Deadstock

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE visitors

John Fukuda was dropped off at his apartment complex by one of his company's security people, but when he entered the foyer he was a little surprised to see the building's own security team was not represented. Still, he didn't think too much of the empty security desk until he buzzed for the elevator and two men appeared around a corner in the hallway, taking their place to either side of him as if merely waiting for the lift themselves. An innocuous enough scenario, but Fukuda was not put at ease by the fact that these men-however nattily attired in black suits and bowler hats-both had a blue camouflage pattern across their faces and hands. Not after the call he had received from Jeremy Stake yesterday, about being visited by three men of this same description.

Fukuda slipped his hands into the pockets of his suit jacket and smiled casually at the man on his right. "New in the building?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't think a fancy place like this would rent to a couple of mere belfs, do you?"

"I shouldn't think they'd discriminate. It's against the law. As long as one has enough money." Fukuda turned to the other man. "Visiting someone, then?"

The elevator door opened to reveal a young woman inside the cabin, her face entirely covered in a pixel tattoo that currently played a film loop of dolphins gliding along underwater. Even so, she gave the two camouflaged-faced men a suspicious, disapproving look as she emerged.

"Iris-hi," Fukuda all but blurted. "Nice to see you."

The woman paused and looked at Fukuda a little strangely. "Hi, Mr., um."

"Fukuda."

"Yeah, hi. Ah, how's your daughter?" "Good. Good, thanks."

"That's good." The dolphins were replaced by another film loop of teeming, glassy jellyfish. "Well-have a good night."

"You, too."

Fukuda's neighbor walked off in the direction of the complex's front doors. Watching after her, the man on his left said, "You asked if we were visiting someone. The answer is yes." He took hold of Fukuda's elbow. "We're here to visit you."

Fukuda began to jerk his arm free of the clone's strong grip, but the other stepped close to him and Fukuda felt the muzzle of a gun poke into his ribs. "Get inside," said Mr. Jones.

The three of them entered the elevator cabin and its door whispered shut. Fukuda said, "There's a camera in here, you know."

Mr. Doe grinned. "There are a good number of Blue War clones in Punktown, Mr. Fukuda. And every one of us looks exactly the same."

"Push the key for your floor," Jones commanded.

"Push it yourself."

"We don't know the precise floor or number. So would you kindly accommodate us?"

"Why don't you tell me what you want?"

"In the privacy of your apartment."

Fukuda made no move to touch the keyboard. "I am not bringing you inside my apartment."

"Afraid your lovely daughter might be home from school? Don't worry, she isn't. She had her driver bring her and some friends to the Canberra Mall."

Fukuda's jaw tightened. "You sons of bitches are watching my daughter?"

"It's not your daughter we're interested in, Mr. Fukuda."

"Yes, so I gathered. You work for Adrian Tableau ."

"Will you push that button so we can talk about this in a more comfortable location?"

"There's nothing to talk about. I don't know anything about Tableau's daughter. She has nothing to do with me."

"No? But you seem to be of the opinion that she stole your daughter's special little toy."

"I am examining all possibilities about that matter."

"Including the possibility that Mr. Tableau's child took it? His missing child?"

Fukuda looked from one mottled face to its indistinguishable duplicate. "What did you do to the guard in the lobby?"

"He's alive. Just resting. Our other friend is watching over him."

"Go back and tell your boss that his criminal tactics won't work on me."

On the other side of the door, someone punched the elevator's call button. Doe quickly tapped the button for the second floor, and the cabin began rising. "You'd best take us to your apartment, Mr. Fukuda, or things may become ugly."

"Really? I thought you already were ugly."

Jones drew back his arm and struck Fukuda on the ear with the pistol's butt. Fukuda yelped and fell back against the rear of the cabin, clutching his ear with one hand and raising his other arm to ward off a second blow. "All right! All right!" he cried.

The clone holstered the handgun and nodded politely. "Thank you, Mr. Fukuda."

