Less Than Human (7 page)

She was married when she returned from the U.S. Masao Tanaka, student. Sounds like there’s a story there. Why wasn’t she calling
herself Eleanor Tanaka? He flipped back several screens to a scan of a handwritten note about Tanaka. Born 1981 Hirano Ward,
Osaka, father owned small business. No outstanding vices or distinguishing characteristics. Now lecturer in modern history
at the Buddhist University. Hardly the husband you’d expect.

A note on the bottom of Tanaka’s bio said “out of favor with admin for criticizing NMRs.” A lot of old-style Buddhists criticized
New Millennial Religions, and they often ended up like Tanaka, in a dead-end job. One of the reasons the NMRs succeeded was
that they were better at making money than the old religions, and could buy political influence.

He ran a search for Tanaka in police records, no result as expected. The man was totally mediocre. Except, of course, that
he married a gaijin.

He’d call McGuire the following day and ask if she’d found any more technical evidence that Mito’s death wasn’t an accident.
If not, the case was closed as far as he was concerned.

“Oy, Ishihara.” The duty officer from upstairs beckoned him from the doorway. “We got some buddhas in a flat. I’ve called
a team to meet us there. Let’s go.”

Dead bodies on Sunday. Ishihara closed the McGuire file and flicked off the accident report. Criminals don’t take holidays.

A
fter the meal, Grandpa Tanaka disappeared upstairs for a nap, the signal that lunch was over. Grandma went to water the azaleas.
Yoshiko very obviously asked Mari to help her in the kitchen without looking at Eleanor.

Masao and Kazu, Mari’s father, were stretched out on the tatami mats with their eyes shut. Eleanor reached over to turn off
the television, which had been annoying her with its inane chatter throughout the meal.

“Eleanor-san?” Kazu sat up and regarded her with his serious stare. He was a short man with bulging eyes like a worried blowfish.
“Can I get your opinion on something in the factory?”

She blinked at him in surprise. “I suppose so.”

Normally an unspoken rule kept Eleanor away from the Tanaka business. No one ever explained why. Perhaps it was because the
machine tools they used were made by one of her firm’s rivals, and Grandpa Tanaka felt it would be uncomfortable for both
of them. Or perhaps he didn’t want her snooping around. Or, more likely, he’d had enough of being the object of local gossip
when his younger son married not only a foreigner, but also an older woman who worked as a mechanical engineer. Then again,
maybe he just didn’t approve of women on the factory floor.

Kazu had always followed Grandpa Tanaka’s wishes in his precise, undemanding way. Eleanor found it impossible to imagine why
he might be disobeying now. She followed his bandy legs through the walkway and into the workshop.

Kazu had been “adopted” by the Tanaka family upon his marriage to Yoshiko, and he now managed the business. Tanaka Manufacturing
was a tiny supplier for one of the many subcontractors of a construction machinery manufacturer. Although the post-Quake Seikai
reforms were fueling a construction boom, small suppliers seemed no better off. The only small businesses with any prospects
were those with the technical savvy to keep up with the big companies, or at least to be useful to them. And, while Kazu knew
how to operate the factory machinery and maintain the status quo, he certainly didn’t have the capacity to improve it.

In the workshop Kazu switched on the lights and the overhead fans and led her between two rows of workbenches to the desk
at the end of the room. There was a single hard drive and monitor on the desk, a common brand, slow but reliable. On one side
stood the set of wooden pigeonholes dating from the Meiji period that Masao’s great-great-grandfather had used in his bicycle
repair shop.

Like every small Japanese machine shop Eleanor had ever seen, everything was spotless; floors neatly swept, all tools put
away neatly, clean overalls and caps folded and placed ready on each worker’s locker. No film of dust was allowed to collect
on the top of shelves or in corners under benches. Uplifting slogans and posters of peaceful scenery decorated all available
wall space—a distinctly Grandpa Tanaka touch.

“Sorry it’s so hot.” Kazu offered her the chair in front of the computer.

