Less Than Human (41 page)

Sweating, he put the box and cylinders down anyhow and backed toward the door, pressing the redial button again. This warehouse
might or might not be connected with the Silver Angels but someone was using it to store boxes of ammunition.

The yard seemed bright after the darkness inside. He held up the phone.
You are out of.
…

He heard the footstep behind him and turned, but not quickly enough. A hard blow swept his feet from under him. As he tumbled
forward a sharp pain on the back of his head was the last thing he felt.

He dreamed about drowning.

No, he
was
drowning. He spluttered and snorted as water ran up his nose.

“Wake up, cop,” said a harsh voice.

Ishihara tried to wipe his face, but his hands wouldn’t move. That woke him up properly. His hands were tied behind him to
the back of a chair. His ankles were tied to the legs. Someone had thrown cold water over his head to wake him up. One minute
he’d been investigating a suspicious warehouse in the middle of Osaka, the next he was playing the lead in a Hollywood thriller.

The person behind the bucket nodded in satisfaction to see Ishihara awake. He was a hefty young man with no hair, wearing
a white shirt and pants like judo gear. On his head he wore a shiny phone implant.

He wasn’t in a gangster lair, then. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.

“He’s ready,” said the man to a pickup on the wall. Four walls close to each other and the ceiling. All hard concrete.

Ishihara’s head throbbed in the best traditions of melodrama. He should slip his bonds, overcome his jailers with the chair,
and rescue the heroine in distress.

He groaned at the idiocy of it. All he wanted was a clue, not to stumble into the Silver Angels’ hideaway by himself with
no backup …

The door opened and another man came in, this one wearing blue clothes. His face was older than the other’s, although it was
difficult to tell because of the shaved heads.

“Assistant Inspector Ishihara.” The blue man waved Ishihara’s police card, notebook, and phone. “You shouldn’t come snooping
around private property.”

“You should have locked the door, then.” Ishihara’s voice sounded hoarse. He couldn’t be bothered playing. He was sore and
tired, and he’d always hated melodrama. “I’m looking for a foreigner called Eleanor McGuire. If you let her go with me now,
it will lighten your sentence later when you’re arrested.”

The boy in white widened his eyes at this, but the man in blue laughed. “Nobody will get arrested. Soon we’ll have a new kind
of justice.”

Ishihara sighed. “Unless you untie me you’ll be charged with assault and detention by force.”

The other shook his head. “Samael-sama wants to know how much the police know about this place and about us.”

Samael, the other name for Inoue, the chemist from Shikoku, who had probably killed Harada and the twenty-five people at the
Zecom Betta. Of course Samael was worried about the police.

Ishihara’s right calf cramped. He jiggled his legs. “Why doesn’t Samael ask me himself?” A thought struck him. “I want to
talk to Adam.”

The man in blue slapped his face casually. “The Master doesn’t speak to the impure. But if you’d rather talk to Samael first,
it can be arranged.” He smiled unpleasantly.

The boy in white trembled.

“Untie his legs and stand back,” said the man. After the boy had done so, he untied Ishihara’s hands himself and retied them
in a practiced instant.

He needn’t have bothered with the caution. Ishihara’s legs felt as weak as overboiled noodles, and his entire body creaked
with stiffness.

“Walk.” The man in blue prodded Ishihara from behind and he wobbled forward. He wished they had covered his eyes. It seemed
ominous that they didn’t care what he saw.

Blue prodded him right as they left the room. They were in a narrow corridor. He glanced back and saw the corridor disappear
around a corner.

Doors opened off the corridor on his right, where the wall was concrete. On his left, it was old wood panels between concrete
pillars. No windows. It was very quiet, too, no noise from above or beyond the walls. They were probably underground—perhaps
the factory had a basement. Or he might have been carried somewhere else entirely.

They stopped at the third and last door, about twenty-five paces along. Blue reached past him and opened it.

A man wearing green clothes looked down from his perch on top of a bottle crate. He was adjusting something on the ceiling.
Ishihara craned his neck stiffly and saw several heavy metal rings set into long strips of metal that were bolted to the concrete.
A set of what looked like handcuffs dangled from one of the rings, attached to a pulley system on the metal strips. Chains
drooped down to a metal box on the floor.

