Deadstock (punktown) Read online

  "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?"

&nb
sp; "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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  the converted

  The trash zapper behind Steward Gardens gave the appearance of sinking into the drifts of autumn leaves that were ever accumulating as winter inched nearer like a glacier. The dead pig-hens heaped on the ground nearby were utterly buried now, as if under piles of another species of dead creature. No new pig-hens came to roost on the heliport atop the building's roof. By now they had learned that it was not safe for them; dangerous things might appear, fast and predatory. The huffing, snorting sounds their little tapir snouts made were no longer heard. Just distant traffic surging and beeping, and the leaves rustling whenever a gust of breeze stirred them. But presently there came a noise to break that calm. It was a metallic squealing sound: loud, rasping, screeching. The two retracted mechanical arms of the zapper had unfolded and were stretching upwards toward the overcast sun. Straining, their talons spread wide, as if to tear a hole in the sky and reveal another dimension lurking beyond its fabric. As if to tear the veil off the face of a god.

  In the basement of Steward Gardens, the huge tank in which fermented the bacteria-based generic soup that supplied the building's food fabricators began to rumble and shudder. From every fabricator in every apartment came loud liquid belches, and then a sudsy and foul black muck was disgorged, running across marble counter tops to plop onto the kitchenettes' floors. The rotting substance was like the many advancing pseudopods of one vast, amorphous organism.

  As Mira Cello had told Javier Dias, on the third floor of A-Wing there was a little movie theater. For four years it had been languishing in darkness, but at last its wall-sized vidtank flickered to life. At first, the holographic screen only contained static, like a raging sandstorm trapped inside an aquarium. Then, fragmentary images started to take shape from the storm. These images coalesced into a burning and mostly flattened city, stretching out black and twisted to all horizons. Below were thousands of upturned faces and arms lifted in praise. The faces were a mix of human and non-human, but all were charred black, blistered by fire and deformed with radiation. Silvery pus ran out of heat-sealed eyes. Yet despite the pain these people must be feeling, they were singing, all in one voice of adoration.

  The door to the theater opened, letting in a bit more light. A dark figure walked down to the front row, and stiffly took a seat. Following closely came a second figure, which seated itself beside the first. Another figure. Another. The next row began to be filled.

  Soon, every seat in the theater was filled with an identical gray figure that gazed upon the screen raptly, in spite of its lack of eyes.

  Dai-oo-ika had grown impatient with the irritating busywork of the nanomites; it was redundant for the most part, anyway. So he commanded them all to file through his swelling body to that special cabinet where he stored inorganic trash, and crawl back inside Dolly's syringe. However, they couldn't find their way into the device again, so he had them gather in one of her compacted shoes instead. There he ordered them to die, which they obediently did.

  But the wires in his body he liked. The wires linked him with the building's systems, so that it became an extension of his
body like a protective exoskeleton. The wires even linked him with the net. He tested the net's waters with curiosity, sent his thoughts out like spiders along the invisible strands of its web. He watched a man and woman in a naked tangle on their bed, gazing at them through the cyclopean eye of their computer screen. Through another such window he saw a woman seated at her computer but sobbing into her hands; she, too, didn't notice him staring at her. Sad, desperate, frail little creatures, these. Though the woman's tears made him feel a pang for his mournful child mother.

  There was one man seated at his keyboard who did look directly into Dai-oo-ika's face on the screen. The man screamed, fell back from his chair, staggered to the door. But there he stopped. And when he turned slowly around again, he was smiling and his burned-shut eyes oozed mercury tears.

  There would be more time later for such exploration, experimentation. Maybe he would even be able to extend his consciousness along multiple- countless-strands of the web simultaneously, instead of only one at a time. Like a god who can hear the prayers of millions at once.

  For now, he had his current flock of new followers to finish converting. Before he converted them in another way, in his own unholy communion.

  The five of them had their guns in their hands. Satin checked the six plasma capsules in the cylinder of his cannon-like Decimator .220. Even Mira held Brat's gun, which Javier had given her. Javier had succeeded in awakening her, but knelt down low beside her with an arm around her waist, as if to comfort a child roused from troubling dreams.

  "You okay there, baby?" he whispered.

  "Aside from a killer headache. I think I need a foot rub."

  "Ha. Next time we're alone," he told her. "And nice guy that I am, I'll rub everything else, too."

  "I bet you didn't do that to your mom."

  Javier returned his eyes to the floor indicator, his demeanor becoming serious once more as the elevator descended for a final time toward the basement. "Be ready to move," he told the others. "Ready, now."