Deadstock (punktown) Page 7

  "Mr. Stake?" He looked up to see a woman approaching him, smiling. She wore something like the same blazer the students wore, but with a skirt of matching solid black. Stake felt embarrassed, as though the woman had caught him luxuriating in this churning sea of teenage femininity. "I'm Janice Poole," she introduced herself, as she briskly clicked closer.

  He stood and extended his hand. "Thanks for meeting with me."

  She shook his hand. Her grip was strong. "I know John Fukuda; a very pleasant and charming man. He allows me to tour my biology students through his facility every year. I told him I'd be happy to cooperate in any way. Yuki is one of my favorite students-a very dear girl. I hate to see her upset like this. I really don't want her work to suffer as a result."

  "Mr. Fukuda recommended you as someone I could talk with discreetly, so I thought I might ask you some questions about a classmate of Yuki's, who she mentioned is also in your biology class. A girl named Krimson?"

  Janice Poole gave an odd smile. "Krimson. Yes. Well, we could go back inside to my office, Mr. Stake-the school will be open another hour before it locks up for the day. Or would you rather go to your office, or a cafe nearby?"

  His office. He didn't have one. His flat was all he needed, and he never met with his clients there. "Do you know a good cafe?"

  "Sure. Care to take my car? And I can drop you back here afterwards."

  "Certainly; thanks."

  As they drove in her sporty new hovercar, Stake stole glances at the woman beside him. He liked Janice Poole's profile of strong pointed nose and pointed chin. He liked that she had not dyed the gray that prematurely and attractively threaded her shortish, shaggy dark hair. He judged her to be older than himself, in her late thirties. Her skin was very white, her figure inside her sharp uniform apparently full and womanly, and she was nearly the same height he was. She seemed confident. Sure of her place in the world. That always intimidated him about people a little. Or maybe it just mystified him. In that regard, a human could sometimes be more alien to him than a nonhuman being.

  They seated themselves at a small table in an upscale cafe; their young waitress sported a pixel tattoo that covered her entire face, making of it a movie screen. She could probably play any number of film loops across its surface, but right now it showed a close-up of the shifting and glistening feathers of a peacock's tail. "Terrible," Stake muttered, watching her move away to submit their order. "She'd be beautiful without that thing, as far as I can tell."

  "Beauty is subjective," Janice chuckled. "My nephew has one of those on his face; he plays vids of his favorite music groups. I saw a man on the street who was playing porn vids on his." A smile. It had a kind of open suggestiveness to it. In that moment, Stake thought: she's been to bed with John Fukuda. A "pleasant and charming man."

  "I just don't understand people defacing their faces," he said.

  "It's a fad. They'll have them removed, and go on to something else." She leaned her elbows forward on the table. "So… Krimson."

  "Yes. Yuki told me she disappeared about a week ago-the same time that Yuki's doll vanished from her locker. She tells me the girl is hostile toward her. Since you know both girls, I was wondering what you thought the chances are of this girl taking the doll-maybe for its monetary value-and running away from home. Yuki said she has an older boyfriend."

  "I don't know about any boyfriend, but I suspect I know why this girl might be hostile toward Yuki. Her name is Krimson Tableau, and her father owns a company here in Punktown that raises and harvests battery animals. Tableau Meats."

  "Ah. yes."

  "Fukuda Bioforms recently purchased and assimilated the old Alvine Products company. So now they're direct competitors in the same market, in the same city."

  "Well, then my hunch seems valid. But there's a complication. Yuki said one of Krimson's friends has heard Krimson on her Ouija phone. Which, if true, would indicate that Krimson hasn't run away, but is dead. And at her young age, dead could very well mean murdered."

  "Hm." Janice nodded absent-mindedly to the waitress as she placed their coffees in front of them. The girl's face was now a soundlessly pounding ocean surf. "Well, there are some bogus Ouija phone services. And the fragments of voices the kids hear on those things are wide open to interpretation. So I don't know how reliable that theory would be."

