Jake Maroc - Shan Part 21

"Not that we know of. So far. If you would submit to several morea"

She got out of there, fed up with their enigmatic replies. They were like ancient Greek oracles: they opined and said nothing; left you to manufacture your own fears in private.

Three separate crews were hard at work repairing her father's junk. Three Oaths had borrowed a junk from his vast fleet and, mooring it near the first one in Aberdeen Harbor, had installed himself and his family on the unfamiliar vessel. This was where he had brought Bliss when he had taken her home from the hospital.

He had said nothing to her about Jake or his whereabouts until they were aboard. Though she had queried him several times in the hospital, < three="" oaths="" had="" managed="" to="" avoid="" any="" answer.="" she="" had="" enough="" worries="" without="" adding="" to="">

"Where in j.a.pan?" she repeated.

"That I do not know, bou-sehk." He shrugged. "Tokyo, most likely. That is where his Yakuza friend is, neh?

"Mikio Komoto? Yes."

"Yakuza murdered the Jian. He has gone to find out why."

For the first time Bliss became aware of the extraordinary tension emanating from her father. That is normal, she thought. Shi Zilin was everything to him.

She had fought not to think about the Jian during those moments in the hospital when she had been lucid. Most of the time she had slept, drugged and insensate. At other times it seemed as if she was drifting through clouds of dreamstuff so tangible she wanted to reach out and feel them. She dreamt of light and sensation; she dreamt of floating, of flying. And of spheres more vast than her imagining. Spheres which spun in stately time within the bosom of a spangled blackness deep and wide.

Often she would awake certain that one of the spheresthe closest to herhad about its terrain a disturbingly familiar cast. Then, with a start so palpable it made her shudder, the familiarity was brought into focus: the face of Shi Zilin just before she placed the pillow over it.

Compulsively, then, she would race away from the image, engaging the doctors or, if he was available, her father, in conversation. Speaking about anything at all so long as it kept her away from the image.

But once, she dreamt of the image. And in that moment became aware of the expression on the Jian's face as it was occluded by the white cloud of the pillow. His eyes were closed, of that she was certain.

Yet she was just as sure that he was watching her. How was that possible?

She thought of da-hei, the great darkness where all that was incorporeal about man resided.

She wondered if Buddha would ever forgive her for what she had done. But Shi Zilin had asked it of her as a favor. She was saving him from a.s.sa.s.sins' bullets.

Now, for the first time since the incident, Bliss wondered how the Jian knew that they were coming; knew even before the walla-walla b.u.mped against the junk's hull. If he knew, she thought now, why didn't he act to save himself? Surely he had time to get us both off the junk.

"Bou-sehk!"

Heard Three Oaths's voice as if from a great distance.

"You did not answer my question."

I did not hear your question, Father, she thought.

"Are you all right?"

She opened her mouth to answer him, though, indeed, she did not know the answer. Instead she was overcome. The strange emotion inside her that had been stirring like a snake in spring, emerging from slothful hibernation, gyred upward. And in its ascendancy it transported her.

Once again she was stretched over the skin of the heaving South China Sea as she had been when she had been bent over the dying Form of Shi Zilin.

She saw the black bulk of the tankers, newly from the Strait of Malacca, full of flaming dark oil. She heard the sea erns calling, saw :heir great flecked bodies dipping and gliding on the air currents above her. Below she heard the deep drawn-out symphony reverberating through the ocean current. Carried for miles on end, the whale schools communicated in an ancient arcane song. Elemental and powerful, their speech filled her up as if she had been an empty vessel, waiting upon the bosom of the sea.

And in their cries was recognition, just a flash, a white-hot instant of revelation that shook her to her core. It froze her consciousness even while it galvanized the inner heart of her mind. She saw and felt it once the source of this strange emotion. She felt her qi linked and she thought, All G.o.ds bear witness this cannot be happening. I must belosing my mind!

"look like?"

A mi tuo fo!

"seen a ghost."

Felt herself being shaken and at last her eyes focused on her father's concerned face. "By the Celestial Blue Dragon," he said, "you've gone as white as milk. Are you ill?"

Buddha, she thought. Buddha protect me from this madness. "I'm not" She put her hand to her forehead. "I'm not feeling at all well in fact." She stood on wobbly legs. "Will you excuse me?"

She clutched at the railing, her body bent over. She tried to vomit and could not.

"Bou-sehk!"

She wanted to stop this feeling of being in two places at once. The South China Sea beckoned with all its thrumming animal sounds.

What is happening to me? she thought wildly. She clutched at her head as her qi plunged downward into the depths of the water, listening to the atonal symphony. Listening a "Art is truth," Fo Saan had said to Jake. "Art takes nothinga blank page, a white canvasand makes of it something affecting. Art can only be defined by the emotion it engenders in the viewer. It does not presuppose; it does not contend. Like the great seas and rivers of the world, art is one of the Lords of the Ravines. Its power comes from keeping low."

