by Kim Newman
The rest of Molinar’s Guard would be at posts around the building, with a particular concentration in the ballroom.
Mitsuru Fujiwara’s terminal was shut down, hooded with a dust cover. He was not on site. Damn. Molinar wanted to toss the Jun Zero thing at the cyberguy.
‘… We will extend all cooperation,’ said Verlaine, scowling.
She saw Molinar and held the phone to her chest.
‘It’s Gokemidoro of EarthGuard,’ she said. ‘He’s sent in the Armourdillo. All holy hell is let loose. Where have you been?’
‘With the Mad Gnome.’
Verlaine looked at the ceiling and shook her head.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Waste of time at the best of times.’
‘This isn’t those. This is the other ones. The worst of times.’
She put the phone to her ear again.
‘Vice-President Molinar is here now. I can put him on… oh.’
She replaced the receiver and unwound herself from the long curly cord. ‘He’s hung up. General Vag-Face. We learned not to trust him in 1899.’
‘Which mouth was talking?’ he asked.
‘The deeper, gruff one,’ she said, pointing to her forehead.
Molinar hadn’t often heard that voice. When the cranial jelly spoke through the cleft, the General nodded off. The higher brain was in charge. The rest of the body was someone else’s – a suit the vampire wore. He was another relic of the days when the Treaty of Light was being drawn up. Macedonians didn’t like him. Neither did anyone else, much – except successive Japanese governments who gave him plum jobs.
Verlaine put her earring back in, drawing a bead of blood. Licking her finger, she grimaced. Few loved the taste of their own blood. Most vampire women – unable to get piercings thanks to the healing ability – used clip-ons. Sliding fresh steel through the earlobes every night showed Verlaine’s commitment. Mostly ascetic, she splashed out on earrings.
She gave him a recap. Aum Draht. Two eyeheads. A bio-bomb. Fungal plague. The terrorists got taken down quickly.
‘The Sakis?’
Verlaine shook her head.
‘Civilian security. One of the guests’ bodyguards.’
‘What have Gokemidoro’s toy soldiers done?’
‘Ordered the Gate shut.’
‘I heard. Hyakume’s goggling.’
‘Only a few latecomers are stuck outside and no one will want to go home till after midnight. So that’s breathing time before the shrieking starts. But no one complains as loud as rich people who have to stand in a queue for twenty minutes.’
‘So, we have another deadline. Get back to EarthGuard and insist they open the Gate by twelve. Who’s their team leader? The Black Ninja? Rider Kuuga?’
‘Golgotha.’
‘Don’t know him. Don’t want to know him.’
‘He’s not responded to my messages. It’d be professional courtesy. And he could use the manpower. Though all our ops are busy busy, manning the Gate or standing upstairs. I’ve talked with Inugami. He’s in the dark and growling. Tokyo police have a presence inside the Wall. Detective Azuma.’
‘A beat in the Bund is a step down from being suspended. What did he do?’
Verlaine smirked.
‘Bit off a pimp’s ear.’
‘But what did he do wrong?’
‘Spat it out again. Azuma’s a v-and-v cop, by the way. Vampire and violent.’
Molinar suspected another free-range headache.
‘Where’s Fujiwara? Kicking loose at the party already?’
‘He headed out with a sack of New Year presents. He’s visiting his girlfriends in the police box. The Sakis will be delighted, though they’ll hardly have time for a snack and a cuddle what with the terror alert and all.’
The thing Christina Light did to men Mitsuru Fujiwara did to women. Even Verlaine got catty when mentioning Fujiwara’s femme fans. She couldn’t mention the IT guy without blushing – and she was a death-white nosferatu with skin stretched memento mori taut over her cheekbones. When he wanted his apartment cleaned or his laundry done, Fujiwara went out on the street and put the glam on the first skirt he saw.
‘What did Pretorius want?’ Verlaine asked.
‘To drop a name in the most annoying and overcomplicated way imaginable. Jun Zero.’
Verlaine thought a moment.
‘Suzan,’ she shouted. ‘Can you shoot me over something from Fujiwara’s system?’
