Less Than Human (43 page)

T
hey pushed Ishihara through a door marked
TOILET,
then through another door into a small room with partitions instead of walls, and open wooden boxes stacked at one end. Hot
water pipes ran up the wall and it was warmer than in the corridor.

He was thrust to the floor and his arms wrenched backward. One of the novices cursed, then looked around guiltily.

“What’s wrong?” said the other.

“I forgot to bring cuffs.”

The other groaned. “We’re supposed to be praying. The main session starts any minute.”

“We could just knock him out.”

The other rummaged in one of the boxes. “No violence before a session. We’d have to wash and everything.” He held up a meter-long
length of heavy cord. “This belt will do.”

They tied Ishihara’s hands to the water pipe, leaving him sitting down.

Two girls opened a door in the partition next to the boxes. They were naked and wrapped in towels, their hair damp. When they
saw the men they shrieked and tried to stretch the towels to cover themselves further.

“Shush,” said the first novice. “What are you doing?”

“Purifying,” said the taller girl self-righteously. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re going to be late. They’ve already started praying.” The two men left.

The girls squealed in horror and began to drag white clothes from one of the boxes.

The novice poked his head around the door to add, “Don’t talk to him. He’s a filthy unbeliever.”

The girls stared at Ishihara, then at their clothes in heaps on the floor. “We can’t get dressed in the shower, it’s wet,”
said the shorter girl.

“I’ll shut my eyes if you like,” he offered.

“We can’t trust unbelievers.” The tall girl pursed her already-small mouth.

“Oh, come
on.
” The other girl, round-faced and darker-skinned, bobbed her head at him. “Please.”

Ishihara shut his eyes. He could hear the rustle of clothes and muffled whispers. One of these girls might be McGuire’s niece.
He hadn’t paid much attention to her photo at HQ and anyway, without hair who could tell?

“What do you believe in?” said the shorter girl’s voice right beside him.

Ishihara opened his eyes. The girls were dressed in white trousers and tops. He wondered fleetingly if Junta’s group wore
white. It seemed unlucky, dressing like a corpse.

“When you die,” persisted the girl, her eyes serious, “do you think you get born again?”

“Maybe.”

“So you’ve got to go through lives again and again. Adam says we won’t have to do that.”

Ishihara shook his head. “I won’t know the difference. It’s not me Ishihara that’s reborn. Ishihara dies.”

“For good?”

“Well, I won’t remember anything.”

They both stared at him. “How can you believe that?” she whispered

“It gets easier as you grow older.” The thought of himself eventually dissolving like salt into the sea didn’t seem such a
terrible thing anymore.

The girls backed away. He cursed himself at losing the chance to talk them into helping him. He tried to smile. “The results
of my actions don’t die, though. The same as if you help me …”

But they were gone. They probably wouldn’t have helped him anyhow. And for some reason it had been important to answer the
girl’s question honestly.

He wriggled his hands and tried to run them up and down the pipe. He must get out and warn the police. Every government department
depended on the information in the NDN. Thousands of companies paid to use the same information. Tens of thousands more probably
used it illegally … He grinned at the empty room. At least people like Sakaki would be free of debt if all those records crashed.

Not only would all those organizations be unable to function without the information; but if the Angels released a virus,
it would spread to billions of users worldwide. He groaned inwardly. Even the great Net Crash of 2008 would seem tame in comparison.

The pipe didn’t budge, even when he threw his weight against it. All he achieved was rope burns on his wrists. His head throbbed
and he needed a drink.

He tried all the methods that worked for detectives on TV, like hooking something useful with his feet, but the only things
within reach were the girls’ wet towels. He knocked on the pipe in case someone above ground could hear. He didn’t have a
penknife in his pocket, nor did the cubicle have any glass to break into rope-shearing shards.

Finally, he sat still and listened. What he’d give for a smoke … He didn’t have the energy to be worried, not even about McGuire.

He thought he could hear music, but couldn’t be sure. He wondered how Adam planned to do the sabotage—wire all his devotees
into a kind of human network? He blinked away a bizarre image of them all sitting in a circle chanting, joined not by clasped
hands but by wires from head to head. The most he could hope for was that Adam’s grand plan would backfire somehow—surely
a group of paranoid airheads couldn’t bring a civilized nation to a standstill.

The inner door opened slowly. It was the short, dark girl who’d been there before. She was dressed, but she still held a towel,
which she wiped across her face.

She held her finger up to her lips before he could say anything, then stretched and flipped the towel over the top of one
of the partitions. It snagged on something high on the wall that he realized belatedly was a security camera.

She began to untie the rope around his wrists. ‘Taka told me how Niniel poisoned them.” In response to his look of puzzlement
she added, “My friends. And Adam doesn’t care.” She pulled angrily at the rope. “I hate him for that.”

“The four students?”

She nodded, grimacing at how tight Ishihara had pulled the knots in his efforts to escape. “I didn’t believe Aunt Eleanor,
and now she’s in trouble because of me.”

“You’re the niece.” Ishihara managed to wrench one hand free, then the other. “Your aunt is helping the police. You’d better
come with me.”

He stood up, then had to hang on to the pipe as his vision blurred for a moment.

She shook her head. “I have to help Aunt Eleanor.”

