In Dark Corners (39 page)

Approaching hoofbeats.

A carriage appeared like a phantom in the mist.

The man waved.

"Sorry, gov'nor," the driver shouted down, "got a fare."

The clacking hoofbeats drove slivers of pain into his throbbing skull. The voices were shrieking, wailing.

He swallowed, fighting nausea. He needed immediate relief. His pained gaze searched the mist frantically for help, another carriage…Nothing.

He didn't have time to reach Spitalfields on foot…

A curtain of fiery pain blurred his eyes. He blinked. The fog swirled, parted. The cooling black waters of the Thames beckoned…

The man vaulted the railing.

The cold water was a shock, squeezing him like an icy hand…But the pain was easing, the voices—the songs of the harlots—were muffled, cleansed from his ears.

He gave himself up to the river.

Down, down to peace.

***

Staring at the opaque glass, Rod shook his head. "No wonder they never caught him."

"You know the card?" Oberon asked, slowly turning over the piece of glass.

"The most famous jack in history."

It was the jack of hearts. Pushing the card next to the others, the hooded figure rasped, "Ready for your fourth card, Sensitive?"

Rod nodded.

The miniature window cleared: An odd room, circular, the sky-blue wall unmarred by door, window, or decoration. An effect of spaciousness. And four people—two couples—dressed in similar one-piece metallic garments that shifted through a spectrum of pastels as the wearer moved.

One couple was saying goodbye.

The man said, " Great dinner. The Uranus holos made it all seem so authentic."

"Yes," the woman added, "thank you both for a lovely evening." She brushed her cheek against the hosts' faces. "David…Amy."

Smiling, David placed his hand palm up, against the wall. A circle entry irised open. "I'm glad you could come down."

Amy nodded.

"You'll have to visit our level soon," the man said.

After the couple stepped through the entry and disappeared, the opening closed, leaving the skywall unmarred again.

David turned away, but Amy, after a jerk, seemed to freeze, staring blankly at the featureless wall.

"Amy?" David stepped to her side, voice concerned. "Are you all right?"

Finally she nodded, touching her forehead and smiling at David. "Yes, I think so."

The smile froze on her face as her voice broke off, making her face seem doll-like.

Then: "…Just…a…little…problem…with…"

Her speech was a series of grating fragments, decreasing in volume, eventually fading out.

David looked in Amy's dull eyes; then he picked her up in his arms and moved across the room. "Airbed, please."

Whirr
.

The bed rose from the floor.

Carefully, David lay Amy on the bed's warmed surface. He undressed her, exposing her lovely body. Gently he turned her head to the side, resting her chin against her right shoulder. Then he touched his forefinger to the depression at the base of her neck and released the sealseam catch. With a quick motion, he opened the seam from neck to navel. He separated the hinged ribs, revealing the cluttered chest cavity.

With eyebrows pulled together, David scanned the array of vital sign indicators…"Ah…" His face relaxed. The tiny power-cell bulb was glowing red. He smiled, touching the implant behind his left ear. "Central? I need an Advanced Cybernetic Systems power-cell."

"Type and model?" the computer interrupted in its bored monotone.

David leaned closer to Amy and read the descriptors on the power cell. "Okay. Type is PC-1112 for ACS Model P.W."

Slowly, David's finger dropped from his ear to his chest, as the smile dissolved to a frown. The irony wasn't amusing. He stared down at the power cell. P.W. Perfect Woman…

***

"Card value?"

Puzzled, Rod shook his head. He had no idea.

"Oh, come now, Sensitive, don't be so dense. Slang for the perfect woman for your time."

Perfect woman?

"One of your primitive movies carried it as a title."

It finally dawned on Rod. "A ten, of course."

The ten of hearts.

He looked at the four cards lining the edge of the table: ace, king, jack, and ten, all hearts. God! A queen of hearts would be a royal flush.

"Last card. As always, you have the option to continue or demand a new game…Sensitive?"

