Would they go so far as to torture him? Though strictly forbidden, torture had not been unknown in the interrogation of Ha Jiin prisoners, by soldiers cloned or otherwise. And might they even intend to kill him? Stake gauged his chances of surprising the three clones. Brushing that revolver away from his neck with his left arm. Grabbing his Darwin out of the man’s waistband and bringing it up to take out the shotgun man. Then back to blast the first man. Then wheeling and plugging Jones before he could jerk out whatever iron he carried. Maybe. Maybe he could pull it off. But Stake dreaded the scenario. As strong and fast and skillful as he was, these men were designed to be even stronger, faster, more skillful. Three of them. And one of him, with guns only inches away.
“And we’re just to take your word on that?” said the shotgun man. “Put our trust in your professional ethics?”
“Hey, bring me down to the nearest forcer precinct. I’ll submit to a truth scan in a minute. Yes, Mr. Fukuda would like to know if Krimson took the doll. So yes, I’ve tried to find her myself. In that regard, I’m actually helping Tableau, aren’t I? The more people looking for his daughter, for whatever reason, the better.”
“You’re more and more the saint by the minute,” said shotgun man.
“If Fukuda took Krimson, then why doesn’t Yuki have her doll back?”
“Because Krimson never took it,” Jones said, stopping opposite Stake a few paces away. As if he might strike him. Whip out his gun to execute him. “He may have her in custody to use in bargaining for the doll if he can establish that Mr. Tableau possesses it. Or even, realizing his error in kidnapping her, Fukuda might have murdered Krimson Tableau and disposed of her to hide the fact that he captured her.”
“That’s all nonsense. Paranoid nonsense your boss is feeding you. You guys should know better.”
“It’s your blasting boss who’s the paranoid one, Corporal,” said the Decimator man. He had studied Stake’s medals, too, obviously.
“Hey, mate, we all fought on the same side once.”
“Yeah? Not anymore.”
“Oh my God,” Jones said in barely a whisper, taking a step nearer to Stake. “Your face is changing. You’re starting to look like us.”
Dung, Stake thought. Not in color, he knew from spending time with their sort in the past, but definitely in form.
Decimator man leaned around in front of Stake for a look. “Not us,” he corrected. “You. He’s a chameleon.”
“Why are you copying me?” Jones asked harshly.
“I can’t help it,” Stake snapped.
“So you’re like us, huh? A belf?”
“No. I was born, not grown. I’m a mutant.”
“I see. Better to be a mutant than a clone, I guess.”
“Your words, not mine.”
The Decimator’s muzzle ground itself against his jawbone more painfully. The front sight broke his skin and he felt a bead of blood run down his neck. “Wanker,” the man snarled.
Mr. Jones looked Stake up and down. “Don’t be so smug, my friend. You might still be a belf and not know it. Your designers could have given you a false history. A brain drip of memory‑encoded long‑chain molecules, the way they trained us.”
“Why would they go through the trouble of making me think I was a birther?”
“Maybe it had to do with the work they programmed you for in the war. I mean, why would they have used you, if not to exploit your ability? Were you a spy? A deep penetration scout?”
“Stop fucking with me. You’re not going to convince me I’m a factory product like you bastards.”
The shotgun’s stock smashed him in the ribs, and Stake went down on the floor, feeling as if he’d been hit with a load of its pellets. The Decimator now pointed at the top of his porkpie hat. But Jones hadn’t deemed to pull his own gun. Calmly, he said, “Maybe you’re a pet that madman Fukuda cooked up in one of his labs. And it’s him who put a bogus history in your head. Digest that for a while, Mr. Stake.”
“Blast you,” he wheezed.
“In the meantime, I suggest you think about the wisdom of withholding information that might lead us to the whereabouts of Krimson Tableau, dead or alive. If you come forward to help us, we’ll be lenient, even if you had something to do with it. After all, you’re just a tool. But if we have to come back here again, we may be in a less civil mood next time.”
“I’m going to continue looking for that doll,” Stake said evenly. “And if I find Krimson Tableau along the way – dead or alive – I promise to let you know. But I will assure you again, I had nothing to do with her disappearance.”
