Less Than Human (29 page)

“What good timing. I was just thinking about you.”

She couldn’t think of a polite follow-up to that one.

“I knew you’d want to see more,” he went on. “I shall give you a demonstration. What time can you leave work?”

Eleanor was about to say seven, which was normally the earliest she’d get away. But things weren’t normal.

“I can leave sometime in the next hour,” she said. “Where’s your lab?”

“I’ve got some equipment at my friend’s place. Why don’t I meet you at the fast train station?”

“Okayama Central?”

“No, the Zecom line, first station, Betta East.” Akita sounded almost cheerful. “I’m staying close to where I worked before.
Funny, isn’t it.”

Very funny. But why shouldn’t Akita have a friend who worked at Zecom? Lots of engineers did.

“I’ll get there about seven.”

“I look forward to it. Oh, and McGuire-san?”

“Yes?”

“Did you know the police are bugging your phone? You should invest in some protective software. I have one that’s very effective.”

“I’ll, um, look into it.”

She stared at the blank screen. Bugging her phone, were they? It wouldn’t be difficult. Rumor had it that the police and domestic
security forces monitored all hand phone frequencies as a matter of course. The old cable used in the Tomita lines was open
to surveillance, too. The only totally secure wiring was liveline, which was why they were used in the Bettas and new areas
of Tokyo, including the NDN. Nobody had, officially at least, found a way to penetrate its biometal sheath.

She dictated a terse e-mail to Assistant Inspector Ishihara, asking if the police were tapping her phone and if so, why. She
felt obscurely betrayed by Ishihara, with whom she’d just begun to feel comfortable. So much for the “honest cop.” And she
called Masao and left a message that she was going to meet Akita and would be home between eight and nine.

She glanced sharply at a cleaning robot in the outer office, but it was ticking over harmlessly in a rest cycle and showed
no sign of following her.

The Zecom line was a short local train line off the main fast train track. The first two stations connected to the Zecom Betta,
the third to the factory where Eleanor had come to see Nakamura last Monday night.

Akita waited just outside the ticket gates. He blended into the gray-suited crowd of homecoming salarymen and women as though
he was still one of them. When he saw Eleanor he raised his gloved hand in greeting and smiled as she approached.

That slightly vacant, un-Japanese smile didn’t help Eleanor’s nerves. She’d never felt this physical unease with the old Akita.
Was she being oversensitive?

They walked down the wide, clean passage. Homecoming workers were only just beginning to fill the space.

“What department does your friend work for?” said Eleanor. The walls shifted in green-and-pink abstract patterns, and Bach
tinkled softly from invisible speakers.

Akita nodded in time to the music. “My friend is the systems manager at the Betta. He lets me use one of his storerooms to
keep my equipment in.”

“But you must have had access to an advanced laboratory to do the work on your hand …” Eleanor began, but paused. A cleanbot—one
from a Zecom line, of course—was following them. There was no other word for it. The round, wheeled shape hugged the wall
behind them, staying an even ten meters back. There were no other cleanbots in view.

Akita noticed her gaze. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Eleanor kept walking, and looked over her shoulder as they turned a corner toward some elevators. The cleanbot
came to the corner and plunged across the corridor, zigzagging frantically to avoid human legs. Then it settled down against
the wall again.

If she said
I’m being followed by robots,
he’d probably call a psych counselor.

Three other people also waited for the elevators. Akita waved his card in front of the sensors, and the down light went on.
The other people moved on to the next elevator.

Welcome to Zecom Betta East,
said the elevator in an attractive female voice.

“I’ve got your visitor’s chip,” said Akita. He handed her the card, which she passed in front of the elevator’s internal sensors.

Thank you,
said the elevator. As the doors closed she could see the cleanbot motionless against the wall.

Eleanor watched the numbers drop by two.

Lower ground floor, authorized personnel only.

“Here we are.” Akita led the way to a door labeled
MANAGER,
close to the elevator. “My friend’s away until later this evening,” he said.

The apartment was large and Western-style, with bare walls and square black furniture. Two extra doors in the living room
were labeled
SECURITY
and
SYSTEMS.

