Angel Eyes (61 page)

Now an odd thing happened. Murashito's face changed, and if Tori hadn't known better, she would have sworn it relaxed. He turned quickly away, as if embarrassed. "She's already endured more pain and suffering than any young woman should.''

Tori went silently up behind him. She said, "I'm not Tom Royce's sister. My name is Tori Nunn. Do you know me?"

Tok Murashito shook his head no.

"I'm the Wild Child. I could kill you right here and no one would know about it. Do you understand me?"

Tbk Murashito said nothing for some time, then he said, "You're a foolish young woman. There is too much fire burning inside you. Go home." When she did not move, he turned to face her. ''One of these days you'll discover that there are alternatives far preferable to violence."

"That's curious advice, coming from you."

"Giri. I did what I had to do."

Tori looked him in the eye. "Just as I do," she said.

Tok Murashito stared at her for a long time. Then he shook his head. "Time makes fools of us all, Miss Nunn. I strive to remember that, but all too often it slips my mind." When she said nothing, he said, "Will you kill me now?"

"If I did," Tori said, "your daughter's pain would forever be on my conscience."

"Well," Tbk Murashito said, "after all, perhaps there is such a thing in the world as justice." He never took his eyes from her. "Tell me, why did you come here. Miss Nunn?"

"To let you know that I was here," Tori said. "To see how you would react.''

"You were testing me."

"In a manner of speaking.''

He passed a hand across his face. "I must say that this is the first time I have been tested by a woman.''

"How does it feel?"

"To be truthful, it makes me uncomfortable."

Tori nodded. "The traditional roles have been reversed."

"That's not what I meant," Tok Murashito said carefully. "What makes me uncomfortable is your easy acceptance of violence."

''You think that because I am female I should hate violence.''

"That is my experience, yes." He shrugged. "Someone has to fight against violence, don't you think? If women abandon their traditional role as peacemakers, where will we be?"

"Mr. Murashito," Tori said, "you are something of an enigma."

"I think I shall take that as a compliment, young lady."

Tori frowned. "No one's ever called me young lady before."

"Well," Tok Murashito said, "I think it's about time they did."

The dream of the past began to dissolve in much the same way as a reflection of the moon on water breaks up with the coming of rain. Tori became aware of something dark and metallic impinging on her consciousness, and she rose through the layers of sleep, from delta to beta to alpha.

Her eyes fluttered open and she saw the figure standing at the foot of the bed, half illuminated by the lamp at her bedside. She was far more aware of the figure than she was of her surroundings. She hardly knew where she was or how she had gotten here. What had happened to her? Slowly, in patchwork fashion, she remembered the nightmarish chase inside the Kinji-to, leading to the final confrontation with Fukuda.

But, again, the dark metallic rings brought her out of the well of her memories, and at last she understood that what she was feeling was the expansion of the figure's wa, a dangerous weapon that was about to be used against her.

"Who are you?"

Koi moved closer. "I am Fukuda's spiritual sister. I have come to repay you for killing her."

And immediately Tori thought of her encounter with Tok Murashito. Now, it seemed, in an eerie replaying of the scene, she was Tok, and this woman was what Tori had been so many years ago.

Tori saw a rather small handsome woman with wide shoulders, narrow hips, black, glossy hair. Her black eyes seemed opaque, or perhaps they were utterly transparent, and the darkness was the ghost hidden inside herself.

Tori allowed herself to touch the other woman's wa, felt an engine that would not stop, something so relentless that it would not give even its owner surcease. She felt what Big Ezoe had defined as the water tap that would not shut off.

"What is your name?" Tori said.

''I have given myself the name of Koi.''

''You are a foolish woman. There is far too much fire burning in you. Go home."

Koi said, "I will leave when you are dead."

"So much violence inside you, eating you alive. Don't you see it?"

"Not before."

"No, of course you don't. I didn't, either, years ago. I'm not sure that even now I do."

''I don't understand you.''

Tori looked at Koi. "In respect to Fukuda's death, I did what I had to do. Giri. She stalked me, laid a trap for me. She was determined that only one of us was going to leave that tunnel.''

