But the addicts of Kill-13 were not ordinary thugs. Their strength and reflexes were far better than those of any normal person, and the drug gave them a berserker courage. And this Demon still had his gun.
He put that gun to the side of Kobi's face, quickly, like the motion of a rat-trap springing shut, and pulled the trigger. Kobi's deadly nails tore his larynx out, but the bullet smashed upward through the soft part of the jaw and on through the brain and out the top of Kobi's head.
"And that was it," Ilunga finished "He took six Demons with him, that old man, but he died, his brains splattered across the sidewalk. The others took the bodies away and covered the traces, so there was no police report. And of course they had the girl."
I nodded in the dark. "I appreciate your telling me," I said, smarting from the knowledge, for that old wound was deep. But now I had confirmation of what I had believed, that Kobi Chija, my prospective father-in-law, had acquitted himself with honor. His life could never be recovered, but the pride of his memory was essential.
"You know why I told you," she said.
"Yes."
"I suspected you, as you suspected me, then. But I never betrayed you, though we were enemies."
"And I never betrayed you," I said. "And we are not enemies, now."
"I guess I knew that all along, but I didn't know I knew. You're a honky, and—"
"And you hate all honkies," I finished for her.
"I did hate honkies. But since I studied Tao, I can't get the old edge on it any more. 'God's Way is gain that works no harm.' That's from the Lao Tzu. I wish—"
"Kobi was wrong in one thing," I said. "Kill-13 addiction does not convert a good man into an evil one. It only accentuates traits within that man, and stifles his inhibitions. You retained your good qualities, and the Demon leaders had intelligence and integrity. When I learned of the abduction of my fiancée, you comforted me instead of taking advantage of my shock. There was that in you that responded to my need. I never forgot that favor."
She spat viciously to the side. "Shit, Striker! You don't know a thing! I never did anything for you."
But I understood her. I had complimented her and thanked her for the aid she had rendered during the Demon adventure, and she was constitutionally unable to accept such appreciation gracefully. That Tao training obviously had affected her profoundly, but the negative passions of a lifetime could not be reversed overnight. Her emotion was ambivalent, but powerful.
Racism was deeply ingrained in her; it was part of her nature. She had been mob-raped as a child by white men, and ridiculed by white policemen when she sought justice, simply because she was black. Her whole life thereafter had been dedicated to revenge against the white man. Now she had been used again, by the Hyena. How could she profess any respect for any white man?
Yet she had taken the trouble to tell me of the abduction of my fiancée and the murder of Kobi. On one level it could be interpreted as a desire to hurt me, for the news was undeniably painful. But on the deeper level, this was Ilunga's way of apologizing for believing I had betrayed her. And an excellent way it was.
"I studied Tao to try to get off Kill-13," she said. "But I didn't make it."
"I thought Kill-13 addiction was incurable," I said.
"You got off it."
"I wasn't really on it," I said, realizing I had been tactless. I had had one sniff forced on me, and had suffered a hell of a high, but in my case, one sniff did not an addict make.
"You would have been an addict, if you hadn't had some way to stop it," she insisted. "What did you do?"
I saw she meant it. She thought I had some secret remedy, and she really wanted to know what it was, so that she could use it herself. "It isn't what I did, it's what I am," I said carefully. "Drug addiction comes to the disadvantaged, the emotionally insecure, the ones with seemingly overwhelming problems. They need an escape, and drugs are the easiest way, short term. I've had a better life. I was raised in a happy home, and I did well enough in school. I like my profession, instructing judo and karate. I have no reason to escape my life. I'm not bored or hungry or dissatisfied. So for me the drug euphoria is no temptation. But you—well, if I'd had your background, I'd be an addict too. Don't get me wrong. But you never had the chances I had because you're a woman and your skin is black."
"And when you lost your fiancée?" she asked softly.
Just like that, she punctured my glowing balloon, turned the knife in my gut. Expertly, with no warning. Now there was no way out but the truth. "I wanted to die. I would have died, if you hadn't dragged me out, you bitch."
