Deadstock (punktown) Read online

  Mr. Smithee came over and took Yuki by the arm, to help her up from her chair and to escort her while walking. As the four people crossed the room toward its exit, the middle of the three forgotten robots turned its head to watch them, looking all the more morose at having lost its temporary company so soon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  revelations

  His meeting with Pablo Fujiwara fresh in his mind, for an hour now Jeremy Stake had been searching out and reading archived news stories on the net regarding the cult that had formerly owned Alvine Products, and used its resources to create a bizarre army.

  Nearly all of the human-like Kalian race worshiped the demon/god Ugghiutu, but this particular schismatic group had not been content with merely paying him tribute, had instead been intent on awakening him from some sort of spell he was under. Reanimating him from his living death. Or was that merely metaphorical? Maybe this crop of life forms was just meant to represent Ugghiutu, supposedly reborn in new flesh as a colony of animals, though perhaps possessing a communal mind. At least, that was what one of the more adventurous articles suggested. Most of the major news outlets seemed to have treated the idea of an army of monsters as the ludicrous plot of an overzealous group of crackpots, dismissing any real threat-despite several rescue workers having been killed by a few of the awakened creatures before they, too, were consumed in the fire raging through Alvine as a result of the earthquake that had all but gutted the complex.

  Still, some of these more audacious journalists not only took the threat more seriously, but drew connections to other cults and ominous events, here on Oasis and on other worlds as well. They cited the existence of a Tikkihotto cult, a Choom cult, even Earth-based cults with similar beliefs centered around a race of god-like "Outsiders" that awaited their rebirth and return to power. Nineteen years ago there had been a major incident right here in Punktown, when three vast, insectoid creatures had attempted entry into this plane of existence, the extradimensional entities apparently summoned by a sect of beetle-like Coleopteroids (or Bedbugs, as the race was nicknamed). The government had become involved, even killing one of the titanic-though still immature-creatures. They had been called Gatherers by the Bedbug cultists, but these journalists linked them to the Outsiders that the Ugghiutu followers spoke of.

  Accompanying one of the articles was a painting taken from an ancient Kalian text that portrayed great Ugghiutu in one of the guises he could manifest. The illustration was captioned "The Black Cathedral." Apparently Ugghiutu would form his amorphous black flesh into the semblance of a temple that would appear in remote places, and lure the unwary inside as unwilling sacrifices. This temple, consisting of himself in tribute to himself, exhibited a looming dome in the center (a head? Stake wondered), minarets made of entwined tentacles, and two flat-roofed wings of several floors that framed the central rotunda.

  Such folklore-like elements aside, Stake was open-minded about what he read. After all, the woman he loved was an extradimensional being herself. And look at the great power she had wielded over him. Conquering, and laying to waste, his world.

  Stake went to a net bookstore called Shocklines to order two books relevant to these matters; Monstrocity, a non-fiction account of the Alvine Products controversy, supposedly written by a man who had opposed the Ugghiutu cult, and Everybody Scream!, which dealt with the night the three Gatherers had attempted to cross into this dimension to wreak havoc. But while Stake was looking up the books, a call for him came over his comp and he switched the screen to vidphone mode. When he saw the call came from Janice Poole, he let it through.

  She didn't look like her usual flirtatious, smiling self. She looked surprisingly grim. "Jer," she said, "I think I saw Yuki Fukuda abducted in front of the Arbury School a little while ago."

  "What?" he hissed. "You think?"

  "It was her car, but a forcer was making her get inside, and then he got in after her. I thought I heard her cry out. I don't know where her regular driver went to."

  "Maybe he was in on it. Got paid off. Did you tell the police?"

  "No. In case it really is the police, for whatever reason."

  "I doubt that. It has to be that blasting Tableau. Did you call Fukuda?"

  Janice seemed to squirm inside her skin for a moment. "I called him first. He didn't want me to tell you, but I couldn't hold it in anymore."

  "Shit, Janice! How long ago did you see this?"

  "I'm sorry, Jer. It was about forty minutes ago. Maybe longer."