  "I know. I'm not too trusting of that source, myself, though I have to admit I know little about those phones. Please don't repeat this to Mr. Fukuda, but Yuki even swears she's heard her own mother on one of them."

  "Really? That's rather spooky. Speaking of murdered: did you know that Yuki's mother was murdered? And please do me a favor, too, and don't tell him I told you that. I don't know that he cares to have people discuss it."

  Stake set down his mug and looked at Janice intently. "Murdered? No, I didn't know that. She only told me her mom died when she was a baby."

  "When she was a baby? I thought I'd heard it was more recent than that, like four years ago or something. Maybe Yuki told you that to hide the more painful reality. Anyway, yes, her mom was killed. I guess they never found out who did it. My knowledge is pretty limited, so it might be unfair of me to bring it up at all."

  "Huh." Stake stared into her face, lost in thought. She was watching him very intently herself, and it was as though he could see himself reflected in her eyes. Before he realized what was happening, so distracted was he by this string of revelations, he saw Janice's expression become one of surprise.

  "Oh my God-you're a changeling! A chameleon!"

  Instantly, violently, he looked away. But she reached over and took his hand.

  "I'm sorry; I don't mean to make you self-conscious. Please look at me again."

  "I'd rather let this pass." How much did he look like her already? The long pointed nose? The pointed chin? Maybe even gray threads through his short dark hair? Maybe even his somewhat olive skin gone ivory white?

  She squeezed his hand to reassure him. "It's remarkable. Really, I'm not repulsed. I'm fascinated."

  "Well, you are a biologist."

  "I didn't mean it that way. Maybe a little. So, were you genetically designed for this, or-"

  "No," he said, a little too harshly. He looked at her again. "I'm not a belf." It was a derisive slang for bio-engineered life form. "I'm a mutant." But was that much better than being a belf?

  "Yes, I see. Ah, Caro-"

  "…turbida," he finished.

  "Restless flesh."

  "Confused flesh."

  She still held his hand. "Please don't be offended. Do I look like it bothers me?"

  "No. But it bothers me." That was too frank. Women brought that out in him. Especially those he found attractive. As long as he was spilling his guts, he went on, "I was born in Tin Town. The mutie slums. My father was normal, but my mother was a mutant. She died when I was a kid."

  "Very sorry. So your dad raised you."

  "Not really. He sort of lost himself in drugs after that. He loved her a lot, see; he didn't care what she was. So I pretty much grew up on the streets. I avoided the gang thing, and I ended up enlisting in the military as soon as I could, to get out of Tin Town the best way I knew how."

  "Was your Mom a. could she change like this, too?"

  "No. She had physical deformities. But no 'gifts,' if you want to call it that."

  "Wow." Janice digested all this. "I appreciate your candor, Mr. Stake. Can I ask your first name?"

  "Jeremy."

  "Jeremy," she repeated, staring at him so raptly that he couldn't stop himself from flicking looks at her eyes again and again, despite how much he had trained himself.

  The waitress returned to ask if they were enjoying their coffee and if they needed anything else. Her eyes, in a field of yellow flowers rippled by a summer breeze, looked confused, as though she thought another customer had come in to replace Stake. The woman's twin brother, perhaps.

  Janice dismissed the waitress, and then whispered to Stake, "Hey, do you want to get ou
t of here?"

  She still hadn't let go of his hand.

  He had been wandering around her living room, admiring her collection of paintings (they apparently paid teachers unusually well at the Arbury School), but he rejoined her at the bar. "What would you like?" she asked. He noticed a bottle of bright yellow Ha Jiin wine; he could tell by the giant centipede coiled inside the bottle, preserved by the alcohol. He tapped the bottle with a finger, and Janice poured some into a small glass. "Be careful, it's very potent. And did you know it's supposed to be an aphrodisiac? I'm sure that long, thick centipede has nothing to do with the belief."

