Less Than Human

by Maxine McArthur

  Funo nodded. “The so-called Soum army wouldn’t have been much of a problem with just the leader. It was his ruthless disciples who allowed things to get out of hand.”

  Beppu belched reflectively. “What we need is someone on the inside.”

  “Or someone who’s lost a friend or relative to the group and knows something about them.” Ishihara stubbed out his cigarette in the dusty sink. He thought of McGuire’s niece. Maybe she could have been persuaded to defect. If they’d got to her first.

  “Or luck,” said Funo unexpectedly. “Like the newspaper delivery boy who noticed the Happy Universe truck before the timer went off.”

  Ishihara didn’t want to think of the Silver Angels as a ticking bomb. “What do you want us to do now?”

  Funo picked up her bag and swung it over her shoulder. “Continue the background checks for those students who had any connection with the dead and the geography club. Send on all the information you find. We’ll correlate it with our data.”

  They locked the door, put a police seal on it, and clattered down the iron stairs. It took Beppu and Ishihara ten minutes to get all the cats out from under Funo’s car.

  Later that afternoon, Ishihara waited for McGuire’s description of her niece’s boyfriend to be processed into a format he could run through the NDN and tidied the piles on his desk from the Kawanishi Metalworks case. That morning he’d heard about Sakaki’s gambling debts and thought it might provide a motive for Mito’s murder, but McGuire assured him that Sakaki couldn’t have used the robot.

  Yet his intuition said the man was involved in Mito’s death somehow. He stubbed out his cigarette and left a message for Beppu that he was going to tidy up a loose end in the Kawanishi case. One more little chat with Sakaki.

  Eleanor reached the company about three o’clock. She nodded vaguely at the department admin assistant’s cheery “good morning,” threaded her way between the four rows of desks to her own little alcove in the corner of the room, and sat down with a barely suppressed groan. Her feet hurt from the unaccustomed walking, and her head ached where she’d hit it on the table when Taka pushed her.

  She’d taken Kazu for a cup of coffee after they left Mari’s abandoned apartment and lent him her phone—he’d forgotten his in his rush to get there—so he could call Yoshiko and tell her Mari wasn’t coming home yet. He’d looked so miserable, and she had so little to say to comfort him, that she tried to think of another topic. The only thing she could think of was to apologize for getting him in trouble with Grandpa on Sunday, which sounded inadequate, for the normalcy of the workshop and the Tanaka house seemed far away.

  Kazu said merely, “You don’t need to apologize. It’s between Grandpa and me.”

  “I didn’t mean to…” she hesitated, unsure of how to phrase it tactfully “… to bring back any unpleasant memories for you.”

  He waved away the idea. “That’s fine. But I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind?” He sat on the edge of his seat, his faded, stained work clothes out of place in the bright cafe.

  “I can’t…” change jobs, she intended saying, but instead said, “decide just yet. Give me some time.”

  “We could make you a partner.” He looked at her directly, and said in a rare burst of honesty, “We need to get the factory back in competition. All we do now is take the same old orders from the same old companies, for less and less money. If we don’t make more profit, we won’t be able to repay the debt.”

  She remembered Masao talking about Kazu’s failed business venture. “You mean from livelining the old factory?”

  He nodded miserably. “We need an edge. I was hoping you might be it.”

  Tomita obviously doesn’t think I’m an “edge” anymore, she thought. “Kazunori-san, I don’t know if I can make such a huge change.”

  “We’re not going anywhere, if you change your mind.” He left abruptly after that, saying he had to get back to the workshop. He was so flustered he let Eleanor pay the bill.

  She should have called the police before she went to the apartment, she realized. Especially after seeing the frustration in Ishihara’s eyes when she told him what happened. His restraint about it only made her feel worse.

  She eased off her outside shoes and slid her throbbing feet into the comfortable old sneakers. On the other side of the filing cabinets, shelves, and potted plants that formed her little alcove, the main office hummed with muted conversation and computer noise. All very familiar and, just then, unreassuring.

