The Future Is Japanese (38 page)

Miss Sato ignored this impropriety. “But the Americans, the Chinese, the Koreans, they uniformly agree—she’s the ‘Pirate Queen of Tsushima.’ They all agree that if an act of mercy can resolve my hostage crisis, then Khadra would be the key actor.”

“That’s the lying mainstream media! They just say that for their own political advantage. Khadra doesn’t rule this island, she is just some pretty Somali girl who got mixed up with pirates! Every man she ever kissed gets killed. And I’ll tell you why—it’s because Khadra is a police informant. She rats out her lovers to the Chinese, or the Koreans, or the Americans—whoever pays her most.”

Miss Sato considered this assertion. She and Yoshida were both lost in the tall grass.

“Doesn’t anyone in this world have any sense of decency?” Miss Sato said at last.

“It’s the truth! Think about it. Once you’re a pirate’s woman, you can’t just divorce your pirate and walk away. He’s evil, he’s a killer, and to be free of him you have to have him killed.” Yoshida insistently stamped a path through some windblown, rotten bamboo. “It was Khadra who betrayed Boss Takenaka. Khadra got him blown to bits, eighty men dead in one night. A real massacre. Someday I’ll find the proof that Khadra herself did that. Then I’ll write that story and publish it. People will be totally amazed!”

“Maybe Khadra isn’t a pirate queen or a police spy or a hooker or a gangster moll, or any of those cruel things you say about her,” Miss Sato offered. “Maybe Khadra’s just a refugee woman who is cruelly exploited by violent men. At least, Khadra would know what that means to a woman. And why that oppression should end.”

“Oh no, Khadra’s evil, all right,” said Yoshida. “But I’m not in any hurry to denounce Khadra. That’s because Khadra is such great copy. Hot news stories about exotic, promiscuous pirate beauties will practically write themselves. Hey, hey, wait, look at this, look what my dog just found here! Good boy!” Yoshida fell to his bare knees in his cargo shorts. “This is Tsushima ginseng! Still growing up here in the good old mountain wilderness, imagine that! Wild ginseng is as rare as a Tsushima wildcat! This must be my lucky day.”

“You could sell that ginseng to a rich Korean,” Miss Sato said, “if there were any rich Koreans to eat ginseng anymore.”

“That was a joke of yours, wasn’t it,” said Yoshida, rising to his feet with a scowl. “Ginseng is Tsushima’s truest buried treasure. I could dig up this root right now if I had a shovel instead of my newspapers. Ginseng roots are shaped just like buried men, you know. They’re full of mystical vitamins.”

Miss Sato reached into her woven handbag and produced a half-empty bottle of multivitamin pills. “You don’t need any dark, ancient roots.”

Yoshida wiped wet dirt from his hands and dry-gulped a vitamin. “Well, let’s dig up one pirate treasure at a time. Boss Takenaka’s robot gun is buried somewhere on this hill. My map says we’re standing near it right now.” Yoshida waved his hands around the rugged woods, which had a commanding view of the island’s eastern slopes. “This was Takenaka’s favorite turf. He wanted to dig in deep, up here, with secret forts and pillboxes. Dig in and fight it out to the bitter end, Pacific-War style. Just like the kamikazes from World War II, a hundred years ago.”

“The kamikazes flew airplanes,” Miss Sato corrected him. “They didn’t dig any secret forts in hills.”

“Well,” said Yoshida, offended, “I meant to say the original kamikazes—the samurai who fought Mongols here on my island, one thousand years ago.”

“Weeds are pirates, while pirates spread like weeds.”

“That’s pretty clever,” said Yoshida.

“I read that in your newspaper.”

“I’ve got a real way with words,” Yoshida agreed. He gazed around, alertly smiling. “It’s incredible how fast the weeds grow during climate change. Turn your back, and the weeds just take over the world! Post-atomic Tokyo is one huge vacant lot now, a vast dead city full of weeds. Fukushima has mutant trees ten meters high!”

“Fukushima is not so bad as that,” Miss Sato said. “I’ve been to Fukushima. Fukushima is very peaceful and pretty. Fukushima has no people, but it is full of wildlife.”

Yoshida scowled. “What kind of wildlife is in Fukushima? Glowing, three-eyed dolphin mutants?”