  He sipped the barest few molecules of his drink but it still took his breath away. He hadn't had any of this in a few years; not since angry vets had protested it being stocked at the bar in the Legion of Veterans Post 69. Why put money in their former enemies' pockets? This, in spite of the fact that it was probably their allies, the Jin Haa, who had exported it.

  He noticed a bottle of sake amongst the diverse collection of bottles. "How well do you know Mr. Fukuda?" he asked in an offhand way.

  "How well does anyone know anyone, Jeremy?"

  She was being playful, or evasive. He turned around, and she was standing close, too close, a glass of white wine in her own hand. He knew his face held onto the change, a little or a lot. When he concentrated on it, his mind could reach out and tell. He could also activate the mirror feature on his wrist comp's screen to look and be more sure- and he could even call up his natural face on that screen, and pore over it until he slipped this mask-but he did not raise his arm. He was a little embarrassed to do so. To show that it bothered him that much. He had revealed enough vulnerability already.

  "I like it," Janice purred. She set her glass down on the mini bar.

  "Like what?"

  "That you look like me now. I don't know; I find it very intriguing." She took the glass from his hand, rested it beside hers, and then her arms went around him. Their twinned mouths came together.

  In her bed, she straddled him with her full breasts swaying down heavily in his face. He sucked at one of them as if to feed, his craving making him an infant. It had been a while since a woman had gone to bed with him. And the last time had been a prostie. Not many women found his turbulent flesh so "intriguing." As she undulated atop him, Janice said huskily, "When I was thirteen, I used to kiss my reflection in the bathroom mirror as I-you know-touched myself. Huh. I guess I sort of lost my virginity to myself." Her eyes didn't leave his face. "Look at me. please," she said.

  His closed eyes dutifully opened and stared up at her. She leaned lower and dragged her nipples across his cheeks. She grinned, her shaggy hair falling about her face.

  "We're all narcissistic," she said in a lustful voice, more like panting. "We're all just masturba-tors."

  Yes, thought Stake. Because we're all alone. Even when we're together.

  And that made him think of Thi. And it was a good thing he did not change his appearance simply by thinking of another person, as some who suffered his disorder did. Or right now, Janice would wonder why he was beginning to resemble a Ha Jiin woman instead of herself.

  She dug her fingers into his breasts, which had swelled up in a fair imitation of her own, and her undulations grew more intense. Beneath him, under her driving weight, Stake felt her sheets rub against him. When she had led him by the hand into her bedroom and pulled back the blankets, she had revealed that her bed linens were sheets of pink, living skin. A thin flexible tube ran from both the mattress sheet and the cover sheet to a nutrient tank in the corner that kept the bio-engineered flesh alive. Stake had never been in a bed with sheets of this nature before. It made him feel all the more infantile and helpless. Inside a womb.

  Their entanglements grew more varied. Finally becoming more actively involved, less passive, Stake shifted behind Janice. He preferred looking at the back of her head, felt strengthened by the break in their eye contact. He remained there until he climaxed hard against her. They collapsed to the bed together, he on top of her, sucking at air. Janice had squeezed the mattress sheet in her fists, and when she unclenched her hands she saw that her nails had dug into the smooth skin. Beads of blood rose from the little wounds. "Damn," she said.

  Stake lifted his head to look. "I'm sorry." She reached up behind her to stroke his face. "Don't worry, it will heal."

  CHAPTER SIX

  shadow city

  Beneath Punktown there was, in effect, a shadow version of itself. When they'd run out of room to build sideways or upwards, city planners had looked downwards instead. This underground district had come to be known as Subtown. Its borders were not nearly as extensive as those of the city proper overhead, but it still encompassed a sizable area.

