Tengu Monastery, Noctis Labyrinthus
Zealand Prefecture
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 7. 19. 12:17
It happens.
Within minutes, I find myself in an old man’s arms, dancing across the floor of the main hall. The tatami mats have been pulled aside and stacked in a neat pile. The floor is polished and slick. Even barefoot, I’m in constant danger of slipping, which just adds to my mortification.
“But you make such a cute couple,” Mimi says.
I don’t even bother to argue.
“Master,” I say as Yadokai drags me across the floor, humming in tune with the portable music box. “Couldn’t I just look at the electrostat instead? I’m a quick study.”
“Ha!” Yadokai barks. “You cannot learn to dance the Bon-Odori from writing. You must learn at the hands of a master.”
Hands? Oh crap. “You can’t be serious.”
“Serious as a heart attack,” he says. “And I’ve had two. Just pretend I’m the prettiest girl you have ever seen.”
Easy for you to say, I think, trying not to stare at the liver spots and random tufts of hair sprouting from his cheeks. “What’s the big deal? I’ve seen the Spirit Festival dances a bunch of times,” I complain. “It’s just a line of partiers jumping behind a fossiker wearing a lion head.”
“Wrong and wrong!” he hollers. “The Spirit Festival is the bastard child of Bon-Odori and that group hop-along is nothing like a dance! Arms up!”
I shut my eyes and try to imagine that my partner is Vienne, which is hard to do because instead of soft, warm hands, I’m holding on to bony hunks of weathered skin.
“This is ridiculous!” I tell Mimi. “If my old crew saw me dancing with an old man—”
“They would be laughing at you,” she says, “just like Riki-Tiki and Vienne, who are hiding in the other room instead of observing prayer time.”
“Thanks for confirming my abject humiliation.”
“Anytime, cowboy. It is one of my most pleasurable functions.”
“Walking is basic to the steps of Nagashi, the restrained form of Awa Bon-Odori,” Yadokai says. “Hear the beat of the taiko drum? Step on it.”
I stomp.
“Ow!” Yadokai snarls. “Step on the beat, not on my foot!”
“Sorry!”
“You should be!” he snaps. “Awa Odori is called the Dance of Fools, not the Dance of Two Left Feet. But we have to start somewhere, and beggars can’t be choosers. Hands up, Noodle Arms! And this time, walk counterclockwise. It’s the line of dance, and it keeps you from running smack-dab into another dancer. Weight on the balls.”
“Weight on the what?”
“The balls of your feet.” He whacks me with a bamboo fan. “You want my help or not?”
“Not.”
“Too late now! Keep walking. The second Fools Dance is called Zomeki. It means the Frenzy.”
“Frenzy?” I say. “My agenda doesn’t really include getting frenzied with you.”
“Silence!”
A moment later, Yadokai and I are frenzying across the floor, crouched low, our arms forming a triangle over our heads and our knees akimbo. Yadokai’s eyes are closed as he hums to the beat of the taiko drum.
“More frenzy, less noodle!” He leads us in the opposite direction. “Next lesson, you get to lead.”
I cough like I’ve swallowed ditch water. “Next lesson?”
Later that evening we are gathered around a low table in the temple, enjoying the feast of Bon. The table is stacked with empty bowls and drained teacups. The meal is almost over, which I’m glad of, because sitting with my legs crossed for over an hour is a form of torture that should be banned.
“Ah.” I stretch out my legs. “That’s better.”
“But rude,” Mimi says.
“Cut me some slack. My body is one big cramp. Even my butt is spasming.”
“So is your brain,” she says. “You should try stretching it out, too.”
Riki-Tiki shoves the last rice ball into her mouth, then licks each of her fingers. “Ghannouj says the tea leaves told him you two came here to find a secret. Well, not here, but close by. And you’ve been looking for it for months.”
“Stupid tea leaves,” I mutter.
Riki-Tiki points her chopsticks at me. “So is it true?”
“Um. Well. Mostly,” I explain. “We’ve been trying to collect some important data. It’s stored in a server complex thirty kilometers from here.”
Vienne interrupts, “In an outpost controlled by a crime lord named Lyme.”
Riki-Tiki’s chopsticks drop from her hand, and Yadokai coughs.
Vienne and I trade looks—the monks know the name Lyme all too well. I don’t know why we’re surprised, because Lyme is the most notorious criminal on Mars.
Shoei belches loudly. “Ghannouj! Dessert!”
Ghannouj appears, and I gobble up the last grains of rice. He waits until I’m finished to offer an open hand for my bowl.
