"Van Lustbader, Eric - Linnear 04 - The Kaisho" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

'Okami-san is in need of your most immediate help.'
'I understand.'
'He requires you to go to Venice, Italy. A first-class ticket in your name is waiting for you at the Air France counter at Narita. Please be prompt and pick it up at least two hours before flight time, 9.40 p.m.'
'This evening? I can't just drop every-' Nicholas stopped, realizing he was speaking to dead air; the voice had already hung up.
Nicholas replaced the receiver. Plaster dust hung in the air, made sharp and glittery by the many workers' tungsten clamp-lights which were strong enough to define every edge and sweeping curve, reveal even the most minute flaw in the skin of sand-dusted stucco being applied to the major vertical surfaces.

He thought about what little his father had told him about the mysterious Mikio Okami. There are times, Nicholas, when one exhausts every ordinary means of accomplishing one's goal, Denis Linnear had told him when Nicholas was no more than thirteen. Still, that goal must be achieved- at any cost. You are young now, but believe it or not there are such times when the end is so vital that the means to that end must be overlooked. It may be unfortunate, but one cannot live one's life as a saint; one must oftentimes make compromises, painful and questionable though they may be. So there are times when one is grateful one knows a man such as Mikio Okami.
Suddenly, in the wake of the call, the Colonel's words had taken on a very sinister cast indeed. Nicholas had surmised even then, so long ago, that Mikio Okami had to be Yakuza. In fact, given the difficult and demanding nature of his father's work in the muddy postwar flux of Japanese political circles, it seemed natural that he would have come into contact with this potent and rather ubiquitous element of Japanese society. Nicholas remembered hearing persistent rumors of factions of Yakuza being hired by the American Occupation Hierarchy to quell certain labor strikes in 1947-8, said to be coordinated and funded by the Communists. The fierce and intimidating Yakuza were the logical foot soldiers in such an internecine war, since they were the quintessential capitalist-loyalists, ready and willing to die for the freedom of their country, virulently opposed to any leftist tilt.
But if Mikio Okami had been a Yakuza oyabun, family boss, just after the war, and assuming - generously, Nicholas thought - that he was thirty at the time, he would be in his late seventies now - possibly over eighty. Too old to continue the neverending orchestration required to maintain the Yakuza's unique symbiosis with the police, government and bureaucracies? Or old enough to be in need of reinforcements against the encroachment of the other Yakuza families on the rise in power and influence? Either way, he did not like the possibilities.

Back in his office, Nicholas hastily dictated two memos to Seiko Ito, his assistant: the first, to tell her of his trip and to confirm his reservations; the second regarding the eight most vital matters that required follow-ups, letters, calls, faxes. He faxed Vinnie Tinh in the Saigon office that he would be postponing his planned trip for at least a week, then made a raft of calls which he was planning to put off until after the Saigon trip.
That done, he thought about Justine. She would be livid, of course. Bad enough he had refused to take her back to the States; now he was leaving her alone in Japan. How was it, he thought, that she had come to despise this place? Was it her refusal to learn Japanese, her eternal homesickness, or just her intolerance of the Japanese themselves? Perhaps it was a combination of all three. Other than her friendship with Nangi, she had made precious few connections in Tokyo, and thus found herself isolated, en-isled on an Elba of her own making. Or was it of her own making? Nicholas wondered if he was being unfair to her - or whether he was simply fed up with her complaining.
Of course, there were pressures peculiar to their circumstance. Justine had been pregnant twice. The first time, she had given birth to a girl who had quickly died. The second time, less than a year ago, she had miscarried in her sixth month. Now there seemed to be no solace for her agony.
Nicholas put his head in his hands, his mind haunted still by the face of his three-week-old daughter, her blue-white face distorted by the oxygen tent. His dreams echoed with the feeble sound of her small cries like the iebrile panting of a wolf snapping at his heels.
He heard sounds from the corridors as the offices began to fill up. He had no interest in facing anyone at the moment, so he slipped out the side door to his office, took the spiral staircase down one flight to the fully equipped gymnasium. There, stripped to shorts, t-shirt and sneakers, he spent the next three hours working first on aerobics.