Jeremy Stake was pinned under Janice Poole when his phone rang through his wrist comp. He strained to reach it on her bedside table. For a moment, playfully, she took hold of his arm in both hands to stop him, but when he looked up at her hotly she let go of him right away. He almost dropped the device, fumbling it into his hands.

But it was not her. Not Thi Gonh. The screen showed only darkness. There was sound, however:

"You asked if we were visiting someone. The answer is yes. We're here to visit you."

"Get inside."

"There's a camera in here, you know."

Stake could see that the call was coming from John Fukuda's hand phone. He didn't know that the darkness of the screen was the darkness inside Fukuda's suit jacket pocket, or that Fukuda had covered up the beeps of the buttons as he punched in Stake's number by talking loudly to his neighbor Iris. But Stake could at least figure out that his employer had called him so that he might overhear this conversation.

"What…" Janice started to say, but he gave her another fiery look, this time with a finger to his lips. He activated the MUTE key so he and Janice wouldn't be heard on the other end. The voices continued:

"Push the key for your floor."

"Push it yourself."

"We don't know the precise floor or number. So would you kindly accommodate us?"

Stake scrambled out from beneath Janice, almost toppling her off the bed. "Tableau's men are at Fukuda's apartment."

"Maybe you should call the forcers."

"He didn't phone the forcers. He phoned me."

Stake began to dress hurriedly. As he did so, he only hoped that since his employer was being clever, he would also have the foresight to leave his apartment door unlocked.

It was fortunate that Janice's apartment was much closer to Fukuda's than was his own. By the time he reached Fukuda's place on his hoverbike, better able to negotiate the tight evening traffic than his hovercar, Stake figured he would have lost his physical resemblance to Yuki's biology teacher-who watched him from the bed as he gathered up his holstered Darwin .55.

"What is that?" John Fukuda asked warily. He had been placed in a chair in the center of his living room's sea of expensive carpeting, his hands cuffed behind his back. "Truth serum?"

Mr. Jones had removed his bowler hat, exposing his hairless head, which looked like a blue planet of many continents as seen from space. He was making an adjustment to a syringe-like instrument. In a pleasant, conversational tone, he said, "Recently I read an article about truth serums and truth scans. It said more and more corporate types are having firewall chips implanted in their brains to block the effects of such serums, I suppose in case an ambitious coworker wants to loosen their tongue by spiking their coffee. Mainly, though, the chips are to prevent scans from reading their minds. Apparently they're afraid that business rivals engaging in espionage might try to access their thoughts through phone calls or other remote means, or even by putting telepathic mutants on their payrolls."

"That's all very interesting, but I don't have a chip like that."

"No? Well, would you tell me if you did? So you see, I don't trust truth serums and truth scans." He held the syringe up to the light, squinting one eye at the transparent cartridge. A silvery glitter writhed within. "What I trust is pain."

"What are you talking about?"

"These are nanomites. You ought to recognize them, huh? You produce similar creatures yourself. I used this type with a lot of success in the Blue War, on Ha Jiin prisoners. Oh, it was against the code. The nanomites were for emergency surgical procedures in the field. But their programming is adaptable." He held the instrument ready, and then moved toward his prisoner.

Fukuda stiffened. He had to force himself not to get up and bolt. Lounging back on a love seat nearby was Doe, aiming a handgun in his direction. Fukuda knew it was a type that fired beams instead of solid projectiles. He said, "Look, I told you the truth! I swear it on my daughter's life! I don't know what happened to Krimson Tableau!" Jones pressed the syringe's tip against the side of his neck. "Please, don't!"

There was no pain. Was it his imagination, though, or did he feel the rustle of thousands of microscopic clawed feet as the machine-like insects scurried into his system?

Jones pocketed the syringe, and in its place produced a little remote control device. He held it up for Fukuda to see. "It's simple, really-like a toy. One button will make the nanomites go to work on your nerves to bring about excruciating pain. And this button, here, will make them repair the damage they cause. They're very good at doing either." He smiled. "We're just waiting now, giving them a little time to spread around and make themselves at home."

From the love seat, Doe snickered.

