ia greens above a small valley, only a couple of ridgelines from the SP tracks, final ascent being over dirt roads vexing enough to those who arrived in times of mud, and so deeply rutted when the sea

tury Spain, never recognized by Rome nor even by the Society, but persisting with grace and stamina there in California for hundreds of years - the place had acquired extensions and outbuildings, got wired and rewired, plumbed

ted disciples of Zen ("No bamboo sticks - ever!" promised the ads in Psychology Today) and other Eastern methods. Men of a certain age in safari outfits and military haircuts and quite often the grip of a merciless nostalgia could always be counted on to show up with ogling in mind, expecting som

ng, breaking terrain as almost readably reflect it, as if they shone at all their different angles like great coarse mirrors, beneath ancient tile roofs gone darkening and corroded under the elements, with windows recessed into shadow and seeming to bear no relation to any set of levels that might be inside. As they got closer, Prairie saw archways, a bell tower, an i

ister Rochelle, who turned out to be Senior Attentive, or mother superior of the place. "DL-san," she greeted her longtime disciple and antagonist. "What new mischief now?" DL bowed and introduced Prairie, at whom Sister Rochelle had been gazing as if she knew her but was prete

elivered emphatically, but she only waited quietly in what Prairie would l

k of Notre Dame here, and even if she's not some kind of escapee, there's the Ninjette Oath you took, clause Eight, you

even be considered cool, she had been tending to the line of her spine and quietly meeting the woman's neutral but energetic gaze. "Well then maybe you have some kind of work-study program here, list of courses, pr

seemed intereste

an you don't

eminar-providing community. And we're looking at another herd next weekend, and we try different staff combinations, but nothing wo

an amazing racket, giant metal mixing bowls gonging and crashing around on the flagstone floors, voices screaming, for background the local 24-hour "New Age" music station, gushing into the environment billows of audio treacle. Inside, something ruined was still smoldering on the

Sister Rochelle,

rybody got to trash the chef of the day personally for the failure

hef blubbered, iron and muff

over. "What are you calling 'food,' G

iercely added a lady holding a meat cleaver, with w

m," put in a stylish young man in a coutu

ugh," whimpe

e, thought to be therapeutic, was part of everyone's assignment

pping?" Prairie w

airie had no time to appreciate many of these spiritual dimensions, because she was running her ass off nonstop. The penitents in the kitchen, weird-eyed as colonists on some galactic outpost, greeted her arrival as a major event. As it turned out, none of them could fix anything even they liked to eat. Some here had grown indifferent to food, others actively to hate it.

ing. "Dip," chirped a Mill Valley real-estate agent. "Smor

," replied an ex-instituti

ses full of the more traditional Velveeta and Cheez Whiz, nor was spinach a problem, with countless blocks of it occupying their own wing of the freezer. So next day the classic recipe was the vegetarian entrée du jour at supper. For the meat eaters, a number of giant baloneys were set to roas

ong watchfully, at her own tempo, making a point of inspecting a few assembled casseroles as well as checking the baloney spin rate before leaving the kitchen, reminding herself of a cat. Upstairs, in the Ninjette Coffee Lounge, the Head Ninjette, with a mug of coffee in her hand, slowly emerged, as they conversed, from i

learn to

ice was even, with a slow hoarseness suggesting alcohol and cigarettes. Prairie also thought she heard s

"Seems like it cou

unoichi disillusionments - right, DL? - is finding that the knowl

s, like where

the margins, using the millimeters and little tenths of a second

into it unless

ash, soap away all that road dirt, git 'em buffed up all cherry again, come out th' other end everybody hangin' around the Orange Julius next door go 'Wow!' 's what they think, like we'll keep 'em awake

red plastic model from a Vineland swap meet. "Givin' those

t goin' for it,

e outside data services here, but we also maintain our own libra

d sort of middle-class, knew how it sounded. But Prairie was shaking with the need to find out anything she could, the way some

ut after

nters, wrestled a hot baloney into place, quickly sharpened a knife, and began to carve the object into steaming, purple-rimmed slices, which she arranged attractively on a serving platter, generously spooning more shiny grape liquid over the top

t, cleaned off tabletops, poured coffee, going from one set of chores to another as they arose, sensing partial vacuums and flowing there to fill them, unable to help noticing that people were taking seconds on the Spinach Casserole, and the baloney too. Later she scrubbed out pots and pans and h

nmental, legal history with the DMV, letterhead memoranda from the FBI enhanced by Magic Marker, but there were also clippings from "underground" newspapers that had closed down long ago, transcripts of Fr

omputers could be - even spaces between characters mattered. She had wondered if ghosts were only literal in the same way. Could a ghost think for herself, or was she responsive totally to the needs of the still-l

