with your eyes until you successfully thought of nothing.

“Do you like my garden?” said Gen’s voice at her shoulder. “I’m particularly fond of the rock. I stole it from the construction
site one night when they were filling in our local river.” He sighed. “That river was there since before Osaka became a town.
No good will come of all this.” He waved his hand upward and outward, indicating everything beyond the concrete blocks.

“The garden is restful,” said Eleanor, and meant it. She felt better. “What can I … if my niece is with the Angels, how can
we persuade her to come home?”

He looked at her, then let his gaze drift out to the rock. “I can’t imagine that a child of her generation will feel it’s
her duty. I suppose you will have to persuade her that she’ll be happier at home.”

If Mari had been happy at school or at home, would she have joined the Angels in the first place?

“It is indeed a challenge,” said Gen, as if she’d spoken aloud. “She has been taught that happiness means possessing many
things and having a good time. Then she discovers that this is not so. In her confusion she turns to someone who offers her
a different way to happiness. This involves becoming part of a close group, of trusting others—perhaps with her life—and of
doing new things.”

“But …” Eleanor found she had nothing to say.

“I don’t have to ask you which one she would choose.”

Ishihara’s footsteps sounded heavy on the kitchen tiles. “Nice try with the rake.” He looked over Eleanor’s head. “Be better
with another rock, though.”

“Perhaps you will volunteer your head?” said Gen politely.

Ishihara laughed loudly.

Eleanor pushed past him back into the main room. She must do something to find Mari.

“Can we go?” she said.

“Wait a minute.” Ishihara turned to Gen. “Do you think the Angels could be dangerous?”

Gen grimaced noncommittally. “I don’t know. There are only a few of them, but they have significant technical know-how. And
I don’t think Adam is stable. He could suddenly decide society is out to get him and strike first.”

“Like Soum in the nineties,” said Ishihara. “Do they have a commune?”

Gen shook his head. “I don’t think so. They communicate electronically.” He caught Eleanor’s eye to include her in his audience.
“There are no shortcuts to enlightenment. You must live, create karma, die, and repeat this until you become Buddha. All souls
will eventually achieve this. Anyone like Adam who wishes to be immortal is to be pitied, for immortality does not mean escape
from the Wheel. Remember the Enlightened One’s dying words—‘All that has form, dies.’”

There was a moment of silence, the only sound the susurration of her own breath and the thud of her own pulse.

“All right, let’s go,” said Ishihara. “Thanks, Gen. Don’t come out.”

“I won’t.” Gen smiled at Eleanor, an expression both innocent and lecherous. “I get a sunburned head.”

Eleanor and Ishihara walked back past the other flats to his car. The sunlight sizzled on Eleanor’s skin. She could almost
feel the freckles popping out.

“I dunno if that helped.” Ishihara glanced at her as they got into the car. “Don’t believe everything the old fellow says.
He gets a bit mystical sometimes.”

Eleanor was touched by his concern. Gen hadn’t given her any idea how to find Mari, but at least she knew what kind of nuts
the girl was involved with.

“I’m an engineer,” she said. “Mystical isn’t my thing.”

He grunted in amusement. “I’ll drop you back at the subway.” He pressed the key into the start button. “You’ll be wanting
to get back to work, eh?”