Between the Flowers and the Moon
by Nene Adams ©2006 - All rights reserved

For eighty years and more,
by the grace of my sovereign
and my parents, I have lived
with a tranquil heart
between the flowers and the moon.
-----Narushima Chuhachiro

Tokyo, the 22nd century

Master Takuan Soho of the Unfettered Mind said: The art of the sword consists of never being concerned with victory or defeat, with strength or weakness, of not moving one step forward, nor one step backward, or the enemy not seeing me and my not seeing the enemy. Penetrating to that which is fundamental before the separation of Heaven and Earth where even yin and yang cannot reach, one instantly attains proficiency in the art.

Katsumi paused in the act of lifting a skewer of grilled eel to her mouth. Attached to the unagi vendor's cart was a battered liquid crystal display that was broadcasting a streaming video feed. A CGI head with banana-yellow cartoon hair was superimposed over the scrolling real-time images. The head’s lips were moving but no sound emerged. Katsumi fixed her gaze on the flat screen, her face impassive, and jabbed a finger on the volume icon. The eel vendor hunched his thin shoulder but made no protest. He used chopsticks to turn over the skewers on his plasma grill while Katsumi remained absorbed in the news, her snack forgotten and dripping teriyaki sauce over her knuckles.

"Bindiya Bhattacharya," the announcer said, bobbing frantically to an inner gyroscopic jitterbug, "accused of the brutal slaying of her husband, Dr. Charles Li Fang, escaped just hours ago from Shimekazari Asylum. In an unexpected development, Department of Order psychics remain unable to pinpoint the alleged murderer's location. It seems that Bindiya-san is determined to continue her run of bad karmic debt! Let's download a call from the Koan Man in Ropponji, who thinks the good missus is just a harmless little lepidoptera dreaming that she's a killer queen bee..."

A rustling noise erupted all around, a sort of hushed sound that was like the sigh of silk against skin. Small objects dropped from the sky, a technicolor rain that bounced off the vendor's persimmon-dyed umbrella and landed in the street, thumping mutely on the plascrete surface. Katsumi recognized the genetically modified butterflies, each with an advertising message or company logo emblazoned on its wings. Like cultivated silk moths, these butterflies had no mouths and only survived a day or two before expiring.

Kastumi shook off the dying insects that had tangled themselves in her hair. Have you experienced enlightenment today? asked a faded ad on the wings of a butterfly that fluttered in its death agonies near her foot. Visit Dakini Web, your one-stop dharma shop!

She ate her grilled eel in three bites, then twirled the skewer between her blunt fingers. In a movement that was too quick to follow with the naked eye, Katsumi flicked the thin bamboo length through the air, spearing several of the falling butterflies; the shish-kabob landed on the vendor’s grill and began sizzling. He ignored her, his face shadowed by the wide brim of his woven reed hat. She walked away from the vendor, her wooden geta clattering loudly on the street. Each footstep also crunched the fragile insect bodies, making a noise akin to roasted rice being pounded in a mortar. Maintenance crab ‘bots scuttled from their lairs beneath the pavement, big claws snatching at anything their logic circuits deemed as trash. Katsumi carefully walked around one crab that threatened the hem of her hakama and continued on her way.

Shibuya ward was chaos, as always. Teenagers and young adults of every sex and no sex congregated here, lured by trendy shops, fashion outlets, anime clubs, digital-gladiator arenas and gaming parlors, all bubblegum colors and frantic, frenetic motion. A group of girls passed by, wearing pastel raincoats and eating green tea ice cream. They saw Katsumi and stared, eyes wide, before hastening to the other side of the street. She paid no attention to them. A muscle-grafted bodyguard with ugly metal bond-work on his teeth took a look at Katsumi, and chivvied his androgyn client into the safety of a Hello Sex Kitten club. Katsumi continued serenely in her course, never deviating, never reacting as pedestrian traffic flowed out of her way as though impelled by some invisible herald of doom that stalked ahead of her.

She stopped outside a multi-storied building whose nano-skinned sides displayed a mixture of advertisements and clips from popular chanbara eiga films. Huge samurai clashed above her head in operatically bloody combat while scrolling kanji proclaimed the merits of hemorrhoid cream and three-ply toilet tissue. Katsumi kicked off her wooden clogs and slid them into a receptacle, receiving a printed claim ticket in return. Entering the building, she was nearly run down by a delivery woman in a neon green nylon jumpsuit, who was balancing a stack of lacquered jubako on her shoulder.

Automatically, Katsumi used her senses to detect and catalogue each detail - the holographic logo of the Mongolian barbeque restaurant on the jubako, a whiff of cold mutton and spices, the clumps of dried mascara clinging to the woman's lashes. She took a breath through her mouth, tasting the acrid-sweet mélange of flavors that ghosted around the brilliant green figure and her lunch boxes. The ninja's analysis lasted a heartbeat. Nothing was amiss. She relaxed her hold on the knife up her sleeve, allowed the woman to zigzag around her, and padded on split-toed tabi socks towards the security guard's desk in the lobby.

Katsumi knew what the guard saw when he looked at her - a short, squat female with cold shark’s eyes in a broad flat face, dressed in an ash gray cotton gi, the legs of her hakama bound tightly to her calves with cords. Her glossy black hair was chopped off neatly and evenly just at the angle of her jaw, leaving a tattoo visible on her throat. Hiragana characters spelled out Property of Yoshitsune International in an elegant scroll across her skin. Katsumi was a lab created ninja, just as genetically engineered as the advertising butterflies. There were not many of her kind, since the cost was prohibitive - both in terms of practical expense and time, as well as the necessary government permissions and paperwork. Katsumi took some pleasure in being unique, as rare and precious as the Jomon pots and Ankor Wat heads that were displayed behind shatterproof polycarbonate in the building's lobby.

She returned the guard's bow and presented him with a origami frog. The hand-made paper was screen-printed in the yuzen style in a pattern of feathers and pinwheels. The man stared at her, nonplused. She touched the origami with her index finger. "Kero, kero," she croaked in imitation of a frog's sound, her mouth stretched in a smile that had no humor in it.

The guard blinked. Slowly, cautiously, as if he suspected he was moving in a dream (or being filmed by a crew of pranksters), he extended a finger and touched the folded paper amphibian. The instant he did so, a tiny dart shot out of the frog’s mouth and embedded itself in the meat of his palm. He went rigid and collapsed in a long backwards fall, muscles drawn so tightly that he bounced when he hit the floor. Katsumi nodded, pleased. She had coated the dart with a new acquisition - a modified textrodotoxin which paralyzed instantly, leading to death in a few minutes as the brain shut down from lack of oxygen. There was no way of knowing if the man was in pain, however, so Katsumi knelt next to his body and produced her knife. There was no pleasure in torture; a clean kill was preferred whenever possible. She rolled the man on his side, tugged on his uniform coat to expose the nape of his neck, and drove the knigr between the bony knobs of his vertebrae with a single powerful thrust.

Mission accomplished, Katsumi rose and patiently waited for the other security guards and assorted bystanders to scramble out of her way before she left the building. From a distance, she could hear the shrill sound of a police siren and estimated they would arrive at the location in approximately two minutes. This left plenty of time to retrieve her geta and leave before there could be any further confrontations. No doubt psychics employed by the police would discern the cause of the guard's demise, and the word would spread. Her employer, the Long Eyebrow tong, would be satisfied, as the dead guard owed heavy gambling debts and had been targeted to serve as an example. Katsumi did not fear arrest. She was, after all, a licensed and bonded ninja, duly registered as a corporate asset, and was, therefore, above the laws meant for those who had status as actual people.

Katsumi smiled at the distinction, causing a tattooed Maori bouncer outside a karaoke club to blanch, his face a study in black tribal stripes and apprehension-paled skin.

She took the subway to Nerima ward, where she had space above an abandoned writing brush factory near Toshimaen Amusement Park. A tribe of neo-pagan hackers lived in the rabbit warren of rooms and corridors beneath her, carving out their own space around the thick bundles of cables that snaked everywhere, providing power as well as access to the loas of cyberspace. When Katsumi came through the door, she nodded a greeting to the headman, whose platinum blonde dreadlocks were ornamented with antique computer chips. He cradled a sleeping infant against his bare chest and gave her an affectionate smile.

The air was sweet with ganja smoke, laced with ozone and cooking smells. She could hear the ever-present hum of computers, and track a number of flickering blue-white screens in the semi-gloom, each with its attendant priest. On the wall, a holo-projection of Maître Bandulu, sly god of data theft, winked and rolled its eyes. From somewhere near the back of the building came the insistent thud-thud-thud of African tribal dub, the melody twined with the haunting wails of hurdy-gurdy and shakuhachi flute.

One of the headman's wives, a thin woman whose shaven skull was peppered with chrome interface sockets, sidled over to give Katsumi a large wooden bowl containing portions of pumpkin stew, lentil daal, banana fritters, cauliflower curry, and several rounds of cassava bread called bammy, soaked in coconut milk and fried in ghee. The ninja bowed her thanks, which the wife did not acknowledge as it was forbidden for Sinsemilla women to make eye contact with anyone not born of their tribe. Katsumi started towards the stairwell, dinner in hand, and halted when the headman's fingertips brushed across her back. She did not turn to look at him, but inclined her head and waited.

“Hey, Steppin' Razor, no harm, yah? We heard from the Guédé today, from Maman Brigitte and Baron Dinki,” he said, naming the loas of the dead and obsolete, guardians of the universal bit bucket where lost or destroyed data - including the viral-ridden programs called humanity - could be found post-termination. The headman's accent was thick, his words barely understandable. A pinpoint of light gleamed on the interface socket implanted high on his temple. “Want to warn ya - watch out for the duppy, mah sistah; a pretty face wit' death inside. Gonna be a botheration in the here n' now, the priests say.”

“Hai.” Katsumi expelled the word in a huff of breath. Duppies were, as far as she could tell, the equivalent of yurei - restless spirits of the dead - or perhaps they were some sort of software glitch. It was difficult to be sure, since the tribe's consensus of reality was quite different from her own. These people made no distinction between the emergent collective reality, or cyberspace, the bardo, Amida Buddha's Pure Land, Jingoku or any altered state of consciousness. All was one, one was all. Katsumi respected the members of the Sinsemilla, and allowed them liberties that she would not have tolerated from others. They amused her, for the members had shown no fear from the beginning, simply accepting her as part of themselves and their strange world.

She continued, speaking gently, "Thank you for your concern. I will consider your words with care."

He shook his head, dreadlocks flying. The Nokia ophthalmologic implants that had replaced his eyes gleamed, iridescent as oyster shells. “Duppy's like a soul cracker, dig? A ghost in the wetware, not the hardware – not the machine.” The baby made a soft noise of complaint; he offered it a knuckle to suck. “Abnormal termination begets a vengeance-virus, say the Guédé, and not even a Steppin' Razor be safe. Mo’ better ya go n' grok in fullness, sistah, then we take ya to the balm-yard when the time come.”

Katsumi nodded without comprehending. Since it seemed he had finished, she continued to the stairs, her geta slapping hollowly on the concrete floor. She had to skirt around a couple lying together on a rag pallet, one atop the other; their faces were obscured by a flexible tunnel of black polyvinyl held in place by straps behind their heads. They were VR-interfacing as they writhed together, a slow dance of love and lust fueled by a shared fantasy and simulated stimulation. The masks gave new meaning to the antiquated term ‘sucking face.’ Blue-white light from a fluorescent bulb stuttered on their bodies, illuminating sweat streaks on pallid skin.

The ninja went to her quarters on the second floor, by-passing an offering on one of the steps – a heap of wilting marigold flowers, Red Stripe beer and bottles of rum, a scattering of fat hand-rolled ganja joints. Holographic prayer cards spilled in a fan across the step, all of them representations of Maman Brigitte - a white-clad figure whose head was all scarlet lips and open mouth and sharp teeth, her eyes hidden behind a wild tangle of hair. On every card, the goddess danced to a thrum of muted drums, the rhythm of the human heart. For some reason, it reminded Katsumi of the CGI announcer she had seen that afternoon, and the news story broadcast on the eel vendor's cart.

She opened the door to her living quarters and came upon a familiar face, glimpsed only a few hours ago on a liquid crystal display – Bindiya Bhattacharya, escaped murderer and supposed madwoman.

Zen master Ummon said, If you walk, just walk. If you sit, just sit. But whatever you do, don't wobble.

Serene as always, Katsumi entered her living quarters, shut the door behind her, and offered the bowl of food to her unexpected visitor. “Have you eaten dinner?” she inquired politely, not wobbling at all.

Bindiya gaped at her.

Katsumi catalogued the woman in an eye-blink. She was tall and possessed the figure of a fabled houri of Paradise - full breasted and wasp-waisted, her round hips and thighs and buttocks packed into a white T-shirt and matching pants that were two sizes too small. She wore cheap recycled-rubber sandals in a nauseating pink color, probably purchased from a vending machine at the same time as the nondescript clothing. Her dark brown hair was pulled into a haphazard ponytail at the nape of her neck; long tendrils had escaped and were stuck to her grubby, sweaty face. Bindiya’s almond-shaped eyes were set close on either side of a delicately bridged nose. Her mouth was wide and sensual, although the bottom lip was crusted with a scab. Katsumi’s evaluation included the information that the woman was unlikely to be trained in any of the martial arts. She did not hold herself like a fighter; her body language spoke of fright and exhaustion rather than preparation to defend.

“I will make tea.” Katsumi announced, removing her geta and placing them in a rack by the door. The bowl of food was set at Bindiya's feet. Katsumi accepted the woman’s unexpected presence as she accepted the quirks and twists of existence. Things happened. One acted or reacted accordingly. Shigata ga nai. There was no help for it; escaping one's fate was impossible, so there was no sense complaining or permitting expectation to cloud the future. Since Heaven had seen fit to deposit an accused killer on her doorstep, Katsumi would waste no time or energy fighting against it. Shigata ga nai - a most useful state of mind. Patience would bring understanding.

She went to the kitchen area, a space in the corner separated from the main room by a long bar; the plastic frame and sides were programmed to display random selections from the I Ching. The Wû Wang hexagram was currently scrolling past. Katsumi grabbed two self-heating cups of jasmine tea from the cupboard and popped the tabs on the lids to activate the exothermic reaction. While she waited for the tea to heat, the trigram caught her interest, so she spent a moment interpreting the divinatory symbols.

Freedom from insincerity, recklessness and selfishness will bring success. Noble virtue. Fortunate action followed by the stillness of deep waters.

Clipped to the side of an oil paper parasol that was suspended from the ceiling, a solitary spotlight winked on as the environmental computer sensed Katsumi’s continued presence in the kitchen, and assumed that she required more illumination. The remainder of the large living area remained swathed in the shadows of a rapidly deepening dusk. Despite the lack of light, the ninja’s genetically enhanced vision was quite capable of making out the figure of her unexpected guest.

Bindiya was hunkered down on her heels, scooping daal and pumpkin stew and curry out of the wooden bowl with torn pieces of bammy. The woman ate with the sort of grim desperation that spoke of a belly clemmed by true hunger. Katsumi picked up a tea cup; steam issued from the perforation in the lid, along with a faint flowery aroma. She sipped her tea and watched until Bindiya scraped the empty bowl with a last scrap of bammy and popped it into her mouth, chewing slowly as if, her immediate need satisfied, she was savoring the flavor. The scab on her lip was gone, no doubt torn away in the haste of consumption; a minor demonstration of self-cannibalism that had left a raw place on her mouth. Katsumi approached the woman, offering the other tea cup mutely.

“Th-thank you,” Bindiya said, accepting the cup. She took a cautious drink, just wetting her lips with the liquid, and sighed.

Katsumi cocked her head to one side. “May I know how you came to this place?” she asked.

“My husband...” Bindiya paused, took a deep breath, then gulped the tea down in a few swallows, her throat working. She licked her lips and continued, “Charles. Dr. Li Fang.” Katsumi nodded for her to go on. She breathed heavily for a moment. When Bindiya spoke again, her voice was roughened by unshed tears. “He was a bio-programmer who used to work for Yoshitsune International.” Her eyes rolled upward, her gaze locking onto Katsumi's face. “Help me. Please, help me.”

Katsumi did not respond. There was no need. Charles Li Fang was a name from the past, one which she knew very well. Something happened inside her head; long dormant biofeedback and subliminal programming unspooled from her subconscious, literally changing her mind. Unalarmed, she sucked down the remainder of her tea while she waited for the process to complete. The sensation was familiar; many of her memories included receiving data downloads in Yoshitsune's orbital laboratory. Her clever fingers peeled the label from the side of the cup. Katsumi folded the label into an origami crane when her neural pathways had settled. She pressed the paper bird into Bindiya's hand.

“I have red bean ice cream,” she said, “or cactus Pocky gelato if you still suffer from hunger.”

Bindiya blinked then lost consciousness, toppling over onto her side with another sigh. The origami crane fluttered to the floor. Katsumi glided away. The sedative she had put into the tea would wear off in a few hours, long enough for her to complete a few chores, including collecting her fee from the Long Eyebrow tong. She pulled a futon mattress from a tall Chinese lacquered cabinet, and flipped it open beside Bindiya. It was the work of a moment to roll the unconscious woman onto the futon and cover her with a knitted blanket.

Having made Bindiya as comfortable as possible, Katsumi squatted a moment beside the mattress. Her hand crept out; she brushed her fingertips against the woman's cheek. There was a bruise rising from the bone, moving upward through flesh like a Hokusai wave that would eventually break and flow violet-blue under her skin. Bindiya smelled of hospital disinfectant, cigarette smoke, the rusty iron tang of blood, a sharp/sour stink of stale sweat and adrenaline. She was flotsam, discarded and tossed on the sea of destiny, to be finally deposited on the shores of Katsumi's private island.

Fondness made a rare, real smile crease Katsumi’s mouth and touch her eyes.

***

Bindiya came back to herself abruptly, as if she had fallen from a great height. Her limbs jerked; her heart slammed painfully in her chest. For a moment she was back in the asylum, curled up in a corner of her padded cell while a woman who was/was not there shrieked endlessly – a sound that sliced through her skull and exploded against the backs of her eyeballs in showers of chrysanthemum fireworks sparks. Sweat prickled on her skin. Bindiya whimpered deep in her throat. A hand spread over her shoulder and shook her carefully - the barest vibration of flesh on flesh.

“Do you wish cha?”

The voice was cool but not cold, calm and soothing, yet possessed of great confidence. Bindiya's recollection was jolted back to the present. She was not in the asylum. She had escaped. She was... Bindiya struggled to think clearly. Where was she? Information flooded her consciousness. She was in the presence of a vat-grown ninja whose neural network was saturated with dangerous knowledge, a futuristic throwback who could kill her a dozen times over with an eyelash or a slice of toast. A warrior rumored to have the ability to become invisible, walk through walls, and utilize the esoteric black arts of kuji-kiri and saiminjutsu and yogen to paralyze her prey, enslave a person’s will, or rend a soul screaming from its host body. The ninja was a killer genetically altered and enhanced with recombinant DNA, making her deadlier than Yersinia pestis and hemorrhagic fever combined.

Bindiya's eyes fluttered open. She stared upward into a flat, impassive face and surprisingly, felt no fear. Some instinct urged her to trust. She did not know why, but so much had happened since her world had been chopped into bloody little pieces. How long ago was it? Time had no meaning when one dwelled in a perpetual nightmare. It had become easy to cast aside her education, her rationality and reason, in favor of some voodoo survival programming of the lizard brain. No, not easy. Necessary. After everything she had endured, putting her faith in this woman would be the tiniest and easiest of steps.

“I knew your husband once,” the ninja said conversationally, as though she was a sarariman’s wife sharing confidences at a corporate brunch. "On the space station. Is this how you knew where to find me?"

Bindiya uncurled from her fetal ball and sat up, taking it slowly since her head had apparently been hollowed out while she slept and filled with cotton wool. Why had she come to this ninja? What had prompted her to seek assistance from a person she had only read about in one of her late husband’s files? The last thing she remembered clearly was... Bindiya gasped, a flurry of images appearing and disappearing one-by-one inside her mind, quickly as a stack of flashcards flipped between thumb and forefinger.

The door of her cell opening, the sliver of blackness beyond the door that was relieved by firefly flashes from a guttering fluorescent strip. There were phosphene trails at the corners of her eyes, green-yellow threads against the red-tinged dark. The sour smell of acetic acid bloomed, the taste of chemicals on her tongue, the sound of shuffling wet footsteps and through it all, a steady dripping of water. Fast forward to a train station, shivering despite the heat, pushing New Yen bills into a vending machine’s slot. She did not know how she had gotten here, or even how she had known the ninja's exact location. It was not as though an assassin would be listed in the residence directory. Her presence here was another puzzle to pile atop the rest.

“I don't...”Bindiya stopped, and rubbed aching temples with the heels of her hands. The ninja - memory supplied a name, Katsumi - peeled a dermal endorphin patch off a strip and thumbed it firmly against the side of her neck. Bindiya licked her dry lips and groped for an answer to the question she had half-forgotten. “I was privy to my husband's files,” she said at last, a shiver creeping through her skin. “All of them.”

Katsumi nodded, clearly unconcerned. Bottomless black eyes regarded Bindiya. “You asked for my help.”

“Yes,” Bindiya gasped, fingertips digging hard into the futon mattress until her nails threatened to splinter. She was not safe, her world had teetered to a point that had been shifted far left of center, and she knew that life would never be the same for her again. At best, there would be an endless purgatorio of drugs, therapies, personality splintering and reintegration, memory wipes and mental reconstruction. At worst, she would be dead. The human animal was driven, at its most basic deepest level, to survive by any means necessary. Bindiya’s ego and id and superego were, for a change, in full agreement with the primitive mind. Despite the ninja's history, trusting Katsumi was imperative.