“And you can assure us that Fukuda had nothing to do with it, either?”
Actually, Stake couldn’t assure them of that. The man was still too much of a mystery to him. Too full of surprises.
“Not as far as I know,” was the best he could say, rising to his feet again slowly so as not to alarm them. He winced, a hand to his side.
Shotgun man took the Darwin .55 out of his comrade’s waistband and walked into the bedroom. He apparently left the shotgun and pistol in there, so as to return them to Stake, because he came back without them. Meanwhile, Jones had moved toward the door.
“Remember what I said, Mr. Stake. Don’t be foolish, now.”
“I won’t if you won’t.”
The last one out was Decimator man, and he gave a mocking military salute before Stake closed the door in his blue-mottled face.
***
A false history. If he were just a “pet” created by John Fukuda himself, as part of some game, some play – the scope and purpose of which he couldn’t fully imagine – would his maker go through the trouble of faking these medals framed on the wall? The pictures of his parents that he kept, but locked away? The same way Fukuda had manufactured a history for Yuki, his wife-turned-daughter? No, it was too illogical in his own case. At least the idea that he himself was a military clone, designed for his chameleon abilities, made more sense.
But it wasn’t true! It wasn’t! He knew who he was. He had had parents. A past. All these memories were real. He knew them as intimately as he knew this very second.
He turned to look across the room at his computer.
Rick Henderson had given him the number by which to contact her, via net connection. On her other world. In her other dimension, almost as far away as their one week together.
Stake sat down in front of his computer. And at last, began the call he had fantasized about making for a decade gone by.
It rang and rang on her end. He let it go on for five minutes. What time was it, there? And if someone finally answered, might it be a boyfriend? A husband? A daughter or son?
He was about to disconnect, filled with that thought, when her face appeared on the screen. He flinched, felt nausea lurch into his guts.
Her hair was parted on the side, drawn back behind her head but he could tell it was still as long as ever. Where the light gave it a sheen, it went from black to metallic red. Her blue face, like that of some beautiful apparition, had maybe lost a layer of youthful softness. But he had never seen her eyes, or her little smile, so soft. Or heard her voice, when she spoke, sound so gentle.
“Ga Noh.”
“Hi,” he said, trying to make his own smile look casual. “Hi, Thi Gonh. It’s good to see you again. My friend told you I’d be contacting you, then?”
“Yes. Your friend. Hen-da-son.”
Stake nodded. “Good. Thanks for talking to me. How are you?”
“Thi is good,” she said. “How are you, Ga Noh? You married now? Children?”
“Me? No. No time, I guess. Busy working.”
“Work what?”
“I’m a detective.” He saw her features pinch together in confusion. “I’m like a policeman, but for money.”
“Ah.” But it looked like she only partly got it.
“What are you doing now, for work?”
“I have good money. Farm. Big farm.” It seemed to Stake that she watched hi
m more closely, watched for his reaction, when she added, “My husa-bund and me.”
“Ah.” He nodded again. Husband. “You got married.”
“Yes. Six years married.”
“Congratulations. Wow. Ah...any children?”
“Oh, no.” She shifted slightly, uncomfortably, as if embarrassed at a failing. “Thi body no good.”
“No, don’t say that. Your body...you...”
His words trailed off. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to cry. He wondered if it were too late to go out after Jones and the other two clones – and shoot them. Shoot their blue-patterned faces off.
Now Thi narrowed her eyes as she scrutinized him even more intently. Why? Was he beginning to change? To mirror her face, as he had done the first time she had told him her name? Mirror her face, as he had done when their bodies were knotted behind the closed blue door of her cell?
“Ga Noh, what happen?” She pointed at the screen.
“Huh?” He touched the blood trickling down his neck, and understood. “Oh. I, ah, cut myself shaving.” He made shaving motions and grinned stupidly. Broken-heartedly.
“Ga Noh,” Thi said. “You okay? Okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Why you call me? You need Thi take care you? Help Ga Noh?”