  Although she hadn’t said so to Kazu, she felt better about Mari’s disappearance after seeing her. Before, she’d imagined Mari as a helpless victim spirited away by outlandish kidnappers. The worry was still there, but it was tempered by the glimpse of Mari very much alive and well, and rebellious. Short of dragging her away physically, there didn’t seem much they could do to bring her back.

  In the coffee shop earlier Kazu had kept repeating, “Why didn’t she tell us? What does she see in these people?” Eleanor could find no answers. She didn’t know who “these people” were. What had Gen said? The Silver Angels are afraid of death and decay. And Mari said something about a “white nothing,” but Eleanor had been feeling woozy at that point and didn’t remember clearly.

  She leaned her forehead on her hands and stared blankly at her personal com screen. How do we convince Mari that this is the wrong thing to do? Hell, how do we know it is the wrong thing to do? Is our way of life so wonderful? She heard Masao’s voice, I never see you. She’d worked fifteen years for a company that now axed her best work.

  If this Adam guru had found a way to cheat death, how could she tell Mari not to join in? Gen’s Buddhist reservations aside, she would be interested herself… Or would she?

  It’s not death itself that frightens me, she decided. It’s saying good-bye and knowing there will never be another meeting. Good-bye to the child Mari used to be. Good-bye to her father and mother and all the things she should have said but didn’t. Someday, good-bye to Masao. Then she’d regret all these hours spent at work.

  The truth hit her as though she’d swallowed a lump of ice.

  It’s not the most important thing in the world.

  She gulped the jagged lump and activated her computer automatically, pushing her bag to one side. It felt heavier than usual. A strange coincidence … In the apartment earlier when Taka pushed her, she’d knocked her bag onto the floor, and the manga she’d bought earlier must have fallen out. Man had picked it up instead of her own book and taken it. Eleanor found Mari’s book farther under the table. The shop covers were similar, and Eleanor might easily have mistaken them herself. So Mari now had her copy of the last volume of Journey to Life. And she …

  When she opened Mari’s book she couldn’t help laughing. She now had a copy of Volume One in the same story. Perhaps Mari remembered their conversation on Sunday. The thought comforted her. She had reached her niece, in a small way.

  She realized she was staring at mail from Akita.

  Sender: A

  Subject: Re: Discussion

  McGuire-san

  I am delighted that you have decided to meet with me. Please do not be concerned about your response to my earlier query. We shall discuss this further when we meet. I suggest tonight at six. I will book a table at the restaurant Higo beside the games plaza 3 at Umeda.

  A

  Eleanor didn’t want to meet Akita that night. Why couldn’t the man phone her? And she found the tone of the mail overbearing, without being able to pinpoint anything. Still, if they met at six, she’d be home by nine, which would please Masao. He said he’d call her if he heard anything about Mari.

  She sighed and replied that she’d be at the restaurant at six. Akita had always been abrupt. In their first days at the company he had been the only other new recruit who gave her no concessions or even special looks because she was a foreigner. He treated her, like he treated everyone else, as a potential rival or, if they turned out to be unworthy of rivalry, with di
sdain. Eleanor was able to keep up with him and therefore received grudging acknowledgment that deepened into tolerance.

  Voices rose in the main office, then dropped again. Something sounded wrong. She poked her head around the filing cabinet.

  The five members of the Robotics Department who weren’t in the lab gathered around Kato’s desk, Kato’s thin neck and shiny scalp just visible in the middle. The admin assistant, a young woman named Kimura, perched on the desk corner. Kimura wore the demure blue uniform required of administration employees, but she still managed to look frivolous.

  “… left the year I was recruited,” Kato was saying. He looked up over and saw Eleanor. “Chief, you knew Nakamura-san, didn’t you?”

  Eleanor opened her mouth, shut it again while she gathered her thoughts. The others waited expectantly.

  “It’s been in the news?” She left her alcove and came to stand with them.

