Ion 417: Raiju (24 page)

I assumed that schools would be like I had learned, on the data terminal, but perhaps data terminals were difficult to obtain on Terra. They had a person dedicated to passing out information to the students.

The children would walk down the street to board a kind of transport called a bus that would take them to a special building for learning the things they needed to know.

Sakura gathered them in her arms, "Now remember that she is our guest. Her safety is our responsibility. If you say anything about her or the old shrine it will cause all sorts of danger. Once you say even the smallest thing to anyone, there is no taking it back."

Saddened responses came from both of them as they shuffled to the door with glances at me. Once out the door their mood changed back to the happy one they'd shown at breakfast. Both were fairly bouncing down the street with backpacks full of actual books.

Sakura turned to me with an odd look in her eyes. I could tell that something was going through her mind as she slowly circled me with an intense inspecting look. Her eyes scanned every centimeter from top to toes. I wondered what she was planning to do to me. Her look was causing a feeling that stirred my energy, but I forced myself to relax; if she had meant harm to me it would have happened the previous night.

"First thing is to get you some identification. That'll be the hard part."

The comment surprised me, "Identification? But I can't go to the authorities like this. You said so yourself."

"I know someone that can help us. People say all sorts of things as I mend their clothing, and I listen."

She used a wall mounted comm unit that was called a phone, and coded in a sequence of numbers. After several minutes of hushed conversation she smiled and told the person to be here in an hour. As soon as she ended the contact she let out the breath she had been holding and flashed me a smile.

"He will be here in an hour, and is willing to create an identity for you. It will be good enough to get you to where you can find your family. In the meanwhile we need to make you look like you belong. We can't get away with the shironuri look very long."

"Shironuri?"

"The painted white face, like we did last night. It's hard to explain, but it won't work in bright sun with your skin. Gahh, it's hard to think of you as an alien when you speak Japanese. There are so many things you don't know about."

I felt a flash of anger pass through me at her words, "But I'm Human. I know I came from somewhere else, but my mother was from Sendai, Japan, Terra, Sol."

"I beg your forgiveness for my poorly chosen words. We will get you ready to find your mother."

"She's dead."

Sakura stopped in her steps, and turned a shocked expression my way, "But you said..."

"I am trying to find her family. She died nearly ten years ago, but there must be others of her family. She had a mother and a father. Surely they still live nearby."

"Then we will work even harder to get you ready."

Sakura started the same way she had last night, with a very pale coating over my face and neck. It wasn't quite as white as the shironuri look. She followed this with tan color to match her skin, and drew lines around my eyes. She even had a stick of red paint to cover my lips.

Most of the intervening hour was spent trying to get my face to look more like hers, but there was still time enough to carefully don a long sleeve shirt, and tie my hair into a scarf to cover the green shade it held. We finished with ten minutes to sit and wait before a bell announced her visitor. It felt a bit odd, almost as though the coloring stiffened my face. Twice she admonished me not to touch it.

Sakura opened the front door to admit an older man carrying a large shoulder bag and a wrapped package under one arm. I wonder if those dark glasses he wore had the ability to see beneath my disguise -- from the way he looked at me it felt like he could. His eyes drifted slowly down to my chest before he turned to look at her again. I felt a shiver run down my back for some reason, though I know the temperature was just fine. In fact it was extra warm in the long sleeves.

"This is Mr. Motogawa. He will be creating your identity."

"Mrs. Masema, had you heard there was a UFO flying right over Sendai yesterday? I know that most of the news channels missed out on the opportunity, but I know this friend that managed to snap a really good picture of it. Channel seventy-nine snapped it up for their two am show."

Sakura just laughed lightly as she led him toward the main gathering room, "Please, we need to hurry this."

"Alright, don't worry. I'll have a new ID for her so she can get in the club with me tomorrow."

Before I could even ask what club he was talking about, Sakura scowled at him, "The deal was for the cloak only, not a date."

"But if she says yes."

"You can't just make demands like that. I might simply shred the cloak too."

"All right. Ok. I'll get this done in no time."

He pulled a large bag off his shoulder and set it on the counter in the kitchen. It had all sorts of little pockets that held small things, and a large one that he pulled a data terminal out of. The unit hummed softly and beeped a few times as it slowly gained power.

Finally it opened to a screen showing a bad picture of, I think it was a sashimi. Whoever drew that picture must have been severely intoxicated. The caption across the picture read 'Wanted'. He spent a few minutes getting to the correct file he wanted before he asked Sakura for a few details. She looked at me and prompted for my mother's name.

"Yoko Ryokan, 565 Kamasaki Fukouka Kuramoto, Shiraishi-shi, Miyagi-ken."

He was busy tapping keys, "I just needed her name; I'll get the rest in a minute. Is that a real name?"

"Yes, she was my mother."

"It's ok, I believe you. I can find her."

He tapped the keys and the viewer shifted images. He read down the page a bit with little inarticulate sounds coming out of him. A few times he nodded to himself. This must have been what Jun had done to find information about my mother. Form after form flashed on the screen, and paused long enough to read a few lines before he tapped for the next one. He seemed to know just what he was looking for in all of that data. It was very different than when I was looking through files on the orbital lab.

"Says here she died twenty-two years ago at the age of fifteen. Her canoe was found swamped in Lake Yellowstone... Family searched for... Came home... Honored at... "

The image on the viewer was different than what I had seen in the files of Teyrn Elon. This showed her in happier times with friends. She had friends. So many things I never knew about her. She never got the chance to kiss my forehead the way Sakura had done for Hiro and Sai. I found myself reaching out to touch the screen when Sakura nudged me. She leaned close to whisper in my ear.

"Don't cry, it'll smudge if you do."

