Kiai! & Mistress of Death

  "I'm no facsimile of Kali," I said.

  It was as though I had struck her. "How do you know of that?"

  "Miko told me about your black goddess. The resemblance was apparent. It figures that you have quite a future in this outfit. But I'm different. I'm male and white and straight."

  "My future could be yours."

  "Don't try your park-wiles on me! The drug kills that sort of thing."

  "It kills only what is ugly in man."

  "His sex?"

  "There is more to you than sex."

  I didn't like this. She was beginning to make sense. "I hope so. I'm getting married soon."

  She reacted, but I was uncertain how to interpret it. She had tried to mark me, in our park encounter, as though she were jealous, but she didn't seem jealous now. Sad, perhaps. "To the Chinese girl? I think not."

  "Why not?"

  With no other forewarning she sprung the trap. "Because she is in our power."

  She might as well have kicked me in the unguarded groin again. It did not occur to me to disbelieve her, at first. Kill-13 seemed to act as a truth-drug, along with all its other attributes; no demon had lied to me yet, that I knew of. "How?"

  "The taxi the old man took, bringing her home. The demons ambushed it at a red light."

  "I would have heard about it!"

  "How? No one knows yet that they are gone,"

  "Kobi would have fought."

  "Against a gun held by a demon?"

  So the demons had resorted to guns for this venture. "Yes, to protect his daughter."

  "Then he is dead."

  I remembered Kobi's seeming disappointment when I declined to accompany him to the hospital. Had he had a premonition?

  "Let me use your phone."

  She gestured to it. There was no trace of gloating in her manner; she seemed sorry for me.

  But even before I called, I knew the demon net was pulling in tight. They had outmaneuvered me. They must have started planning this caper the moment I beat Miko, or even before. Why hadn't I anticipated their countermoves? Why hadn't I stayed to bring Chiyako home from the hospital myself? This could not have happened then.

  "Do not blame yourself," Ilunga said as I dialed. "Demons have watched you for several days. We know when to strike. You could not have avoided this."

  I didn't reply. I had seen little evidence that the local demons were clever enough to pull off so neat a play. Perhaps there was a national or world organization whose finesse was greater. Still, it was questionable.

  How had they known about my involvement with Chiyako? There had never been anything obvious about our relationship; I had been circumspect. Not because I cared what the demons thought, but because I valued the acquaintance too highly to make a spectacle of it. Naturally I visited Kobi's house often; he and I were working together against the demons. They would have had no reason to suspect my involvement with his daughter. So I had taken her out one afternoon; this was the polite thing to do for the child of an honored sifu. The demons would naturally minimize the relationship, failing to appreciate the sexual attraction because of their own weakness in that department. Chiyako had been in the hospital several days, and I had not even gone to visit her. How could the demons know it was at her own request? While she sorted out her feelings for me, and I did the same for her. No, there was no certain evidence.

  Someone must have told the demons that the surest way to put pressure on me was to put pressure on Chiyako. And the demons had acted immediately.

  Who had betrayed Chiyako? Who had known me well enough, and also had had contact with the demons? Almost no one. I realized that the phone had been ringing at the other end for some time, with no answer. Neither Kobi nor Chiyako were at home. Yet there was nowhere else they would be at this hour, on this day.

  Except with the demons.

  I put down the receiver, looking at Ilunga. "You knew about me and Chiyako." I said. "You wanted to compete with her, one way or another." A terrible rage was building in me. "You just made me an offer to take her place. As you took the place of the demon you sent me to kill, Miko. You betrayed her. Kali's way." I drew out my nunchaku.

  "Do not flatter yourself," she said coolly, putting her bare feet upon the couch. Her long thighs showed. "I lost a battle to you, not the war. I'll never take up with a honky bastard."

  The nunchaku moved in my hand as if of its own volition. I was expert in no weapon, but this was the one I handled best. I felt its awful power, an extension of my awful emotion. "Then what did you mean, just now, 'My future could be yours'? It sounded like a proposition."

