Ghostwritten Part 2

I flinched from the shuffling sheets of lies. 'No, it's all right. But how about the Guru?' The branches may burn in the forest fire, but new growth sprouts from the pure heart. The branches may burn in the forest fire, but new growth sprouts from the pure heart.

'The who?' Wartman blubbulled his rubbery nose. I wanted to kneel on his neck and cut that abomination off with a sharp pair of scissors.

'The Leader of the Fellows.h.i.+p.'

'Oh, that maggot! He's hiding, like the coward he is!' Wartman choked on the hatred in his voice! What a sick zoo the world has become, where angels are despised. 'He's a true devil, is that one. A devil from h.e.l.l.'

'Walking evil, he is! Here you are, Mr Tokunaga.' The old woman poured me a cup of green tea. I needed to escape to my room to think, but I wanted more news. 'He fleeces the poor fools who run along to him. Then he acts their father, orders them to do his dirty work, plays out his wicked dreams, then scurries away from the consequences.'

Their ignorance makes me gasp! If only I could make these vermin understand! understand!

'It's beyond my comprehension,' said Dungaree-woman, 'how such things can happen. It wasn't just him, was it? There were bright people in the Fellows.h.i.+p, from good universities and good families. Policemen, scientists, teachers, and lawyers. Respectable people. How could they go along with that alpha Fellows.h.i.+p nonsense, and choose to become killers? Is there so much evil in the world?'

'Brainwas.h.i.+ng,' said Wartman, pointing to everybody. 'Brainwas.h.i.+ng.'

The thin woman examined the dragon curled around her cup. 'They did not specifically choose to become killers. They had chosen to abdicate their inner selves.' I didn't like her. Her voice seemed to come not from her, but from a nearby room.

'I don't altogether follow you,' said Dungaree-woman.

'Society,' and from the way the thin woman said the word I knew she was a teacher, 'is an outer outer abdication. We abdicate certain freedoms, and in return we get civilisation. We get protection from death by starvation, bandits and cholera. It's a fair deal. Signed on our behalf by our educational system on the day we are born. However, we all have an abdication. We abdicate certain freedoms, and in return we get civilisation. We get protection from death by starvation, bandits and cholera. It's a fair deal. Signed on our behalf by our educational system on the day we are born. However, we all have an inner inner self, that decides to what degree we honour this contract. This inner self is our own responsibility. I fear that many of the young men and women in the Fellows.h.i.+p handed this inner responsibility to their Guru, to do with as he pleased. And that,' she flicked the newspaper, 'is what he did with it.' self, that decides to what degree we honour this contract. This inner self is our own responsibility. I fear that many of the young men and women in the Fellows.h.i.+p handed this inner responsibility to their Guru, to do with as he pleased. And that,' she flicked the newspaper, 'is what he did with it.'

'You sound like you have fairly entrenched opinions,' I remarked.

The thin woman looked at me straight in the eye. I looked straight back. Our sisters at Sanctuary are taught humility.

'But why?' The fisherman lit his pipe and bulged his cheeks in and out. 'Why did his followers want to give him their will?'

The thin woman looked at me as she spoke. 'You'd have to ask them yourself. Maybe there are many answers. Some get a kick out of self-abas.e.m.e.nt and servitude. Some are afraid or lonely. Some crave the camaraderie of the persecuted. Some want to be big fish in a small pond. Some want magic. Some want revenge on teachers and parents who promised success would deliver all. They need s.h.i.+nier myths that will never be soiled by becoming true. The handing over of one's will is a small price to pay, for the believers. They aren't going to need a will in their New Earth.'

I couldn't listen to this any more. 'Maybe you're reading too much into it. Maybe they just did it because they loved him.' I downed my tea in one gulp. It burned my tongue and it was too bitter. 'Could I have my key now, please?'

The old woman idly pa.s.sed me the key. 'You must be exhausted after your long walk. My nephew's wife saw you out by the lighthouse!'

Secrets on islands are hidden from mainlanders, but never from the islanders.

I lay on my bed, and wept.

My brothers and sisters, committing self-slaughter! Which of my co-cleansers had fallen at this last hurdle, and why? We were heroes! Just a few months before the end of the unclean world! Paradise had been so near for them! I was further surprised at the Minister of Defence allowing himself to be captured. He has a high enough alpha quotient to displace molecules and walk through walls.

The spider in the jar had died. Why? Why, why, why?