  "Dung!" he shouted. Then he fought to control himself. "Okay, look, I'm going to call Fukuda myself. You'd better let me know quick if you hear anything new!"

  "I will, I promise. I'm sorry. And you keep in touch with me, too, okay?"

  He cut the connection, muttering curses, and punched up John Fukuda's number.

  Fukuda answered promptly, and right away Stake noticed two things. That Fukuda was inside a moving vehicle, and that his face looked even more grim than Janice's had been. "Detective," he said.

  "Mr. Fukuda, I just got a call from Janice Poole. She told me Yuki's been taken."

  "Yes," Fukuda said in a voice that was oddly flat and composed, though perhaps only out of numbness. Out of a crushing kind of fatalism. "I received a call from the person responsible, telling me that he had her and instructing me not to contact anyone about it. And a few minutes ago he called again to tell me where to meet with him. I'm on my way there now."

  "You're doing what? Don't be crazy; it's a trap."

  "I'll hear what he has to say. And then he can hear what I have to say. I'll do whatever I can to satisfy him. If killing me satisfies him, so be it, as long as he lets Yuki go free."

  Stake snatched up his black sports coat, shoved his arms into it, and clapped his porkpie hat on his head. He transferred Fukuda's call to his wrist comp and continued their conversation that way as he tore out of his apartment.

  Realizing from the image that Stake was on the move, Fukuda said, "Where are you going?"

  "I'm going where you're going, so tell me where it is."

  "I can't do that."

  "You have to, damn it!" He didn't want to wait for the tenement house's elevator, so his feet were a flurry down the stairs.

  "If the person in question sees you with me, he may do Yuki some harm."

  "He may still do her harm-you and her both! Do you think he'll let you two live to implicate him in this, after he's done questioning you?"

  Fukuda glanced from the road ahead of him to the vidscreen on his console, locking eyes with Stake. After a hesitation, he spoke weakly, letting Fate continue to buoy him on its currents, wherever it might wish to carry him. "Steward Gardens. He's taking her to Steward Gardens."

  "That place your brother built. In Beaumonde Square."

  "Yes."

  "So why there?"

  "I don't know. I suppose because it's abandoned, private. I don't know how he found out about it. He must have researched me."

  Stake had reached the lobby, and dragged his hoverbike out from under the steps where he was permitted to store it. He walked it to the front door and out into the failing light of dusk in Punktown. The late autumn air had a sting to it. Stake straddled the machine, and then it was whisking him along, insinuating and inserting itself into the slots and narrow passages between the hovercars and various other types of vehicles clotting the streets. Throughout this, he maintained his exchange with Fukuda, shouting to be heard over the roaring and beeping of the traffic.

  "Why don't you stop somewhere and I'll meet up with you before you go on? Better yet, why don't you just back off, and let me handle this?"

  "I told him I'd be there, and I'll be there. Yuriko died because of me once already. I didn't bring her back just to get her killed all over again."

  "I see. So you're going to commit suicide, essentially, to atone for your sins."

  "You don't know the half of my sins, Detective Stake. Though now might be as good a time as any to confess them."

&
nbsp; "I thought you already had."

  "I'm afraid I've been less than honest with you about things. Told you a distortion of the facts. You see, I'm not John Fukuda." Again he linked his gaze with Stake's through their vidscreens. "I'm James Fukuda."

  An aqua-colored hovercar had slowed to a stop directly in front of Stake's bike due to a snarl-up in the traffic. He nearly collided with it, his ass jolting up from the seat as he braked. But it was his brain that felt thrown forward with the momentum. He returned his attention to his wrist comp, squeezing the bike's handles as if to cause them pain, the muscles in his jaw squeezing as well. Fukuda was waiting, giving him space to react. He reacted. "You're James Fukuda. The dead brother. So was it you all along I've been dealing with, or have the both of you been taking turns fucking with me?"

  "There is only me," Fukuda told him. "It's my brother John who's the dead one."

