Nigel Findley

by Out Of Nippon

  She glanced at the clock. Eleven in the morning. That meant she’d had, what, about five hours of sleep. Normally that was more than enough to see her through the day, as long as she didn’t make a habit of it. But today she felt as drained and fuzzy-headed as if she’d just closed her eyes. Well, I suppose that makes sense, she thought. It’s not as if my sleep was restful. She took another mouthful of water, then sat up and ran a hand through her dishevelled hair.

  Did they get out alive, she found herself wondering, those wreckers or whoever they were ? She shook her head at the thought. How could she have mixed emotions on the matter, she asked herself. The raiders had attacked her corporation — well, not really her corporation, but the one that employed her, and that was almost the same. They’d killed the scientists in the Special Projects lab, hadn’t they? (She shut her eyes, tried to suppress a mental image of the figures thrashing and dying in the fire and smoke of the containment lab.) They’d killed the security guards, shot them dead for trying to do their job.

  But they didn’t kill you, did they? The thought came unbidden from some secret part of her mind. The one called Sergei had wanted to, but the blond leader had ordered him to leave her and Toshikazu alive. Why?

  The Nagara security chief, a harsh, scar-faced man that everybody called Yamato-san, had asked that again and again during the interminable questioning that had followed the raid. The guards had led Nikki and Toshikazu up from the basement to the ground-floor security office, where they’d been questioned —interrogated, she corrected — for almost five hours. Alone and then together, they’d had to repeat over and over again just what had happened — sometimes to stone-faced security personnel, sometimes into a tape’ recorder, and once in front of a video camera. At the time, Nikki had found herself wondering when she’d be hooked up to a lie detector. But then she’d realized that a corporation as sophisticated as Nagara probably didn’t need anything as primitive as a polygraph. (A voice stress analyzer, she guessed, maybe built into the tape recorder. They wouldn’t have missed a trick like that.) Yunato-san had sat in several of the questioning sessions, occasionally dropping in queries of his own.

  And those queries had all come back to one point: Why had the “wreckers” left her and Toshikazu alive? She didn’t have an answer, of course, and she could sense the security chief’s frustration and anger at her repeated response of “I don’t know.” At one time anger had flared within her, and she’d drawn breath to demand whether Yamato thought she was involved somehow. But then she’d looked into Yamato’s icily furious eyes. The words had died on her lips, and the anger burning in her chest had been extinguished by cold fear. They couldn’t suspect that, could they?

  Of course they could, another part of her brain had answered. Suspicion of betrayal seemed to be part of The Japanese psyche. (Had it always been like that? she wondered. She didn’t think so, but she couldn’t be sure when the change had occurred.) So she’d had no good answer for Yamato-san — not one she wanted to tell him. She had some ideas — speculations, more like wild guesses really — but she felt no urge to share them with him.

  Why had the raiders let them live? It was almost as if the attackers had specific targets — the Special projects lab, and the scientists who worked there. The security guards were killed mainly because they were trying to kill the raiders. And Nikki and Toshikazu? They were innocent bystanders—not the targets of the raid, and noncombatants. Would wreckers have acted that way? Not the ones who’d assaulted Tomita Technologies. There, anyone unfortunate enough to encounter the raiders was brutally slaughtered. These raiders were different. They weren’t slow to deal death if it was warranted — according to their criteria — but they were selective as to their victims. Interesting.

  She’d kept those thoughts, unfocused as they were, to herself. Eventually, the security guards — even Yamato-saw — had seemed to tire of the interrogation. She knew that her story and Toshikazu’s matched on all points — they were both telling the truth, after all — and the guards had eventually had to accept the fact. It was almost six in the morning when they’d been released, with a final harsh injunction not to talk to anyone about what had happened. As they’d left the security office together, Toshikazu had taken her hand and given it a reassuring squeeze, and then they’d gone their separate ways. Nikki had taken a bus home to her apartment, and collapsed into bed. And then the nightmares had come.

  She climbed from bed and padded into the bathroom. A splash of cold water on her face helped clear her head a little. From the cabinet she took a tube of extra-strength aspirin, and poured one out onto her palm—then hesitated and added a second. Her mouth was still dry when she tried to swallow them, and even a whole glass of water didn’t stop them from sticking uncomfortably in the back of her throat. She looked at herself in the mirror, saw the dark circles under her blood-shot eyes. Don’t I look a treat? she thought. People will think I spent the night in a sake shop. She glanced back through the bathroom door at the bed. What she really needed was more sleep. Why not just call in sick? But more sleep probably means more dreams, she thought with a chill. She didn’t need that. With a sigh, she started readying herself to face the day.

  As she dressed, she considered turning on the radio to see if she could catch some news. Normally she had the radio on while she ate breakfast, tuned to the Voice of America. When she’d first moved to Japan, she’d always listened to the local radio stations, to practice her japanese. But with time she’d noticed that the news those stations reported was always local in character, always focussed on events within Japan, or even solely within Tokyo itself. There was rarely anything from the world outside, and almost nothing about what was going on in the United States. And when there was news from the States, it was always about something that related somehow to Japan and Japanese interests: grain or wood shipments, or new trade agreements between the two nations. Never anything about what Nikki considered important — like the chaos that was wracking California and the whole west coast.

