Deadstock

CHAPTER THREE ghosts

Jeremy Stake preferred riding a hoverbike, a leftover trait from his days in the Blue War, but sometimes his job called for him to use a hovercar instead, and he owned one of those, too. Similarly, when he was off the job, or on a job that required him to look casual, his clothing style was quite different from the nondescript black business suit he wore now-a generic look useful for any number of environments. He adapted to the occasion. But the regulars at the Legion of Veterans Post 69 recognized him in either casual or business-like incarnation, and they had tired of teasing him about whether he was off to the stock market or- when he needed to use the toilet-if he were headed for the "boardroom."

The veterans' former taunts aside, his suit wasn't quite that spiffy, and the hovercar he parked in front of LOV 69 was dimpled and dented here and there. He climbed out of it, and entered into the little building's cavernous shadows. Bass-heavy music thudded from a jukebox, a sports program played on one giant VT screen and a muted soap opera (watched avidly by several drunken gray-haired men) on another. Neons glowed fuzzily through cigarette smoke, and a genie-like holographic woman belly-danced inside a large plastic bottle advertising Knickerson beer. He seated himself on one of the stools at the bar.

Without having to be asked, the bartender pulled a tap to fill a glass with Zub beer and placed it in front of him. This man, Watt, was a Choom veteran of the Red War, older than Stake, his crew-cut hair silvered and one arm replaced from the elbow down with a nimble-fingered, plastic prosthesis black as an insect's limb. Despite his grunt of greeting and perpetual glower, he was one of the few men in the Post whom Stake spoke with at any length. Stake returned the greeting by asking, "Any wars broke out since last time I was in?"

"Not this week, unless I'm forgetting something."

Stake picked up and sipped the foam off his beer, swiveling on the stool a little to scan the other occupants of the barroom. Sitting at a table in front of glass cases containing framed portraits of past Post commanders, various plaques and medals of valor, and trophies won by school sports teams the Post had sponsored, were some more Red War veterans and some similarly boozy-looking women. The Red War vets seemed to predominate at this Post. That was okay by Stake. He didn't really want to reminisce all that much with other Blue War vets. But then, he asked himself sometimes, why did he even come to this place when he felt in the need of a brew? Maybe it was a distant camaraderie, safely filtered. Maybe it was something like a programmed behavior. He was used to that, from those bloody years.

Watt had told him what some of the older vets had claimed: that two decades ago, a crew of veterans from the Klu-Koza Conflict had come in here from time to time. Could that be true, when some said there had been no survivors of that conflict, and others held to the belief that the engagement had never happened at all? Well, those mythical men were gone now, if they had ever been here. Ghosts hung in the air like the cigarette smoke. Ghosts of veterans now dead, and the conjoined ghosts of all the people they had killed. The live souls who hunched over the tables and bar, wearing baseball caps and windbreakers thick with military pins and patches, were embalming themselves with alcohol; ghosts in the making.

Is that what I am? Stake wondered. Is that why I come here?

"Want a shot with that?" Watt asked, scooping up the one munit tip Stake had dropped beside his coaster.

"No thanks," Stake replied without looking around at him. "I'm on a job this afternoon. Just killing time."

"Time's all we got left to kill these days, huh?" slurred a hulk down at the end of the bar. It was a man named Lark. Stake had been trying to ignore the fellow Blue War vet's presence. In the past they had occasionally compared notes, but Stake had found nothing like comfort or pleasure in the exercise. Lark hadn't seemed to like being dismissed, and so it wasn't unusual for him to take a poke or two at Stake before subsiding into conversation with whatever dumpy barroom floozy he could coax beside him with a bottle of Zub.

"Depends on what you do for a living," Stake mumbled.

"Oh, that's right, you're a private detective. You still get in a little gunplay, do ya, huh? I thought you mostly looked through a camera's sights these days, Jer. Following cheating wives and all that."

"Yeah. And when you want me to follow your wife, you just call me, okay? I'll give you a discount."

