The Future Is Japanese (27 page)

Emmy Eto’s own security system was usefully elaborate, more so than he had expected. Combined with surveillance from the building as well as standard public records, Goku had nearly minute-by-minute accounting for Pretty Howitzer and Emmy Eto together, and not much less separately, but only for the period leading up to the crime. The actual crime itself was documented in and out of AR+ by the bank records showing the transfer of money from Emmy Eto to Pretty Howitzer.

Studying the transaction, Goku wondered if Emmy Eto knew how lucky she was that she had done everything in Augmented Reality. Had the scam occurred in Artificial Reality, it would have been harder to make a case against Pretty Howitzer. Not impossible—there had been a number of successful prosecutions against people who had scammed the elderly, all predicated on the claim that the offenders had deliberately used techniques and FX to confuse and disorient their aged victims to the point where they became incapable of distinguishing between AR and an unenhanced, nonaugmented offline environment. A few less-than-elderly people had tried using the same argument for civil actions against scammers who had relieved them of money or property or both while in AR. Results had been mixed, especially across international boundaries, and even successful plaintiffs learned that the difference between winning a judgment and actually collecting was a lot like the difference between AR and unenhanced, nonaugmented offline reality.

He didn’t think anyone would believe Emmy Eto had been confused and disoriented by Pretty Howitzer. The old lady wore several layers of AR+ routinely and nonstop during her waking hours—in a typical day, she probably didn’t see the unenhanced, nonaugmented offline world for as long as sixty seconds. If that—he revised the estimate downward when he saw how often she slept with her lenses in. She did a lot of swapping too, as well as layering. Between her assorted glasses and contact lenses, she probably changed the world half a dozen times before lunch. After which she probably napped for an hour, waking to butterflies and honeybees.

She would never come off as someone who could be confused or disoriented to a jury. He wouldn’t have believed it himself. And yet, when he had asked her if she really thought Pretty Howitzer had an out door—an actual, no-fooling portal to a different reality—she had said yes.

“Of course, I don’t believe it now, Agent Mura, and if you’re anything like me, you probably don’t understand how I ever could have. Do you think I’m wondering how I could have been so gullible? Well, I’m not. I know why I fell for it. I saw because I was looking for it, and it was as real as anything else I see with my very own eyes.” She had looked around, moving only her eyes, a tiny smile on her lips. “And if I saw it again tomorrow, it would be déjà vu all over again.”

The recording stopped and Emmy Eto vanished. Goku found himself sitting sideways at his desk, the way he would have been had he still been sitting next to her on her couch. There was a slight crick in his side from the awkward posture he had unconsciously assumed to keep his elbow from touching the arm of his chair; it would have ruined the illusion.

And there it was, practically on cue: a faint flutter at the limit of his peripheral vision, but this time on the left rather than the right. He made a note to find out if Emmy Eto had noticed her daughter’s image on one side more often than another or whether it just popped up in the middle.

His phone chimed with a message from Ogada, telling him he could visit Konstantin this evening.

At first Goku thought he was in the wrong room. There was a wire-frame contraption rather than a bed, and the figure suspended in it looked more like a large doll than a living person, a sexless, featureless mannequin in an elaborate hotsuit meant for a programming engineer or a Foley editor rather the standard end-user. Then he realized and looked away.

“It’s always so hard when people see someone they know in a condition like this.” The nurse’s low, kindly voice had a hint of the Caribbean. Goku wondered how far removed she was from it, whether she ever went there, and if so, did they welcome her home or as a tourist.

“I didn’t think there were many people in this condition,” he said, still not looking at Konstantin.

“I meant a condition
like
this—incapacitated. If I gave offense, I apologize.”

“You didn’t, not at all.” Goku winced inwardly. “One of her staff told me about the, ah, incident and that it was an unusual injury. She had a hard time explaining. I ran into her boss and I thought maybe he could tell me more. But all I got from him was something about laser pointers and burned retinas.”

The nurse raised her eyebrows. “Hmph. Pretty good.”