“Oh. Sorry,” I say. “Didn’t mean to hold you up. You’re a great cook.”
Shoei lets a megaton burp rip. “Ha! Ghannouj did not prepare the feast. He is terrible in the kitchen.”
Yadokai lets one rip, too. “And a terrible dishwasher. We only let him be abbot because he makes the tea.”
They all laugh, and I don’t get it. Even though Ghannouj seems to be the most revered of the monks, he cleans up after every course. It’s something I’ve been meaning to ask Vienne. Of course, there are a zillion things I want to ask her.
“Actually,” Mimi says, “there are thirty-one inquiries you have mentally noted, including how to use the squat toilet correctly.”
“That one can wait,” I tell her, then look to Vienne for guidance. She takes pity on me. “The food for the feast is provided by the farmers in the collectives nearby. It is their offering to the dead.”
“And the Tengu eat the offerings?”
“Sure do!” Riki-Tiki tries to burp, which sounds more like a hiccup. “Compliments to the chefs!”
Ghannouj returns with a plate of mochi stuffed with sweetened bean paste.
Looking at the dessert, I see the chance to gather intel on what Vienne told me earlier—that the monk outside, Stain, had desecrated the temple.
“Intel my eye,” Mimi says. “Your interest in Stain is purely testosterone fueled.”
“Is that your way of saying I’m jealous of the jack?”
“Affirmative.”
“I’m just curious, Mimi.”
“Though you may lie to yourself, cowboy, you can never lie to me.”
But I’m not to be denied, so I ask the monks, “Should we take some of this to Stain? When I saw him before, he looked really hungry.”
The monks shrug indifferently, and Vienne gives me a pained expression, which makes me feel even more curious.
After sounding a louder burp, Riki-Tiki grabs a saucer with mochi on it. “Don’t bother. Stain doesn’t need food like the rest of us.”
“Stain,” Vienne explains, when I look confused, “is an ascetic monk.”
“Ah.” I have no idea what she means. “What’s an—”
“An ascetic is a monk who seeks enlightenment by depriving himself of certain comforts and worldly pleasures.”
“Like food?”
Vienne nods. “Among other things.”
“I never thought of food as a worldly pleasure,” I say. “Was he always an ascetic? Or did he become one after he was banished?”
Crash!
Riki-Tiki’s saucer hits the floor. The porcelain shatters. She’s still holding chopsticks near her mouth, a grain of rice clasped between them.
A moment passes. No one else makes a sound.
Uh-oh. I’ve stepped in it now.
“Curiosity killed the cat,” Mimi says.
“But satisfaction brought him back,” I reply.
“Perhaps I should define ‘satisfaction’ for you, cowboy.”
“I will get a broom.” Ghannouj shatters the silence. “Then perhaps Durango can help us practice our Dance of Fools.”
“Hai!” Yadokai yells, sounding a might too enthusiastic. “Riki-Tiki! Music! Old woman! Stack the mats! Vienne! Stop Noodle Arms from escaping!”
“Stack them yourself, old man. I’m dancing with Noodle Arms!” Shoei yanks me across the floor, even as Ghannouj is cleaning up the mess and Riki-Tiki is cranking up the dynamo on the music box.
“Mimi?” I ask. “What should I do?”
“Dance,” she says. “They are trying to assuage your embarrassment, so keep your big yap shut and go with it.”
Shoei places me in the center of the floor. Her hands are smaller than Yadokai’s but no less leathery, and her head only reaches my chest. “Show me the dance of the kite.”
I try to escape. “Yadokai didn’t teach me any kite dances.”
“Ha!” She yanks the hem of my shirt. “You do not get off so easy. Vienne, come, you will be the kite.”
“What am I then?”
She pops me on the forehead. “You control the kite, Noodle Arms!”
“Control the kite?” I ask Mimi.
Before she can answer, Yadokai turns on the music, and Vienne is bowing before me. For the feast, she’s dressed in a white linen salwar kameez and is barefoot, her painted toes still pink. Her hair is pinned in a loose bun, and her cheeks look fresh scrubbed. It’s one of the few times I’ve seen her out of symbiarmor, and the sight makes me hyperventilate.
“Breathe,” Mimi says.
“I forgot how.”
