Less Than Human (26 page)

“We’re getting to that age when you never know if people are going to stay in their groove,” he went on. “You talked the other
day about leaving Tomita and working with Kazu. You’d never have said that a couple of years ago.”

He was right. She dug in her fingers with more force man usual. She could taste an unaccustomed panic at the thought of the
year ahead of her at Tomita, then another, then another. All those years, and what to show at the end of it—more canceled
projects?
The past is dead, and the only thing the future holds is death.

“Masao?”

“Hmm? A little lower.”

“Do you believe people have souls?”

His muscles tightened under her hands. They hadn’t talked about religion for years. Or love, or desire, or happiness, she
thought with dismay. She’d been too damn busy.

“I know that Buddhism says we aren’t reborn as the same individuals,” she kept going, a little nervous now. “We’re reborn
as new, right?”

“According to what we’ve done in previous lives, yes.” Masao kept his gaze ahead.

“What about our memories?”

“Do you remember your previous lives?” She could feel him grin.

“Oh. But what are we if not our memories, our experiences?”

“Our actions,” he said softly. “That’s what karma is—what we do. Anyway”—he swiveled in his chair to face her—”if what you
mean by ‘soul’ is the thing that’s reborn, then not only people have souls. All living things die and are reborn.”

“All that has form, dies,” she said softly. “Even robots. Even Sam Number Five in
Journey to Life.
It didn’t matter that he wasn’t human. If he had consciousness, he could achieve rebirth.”

He swiveled in his chair, surprised. “That’s right. Why the sudden interest?”

She shifted awkwardly. “I was doing some research into that group Mari’s with—the Silver Angels. And I started thinking about
… other things.”

He chuckled and drew her to him, pulling her down onto his lap. How long had it been since they last sat like this?

“Ellie, if you get one of those moving-out-of-the-groove impulses, don’t ignore it. Change is a good thing.”

“It’s nothing to do with work.”

He hugged her so hard that her elbows dug into her sides. “That’s what you think.”

She slept badly that night. She had a dream that there’d been another earthquake, only this time it was everywhere. Smoke
rose in a haze over the horizon as she stood in front of the rubble of the Betta with Masao. These were supposed to be quakeproof,
she said. What happens now?

And her eyes opened. She lay still until her heart stopped thudding and wondered if the Bettas were as safe as they were supposed
to be. One of the main causes of damage in the Great Quake and the Kobe quake before it in 1995 was the way construction companies
had cut corners to finish buildings in time for deadlines, leading to weakened structures. The Bettas were supposed to have
stricter controls, but she wondered.

Look how easily Akita entered. Theoretically, the fingerprint and retina ID systems were possible to crack, and the microchip
recognition even less secure. But it required inside knowledge of the overall system, and the Bettas were supposed to have
layers upon layers of security redundancies to protect that. If Akita could do it, anyone with specialized system knowledge
could get in. They could interfere with the environmental systems, stop the air conditioners … or, more insidiously, reprogram
it to include toxic gases.

Masao breathed as calmly as always beside her, but she felt no peace. The cool, smooth walls seemed like a prison. Her chest
felt tight, and she was sweating. Could the windows be opened? She’d never tried. Surely there would be emergency latches,
in case of fire.

She rolled out of the futon, taking care not to disturb Masao, and padded to the window. The glass was dimmed in preparation
for morning glare, so she couldn’t see anything outside except a few blurred lights.

There
must
be an emergency catch. Her fingers, shaking with urgency, scrabbled along the line of the lower sill. Betta safety and security
closed in like a vice. Akita’s voice in her head,
Nothing is uncrackable.
Sweat soaked a line down the center of her back.

Where was the damn catch? If there was a fire or an earthquake, how would people find … with a moan of relief, she felt an
indented area in one corner under the sill. Under a hinged cover was a tiny leverlike device.

It wouldn’t open, she didn’t have the strength. Was the air really growing staler or was it her imagination?

“Ellie? What’s the matter?” Masao’s voice from the floor.

“Open this. Please.”

The futon rustled, his feet slapped on tatami then his comforting bulk was beside her, his hand warm on her waist.

“Open what, the window?”

“Yes.”

“Why? We’ll get fined.”

“Please.” She tried to take deep, long breaths but they got caught halfway in.

Masao’s hand left her waist and with a click-clunk, the window slid outward about ten centimeters. Tepid, moist air touched
their stomachs. A warning light on the wall above began to blink, and if Eleanor had not canceled the apartment’s vocal function
after they moved in, a voice would now be asking them to close the window.

She relaxed immediately, and almost as immediately began to feel a fool.

“What was all that about?” Masao put his arms around her. “You’re sweating. Are you sick?”

She shook her head and allowed herself to almost fall into him. They subsided onto the floor under the window, breathing humid
air laden with the exhaust of countless air conditioners.

Her safe house was no longer safe.

T
hursday morning. Ishihara stretched his legs the full width of the passageway and lit another cigarette. New regulations said
he couldn’t smoke in the office and had to use a segregated section of the corridor. He’d damn well use the whole section,
then.

He wondered how Mikuni was proceeding with the Zecom case. Ishihara didn’t pretend to understand the contents of Nakamura’s
files, but as far as the police were concerned, if Nakamura had been blackmailing Yui for money or anything else, Yui had
a motive for killing. And at the moment he was the only suspect.

Nakamura might have threatened to reveal that Yui copied research from … wherever it was. Nakamura hadn’t been specific, which
was what infuriated McGuire. Maybe Nakamura wasn’t sure himself. It didn’t matter, as long as Yui thought Nakamura knew.

Ishihara shifted from one side of his bum to the other on the hard bench. Both sides were equally uncomfortable.