  She closed her eyes, not deigning to notice my ready weapon. "The Kill-Thirteen cult will expand enormously. There is room at the top. Especially for competence. I hate you for what you are, but I hate all men, including the sexless demons. You would make an excellent demon leader. Together we could move up, into fantastic power. Take your Chinese girl with you, I don't care about that. Only swear that you will never betray my interests, and take a sniff with me. When I am really a goddess, you can be a god. We don't have to like each other."

  "So you had Chiyako kidnapped, so that I would help you take over the cult," I said. It was a grandiose plan, but quite possibly workable. The cult, by my own observations as well as hers, was short on effective leadership. Only the compelling power of the drug itself held it together. I could do a better job of organizing Kill-13 distribution than the present pushers; I knew that without any special conceit. And I could outfight the present demons, even when they were armed and high on the drug. I had proved that the hard way. So Ilunga's notion made sense.

  Except that I had no hankering for that sort of power. I could not be corrupted from my mission. My Shaolin commitment was eternal, and I could expiate my blunders of the past only by expunging this devastating drug from the world.

  I balanced on my foot, on the verge of an attack that would mark a new phase in my war against the demons. I knew it was useless to bargain with them for Chiyako's release, or that of her father, if he was alive. They would either kill her or addict her the moment I made my move. But I could kill demons, starting with the black mistress herself.

  "I did not betray her," Ilunga said.

  I paused, knowing that violence was folly, seeking some way out of it, some way to recoup. I felt like a rat in a trap. "Who, then?"

  "Amalita Pedro."

  It had to be true. Amalita had known, and was insanely jealous. She had the means and the motive to destroy Chiyako, and had done it. Why hadn't I realized that before?

  "You are not thinking well," Ilunga observed. "You would do better with the drug. Isn't that obvious?"

  It was obvious. I was reeling from emotional body blows. My fevered reasoning was a patchwork full of holes. Whatever I decided right now was bound to be a mistake. But I would never take the drug.

  I lowered the nunchaku. "What do you recommend?" I asked. One part of me was appalled that I should seek her advice; she was the enemy!

  "Go after her," she said. "Immediately, before they contact you. Strike fast and hard."

  "I don't know where she is." Now I sounded querulous.

  "Neither do I. But I can guess."

  I shook my head, trying to clear it. "You're helping me? Turning traitor to your own organization?"

  "I was not inducted voluntarily. My purposes are my own."

  I remembered Kobi's description; how Ilunga had been tricked into her first sniff, not realizing she would be addicted. So she had made the best bargain she could, and formed a fighting arm of the demons, working with men she hated. Now she wanted to bring me in on the same basis. "Still—"

  "Of course if I help you to recover her—" she began.

  "No!" I cried. "No bargaining!" Yet I was bargaining. Somehow she had fought me and overcome me in this verbal struggle. Just as I had overcome her physically, before. It was now apparent that I had won little if anything by that encounter; her strategies were more comprehensive than mine. H
owever I might protest, I had to listen to her, for Chiyako's life was now at stake.

  "All right. No bargaining," she agreed. "I will tell you the source."

  "You know the source of Kill-Thirteen?" I demanded incredulously.

  "A Mayan temple in the jungle of Honduras. That is all I know, and I learned it only this afternoon, with the assumption of my new position in the hierarchy."

  "Why on earth should you tell me this?"

  "Female illogic."

  Fat chance! She was either trying to send me into another trap, or to enlist my loyalty to her interests. "If the demon leaders learn you have told an outsider"

  "I think you will keep my secret. We have a common purpose, when you choose to recognize it."

  Yes, she still hoped to convert me. Perhaps that was the only way she could expiate her failure to mutilate or kill me. Still, I had to follow up this lead; it was the only one I had.

  Yet I was not satisfied just to walk out of Ilunga's apartment. "You knew I was coming," I said. "You set this up for me."

  "This is the way I live," she said. "The heightened perception Kill-Thirteen gives me enables me to appreciate fine things, and now I have the money and leisure to indulge my tastes for material and aesthetic things. I find that is not sufficient, however."

