Deadstock

CHAPTER NINE bed cames

Stake despised the situation comedy called Buddy Balloon, starring a mutant discovered by the producers in Tin Town, by the name of Buddy Vrolik. Buddy was a 150-pound sphere, without limbs, without facial features, without anything but artificial ports into which nutrients were fed and from which wastes were pumped, these substances contained in tanks stored under the motorized cart he rested in. He could move this cart about via a chip implanted in his brain, which resided inside that globe like a yolk in an egg. Similarly, he could have his thoughts expressed through a speaker in his cart, in the form of a synthetic voice.

In Tin Town, prior to his discovery, his sister had let Buddy sit all day in a child's plastic swimming pool in her living room, soaking up a nutrient solution usually fed to malnourished infants from a baby bottle.

In the comedy, Buddy-whose mutation, Stake had read, was called Acardia amorphus-was the centerpiece of a lovable if trouble-prone family, berating them or giving them smart-alecky wisecracks in a city tough accent. He was famous for his lewd comments and double entendres, when female friends visited the apartment.

Stake couldn't fault Vrolik for humiliating himself this way. It was a better life than he'd ever known. He'd been able to move his family out of Tin Town. But Stake knew that Vrolik's benefactors had not been motivated by concern for his welfare. And if other mutants, each more grotesque than the last, became the subjects of their own sitcoms produced by rival networks, then it would not set into motion a wave of public concern for the horrendous living conditions of Tin Town, the epidemic lack of health care for the poor, the toxins in the air. It would set into motion a wave of laughter, from viewers smugly relieved that they had two arms, two legs, two eyes.

Janice Poole returned to the bedroom, wrapped in a purple silk robe and toweling her gray-threaded dark hair. She saw what he was watching as he still lay nude on her bed, but with the skin sheet pulled up to his chest. "Oh, this guy is so funny," she said, sitting down on the edge of the mattress. "I saw him interviewed on VT a few weeks ago and he really is funny in real life, too."

"The indomitable human spirit," Stake said drily.

Janice looked around at him. "I missed you in the shower, lazybones. We could have had fun in there." She leaned down over him and pressed the side of her face to his crotch, the living flesh of her bed sheet forming a thin barrier between his flesh and hers. She pretended to be listening to a baby inside the womb of its mother. "I hear something kicking in there."

Stake ruffled a hand through her hair in a gesture more obligatory than affectionate. He had not been too lazy to shower with her. He had needed the few minutes alone, after the hours they had spent in bed together tonight. They had been watching movies on the entertainment system opposite the foot of her bed. Some of her favorite movies, starring some of her favorite actors.

She had instructed Stake to keep his eyes on the screen. Occasionally she had even touched her remote in order to freeze a huge close-up, so that he could focus on his subject all the better. Like a sniper, keeping her target in her sights. In this way, Janice Poole had at first made love to the hot new actor, Crow Tidwell. And after she had had her fill of Crow, she had exchanged him for the leading man Harris Docker, but in a movie a few decades old, from when he'd first become popular. Stake had not objected. He had complied, passive beneath her, or even behind her. Once in a while stealing a look at her skin, instead, to keep himself aroused.

She raised her head to smile up at his face. "My toy," she said. She was so honest about it; how could he hate her for it? "Back to your 'default' mode, I see."

"Sorry."

She narrowed her eyes perceptively, but didn't say anything. She followed his gaze back to the screen, watched Buddy Vrolik for a few moments. In a slapstick scene, his rascally sitcom nephews were trying to roll him down a bowling lane in the hopes of winning a competition. It was VT; of course they'd get the trophy. Janice said, "How come your face isn't turning all blank right now? What keeps it from trying to copy him?"

"My subconscious seems to know when it's something beyond my reach. I don't try to turn into a Bedbug," he said, referring to the bipedal insectoid race, from an alternate dimension like the Ha Jiin. "I won't even try to mimic a Tikkihotto." This of course was one of the handful of alien races that were truly humanoid, but whose "eyes" were squirming nests of clear ocular filaments. "I could reproduce their faces in general, but because their eyes are so different my gift shuts down and refuses to try."