"That was when you had your sniff of Kill-13," she reminded me. "There was your escape from grief. Why didn't you take it?"
"I hated Kill-l3 and its Demon cult," I said. "I destroyed it, and I'd do it again ten times over, and still not be satisfied. They killed my love."
"I hate Kill-13 too," she said. "And my brother may die because of it. How did you get off it?"
She was forcing me into admissions I had never made before. I had been a setup for addiction, in that circumstance, by my own definition. Without my fiancée, Chiyako, my life was meaningless; color, sex, and job satisfaction were irrelevant. Yet I had escaped the power of the drug. "I think it was the ki," I said at last. The ki-that mysterious inner force, indefinable yet potent, so hard to master. Hiroshi the aikido sensei had it, but few others could do more than talk about it.
"You believe in the ki?" she asked.
"I was a skeptic once, but one day a man showed me its power He was a sixty-year-old little philosopher, but as formidable a martial artist as I have ever known. Hiroshi—he was the one I intended to refer you to for help with Danny, had he not been too far away, in Japan. The normal laws of the universe seem to apply to him only imperfectly. With ki, a man can do things... I can't explain it, really."
"This ki stopped the drug," she said.
"Yes. I can't describe it better than that."
"Teach me the ki."
"I can't. Don't you see, I don't have perfect command of it myself. It comes with need—sometimes—but it's involuntary."
"Feel my face," she said.
Perplexed, I ran my hand over her black hair in the dark and found her black face. It was slick with moisture.
I froze, my hand across her closed eyes, those red Demon eyes. It seemed impossible, but there was only one explanation. This tough, emotionless woman—she was crying.
And she had let me know. That was as incredible as the act. Ilunga could kill without scruple; she had done so many times. If ever she should cry, it would never be before a honky. Unless she were moved by something more fundamental than I had yet appreciated. Her captive brother, her Tao training, her determination to break the unbreakable addiction of the Demon drug—she was not the vicious woman I had known; she was at the breaking point. She had humbled herself to ask me for help, again.
It humbled me. I knew what this display had to have cost her. And I had to respond. This was an emergency as real as that of any combat. I felt it right through to the core of my being.
And from that core came the ki. It rose in me like a living tide, spreading from my hara, the seat of my soul in my body, growing until it became a pulsing sphere of raging forces. Up, up through my viscera, my muscles, my arms, suffusing me with its unique power. It pulsed out through my hand that rested across her bloodshot eyes, and it entered her body. It was as though my hand glowed, and her head glowed under it, receiving that subtle charge. Ki—the invincible, all-permeating force, animating the ultimate resources of mind and body. It engulfed us both, that secret essence of miracles.
But it left us calm in the center of its sphere, like the eerie stillness at the eye of a hurricane. It has been said that with ki you may move for a few seconds outside the normal time continuum, projecting your mind to infinity. This may be true; I really could not tell, for the power was not anything I controlled. I was only its vehicle.
Then it passed. The erratic force left
me, and I shivered in the night, feeling a nakedness that no clothing could abate. Had it shown her, had it somehow helped her? I could not know. For perhaps twenty minutes she lay there in silence. Then, abruptly, she sat up. "Got a match?" she asked.
A match—to heat a pellet of Kill-13 into vapor for inhalation? "Don't do it, Ilunga!" I cried, the weight of failure abruptly heavy on my soul.
"'It is wisdom to know others,'" she said, and I knew she was quoting from Lao Tzu. "'It is enlightenment to know one's self.'" She paused. "Strike a match, hold it to my face, tell me what you see."
I found a match and lighted it. I don't smoke, and have few occasions to start a fire, but there are assorted oddities in my pockets like matches and paper clips, don't ask me why. I brought the light to her head, seeing the white of her eyeballs reflected in the black of her face. She seemed serene; even her broken nose seemed straighter, healed. She looked back at me, unblinking, silent. But her seeming peace was the effect of the shadow; what was it that she wanted me to observe?