“Yes,” Bindiya repeated, her voice cracking. “Please, help me.”

“Very well.” The cool gaze returned to its contemplation of Bindiya’s face. A blunt-fingered hand reached down to her, and she took hold of it in a bruising grip. Katsumi did not flinch. She simply braced herself in place and hauled Bindiya to her feet. The knitted red-and-purple blanket stubbornly clung to Bindiya's shoulders, and she clung with equal stubbornness to the lifeline of Katsumi's hand.

Katsumi looked down at their joined grip. A tiny smile quirked the corner of her mouth. "Do you wish tea? Not drugged this time."

At long last, relief dissolved the barbed wire tension that had been coiled inside her what seemed to be an incredibly long time. She knew, with a certainty as inflexible and immovable as hard-cured plascrete, that as long as she remained with Katsumi, she would be safe. Those two words – “very well” - had sealed Bindiya’s fate. She would be protected; threats to her person would be removed efficiently and with minimum fuss.

Thank Shakti I’m safe, Bindiya thought. Thank the Mother goddess that Charles was fanatical about keeping duplicates of his case files and journals, and that my bump of curiosity was big enough to make me steal his password so I could pry into his affairs. Bindiya relaxed and rolled her tongue around her mouth to taste the faintest marshmallow/gun oil trace of a common trank. “How long was I unconscious?”

“Four hours.” Katsumi patted her arm in what Bindiya could only perceive as a friendly manner. “Would you care to bathe?”

“I don't... I don't have any clean clothes.” Bindiya forced herself to let go of Katsumi's hand and stretched until her spine crackled. The blanket slid off. She wrinkled her nose as her own sour scent wafted from the luridly colored material.

Katsumi gestured towards a leather sling chair; shopping bags were stacked on the seat. Bindiya looked from the bags to the woman standing next to her. Katsumi was a full head shorter, her figure broad and nearly square. She was not overweight by any stretch of the imagination; the woman looked heavy and solid, dense muscle packed on a stocky frame. She had taken off her uniform – no one wore ash gray gi except construct ninjas - and donned a forest green kimono paired with black-and-white checkered hakama. The starch-stiffened trouser legs stuck out like wings. Pure white tabi socks covered surprisingly slender feet.

“There is a communal bath in the building,” Katsumi said. “The Sinsemilla don't mind sharing.”

Bindiya blinked, apprehension making her mouth dry. “Those people...the ones downstairs...”

“They will not harm you. They will not betray you.”

Yet again, Bindiya was struck by the ninja's confidence. At one time in her life, she might have rejected such an absolute declaration as a matter of course. That was before. Before. The word was freighted with eldritch meaning. Her mind skittered away. It was enough to deal with the present. The ‘before’ would have to wait. Katsumi regarded her, an inquisitive tilt to her head, but remained silent. Bindiya heaved a sigh, scrubbed her face with her hands, and went to root through the shopping bags. The clothing was simple, comfortable, all natural fabrics. She chose multi-pocketed cargo pants, the dull red fabric imprinted with a vajrayana thunderbolt pattern, and a plain safflower-dyed shirt. Both items looked as if they would fit, unlike the horrid cheap clothing she had bought at the train station.

She paused. Vending machines carried garments that would fit her. Why were the clothes she was wearing two sizes too small? Why? Bindiya's hands were shaking. After enduring so much horror, this most trivial of mysteries was unbearable. Her nerve broke with a near audible crack. Her breath caught in a sob. She bit into her bottom lip and felt a small cut open under the pressure. Warm wetness tickled her chin. Tears burned. Her chest ached fiercely, filled beyond capacity with powerful emotions.

Katsumi hesitated a bare second then wrapped hands around her biceps and pulled her close. Bindiya found herself held against a firm warmth that smelled of plums and moss and salt. “Tell me,” Katsumi commanded softly.

Despite being the taller of the pair, Bindiya bent, burrowing her face into the dark hollow between Katsumi's neck and shoulder, and pressed her mouth against the taut tendon. Tell me. This close, the command was even more compelling. She could hear it, but also feel the vibrations of each word traveling from Katsumi's body through her own.

Bindiya took a breath and began.

***

Katsumi listened to the litany that spilled from Bindiya's mouth, punctuated by long shuddering breaths and whimpers. The narrative was rambling and incoherent in places, but not utterly incomprehensible. Katsumi spread her legs slightly, the better to maintain her balance, and cupped the fragile-seeming bones of Bindiya's shoulders in her palms. She had not meant to prompt this doleful flood, but it was necessary to gain a closer understanding of matters. Katsumi would act as this woman's shield, and also her sword, if necessary. Shigata ga nai. The ‘why’ of things did not matter; she only knew that it was meant to be. Her mental programming told her so.

“At the asylum, I saw her in the pool room, in the water. It was late, it was cold,” Bindiya babbled. “Charles had gone home early. We worked together, you know, but he went home to wait for me. But she was floating in the water, too cold, too cold. I heard her calling.”

The thread of the plot, tangled as it was, could nevertheless be unraveled with patience. That quality was one which Katsumi possessed in abundance.

Bindiya Bhattacharya and her husband worked on the staff of Shimekazari Asylum, a complex for the criminally insane. Five days ago, Bindiya had stayed behind in her office to finish editing an article submitted by their medical AI for inclusion in the hospital's in-house psychiatric journal. On her way out of the administrative area, she had heard a girl calling for help. Bindiya followed the voice to the exercise room. No one except staff was supposed to be there at that time. The lights had been off except for a single red emergency bulb that turned the water in the swimming pool to the color of fresh blood.

A body had floated on the surface, face down, arms and legs spread as if free-falling.

Acting on reflex, Bindiya had dived into the water, reaching for the still figure, believing she was already too late but compelled to try. Strands of long wet hair had insinuated into her mouth, on her cheeks, wrapped around her wrists, tightening and cutting into her skin. She had seen the girl's face underwater, so young, so cherubic... until shockingly, the eyes had popped open, and the lips parted, and a high-pitched scream had shattered her skull.

Bindiya had no clear recollection after that. Her memory of that time was a shoddy thing, blank in some places, tattered beyond recognition in others. She had woken up three days later - seventy-two hours vanished into the void, leaving very few crumbs of clues behind - as a patient in her own facility. A sympathetic judge had granted Shimekazari Asylum temporary custody, pending a murder investigation by the Department of Order. Dr. Charles Li Fang had been butchered with a pair of five-hundred year old Chinese butterfly knives that resembled cleavers. All the evidence pointed to Bindiya as the culprit.

There was no sign of forced entry in their home; the computerized security system had not been compromised. The house was in a secure residential compound patrolled by mutated Rottweilers trained to attack non-residents upon scent or sight. Her fingerprints and DNA trace were on the weapons used to kill Dr. Li Fang. Department of Order clairvoyants had captured scattered psychic images of the crime which tended to suggest that Bindiya was guilty, though their testimony was too unclear to serve as a legal indictment against her.

Bindiya herself had been found in the house, covered with blood, in a state of profound catatonic shock. It was circumstantial evidence yet damning all the same, and the fact that she could not remember anything in her own defense was the final blow - presumption of guilt by reason of insanity. Bindiya's colleagues had done their best for one of their own, using minimal pharmacological and cybernetic intervention until a proper diagnosis could be made. She had at least come back to herself in the company of friends; Bindiya could have ended up in any of the public hospitals, drugged and plugged into a virtual therapy program that was marginally better than no treatment at all.

The ordeal had not ended with her hospitalization. Bindiya had continued to experience hallucinations of the dead girl, both visual and auditory. Phantom screams burst agonizingly upon her eardrums, making her echo those screams until her throat was raw. Long bloody scratches appeared on her body. She never remembered making them, never found skin beneath her fingernails, and could only assume that she must have... disposed... of the evidence, a bit of self-cannibalism that was not nearly as disturbing as the inability to recall making the decision to do so in the first place.

“I don't remember! I can't remember!” Bindiya cried in anguished panic, spittle spraying the side of Katsumi’s neck. Shivers racked her body until her teeth chattered. The stricken woman balled up a fist, and made as if to punch herself in the side of the head.

Katsumi gently fended the blow away. She massaged the pressure points on Bindiya's wrists to help lower her blood pressure, then applied a firm touch to the area of her third eye to encourage proper ki flow. Katsumi stimulated some of the shao yin meridians to nourish the woman's heart, calm her spirit, and trigger endorphin release. When she was finished, Bindiya was relaxed against her, making wordless breathy noises of appreciation. Katsumi was pleased with the result of her ministrations. In the past, she had only used pressure points to kill or maim. Applying her knowledge to a more benign area was a new experience.

“How did you escape?” Katsumi asked, her lips against the woman's ear. She felt Bindiya's shudder, smelled a very faint trace of arousal, and filed that information away for future reference. All knowledge was valuable.

“I don't know,” came the answer.

Katsumi pulled back, monitoring Bindiya as she did so. The woman's heart rate was still elevated but no longer as irregular; her breathing had evened out. Bindiya's face remained mottled and splotched with the evidence of her distress. Katsumi produced a large white handkerchief from the sleeve of her kimono and used it to mop up the slickness of tears and spit and snot, careful of the purpling bruise on Bindiya's cheek. When she finished, Bindiya settled with a sigh against the bulwark of Katsumi's body. This was an unusual feeling for Katsumi, permitting the closeness of another. The shared intimacy of a close-quarters kill was different - less bodily fluids involved, if one was careful. Her neck was wet, the collar of her kimono soaked. She decided it was not entirely unpleasant. Nurturing did not come as naturally as killing. She had to work at it, but her newly engaged protective attitude towards Bindiya made her say, "You will bathe. You will eat again. You will have tea, then I will tell you what I have discovered."

Bindiya nodded, compliant and seemingly calm. She picked up the shirt and trousers that had fallen on the floor and blew a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. Katsumi led her to the door, stopping to pick up an object from a writing table. It was a sword - her own sword, in fact, a straight length of sharpened steel about as long as the distance from the tip of her middle finger to her elbow. The scabbard was quite plain; the metal surfaces had been blackened and dulled so as not to catch the light. There was nothing fancy about her ninjato. It was not an antique, nor was it particularly valuable. Katsumi felt none of the sentimentality that a salaried samurai displayed towards his inherited katana. Her sword, like herself, was an efficient killing tool – nothing more.

But… you are more than a tool, Dr. Li Fang had told her. Katsumi visualized the man's face, the deep lines scoring his flesh from nose to mouth, the thick eyebrows that nearly met in the middle, his skin the color of old parchment. He had worn his black hair cropped short on the top, the back left long and plaited into a dozen skinny braids that reached his hips. On Yoshitsune station, Li Fang had floated in null-gravity, his feet hooked through a rung in the wall. His thin braids had floated straight out around his head like Medusa's herpetological locks. She could conjure him in her mind's eye and hear his voice - so deep, so rich - as he manually re-programmed her, cracked through the defenses that had been built into her mind by her creators, and downloaded a soul-virus into her mainframe that had left one who was more than human… more human.

She turned her thoughts away from the past and back to the present.

Master Musashi said, Step by step, walk the thousand mile road.

Katsumi shepherded Bindiya down the stairs, carrying the ninjato in her hand. Some questions had been answered. Others remained elusive. Eventually, the truth would be uncovered and matters would be resolved. In the meantime, Musashi-san’s advice was apt – matters could only proceed one step at a time.

***

‘I'm sorry,” Bindiya said, subdued but now gloriously clean. She had put her hair up into a much neater ponytail tied with a paper ribbon. Dressed in new clothes and radiating a fragile calm, she looked and felt somewhat better. Bindiya was aware that her emotional state was still very brittle, likely to crack under the least pressure. She was grateful that Katsumi did not seem to mind being drenched with tears or subjected to hysterics. Indeed, the ninja had taken everything in stride - even going so far as to take charge in the bath house. Bindiya had been stripped, placed on a stool, then washed with lime-flower scented soap and a scrubbing bag filled with rice bran before being led to a furoshiki tub to soak in water almost hotter than she could stand.

Katsumi's touch was not impersonal, but not as intimate as a lover's, either. Comforting, not intrusive, somehow permitting no embarrassment or self-consciousness, as though Bindiya had regressed to childhood in the state-run crèche with her assigned amah. All she was required to do was relax and permit someone else to take charge. It had been a long time since anyone cared for her that way, and that included Charles Li Fang. She and Charles were never very close. Their relationship was more mentor and pupil than husband and wife. It had suited her needs at the time, but things changed. People changed.

Oh, how they change. Look at me. A week ago, just seven short days, I would never have conceived of feeling so safe in the presence of the ninja described by Charles in his journals. Now I can't imagine leaving Katsumi’s side. The idea frightens me to death. It isn't rational. Perhaps I am insane.

“I didn't mean to fall apart like that. Thank you for taking care of me,” Bindiya said aloud, shifting a bit in her chair and glancing shyly at Katsumi. The woman was seated lotus-fashion on a cushion on the floor, eating from a bowl of rice topped with meat, vegetables and raw egg - pibim-bbap delivered from a local Korean eatery. Bindiya had finished her portion and was toying with some sweet potato tempura.

Katsumi scooped the last of the pibim-bbap from her bowl, chewed and swallowed. She met Bindiya's gaze, her dark eyes unfathomable. “Drink your tea.”

Bindiya shook her head. “Will you tell me what you've found?”

“As you wish.” Katsumi put her empty bowl on the floor, chopsticks crossed and balanced on the rim. She arranged her hands just so - the right cupped over her right knee, fingers relaxed and pointing downward, and the left hand positioned palm up in her lap. Bindiya recognized a Tibetan mudra, a symbolic gesture named ‘calling the earth to witness,’ the bhumisparsha. “I have nothing new to add to our knowledge of the murder itself,” Katsumi said. “Do you?”

“Charles collected antique weapons," Bindiya offered. "The butterfly knives belonged to him. He bought them after the Hong Kong real estate bubble two years ago.”

She had a memory flash of her late husband's study, one wall covered with old swords and knives that he had bought from around the world. The weapons that had been used to kill him were Chinese in origin, five hundred years old, a matched pair of square chunky blades that resembled oversized butcher's cleavers. Bindiya closed her eyes and tried to breathe around the cramping knot in her chest. Another flash came - her husband's body, sprawled on the floor like a broken doll. The blood, so much blood everywhere - huge glistening crimson pools of it, streaks and splotches and sprays. Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him? The vision was red and white, exposed muscle and bone. A fly crawled on his open eyeball. Bindiya gagged.

Katsumi was beside her in an instant, holding a cup of tea to her lips. Bindiya sipped delicately, unwilling to chance an upheaval. The ninja's fingers massaged her body here and there, and the nausea finally eased. When she was sure that she was no longer in danger of losing her dinner, Bindiya smiled her thanks. Katsumi moved back to her place on the floor, picking up her narrative as though the interruption had never taken place.

“As to your escape... the whole of it is unknown. Someone opened the door of your cell from the outside but no DNA trace was found on the keypad, no retinal scan was logged at the time. Shimekazari AI's spy ‘bots recorded no visuals in the corridor, no heat signatures, no anomalies of any kind, no lapses in the time recordings. Self-diagnostic tests and an independent scan showed no sign of unauthorized entry into the core. However, vid capture clearly shows the door of your cell opening.” Katsumi settled back down on her cushion. This time, she chose the bhutadamara mudra - hands crossed at the wrists, palm outward, ring fingers folded down to meet the thumbs. It was a ritual gesture to protect against evil. “Vid does not show you exiting the cell. You do not appear at all.”

Bindiya blinked. “What?”

“Your cell door remained open for one minute and forty seconds before closing of its own accord. No one entered or exited the cell.” Katsumi seemed amused. “No one exited the hospital. And yet here you are. You don't remember?”

“No.” Bindiya felt her breath hitch. She struggled to control burgeoning panic. Unbelievably, losing her memory was more terrifying than losing her husband.

Katsumi leaned forward and let her right hand move out, palm forward, in the mudra of compassion, the varada. "Did you kill Dr. Li Fang?" she asked.

Bindiya stood so quickly, the chair skidded back several inches. “No! I did not murder my husband!”

“You say you don't remember,” Katsumi pointed out, still aiming the varada at Bindiya. Her tone was non-judgmental, soft and soothing – in the manner that one might use to address an injured child. “How can you be certain?”

“I just... I don't...”

“All humans are capable of murder given the proper impetus. The possibility exists that you were responsible for Dr. Li Fang's death.”

Bindiya swallowed hard. She sat back down, elbows on her knees, head hanging. Her neck felt hot, the sinews humming under stress. “You're right, of course. The possibility exists... but I'll deny responsibility anyway.” She tightened her muscles, and loosened them one by one in a vain attempt to relieve the tension that threatened to make her fly apart. Silence stretched between them. Finally, Bindiya said, “There must have been some kind of tampering with the hospital AI's surveillance.”

“Unlikely, considering the high security safeguards used to protect the AI's memory core.”

“Then how do you explain it?”

Katsumi once again made the mudra of protection against evil.

“I don't understand,” Bindiya said. She had hardly gotten the words out of her mouth before the world exploded in white light.

She was deaf, she was blind, cut loose from the anchor of gravity and set afloat. Every nerve in her body was singing, a high-pitched mewling caterwaul that drilled through the center of her brain. Her stomach turned cartwheels. Gravity clicked back on and she was falling, falling, reaching terminal velocity and she felt no pain until... bam! Bindiya's vision cleared. She was on the floor, shaking hard, sweat pouring off her in an acrid flood that was tainted by adrenaline. Katsumi was hovering above her, one hand pressed to the back of her skull to protect it, the heel of the ninja's other hand jammed between her teeth. Bindiya sucked in a breath and tasted blood in her mouth. She closed her eyes and opened her jaws, allowing Katsumi to withdraw. There was something on her forehead. She reached up blindly, pulled off what seemed to be a thin, rectangular piece of paper and crumpled it in her fist.

“Convulsions?” Bindiya asked when her muscles had relaxed enough for speech.

“It resembled a grand mal seizure, except for this.” Katsumi lightly touched her arm.

Bindiya opened her eyes and found herself looking at a series of deep welts and scratches on her forearm. Something was familiar about the pattern. She swallowed a mouthful of bitter saliva and forced herself to concentrate. Suddenly, everything leaped into focus and she recoiled, as if the arm belonged to a stranger. “Mother Goddess!” she exclaimed in horror, unable to believe that this was real. Bindiya turned her head to judge Katsumi's reaction. “Do you see it, too?”

“They appeared spontaneously during your seizure. The phenomena is not without precedent,” Katsumi said, taking hold of Bindiya's wrist and turning her arm so that she could study the marks more closely. “Religious stigmata...”

“This isn't stigmata. I'm as far away from living sainthood as you can get and still be on the same planet. In the same universe. Sharing a journey on the same kalachakra, spinning on the dharma wheel.” Bindiya let out a weak laugh, the sound coming out of the depths of her body. She was perilously close to hysteria but was not inclined to do anything about it except surrender to the rising tide. “You think I'm some kind of homicidal dakini, a deva of long knives? What does that make you, O contract murderer... a karma killer?”

Katsumi assessed her with hooded eyes. For some reason, that made Bindiya laugh all the harder.

After a while, Bindiya wound down, giggles turning into tears. She held her arm stiffly away from her body, refusing to look at the damning marks upon her skin, the characters carved into her flesh that spelled the word, ‘guilty.’ A message from her subconscious, perhaps. She was aware of Katsumi leaving, bringing back a kit in order to smear the shallow wounds with ointment and wrap her forearm with gauze and tape, covering her shame.

From the corner of her eye, Bindiya could see the teeth marks she had made on Katsumi's hand; they were already scabbing over. The construct was blessed with a healing ability that was second to none, due to modified angiopoietin-related growth factor proteins produced in epidermal keratinocytes as well as in her internal organs. Cutting off her head might kill Katsumi... and on the other hand, it might just piss her off.

To give herself something to do besides fall back into an all-too-familiar state of disconnection, Bindiya uncurled her fist and examined the yellow piece of paper that had been on her forehead. It was such an odd thing; she thought it had been on the floor and gotten stuck to her face during the convulsions. She frowned, realizing that it was an ofuda, a paper talisman from a Shinto temple. The rectangular length of rice paper featured red stamps and a scroll of black calligraphy down the center. Her frown deepened.

As though this sort of thing happened so often that she had grown blasé, Katsumi sat back on her heels and said calmly, “I suspected spiritual possession. As soon as the ofuda touched your forehead, the episode ended and you came back to yourself.”

“That's not possible. Personality doesn't survive the death process," Bindiya protested. “This has been proven beyond doubt. The Price Experiments, the Bligh Invariance… so-called hauntings are just infrasound, or residual chi energies recorded in the global etheric body, or the manifestation of telekenetic ability at onset of puberty..."

“And the girl?” Katsumi interrupted. “The dead girl you saw in the swimming pool. You heard her screams.”

“It isn't unusual for mentally disturbed individuals to experience auditory hallucinations.” Bindiya gusted a weary sigh, sat up and tossed the balled-up talisman at Katsumi. She was taken aback by a burst of confetti hitting her in the face. She realized that the ninja had, incredibly, drawn her sword, reduced the ofuda to shreds mid-air, and sheathed her weapon in a single blurred motion too swift. The unexpected paper blizzard made Bindiya’s gaze snap to Katsumi's face. As a means of gaining her attention, the demonstration was absurd but effective, and after a moment's thought, awe inspiring. She must've cleared sword from scabbard in the split-second that the ofuda left my fingertips. Amazing!

“You are not deranged. Insanity cannot cause you to become invisible to digital surveillance.” Katsumi made the pronouncement with confidence. “Regrettably, there is no rational explanation for it. Please accept the fact that we are dealing with spiritual possession. Your flesh is being taken over by another force for some unknown purpose. Revenge is most likely, if the old tales are to be believed.”

