tasies of taking revenge on Brock Vond. I wanted to kill him - one way or another he'd taken away the lives of people I loved, and I saw nothing wrong with killing him. I was

at?" "Just what I ask myself. Anything else?" Her visitor sat down across the table, clicked open an armored attache case, and produced a folder with an 8 x 10 of a face she knew, a Fresson-process studio photograph of Brock Vond, looking like he'd just had a buffer run all over him, the high smooth forehead, the cheeks that still hadn't lost all th

ce texture of Ralph's suit. "Well," she inq

igures he won his war against the lefties, now he sees his future in the

Please, you've got to be ril

" At her look, "We know your hi

hen you know how personal this is. If you want real ninja product, that could

g you truly want, huh? A good crack at a evi

e FBI. What was going on here? Did Ralph have a line into their NCIC computer? If they knew Brock was a target of Ralph's friends, why fail to protect one of their own? Unless of

xcuse, Miss Chastain, they just go in, get anybody they want, do the paperwork later - what, you ai

lks were more into pistols, dirk

n somebody, so lightly they don't feel it then, but a year later they drop dead

You didn't, for example, just go around putting it on people you didn't like. It was useless without a long history of training in martial disciplines, took years to master, and

r. Wayvone, I

d at him like the halo of an angel of mischief. In the Rolodex of Ralph's memory, young DL would be flagged that brightly. He was actually then to follow her for a time, meet to meet through the South and West, along a circuit of grim, early ex-Nam faces, motels always miles from the venue and down the wrong freeway, shoptalk, drinking, possession of weapons, T-shi

equences - only the workings of karma. One unfelt touch to the correct piece of Vond anatomy could commit her to a major redirection of her life. There was no question that she'd ever be free of Ralph. A girl did one Death Touch job and right away people started getting ideas. W

nity, and emerged a different, less noticeable person. The car radio, tuned to KFWB, was playing the Doors' "People Are Strange (When You're a Stranger)" as she injected herself into the slow lane of the eastbound freeway and settled in, hating to let any of it go, Banning, the dinosaurs, the Palm Springs turnoff, Indio, across the Mojave, to be redreamed in colors pale but intense, with unnaturally fine

ic. By this time she was used to the car and its unorthodox push-button shifting, having made the analysis "stick shift - penis" and speculating that a push-button automatic might at least appear more clitorally ladyli

ns from the presses through the wood of the bar. Drink rye, wipe her glasses on her tie, leave her hat on indoors, gossip in the dim light with the other regulars. In the winter it would already be dark outside the windows. The polished shoes would pick up highlights as the street lamps got brighter ... she wouldn't be waiting for anybody or for anything to happen, because she'd only be Clark Kent. Lois Lane might not give her the time of day anymore, but that'd be OK, she'd be dating somebody from the secretarial pool. They'd go out for dinner sometimes to this cozy Neapol

were acres of abundance waiting to be picked through. She had by now grown into a relationship with the Plymouth, named her Felicia, bought her a new stereo, was washing her at least twice per workweek plus again on weekends, when she also waxed the vehicle. She swam and did t'ai chi and continued to practice the exercises she had lear

r. Her little car was left alone in its space, sometimes, across miles and years, to call out to her in a puzzled voice, asking why she hadn't come back. She fought, but whoever it was had sent experts that specialized in not damaging young women. The story she heard eventually was that a

Showa and were permitted out, in supervised groups, only to shop at the pitches under the tracks. Some of these girls, the market being what it was, were boys, of whom DL's friend Lobelia was among the most glamorous.

nk about it - you'll be up there on the block, how are you

ty ch

t least three different eyeshadows, trust me, I know what these cu

igh-gloss display of transgression and desire. But in here, light-tight behind rubberized drapes, the auction room kept its colors to itself, with a crew of moonlighting studio gaffers beaming merciful salmons and pinks at the girls in their eye-catching outfits, each chosen earlier from a giant walk-in, in fact drive-in, closet filled with every kind of getup any customer who'd passed through here'd ever found erotic, schoolgirl uniforms tonight

oftly, paged through catalogues, scribbled on notepads. Out in the bar a baseball game was on, Central League playoffs, and a few guests had lingered till the traditional 8:56, when the transmission from the ballpark was abruptly cut off, in the middle of a double play, in fact. In

rt of a heroin deal, dolled up tonight in black chiffon and mink eyelashes, about to enter a world where she would never again meet anyone who had ever heard of the place she'd been born in and taken from. She was sold for a million y

of one electrician, poised silent near a small fill light. . . just out of her field of vision, his smoky and blurred presence more real to her than any bidder in the room, any future master. . . . How could that be? Relax, have fun. She smiled even with her eyes, Lobelia's eyes, alert now at nipples and clitoris, the price b

er and better. "Relax, lady," he warbled pleasantly. "I'm only the agent here." He opened a rear door. In a slither of tulle, she ducked and curled, alone, into the back seat. The man disappeared up front, doors latched solidly, and off she was dr