A souvenir fan lifted from Suzan Arashi’s desk and flapped. She often used the prop to prove her presence. She less often revealed that she didn’t need to use her hands to do it. With limited telekinesis, she could pick things up from twenty yards away. She could swivel the chair too. Shooting at where you thought she was wouldn’t do any good. Besides being invisible, she had a quiet voice – often mistaken for an echo or a ghost. Of the Bund’s old-school yōkai, she was strangely best adapted to the modern world. She held down a job. Most of her peers, here before the Princess made her Treaty, sat about like museum exhibits. Watson and Kuchisake were on his team because they filled an employment quota. Suzan earned her badge. Her talents had practical uses in Security, Surveillance and Infiltration.
‘Thank you,’ said Verlaine as a document pinged on her screen.
She typed an access code – scarlet nails clicking on her ergonomic keyboard – and aha-hahed.
‘Here we go. Jun Zero’s dating profile on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. He’s a super-hacker. Providing he is a he, which isn’t certain. A cyberspace terrorist. Deadly prankster. Brings down a government before breakfast. Transfers corporate slush funds to random citizens. Leaked a workprint of Monk & Bat-Boy online, before the nipples could be CGI’d off Clooney’s habit. Fujiwara’s triple-highlighted him as a threat.’
‘We should beware of Jun Zero, according to Pretorius – or, rather, according to a ghost the Mad Gnome has trapped in his machine. Professor Brian O’Blivion, if you can believe it.’
‘That can’t be right.’
‘It’s his television name, Pretorius says. Not what he was born with.’
‘No, not the name. Brian O’Blivion can’t be telling us to beware Jun Zero.’
‘Why not?’
‘The FBI list known aliases. Brian O’Blivion is Jun Zero.’
DR AKIBA
The Englishman’s pulse, temperature and blood pressure were normal. No pupil dilation. No external liquefication. Was Richard Jeperson randomly immune to Aum Draht’s bespoke bio-weapon? Akiba didn’t think so. The world, in his experience, was seldom as merciful.
So far, only Officer Kamikura was infected. Akiba had yet to determine whether the sedated policeman had been treated in time. It made sense to start with the patient who could answer direct questions.
Jeperson was calm and cooperative. It was peculiar that his BP and heart rate weren’t elevated. Akiba was inside a HazMat suit and sweating bullets. Though he knew he’d been exposed to a deadly airborne agent, the dandyish gent was cool as iced cucumber. Not all Englishmen were as phlegmatic – or fatalist. With his dark skin, hawk features and fierce (dyed?) moustache, Jeperson could be taken for Berber or Cossack. When he spoke, he was as British as a BBC Shakespeare.
It was fortunate EarthGuard rallied so swiftly.
None of the others on this scratch team acted as if they’d been dragged out of New Year parties.
A vampire girl had taken off the policeman’s infected foot.
Quick thinking. And a decent job. Nearly a professional, surgical amputation.
Akiba ripped the velcro blood pressure cuff loose. On Jeperson’s forearm – over the extensor digitorum muscle – was a tattoo.
GEIST 97.
The Englishman saw him notice.
‘I know it’s an oddity,’ said Jeperson. ‘Auschwitz tattoos were strings of numbers. I wasn’t in a concentration camp. It was some other ghastly thing. Still Nazis, though.’
Akiba was of a generation obliged to apologise repeatedly for Japan
’s conduct in the War. He accepted responsibility though his own family were victims of the Tojo regime. His father’s father, an army doctor in occupied China, was executed in 1938 for refusing to assist Dr Komoda in a programme of inhumane experiments. The Key Man wanted to graft the legs of jiangshi – the ‘hopping vampires’ of Manchuria – onto the stumps of loyal soldiers mutilated in battle. When that didn’t work, Komoda shifted to research that eventually lead to the Caterpillar’s mechanical limbs.
Akiba’s father was understandably a committed anti-militarist and fervent advocate of demokrassi. That Akiba was required not to tell family members he was in the armed forces was a relief.
To honour his grandfather, Akiba took an interest in crimes of science. The Black Ocean Society, the Kempeitai, industrial concerns, and all branches of the imperial armed forces had taken part in shameful activities.