Bindiya opened her mouth to rebut and closed it with a click. After a few moments of intense thought, she replied, “If I say yes, that I'll accept your supposition for now - mainly because I'm too tired for a prolonged debate - what do we do then?”

Katsumi bowed her head in acknowledgement. “First, we must determine the origin and identification of the yurei,” she said, and rolled smoothly to her feet.

Walking across the space with Katsumi, Bindiya took the opportunity to observe her surroundings. The apartment was huge by Tokyo standards, taking up the entire second floor of the old factory. The brick walls were pierced by narrow windows that were covered with accordion-folded mulberry paper shades. There was an eclectic mix of furniture; antiques and modern piece were placed at random. The only defined space was the kitchen area with its solid teak cabinets and the long bar that displayed hexagrams from the I Ching.

Bindiya followed Katsumi over to a new Sony liquid crystal flatscreen that hung on an inner wall. Below it was a computer interface deck and to one side sat a small butsudan. A bell sat on the altar, as well as a bowl of sand, a bamboo container of joss sticks, flowers, three pears in a dish, an offering of rice, a collection of origami animals, a Buddhist rosary and a digital display frame that scrolled slowly through a dozen pictures of men and women.

While Katsumi knelt in in front of the deck, Bindiya peered at the pictures. They were obsolete flat images, not holographic projections, of seven women and five men of varying ages who all appeared to be of pure Japanese stock. She recognized one of them - Dr. Murajiro, a geneticist whose pioneering work with recombinant DNA had increased the value of Kobe-Kline Laboratories stock nearly a hundred percent during his career. He had died eight years ago at the ripe age of one hundred forty-two. Bindiya had read that Murajiro-san attributed his longevity to Taoist breathing techniques and Fang-Chung, an esoteric sexual practice. She was more inclined to believe in the efficacy of cloned organ transplants, gene therapy, and illegal stem cell transfusions.

Katsumi noticed her interest and said, “My technical fathers and mothers - contributors of genetic material as well as my literal creators in the laboratory. They have all left this plane of existence and await rebirth in the Pure Land.”

“Do you really think of them as your parents?” Bindiya asked, curious.

“No, but it is customary to honor one's ancestors.” Katsumi put on VR interface goggles and data-gloves, and plugged them into the deck. She stuck a microdot near the corner of her mouth, and another on her ear; they were connected by a virtually invisible hair-fine filament, serving as microphone and receiver. Finished with her preparations, Katsumi began moving her fingers to establish a connection, air-typing as the data-gloves supplanted the need for a keyboard. Harsh actinic light burned under the edge of the goggles and limned the shallow curve of her cheek until it glistened like bare bone. The flatscreen remained blank for the moment.

Bindiya sat next to her, close enough for their shoulders to brush. She recalled reading that Katsumi was suspected of having killed all the scientists involved in her ‘birth,’ but not the people who had educated and trained her.

A fine distinction in assigning responsibility, Bindiya thought. Rogue ninjas don't happen. The deep mind subliminal programming is supposed to be unbreakable, ensuring complete loyalty and automatic obedience to the corporation or assigned individual. Charles cracked through her implanted neural defenses, cleared away the cortical blocks and set her anima free. Katsumi doesn't even have a safeword anymore. It was standard practice to implant a code word or phrase within a construct’s subconscious, meant to induce instant cataplexy and/or causalgia in the unlikely event that something went wrong. Charles Li Fang had eliminated Katsumi’s safeword, making her the most dangerous ninja alive.

The flatscreen suddenly sprang to life, startling Bindiya. She instinctively pressed closer to Katsumi. As soon as she realized what was happening, Bindiya moved away, unsettled. She had undergone a great deal of trauma in the last few days; it was understandable that she was feeling vulnerable, in need of protection. Why she found that instant sense of security with Katsumi was a mystery that she was not inclined to explore at the moment. At least the other woman did not seem to mind. Indeed, one of her gloved hands reached out to smooth down Bindiya's thigh in a comforting gesture before returning to its neutral upright position when the connection completed.

Katsumi navigated skillfully through the data streams, represented on the flatscreen as complex interweaving patterns, shapes and threads of colored light. Eventually, she crawled to a halt and, hands weaving, connected to a small unobtrusive node. After scrolling through a series of menus, Katsumi downloaded a program, then transferred it to a hand-held pad. She gave the pad to Bindiya. “Recognition software,” Katsumi said, sliding the goggles into her hair for a moment in order to make eye contact. “There are facial features stored in memory. Select those that appear to match the drowned girl. Once you have a picture complete, I'll run it through the Department of Order’s mainframe. Perhaps we will learn her name.”

Bindiya nodded and used the attached stylus to select some options on the pad. In the meantime, she also watched Katsumi. The ninja had put her goggles back on and was cruising a low-rent area, ablaze with advertisements for sex interfaces, tattoo parlors, and cheap body-modification clinics. Katsumi chose one of the latter. The virtual shop door writhed into intertwining dragon shapes as she entered. A curious collection of goods was displayed, ranging from dyed ostrich eggs in a rack to a sleeping tabby cat sprawled on a silk zabuton. Bindiya knew the objects were visual representations of programs that permitted interaction in cyberspace; function did not necessarily follow form. Katsumi gestured, knocking the lid off a blue-and-white ginger jar, and her avatar jumped inside.

The flatscreen showed a dismal corridor, illuminated by occasional pools of light. Due to a trick of perspective, the hallway looked endless, stretching into infinity. On either side of it were closed doors. Katsumi composed a text message and sent it winging off into the darkness. Splitting her attention between the screen and her pad, Bindiya missed reading the contents of the missive. A reply came in the form of a miniature dragon breathing fire kanji that glowed and disappeared in showers of ash and pearls too quickly for Bindiya to catch. Katsumi broke the connection, removing her goggles and gloves. “We have an appointment in three hours in Akihabara,” she said.

The techiya district? Bindiya glanced at the pad in her hands; the portrait was nearly complete. She poked the screen with her stylus, selecting a pair of eyes and moving them onto the face she had created. “Why Akihabara?"

“We must obtain something important there.” Katsumi shuffled around on her knees, so that she was facing Bindiya, about an arm's length away. “It will mean going out in public. Your appearance will have to be changed. The police will not harass me, but they will try to detain you if you are recognized. The resulting massacre will surely attract media attention and is, therefore, to be avoided if practical.”

“And if not practical?”

“Most regrettable but necessary.” Katsumi shrugged, her indifference clear.

Bindiya did not know whether to be horrified or pleased. Katsumi's willingness to kill on her behalf was frightening, like having the power of a goddess over life and death. Before she could say anything, however, there was a whoosh of air past her face. She heard the soft click of Katsumi's sword returning to its sheath. What felt like soft feathers slithered down her arms. Bindiya's eyes went wide in shock as the remains of a paper ribbon joined the severed locks of her hair on the floor. Her head felt strangely light, as though it might float away.

Katsumi frowned and rubbed a strand of Bindiya's now shoulder-length hair between her thumb and forefinger. “Pink, I think,” she said.

Bindiya stared at her in disbelief, then her mouth pulled into a thin, straight line of indignation.

***

Master Sun Tzu said, Invincibility lies in the defense; the possibility of victory in the attack.

They had come to the techiya district to make Bindiya invincible against ghostly possession.

Katsumi walked beside Bindiya, using the flat-footed, bow-legged stomp of a hired samurai bodyguard. She wore a pale blue rubber kimono and zori sandals, a freebie Nippon Airlines headband tied around her brow. Her ownership tattoo was hidden beneath a latex prosthetic that mimicked a patch of bubbly burn scars. Although there was a katana scabbard thrust through her sash, the lacquered bamboo sheathe actually contained her ninjato. She had other weapons concealed about her person as well. Katsumi rolled a simulated ivory toothpick around her mouth and guided Bindiya through the Akihabara crowd with a hand on the taller woman's elbow, scowling at anyone who was not quick enough to get out of their way.

After enduring Bindiya's displeasure - who knew that she would prove emotionally attached to hair or so inventive in her verbal abuse? - Katsumi had dyed what was left shocking pink, then used a static micro-generator to make the short-cropped strands stand out around the woman’s head like dandelion fluff. Bindiya's make-up was the latest retro-yamanba style - a strip of black paint sprayed across her eyes, white mascara and lipstick, white body paint coating every inch of the flesh that showed through an artistically shredded black T-shirt and transparent mini-skirt. Pink plastic boots, white cotton panties and black metal bangles completed the picture of a trendy young madamu, possibly the girlfriend of a Taiwanese mafia snakehead or one of the mag-lev motorcycle gangsters that plagued Tokyo by night. The fact that she was being escorted by Katsumi's seedy rent-a-samurai added verisimilitude to the disguise.

A strung-out sim/stim addict boogied past, headed for a manga cafe. In his haste, he brushed against Bindiya. Without breaking stride, Katsumi grabbed the back of his head where a mare's nest of cables ran from his VR goggles and the interface sockets on his skull down into the back of his sensor suit. A jerk and a twist and he was unplugged, disconnected from whatever full immersion program he was running, his reality shockingly shattered. The man let out a thin scream and fell to the pavement, flopping like a gaffed carp. Katsumi's heel smacked against his nose in passing; there was a soft crunching sound and a spurt of blood.

Bindiya's sidelong glance of disapproval did not make Katsumi regret the extra back kick, which she admitted was not strictly necessary. News of the incident traveled in some mysterious and silent way via the street telegraph, for they had no further trouble negotiating through the masses. Katsumi stopped at a vendor's cart and bought Bindiya a sack of crunchy fried grasshoppers sprinkled with a mixture of chilis and spices.

“Where are we going?” Bindiya asked, holding out the bag to share. Katsumi shook her head; a real hired samurai would rather dine on pride than admit to being hungry.

“An appointment,” Katsumi said, sucking on her toothpick. “It isn't much further.”

The Akihabara district was full of electronics shops, digital cafes, freelance hackers and crackers, data brokers, implant clinics, vendors of software and hardware and wetware. A veritable sea of humanity surged back and forth; the atmosphere was saturated with the buzz of business, deals being made and broken and re-made in an endlessly industrious cycle. Katsumi stopped at a corner where a dozen teenagers were crouched like gargoyles on a low wall. They had all undergone body modification of the same type - pointed ears tufted with fur, their mouths stretched grotesquely to the angle of the jaw. The gaki gang also had interface/processor plugs riding over their ears, black plastic curves studded with micro-splinters in every color of the rainbow. They appeared to be zoning on some quasi-lethal combination of software and cortical stimulation, lost in a collective wet-wired Zen trance.

Katsumi held out a hundred New Yen credit chip to a slack-faced teenager whose furred ears were bright orange. He stared blankly. She had to wave the money in front of him for a full ten seconds before he roused himself and focused.

His fingers stretched out to take the chip, but Katsumi held it just out of reach. He frowned, the expression nearly dripping off his face. “Hey, momma-san, what you want?”

“Are you Jubei?” Katsumi asked.

“Maybe so, maybe no.” His eyes narrowed in suspicion, and he said to a skinny girl squatting next to him, “Check ‘em out for dolby, Miko.”

The girl pulled a piece of equipment out of the waistband of her bicycle shorts. It was gray metal, shaped like a pistol with a wide, bell-shaped muzzle. She pointed it at Katsumi, pulled the trigger and peered at a readout on the hand-grip. “No eavesdroppers, no spy-eyes, no uplinks, no broadcast ‘ware,” she reported in a nasal voice, then repeated the process with Bindiya. “They're clean, Jubei-san.”

Apparently satisfied that the women were not wearing surveillance equipment, Jubei leaned out a little and grabbed the chip from Katsumi's grip. “Heki da yo, no problem. You got five minutes, momma-san,” he said, tucking the chip up the sleeve of his cartoon-printed jacket.

“You are the proxy for Tara Phuoc Trung,” Katsumi declared, memorizing the teenagers' positions and making contingency plans for defense against assault. She could remove three threats in the first three seconds with her sword alone. In her mind's eye, Katsumi played a sequence of events, altering weapon and attack vectors until she was happy with her calculations. This assessment did not interfere with holding up her end of the conversation. “I wish to make a special commission.”

Jubei let out a breathy little laugh, showing the whites of his eyes sidelong. “That'll cost you more than a hundred New Yen.”

“How much?”

Bindiya fidgeted with impatience while Jubei and Katsumi bargained, but for the ninja, the need to split her attention between the gaki punks, the woman beside her and their surroundings in general was not really difficult. She had been created to multi-task. At last, they reached an acceptable figure. Katsumi passed over a handful of colorful chips and in return, Jubei used his thumbnail to remove a bright green micro-splinter from his interface. He gave it to her, along with a muttered address.

Katsumi glanced at Bindiya's face as they continued their walk. The unfamiliar make-up, the shocking pink hair, made her seem to be a completely different person, confident and assured. That was only on the surface, however. Behind the cosmetics was the face of a woman whose control was shaky at best. Breaking into her thoughts, Bindiya squeaked and jumped and clutched at her arm when a man bawled loudly in her ear. Katsumi scowled her displeasure at the oshiya, a big-bellied man who was attempting to bully customers into his cyberware shop. He sneered back at her, unimpressed by a mere yojimbo-for-hire. Mindful of Bindiya's aversion to unnecessary violence (although Katsumi thought of violence as a useful tool, and impoliteness could not go unpunished in any case), she settled for launching her toothpick at him like a miniature dart. The sharpened piece of simulated ivory pierced his nostril and he bellowed in pain. Not wishing a further confrontation, Katsumi used the momentum of the crowd to carry her past his shop and down the street before he had time to react. She towed Bindiya alongside, the pair of them looking like a tug boat escorting a sleek but colorful cruiser.

After walking for several blocks, they came to a tattoo parlor. The storefront display contained an obsolete military-grade exoskeleton, the metal surface powdered with rust. A woman who had been goliathed lounged against the door. Extensive bone grafting and gene therapy had made her nearly seven feet tall; huge muscle grafts bulged in her shoulders, arms and thighs, like basketballs under darkly tanned skin. A Mossberg combat shockgun was cocked over her shoulder, the neon yellow jelly-charge visible through the clear polycarbonate barrel that was big enough to swallow a doubled fist.

Katsumi approached the goliath and offered the green micro-splinter she had gotten from Jubei. The woman looked disdainfully down at Bindiya, then further down to rake a scornful gaze over the ninja. She finally took the splinter, handling it carefully in her big hand, and inserted it into a reader hanging from her belt. After a few moments, she curled her lip and moved away from the door. Katsumi urged Bindiya inside and followed on her heels.

The room was brightly lit, although the rubber tatami mats on the floor were scuffed and grimy. Hospital screens concealed several work areas. A Tsuchiyama diagnostic bed was in the center of the space, illuminated by an adjustable light. As they entered, a small ‘bot in the shape of a scorpion scuttled near their feet and misted a fine spray of disinfectant. In the back of the store was a traditional bead curtain; it was swept aside as a plump woman barreled through and came to a halt, facing Bindiya. The look of naked calculation and sheer greed in the woman's expression was breath-taking.

“Konnichiwa,” Tara Phuoc Trung said, a smile wreathing her fat-cheeked face and squeezing her eyes into narrow slits. "Xin chào, bonjour, good afternoon, shalom, selamat pagi, howzit, g'day!” She was shirtless, exposing the dozens of tattoos that covered her torso. Lakshmi was sprawled across one breast. On the woman’s other breast was Kintaro, the red-skinned witch’s child, while over Tara’s chunky shoulders and down her arms, Coatlicue in her serpent skirt danced arm-in-arm with Wang Mu Niang-Niang and her peaches of immortality, refereed by Ereshkigal on a throne of bones.

“How may you be served in my establishment?” Tara asked.

“Not with an apple in my mouth, I hope,” Bindiya muttered faintly.

Katsumi inserted herself between Bindiya and Tara, forcing the tattooist to acknowledge her. “Custom interactive,” she said, “full body, single activation point.”

Tara's plucked brows rose. Her head was shaven, the better to display a winged serpent that coiled around and over her skull. “Expensive,” she replied, gnawing her bottom lip. Abruptly, her eyes went as hard as obsidian chips. “You're no hired katana, and I'll bet that she's no bosozuko's girlie-girl. You don't have the corporate stink, nor do you look like a pair of high-riders slumming down the gravity well.” She stood with arms akimbo, frowning. “What, exactly, do you want?”

“The Emptiness of Forms sutra,” Katsumi said.

“Eeee! Like Hoichi the earless!” Tara hooted in amusement, her rolls of fat jiggling.

Bindiya shivered; Katsumi could feel the vibration against her back. She reached behind, curving her hand over Bindiya's hip. “Let us avoid repeating the error,” Katsumi said. The story was familiar to all Japanese, who absorbed the tale with milk at mother's breast. Many gaijin like Tara and Bindiya could claim a familiarity with the story, as it was a popular subject for plays and 3D programs. Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi the blind biwa player-priest found himself haunted by angry ghosts of the Heiki clan. To save his life, his fellow monks inked his skin with the Emptiness of Forms sutra to make him invisible to the spirits, but forgot to mark his ears. Hoichi's ears, the only parts of his body visible to the ghosts, had been pulled off, leaving him maimed for life. That would not happen with Bindiya.

Tara laughed until tears trickled over her cheeks and dripped down her double chin. Finally subsiding into hiccups, the tattooist wiped her face and stepped back a pace, calculating once again. The expression in her eyes was practically an abacus. “For you or the long tall drink of sake over there?”

“My client’s wishes,” Katsumi said. Behind her, Bindiya inhaled sharply; she squeezed the woman's hip in warning and was gratified by a silent exhale. “Can you program a single activation point?” she asked.

Again, Tara's needle-sharp gaze swept over the pair. “Of course,” she said. “Slow spread? Patterned spread?”

“Speed is essential. Aesthetics are not.”

“I see.” Tara rubbed her nose, making the piece of steel in her septum waggle back and forth. “All right. Come back in two weeks.”

"Regrettably, the work must be done within the hour. We will wait." Katsumi was immovable on this point; delay could be fatal. Bindiya had to be protected as soon as possible, before the yurei could attack again. The woman could not go through life with an ofuda stuck to her forehead; that was too uncertain, as well as too conspicuous a solution.

There was nevertheless some debate, with Tara growing increasingly unpleasant until Katsumi considered doing something messy and lingering, solely as a warning to other tattooists who might be considering suicide-by-ninja. However, Tara Phuoc Trung was supposed to be the best of the underground interactive artists. More importantly, she did unregistered work for cash; illegal, since all tattoos and other body modifications were supposed to be registered with the Department of Order, along with DNA trace, retinal scan and a Kirlian aura analysis.

At last, Tara ran out of objections, possibly because Katsumi waved a credit chip in her face. The amount on the chip was impressive enough to make the woman's pupils contract. “The customer's always right,” Tara said, taking the chip and feeding it into a security box. When she was done, she tapped the bright red Kintaro tattoo on her breast. “Run out onto the ‘Net and fetch back a copy of the Emptiness of Forms sutra,” she ordered. The witch's child flexed its legs and leaped off Tara's skin, disappearing in a sparkle of static discharge as it dived into a wireless connection with a nearby computer deck.

“He'll be a few minutes,” Tara said. She opened a mini-refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of beer. “Sapporo or Asahi?” she asked. “I might have some Csarda, too.”

Katsumi shook her head.

The tattooist shrugged, popped the cap off the bottle and chugged until the bottle was empty. “Suit yourself, ronin-san.” She munched unselfconsciously from an open sack of curry-and-cuttlefish pretzels while they were waiting for her servant/avatar to return from its appointed task.

Bindiya bent down and whispered urgently into Katsumi's ear, "We need to talk. Now. In private."

Nodding to Tara, Katsumi allowed Bindiya to steer her towards a screened area of the shop.

***

We are both delusional, Bindiya thought. A folie à deux instigated by superstition, reinforced by visual and auditory hallucinations and false perceptions. In the consensual world reality, ghosts don't hijack a person's consciousness to enact some death-in-life scenario. That's a fantasy straight out of Yoshitoshi and Kurasawa X and kabuki theater and puppet shows. Fodder for the uneducated masses who clamor to see faces in indigo and black, limp-wristed and legless figures that are pathetic rather than frightening.

The lack of control over her own body was completely outside her personal experience, but explainable if one embraced science rather than voodoo. A part of her mind could not help but wonder about her apparent invisibility on hospital ‘vid, the paper talisman that Katsumi had put on her brow, the scratches and welts on her arm that spelled ‘guilty.’ The power of suggestion? Perhaps. The map of the human brain and its potential was not yet complete. Science went only so far. Bindiya could admit that. On the far distant horizon that was the vast collective experience of mankind, enigmas beckoned.

One of those enigmas was standing in front of her. Bindiya had been passively following Katsumi's lead, doing as she was told, going where she was led without protest. Now the ninja had gone a step too far. This was worse than the involuntary hair trimming, which she was sure she would be having nightmares about later.

“Why am I getting an interactive tattoo?” Bindiya asked, doing her best to loom over Katsumi in an alpha-dominance display. She was helped by the high heels on her boots; she could have rested her breasts on top of the other woman's head had she been so inclined. The next step to establishing dominance would be throwing leaves and sticks at the ninja’s head if one followed the classic primate model.

However, Bindiya was hindered by the fact that Katsumi refused to be threatened. In fact, she looked amused, the tiniest sparkle in her eyes. “To protect you from evil,” Katsumi replied in an ‘of course’ tone of voice.

Bindiya shook her head. Wisps of pink hair stuck to her forehead and cheeks; she brushed them away, sparks crackling on her fingers from the electrostatic micro-generator taped to the back of her neck. “I am not going to... no. No, no, no. This isn't happening.”

