Barrington Bayley - The Zen Gun

“Uncle,” Sinbiane said, “can we be restored to what we were before?”

“Yes, you can,” Ikematsu told him. “The surgeons on the Imperial fleet would be able to put you back together again. But that will depend on their recovering this planet. At the moment when the aliens snatched us away, the flagship was under attack and had been boarded. If others have taken control of the fleet they will have moved it out of the danger area by now.”

To that, Sinbiane was silent. “I have no intention of lying to you,” Ikematsu said. “Meantime you have a rare opportunity to practice mental flexibility. It should stand you in good stead when you train to become a kosho .

“I never imagined anything like this happening, uncle.”

“I hope you do not expect the world to be limited by your imagination, nephew.”

Ikematsu paused again, still thinking. “Is there anything you can tell me about the beings who did this, or how they did it?” he asked Sinbiane.

“It happened so quickly, uncle. It was all over in a moment. But I seemed to gain a mental impression of them. They are very confused. They don’t understand our world, but they are trying to understand it. That is why they did this. They don’t realise they are meddling with living beings.”

“They have no conception of discrete objects,” Ikematsu agreed. “That is deducible from their own manifestations.” In fact, he told himself, an act of this kind was probably not even possible in “normal” space. They had brought their own kind of space with them. That was what appeared as the extending lines or threads.

“Did you see the animal, Pout?” Sinbiane asked.

“No,” Ikematsu replied quickly, immediately interested. “Why do you ask?”

“He was here too. He cannot be far away.”

“Was the same thing done to him?”

“I do not know. But I don’t think he is here in the house.”

“I am leaving now to find the chimera,” Ikematsu said. “I will return when I am able. Meantime, do not shame my abilities as an instructor by losing courage.”

Sinbiane did not reply as he strode from the room.

It did not take long to locate Pout. The chimera was but a few yards farther down the road, partly hidden in a thicket of coarse long-stemmed plants.

He was, in fact, incorporated into one of the plants, or vice versa. He was jammed in a squatting position, while the stems, entering at his buttocks, merged with his legs, his arms and his torso, emerging at knees, elbows, and through his abdomen and thorax. A large, yellow-petalled flower seemed to frame his face.

His face. It was his face that riveted Ikematsu’s attention, while the chimera squirmed in dumb distress, glaring with huge piteous eyes. For in that face, set into it as if set in blancmange, was the zen gun. The gun was his face, or a part of it. The barrel jutted straight out in place of a nose, waving and poking towards Ikematsu, making the whole visage hatchet-shaped. The stock merged with and disappeared into Pout’s pendulous mouth.

After studying the spectacle Ikematsu leaned towards the chimera hands on hips. “How you loved your toy! Now it is truly yours. But do you still want it?”

Pout waved his head vigorously from side to side, making the yellow petals shake as if in a storm. A howling wave of rejection emanated from his crazed brain.

“ NO GUN! NO GUN! ”

“If I succeed in relieving you of it, will you concede that the gun becomes mine? You must grant it to me willingly. Otherwise it stays attuned to you.”

The effort of communicating to Ikematsu seemed to have exhausted Pout. He sagged, sucking air into his throat round the intruding stock that nearly blocked his mouth. Slowly, his head nodded.

“Good…” Ikematsu mused. “But how is it to be done…?”

Tentatively he reached out a hand, touching the wooden barrel. Seizing it between thumb and finger, he tugged experimentally.

Almost without resistance, the gun slid out of Pout’s face. There was a plop as his features re-formed behind it.

Pout began to cry.

At last, kosho Hako Ikematsu permitted himself to exult, at last he held the zen gun in his hands.

Zen in the art of electronics…

Curiously there was no trace of its contact with the interior of Pout’s person. No slime or moisture. No body heat, only the ordinary cool warmth of friendly wood. Ikematsu turned it over and over, examining it at length.

He knew its age: more than three Earth centuries. He knew its provenance: the zen master who made it had been a member of the order from which his own had originally sprung. The external appearance of the gun was a testament to certain cultural concepts: it seemed improvised, unfinished, crude, yet in its lack of polish was a feeling of supreme skill… in the Nipponese language of the time it had wabi , the quality of artless simplicity, the rustic quality of leaves strewn on a path, of a gate mended roughly with a nailed-on piece of wood and yet whose repair was a quiet triumph of adequacy and conscious balance. It had shibusa , the merit of imperfection. Only incompleteness could express the infinite, could convey the essence of reality. Hence, the unvarnished wood bore the marks of the carver’s chisel…

These qualities were themselves but superficial excrescences of the principles on which the gun acted, principles so abstruse in character that one dictum alone succeeded in hinting at them: Nothing moves . Where would it go? Pout the chimera had succeeded in using the gun as an electric beam to hurt or kill, without regard to location. But that was the most trivial of its capabilities. Only a kosho could unlock its real, dreadful purpose…

Ragshok’s voice was slurred as he spoke to Archier. He had not been able to resist the intoxicating airs and beverages so freely available on the flagship.

“We’ll be in Diadem in less than two days,” he said. “Listen, you could be useful to us. Tell us which are the juiciest worlds. Where we’d go to forestall resistance.”

“I’m your prisoner, that’s all,” Archier said dully. “Don’t expect me to be a traitor as well.”

Ragshok took a long sucking drag on the foot-long charge cigar he was smoking. He grinned glassily at Hesper. “Work on him, love. Make him see the light. Simplex take it! I can offer you anything . Wanna be total dictator of a hundred worlds? Satisfy any kink you like? Come on, everybody’s got his price!”

Hesper snuggled closer to Archier and stared at the pirate distastefully.

“Aaargh…” Ragshok growled in his throat, his natural aggressiveness overcoming even the calming effect of the drug. “Who needs you, huh? Who needs you?”

The door slid open with a bang. Ragshok turned, eyebrows lifted, as someone burst into the small sitting room where they were talking. It was one of the women in his band, a middle-aged virago who had been particularly bloodthirsty during the takeover. Her face was ugly with alarm.

“There’s a fleet ahead of us, chief!”

“What are you talking about?” Ragshok’s surprise was almost comic. He took the cigar out of his mouth, rolling it between thumb and finger.

“It’s on the radar. A big Imperial fleet!”

Grumbling incoherently to himself, Ragshok lurched to his feet. He pointed to Archier. “Bring him to the Command Room.”

He ran through the door. Archier didn’t need the scangun that was pointed at his head to persuade him to follow. He went willingly, and in the Command Centre found Ragshok already on the throne, his lieutenants, Morgan included, grouped around him. In the air in front of them there hovered the radar report.

There was no doubt of it. The oncoming blips were in standard Star Force formation, and there were more of them than Ten-Fleet could currently boast. In fact, from the identifying symbols in the top left of the image Archier knew it to be Seventeen-Fleet.