Ishihara thought of all the people who’d been kidnapped and killed by religious freaks in the past thirty years—the Matsuyama
family by Soum, the Susuki high school class by the Truthseekers, and many more suspected but unproved cases. Policemen included.
And now he was going to become one of them.

“We’re ready here.” The man on the crate measured Ishihara with his eyes. “This one’s a bit tall,” he said reproachfully.
“We’ll have to keep his arms tied.” His slim figure, delicate features, and precise enunciation didn’t fit what he was saying.

Blue shrugged. “You’re the expert. We need to get him ready for Samael-sama. As soon as the meeting’s over he’ll come down.”

“I’m supposed to be purified and on duty at midnight. Do you think it’ll take that long?”

“I don’t know. That depends how cooperative he is.”

Their dismissal of Ishihara was absolute. They weren’t playing with him, as gang members might, to increase his fear. They
took no more notice of him than of the equipment. In fact, the dapper young man in green fussed more over the chains.

He pressed a control on the metal box. It whirred, and the chain lengthened with a smooth rattle. The handcuffs thudded to
the floor.

Ishihara considered resistance. He might conceivably take these two alert young men by surprise and run. He might also find
an escape route, which they would probably be guarding. But it was unlikely, and a botched escape attempt would mean they’d
watch him so closely he’d never get another chance, either to leave or to find McGuire.

So he stood and let Blue and Green strap the cuffs to his ankles above the joint. The cuffs were thickly padded and didn’t
cause any discomfort. He kept his face calm, but his heart stuttered against his breastbone. They left his hands tied behind
his back and roped them tight against his body.

“Sit down.” Blue poked him in the chest.

Ishihara sat on the floor. Cold seeped immediately from the concrete into his backside.

Green pressed some more buttons on his box. The chain’s slack disappeared until Ishihara could feel a tug at his feet. Then
his feet were pulled upward with irresistible force. His hips followed quickly. He remembered in time to tuck in his chin
before his shoulders and head left the floor and he dangled from his ankles. The room spun nauseatingly and he shut his eyes,
but this made it worse so he opened them again.

The cuffs cut into his ankles, not as painfully as he’d expected. He tried to wriggle his toes inside his shoes but they were
numb already. The skin of his face felt as if it would slide onto the gritty surface of the floor about twenty centimeters
from his head. His eyes began to pop. He squeezed them shut and opened them but it didn’t help. His sinuses filled, his teeth
hurt, his head pounded.

“What’s the point of this?” he made himself say. The words sounded as if he had flu.

Green’s voice. “Training, Detective-san. Our novices learn to conquer their fear and weaknesses of the flesh through meditation
even in extreme situations. In your case,” he added, “it offers you a chance to consider your situation and meditate on your
shortcomings.”

“Before we ask you some questions,” said Blue.

Bare feet slapped on the floor. The door closed.

Ishihara twisted his shoulders to see if they’d both gone, but it didn’t give him a better view. He just revolved.

“I’m still here,” said Green. His voice came from the corner of the room. “If you decide you’d like to tell us anything, just
say so.”

Who’d have thought hanging upside down would be so uncomfortable? Ishihara’s shoulders ached unbearably, his head worse. His
thoughts forced their way through a stiff soup of flooded sensation. Saliva collected in the top of his mouth. His nose ran,
but he couldn’t sniff.

Bear it, he told himself. You survived years of freezing stakeouts, soaking patrols, four- and five-night investigations without
sleep. You can survive this.

He forced his mind to count, squeezed the numbers out somehow. One, two, three, four … twenty … fifty … two hundred. He started
again, lost count, started again … the numbers lost sequence.

Something hit his back and the pressure on his ankles eased. Cold seeped into his side. Through the roaring in his ears he
could hear voices a long way off. His head spun with the lessened pressure. He couldn’t move his legs or sense which direction
was up or down.

After a minute or two he managed to open his eyes. Jabs of pain all along his legs and feet helped to anchor his senses.

Green yanked him upright with a grip on his collar. Ishihara’s ears rang, and the room whirled as the blood drained from his
face.