After my evening cleansing I walked around this fis.h.i.+ng village. Squealing children were playing some incomprehensible game. Teenagers hung around on street corners in their trendiest gear, doubtless imitating the Tokyo teenagers they see in their magazines. Mothers stood gossiping outside the supermarket. I want to shout at them, The world is going to end soon, you are all going to fry in the White Nights! The world is going to end soon, you are all going to fry in the White Nights! Okinawan music blared out of a bar, all twinky-tw.a.n.ky and jangling... And at the end of the street I reached the mountains, the sea and the night. Okinawan music blared out of a bar, all twinky-tw.a.n.ky and jangling... And at the end of the street I reached the mountains, the sea and the night.

I walked along the pebbly beach. Plastic buoys. A sea coconut, shaped like a woman's loins. Junk, washed up with the driftwood. Cans, bottles, rubber gloves, detergent containers. I heard grunts and squeals from under a peeling boat, never to float again. In the distance a shadow lit a fire.

His Serendipity speaks to me in the cras.h.i.+ng of the waves, and the sucking of the s.h.i.+ngle. Why telephone when telepathy is possible? His Serendipity told me that his trusted cleanser Quasar had the greatest role to play. The Days of Persecution had begun, as prophesied in the 143rd Sacred Revelation. My Master told me I shall be a shepherd for the faithful during the White Nights. And after the comet ushers in the New Earth, I shall be at the right hand of His Serendipity, administering justice and wisdom in His name. I replied to His Serendipity that I was ready to die for Him. That I loved Him as a son does his father and would protect Him as a father does a son. His Serendipity, hundreds of miles away, smiled. The comet will be here by Christmas. The New Earth is not far away now. The Fellows.h.i.+p of Humanity will gather together on a purer island, and the survivors will call me 'Father Quasar'. There will be no bullying. No victimising. All the selfish, petty, unbelieving unclean, they will fry in the fat of their ignorance. We will eat papayas, cashew nuts and mangos, and learn how to make traditional instruments and beautiful pottery. His Serendipity will select our mates according to our alpha quotients, and teach us advanced alpha techniques, and we will travel astrally, visiting other stars.

I knelt, and thanked my Lord for his encouragement. The moon rose over the open bay, and those same stars came on, one by one.

The baby in the woolly cap, strapped to her mother's back, opened her eyes. They were my eyes. A disembodied voice was singing a chorus over and over again. And reflected in my eyes was her face. She knew what I was going to do. And she asked me not to. But she was fated to die anyway, Quasar, when the comet comes! You shortened her suffering in the land of the unclean! The innocents, surely, will be reborn into the Fellows.h.i.+p of the New Earth! Cleanse yourself, and anchor your faith, deep and fast!

The radio alarm clock glowed 1.30 a.m. Bad karaoke throbbed through the walls. I was wide awake, straitjacketed by my sweaty sheets. A headache dug its thumbs into my temples. My gut pulsed with gamma interference: I lurched to the toilet. My s.h.i.+t was a slurry of black crude oil. I kept thinking of the thin teacher, and what I should have said to her to put her in her place. My eyes wandered around the labyrinth on the worn lino. I took a shower, as hot as the flesh could bear.

For the first time since my initiation ceremony into the Fellows.h.i.+p I bought some cigarettes, from a machine in the deserted lobby. I lit one, walking back up to my room. I was going to be up for a while.

My palms have become blotchy. I clean myself eight or nine times a day, but something is wrong with my skin. I have taken to watching the television every morning. Proceedings are under way to disband the Fellows.h.i.+p, and make members.h.i.+p illegal. I have been named, and my photograph shown, ransacked from Fellows.h.i.+p archives. Luckily it was taken with my scalp shaved and an alpha energiser on my head, so the likeness isn't close. I am the last of the Tokyo cleansers to evade capture. I saw my skin father and mother being chased into my skin sister's car by a baying pack of reporters. The whole scene was lit by flashbulbs. His Serendipity has been caught and charged with conspiracy to commit genocide, and with fraud, kidnapping and possession of Category 1 nerve agents. The news showed the same clip of His Serendipity being bundled into a car by agents of the unclean and driven through a mob shouting for His blood. They showed it over and over again, to a sinister soundtrack, to tell the mindless that He is a villain, like Darth Vader, to be loathed and feared. The rest of the Cabinet have also been arrested. They are falling over themselves to denounce each other, hoping their death sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment. I myself was denounced by the Minister of Education. Even His Serendipity's wife has denounced our Master, saying that she didn't know anything about the production of the gas. She, who was so zealous about the cleansing! One television news station flew their jackals to Los Angeles, to film the elite school in Beverly Hills where His Serendipity's sons were boarded.