The woman beside Lark, not his wife, chortled. Lark growled, "Blast you, Stake! At least I have a wife, you stinking mutant. Who the hell would want you?"

"Ease up, boys," Watt said disinterestedly.

Lark went on, "Course, a guy can always pay for it. I expect you had a few blue-skinned prosties in your time, huh? I know I did." Lark turned his attention to Watt. "Those Jiini women, man. Beautiful. Beautiful like a cobra is beautiful. But you know what gets a Ha Jiin man the hottest? It's hands, man. They have a fetish for hands. See, in the Ha Jiin culture, aristocratic women always showed off their status by making sure their hands looked dainty and delicate. No calluses, no scars. It got so crazy over the years that these women started dipping their hands into this stuff like liquid nitrogen, to crystallize them. It petrifies them, man, turns them as hard and useless as the hands of a statue. All smooth and white."

"I've seen a show about it on VT," Watt told him.

Lark went on as if he hadn't heard. "See? They're showing they don't need to use their hands. No manual labor for them. So after that practice began, the regular not-so-aristocratic girls started wearing white rubber gloves to at least make their hands look like they're petrified." He chuckled. "I tell ya, nothing pops a Ha Jiin guy's cork like having a lady stroke him off with one of those cool white hands, though most guys have to settle for the fake ones. I had me the real deal once."

"You told me about it," the Choom bartender grumbled. "More than once."

But Stake hadn't heard the story, and he found himself tensing up inside, as if he knew what was coming. As if the woman Lark was referring to was Thi. But it couldn't be Thi. His Thi. She had not possessed crystallized hands, as glossy-and immobile-as alabaster. She hadn't even worn imitative gloves. Her small hands had been only too mobile, and nicked with scars, even with little black hairs on the knuckles; a working woman's hands.

A killer's hands.

Lark continued, despite Watt's words. "We captured this plantation once. These rich bastards, with their own private army of guards. Well, they didn't stand up to us long. Anyway, the family had a few daughters, and the oldest daughter had those frozen white hands, man, just like her mom, only the mom was old. Those Jiini women are the most beautiful women in the universe, but when they hit a certain old age-bam-they shrivel up fast. Anyway, this daughter… oh. I took her upstairs, and I had me a look at that blue skin. But she didn't like my pink skin, I guess." He turned to laugh at the woman beside him, but she only gaped at him with a fish-like expression.

Stake was remembering Thi's blue skin. Her eyes, gazing up into his. Her unreadable eyes.

"When I was done with that little blue bitch, I left her alive. But I broke her hands with the butt of my rifle. I broke 'em to pieces, man, you should have seen it. Hell, she didn't need them anyway, did she? Aristocratic little."

Watt's eyes had followed Stake off his stool, and down the length of the bar. He could have stopped Stake, or tried warning Lark, but he didn't. He didn't like Lark. And he was just a little afraid of Stake. He trusted him not to make too much of a mess.

".bitch," Lark said, a second before Jeremy Stake grabbed him by the back of his collar and slammed his face onto the bar. Out of respect for Watt, he didn't smash the vet's face into his glass and spill his Knickerson, but there was still a spurt of blood from the man's split right eyebrow. Stake let go of Lark, watched him thump bonelessly to the floor.

"Fucking barbarian," he muttered.

"I'll tell him he got too drunk," Watt sighed. "Slipped off his stool and bashed his face."

"I don't care what you tell him," Stake said. He glanced at a clock advertising Clemens Light beer. "I gotta go."

"Hey," Lark's would-be pick-up griped, "what are you, some kind of blue-lover? They were the enemy, weren't they?"

"Keep out of it, Joy," Watt advised her.

"Yeah? Well this guy cost me my next beer."

"Here." Stake tossed some munits onto the bar. "It's on me." He then went to the door, and after the tomb-like darkness of the Post the brightness of the city made him squint as if in pain.