As I watch, she raises her hands above her head and begins to bounce, then does a round-over, the rhythmic movements of her arms and legs matching the herky-jerky tack of a kite in the wind. She jumps into the air, arms spinning, then lands and executes a tumbling run that ends with her bounding off the far wall and sailing high up near the beamed ceiling, arms wide, sleeves ripping in wind of her own making, the fabric pressed tight against her chest, long hair escaping its bun and wrapping around her face like the tail of the kite.
When she lands so lightly that the wooden hummingbird floors barely whisper, my palms are moist, and I think my heart has stopped. With barely a pause, her arms fly above her head again, and her hips sway with the beat of the drum. This is a different Vienne—lost in her own body, free, rapt in the rhythm of the music, beautiful in a way that turns my gut inside out.
“I believe,” Mimi tells me, “that you should be pretending to control her flight.”
“Not a chance. There’s no way anybody could control that.”
“Your choice,” she says, “but it would be better if you tightened your slack jaw. Your tongue is hanging out.”
“No! No! No!” Yadokai howls. The music stops, and the old man stalks over to me, clapping his hands. He shakes me hard. “You should be guiding the kite, not watching it fly away. Did you learn nothing from your lessons? How will you dance the Bon-Odori now?”
“Uh,” I say, one eye on him and one eye on Vienne as she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, her cheeks and lips flushed red. I feel empty and hungry, as if I’ve never had enough to eat.
“Master.” Vienne exhales deeply to focus her breath. “Don’t worry. I can teach Durango. He is a very fast study, when he wants to be.”
We’ve faced bullets, Big Daddies, and cannibals together, but none of them was as fierce as the stink eye the master is giving me. Vienne leans toward me, shielding me from Yadokai, and I can feel the warmth of her skin.
“Old man! Leave the boy alone.” Shoei pushes Yadokai aside, then shoos us to the door. “Vienne, take him for a walk. We will clean up. Go, go. Wait.” She pinches my earlobe. “No funny business, Noodle Arms. Shoei knows all, eh?”
“Why is it,” I ask Mimi as the mistress slaps the sliding door closed behind us, “I can lead a whole davos of Regulators, but two small, wrinkled monks treat me like a child?”
“Some truths are self-evident,” Mimi says.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning it is self-evident, cowboy. Think about it, or try, if you can ever get the butt cramp out of your brain.”
“Mind your own business!” I tell her as Vienne bounds down the steps to the path, barefoot, immune to the gravel.
I take a second to pull on my boots, then follow her. Soon, when she is out of range of the lights of the temple, only her linen salwar kameez is still visible. She moves quickly down the path, silent, ghostlike, until the rising sound of frogs alerts me to the proximity of the pond.
“I did not,” Mimi says, “need the frogs to alert me to the location of the pond.”
“Goody for you,” I subvocalize, and almost bump into Vienne. “Know what? I think you need some dedicated processing time.”
“I am capable of multitasking,” Mimi says.
“Right. Which means you can both kibitz and mock me at the same time,” I tell her as Vienne strikes a match and lights a line of three torches on the edge of the pond. “All right, you can stay awake. Just keep it down, huh?”
Vienne sits on a smooth stone on the bank. She pats the stone next to her. “Take a load off, soldier.” The tone of her voice is familiar. The old Vienne. The comfortable Vienne. The warrior Vienne. Not the flying girl that makes my involuntary muscles spaz out.
Earth and her moon, like two dancers always at arms reach, fill up the evening sky, close enough to see with a naked eye. It’s hard to believe that a planet so bright blue and alive could have a moon that’s so desolate. Yet between the two, it’s Luna that shines more brightly.
“When I was small,” Vienne says, “younger than Riki-Tiki, I used to sit right here, skipping stones and wondering what it would be like to grow up on Earth. Imagine having all the water you could drink, all the food you could eat—”
“All the pox you could catch,” I say. “You know, Earth’s gravity is four times that of Mars. Which means on Earth, your butt would be four times as wide.”
She gives me a playful poke in the ribs. “Be serious.”
“I am serious.”
“Then be less serious. You’re always Durango the chief and never Durango the jack, right?” She tosses a pebble into the pond. It bounces off a water lily and makes a wet plop. “Even when you’re not wearing armor, it’s like you’re still wearing armor. Know what I mean?”
Me? Wearing armor? As if she’s not the one who gives a steady supply of mixed signals. First, she almost kisses me; then she’s as distant as a moon. Then she’s playful, like now. All these months together, and it still feels awkward, this thing between us. Sometimes, I dream of just sweeping her up in a deep, melting kiss, then I think no, that’s a great way to lose a few teeth.
So I toss my own pebble into the water and let enough time lapse before I say, “I reckon I do,” hoping that it will encourage her to explain more.
