Less Than Human (30 page)

Eleanor cleared her throat. “I, um, think I’d better go now.”

“In my research I discovered a way to use science to become part of the Macrocosm ourselves, and thus divine. We are no longer
reflections. That is why I said to you that your robots are no longer necessary. They are merely puppets, simulacra.”

She stood up. “Akita-kun, I came to see an example of your research, in the hope this might lead to us collaborating. But
if you can’t show me something more than an unproved demonstration and this ranting, I shall leave.”

He looked up at her, his heavy eyebrows crooked in puzzlement. “I am explaining.”

The door to the systems room opened, and Fujinaka stepped through, shutting the door behind him. He looked more composed now—he’d
put on a collared shirt and had wiped his smooth head and face. His scalp was marked in places by the flat shine of the implants
where the wires had been connected. He still wore the black glove on his left hand.

“Nice to meet you, McGuire-san.” He looked her up and down in what Eleanor recognized as the Bold Young Man Sizing up Foreign
Body stare.

She ignored the look, as usual.

“The Boss here”—Fujinaka pointed with his chin at Akita,—”has told us so much about you.” He sat down in the chair opposite
Akita, so they flanked Eleanor.

“Like what?” she said, momentarily distracted.

“How you and he were the bright young hopes of Tomita Corporation.” Fujinaka grinned. His long eyes almost disappeared into
his cheeks. “Before the Boss went freelance.”

“I was not appreciated,” Akita said.

“So you don’t work at a university?” Eleanor’s unease grew.

“Academics have been particularly critical of my work.” Akita frowned. “They’ll regret that.”

“The Boss has high hopes for you, McGuire-san.” Fujinaka tried another version of the Stare.

To avoid his eyes on her crotch, Eleanor sat down again. “High hopes?”

“With our new interface.” Fujinaka jerked his chin at the systems room. “The Boss is always telling us we need to study more
about the Betta systems so we can use it properly, but none of us know enough. He reckons you’re an expert.”

“Not on Betta systems as such,” protested Eleanor. “On some of the robots, perhaps. Tell me, how did you make the robot respond
so quickly to my order to dance?”

Fujinaka looked at Akita, who nodded. “I thought about dancing,” said the young man. “Only I couldn’t find a step you old
fogeys would recognize for a while.”

“It seemed like a while to him,” Akita put in, stroking his artificial hand with the other as he leaned forward. “To us it
was much quicker. There is a time lag between our perceptions in the Ma … in the interface and our perceptions outside it.”

Eleanor looked at Fujinaka’s gloved hand. “The synaptic connections are made through the nerve endings in the hand?”

Akita nodded. “Sensory nerves. How ironic that we should be using those supreme servants of the body to conquer it.”

Eleanor didn’t pay attention. She was trying to understand how it might work. You’d have to translate the electrical signals
from the human brain into electrical signals that a computer could process …

Fujinaka sat upright and put his hand on the large implant above his ear, listening. “He’s here,” he said to Akita. He glanced
at Eleanor, and added cryptically. “You know, from the south.”

“Where is he?” said Akita.

“On his way up now. Something’s wrong.” Fujinaka glanced at Eleanor again and slid a phone out of his shorts pocket. “Do you
want him to wait?”

Akita smiled at Eleanor. “Of course not. We have no secrets from McGuire-san. She has decided to join us.”

There it was again, the “joining” thing. As if Akita was talking about some special club. Mind you, if it was a club devoted
to researching the new interface, she’d join.

“If you’d like me to come back later …” she began insincerely.

The front door of the apartment banged open. A slim man stood in the doorway, breathing heavily. He had a thin, ascetic face
and was carrying a bulging briefcase. He strode forward, his eyes on Akita.

“Adam-sama, we have a problem.”

A
t 8:20 Ishihara’s desk phone buzzed. Mikuni’s face appeared on the screen, stretching sideways, then snapping back into proportion
as the image stabilized.