“Help? Oh no. No. I just...I just lost track of you so long ago, and I’ve always wondered how you were. After the trial and all. I’m just happy you made out all right. I’m relieved.”
“Someone hurt you, huh?”
“Hurt me? No. No, I’m okay.”
“Someone hurt Ga Noh.” Her face had become harder, grim.
“Don’t worry about me. It’s just my job. It’s crazy sometimes.” He cleared his voice. “Hey, look, I have to go. But I was talking to Rick – Henderson – and I just thought I’d check in with you and say hi. Now that we aren’t at war with each other anymore, huh?”
Her eyes still probed him. Sniper’s keen eyes. “Thi worry you. Very worry.”
“No. No, really. Look, I have to go. Maybe I’ll call again sometime.”
“Call from where? Where you now?”
“Punktown, on Oasis. I was born here.”
She glanced behind her before she continued. “I am afraid husa-bund angry Thi, talk to Ga Noh.”
“Yes, yes, I understand.”
“But you need Thi, you call. Okay?”
“Sure. Same here. You need anything, call me. Just store my number, all right?”
“Mm.”
“Okay, then. Well...nice to see you. Goodbye, Thi, okay? Goodbye.”
Sadness in her face. It truly looked like sadness. Ask her! part of him shouted. But what did it matter now what, if anything, she had felt back then? What that had been all about. A husband now. Another life entirely, as if a different woman had been reincarnated inside the same body.
“Goodbye, Ga Noh,” she said.
He pressed a key, banished her face. Then let his head droop. And laughed. Wagged his head, and laughed.
“Fool,” he muttered. “Stupid, stupid fool.” Ten years, for these five minutes. And now it was all over, wasn’t it? This was his closure. Finally over, with a whimper. With a chuckle.
Stake lifted his head to make another call. To let John Fukuda know about the visit from Tableau’s cloned thugs. And to let Fukuda know that his own life might be in danger.
Back to the case, to take his mind off the call he had just made. The emptiness that it had filled only with pointed, painful heaviness, like the obsolete detritus of their war. Razor wire and spent cartridges, blood-crusted knives and mud-caked guns. Back to the case, because it was all he had.
EIGHTEEN: CONJOINED
As he passed through a wide section of tunnel, Dai-oo-ika noticed that two youths in shabby clothing were watching him, crouched as they were on a catwalk above him, but when he turned his head their way they ducked back into a narrow opening. He was tempted to go up the ladder there after them, in order to take more nourishment, but he did not want to be distracted from the unseen beacon – the silent vibration, almost like a voice – that drew him on and on through the entrails of Punktown. It promised him understanding of his condition, of himself, at its source. Or at least, it was his desire that it would be so.
Some stretches of tunnel were utterly without light. It didn’t inconvenience him one bit. His senses had become heightened; the thick tendrils of his face touched – like Braille – the particles of light from which images were constructed. They caressed the currents of sound like a hand dipped in a flowing stream, and the airborne spores of scent adhered to them and dissolved into their silver/black-banded flesh.
On he burrowed. On. Like an archeologist in subterranean ruins, hoping to excavate and piece together the fragments of his memory. There had to be more than just his name, the face of his child mother, snatches of dream. There had to be.
He reached the limits of underground Subtown, but came to a ladder, which he climbed up, up, to a higher level of the netherworld. At one point he crawled on all fours on a web-like metal grille and watched a subway train speed by below him, washing him in a flow of warm and stinking air. Now, just below the crust of the city, he continued following the beckoning call. A voice almost as familiar as his mother’s.
He came to a sealed circular grate, but it was not the first that had blocked his path and he pushed it out of its frame with a tortured screech of metal. Dai-oo-ika entered a polished white tunnel, glossy as the inside of a leviathan’s intestine. He crawled along this for a short distance, warm air like the wake of that subway train blowing hard against him. But he was a fish diligently swimming upstream against the current. At the end of this air vent he encountered a fan spinning inside a cage. He bent his thick fingers between the bars and tore the cage out of the mouth of the tunnel. The fan came with it in a burst of sparks, the blades whirring to a gradual stop. He bent this obstacle to one side, the fan blades merely the petals of a giant flower to be crushed.
