diary       site contents       essays       stories       flash fiction       poems       novels


Chapter Eleven

        The world outside is cool and gray, not raining but promising rain. With plenty of time in hand, I saunter across the road, cut through the grounds of Perturbations Lodge, and walk round the side of the Older House to the garage, meaning to get my car out and drive first to the Kawamata Choban, so I can have a word with Petticat about Strom's alibi for yesterday, and then to the Infinite Turtle, so I can meet Kitty.
        But there's a problem.
        On returning home yesterday, I backed the car into the garage and left it parked there with the windshield end outermost. During the night, the padlock securing the garage has been cut away, the door has been swung open, and the windshield has been smashed. There's an ugly hunk of concrete brick lying on the driver's seat. It's not the kind of thing you could lay your hands on in the vicinity so someone must have come prepared.
        What am I going to do? Call the cops? If I do that, I'll be late for the meeting. If I walk, setting out right now, I can still be at the Infinite Turtle in time to meet Kitty. The plan was for her to follow my car back from the Infinite Turtle, but we could ride together in her car.
        As I'm thinking about it, there's a bright toot on a horn, and, turning from the garage, I see a car has pulled up, a car in the familiar green and blue livery of Catamawa Rentals. Kitty is driving. Plainly, she must have figured out that it would be easy enough for her to find her way to the Older House without waiting for me to guide her. Which is true, but which, nevertheless, annoys me.
        A plan is a plan, and the increasing disorder of my personal universe makes me intolerant of the unauthorized initiatives of others. Still, I smile approvingly. Kitty is the one with whom I must conclude a deal. Therefore I must be a diplomat. At least for the moment.


* * *


        "Hi," says Kitty brightly, getting out of her car.
        Kitty is no longer quite the glossy office worker whom I met in the Volcano Room. She is dressed in clothes which might squeeze into the category of business casual, a plain gray blouse and a matching gray skirt coming just below the knees, but she's also wearing a rain hat, a pair of workmanlike boots with bulbous toe caps which probably conceal reinforcing steel, and a weatherproof jacket which comes with pockets and zips made for practical use rather than fashion statements.
        Today, there's no sign of the sky blue Phrenic Armor laptop bag which Kitty had with her at the Volcano Room. Instead, she's toting a small green backpack-style bag made from a tough synthetic, a signal that we've left the world of lacquered cocktails in favor of the realm of muddy adventures. Not an improvement, in my opinion.
        "Me in construction site mode," says Kitty, flashing me a smile. Lips glossy, I see. Face immaculately made up. "Bring on the rabid dogs!"
        I don't follow the rabid dogs comment. We don't have rabies in Nizon. Maybe it's something they say at South Zeast when they're in a gung ho mood.
        Then Kitty catches sight of the smashed windshield.
        "Ken!" she says, with a comic book gasp. "Your car!"
        "Yes," I say, unenthusiastically. "My car."
        It hadn't occurred to me that this was going to be an issue. It's my car, after all, not Kitty's. But Kitty is dismayed by the chopped padlock, the smashed glass. She wants details.
        "Probably just kids," I say.
        "No," says Kitty. "They brought something to cut the padlock. And the concrete thingy, where did they get that from? Is something going on, Ken?"
        "Going on?" I say.
        "Sometimes there are ... third party issues," says Kitty. "In a property deal, I mean. Has anyone threatened you?"
        "Threatened me?" I ask. "What do you mean?"
        "You tell me," says Kitty. "I'm the tourist here."
        "No," I say. "Nobody has threatened me, and I can't see why they would."
        This statement is more or less true. The poison pen letter which concludes by saying "Go and visit your mother" is unfriendly but does not contain any definite threat. It does not say, for example, "Do as you're told or we'll break your legs for you." It may have been intended as a threat, but it's too cryptic to convey meaning.
        It's then that I remember that the mail carrier managed to drop that letter, and I had to pick it up off the roadway. Maybe it's the second or third in a sequence, and earlier messages have gone missing.
        Well, and I shouldn't forget that there was the Wangabu Authigobibar message, with its threats suggesting that someone might end up losing their fingers or (somehow) going over a cliff. So, all right, I've been threatened. But not to the point where I feel it necessary to tell Kitty about it.
        Apart from the messages, what else is there? Melshu's mumblings about a mysterious "she" poisoning the Udamanas. Melshu has rarely made coherent sense in my lifetime, and I don't have the impression that he has started now. And there was the incident of Tanto and the body bag. But that wasn't a threat. That was just adolescent stupidity.
        "This is a serious issue," says Kitty. "This smashed window, I mean. And any threats that go with it. You must call the police and report it."
        "Must?" I say, bridling a little at what sounds like a command.
        "Yes," says Kitty. "This is serious."
        "Excuse me," I say, "but it's my car, my garage -- isn't it for me to say whether it's serious or not?"
        "Your car but our deal," says Kitty. "If you're serious about doing business with us. If you're not, then head office has to make the call on this. Vandalism on the Udamana estate, and Ken Udamana shows no sign of trying to find out who or what or why."
        "Aren't we getting a little fussed over a little bit of broken glass?" I say.
        "As I've already stated," says Kitty. "I'm the tourist. I don't know where this ends. It starts with a brick, but what's next? A bomb?"
        "We don't go in for bombs round here," I say, pulling out my cellphone. "Okay, I'll talk to the police -- I'll call this in. But we'll be hanging around here for maybe a couple of hours before they send someone out to talk to us. What are you planning on doing?"
        "Having breakfast," says Kitty. "Jet lag hits me really hard, it takes days." She stops. The intended meaning, presumably, is that it takes her days to recover from jetlag. "I slept right through my alarm clock," she says, confessionally.
        Then looks at me, oddly worried, as if she thinks she's said too much. Maybe, in the make-no-concessions Merlercian world, she has. But this is not Merlercia. This is Nizon. And I am frankly indifferent to Kitty's jetlag problem. I find the number for routine police calls in my address book (if I'm ever motivated to move it to the speed dialer then I'll know my life is really in trouble) and launch a call.
        As I speak to the police, I hear Kitty on her own phone, ordering in home-delivered pizza.