I telephoned Sanctuary from the port.

'State your name, business and present location,' said the cold voice. A cop. Even with the alpha quotient of a fruitfly, you could spot them a mile off. I hung up.

But this is bad. I have run out of j.a.pan. My pa.s.sport is in the possession of the Fellows.h.i.+p's Foreign Office, so seeking a.s.sistance with our Russian or Korean brothers and sisters is impossible. I am running out of money. Of course I have no money of my own: after my initiation every last yen was transferred to the Fellows.h.i.+p. My skin family have disowned me, and would turn me in. So would my skin friends from my life of blindness. This causes me no sorrow. When the White Nights come, they shall reap what they have sown. The Fellows.h.i.+p are my true family.

I had one final resort. The Fellows.h.i.+p's Secret Service. The media had mentioned nothing about their arrest, so perhaps they had gone to ground in time. I dialled the secret number, and gave the encoded message: 'The dog needs to be fed.' 'The dog needs to be fed.'

I kept on the line, saying nothing, as instructed during my cleansing training sessions at Sanctuary. The Secret Serviceman on the other end hung up when enough time for my call to be traced had elapsed. Help would be on its way. A levitator would be despatched, bearing a wallet of crisp ten-thousand yen notes. He will scan for my alpha signature, and find me during one of my rambles around the island, when I am alone, or asleep in a grove of palm trees. He will be there when I awake, glowing, perhaps, like Buddha or Gabriel.

k.u.mejima is a squalid, incestuous prison. To think, this lump of rock was once the main trading centre of the Ryuku Empire with China. Boats laden with spices, slaves, coral, ivory, silk. Swords, coconuts, hemp. The shouts of men would have filled the bustling harbour, old women would have knelt in the market place, with their scales and piles of fruit and dried fish. Girls with obedient b.r.e.a.s.t.s lean out of the dusky windows, over the flower boxes, promising, murmuring...

Now it's all gone. Long gone. Okinawa became a squalid apology for a fiefdom, squabbled over by masters far beyond its curved horizons. n.o.body admits it, but the islands are dying now. The young people are moving to the mainland. Without subsidies and price-fixing the agriculture would collapse. When the mainland peaceniks get the American military rapists off the islands the economy will slow, splutter and expire. The fish are all being fished out by factory trawlers. Tracks lead nowhere. Building projects have been started, but end in patches of concrete, piles of gravel and tall, th.o.r.n.y weeds. Such a place would be ripe for His Serendipity's Mission! I long to awaken people, to tell people about the White Nights and the New Earth, but I daren't risk bringing attention to myself. My last defence is my ordinariness. When that wears out, I have nothing but my novice's alpha potential to protect me.

The island's bewhiskered policeman spoke to me yesterday. I pa.s.sed him outside a snorkel shop while he was bent over tying up his shoelaces.

'How's your holiday, Mr Tokunaga?'

'Very restful, officer. Thank you.'

'I was sorry to hear about your wife. It must have been terribly traumatic.'

'Kind of you to say so, officer.' I tried to focus my alpha-coercion faculty to make him go away.

'So you'll be off tomorrow, Mr Tokunaga? Mrs Mori at the guest house said you were staying for a couple of weeks.'

'I'm thinking of extending, actually, just a few more days.'

'Is that a fact? Won't your company be missing you?'

'Actually, I'm working on a new computer system. I can do it here just as well as in Tokyo. In fact, the peace and quiet is more conducive to inspiration.'

The policeman nodded thoughtfully. 'I wonder... At the junior high school the youngsters have recently started up a computer club. My sister-in-law's the headmistress there. Mrs Oe. You've met already, I believe, at Mrs Mori's. I wonder... Mrs Oe is far too polite to dream of imposing upon your time herself, I know, but...'

I waited.

'It would be a great honour for the school if you could go along some time and tell the computer cla.s.s about life in a real computer company...'

I sensed a trap. But it would be safer to get out of it later than refuse now. 'Sure.'

'That would be very kind of you. I'll mention it when I see my brother-in-law next...'