"Ok, so this is the one? I'll take this... set that to... School... tap into... Then... Now, birthdate?"

Sakura nudged me to snap my thoughts away from the image that had flashed on the screen, "He means when were you born."

"Twenty standard years, seven months, and... eight days ago."

"I'll need height, weight, eye color, measurements. Ow!"

Sakura slapped the top of his head with that last question, "You don't need to know her measurements."

"One hundred seventy-one centimeters. Sixty-eight kilograms. Gold with red flecks, and I don't know what you want me to measure."

With a glance at me and Sakura, he mumbled, "I'll just put gold, but they'll know those are contacts."

He worked quickly through several screens before he announced success. Several times I heard his odd noises while he attempted to force the terminal to do what he told it to. Many of the little words he mumbled were ones I'd never heard before. I didn't ask about them because I didn't think I was supposed to hear them.

"And... Yoko Ion Ryokan is born! I put family images of the original Yoko in for her history. She graduated from Sendai Academy with a good degree in power systems. She spent the last several years in religious isolation. Good luck. Oh, and this is only valid in Miyagi Prefecture for now, If you need more than that it will take several days and cost a bit more."

An image on the screen showed an identification card very much like the one my mother had carried. This one though, had a picture of me that he had taken with a little imager, and registered the address for Akita and Sakura's home. We had to use their address because I couldn't very well tell him it was the big blue starship sitting in the temple grounds up the hill. I was still going to have to do something about that too.

He patted the wrapped package sitting off to the side, "I'll pick it up tomorrow afternoon."

I tried to express my thankfulness for creating the identification, "You managed to create an identity with just the little data terminal? Where does the card come out?"

Mr. Motogawa gave a short laugh, "I did better than just printing you a Basic Resident Registration card. I tapped into the prefecture office and convinced their computers that you had been issued that BRRC and a driver's license. All you have to do is go claim they were lost and the government will give you a new one."

I also wormed my way into the files of the Health Department and stuffed in a National Health Insurance card. All it takes is knowing where to go on the Internet and you can get anything."

"What Internet?"

His mouth dropped open, "What do you mean you don't know what the Internet is? Hundreds of thousands of computers all linked together across the entire world. With it you can get information anywhere, or in the case of what I did, create information in the official places.

I can get all sorts of information, like that UFO I was talking about. This is the image my friend took. That was sitting still for seven minutes without a rotor. That's no helicopter."

Even I had to look closely to tell that it was my ship, and I knew what my ship looked like! I wouldn't have even known what it was, except that he explained it as an unidentified flying object. I just smiled and nodded, resisting the urge to ask him if he wanted to see what it looked like without the blurriness.

As Sakura escorted him back out the front door, I contacted Lafiel and asked her to have Panzo locate this Internet if he could. If I could access it the way that Mr. Motogawa had, it would be of great use. There would be many more uses for information before I could send them back to Reliance.

Panzo was thrilled to have a chance to redeem himself for yesterday's folly. I had to assure him that I wasn't mad; neither of us had thought about what reaction there would be to a Kanari suddenly appearing here. I tapped the comm off as she returned.

"So, now that we got the local pervert to hack into the system and create an identity for you, it's time to go shopping! Right after we fix your money."

We went out to the garage where various tools helped us to mangle several of the coins into lumps of gold with no hint of the origin. Even my gold had to be disguised to alleviate suspicion.

"Gold is sort of rare on Earth, and carrying coins with this hologram would be noticed."

"That's the seal of the Gikdorlha Sector Firm, the banking firm of the sector."

She lifted a handful of the lumps, "There, that feels like about a kilo. If we try to do more than that it will draw attention."

"So, gold is rare enough that you don't make coins with it. You just use lumps?"

"Actually we'll trade the lumps for cash that will be easier to use at stores. We can get everything we need for less than a lump. Two lumps would get you an entire wardrobe of nice clothes, with enough left to pick us up dinner."

"Just how much would have paid Panzo's charge with police authorities?"

"Hmm. I'd guess that one would have done it. Of course the police wouldn't take gold coins."

The list of things I needed to learn about this place was getting ever longer. Comm units are called phones, sometimes with a cell attached; nobody uses gold here, and she confirmed that platinum and diamonds would draw even greater attention; ground transports are motorcycles, cars, trucks, or buses depending upon size; people can be tan, brown, pink, white, yellow, red, and black, but never green. I needed to get used to naming them correctly on my home planet -- which was really called Earth, not Terra.

We walked down the road past several houses that all had the walls around the courtyard. Only a few had the family name above the gate though, which dashed my hope of running through the streets until I found the right gate.

We walked for about a half kilometer along the road before there were shops intermingling with the houses. It was like the shops on Reliance Station with all the windows displaying interesting things. Sakura had to keep pulling my arm every time I paused to look.

At the corner we actually did pause, this time in front of the bakery and fish market. When I saw the window with all of the delights arranged so neatly, and caught the aroma with my nose, I started to become hungry from the smell.

She must have seen my gazing at the food items behind the glass, "No, this isn't the one where my Tsukune works. He's all the way in Tokyo. We stopped because this is where the bus will stop. There isn't time for side trips when I have to help you find your family and leave mine."

As though her words had summoned it, the bus pulled to a stop barely a meter in front of us. Sakura dropped some small coins into a box next to the driver as we boarded. There wasn't any place for sitting on this bus, so we had to hang on to the zero g bars. It probably would have been better if they had used a bigger bus, like the one I'd boarded in Yellowstone. That brought up another thought.

"Do you think that's why he got mad at me in Yellowstone? I didn't drop coins into the box there."

"Yellowstone? Like the place in America? Just what were you doing on a bus in Yellowstone?"

"I was hiding in the back of it after leaving that medical place."

"Should I ask why you were in a medical place?"