“If you’d like to leave some feedback for the costume manager, the watch on that chain will allow you to do so.”
Strictly speaking, the pocket watch that came with his costume wasn’t temporally appropriate. He wasn’t terribly familiar with the world of 1543, but he doubted pocket watches were the norm. But every visitor to the old city carried one.
“They’re the only accessory that goes with every costume,” the attendant had told him. “They just seem to communicate the past.”
And that was the thing about the old city. It didn’t represent or replicate any particular past, just “the past.” All the centuries just blended together into some imaginary year when everyone wore too many layers and smoked a lot of opium. Javier suddenly wished he could talk about it with Holberton. Holberton knew all about this kind of thing. Hell, he probably knew the people who had designed it. Maybe he’d even lost a bid to work on it. It certainly seemed to work a lot like Hammerburg. Only instead of vampires chasing people, there were samurai and geisha and spies for the Dutch government and Catholic priests in hiding.
One of those priests sidled up to him, now. Javier could tell by the plain black robe he wore. He also wore a massive rattan hat that looked like a lampshade. Breath fogged out from under it in short, strained bursts. The hat mostly covered his eyes, and when he tilted his head way back to peer at Javier, Javier could see that he was an older white guy with milky little blisters over his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped, “but do you know how to get to the Megane bridge from Dejima?” He held up a little jar. Inside was a pair of very old blue eyes. They no longer held any blood, but it was easy to imagine that once upon a time, not so long ago, they’d been bleary and red. “It’s good luck if you feed your old eyes to the turtles that live under the bridge. Your new eyes will never download anything bad.”
Javier gently pushed the old man’s hand away, so he didn’t have to look at the eyes any longer. “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you know the way to the ninja forest?”
15: ??????????
The ninja forest took up a large section of parkland bordering Mecha and the harbour. The trees were the largest he’d ever seen in any urban space. They were mostly beech varietals and red or white pine, but there were little glades full of willows that leaned over trickling creeks, and ranks of Erman's birch and elem standing guard at the borders of the forest. And, of course, the cherry trees. They stretched out their arms in perfect supplication, their signature blossoms replaced by snow. Or maybe, Javier thought, they were just sad at having their tops so ruthlessly trimmed down. Not a single one of them had been allowed to grow up rather than out, and it made for a middle level of coverage in the more open areas of the park. It reminded him a great deal of the forest where he’d iterated Xavier.
It was the perfect place for his children to hide.
“The next ninja show will be starting in fifteen minutes, in the Ueno arena.”
Javier looked around. He could see no speakers, even in the naked trees. It occurred to him that the trees might not even be real – maybe some of them were just hollow tubes with wires inside.
He was getting tired of not knowing what was real.
The path to the Ueno arena led down to the beach. Getting there was a trick in his stupid swishy pantaloons, or whatever they were, so he slipped off his sandals and started jumping. The pantaloons created an unusual amount of drag on his flight, but his feet and hands still worked as usual. He leapt from the path to a copse of willows, listened for the sound of the harbour, then vaulted over the willows to a stand of pines.
“Hey, aren’t you the saint, today?” a voice above him said.
In the tree was another vN, this one wearing an angry blue mask with polished tusks poking free of a grimacing mouth.
“I just checked your schedule,” the ninja said. “You’re the saint.”
Javier decided to play along. “Oh,” he said. “I guess I’d better go change.”
“The show starts in fifteen minutes! Get moving!”
“Sorry,” Javier said, and hoped he hadn’t just gotten his son fired.
He ditched the worst of the clothes before finding a florist that catered to the fans in line. The eighteen yellow roses they sold him at the mobile florist outside the tent were long-stemmed. Javier requested that they trim them down and arrange them into a ball and then tie them with a white ribbon.
“That’s a very unique request,” the girl behind the counter said.