He stopped at a stream to drink. But as his lips approached the water, he paused. He frowned, showing the irritation of a man who had really expected better—though he was hardly eight years old, physically. He did not drink.
For some time the boy contemplated his wavering reflection in the moving water, as though meditating. What had he expected to see—the face of an old man? Physically he was undernourished, his stiff hair radiating out from under his hat in an unruly manner. His skin was faintly yellow, hairless, and his eyes were Oriental. He had good, clean white teeth and even features, but was otherwise undistinctive.
Then he looked up, noting a slight milky cloudiness in the water, and saw a fish floating by, belly-up. This only confirmed what he had already fathomed: the river had been poisoned. He walked along the bank, upstream, seeking the source of the poison. As he proceeded, his strange mind sifted through an incredible store of information, remembering, reasoning, assimilating. He recognized the river poison: it was predominantly mercury, one of the ninja staples. Yet it differed, being grossly impure; and there were no longer ninjas hereabouts.
The boy was in a position to know, for he was Fu Antos, lord of the ninjas. His body harbored a mind whose awareness extended back four centuries.
But Fu Antos was a figure of the past. Once highly active, involved in intrigue in any part of Japan, he had lost touch in the past century. He had been confined to an inevitably aging and deteriorating body, physically helpless. Now, restored, he was surveying the contemporary situation.
He came to a village and passed through it without making any stir. To the villagers he was merely an idle boy. He kept his compelling eyes averted, deliberately, or shielded them with his hand, preferring anonymity. And he observed.
He saw the ravages of the river poison. It was dilute, not immediately fatal, and because of other contaminants that gave it a foul appearance and odor, few people drank from it directly. But that tainted water seeped into the ground, and was used to irrigate the crops, and domestic animals drank of it. In due course, cows passed the poison on in their milk, so that it reached little children. It became concentrated in the flesh of the river fish, the staple of the villagers. The government, becoming aware of this, merely upgraded the standards at which this pollution was deemed "safe"; thus there was no alarm and no action. So the mercury continued to infuse the village, subtly, giving no obvious alarm.
He saw blind, maimed, crippled people. Years of mercury infiltration had had its slow effect, strongest in the children. A young girl of about fifteen sat before her home; she might have been beautiful, for her face was elfin, but her body was grotesquely twisted by the bone damage of the poison. He saw another child, a boy about the same age as Fu Antos' own physical body, but naked, his arms and legs so deformed that he could neither walk nor crawl. Instead he wriggled through the dust on his belly, soiling himself from either end as he went. Yet the glance he gave Fu Antos in passing was intelligent: the child's mind was whole.
Other children were, in contrast, idiots with whole bodies. They contentedly played with their own feces, smearing them about over their torsos, smelling, tasting, forgetting. He heard villagers crying. When he approached the sound, he found that it was the funeral for a baby boy, stillborn. His casket was a small wooden box made from an old crate, cradled in the arms of his father. There was evidently no money for anything better.
The mourners were dressed in white, the traditional Japanese color. Two villagers made sad wailing music with flute and cymbals. A shaven-faced, angry Buddhist monk garbed in yellow robes led the procession, holding a small, fragrant-burning lamp. Fu Antos was an accomplished spy and warrior. He had killed many times in his long history. But he considered himself to be a man of the people. He had always killed for good reason, always with the conviction that ultimate justice was on his side. And always with a certain artistry. This use of a ninja poison to maim and kill indiscriminately among innocents disturbed him. The villagers did not even know the cause of their woes.
For a moment he forgot to shield his eyes. The light of his wrath shone out from them, a subtle but terrible thing, akin, in its fashion, to the nature of the poison itself. Fu Antos hated torture and death, except in a necessary cause, and he was appalled by unnecessary destruction and fouling of the environment. His passion against these things had built up through centuries. His nostrils still twitched with the remembered odor of his own lands devoured by the flame, so long ago in his true youth.