  They all nodded.

  “It must have happened just after he called you on Monday night,” said Kato.

  “Oh, that was Nakamura?” One of the others in the Sam team wrinkled his forehead with the effort of remembering.

  Eleanor hadn’t told them she went to Zecom, and she didn’t think the police would want her to start now.

  “The news said it was probably an intruder,” said Kato, glancing at the screen.

  “Their security can’t be up to much,” grunted someone else.

  Kimura touched a handkerchief to moist eyes. “He was always willing to stop and chat,” she sniffed. “Even after he left here.”

  That’s why he never got any work done, thought Eleanor. Then Kimura’s second remark registered. “What do you mean, ‘after he left here’?”

  Kimura lowered her handkerchief and stared back at Eleanor with mascara-smudged eyes. “When he came to get his mail.”

  “What mail?”

  Kimura glanced at the others as if asking what the fuss was about. “The letters and stuff that got sent here. He didn’t want us to forward them on, so he came to pick them up. He always brought some sweets or crackers for the mail room staff, and…”

  Eleanor blanked out the rest of Kimura’s words as she reached over and opened a line from Kato’s desk.

  “Mail room? This is Supervisor McGuire, Robotics Department. Do you have any mail kept for an ex-employee named Nakamura Shigeo?”

  The mail room clerk said he’d check.

  “You think the police might want to see those letters?” ventured Kato.

  “I’m sure they will,” said Eleanor. And so did she.

  Ishihara hadn’t expected Sakaki to run.

  The manager pointed out Sakaki’s skinny, overalled figure on the other side of the factory, walking toward the exit. The manager shouted his name and waved. Sakaki started running. Ishihara cursed and sprinted after him down one of the aisles, found his way blocked by machines, and fumbled for his phone. Sakaki disappeared out the loading bay doors.

  Ishihara’s phone was buzzing already.

  “Ishihara here.”

  “This is Constable Taji. We’re holding one male who was running out of the building. Is he connected with the case?”

  “Hold him there, I’ll be right out.” Ishihara let out a breath of relief and picked his way between benches and machines, wiping sweat from his face.

  “What’s going on?” said the manager beside him. He was a thin, middle-aged man with the expression of one who expects and gets the worst.

  “Your man Sakaki has a guilty conscience.”

  “Can I do anything?”

  “Not now.” Ishihara inclined his head to soften the directive and closed the door firmly behind him.

  Sakaki stood in the parking space in front of the building, between the local constable, who’d met Ishihara when he arrived, and the constable who came in the car with Ishihara. A truck was just pulling out, leaving the air thick with exhaust fumes, which seemed worse in the heat.

  The sun seared their necks and shoulders, but Ishihara didn’t suggest they go inside. The less comfortable Sakaki felt, the more likely he was to talk.

  The manager peeked out the doorway, but Ishihara waved him back inside.

  “We’ll be there in a minute,” he called. Then to Sakaki, “Why did you run?”

  Sakaki kept his eyes down. He looked worse than he did on Saturday—his face was drawn and unshaven, and his blue overalls were filthy. He hunched his shoulders and thrust his hands deep into the overall pockets. “Didn’t want to get into trouble.”

  Ishihara lit a cigarette and, as if on second thoughts, offered one to Sakaki. The beat constable looked on, interested, while the West Station constable stared into space.

  “Why should you get into trouble?”

  “I was here when Mito died.” Sakaki accepted the cigarette. His hands shook. “I came in that night to ask Mito for a loan. I knew he wasn’t likely to give me one, but I had to try. He never spent money, the tight bastard. I stayed behind in the locker room after my shift finished, thinking what to say to him. I must have fallen asleep.”

  “For how long?” said Ishihara.

  “Until after three-thirty … All right, I had a couple of beers. I thought I needed some help before talking to Mito. You don’t know what a self-righteous bastard he was.”

  Ishihara had met a lot of Happy Universe members and thought he could guess, but didn’t say so.