"Okay, so if your gift is controlled by your subconscious, can't your subconscious be controlled by drugs? Or a chip? Or even therapy?"

Stake met her eyes. "Why? Are you anxious to lose your toy?"

She arched a brow at him. "I'm only saying, why didn't you ever do that?"

"I guess I feel this is who I am, now. It came in handy during the war. Comes in handy in my job. And, I suppose it makes me feel a bond with my mother. She was a mutant, too."

"You don't think there's something masochistic about not dealing with it?"

"What do you mean?"

She held up her hands to ward off potential anger. "Never mind. I'm being too personal, maybe. Things always deteriorate when men and women stop fucking and start talking instead." She sighed. "I'm not good with long-term relationships."

"Me neither," he muttered. Though he resented the way she had used him tonight, at least she had wanted him in some way. He had found it difficult to meet a woman who wanted anything from him at all. If she wanted his money, that made it easy enough, in a brief and barely satisfying way.

"Has anyone ever played these games with you before?"

"Well, I once had a woman hire me to find her missing husband. It turned out he'd been murdered by a business associate. She was devastated; especially because she'd doubted him by thinking he'd run off with another woman. A few months after I found him, she contacted me again. She, ah, paid me to take on her husband's appearance. We met a few times for sex." He shrugged. "Then, about a month after we stopped that, I heard she committed suicide."

"Wow."

"I wondered, for a while, if I made her problem even worse, by doing what I did."

"Oh no, don't say that. She was badly messed up already. You take on people's faces, Jeremy, but I think you take on their pain a lot, too."

Again, he met her eyes. It was a more insightful and sensitive observation than he would have expected from her.

In a moment, however, she was back to being the playful Janice, smirking and asking, "Did a man ever pay you to impersonate a lost female lover?"

Stake confessed, "I guess the last time I met with John Fukuda, when I was leaving him, I was kind of afraid of that. Afraid he might ask me to take on his dead wife's form. He'd been looking at me very strangely through lunch. Especially after he'd had a few drinks. I thought I saw tears in his eyes. Then again, he'd talked a little about his twin brother, earlier."

"Mr. Fukuda did adore his wife, from what I hear. But I don't think he'd accept a man as a substitute. He's very much a fan of the ladies."

"You sound like you speak from experience." Stake had finally come out with it.

Again, the smirk. "Jealous?"

"Curious. It didn't develop into anything major?"

"I guess we're both too restless, he and I. Restless in here," she tapped her chest, "instead of here." She reached over to touch his cheek.

Stake thought of the Ha Jiin clerical caste, with their vortex faces and the smaller vortex in the center of their chests. "I'm restless in both places."

She slipped under the sheet with him, but thankfully kept on her robe, content to lie on her back and stare absently at the VT screen. "How is the Fukuda case coming along?"

"I brought up Tableau Meats to him. The possibility that Adrian Tableau's daughter might have stolen Yuki's doll out of hatred, because their fathers are rivals. I'm going to follow that angle for now. In fact, I think I'm going to try to meet with Tableau in person."

"Who knows, maybe he'll even hire you to look for Krimson. Or would that be a conflict of interest?"

"Technically, maybe not, but I think I'd have to decline at this point if he asked."

"So, how much do you know about John's meat company? The former Alvine Products? It has quite a history behind it."

"I know the basics of the scandal."

"Oh, I was fascinated with the whole thing when it came out."

Like Tableau Meats, Punktown's other large meat supplier, Alvine had been in the business of manufacturing livestock-or deadstock, as Fukuda had told Stake they were nicknamed. Battery animals, as they were more formally referred to by bio-engineers. Chickens without pesky heads or feathers, rapidly grown by the thousands in great tanks of nutrient solution. Headless cattle with rudimentary limbs. Hogs that were little more than pink blobs of meat for the harvesting. Tikkihotto hetreki, which were like giant sloths, and llama-like reptiles called glebbi, from the planet Kali. In fact, the top executives of Alvine Products had been Kalian; apparently the leaders of a bizarre religious cult.