“Whales are in Fukushima. Siberian cranes. Wild monkeys even.” Miss Sato laughed. “Monkeys are so funny. Monkeys are much kinder to each other than people are.”

Yoshida glanced up at the clouding sky and shifted his bundle of newspapers. “Now it’s trying to rain on us. All you have to do is talk about the ‘sacred wind,’ and here it comes to get you, the kamikaze! Did you ever notice that, when you speak the words ‘climate change,’ the weather will actually change?”

Miss Sato nodded. “Oh yes. Everybody says that nowadays. Even on the mainland.”

“I spotted some roofs on the far side of that ravine,” said Yoshida. He picked up his dog in one arm and hefted his newspapers in the other. “So I bet there’s a village where I can deliver my newspapers. We’ll be uphill of the sniper nest too. So maybe we can see it by looking down at it from a position of vantage.”

Yoshida was young and energetic rather than reasonable, but his thrashing through the tall weeds was soon rewarded. He led her from the choking, tangled overgrowth into a clearer area.

Boss Takenaka had built a concealed guardhouse here to defend his mountainside drug farms. Faded warnings of land mines were nailed to the larger trees.

A warm, sticky drizzle began to fall. It was the premonition of much worse weather to come.

“Land mines,” Miss Sato murmured.

“Those signs are probably lying,” Yoshida advised. He scampered forward along with his yapping terrier. Miss Sato followed, treading with care in his footsteps.

The pirate guardhouse was almost invisible, built to fool aerial surveillance by military drones. The big hut was roofed with a dense thatch, thoroughly smeared with mud and festooned with flourishing gourd vines. Crooked sniper holes allowed a few rays of daylight.

The yawning door was hung all over with lucky pirate amulets. Superstitions had arrived here from all over the planet: wreathed anchors, topless mermaids, see-no-evil monkeys, marijuana leaves, hooded skeletons. Crossed revolvers, hypodermics, bloody dice, Taoist yin-yangs, lightning bolts, ninja masks …

Inside the guardhouse were three stone steps leading downward.Dried herbs and spider webs dangled from the rafters. The uneven floor of the hut—just simple, damp, pounded earth—was strewn with rotting tatami mats.

The terrier trotted down the steps and barked at a pile of damp hay in the hut’s darkest corner. The hay-pile sat up. It revealed itself as a slumbering derelict under a thick straw raincoat.

“Nice dog,” the blind man said mildly, grasping at a long stick. “I know your voice, doggie! If you are here, then your master, that journalist, must be nearby.”

“That’s right,” Yoshida admitted, “and fancy meeting you in here, Zeta One.”

“The sacred wind always makes me sleepy,” said Zeta One. He crowned his dented head with a rain hat. His conical hat was the size of a bicycle wheel and, from above, made him resemble some harmless patch of weedy island sod.

Zeta One sniffed aloud. “So, what brings you to this lonely place, with your pretty female friend, who is standing there? Should I ask that?”

“She is not my girlfriend,” said Yoshida. “She is Miss Sato from the Federation of Nine Relief Societies. She’s a peace activist from the mainland.”

“So then you’re from Nagoya, Miss Sato,” said Zeta One, fingering his pilgrim’s sacred cane. “I can tell that by the way you talk.”

“But I haven’t said a word,” Miss Sato said.

“See, you really are from Nagoya.”

“Are you living inside this shack these days?” asked Yoshida. “I haven’t seen you in Tsushima City lately. At least, not since that gambling house exploded. The casino that kicked you out.”

“Ah, well then,” said Zeta One, smiling blindly into the dim air lit by sniper holes, “a fine young gentleman like yourself doesn’t frequent the brothels and gambling dens where a reprobate like me passes his time.”

“Well, yes, being a journalist, I do spend my time in there, actually. I was lucky not to get killed.”

“We keep different hours,” said Zeta One. “Poor, blind wretch that I am, I can’t tell any difference between night and day. It’s only due to the kindness of strangers that I get by on humble charity bowls of sweet-potato porridge.”

A flicker of irritation crossed Yoshida’s youthful face. “So—what exactly are you doing in here?”

“I am sleeping the big storm away,” said the blind man with a tender, confiding smile. “I can’t see the lightning, so the lightning might kill me. The sound of thunder on my poor blind ears, that always makes me jump with fear.”