“Stand.” Green put his mouth next to Ishihara’s head so he’d hear.

Ishihara wobbled his way around the room as sensation returned to his legs, leaning helplessly on the other man. His arms
were still bound, and he couldn’t keep his balance properly.

“What’s your name?” he mumbled.

“Maliel. The Master named me twenty cycles ago.”

“Were you all living here then?”

Maliel held a glass of water for Ishihara to slurp from. “You don’t need to know that.” He motioned for Ishihara to circle
the room by himself, then pushed him to the floor beside the pulley.

Not again. Before Ishihara could think of a protest, the chain pulled him relentlessly upward.

They repeated this cycle twice. The second time Ishihara struggled when Maliel pushed him back to the ground. He kicked out
and sent Maliel flying, but Maliel simply grabbed a metal bar from beside the desk and swept Ishihara off his feet with a
painful crack, then continued as though nothing had happened. He was as free of malice as an executioner.

The third time Ishihara couldn’t walk around the room at all. He sat and stared at the concrete, willing his brain to work
like it should, but nothing happened. He couldn’t think. He didn’t resist when the chain tightened.

As the world slid downward, the door opened. One, two, three sets of feet stopped where he could see them. Two male, one female,
judging by size and hairiness of ankles. He grasped at these simple facts as his head began pounding in the familiar rhythm
of his stressed heart.

One of the men wore a gold kimono or robe, the other wore silver. The woman wore trousers like Maliel but they were white.
Her feet were narrow and blue with cold. The feet under the gold robe were large, long-toed and flat-arched.

Maliel prostrated himself beside Ishihara’s head in a full-body bow, and said something in a foreign language.

“Assistant Inspector Ishihara, isn’t it?” one of the men said. His voice was deep, a bit hoarse, and compelling in its mellow
strength.

The woman gasped.

“West Station?” the same man continued. “You’re a bit out of your territory, aren’t you?”

Ishihara’s police notebook dropped to the floor in front of the feet.

The other man barked an order at Maliel, who scrambled upright. After the sound of a wooden door sliding open and shut, he
placed a kneeling cushion reverently in front of the gold feet and backed out of Ishihara’s range of vision.

The man in gold dropped his backside on the cushion with an “oomph.”

Ishihara squinted through the swelling of the flesh around his eyes. The man looked ordinary enough, and familiar from somewhere.
Heavy, but not well muscled. Bumps on his naked skull, some of them implants. Eyes bloodshot and full of some stimulant.

“Jinnosuke,” said the gold man in the deep voice. “Such a wonderfully old-fashioned name. ‘Jin’ is an important concept in
my revolution also. Feeling toward others. Service. Love.” He tilted his head to see Ishihara’s features better and the feeling
of familiarity increased.

“Do you feel you have been able to serve others as a policeman, Jinnosuke?”

Ishihara tried to think through the weight gathering in his head and chest. The words formed slowly between his swollen tongue
and lips.

“It also means simply ‘person,’” he said.

The man in gold looked up at one of the others, who mumbled something Ishihara’s ringing ears couldn’t catch.

“This is an undignified way to converse,” said the man. “I shall give you a chance to do it with less inconvenience.”

He beckoned, and the silver-clad man kneeled on the concrete floor. A young, spare man with the same shaven head. He looked
like his photo. Samael, also known as Inoue. I’ll get you, Ishihara promised inwardly, but it was only habit. Any strength
in the thought was crushed under the weight of his own blood.

Samael leaned forward and spoke loudly and clearly in Ishihara’s ear.

“We need to know how much information the police have about us. We need to know what they plan to do. We need to know how
you found out about this place.”

He stood up. The man in gold started talking again.

“I am Adam,” he said. “I am connected to the Macrocosm. I know God, in the ancient sense of the verb. I
am
God.” He was sweating great drops all over his face, and a muscle twitched his toe.

He’s the one with the ordinary face, thought Ishihara vaguely. McGuire’s old classmate. Akita, that’s right. Hah, and we thought
he just helped them get into the Betta.

“All you must do,” said Adam/Akita, “is to state the truth. Tell me, ‘You are God.’ Then we will put you right side up and
continue like civilized beings.”