Imperial. They eyed each other across a spacious sitting room. She'd slid off her shoes fi

peared to have shaved sometime in the last hour, and he was wearing a pink tropical blossom in his lapel. He still smelled, however, like the f

ightly crazed shots all along the horizon. Somewhere in here a stereo began to play a stack of albums from the fifties,

beaded in the humid night, his voice slow, almost dazed. She twirled

re paid

, goes in a p

ly pretended

ay you're here till y

l want Br

ad his lower lip out, tryi

a vacation from my life.

n't sound to me like you're really all that hungry to get this little fuck. Like you've -" she

y not talk to some talent scouts, I'm not the only

bare arm lightly. "Darryl Louise, think of who you are - mentioned in Black Belt before you were ten, the Soldier of Fo

Animosity, why are you bri

t? Spend the rest of your life typin' up invoices

would I have to

er break ya." He put down his glass, held his arms ope

Pizza Hut. Even putting champagne and orchids aside, here was the first human in her lifetime of running away who'd ever taken the trouble to come after her, not to mention publicly buy her, h

to speak only during instrumental breaks. "You might even get to like working for us. Our benefits package is the best in the field.

e outfit, where's 'em gold chai

o'd ever try to run a lady such as you, with your independent

enture and had to arrive at other, less hopeful arrangements. But it came about, after a night and a day of jack-hammer sex, amphetamines, champagne, and Chaliapin Steaks ordered up from Les Saisons, that she was sped by Lincoln limo, semen drying on her stockings and one

ng to be helpful, "they'll just

t with 'chuks and eagle catchers, meditating, finding inside herself the way back to shelter she'd wondered more than once if she'd lost for good. Outside the establishment, in the street, to keep herself in the

edule of his free time, unless he's also one of those mischievous lads who like to play hooky. You'll wait, y

ID me, he'l

way you

he saw it on, a shivering crept all over her skin, as she looked at her own face on Frenesi's head. "Mr. Brock Vond," the girls assured her, "likes American girl, looking just this way, always the same," the little sixties outfits, the lurid makeup of the time. . . . But

y mother and this creep, and you

rio

e? They told me she was on the side of the people - how c

-to-edge delusion, having only read about Frenesi Gates once in some dentist's waiting room or standing in line at the checkout, whereupon something had just snapped and she'd gone on to make up the whole thing? And was now not in any Japanese whorehouse waiting to kill Brock Vond at all, but safely within a mental institution Stateside, humored, kindly allowed to dress up as the figure of her unhappy fantasies? For company while she waited she left the Tube on with the sound off. Images went rolling in and out of the frame as she sat, quiescent, sometimes teasing herself with these what-is-reality exercises, but keeping always balanced, right on that line, attentively breathing herself through the turn of the hours, the rise and fall of

orld conglomerate Chipco. About a week after Brock Vond's arrival, Takeshi was standing at the edge of a gigantic animal footprint which only the day before had been a

rom up here on the rim, about all he could make out were the yellow headlamps of the tech squads moving far below, taki

uckled aloud, drawing a stare or two, "to get to the bottom of this!" Another strange element, as his former mentor Professor Wawazume, eccentric CEO of Wawazume Life & Non-Life, had reminded him over the phone last night, was that recently Chipco had wanted a floater written in on an inland mari

ntalist!" Takeshi, by the time he got to see it from the air, didn't want to rule out another secular possibility - a professional job. There were some fancy blasters around, studio special-effects people, Yank veterans

only the buttonhole unadorned, lordless, his one fixed address now a cubicle in outer Ueno he shared rent on, containing an armored file cabinet, a telephone, and the signed, framed photo of himself the Professor had given him when he left to go out on his own (an enlarged paparazzo shot, the Professor looking even more goofy than usual, lurching after a noted beauty in gold lame, flip hairdo, and two-centimeter eyelashes outside a bar in Shinjuku, a lucent string of drool begun to descend from one corner of his mouth), Takeshi had already long been a nomad in the sky's desert, continuing to depart in kerosene fumes to seek another connection in another Pacif

n't been buying enough drinks! The rain clouds had settled in. Looking up, Takeshi could no longer see the rim he'd descended from. A group of Techs nearby had started shouting angrily at each other, their headlamp beams swooping and cro

