Bug Park

by James P. Hogan

  The new Japanese release playing on the big screen in the game room of Hiroyuki's house had both. The big, green, natural, organic monsters had been awakened from dormancy on the ocean bed by nuclear-weapons testing in the Pacific, and "smart" battle machines were taking them on—apparently through some instinctual loyalty to their creators that none of the scientists depicted in the movie could explain, but which the scriptwriters evidently considered to be of deep, mystical significance. The heroines were now liberated, of course, and waded in wielding M-16s and Uzis with the best of the guys, thus doggedly emulating what their admirers had been denouncing as the worst of male traits for years. The screaming role had passed to Taki's younger sister, Reiko, and a half dozen other small members of the innumerable relatives watching in total immersion from the couch, the floor, and other seats around the room. Nakisha, in one of the armchairs, stared unblinking, but managed a restrained silence becoming to her sixteen years that showed she was above that kind of thing.

  "Hey, look at all the arms on that guy. It's like a mechanical spider."

  "It's like some of those miniature robots of Taki's. Is that what it was like, Nakisha? Did it feel like being one of those?"

  "Did Taki really put you down next to a slug?"

  "Ooooh, yuck! . . ."

  "Shut up. It was horrible. I don't want to talk about it."

  Kevin sat on a chair by the wall near the glass-paned doors behind them, half watching while he idly practiced materializing a playing card in one hand, then vanishing it again. Doug Corfe had gone for a drive into Seattle to reconnoiter Garsten's office from the outside. Taki had been called away for the moment to give his mother a hand with something. Ohira was on a stool at the back of the room, arms akimbo, hands planted solidly on his knees, watching the movie with a raptness that was unusual. It seemed to have triggered some distant line of thought.

  Kevin rather took to the monsters, he decided. It wasn't their fault if they blundered around sinking ships and knocking gaps in city skylines, any more than foxes could help being partial to chickens. It was just the way they were made. He identified with them, he supposed, as another form of life that was misunderstood and looked down on—in the monsters' case, metaphorically—by grownups. There were days when he was sure that he too could find it a great reliever of stresses and tensions to go on a rampage of pulverizing a few downtown high-rises or picking up automobiles filled with the irritating kinds of people who played bullhorn radios in parks and left trash everywhere, and throw them into the harbor. Maybe grownups went out and dropped bombs on each others' cities for the same kind of reason. If that were true, it didn't seem fair that kids should have to be in them too.

  Then the thought struck him that perhaps they could build miniature cities for stressed-out adults to crash around in and flatten, using monster-mec bodies designed specially for the purpose. They could even have other people—perhaps kids who liked being scared by monsters—in smaller mecs to run around and provide crowds of panicking inhabitants, making it all the more realistic, and presumably more satisfying. Then, perhaps, there wouldn't be any need for wars.

  He was still musing over the thought as surely a touch of genius when Ohira got up from the stool and came over, at the same time making a sign to catch Kevin's attention. Kevin looked up. Ohira motioned with his head to indicate the doors. "I have been thinking. There is something I would like you and Taki to do for me," he said. Kevin held out the card deck that he was still holding in one hand and fanned it in an unspoken invitation. Ohira selected a card and returned it. Kevin shuffled it into the deck, gave the deck to Ohira, and then plucked the card he had chosen out of the air. He made it disappear again, showed his hand to be empty, and produced the card from the other one. "Very good," Ohira complimented. "It seems that everything young people do these days has to have screens and be connected to a nuclear power plant. You don't even need batteries." He waved again toward the door. Kevin got up and followed him out of the room.

  The living room outside was bright and spacious, with a floor of gray and white marble squares with fleece rugs. Ohira turned and sat on the arm of a sectional divan filling one of the corners. "How would you like to be a movie director?" he said. "I want you and Taki to make a movie for me."

  "So you're the producer?" Kevin said.

  "If you like, yes."