  That was when she’d tuned her radio to the Voice of America. Originally intended for American servicemen overseas, she thought she’d remembered reading, the Voice had now become the best source of news lor American civilians abroad. Originating from the new national capital of Houston, the Voice was beamed to several of the few communications satellites that still functioned, and broadcast throughout the world. presumably, anywhere around the globe that Americans had radios —and where radios still work, she mentally added — they could tune in to the Voice and keep up to date on what was going on back at home. A tew years ago, Nikki would never have thought that she’d become one of those so tied to the States that they couldn’t live without American news. But now, with the upheavals all over the world, she found it very reassuring to be able to hear frank reports on what was going on.

  It still amazed her, but the local Japanese radio stations, and even the national TV network, NHK, never had anything substantive to say about what the Voice of America called the Possibility Wars. Sure, sometimes NHK or the others would make some coy remark about Kazvaru — “the Change” — having some negative impact on international trade, or something like that, but that was it. Again, nothing that didn’t relate directly to Japanese interests, Nikki thought. For the hundredth time, she wondered how Japan seemed to have avoided the chaos that was wracking the rest of the world.

  Nobody seemed to know how it had happened; or, ; if they did, Voice of America wasn’t sharing the knowledge. All that Nikki knew was that, almost two years ago now, what the world thought of as reality began to change. The upheavals were as massive as they were : disorienting. Physical laws seemed to change on an immense scale, over huge regions of the world. And even in those changes there was little sense of consistency. In some parts of the globe, strange technologies that might have come directly from 1930s-vintage pulp fiction worked reliably; in others, virtually nothing more technically advanced than a pair of scissors or a crossbow would function.


  It wasn’t only the physical laws that had changed, Nikki knew. Societies altered, seemingly overnight, and even individuals underwent horrifying changes, “or so claimed the Voice of America. At first, Nikki had discounted what she’d been hearing, trying desperately to believe that she was listening to an elaborate and grotesque practical joke. But there was no way she could close her mind for long to what was happening. Nobody could continue a hoax for so long. She had to face the facts. Parts of Southeast Asia had become a realm of nightmares become real. Dinosaurs and sentient lizards hunted the east coast and around the Great Lakes, much of the west coast, and parts of the Canadian north. Dragons flew the skies of the British Isles, while Viking raiders sailed the North Sea. France and much of Western Europe had become a cruel and twisted techno-theocracy. And a reborn Egyptian empire, unlike that imagined by any pharaoh, was st riving to extend its influence throughout the Middle I last, reinforced by weapons based on science that, by · ill the physical laws that Nikki had studied, simply shouldn’t work.

  Some areas hadn’t been affected — at least not obviously. Japan, for one. Russia and the newly-independent countries that had once made up the Soviet Union. China. Australia and India. South Africa. So far, those regions had suffered little directly — although, of course, few escaped the effects as neighbors, allies and trade partners underwent Kawaru.

  Many of the regions that had undergone the Change were fighting back, struggling to defeat the strange forces that were attempting to alter the world beyond recognition. That struggle was what the Voice of America called the Possibility Wars. (Why “Possibility?” Nikki wondered again. The word seemed to have some immense significance, but one that was beyond her understanding.) Here she was in her safe little corporate-subsidized , apartment, with her corporate-supplied computer system — light-years better than anything she could possibly have owned at home — and her sophisticated home entertainment system. It would be easy enough to keep her focus on the here and now, and pretend I hat nothing outside these walls — or this city, or this country—had any real significance. That, she thought, was what the vast majority of her colleagues seemed satisfied doing. But, although turning her back on the rest of the world would have its comforts, there was no way she could do that. Even if the Possibility Wars didn’t directly affect her, she still felt it was her … well, her duty, in a way, to learn what she could about how her home, and the rest of the world, was faring.

  But not this morning, she told herself firmly. She was too tired, too stressed to worry about crises half a world away. Enough chaos right here and now without looking for it elsewhere.

  *

  It was almost eleven forty-five when Nikki finally walked into the Nagara Building lobby — almost four hours after the official start of the business day. There were advantages to coming in this late, of course — on top of getting at least some sleep. She’d missed the playing of the corporate anthem—a particularly brash and bombastic thing with lots of blaring trumpets and clashing cymbals — over the building’s public address system, an eight-thirty ritual. She also didn’t have to weather the accusing looks she always received for not attending the semi-official morning calisthenics class. (Company anthems, and group calisthenics. She still found the concepts rather amusing. When she’d first come to this country, she’d known that Japanese corporations had their own ideas of how things were done, but knowing and experiencing them first-hand were two different things.) As she crossed the lobby to the elevator, she saw two of the white-armored security guards. They were standing a few meters apart against the back wall, facing the main doors. For a moment, Nikki was puzzled. Normally there were no armored guards in the lobby. There were two guards always stationed at the reception desk — they were in their accustomed places today, she noticed — but what she thought of as the “stormtroopers” never came into the public areas during the business day. As ifNagara’s embarrassed that they exist, or as if the corporation doesn’t want to scare casual visitors, she thought. Today, though, there were two, just hanging around casually as if they had no better place to be.