* * *


        At mid-morning, after my vandalism complaint has been taken by a very young probationary police officer (not Chobber, our assigned patrolman, who apparently is off duty with the flu), Kitty and I begin our physical walk.
        We go at a leisurely pace, as if we had all day for this, which in fact we do. Occasionally, Kitty uses her video camera to take a still snapshot. Starting at the Older House, we wander north up Travahimamak Road to the Infinite Turtle, passing three of the Big Houses en route. I still want to talk to Petticat about Strom's dubious alibi for yesterday, so I take the opportunity to knock on the door of the Kawamata Choban. But there's nobody home.
        How about a phone call? No, Petticat has nonpaymented herself out of the cellphone world, at least for the moment. How about Molo, then? I get through to his message facility. I could leave a message asking him to get Petticat to call me, but I won't. I'd rather deal with Petticat one on one, without getting Molo involved.
        "Molo, Ken. If you've got time, my car needs a new windshield. It's in the garage, the garage is open. No time, no problem. Talk to you later."
        "Who was that?" says Kitty.
        "My brother-in-law, Molo Opal," I say.
        "Oh, Petticat's husband," says Kitty. "The one with the car business."
        "You've researched us," I say.
        "Five minutes on the Internet," says Kitty, making light of it. "Molo customizes cars, right?"
        "Sure," I say. "New engines, put in a new stereo system, that kind of thing."
        And, on occasion, works late into the night with Cousin Po, acting as Po's bodyguard in the world of party pill sales. I wonder if she's researched that?
        A little later, at the Infinite Turtle, where Travahimamak Road and Jalsinkoola Lane merge into Ichatrak, it's time to turn south. We'll make our way south through the wooded land which edges Jalsinkoola Lane. Udamana land, never used by us for anything.
        Even if we didn't want to sell this land, it would be a smart move to do so. Two years from now, when the Equitable Levies Scheme kicks in, we will be faced with the prospect of paying a nine percent tax on the capital value of any underdeveloped land, a tax which we will be unable to avoid by the simple expedient of leaving ownership with the Udamana Zekotalora Trust. A grotesquely unfair tax, in view of the legal constraints on developing our land. If we can't pay, the city will take land in lieu of tax: we are, in effect, faced with the prospect of confiscation.
        Which Kitty knows.
        "It's trees over there, all the way to the Moss Mansion," I say, indicating the band of wilderness which Kitty proposes to explore. "I think you can get a pretty good idea of it from the road."
        "Oh no," says Kitty. "We'll follow the logging track."
        "Logging track?" I say, blankly.
        "Road, to be pedantic," says Kitty, pulling something out of her green bag. "It's on the map."
        And she unfolds a large sheet of paper in the familiar dull yellowish beige of a Nizon Survey map. Yes, it's just such a map. I don't think I've seen one since the last time I went mountain hiking with Grandfather Hondo, which feels like a lifetime ago. The maps always used to be trouble, getting wet in the rain, picking up grease stains from fingers smeared by sandwich-eating.
        But there's something odd about Kitty's map, which has a shininess to it.
        "It's been laminated," I say.
        "Standard operating procedure," says Kitty absent-mindedly, as if maps and map reading are a routine part of her world, as unremarkable as cellphones. And perhaps they are.
        To begin our adventure, Kitty leads us to the extreme north end of Travahimamak Road, where an ancient stretch of granite wall, overgrown with ivy, abuts the modern concrete wall which divides the Udamana land from the Infinite Turtle's car park. Although I've never noticed it before, there's a gate here, hidden from view behind a pair of oak trees which are growing on the verge, which at this point is wide and unkempt.
