Less Than Human (13 page)

Damn Nakamura. He brought her all this way and didn’t have the courtesy to register her as a guest.

“Must’ve gone to the toilet,” grunted the guard. He glanced regretfully at the TV, then heaved himself out of the chair. He
took his cap from a peg on the other side of the booth and disappeared out a door.

Eleanor wondered if he’d gone to look for Nakamura or had simply given up on the whole thing, when he appeared again inside
the gates. “Go round the side,” he called.

A door opened beside the large double gates, and the guard let her through, grumbling under his breath the whole time. He
rolled as he walked, like a sailor.

Their feet scrunched on tiny pale gravel. Eleanor thought it was the overbright lights that made the gravel look pink, but
when they entered the main lobby, she realized the gravel probably was pink. To match everything else.

The walls were pale pink. Photographs adorning the walls showed model employees in jackets of a darker pink. The interior
of the lift they took down was a tasteful apricot; even the visitor’s card the guard gave Eleanor was pink. It all clashed
horribly with her hair.

Aside from the color, it was standard Big Company style, Aseptic mode; no friendly notices about QC circles or volleyball
practice on the walls, no tea-making niches with unhygienic clutter, or sickly potted plants huddled around ashtrays in little
bays. Zecom obviously kept up with nonsmoking trends. She was reminded of the detective, Ishihara, wanting to smoke in the
factory and the look of disgust he gave her when she objected.

The vinyl floors were squeaky clean and the overhead lights clear. Whichever series of cleaner robot they used, it did a good
job.

To get in and out of the elevator the guard had to use his card key. He used it again at the entrance to the research lab,
where two sets of doors formed a kind of air lock.

Their footsteps echoed. “Doesn’t anyone work late here?” Eleanor wondered aloud.

“Not unless they get permission,” said the guard. “Zecom is committed to ensuring its employees have private lives as well
as company lives.” This last was said in a rush, as if he didn’t want to forget it halfway through.

Outside the elevator and at the start of the main corridor, a time clock and neatly labeled cards placed prominently on a
table indicated that Zecom’s research staff were expected to maintain the same work hours as the factory. Nobody had yet invented
a computerized system as tamperproof as the time clock.

They walked through a large office space with desks arranged in neat rows. Each row had a larger desk at the end. Every desktop
was clean and uncluttered, all the pale gray monitors and keyboards aligned at the same angle. There were no memos stuck carelessly
to screens, no reference books left open at a particular page, no teacups or photographs or sweet wrappers or slippers under
chairs, or any sign that human beings ever worked there at all.

The only wall decoration was a single heavily framed message in square calligraphy exhorting Care, Quality Control, and Cost
Efficiency.

Was Nakamura happier here, in this atmosphere of rigid control? He’d always disapproved of the relaxed attitude at Tomita,
especially in her department. But one of her section chiefs disapproved, too, and worked around it. Perhaps Nakamura needed
the structure. Or perhaps he found himself stuck here with no way out. She could see why Akita hadn’t lasted long, though.
He’d been far less of a team player than Nakamura.

The guard led her through the office, down another corridor past rooms marked
DEPARTMENT SUPERVISOR
—he gets his own room here, thought Eleanor enviously—and
DIVISION CHIEF
, then used the card key to open another door marked
NO ADMITTANCE AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

The lab was a large room, divided into an open central area with small bays down both sides. Each bay contained a desk, computer
stations, and chairs. The open central area held several assembly line mock-ups and a number of robots and machine tools.

Most of the bays were dark, but strong lights illuminated the central area in the second half of the room. Only one of the
bays was lit.

“Nakamura-san,” called the guard. “You have a guest. I need you to stamp the forms, please.” His voice echoed in the stillness.

No answer.

“This is strange,” muttered the guard. He strode down the line of machines in the middle, keeping carefully to the outside
of the striped safety tape on the floor.

Eleanor followed, trying not to peer too obviously at the robots and equipment.

The guard stopped so suddenly she ran into his back.

“Sorry,” she said, flustered, “but you …”

Then she saw why he’d stopped.

A figure in a pink lab coat lay on the floor beside a medium-sized industrial robot. The robot’s arm was outstretched above
the man, and blood pooled under his head.

“Oh, no.” The guard stepped forward, reaching for a pulse, and Eleanor woke from her shock in time to shout at him,

“Stop! Wait a second.”

The guard, surprised, did stop.

She knelt, found the robot’s power cable leading to a switch around the other side of the workbench, and shut it off. It should
have been at total shutdown anyway, but she wasn’t going to take chances.

“Now.”

The guard felt the figure’s pulse and shook his head. It was Nakamura. She stared at the crepe-soled loafers he always used
to wear in the lab. The squeak had annoyed everyone. She kept her eyes away from his head.

“Are you okay?” the guard asked, his thumb tapping a number on an old-fashioned hand phone. His own face was pale under its
tan.

“Yes.” She’d thought the guard shifty-eyed and unpleasantly presumptuous in how close he got to her in the elevator. But in
the face of the shocking thing on the floor, he was a haven of normalcy.

He was calling 110. Ambulance? He looked at Nakamura, then quickly away again. No, they didn’t need an ambulance. They needed
the police.

Then he was talking to someone else, probably a senior manager from the way he bowed at nothing as he talked and the polite
register of his language.

She must concentrate on something, or she’d be sick.

She backed into the bay and flicked the computer’s touch pad, intending to check what Nakamura had been doing with the welder.
But instead of humming alive, the drive stayed silent, and the screen remained gray. She held her hand right in front of the
heat sensor. Nothing. She tapped the restart pad. Still nothing. Checked the wall connection—livelined here, of course, and
plugged in.