  “Anyway, I washed my face and went to talk to Mito. He wouldn’t lend me anything, then he had the cheek to give me a sermon. At five o’clock—I noticed the time because I could get breakfast near the station—Mito looked at the monitor and said something like ‘that’s funny.’ I said ‘what’s up,’ and he said ‘hang on, the welder’s stopped, I’ll be back in a tick.’ He went over to the welder…”

  “Which one?”

  Sakaki stared. “The one that hit him, of course. I was nearly at the door by then because I wanted to get away from him. He was looking at the controller. When I next looked around, he was on the ground, and the welder’s arm was shaking.”

  He took a pull at the cigarette, then another. “I hit emergency stop on the line and ran to see him, but he was already …” He threw the cigarette on the ground and swallowed several times.

  “Didn’t any of the alarms go off?” said Ishihara.

  Sakaki shook his head.

  “What did you do then?” Ishihara said. A pity there weren’t any witnesses to back up this story.

  “I left. I couldn’t do anything for Mito, could I?” said Sakaki defiantly. “I didn’t want anyone to see me there.”

  Ishihara ground his cigarette butt out on the concrete with his heel. “Why didn’t you tell us this before? You could have saved us a lot of trouble. I could charge you with obstructing an investigation.”

  “Who cares?” said Sakaki. “Telling you isn’t going to repay my loan.”

  “You shouldn’t take out loans if you can’t repay them,” said the local constable disapprovingly.

  “That’s what Mito said.” Sakaki glared at them all. “Everyone knows that, but nobody tells you how to get out of repayment hell once you’re in there.” The words burst from him. “You don’t know what it’s like. I borrow from A to pay B, then from C to pay A, and it never ends.”

  He folded onto a concrete block, as though his legs had given way, and put his head in his hands.

  “Declare personal bankruptcy,” suggested Ishihara. “It’s about all you can do.”

  Sakaki didn’t look up. “Some of my creditors don’t listen to the courts.”

  Ishihara sighed. “You’re sure the robot moved by itself?”

  “I’m sure.” Sakaki’s voice was muffled.

  “Take him to the station,” said Ishihara to the constables. “He’ll make his statement there.”

  In the tiny office, the manager was talking on the phone, no video. Ishihara sank into a chair beside a low table without being invited and breathed the cool air with relief.

  Ce
rtificates and group photos covered the walls, most of the photos taken in front of the factory. Three desks were crammed into the narrow space. A door at one end bore the sign PRESIDENT’S ROOM.

  “A man called Noda,” said the manager to the other end of the conversation. He raised his eyebrows at Ishihara, who opened his palm in a go-ahead gesture.

  “No, we hadn’t seen him before,” continued the manager. “His rego number was … hang on.” He tapped the keyboard beside him and read a number from the screen.

  Short pause.

  “Well, we couldn’t know that. I suppose it’s a matter for the police, then.” He looked over at Ishihara, then continued. “There’s a detective here now.”

  Ishihara pointed to himself and raised his eyebrows in query.

  The manager offered him the handset. “It’s an engineer from Tomita Electronics. She says someone from another company sabotaged their robot the other day, when it hit Mito.”

  It was McGuire. “Nakamura was the technician who serviced the Zecom robot the week before the accident,” she said. “He gave a false name, and when he serviced the Zecom robot he attached the device to our robot. I think that allowed him to send a signal and operate it long-distance.”

  “How do you know?” said Ishihara.

  “We found one of his backup files.” She didn’t sound as pleased as he’d expected.

  “Does it tell you how he did it?”

  “Not in detail, but it might tell you who killed him.”

  “Are you at Tomita?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  He cut the connection and turned to the manager. “Thanks for your help. We may soon know more about Mito’s death.”

  The manager ran his hand over his balding head. “It’s not going to stop the line again, is it?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “And what about Sakaki? Is he under arrest?”

  “No, but you should know he’s heavily in debt,” said Ishihara.