ng a significant look at a cop in riot gear beside a chain-link fence someplace while one hand (Prairie would learn her mother's hands, read each gesture a dozen ways, imagine how they would have moved at other, unphotographed times) appeared to brush with its fingertips the underside of

en the spokes of cyclists. Catching the late or early sun were palm trees, flights of distant steps, a volleyball court, few if any glass windows. Frenesi's face was turned or turning toward her partner, perhaps her friend, a suspicious or withheld smile seeming to begin. . . . DL was talking. Her lower teeth flashed. It wasn't politics

dude,' at the protest rally? With the long ha

wered bell-bottoms a

on, s

ell into a hyp-nagogic gaze, which the unit promptly sensed, beginning to blink, following this with a sound chip playing the hook from the Everlys' "Wake Up, Little Susie,

User," it replied, "and may your

een willing to bet they'd stick? The turbulence of the times was bringing all kinds of people together into towns like Berkeley, lured, like DL, by promises of action. In those days DL was just cruising up and down 101 looking for girl motorcycle gangs to terrorize, drinking drugstore vodka out of the bottle, hustling guys named Snake for enough double-cross whites to get her to the next population center offering a suitable risk to her safety. The night before she met Frenesi she had chased the

over with heavy plywood. Her next step would've been just to go ahead and change rolls, get some more footage, but to go rooting around in her bag right now could only be taken as a threat by the boys in khaki, who'd come close enough that even above the lingering nose-wrenching ground note of tear gas she could still begin to smell them, the aftershave, the gunmetal in the sun, the new-issue uniforms whose armpits by now were musky with fear. Oh, I need Superman, she prayed, Tarzan on that vine. The basic stone bowelflash had come and gone about the time DL showed up, all in black including helmet and face shield, riding her esteemed and bad red and silver Czech mot

me trick of sun and water outside? no ... too many of these fevered lamps not to have origin across the line somewhere, in a world sprung new, not even defined yet, worth the loss of nearly everything in this one. The jukebox played the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Jeffer

, was all. You su

fat, each drop warped by the forces of its flight into swirling micropatter

people's oneness, drawing together toward the best chances of light, achieved once or twice that she'd seen in the street, in short, timeless bursts, all paths, human and projectile, true, the people in a single presence, the police likewise simple as a moving blade - and individuals who in meetings might only bore or be pains in the ass here suddenly being seen to transcend, almost beyond will to move smoothly between baton and victim to take the blow instead, to lie down on the tracks as the iron rolled in o

he sun, Frenesi in dazed witness, her face had become possessed by that of a young man, distant, surmised - Moody Chastain, her father. Later, when they got to showing each other pictures of their lives, there he was, same face in silver and dye, confirming the earlier gleaming moment - the halo of f

he was soon back in his native orbit, handing out to all the ladies Dauphin Island orchids kept fresh with the beer in an ice tub in the truckbed and resuming his ways, which included driving fast, discharging firearms inappropriately, and passin

pon, any

ho do I ge

thing about that, way I see it, you

st time in his career he couldn't climb in the truck and head for some borderline. He felt himself about to go crazy in this deep overcrowded hole, but he hung on, he tried to see through his fear, and when it came it was like finding Jesus - Moody saw, like the comics or Bible illustrations, a succession of scenes showing him the way he had to go, which was to imagine the worst and then himself be worse

even rifles, as too abstract and cold. The peacetime Moody wanted to get more personal now. Though he was already licensed to use life-threatening come-alongs, to crack heads and dislocate shoulders, he didn't really light up till he discovered the judo and jujitsu of the defeated Jap, then enjoying a postwar

was slippin' around. Maybe I was

uniform, ribbons and medals and patches and fourragères, holding already oversize eight-month-old DL

hings like this comfortably, "is that he went over.

r something else that years later DL surmised could have been boyfriends. Among Moody's problem areas was a practice of bringing home with him emotional elements of his work. The morning after one of their bigger go-rou

nesi broke in, "he b

-you stare back. "Never heard

r do it

itch, you see, wouldn't even work out with me - not even in public at the dojo, not ev

new b

e while Frenesi grinned. "I'm serious, you don't let things like how you fe

mom, why did sh

s he has to be like 'at." Her face that morning had been swollen, distorted enough to frighten the gi

they're tel

urrender of breath. "No, but they might's well be. Just how it is. Men are runnin' it, they do

everybod

ston, Norleen finally told her, "Why, the man had me scared spitless. What was I supposed to do? I didn't even know how to shoot any o' them ol' st

ipline had steered her early enough away from the powerlessness and the sooner or later self-poisoning hatred that had been waiting for her. Somewhere further along, she'd been given to understand, she would discover that all souls, human and otherwise, were different disg