n!" "Strange! Here, look at this

ent. "Hen na!" But he allowed Minoru to ID the

ed away. "Never been in a hole

or crouched, looking up, not really poised to flee - where in this mud deathtrap was there to go? - but relaxing helpless under some imminent unthinkable descent.. . and what was it, appearing out of th

could even react, the mysterious visitor, smaller than at first supposed, had angled over toward a makeshift landing pad, where it turned out to be one of Chipco's fleet of customized jumbo passenger helicopte

according to an announcement over its speakers. Was this another joke? "Wh

mbing on board with him. "Were y

xcuse was by now? They ascended into deep clouds and flew in zero visibility for what could have been an hour or more. Passengers, mostly Techs and military, read tabloids and comic magazines, listened through earphones to pocket radios, played cards or go. Takeshi and Minoru headed aft to a small bar with a price list

ese days. Last year I was in the s

wasn't actually trying to take apart strange bombs in

ming maliciously, "since Lhasa International, go

specially today! May

PA came on. "We are approaching the famous Chipco 'Technology City,' home of 'Chuck,' the world's most invisible robot." Takeshi and Minoru tried to order two more beers, but the bar was closing. "How invisible," the voice continued, "you might wonder, is 'Chuck'? Well, he's been walking around among you, all thro

arities - assault on the inanimate, the Czech origins of both the i

"you don't think thi

te the f

anetwide struggle had been going on for years, power accumulating, lives worth less, personnel changing, still governed by the rules of gang war and blood feud, though it had far outgrown them in scale. Chipco was in it up to their eyeballs

sced. "Right at the worst part, t

ing white! Couldn't find the pass!

an see! The bomber is already back in Geneva - with a perfect alibi! Suddenly - w

sed in laughter. "Everybody thoug

e off to Tibet -

," Minoru recalled, after

rer. Minoru headed for a public phone while Takeshi waited, reaching for his Georgian silver snuffbox, where the shabu were. Minoru, growing agitated, made an

en who'd tell him all about the initiator fragment, even get facsimiles while he waited of the sales slip, with the purchaser's current address, if he liked. Takeshi kept his hand on the door handle but forgot, each time the cab slowed, to jump out. It was '78, during a period of epic and bloody street war among all major factions of the yakuza, and no place public was safe from liability. Pedestrian life in Shinjuku shared the same nervous dread. Disco musi

That First Election Campaign." Frustrated, they headed for the bar and sat drinking till somebody paged Minoru, who disappeared and remained that way. After a while Takeshi wandered off to the toilet, but could not i

ow we found anything out, hm? They'll have their checkpoints between here and there, so what we need now

radical, like death, had just happened. It was a stressed and malevolent cartoon of his face, of what he shaved and had long looks at, but its steady glide forward had him hypnotized. Brock slid a rectangle of white plastic into the breast pocket of Takeshi's suit jacket. "Your passport to an evening you'll never forget," whispered Brock, and "Don't say we never did nothing

the car window, but the car only revved up and moved out and was soon around the corner and gone. Takeshi looked at the card. Next to a logo of a pleasant-looking young woman in provocative attire, it said, in Eng

uced next morning at breakfast, she saw this shorter, older guy wearing a truly gross suit, in synthetic fabric but printed to look like some tweed of bright powder-blue flecks against a liver-colored background. The pants bagged at the knees. DL leaned lightly on his shoulder and looke

Prairie

t's she been te

ut it,"

lor commentary on DL's version. Until, just before the dark metal door with the plastic ke

st a kid,"

" Prairie

he'd walked right into the middle of a piping of parlormaids, easily a dozen of the charming soubrettes in scandalously short outfits of organdy and taffeta, who gathered around him like shiny birds of doom. He began to sweat with panic and also to get an erection. He was hustled along, daintily coerced with flashing burgundy nails, through room after room, barely able, in the delicate stampede of high heels, to keep from tripping, down deserted hallways, trying to be a sport, going, "Ladies, ladies!" and "What's all this?" But he was only cargo. Surrounded by airy petticoats and

covered in black velvet, with a silver doorknob. As carefully as he approached, he couid still hear his shoes squeaking in this muffled place. Maybe it was all Minoru's idea of a practical joke. He tried to knock on the door, but the velvet surface absor

akeshi thought, I love it!