“It is.” Katsumi casually touched Bindiya's hip, much as she had a few moments ago in the main room of the shop. As before, Bindiya felt the imprint of the woman's hand burning through her clothing like a hot brand. She licked her lips and tried another mode of attack.

“I won't permit it,” Bindiya said, spearing the other woman with her best eyebrows-meeting-in-the-middle glare.

Katsumi smiled. “You will.”

Bindiya was momentarily stymied. Walking away was not an option. She needed Katsumi; perhaps not quite as much as she needed air, but close enough as to make very little difference. Katsumi seemed to know what she was doing, whereas Bindiya was stumbling around in the dark. Believing in ghosts is ridiculous, a pre-civilized fear-based response to the unknown. But I don't have all the answers, either. I doubt even Shakti has all the answers. The cycle of belief/disbelief was making her crazy... possibly literally. She had given in to Katsumi because she was tired, because she was terrified of herself, because her life had spun so far out of control that one more bit of lunacy would hardly be noticed.

Now Bindiya closed her eyes and wished she was anywhere but here, in a tattoo parlor with dirty floors, puke-green walls and what she was sure were bloodstains on the ceiling. The cloying smell of disinfectant had trickled down the back of her throat, making her feel sick to her stomach.. Katsumi’s hand on her hip began a gentle massaging motion.

“There will be a single small activation point,” Katsumi said, the warm voice breaking through Bindiya's anxiety and exhaustion. “Very small, hardly bigger than a pinhead. Not noticeable at all.”

Bindiya felt herself drooping a little, wanting to lean into that solid body mass. Why had she never consciously noticed how mesmerizing Katsumi's voice could be? “But I don't...” she began and stopped, unsure of what she wanted to say.

“This is necessary to protect you,” Katsumi continued, still soothing, still rubbing Bindiya’s hip in circular motions.

“I don't believe in ghosts,” Bindiya whispered.

Katsumi tilted her head back. Glossy black hair slid away from her shoulders like strands of silk. “They believe in you,” she said and smiled again.

Bindiya could not find the strength or the inclination to argue anymore.

The screen rattled as it was thrust back, revealing the tattooist. Tara said, “You two lovebirds ready? I don't rent space by the hour. Get your sucky-fucky thrills at a love hotel, huh? I got a business to run.”

Bindiya's whole body jerked as Tara's strident presence shattered the bubble that had built up between her and Katsumi.

“We are ready,” Katsumi replied. She slid closer and put an arm around Bindiya's waist, never breaking eye contact.

Bindiya sighed, shrugged a shoulder and relaxed minutely into the embrace. Some things were inevitable. Shigata ga nai - a most useful philosophy to adopt. She ought to bow gracefully to the demands of karma. “Yes,” she said, “we're ready.”

Tara rolled her eyes.

The blank tattoo forms were kept in an enzyme bath in the refrigerator. While Bindiya stretched out on the diagnostic bed (the surface was somewhat tacky and stuck unpleasantly to her skin), Tara prepared to inject the digital sutra into the new tattoo's matrix. It dangled from her fingertips like a sheet of clear jelly, benign and unthreatening. The instruments she used were very delicate, but she wielded them with workmanlike grace. A pince-nez magnified her eyes hugely. After forty-five minutes of labor, during which she muttered a continuous stream of invective under her breath, Tara was finished. She dunked the programmed matrix into a nutrient solution and held it up, dripping.

“Pull your shirt up,” Tara instructed, squinting over the pince-nez that gripped the bridge of her nose. Reflected glare from the steel bar in her septum and the sweat on her shaven skull distorted her features, blurring them like heat shimmer off pavement.

Bindiya complied, baring her stomach. Tara matter-of-factly swabbed a patch of make-up away and draped the cold slimy matrix on her flesh. She flinched, earning a growled order to stay still. The tattooist produced a charge baton, applied one prong to Bindiya's skin and the other to the clammy sheet on her belly. A worm of electricity twisted greenish-white. The jolting buzz made Bindiya yelp in mingled surprise and pain as ink-charged nanites were driven into her epidermis, thrust through the stratum basale, stratum spinosum, stratum granulosum and stratum corneum, burrowing deep between the second and third dermis layers. When Tara was finished and the remains of the sodden matrix were wiped away, all that remained was a little dot centered above her navel. If Bindiya had not known better, she would have sworn it was a mole.

Katsumi helped her rise and guided her to a full-length mirror screwed to the back wall. As Bindiya watched, Katsumi reached under her shirt and pressed the activation point firmly. She shuddered, the sensation of ants crawling under her skin almost too much to bear, but she was too fascinated to close her eyes. Lines of text scrolled around her navel, sun rays extending and rippling on her skin, outstretched serifs turning into individual symbols that marched in regimented fashion and settled into place. They could be but dimly glimpsed beneath the white body paint that still concealed most her skin. Bindiya looked more closely, trying to follow their progress. Shadowy characters moved under their own power, silhouettes like sharks swimming in murky waters if glimpsed from a height. She gasped, staring into the mirror. There was calligraphy on her eyeballs, spokes of wheels centered on her pupils.

Bindiya was speechless.

Tara grinned. “Good work, huh? Not exactly ichi-ban, but not bad for a rush job.”

Katsumi examined Bindiya closely, warm puffs of breath stirring the tiny hairs on her arms, her neck, her cheek. “It will do,” she confirmed.

“Avoid UV tanning booths, reiki healing and further body modification for two weeks,” Tara said. She turned away, headed to the front of the shop.

Bindiya felt rather than saw the clench of muscles, the tightening of tendon and sinew that signaled Katsumi's readiness for action. She grabbed the ninja's wrist, squeezing hard to abort the blitzkrieg draw/strike of ninjato. Tara, she was sure, had no idea how close she had come to dying. Bindiya tapped the activation point above her navel, causing the tattooed sutra to disappear from view. Later, she would ask Katsumi why she wanted to attack the tattooist; right now, it was important to get them both out of here.

Katsumi shrugged and slipped painlessly out of Bindiya's grip. She took four silent steps forward, sword already clearing sheath in a whispered hiss. Alerted by Bindiya's gasp, Tara half-turned, flinging up an arm in futile defense. Katsumi's ninjato sliced cleanly through radius and ulna, continuing in an arc that swept through the tattooist's neck, trailing blood splatter behind. Tara’s severed head sounded hollow as a ripe melon when it hit the dirty floor and rolled, coming to a rest beneath the diagnostic bed.

Bindiya bit down hard on a knuckle to keep from screaming.

“We must go,” Katsumi said, snapping her sword to one side to clean off the worst of the blood and re-sheathing it. She reached for Bindiya's elbow. Bindiya stumbled backwards, her mouth a round O of horror. So much blood...

The ninja made a clucking sound of impatience. At almost the same moment, the goliathed guard burst through the door. She was bent almost in half to clear the lintel, the Mossberg shock-gun swinging up to aim directly at them. Energy discharge crackled from the barrel. Katsumi whirled on her heel. Chunk! Chunk! Chunk! Chunk! Four straight-bladed shuriken sprouted from the guard's face and throat. The woman let out a choked roar and pulled the shock-gun's trigger. A jelly-charge exploded. Bindiya was in the line of fire but suddenly she was moving sideways, the sting of shrapnel a mild annoyance compared to the hydrostatic waves that were turning her bones to water.

Time slowed to a syrupy trickle. Bindiya was vaguely aware that someone was wrapped around her, a hand on the back of her head, another cupping her buttock. Plaster powder from the blasted wall irritated her eyes. She was flying without wings. Time snapped back to speed, the floor rushed towards her and she landed hard, a jolt that made her teeth clack together painfully. Bindiya was pushed into a fetal curl. Someone's knee was digging into her ribcage, someone's torso was pressed against the side of her face. She gulped for air; heated by the jelly-charge’s passage, it scorched her lungs.

The weight on her body was abruptly removed. Bindiya opened her eyes to see Katsumi dance up to the guard and hit her once, twice, three times with a naked hand. The oversized woman's snarl turned into a puzzled frown. She was holding the Mossberg over her head, preparatory to striking at the smaller figure of Katsumi. Instead, she slowly toppled over, her face turning an unhealthy shade of purple. A thin breath whined out past blued lips. Her eyes were huge, tear-filled, the eyelids fluttering. Katsumi took hold of a shuriken embedded in the woman's neck, twisted and pulled, severing the jugular vein. Fine blood spray dotted her rubber kimono and ran off in trails, leaving hardly a stain behind.

The entire sequence of events had taken about thirty seconds from beginning to end.

Katsumi held out her hand. “We must go,” she repeated, as though they had never been interrupted by explosions and death.

Bindiya shook her head, but reached for the beckoning fingers anyway and allowed Katsumi to pull her off the floor.

***

Master Musashi said, Pay attention even to trifles.

It was the absence of a tattoo that alerted Katsumi.

The witch's child, red-fleshed Kintaro, had vanished again from Tara's skin, presumably leaping back into the wireless ‘Net connection. Katsumi checked the tattooist's vital signs using her enhanced senses. Blood pressure was elevated, pulse rapid, the pupils contracted to pinpoints. The woman licked her lips, swallowed frequently and rubbed palms on her trousers, indicating a dry mouth and sweating hands - classic symptoms of nervousness. A micro-dot mic was taped to her cheek; she was sub-vocalizing, most likely in contact with the guard outside. While Bindiya admired her reflection in the mirror, Katsumi cocked an ear in the computer deck's direction and heard the faint grinding sound of an established connection. She pushed her vision two points, enough to make a quick visual scan of the monitor. It showed the pulsating gray/orange pyramid that was the Department of Order, Tokyo division. Finally, she saw Tara pick up the baton and adjust the setting to deliver an incapacitating charge. They had been betrayed.

Katsumi did not have time to explain her observations to Bindiya, nor was she inclined to indulge any non-violence squeamishness. She simply took care of the problem by eliminating Tara from the equation. When the goliathed guard came inside the shop, she was prepared to deal with her, too; the behavior was predictable. The big woman's decision to fire the shock-gun at Bindiya first rather than the more dangerous target - namely Katsumi - was tactically unsound. Nevertheless, the ninja made sure her companion was safe before she dealt with the guard. Pressure points could be destructive, and the human form was actually quite fragile despite modifications intended to make it less so.

When the threats were gone, she turned her attention to Bindiya, who was petrified; the stench of fear poured off her. Katsumi had learned that Bindiya was responsive to tactile sensation, so she cuddled the taller woman close to her side and rubbed circles on the small of her back, simultaneously leading her out of the shop's back door and into an alley. They surfed the Akihabara masses until Katsumi found a pinku bar wedged between a VR-avatar studio and a second-hand wetware clinic. The interior was cool and not very well lit, the walls crowded with interactive idoru posters that winked, simpered and wriggled in tantalizing soft-core displays. Katsumi chose a table in the back corner, paid the indifferent attendant for a handful of metal tokens and ordered drinks - sparkling dragonfruit cocktail with ginseng and shizandra for herself; cranberry juice with bee pollen and agave extract for Bindiya.

The top of the table was an LCD monitor and holo-projector protected by a thick polycarbonate shield. Katsumi fed a couple of tokens into the slot and chose an item at random from the menu. A live-action hentai program began playing, pigtailed young women in spandex being violated by mutant octopi-‘bots. The resolution was bad, the color registration off to the point of migraine, the sound muted. Katsumi kept Bindiya plastered close, their bodies touching from knees to shoulders. As soon as their drinks were delivered, she stabbed at the privacy button, raising a soiled curtain around their table. The uneven hum of a white noise generator came from hidden speakers in the floor.

Bindiya did not look at her. She drank her juice, making a face at the sour taste.

Katsumi remained silent, waiting for Bindiya.

“Why?” Bindiya asked at last.

“She was in contact with the Department of Order,” Katsumi explained. “There is no doubt a reward being offered for your capture.”

“And you were protecting me.”

“Hai. That is my purpose, after all.”

Again, silence. Bindiya finished her juice and set the empty glass on the table. “I don't want any more people dying because of me.”

“You are not responsible for Dr. Li Fang's death.” Katsumi was fairly certain on that score. Chopping up a man using cleavers took a strong stomach, not to mention great physical strength – neither of these traits seemed to be consistent with what she had observed about Bindiya. According to the reports, Li Fang had not been restrained or drugged, nor had the first blow been completely incapacitating. No skin cells had been found under his fingernails, no defense cuts. He had dragged himself around the house on hands and knees, enduring the attack and making no attempt at defense until blood loss rendered him unconscious. The strikes had been hard enough to splinter through bone, to sever limbs from the joints. As a professional assassin, Katsumi was not impressed with mere butchery.

Bindiya snorted and tossed her head, sending ripples through her pink dandelion-fluff hair. “You know what I mean. I don’t want you killing people just because you can.”

Katsumi took a pad from the breast of her kimono and plugged it into the deck. The hentai program was interrupted as she tapped keys to transfer a graphic from the pad. It was the composite picture of the drowned girl that Bindiya had made. “Should I have stepped aside and allowed Tara to electrocute you?” she asked.

“Of course not, but...” Bindiya's voice trailed off. After a moment's pause, she rallied. “You might have used a non-lethal method.”

“As non-lethal as the guard's shock-gun?” Katsumi did not bother concealing her amusement.

Bindiya smacked her fist against the table top. “This isn't a Zen riddle game!”

“I take full responsibility for my own actions,” Katsumi said, trying to mollify the upset woman. “You are not my legally registered owner, therefore you cannot be held accountable for anything I do.” She avoided the fact that she had not belonged to Yoshitsune for a long time, although no one – especially the company’s managers – would ever report her as a rogue. Rogues did not exist, could not exist with all the safeguards implanted in vat-grown constructs; to admit that Katsumi was not under corporate control would undermine public confidence in the company and also cause much loss of face for the directors. It was better to pay fines and accept official censure for Katsumi’s activities than lose stock points.

Sometimes she wondered how natural humans had survived the last ten thousand years. Their propensity for perversity was puzzling.

Katsumi logged on to the Department of Order's node and used the pad to introduce a small program she had gotten from the Sinsemilla, a worm that would open a back door into the department's database and allow her access to their internal search program. It would take a minute or so to complete the connection process.

“I asked for your help,” Bindiya said.

“And I chose to give it to you,” Katsumi countered. She reached up and patted Bindiya's cheek, unsurprised when the woman leaned into the touch. Beneath the make-up, she could still feel a slight swelling, the bruise that continued to mar her flesh. “We are walking the same path towards the same destination. Should we not join forces and complete that journey together? Let me protect you, please.”

Bindiya stared at her. Seated, their faces were on the same level. “Why?” she asked softly.

Katsumi blinked. The question was irrelevant. She posed one of her own: “Why not?”

The deck made a two-toned chime. Bindiya pressed her lips together, her eyes hooded. Katsumi checked the tiny pad screen; the worm had done its work. She uploaded the picture to the Department of Order's database and programmed search parameters. The results were returned quickly, along with the faint cybernetic stirrings of a routine low security probe. Katsumi ended the connection before a trace could be established, but she had already downloaded the necessary information. Bindiya watched silently, toying with her empty glass and stirring a fingertip around a snack-sized bowl of wasabi peas that appeared to have fossilized with age. The hentai broadcast flickered back to life, a girl with purple hair and cat ears being multiply violated by a Cthulhu clone.

“The drowned girl’s name is Esperanza Serjee,” Katsumi said, reading from the data scrolling on the pad, “a priestess from a religious commune on Penthesilea.”

Bindiya looked interested. "Isn't Penthesilea the all-female station at LaGrange IV?"

“Hai. There is a singular difficulty, however.”

“Oh?” Bindiya arched a brow. Her expression suggested that the entire enterprise had been fraught with difficulties; what was one more? “What’s that?”

Katsumi put down the pad. The news she had to deliver was disquieting, but not impossible if one believed old granny’s tales. “Esperanza Serjee is still alive.”

***

Bindiya glanced around the Chinese doctor’s office, which was located in a primarily Tibetan neighborhood. There were framed certificates on the walls with expertly crafted calligraphy. A square column (she supposed it housed pipes or electrics) had been mirrored all over to reflect the ‘poison arrow’ effect deleterious to good feng shui, and a small table-top fountain gurgled in the auspicious south-east corner. A huge old-fashioned apothecary’s chest dominated the space. Opposite the chest was a scarlet lacquered cabinet and a delicate scroll painting of a mountain. An altar occupied part of the room, the top covered by an oil lamp; a pair of candles; bowls of tea, rice and water; five bowls of fruit; heaps of paper talismans; a sword made entirely of antique coins; an eight trigrams mirror and a bell; sticks of burning incense… all the accoutrements of a ‘fire dwelling’ Taoist.

Dr. Zhang was old, her body withered and shrunk in on itself, the skin tight against bone except for the wattles of loose flesh at her neck. Her eyes were clear and bright, although the irises were the color of quicksilver – the hallmark of Ukrainian ophthalmologic implants. Dressed in a plain indigo cotton tunic and trousers, her little feet encased in black slippers, her hair screwed back in a knot, Zhang resembled an auntie from a rural province. Bindiya expected her to cluck and fuss, but the woman was briskly business-like.

“You biorhythm chart indicates this is an inauspicious time to dig wells, operate heavy equipment, plant rice or play Texas Hold ‘Em,” Zhang said, fixing her bright quicksilver eyes on Bindiya. She pulled a stool over with her foot and perched on it, operating a small lever that adjusted the stool’s height so that she was level with the taller woman. She took Bindiya’s wrist, her fingers pressed on the pulse point at the radial artery. “You should also avoid the Drunken Crabs as well as the Blow of the Sparrow sexual positions.”

Katsumi stood beside Bindiya, a comforting if quiet presence.

Zhang said after a while, “A knotted pulse indicates a significant imbalance of Wood and Water in your system which has led to pernicious qi blockage as well as a lack of vital jing substance. I recommend special Grievous Wind tea…”

“Tastes like dead cat,” Katsumi commented.

“Only little bit dead cat!” Zhang said emphatically. To Bindiya, she continued, “Also digital acupuncture sessions twice weekly. See my on-line avatar for appointment.”

“What about the haunting?” Bindiya asked. “The spirit is…”

“Ai-yah! Am I finished with my diagnosis?” Zhang exclaimed. “No wonder you’re in a state of disharmony! Impatience leads to many evils, including bowel dysfunction. You maybe want a Five Elements enema? No? Then be quiet and let me finish my examination.”

The old Chinese woman rolled the stool over to the lacquer cabinet. Rummaging among the cluttered shelves, she returned with a curious object. It resembled a lorgnette, although there were numerous multi-colored lenses bristling from the carved bone handle. “Pentium astralscope, best on the market, can get you a discount for home version,” she muttered, holding the lenses up to her eyes. She flicked through the lenses with her thumb, one after the other, squinting at a digital read-out on the handle. “Hmmm…” Zhang pulled a jack from a computer disguised as a statue of Laughing Buddha and plugged it into the end of the astralscope’s handle. A moment later, pictures of Bindiya’s Kirlian field were displaying on the liquid-crystal screen embedded in Buddha’s belly.

“There are definitely signs of spirit activity here,” Zhang muttered, examining the aura. “Disturbances in the global etheric as well as localized activity. Your ghost may still be alive but it’s hungry, all right. Such an appetite!”

Katsumi took Bindiya’s hand, lacing their fingers together.

Laying the astralscope aside, Zhang used a qi kung reiki technique to cleanse and tonify Bindiya’s energies. She wielded a geomantic compass, then chanted secret Taoist mantras, her gnarled hands forming mudras of protection and exorcism. She cast black dice against Bindiya’s white dice and made her burn Hell banknotes as an offering to the dead. She rubbed Bindiya all over with a chicken’s egg and made her drink a potion that tasted foul, like a blend of spearmint and dog shit. Bindiya gagged but managed to keep it down, mainly because Zhang’s severe expression promised a second dose if the first made a reappearance.

“This will only arrest the spirit’s progress for a short while,” Zhang said, going to the altar to burn more sticks of incense. “Whatever has happened to the woman’s living body, her spirit has been cast loose and seeks vengeance.”

“Like Lady Rokujo in The Tale of Genji,” Katsumi said, ignoring Zhang’s irritated snort at the interruption. “Lady Rokujo suffered from unrequited love for the Shining Prince as well as unreasoning jealousy of his other women. Her angry soul left her body at night while she slept and caused the death of his wife, Lady Aoi.”

Zhang snorted again. “That’s just Edo air-conditioning,” she said, referring to the Japanese tradition of telling ghost stories during summer to cool the body with fright chills. “For a soul to wander so far from the flesh, one must either be a master of meditation techniques, or existing in some other state of suspended animation. Rage is not enough, although it helps lubricate the spirit so that it can slip free,” she confessed grudgingly. “The woman who is haunting you has a strong will. She must be a Fire Horse woman, dangerous and headstrong, very bad fortune for a husband. Perhaps she is dying and seeks to avoid the next-life dharma path by remaining attached to this plane.”

“What can I do?” Bindiya asked. The scent of aloes and sandalwood filled the air as incense smoke made lazy curls around them.

“The conflict must be resolved. I suggest you locate this Fire Horse woman and speak to her, find out why she’s haunting you, work out a compromise.” Zhang shrugged, her quicksilver eyes gleaming. “Otherwise, find a ngakpa lama to perform a soul retrieval and learn to live with a pushy spiritual squatter.” A digital abacus appeared on the Laughing Buddha’s belly, the beads whirring and clicking. “Here’s my bill.”

Katsumi handed the doctor a credit chip. “We must go to Penthesilea station,” she said to Bindiya. “I will make the arrangements.”

Bindiya would have liked to disagree, but the taste of spearmint and dog shit lingered in her mouth, and she could see no other alternative than to beard the ghost in her den, so to speak. She had no arguments against any action at this point. She was tired, mentally and physically, not to mention spiritually.