Stake had anticipated a weapon scanner at the school, particularly as this was an upscale private school, and so he had made sure not to be packing anything today. It wouldn't have gone over well, regardless of the fact that Yuki Fukuda waited for him, smiling, inside the lobby. Visitors, even parents, had to pass through this separate entrance. After having him stand on the scanning platform for a moment, the guard (himself unquestionably armed) waved Stake through. He signed into a log at the reception desk. The woman behind the counter said pleasantly, "Yuki tells me you're a business associate of her father's, who might have employment for her after graduation."

She had, had she? Stake smiled. He wasn't sure Yuki would find his line of work very rewarding financially, or very palatable for that matter. He often found it unpalatable himself. Did she have the proper qualifications as a masochist? "Well, it's never too soon to contemplate the future," Stake said, setting the pen down on the logbook.

"Thank you. Right through there, Mr. Stake," the woman said.

Stake passed into the high-ceilinged lobby of the Arbury School. The crest he had seen on the blazers of Yuki and her friends was reproduced gigantically on the lobby's polished floor, like some cabalistic symbol awaiting all manner of hedonistic rituals, orgies of students divested of their primly seductive uniforms. Stake banished that image as best he could as he approached his client's lovely daughter with her bright, shy face.

"Nice to see you again, Yuki." He shook her tiny hand.

"Thank you, Mr. Stake. It's lunch time. do you want to join me in the dining hall?"

"You don't mind sitting openly like that? What will your classmates think of me?"

"They'll think you're my boyfriend," she joked, then she hid her giggle behind her hand. "I'm sorry."

Stake felt weirdly shy himself. "Ah, well, if you don't mind people seeing us, then I don't mind. But have you told anybody that your dad hired a man to look for your kawaii-doll?"

"No. If anyone asks, I'll tell them you're a business associate of my father's, who-"

"Who might have employment for you after you graduate. The receptionist told me. Good story."

"Thank you. Okay, then. This way, please."

If Stake had felt shy before, he was ready to pull his head into his collar like a turtle when they entered the cafeteria together. It would have been easier, he thought, had the students not all been female. It just felt wrong, as if he had blundered into a convent. Yuki seemed unconcerned about it, and maybe even liked showing off her male guest in some perverse way. He supposed at her age, and in the competitive mind-set of the wealthy, any attention was good attention. He was only somewhat relieved when they found a small table to sit at alone.

"I'll spare you from going through the lunch line; I'll get your lunch for you," she told him, then recited today's menu. He chose the same meal she was having-sushi-but asked for a coffee to go with it. She giggled again. "Coffee with sushi? If you like."

Soon Stake was breaking up an eel roll with a pair of chopsticks and transporting the morsels to his mouth with a modicum of grace. He glanced around the vast room surreptitiously, trying to get a feel for the Arbury School's environment, both physical and psychological. Yes, Fukuda had given him Yuki's story, but now he wanted to hear it from her own lips, and in the place that it had happened, to see what impressions might be gleaned firsthand. And so he had called Fukuda this morning, and Fukuda had given him the go-ahead to visit Yuki at her school, as he had offered the day before. Fukuda had then called the school to clear it with them. Had he been honest about Stake's mission, or had he given a story similar to that which Yuki had told the receptionist?

Over the heavy buzz of youthful female voices, gathering at the ceiling like a solid mass, Yuki asked him, "Did my Daddy show you pictures of Dai-oo-ika?"

"Yes, he did."

"Oh. Well, I have more right here, if you want to see them."

Stake switched to a small cup of miso soup and took a sip while he watched Yuki awaken the computer she wore on her wrist like a bracelet. It was a more feminine version of the one he himself wore. She touched some minuscule keypads, then extended her arm toward him.

The screen was tiny, but when he positioned his eyes directly above it the image was transmitted to his brain in such a way that it filled his vision to the exclusion of all else. In the lower right corner of this enveloping virtual screen there was a sort of window that showed the wrist comp's controls, so that he could still view them in order to operate the device, but it was Yuki's delicate fingers that he saw resting across the keypads now.