k. Undress. You

in comical accents, predictably to DL's annoyance. A bird usually associated with the dawn, the cock, by the laws of the Death Touch, belonged to early night. By now the chi cycle of the victim would have arrived in the region of his triple warmer, considered wife to the bladder, which was thus endangered. In the Dim

superintimate situation with a guy taking his clothes off, and it's ob

s blue as your mom's - yours, for that matter. Cheapskates at the ol'

mebody else's

out the same size and body format anyway, and my mind ri

o what you were doi

ers. She never found out for sure, but had come to believe that the lenses had been taken from the eyes of a dead person. That furthermore she had been intended to witness her own act of murder through the correction to just this per

eyes, she went in by other sensors, direct to the point, opposing his chi flow, spiraling her own in with the correct handedness. Takeshi never felt it. It wasn't till he climaxed moments later and started screaming in street Japanese that DL, de-transcending, realized something mig

ollow, she had rolled off the bed and taken

hi up on one elbow, "if

t by any number of cameras, population now returning to the corridors, plausible copies, for DL, of known enemy fa

progress out to the street on his own monitor, as well as Takeshi's slow bewildered

?" inquired Two-Ton

er go, we can always find her again . .

ys that somebody tipped off our boy.

slowed-down martial-arts lope, finally with an extravagant "Mmwahh!" blowing her a kiss as sh

. "But he's livin' on borrowed time, 'c

h Wayvone sighed, "h

hen leaving, then coming back again, building a long-term love-hate affair with the Attentive staff, Sister Rochelle in particular. Bu

o the Regression Room and watched old movies on the Tube, smoking cigarette butts out of the public ashtrays till the birds woke up. By the time she dragged in to see the Senior

tel

can I tell tha

ssperson, I might've known it, in you waltz and suddenly I've got to be Father Flanagan." She shook her head, pursed her lips like a

not sur

y but also memory, conscience, passion, inhibition - all converging to the one lethal instant. The Senior Attentive gazed evenly at the bent nape, the averted

as t

attention, taking the time, getting prepared, you had to be a reckless bitch and

r the rest of their lives. He had known - he had seen it in her, some latency for a bungled execution at a critical moment, somewhere in her destiny - but how

ll yes and no. It depends on many variables,

s she saying? "but I w

d DOM's on the staff now, some new therapy machines - and while we don't see that many Ni

n? I didn't think I'd - I wanted

e said, "Le

. ," a small failing voice

ll of land toward "down there" - while up here the wind blew among the smooth gold and green hills, it seemed endlessly. Here was the deep quiescent hour

but it can't get you much further - when do we ever see you concentrate, where's the attention span? Blithely driving off down the road in some little low-rent touring machine, showing up again in something from an assistant buyer

take me in no mat

eave us forever, I'd just

hose of the motionless Headmistress - a compound look, flirtatious while at the same time pushing awa

should reward you by letting you stay forever? Oh, chil

d got to where she could stay away from other people's smokes, keep her hands off her pussy, and hypnotize h

, which hadn't taken him long. The morning after his adventure at Haru no Depaato he tried to call Minoru at his office in the an-titerrorist subministry, but all he got was a lengthy runar

t of food now nauseated him. The final hammerstroke came when he got his suit back from the cleaners, the suit he'd worn to and from his encounter with DL, and found it full of holes, each five to ten centimete

e do on everything! I was amazed

? Starte

ok a few seconds! Never

th him. Dr. Oruni laid it out on an examining table and sent some automated scanning device over it while he and Takeshi watched a video screen in the next room, displaying the data i

hi through an abbreviated physical, grunting darkly at everything he seemed to find. Nothing really showed up, though, till the urine scan. Doc Oruni pulled a bottle of Suntory Scotch out of a small refrigerator, found two paper cups, poured them 90%

t be more

re in some - actuarial table? And once you see

n't happen

around the clubhouse - anecdotes. If you like, I'll

er you can t

of the Vib

in there on

me delay! Invented centuries ago by the Malayan Chinese, adapted by our o

?" Effect? "But I d

Allegedly, the lighter the touch

- how

ed for a while

h of his suffering alarm points, count different struggling pulses, imagine his chi flow, in turbulence - blocked, darkl

reeling out of the elevator under the combined influence of speed, Scotch, and some new tranquilizer nobody knew anything about but which the detail man had left a huge barrel of sampl

ce and the hope that once in San Francisco he would communicate with the enclosed phone number. What difference did it make? Takeshi shrugged. He

ked up at the doc's. Oh, ho, ho! Look at all these contraindications! Every variety of shit that was seething around already in his system, as a matter of fact, was prohibited. "Well!" out loud, "that being the case -" he ordered another drink and swallowe

st - trying to relax! I mean - don't you just hate flying? Huh

away. Takeshi went on, "Here, you want to try one of these? Huh? th

ndings, the moonlit childhood-picture-book clouds out the rounded toy windows, the lambent fall of electric light on f

end!" proceeding then to rattle out the whole story, sparing no medical detail. The suit-wearing juvenile was more than willing to listen

American tried to be sympatheti

hought she was somebody else." Takeshi grew instantiy paranoid, ass