then abdominals, weight-circuit.training and, finally, his beloved martial arts: aikido, kendo, as well as the various sub-disciplines of Akshara that were so ancient that they had no names in the Japanese language. In this manner he cleansed first his body, then his mind and, finally, his spirit of the various negative toxins that the post-modern world invariably built up.
Nicholas was long-muscled and wide-shouldered. It was obvious that he was an athlete of some kind, but it was his presence, what the Japanese called hara, that made him such an extraordinarily intimidating figure. He moved from the waist down as if his feet were a part of the floor or the earth he walked upon. Seeing him for the first time, one had the distinct feeling that he could not be moved from the spot on which he stood even with extreme measures. He had the unusually upswept eyes that were a legacy of his mother, along with the angular, rugged cheeks, nose and chin of his father. He was handsome in a charismatic rather than a poster-boy manner, with dark, curling hair flecked here and there with silver.
He himself did not see it, but those old enough to have known Colonel Denis Linnear saw the striking resemblance between father and son in the overall shape of Nicholas's face, the line of his nose, lips and jaw. The father, who counted among his ancestors calculating Romans and wild Celts, rather than barbarous Saxons, had that extraordinary gift of being both warrior and statesman. It was said by those who knew them both that the son possessed the same quality.
Nicholas's mother, Cheong, was Oriental, and it was only recently that he had been able to unravel the puzzle of her origins. She had been secretly tanjian, like Nicholas's Chinese grandfather, So-Peng, who had adopted her. So was Nicholas.
Trained in the arcane mysteries of Tau-tau, the tanjian, whose origins harked back to myth-shrouded ancient China, were ancient mage-warriors, who wielded a

knowledge so potent, so elemental, that most humans had been cut off from it for centuries.
The basis of Tau-tau was kokoro, the heart of the cosmos. Kokoro was the membrane of life. Just as in physics the excitation of the atom caused the most extraordinary reactions of energy - light, heat and percussion - so, too, did the excitation of the cosmic membrane manifest its own ethereal energy.
Akshara and Kshira, the Way of Light and the Path of Darkness, were the two main branches of Tau-tau. Nicholas, who had been only recently trained in the basics of Akshara, had nevertheless some experience as well battling those versed in the deadly path of shadows. He w,as perhaps the only man on earth who had faced and defeated two Kshira adepts. This he had done partly by utilizing the gift So-Peng had passed down to him, the mystic emeralds of the tanjian. They had become a kind of psychic weapon which had penetrated even Kansatsu's Kshira and, at Nicholas's bidding, had destroyed him.
Kansatsu had instructed Nicholas in Akshara, but all the while he was also secretly an adept in Kshira, and it was Kshira which had almost destroyed Nicholas. In a very real way, it was Kshira which had destroyed Kansatsu. He had believed himself capable of containing the two separate disciplines inside himself; he had believed himself powerful enough to keep Kshira harnessed, using it only when required, but he was wrong. Its pollutant had seeped out, and so slowly that he had not been able to recognize it; it had poisoned him, turning him from good to evil.
The more Nicholas studied Akshara, the more he understood Kansatsu's temptation, for it was becoming clear to him that the Way of Light was in some aspects an incomplete discipline. No records existed that far back in time, but he suspected that in the first days of Tau-tau the two disciplines were part of one whole. At what point they were riven in two - or why - he could not say. Perhaps at some date now long forgotten the mind of man - even