But an inside straight? Still, if it was the right queen, he'd be leaving the City for good. Back to L.A. Sharon. Excitement welled up, tightening his throat. He coughed and croaked, "Deal."

Oberon placed the last piece of glass in the center of the table; then he brushed his hand across its surface, changing it to a playing card.

Rod leaned closer, staring at the figure on the card: a dwarf-like creature, wearing a belled cap, grinning…

Rod gasped. It was his face on the card.

"Value?"

"Value?" He shook his head and looked again at the tiny grinning face. "Ah, a, a…a jester." No; then, he had it! "A joker." He placed the card in its place with the others, his heart racing. "Ace, king, joker, jack, ten…"

"Yes, indeed," the cloaked figure interrupted, "but…" He paused, picking up the joker and ripping it in two. "As you recall, Sensitive, there are no wild cards in five card stud. You lose." Oberon reached across the table and gently plucked the disc from Rod's hand.

He was stunned, almost choked with his disappointment. He shook his head, staring in shock at the worthless joker. Slowly his dismay changed to cold anger. Dammit! just like the other times, he thought, his mouth tasting sour. He'd lost the game…after an unexpected twist. Why did they do that?

Fists clenched, he stared in Oberon's flickering eyes, half expecting a chuckle…Maybe, after all, the inhabitants had retained a narrow emotional nature—a thin, perverse sense of humor.

Oberon remained silent.

No, Rod decided, his anger easing. That was the reason they sent him out to interesting historical situations to bring back an emotional reaction for their Histro-Theatre entertainments. He was like their dope connection. Hah! The affective connection. He finally was in starring roles.

Oberon was shuffling the remaining cards. As he fanned the cards, they changed back to four pieces of glass. He handed one to Rod. "Your assignment, Sensitive."

Rod shuddered, hoping it wasn't Jack.

***

Rod was back in the Big Tank, barely conscious, his thoughts swirling. Then he felt a steady downward tug and his body began to spin horizontally, as if he were being sucked down a huge drain. Down, down, down. He was adrift, no sensations, no feelings. Numb. However, he was aware that he was shifting back, back, back along the continuum.

Finally, he was in another place, another time, another body…

***

Her eyes opened slowly. She was disoriented, confused, frightened, her heart thumping against her ribs like a fist pounding a door.

Cautiously, she took a deep breath, sat up, and looked around. She lay on a narrow bunk in a tiny gray cell—nothing else. Her forehead throbbed, and her nose felt stuffy…a funny itching way up in her sinus—

Ketchoo
.

A violent sneeze had dislodged something. Opening her eyes, she stared into her palm at a piece of white plastic, about the size of a pinhead. Odd, she thought, how…

She sneezed again, blowing the plastic circle from her hand. She looked down at the cell floor. Ah, there it is…

A polished boot stepped on the white speck.

"Oh" Something flopped into her face.

She pulled away and stared up into the cold eyes of a uniformed man. "Call me, Sergeant," he said, his tone matching his eyes. He gestured at the rumpled gray uniform in her lap. "Your name is over the left pocket…Get dressed!" Abruptly, he turned and left the cell.

Still dazed, she turned over the gray uniform, fingering the tag over the left breast: 237.

Suddenly, she recalled the piece of plastic. She glanced at the floor. It was gone, probably stuck to the Sergeant's boot. Well, it wasn't important…But, for some strange reason, she had the feeling
it
would soon be very important.

"…
Okinawa, eighty-five miles long and twelve miles wide, is the largest and most populated of the Ryukyuan Islands. The archipelago, stretching between Japan and Taiwan, lies about four hundred miles east of the China mainland, directly in the path of the great typhoons
…"

Excerpt from "Replacement Orientation," a lecture, 3rd Anti-Tank Bn., 3rd Marine Div., Camp Hanson, Okinawa, 1960.

It had been unseasonably humid: clinging hot, the air choked with moisture but completely still, not the slightest wisp of a cooling breeze, and the day had passed without a drop of rainfall—unusual weather for October. The onset of night would offer little relief from the muggy temperature. For, as the sun neared the horizon beyond Ishikawa Bay, the clouds gathered over the island into a solid white canopy, blocking out the blue sky and trapping the day's heat.

