Less Than Human (28 page)

“I found a bit of extra information.” Beppu paused in the shade of a hairdresser’s awning when they reached the main road.
See that coffee shop over there?” He nodded at the tiny lounge with a sign that said
COFFEE AKEMI.

“The owner reckons Mari went in there a couple of times with two different men. With each of them at different times, I mean.”

“Did she recognize a photo?”

“Picked Mari at once. One of the men sounds like the boyfriend your gaijin saw.”He grinned at Ishihara’s expression. “The
other one sounds a bit older, maybe late twenties. Conservative dresser, a salaryman maybe.”

“That’s all the description we’ve got? It only fits about a tenth of the population of Osaka.”

“Yeah, I know.”

As they trudged back to the subway entrance Ishihara’s phone buzzed. It was Lissa Takada’s friend.

“Assistant Inspector? I just remembered that I think Lissa had a class with Mari Kitami. Geography, maybe.”

“Are you sure?”Ishihara tried to unfold the schedule printouts with one hand.

“I think so. But I couldn’t be certain …”Her voice trailed away.

“Thanks for calling,”Ishihara remembered to say.

The brightness of the sun reflecting off the printout made them both squint. None of the girls’ classes coincided.

“She made a mistake. Never mind.”Ishihara refolded the paper.

“Hang on,”said Beppu. “Mari didn’t take geography.”He slapped a fist into the other open hand with a damp smack. “Not a geography
class—the geography
club.
The man must be connected to that club.”

“You’re a bloody genius.”Ishihara reached for his phone.

“I know,”smirked Beppu. “Got a dry handkerchief I can borrow?”

At 3:00
P.M.
Ishihara and Beppu went off to question Kiichi Harada, alias Ikujiro Tomonaga, the man who had acted as guarantor for McGuire’s
niece and Lissa Takada.

Harada was a research assistant in the electrical engineering department at Osaka Engineering University. According to the
geography club convener, Harada joined the club in autumn last year and usually directed one of the bimonthly Sunday walks.

“He’s very sound on the infrastructure of the town,”said the convener. “You know, how the electricity reaches us, where the
main broadcasting stations are, where the sewers run, that sort of thing. It’s good for the students to learn about this as
well as the usual historical sites.”

The university informed Ishihara that Harada was on leave for Bon and wouldn’t be back until August 25. They told him Harada’s
Osaka address reluctantly, and his home address in Gifu Prefecture only after confirming Ishihara’s identity with West Station.

Ishihara grumbled at their caution, and the two detectives caught yet another train south to Harada’s apartment, in Kuramachi,
Hirano Ward. He didn’t live in the university Betta. Administration had explained shortly that a research assistant didn’t
qualify for Betta residence. Harada obviously couldn’t afford the rent near the university, either, because the address was
an old-style block on the east side away from the city center.

Ishihara mentally called these areas the “dough in the doughnut.”Years ago in the nineties, before the Quake and the Seikai
reforms, a lot of fuss was made about the “doughnut phenomenon”of cities. Experts sat solemnly in front of TV cameras and
predicted how residences and services would flee the city center, leaving an empty hole of illegal residents and lawlessness.

They didn’t predict the Bettas, or the maglev trains, or the networks. Business in the center of the city was as healthy as
ever. The Bettas sat happily in the suburbs, each connected to the center by transport and service networks that spread like
the spokes of a wheel.

The wheel was a better metaphor, really. Into the empty space between the spokes fell the poor, the homeless, illegal immigrants,
shady businesses, and illegal entertainment of all kinds.

Harada’s apartment building sat squarely between the spokes. It had been built in the eighties, when eccentric small buildings
were in vogue. Now graffiti covered the redbrick walls, and the residents had put a wire fence around its quaint courtyard
entrance because it was such a good place to ambush people.

The manager’s door bore a sign. “Out shopping, back about 4:30.”

Guests had to call residents on the intercom and get them to open the main doors. Harada’s name was written beside Apartment
4B’s intercom button.

Ishihara picked his way around trash and abandoned bicycles stacked at the side of the building, and found a fire escape at
the back. He waited there until Beppu signaled him with his wrists crossed—no good.

“If he’s there, he’s not answering the intercom,” Beppu said across the bicycles.

Ishihara looked up at the flimsy metal fire escape. They could try going in that way, but he’d bet the windows were locked.

“Let’s wait until the manager gets back,” he decided. “Then we’ll know if he’s here or in Gifu.”

“We could call Gifu,” Beppu pointed out.

“Better not to alert him if he is involved.”

They waited, sweating even in the shade of the brick wall. “We should have checked the geography club first,” grumbled Ishihara.
“We knew the kids all went there.”

Beppu mopped his forehead. “Can’t help it. We didn’t think a teacher was involved. And you know how it is—you get caught up
in one line of investigation and forget the others.” He pointed across the road at a small park with spindly trees and a water
bubbler. “Drink?”

They crossed the road and drank at the bubbler. Typical Osaka water, tasting mostly of chemicals.

A young woman sat pushing a pram backward and forward. She kept one eye on a toddler who sang softly to himself as he played
in the dirt with an empty yogurt container and bottle lids.

Beppu greeted her cheerfully. “Good day. We’re waiting for Harada-san from the fourth-floor flat over there.” He pointed at
the brick building. “I don’t suppose you know when he usually comes in?”

The young woman blinked tiredly at them. Her T-shirt was covered with food stains. Beppu gave her his best avuncular smile
and peered in the pram.

“There’s a cutie,” he said. “Is she a good sleeper?”

The girl relaxed a little. “Not bad. She keeps him awake though.” She nodded at the toddler.

“They’ll settle down soon,” said Beppu. “It’s the heat.”