Dai-oo-ika found himself in a long passage that vanished into darkness in either direction, despite the maintenance lighting. The tunnel was crammed with pipes that sheathed power cables and plumbing that conveyed water both fresh and fouled – many of these conduits labeled with tags or even by color. Spaced along the tunnel were rungs set into the tiled walls, these leading up to hatches stenciled with words he could not fathom. But he did not need to read them. He went unerringly to one set of rungs, and hoisted his bulk up them. The metal hatch was locked, but he yanked it clear of its socket with one hand and let it crash below him.
The access chute was narrow, and he had to squeeze his heavy body through it like the boneless mass it truly was, just as an octopus can ooze its body through the barest crack. But he was able to stand erect again once he had entered the basement of the apartment complex called Steward Gardens.
There were a number of interconnected rooms. Dai-oo-ika could stand in them with only a little stooping. Here were the support systems of the structure above him. Its softly humming generator. Cabinets sparkling with indicator lights. Monitor stations with screens that showed colorful scrolling data, or fizzing static, or were black and dead. Dominating one room was a huge tank containing the generic soup of fermented bacteria that the apartments’ food fabricators could mold like clay into a variety of programmed meals – could have, had the soup not gone bad. Dai-oo-ika sensed the seething microscopic life within, but it did not interest him. It was not a sustenance that would have nourished him, even if it were still viable.
But he took all this in only briefly. The source of the voice in his head was here, so loud now. As he moved toward it, however, several stealthy figures crept out of the gloom.
Dai-oo-ika felt the vaguest sense of kinship with these four figures. Their origins were at least in part the same as his own. Like him, they had no eyes but still appeared to see him as they approached in a widening semicircle. Their skin was gray, as his was predominately. All that distinguished one from the other
of them was the number marked on their foreheads.
But they apparently felt no kinship with him. They clearly saw him only as another intruder.
The first of the creatures to bolt and leap upon him tried to dig its fingers into his flesh. This angered Dai-oo-ika, and he plucked the clinging creature off him with one hand, flung it across the room. Another rushed him, but he batted it away and it thudded hard against a wall. He caught the third and fourth in his arms – and pulled them tight in a squeezing embrace. Pressed them against his swollen white belly. Until, much as they squirmed in his arms, they began to sink into his flesh as if it were a pool of milk.
One of the two he had repelled tried to rise, but he moved toward it with one of its brothers’ legs still protruding from his belly for a moment before it slipped out of sight. He picked up this stunned creature and embraced it, too. As soon as it had submerged, he turned his attention to the last of the four. It was flopping in a seizure on the floor. It didn’t put up a fight, only convulsed in his hands as he fed it headfirst into his mid-section.
Nourishment. He savored it. He felt stronger still. And now he focused his attention on the voice again. Followed it to the very core of this building which, in a sense, the owner of the voice made a sentient thing. Though sentient in a damaged way. Steward Gardens was like one immense living entity that didn’t quite know what it was, either.
The encephalon was a mass of grayish, convoluted tissue flattened into a vertical transparent frame, about four feet tall by two feet wide by six inches thick. Wires snaked out of the massive brain, floating subtly in the greenish amniotic solution that kept it alive. There were more computer stations in this room, but the brainframe itself was the very soul of the building.
Dai-oo-ika approached the glass cabinet slowly, its fungal green glow upon him. What was its relation to him? Brother? It felt more like...father. Creator. A god’s god. He reached out his right hand and placed it flat against the surface. The brain’s thoughts poured into his palm, flowed up his arm and into his flesh toward his own nexus of thought. He jolted a little at the strength of their connection. And when he jolted, the glass around his hand shattered. The nourishing solution began to leak out and patter on his feet. But Dai-oo-ika did not pay heed. He pressed his hand inside the cabinet, and now laid it upon the knotted brain tissue itself. The voice running into his arm turned to a bellow.
Deadstock: A Punktown Novel Page 19