Why would he shut down the computer in the middle of an investigation?

She looked back at the robot. It was the same 316 series welder as Zecom had at Kawanishi Metalworks. Possibly the same one.
But Nakamura said Zecom’s maintenance department found nothing wrong with the welder. Why did he bring it in here—had he found
a disc like the one on the Tomita robot, after all?

The welder showed none of the stresses that should have been apparent from hitting an unprogrammed object in the middle of
a movement. The end-effector was twisted under a dark and sticky coating, but the arm itself was right where it should be.
None of the joints or leads showed impact fissures.

She walked around to the controller, which sat on a bench on the other side of the robot.

“Better not touch anything,” said the guard. He’d finished his call and was checking each of the bays.

She nodded. The controller lights were off, as she’d cut the power at the wall. She couldn’t remember if the lights had been
on when they came in.

What’s wrong with this picture? She let her eyes lose focus so she could look at the whole scene—the white lights illuminated
the tableau as if on a stage. Man Sprawled Lifeless under Avenging Mechanical Arm of Death.

That’s what bothered her—it was so obvious.

If Nakamura had been hit, then fallen where he now lay, the pressure-activated safety mat would have sounded an alarm. Nakamura
might have disabled the mat, true. But Nakamura had never, in all the years Eleanor knew him, turned off a safety feature.
If anything, he was obsessive about turning them all on.

Not only the safety mat. In fact … she walked around the robot to stare at it from the other side. In fact, Nakamura couldn’t
have been hit by this robot and fallen where he had. This time it wasn’t a question of the robot arm moving outside its programmed
arc, as when Mito was killed. This time it was physically impossible for the robot to make that arc.

The robot had been set up.

Her hands itched to examine it, but she didn’t dare. She crouched down and tried to see its network port, but the corner of
the table hid it.

Voices boomed in the corridor, then the door at the far end banged open.

Two uniformed policemen followed another security guard into the lab. All the overhead lights came on.

Eleanor straightened hastily.

“What happened here, then?” said the first policeman loudly and jovially, as though to idiots. He had a broad, red expanse
of face out of which small eyes peered.

The other security guard disappeared back up the corridor.

The policemen advanced into the lab, and the speaker’s tone changed when he saw Nakamura’s body.

“Trouble all right. You did right to call us.” He turned his back on them and spoke briefly into his phone.

“Was he like this when you found him?” asked the second policeman. He was small and colorless, like a bleached imp.

“Of course. We haven’t touched anything.” The security guard sounded cross, as though his professional reputation had been
impugned.

“I always said these things were dangerous,” said the small policeman.

But they shouldn’t be dangerous, Eleanor thought, not if you take the proper precautions. And Nakamura always did.

The first policeman, the one with the piggy eyes, started toward Nakamura, then hesitated. He pointed at the robot.

“Is that thing turned off?”

“Yes,” said Eleanor.

The constable knelt beside Nakamura and checked vital signs, ignoring the security guard’s pointed comment that he’d done
it already.

“Who are you?” said the small policeman to Eleanor.

“She’s a visitor.” The guard looked up from where he hovered over Nakamura and Piggy. “I brought her down here to see him.”
He jerked his chin at Nakamura.

Eleanor chuckled mentally. As a visitor, she’d been an outsider to the guard when she arrived. But now, in the face of police
questioning, as a visitor to the company she was token “family,” and therefore needed protection.

“At this time of night?” said the small policeman.

“He called me in Osaka,” she said. “He wanted me to come and discuss some research.”

“Research?” The policeman frowned in disbelief. Or perhaps it was his natural sour expression. “You’d better tell all this
to the detectives when they arrive.”

“He’s definitely gone.” Piggy stood up. “You two had better go upstairs and wait for the ’tecs.”

He shepherded them toward the door. The guard muttered something about know-it-alls. Eleanor was glad to get out of there.
Nakamura dead was horrible, but worse was the obvious falsity of it all. Someone had killed him, and it wasn’t the robot.

O
y, Ishihara!” One of the other detectives held his hand over the pickup of the vidphone as he yelled across the room. “Line
three.”

Ishihara waved his hand wearily in reply and punched 3 on his desk monitor. It was after ten on Monday night and he didn’t
want to talk to anyone.

Only the audio came on. The voice at the other end of the phone said, “Hello, Ishihara. This is Mikuni, at Okayama Prefectural.
It’s been a while.”

Ishihara shook himself awake mentally. “Mikuni, you old devil. It’s been five years. How are things out in the sticks?” Mikuni
was probably the only detective at Okayama whom Ishihara hadn’t offended during his term there, or maybe he was just thick-skinned.

“We have our little problems,” Mikuni’s voice was still calm and mellow. “Like now. I thought you might be interested, seeing
as how you had a similar case recently.”

Not more Silver Angels, surely. Ishihara reached for a pen. “I’m listening.”

“Bloke got hit by a robot. One of those industrial things, not a proper robot.”

Ishihara opened his mouth and shut it again while his brain caught up.

Mikuni went on. “Fortunately, it’s in a robot factory …” Someone spoke in the background. “I mean, a research institute. Zecom.
Big machine tool company, high profile, international connections.”

Okayama Head Office had probably put together a response team immediately.

“There’s no shortage of experts,” Mikuni said. “In fact, we’ve got one of yours as well.”

“What do you mean, one of ours?”

“I mean that foreigner you quoted in your report on your factory case. I noticed it in the bulletin this morning.”

“McGuire?”

Mikuni said something off to one side, then came back on again. “That’s the one. She discovered the body. Don’t quite know
what to make of her evidence.”