a tanjian mind - could no longer be trusted to use the knowledge of Kshira in a prudent fashion; perhaps the lure of massive power became too great even for these ancient mages of the mind.
In any event, what was once one was now forever separated by such a profound philosophical abyss that proponents of Akshara were forbidden to plunge into the dark mysteries of Kshira.
Once, Kansatsu had spoken of koryoku - the Illuminating Power - with the kind of reverence he reserved only for gods. If there had ever been a focal point - real or imagined - between Akshara and Kshira, Kansatsu had been convinced koryoku was it. His anguish that for all his expertise in Tau-tau he could not achieve the Illuminating Power must have been a crushing blow to him - one so deeply felt that he had not allowed anyone to suspect.
In his studies after Kansatsu's death Nicholas had come to believe that koryoku might be the Path, the needle-like fulcrum from which the whole would open up like a flower.
He had named this whole Shuken - the Dominion: where one mind could contain Akshara and Kshira, both hemispheres of Tau-tau, without being destroyed by the dark side.
But koryoku was not like other states of deep meditation. Though little was known about it, it seemed clear that one needed to be born with a kind of psychic trigger that would access the doorway. Without that trigger no amount of study, concentration or incantation at kokoro would prove useful.
Nicholas had never encountered anyone with koryoku and so had never been able to test his theories. He did not even know whether he himself possessed the trigger that would access the doorway. Only another so gifted could tell him.
Sometimes, lying in the shallows of night, Nicholas started awake to discover that he had been dreaming. In

his dream-world, he existed in Shuken, as he believed his forebears had once done, open to the full limits of Tau-tau - the full sphere of Akshara and Kshira at his command. And he knew with the certainty that comes in dreams that koryoku was the sole path to Shuken.
As he rose out of theta, parted from his dream, he could almost reach out and touch koryoku, the doorway, just another second and . . .
But when he became fully awake, the knowledge was lost to him, and he could not help but feel an acute sense of loss which brought tears to his eyes.
Still, he knew he had an entire new world to explore. This reason perhaps more than any other had compelled him to remain in Japan, even though this was a source of increasing friction between him and his wife, Justine, who longed to return to America.
The thought of Justine's unhappiness was as painful as the sight of a stunned sparrow. He put his hand across his eyes as he closed them. Even this far from her he could feel her distress like a child's cry in the night. And yet there was a kind of abyss between them, dark and unfathomable. How long had it been there? Nicholas, beginning to slide into Tau-tau, tasted it, found it as familiar as an old jacket. With a start, he realized that it had begun to form at the time he had discovered he was tanjian. Was he slipping further away from the world most people knew? Were his explorations of the Tau-tau universe giving rise to a form of anomie from which he could not extricate himself? He did not think so, and yet there was that abyss yawning between him and Justine.
Sometimes, his anger at Justine was palpable. She had been in Japan for years now, yet she had failed to make the requisite effort in joining in. She had no Japanese friends of her own - save Nangi, and that was at his instigation and continuing effort. She still exhibited the Westerner's typical bewilderment at the complex net of customs, courtesies and expressions of respect that defined Japanese society.

And, worst of all, she was beginning to exhibit that kind of blind impatience and outright resentment toward the Japanese Nicholas had witnessed in a number of American business contacts.
As Kansatsu had taught him, he began the journey inward, until he reached kokoro, the heart of all things. Then he selected the proper rhythm, began to beat at the membrane of kokoro, creating the psychic resonance that would transform thought into deed.
Sinking deeper into Akshara, the reverberations of kokoro filling the space around him, Nicholas's consciousness expanded until it filled the entire gym, then burst beyond the confining walls. In his mind he saw the city stretched out before him, and then, as if he were gathering enormous speed, the image of its bustling sprawl blurred. That familiar sensation of confinement fell away as, with a burst of psychic energy, he broke through the womb of Time.
Outside in the spangled darkness past, present and future existed only as meaningless definitions of concepts that did not exist. He did not yet know his way through this space or how to most effectively utilize its infinite horizons. That would take many years of trial and error. Instruction would have been preferable, of course, but the only other tanjian who had been qualified to teach him was now dead at his own hands and the inexorable forces of Tau-tau.
How long Nicholas spent in exploration of his new world it was difficult to say, because time as humans knew it did not correspond in that state. They had a taste of what it was like to be Outside in the midst of dreams when hours, even days, could seemingly be compressed into the space of micro-seconds.
When he again opened his eyes he felt refreshed and invigorated; the ghost of Justine's unhappiness was a scent in the air soon dissipated.