“Eleanor-san, Kazu-san. Your tea.” Grandma somehow found places to put two full cups in the mess on the kitchen table. Kazu and Masao stood by the doorway to the living room, muttering together.
Eleanor sipped the bitter green brew and hoped it would clear her head. There didn’t seem to be anything she could do at the moment, which made it harder to stay awake.
“Mari is a good girl. She wouldn’t do anything stupid,” declared Grandpa, as though that made it so. But his stubborn mouth was unsteady, and his tufted eyebrows twitched as he blinked.
“Did you say anything to her about those implants?” Yoshiko suddenly turned to Eleanor.
“What implants?”
“On Saturday, she said she wanted to get one of those phone implants. You know, the ones you put under your skin.”
Grandma looked puzzled. “How would you get a phone under your skin?”
Hastily, Eleanor explained. “It’s a tiny receiver that a doctor attaches to your aural nerve. So you can hear messages without having to hold up a phone to your ear.”
“They cost millions of yen,” went on Yoshiko. “So of course I said we couldn’t afford it. She didn’t make a fuss. But maybe she was upset.”
“She didn’t say anything to me,” said Eleanor. “I don’t think that’s why she left.” She was remembering how urgently Mari had responded to the phone call on Sunday. Something important.
“How would you know?” said Yoshiko. “You hadn’t seen her for six months.”
“Yoshiko,” said Grandma reprovingly.
“Well, it’s true.” Yoshiko set her jaw stubbornly, looking exactly like Grandpa. “She always pokes her long nose in things.”
“She’s part of the family, so that’s all right,” said Grandma soothingly.
Eleanor decided she didn’t want to argue with Yoshiko at the moment. “When did the … accident with the other girls happen?” she asked Kazu.
“The policeman said last Friday.” Kazu sat down at the table with a sigh. He was still wearing his grimy factory overalls. “We should have insisted Mari stay on Sunday night.”
“I don’t see that matters,” said Grandma. She began to fold little boxes using junk mail from the local supermarkets, patiently pressing each fold and making sure all edges were even. “The child would have gone anyway.”
“The policeman …” began Yoshiko.
“Detective. From the Religious Affairs Department,” interrupted Grandpa.
“He said we should tell him if we hear anything from Mari, or if any of her friends call her,” said Yoshiko.
Religious Affairs. Eleanor had a faint memory of a grating voice saying, Assistant Inspector Ishihara, West Station Police, Religious Affairs.
“That detective—he wasn’t a tall, skinny man with a sour expression, was he?”
Yoshiko shook her head. “He was very nice. A solid man, mature.”
Still, she would call Ishihara the next morning and ask him what they should do. She’d helped the police with Nakamura’s murder, now they could help her.
“Mother, will you stop doing that!” Yoshiko snatched the junk mail pages away from Grandma. “It gets on my nerves.”
“It steadies my nerves.” Grandma stood up with dignity and went into the bathroom. “I’m having my bath.” Her voice sounded muffled from behind the sliding door.
Eleanor stood up a little unsteadily and beckoned Masao into the living room. Threads of incense smoke curled white against the dark wood of the family altar. Three boxes of cakes and a basket of enormous, perfectly shaped strawberries crowded the offerings ledge. Any gifts received by the household were automatically left on the altar first.
Eleanor kept her voice low. “Are we staying all night?”
“They’re worried,” said Masao. “They need my support.”
“I know. But I’m really tired.”
“If you didn’t work such ridiculous hours, you might be more use when you’re home,” he snapped.
“Last night wasn’t my fault. There was an accident …”
“Can’t you ask them to call someone else? I never see you.” He took a deep breath, then swallowed whatever he had been going to say. His hand traced the outline of her face, around her jaw, across her cheekbone. “I don’t like to see you wearing yourself out for a job. That’s all it is, you know. It’s not the most important thing in the world.”
“I know, but …” She had no idea how to finish the sentence. But it’s important to me? But it’s all I’ve got? The calm face of the little Kannon statue in the altar offered no help.
“I wouldn’t mind, you know.” He dropped his voice further. “If you decided to leave Tomita. We’d manage somehow.”
She blinked at him, astonished. “I never knew …” I never knew you felt like that. How could she know? They rarely talked about Important Things, as opposed to the comfortable minutiae of daily living. You were supposed to understand how your spouse felt by emotional osmosis, or something.
“We’d have to move out of the Betta.” The idea horrified her.
He shrugged. “People live outside the Bettas still.”
“I couldn’t leave Tomita,” she said firmly. “It would be madness.”
He sighed and hugged her to him. She relaxed into the hot, sweaty circle of his arms. She didn’t want to think about the future right now. All she wanted was a nice sleep.
“Just take it easy,” he mumbled, his breath warm in her hair.
Ishihara took the outside route from the subway entrance to West Station on Wednesday morning. There was an underground connection, but he preferred the heat.
Living in the Betta, commuting in the train, working in the station—sometimes it seemed unreal. Too clean and two-dimensional.