DL was left on her own. She started to ditch the dependents' school, intending to go look for an instructor in unarmed combat, usually winding up hanging around pachinko

hagous "tulips," she grew aware of a gap in the web, a local redirection of interest. She looked ar

ack, "Yo

uly destined to be. "Don't get me wrong!" between slurps, "you have definite shodan potent

kind of guida

a long time. The s

kin' for the teacher. What kind of a no-class setup is this here?" But she'd been having no

aying his agent Noboru, with his infallible gift, had detected an advanced ruthlessness of spirit, which the master, going then secretly to observe, had confirmed. DL wondered if being alread

even Ja

utside of Japanese insular craziness, be international assuki

uh

n by then, had arrived at last, plus lately she felt washed under by these long, sometimes daylong, waves of inattention, everybody looking at her weirdly, especially boys. The sensei had scowlingly little sympathy for any of this, however. In the traditional stories, a few of which DL would come to hear before she left Japan, the apprenticeship is harsh and long, someplace scenic up in the mountains where the student is put to work at menial outdoor tasks, learning patience and obedience, without which she can learn nothing else, and this alone, in s

hape and weight, and leaving her well lost, with instructions to get back to his house before nightfall, using only the stone. He gave her messages she didn't understand to take to people she didn't know, at addresses harshly drilled in, that would turn out either not to exist or t

, trying to stay out of the way, though sometimes on impulse she was known to actually bring them coffee right in the very fierce middle of it. And as usual Moody made no least move upon his daughter, who might by now, far as he knew, be able to do him some real harm. To tell the truth, these days, pushing twenty years in the service, he was starting to kick back some, working a regular daytime shift for a couple years now, manipulating paper that only represented the adrenaline and guts of what he used to do, putting in less and less time at gym, track, pool, or dojo, content to sit behind his increasing embonpoint with a personalized coffee mug wired permanently to his

fyingly, Communist too. Norleen nibbled her lip and from under her lashes sent sorrowing looks that said, Why keep getting him worked up, he'll take it out on me. "I was just sadistic enough," DL ad

fic breathed along the freeways, trees outside just managed to stir in the moist s

l no, she sure hadn't kno

or the div

head, bewilde

all, laughed like a girl with a

rtainty that only when she was away from them, learning to fight, did she feel any good. The sensei, for all his lechery, high-speed frenzies, temperamental snits and low-tolerance ways, had become a refuge from what lay breathing invisible somewhere back in the geometric sprawl of yards and fences and dumpsters of Dependents' Housing, more than ready to rise from its crouch and take her over. So instea

g fellows in black suits and shirts, white neckties, black shades, posed and sauntered. She knew enough to keep out of the way, hunker down, wrap her hair in a scarf, wait in a shadow till she saw an elderly man in a suit and homburg hat come out the door wit

out for it all day. Noboru was unconscious, but DL thought the sensei had a grip on himself

kuz

ung for such t

when she hears the name Yamaguchi

ediately in a Vanishing Stance, surfaces loaded, ready to let him have it

e that tight with the Mob, and I'm

s in heavily. But you and I, we're connected only by bonds of master and disciple, free to disconnect

Guilt? "You wan

not quite decipherable. "You will

had been subverted, made cruel and more worldly, bled of spirit, once eternal techniques now only one-shot and disposable, once greater patterns now only a string of encounters, single and multiple, none with a

ond to decide fail to get it right and live with it the rest of our lives - it's for us drunks, and sneaks, and people who can't feel enough to kill if the

once," she informed him, "maybe

se you must resist - they are neither samurai nor ninja. They are sarariman, incrementalists, who cannot act b

ouds of Guilt technique to make them commit seppuku and think it was their idea - plus a grab bag of strategies excluded from the Kumi-Uchi, or official ninja combat system, such as the Enraged Sparrow, the Hidden Foot, the Nosepicking of Death, and the truly unspeakable Gojira no Chimpira. Des

spaced away from it as they can. Maybe they think people are easier to control that way." The schoolroom line was, You'll never know enough about your body to take responsibility for it, so better just hand it over to those who are qualified, doctors and lab technicians and by extension coaches, employers, boys with hardons, so

lly everybody knew where she was and that she was safe. Both parents, for their own reasons, were just as happy to have her out of the house just then, and the only reason DL had t

not so much into money." She and Prairie were out taking a break, down by the creek. It was a couple of weeks after their arrival, with Prairie by now an old hand in the computer room as well as the kitchen. "Yeah now it's group insurance, pension plans, financial consultant name of Vicki down in L.A.

rt not a nosy kid, did want to give her t

of Nippon can tak

ow'd you

urday-morning cartoons Prairie had ever

as a pretty innoce