"They were growing an army of monsters, right there along with the meat," Janice related. "Spawn of Ugghiutu, they called them. Ugghiutu is sort of the Kalian God and Satan in one body. Supposedly, Ugghiutu is one of a whole race of god-like beings called the Outsiders, who once ruled the universe but got shut out of our dimension and put into a sort of suspended animation. So there are these really fanatical schism groups of Ugghiutu worshipers who try to call Ugghiutu out of his sleep. They want to bring about an apocalypse to end our reign, and return Ugghiutu and I guess the other Outsiders to power."

"So what kind of monsters were these things, anyway? The place was so badly damaged in the big quake."

"Yeah, that's how it all came to light with Alvine, because of the fire fighters and rescue teams going in there. Anyway, who can tell what would have happened if they'd unleashed all those creatures. No one seems to know just what they would have been like when they were fully grown. The leaders of the cult were either killed in the earthquake themselves, or hunted down by another sort of cult called the Children of the Elders, that seems to be at war with the Outsiders cult."

"Jeesh. So strange," Stake mused. "But why would Fukuda go to the trouble of rebuilding the same structure and assimilating their business, instead of just starting up another similar company elsewhere? I should think that he'd want to distance himself from all that. Controversy can be good publicity, but we're talking about something people put in their bellies, here."

"Well, John's a bit on the mysterious side; do I need to tell you that? Mainly, I think he was just fascinated by the whole thing with Alvine Products himself, given his profession. They were obviously doing some very strange experimental stuff behind the scenes in Alvine." She turned toward Stake meaningfully. "I've been thinking of that a lot since you and I first talked about Tableau Meats."

"What are you thinking?"

"Yuki's doll. It's a belf. A primitive life form John created for her."

"Yes."

"And his name, Dai-oo-ika. In Japanese it means-"

"'Great king of squid,'" Stake cut in.

"Yeah. Well, like I said, they didn't find out much about what the cult was growing at Alvine; what the things would have ultimately developed into. But some rescue workers were killed inside by a couple of these monsters. They were on fire and all crazed."

"One guy was eaten," Stake said. "I read an interview with a rescue worker who saw it happen."

"I read that, too. It sounds like he wasn't eaten so much as absorbed, in something like phagocytosis."

"Which is?"

"The way an amoeba eats. Hell of a way to die, huh?"

"Right. I hate when that happens."

"So anyway, these eyewitnesses said the things were very big, and that they didn't have faces. Just tentacles instead, like those of a mollusk."

"'Great king of squid,'" Stake mumbled again, remembering the pictures of Dai-oo-ika that Yuki had shown him on her wrist comp. "My God, Janice."

"Yeah," she said. "So, what I was thinking is, was John able to salvage some of the research or technology at Alvine? And did he use that when he designed Dai-oo-ika for his daughter?"

"Janice," Stake said, "if I ever need to hire a partner, you're in the front running." He sat up in her bed, the gears in his mind fully lubricated now.

"So what if that were true, and Tableau suspected it, too? Put it together like you did? Would he want to steal Dai-oo-ika from his rival not so much out of spite, but because he wants access to that research himself?"

"Hard to do a job for John when he keeps you in the dark, isn't it?"

"I'd like to know just how much dark there is. The first time he told me he bought up Alvine Products, he admitted that he did a lot to cover up the situation there himself."

"Can you come right out and ask him about this stuff?"

"He'd have told me if he wanted me to know. He might feel it's not relevant to the task he's given me. He might not trust me with knowledge like that. But if I need to confront him, then I will."

"Still, you're not a forcer solving a crime, you're a private dick collecting a paycheck." "Exactly."

