Ga Noh, the Earth Killer had called him. Wasn't it much the same? Hadn t she become attracted to him because of his gift, as well? But, Stake thought, it had also been different. For Janice, he was a malleable toy. To the Ha Jiin woman, he had been, as Henderson told him, "A chimera or a shapeshifter. A mystical kind of being; part human, part god."
"Janice. I ll call you. I will. But right now. right now I just need some me time."
She sighed. "Whatever you say. Call me if you get lonely. We all get lonely, Jer. I know I do." And with that, she vanished from the wrist comp s tiny screen.
Stake gave a sigh of his own. Time for that shot. He tossed it back in one throat-searing swallow.
Before he started another beer, and forgot who it was he meant to call, Stake finally contacted Fukuda. The man picked up immediately. His miniature face showed a wan smile. "Well, hello. Welcome back from the dead."
An odd thing to say, Stake thought. Or at least, uncomfortable, given the circumstances. "Janice Poole said you were trying to reach me."
"I just wanted to know how you were, mostly."
"Care to join me for a few beers? I m at the Legion of Veterans Post 69, on Diode Avenue."
"I m on my way, then."
"Better hurry. I have a head start."
"I won t be long."
"Great. See you then, Mr. Fukuda."
The anemic smile faltered a bit. "You can call me James." Then he signed off.
When James Fukuda entered LOV 69, he found that Stake had moved from the bar to one of the tables for more privacy, and that he was drinking a coffee instead of beer. "Have you quit before I could start?" he joked.
"I m just waiting for you so I can start again," the detective told him.
"Then I ll get this round." Fukuda went to see Watt about two fresh drafts.
When they sat across from each other, they formed a silent and uncomfortable diptych. Stake expected Fukuda to ask him about the Ha Jiin woman who had come out of nowhere to get them safely from Steward Gardens. Fukuda, Stake was sure, expected and dreaded the subject of Yuki. But that part was inevitable, wasn t it? So he thought he might as well broach it first.
"Mr. Fukuda. James. I m so sorry about Yuki. I ve been wondering if it wasn t my fault. If I hadn t come in there guns blazing like a cowboy."
"No. No, Jeremy, please. At that point there was no other way. They were about to torture her, weren t they? At least she had a chance at being rescued, that she never would have had if Janice hadn t told you she d been kidnapped. But maybe it would have been better that way. You wouldn t have been so seriously injured. And I would have perished alongside Yuki, as I deserved."
"Don t say that. You gave her a brief life filled with love. You don t deserve to die for that. The men who deserved to die are dead."
Stake said that, but even he had to admit that- his methods aside-Tableau had only wanted to find the daughter he loved. And his security men had only wanted to do a good job for the man who had given them a life after the war for which they had been manufactured. Still, Stake had no room for remorse. After all, every enemy he had ever killed had been a child at one time. At some point, all life was innocent.
Fukuda said, "Maybe it was wrong giving her that life. It was a selfish thing, done to alleviate my guilt. I brought a human being into existence just for a way to redeem myself. But at the time, I told myself it was for Yuriko. That was why I made her my daughter, not my lover. I didn t want to lust for her again. My lust for her was what killed her the first time. But it didn t matter, in the end, did it? I still got her killed anyway. It may not sound scientific for the owner of Fukuda Bioforms to say, but it makes me think that she was not fated to be reborn. That I was trying to cheat her destiny."
"Who can say? I don't know if I believe in destiny. But once I didn t believe in ghosts, either."
"The owner of Fukuda Bioforms." Fukuda echoed his own words with a tinge of bitterness, staring off at one of the large VT screens as it played a commercial that managed to seem loud even with the sound muted. "There is no redemption for me. I think I can come to peace with that, in a way. That s my destiny."
Stake tried not to look at Fukuda s face for too long. On top of everything else the man was feeling, he didn t need to see his brother resurrected in front of him once more. So staring through his beer glass, the seething bubbles like cells on a microscope's slide, Stake said, "You know, any time people purposely conceive children, they really do it for their own pleasure. Not to further the human race or anything noble like that. Well, excepting our biological programming to further the race, misguided as those instincts may be. But anyway, like I say, that impulse is no less selfish than what you did in creating Yuki. Right?"
Fukuda heaved a sigh and tried on a smile again, returning his gaze to Stake. "Have you ever wanted children, Jeremy?"
"Yeah. Little blue-skinned children," he joked.
Fukuda narrowed his eyes with speculation.
"Hm."
Stake realized he d said too much. He did not want to discuss the mysterious Ha Jiin woman, or the reason for the destruction of Steward Gardens, the fate of Dai-oo-ika, or whether Fukuda would now be sure to order Pablo Fujiwara to destroy all the remaining research from Alvine Products. At that moment, he just wanted to go empty his bladder to make room for the beers to come, so he said as much to Fukuda as he rose from the table. "Be right back," he told him. "And the next round's on me."
"I ll be here," Fukuda replied.
The detective had been gone for a few moments, during which time Fukuda s eyes had wandered back to the muted VT s splashy brightness in the gloom of the bar, when a beeping sound came from inside his jacket. He flinched. For a second, he hesitated in reaching into his pocket, but a couple of other patrons glanced boozily his way. Throwing a look toward the direction in which Stake had disappeared, Fukuda nervously produced a little hand phone. It was a new, state-of-the-art model called the Planchette, with the orange outlines of Day of the Dead skeletons cavorting across its black surface.
The beeping continued, announcing that a channel had opened. Contact had been established.
Slowly, as if afraid it might explode in his hand, explode against his skull, Fukuda lifted the device to his ear. Held it an inch away from touching.
"Daddy," a voice said, tiny and remote.
There was much crackling, hissing static. She was saying more, but he could not make out the words, the message she wanted to relate.
"What is it, my love?" he said into the mouthpiece. Tears quivered in his eyes, and his own voice cracked as he pleaded, "Please speak louder. I can't hear you. I can't hear you."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeffrey Thomas's milieu of Punktown has been the setting for other of his books, such as the collections Punktown and Punktown: Shades of Grey (with brother Scott Thomas) and the novels Health Agent, Everybody Scream!, and Monstrocity, which was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. Several of these have been translated into German, Russian, and Greek language editions. Deadstock's protagonist Jeremy Stake also appears in the story "In His Sights" in the anthology The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction. When not visiting Punktown, Thomas divides the rest of his time between Massachusetts and Viet Nam.
You can visit Jeffrey at:
www.jeffreyethomas.com
www.myspace.com/jeffreythomaswriter