  But then she looked at the guards again. Although they were just standing there, there was little casual abut them. What she’d first thought was a relaxed posture wasn’t; their stance was poised, like a karate master, ready to move in any direction at an instant’s notice. Their right hands, seeming just to hang casually at their sides, were centimeters away from the butts of their sidearms. And their helmets, with their mirrored visors down, were scanning back and forth ceaselessly. She felt a chill on the nape of her neck as she realized that their positions in the lobby were just as purposeful as their stance. From where they’re standing, lliey have perfect line of sight — and line of fire — to everywhere in the lobby, she understood. And there was no risk of either one getting in the other’s line of fire should anything happen. They were taking the events t >1 last night very seriously. As well they should, another part of her brain added.

  She suddenly realized that she’d come to a complete halt in the middle of the lobby, and was staring at the guards. Both their helmets had turned toward her, and lie could almost feel their cold and steady eyes boring into her through their mirrored faceplates. With an effort, she forced herself to move. She could still feel their eyes on her back as she waited for the elevator to arrive in response to her security badge, an unpleasant sensation like someone brushing the back of her neck with a feather. The feeling faded only when she’d stepped into the elevator and the doors had closed on her.

  She shook her head to banish the lingering discomfort she felt. They weren’t watching me, not me as me, she told herself. They only cared about me as someone in the urea they were supposed to guard. Of course that was it. lint still she couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d known who she was, and were giving her their complete attention.

  The elevator reached the first sub-basement level, and the doors opened. As she stepped out into the corridor, Nikki found herself stopping again. Something’s missing … It took her a moment to realize what part of her mind was expecting. No smoke in the air. Of course not, the building’s air conditioning would have scrubbed every trace of the acrid smoke from the air. And — she glanced at the white floor — no blood stains. The last time she’d passed here, on the way to the security office for her interrogation, there’d been smudges and streaks of dark red, blood from the wounded raiders, and from the guards who’d been after them. (Did they make it? she found herself wondering again, then ruthlessly forced the thought from her mind.) She shook her head again to clear it, and headed for her lab.

  The other members of Group Five were already there, of course, busily at work. Omi was sitting at the control terminal; Ito and Toshima had one of the automated analyzers open, and were making delicate adjustments to its interior; Matsukara and Zakoji were preparing another sample for analysis; and Bojo was reading a report as it came off the printer. They all looked up as she walked in, eyes and face expressionless. Then, as one, they looked away and went back to their work.

  What the hell was that about? Nikki wondered. Sure, she’d never been on the best of terms, socially, with her colleagues, but normally they’d at least offer her a polite “Konichi-wa” when she arrived in the morning. She looked around for Toshikazu.

  At least he gave her a warm smile, from over at the far lab table where he was handling a pipette with his usual economy of motion. She walked over to him and asked, “What’s going on?”

  He shrugged, apparently unperturbed. “Perhaps they got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.” His voice was casual—purposely casual, Nikki thought. “Why don’t you check your e-mail?” he suggested.

  “What do you …?” she started to ask, then shut her mouth. Something’s going on here, and I don’t like it. She nodded. “I’ll do that,” she told him, forcing her voice into the same casual tone he’d used. “Talk to you later?”

  He nodded. Count on it, his expression seemed to

  say.r />
  She shrugged and walked over to her “office.” Not an office really, just a couple of six-foot-high dividers attached to the wall, forming a three-sided cubicle around her desk. She set her attache case down on the

  I floor, shrugged into her knee-length labcoat, and settled herself in the chair. She hit a key on the computer keyboard, and the Nagara Corporation logo appeared on the screen. Quickly she logged onto the system, and brought up the corporate electronic mail program.

  Her eyebrows raised in surprise. There were the usual array of messages in her in-box — scheduling

  queries, requisitions, and the other day-to-day matters she had to handle as a workgroup leader — but with them was something out of the ordinary. A general-broadcast message, issued by the office of Nagara’s chief Executive Officer, Kubota-san, sent to every employee of the corporation. Ignoring the other messages, she cursored down to that entry and hit the key to display the full text on her screen.

  As she read through it, her eyebrows rose even further, and she sat back in her chair. That isn’t right, she thought, that isn’t right at all. She scanned the message again, paying more attention to her transla-I ion to make sure she picked up on every nuance of the language.

  To all Nagara employees, it read. Last night at approximately one A.M., Nagara Corporation became the victim of ii heinous act of sabotage. A group of a dozen wreckers entered the building, by means that have yet to be established, and inflicted damage upon Nagara’s Special Projects department. This damage, although not serious, was widespread, impacting the Special Projects department’s ability to perform its vital work. It is believed that the wreckers’ target was the department’s computer system, which contains all the data that the group has collected over the past months.