        "Do you have the key?" says Kitty, looking at the lock, which is a mass of rusted iron.
        "No," I say.
        Though I did promise to bring keys to open anything and everything we might find, I did not expect to encounter mystery gates that I never knew existed. I give the door a solid kick, thinking the lock might give way, but I only succeed in hurting my foot.
        "Allow me," says Kitty.
        What happens next astonishes me. With all the uninhibited violence of a slam wrestler, Kitty throws her bodyweight against the door. Once, twice. A third time. With an ugly graunch of yielding iron, the ancient lock gives way. With some scraping and pushing, the door is shoved open enough for us to squeeze through, and I find myself splashing over the flooded stonework of an ancient path made of faded blue ceramic tiles which are treacherous with water weed.
        By the time I've taken a few steps, my shoes are already soaked, ruined. Shortly, we reach an openish avenue, knee-high in scrub, which is evidently the logging road on Kitty's map. It's hikeable, but I'm going to trash my trousers in the process. Too bad.
        "I never knew we had a road here," I say.
        "It's because of your father," says Kitty. "Didn't you know that?"
        "My father?" I say.
        "Your grandfather, what's his name, bought the Isendai Temple."
        "Grandfather Hondo, yes," I say.
        "Well, your father claimed he had an option to buy. There was a court case. It seems your grandfather ended up needing lawyer money, and he had, he'd inherited it, the right to take lumber from this piece of land. So he had all the old growth trees felled. Got the money, won the court case, kept the temple."
        "How do you know that?" I say.
        "If you look at the deed for the temple, or the, what do you call it, the place, Perturbations Lodge, there are half a dozen caveats on the property. You must've seen them at some stage."
        "Well," I say, trying to remember. "I don't know ... my grandfather died, I inherited ... I think I had my lawyer look at the paperwork, tell me if there were any fishhooks, he said, no."
        A bad time, my grandfather's death. I was in early manhood, and my first marriage, my disastrously ill-advised marriage to Fizonella Induzenataka, was in the process of coming apart, noisily, messily.
        It disturbs me that Kitty knows more about this part of my family history than I do, and I brood about it as we slowly make our way through the logging road scrub. The logging road runs roughly down the middle of this piece of Udamana land. The land itself is a strip about a hundred paces wide running from north to south, bounded by Jalsinkoola Lane to the east, and, to the west, by the barbed wire and warehouses of the Yendo Regional Civil Defense Depot, which houses an earthquake's worth of emergency supplies.
        After Hargorli Park, this long, narrow strip of land is our most valuable piece of real estate, and Kitty seems comfortable and relaxed as she explores her way through her physical walk, satisfying herself that our lands do not contain any unacknowledged tarpits, abandoned copper mines, flooded quarries, minefields, unmapped cemeteries, biohazard repositories, high voltage power pylons, microwave transmitter lines, shooting ranges or the like.
        Kitty is working. I, by contrast, am burning daylight. And ruining a perfectly good pair of shoes.
        At last the old road narrows to a faint but clearly defined path, which shortly, to my surprise, leads us into the rear of the Inner Garden, very close to the Moss Mansion. Until now, in all the years that I've lived in the Moss Mansion I've always presumed that the rear of the Inner Garden was an impenetrable mass of vegetation.
        As Kitty and I achieve the Inner Garden, I look around for Chelooza, but today Chelooza is nowhere in evidence. The Inner Garden is empty, deserted, and I feel an unexpected and totally absurd pang of loneliness.