The match burned low, scorching my fingers, and I dropped it. We were in darkness again.
Then it came to me. "Your eyes!" I exclaimed. "I saw the whites of your eyes!"
The telltale mark of Demon addiction was gone.
She leaned toward me, her hand catching my shoulder, pulling me about. "I love you," she said. "You have made me whole."
I opened my mouth to demur, but she closed it with a deep kiss. Then I knew that the ki had animated her, providing that last impetus she required to break the addiction. She had no other way to respond to it, in this first flash of its ambiance. She loved me—because she loved the world. That nucleus of hate that had fashioned her into a cold killer, that had made her hate herself, made her prey to the drug—that thing was gone, melted by the ki. I had not been the cause, only the instrument. The power obeyed its own imperative.
With this understanding came acceptance. Ki had saved me before, more than once. Now, perhaps, it had saved her. There was no experience like it; we both were children under its beneficence. And so we made love, there on the roof, with the stars shining through the laundry above us, while the Cuban G-2 quested in vain. We made love, not as white to black, not even as man to woman, but as a merging of equals, united by the amazing quality of the ki. Not since I lost my fiancée had I experienced anything like it.
Chapter 9
Fidel
When we were assured that the chase had subsided, we descended and made our way across Havana by foot. By this time, we knew, the G-2 had ascertained our identities and comprehended that we had tried to destroy the weapons shipment. Mustapha might have saved himself by blaming us—and quite possibly he had not had to lie to do it. We could not return to our former roles; they would arrest us on sight, and hold us on one pretext or another until the arms and heroin were delivered. And then—they might execute us.
Oh, there would be a stink, about me, at least. But totalitarian governments were accustomed to getting away with such things. If they could get rid of me secretly, they could deny any knowledge of my whereabouts, and who could prove otherwise? It wasn't as though Cuba had any great concern for the opinion of gringo America. After all, more than twenty American citizens had met the dreaded paredon, the execution wall, at Cabanas prison alone. Many Yankees languished in Cuban jails, disillusioned about the protective aura of American citizenship. "You can't do this to me! I'm an American..."
I was destined to share some such fate. All because I had stumbled across that illicit arms and drug shipment. Yet there was merit in it, for it had united me with Ilunga.
She guided me to the kwoon of the sifu she had been seeing in Cuba. We walked for a long time, till we hit Havana's Chinatown. We were right in the center of the street, Zanja, with old ramshackle buildings crowded together, Chinese laundries, fruit stalls and vegetable stands. Even at this late hour there were faces peering at us from the windows, old male faces.
We entered an old building. On the ground floor there was an authentic Chinese restaurant, the Pacifico, with several more old men lounging around the entrance despite the predawn hour. Above was the small kwoon and room of the sifu. It could be reached by an old open-cage elevator with wire around the upper portion, or by a staircase. We used the stair. There had not been time for the sifu to help her fight her addiction, and now there was no need; but she believed he would hide us. At least until I could contact the Swiss Embassy and arrange to get out of the country. It was now early morning, but we had no choice; we couldn't wait for an afternoon appointment.
But Sifu Tuh Hsin-wu was there, and seemed to be expecting us. He was in his late seventies, very small and thin, standing about five feet two inches tall. His skin was like yellow parchment, taut across his cheekbones yet hanging flaccid on his arms. He was completely hairless; and his teeth were rotten stumps. He was smoking an opium pipe whose sweet odor permeated the room. This habit of Chinese martial artists appalled me, yet many of them did it. He had the dreamy look of the lifetime addict.
"I see you do not approve," he said to me.
Was I to insult the man who might help me? "Your ways are not mine. Perhaps with greater understanding I would see it otherwise."
"You Americans put undue stress on appearances."
"No doubt," I agreed.
