Dragon Dance by Peter Tasker

Author:Peter Tasker
Format: epub

THIRTEEN

Martine watched as Nozawa crept along the verandah, opening the sliding doors one by one. He was dressed in a loose black kimono, with a silk cloth covering the lower half of his face. His eyes were bulging with tension, and in the middle of his forehead a single bead of sweat glistened in the moonlight.

All the rooms were empty except the last, where a young geisha lay trussed up on the floor.

“Help me,” she moaned, tossing her head from side to side.

Nozawa darted into the room, then stopped just in time. The floor panel between them had dropped away to reveal a pit of writhing snakes. Then another floor panel swung open. Underneath was an array of steel spikes, the points dripping with poison. The geisha started giggling hysterically. Nozawa whirled around just as the doorway burst into flames and the floor panels on either side of him fell away.

Trapped! No way out! But a huge leap took him clean over the geisha’s head. Then he ran up the pillar at the far end of the room, scuttled upside down across the ceiling, and somersaulted through the tiny window into the garden outside. Three monstrous soldiers with scowling red faces, long noses, and straggly yellow hair were waiting for him, muskets at the ready. Nozawa disarmed them with a hail of throwing stars. The soldiers roared in comical panic as the razor-sharp metal went slicing into windpipes and lopped off fingers and ears, spattering gouts of crimson blood over the paper screens. Then he finished them off at close quarters with flashing sword and whirling chain.

With the bodies lying inert on the ground behind him, Nozawa pulled the black cloth from his mouth and picked up a shamisen leaning conveniently against a nearby barrel. He plinked out a scurry of notes, then the riff was [138] picked up by a chorus of saxophones and Nozawa launched into the first verse of “Born to Sweat,” his soulful lament for the unemployed.

The screen went dead, and the real Nozawa turned to Martine.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“The picture quality is excellent.”

“Of course! Softjoy Corporation uses the world’s finest imaging technology. That’s why we always ask them to make our games. No other company could do it.”

They were sitting in Nozawa’s personal recording studio, a squat windowless building in Harajuku. Getting inside had been no easy matter. Martine had had to fight her way through the crush of fans surrounding the entrance, hoping for a glimpse of their hero. They would be lucky to get one, since Nozawa’s people were adept in the uses of decoy and disguise. The hooded figure in the back of the accelerating limo could be anybody.

Nozawa was here to add the finishing touches to the soundtrack of the “National Regeneration” videogame. In a week’s time the new game would be in the shops, and in two weeks it would be heading the popularity rankings, as had all his previous games. People would be playing it on home

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