"The baby's fine. Other than the fact that neither one of us has a last name to give it."
There was a knock at the door. Fortunato tensed, feeling suddenly out of place. "Peri?" said Tachyon's voice. "Peri, are you in there?"
"Just a minute," she said. She put on a robe and handed Fortunato his clothes. He was still buttoning his shirt when she opened the door.
Tachyon looked at Peregrine, at the rumpled bed, at Fortunato. "You," he said. He nodded like his worst suspicions had just proved out. "Peri told me you were… helping."
Jealous, little man? Fortunato thought. "That's right," he said.
"Well, I hope I didn't interrupt." He looked at Peregrine. "The bus for the Meiji Shrine is supposed to leave in fifteen minutes. If you're going."
Fortunato ignored him, went to Peregrine, and kissed her gently. "I'll call you," he said, "when I know something."
"All right." She squeezed his hand. "Be careful."
He walked past Tachyon and into the hall. A man with an elephant's trunk instead of a nose was waiting there. "Des," Fortunato said. "It's good to see you." That was not entirely true. Des looked terribly old, his cheeks sunken, the bulk of his body melting away. Fortunato wondered if his own pains were as obvious.
"Fortunato," Des said. They shook hands. "It's been a long time."
"I didn't think you'd ever leave New York."
"I was due to see a little of the world. Age has a way of catching up with one."
"Yeah," Fortunato said. "No kidding."
"Well," Des said. "I have to make the tour bus."
"Sure," Fortunato said. "I'll walk you."
There was a time when Des had been one of his best customers. It looked like those times were over.
Tachyon caught up with them at the elevator. "What do you want?" Fortunato said. "Can't you just leave me alone with this?"
"Peri told me about your powers. I came to tell you I'm sorry. I know you hate me. Though I don't really know why. I suppose the way I dress, the way I behave, is some kind of obscure threat to your masculinity. Or at least you've chosen to see it that way. But it's in your mind, not mine." Fortunato shook his head angrily.
"I just want one second." Tachyon closed his eyes. The elevator chimed and the doors opened.
"Your second's up," Fortunato said. Still he didn't move. Des got on, giving Fortunato a mournful look, and the elevator closed again. Fortunato heard the cables creaking behind bamboo-patterned doors.
"Your power is still there."
"Bullshit."
"You're shutting it inside yourself. Your mind is full of conflicts and contradictions, holding it in."
"It took everything I had to fight the Astronomer. I hit empty. The bottom of the barrel. Cleaned out. Nothing left to recharge. Like running a car battery dry. It won't even jumpstart. It's over."
"To take up your metaphor, even a live battery won't start when the ignition key is turned off. And the key," Tachyon said, pointing at his forehead, "is inside." He walked away and Fortunato slammed the elevator button with the flat of his hand.
He called Hiram from the lobby.
"Get over here," Hiram said. "I'll meet you out front."
"What's wrong?"
"Just get over here."
Fortunato took a cab and found Hiram pacing back and forth in front of the plain gray facade of the Akasaka Shanpia. "What happened?"
"Come in and see," Hiram said.
The room had looked bad before, but now it was a disaster. The walls were spattered with shaving cream, the dresser drawers had been thrown into the corner, the mirrors were shattered and the mattress ripped to shreds.
"I didn't even see it happen. I was here the whole time and I didn't see it."
"What are you talking about? How could you not see it?" Hiram's eyes were frantic. "I went to the bathroom about nine this morning and got a glass of water. I know everything was okay then. I came back in here and put the TV on and watched for maybe half an hour. Then I heard something that sounded like the door slamming. I looked up and the room was like you see it. And this note was in my lap."
The note was in English: "Zero hour comes tomorrow. You can die this easy. Zero man."
"Then it is an ace."
"It won't happen again," Hiram said. He obviously didn't even believe himself. "I'll know what to look for. He couldn't fool me twice."
"We can't risk it. Leave everything. You can buy some new clothes this afternoon. I want you to hit the street and keep moving. Around ten o'clock go into the first hotel you see and get a room. Call Peregrine and tell her where you are."
"Does she… does she know what happened?"
"No. She knows it's money trouble. That's all."
"Okay. Fortunato, I…"
"Forget it," Fortunato said. "Just keep moving."
The shade of the banyan tree had saved a little coolness from the morning. Overhead the milk-colored sky was thick with smog. Sumoggu, they called it. It was easy to see what the Japanese thought of the West by the words they borrowed: rashawa, rush hour; sarariman, salary man, executive; toire, toilet.
It helped to be here in the Imperial Gardens, an oasis of calm in the heart of Tokyo. The air was fresher, though the cherry blossoms wouldn't be blooming for another month. When they did, the entire city would turn out with cameras. Unlike New Yorkers, the Japanese could appreciate the beauty that was right in front of them.
Fortunato finished the last piece of boiled shrimp from his bento, the box lunch he'd bought just outside the park, and tossed the box away. He couldn't seem to settle down. What he wanted was to talk to the roshi, Dogen. But Dogen was a day and a half away, and he would have to travel by airplane; train, bus, and foot to get there. Peregrine was grounded by her pregnancy, and he doubted Mistral was strong enough for a twelve-hundred-mile round trip. There was no way he could get to Hokkaido and back in time to help Hiram.
A few yards away an old man raked the gravel in a rock garden with a battered bamboo rake. Fortunato thought of Dogen's harsh physical discipline: the 38,000-kilometer walk, equivalent to a trip all the way around the earth, lasting a thousand days, around and around Mt. Tanaka; the constant sitting, perfectly still, on the hard wooden floors of the temple; the endless raking of the master's stone garden.
Fortunato walked up to the old man. "Sumi-masen," he said. He pointed to the rake. "May I?"
The old man handed Fortunato the rake. He looked like he couldn't decide if he was afraid or amused. There were advantages, Fortunato thought, to being an outsider among the most polite people on earth. He began to rake the gravel, trying to raise the least amount of dust possible, trying to form the gravel into harmonious lines through the strength of his will alone, channeled only incidentally through the rake. The old man went to sit under the banyan tree.
As he worked, Fortunato pictured Dogen in his mind. He looked young, but then most Japanese looked young to Fortunato.` His head was shaved until it glistened, the skull formed from planes and angles, the cheeks dimpling when he spoke. His hands formed mudras apparently of their own volition, the index fingers reaching to touch the ends of the thumbs when they had nothing else to do.
Why have you called me? said Dogen's voice inside Fortunato's head.
Master! Fortunato thought.
Not your master yet, said Dogen's voice. You still live in the world.
I didn't know you had the power to do this, Fortunato thought.
It is not my power. It is yours. Your mind came to me. I have no power, Fortunato thought.
You are filled with power. It feels like Chinese peppers inside my head.
Why can't I feel it?
You have hidden yourself from it, the way a fat man tries to hide himself from the yakitori all around him. This is how it is in the world. The world demands that you have power, and yet the use of it makes you ashamed. This is the way Japan is now. We have become very powerful in the world, and to do it we gave up our spiritual feelings. You have to make the decision. If you want to live in the world you must admit your power. If you want to feed your spirit, you must leave the world. Right now you are pulling yourself into pieces.