They rode in Tableau's luxury helicar, which lifted above the congested street traffic and glided along invisible navigation tracks beamed through the canyons of steel and concrete. Its interior was heavy with Mr. Jones's high-priced cologne, which he seemed to overindulge in just to show that he could afford to do so on his salary. Or maybe the cologne and his fancy suit and bowler hat were his way of self-consciously compensating for his appearance-and origins. Stake couldn't help but lean toward the front seat and ask him, "So you were in the Blue War, huh?"
"Yes, sir. I was there for four years."
Me too, Stake wanted to tell him. "That must have been a rough ride."
"Yes it was. I lost my left foot in an engagement in the Kae Ta Valley."
"Really? Did you have it regenerated?"
"I don't believe that a cloned soldier would be deemed worthy of that level of attention, sir. No, I was given a prosthesis."
Ahh. Did Stake detect the slightest hint of resentment at the clone's station in life?
Then he frowned. The Kae Ta Valley? The cloned soldiers of the 5th Advance Rangers, led by Sergeant Adams, had been pinned down by heavy action in that location before rendezvousing with Stake's unit, holed up in the captured monastery. But he told himself not to become paranoid. The Fifth couldn't possibly have been the only cloned unit to fight their way through the Kae Ta Valley. Anyway, even in the unlikely case that this man had been one of the Rangers (Stake didn't remember him, as they all looked alike anyway), his guise as McMartinez would prevent him from being recognized. Still, unsettled, Stake activated his wrist comp, called up McMartinez's image, and stared hard at it, lest his face begin to dissolve back to its default setting prematurely.
He needed to maintain his disguise. He had felt this was the best way to approach Tableau, and poke about the issue of his missing daughter. And maybe in poking at that, he might turn up Yuki Fukuda's stolen doll. He knew it was unlikely that Tableau would have answered questions put to him by a private dick hired by his business rival.
"I hope you can help Mr. Tableau find his daughter," Jones spoke up from the front seat. "He's very distraught over it."
"I'll do my best," Stake said. Without lying in that regard, at least.
It was difficult for Stake to take in Tableau closely, at first, or even to hear his words. He was too stunned by the menagerie that formed the man's office, here at Tableau Meats.
The walls of the office were transparent, and behind this barrier were a dozen cells containing a variety of animals. These were natural specimens of the creatures his company produced in the form of headless/limbless battery animals. In one cell, a cow rested on its side in a bed of straw, its long-lashed eyes gazing back at Stake placidly. Two pigs in another cell. A cluster of chickens pecking at feed. A Kalian glebbi, a long-legged and long-necked reptile resembling a llama. Stake knew that the battery versions of these creatures, as produced in the manufacturing departments of this complex, would be bigger, plumper, without fur and scales and feathers to be removed. But what of that ape in one of the cells?
Stake had never heard about any race in Punktown that included such an advanced primate in their diet. This creature even looked bipedal, more of a hominid than an ape. But then he thought of the extradimensional race called the L'lewed, who bred a species of primate they had encountered on another world for sacrifice in a religious ritual. The L'lewed would have preferred to use more fully human beings for this purpose, but naturally that was frowned upon by the Earth Colonies. Could Tableau be producing the hominids here for the L'lewed's needs? Stake gestured at the creature, which was moving about its cell in an agitated way, back and forth, throwing them hostile looks and once baring its fangs in a cry they couldn't hear.
"Is this also a comestible animal, Mr. Tableau?"
Tableau turned to regard the creature, and laughed. "Oh, this guy is a one-of-a-kind, Mr. McMartinez. I once had a business partner named Grant Leery. We parted ways on, ah, bad terms. He liked to call me an ape in a suit, behind my back. So I had my lab people make this hairy fella from some of Grant's DNA that I got a hold of. But they tweaked it here and there, and we sort of regressed him a bit. I'm told my Grant is a fine specimen of Australopithecus africanus." He laughed again. "I had a hat made for him like an organ grinder's monkey, but he wouldn't keep it on."
"That's quite the unique revenge," Stake said, almost too stunned to feel disgusted.
Tableau faced his guest again, and looked like he regretted his candor. His mood became grimmer as he turned to the subject of his daughter. "I appreciate your help with Krimson. The forcers haven't done a damn thing, if you ask me. They suck enough tax money out of my ass to fund a half dozen precincts, but they can't turn up a single clue. And I've had my own security men dig around, asking questions, but… you know." He gestured at Jones as if to say, what can something that looks like that find out?
"I'll do everything within my power, Mr. Tableau."
"Here, come sit down. Coffee?" "Um, sure."
Tableau motioned to Jones, who promptly left the room, bowler hat cradled in one arm. Looking back at Stake, the businessman's hard eyes suddenly narrowed. He tilted his chin toward Stake's hands, folded in his lap. "Wrist comp not working?"
"Sir?"
"You called me from a pay phone." Stake glanced down at the device on his wrist. "Oh, right. No, no it isn't. It's glitched."
"Ah."
Stake, as McMartinez, asked Tableau to fill him in further on the circumstances of his daughter's disappearance. There had been no note left by her prior to her going missing and no message sent since, no calls to him from her, nothing; she simply hadn't returned home from school one day.
With an apologetic expression, Stake asked, "So do you think she might have run away with an older boyfriend, as the rumors have it?"
Once more Tableau's eyes narrowed, and his jaw thrust out more pugnaciously. "The problem with that theory is, I don't know this alleged person's name. She hinted to me that there was some older guy she liked-she wouldn't tell me how old-and I told her that any guy who tried to date her wouldn't be getting any older if he put a finger on her. She's sixteen! I don't care who her friends are fuc. seeing. I didn't want her getting taken advantage of by some horny punk. Well, after I told her how I felt, she wouldn't tell me a damn thing about him."
"But didn't she confide in any of her friends?"
"Either she didn't, or they've been covering for her. But I don't think they're covering for her now, because they know she could be in danger. And I've even offered some of her friends a reward if they put me on this boyfriend's trail, but they still can't tell me anything. So I don't know if there's a boyfriend involved in this or not. I don't know if I scared her away from dating him, or if she ended up protecting his identity even from her friends so I couldn't get to them."
"That's unfortunate," Stake mused aloud.
There was one bit of information he could provide Tableau, he knew, but he didn't dare. Not yet, anyway. That one of Krimson's friends claimed to have heard her voice on a Ouija phone. It looked like no one had shared that rumor with her father.
Instead, Stake casually introduced the matter that he had been hired to pursue. "Another funny rumor I've heard is that she envied a classmate of hers for having one of those kawaii-dolls that are so popular now. A very, very valuable one, belonging to a girl named Yuki Fukuda." He watched the businessman's eyes carefully after dropping this bomb. "Evidently this doll has been stolen. Is it possible she might have taken the doll and run off with it? To sell it, or.?"