"This is irrelevant to me. I, too, must do what I have to do."

Grasping, at last, what Tok Murashito had meant. Tori said, "Listen to me, Koi. There's a difference between doing what you have to do and doing what you have been told to do."

"There is no difference."

"If that's so," Tori said, "then there is no self. In that case, you don't exist at all, but are purely the creation of someone else-who would that be, Big Ezoe? Of course. Big Ezoe. There is no Koi, only Big Ezoe's automaton." She watched the other woman. "Tell me, Koi, who are you?"

"I am the hard machine."

"That may be what you are, but it isn't who you are." Silence. ''You can't tell me because you don't know. I'll bet there was never a time in your life when yon were you, plain and simple, with no one else telling you what to do and what to be."

Koi said nothing for a long time. Her eyes seemed to have fixed on that peculiar middle distance that exists only in the back of the mind. At last she said, "I was trained by a sensei known as the Man of One Tree. He adopted me, or so it seemed, when my parents no longer knew what to do with me. I am cursed. I was born hinoeuma, in the year of the husband killers.''

Her head moved slightly, but her eyes did not change their focus. "The Man of One Tree taught me how to combat my curse. He told me that karma was mutable, that if my will was sufficiently developed I could change my karma. I believed because I had nothing else to believe.

"I stayed with him on his island for many years. I came to think of myself as his daughter, and it seemed that he thought of himself as my father. I liked that. My real father was always so afraid of me, whatever paternal instincts he might have had were channeled away from me, toward my brothers and sisters.

"Then, one day, the Man of One Tree announced that we were leaving the island for several days. He took me to the mainland, where his daughter was getting married. Watching the look of love transform his face as he gazed upon his daughter, I knew what a pathetic fantasy I had been living all the years I had been with him. I was nothing to him, not a daughter, not family. Nothing. But I hid my disappointment and anger by covering myself with shame. Of course he did not think of me as his daughter. How could he? I was hinoeuma. I was unworthy of his love.

''I said nothing of this to the Man of One Tree. I needed him as much as I had before-perhaps even more. Now that I knew he had not adopted me as his own, I had even less than I had thought. And I needed every scrap of attention I could find, otherwise I was sure I would shrivel up and die."

Koi stood very still, paralyzed by memories.

Tori could feel the awesome strength of her wa purling outward in waves, but she did not try to fend it off. Instead she said, "Koi, tell me something, why is it that you accept violence as your only alternative?"

"My nature is steeped in violence, in blood. I am unclean."

"And yet," Tori said, "I bleed every month the same as you."

''And you embrace violence as if it were your lover.''

"No," Tori said. "That's not true."

"But it is," Koi said. "I feel the fire of rage in you. It's easy to identify something that is so familiar to me."

"We're women," Tori said. "We should do whatever we can to find alternatives to violence."

"Why?"

"Because fire without the requisite water to put it out occasionally is madness," Tori said, beginning to work the enigma out for herself. It had not been Tok Murashito who had been the enigma; it was herself. "Nature cannot long tolerate something that is so out of balance. Yin without yang will not long survive."

Koi said, "Then I will be a star, burning bright in the blackness before winking out."

"Is that what you want for yourself?" Tori asked. "Death?"

"In a world without honor, death is the only honorable solution. ''

"No. You're wrong. Bringing water to the fire is the preferable alternative."

"Banking the fire is impossible for me."

"For people like us, nothing is impossible," Tori said.

Koi put her hand on Tori. "You cannot even bring the water to your own fire, how can you counsel me to do it? "

Tori said, "In life, only failure breeds success. If, in the past, I have tried and failed, it does not mean that I will stop trying.''

''And making the same mistakes over and over.''

''No.'' Tori struggled now to sit up, but Koi's powerful hand prevented her. "The circle of defeat must be broken. I cannot tell you how to make yourself better. Too many people in your life have already done that, and look at the result."

"I cannot be better," Koi said. "I am hinoeuma. I am doomed."