But no explanation is forthcoming. Her silence ripples on.
Clouds are rolling in, quickly obscuring the twin lights of Earth and her moon. In the torchlight, I notice a delicate silver pendant hanging from a chain on her neck. Carved into the center of the pendant is a lotus, surrounded by its leaves.
“What’s this?”
“I got it when I was a child. I left it here when—when I left.” She tucks it inside her top. “Sorry about the master and mistress. They mean well, but sometimes their enthusiasm for the Bon-Odori lets them get carried away.”
“They’re not so bad,” I say. “I’ve met worse. At least they don’t carry live ammo. Or eat people. Or dissolve—”
“So you like them?”
“Affirmative.”
“I’m glad. They like you, too. Especially Riki-Tiki. She says that you are very handsome and would make a perfect husband.”
My voice rises an octave. “Husband?”
She pats my knee. “Don’t worry. She’s too young to marry, and besides, you’re already taken.”
The loss of lung function returns, and I rasp, “I am?”
“Do you have to ask?”
The truth is, yes, I do have to ask. Like she said about Stain, it’s complicated. Infinitely complicated. More complicated than the cipher algorithms Mimi is running to decrypt the MUSE data.
“No.” I arch an eyebrow. “But I like hearing you say it.”
She grabs my nose and like Shoei, gives it a playful twist. “You’re pathetic! Maybe I’ll tell Riki-Tiki you’re available after all!”
We both laugh, which releases some of the tension. I’m more comfortable being her chief than being her taken. I’m beginning to understand what Vienne means when she says that life is easier when you can just shoot your problems. The AI Mimi would probably say that my id and superego are suffering from asymmetrical synchronicity or some such nonsense. The real Mimi probably would’ve said that I had the target in my sights but just couldn’t pull the trigger.
“Hey,” I say after a moment. “Aren’t you supposed to be teaching me how to do the Dancing Kite?”
“That’s Dance of the Kite, Noodle Arms.”
“Which was amazing,” I say. “Check that, you were amazing. Any chance of an encore?”
She blushes. “How about now?”
“But there’s no drumbeat to follow.”
“I don’t need the drums.” She covers my hands. Her skin is so warm to the touch. “And you couldn’t follow the beat anyway.”
“Ouch. Good one.” I take her into my arms. She smells like orange peels and sandalwood and my scent is more like—
“Old boots,” Mimi says. “You have analyzed every possible nuance of experience; now be quiet and start dancing.”
“No kibitzing!”
Vienne puts a hand on my cheek and rubs the stubble on my chin with her thumb like she’s trying to sand the loops and whorls of her fingerprint smooth. It makes a scratching noise that brings a sly smile. “You need a shave.” She pinches a lock of my long hair in her fingers. Tucks it behind my ear. “A haircut, too.”
She pulls me closer, then presses her lips to my cheek and then my mouth. I kiss her back, tasting the sweet heat of her tongue, and I feel my body shudder.
“‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas,’” Mimi says. “‘But not your heart away.’”
“Shut it, Mimi.”
We dance in the light of the torches, without a sound, eyes closed, hands locked until Vienne pulls away.
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
“Since I became a Regulator, the Tenets have guided my way.” She looks at the stub of her pinkie finger. “Even after we became dalit, I tried to follow them, but then everything changed, and now, I don’t know what rules to follow. How do I know which path to take?”
The wind shifts, and the high grasses bend to it. I have no answer—I’m a soldier, and the tea leaves don’t speak to me.
“Today Riki-Tiki told me she plans to leave the monastery and become a Regulator.” Vienne pats the pendant that hangs around her neck. “She wants me to take her as an acolyte.”
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth,” she says. “Partly the truth. I told her I was very flattered—which I am—and that she would make an excellent Regulator.”
I agree. “What’s the other truth you didn’t tell her? That the monks need her here?”
“You’re pretty perceptive for a soldier.” She rests her head on my shoulder. “The monks do need her. The master and mistress aren’t long for this world, and when they are gone, Ghannouj will be the only Tengu. So much depends on Riki-Tiki staying here and caring for the bees. Hopes. Dreams. History. Traditions. It will all be lost if the Tengu cease to exist.”
I put my arm around her. “That’s a pretty powerful truth.”
“And there’s one more,” she says. “The truth about me—”
But I never hear what truth she means, because a second later, the still night is interrupted by distant pounding and frightened shouts of “Fire! Fire! They’re burning the whole place down!”