Outside Dr. Zhang’s office, Katsumi and Bindiya took turns spinning the huge bronze prayer wheels that stood in a row down the street, watched by the sleepy ‘Buddha eyes’ painted on a whitewashed stupa that was nearby. Bindiya thought she could use all the good karma she could generate, even if it was for the next life. Strings of prayer flags flapped in the breeze, which was scented with hot oil from a toothless man frying bread in a doorway. After lighting butter lamps at the little temple (Katsumi dropped another credit chip into the donation box) and buying bottles of Lhasa Roof-of-the-World beer, the two women rode in a ‘bot driven taxi back to the writing brush factory.

Katsumi’s contacts within the Sinsemilla tribe proved fruitful. After an incomprehensible (to Bindiya) round of negotiations, the neo-pagans procured a new identity for Bindiya in a religious ceremony that had involved smoking ganja, then drumming and dancing by white-clothed celebrants while the priests/hackers plugged into cyber-space and broke into the Department of Security using a special Trojan horse program to overcome the database’s defenses. There was also the sacrifice of both a chicken and an antique Sony micro-processor on the altar of the Rainbow Snake, the loa of new life in the ‘meat ‘verse as well as virtual existence. Prompted by Katsumi and the blonde dreadlocked headman of the tribe, Bindiya had offered a bottle of rum, the Lhasa beer, a box of cigars and a handful of holo-Tamagotchi to Papa Legba Torvalds, the ‘opener of the way.’

Bindiya was now the possessor of a new passport and I.D. card, complete with a falsified past and genetic information that matched her own. The passport would not survive an extensive background check, but for the purposes of going off-world, it would do – if the gods and goddesses were kind. Bindiya Bhattacharya was now Jasalina Nayar, a mid-level employee of Garuda Multi-National Quality Entrees, Inc. Her hair was re-dyed a non-descript brown; her loose wide-legged salwar trousers were made of gold-spangled silk, while the accompanying knee-length kameez was vibrant orange with a hands-deep indigo border. A sequined bindi shimmered on her brow. The final touches were glass bangles, a gold nose-ring piercing one nostril, and spectacles with lozenge-shaped lenses. She could have been a clerk, an administrator, an accountant – any one of a dozen ordinary occupations for a woman of the vaisya/skilled worker caste.

She still did not understand how she was expected to get past the Department of Order psychics who were routinely stationed at airports and spaceports to scan travelers and weed out terrorists, wanted criminals or other trouble makers. True telepathy was single mind-to-single mind; it would be impossible even for a talented telepath to read so many people thoroughly. They would go insane trying. These departmental psychics skimmed the surface of the chaotic mind-muttering of thousands of people, alert for catch-words like ‘bomb’ or ‘guilty’ or ‘kill’ or any of a hundred other language cues that might pop into one’s head and betray one’s intentions. Being tagged as potentially dangerous by a psychic would earn her detention and a more complete examination, and that would be disastrous.

Beside her, Katsumi said, “Sing.”

Startled, Bindiya halted in her tracks. “What?”

“Sing a song,” Katsumi suggested. “An advertising jingle to distract your mind.”

That was a good idea. Bindiya glanced around, seeking inspiration. They were in the spaceport – actually the mobile anchoring platform for the ‘space elevator’- headed towards Concourse Four. Knots of people surged back and forth like a strange tide. Every few feet was a franchise store or snack booth; she and Katsumi were currently standing in front of a Mr. Noodle bar, where sararimen, off-world construction and maintenance workers as well as flight crews sat elbow-to-elbow and slurped from bowls of udon. Further up the concourse could be glimpsed the rival businesses Cappuccino World, Starlight Xpresso and Coffee-a-Go-Go, their doors guarded by heavily armed baristas against the threat of industrial espionage.

From their cardboard boxes shoved against the walls, squatters sold solar batteries, nootropics, low grade amps and endorphins, cheap souvenirs and cheaper electronics, Chinese vodka, grimy postcards, split-toed tabi socks, rubber zori, and biotech like mutated flish that burbled in their bamboo cages and flapped modified fin-wings. A black-suited priest of the Compassionate Church moved among the squatters, offering the use of his euthanasia machine and the eternal salvation that came with suicide.

Bindiya’s mind was a blank. Sweat sprang out on her brow as panic response set in. Her heart stuttered in alarm. It was a vicious cycle: the harder she thought about it, the less she could think. Suddenly, shockingly, Katsumi flashed the bhutadamara mudra at her and began to sing the infamous ‘Cat Shit Pie’ jingle – a jingle so subliminally insidious, a meme so hypnotically banal, an ohrwurm of such longevity, it had been banned in eighty countries and spawned a therapeutic industry for people who could not get the annoying song out of their heads. Worse, Katsumi demonstrated that as skilled as she was at dealing death and mayhem, she could not sing a note. “Eat a piece now/save a piece for later,” she warbled off-key. Around her, people shied away as if she had plastic explosives attached to her chest and a dead man’s switch in her hand. “With bananas, it has appeal!” Katsumi continued, striking a pose and crossing one eye in a kabuki actor’s mie.

Bindiya could not help herself; she forgot her nervousness and began to laugh.

Spaceport security hesitated, stymied. It was clear that Katsumi had to be stopped from committing an act of audio terrorism yet she was a corporate ninja construct, duly tattooed and therefore registered somewhere as a lethal weapon. Any show of force was likely to end in death – theirs, not hers. After some debate, during which Katsumi sang a few more lines, prompting a passing Taoist ‘black head’ priest to throw synthesized chicken’s blood at her in a futile exorcism attempt, a low-level guard was dispatched to make a polite request for her to stop. Katsumi did so, much to everyone’s relief. She took Bindiya’s arm and led her to the waiting room/staging area, away from a trio of psychics who looked as if they were suffering from a serious collective headache.

Bindiya went along, shaking her head at Katsumi’s tactics. She had to admire the ninja’s nerve. Humorous as it was, singing ‘Cat Shit Pie’ might spark mob violence if matters went too far. Introducing an ohrwurm into a public area was considered a serious offense. Bindiya supposed the directors of Yoshitsune International would be fined for the ninja’s performance. She herself was grateful that the scene had not become a bloodbath.

The hostess checked their tickets and passports, then nervously gave the women tiny bottles of chilled plum wine, hot towels and packages of barbeque flavored wasp larvae as if she expected one or the other of them to break into song. Feeling a bit giddy with relief, Bindiya was tempted to sing a few rounds of ‘The Good Ship Venus’ but she refrained out of respect for the presumably delicate sensibilities of her fellow travelers.

The staging area slowly filled with passengers, a bewildering variety of persons intent on riding the ‘space elevator’ that would take them out of Earth’s gravity well. At fifteen-hundred Zulu, the hostess opened the doors and passengers filed inside the transport pod, seeking their assigned seats. Katsumi had chosen business-class for their trip; they were seated together in the seventeenth tier, with enough leg room that Bindiya did not quite have to duck her knees under her chin. An androgynous attendant passed out magazines, chewing gum, ginseng tonic and anti-nausea patches. Bindiya took a piece of cherimoya-flavored gum, while Katsumi loftily ignored the attendant and his/her woven plastic basket of goodies.

Bindiya settled back in her seat, doing her best to ignore the hiss of recycled oxygen, the smell of too many people in a too-small space. She could feel it pressing on her, the weight of the people in front of her, behind her, on top and below her in the transport pod. It was like being trapped. She felt empathy for rats who, when cornered, viciously attacked anything (or anyone) they perceived as a threat. Bindiya registered Katsumi’s hand on her arm and took a breath, trying to settle her seething prana.

“I could render you unconscious,” Katsumi said, her voice pitched for Bindiya’s ear alone, “but then you would miss the view.”

“I may take you up on that offer,” Bindiya said, grimacing as the mag-lev pod began its smooth ascent up the platinum-plated carbon nanotube fiber ‘ribbon’ - popularly nicknamed the Beanstalk - that stretched upward from its Pacific-based mobile anchor to the lunar colony. She started leafing through a magazine, although her gaze kept shifting to the distracting view on the other side of the window, the voluptuous curve of the planet limned in gold sunlight, the blackness of space livened by a touch of indigo, the Earth itself a mass of white and blue so beautiful it hurt the eye.

For the purposes of their trip, Bindiya and Katsumi would be taking the Beanstalk only as far as a transfer-point platform where they would catch a fast shuttle to Penthesilea station. Bindiya turned away from the window. Fortunately, Long March Aerospace had provided plenty of distractions on board to alleviate the tedium of traveling with the masses. The ascending pod boasted restaurants, cafés, clubs, bars, nursery crèche, a ‘love’ hotel for non-first class passengers who wanted privacy for their affairs, an acupressure clinic, biorhythm specialist, pachinko parlors, a kabuki theater, 3D films, zero-grav ballet… all of the entertainment that credit could buy.

Bindiya tossed the magazine aside and stood up. “I need to stretch my legs,” she said, still feeling claustrophobic. Katsumi nodded agreeably and accompanied her to the escalator.

“Dr. Bhattacharya?” said a soft male voice behind them.

Her heart frozen in apprehension, Bindiya turned around. She did not recognize the man in the ash grey gi, but he could have been Katsumi’s womb-brother – stocky and solid, an ownership tattoo scrawled on his neck. His almond-shaped eyes studied Bindiya a moment, a flick-flick-flick of rapid-fire assessment before his gaze shifted to Katsumi. His face was expressionless. “I am Shigemitsu,” he said, giving Katsumi a miniscule bow.

Something clicked unpleasantly inside Bindiya’s head. No! Not now! was all the thought that Bindiya had time for before her vision exploded in a shower of crimson and black. She was surrounded by water; her screams were nothing but a stream of silver-tinged bubbles bursting out of her mouth. Liquid filled her burning lungs. She clawed at the yielding darkness without affect. A cherubic girl’s face appeared, the eyes open and staring into hers. The girl’s lips parted and a voice breathed, “Charles…” The name echoed and re-echoed in the vault of her mind, weirdly distorted by a train-whistle screech that grew in intensity until she was deafened by the skull-splitting noise and the pain it caused.

After a stomach-wrenching free-fall moment, Bindiya snapped back to the present to find Katsumi kneeling over her, a hand pressing on her belly. The sensation of insects marching in formation over her skin – hay foot! straw foot! – meant that her Emptiness-of-Forms tattoo had been activated. When she raised her own hand, she saw the ink characters scrolling and settling into place. Bindiya smiled up at the grim-faced Katsumi, ready to offer a reassurance, and saw the other ninja glide into her field of vision, his bland face appearing over Katsumi’s shoulder like a satellite moon. Before she could utter the scream that was building in her throat, Katsumi whirled around and attacked.

It was more than likely that the passengers witnessing the two ninjas fight had never seen anything close to the whirlwind combat that was almost too fast for the eye to follow. Katsumi and Shigemitsu exchanged blows, flowing together and breaking apart, two grey shadows that seemed too soft to inflict damage until they paused and one saw the forming bruises, the trickles of blood. Katsumi upped the stakes by whipping her ninjato from its scabbard; after a brief hesitation, Shigemitsu did the same. People who had remained close to the battle zone suddenly found an excellent reason to back away and press against the walls, giving the ninjas room to maneuver.

Bindiya climbed to her feet, watching in horror, not daring to interfere. Light rippled along the raised ninjato blades held by Katsumi and Shigemitsu. The two opponents circled each other, making minute shifts in their stances. Shigemitsu slid his tabi-clad foot forward two inches; Katsumi twisted her wrist to present the edge of her blade. He countered with a twitch of his shoulders. This subtle dance continued for several minutes, then suddenly Shigemitsu sheathed his sword and bowed to Katsumi. The bow was in the degree of equals. Katsumi returned the gesture. The ninjas walked away from each other, Katsumi returning to Bindiya while Shigemitsu insouciantly shouldered his way through the crowd.

“What was that?” Bindiya asked, grabbing Katsumi’s upper arm and dabbing at a cut on the smaller woman’s cheek with the sleeve of her kahmeez. The cut was already closing, the blood visibly clotting, but Bindiya had to suppress the inclination to fuss.

“Shigemitsu belongs to the Nokia corporation,” Katsumi said, re-sheathing her ninjato. She gave the lingering rubber-neckers a baleful glance, and the crowd dissipated. “He was testing me, to see if independence had affected my skill.”

“He knew my name!” Bindiya said, dropping her voice to a sotto voce whisper.

“That is not surprising. He recognized you from the Department of Order notices.” Katsumi straightened her rumpled gi. She pressed the heel of her palm onto the activation point on Bindiya’s belly, and the tattoo receded. “Your disguise was meant to fool casual examination, not an in-depth cranial-facial analysis. But Shigemitsu was no threat to you; had I believed so, I would not have toyed with him.”

Bindiya remembered the fast flick of Shigemitsu’s gaze. Reaction set in and she shuddered, but her terror had not been entirely for her own sake. She was aware of the cold dampness of her blood-dappled sleeve – Katsumi’s blood, rich with recombinant DNA. The ninjas had been playing with each other, like two sibling kittens mock-brawling until the fur flew. She had been so afraid for Katsumi, and she had also suffered spiritual possession again, the impossibility of being dogged by the ghost of a living woman. Her gaze fixed on the blood, turning darker as it dried. What genetic material had the designers on Yoshitsune station chosen to blend with homo sapiens sapiens to create the ninja construct? Whatever they had done, the process had made Katsumi either more- or less-than human. Suddenly, Bindiya did not care. A wrenching need to connect to the woman consumed her, and she let out a whimper. At once, Katsumi’s hands settled on her waist, pulling Bindiya close.

She wrapped her arms around Katsumi and leaning down, buried her face against the side of the woman’s neck, her lips brushing against the ownership tattoo. Bindiya fancied that she could trace the raised pattern of ink against her mouth. Salt, plum and moss, tainted by shed blood, were the familiar smells she could detect in Katsumi’s hair and on her skin. Bindiya had loved her husband. Their marriage had been a union of two minds rather than two bodies. What she felt for Katsumi was far more confusing and complex.

There was physical attraction, of course; Bindiya had never made a secret that she shaded closer to four than two on the Kinsey scale, and Charles had accepted that part of her, just as she had accepted his predilection for work instead of pleasure, his incessant business trips, his secret projects and scientific whimsies. It had been a long time since anyone had touched her with purpose. Katsumi was strong and fit, handsome and kind to her, even if the ninja was unthinkingly violent towards everyone else. It was impossible for her not to feel an attraction, a warm flush of desire that pinked her cheeks and settled low in her belly, a surge of psycho-sexual kundalini energy generated by the serpent chakra nestled at the base of her spine. Circumstantial evidence suggested that Katsumi felt similar stirrings. Other aspects, such as the instant connection between them, the astonishing level of trust, the easy acquiescence to Katsumi’s protection and authority – these things were troublesome to Bindiya, as they seemed far more than the mere neural mechanics of romantic attraction.

Was it spawned of gratitude, this affection, or something else? Was it benign or malignant? A natural function of the mammalian brain or… Bindiya went rigid. A tantalizingly terrible glimpse of memory shivered to the forefront: Charles Li Fang sitting in front of her, his voice murmuring instructions, a strobe-flash of light in her pupils, the tug of electrodes against her scalp, the bitterness of chemicals on her tongue.

Bindiya’s fingers curled into claws.

She did not quite remember this scenario, not really; there was a dream-like quality to it that made the experience elusive rather than immediate. Bindiya concentrated but the memory faded, slipping through her metaphorical fingers as if crafted of mist and retreating back into her subconscious. The accompanying sense-memory was even more disturbing; she could swear that she smelled the antiseptic tang of alcohol, could feel the spike of coldness as a needle slid into the vein in her inner elbow. She squeezed her eyelids shut and let Katsumi assume more of her weight. The stocky woman shifted her stance to accommodate without hesitation or complaint, holding Bindiya against the solidness of her body.

Bindiya wondered what Charles had done to her. He had specialized in bio-programming,– altering the workings of the human mind, from the highly specialized cerebral cortex to the deeper, murkier functions of the limbic system. Strangely, the thought did not cause alarm. When Bindiya probed at this new idea with the caution of testing a suspect tooth, the semi-expected pain of betrayal did not come. If Charles had tinkered with her mind, it was in her best interests. She trusted his motives.

Love could be quantified, after all, as no flight of poetic fancy but as measurable activity in the right ventral tegmental and prefrontal cortex areas of the brain, and attachment was driven by the hormones vasopressin and oxytocin. It was a natural function of the human animal. She loved Charles; she also loved Katsumi. There was no conflict. For a heartbeat, she thought she heard her husband’s voice telling her the same thing.

She was calm now, the reward signal of dopamine flooding her mid-brain with pleasure as a result of her acceptance. Bindiya dismissed further speculation as unproductive; dwelling on conspiracy – whether or not the conspiracy actually existed – would only drive her increasingly towards obsession, compulsion and eventual madness as her mind spiraled endlessly in an ouroboros of paranoia.

“Why did my husband liberate you?” she asked Katsumi, shuffling back a little and loosening her embrace.

Katsumi shrugged a shoulder. “He did not tell me.” She seemed unconcerned. “Does the song-bird ask why the cage door has been opened?”

Bindiya frowned. “He must have had a reason. Charles wasn’t an abolitionist or a Right-to-Freedom activist. He was a proponent of cloning, laboratory constructs and recombinant DNA research and development.”

Again, Katsumi shrugged. “Perhaps he relished the challenge.”

“Could he…” Bindiya paused, unsure if she ought to continue this line of questioning. Was Katsumi’s emancipation an experiment in how a construct might fare when deprived of her core programming and let loose in a world of contradictions, chaos and strife? Bindiya abandoned her inquiry. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle was at work here; if she tried to grasp the truth, she would never understand it because the act of grasping itself would alter the truth in ways she could not predict. Her husband might be revealed as a cold-blooded manipulator who treated sentient beings like laboratory rats, instead of a good man who wanted the best for his test subjects. “Never mind,” Bindiya said.

Resolute, her insides quivering, Bindiya bent her head and kissed Katsumi, their mouths meeting in a movement that was fraught with awkwardness but also grace. She savored the sweetness of the lips beneath hers, then broke the kiss before Katsumi could respond and stepped onto the escalator that led further into the upper tiers of the pod. She was comforted by the unseen but nevertheless detectable solid presence of Katsumi behind her, close enough to touch. Fondness made a weight in her heart, and Bindiya sighed.

***

Located at Earth-Moon LaGrange point IV, approximately 384,000 kilometers from the moon itself and possessing a stable eighty-nine day orbit, Penthesilea station was a habitat wheel floating in the blackness between the stars. A laser ‘broom’ thrust out at the top and bottom of the hub, the beam sweeping the space around the wheel and the big solar collectors tethered to it to destroy micro-asteroids and debris. Penthesilea was unique among the other space stations in that it was not corporate-owned and/or government funded but the sole property of the founder, Molly Gattopardo Jane, heir of the mighty Jane shipping empire.

Katsumi kept herself open to the flood of new information that assaulted her senses as she preceded Bindiya through the Customs/Immigration section of the station’s dock. She was also keenly aware of the woman behind her. Bindiya had kissed her, and Katsumi was not sure how she ought to respond to that overture. Aggressively? Tenderly? She felt a protective affection for the woman but Bindiya’s feelings seemed stronger, more geared towards physical passion. Katsumi had no experience at ‘love’ – it was a null concept that required further study – but she supposed it would not be difficult to give Bindiya whatever she needed. In fact, she thought the attempt would make an interesting challenge.

The Tao Te Ching of Master Lao-Tzo said: Embracing Tao, you become embraced. Supple, breathing gently, you become reborn. Clearing your vision, you become clear. Nurturing your beloved, you become impartial. Opening your heart, you become accepted. Accepting the World, you embrace Tao. Bearing and nurturing, creating but not owning, giving without demanding, controlling without authority. This is love.

The few male visitors were shuffled off to the Sequestery, a small part of the station set aside for those burdened with an XY chromosome pair. Like the ancient women warrior’s nation, Penthesilea welcomed females only; the exceptions were eunuchs and the volunteers of Heavenly Greenpeace who served crew rotations on the old Rainbow Yong, trundling around the Earth-Moon-L4 route to clean up space trash that was hazardous to navigation.

Katsumi gave her corporate registration/importation visa to the Customs official and put her hand over the scanning plate, registering the barely-there pinprick as a hair-fine needle took a sample of her blood for DNA testing. The process of verifying her identity and sex took only a moment. The official pursed her lips and added holographic stamp on Katsumi’s visa, adding the proviso that ‘the goods in question were of a volatile nature.’ Katsumi stood aside and waited for Bindiya to present her falsified passport.

Once Bindiya had been cleared for entry, the two women consulted a map and took the people-mover to their hotel in Spoke Three, near Central Control in the hub. Katsumi was surprised at the amount of plant life inside the station: dark vines spilling over the hotel’s façade, tubs with miniature fruit trees lining the boulevard, blossoms everywhere, even circles and diamonds of green turf. Many of the women she saw were dressed in tunics that bared a breast, and most had flower wreaths on their heads. Some carried pinecone-topped thyrsus and wore leopard skins – likely tourists taking advantage of scheduled bacchanals and gyno-centric therapies designed to put them in touch with their ‘inner Amazons.’ None of them could have posed a serious threat to her or Bindiya, but Katsumi remained on her guard.

Their hotel was human-free, run entirely by hospitality ‘bots, which made for eerie silences but ultra-efficient service. Bindiya was unnaturally pale, but once they were in the room she tossed her spectacles in the recycling bin, marched over to Katsumi and pressed a kiss against her mouth. Katsumi sensed Bindiya’s anxiety, the thrum of nerves, the faint sheen of sweat that glazed her skin. Opening her lips to the tip of Bindiya’s tongue, she took hold of the woman’s wrist, rubbing her thumb between the ulna and pisiform bones at the shen men meridian to transmit energy to the heart. Bindiya let out a moan and pressed closer. Her free hand wandered, seeking Katsumi’s flesh. Katsumi catalogued the sensations for later analysis even as she reciprocated, following Bindiya’s lead.