“Ishihara, I owe you an apology about the Zecom murder. We found a witness who places Yui outside the Betta at eight o’clock.
I don’t know how the Betta records can show him going in at 7:35, but we brought him in for an interview.”

“Not an arrest?”

Mikuni grimaced. “We couldn’t go that far. His DNA’s all over the lab, but you’d expect that. His fingerprints aren’t on Nakamura’s
workstation, but there are plenty of gloved prints, very recent. We also got glove prints from the downstairs toilet. We brought
him in mainly so that the witness could try to identify him.”

“And?”

“I’ll run the tape for you.” Mikuni’s face disappeared from the pickup, leaving a blurred image of his office. Then the screen
darkened, and lightened again to show Mikuni talking to Yui over a desk in a bare interview room. A constable sat in the corner,
monitoring the recording at a small computer.

Yui was ticking items off on his fingers with exaggerated patience. If anything, Mikuni looked more uncomfortable than he
did.

“… I sent my suitcase home by courier from the airport. Then I got on the fast train to Okayama. When I reached the Zecom
stop it was nearly five. I clocked in, greeted my assistant, then went into my office and checked my mail.

“Then I met with the vice president and the managing director of the Marketing Division to give them an informal report on
our situation in Jiangsu,” Yui went on. “After that I returned to my office, sent a couple of e-mails, then went home.”

“That would have been about seven?” said Mikuni.

“Probably a bit after.” Yui sighed. “I’m sure you confirmed that my assistant went home at seven.”

“So you say you got in the monorail at the company, got out at the Betta West stop, and went straight home?”

“That’s what I said. Shall we replay the recording so you can listen?” Yui drummed his fingers on the table in a show of irritation.
It must be only show—Yui was far too cool to get flustered yet.

Mikuni leaned forward. “Would it surprise you that the station videos show no record of you catching a train that night?”

Yui raised his eyebrows. “No, it would not surprise me. Approximately seven thousand people live in the Betta and catch that
train every day. What would surprise me is getting a clear image of everyone.” He regarded Mikuni almost pityingly. “Inspector,
surely you aren’t trying to build a case around this?”

Mikuni shook his head and smiled. Ishihara could see the nervousness behind it.

“I assure you, we’re merely making inquiries with regard to the Nakamura case. Nothing more.” He blinked and looked down for
a second. Ishihara suspected the witness’s positive ID was being conveyed through Mikuni’s aural receiver.

Mikuni looked up. “However,” he continued more confidently, “we appear to have a slight problem with your timing. You’re sure
it was 7:20 you caught the train and 7:35 you got home?”

“I think we’ve made that clear, Inspector. You spoke to my wife, you saw the Betta entry records.”

“Nobody saw you at the station,” said Mikuni. “But somebody saw you outside the Betta at 8:20.”

Ishihara wished he could see Yui’s face better.

Yui looked bemused. “It’s a mistake.”

Mikuni leaned back in his chair, but his eyes never left Yui’s face. “As Nakamura talked to someone on the phone at 7:30 and
was discovered dead at 9:03, you can see why this witness interests us.”

“He or she must be mistaken. I had no reason to wish Nakamura any harm. This whole interview is ridiculous.” Yui pushed his
chair out from the table.

Mikuni put his hands up in a calming gesture. “Please, a couple more minutes, if you don’t mind. Firstly, we’d like you to
explain why you have been making regular large withdrawals from your bank account for the past six months.”

Yui drew his chair under the table again. He straightened his glasses, looked at the observation wall, then back at Mikuni.

“I think I’ll talk to my lawyer now,” he said.

The screen darkened, then Mikuni’s face snapped into focus.

“As you can see, we got a positive ID from the witness.” He sounded satisfied.

Yui insisted he’d used the money to gamble and lost all of it. It was a coincidence that the amounts were the same as payments
going into Nakamura’s account. As for the research on interface systems, that was the result of a former collaboration. They
were welcome to check the people he’d collaborated with.