"You're my private dick, too." She squeezed his groin beneath the skin sheet.

"You mean Crow Tidwell's dick," Stake remarked.

"Ohh, jealous of your own face now, huh?" She rolled on top of him. "It's still you, isn't it? Always you." She kissed his bland, android-like visage. "My little plaything."

He awoke with a start. He had fallen asleep beside her. She might have killed him while he was vulnerable. But she hadn't.

A pounding at the thick wooden door, glazed a glossy blue. Stake sat up, heart thudding, then looked down at the woman beside him on the mattress. She lay on her back staring up at him. The way the light touched her black eyes at this angle, they glowed at him a laser red.

How long had he been asleep? And had she dozed off, too? Or been watching him all this time?

"Sir?" a voice called through the door. Private Henderson. Now, when Stake came in here, he posted only Henderson outside the door. He trusted him the most.

Corporal Jeremy Stake jumped to his feet and struggled into his blue-camouflaged uniform as swiftly as he could, but with his nerves singing it was an awkward enterprise. "Right there, Henderson," he said. He fastened his belt. There were no weapons holstered on it. He didn't bring them into the Earth Killer's room.

Still, she could have found another way to kill him while he slept. Had she spared him out of a sense of humanity, or was it only that she felt killing him would gain her nothing except her own death?

Hearing her move, he turned to see her pulling her own clothes toward her, more peasant attire than anything like a uniform: a sleeveless top that fastened down the front and pants that ended at the calf, in a darker shade of blue than her skin; her lovely, sky blue skin. Even as he rushed to get his boots on, he could barely take his eyes off her small, lithe body while she dressed. Her hips only subtly flared, but the thick mat of black hair below her smooth belly belied her body's child-like appearance. In leaning forward to step into her pants, her long, long hair spilled down like ink to hide her little breasts with their nipples the same soft pink as her lips against that cool blue skin.

Finally Stake could go to the door and crack it open. Henderson was a good man, didn't try to peek in past him. "I'm okay," Stake told him. "Just, uh, trying to get her to talk to me."

In a lowered voice, Henderson said, "Yes sir; sorry, sir. But I thought you'd want to hear what the other prisoner was telling Private Martin. She just came and told me. It's about the Earth Killer."

As he left the room, Stake threw a glance back at the woman named Thi Gonh. Now that she had dressed again, she sat cross-legged on her mattress on the floor. She gazed at him in return, her face unreadable. Stake shut and locked the door between them.

Private Martin was the only female in their unit, and as they walked (another Colonial soldier had come to guard Thi Gonh in Henderson's place), Henderson suggested that this was the reason the male prisoner had opened up to her.

They came to the room-one of those the clerics had utilized as their quarters before the Earth soldiers captured their monastery-that was being used as the young prisoner's cell. The guard posted at the door was Private Cortez, and he smiled as Stake approached him.

"Hey," he said, "when can I have my turn, ah, interrogating that little blue bitch?"

Stake stopped in front of the man. "Shut your mouth, Cortez. You aren't to touch her."

"I see. Want her all to yourself, huh?"

"I said shut your blasting mouth. Now get the fuck out of my way."

"Yes… sir." Cortez stepped aside, and Stake unlocked the door to let himself and Henderson into the male Ha Jiin's tiny cell.

The male prisoner, who had not given his name, looked better off now that the medic had seen to his wound. He was as small and light in frame as the woman, with a short, bristling haircut. The light made his eyes flash red when it refracted off them, too. He lay on his thin mattress, the end of it doubled over to prop up his back.

"I hear you've been conversing with our Private Martin," Stake said to the young man, who had to be less than twenty. He wanted this information straight from the source. If the youth wouldn't talk as readily to him as he had to an attractive young Earth woman, then he'd get the story from her instead. "You said something to her about your partner, the Earth Killer?"

"Earth Killer." A grin spread open in his face; it seemed to flash back the light itself. "How could that traitor ever be known as Earth Killer again?"

