Deadstock (punktown) Page 21

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  running to stand still

  Floor Three. Then, the button for the basement again, before the door could open. Sometimes when they briefly stopped before ascending or descending yet again, they heard fists pounding on the outer security door. Thank God the things didn't think to try the elevator keyboards on each floor. Thank God the elevator's mechanism had not given out and trapped them somewhere between floors. Javier had visions of the Blank People shimmying up the cable from below. Or worse, dropping down the shaft from above onto the top of their carriage, and prying open the hatch above their heads.

  The elevator had to keep moving and moving, like a shark that will die if it stops passing water through its gills.

  Javier looked at Patryk, who leaned his tall body in the corner, playing around on Nhu's wrist comp.

  He felt a fondness and a bittersweet pride. The last of the Folger Street Snarlers besides himself. Quietly strong, loyal and calm, with an unquestioning faith in his leader. But Javier felt no less fondness for the others, despite the flaws that might have led to their deaths. How could he have outlived them? He was twenty-five. Some of the others had been teenagers. He had passed through more fires in his life on the streets than they had, but had still come out the other side where they had not. So far.

  He took in the last of the Tin Town Terata. Barbie had fallen asleep, hunkered down near Patryk's feet with her arms around her knees. Her two cognizant faces had closed their eyes, but the largest of the five faces flicked its eyes back and forth madly as if in a panic. REMs, Javier realized. For the sake of room inside the cramped elevator, Satin had folded up and collapsed the limbs of his mechanical body as best he could. He glowered at something only he could see, but occasionally roused from his distanced fury to glance around at his remaining comrades as Javier was doing.

  And Mira. She had fallen asleep, too, curled on her side like a child at his feet. He wanted to kneel down close to her and touch her hair, her face, her shoulder, but was too self-conscious in the presence of the others. Why was he so attracted to her? Had this circumstance drawn the two of them together only because they needed each other? He had heard that the nearness of death brought out the instinct to fuck, to procreate, to continue the species. Could that impulse have found a more tender manifestation in the both of them? If he had met Mira on the street would he have done anything except maybe crack a joke behind her back to Mott or Hollis? He had had beautiful women of all races. Whole women. Mutants were to be scoffed at, shunned, or at best pitied. Maybe she had used her gift, he kidded himself. Got inside his brain and twisted it like a balloon animal into the shape of love.

  Whatever the case, whatever the cause, that was what he felt when he lowered his eyes to her again. He felt love.

  The elevator had reached the basement level. Javier was quick to poke the button for Floor Three. They began to rise up smoothly through the body of Steward Gardens again.

  Javier noticed Satin's eyes were on him. They had an angry look, but then they always did. He realized the mutant had been waiting to say something to him. Maybe waiting for quite a while.

  "You like our little girl, huh?" he grumbled.

  Ha, Javier thought. Maybe Satin had a touch of a gift, himself. "Yeah," he said. "I like her."

  "Yeah, well, she likes you, too." Satin turned his eyes away. "Can't blame her. She needs a man with those extra touches-like arms and legs. Real arms and legs. Not much someone like me could do for her."

  Javier understood a lot then; not that he hadn't suspected it before. "Hey. I seen you fight those Blank People. If it wasn't for you, you most of all, none of you Terata would be alive right now. Mira wouldn't be here right now." The gang leader chuckled. "I know I wouldn't want to go up against you, man."

  Satin returned his gaze to Javier. And smiled. "Uhh," Mira said.

  Javier flicked his eyes back to her, saw that she was shivering violently. Her strong features were clenched in an expression like pain. No longer caring what the others thought, he crouched down beside her and gripped her shoulder, leaning his face in close to hers. "Mira! Mira, wake up!"

  "Javier," she murmured, as if talking in her sleep. But he could tell it wasn't quite that. "Something in the basement. Somebody. Something."

  "What is it? What do you see?"

  The purple veins at her temples stood out engorged and throbbing. Their branches were spread wider than he remembered them, touching the ends of her eyebrows and the tops of her cheekbones like cracks in the porcelain head of a doll. "Javier, there's something in the basement now." She spoke clearly but her eyes were still crunched shut. Awake but not. "It's swallowed the brain. The encephalon. Merged with it. It's sitting down there, getting bigger. Stronger."

  "What is it? What are you talking about?"

  "Dai-oo-ika." Then she gave a shudder, and seemed to change her mind. "Outsider. Dai-oo-ika. Outsider. The Spawn of Ugghiutu. Outsiders. the Outsiders…"

  "Okay, that's enough-wake up." He shook her.

  "Wake up."

  She didn't open her eyes, but her features relaxed somewhat and her trembling became more subdued. Javier stroked her hair and looked up at Satin, who said, "We got to get out of here. We can't keep riding up and down in this thing forever. We have to make a run for it."

  "We'll die, like Nhu," Patryk said.

  "What else can we do?" Satin growled. "There's nothing else left. The question is, do we go out the front door or through the basement?"

  "The building is too full of them now," Javier said. "We'd never even get to the front door alive. But we don't know about the basement. Unless the Blanks are getting in from outside, there might only be a few left in there."

  "Nhu took her key card with her, didn't she?"

  "We don't need it anymore," Patryk said. "She overrode the basement lock-out and now we have access to general door functions."

  "Well, what about that thing Mira is talking about? What's that mean?"

  "I don't know," Javier said. "But of the two choices, I guess we're going to have to make a run for it that way."

  "There's another idea," Patryk said. "Nhu's idea."

  "What was that?" asked Satin.

  "Call the forcers in here. They're the lesser of two evils. Let them fight the Blank People. We might even be able to escape more easily while they distract each other."

  Javier held Patryk's gaze for several long seconds, and then said, "Let's do it."

  "Okay. Her wrist comp is acting funny-I can't get on the net-but there's some hand phones in my backpack." He slung it off his shoulder and fished around inside. He produced one of the little devices and passed it to Javier.

  Javier took it, recognized it as Tabeth's. He activated it, punched the emergency number for the police, and held the phone to his ear. Hissing, crackling static. He made some tuning adjustments, but to no avail. He tried to call other numbers programmed into Tabeth's address book. He couldn't get through on those, either. "Let me see another one," he said.

  Patryk traded him Hollis's hand phone. Again Javier tapped out the number for the forcers and pressed the device to his ear.

  A sizzling, fizzing aural clutter, rising and falling in waves. Then, through it, teases of multiple voices, surfacing briefly then submerging again, elusive fish in an ocean of static. But Javier heard one voice that he recognized. It was almost comical, because it was a high-pitched voice cursing with hysterical vehemence.

  "Fuck! Fuck you! Fuuuck!"

  "Tiny Meat," he whispered.

  The voice faded away. Patryk was watching him. "Some kind of interference. It shouldn't disrupt the net and the phones."

  Javier put away Hollis's phone, now essentially become a Ouija phone. He looked down at Mira again, slumbering peacefully now. "It's that thing in the basement doing it," he said. "Whatever it is Mira was talking about." He knelt down to gently wake her up. "But we got no choice. We're going out that way."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  visitor
s

  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!"