  "You eat hors d'oeuvres every night?"

  "No. That much was for you."

  "How did you know I was coming, when I didn't know myself?"

  "I—hoped."

  "I thought you hated me. That you wanted me dead."

  "That is true, and untrue. You told me I would change, if I ever went halfway to know a decent man. I have gone halfway."

  This was becoming uncomfortable. I was fishing for negative answers and not getting them. She had evidently done some serious thinking in the past few hours. "You said you'd never take up with a honky."

  "Not openly." She smiled with resignation. "I have an image to maintain."

  "I don't understand you."

  "I don't understand myself. Go to your Chinese girl."

  "What do you figure my chances of recovering her are?"

  "One in a hundred, if you're lucky. Your way. My way, a hundred to one your favor."

  That was the way I figured it too. Take a sniff, join the demons, and Chiyako would very soon be back with me. Throw away my mission, desert Shaolin, for the sake of a Shaolin girl. Paradox. "I need a drink."

  "I thought you didn't drink."

  "Not openly. Image." But it wasn't funny. The whole project seemed hopeless. I loved Chiyako, but that love could kill her. Either way I chose. Better for her if I had never known her. Just as it had been with the head monk.

  "You know that one sniff would bring her back," Ilunga said. "But you won't take it."

  "You wouldn't understand."

  "Try me." She made a little gesture with her hand. "I know something about having a mission, about being alone. I never met a man before who put his principles first. I could respect a man like that, and I'd be disappointed if he took the easy way out."

  She was right. There was a parallel in our situations. Kobi had been right too; Ilunga was no simple criminal but a woman with many redeeming qualities, once her framework was understood. I kneeled beside her on the couch, and she stroked my hair. I let the nunchaku drop to the floor.

  "As I said," she murmured as her hands moved on down my body with consummate skill, "we don't have to like each other. Just a little respect."

  Somehow I did not regard what followed as a violation of my commitment to Chiyako. My effort of the following days would proceed regardless. Ilunga's life would continue as before, and she would still hate men. We were ships of hostile nations passing in neutral territory, exchanging amenities on a guarded basis. There was no commitment on either side beyond that.

  It was still one hell of an experience.

  It was with a certain trepidation that I went to Nicaragua to see Vicente Pedro. He had to know what his wife Amalita had been up to. But I had to have his help. All I could do was tell the truth, the whole truth, and stand for the consequence. If he didn't kill me, he would help me.

  I had, of course, checked Kobi's home. It was empty. The two had left the hospital in a taxi; that taxi had driven off. And never arrived at its destination. The driver was gone too; his family was distraught. The demon goon squads were not ones to quibble about killing innocent people. The taxi was found in an alley, blood-stained and bullet-ridden. Ilunga had told the truth, but I believed her when she said she had not been involved in that particular deal. She never touched a gun, and neither did her trainees.

  Pedro's vast estate was near the Honduras border, and his comprehensive enterprises reached well beyond it. Given the hint Kill-13 in a Mayan temple—he would know how to follow it up. I hoped.

  I had saved his life, in the snowy wilds of Japan's Hokkaido Island. I had carried him down the snowcovered mountain, back to civilization, where modern medicine had helped him recover. He was duly grateful. But he was also extremely jealous. In fact, he was very like his wife in that respect. The matter with Amalita might or might not balance out.

  The only way to get to his estate, or to anywhere in Nicaragua, was by way of the capital city, Managua. I phoned ahead, of course, and received an impersonal acknowledgment from one of Pedro's secretarios: a private aircraft would pick me up in Managua. My plane stopped at Bluefields, Nicaragua, unscheduled, but there was a storm ahead. The city is on the Atlantic, a fishing center and port. Most of the population was black. There was one paved street, five hundred meters long; the rest was mud, and more mud. It rained incessantly.

  I understood that this was one of the major cities of the Atlantic coast. I stayed in, feeling miserable.