His English was very good; this was the most Stake had heard him say. He stepped closer. "Why do you call her a traitor?"

"She let us be caught, with no fight. There are not many of you now. Maybe in here we could have beat you, or pushed you back."

Henderson couldn't stop himself from speaking up. "I seriously doubt that, partner."

"You did the right thing, surrendering," Stake told him. "Now maybe you'll make it out of this war alive. A smart choice doesn't make you a traitor."

"She is a traitor. Letting you take us-that is not her true crime." Now he turned his smile to Henderson. "You were one of the soldiers in the clearing. Reading your friends' letters. I remember your face."

Stake looked to Henderson. "What's he talking about?"

Henderson dropped his eyes. "It was a few hours before we came to the monastery, the day after Lindy and Lieutenant Babouris were killed by the sniper. Me and Privates LeDuc and Devereux were. well, we were all on the move, sir, but it was when the unit stopped to take a rest. The three of us crept aside into a tiny clearing. We had the personal belongings we'd taken off Lindy, and Privates Nguyen and Howland. We found some mail they'd printed out. We began to read the messages to each other, quietly. I don't know why. Maybe to pay tribute to them. LeDuc began it, by reading a letter Lindy's wife sent him. There were pictures in there of his children. And then I read a letter Howland's mother sent him, and there were even a few cookies in a little bag. I don't know if she shipped them to him or if he brought them with him. It looked like maybe he was just saving them, to have them. We each ate one of the cookies. And LeDuc was the first to start crying."

Stake glanced down at the Ha Jiin boy. His grin appeared wider.

"We all three of us were crying, very quietly so no one would hear us. Not the enemy. And not our friends."

"But we did hear you," the Ha Jiin broke in. "And we were watching you. And the woman had you in her sights all that time. Her finger on the trigger."

Stake turned to him, not daring to believe it. "She could have killed them?"

"More easily than she killed your two officers, and the two other men you were weeping for." He tipped his chin at Henderson. "But she waited. And waited. I looked at her. She let her gun down. I motioned to her-shoot them, shoot them. But she wouldn't. And when I tried to point my gun, she put her hand on my arm. She made me pull away with her. And I obeyed her."

"Why?"

"I had to obey her. She is higher in rank."

"No, I mean, why didn't she kill my men when she had the chance?"

"Why? Because she is a woman." He snorted. "She was strong when she was killing you from a distance, but she became soft when she was close enough to smell your tears."

Stake looked away then, as if he could see the Earth Killer through the walls that separated them. "She showed my men mercy, because they were defenseless just then. And because their loss touched her," he said. "That makes her human, not weak."

"Human, like you? She is fighting to keep our nation whole! She is fighting against demons that step into our world out of the air, from some hell we can not see! She kills your officers and soldiers, and then spares the men who weep over those same dead men? She is a traitor. And someday I will be back with my own people, whether it takes me a year or ten years. And I will report her to my superiors as the traitor she is!"

Stake lunged forward then, and stood over the boy, and pointed the sidearm he had ripped out of its holster. Pointed it down at the surprised hole where those bright teeth had been gleaming seconds earlier. "Who's soft now, huh? You'll be smelling your own tears in a minute. Probably your piss, too."

"Sir," Henderson said.

"Don't," the young man blubbered, shielding his face ineffectively with one hand.

Stake backed off slowly, and returned his jungle-blue pistol to its holster. "You owe that woman your ass, punk, whether you want to admit it or not." He turned to leave the room. "Come on, Henderson."

Returning to the Earth Killer's cell, Stake found its door standing wide open. The room was empty. For a moment, his eyes went wild, but one of his men close by told him that Privates Martin and Devereux had taken the woman to clean herself up. Stake himself had given his people orders to allow her this. He headed toward the single large room where the monks cared for themselves. There, he found the two Colonial soldiers posted outside the open door. He heard water splashing against a body inside, but didn't see her from this angle.

