Less Than Human

by Maxine McArthur

  He’d think it funny to put her in his debt.

  “Possibly the carriers gave this number by mistake,” he added.

  A synthesizer rendition of an old Japanese folk tune replaced Nakamura’s voice. The simplistic melody reminded Eleanor of the nationalist trucks that had patrolled the streets of Osaka in prereform days, blaring lullabies and military songs so loudly that you couldn’t talk as they drove by.

  After a couple more bars the song faded, and a high female voice began telling Eleanor about Zecom’s many achievements in the robotics industry.

  … first machine tool factory in the world to use completely automated … international links formed in the 1990s have …

  She wondered if you could put the latest cranial phone implants on hold. Most of the implants were simple vibrators that stimulated nerves in the skin to let users know when they had a call, as well as being fashion accessories. You still had to use a physical phone to listen from and speak into.

  … Seikai reconstruction plan for Inner Tokyo and Yokohama. Zecom’s central role was recognized in an address by the mayor …

  She’d seen more sophisticated implants that combined ocular and neural navigation aids with tiny embedded microphones that let you listen to calls directly.

  Zecom, a symbol of the New Japan. Synthesizer music again.

  Nakamura was taking his time. Maybe it was a mistake. Certainly, a 316 welder shouldn’t go to the main lab for a routine checkup.

  “McGuire-san? Sorry to keep you waiting.” Nakamura didn’t sound sorry. “The robot is here, but only as a safety precaution. We wanted to reassure the factory owner that our machines are safe.”

  “Fine. So it hasn’t been checked yet?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “Well, please call me if you find anything that might affect other machines.”

  Nakamura eh-hemmed again. “I won’t be handling such a minor chore, but I’ll pass on your request. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye,” said Eleanor shortly. And good riddance. She wriggled her shoulders, which had stiffened with tension. Tomita had lost one good researcher to Zecom when Akita left, but they were welcome to Nakamura.

  Should she tell the police about Zecom recalling their robot? It didn’t seem important. She decided to attach a comment to her report and leave it at that. And then she could get back to her own project. At last.

  Or so she thought.

  “See, there, near the port? When we unscrewed the panel to check the wiring, we found that.” Nishino’s loud breathing rasped in her ear as she bent over the bottom of the welder’s control panel.

  A small disc, no bigger than an old one-yen coin, was seemingly welded to the circuitry. Presumably Nishino hadn’t levered it off for fear of damaging it before they knew what it was.

  “You said you found an interruption to this robot’s connection to the factory network?”

  She straightened up and stepped discreetly away. Nishino’s size and sweatiness made her feel hot.

  “Yes, but that’s no a reason to go off-line, or to disrupt its program. Neither the port nor the network cable showed any sign of damage.”

  “I know, but maybe there’s some connection with the accident.”

  She squinted at the faintly luminescent disc. It looked like some kind of biometal.

  “We ran a level-two circuit analysis of the way the disc is attached.” Nishino put his hand on her elbow and almost dragged her over to a seat before a computer on the lab bench. He was the most “touchy” Japanese Eleanor had ever met. Or he just liked pawing her.

  The analysis indicated that the little disc seemed to be designed to carry impulses from the robot’s circuitry and convert them (she was guessing here) into data to be transmitted. A transmitter as well as a receiver. It clung to the circuitry of the welder like a minute lamprey to a shark.

  “Weird, huh?” Nishino beamed at her.

  “Sure is.” It was also a neat piece of work. If she could use a similar system to feed sensory input from their Sam robot onto its own neural networks, they might solve its reaction problems. Without having to work with Akita and his pompous e-mails, she added to herself.

  “It didn’t come from here,” she said. “So it looks like Kawanishi did modify the robot, or somebody did. Which voids its warranty.”

  “That’s what I thought. And by the way, the ID tag checked out fine when it left here. We’ve got visual records.”