Nakamura decided he would take the credit for the new system by taking it to Tomita. He made a mistake when testing it and
killed Mito. The day manager at Kawanishi Metalworks had identified Nakamura as the technician who had serviced the Zecom
robot on August 12. Nakamura must have planted the device on the Tomita robot then.

Yui found out Nakamura was going to double-cross him and killed him. As far as Nakamura’s murder went, all Mikuni could do
was try to crack Yui’s alibi. Okayama police certainly weren’t going to bring him in for voluntary questioning yet. Zecom
was far too important to the prefecture’s economy to offend without evidence.

The cigarette burned down to the filter. Miserable short things they were, these days. He ground it out on the leg of the
bench and tossed it in the ashtray, then went back to the office. He told his computer to open the folder labeled Zecom.

Yui had a level of security clearance that made it possible to tamper with the security system to show nobody in the building.
He said he’d gone straight from the airport to Zecom, met the president, then went home. President Tatsumi confirmed he met
with Yui at five-thirty. The clock-in records also confirmed it. Yui then went home, two stops on the Zecom maglev line, and
arrived “in time for dinner” according to his wife.

She seemed startled, Mikuni had added. Doesn’t sound like they eat many meals together. Mikuni had detailed a constable to
track down the train records for that evening.

Something bothered Ishihara about Yui’s statement. A déjà vu thing with the words. Was it the times? But Ishihara had only
spoken to Yui once, at Zecom the night Nakamura died. All the other details had come secondhand via Mikuni. That time at Zecom,
Ishihara was sure Yui said something about getting home at eight o’clock. Maybe Yui wasn’t conscious of the exact time he
got home, then later his wife reminded him. The man had just returned from overseas, after all. On the other hand, Yui might
have let “eight o’clock” slip when he thought the police didn’t suspect him. Then he would have revised the time he got home
to provide an alibi for the time of Nakamura’s death. They knew for sure that Nakamura had been alive and talking to McGuire
on the phone at 7:30. His door card was last used, presumably by the murderer, at 8:05.

Yui killed him, for whatever reason, removed the discs, cut power to the computer to wipe it, fixed the internal security
cameras so he wouldn’t show up, let himself out with Nakamura’s card, opened the toilet window downstairs to make it seem
like an outsider got in, and left. He could then walk around to the Zecom subway entrance … no, too risky. Someone would see
him, or he could be caught on camera.

Ishihara made a bet with himself that the train records wouldn’t show Yui. It wasn’t an issue as far as evidence was concerned,
because the visual records weren’t admissible in court. Too great a chance of wrong identification, they said.

The Zecom Betta records, though, should show the time Yui entered. Ishihara flicked through screens of Mikuni’s notes and
found … 7:35. Betta records showed Yui had entered his usual elevator from the subway. Ishihara clicked his tongue in annoyance.
These records
were
admissible as evidence. He must have heard Yui wrongly. Yet he could have sworn …

He put in a call to Mikuni, who was in a meeting and inclined to be irritable.

“What? No, nobody saw him outside the station.”

“Did you ask the people in the houses around the Betta?” Ishihara persisted.

“Why? He went in the Betta from the subway entrance.”

“Is that on visual?”

“No, but his chip signal’s in the record. Look, I gotta go.” Mikuni dropped his voice. “We put out a call for anyone who saw
anything suspicious to tell us. Okay?”

“Yeah, thanks.” Ishihara didn’t have much faith in the public’s spirit of cooperation. Either they’d get no response, or a
lot of calls from a few weirdoes.

“Don’t you have any cases in Osaka?” was Mikuni’s parting shot.

Ishihara did have a case, and afterward he wished he’d looked at his mail sooner.

“The silver paint was deliberately poisoned,” said the chemicals expert. He was a dapper young man with slick hair, wearing
a Toramon T-shirt instead of the usual white coat. He rolled his chair from one side of a long desk to another, and the pickup
changed to a different angle.

“So it’s homicide.” Ishihara thought with dismay of the time they’d wasted.

“This isn’t a poison you’d expect to find in paint,” the expert said, his eyes on a computer screen. “It’s called ‘fu-jirin,’
after Daisuke Fujita who first synthesized it in the 1990s. At the time, he was working for one of the big pharmaceutical
companies that later went bust after the Quake …”

“Can we have the gist, please?” said Beppu, who was crowding Ishihara so he could see the small screen.

The expert shrugged gracefully. “Whatever you like. Basically the victim dies of anaphylactic shock. Suffocates, you know.
Fujirin can be absorbed through the skin or respiratory system.”

Bloody sarin all over again, thought Ishihara. If this is what Prefectural Office is worried about, why didn’t they tell us?

“Where would they get it?” said Beppu.

“I put a list of places in the report.” The expert finally looked up from his screen. “A few research labs handle the inert
form used for cancer treatment. Otherwise, you’d go to the black market. That means international.”

“How much of this stuff exists domestically?” Ishihara asked.

“Not much. A few grams in each lab.”

Both detectives relaxed.

“But you only need a fraction of a milligram for treatment. There would have been less than that diluted in the paint.”

Ishihara rolled his eyes at Beppu. “So we’re looking for someone who knows what he’s doing.”

“Oh, yes.” He beamed. “I nearly missed it myself.”

“Thank you.” Ishihara reached to cut the connection.

Beppu put his hand out to stop him. “Is it possible these kids put the poison in the paint themselves because they thought
it would help them connect with the computer? Does it work on nerves?”

Nice one from Beppu. That one hadn’t occurred to him.

The expert ran his chair in and out from the desk a couple of times. “I doubt it,” he said. “Firstly, because of the general
unavailability of the substance. Secondly, because it’s almost unknown except to the people working with it. The general medical
community doesn’t know about it, and it hasn’t been adapted for military use overseas because of manufacturing difficulties.”