The communications unit chimed. Bindiya shoved Katsumi away seconds before a holographic figure appeared in the center of the carpet. Katsumi allowed herself to surrender to momentum and fall back onto the bed. From the flaming embarrassment on Bindiya’s face, one might think she had been caught masturbating. Since the ninja was legally classified as an object, that was a fairly good analogy, and she found it amusing enough to want to share the observation with Bindiya when they were in private once more.

“Chem Bhattacharya, welcome back to Penthesilea station,” said the hologram, a red-haired woman with an athletic build and a bulldog jaw.

Bindiya’s bafflement was no show. “I’ve never been here before,” she said.

The woman frowned. Her face took on the far-away expression of one who was sub-vocalizing commands and receiving information via a subdermal transceiver implant. “Our records show that you were granted entry into the station six months ago with your co-mate, Dr. Charles Li Fang,” she said, smiling ever-so-slightly.

“You must be mistaken,” Bindiya replied. She was showing signs of renewed anxiety. Katsumi rose from the bed, responding to a threat not yet realized.

“I can show you the relevant documents and files, however it isn’t my purpose to open a debate. Chem Jane wishes to see you.”

Bindiya’s eyes widened. “I don’t… are you certain she wants to see me?”

“Yes. Will this evening at 1900 hours suit? A dinner engagement, followed by an audience with chem Jane. An escort will be provided to the House of the Ax, as well as formal attire if required.” For the first time, the woman’s gaze wandered to Katsumi.

“I’ll be waiting.” Bindiya seemed to regain some measure of confidence. “I think I can take care of my own attire. Please thank chem Jane on my behalf for her kind invitation.”

The holograph winked out, leaving a golden labrys sign hanging in the air before it, too, faded out in an ozone crackle. Katsumi waited a moment before turning to Bindiya, who was looking thoughtful. An audience with Molly Gattopardo Jane was a rare opportunity, a privilege over which the obscenely wealthy would sell their cryo-preserved grandmothers, and rabid journalistas would crawl over broken glass. Katsumi cared nothing for Chem Jane except as she may/may not relate to Bindiya. The claim that Bindiya had visited Penthesilea station six months previously was worth investigating.

Before that could happen, however, she had to take Bindiya shopping.

Bindiya did not care to inquire too closely as to where Katsumi’s seemingly inexhaustible credit resources had originated. She was only glad that credit appeared to be no object. When they entered the exclusive Golden Girdle haute couture salon, the sales clerks lofted their noses into the air, deeming Bindiya’s vaisya persona unworthy of their attention. That changed the moment Katsumi discreetly passed a credit chip to the chief clerk, whose purple sequined brow ridges shot up to her artificially lowered hairline at the amount of zeroes in the chip’s readout. Suddenly, Bindiya felt the weight of a dozen speculative gazes upon her. The sensation was, she imagined, akin to being a juicy chunk of Kobe beef dangled before a school of hungry piranha.

“Eep,” Bindiya breathed just before the clerks descended en masse, their eyes gleaming with a fervor borne of fifteen percent sales commissions. The glance saying ‘oh, please, for the love of Shakti, help me’ that she threw Katsumi went unanswered. The traitorous ninja simply backed away and left her to her fate.

The sonic exfoliator was ticklish but left Bindiya feeling cleaner than she had in her entire life, as well as several kilos lighter (although she was certain that was an exaggeration). It really was appalling how much dead skin was carried on the body, and how much dirt was engrained in that skin! Stylists were hastily summoned to take care of Bindiya’s hair, toenails, fingernails and cosmetics. Gowns were applied and rejected. Finally, after several hours of concentrated effort, Bindiya was led to a mirror to view the finished product.

She did not recognize herself. Her make-up was dramatic, big kohl-rimmed eyes and an airbrushed wave curling up from the lower half of her face; the rest of her skin was luminous, an effect achieved with a gilt cream whose cost had made her suck air through her teeth. A length of gauzy Madagascar spider-silk was wrapped sarong-style under her armpits, falling to the tips of her sandals. Holo-projectors on ankle bracelets created realistic-seeming swaths of clouds around her feet. The final touch was a gold crown that reminded Bindiya of a Babylonian ziggurat, with fresh flowers poking through the sides and top.

In the meantime, Katsumi had purchased an ash gray kimono with a subtle silver pattern of gossamer-tailed koi, which she wore paired with stiff-legged black hakama. Her hair was dressed with chamomile oil and pulled back from her face in a tea-whisk style topknot. The ninjato in its scabbard was thrust through her black-and-gray checked obi, the hilt conveniently at hand. Next to Bindiya’s finery, Katsumi appeared grim, a harbinger of efficient death rather than frivolity – a battle raven to Bindiya’s glistening peacock.

The promised transport arrived at 1830, a remote-controlled electric car that carried them both hub-wise on the public transport system, through a number of security checks to the Jane mansion, a multi-level building that resembled a corkscrew. The uppermost part of the building thrust towards the domed hub itself, terminating in a private elevator linking Molly Jane and her employees to Penthesilea station’s vital Control and Command Center.

They were met at the door by a chimera that appeared to have undergone serious genetic engineering of the sort that had been popular fifty years previous. The result was a vaguely potato-sack shaped primate about five feet tall whose arms that seemed twice as long, big hands resting knuckle-down on the floor. Tufts of bright red hair peeked out of the collar and cuffs of its tuxedo jacket. Tiny brown eyes surveyed Bindiya, then shifted to Katsumi and back again. “Be welcome, chem,” it said in a grating voice. Bindiya noticed a clump of something green between its prominent incisors. “On behalf of Molly Gattopardo Jane, be welcome to the House of the Ax,” it continued, shuffling aside to let Bindiya and Katsumi enter. The chimera’s feet were big and hairless, the toes clearly prehensile. Contrary to expectation, it smelled like strawberries and freshly mown hay.

Something butted into her leg, momentarily interrupting the projected clouds around her feet and making her stumble. Katsumi’s hand on her arm prevented Bindiya from falling. Regaining her balance, Bindiya glance down and saw a miniature elephant, complete with tusks that had been capped with gold sleeves. The knee-high pachyderm raised its trunk, flapped its ears and blatted angrily at her. Their chimerical guide ignored it and walked on; Bindiya and Katsumi followed suit.

The mansion’s entrance hall was huge, the ceiling held up with plascrete columns that had been molded and painted to resemble the columns of Knossos Palace on Crete. There were display cabinets everywhere, showcasing an unbelievable collection of embroidered silk lotus shoes, each pair just a few inches long and made for bound feet - the much-admired san tsun gin lian that had cost tens of thousands of girls untold agonies in the past. As if to continue the theme of suffering, lachrymosal madamu butterflies beat their huge wings against gilded cage bars, their iridescent bodies shedding strings of nectar-tears. Fanged orchids bloomed in unexpected places, snapping at unwary visitors. Bindiya skittered on her sandals, grateful for Katsumi’s silent presence amid this place of wonders and grotesqueries.

A high-speed transport tube led them up uncountable levels. The strawberry/hay scent of the chimera increased the higher they rose. It had not spoken again but hummed a tune deep in its throat, resting on its knuckles and occasionally casting glances at Katsumi and Bindiya from the corners of its eyes. At last, the tube glided to a stop, the doors opened, and the women exited in the middle of a chukka of elephant polo.

The miniature beasts thundered across the red stone floor, ridden by capuchin monkeys in jockey silks. Each elephant was bedecked in jeweled trappings, their tusks capped like the one Bindiya had run into downstairs. The monkey jockey perched on each saddle wielded a mallet in one hand and a silver ankus elephant goad in the other. Several dozen fantastically dressed people stood around the ‘playing field’ watching, applauding and groaning, exchanging credit chips or other goods as wagers were won or lost. Bindiya hesitated, unsure where to go or whom to seek.

A young blonde woman approached. She seemed no more than seventeen years old, simply dressed in a bronze-colored cheong sam that ended at mid-thigh, exposing a long length of coltish leg. “Welcome to my home,” she said, inclining her head. She wore a string of polished garnets around her throat, and a cloth bandeau held back her mane of blonde hair. “Thank you, Darwin, you may go,” she said to the chimera, who knuckle-walked away.

Bindiya stared, nonplused. Molly Gattopardo Jane was in her seventies. Gene therapy, cloned organ transplants, surgery, stem cells and other elective medical treatments could only do so much. Realizing that she was being rude, Bindiya bowed in return, although her mind was a-whirl with questions that were too impolite to ask. Another roar came from the crowd as an elephant slipped on a ‘steaming divot’ and skidded out-of-control, bowling over a gentleman who was wearing a tiny gilt loin-guard and nothing else.

“Let’s chat somewhere else,” Molly offered. “It’s a bit noisy in here.” She paused, and looked at Katsumi. “Do you know Momoko?”

“Momoko-san is a construct ninja belonging to Jane’s Shipping Incorporated,” Katsumi replied.

“I asked her about you. She had nothing to say. I found that odd.”

Katsumi hunched a shoulder fractionally.

Undeterred, Molly went on, “Did Dr. Li Fang buy your contract from Yoshitsune International? I had no idea he was independently wealthy.”

Again, Katsumi made a non-committal shrug.

“Well, let’s go,” Molly said after a heartbeat. Her expression did not alter, but it was clear to Bindiya that the old woman in the girl’s body was annoyed by Katsumi’s refusal to engage in a dialogue. She took them down a corridor that angled upward, a gradual incline that nevertheless made Bindiya’s calves ache after about ten minutes of steady walking. The walls were painted with a trompe l’oeil mural of windows open to a landscape of blue skies, humped green hills and rolling lead-gray surf. Molly opened a door and ushered them inside a room whose ceiling, floor and walls were coated with a weird shifting soap-bubble slick that was trapped behind seamless slabs of polycarbonate.

“One of our R&D teams created this beauty based on a bacteria strain an exploration team found on Phobos in the Stickney crater,” Molly said, pressing the flat of her hand against one of the clear polycarbonate covered walls. Shockingly, as if it was aware of her proximity, the slick stuff lunged against the barrier, more of it draining from other regions of the room and pooling towards the place where Molly’s palm was pressed.

“Quite vicious, isn’t it?” she asked, giving the surging liquid a fond smile. “And the Mathmos is highly acidic as well. A tablespoon will eat its way through organic matter – say, something the size of an average human – in less than a minute. It digested most of a fully staffed laboratory before we could get it contained. This is the only example in existence, and it’s always hungry. I’ve heard rumors that I feed my enemies to the Mathmos, but that would be foolish. The more it eats, the bigger it grows. If that was true, I’d need a containment facility the size of this station. And for all my faults, ladies, I am never foolish.”

Bindiya stiffened, certain that she was being warned in a round-about manner, but unsure what she was being warned against. Katsumi took the half-step necessary to interpose her body between Bindiya and Molly, as though she regarded the long-legged, blonde-curled Molly more seriously as a threat than the slick appetite of the Mathmos that was battering itself against the polycarbonate that sheathed the room.

Molly wrinkled her nose and widened her eyes in a way that was reminiscent of naughty anime schoolgirls. She almost, but not quite, used the edge of her hand to flip her hair back over her shoulder. The gesture turned into a slash through the air. “Enough digression,” she said. “Chem Bhattacharya, I wanted to offer my condolences on the death of your husband, Dr. Li Fang. He was a brilliant scientist.”

“Thank you, chem Jane.” It was all Bindiya could think of to say.

“He was invaluable in assisting me with a project dear to my own heart.” Molly’s glance turned coy, as if she was expecting a certain reaction from Bindiya.

For a moment, Bindiya was tempted to pretend she knew exactly what Molly was hinting at. “Actually, I’ve been… ill since Charles’ death,” she said. “I don’t remember being here six months ago, nor do I have access to his private files. Whether my memory returns or not cannot be determined.”

The coyness turned to granite. “Do you remember chopping him apart with a knife?”

Shocked by the rudeness, Bindiya gaped. Molly smirked unpleasantly; it was apparent that she was enjoying playing her nasty little game. Katsumi said nothing but her actions spoke more loudly than words. To Bindiya’s horror, she drew her ninjato in a single smooth movement and without hesitation, struck the polycarbonate shield that covered the wall.

Bindiya was grabbed and shoved out of the door just as a star-shaped crack appeared. The crack lengthened jaggedly towards the floor, accompanied by the crisp snapping sounds. A thick mother-of-pearl shimmering bead of the Mathmos oozed through, a slow but steady intrusion. Molly’s pretty seventeen-year old face turned ugly in distress. Katsumi pushed the woman through the door and slammed it shut behind her, trapping the Mathmos inside and preventing it from escaping into the corridor.

Molly leaned a hip against the painted wall. After a moment during which she was clearly regaining her composure, she said, “I’ll have to have nanites injected into the room to effect repairs. Very inconvenient.”

“More inconvenient,” Katsumi said evenly, “if I had left you in there.”

“Point taken.” Molly stared at Katsumi, then shook her head and smiled, turning her attention to Bindiya. “Penthesilea station does not have extradition treaties with Earth or any of her subsidiary colonies, so you needn’t worry about an arrest warrant being executed during your stay. Shall we go to dinner? I’m famished! I hear Cook’s made gazpacho.” She turned and walked away while a confused Bindiya gazed after her, feeling as if she had somehow taken a tumble down a rabbit hole.

***

Master Miyamoto Musashi said: Under the sword lifted high there is hell making you tremble, but go ahead and you have the land of bliss.

Katsumi’s instincts told her that Molly Gattopardo Jane was hiding something; she sensed this in the same way that she could have sensed a wound festering beneath a pristine bandage. There was the same barely detectible whiff of rot, the suspicion that something awful was lurking out of sight. Further, she had not liked the woman’s veiled threat in the room that had contained the Mathmos; it had seemed that Molly was warning them that she had the power to make her ‘enemies’ disappear, so it was best to stay friends and give Molly whatever she wanted. In return, Katsumi had given Molly a reminder of why it was not wise to threaten a ninja. Perhaps her response had been a trifle extravagant, but wealthy high-riders like chem Jane did not often appreciate subtlety. Katsumi supposed that Molly now comprehended that any attempt to harm Bindiya would result in abrupt termination

The day following their dinner at the House of the Ax (which had been dragonfly curry rather than gazpacho, served al fresco on a balcony with another hundred or so diners; Molly had ignored them throughout, making it clear that their interview was over) Katsumi tapped into the station’s database. She coaxed the hotel’s computer deck into making a info-dump about the religious community that Esperanza Serjee belonged to – the Order of Tanit, which claimed to be able to trace its origin to ancient Carthage.

“The high priestess is called Tophet,” Katsumi said aloud, kneeling on the floor in front of the deck. The VR goggles did not quite cover her entire eye; from out of the corner, she could see a naked Bindiya sprawled over the bed, watching a soap opera on the 3D set. The curve of Bindiya’s buttocks was interesting, a study in sacred geometry that would not have shamed one of the celestial maidens carved in the stones of Khajuraho temple. Katsumi returned the bulk of her attention to the information scrolling on the goggle lenses.

Bindiya clicked off the 3D set and rolled over, sitting up on the bed with her feet crossed over her thighs lotus-style. “Tanit… a lunar fertility goddess, one of the chief deities of Carthage,” she said. “Tanit was likely the equivalent of Astarte, the Great Mother Goddess of the ancient Near East. The tophet was a sacred precinct where still-born children and children who died in early infancy were ‘given back’ to Tanit and Ba’al Hammon, her consort – the parents making an offering of the child’s cremated remains in the hope that the gods would provide a replacement. There are other, darker interpretations, of course.”

“The Order of Tanit is privately funded,” Katsumi said. “There are sister chapters on Earth, but the mother temple is based on Penthesilea station. The Order’s function seems to be charitable; they run low-cost crèches and adopt abandoned or unwanted children. Each transport run, a female child is imported to the station from Earth and taken to the temple where she receives culture-appropriate care and education.” Katsumi plugged a second set of VR goggles into the deck and handed them to Bindiya, so that the other woman could experience the data-flow herself.

They watched a half-hour propaganda film about the Order of Tanit. At the end, Bindiya slid the goggles off her face and into her hair. “Somehow, I don’t believe…” she began, and stuttered to a halt as her eyes glazed over. Her muscles began to jerk.

By now, Katsumi had become familiar with the signs of possession. She ripped off her own goggles and flowed onto the bed, reaching for Bindiya’s belly where the nano-tattoo’s activation point was marked by a small dark brown dot. Bindiya was in a full-blown grand mal seizure, her whole body drawn tight, her spine arched like a bow, her eyes rolled back to show the whites. Bindiya’s lips were drawn back nearly to the angle of her jaw. Flecks of foam dotted her cheeks. Katsumi pressed the activation point, watching as text scrolled into being on Bindiya’s skin, the Emptiness of Forms sutra called Hannya-Shin-Kyo. The deep flat drone of the sutra rolled through her head, as if chanted by a thousand-shrine monk:

Bu Setsu Ma Ka Han Nya Ha Ra Mi Ta Shin Kyo Kan Ji Sai Bo Sa Gyo Jin Han Nya Ha Ra Mi Ta Ji…

Bindiya gasped, sweat pouring off her. She stank, but it was not the rank stench of fear or illness. Katsumi expanded her sense of smell. It was something charred and smoky, like burning spices, that was mingled with a sharp sour tang which she could not identify. Bindiya relaxed muscle by muscle, letting out a long sigh, until she finally lay flat on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Katsumi knew how distressing it was for Bindiya when her consciousness was invaded by hostile energies. An urge to nurture caused an unfamiliar ache in her chest. She shifted until she could put her thumbs under Bindiya’s skull, one on either side the spinal column, and applied gentle pressure. After several minutes, Bindiya sighed again and rolled over on her side, resting her head on Katsumi’s thigh. The tattoo disappeared from her skin, deactivated by Bindiya herself.

“I saw a bronze statue of a woman,” Bindiya said, her voice subdued, “so huge I could not see the face; it was too high above me and hidden in shadows. A fire burned inside the statue, but it wasn’t really fire. It was more like water, but it wasn’t.” Her expression reflected her frustration at being unable to articulate precisely what she had been shown. “Priestesses were putting children into the fire but they weren’t being consumed. They were still alive, and the fire was siphoning the life out of them…”

Katsumi did not understand the significance of Bindiya’s vision but she did not press for further details. The woman looked exhausted; there were purple stains beneath her eyes that had not been there before. Even with the protection of the sutra, each instance of possession was draining her strength, her vital ki energy. Katsumi wondered if it might not be better to leave Penthesilea and forget Esperanza Serjee. Bindiya could go to a lamasery in Tibet or to the haven of Shambhala station at LaGrange III to have herself purged of evil by red-hat nyimgmapa magics. Even as the idea occurred to her, she rejected it as unlikely to be successful. This living yurei would not cease haunting Bindiya until it had whatever it wanted. An exorcism would provide only a temporary fix.

“What don’t you believe?” Katsumi asked, recalling what Bindiya had begun to say before the attack, but the other woman had fallen asleep, her breathing heavy, her hand curled over Katsumi’s leg.

She waited until Bindiya had progressed into stage four delta sleep, then Katsumi extracted herself deftly from the woman’s grip, covered her with a blanket, and donned the VR goggles again, settling cross-legged in front of the computer deck. Entering the search terms Carthage, Tanit and child sacrifice, she watched the data-stream turn into a torrent.

When Bindiya woke up, Katsumi handed her a T-shirt with the legend ‘I Stuck My Finger in a Dyke at Spaarndam’ and pale blue cotton drawstring pants. “We have an appointment at the Order of Tanit’s headquarters,” she said, watching Bindiya get dressed.

“To see Esperanza Serjee?” Bindiya asked, bending over to pull on a pair of intelligent ankle boots that adjusted themselves to fit her foot.

“Perhaps.” Katsumi was being deliberately cagey. There was no actual appointment; in fact, the temple spokeswoman she had spoken to over the communication system had been quite hostile to the idea of visitors, which only increased Katsumi’s curiosity as well as her determination. Anyone who attempted to stop them would meet her sword or her fist; both were equally lethal, therefore the afternoon promised to be interesting. She looked forward to the exercise. Bindiya was gazing at her with narrow suspicious eyes, so Katsumi continued, “First, we must speak to the Tophet.”

There were no private transports on Penthesilea except those belonging to Molly Jane and her corporation, so Katsumi opted for the public mass transit people-mover. To save space – always at a premium – the magnetic levitation system ran on tracks built on the outside of the station. There were bubble-shaped transport cars sheathed in a protective layer of frictionless material that shielded the occupants from solar winds and radiation. Each car housed up to twelve passengers; the one that Katsumi chose was unoccupied. The moment the doors shut and the car began gliding on its track, Bindiya turned to her.

“We don’t really have an appointment, do we?” she asked.

“No, we do not.” Katsumi saw no point in further deception. She decided to reveal some of the information she had gleaned from the station’s database and from an uplink to the Earth-side ‘Net. “You and Dr. Li Fang did visit Penthesilea six months ago at chem Jane’s invitation. There is surveillance vid which confirms this fact. I cannot learn much regarding the reason for your visit, except it had something to do with the Order of Tanit.”

Behind Bindiya’s head, a flatscreen was projecting ad-blurts at full subliminal speed, images that came and went too quickly for even her enhanced vision to distinguish. She looked away, but not before something clicked inside her head. Her subconscious mind was flooded with information. Crimson light flared; her heartbeat stuttered, the semai or hesitant pulse that caused an unpleasant sensation under her skin, as if her bones were bamboo being scraped with a knife. An inner spark flared.