She gave him a slide show of Dai-oo-ika in various poses. On her living-room couch, propped up like a sofa cushion. On her bed, slumped against her pillow. In her lap, as she sat grinning in childish pink pajamas with a pattern of cute-eyed jellyfish swarming across them.

"Great king of squid." He had understood the name when Fukuda had shown him his own, more clinical pictures yesterday. Dai-oo-ika looked as plump as a beloved doll should be, but not so inviting to the touch. His Buddha-like body was shiny, glossy, gave the impression of being clammy. His belly was a bloodless white, but his translucent flesh shaded to a grayer color toward his back. There was a scattering of black speckles there, too, and on the back of his hairless head. Two chubby arms like those of a baby, and two even chubbier legs, all ending in webbed paws. From that speckled back sprouted two cute little wings, ribbed rather like the fins of a fish. And the face.

Well, there was no face, really. No eyes, no ears, no nose, no mouth. The lumpen head possessed no features other than an outgrowth of thick tendrils like those of an anemone in the place where a nose and mouth should have been, had Dai-oo-ika been a human infant. These tentacles were ringed in alternating bands of black and an almost metallic silver.

Stake remembered the kawaii-doll of Yuki's friend, Maria. Stellar, it was called. Primitively alive. Eerily squirming. He envisioned Dai-oo-ika, a kindred creature, doing the same. Bio-engineered doll. A golem to take to bed. A homunculus to squeeze and kiss.

"Cute," Stake told her.

She had a proud, tragic sheen in her eyes as she returned her wrist comp to sleep mode. "Thanks. At first when Daddy surprised me with him, I was disappointed that he didn't have eyes, but I think it makes him so helpless and dependent on me. One time when I was hugging him it really seemed like his tentacles were stroking my face!" She made a spidery motion along her cheek with her fingers.

Stake imagined that as a less than endearing sensation. He took another slurp of his soup, then observed, "So it's safe to say that our culprit is right here in this room."

"It has to be one of them," Yuki said in an urgent whisper. "They've all seen me with him. They all envied me for him. It's been a week now, exactly, since he's been gone! And I've only had him for about a month. It's so unfair!" Her voice was near to crumbling. "I always take good care of him; I never ever put him down and turn my back on him. If I can't have him with me, like in phys ed, then I keep him in my locker. And that's what happened! I came back from my shower, and there was my locker-open. And Dai-oo-ika was gone!"

"Does anyone else know the code to your locker, or was the lock forced?"

"It wasn't forced, but it could have been hacked."

"What about maintenance people?" "Um, I don't know, they might have access to the lockers."

"I'll look into that. What about your friends; they wouldn't know the code? The ones I met the other day?"

"Oh… Kaori, Suzu and Maria are my best friends! And they have their own kawaii-dolls."

"But not as good as your doll, no matter how good theirs are."

"No, no, they wouldn't. Besides, what good is a kawaii-doll if you can't show it off to people?" she said with plain honesty. "You wouldn't just hide away with it."

"Unless someone was doing it specifically to hurt you."

"Right. To hurt me." Those oversized eyes under their border of bangs had begun to film over wetly. "That has to be it. Someone so jealous, they wanted to get back at me. I just hope they haven't hurt him. I hope they ask for a ransom or something. I'd get Daddy to pay it, I don't care!"

"So do you know any girls who dislike you? Who are especially jealous of you? How about teachers? Have you had problems with any of them?"

While he conversed with the girl, he let his gaze alight on her face only briefly before it fled to another table, or a supporting column of the room, or the wall of bright windows. If it lingered too long on her face, he would begin to feel the familiar rustle of his cells (even if that sensation were largely imaginary) as his features began to remodel themselves. Again, his eyelids would take on the epicanthic fold, but in imitation of her eyes instead of her father's. The length of time it took for this process was not always the same. Sometimes it was fairly swift, and other times it was more gradual, but unless he was preoccupied he usually had a subconscious awareness of when it was going to transpire, despite the fact that he had no conscious control of his ability. He felt restless with Yuki's own eyes upon him. Had Fukuda told his daughter about his "gift?" Was she even waiting to see it happen for herself?