“What’s the problem?”

“The spot welder has been inaccurate several times this month and we can’t find out why.”

“How long has it been working?” Eleanor typed up details of the robot’s programming. I haven’t looked at a welder for ten
years, she thought, and this is the second one I’m examining in as many days.

“Nearly two years now.” Kazu watched her fingers on the keys.

“It’s rented, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, don’t they give you a free service every year?” She knew about the industrial robot rental scheme, aimed at small businesses
that could not afford to buy one outright, but not the details.

Kazu shifted uncomfortably. “It’s a long story … basically we can’t afford to get it repaired at the moment, but we can’t
leave it idle. We’re in the middle of a big order.”

“All right, then. Let’s look at the software …” It didn’t take long. “There’s no problem here.” She swung the swivel chair
around and stared at the rest of the factory. “How is it malfunctioning?”

He showed her some imperfect welds.

“Looks like an alignment problem,” she said, moving over to study the robot itself. It stood between two benches for easy
access—a cylindrical base, stocky body, and one long arm bent like an inverted L.

“That’s what we thought, but we really don’t want to take it apart ourselves,” he said. “At least”—with a glimpse of sincerity—“I
want to, but the boss doesn’t like the idea.” The word he used for Grandpa Tanaka was old-fashioned, meaning “master” rather
than “employer,” the same word many women still used when referring to their husbands.

Eleanor shifted so she could look him in the face. “Shall I try to fix it?” She didn’t mind trying a new family dynamic, but
would Kazu?

Kazu turned away from the eye contact, fidgeted, then met her gaze again. “I think that may be for me best. Thank you.”

He sounded relieved and apprehensive at once.

A sweaty hour or so later, they’d found the problem and jury-rigged a temporary solution.

“If you take care when you’re feeding in the pieces,” Eleanor said to him as they drank tins of cold coffee from the vending
machine that stood outside the shop, “you’ll have a couple of months’ grace. Then I really suggest you get a complete overhaul.”

Kazu nodded, more cheerful than she had ever seen him, and she felt as relaxed with him as she’d ever been. This was the first
time in fifteen years they had talked about anything that interested either of them. They shouldn’t have waited so long.

“Eleanor-san?” Kazu paused in passing a rag over the table. “Have you ever thought of moving to small business? Wouldn’t you
get more scope to do the research you want?”

She kept replacing screwdrivers in their case. “Not really. My work needs considerable infrastructure. Besides, small businesses
are so unstable that it wouldn’t be worth trying. Imagine completing all your basic research, then going bust before you could
develop it.”

Kazu started wiping again. “I see what you mean. But in small …”

He was interrupted by Grandpa Tanaka flinging aside the sliding door with a bang.

“Kazunori, what is the meaning of this?”

Kazu opened his mouth and shut it again, looking more like a blowfish man ever.

“Kazu asked me to take a look at some machinery that’s malfunctioning.” Eleanor wiped greasy hands on another rag. “It’s no
big deal.”

Grandpa ignored her. “You know I don’t like outsiders poking around in here.”

Outsiders? For a moment Eleanor was speechless. For fifteen years this man had preached to her about the enlightened way Japanese
families welcome their sons’ wives.

“Well, Eleanor is family, you know,” Kazu mumbled, “And as she’s a better mechanic than I…”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.” The two of them seemed to be operating on a separate wavelength of shared secrets,
at which she could only guess.

Kazu flung his rag on the workbench. Both Grandpa and Eleanor jumped.

“If you’d start moving with the times, we might be able to afford to get it fixed properly,” he said bitterly.

Eleanor had never heard Kazu talk this directly. All his polite nuances had gone.

Grandpa bristled. “If by ‘moving with the times’ you mean accepting jobs outside our area of expertise, you’re setting us
up for failure.”

“How can you know when you’ve never tried?” Kazu’s voice rose in frustration. “You only deal with the same old companies,
and half of them are going out of business anyway.”