It was Fo Saan who trained Jake in the ways of the mind and of the body. It was Fo Saan who, unbeknownst to Jake, had been sent by Shi Zilin to do just that when Jake was just a boy of seven. Fo Saan in his own way had been a part of the yuhn-hyun, the inner circle. He had also been responsible for training Jake's childhood playmate, Bliss.

It had been Fo Saan who had taught Jake about cham hai, sinking in, and its ultimate phase, ba-mahk.

"There will come a time," Fo Saan had said to his young pupil, "when you will find yourself contending against shadows. Perhaps you will know your enemy, perhaps not. In any event, his intention will be hidden from you. You will strike out here! There! But you will strike nothing. Only shadows.

"Then you must heed my words and seek to become one with the Lords of the Ravines. You, too, must keep low."

This was what was in Jake's mind when he told Three Oaths Tsun that he was going to j.a.pan. Of course his anxiety for the safety of Mikio Komoto was a major factor. But Jake was acutely aware that the yuhn-hyun was under attack. He did not know who his enemies were or what their ultimate goal was. The time that Fo Saan had foreseen for him had at last come and by taking himself away from Hong Kong, from the center of the arena of contention, he was keeping low. Hopefully then, he would gather to him the power of the Lords of the Ravines.

Fo Saan's bright b.u.t.ton eyes dominated Jake's dream as he slept on the flight out of Kai Tak airport. He had slept fitfully for weeks, and not at all since his father's death. And his fight with the dantai, though effecting no permanent damage, had taken a lot out of him both physically and emotionally. The thought that a Yakuza clan was involved in his father's a.s.sa.s.sination made no sense. It chilled him to the bone, for his connection with the j.a.panese underworld was directly through Mikio. Had the raid signaled a sinister turn of events in the Yakuza war? Was Mikio already dead, the victim of a rival's katana?

Fo Saan: "You are no longer a child; no longer safe." He takes Jake by the hand and leads him into the night. The skies are pellucid so that the stars seem a shower of sparks raining down upon the earth. The bowl of the heavens is alight and afoot.

"Where are we?" Jake asks.

"Upon the mountain."

"Where are we going?"

"Up."

They walk for a very long time. Above their heads the blazing stars wheel in their predetermined arc. An owl hoots and, flapping its powerful wings, takes flight. Its predatory head, filled with enormous orange eyes, scans the darkness before the bird plunges downward to the earth.

The man and the boy both hear the sharp crunch of tiny bones breaking with an almost suprareal clarity.

"Shan," says Fo Saan, "from shan do the dieh loong, the earth dragons, greatest of all the species, get their power."

"From this mountain?" Jake asks. "From any mountain?"

"Ask the winds and the water," Fo Saan says.

"Feng shui."

"Feng shui, yes. The art of geomancy; of reading the magical portents from earth, air, fire, water and metal: the five cardinal elements." Fo Saan, back bent against the incline, seems tireless though the way is long and, at times, arduous. "There is qi in the earth," he says, "just as there is qi in all of us. Qi is a great spiral. Sometimes it is inhaled toward the center of the earth, at other times it is exhaled upward into the valleys, rivers, streams a and shan, the mountains. It is in these places that man seeks to live."

It is near to dawn by the time they reach the summit. The stars are visibly closer but already beginning to dim in the east. Above, the bowl of night is still dominant.

"Lie down," Fo Saan says. Jake does as he is told. "Close your eyes." He does so.

"In order for you to fend off death," Fo Saan continues, "you must generate sufficient power to carry out the maneuvers you have been learning. Practice is one thing, the killing ground quite another. Speed, dexterity, flexibility in body and thought is vital if you are to survive your first real encounter in the killing ground.

"Force, energy, power. Qi." Jake feels rather then hears the movement but he does not open his eyes. "You are no longer a child; no longer a baby." Is there hidden significance in Fo Saan's repeated words? Jake does not know. "You must begin all over again. You must learn the bare essentials of life if you are to live it henceforth in this manner."

Now Jake gasps but does not cry out. There is a weight on his chest of such proportions that he is certain it will crush him. His eyelids flutter and Fo Saan says, "Do not open your eyes." Jake obeys.

"I cannot breathe," Jake says in a strained voice. "I will die."

"There is a stone on your chest," Fo Saan says. "A great heavy stone. Perhaps it is a scale from dieh loong that has been shed at the end of winter."

"I cannot breathe."

"Then you must learn to breathe all over again," Fo Saan says and Jake understands the meaning of his mentor's reiterated words. You are no longer a child; you are no longer a baby. There is no oxygen left within him. Weight presses down upon him as if it were the shan itself atop his chest. You must begin all over again.