"Please, listen, you know I'm a wealthy man. I can pay you men a great deal of money to stop this."

"We have a sense of loyalty, Mr. Fukuda, do you know that?" Jones's amicable demeanor began to crumble away. His eyes shone, and he spoke through clenched teeth. "It might seem hard for you to believe that factory-produced mannequins like us could have such principles. You might even believe that we're merely following our robotic programming, by substituting a corporate commander for a military one. But I'll tell you something-most vet clones like us are breaking their backs right now in asteroid mines, or constructing space stations, or some other slave labor work. Mr. Tableau gave the three of us a job we could be proud of. A job that lets us walk the street with birthers like you!"

"I didn't make you men, did I? I don't manufacture human clones!"

"What I'm saying is, you can't buy our loyalty. It's about more than the blasting money." Jones was so animated now that as he spoke he sprayed spittle in Fukuda's face. Had his skin tone been natural, he might have been flushed deep red. But he calmed himself enough to glance at a clock on one wall. Regaining his composure, he found his smile again. "I think that's enough time."

Mr. Jones pointed the remote at Fukuda, who yelled, "Don't, don't, don't!"

He started to shoot up from the chair but the pain slammed him back down hard. It was difficult to tell exactly where it was coming from- seemingly everywhere at once, like electricity crackling along every nerve. Fire up and down his arms and legs. Fire in his neck, making the cords stand out, fire across his back, in his fingertips and in the sensitive nerves at the head of his penis. He screamed. Tears bubbled up in his eyes.

Jones thumbed another button. The nanomites went to work fast to repair the gnawed nerves, but to Fukuda the process was agonizingly slow. He slumped in his chair nearly unconscious, drooling onto his shirtfront. He felt like he must be bleeding from every pore, though there wasn't a mark on him. It would have been hard to prove a military prisoner had been tortured, should someone investigate. Fukuda was a man possessed, but the tormenting demon inside him had receded. For the moment.

"They're like us," Jones went on. "Like soldiers. We were programmed with martial arts training, to break and tear another person to pieces. But we were also trained in ways to heal the body with just our hands. Set a broken bone. Get kicked-in balls to come down into the scrotum again. Stuff an eye back in a socket, if it was still attached."

"I don't know," Fukuda mumbled, still drooling. "I don't know where she is."

"I'd be afraid to admit it, too, if I'd killed her."

"I didn't kill her, you fu-"

Jones pressed the first button again. The nanomites became piranha again. Fukuda began to scream again. Once more he shook in his chair like a man being executed through electrocution.

There was no gunshot, really, just a poof, because the Darwin .55 was a pricey gun with a lot of features, one of which was an optional silent mode. Thus, it was as though Doe's wrist simply exploded on its own through some extreme medical anomaly. The ray blaster dropped to the floor with his severed hand still wrapped around the grip. He howled in surprise as much as agony.

Jones whirled around and saw Jeremy Stake there in the doorway behind him, holding his pistol in both hands to steady its aim. "Reverse it!" he snarled.

The clone pressed the button to turn the nanomites from demons back to angels, from soldiers to healers. Fukuda slouched down limp in his seat with a deep groan.

"Okay, now drop that thing!" Jones let the device fall to the carpet. "Hands on your head!" Jones complied, lacing his fingers atop his skull. As when he had ranted to Fukuda, his eyes shone and his teeth were clenched.

"You're a fool getting in this deep, Stake. You should walk away from all this now."

"You fuck! You fuck!" Doe was wailing, clutching his arm to compress its veins. He started rising to his feet.

Stake shifted his eyes to him. "Sit down!"

With the stump of his wrist squirting blood in rhythmic pulsations, the clone reached his remaining hand into his jacket for some backup weapon. Poof. This time, the .55 projectile went through the vet's throat and shattered something glass across the room. This time, the clone obeyed Stake's command. He dropped back onto the love seat, a wave of vividly red blood washing down his bright white shirtfront.

"I told him to sit down," Stake muttered.