Bindiya’s face was weirdly elongated, her mouth open in a stretched oval that revealed teeth and tongue. Katsumi registered the cold greasy-feeling sweat that coated her skin, along with an odor very much like freshly spilled blood – hot, rank and sweet. The smell filled her nostrils, turning active thought into white noise.

For the first time in her existence, Katsumi lost control.

***

Bindiya tried to regulate her breathing but it was difficult. There was a ball gag in her mouth, and her arms and legs pinioned by artistically twined and knotted nylon rope. Panic fluttered in her stomach; acid reflux scorched her throat. She was terrified that she might vomit. If she did, she would choke. There was a sore spot on the side of her head, behind her ear, where she thought someone had struck her. It was the last thing she remembered until she had woken up in a strange room, bound and gagged.

The room seemed ordinary enough, a modest bedchamber decorated in blues and greens, very restful and calming. A fish tank on top of a plastic dresser held colorful guppies and water weeds. The bubbly sound of the aerator would have been soothing under other circumstances. Bindiya flexed against her bonds to no avail. She closed her eyes, willing her muscles to relax, hoping to avoid painful cramps. Where was Katsumi? The ninja would never leave her voluntarily, that was certain. The only explanation that made sense was that Katsumi was dead. Her throat was tight and aching. Tears threatened, and Bindiya sniffed them back fiercely; getting a stuffy nose now would be tantamount to suicide.

Katsumi!

They had been alone in the transport bubble, she was sure of it. She must be missing memories. The result of head trauma? It was possible. Her heart chakra was in the throes of a far worse agony, the clear green energies turned murky with grief. She felt like she was hemorrhaging on the inside, a melancholy bleed-out for which there was no treatment. Wet trails of saliva slipped out of the corners of her mouth, held open by the rubber ball. If it was possible, she would have screamed out loud. The gods were absent, the etheric planes desolate and there she was, trussed for sacrifice with only her bitterness to keep her company, shaken to the depths of her soul. The pain of losing her husband was still raw; to add Katsumi’s loss put Bindiya in a place of jagged-toothed darkness from which there was no escape.

Bindiya loved Katsumi, and now Katsumi was gone.

An indeterminate amount of time passed.

Without warning, the door opened.

A Japanese woman stood on the threshold. She wore ash gray gi and her neck bore the ownership tattoo of a construct ninja. Her flat face was impassive. “I am Momoko,” she said.

Bindiya closed her eyes. Her defenses, paper-thin at best since the madness had begun, were torn to shreds. Grief was too heavy. She could fight no more.

She let herself fall into oblivion.

***

It was all she had ever known, this regimented interior landscape.

Katsumi processed information the way she had been programmed. Her womb-mind had received the foundations of structure, then later, she had been taught to learn and to obey. She was used to the sensation of a previously unguessed-at seed blossoming inside her mind, growing to fruition and bringing with it change. This time, however, the change had been unwelcome, the alterations done crudely but effectively. She had been imprisoned inside her own mind, a hapless passenger bearing witness to her body’s hijacking by the bio-software virus that had ambushed her on the transport bubble.

Molly Gattopardo Jane’s doing, she thought, unable to control her body but still capable of experiencing the stream of data picked up by her senses. Katsumi’s vision scanned the entrance hall where she was standing, taking in the lotus shoes, the orchids, the butterflies and their nectar tears. The sound of people chatting and laughing came from nearby. She presumed Bindiya was in the House of the Ax as well. Katsumi had not been able to halt the viral download into her brain but the program had not used her as a weapon to kill Bindiya, just to incapacitate the other woman and bring her to the mansion.

Katsumi’s consciousness had been rendered redundant. Unlike other times in her life, she found the prospect disquieting.

Does the tool question its master?

The answer came to her in a flash, an insight that was as enlightening as polishing a tile to make a mirror - it does when the tool has a choice.

With that revelation, Katsumi chose to embrace the independence that Charles Li Fang had forced upon her. In a burst of self-discovery, she realized that she had been drifting since her escape from Yoshitsune. Finding a place with the Sinsemilla and accepting assassination jobs had been a way of marking time, treading water until… what? Until a new set of instructions was downloaded into her psyche. Until someone else took control and gave direction to her life. Charles Li Fang might have de-programmed and re-programmed her, but he had not given her a purpose. Or had he? It did not matter. Bindiya was her purpose, Katsumi decided. She would save Bindiya or she would avenge her. Perhaps she would do both. The future lay ahead, and it was full of choices.

Never had she felt so liberated, even if she was imprisoned.

Struggling against the program availed her nothing. Katsumi was a born killer, but fighting the mind virus was like wrestling with sorghum molasses. Confronting the thing that had imprisoned her only entangled her more deeply in its snares. Unlike the Sinsemilla, she did not have interface sockets that permitted her direct neural access to cyberspace, but she had listened to descriptions of the experience from hackers, the anti-hero console cowboys of the urban Sprawls. They had spoken of black ice, security countermeasures programs that could flat-line an intruder’s EEG and cause permanent brain damage. The virus that had invaded her was not as deadly as that but it was equally implacable.

Master Sun Tzu said: To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the highest skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill.

Accordingly, Katsumi stopped fighting the bonds that secured her and concentrated instead, marshalling her forces. The virus manifested itself to her inner eye as rough-hewn stones held together with a strong mortar. Her legs were encased to the thigh in stone, as were her arms, leaving her spread-eagled in place. She recalled former lessons piped directly into her memory, the voice of a long-dead sensei’s preserved personality, uploaded to an AI node. Embrace the Void, the mushin-no-michi – the state of no-mind, where conscious volition gave way to the instinctive reaction of ingrained skills. Katsumi flexed her mental muscles carefully and deliberately, testing her bonds, seeking weaknesses in the viral structure.

There was a flaw in the virus’ design, she discovered; a crack in its defenses. Katsumi sidled to the wall, millimeter by millimeter, her non-existent ‘body’ more flexible than mere flesh. The language of bio-programming was dense, as rich as a Viennese torte. Strings of code dazzled her inner vision. Katsumi was no wetware wizard but she understood enough to begin the process of freeing herself. As she began to pry into the crack, the virus defended itself by sending pulses along her neural pathways that were interpreted by her thalamus and somatosensory cortex as pain.

The pain increased exponentially the more she attempted to infiltrate the virus. It felt as though she was on fire, the flames eating her skin, consuming the flesh beneath. Her body was blackened and crisped; smoke filled her vision and the taste of ashes filled her mouth. Katsumi continued, ignoring the agony that sang along every nerve. She persevered, aligning herself with the wall that blocked her from bodily control. Katsumi pressed herself against the stones. Freedom was a matter of integration rather than resistance.

Whatever rises must fall. Whatever lives must die.

She had to allow the virus to pass over her and through her but it was difficult. Too difficult, Katsumi found as the adaptive program shifted around her. She sought another way and found it in a protocol nestled in the code. Whoever had hacked her mind had left certain safeguards in place within the virus, confirming that it had been hastily modified program probably intended to do something else. Katsumi’s concentration redoubled. She reached inside herself in the way she had been taught, seeking the implanted trigger.

Just as Katsumi had some degree of control over her adrenal glands – making her stronger and faster when needed - she also possessed control over her body’s autonomous cardiac and respiratory functions. Ninja constructs were always programmed with a safeword that would shut them down in the event such a drastic measure was required. Charles Li Fang had removed her implanted safeword but the trigger was still in place, hidden deep inside yet nevertheless within her virtual grasp. The virus could not prevent Katsumi from delving into the recesses of her psyche. After a moment, she found the trigger and activated it.

Master Musashi said, The Way of the Warrior is resolute acceptance of death.

Vision faded first, then hearing. She was deafened by the sound of her own faltering heartbeat, then by the silence as her pulse ceased. Katsumi was not concerned; she had accepted the Way long ago. Although blind, she saw a face floating in the darkness. It was Esperanza Serjee. The girl’s skin was too white, an unnatural pallor that was enhanced by the dark strands of her hair that snaked around her head, the tendrils waving as if stirred by a tide.

The dead-who-was-not-dead beckoned to her. Within her mind, the virus engaged a forgotten safety protocol and began to immolate itself, code-strings blazing one by one in feverish self-consumption. On a wind that smelled of scorched spices, Katsumi flew away.

***

Bindiya awoke to a different room, this one decorated in dusty chintz. The red-furred chimera Darwin was there, resting on its knuckles, watching her with its little brown eyes. Bindiya was no longer gagged, but her mouth was too dry for speech. She tried working up some spit. Darwin came closer. The slap of its bare feet against the floor made her heart clench inside her chest. She inhaled, smelling the chimera’s strawberry/hay scent; the normally pleasant odor seemed cloying now, sickeningly sweet.

It shuffled over until its face was against the side of her neck. She felt its nostrils flaring, the tickle of its fur tufts sliding on her skin. The chimera snuffled wetly. Bindiya cringed. She was tied to a wheelchair, her ankles and wrists secured with plastic ties. A drooling tongue ran along her collarbone, a velvet touch she found repulsive. The chimera’s fingers were hard and callused in strange places. Impatient, it tore at the neckline of her shirt and nuzzled her breasts. Under the tuxedo trousers, she saw the tell-tale bulge of a sexually excited male. Bindiya jerked and rocked in place, consumed by horror, trying to evade the chimera’s tongue and fingers and the hard erection it was rubbing on her thigh.

She found enough moisture in her mouth to chant a denial, “No, no, get away from me, get away! Stop!”

Molly Gattopardo Jane appeared in the doorway. “Darwin!” she scolded.

The chimera leaped away from Bindiya, making the wheelchair rock back on its wheels. Bindiya forced a scream out through her raw throat. At Molly’s scowl, the chimera grinned at her, an apprehensive baring of teeth. It reached out an impossibly long arm to snag the wheelchair and slam it back down on the floor.

“Please excuse Darwin,” Molly said, coming into the room. “He sometimes forgets to be civilized when we have company.” She reached up and stroked a fingertip across one of the garnet beads she wore strung around her throat. Darwin grunted, shivering. It fell down abruptly, keeling over into a fetal position on the floor. Tremors shook its sturdy frame. “The mind can interpret sensation as pleasure or pain,” Molly said conversationally, but her eyes absorbed the light, black holes from which no compassion could escape. “My servants are all equipped with remote access wetware that allow me to punish or reward them, as the case warrants. I find it’s a very effective management tool.”

The pungent smell of urine filled the air when the chimera lost bladder control.

Her nose wrinkled in disgust, Molly jammed her finger harder on the bead then released it, and moved aside to allow her corporate ninja Momoko to enter the room. Momoko stepped over the puddle of fluorescent yellow urine, crossed behind Bindiya and took hold of the wheelchair’s handles/ Bindiya panted, trying to regain her breath. Darwin’s saliva dried sticky and itching on her skin. She twitched all over, her fingers curled over the armrests, nails digging into the pseudo-leather. Her hair had fallen over her eyes, a welcome obscurity. Momoko trundled the wheelchair out of the room, bumping it over the threshold.

Molly crooned as they passed, “Don’t worry, chem. I’m going to take care of you.” She caressed Bindiya’s cheek with the back of her hand. It was worse than the chimera’s touch, like being corrupted by something unclean, something filthy. Bindiya resisted the impulse to snap at the long, white, smooth fingers that skittered like spiders over her face.

Momoko pushed her down the corridor, with Molly walking by the wheelchair’s side. The chimera followed on the other side, whining softly to itself. They passed door after door, always headed downwards, a seemingly endless spiral that ended at a garage where a private transport vehicle was waiting.

“Let me go,” Bindiya said, pulling on the plastic ties until her chafed wrists began to bleed. She welcomed the pain; it meant she was still alive. “Please, just let me go.”

“You’re too pretty,” Molly replied, leaning over and licking the frustrated tears that spilled from the corners of Bindiya’s eyes. “You smell good, Pretty-Pretty,” she whispered. Her breath was warm, scented with clove and cassia.

Momoko opened the transport’s gull-wing shaped door.

Molly continued to whisper, “Oh, you’re so pretty, Pretty-Pretty… I can’t wait to taste you.” Her smile was a razor blade that sliced through the ragged remains of Bindiya’s defenses.

Bindiya’s mouth opened but no sound came out, not even the merest whimper of denial. Impassive and efficient, Momoko thumbed a micro-needle patch on her neck over the carotid artery. There was no sting. The drug passed into her blood, circulating through her body with every beat of her heart. Bindiya began to feel woozy, and thought it might be a sedative but she was not sure. Her head was too heavy for her neck to support, and growing heavier by the moment, then it was light as a balloon on the end of a string. Bindiya giggled.

Molly kissed her, and she went on giggling while Momoko loaded the wheelchair into the transport.

***

The Order of Tanit’s temple was oddly shaped, a stack of rhombuses that appeared to have been carved from volcanic basalt. At the very top of the temple was huge metal dish in which holographic flames danced. By the time they reached the temple, Bindiya had stopped giggling. The drug’s effect was short-lived and left her with a nasty headache that was compounded by the clove cigarettes Molly smoked, holding each one delicately between thumb and forefinger. Smoking was forbidden on the station – naked flames of any kind were a bad idea when one lived in a vulnerable pressurized environment – but Bindiya supposed that when one owned the station in question, one felt free to break the rules. Molly Jane did not seem to be the type to care much about safety regulations anyway.

Bindiya was wheeled inside, blinking as her eyes adjusted from the brightness outside to the dimness within the temple. The floor was made of a white translucent stone that was backlit, providing soft illumination. Women wrapped in red robes, their hair covered with black scarves, walked to and fro over the glowing floor, murmuring quietly. A middle-aged female with a bulldog jaw stopped in front of the wheelchair, looking down at Bindiya, who recognized that this was the woman had contacted her and Katsumi in the ‘bot hotel.

“Is this the one?” the woman asked.

Molly nodded. “Can we use her?”

“Perhaps. We’ll do a full analysis. It will take a little while.”

“I could just…” Molly broke off and looked little-girl sly. The woman shook her head.

“If you’re incompatible, that could be a major set-back. Have patience, chem Jane. The testing won’t take that long.” The woman’s keen glance raked Molly up and down. “Is it that bad? Has the last dose worn off already?” She frowned. “It seems to be taking less and less.”

Molly snarled, “Just do the damned test!” The command sounded odd coming from an apparently teenaged girl. Nevertheless, the woman bowed her head and glided away.

The door banged open and Katsumi strode inside.

Bindiya could not believe what she was seeing. Katsumi was dead! In her heart, she was still mourning her loss, still grieving for the other woman. The gods knew she had had enough hallucinations and inexplicabilities bleeding through lately to confuse Chuang Tzu’s butterfly as to the nature of reality. This could be a dream, or it could be… “Katsumi?”

“Konnichiwa, Bindiya-san,” Katsumi replied. “Are you well?”

The question was completely incongruous given her current state. “Not entirely,” Bindiya said, striving to match the ninja’s nonchalance. “I thought you were dead.” Her diaphragm spasmed, and she choked on the last word. Relief was co-mingled with dread. Momoko had come forward and stood in front of Molly, cool murder in an ash gray gi.

Katsumi took a step forward. Her own gi was rumpled and dirty; there was a stain that looked very much like blood on one sleeve. “I have seen Esperanza Serjee,” she said, speaking to Molly. “I know what you have done.”

Molly made a moue. The expression was ill-suited to the old woman staring out of her eyes. “I know what you have done,” she mocked. “Really? You’re so clever.”

Bindiya pulled against the wrist restraints, grunting each time the plastic bit into her scored and bleeding flesh. She wanted to be free. She wanted to slap spoiled selfish Molly Gattopardo Jane until her palm hurt. She wanted to touch Katsumi and reassure herself that the other woman was real, not a figment of her demented imagination. Katsumi had to be real, not like Esperanza Serjee, dead but alive – a conundrum and a riddle and an enigma that she did not care about solving. “Katsumi!” she called out.

The ninja seemed to do hardly more than shrug, but four shuriken were launched into the air. Bindiya had time for a single quick inhalation before the little blades sliced through the plastic ties with astonishing precision, barely whispering against her skin in passing and not injuring her at all. She tried to stand but her balance was gone and she fell back again, causing the wheelchair to roll backwards a few inches. A fifth shuriken was cast at Molly, but Momoko intercepted it with the blade of her ninjato, striking the dart at an oblique angle and embedding it harmlessly in the wall.

Priestesses fled.

Bindiya rose from the chair. At her full height, even in bare feet she topped Molly by a good six inches or more. She took one step, then another, and another as a measure of strength returned to her limbs. Molly sneered and pulled a flechètte gun from the waistband of her whispering taffeta skirt. Bindiya could not reach her quickly enough. Molly pointed the gun at Katsumi and pulled the trigger, sending a half-dozen darts towards the ninja’s back.

Katsumi bent radically backwards at the waist just before the first of the darts would have penetrated her flesh. This move also left Momoko exposed. She parried with her blade, sending five flechèttes flying in various directions but the sixth buried itself in her thigh. Molly stiffened. “Modified Hansen’s disease,” she said, her eyes gone round. Angry and filled with loathing, Bindiya knocked the gun out of the woman’s hand; it slid along the floor and came to rest against a wall, the plastic grip chipped by the impact.

Momoko ignored the dart in her thigh. She advanced on Katsumi, blade held high; her steps were made terre-à-terre as precise as any holo-ballerina’s. Katsumi moved to block, sweeping her own sword around. The two ninjas clashed, parted, and clashed again. A heavy scent hung in the air; Bindiya recognized incense smoke, charred spices and resins. Despite her apprehension, part of her wondered if the temple actually burned the stuff contrary to regulations, or if they imported the fragrance from a temple on Earth.

There was a wet plop as Momoko’s right arm suddenly detached from her body and fell on the floor. Soft white light made the blood seem dark, almost black as it oozed over the translucent stone. A fine spray of blood hissed from the wound. Katsumi backed away, her split-toed tabi socks flashing white under the hem of her hakama. Momoko gripped her ninjato in her left hand. Her right leg came off at the knee and more blood pooled on pale stone. She must have been in agony but not a hint of pain showed on her flat face.

Bindiya could not stand anymore. “Finish it!” she hissed at Katsumi.

Several of Momoko’s fingers pattered down, joined by an ear and a scattering of teeth. Her eye slipped out of its socket and hung on her cheek, a blob of bloodstained jelly tethered by the optic nerve. Molly Gattopardo Jane ran out of the room, disappearing through a shadowed doorway, her taffeta skirt whispering with each stride of her coltish legs. Momoko said nothing; there was no anguish in her steady gaze. Nevertheless, Katsumi delivered the mercy stroke. She whipped her sword through the air, an arc of glittering steel that sliced cleanly through Momoko’s neck. The blow was beautifully executed. Katsumi recited a few words in Japanese, which Bindiya thought might be a death poem. She recognized the words for ‘cherry blossoms’ – a typical poetic metaphor for the briefness of a samurai’s life. Dark blood drops exploded into a spraying crimson fountain as Momoko’s head fell off and bounced along the floor, leaving a messy trail behind it. The stump of her neck was liquid scarlet, contrasting with the stark white bone in the center.

Katsumi flicked her ninjato to clean the blade free of blood, then sheathed it. She held out her hand to Bindiya, who took it without hesitation and pulled the shorter woman into a fierce embrace. “I thought you were dead,” Bindiya whispered into Katsumi’s hair.

“I am yet among the living,” Katsumi replied. Her voice was unemotional but the pressure of her arms around Bindiya’s waist told another story.

Her throat was closed with gratitude and relief. It took a moment for Bindiya to speak. “What did you mean when you told chem Jane that you knew what she had done?” It was not what she had meant to say, and she surprised herself with the inquiry.

Katsumi pulled away and looked at her, an unreadable expression in her fathomless black eyes. “Technically, what you all have done. Dr. Charles Li Fang, Molly Gattopardo Jane and you, Bindiya Bhattacharya. Especially you.” Her hands curled over Bindiya’s biceps, holding her in place when she would have instinctively bolted. “You do not remember,” Katsumi continued, “because you wished to forget. It is time for you to confront the ghosts of your past. It is time to remember the Golden Immortal.”

Those two words struck Bindiya a hammer blow. She gasped as memory surfaced from the murky depths of her subconscious, as subtle as Carcharodon carcharias rising with open jaws from the deep. The Golden Immortal… the elixir of life. Penthesilea station. Molly Jane’s seventy year old face, wrinkled as a relief map, her mouth stretched in a greedy smile. A girl about twelve years old, with big eyes and scabby elbows. An exercise in the hypothetical becoming grim reality. Bindiya understood now what her husband had done to her with his bio-programming skills. The full horror made her want to vomit.

She would have fallen without Katsumi’s grip to hold her up.

***

Katsumi recognized the moment when Bindiya’s memories returned. She was prepared for any reaction, including the woman tearing herself from Katsumi’s grip and diving for the flechètte gun on the floor. Katsumi took hold of Bindiya and used the woman’s momentum to pull her around and prevent her from reaching the gun. “Death is not justice,” she told Bindiya, whose face was crumpled in an ugly grimace.

“I don’t… I didn’t mean…” Bindiya said, her voice broken.

“Vision without action is but a daydream,” Katsumi said. “You did not consider the implications of your work.”

“And then Charles…” Bindiya swallowed. She had turned pale; her hands trembled.

Katsumi nodded. She locked her fingers around Bindiya’s wrist and led her through the doorway where Molly had vanished earlier. There was no sign of the Order’s priestesses until they came to a place where the corridor led to a room that was empty except for three well-armed women who had been goliathed, their bodies made grotesque with muscle grafts and stainless steel teeth. Katsumi swept Bindiya behind her. Projectile weapons were forbidden to prevent an atmospheric breach, so the goliaths were armed with long knives. Katsumi made a quick calculation and spun on her heel, kicking out with one leg. She struck one woman in the chest, feeling her ribs cave in and her heart break apart under the impact. Moving swiftly, she snapped the second woman’s neck. The third put up a token resistance, but she was nowhere near as skilled as Katsumi. She, too, died.