“I’ve seen you fail.” Grandpa seemed to think this was his trump card. “Didn’t you learn anything?”

Eleanor was suddenly embarrassed for Kazu, for herself. Even embarrassed for Grandpa, who was always so careful not to be
emotional about anything, but was now red with rage. She backed out of the workshop into the relative coolness of the garden.

Mari was sitting on the big rock under the twisted pine tree with her back to Eleanor, talking to someone on her phone. Eleanor
caught a glimpse of the face in the phone—young and male.

“… terrible. But are you sure? … okay, I’ll see you in an hour.”

She got up and turned around. Her expression, soft and inward-looking, tightened when she saw Eleanor. She slipped the phone
into her shorts pocket and ran her hand over her bob.

“I have to go,” she said. “A friend just called. We, um, have an assignment due.”

“You know, if you ever need to talk about anything …” Eleanor began.

“Mari-chan!” Yoshiko opened the door. “We haven’t finished soaking the plums.”

“I’m sorry, Mother. I just got an urgent call and I have to go back now.”

“Is this because of the implants? Mari-chan, you know your father and I…”

“No, Mother. I have to meet someone.” She pushed past Yoshiko. “I’ll get my bag.”

Yoshiko looked at Eleanor as if it was her fault. “Did she say anything to you?”

“She said she has an assignment due.”

Yoshiko frowned disbelievingly. “Why didn’t she say that earlier? Where’s Kazu-san?”

“In the workshop.” Eleanor didn’t mention the fight with Grandpa. Yoshiko would blame her for that, too.

Yoshiko clicked her tongue in annoyance and went into the workshop.

Mari rushed out the door, cramming her feet into sandals. “Mother, I’ll phone,” she yelled at the workshop door. “Nice seeing
you, Aunt Eleanor,” she added, then clattered down the path and out the gate.

Eleanor waved, but Mari didn’t look back.

That night, back in the Betta, Eleanor couldn’t sleep. For once it wasn’t because of robots.

“Masao?” She poked him gently in the ribs.

He gave a barely awake grunt.

“Doesn’t it bother you that Grandpa won’t let me help out in the workshop?”

Masao turned toward her with a groan. “I never let Grandpa bother me. He’d drive me mad.”

“Today he said something strange. He practically accused Kazu of making some mistake.”

Masao was silent. She waited with growing impatience. Masao was always slow with his opinions.

“Grandpa’s probably thinking of Kazu’s failed venture,” he said finally.

“Kazu? You’re kidding.”

“No, really.” Masao shifted to face her. “A couple of years after the Quake, we were away that summer because you had a conference
in Amsterdam.”

She did remember. They took the obligatory souvenirs to Masao’s parents after they got back to Japan, but the atmosphere was
tense there. She never asked why.

“Kazu got together with some of his mates and rented part of the old milk factory building. You know, in the next block from
ours. They were going to make robot toys you could program yourself, taking advantage of the slump after the Quake. They spent
a lot of credit livelining the whole building for their equipment. It was the latest thing, but terribly expensive.”

Liveline cabling had been invented before the Quake of 2006 but had not come into widespread use until afterward, when the
rebuilding of Japan began. Liveline was the most secure of cabling, but even nine years later was still prohibitively expensive.

Masao stroked her hip reflectively. “Kazu said the factory was a mess. They had to move a lot of big equipment abandoned by
the milk company down into the basement. And then some other company …”

“Mipendo,” interrupted Eleanor. “Brought out their personal robot line. Which ruined the market for small companies in that
field.” Tomita had developed a similar, minor line, based on the Mipendo template.

“That’s right.” Masao rolled onto his back again. “And Kazu went bust, along with the money he’d borrowed from Grandpa. Ever
since then, Grandpa hasn’t let him do anything creative. And he never lets Kazu forget it. Not deliberately, of course.”

Eleanor winced at the casual way she’d dismissed Kazu’s veiled invitation and her careless comment about small companies going
bankrupt.