Akita noticed her glance. “The manager’s got access from here as well as through the main office. In case he needs to be contacted
after hours.” He gestured at the low sofa. “Have a seat.”

Eleanor sat on the edge of the sofa, shoving her handbag behind her feet. She did hope she’d been right about Akita’s interest
being purely platonic. “Where do you keep your research equipment?”

“Mostly in there.” He sat down heavily in one of the armchairs and pointed at an unlabeled door that Eleanor had assumed led
to a bedroom. It didn’t reassure her.

Akita leaned over and spoke into the arm of the chair. “Bring two drinks to the living room.” His pronunciation was so slow
and clear that he must be talking to a Betta system.

Sure enough, a few seconds later there was a whirring sound from the kitchen, and a squat, flat-topped helpbot hummed across
the floor toward them, carrying a tray on its head. A shiny silver cylinder with multiple retractable appendages, it moved
a little jerkily. Perhaps it needed a sensor upgrade. Or the room might have recently been rearranged, and that was confusing
its navigation system. When it got to the sofa it stopped.

Please take your drink.
It sounded familiar, a synthesized version of Akita’s voice.

She took one of the glasses of iced tea. “Nice touch.”

“I think so.” He peeled off his gloves and took the other drink, letting her see how the artificial hand worked; the fingers
held the glass, but the long, tonguelike appendages were free to manipulate other things, in this case a straw.

“Can I, um, see the specs for that?” Eleanor stared unashamedly.

“Of course.” Akita nodded seriously. “I am so glad you have decided to join me.”

“Join you …?” Eleanor was being distracted by the helpbot. It seemed to be looking at her. How something with only a flat
screen as an interactive surface could “look” at anything, she didn’t know. “Akita-kun, is there anything wrong with this
robot?”

He smiled. “It is different. Watch.” He clapped his hands, and the helpbot swiveled slightly, giving the impression that its
attention had shifted to him.

“Draw me the shape that has no end,” he said.

The helpbot zoomed over to the middle of the room and ran slowly in a circle, leaving its vacuum appendage down so that the
trail remained in the carpet pile. The circle was slightly egg-shaped.

“That’s an impressive recognition program,” Eleanor said, and meant it. A helpbot was normally programmed to process only
a handful of simple commands, certainly not metaphors.

“It’s not a program. Tell it to do something.”

“What…” Eleanor frowned at Akita, certain he was teasing her. “All right.” She clapped her hands. “Dance. You choose the step,”
she added.

The helpbot didn’t move for a moment or two. No way it could process an unspecific and arbitrary command like that.

Then it began a jerky series of movements, slowly transcribing an arc. Seconds later, the apartment’s audio system activated,
and the sounds of “The Blue Danube” echoed softly. The robot’s movements were in three beats.

Akita laughed at the look on her face. It was a superior laugh, and Eleanor set her teeth.

“What kind of processor have you got in there?” she demanded. Then to the robot. “Stop.”

The robot kept dancing.

Akita spread his hands wide. “An effective demonstration, you must agree, McGuire-san. As I told you, it is not a program.”
He called to the robot. “Enough, Ken. You may finish now.”

The robot stopped, and the music faded.

“This way.” Akita rose and opened the door marked
SYSTEMS
. The room was filled with wall-to-wall monitors and consoles that spoke of the complexity of the Betta. At a desk in the
middle of the room sat a man, with wires connecting his bare skull to a large console on the desk. One of his hands seemed
to be stuck inside part of the console, via a huge glove that reached to his elbow. He wore shorts and an undershirt, and
his body gleamed with sweat.

The man shook his head as though waking from sleep and reached up with his free hand to disconnect the wires on his head.
Then, very slowly and with many stops and starts, he withdrew his hand from the glove. His hand wore another glove, this one
black with the shine of metallic thread.

“Well done, Ken,” Akita said. “This is McGuire-san, but you two have already met. McGuire-san, this is one of my associates,
Ken Fuijinaka.”