  The rays of the sun did not reach down here; its citizens, many of whom might not venture above-ground for months at a time, lived and worked under the artificial glow of lamps set into a concrete sky. As evening fell, some of these lamps dimmed and others were shut off completely, to give something of the effect of night (though Subtown was not made so dark as to give criminals undue cover for their activities). Because of the limits set by the ceiling, buildings were smaller, tending toward flat-roofed tenement structures, often with shops on the ground floor. There were factories and warehouses, too, but these had not been safe in their subterranean shelter when financial plagues had swept through the city, and manufacturers had migrated in flocks to the Outback Colony or even to overcrowded and much-blighted Earth in a reverse colonization. Wherever labor was cheaper, or perhaps restrictions were laxer about how many living workers companies were required to employ to balance out their automatonic laborers, whom they didn't have to pay at all.

  Behind the Perez Valve Company there was a pair of loading docks, but these had been claimed by other street people, who had used scrap material from the derelict factory's inoperative trash zapper to build enclosed shelters upon the elevated platforms. So last night, the homeless person had simply lain against the factory's graffiti-splashed flank, using his bent arm for a pillow. He didn't have to worry about being rained upon, after all, and the temperature was regulated down here, always comfortable unless there was the occasional glitch in climate control. Therefore, he didn't really need to build a shelter. He simply slept in this alley or that, at most pulling a plastic tarp over himself. When he had first found the blue plastic tarp, he had dragged it behind him loosely in his wanderings, but later he realized that it was better to roll it in a tube and carry it with him that way during the hours that corresponded with daylight. Finally, he had had the notion to tear a hole in the center of the sheet and wear it over his head like a long poncho, covering his previously naked body.

  He had awoken hungry, as he did every day. So hungry. Yesterday he had seen two street people scrounging through a trash zapper behind an Indian restaurant. The spicy smells of cooking from inside had made his innards gurgle, but when he had shambled toward the two men to join them, they had yelled and thrown trash at him to chase him off. Forlornly, he had moved away.

  Now, as always, he tried to keep to the alleys as he navigated Subtown. Peering out from one of these, he spotted an outdoors cafe (if it could be spoken of as such), spilling onto the sidewalk. He lingered in the alley mouth until a nicely dressed couple got up from their table, leaving behind a little coffee in their mugs and half a croissant on one plate. He emerged from the alley and went to the table, snatching up the piece of croissant just before the waiter reappeared and started shouting at him. He hurried away, glancing over his shoulder to see the waiter protectively gather up some slips of colored paper that the nicely dressed couple had also left behind them on the table.

  He ducked into another narrow passage between buildings, and there brought the croissant up to his face. Some of it had flaked away in his tight grip, but he studied the smashed bit that lay in his palm. He stared and stared at it, so hungry. But he could not think of how to get the succulent morsel into that empty place that yawned inside
his body.

  Two youths stepped into the end of the alley, laughing, holding a woman's handbag between them. As they clawed through the pouch, little bits of this and that dropped to the alley floor. Coins. A container of mints. A little glass bottle that smashed with a tinkle and emitted a strong flowery scent.

  Giggling, babbling. Their happiness inspired the homeless person. He moved forward out of the shadows, shuffled toward them. Maybe they could help him. Show him what to do.

  "Whoa!" said one of the youths, looking up at the homeless person's approach.

  "Dung, man," the other laughed, to hide the fact that he'd been startled. "What the hell you want, you mutated freak?"

  The homeless person stopped a few paces away, almost the same height as the two boys but bulkier. The rustling plastic cloak he wore made him look bulkier still. He lifted his arm, extended his fist and opened it, revealing the smashed remnant of croissant there. He wanted to make the noises they made, but he could not. All he could do was hope that they understood his mute gesture. Helped him to feed, and appease this perplexing hunger.

  "Thanks, freak, but I'm not hungry," the darker-skinned of the two boys said. He stepped up to the homeless person and slapped the piece of croissant out of his hand. It went flying, landed on the ground. The boy then backed off, sputtering laughter. They both laughed.

  The homeless person looked down at the morsel on the ground. He then looked up again, and moved closer to the boys imploringly. So confused. So hungry. He continued to hold out the empty hand in which the croissant had rested.