  “Good. I’d like to take a closer look at how this thing works,” Eleanor added, as casually as she could. “Can you keep the robot here for a while?”

  Nishino leaned on the bench so that his thigh touched her shoulder. “It takes up too much space. Can’t you just take the controller?”

  And risk damaging it? Eleanor smiled up at him. “You could put it in storage for me. Only for a week or so.”

  He made a show of nodding reluctantly. “Okay by me.”

  The intercom buzzed. They could see one of the young women who worked in main administration through the clear upper half of the lab door. Nishino heaved himself off the bench with a grunt and opened the door.

  “Good morning, Nishino-san.” The girl inclined her head. “Chief Matsuki would like to see McGuire-san in his office.”

  Eleanor smoothed her hair uneasily. Matsuki only sent someone to fetch you, instead of using his high-resolution intercom, if he was in a bad mood. Nishino managed to pat her on the back as she left and shot her a look of commiseration.

  She followed the girl’s slim, blue-uniformed back in silence down the hall, up in the elevator, and across the covered walkway from the research labs to the main building. She wished she could have changed out of her ancient indoor sneakers and into outdoor shoes.

  When had this kind of peremptory order ceased to annoy her? She remembered, long ago, feeling upset that Japanese bosses never said “please.” Now, it was simply part of the job.

  Chief Matsuki’s office was on the second floor of the main wing of the central building. It occupied the entire width of the wing and looked out on the main gate and the trees and shrubs between the wings. This was the office to which guests were always shown first. It had deep carpet, a couple of Japanese landscapes on the walls, and solid oak furniture. Matsuki firmly believed in the weight of tradition, and that was not found in aluminum fittings.

  He sat behind his desk, a round-faced man with round glasses, all designed to give an impression of smoothness that he didn’t deserve. The Mechatronics Division manager, Izumi, stood in front of the desk. Izumi, the closest she had to a mentor at the company, inclined his gray head fractionally and glanced a warning over his wire-rimmed bifocals.

  Eleanor knew that look. It meant trouble. She straightened and applied the layers of protective blandness she’d acquired over the years.

  “Did you wish to see me?” Her bow added “sir.”

  Matsuki deliberately ignored her while he finished adding papers to a file.

  “McGuire. Where’s your report on the robot that was involved in the accident?” Matsuki finally looked at her.

  “I’m working on it now,” was the best she could do.

  “Stop dawdling and finish it.” Matsuki wasn’t yelling at her, something she’d seen him do to other people, but his language was rough. “The accident was on Saturday.”

  He stood up and walked to one of the side windows. He looked out, clasped his hands behind his back, and walked ponderously back to his desk again.

  “On Saturday,” Matsuki repeated. “We’ve already had three articles in the papers about it. Unfavorable publicity. In these competitive times, the company can’t afford unfavorable publicity.”

  Someone at Head Office had complained to him, and he was passing it on.

  “Until we get your report to Head Office, we can’t close the case. It looks bad. Do you understand, McGuire?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the robot, of course.”

  “Nothing th
at we … nothing that could have caused the accident.”

  “That’s to be expected. It was human error, as usual.” Matsuki sat down again behind his desk, a sign that the interview was over. “I told Head Office that your report was on its way. So make sure it is.”

  “I will.” Eleanor bowed to Matsuki, then Izumi, and excused herself with the humblest phrase she knew.

  Her knees were trembling as she stood waiting for the elevator, which annoyed her. Why don’t you act more like a foreigner, she sneered at herself. Stand up to Matsuki. Because it wouldn’t help—they would find a display of emotion embarrassing for her, and she’d be regarded as someone with no self-control and, therefore, unreliable.

  She’d been going to submit the report today anyway. The only question was whether she should send a copy to the police as well. The tiny transmitter might conceivably have had something to do with Mito’s death. How, she didn’t know. Which meant the police wouldn’t know, either. They’d be left with the same conclusion as now—that someone with specialist knowledge from outside Kawanishi tampered with the robot. But at least they’d have the information.