With that anger came decision: he would right this wrong. Fu Antos left the village.
He followed the stream on up, tracing the poison by the deterioration of the life in and around the water. He found a modern factory engaged in manufacturing tungsten and other metallic parts for rocket motors. The wastes from this factory poured into the river, contaminating it.
Fu Antos was not familiar with the Industrial Age. He did not understand mechanized mass production. To him this was a malignant castle, spewing out the burning urine of a dragon, killing the helpless villagers. It was his duty to destroy it.
The castle was well guarded. It had massive windowless walls, and a fence of metal spikes surrounded it. The day was overcast, but electric dragon's eyes illuminated the grounds like sunlight. Secret entry seemed impossible.
It was a sufficient challenge for a ninja.
Fu Antos did not like what he had to do, but he refused to be deterred. He removed from his pack his black ninja suit and donned it. He fastened it carefully so that it was virtually watertight, and brought the hood tight about his face so that little skin was exposed. Then he dived into the polluted river. He swam strongly upcurrent, his eyes tightly closed to keep out the poison. He relied on his ki for ultimate protection, but still the chemicals made his face burn. His body was young yet; neither its muscles nor its ki had been properly broken in.
Where the metal fence crossed the water, he handed his way down deep, passing under the bottom of the barricade. Then he floated up slowly inside the factory compound.
He broke water silently, shaking the fluid off his face before opening his eyes. Wherever the water touched him, he was smarting. But he remained in it a few moments longer, for the river was in shadow here. The depth of pollution made it opaque; with his black hood he was virtually invisible. This, of course, was no coincidence; for centuries the ninjas had been the masters of invisibility, the spy class of Japan. Fu Antos was the master ninja.
Close to the building he drew himself out, shedding water in the manner of an aquatic bird. Concealment would be better in the river, but he didn't care to immerse himself in the highly concentrated effluence spewing out from the factory pipe, the penis of the dragon. He emerged like a shadow.
Now his uniform was a liability, black against a light background, and the lingering drips marked his trail. He doffed it, shook it dry, and reversed it. The other side was a light creamy hue that blended perfectly with the color of the gaunt walls. He would now be difficult to see when he froze against that background.
He tucked his kusarigama into the belt behind him, so that the chained sickle did not show from front or side, and palmed two star-shaped shuriken, ready for instant use. To the casual observer, he was still an unarmed child.
He considered scaling the wall, but this would have been difficult in this body. But if he used a normal entrance, he would not be able to avoid the guard pacing in the dazzling light. So he did not try; he walked boldly toward the main portal.
The guard saw him. The man's eyes widened at the sight of this strangely garbed child. His mouth opened.
In that moment of confusion, Fu Antos could have killed him with a shuriken in the throat. The star-shaped throwing blades did not penetrate as deeply as the single-bladed ones, but a score on the throat would have been sufficient. Instead he used his fingers. From a distance of twenty feet he initiated the hypnotic kuji-kiri compulsion.
The guard could not break away and could not cry alarm. He seemed to be drowning in those
eyes, drawn right out of his body and sucked into the orbs. Yet it was the hands that really compelled, their incessant mystic motions telling him something, numbing his brain, forcing it through a convolution, as though it were being thrown headlong, rolling over and over—yet he was standing still. Then, as it were, a door closed.
Suddenly the guard forgot to see the odd boy. He walked on, blithely unaware of anything unusual. The ancient ninja finger-hypnotism technique had rendered Fu Antos invisible to this man.
Fu Antos opened the large front door, seeking the master of this grim fortress. He paused, startled by the blast of cold air that met him. What sort of a dragon had a cold lair? He had never before encountered air-conditioning. But after his initial surprise, he recognized it as a harmless phenomenon, and entered the front office.
A pretty girl looked up from the information desk. A maiden in distress? "Yes?" she said, then did a double-take.