  The traffic had begun moving again, but like chunks of ice in a nearly frozen river. Stake spat a profanity. He glanced up at a helicar that flew directly above him along a strand of the invisible navigation web strung between the skyscrapers, a taxi with the identifying number 23 boldly black against its yellow-painted belly, making it look like a giant bee. He wished he was up there, inside that craft, not down here locked in this crawling glacier. Fukuda had gotten a head start, and he had been closer to Beaumonde Square than Stake had been from their points of departure. Regardless of the small bike's maneuverability, he feared he'd never overtake Fukuda on the way to Steward Gardens.

  "Why did you lie to me before?" Stake shouted.

  On Stake's little screen, Fukuda's eyes were turned away-presumably while he watched the traffic ahead of him-as he replied, "The story I told you before is that the brother named James was in love with Yuriko, the wife of the brother named John. That part was true. But what wasn't true, was that Yuriko resisted James's advances, and in a fit of anger James killed her. I then said that John came home to find his wife dead, and the brothers struggled. In despair at finding his wife murdered, John grabbed the gun away from James and shot him with it." "I remember."

  "The fact is, Yuriko loved James, as he loved her. As I loved her. My brother John… well, I told you he was the successful one. Practical, dedicated to his business, unwaveringly strong. But he was also cold, Mr. Stake. He was so obsessed with his company that he became distant from his wife, even distant from me. Yuriko was very sensitive, very gentle and affectionate; she needed to be loved. She was not a bad woman. If anything, I was a bad brother."

  "So you started an affair with her."

  "One day, as I suppose was inevitable, John discovered the truth. Caught us together at his apartment. Not in bed at that moment, but he understood. In his rage, he took out a gun and shot and killed Yuriko. Then he turned on me. I got the gun away from him. And because he had killed the woman I loved, I killed him, too." Fukuda let out a long, ragged sigh. "Almost the same story I told you. But with some critical differences."

  "Let me spare you telling me the rest. John was the successful one. You were the dreamer, the loser; you were saddled with Steward Gardens, your biggest failure yet. So you assumed your twin's identity, and took over his business."

  "I was the more imaginative brother, yes. But I was also the envious brother. I coveted my brother's wife, and I coveted his success. In my greed, I stole them both, didn't I? At the cost of their lives. So I tried to bring them back, in my way. I resurrected Yuriko through Yuki. And I resurrected John through me."

  "Do you think getting yourself killed now will redeem you?"

  In a choked voice, James Fukuda said, "I only want my daughter back."

  "Pull over and let me catch up with you, damn it!"

  "Why do you care what happens to me, Mr. Stake?"

  "Because you're paying me to," he snapped. "I don't think so. I think it's your nature to care." "Whatever you say."

  Once more the traffic became bogged down, and in frustration Stake glanced again at the freer movement of the helicars overhead. That cab, numbered 23, had paused above him as well, even though the traffic was more open up there. Irritated vehicles beeped at it, or switched to other navigation beams to veer angrily around it. What was it waiting for?

  Me, he realized. Dung. Tableau had obviously put a tail on him. Eventually they'd see that he was headed for Beaumonde Square, for Steward Gardens, and then they'd be ready for him. Well, so be it. He'd deal with that problem once he arrived there.

  "I'll be there soon," Fukuda said from Stake's wrist comp, his voice growing increasingly shaky. "I'd better sign off."

  "Fukuda, I'm telling you-"

  "You should turn around and go home, Mr. Stake. This is my affair now."

  "It always was. Look, if you won't let me help you, fine-but let me help Yuki."

  For a moment Fukuda didn't reply. Then he said, "We must follow our own destinies, detective. If that is your choice, then that is your destiny. For me. well, it's time to accept my destiny, instead of hijacking my brother's. Now I really have to go. I just can't bear to look at your face any longer."

  And with that, James Fukuda broke their connection.

  Stake didn't have to switch his little computer's screen to mirror mode to know whose face he had begun to assume.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  convergence

  They had left the hoverlimo-with Nelson Soto still slumped down in the passenger's seat-behind at the warehouse, and taken Adrian Tableau's luxury helicar. So it was that Mr. Jones brought this craft down into the parking lot on the roof of Steward Gardens' A-Wing.