Bindiya pressed a hand against her sternum as the third woman fell. Her breasts rose and fell with the force of her breathing. She swallowed. “I remember the way,” she said to Katsumi and stepped over the bodies, headed for a door. The temple was a labyrinth but Bindiya demonstrated that her memory had indeed returned by leading Katsumi unerringly down and across and up again through a winding series of corridors and rooms. She paused outside a door. “It’s in here,” Bindiya said.

There was no doorknob; access could be acquired only by inputting a code on a nearby keypad – old technology but still effective. Katsumi drew her ninjato. Bindiya touched her arm. “I remember this as well,” she said, punching buttons on the keypad. The door slid open. Beyond was a scene from Hell.

It smelled like pickles, amines and ozone. A line of clear polycarbonate-sided tanks took up most of the space. In each tank floated a naked young girl; they were suspended in a pinkish fluid, their limbs splayed like starfish. Black rubber tubes and bundles of cables snaked everywhere. Each girl had electrodes fastened to her hairless skull. Their eyes were closed but beneath the eyelids was movement, as if they were in the depths of REM sleep. The last girl was older than the rest. Katsumi recognized her; it was Esperanza Serjee.

“Liquid breathing,” Bindiya said, “in oxygenated perfluorocarbon fluid. The project was my idea,” Bindiya went on, a dreamy expression on her face. She walked along the damp floor, trailing her fingertips over the tanks where traces of condensation beaded the polycarbonate surfaces. “I thought about terminal patients, how they might benefit from transfusions of prana energies. Healthy people could volunteer to give a little of their vital force to help others. I thought about the benefits of life energy infusions, the healing that could be accomplished, the diseases that could be cured. The mental, emotional, physical and spiritual imbalances that could be redressed, including fluxes in the global etheric. A network of bio-energy banks, anyone able to make withdrawals and deposits, all for the benefit of humankind. Charles and I developed the technology over many years. It was Molly who funded our research. When we came here for the final stage and she called the project the Golden Immortal, I didn’t understand the significance until it was too late.”

Immortality was a Holy Grail for some humans, Katsumi thought. Her own ancestors had possessed an unparalleled grasp of the beauty of death. She could not comprehend the desire to live forever. Any activity, no matter how delightful, would ultimately pall over time.

Bindiya tapped a tank with her fingernail. “Molly wanted to live forever, be young forever, and she’s using these girls to do it. She’s draining them of their energies, transfusing herself with the elixir of life, the Philosopher’s Stone, and leaving them to exist in some nightmarish half-life, not truly dead but not alive, either. Charles and I were devastated but what could we do? For six months after we were politely escorted off the station, he tried to interest the authorities in Penthesilea and Molly Gattopardo Jane and the whole appalling situation, but the station is autonomous. Earth has no authority – no extradition treaty, remember? - and on Penthesilea itself, Molly is where the buck stops, period.

“He was desperate. We were desperate. This isn’t what we envisioned. It was sickening, the way she perverted…” Bindiya licked her lips. “Charles had a plan.”

Katsumi put a hand on Bindiya’s elbow, gently squeezing, testing the integrity of the joint while part of her marveled at how fragile the human body could be, and how strong the spirit in adversity. “He used his skills to program you to take vengeance.”

Bindiya closed her eyes. “Yes,” she said, and there was a wealth of horror in that single simple syllable. “I killed him. Suicide by proxy. He was old, he was tired, and he couldn’t live with the guilt. He chose the method of his death. He implanted information into my subconscious, false memories, you… my connection to you. He planted the seed deeply. He knew I’d need you to get to Penthesilea station, to fight Momoko, to stop Molly. The haunting… I have no explanation for that. It wasn’t part of his programming details.”

“Now we are here, what must be done?” Katsumi asked, avoiding the question of ghosts for the moment. This was a different Bindiya than the woman who had appeared in the writing brush factory, terrified and hungry and wearing clothing two sizes too small.

Master Deng Ming-Dao said: Some warriors look fierce, but are mild. Some seem timid, but are vicious. Look beyond appearances; position yourself for the advantage.

“We end it,” Bindiya answered, opening her eyes. She was a woman transformed, the former endearing mixture of confusion and fear sloughed away to reveal an adamantine purpose beneath. Black-skinned Kali Ma, the Mother of Darkness, danced in her pupils - the four-armed destroyer of ignorance, the destroyer of ego, the destroyer of that which disrupted harmony and created chaos. Bindiya shone with potential violence. Katsumi’s heartbeat quickened. Warmth trickled down her spine. Her mouth was dry. She had been created to follow this goddess of destruction; obedience to death was bred in her bones. Katsumi now understood what it was to love.

Beside her in the tank, Esperanza Serjee’s eyes opened, too.

“Don’t you want to play, Pretty-Pretty?” Molly said, coming around the corner. She did not seem to be armed with any weapon other than her own confidence. Her low-heeled pumps, encrusted with glittering garnets as red as blood, clicked loudly on the damp floor.

“It’s over,” Bindiya said. Her T-shirt was torn at the neck, showing her breasts down to a rosy slice of nipple, and her trousers were dirty. Her short dark hair was disheveled, bits of it sticking up and out at odd angles. Dirt streaked her face. Nevertheless, she was beautiful – as beautiful as an unsheathed blade. “It’s over, chem Jane,” she repeated.

“Do you honestly think this self-righteous ploy is going to make me melt into a gooey pile of regrets?” Molly tossed a lock of golden hair over her shoulder. “You and your husband took my money eagerly enough. You asked no questions.”

“Would you have lied?” Bindiya asked.

“Possibly.” Molly’s smile vanished, replaced by a sneer. “Why shouldn’t I benefit from the chi therapy? I paid for it.”

Bindiya jabbed a thumb at the nearest tank, where a girl who appeared to be of Mongolian extraction floated in the pink-tinged fluid. “No, they pay for it,” Bindiya said.

Molly shrugged a smooth white shoulder. “They’re unimportant.” At Bindiya’s scowl, she added, “Earth is practically flattened under the weight of the unwanted, my dear. ‘Girls are maggots in the rice’ - that’s the attitude that still prevails in parts of the world. What are a few disposables here and there? No one cares. Their own societies have abandoned them the same way their parents have. These girls are of use to me. I value their contributions. They’re part of the elite; they’ve been carefully selected to help more important people. I’m almost ready to go live and start sharing this wonderful breakthrough with anyone who can afford it. Think about it, chem. Think about immortality, the chance to live forever… or at least, as long as I can collect a fat fee or favors for the privilege.”

“It’s wrong,” Bindiya insisted.

“You and your husband were dreamers, chem Bhattacharya. Very impractical. You both failed to comprehend that humans aren’t good at heart. We’re downright mean bastards, greedy and selfish and prone to violence, ready to stab each other in the back as we scrabble for more than our fair share. We’re primates not far from the jungle, red in tooth and claw. Did you really think that the world was going to fall in line with your idealistic views?”

“You never gave us a chance.”

“No, you’re right. I didn’t.” Molly’s mouth tightened into a hard line. “The technology belongs to me, since I was the one who put down the cash. That’s in the contracts you signed. As for the girls… their parents and guardians were well compensated. My technicians have discovered that prana transfusions – you can call it qi, or chi, or ki, if you prefer – they only work with a compatible donor, like blood types, so I have to bear the expense of testing potential candidates, but the result is worth the trouble.” She smoothed a hand over the line of her youthful body. “My old shell was worn out but look at me now! I’ll stay this way forever sipping fresh prana straight from the source. Lovely, isn’t it?”

“As lovely as Erzébet Bathory, the Blood Countess,” Bindiya said, raising her hand to aim a tarjani mudra at Molly – a gesture with forefinger and little finger extended to form ‘horns’ and the other fingers folded inward, meant to bring about the subjugation of evil. “You’re a psychic vampire, stealing life that doesn’t belong to you to sustain an unnatural existence. You’re Lillitu without a spark of the divine!”

“I’m immortal,” Molly replied.

Bindiya continued to aim the mudra at her. “But not invulnerable.” With her free hand, she reached out, clearly confident that Katsumi would understand. Katsumi did. Yielding to the unspoken command, she drew her ninjato and placed the hilt in Bindiya’s palm, then bowed before the terrible purpose in Bindiya’s eyes.

Molly shook her head. She did not seem frightened of the shining steel blade that was pointed at her. “You think that if you kill me, the whole thing ends here? Copies of my consciousness have been stored here and elsewhere; money buys a lot of core memory. You can destroy this body but I’ll just wake up in another. I’ll still be in control. Don’t be more naïve than you already are. I’ve won and I’ll always win.”

“This has very little to do with you,” Bindiya said almost gently. She took the ninjato’s hilt in both hands. “It’s about dharma.”

Katsumi would have corrected Bindiya’s hold but held back, not wishing to interrupt the moment when the tall woman snapped the sword at one of the polycarbonate tanks, rolling her shoulders and concentrating her energy on a single point as if she had learned the move at sensei’s knee. The ninjato’s chisel-tip smashed through the side of the tank, shattering the acrylic. A gush of fluid exploded outward, flooding the floor. Molly screamed, a high-pitched sound that had nothing of fear in it, and everything to do with thwarted rage.

The Mongolian girl hung in mid-air, her wasted body supported by tubes and cables in a posture reminiscent of crucifixion. Above the broken tank, the green and red lines on a monitor began to fluctuate. A nasal buzz sounded. She was flat-lining.

Molly touched a garnet on her necklace. “Security to Level Thirty-Three,” she said, then the full force of her scorching gaze fell upon Bindiya. “Go on, then. You can’t save these girls. They’re almost drained. They’d have been dead soon anyway. I’ll just import others.”

“It’s about second chances,” Bindiya said, still gentle as though she was speaking to a child, as though Molly herself had not spoken. “It’s about the clear light and the dull smoke-colored light from Hell. It’s about rebirth and retribution.”

From the Tibetan Bardo Thodol, the Book of the Dead, Katsumi remembered a prayer to the Buddhas and bodhisattvas: O you compassionate ones, defend who is defenseless, protect who is unprotected, be her kinsman, protect her from the suffering in the depression of the bardo, turn her from the storm wind of karma, turn her from the great awe and terror of the Lords of Death, liberate her from the long narrow way of the bardo.

Bindiya took a deep breath. “It’s about death, not living death,” she said, and stabbed the Mongolian girl through the chest. The blade was well angled, Katsumi observed, to sever the major vessels. She would have advised against a heart strike; spasming muscles could trap a blade and make it difficult to withdraw promptly. Aiming at the throat was better; the inner thigh and its femoral artery were also excellent targets. She noted the slight awkwardness in Bindiya’s wrist movement as she slid the ninjato free from the girl’s body. Blood streaked the girl’s skin; blood-tinged bubbles frothed at her lips.

“Death is the only freedom I can give them,” Bindiya concluded. “Freedom from suffering. Freedom from manipulation. Freedom from the prison you’ve forged for them. ” Her gaze turned fierce. She clutched the ninjato’s hilt tightly enough to strain her knuckles white. She spat at Molly, “You can’t treat human beings like batteries!”

Molly rushed at her, fingernails poised to rend. Katsumi thrust out a foot and tripped the woman so that she fell sprawling in the mess of blood, polycarbonate shards and what looked disturbingly like amniotic fluids on the floor. Ignoring the woman, Bindiya moved to the next tank, and the next, and the next. Each occupant received the same treatment – the tank destroyed and a sword blade through the girl’s heart. More buzzers went off until there was an entire chorus of them, sounding like a fleet of Kong-sized mosquitoes broadcasting their annoyance in a rising skill-saw buzz.

Esperanza Serjee’s body twitched as if in anticipation. The woman’s eyes were open but blind, without a trace of intelligence of personality. She was a doll abandoned mid-play.

“Esperanza tried to stop me,” Molly said thickly. She lay on her back on the wet floor, legs apart as if she anticipated violation. The ends of her hair trailed in the blood and other fluids. “The stupid child felt sorry for my donors. She wanted to set them free. Security caught her trying her hand at sabotage, the little Luddite-in-training. I thought, if she wants to empathize with the girls so much, let her have some first-hand experience - you remember, don’t you? You and your husband were here. You tested the system on Esperanza. I told you she was a volunteer. Weren’t you the least bit suspicious? No?” Her salt-white teeth showed in a grin. “Esperanza tasted sweet, didn’t she? Sweet and delicious. You wanted more. A young girl’s life is more addicting than any drug. I’ll wager you still recall the piquancy of her karmic purity, don’t you?”

Bindiya smashed the tank, her face grim. “That’s true, but Esperanza Serjee’s will is stronger than either of us,” she said over the sound of fracturing polycarbonate and rushing water. “She found her own escape.”

Molly scrabbled to stand, her nostrils pinched with fury.

At the other end of the room, a door burst open and several women rushed inside, brandishing various edged weapons and flechètte guns. Katsumi ran lightly over the broken acrylic shards, drawing a tanto knife from her kimono sleeve. As she approached, she calculated angles of attack, deciding the most efficient way to dispose of the security team. Just before reaching the first guard, Katsumi launched herself into the air, pin-wheeling to avoid being made an easy target; her kimono sleeves and the legs of her hakama flared out, confusing the eye as to the true outline of her body. One woman raised a flechètte gun; Katsumi simply wrenched the gun out of her grasp and shoved the knife through her throat, severing jugular vein and carotid artery in a practiced stroke.

The fight was brief. The sound of steel grating on bone echoed in the chamber, as did whimpers and the choked wet gasps of her opponents as she eliminated the threat. Katsumi sustained no injuries. She felt contempt for whoever had trained these guards. They were obviously ill prepared to manage anything more serious than the odd drunken brawl. The course of wisdom would have been to stand back and shower Katsumi with neurotoxin-tipped flechètte darts. Of course, that would not have stopped her; Katsumi’s enhanced metabolism could easily deal with fugu and other poisons. Returning the tanto to a hidden sheathe strapped to her forearm, Katsumi turned back to where Bindiya and Molly were standing.

“Go on. End it!” Molly shouted. Her body was petite, her bones seeming as delicate as a bird’s. Blonde hair straggled over her pretty face. “Do it, you sanctimonious bitch! Get your dose of satisfaction. It will only last as long as it takes to activate one of my clones.”

Bindiya dropped the ninjato. The straight-bladed sword chimed when it struck the plascrete floor. “I don’t need to finish it,” she said. “They will.” Once again, her thumb jabbed at one of the wrecked tanks.

Molly’s chest heaved as she took in breath after breath. After a moment, she laughed. It was as scornful sound.

Katsumi’s hair fluttered, stirred by a spectral breeze, and the lights took on a cold unfriendly gleam.

Bindiya smiled.

***

Bindiya had forgotten what it was like to be without fear, to live without tension coiled painfully in her gut hour after hour, day after day. She remembered now. Her heart slammed against her ribs like an impatient fist battering a door, but she was not afraid. The insanity of the last few days finally made sense. She had unwittingly stolen a taste of Esperanza’s life, forging a link with the not-dead. The plans her husband had put in motion – the bio-programming and the series of events that had led to her meeting with Katsumi and all the rest - had intersected with Esperanza’s disembodied desires. Bindiya had been driven by two invisible forces straight towards this confrontation with Molly Jane.

She was the pale horse ridden by Death, the cheval of the Guédé, loas of the dead.

The mystical energy stream intensified, manifested by a shockingly chilling wind that whipped through the chamber where a dozen young lives had been taken. Bindiya was deafened by angry screams; she was buffeted by nails and fists that raked her to the soul. Rather than resist, she opened herself to it and let the rage flow through her, her body burning white hot. Her flesh was tattered, frayed by righteous fury. She was the center of a sun gone nova. She was Kali Ma dancing in her girdle of severed limbs, divine power unconstrained. She was the transformation of the self that came with dying.

Molly’s mouth sagged open.

Bindiya’s vision narrowed, the edges dimming until Molly was centered within a circle of brightness, as if she was being glimpsed at the end of a tunnel. Names came and went in her mind, attached to faces she had never seen until now – young girls whose lives had become fuel to feed a greedy woman’s dream to live forever.

Psychics would have people believe that the personality did not survive death, that ghostly phenomenon was caused by infrasound or ripples in the global etheric or by mental disturbances but Bindiya knew better. She had been haunted twice, her psyche trammeled by her husband in his quest for justice, and by Esperanza Serjee in her quest for retribution. She felt the lost ones and their anger; she was lost in the currents of their pain.

Marks appeared on Molly, deep scratches and tears in her skin, which was losing the sheen of youth. Molly screeched and batted at her invisible attackers. Gray invaded her blonde hair. Lines and wrinkles appeared on her face. Molly stumbled and fell to her knees. Bindiya stood above her, the eye in the center of a wind blown from Hell. Molly bled from her mouth, her nose, her ears; bloody teardrops left crimson trails on her crumpled parchment skin. Her screams were thin and high, a piping that grew shriller and fainter as her flesh shrank on her bones, the years she had stolen stripped away to reveal the old woman beneath.

Bindiya shivered, her blood running cold, then hot, then cold again. Esperanza Serjee whispered to her, a gabble of unintelligible words that sounded like a mantra; she could barely discern it above the rush of blood in her ears. A shower of intense blue and yellow sparks burst in front of her eyes, a spiritual Catherine wheel that dispelled the pall of gray and brown and white that had suffused the atmosphere. She looked down. Molly was wallowing in scarlet; she was streaked and dappled with it, her taffeta skirt soaked with red.

Sparks became stars, which in their turn became wheeling constellations. Bindiya’s head rocked back as a hammer blow struck her in the center of her brow - the seat of perception, the third eye chakra. The concussive force drove the breath from her body. Above her, the ceiling blew away to reveal the reeling Heavens, the moon like a pearl that was the eye of the warrior goddess, Durga - slayer of demons, preserver of order, the victory of virtue. The spirits of the dead girls flew around the goddess’ head, a vaporous honor escort mounted on wind-horses, accoutered in silver and gold. Durga leaned in, unimaginably vast and beautiful in her fierce aspect, shouldering the stars aside. Her trident pierced Molly through the breast, drawing an agonized cry from the old woman.

The trident withdrew. Wriggling on the center blade was a thing all white and black, a squalling demon with a red-rimmed mouth and a lolling tongue. Its hands clutched the trident where the weapon had pierced its belly. Durga lifted the monster high above her head, making it squeal angrily in protest. The swarm of girl ghosts descended. Their teeth were made of iron, their nails of bronze. Breathing the smoke of righteous vengeance, they tore into the wriggling soul of Molly Gattopardo Jane, rending it to quivering ectoplasmic shreds that were lifted on a scorching wind and abruptly scattered, black snowflakes and white ash, until they faded and disappeared from view.

Durga and the girl faded, too, as if they were stars muted by the approaching sun.

The force released her all at once, and she fell back to earth, hollow and exhausted. Bindiya became aware that she was laying on her back, her head cradled in Katsumi’s lap. The grave-faced ninja was staring down at her, a hand smoothing her hair.

“It is over,” Katsumi said. “Our task here is finished.”

Bindiya rolled her eyes to the side and saw Molly Jane’s body nearby. The woman was obviously dead. She looked shriveled and shrunken, as if all her vital juices had been sucked out. The mental image was disquieting. Details regarding Durga and the girl’s ghosts were already fading. It did not matter. Esperanza Serjee and the rest were gone, liberated from flesh and on their way to their next incarnations.

It was over.

Sighing, Bindiya closed her eyes, finding a measure of peace at last.

***

The department stores in Tokyo’s Ginza district were lit up brilliantly, each store competing with its neighbors over who could create the most obnoxious holo-display. At upscale Wako/GUM, a gigantic saurian Gojira stomped a miniature city to smithereens, indifferent to the ranks of tanks that fired ad-blurts in Japanese and Russian. Flying sword masters in Ching dynasty robes buzzed pedestrians’ heads in front of Sun Sun Company. Bee ‘bots scattered haiku-written coupons. A projected geisha giggled behind her fan as she strolled down the avenue, her kimono advertising a sale of fuzzy logic lingerie.

In the midst of the colorful pandemonium strode a squat powerful figure in an ash gray gi. Beside her was a tall dark-haired woman, her face half-hidden behind a pair of mirror shades, her stunning figure displayed by a tight black T-shirt and drawstring trousers. Neither of them seemed to garner much attention from the sea of passers-by that hurried to and fro, each person intent upon his/her/its own business. However, it was clear that this indifference was feigned. Although the pavement was crowded and collisions common, everyone gave the women a wide berth.

The display window at the Sony building held a dozen 3D projectors, each one tuned to the most popular evening broadcast for the benefit of sidewalk shoppers. A pair of polished-as-porcelain androgynous newscasters, their teeth white as tombstones, delivered the latest information updates with gruesomely bright bonhomie.

“…a spokesperson for the company has issued a statement that the various power surges which destroyed the back-up copies of Molly-san’s personality are under investigation. Yes, the wealthiest individual in the collective consensus – Molly Gattopardo Jane – achieved the dissolution of the five elements in her physical body last week. You go, sentient being! The funeral will be held on Penthesilea station. Our in-house lama Jamyang Rinpoche says Molly-san’s soul has achieved the second bardo stage, and urges spiritual travelers to lend their support as chem Jane continues her journey towards the five worlds of rebirth. In other news, an industrial accident at the Celebrity Flav-o-rama factory in has resulted in a total recall of all Elvis flavored crisps…”

The two women turned to one another.

In an upper corner of the broadcast, a goddess with scarlet lips and a wild tangle of hair over her eyes danced to the pulse-rhythm of a silent drum.

Master Ueshiba said, Foster and polish the warrior spirit while serving in the world; illuminate the path according to your inner light.

The ninja tilted her head back, offering her mouth to the taller woman’s kiss while life flowed around them in a ceaseless tide.

THE END

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