"Sifu Tuh is dying of cancer," Ilunga murmured to me. "The opium gives him relief from the pain. He has smoked it for fifty years."
More than pain relief was involved, then, I thought. Fifty years!
"I have lived a long satisfying life," Sifu Tuh said equitably "My one remaining desire is to die in honest combat, not from the debilitations of disease." He shrugged. "'The Wise Man's mind is free.'"
I recognized another quotation, probably from the Lao Tzu. Ilunga had really been exposed to this Taoist philosophy, and it had benefited her in more than the relief from addiction. A child appeared, evidently some kind of servant. "Master, it is time to cook the rice," he said.
Sifu Tuh nodded. He went to a closet and brought out a twenty-five-pound sack. He held it above the kettle with his left hand, and drove the extended fingers of his right hand at it, once, twice, three times.
It was, as though his fingers were knives. At every stroke his hand plunged into the sack, making a neat incision. Rice poured out.
This was a true sifu, all right. I could not have done that trick; my fingers would have snapped off.
He gave the pot to the boy, who hauled it away. It was for the restaurant below, I surmised; the sifu could hardly consume so large an amount in one meal.
I sensed that this display was not idle; he hardly needed to open the bag in this fashion in my presence. Probably he felt he had lost face because of my disapproval of his opium habit. He had not had cancer fifty years ago, so had needed no pain-killer then. So now he wanted to gain my respect with this exhibition.
"Lift me," he said. I put my hands to his elbows, knowing he could not weigh more than a hundred pounds. I heaved upward—and he did not budge. It was as though he weighed five hundred pounds. It was another demonstration, and I had to go along, for we needed his help. But I was impressed.
I desisted, shaking my head. "I will show you how it is done," Tuh said. He led the way to the roof, and held some rice in the palm of his hand. A sparrow flew down to eat. When the rice was gone, the bird tried to fly away, but evidently could not. Yet it did not seem to be injured. "When it seeks to fly, I hear its energy and yield, so that it has no base from which to launch itself," he explained. "Even so the proper yielding can prevent a man from being lifted."
He let the bird go. Yes, I was impressed.
Then Tuh put his arm out straight to the side. "Bend it down," he suggested.
At this point I knew the resistance I would meet. I went ahead and tried. I put pressure on the arm, to force it down, and of course it would not go.
Then I felt the ki again, unbidden, flowing into my own arms. Slowly I forced the arm down.
"Ah,"
he murmured, undismayed. "I feel that! You have some ch'i yourself! I thought I perceived it in her, and I wondered at its source." He gestured to Ilunga, who smiled. That was another thing: now she smiled, whereas in the past she had only bared her teeth.
"It has no source," I said. "It infuses whatever it will."
"True, true!" he agreed. "But give it time. If the will is concentrated, the vital energy will follow it. Will is of the highest importance, vitality stands second. Do not seek in your vitality for what you do not find in your heart. What you have is untrained, but it is very strong. It has made a woman of her."
"It wasn't just the ki the ch'i," Ilunga said. "He—"
"It was to cure the addiction," I said quickly. This hardly seemed the occasion to rehash our rooftop liaison. "She needed that extra push."
Tuh nodded, not pursuing the matter. He had recovered his face, and did not choose to make me lose mine. We had a leisurely breakfast of Chinese herb tea, fragrant and tasting of mint, boiled rice with fish heads and chunks of lobster, and lotus seed cookies. Evidently the restaurant below took good care of the sifu's dietary needs. Tuh told us how he had been sixteen at the fall of the Manchu Empire in China in 1912, and quite involved in the secret societies of the time, as well as in the Chinese underground. Later, when China fell to the communists, he migrated to Cuba, only to have it, too, fall.
"But here they tolerate me and my habit," he said, taking another puff of his opium. "So long as I do not publicize my way of life or my beliefs. And I am old, and soon to die. I take no joy in quarrels."
The boy dashed in. "Master!" the lad cried breathlessly. "The G-2 are coming!"