"A teacher? Oh no, all the teachers like me! I don't have a problem with any of the phys ed teachers who would be in the locker room. But I have had a problem with some of the girls here, in the past few years. It's always like that. Cliques, you know?"

"Sure. Right now-but don't make it obvious- do you see anyone taking extra interest in our conversation? Anyone who's been hostile toward you in the past?"

He saw Yuki involuntarily turn her head just a fraction, but her glistening eyes rolled about in wide, morose arcs. "A lot of people are looking at us."

"Mm," Stake agreed, peering over the rim of his coffee cup as he sipped from it, and taking in the many curious glances.

"Oh," Yuki fretted, "maybe it wasn't a good idea to meet in public, after all! What if we scare the person into destroying Dai-oo-ika, to hide the evidence?"

"I'm sure they wouldn't do that, not with his value. In fact, we might spook them into coming forward and saying it was all just a harmless prank."

Yuki returned her gaze to him. "One of the nastier girls, one of the ones who've been really mean to me, disappeared last week, too. She's in my biology class."

Stake looked directly at her now. "Disappeared how?"

"Well, she had an older boyfriend, and the rumor is she ran away with him because her dad didn't approve. But one of her friends-her name is Krimson-one of Krimson's friends swears she heard Krimson trying to talk to her on her Ouija phone. And that would mean Krimson is dead." Yuki hugged her arms and visibly gave a shudder.

"Huh," said Stake.

Lost in thought for several beats, he frowned toward the floor. He tended to do this a lot. No faces to see down there. It was hard to escape faces in a city. In his apartment he didn't even have pictures of people, whether they be photos or paintings or holoportraits, displayed on the walls. Except for one: a picture of himself. If he came home looking like someone else, staring into this photo as if it were a mirror helped him speed up the process of looking like himself again. In the wrist comp he wore he could store pictures of faces, the countenances of people he might want to metamorphose into for this or that reason, by staring hard at their image. But he had also filed a picture of his own face in his wrist comp. He could gaze at it to hasten the restoration of his neutral appearance (his "factory" or "default settings," as he joked to himself), like a man with amnesia remembering who he truly was again.

Lost in her own thoughts, Yuki said, "My mother died when I was just a baby, you know."

This comment, seemingly out of the blue, caused Stake to meet her eyes again. "I'm sorry. I lost my mother when I was just a child, too." He regretted his own admission as soon as it left his lips. Why tell this young girl such a personal thing, regardless of what she had revealed to him? He didn't elaborate on his mother, and thankfully she didn't ask him to.

Yuki continued, "My mom. I think… I think I've heard her, too."

"Heard her? You mean, on your Ouija phone?"

Yuki nodded, doing her best to keep a cap on her emotions. "I swear it's her voice. She's trying to tell me something. Something important. But I can't hear her well; just little bits and pieces, really far away, and full of static."

"Huh," he said again.

"Please don't tell my father I told you that, okay? He hates those Ouija phones. I don't want to upset him. He loved my mom a lot."

Half a sob gushed out, and Stake found himself reaching across the table to take her hand. He was a bit embarrassed when he realized what he'd done, but here he was, so he gave it a comforting squeeze. Yuki looked down at their joined hands tearfully, then smiled up at his face.

"People will really think we're boyfriend and girlfriend, now," she joked, trying to restore her composure.

"Well, I'm honored if they'd think that." But he felt it was prudent to let go of her hand now.

"You're cute, you know?" she confessed, and giggled behind her palm. "I'm sorry."

He was more embarrassed than ever; her compliment caused him to feel flattered and self-conscious and bewildered all at once. No one had ever said that to him. "Cute, huh?"

"Yes," Yuki told him. "You have a face like a doll."