I met the husky dog on the beach. His Serendipity chose to address me in its barks.

'What did you expect, Quasar? Did you think raising the curtain on the age of h.o.m.o serendipitous h.o.m.o serendipitous was going to be easy?' was going to be easy?'

'No, my Lord. But when are the yogic fliers going to be despatched to the White House and the European parliament, to demand your release?'

'Eat eggs, my faithful one.'

'Eggs, my Lord?'

'Eggs are a symbol of rebirth, Quasar. And eat Orange Rocket ice lollies.'

'What do they symbolise, Guru?'

'Nothing. They contain vitamin C in abundance.'

'It shall be so, my Lord. But the yogic fliers, my Father-'

My only reply was a barking dog, and a puzzled look from the two lovers, jumping up suddenly from behind a stack of rusty oil drums. The three of us looked at each other in confusion. The dog c.o.c.ked its leg and p.i.s.sed against a tractor tyre. The ocean boomed its indifference.

The little baby girl in the woolly cap, she had liked me. How could she have liked me? It was just some facial reflex, no doubt. She gurgled at me, smiling. Her mother looked at who she was smiling at, and she smiled at me too. Her eyes were warm. I didn't smile back. I looked away. I wish I had smiled back. But I wish they hadn't smiled at me. Would they have survived? Or would the gas have got them? If they hadn't moved, it would have leaked out of the package and straight into their noses, eyes, and lungs...

Mum. Dad.

But we were only defending ourselves! There was one day, during my a.s.signment to the Ministry of Information. One of our sister's skin relatives, her unclean uncle, had taken court action to stop her selling their family's farmhouse and land. He was a property lawyer. The Secret Service had brought this flesh brother in for questioning. His Serendipity instantly knew he was a spy sent by the unclean. An a.s.sa.s.sination plot was being engineered, it seemed. Laughable! All of us in Sanctuary knew how, thirty years ago, while travelling in Tibet, a being of pure consciousness named Arupadhatu transmigrated into His Serendipity, and revealed the secrets of freeing the mind from its physical shackles. This had been the beginning of His Serendipity's path up the holy mountain. Even if the body of His Serendipity were harmed, he could leave his old body and transmigrate into another, as easily as I change hotels and islands. He could transmigrate into his own a.s.sa.s.sin. There was one day, during my a.s.signment to the Ministry of Information. One of our sister's skin relatives, her unclean uncle, had taken court action to stop her selling their family's farmhouse and land. He was a property lawyer. The Secret Service had brought this flesh brother in for questioning. His Serendipity instantly knew he was a spy sent by the unclean. An a.s.sa.s.sination plot was being engineered, it seemed. Laughable! All of us in Sanctuary knew how, thirty years ago, while travelling in Tibet, a being of pure consciousness named Arupadhatu transmigrated into His Serendipity, and revealed the secrets of freeing the mind from its physical shackles. This had been the beginning of His Serendipity's path up the holy mountain. Even if the body of His Serendipity were harmed, he could leave his old body and transmigrate into another, as easily as I change hotels and islands. He could transmigrate into his own a.s.sa.s.sin.

Anyway, this lawyer was injected with truth serum and confessed to everything. His mission had been to put an odourless poison into the refectory rice cookers. His Serendipity's wife conducted the interview herself, I heard.

You see! We were only defending ourselves.

My fingernails are coming loose.

I spent the afternoon walking to the lighthouse. I sat on a rock and watched the waves and the birds. A typhoon was moving up the coast of China, skirting Taiwan, and looming over the Okinawan horizon. Clouds were piling up in the west, winds were unravelling. I was being discussed, and decisions were being taken. What had gone wrong? A few more months, and my alpha quotient would have been 25, putting me in the top two hundred on Earth His Serendipity had a.s.sured me, in person. I had ingested some of His Serendipity's eyelashes. After winning converts on the Welcome Programme I was rewarded with a test tube of the Guru's sperm to imbibe. It boosted my gamma resistance. I had been taken off the lavatory docket and been made a cleanser. For the first time in my life, I was becoming a name.

The corrugated iron roof of an abandoned shed clattered to and fro in the wind.

Nothing has gone wrong. Nothing has gone wrong, Quasar. It was your faith that brought you to His Serendipity's notice. It is your faith that will guide you through the Days of Persecution, through the terrible days of the White Night to the New Earth. It is your faith that will nourish you now.