"You will ask," Fo Saan says, "why do you not teach me to breathe all over again in tranquil surroundings, with a pleasant breeze ruffling my cheek and an infinite amount of time in which to perfect my learning?" The voice was closer to Jake's ear, an insect buzzing near the gently curved sh.e.l.l.

"My answer is that this is another form of learning. We speak here of instinct. When you are attacked, instinct dictates that you hold your breath, your muscles tighten. Qi ceases its flow. Then you will die.

"Instead, you must learn to breathe under attack, to keep your muscles supple, the qi flowing. You are under attack now. You must breathe."

The voice subsides in the night. There is a red rim around Jake's eyelids. He sees this aurora and wonders what is causing it. His heart hammers in his chest, his rib cage strains beneath the enormous weight. His pulse thunders in his ears. I will die, he thinks.

Then, his body or his mindhe does not know whichmoves. It comes to a clear s.p.a.ce, an otherworldly s.p.a.ce. Here he feels no pain but rather the rippling of some gleaming constant flow. Is it qi, as Fo Saan has suggested?

Jake concentrates on this one spot, a patch of silver moonlight pouring into the midst of a dense and stifling forest. He moves within this glade. He moves upward.

And as he does so he gathers power. His muscles ripple and contract in unison as if galvanized by one momentous surge of inner energy.

Upward he thrusts. Off comes the weight. He hears the thunk of the stone. He breathes.

And in his ear, Fo Saan whispers, "Jeuih-jahp lihk-leung. You have gathered together the power. You have learned to breathy all over again."

Jake opens his eyes. Dawnlight shimmers the horizon, illuminating at last the mountain upon whose back he has labored.

Tony Simbal at the DEA computer getting the lowdown on Encarnacion. A town in southeast Paraguay. It was where, Threnody had told him, Peter Curran had bought it. Simbal wasn't getting the usual stuffpopulation, typography, agriculture, climate and the like. He could have used the Encyclopaedia Britannica for that.

The DEA files were gravid with information on that quadrant of the world from 1947 on. With good reason. That was when the futures of certain South American countries began to changeincluding Paraguay's. Certain leaders abruptly became stronger, their private armies larger and better equipped. Enormous sums of money had been infused into these countries in an astonishingly short period of time. And, further, within the s.p.a.ce of five years new industries had sprung up and others were burgeoning. All these industries were clandestine and, at least in the majority of the world, illegal.

The smartest and most powerful of the n.a.z.is who had made it out of Germany and Europe, evading both the burning of Berlin and the subsequent Nuremburg war crimes tribunals, had set themselves up for life deep within the emerald jungles of South America.

Paraguay was high on the DEA computer file list of countries whose regimes had aided and abetted the fleeing criminals. For a price, of course. A price exacted that would ensure their own security among a populace stricken with intense poverty, disease and educational ignorance.

Encarnacion, Simbal learned, had been nothing more than a backward town before the n.a.z.is had come. They had terraformed nearly a continent. Now the diqui had begun to take over there. Why? No one knew. It was what, apparently, Curran had been tracking down.

"Who was in Encarnacion when Peter Curran was?" Simbal said out loud.

"I don't know," Monica said softly from a point just behind him. She was peering over his shoulder. The terminal screen was brightly lighted, pulsing with information.

"Anyone from DEA?"

"Not that I know of."

"Let's bring that up and check. What's the file name?"

"Travel Folder."

Simbal found it, coordinating the dates during which Curran had been in Paraguay. Drew blank.

"Okay," she said. "What next?"

He smelled the lemony tang of her soap, mixed with the hint of perfume she used. A stray strand of her hair brushed his cheek. He felt her warmth.

"Vacations," Simbal said and she gave him the file name. He called it up and went down the list. There were six names. None of their itineraries precisely coincided with the dates and, in any case, all were required to file destinations and local phone numbers with Threnody's office.

Monica pulled these. There had been occasion to call three of them during the course of their vacations and they had indeed been where they had logged in. Three others were still out and had not been contacted. None were anywhere near South America, let alone Paraguay, but then Simbal did not expect anyone to broadcast that fact.

"Do you know what you're looking for?" Monica asked him.

"Just following my nose," Simbal said, dialing the first number. He put Monica on and she made up a story about why she had to call. It was late. Everyone was in bed just where they said they would be.

"So much for vacationers," Monica said. "Satisfied?"

"How powerful is this baby?" Simbal patted the side of the monitor.

"Plenty, why?"

"Are you networked?"

"Sure. But it depends on the agency and, within that agency, on how the material is cla.s.sified."

"How about FBI, CIA, SNITs."

Monica put the flat of her hand over the keyboard. "Whoa," she said. "Before I possibly incriminate myself and this agency I think you'd better tell me what you have in mind."

HI'L "

I can't.

"Then this is as far as we go together." She reached to shut down the terminal and Simbal took her hand.