Before the Treaty of Light, the Bund was Yōkai Town, where Japan put its monsters. The nation kept back sufficient monsters for its own use. Not all fiends had fangs. Blood debts were still outstanding. Even fifty-five years on, culprits might yet be brought to justice. The Key Man was unpunished and possibly still active.
He looked at Jeperson’s tattoo a few seconds longer than he should have.
‘Have you seen one like this before?’ Jeperson couldn’t hide his eagerness. This was a lifelong mystery for him.
Now, Akiba would guess, Jeperson’s heart was racing.
‘Not precisely the same,’ Akiba admitted. ‘But similar. Equivalent. “Geist” is German for “ghost”?’
Jeperson nodded.
‘I have twice seen a tattoo with “Yurei”, Japanese for “ghost”, and a prime number. Once on a corpse…’
In Malaysia – a pontianak elder, dead of bat flu. 23. YUREI 23. Performing a rush autopsy in a tent surrounded by soldiers with cans of gasoline and lit torches, Akiba had pressing concerns but noted the tattoo as a distinguishing feature – only for his supervisor to strike the detail from the record.
‘… and once on a living man – well, a vampire.’
Astro-Man had 139 on his forearm. YUREI 139.
When the EarthGuard agent was in his care, Akiba had asked where he got his mark.
‘In the War.’
Of course.
Tojo’s Japan and Hitler’s Germany exchanged secrets shyly, like couples who killed together, relieved and stimulated to find partners not utterly repulsed by their predilections. The YUREI/GEIST programme was an Axis operation.
That pontianak wore an Imperial Army officer’s cap, shorn of insignia. The Black Ocean Society had a presence in occupied Malaysia. They took as much interest in Malay vampire variants as in jiangshi.
‘97 is a prime number,’ said Jeperson. ‘You think that’s significant?’
With only his tattoo to go on, Jeperson hadn’t considered its prime status. Even with only three examples, it was unlikely to be happenstance.
‘Primes are not usual,’ said Akiba. ‘They get scarcer as you count upwards.’
‘I’m not usual either,’ Jeperson said.
‘Neither were the individuals I mentioned. The Yurei Primes.’
‘The living vampire? Do you know his name?’
‘I know a name he uses.’
Jeperson smiled, understanding Akiba’s caution.
‘I apologise,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t dig for state secrets on such brief acquaintance. We’ve barely been introduced. I’m a damned foreign devil too.’
Jeperson handed over an oblong card.
RICHARD JEPERSON
MOST VALUED MEMBER
THE DIOGENES CLUB
LONDON SW1Y 5AH
UNITED KINGDOM
Akiba knew what the Diogenes Club was. Representatives from equivalent agencies attended EarthGuard seminars. Some years ago, the Diogenes Club sent a vampire specialist called Hamish Bond. He claimed to have a double first in oriental languages from Oxford but could barely manage enough Japanese to ask a geisha for a rub-down. Commander Bond had no interest in spitballing solutions to theoretical problems. He hared around Tokyo, biting local girls. He crashed nightclubs, bathhouses, gambling hells, and expensive vehicle prototypes. Everyone supposed the British sent him on overseas missions to keep him away from the secretaries in home office and stop him blowing up half the London subway on his morning commute.
‘I see you’ve heard of us,’ said Jeperson.
Akiba hoped his frown hadn’t given him away then wondered how Jeperson had read his face. The helmet obscured most of it. He’d spotted his interest in the tattoo as well.
He must be slightly psychic.
The YUREI/GEIST Primes could have qualities in common.
Two vampires and a warm man. All unusual – gifted? Cursed? And branded in the War.
‘We are colleagues,’ Akiba said. ‘In the Bund, we are both damned foreign devils.’
‘Until midnight.’
Akiba nodded, bumping forehead against faceplate.
HAROLD TAKAHAMA
Floor 44 of the Daikaiju Building was a closed system. Narrow windowless corridors. Locked frosted glass doors. Exposed ducts. Steam belching from wonky joints. Scuffed last-walk-to-the-electric-chair linoleum.