A man stood on the beach of coarse sand and stared westward across the calm, crystalline-green waters. Near his feet rested an enormous bundle of driftwood—sticks, small log chunks, fragments of lumber. He was Kinjo Jo-ken, the wood-collector of Kin, a tiny village a mile inland from the upper end of the bay. He had been born in Kin in 1890, about ten years after the annexation of the Ryukyuan Kingdom, and he had lived there most of his sixty-six years.

Like other Okinawans, Kinjo was short and wiry, his weathered face the color of a walnut shell. Deep lines radiated from the corners of his squinting eyes, suggesting a lifetime of looking into a bright sun over glistening waters. Indeed, he had been a fisherman most of his life. His close-cropped hair was black, only a little gray at the temples, but his scraggly beard betrayed his years—pure white.

Unlike others, Kinjo wore no American military cast-offs. Instead, he dressed in the old way: an indigo wraparound top and knee-length pants, both secured by a wide black sash. On his feet he wore the traditional thonged wooden clogs.

Kinjo continued to stare westward. Slowly, the sun sank into the sea, transmuting the water to copper and the cloud canopy to bronze. For a few more minutes Kinjo stood motionless, listening, watching, smelling, tasting, feeling; checking all the weather signs…

Soon, he decided, very soon, the Wind of Steel would come from the south, slashing across the island like a great sword. He turned slightly to his right, facing south, and rechecked the signs. Yes, soon…

But not tonight.

Relaxing, Kinjo squatted. Even with his failing eyesight, he enjoyed the alchemy of the sunset, experiencing the details clearly in his memory, which still was sharp. He had watched the sunset from Ishikawa Beach most of the days of his life, and he never tired of the spectacle. But always, especially in the fall, he checked first for signs of the Wind of Steel returning from the Philippines.

Only once had his routine been disrupted for any long period of time. During the Great War he had been conscripted by the Japanese as a laborer, and he had spent three years filling sand bags and digging gun emplacements at Shuri Castle near Naha, at the southern end of Okinawa. For sixty days the planes and big guns from the sea had pounded the emplacements around Shuri Castle. Finally, nothing had remained of the most sacred monument of the Ryukyuan Kingdom.

Kinjo rubbed his tired eyes, remembering his fear when the big guns finally stopped and the American sea-soldiers invaded in the spring of 1945. Giants! And the Japanese had told the laborers that the sea-soldiers were cannibals! He shuddered. A few of the surviving laborers had followed the Japanese to the cliffs of Mabuni, preferring
seppuku
to a dishonorable fate at the hands of the barbarians.

Kinjo sighed, his thoughts returning to the present.

Now, as an elder with poor eyesight, he seldom ventured farther from Kin than Ishikawa, the large village five miles south. But Ishikawa was turning from the old way. The teahouses had become neon-lit bars with loud music and pillowing girls for the sea-soldiers. Even the people were changing: clothes, habits, manners…they were trying to be Americans.

Very sad, Kinjo thought. He snorted. A frog can never be a bird, no matter how high it can jump. Of course, the Ishikawans thought the people of Kin were backward rice-growers and ignorant fishermen…

A tug at his sleeve interrupted Kinjo's reverie.

"Ah, Grandfather! Come along quickly!"

"What is it, Mongoose?"

"It's one of the foolish ones, Grandfather," the boy announced in a breathless voice, pointing down the beach at three figures.

Still dressed in his black school uniform and cap, the boy explained that he had wandered several hundred yards down the beach collecting wood. He had been startled when two policemen appeared suddenly from the dunes screening the beach from the coastal Naha-Nago Highway. They were trying to restrain a naked woman by tugging on a thin rope tied around her neck. The female prisoner refused to be led along, rubbing her shaved head and moaning as if in painful agony. Mongoose had recognized her as one of the foolish ones. He darted back up the beach to inform his grandfather of the rare sight.