  It was a typical Ohira approach. He would get to the point eventually in his own time. Kevin, meanwhile, played along in his own typical way. "Aren't we going to talk about percentages, director's fees, contracts, bonuses? . . ."

  Ohira's mouth turned upward at the corners briefly, but the rest of his craggy features stayed the same. "You see, always in too much of a hurry. You have all of your lives still before you, and always young people are in a hurry. We have most of ours behind us, yet we don't have to hurry and the things that need to, get done."

  "I thought it was supposed to be good business. I was just going by what Hiroyuki says."

  "Good business is getting paid what you are worth. A director is paid for his experience. First you get the experience; then you have something to sell. Being paid more than you are worth is bad business. Your customers don't come back again, and then you have no business."

  Kevin grinned and put the cards in his shirt pocket. "Okay. So what's this movie about?"

  Ohira waved a hand in the direction of the room they had just left. "I was thinking while I watched that movie that the kids in there are looking at, the part where you see the monsters over the trees."

  "You mean where those guys with guns are looking for them—except they don't realize they've grown so much? . . . And then the slithery things come up out of the lake."

  "Yes, by the river. I was thinking, suppose those heads looking down over the trees weren't monsters but . . . what do you call those long, thin insects that stand up on end and catch flies in arms that close like nutcrackers? Mantis, is it?"

  "Oh, praying mantises."

  Ohira nodded. "Yes, that's them. Then those hunters would really have something to hunt, wouldn't they?"

  "Oh, I see. As mecs, you mean." Kevin pulled a face. "Their guns wouldn't be much use, though."

  "The guns weren't much use to them in the movie there either." Ohira waved a hand. "But never mind the guns. You have other weapons anyway. But the point is we can add something extra to Bug Park, for the adventurous souls. Instead of just being tourists, they can go on safari too."

  Kevin's brow furrowed for a moment. "You mean hunting bugs?"

  "Sure. Why not? Think of the way that you and Taki have talked about some of your own experiences. Well, isn't it the kind of experience that a lot of people would be willing to pay for?" Ohira thought for a second and shrugged. "All the real safari animals are protected these days, anyway. Nobody can go big-game hunting anymore. So, we let them go little-game hunting instead."

  Kevin sank onto a chair and stared at him. It seemed so obvious, now Ohira had spelled it out. How could it not have occurred to either him or Taki in all this time?

  Ohira studied his face. "So what do you think?"

  "I think it's brilliant," Kevin said. "It's got to catch on. . . . And how long would it take before malaria mosquitoes became an endangered species?"

  "They couldn't. You'd never even make a difference."

  "I was joking."

  "And anyway, who'd care if they did?" Ohira raised his hands. "You see, every day we find more possibilities."

  "So where does the movie come in?" Kevin asked.

  "I want you and Taki to organize some hunting expeditions so we can put a movie together from the monitor videos for me to show to the other Theme Worlds directors. You know the kind of thing—lots of towering monsters and gaping jaws; the kind of thing that's making the kids scream next door there." Ohira thought for a moment and held up both hands in front of him, thumbs level as if framing a picture. "And I'd like a good still shot, maybe you two as mecs, posing with your arms folded and a foot each on the b
ody of a dead beetle or something—you know, the way they used to with elephants. It would look good on the title page of a proposal."

  "Okay, sure," Kevin said. "We've got the holiday weekend coming up. I'll tell Taki about it, and we'll see what we can do."

  Kevin's answer had been mechanical. The eagerness with which he would normally have greeted such a suggestion was noticeably absent.

  Ohira rubbed below an ear with a finger and contemplated him in silence. "There's something the matter, isn't there?" he said finally.

  "What makes you say that?"

  "Oh, some of this experience that I have that's worth something, and you don't have yet. You think more than usual, but you say less than usual. For the kind of person you are, that says there's a lot that would like to come out. If you and Taki want to tell me about it, that's all right."