  They disembarked from the vehicle, the chill wind up here making a streaming pennant of Yuki's long hair. Evening was falling, the sky deepening to blue, a background against which the kaleidoscope of city lights began to dazzle. Squinting against the wind, Tableau walked close to the edge of the roof and for a moment watched the traffic on distant Beaumonde Street as the first wave of office workers made their way home, leaving their more ambitious brethren to sit at their desks for a few hours longer. Tableau still resented their kind, despite his now greater success, just as much as when he had mugged them as a teenager. Because of his background, he trusted his security team of retired Blue War clones more than he did any of the office drones under his employ.

  Mr. Smithee had gone to the door that gave access to the building's interior, prepared to use a skeleton key card to override the lock. But he turned to the others to announce, "It's already open."

  Tableau looked down at the overgrown gardens that set the apartment building back from the street, the dead vines entwined through the metal trellises, the scum-filmed fountain in the center of the front walk. "Blasting haunted house," he murmured to himself, before joining Jones and Smithee, who flanked the sniffling teenage girl. He had a gun of his own under his expensive jacket, and he drew it from its holster before they passed through the rooftop doorway.

  The little party descended to the third and top floor of A-Wing, emerging in a murky corridor behind the large room central to this level. Jones stepped forward to lead the way, his ray blaster held ready. Not the first time in his life he had taken point. They passed the elevators, turned a corner and found themselves looking down another dimly lit hallway, with numbered doorways on their right-the first of these being 36-A. On their left: two more widely spaced doors giving access to the room that comprised this floor's center. Tableau himself took Yuki by the arm now, and whispered harshly, "If you've walked me into a trap, you're going to be one sorry little girl."

  "I didn't," Yuki sobbed. "Krimson told Caren this is where she is."

  Smithee flicked his eyes about warily. The sounds of street traffic had been left behind them, entirely blocked out. A silence like deafness, incongruous to this city. Had he not known differently, the veteran might have believed he was deep beneath the earth, as when he had stalked through the tunnels in which the Ha Jiin had long stored their deceased. The same tunnels in which, during the Blue War, their living soldiers had
hidden, popping up from concealed hatches in the jungle floor to attack like the reanimated and vengeful dead.

  Jones was keeping his eye on the numbered apartment doors, but it was the nearer of the two doors on his left that opened, just a few feet ahead of him. He whirled, bringing up his pistol, as a figure walked stiffly out into the hallway.

  The entity had the form of a man, but unfinished, with the barest suggestion of a nose and eye sockets-no true features other than the number 32-B etched into its forehead. It was gray-fleshed and without clothes. And it turned as if it had no awareness of Jones and his pointing gun whatsoever, shambling off in the direction of the elevators and stairwell.

  "What the blast was that?" Tableau hissed after the thing had trudged past him. He felt Yuki crushing herself against his side, as if he might protect her. "I thought it was a ghost!" he said.

  "A belf," Smithee whispered, recognizing the bio-engineered life form as something remotely like himself and Jones, though on another branch of the plastic evolutionary tree.

  Jones moved closer to the open door and began to peek inside, immediately jerked back as another figure lurched out of the darkened room beyond. It brushed against his arm but again seemed unaware of or uninterested in his presence, following its brother down the hallway, identical except for the number 21-A that Jones had glimpsed on its forehead.

  He ducked into the doorway once more, and this time could see that the room served as a miniature theater. On its screen, however, there was only a fizzing and crackling sea of static, which once or twice flashed an image that didn't quite solidify. Accompanying these flashes was a burst of sound that suggested a multitude of voices moaning or chanting all at once, but the static drowned them out again.

  There were a few heads silhouetted against the screen. One of these last remaining audience members stood, turned awkwardly, and started walking toward the doorway. Jones stepped back to let the faceless being pass, and stagger off down the hallway in the same direction the other two had gone, disappearing around the corner as they had. For the third time they heard the metal stairwell door squeal open and bang shut.