Pretty Good
—
Pretty Howitzer’s overachieving cousin, the one she could never live up to;
the thought blew through his mind, a scrap of absurdity. Konstantin had talked about sometimes feeling a sense of unreality or surreality. He’d never been quite sure what she meant, but now he thought he had an inkling.

“Too simple, of course,” the nurse went on. “If it really were that basic, they might have made some progress with her. But as an analogy, it’s pretty good. Better, though, for the neuros to accept that a person is more than a mind driving a body.”

“Greater than the sum of her parts?” He suppressed the urge to mutter something sarcastic about platitudes.

She made a disgusted noise. “Oh, don’t give me that.”

“Excuse me?” Goku stared at her.

“People who say that think they
know
all the parts. What they are, how many.”

He shook his head, baffled.

“People are a
lot
more complex. Can you trace the exact shape of the hole she left when she fell out of her life?” The nurse looked at him with grim amusement. “Work on that, maybe you’ll be getting somewhere.” She went over to the framework holding Konstantin and peeled back the right sleeve of the suit, exposing a pasty but still firm-looking forearm. She bared Konstantin’s hand as well and Goku started to turn toward the door, thinking the nurse was going to bathe her.

“No need to go,” the woman said. “You came to visit, stick around.” She laid her own arm along Konstantin’s, intertwining their fingers, and gently moved Konstantin’s hand back and forth as if trying to retrain her movements. Next to the nurse’s dark brown skin, Konstantin’s looked as white as paper, but it wasn’t the contrast that struck him.

After a couple of minutes, the nurse switched the position of her arm so that it was now on the outside of Konstantin’s. It didn’t look like any physical therapy he had ever seen, but he resisted the temptation to say as much. Instead, he asked, “Does that help?”

The nurse smiled. “Can’t hurt.”

“Do you ever try that with both her arms at once?”

“Takes two people. If you’re volunteering—” she tilted her head toward Konstantin’s other arm.

“Actually, I was thinking five more people at least. There’s a form of Japanese theatre called
bunraku
—”

“I know what bunraku is. Those big puppets. It’s not a bad idea,” she said, still manipulating Konstantin’s arm. “But now it’s getting complicated.”

“So? You just said people are complex.”

“I mean legally—permissions. Which would be all right, but … ” She gave him a Look. “The lieutenant told me you were in from England. You want to help with this, you can’t phone it in. We don’t do AR or AR+. You planning to stick around?”

He nodded and immediately there was another flicker on the left. Definitely right on cue, too perfectly timed to be more than that fancy footwork all human brains were so partial to, even his. In this case, especially his.

But what the hell, he thought. He didn’t have to believe one way or the other. In which case, he would stipulate for the record—whatever record that was—that yes, he wanted to see Konstantin. And he would come here and see her tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, for as many days as he could wheedle out of I3.

If he saw her every day, the odds were good that sooner or later she might catch a glimpse of him.

A tray was set next to the futon where Yutaka lay.

There was an earthenware bowl filled with a hearty soup. But what was in the soup left little to be desired. The broth was an inky brown color he’d never seen before, and floating in it were oddly shaped brown balls and white pasty-looking lumps, and even what appeared to be tentacles of some kind.

This was clearly the staple food of an uncharted, uncivilized territory, a far cry from the beef stew, borscht, and
pot-au-feu
to which Yutaka was accustomed.

Yutaka sat up on the futon and cast a wary eye on the blonde-haired woman in the kimono who had brought him the tray. The woman knelt down on the tatami mat, flaring her nostrils as she looked down at him. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties and had sharp features, which, at the moment, made her look all the more intimidating. About ten local kids peered in from the shadow of the sliding fusuma door. All of them had bright blond or red hair and green or blue eyes that seemed otherworldly to Yutaka. They all stared curiously at the black-haired, black-eyed visitor.