  Kevin bit his lip. He wanted to talk, even to somebody that he couldn't immediately see as in a position to be of help . . . but not without Taki around. And even then, the thought of Corfe's likely reaction was enough to make him not want to think further.

  "Is it about Eric's company?" Ohira said after a pause. "I know that certain people have been giving him problems lately."

  Kevin shook his head. "Thanks. . . . But it's nothing really."

  Ohira's wide, strangely flat eyes lingered over him for several seconds longer, giving him the eerie feeling that they were able to read everything for themselves anyway. At length Ohira nodded. "If that is what you wish," he said. "But remember always that you are family here now as much as Taki is, just as your father treats Taki the same as you. And that means you have many friends who are here to help if there is trouble. We Japanese families look after our own."

  "I'll remember that," Kevin promised.

  Ohira looked at him for a moment longer, then nodded. "So go and make us a good movie, eh?" he said, standing up. "Maybe first we show it to some of that bunch in the next room. Let's see if you can get them really screaming."

  Taki reappeared a short while later, and he and Kevin went down to Taki's workshop. As a test, and on the offchance that the time might be right to learn something new, Kevin used the coupler there to see if he could activate the relay that he had concealed in the trunk of the Jaguar—wherever it was. The relay responded, and moments later Kevin connected himself to Mr. Toad, one of the two mecs that he had left along with it.

  The link functioned just fine. He emerged from the mec box and discerned immediately from the sound and intermittent lurching that the car was moving. Warily, he crossed through the space above the trunk and came up behind the rear seat cushion. The interior of the Jaguar loomed above him in shadow like the Hagia Sophia of Istanbul. Outside, it was dark, with not much in the way of other traffic or street lights. There was nobody in either of the rear seats, just a folded coat and the form of a briefcase, rectangular and clifflike, outlined above him in the gloom. By intensifying his vision, he was able to see sufficiently to follow the base of the seat-back to the corner. From there, using his back and legs like a rock climber negotiating a chimney, he wedged his way up the space between the seat and the car wall to the window ledge. As he gained height, he could see Vanessa in the front seat, driving. She was alone. The same feeling of unreality that had affected him before in the yacht, at "being present" as part of events happening miles away, seized him again. Outside was just darkness, trees rushing through the light from the headlamps. Taki was following on the monitor but not making any inane remarks this time.

  Then Kevin felt himself thrown forward, then sideways, as the car slowed and made a turn—barely managing to jam a hand into the crack between the window glass and the sill in time to avoid being dislodged completely. Now there was light ahead, with dark shadows of what looked like trees on both sides. He braced himself more securely and turned toward the glass. Where would he find himself this time? . . .

  Then, as the trees opened out, he recognized his own driveway. Harriet's car was parked just ahead, with Batcat coming out from underneath to be let inside the house. And why should he have hoped for anything else? Had he really expected that just when he chose to tune in, something would just happen to be taking place that would give them the great breakthrough? You needed scriptwriters for coincidences like that.

  Vanessa turned in her seat, and her arm reached over to retrieve the things from the seat below where Kevin was clinging. He waited for her to leave the car, then returned Mr. Toad to the mec box and deactivated it.

  Well, at least the system still worked. And that, he supposed, was something.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Doug Corfe looked at Michelle across the desk in her office in the John Sloane Building in downtown Seattle. His decision to come here midway through Friday morning had been prompted more by desperation at the nearness of the weekend than by any clear intentions thought carefully through. Now that he had committed himself, it was important to go for the opportunity that the holiday presented; to pass up on it now would risk the appearance of fobbing Kevin off and of never having been sincere at all, which was something Corfe couldn't permit. After yesterday's experience, he hadn't been willing to just call and risk being asked to leave another message. This was something that he needed to put to Michelle face to face. That was about as far as he had taken things in his own mind. The rest, he'd more-or-less assumed, would fall into place once Michelle had the picture.