  Matsuki wanted to hear nothing more about the whole incident. If she told the police about the transmitter and they started an investigation, it might mean more publicity for the company. Matsuki would be upset.

  She had no illusions about her value to the company. They needed her skills, they needed her creativity, and in pre-Quake, pre-Seikai reform days, when international appearances still meant something, they’d needed her visibility as part of their global image. But only while she stayed a team player. As soon as she began to make what they perceived as trouble, that would be the end.

  Perhaps not the end of employment, like Akita, but certainly the end of promotion and responsibility; she’d be shuttled back to the U.S. to languish as a regional manager, subordinate to the local Japanese manager and Head Office.

  “Shit,” she said in English, and slapped the corridor wall. Sometimes she wished she did work in a small workshop like the Tanakas. By herself.

  “McGuire-san.”

  Izumi caught up with her.

  “Another hot day we’ve had.” He looked at her carefully. Izumi, stooped and grizzled, reminded Eleanor of an underweight badger, that creature of low cunning and sly sense of humor in Japanese folklore.

  Eleanor nodded. The elevator doors opened and they both got in.

  “You’re off to the lab?” said Izumi.

  “To finalize the report, yes.” She tried to keep her tone neutral, but some bitterness must have crept in.

  “McGuire-san, about that report.” Izumi looked sideways at her. “It is important to the whole division that it gets done properly. The budget proposals are evaluated on Thursday, and I wouldn’t want the evaluators to be distracted by minor matters.” He didn’t need to say more. If she upset Matsuki, it could inconvenience everyone in the division.

  The doors began to open. Eleanor reached out and hit the shut pad again. Izumi looked at her in mild surprise.

  “Chief Izumi, the robot seems to have been m … modified after it left here. That voids its warranty, of course, and it isn’t our responsibility. But the police should know.”

  “Indeed.” Izumi took off his glasses and polished them on the end of his tie, taking his time. “I think they will receive a copy of your report anyway.”

  “Will they? I assumed it was an internal matter.”

  “I should say, I believe they can acquire a copy should they desire one.”

  “Oh. If they realize they should have a copy, they can ask for one.”

  “Exactly.” Izumi replaced his glasses and looked at her sharply over them. “The detective in charge of the case merely needs to ask.”

  Eleanor thought of Assistant Inspector Ishihara. He would not be shy about asking for a copy of the report. All she had to do was tell him it was available.

  “Thank you for your advice.” She bowed with as much sincerity as she knew how.

  “One more word of advice, McGuire-san.” Izumi half smiled. “You excel at following your instincts, but you are still learning to put the company first. Remember that there is always a way to do both.”

  He tapped the open pad and left the elevator.

  Eleanor sighed and followed him. Life wasn’t long enough to learn how to do that.

  Prefectural Office’s idea of taking over the investigation into the four Silver Angel deaths was to let Ishihara and West Station do the slog work like interviews, while they sat in air-conditioned offices and fiddled with computers.

  Ishihara wiped the sweat off his face with his third handkerchief of the day. Monday midday already. He’d like to see career officers like Inspector Funo get out into the hot streets. It would give them an idea what the real police force did for a living. The young network specialist, Kusatsu, had been incensed at the way Prefectural Office treated West Station, especially when he hadn’t been allowed to observe the data that was downloaded from the handcoms found in the apartment.

  Ishihara had long ago stopped complaining at how the elite of the police force treated the rest. You swallowed the condescension and did the best you could with whatever part of the job they left to you. Kusatsu should get used to it, too; otherwise he’d find himself doing traffic duty on Tsushima, or somewhere equally bucolic.

  He tried to match the map in his phone against the street he stood in. If “street” was the right word. “Alley” might be better. It was one of the side streets that ran off the old station area. The new station was underground, several hundred meters away, near the new Betta where the four silver-painted children had died.