"You fuck," Jones hissed, the same words as Doe and in the same voice. Yet, he had the better sense to remain motionless.

Stake moved further into the room. He circled around Mr. Jones until he came to Fukuda's chair, and reached down to the manacles binding his wrists. "What's the release code?" he snapped. Jones gave the numbers, and Stake punched them in with his free hand while keeping the Darwin trained on the security chief.

"You'll die for killing my man."

"Soldiers die, Mr. Jones. Like one of you told me, we're not on the same side anymore."

His hands now free, Fukuda rose from the chair shakily. He scooped up the dropped remote, afraid Jones would stomp on the pain button.

Stake went on, "If Fukuda did do something to Krimson Tableau, he'd have just told you. So you found out what you needed to know. Go back to your boss and tell him that."

"You're going to let him go?" Fukuda panted.

"As opposed to?"

In a whisper, Fukuda said, "We should take care of him, like that one!" He motioned toward Doe's corpse with its surprised-looking open eyes and flowing throat wound.

"I came to protect you. I'm not an assassin."

"Such a good soldier," Jones mocked.

"You and me both, huh?"

"Whatever. Let him go," Fukuda said. But he went to Jones and dug inside his pocket, fished out the syringe device. He saw that only a portion of its contents had been injected into him. Without hesitation he then jammed the tip of the instrument into Jones's side and injected him through his shirt. The entire remaining dose.

Jones spun and elbowed Fukuda in the face. He fell back onto the carpet, but the remote was in one hand and he pointed it like a gun. Depressed one of its buttons.

The clone instantly dropped to his knees, his mouth wide in a cry that wouldn't come. His eyes quivered in their sockets, as if they might burst from some pressure behind them. Then he pitched onto his face, unconscious but still giving spasmodic jolts.

"Enough." Stake took the remote from his employer and thumbed the button to order the nanomites to make their repairs. He pocketed the device. "You're lucky this is directional, or you would have just put yourself on the floor with him."

"I guess I didn't think of that." Fukuda placed a hand on Stake's shoulder, wagging his head. "Thank God you got here."

"Well now we've got to get him and his friend out of here. Where's the third one?"

"Apparently he took out the security man in the lobby, and has him restrained somewhere. Probably in the security office."

"What a mess," Stake seethed, his eyes roving over the scene. "What a blasting mess."

"Yes, and we have to get rid of them before Yuki comes home."

"How well can you trust your security people?"

"Very well, I think."

"We could go to the forcers with this, but I think we should dump Doe's body and drop off Jones near Tableau's company. If it comes back to us later on, a memory scan would show it was justifiable and it was just a clone, anyway. So why don't you call some of your men over here in a car. And you'd better have one of them stay with you in your place at all times now, until this is over and squared away."

"All right. Uh, what about number three, downstairs?"

"We'll have Jones talk to him and send him away, when he wakes from his nap." Stake knelt down and used Jones's own manacles to cuff his wrists behind his back. He then patted him down and took two pistols and a switchblade knife off him. "Jeesh," he said to himself. "Fucking Clone Ranger." He rose to face Fukuda again.

"I can't say you didn't warn me that Tableau might make a move, but I guess I still couldn't believe he'd go this far."

"Look, Mr. Fukuda, I told you I talked to the brother of Krimson's boyfriend. I told you the boyfriend didn't know where she went off to. But I didn't tell you all of it, maybe because it sounds crazy." Stake then went on to relate the circumstances of Krimson Tableau's disappearance from the Gentile brothers' Subtown apartment. All the personal belongings, clothing included, she had left behind. Finally, he described the ventilation grille that had been bent open behind the bed where Krimson had been resting with her lover.

Fukuda furrowed his brow. "I don't see where you're going with this."

"Now we know for certain that Krimson made off with the doll initially, yes. But later, I'm thinking the doll made off with her, in a way."

"What?"

"I think the doll escaped through that air duct on its own, after it did something to Krimson while she slept right there beside Brat Gentile."

"Did something? Did what-eat her?"

"Who knows? How does that thing feed, anyway? Like an amoeba?"