Vending machines offered squeaking live vampire snacks and shrink-wrapped porno on CD-sized laserdiscs. He recognised none of the stars and understood only about half the kinks. Throat sprockets? Trampire tanlines? Tailstub upskirt? Eight years brought exciting, perplexing changes in adult entertainment. Was Rac Loring still on top – or underneath, or in between? Hal’s fang fantasy wouldn’t have aged since 1992.
A sour, behind-the-scenes smell permeated the recycled air. Floor 44 was invisible to higher-ups who took an overloaded system for granted. Processor rooms were the basement boilers of the twenty-first century. He’d seen that coming.
Lefty told him the Daikaiju Building was HQ of Light Industries, a world-spanning corporation. Their highest-profile biz was the Light Channel, which broadcast a soothing off-white glow around the clock. People tuned in and zoned out. Hours and hours of nothing were prized by an information-saturated society. Carried on basic cable in the US, its greater reach was on the World Wide Web. LI owned virtual continents of cyberspace.
Widescreen monitors at every junction were set to the Light Channel. Hal first took them for light fittings. The icy glow had a pulse. It vibed like a Zen Trojan Horse. Pumping subliminals into the backbrains of a million screen junkies?
Go out and buy. Reproduce and consume. Blame the poor.
Humpty-humpty humpty-humpty. Six more hours to Y2K, Y2K, Y2K. Six more hours to Y2K. Silver Shamrock!
So Jun Zero’s posse had broken into a zaibatsu lair.
Hal tried to remember what he’d done when he had system access. Searching for overwritten memories was like probing a tooth abscess with a thumbtack. Light Industries must have high-grade firewalls. Jun Zero would have to be a hotshot to crack the system. Getting into the building can’t have been easy, either. The client had laid out serious coin to set this up. Even Hal’s murder would be expensive.
He must have completed the job, to flip Chiropterid Karl from Muscle to Assassin. The building could be counting down to conflagration. This was the last day of the century. Hal doubted the op was a freak-prank, like rigging the Light Channel to transmit a laxative thrumm to millions of loose-bowelled couch potatoes. Could be the client wanted to ring in the New Year by taking out the competition with an almighty Ker-Blammo.
Hal had invented a pulsar which hijacked an opposing G-bot’s OS and set off all its bang-bangs in their silo-sheaths. A virtual v-weapon. Jun Zero might have ironed the bugs and developed a real-world version.
In this future, Harold Takahama was a terrorist!
If he was the digibomber, Dad would commit seppuku from shame.
Radical college girls would pin up his wanted poster in their dorms and write poems about his killer ops.
And the CIA-FBI-NSA would send kill-ninjas after him.
But right now, here on Friendly Floor 44, he was going to be slicer-diced by the ninjas before he got to make out with any rad chicks.
If he had to mind-jaunt into the future, why couldn’t it have been to the good parts?
He recognised landmarks. A crescent-shaped bleach stain in the lino. A sign-up sheet for the Daikaiju Dodgers Battlefield Baseball team.
Coming back to where he started after a complete circuit of Floor 44, he still jumped at the shadow on the frosted glass.
Ishikawa walked into the translucent door over and over, like a bird flapping against a window. Blood smeared the other side of the glass. Vampires were strong. When Ishikawa redeveloped coordination skills, he’d get out of the Processor Room.
An alarm still sounded. Not a blare, but something like amplified wind chimes. As strangely soothing as the Light Channel. A coded signal beamed at intruders? Sit in the designated area and await qualified executioners to clip your lanyard.
The security sweep was overdue. Ishikawa was wearing a night guard uniform. Had the team replaced the regular security detail as part of their infiltration strategy?
‘Lefty, can you access plans for this building?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Share them with User Jun Zero.’
The appliance shot an unnecessary pain-jolt up his arm, which jerked out and aimed its palm at a blank stretch of wall, glass fingers splayed. A three-dimensional frame hung in the air. But not the plans he’d requested. Lefty was on the fritz! And far too free with the agonizer.
‘That’s not a building,’ said Hal. ‘That’s a page from a D&D manual.’
The hologram was an anatomical model of a bipedal saurian. A big-bellied dragon with overdeveloped thighs and an Elizabethan ruff. It would make a righteous mecha. Hal saw where to implant weapons. Eyes, mouth, crest, chest, claws, tail. A warbeast of the wasteland.