Ishihara waited for him to mention Harada again, but before he could, the girl nodded across the park.

“There’s Harada-san coming now.”

Two things happened simultaneously. Beppu straightened up from the pram, both he and Ishihara staring in the direction the
girl indicated.

The man walking past the park paused, looked across at them, and ran back the way he had come.

Ishihara cursed and chased Harada. He could hear Beppu panting into the phone behind him but the sound soon faded. Harada
ran down the shopping street, dodging people, bins, and bicycles. Ishihara followed, pacing himself. If he could keep Harada
in sight while Beppu called for backup, they’d get him. There was no subway entrance in this direction for a kilometer or
more.

Harada swerved left by a shoe shop, off the shopping street. Ishihara sprinted. Catcalls and cries of annoyance followed him.
His side hurt, and sweat stung his eyes.

Around the corner… yes, Harada still ran ahead. He was limping now, he must have hit his foot on something.

Ishihara put on a final, desperate spurt. Visions of himself actually making the emergency arrest and bringing in the key
to the whole case flashed through his mind. His last arrest.

Harada stopped and turned right into what looked like a wall.

Ishihara was staring so hard that he failed to notice the shopping cart being pushed out of a grocery store by an elderly
woman; he skipped out of the way at the last minute and crashed into a parked bicycle at disastrous speed.

The world spun and hit him from many angles. He disentangled himself and hobbled on to where Harada had disappeared—a door
set between buildings, now locked.

Ishihara rattled the door ineffectually. He couldn’t see another entry anywhere along the road. He knocked at the entry of
the building next to the locked door, but nobody responded.

Finally, he sat down on the curb and lit a cigarette with shaking hands. Probably the last thing his aching lungs needed at
the moment, but what the hell. When he thought his voice would be steady, he dug out his phone and hit Beppu’s number.

“I’m at”—he glanced up at the nearest direction sticker on a pole—“Kireda four-thirteen-twenty.”

“Yeah, we followed you on survey camera until you left the shopping street,” said Beppu’s voice. “I’m in a car from the local
police box. We’ll be there in a minute.” He paused. “Did he give you the slip?”

“What do you think?”

Beppu wisely didn’t answer.

They left the local police doing a house-to-house. By the time they got back to West Station it was nearly five and the house-to-house
hadn’t found Harada. Ishihara wanted a bath and bed. Damn Harada for being young and fast. The vision of an arrest mocked
him.

Beppu took a call from Prefectural Office as they finished their report over a cup of tea.

“The ice queen wants to see us at a nine-thirty meeting. Looks like the toxin lead might be breaking.”

Ishihara groaned and reached for his notebook. They’d missed Harada, but at least they had made a positive ID. He would be
picked up sooner or later.

E
leanor spent Thursday packing away a dream. The budget committee had recommended that the Sam project be shut down in order
to “divert resources to more flexible projects with wider applications.” All current experiments were to be completed at the
earliest opportunity or simply abandoned, reports written, and the lab cleared away.

Eleanor made a formal protest to Division Manager Izumi and, although she knew it was futile and might damage her reputation,
to the executive director, Matsuki. She had to do
something.
Never had she felt so much like a very small and dispensable cog in a large machine.

The other members of the project team were at first loudly disappointed, but when Eleanor returned from Matsuki’s office silent
and withdrawn they, too, began to work in silence, darting worried glances at her. Eleanor knew she should talk to them about
it, but she didn’t trust her voice to stay steady or her eyes to remain dry. She immersed herself in the tasks, and the day
passed in a kind of dreary disbelief. It wasn’t as if the project had to be cleared away that evening. They still had experiments
to write up, conclusions to draw. Two of the team had a paper to write for a conference the following month. The Sam robot
still stood in the lab, connector rod stuck in the wall as it recharged its battery ready for the next challenge. Only there
would be no more challenges.

Eleanor sat at her desk in the office and stared blankly at the monitor screen. She tried to tell herself that she wasn’t
angry, that she was an adult and these things happened, that she could cope with this rejection of everything she’d worked
on for nearly a decade.

What would they do with Sam? Probably take it apart and use the components. She felt an almost physical pain at the idea,
although she knew that to be ridiculous. It was only a robot. She could build another.

Yet it still hurt. All that work on Sam, and for what? For what, indeed.
What are your goals? What use are they?
To create something that worked. Why did she choose the humanoid robots—because they were the greatest challenge? But they’d
always be less than human.

“Are you coming for a drink, Chief?” Kato, who had worked with her on the Sam project, poked his head around the filing cabinet.

“Now? It’s only five-thirty.”

“We don’t want to hang around much, tonight,” he said with embarrassed defiance.

They would go to a bar and commiserate with each other over a continuous flow of beer and whiskey, spilling all the complaints
they couldn’t voice at work and reminiscing on how they’d come this far together.

Eleanor couldn’t face it. She wanted to do something, anything. Even start work on the new research proposal, now that Akita
had agreed to collaborate … Akita’s artificial hand flexed in her memory. That’s what she could do— go and see for herself
what he’d been doing.

“I think I’ll pass tonight, Kato-kun. I’m sorry.”

He looked both relieved and disappointed. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m a bit tired.” She dug a ten-thousand-yen note out of her handbag. “Have a couple of drinks on me.”

“Thanks, Chief.” He grinned and left. She heard the six members of the team go, leaving the office quiet.

The number Akita gave her had an Osaka prefix, but after it rang twice she heard a double click as it diverted. It rang four
more times, then connected. “Audio only,” her darkened screen informed her.

“Hello, McGuire-san.” Akita’s voice.

“Hello.” She felt awkward. “Thank you for your hospitality last night. You gave me this number if I wanted to see more of
your research.”