"What are you talking about? It gets what little nourishment it needs through photosynthesis. That doll could hardly consume a human being, then climb down from the bed, tear open an air vent, crawl away God knows where. None of that. The best it can do is wriggle and squirm a little! You met Yuki's friend Maria, remember? And you saw her kawaii-doll, Stellar. I created that doll, too. Dai-oo-ika is no more advanced a life form than that! A slug would be more active-and sentient."

"But Dai-oo-ika wasn't made in the same way Stellar was, isn't that right? You used a different approach for him, didn't you? Something sort of radical?"

Fukuda became wary. "What do you mean?"

"Hey, look over there, Mr. Fukuda!" Stake barked. "There's a dead man soaking his twelve pints into your nice expensive love seat! I did that, and now I can expect Adrian Tableau to make my life interesting. I guess you didn't think I needed to know about it before, and I guess I didn't think so either, but now I need you to tell me everything! Dai-oo-ika… you created him with information you inherited when you bought up Alvine Products, didn't you?"

Fukuda touched his lower lip, split by Jones's elbow, and studied the blood on his fingertips.

"Even if I get Dai-oo-ika back, I don't dare return him to Yuki as a harmless toy. If I'd known from the start the danger I might have placed her in."

"So it's true, then. And it wasn't just about your poor sad daughter, or even about a costly kawaii-doll. You can't let Tableau or anyone else get their hands on your special research."

Fukuda lifted his head and smiled at the detective with something like defiance. "If I can believe what you're saying, then maybe he even did something to Tableau's daughter out of anger. Knowing she'd taken him from Yuki." He almost sounded proud of the creature for that. His surprising prodigy.

"I can't believe you'd be so irresponsible as to use that fanatical cult's data to make a toy for your child."

"It was an experiment! But I didn't expect anything extreme to happen. The designer I put in charge of the project didn't anticipate any danger, either."

"I thought you were supposed to be the practical brother, and it was James who had the crazy schemes."

"James wasn't crazy!" Fukuda said. "Just more creative than me. More daring."

"Well, being daring and being reckless are two different things. Your best bet, if we can even hope to catch Dai-oo-ika now in this whole blasting city, is to just destroy him."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. First, as before, we find him. Whether he walked away on his own or not."

"I'd like to talk to your designer. Just on the small chance that he might come up with something useful in tracking the thing down."

"His name is Pablo Fujiwara. He used to work for Alvine Products, in fact."

"Lovely."

Stake and Two of the security crew from Fukuda Bioforms rode down in the elevator with Mr. Jones. Knowing the martial training Jones had been instilled with from his conception, Stake kept the manacles on him and his Darwin .55 leveled at his back. Shortly after Jones had awakened, Stake had instructed him to call the third Blue War clone and tell him to go fetch their vehicle and wait outside. And to be sure not to try anything stupid when their party arrived in the lobby. Stake had also inquired about the apartment complex's guard. Jones had related that the man was drugged unconscious, but basically unharmed, in the security office. Fukuda had then said he would offer the security man some financial persuasion for not forwarding this whole matter to the law.

"What are you going to do about Mr. Doe?" Jones asked now, as they descended.

"I took your two guns. One of them has plasma bullets, I see. So I'm going to melt him."

"You'd be wise to melt yourself, too, because that's the only way you're going to be able to escape me, Corporal Stake."

"Just doing my job, Mr. Jones. Like you."

"My job will be done when your skull is cracking between my palms. I should have killed you at your flat, but I guess I got all soft because you were a vet. We're all permitted the occasional lapse in judgment, right?" "I suppose."

"And your lapse of judgment is letting me live, now."

"Yeah? Time will tell."

The elevator reached the ground floor, and Fukuda's three men watched the clone cross to the front doors, looking as dignified as he could in his pricey suit and bowler hat, despite his wrists being cuffed behind his back and the incongruous coloration of his flesh. At the doors, he turned to give Stake a nod that was not polite, not friendly. It was an assurance. We will conclude this business another day.

Stake nodded back at him.