“And?” said Ishihara.

Mikuni shook his head. “One of them is a professor in Sweden, one left the field and works as a journalist, and the other
one left with no forwarding address.”

“It doesn’t sound like they kept in touch with Yui.”

“No. We’ll check his mail just in case. We’ve got analysts looking at the research Yui mentioned, but it will take them a
while to work out if it could be used to do something like whatever Nakamura did. And you know the file Nakamura mentioned?
The one named ‘Doll’ or something?”

Ishihara remembered McGuire saying it was probably the file with Yui’s core research. “‘Puppet,’” he corrected.

“Yeah, well it’s not there.”

Damn, he would have liked to give McGuire a look at that file. “When did Yui come in tonight—seven o’clock? Can you get a
search warrant to go through his files before one o’clock?”

Mikuni would have to apply for an arrest warrant before he could arrest Yui, as Yui had come in on voluntary appearance. That
would have to be done within six hours, or they’d have to let him go and pick him up again. Ishihara doubted the magistrate
would approve a warrant so quickly, especially as Yui had shown no signs of being likely to run. Mikuni’s superintendent,
though, could issue a search warrant, and if they uncovered evidence, he could then make an emergency arrest without a warrant.

Mikuni took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. “I’d feel better if we only had the wife’s word on when he
came home. The Betta records evidence is too strong. We’ll need a confession to beat it.”

“Talk to the wife again,” suggested Ishihara. “Does she know about the payments to Nakamura?”

“Good point.”

Ishihara checked the time. It was 8:45. “I gotta go.”

“Something big?”

“Not sure. Prefectural Office is being cagey.”

Mikuni shook his head sadly. “They’re always like that. See you later.”

The Prefectural Office incident room was rowdy with the noise of half a dozen conversations being held at the same time on
different phones. The air smelled of smoke and Korean take-away. Four detectives he didn’t know tapped keyboards in front
of computer screens. Inspector Funo was talking to two of them at the far end of the room. She saw Ishihara come in but didn’t
nod.

Beppu beckoned to him from one of the desks closest to the door.

“You took your time,” he said. “I had to explain to her ladyship that you were tidying up a case in Okayama. Meeting’s postponed
until we hear from the chemical lab in Shikoku about that poison found in the paint.” He pulled over a chair from the neighboring
desk. “Siddown.”

Earlier that evening, two detectives from Osaka had gone to interview management of a research lab in Tokushima on Shikoku
Island, one of the few places that stocked the fujirin chemical used to kill the four Silver Angels members. The two detectives
would be there by now, and were to send word if any of the stuff was missing.

“The thing that got everyone a bit excited,” concluded Beppu, “is that a few minutes ago we had a call from Takamatsu. Guess
who the station cameras picked up on the platform of the fast train from Osaka at four this afternoon?”

“Who?” Ishihara picked up an untouched box of food from the other desk. It was lukewarm, but he was hungry again. The less
sleep he got, the more food he ate.

Beppu groaned. “You could at least act interested. Harada, that’s who. Our tutor from the geography club. If he was involved
in the poisoning …”

“No wonder he ran,” said Ishihara, his mouth full. Takamatsu was the first stop after Okayama, through a long tunnel under
the Inland Sea and into Shikoku. “Have Takamatsu police picked him up yet?”

“Not yet,” said Inspector Funo behind them.

Beppu swung his chair to face the desk properly and Ishihara put the box and chopsticks down. One of the chopsticks tipped
off, flicking spots of kimchee onto Funo’s dark blue trousers. She didn’t notice.

“How kind of you to join us, Assistant Inspector.”

Ishihara had half expected a reprimand for failing to bring Harada in.

“Harada and his friends are too savvy,” she said. “They don’t carry phones, they either don’t have Betta chips or they’ve
removed them, and they manage to avoid public cameras.”

“Makes it hard to track them,” Beppu said sagely.