"What are you doing here? This is no place for—"
Fu Antos used the kuji-kiri technique on her, hypnotizing her instantly. "I seek the robber baron," he said. "I will free you and the village from the grasp of the dragon."
The hypnosis gave her comprehension. "The directors are in a board meeting with the company president and the owner," she said. "The owner is a bit of a dragon! It is on the third floor, and there are instructions to keep everyone else out."
"Excellent," Fu Antos said. "Return to your duties for now, and do not let anyone else enter that room after me."
She forgot his presence, as the guard outside had. He climbed the stairs, disdaining the elevator, because he hardly understood it.
A guard stood outside the boardroom door. He was a strapping big man, armed and tough. He was a mercenary, a hired goon who hardly cared what method he used to prevent intrusions. In this sense, Japan had not become softer with the technological age; men still performed brutal tasks for pay. Fu Antos assessed the guard with one glance, realizing that he was too stupid to be properly susceptible to the kuji-kiri technique, and too loyal (well-paid loyalty!) to be subverted. He had to be eliminated, and quickly.
The guard saw him. There was no hesitation like that of the fundamentally decent outdoor watch; this man's hand was already reaching for a weapon. Fu Antos moved in so rapidly that his little body seemed a blur. As the goon's hand raised a short wooden club, Fu Antos drove his stiffened fingers—the spear hand—into the man's groin.
There was a scream, but it cut off as the man doubled up, unconscious.
For a moment Fu Antos listened at the boardroom door, verifying the identity of the occupants. "...to prevent an adverse profit ratio from developing," a man's deep voice was saying.
"No problem there," a higher voice replied. "Declare another cost overrun. They'll pay; it would cost them three times as much to change from our specifications, now that the contract is well under way. That's why we set it up that way."
They were concerned with riches, not health. This was the place: the minions of the dragon.
Fu Antos pushed open the door a crack and entered with ninja stealth. The directors did not realize what had happened, for the outside action had been swift and concealed from their view. They thought the guard had merely let the intruder pass, despite the standing orders to the contrary. His pay would be docked accordingly. Fu Antos turned to face the directors. "Men, you are poisoning the river," he said boldly as he approached the table.
The directors glanced around at each other. "One of your sons?" one inquired facetiously of another.
"Not mine! I teach mine manners!"
"I hope you also teach yours to dress according to their stations," a third said, eyeing the ninja suit with insulting directness.
"The poison must stop immediately," Fu Antos said. "You must make reparations to the villagers for their suffering. You must restore the wildlife of the river."
The president of the company faced him. "Son, you have blundered into the wrong room. When you grow up and have a hundred million yen to invest, you may play 'executive'; right now you must return to your mother."
It did not even occur to Fu Antos that he was being mocked; no one had mocked him and lived, for over a century. "I shall not depart until this wrong has been set right," he said firmly, absentmindedly scratching his posterior where a trickle of the river water still irritated it.
"We have played games enough!" a board member snapped. "Get the brat out of here!"
The president called to the guard outside the door. "Kindly escort this young man out," he said.
There was no response from the hall.
"Orderly!" the president snapped, his facade of good humor evaporating. "Pay attention!"
Still there was no answer. One of the directors got up, opened the door, and peered out. "Hey, he's lying down!"
"If that dolt has been drinking on duty..."
"No smell of liquor."
"The man's ill!" a board member said irritably.
"Ill, hell!" another said nervously. "He's been sabotaged!"
"This must be a midget disguised as a child, sent by our enemies to assassinate us!"
The president sighed. "You're hysterical."
But now the others were distinctly uneasy. "Let's not take chances. Buzz the office."
"All right-this time," the president said. "Bunch of old women," he muttered as he touched a button on the table.
"Yes, sir?" a woman's voice said from an intercom.
"There is a child in the boardroom, disrupting our meeting. Have the internal security force remove him." He glanced through the door at the prostrate guard. "And send a doctor; the orderly appears to have had a fit."
"Right away, sir," the girl replied.
