Mr Moriya decided she was right to go for quality rather than quantity, and renegotiated her contract with the orchestra. She started to ration public appearances, and only recorded when she absolutely had to. Western music critics who heard her made flattering comparisons; she thought about going to Europe but kept putting it off. She was looking forward to travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway, but it seemed like something she should do only once each way (to reduce it to some sort of absurdist commuter journey each year would seem like sacrilege), and was anyway nervous of actually playing in Europe. At first she had worried that nobody would want to listen to her, then, when it became clear they did, that she'd been built up too highly, and they'd be disappointed. Mr Moriya, to her surprise, didn't try to pressure her into going. He seemed content to let the offers mount up, the venues increase in size, and the proposed money inflate.
She fell into the music, whenever she played. It was real; colourful. Her life, for all the friends and holidays and for all the respect of other musicians and adulation of audiences, seemed, if not actually monochrome, then missing some vital component; as if one colour was missing, one gun in the set misfiring, so infecting the image with its absence.
One day she trudged through the woods north of Fuji, taking the old path she'd first travelled as little more than a child, struggling with her water-warped and salt-stained cello and case.
When she got to the bald summit of the hill, the little clearing where she'd watched Fuji dance in the flames she'd made, she discovered it had become a picnic area; half a dozen smiling, chattering families sat at stout wooden tables, unpacking boxes, spreading dishes, opening bottles, taking their rubbish to cheerfully bright plastic bins which said 'Thank you' when you fed them. Children's laughter filled the place, and smoke from a portable barbecue wavered like some incipient genie. in front of the view of Fuji. Western pop music tinkled from a ghetto blaster hanging from a tree.
She turned and walked away, and never went there again.
She was halfway across the kilometre of dark water between the Nadia and the Nakodo when the radio came alive in her trouser pocket. The noise startled her, made her let go of the throttle, clutch at her thigh where the speech was coming from. She pulled the radio out.
'-hey; Sucre…? She let the Gemini's engine idle, looked round at the lights of the ships. 'Arturo, Arturo… La Nadia, 'allo? Yo, venceristas en La Nadia… muchachos? It was Dandridge's voice, chuckling. Despertad vosotros!
She heard other voices in the background. More Spanish, too quick for her to follow. Eventually; 'Sucre; anybody. Hello. Hello? God damn it, you guys. Hello. Hello! Hello! Jesus- The radio went dead. She looked round to the lights of the Nakodo.
She switched the engine off. It was very quiet.
She remembered the nightscope on the AK47 she'd taken from Sucre's cabin, lifted the gun and sighted.
The view of the Nakodo's hull was dim grey and grainy. There was no movement on the deck or in the bridge, though it was hard to tell in the bridge because the lights there were almost too bright for the nightsight. She dropped the sight, watched the pontoon and the steps down to it. Still nothing. She kept watching, and kept checking the radio, thinking she had somehow turned it off Then she heard something, behind her.
She swung, steadied the sight on the Nadia. She swept the ship, stem to stern, and found a Gemini, heading round from the rear of the ship, making for the pontoon. One man; that was all she could see.
She put the gun down, started the engine up again, and swung the inflatable back, towards the Nadia.
She kept checking with the rifle nightsight, in case whoever was in the Gemini approaching the ship showed any signs of having heard — or seen — her, but the inflatable just motored on, slowing, for the pontoon she'd left a few minutes earlier. She was a couple of hundred metres away from the Nadia when the other boat docked. One man got out. She saw him raise one arm to his face.
'Here, said the radio. The man hefted a rifle, started up the steps towards the Nadia's deck. She kept on motoring towards the ship. She was watching the single figure climb towards the top of the steps when he stopped. He looked down towards the pontoon. The view she had was made shaky by the progress of her own boat through the waves. She let go the throttle; the Gemini coasted forward, dropping and dying in the water. The man brought something up from his waist. 'Wait, said the radio. 'The Gemini; the other one. Did anybody — ? She saw him raise something else to his face; to his eyes; held like a pair of binoculars. He looked down, then out, scanning, looked straight towards her. 'Holy sh-, Arturo? Hello? Who is —
She had to look to find the safety, flicked it and resighted. The rifle filled the world with sound; the sight flared with the gun's own flame. 'Holy sh- the radio said again.
She had the impression of bullets flying and falling. She brought the gun up, kicking against her shoulder.
Fire came back from the ship, halfway up the steps to the deck. She dropped the rifle, hearing distant, tinny echoes of firing coming back from behind her, reflected from the boxy hull of the Nakodo.
She found the heavy machine-gun, lifted it rattling from the bottom of the Gemini. She supported it as best she could, fired.
The gun kicked against her shoulder, almost throwing her over the stern of the boat. Lazy lines of tracer swung round, heading towards the Nadia, spiralling into the night sky. The Gemini was turning, forced round by the weight of flung metal arching away from her towards the distant ship. Return fire flickered from the ship's hull.
She cursed, dropped forward, hearing splashy pops of bullets striking the water somewhere in front of her. She steadied the big machine-gun on the bulbous prow of the Gemini, swinging the inverted V of its barrel-support into place on the taut rubber of the bows. In the ship's own glow she could make out enough of the steps and pontoon to see where to aim. Light glittered there. By the time the noise arrived she was firing.
The tracer helped. She swung the stuttered trail and raised it, until the trail ended where the firing had been coming from. The Gemini was starting to swing again. The belt of bullets clinked and clattered like a bottling plant beneath her; the cartridges were thrown out to one side, hissing as they hit the waters of the lake.
'Hey! Get — ah! Son of a bitch! The radio came alive again with Dandridge's voice. She paused, and through the radio heard clinks and slaps that died away, and guessed those noises were her bullets hitting the hull of the ship. 'Get over here, you motherfuckers. Ah! Shit! The sound of something thumping and clattering.
She fired again. The chain of bullets ripped its way up into the gun and finished. She spun round, grabbed the ammunition box, found the end of the cartridge belt and snapped the gun open, hauling the weight of articulated belt up, fumbling with the first round until it clicked into place and she could close the breech mechanism again. She fired once more, having to angle out over the starboard bow of the inflatable as it twisted in the water, swung by the recoil. She put the gun's stock down, felt for the AK47 and studied the nightsight. Against the Nadia's hull, a figure limped and fell down the last few steps to the pontoon, threw itself behind the deflated corpse of the black Gemini.