"I was talking to the male prisoner," Stake said to the unit's only female. "Good job using your womanly wiles, Martin."

Private Martin nodded. "I'll try to find out anything else significant. He hates our guts, but it looks like he wouldn't mind bedding down with an Earth woman if he had a chance."

"Speaking of womanly wiles, sir," Devereux spoke up, "some of us are getting concerned about you and this woman. The past couple of days you've been in there with her more than out here with us."

"Don't worry about what I do, private."

"I worry because you're our commanding officer now-corporal. And you're our commanding officer because that woman in there killed Babouris and Lindy. Is that so easy to forget, just because she's beautiful?"

"I haven't forgotten that. But did you know that woman spared your life a few days ago?"

"Martin told me. I don't believe it. Yes, we were reading letters in the clearing. Looking at pictures of Lindy's kids: a boy, five; a girl, two. Who'll never see their dad again, because that woman shot his face off. If you ask me, she didn't kill us just then because she thought it would draw too much fire, and her partner was already wounded. Not because she felt sorry for us."

"Believe what you want to believe."

"I will. And I believe you're fraternizing with the enemy. Or is that sodomizing the enemy?"

"You will show me respect, private!" Stake roared. He thought he could hear the Earth Killer tense her body motionless, just then, as she listened to them in the next room.

"When we get out of here, you may find yourself reported, corporal."

"If you do get out of here, you'll have that woman to thank for it."

"Yeah?" He smirked. "Like I say, it isn't just me who isn't too happy about how chummy you are with her. You know, you can't be with her every minute, as much as you might like that. And who knows; she might just try to escape. One of us might just have to shoot her in the back."

Stake stepped closer, until his face was inches from the other man's face. So close, that his features were starting to mold themselves into Devereux's angry reflection. "If someone makes that serious mistake, they might find themselves shot, too. In the front."

Martin put a hand on Devereux's shoulder. "You better do as the corporal says. No one has witnessed any improper behavior. We have to stick together, here. The Ha Jiin could move on this position at any time."

Stake's compack beeped just then. It was affixed to his belt, and he glanced down at it. "I'm going to take this call. See that woman safely back to her quarters when she's done, and get her some food." He then stalked off with Henderson in tow.

Stake detached the little computer and thumbed it on in front of his face. Another man's visage appeared on its little screen. That visage was covered in a camouflage of blue patches, ranging from pastel to indigo. But the camouflage was not makeup, Stake knew, nor was it even tattooing. It was the man's natural coloration, if natural were the right word. Stake understood straight away that he was looking at a clone. Many of the Colonial Forces infantrymen were copies cloned from belf masters-soldiers bio-engineered to be better fighters. Stronger, hardier, with enhanced hearing and vision, and in this case better equipped to blend into their surroundings. Since the Earth Colonies had only been involved in the so-called Blue War for three years at this point, the man's blue-based camouflage meant that this clone was probably only a year or two old. And yet, a moment later Stake realized that this being outranked him.

"Corporal Stake? I'm Sergeant Adams, of the 5th Advance Rangers. We're the men headed to rendezvous with you at the enemy temple."

"Yes, sir. Good to talk with you, sergeant," Stake said. In reality, though, he was always wary when dealing with clones. They tended to be grouped into their own units, and so there was often resentment or even hostility between them and the "birther" soldiers, as the clones had nicknamed men like Stake. The birther men felt superior for not being a mass-produced product. The clones felt superior knowing that they were, in general, the better warriors. Stake tried not to fall into childish tribalism and counterproductive rivalry, as so many others did, but it was easy to get swept up in it when the derision was directed one's own way.

"Stake, we're in the Kae Ta Valley and things are a bit intense down here." In fact, Stake could hear a distant crackling of gunfire in the background. "I estimate we're going to be a few days behind in merging our unit with yours."

"Understood, sir. We'll continue to hold this position until you arrive, or until we receive new orders."