“I don’t believe a word of that,” Yoshida objected. “Miss Sato and I were just discussing you, not one hour ago. And yet here you are, ‘like the daughter-in-law who ate the autumn eggplants.’ ”

“No one believes in your old proverbs anymore.”

“My old proverbs have nothing to do with it! Obviously you knew that we were coming here! You were lurking in here, waiting for us.”

“You’re such nice people,” said Zeta One, “that this must be a blessing from the Goddess of Mercy. You see, in penance for the many past sins of my wretched former life, I have vowed to visit all six temples of the Kannon on Tsushima. Now that I’m on my sacred pilgrimage to the east, west, north, and south of this island. Meeting you is how the Goddess rewards me for my piety.”

“What a sweet thing to say,” Miss Sato interrupted. “I’m glad to hear of such a blessing! Because I’ve been searching for you, Mr. Zeta One. I bring you some personal greetings from Mrs. Mieko Nagai. Mrs. Nagai is an unfortunate hostage who is held captive in chains, as you know. And she told me you were kind to her. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”

“Well, that’s all for you to judge, miss,” said Zeta One, adjusting a twisted leather thong on his huge rain hat. “This poor old bean of mine took quite a pounding in the old days. So I’m afraid I don’t remember any Mrs. Michiko what’s-her-name … Never saw one glimpse of that lady, can’t remember what I don’t see, please forgive me.” He briefly bowed where he sat.

“Oh stop all that,” Yoshida objected. “You wouldn’t fool a ten-year-old child!”

Zeta One meekly and silently rubbed at his long cane.

“You got that cane from the Mechatronic Visionary Centre,” said Yoshida. “You did, didn’t you?”

Zeta One chuckled. “What, a poor blind wanderer like me, who can’t even read a computer screen? Whatever would I know of your fancy technology?”

“You’re in and out of that damn lab all the time, you big faker! You wrapped that metal antenna in leather, and you smeared it with dirt, but that thing’s packed with circuitry. That cane has got some kind of radar.”

Alarmed by the anger in his master’s voice, the terrier began barking furiously at a spider. The spider, disturbed by the rain, was inching up the timber of a ridgepole.

Without looking at the spider—without listening, without even turning his much-battered head—Zeta One hefted his staff, reached out, and precisely mashed the spider into paste.

“You shouldn’t scold a blind man about his cane, Mr. Yoshida,” said Miss Sato, in the rising patter of rain. “That isn’t decent.”

“I can tell by your sweet voice that you’re a kindhearted lady, Miss Sato,” said Zeta One as he levered himself to his huge, callused, straw-sandaled, and malodorous feet. “Not like this nosy young man with his Communist scandal sheet. I’ll be on my way to the local temple of mercy. No one cares if an old blind man is soaked to the skin by the typhoon.”

“You’re not leaving until you tell us why you were waiting here for us,” Yoshida said.

“Who, me? But I want nothing from you!” said Zeta One. He shook a leather bag on a belt under his shaggy raincoat. “Unless you want to give me a few gold coins to gamble away at the dice house. That’s my only amusement—to listen to the rattle of the dice and the cries of the yakuza gamblers.”

“I’ll go with you to the temple,” said Miss Sato at once.

Yoshida was scandalized. “You can’t wander off with this sleazy character! You can’t trust him. How can a blind man gamble with dice? He can’t even see the spots!”

“You might as well ask why this pirate island has gold coins!” Miss Sato shouted. “Nobody wants Tsushima’s stupid coins. Mint all the fake treasure you want, your gold has no legal value with any government! Pirate gold is worse than trash!”

Zeta One rumbled with laughter. “I do so enjoy the witty chatter of clever people. Sadly, since my brain was damaged, I can’t keep up with the likes of you. Goodbye.” He tapped his way toward the stairs of the guardhouse.

Yoshida blocked his way. The two men confronted one another for a moment, Yoshida glaring and Zeta One mildly turning his ravaged face to the dirt floor. Then, reluctantly, Yoshida stepped aside.

Zeta One found the yawning door of the hut with the tip of his stick. Then he left.

Miss Sato followed him. The forest trail was a sinister maze of briars, loose rocks, and rain-slick muddy slopes. Also, it was raining. But Zeta One moved at quite a brisk pace, setting his huge, sandaled feet with firm decision, like a man placing go stones.

“I’d appreciate it if you stopped following me,” Zeta One said at last, stopping but not turning to face her.