Like one of those manga that Junta had always been watching when Ishihara got home from work. His mother thought he was studying, but as far as Ishihara could tell, all he did was watch discs, the VR mask covering his eyes and ears so that the only Junta-like part of his face was the small, half-open mouth.
The manga all featured superhuman heroes, often cyber-enhanced with ninjalike powers, who battled shadowy forces with lasers. The setting was usually a futuristic Tokyo, metal towers and streamlined traffic systems. Very similar, in fact, to post-Quake Tokyo. But the manga artists hadn’t thought about what it might be like down in the streets.
Last time he went to Tokyo, he’d felt lost. It wasn’t the high-rise canyons that disoriented him—Osaka had those, too—but the archaic, angular kanji on shop fronts and awnings. He felt like he was on the set of an old Hong Kong movie. And down in the sludge and among the street stalls, he heard more Chinese than Japanese. After the Quake it seemed Japan was less interested in the world than ever. And yet more people from all over came there, to get their piece of the Seikai boom.
In any case, sometimes he needed to make sure that the real world still existed, outside the Betta and the underground. He needed to confirm that the strange new ideas of reality could not invade his own and change what he knew to be true. The gritty asphalt under his shoes, the stink of exhaust fumes and urine in the airless canyons between tall buildings, the pinched faces of people living in cardboard boxes; these things were real and comforting in their solidity.
Not like the manga. Or cyberspace. Or cultish metaphysics. That’s what you get from a generation who grew up with plenty of everything. Everything material, he reminded himself. They certainly didn’t get enough of the things he and his parents had taken for granted—time to talk to friends, a family to come home to, parents who might be overbearing but who were always there when needed.
Like he’d been there for Junta?
The memory of his son jumped at him, catching him unawares as it always did. He hadn’t been there for Junta. At least, that’s what his wife said. She was right; no policeman could ever give enough time to both job and family. And Junta looked elsewhere for what he needed.
He blew a drop of sweat off the end of his nose. Bloody ironic, w
asn’t it. He was still chasing cult masters, and his own son’s disappearance proved the job’s futility.
The dilapidated front of West Station was sandwiched between a business hotel and a banking office block. Its cracked, stained concrete oozed in the humid air, and the air-conditioning in the lobby was always at half strength. The young female constable on front desk tried not to wrinkle her nose as Ishihara walked past in his sweat-gray shirt.
Beppu was waiting at Ishihara’s desk to go over the Silver Angels case, the fluorescent light reflecting off his bald patch.
He pointed at the screen. “Here’s what came in last night. Basically what we heard at the briefing yesterday afternoon.”
Interviews with the parents of the dead, interviews with other students. Their own evidence that the dead Angels had known the apartment would be empty before the owner left. No evidence as to how they got past Betta security. No further information about the group as a whole.
“Don’t take this the wrong way …” began Beppu, cutting into his thoughts.
“That means you’re going to insult me.”
Beppu nodded. “What’s new? No, seriously, Ishihara, if you feel this case is not … I mean, if you think you might find it hard to stay objective with this one …”
It hit Ishihara that Beppu was talking about Junta. His immediate reaction was to say mind your own business. But he had been thinking about Junta more than usual. It might be a good excuse to get out of this case, which looked like going nowhere fast.
Yeah, and how many times in your life have you ducked out of a case because you didn’t like it?
“I’m fine,” he said gruffly.
“Okay. I gotta ask, you know.”
“Yeah, once is enough.” Ishihara looked back at the screen.
Beppu leaned back in his chair, giving Ishihara some space. “Have you thought about the house?”
“House?”
“By the sea. There’s only one more in the complex. If you don’t put down a deposit, someone else will.” After years of poring over catalogues and attending information sessions, Beppu had finally decided where he was going to retire. Now he considered it his duty to make sure Ishihara did the same.
“I don’t think I can stand being neighbors with you for the rest of my life.” Ishihara tried to make it a joke. “Get off my back. I’ve got to report on the Okayama case.”
Beppu slid his chair away, grumbling.
Ishihara was glad the Zecom case wasn’t his. He could see the pressure put on Mikuni and the Okayama police by Zecom, and probably by the Tokyo police authorities, but he didn’t think Mikuni was handling it very well. They needed to get their information in order.
The business with the robot, for example. Nakamura must have let his killer into the lab, and the killer knew how to get out without attracting attention. And McGuire said there should be backups—which argued, to his mind, that it was an inside job. Or an outsider who knew their way around the company and around a computer. A disgruntled ex-employee, maybe.
But Mikuni was spending more resources on chasing Nakamura’s personal contacts outside the lab than in interviewing people in the company. Because that fellow Yui, the one with the authoritative PR manner, told them Nakamura had debts in the town.
How did Yui know all this? He was Nakamura’s boss, sure, but not his mate. Mikuni hadn’t taken into account McGuire’s comments that Nakamura was a complete wimp. Would that kind of man make friends in a tough crowd to start with? And none of the other researchers in the unit had said anything about Nakamura’s after-hours activity.