He didn’t sense any hostility in his captors. It was clear that the meal set before him wasn’t a barbaric attempt at murder or execution, or even human experimentation. At the same time, he wasn’t sure what to make of their food hygiene awareness. To put it bluntly, the soup was liable to give him food poisoning.

Nevertheless, Yutaka was a prisoner here. His priority was to heal his wounds and keep up his strength so he could return to his squadron.

He leaned over the bowl, mindful of the cast on his left hand, and with the right hand, shoveled the soup into his mouth with the strange wooden sticks.

The soup had a rustic flavor and tasted like seawater in his mouth. The potatolike balls were slimy, forming sticky threads when he bit them in half, and the white pasty lumps stuck to his teeth as he chewed. There was no way he could bring himself to eat the tentacles.

So horrid was the soup that he covered his mouth with the back of his hand, beginning to feel as if he were being subjected to some absurd method of torture. With tears in his eyes, he fought back his gag reflex and swallowed what was in his mouth, but could eat no more.

“What is this?” Yutaka muttered to himself. “Is this what you call soup?”

“How’s that for gratitude?” said the woman. “I made that soup!”

Yutaka stared in shock. It was the first time anyone had spoken to him since the crash.

“You … understand what I’m saying?” he asked.

“What do you think?” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “We bumpkins may not know how to build starfighters, but we
do
talk.”

“No, I meant that you understand my English. I didn’t expect it to be spoken in the backwoods of Kalif.”

“Ahem! This is the language we’ve always spoken in these
backwoods
.”

Yutaka watched the woman look away. She pouted like a child.

“You wouldn’t have something more … real to eat?” he asked.

“I doubt you’ll find much better than that potato and squid
suiton
. Eat up because that’s all there is.”

“Doesn’t this colony abide by the laws?” The Interstellar Laws of Warfare dictated the humane treatment of prisoners of war.

Hearing this, the woman sneered. “Why do you think I’m sharing what little we have to feed you? Or did you forget what you’ve done?”

Yutaka flinched and shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

“Don’t play innocent with—”

“No, really,” he interrupted. “I lost consciousness soon after I bailed out. I really don’t remember.”

The woman fell silent for a moment. “Well, that’s too bad,” she mumbled. “Your fighter crashed into the storeroom, sending all of the rice flying out into space. All that’s left to feed the village are the vegetables in the fields and some nonperishables. Although I guess I can’t blame you if you’re saying that it was an accident.”

“That sounds … serious.”

“The will of Andromeda. There are four hundred ninety-seven of us in this village, and for a while, we thought half of us would have to go hungry. But after poring over the books, checking the drums, and counting every last provision in the vacu-room for three days and nights, we calculated that the village should hold out until autumn. That was just this morning. Consider yourself lucky! If you had come to yesterday and some of the others heard you talking like that, they would have tossed you into the composter!”

The words flooded from the woman’s mouth in a torrent. When she was done, she was breathless and red-faced. Her blue eyes glowed like jet burners; sparks danced around her blonde hair that was tied back in a bun.

Although he recognized that it was the spring rays spilling in through the shoji screen that cast her in this light, Yutaka could not help but admire her beauty even as he was overwhelmed by her fierce tongue. Yutaka was from Yamato, an aggressive nation that valued advancement and expansion, where assertiveness was a respected trait.

As far as Yutaka could gather, he was at fault. The young pilot had only happened to engage an enemy fighter near Kalif territory. The Kalif Federation was a neutral nation and not an enemy of Yamato.

Yutaka decided it was best to apologize. He sat upright with his legs folded beneath him like the woman before him, pressed his hands firmly against his waist, and bowed his head deeply. “I regret the damage I’ve caused. I’m sorry.”

When he raised his head, the woman was staring at him dumbstruck, and then her cheeks ballooned until she burst into laughter.

The pilot would later learn that the proper prostrate gesture in Kalif was one where you pressed your head against both hands brought together in front of you on the floor. However, Yutaka had unwittingly bowed down having combined the
attention
and
sitting
positions. Such a gesture did not exist in Kalif culture. It was no surprise the woman had laughed.