  He rotated the map in a vain attempt to get his bearings. A tiny S indicated a supermarket somewhere near the old station, but he’d been walking for nearly half an hour now without finding it. Probably closed down, he thought gloomily. Like most of these other shops.

  Deprived of their main source of customers, commuters walking to and from the station, most of the small boutiques, bookshops, hairdressers, restaurants, and cafes in the area were boarded up or simply abandoned. Some had been taken over by homeless people. Or perhaps they were the original owners. In the midday heat few people moved, and the place seemed abandoned. Above the tangle of electricity lines and tiled roofs loomed the angular white prow of the new Betta.

  Soon this lot will be cleared away for a shopping mall or something connected to the Betta. Will it really be an improvement? He wiped his face again and kept walking.

  The Betta where the deaths occurred was not yet fully occupied. The residents hadn’t got used to their neighbors, and nobody had noticed anything strange on the sixth floor. Nobody had yet moved into the apartment on one side, and the family on the other side hadn’t heard anything through the soundproof walls.

  The autopsy report had just come through that morning, and showed that all four victims died of anaphylactic shock, possibly from a reaction to electric current, although this was unlikely. Other analyses were being done, but the results weren’t ready yet. All the victims had phone implants augmented so that they could receive aural input directly. It looked like an accident, except that nobody knew what the victims had been trying to do. Prefectural Office’s report, which might hold information about the Silver Angels that could give them a clue, wasn’t available yet.

  The Betta security cameras showed the kids going into the elevator and up to the apartment on Friday night. None of them ever came out again. They didn’t appear to have any trouble getting in, which made Ishihara suspicious of the manager again.

  One important item of information came from the interviews. The food in the kitchen didn’t belong to the owner of the apartment. He said he’d only just moved in when he was called away on business, and hadn’t had time to stock the pantry. There should have been only a couple of cans of beer and some mayonnaise in the fridge. Instead, several packaged meals and bottles of soft drink crowded the shelves, and wrappers from seven packets of
instant noodles had been squished under the sink. Good job the kids were untidy and didn’t put the rubbish in the automatic garbage dispenser. They’d obviously intended to stay a couple of days, indicating they knew when the owner was getting back.

  None of the employees of the shops within the Betta recognized photos of the four children. And so far none of the employees of shops near the Betta recognized them either. The kids had probably brought the food with them from wherever they lived. But it was worth checking.

  He saw a 24 HOURS sign above a grimy glass door that said QUICK MART in peeling letters. The door jangled a tune in the rear of the shop. Nobody was at the till, although an archaic electric fan wafted air that was barely cooler than outside. Four short lines of shelves filled the narrow space. He nearly turned away—it didn’t seem likely that these shelves held the kind of meal that would appeal to four teenagers. At the back of the room refrigerator cabinets groaned with the effort of cooling ice cream, pickles, and cold meats. A door stood open beside the cabinets, but it was covered with dangling plastic strips, so Ishihara couldn’t see where it led.

  “Hello?” Ishihara called loud enough to be heard by someone in the back room.

  Nobody answered, but he could hear the sounds of a television. He edged between the shelves and stood beside the door. “Is anybody there?”

  After a long moment he heard shuffling footsteps, then the strips, their original colors faded to a uniform dirty pink, were pushed aside to reveal a wrinkled face topped with wispy gray hair.

  Ishihara groaned inwardly. Grandma was minding the store. He’d have to come back later. “Good morning, Grandmother. Is the owner here?”

  The old woman, a bent question mark of a person, cricked her neck up to look at him.

  “Good morning,” she returned equably. “He’s just stepped out. And you are …”

  “Assistant Inspector Ishihara of West Station police.” He held up his ID. She squinted at it.

  “Wait a minute. I need my glasses.”

  “There’s no need …” he began, but she was already shuffling through the plastic strips. She shoved her feet into ancient sandals and hobbled over to the till. Ishihara followed, stepping over boxes of curry stacked beside the shelves.