Yui himself stank of deception. It might be merely the desire to keep Zecom out of trouble. Yui had been with the company since he left university. He was Zecom’s best, and also the type Ishihara trusted least. They were university-educated, so they thought they were cleverer than everyone else; they’d spent time abroad, so they thought they knew how to do things better; they had high-paying jobs with connections to government and business bigwigs, so they assumed they had protection.
The description might apply almost equally well to McGuire … no, not really. Her husband’s family were ordinary people. And by “ordinary,” he didn’t mean white-collar Betta-dwellers.
So what was he to write in the report? Dear Boss, I think Okayama Prefectural are pissing in Zecom’s pockets and we’re never going to find the killer because he’s in the company.
He groaned and started tapping his thoughts into something more tactful. Maybe he should get voice activation on his machine.
A quick glance across the room showed three detectives seated at their desks in earnest conversation with their screens. It looked so stupid. He really didn’t want to start talking to machines. It reminded him of the Silver Angels kids, trying to wire themselves to computers.
“Enjoy your field trip?” Assistant Inspector Ube paused on his way past.
Ishihara grunted assent.
“Message from young Bato, too.” Ube scratched his head. “He wants you to call. He won’t be in today, but he’s online.”
After the Kawanishi incident, Ishihara had asked Constable Bato from Fraud to keep an eye open for the dead man’s name in connection with loans, in case he’d been in trouble somewhere.
“Thanks.” Ishihara reached for his normal, solid, unimplanted telephone.
Bato’s voice faded in and out. “… nothing on Mito …”
One lead gone nowhere, thought Ishihara.
“… the other man.”
“Who?”
“You don’t need to yell … hear you. From Kawanishi, technician called Sakaki … sent you a note. He’s blackballed at every legal level. For over a year now.”
And another lead entirely. “Thanks, mate.”
“Happy to oblige.”
Ishihara ruffled through the papers in his in-tray. There it was, a fax sent to him yesterday.
It looked like Sakaki had been sinking further and further into debt now for months. To get himself on the list of unacceptable risks for legal loan houses, he would have had to miss several payments completely and at more than one place.
He laid Bato’s fax about Sakaki on the left of his desk, the incident reports from Kawanishi in the middle, and his own notes, including what he thought McGuire said, on the right. About time he cleared this up. Was Mito’s death an accident or not? If not, was it murder and who was responsible?
The evidence of the factory said accident—nobody was on the floor except Mito and the body was undisturbed.
The evidence of the robot was unclear, according to McGuire. Something caused it to move outside its programmed sequence and to go to halt instead of emergency stop after hitting Mito. But she still didn’t know for sure if that “something” was accidental electronic interference or deliberate sabotage. It wasn’t mechanical failure.
Sakaki’s turning up at work on the afternoon after discovery of the death was suspicious, also that he was deep in debt. But unless McGuire’s examination of the robot showed how Sakaki could have done it, he wasn’t a suspect.
A copy of McGuire’s report to her bosses at Tomita had been sent to him, as requested. He skimmed through most of the technical details to the summing-up. She didn’t speculate how the accident might have happened—all she said was “it is likely the robot was modified in some way that allowed it to move outside its program. This is supported by the erasure of the control logs at the time of the incident and the unidentified hardware attached to the controller.”
The police specialist in industrial machinery said much the same thing, although he hadn’t seen the “hardware” McGuire referred to. Some kind of transmitter.
A number of possibilities presented themselves: Mito and Sakaki might have gone gambling together, then quarreled over who should pay back the loan—except Mito was a Happy Universe member and didn’t gamble; Mito might have found out about Sakaki’s habit and threatened to tell the company, or even tried to get money from Sakaki in exchange …
He called her number from her business card, but she wasn’t there. A young male voice that identified itself as Kato said McGuire-san hadn’t come in yet.
Ishihara said he’d call back later and dropped the phone back in its slot in annoyance. No rush, really. If Sakaki did happen to be a particularly clever murderer, he wasn’t likely to do anything else—he’d be happy for McGuire to discover nothing and the accident to remain an accident. Surely she’d have called Ishihara by now if she’d found evidence that it wasn’t.
But why wasn’t McGuire at work yet? He’d got her classified in his mind as “ambitious workaholic,” one of those foreigners who delighted in beating the Japanese at their own game. Workaholics should go to work.
His desk phone buzzed, an outside line, voice only. Bato again?
“Religious Affairs, Ishihara.”
“Um, this is McGuire. From Tomita …”
Ishihara sat up straight, the coincidence prickling the back of his neck. “McGuire-san. What can I do for you?”
“Can I ask you about a Religious Affairs problem?” Her Japanese was damn good. He’d never have guessed a foreigner was on the other end of the line.
“Yeah, sure. That’s my job.”
He could hear her take a deep breath.
“My niece seems to be involved with a weird group. The police think it’s a cult of some kind. They talked to my brother-in-law, but he can’t contact her.”
“What’s the group’s name?”
“The police called them the Silver Angels.”
Ishihara cursed inwardly and re-called the Silver Angels report onto his screen. Interviews … interviews … list of geography club members …
“Assistant Inspector?”
“Yeah, I’m here. What’s your niece’s name?”
Less Than Human Page 13