“What’s so funny?” shouted Yutaka.

“You are.” The woman smiled and wiped the tears from her eyes. Yutaka was taken aback by the kind expression that came over her face. “I wondered if you had any manners when you started eating without saying anything. But maybe you aren’t a completely bad seed. My name is Ainella Burbanks. I’ll be looking after you until a rescue comes for you. What’s yours?”

“Second Lieutenant Yutaka Kubuki of the Yamato no Yasoshima Interstellar Expeditionary Fleet, 3rd Carrier Strike Group, 34th Fighter Squadron.”

“That’s a mouthful. How old are you? You look awfully young.”

“Eighteen in Earthian years.”

“You’re just a young pup,” said Ainella, blinking.

It was the villagers of Lakeview, which was located on a tiny unnamed asteroid, who had saved Yutaka and taken him in. After thanking them, he took the necessary course of action that any stranded starfighter pilot would take and contacted the mother ship.

Lakeview had an interplanetary communicator. Despite the difficulty of hailing a military vessel through civilian channels, Yutaka succeeded in making contact by devising an encryption code. But what he learned was grim. After several days, the mother ship had determined there was no chance of his survival and had departed the sector.

Most interplanetary spacecraft traveling inside the solar system were incapable of changing course due to the current limitations in orbital science and nuclear fusion engines. Once a spacecraft passed a certain point, it was unable to turn around unless it refueled at the next port.

It had taken the carrier group three months to reach this sector. Even if the mother ship were to turn right around after reaching Yamato, it would take over six months to return for him.

Not that the military was going to mobilize a carrier vessel to retrieve a lone pilot in the first place. In other words, Yutaka would not be able to rejoin his squadron as quickly as he’d hoped.

The Yamato military drilled its striker pilots with the standards of conduct and skills for just this type of situation. The first survival protocol, as far as Yutaka could remember, was “Don’t panic.” The second was “Return to the fleet by any means necessary.”

Yutaka attempted to carry out the second protocol.

But before long, he realized that it was easier said than done. Lakeview was a subsistence village on a tiny asteroid off the beaten path. A shuttlecraft arrived from a heavily populated planetary hub once a month, but it was run by the very enemy nation that Yutaka had been deployed to attack.

Relying on an enemy vessel to get off this asteroid was out of the question. In fact, he had to assume that the enemy was looking for him.

Yutaka had no choice but to follow the first protocol of survival.

He would have to lie low until he saw his chance to escape.

“Anything but this!”

Day fifteen since Yutaka had come to live in the Kalif-style wooden house. Scowling, he shoved as much of the vegetable stew called
suiton
into his mouth as he could. The peculiar taste of fermented soybean along with the pasty lumps that stuck to his teeth made his skin crawl, and it was all he could do to force the stuff down his throat.

“Have some
ohitashi
.”

Ainella, sitting across from Yutaka with her legs folded, coldly slid the dish of boiled greens across the tea table. There was also some smoked fish and pickled red berries of some kind. As meager as the portions were, Yutaka tried to pack away as many calories as he could. And yet, he couldn’t help but ask, “Do you have any meat?”

A rump steak twice as thick as your palm? Some bread and milk, potatoes, ice cream, pork and beans? Pasta?

“We slaughter the livestock in autumn,” Ainella said curtly, bringing a small fry up to her mouth. She was frightfully dexterous with chopsticks. “You fatten them up during summer and autumn when there’s plenty to graze on and slaughter them before winter—everyone knows that. Just how do you people live on Yamato?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” said Yutaka, clumsily trying to pick up a small fry with his chopsticks. When the fish fell into pieces on the table, he tried to pick it up until he remembered the cast on his left hand. “I don’t understand why you people have to grow grass during the summer and suffer the cold in winter. That kind of thinking is from an era when we were still constrained by Earth’s axial tilt. Your asteroid doesn’t experience seasonal changes. Why haven’t you standardized your energy resources year-round? Why haven’t you industrialized your meat production?”