        "Lunch," I say.
        "No," says Kitty, looking at her watch. "It's too early. Besides, your wife won't have anything ready for us. We should finish up with Hargorli Park then drive to a restaurant somewhere and eat."
        But I insist.
        Iola proves to have gone out and there is no sign of Melshu, either. And, since it's Friday, the kids are at school. Consequently, Kitty and I have the house to ourselves. I produce the family's stash of menus from restaurants that will home deliver, and we order, steak for me and seafood for Kitty.
        Within thirty minutes, our food has been delivered by motorbike and we're sitting at the big dinner table in the living room, me in dry shoes.
        "So," I say, feeling the time has come, "Let's talk about Plan A and Plan B."
        "If you wish," says Kitty, peeling the shell from a shrimp with her fingers.
        "Plan B is for you to buy our land on the cheap," I say, "then bribe a couple of cabinet ministers to get the zoning rules changed, then sell the land for development at a grotesque profit."
        "Sounds good to me," says Kitty, biting the shrimp in half with those unnaturally white teeth of hers, teeth which look more like bleached porcelain than the vaguely yellowish pieces of ivory which usually grow in the human mouth.
        "Sounds good to me, too, providing cheap isn't too cheap," I say. "But what's Plan A?"
        "As I've told you," says Kitty, "when I return -- "
        "I know what you've said," I say. "But you have to look at it from my point of view. I'm the chief negotiator. My family is looking at me for news. For information. If the plan suddenly changes, and if that impacts negatively on the family, that's going to look bad for me."
        Kitty slides a knife into her fish, looking for bones. Which she finds. The fish in question is nariwon sea herring, and you can eat the bones, which are soft and nutritious, but I don't tell Kitty this. Instead, I watch as she patiently begins the tiresome business of separating flesh from bone.
        Eventually, having finished extracting the bones, Kitty looks at me.
        "In the face of the unknown, Ken, do you want to abort the negotiations at this stage? From our point of view it's a yes or no question."
        This is unexpectedly aggressive. Kitty is choosing to play rough. She's slam-shouldering me, just as she slam-shouldered the truculent door which was denying us admission to our adventure. She's giving me an ultimatum. Or, to put it another way, she's asking me a question: is your position really as weak as it seems to be? She hasn't said that she has the option of getting on the next plane out of here and never coming back, but that's implicit in her challenge.
        "I'll continue at least as far as the hearing of Plan A," I say.
        Struggling to make the words come out calmly. To conceal weakness, disappointment, pain.
        "Then," says Kitty, "when I return from Merlercia with the full negotiating team, we'll go over Plan A. Until then, let it be a mystery. Mystery is the spice of life, isn't it?"
        Her last comment comes out sounding as if it might be a traditional Merlercian saying, a proverbial set phrase. She makes it sound as if mystery was a positive. But, to me, mystery is a negative. Mystery is undiscovered boobytraps, unexploded bombs and unexplained performance slips (mental, physical, psychological) which might be anything from the first symptoms of incipient old age to early indicators of undiagnosed cancer. But, regardless of how I may feel about Kitty's proposal, it seems I'm going to have to live with mystery, at least for a while longer.


The text on this page is part of the fantasy novel Bamboo Horses by Hugh Cook. The first 30 chapters of this book are on this website and can be read for free online. However, the text is copyright - all rights reserved. For permission to use this text or any portion of it contact Hugh Cook.

Bamboo Horses Copyright © 2005 Hugh Cook.


top