Everything around me on this G.o.dforsaken island is crumbling. I should have stayed in Naha. I should have hidden in snow country, or deep-frozen Hokkaido, or lost myself amid a metropolis of my own kind. What happened, I wonder, to Mr Ikeda? Where do people who drop off the edge of your world end up?

Typhoon weather.

The curtains I keep drawn. Our Minister of Defence received some reports that the government of the unclean had developed micro-cameras which they implanted in the craniums of seagulls, which were then trained to spy. Not to mention the Americans' secret satellites, scrolling over the globe, scanning for the Fellows.h.i.+p at the behest of the politicians and the Jews, who long ago had set up the Freemasons, and funded Chinese to pollute the well of history.

I was sitting with my back to the lighthouse on the lonely headland. Headlights approached, seeking me out. I looked for a place to hide. There was none. A seagull watched me. It had a cruel face. A blue and white car pulled up. Too late, I looked for a place to hide. A door opened, and a dim light lit up the interior.

They've found me! The rest of for ever in a cell...

And then, so strangely, I'm relieved it's all over. At least I can stop running.

A hand was already clearing stuff from the front seat. Its owner leant forwards. 'Mr Tokunaga, I presume?'

Grimly, I nodded, and walked towards my captor.

'I've been searching for you. The name's Ota. I'm the harbourmaster. You spoke with my brother just the other day, about giving a lecture at my wife's school. How about a lift back to town? You must be tired, after walking all the way out here, all on your own?'

I obeyed, and still trembling I climbed in and put on my seatbelt.

'Lucky I was pa.s.sing... there's a typhoon warning, you know. I saw a figure, all hunched like it was the end of the world, and I thought to myself, I wonder if that's Mr Tokunaga? Not feeling too chipper, this evening?'

'No.'

'Maybe you've been overdoing it. The island air is good for clearing the head, but at the rate you've been tramping around... Terribly sorry to hear about your wife.'

'Death is a part of life.'

'That's a sound philosophy, but it can't be easy to keep your thoughts focused.'

'I can. I'm a good focuser.'

He braked and beeped a couple of times at a goat standing in the middle of the road. Magisterially, the goat sniffed at us, and wandered into a field.

'Must tell Mrs Bessho that Caligula's escaped again. You name it, goats eat it! So, you're a good focuser, you were saying. Splendid, splendid. It would be a crime not to try diving while you're here, you know. We have the finest Pacific reefs north of the equator, I'm told. By the way, the youngsters are delighted at the prospect of a real computer man coming to talk to them. No great scholars, I'm afraid, but they're keen. My wife would like you to join us for dinner tomorrow, if you're free. So, Mr Tokunaga. Tell me a little about yourself...'

The road looped back around to the port, as all the roads on this island eventually do.

Clouds began to ink out the stars, one by one.

Tokyo

Spring was late on this rainy morning, and so was I. The commuters streamed to work with their collars and umbrellas up. The cherry trees lining the backstreet were still winter trees, craggy, pocked, and dripping. I fished around for my keys, rattled up the shutters, and opened the shop.

I looked through the post while the water was boiling. Some mail orders good. Bills, bills bad. A couple of enquiries from a regular customer in Nagano about rare discs that I'd never heard of. b.u.mf. An entirely ordinary morning. Time for oolong tea. I put on a very rare Miles Davis recording that Takes.h.i.+ had discovered in a box of mixed-quality discs which he'd picked up at an auction last month out in s.h.i.+nagawa.

It was a gem. You never entered my mind You never entered my mind was blissful and forlorn. Some faultless mute-work, the trumpet filtered down to a single ray of sound. The bra.s.sy sun lost behind the clouds. was blissful and forlorn. Some faultless mute-work, the trumpet filtered down to a single ray of sound. The bra.s.sy sun lost behind the clouds.

The first customer of the week was a foreigner, either American or European or Australian, you can never tell because they all look the same. A lanky, zitty foreigner. He was a real collector, though, not just a browser. He had that manic glint in his eyes, and his fingers were adept at flicking through metres of discs at high speed, like a bank teller counting notes. He bought a virgin copy of 'Stormy Sunday' by Kenny Burrell, and 'Flight to Denmark' by Duke Jordan, recorded in 1973. He had a cool T-s.h.i.+rt, too. A bat flying around a skysc.r.a.per, leaving a trail of stars. I asked him where he was from. He said thank you very much. Westerners can't learn j.a.panese.