"Good man. Hey-we heard you caught the Earth Killer. Nice work, corporal." "Yes, sir."

"Got to run. Places to go, people to kill. I'll get back to you ASAP."

"Thanks, sergeant." The man's patterned face vanished from his compack's screen, and he returned it to his belt.

A short while later, the soldiers ate some dinner and settled in, restlessly listening to the sounds of the darkening jungle as diurnal animals made way for nocturnal. Stake stole back toward the room in which Thi Gonh was kept. There, he found Devereux posted outside. The man looked agitated when he saw Stake coming toward him.

"Go get Martin to replace you," Stake told him harshly. "I don't want you guarding this woman anymore."

"Okay, sir," Devereux stammered, sounding strangely less cocky all of a sudden, "but why don't you go get Martin, and I'll wait here until…"

Beyond the thick door, Stake heard a muffled voice. A man's.

He pushed past Devereux, threw the glossy blue door open.

The Earth Killer lay on her belly on the mattress, her face squashed against it in profile. She was naked, and so was the man lying across her back. Private Cortez had his pistol in his fist, and he kept its muzzle pressed against the blue woman's skull. Hearing the door open, Cortez had raised his head. "Dung," he hissed. Thi Gonh opened her eyes.

The tip of Stake's boot caught the Earth soldier under the jaw. He then descended on Cortez with his fist. When he had rolled Cortez's moaning hulk off the small woman, Stake stomped him between the legs, and then on the face. He heard his nose break. Blood sparkled on his boot.

"Stop it!" Devereux shouted, trying to grab at Stake from behind.

Stake's pistol smashed across Devereux's jaw in an arc as he tore it out of its holster. He then aimed the weapon at the stunned soldier's face. Blood started to run into the palm Devereux clamped over his mouth. Cortez's faraway moans sounded like he was having some terrible nightmare.

"Anyone touches this woman again, I will kill them. I will. absolutely. kill them."

"She's using you!" Devereux sobbed. "She doesn't give a blast about you, or me, or any of us! She'd kill us all if she could!"

"Get out of here. And take your friend to the medic, before I decide to shoot his stinking jewels off."

Devereux dragged Cortez's nude body from the room, leaving a swath of blood. And Stake turned to look down at the prisoner. She had pulled her clothing to her, but held it balled up in front of her in clenched fists. For the first time, he saw her eyes were moist with tears that she was fighting to restrain. For the first time, she revealed to Stake that she knew some words of English, after all.

"T'ank you, Ga Noh," she said in her dark voice. "T'ank you, take care, take care of me."

Ga Noh. He remembered it now. Henderson had told Stake she'd referred to him this way, after seeing his face change the first time. Ga Noh was something like a chimera or a shapeshifter. A mystical kind of being; part human, part god. Maybe good, maybe evil.

"I'm sorry," he told her.

She held her hand out to him. He stared at it.

Using you, Devereux had said. Only using you.

Why had he found himself attracted to her, even before he'd learned that she had spared three of his men? Was it indeed just her beauty blinding him? Was the shapeshifting mutant so desperate for the attentions of a woman? Any woman? He felt a moment of contempt for her. Contempt for himself.

And then he took her hand.

Private investigator Jeremy Stake awoke to find that Buddy Balloon had been replaced by a late night talk show. A naked starlet sat giggling in the interviewee chair, luminous green tattoos twined around her overly large breasts like the vines of pumpkins. He turned his head to see that Yuki Fukuda's biology teacher, Janice Poole, had dozed off in her purple silk robe beside him. He stared at her profile for a few moments. Private Devereux had been dead for ten years now-killed the first day that Stake's unit and the cloned Rangers ventured out from the monastery togeth-er-but his words still echoed in Stake's mind. Using you.

He stole out of bed, gathered up his clothing. He was afraid that the sound of showering would rouse Janice, but this was not so much out of consideration for her. He just slipped into his things, buckled on his gun's holster, and stepped out into the chill of Punktown's night.