The barbarous cruelty permeating every aspect of life in the outside world? Who would favor savagery over tranquility? If you had a system that worked, why mess with it?
Rikki thoughtfully stared at the katana in his lap. His chosen profession, as a dedicated Warrior, sometimes entailed the use of violence in the performance of his duties, but that was different. Violence utilized constructively, to preserve the standards of truth, beauty, and goodness, was not a moral evil; violence used destructively was.
Did that make Napoleon evil?
Rikki fondly recalled his philosophy classes in the Family school. What was it Confucius wrote? “Clever talk and a domineering manner have little to do with being man-at-his-best.” And the Buddha was quoted as saying:
“A man should hasten toward the good, and should keep his thoughts from evil.” And didn’t one of the Proverbs say “the way of the wicked is as darkness”?
Napoleon, so it seemed, was intentionally courting a darkness of his own devising, and exalting his ego, his vanity, over the welfare of the Family and the safety of the Home.
Why?
What made Napoleon tick?
Did it really matter?
No.
As a Warrior, as a defender of the Family, he had a duty, and his duty eclipsed any and all other considerations. His was not to reason why; his was but to kill or die.
Rikki enjoyed the many books in the Family library dealing with Oriental subjects. They suited his temperament, his inner nature, like a glove over a hand. From earliest childhood, he’d spent countless hours in the library perusing volumes on Oriental reasoning and the martial arts.
Others in the Family evinced a decidedly Christian bent to their religious proclivities, and some preferred the Koran or The Circles, but he found his orientation centered on Zen.
To function as the perfected swordmaster was his only goal in life.
Ironic, wasn’t it? If he’d been born before the Big Blast, before the nuclear holocaust had torn the fabric of existence asunder, he would have found himself in a sterile society, devoid of spontaneity and originality, a world designed to shape every person into the same mindless mold of cultural conformity.
He despised the very concept.
It had taken a nuclear conflagration to return—or was it advance—humanity to a free level of expression, where a man, or woman, could openly nurture the realization of his or her own unique personality without government interference or social imposition by those who claimed to “run things.”
Years ago, Plato had given a seminar on “Life Before the Final Folly,” an insightful examination of daily living before the Third World War. Rikki had never forgotten it. Why had the people let themselves be manipulated by those in “power”? Why had they allowed every aspect of their daily existence, from the food they consumed to the clothes they wore, to be dictated by others? And what about the ones in authority? Why had they sought to control everything? Whether it was by the passage of a convenient “law,” or by the terrible force of “peer pressure,” either you conformed or you were branded an outcast, a misfit with no redeeming social value.
A swordmaster would have been hard pressed to attain spiritual harmony in the times before the Big Blast.
Rikki placed his right hand on his katana. He wouldn’t have been “allowed” to carry his sword down the street before the war. Simply amazing! His katana was as much a part of him as his arm or his leg.
Maybe more so. The perfected swordmaster wasn’t a swaggering bully; he used his sword only when unavoidable in the performance of his duty. His path of Tightness, the code of Bushido, perceived the katana as the sword of justice, as an extension of his inner guide. Before he could engage an opponent, prior to combat, he must divest himself of all personal animosity and anger, strip his consciousness of any feelings of revenge or retaliation. He must become, in a sense, empty. An emptiness with a purpose.
So Napoleon’s motivation for desiring to usurp the Family leadership from Plato was completely irrelevant. To Rikki’s mind, to the mind of the professional Warrior, the mind of the perfecting swordmaster, the fact of Napoleon’s threat superseded any impulse toward compassionate understanding.
The threat must be eliminated.
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi serenely gazed at the azure sky and cleared his mind of all thoughts.
Today was the day.
Either Napoleon would cease to threaten the Family, or by nightfall the Family would need a new head of Beta Triad.
Chapter Twenty
“…up!”
What the blazes was it? An earthquake?
“Hickok! You’ve got to wake up!”
Hadn’t he just been through this? But hold the fort! This wasn’t Sherry’s voice. It was familiar, though…
“What did they do to you?” the person anxiously asked.
Hickok opened his eyes and found Shane’s bushy brows and full cheeks hovering inches from his face. The sixteen-year-old was wearing black pants and a black shirt, both filthy from his confinement in the dirty cell.
His brown hair was matted with grime.
“Thank the Spirit!” Shane exclaimed. “You’re okay!”
“That’s debatable,” Hickok groused, sitting up and pressing his left hand against the back of his head. “That’s another one I owe.”
Shane’s brown eyes sparkled with excitement. “I can’t begin to tell you how glad I am to see you!”
“Do tell, pard.” Hickok said, frowning in annoyance. “Need I point out I wouldn’t be in this fix if it wasn’t for you?”
Shane, shamed, averted the gunman’s gaze. “I didn’t think it would turn out like this,” he mumbled.
“Let me guess. You figured you’d impress me by finding the new Troll headquarters. Right?”
“How did you know?” Shane gawked, impressed.
“It was as easy as adding two and two,” Hickok informed the youth.
“Your letter told me you were going to find the Trolls, and it was pretty easy to figure out why. You jerk.”
“I take it you’re mad at me?”
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
There was a shuffling sound behind Hickok. “So this is the one you’ve been telling me about?” asked a new voice. “The one who killed fifty Trolls singlehanded?” he added doubtfully.
Hickok swiveled. The third and final occupant of the small earthern cell was a big man with short brown hair and green eyes, dressed in soiled clothes little better than tattered rags.
“Hickok,” Shane said, introducing them, “this is Wally. He’s from a small town south of here…” Shane paused a moment. “What was the name of it again?”
“Tenstrike,” Wally answered. “The Moles caught me about a year ago.
Wolfe put me on one of their digging crews, but I gave ’em such a hard time they threw me in here. I don’t imagine I’ll be in here much longer.”
“Why’s that?” Hickok inquired.
Wally nodded at the iron bars comprising the cell door. A guard with a rifle stood on the other side, leaning against the far wall, his eyes closed.
“These bastards put you out of your misery if you give ’em too much grief.”
“Do you want to throw in with us?” Hickok questioned him.
“You have something planned?” Wally said, moving closer so their conversation couldn’t be overheard by the guard.
“I’m busting out of this calaboose,” Hickok replied. “You’re welcome to come along if you like.”
“Calaboose?” Wally repeated, perplexed. “Oh! You mean this cell?”
Hickok nodded. “That’s what I said, pard. You game?”
Wally glanced at the guard. “How do you plan to do it?”
Hickok grinned. “With my ace in the hole.” He patted his right wrist, then froze, stunned.