  Next day we made it to Managua. I remembered it from my prior visit, over a year ago. A hilly city rising from the lake on its north. This was December. No snow, of course, but it was the rainy season. The equator was only a few hundred miles to the south. A warm Christmas was only two weeks away, and decorations were everywhere. There were garlands, a few Christmas trees, some Santa Clauses. But many figures of the three wise kings, Los Reyes Magos, bringing toys to children in Latin America. Booths were in the streets, on the sidewalks, selling toys and food. There were many drunks abroad.

  I stayed the night at the Plaza Lido Hotel, downtown. Restless, I went out to wander the cobblestone streets in my shirt sleeves, amazed by the winter warmth despite the latitude. Only a day ago I had trekked through snow.

  The rain had let up, for how long, I could not be certain.

  Many natives were out now; the population of the city seemed to be mostly Indian, about five-feet five-inches tall. I towered above the crowd.

  I bore south at first, uphill, stretching my legs. There were parties in the private homes, fiestas; I saw them going on in the open houses. People were dancing to wild Latin music—rhumbas, zapateos, mambos—I couldn't tell one from the other. But I wished I could join in.

  I passed through a marketplace, still open this evening. There was much good food, meat, fish, and so on, but it was covered with flies. Much of it was alive; I saw chickens and pigs. The smell was so strong I felt like retching. And there were crows, as there had been in Chinatown.

  Then I worked my way on around the Presidential Palace—such a contrast to the market—and back north a mile or so, to the water. I moved along the Malecon, past a small beach on Lake Managua, looking at the water to see if I could spot one of its unique freshwater sharks. Of course I couldn't; it was dark now, and I was not inclined to go for a swim. I went down a set of steps, around Ruben Dario Park, and encountered a small carnival. People were dancing there, more Latin dancing I didn't understand but enjoyed watching. Those women sure knew how to move in those dresses.

  A nine-year-old boy offered me a shoeshine. I had some native money, but didn't know the going rate for such services. He thought I was haggling, and in the end he did it for the equivalent of two American cents, and seemed well
satisfied.

  I saw many beggars. Some were blind, or claimed to be, and some were merely old. Women as well as men. Some sold lottery tickets. Some sold newspapers; I would have bought one, if I had been able to read Spanish. In this foreign city, I felt awfully ignorant. There were many handsome buildings, some tall new skyscrapers. But also many old buildings of stucco or even mudwall, and red tile roofing. The streets were narrow, and the drivers crazy. The carnival seemed the safest place to be.

  I rode a small ferris wheel, getting a boyish thrill. Then a girl joined me, and made an offer that needed no translation. I wasn't interested, but if I had been, the smell would have cured it. She hadn't taken a bath for a month.

  But even that sort of girl reminded me of Chiyako. I was unable to enjoy any of this anymore. I went soberly back to my hotel room, only two blocks south, and spent a restless night. There was no TV to distract me, not even in Spanish.

  The phone woke me. "Huh?" I answered groggily, noticing the bandage on my hand was loose. Fortunately that sai cut had not been serious.

  "Pedro here," the familiar voice said. "Do you not remember where you are supposed to be?"

  "You're here?" I asked, still bemused. "In Managua?"

  "Well, I am not in Japan, Señor! Do you think I would let an underling pick up my friend?"

  So he didn't know about Amalita! "Pedro, there's something—"

  "Tell me in the airplane!" he said jovially, and hung up. Tell him what: Kill-13, or Amalita? In the plane, where one false move would crack us up?

  There was no help for it. We looped over the city, appraising the flat tops of its numerous downtown stores, its parks and statues, its manycolumned capitol building, the stately Presidential Palace that I had viewed from the ground. In front of the baseball stadium I could see the big statue of Somoza. And near the carnival, the big plaza in front of the cathedral. Then out across the lake.

  I glanced at Pedro. He looked tanner and fitter than he had a year ago. Once he had been wheelchair-ridden; now he stood and walked powerfully. He had gained about twenty pounds of muscle, and grown a big black mustache.