"Superstitious nonsense. You're no different than I am, except that you've been totally cut off from people. You've had too many mentors, and no one to trust. It's so terrible to be disconnected. Life seems so desolate, you begin to survive only on desperation. But all you're doing is feeding on yourself.'' Tori's eyes caught Koi's. "If you trust me, I can help you. Perhaps we can even help each other.''

''Impossible,'' Koi said, tightening her hold on Tori. ''I must avenge Big Ezoe's death. Giri. I must kill you."

"Then," Tori said, "you truly are doomed." Her eyes had not left Koi's. Koi did nothing.

The two women, locked in a silent duel, heard the noise at the same moment.

"It's Big Ezoe's assassin. Kill her!"

Tori recognized Hitasura's voice, saw, at the same moment, Russell step into the room, aim a gun at the back of Koi's head.

"Shoot me," Koi said calmly. "Before I die I will take Tori Nunn with me."

Into the ringing silence Tori said sharply, "Back off!" She risked a glance at the men in the open doorway. "I mean it, Russ! Back off and take Hitasura with you!''

"She's a killer, Tori," Russell said. "She came here to kill you, for Christ's sake. She's got to go."

"I'm sick of you men and your solutions to problems!" Tori cursed in Japanese. "Get the hell out now!"

Russell dropped his arm. "Tori ..." Tori said nothing. The men withdrew.

"Why did you do that?" Koi said.

"Because this has nothing to do with them. This is between us."

"I think they found the right spot, they could have killed me before I had a chance to get to you.''

"Perhaps."

"Yet you insisted they back off." She shook her head. "Why?"

"I told you before. It's a matter of trust.''

"I could kill you now."

"I know."

"It's what Big Ezoe wanted me to do."

Tori said, "What the hell is Big Ezoe to you?"

For a moment Koi did nothing. Then she began to laugh. She laughed and laughed, collapsing on the bed beside Tori, holding her sides, gasping, tears streaming down her face.

Then, abruptly, she was weeping bitter tears, tears pent up for years, tears of rage and self-loathing, and she put her head in the crook of Tori's shoulder while Tori stroked her hair as she would a frightened child.

"It's going to be all right," Tori whispered.

But Koi shook her head. "No," she gasped through her sobbing. "It won't. I don't think I'm capable of trusting anyone."

"But you're already trying, aren't you?"

Koi nodded her head yes.

''Then,'' Tori told her, "if it won't be all right, at least it will be better."

"I feel all right."

"You look like death warmed over."

"My, what a charmer you are."

Tori and Russell sat facing each other in the room where Tori had awakened to find Koi standing over her. However, now, thirty-six hours later, the bed was empty. Tori was dressed, had eaten two normal meals.

"Just trying to make a point," Russell said.

"Which is?"

"You're not a being from the planet Krypton."

Tori groaned. "Don't worry. I don't think I could leap over a fireplug, let alone a tall building. But we've still got work to do. Now where's Koi? Have you kept her and Hitasura apart as I asked you to do?"

"Yes, though this is his turf, so it wasn't all that easy. But, I must say, your poisoning has unnerved him.''

"Is that so?" Tori said. "We'll see about that."

''What did you and Koi talk about? You and she were up here for hours."

"I need to do a couple of things before I tell you,'' Tori said. "First off, I need a hookup to the computers at Mail Central. Can you fix that up?''

"No problem. I'll go make the call now. We've rented out space in the Sumitomo Building for about a year now."

"Good. Then, I'm going to want to interview Hitasura. That's long overdue."

"You bet it is," Russell said. "I have some questions to put to him."

"No. Trust me on this, Russ. I've got to do this alone."

But Russell was already shaking his head. "No way. For one thing, you've just got off a sickbed-"

''Want to arm wrestle?''

"For another, this is a situation of totally unknown consequences. I can't take such a risk with your life."

"Don't worry," Tori said. "Whatever happens, Hitasura won't kill me."

"I don't know that," Russell said firmly, "and despite what you tell me, I can't believe you do, either. No. If you speak to Hitasura at all, it'll be with me in the same room."

"Be realistic, Russ. Hitasura won't talk to you."

"Well, one way or another, you're going to have help when you meet with him."