The man turned in his seat and looked their way with thin, slanted eyes above high cheekbones. His eyes were slightly unfocused.
The smooth, muscular shoulders in the dark undershirt were those of a young man, but his face was sallow and drawn. There
was a line of drool down his chin, which he wiped with a shaking hand. He mumbled something at Eleanor and turned back to
the console.

“Ken will join us in a minute,” said Akita with a patriarchal air. “He is still learning. There is a certain lapse between
in there and out here.”

He pulled the door of the room closed again, forcing Eleanor to step backward into the apartment living room again. But she
went no farther.

“What
is
that?” She folded her arms and set her feet, not intending to budge until she got some answers. “What do you mean by ‘in
there’?”

Akita loomed closer. He was almost as tall as Detective Ishihara. But Ishihara had never intruded into her space like this.
She could feel the warmth from Akita’s thinly shirted chest and smelled unwashed sweat and another, sweeter scent, like incense.
He bent forward to speak, and she had to step back.

“That, McGuire-san, is my new interface. It enables the user to control elements of a system from the inside.”

He kept stepping forward as she retreated, until the back of her knees hit the sofa, and she had to stop.

“Fujinaka-san could hear what we said and made the helpbot move? And he must have made that cleanbot move in the passage outside
…” She still didn’t believe it. “A direct interface? But you’d still have to go through the programs. That would take hours,
days.”

“My interface is an intuitive thing.” Akita finally left her some space. He returned to his chair and finished his drink.

Eleanor sat down again reluctantly. She wanted to examine this so-called interface for herself. Part of her had started to
be excited at the possibilities, but she couldn’t let go of caution. It was probably an elaborate fake.

“What do you mean by ‘intuitive’?” she said.

He leaned back in his chair and raised his artificial hand in front of his eyes. With a theatrical gesture he smiled, turned
the hand this way and that admiringly. The pale biometal flexed like a cluster of strange coral in an ocean current.

The biometal converter on the Kawanishi robot…

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Things began to fit together. “You sold this new interface to the director at Zecom—Yui. That’s what
Nakamura was testing.”

Akita looked puzzled. “Nakamura? I don’t know who you mean. And I did not sell my interface to Yui-san. I merely provided
him with some ideas that could lead to Zecom developing a watered-down virtual-reality version of my interface. He provided
me with a reference for this job and certain other … privileges.”

“And Nakamura blackmailed his supervisor Yui, then tested the interface using my … Tomita’s robot at Kawanishi Metalworks,
which killed Mito by accident when he investigated.”

“I don’t know what Yui did with my ideas.” Akita was back at admiring his hand. “I imagine it is plebeian and commercial.”

“Commercial means you get money to do the research properly.” Eleanor was stung by his implied criticism of her own work.

Akita shot her a shrewd look. “Or not, in your case.”

“How did you manage to afford that, then?” She pointed at the systems room.

“My work inspires a number of people who are glad to offer assistance.” He leaned forward, suddenly intense, his dark eyes
fixed on hers. “I have discovered something more than another technological fix. I have discovered a way to give people hope.”

“Hope for what?” She didn’t really care what Akita had dreamed up to justify begging for funding. What she did want to know
was how the interface worked.

“Hope for a different life. McGuire-san, you must see how we Japanese are tired of this relentless balancing act to maintain
our economy.”

“Yes, yes, development is blamed for everything from the breakdown of family life to new diseases,” said Eleanor restlessly.
“I’m aware of the arguments on both sides. Can you get back to how it works?”

He didn’t appear to hear her. “You see, in ancient times people believed in the unity of the physical world and the divine
world. The divine cosmos, the Macrocosm, was a living manifestation of God. That is why our ancestors paid homage to spirits
in trees, stones, and the weather.

“Within it was the Microcosm, our physical world that reflected the divine cosmos and was ruled by it. Our own bodies, like
those of every living thing, are also Microcosms. We are a reflection of the divine. We are simulacra of God.”

Eleanor picked up her handbag. Interface or not, she had better things to do than listen to this.

“With the domination of rationalism,” continued Akita, “we lost the knowledge of God and the divine world. We only know the
physical world, and we think that is all there is. But if we do not know the divine for what it is, we can never become God.”