Fu Antos had been caught unaware by the intercom; such things had never been part of his world. Now he realized that reinforcements had been summoned. The robber barons intended to fight.
He had made a number of embarrassing tactical mistakes, owing to his incompletely broken-in body and his unfamiliarity with the vastly changed outside world. Now it was time for action.
"This is your last chance!" Fu Antos said, preparing his body for what was to come. "Stop the poison. Make reparations, or suffer the consequence."
The paunchy board member nearest him lunged to his feet. "You impertinent brat!" he shouted. "I'll teach you to—"
With a quick twist of his body, Fu Antos caught the charging man by the sleeve and lapel, ducked down, and executed the morote seoi-nage shoulder throw. He had mastered it long ago by another name, before it had been codified in jujitsu or its recent offshoot, judo. His right elbow came up hard under the man's right armpit while his left hand hauled the man's right arm down. The man's inertia carried him forward into the throw.
Though Fu Antos weighed barely sixty pounds, and the man weighed a hundred and eighty, the throw was performed with such superlative expertise that the man flipped completely over and landed hard on the top of the ornate table. Although it was massive oak, it creaked and groaned under the sudden weight and stress. The man groaned once and lay still. He was unconscious.
"Good God!" another board member ejaculated. "He fell!"
He had indeed fallen, but not by any accident. Fu Antos realized that he had made another error. Through centuries he had fought ninjas in practice and samurai warriors in earnest, healthy men, muscular, skilled in tactics and counters and falls. A samurai would have landed on his feet and whirled back to the attack without pause. An unfriendly ninja would not have waited that long; he would have stabbed down with a dagger while he was still in midair. In fact, neither would have permitted an unopposed throw.
So Fu Antos had erred doubly in attempting a throw that could not have been successful against a trained opponent, especially when his own body was so puny; and he had used unnecessary force against a novice. The throw was harmless on a mat against an opponent who knew how to take a fall. On a hard floor, or table, against this obese weakling, it was devastating. Fu Antos still was not properly
adapted to his body; he was acting like the youngster he appeared to be. He had to correct that, for it would surely lead him into disaster.
Now all the men were rising. Fu Antos raised both hands, initiating the kuji-kiri compulsion.
The door burst open, and four burly guards charged in. They were all of the goon-type: huge slabs of fighting meat unrestricted by any excess intelligence. Seeing the man on the table, they reached for their holstered pistols. The original guard had by this time recovered somewhat, and was ready to join the action. Fu Antos shook his head in self-recrimination. He had certainly made an inartistic mess of it. He had not misplayed his hand this egregiously since his real youth, centuries ago. He had lost much of his touch, and would have to practice group-subduing techniques until he regained it. Now he had to deal with ten alerted opponents. If he had used the kuji-kiri at the outset, there would have been no such complications.
The hypnotic technique was ineffective against an aroused crowd; there was no proper concentration. He would have to retreat, or fight.
If he departed, they would never stop the poison; he could judge men well enough to know their basic nature. None of these money barons had any interest in the common people. None had any twinge of conscience about the horrors the river poison brought to the villagers. They were tyrants of the old, familiar stripe—possessed of dangerous new technology.
Well, he had tried to talk with them. He had given them a fair chance, not only by his words but also by his inexcusable series of errors. Now he would revert to more familiar tactics.
A guard advanced on him, pistol drawn. The others were not far behind. "Now, don't give us any trouble, youngster!"
Fu Antos' two hands moved. Despite his prior activity, he had retained the two shuriken in his palms. Now, in a motion so swift it seemed no motion at all, he placed the metal stars inside the band of his belt and drew instead his two tonki from their sheaths at his back. The little knives whistled by the ears of the leading guard.
But the ninja had not missed his targets. The blades embedded themselves in the eye sockets of the guards immediately following. Too small and light to inflict severe damage elsewhere, they were most effective here. Both men pitched forward, clutching at their faces.