  However, he could tell from her expression even before he had finished speaking that either he was putting the case badly or had picked the wrong time—or maybe the idea was just dumb. Whatever the reason, it clearly wasn't going over well. He stopped it at that point for a reaction.

  Michelle spread her hands and looked from side to side, as if searching for words, then shook her head. "Doug, you can't be serious. It's just not on. We can't go breaking into another lawyer's office. I mean . . . it's just not something you can do. We'd be the ones who'd end up on criminal charges, with Garsten doing the filing. Then how would we ever be able to put a case of any kind together from that position? We wouldn't. Is that what you want?"

  "What kind of case do we look like putting together as things stand?" Corfe answered. "You said there was no way to move without some kind of evidence of what these people are up to. Well, here's a practical way we might get some—if any exists to be got."

  "It's not practical. It's totally impractical."

  "Well, I haven't heard too many suggestions from any other direction," Corfe said hotly. He knew as he blurted the words out that it was the wrong thing to say.

  Michelle contained herself with a visible effort. "Excuse me, but I do have other clients . . ."

  "And I have a close friend who stands to be killed. You don't seem to understand. That's what doesn't seem to get through."

  "Doug." Michelle's tone was sharp. "You just show up here unannounced. I've had to shoe-horn you in between appointments—there's one waiting in reception right now. Why on earth didn't you call?"

  "It's Friday, and this is the holiday weekend. If we're going to do it, this is the time. I left messages all day yesterday. . . ."

  "I was out working on this very thing yesterday. Yes, I understand perfectly well how you feel, Doug. Do you imagine I don't feel it too? As a matter of fact, I've put a hell of a lot of time in on it this week, despite having a full schedule to begin with. Do you realize how complicated this is? I'm a business attorney. I deal in contracts. We're probably going to have to call a criminal lawyer in on this, to build a case against somebody's family lawyer. That isn't the kind of thing that lawyers take to easily. And the client in question that we're trying to protect isn't even being what you'd call a hundred percent cooperative."

  This time it was Corfe's turn to be hit the wrong way. He heard it as if Michelle were trying to blame Eric. "Have you shown him the tape?" he asked challengingly.

  "No, not yet."

  "Why not? Tell him the whole story. Don't you think that might help make him more cooperati
ve?"

  "And don't you think that maybe he's going through enough at the moment as it is? Look, I had lunch with him on Wednesday with a view to broaching precisely this subject. But I hadn't realized how dependent he is psychologically on Vanessa. It just didn't strike me as the moment to go kicking that prop away too, after everything else that's been going on this week."

  Corfe shook his head stolidly. "We're not in a situation where we can afford luxuries like that. He's got to find out eventually—or not at all if we're too late."

  "Of course he has," Michelle agreed. "But I'd rather it be at a time when he's in some mood to be receptive instead of showing every sign of being ready to start a fight over it. It was you who came to me and asked for help with this, Doug. I'd appreciate it if you'd let me handle it in my own way."

  Corfe exhaled heavily and sat back. He was still prickly and far from satisfied, but it was equally clear that Michelle was not about to change her mind about anything just at the moment. Clearly, his coming here on impulse had done nothing to improve matters. But it had been something he'd needed to do at the time, as a safety valve. Michelle could very likely see that, but she wasn't showing it. The thought crossed his mind of how satisfying it would be if he went ahead anyway on his own, with Kevin, and they did manage to come up with something valuable.

  "Okay, if you don't want to get involved, that's fine," he said. "Then I'm only going to ask you for one thing. Pretend I never talked to you, and just look the other way. If anything turns up that I think you ought to know about, you'll know about it. Is that acceptable?"

  Michelle looked at him uncertainly for a moment or two. "You don't mean you're still going to do it?"

  "I already told you, a very good friend of mine's looking to get killed. I'm not going to just sit around and do nothing. Nobody else is coming up with any ideas. We'll be okay. You enjoy your holiday." Corfe started to rise.