“If you’re not here, they can’t use you to blackmail her.”

“If I’m not here, there’ll be nobody to watch out for her. I have other friends here, too.” Her jaw set stubbornly.

Ishihara groaned inwardly. Like aunt, like niece. He didn’t have time for arguing. “How did you get away from the session?”

“I told them my period started.” She rolled her eyes at his embarrassed silence. “They’re very strict about pollution.”

She pushed him toward the door. “I think the tunnel will be unguarded, because Iroel told me to go there about four prayers
into the session. He’s planning to get out. Good luck.” She turned and slipped through the inner door into the shower room.

Ishihara opened the door into the corridor and peeped out. He couldn’t see any guard on the tunnel and the cupboard door was
closed again.

He took a deep breath, let it out, and strode along the corridor as if he belonged there. As he got closer, he could see that
the broken half of the door was taped shut. He peeled off one end of the packing tape but the lower edge of the door had been
nailed on. Fortunately not with … very strong … nails.
Crack.
He didn’t wait to see if the sound of the boards splintering brought any response from the rooms.

He crawled into the tunnel, and pulled the door shut behind him. It sagged open immediately, but no more than a hand’s width.
He waited in the dark for a moment, listening. A faint scraping noise came from the warehouse end. It sounded like a cardboard
box being dragged across the floor. As his eyes got used to the dark he could see a light flick on and off beyond the end
of the tunnel up in the warehouse.

He crawled as soundlessly as he could, pausing between each movement. He couldn’t hear anyone breathing or moving at the entrance
to the tunnel, although his own breath rasped so loudly in his ears he’d be lucky to hear anything.

In the warehouse a figure moved across the shadowy maze of crates and boxes. Ishihara slid out of the tunnel and crouched
flat against the wall beside it. He didn’t have time to play hide-and-seek. Adam could be wrecking the NDN that very moment.

The side door of the warehouse that he’d kicked open before lay to his left, the main door farther along the wall.

He waited until the torch flickered at the other end of the warehouse, then moved toward the side door. The distance was only
about five paces, but he knocked his toe on a box, stumbled, held on to another to keep his balance, and pushed it onto the
floor with a crash. The damn thing sounded like it was full of porcelain.

He scrambled for the door and put his hand on it.

A torch beam centered on his chest.

“Stop there.” The figure behind the torch was tall but skinny, the voice an uneasy baritone. The man held out his hand, and
Ishihara could see the glint of metal. He’d never hit Ishihara in the dark, holding a flashlight.

Ishihara turned the door handle, ready to run, then rattled it with a curse. Locked. He paid more attention to the weapon,
a handgun with a silencer. The man held the light beam squarely on Ishihara’s chest. Would he risk hitting the ammunition
here?

Ishihara dived sideways and felt something ping past his cheek. He hit his elbow painfully on the corner of a crate and wriggled
desperately backward. Bloody hell.

He heard the man curse, men the sound of a metal door squeaking. Yellow light from the street streamed onto the boxes.

Ishihara bobbed upright. The main door hung open.

Curses, scuffling, grunts of pain in the yard. Had the Angels put guards there as well?

Ishihara poked his head out cautiously. A knot of men rolled on the cracked asphalt. One of them wore police blue, one of
them a different uniform. Another seemed to be in pajamas. The man who had attacked Ishihara struggled underneath them all,
his silver robe further hampering his efforts to escape.

A fourth man clopped around them in excitement. He clutched the handgun in inexperienced hands and wore only a pair of boxer
shorts and heeled slip-ons.

Ishihara ran over. “Police.” He took the gun out of the man’s hand and checked that the safety catch was on.

The scrum on the ground split up. The Angel lay facedown, with the other two men on his legs, while the policeman clicked
handcuffs onto his wrists.

“Lend me your phone,” Ishihara said to the constable. “I’m Assistant Inspector Ishihara, West Station. I’ve been their prisoner
in there.” He jerked his head at the warehouse. “I have to contact Prefectural HQ.”

The constable straightened up, peered at Ishihara’s face, then held out his phone. “We’ve already called for backup. These
gentlemen”—he pointed to the two civilians—“called us at 2:05 and said they heard a shout in the yard here.”

Could have been me, thought Ishihara. I tried to make as much noise as I could before they caught me in the warehouse.

The man in pajamas stood up, his face shining with sweat. “This is the fellow I saw hanging around earlier tonight,” he said,
pointing at Ishihara. “Are you sure he’s a policeman?”

Ishihara glared at him and tapped Beppu’s number.

“The security company opened the gates.” The constable pointed to the uniformed man still sitting on the Angel’s legs, who
nodded amiably at Ishihara.

“We found ammunition in the warehouse,” continued the constable, “and called the station.”

“Hello?” said Beppu’s voice suspiciously on the phone. “Who’s this?”

“It’s me, Ishihara.”

“Where the hell have you been? I got a stored message from you a few minutes ago but your phone’s off-line. We also had a
call from the station near you to say they’d found a stash of…”

“I’m there now,” interrupted Ishihara. “Let me talk to Funo.”

Pause. The sky over the top of the building opposite was lightening. The time on the phone said 4:17.

“Funo here.” Her voice shook and engines rumbled in the background. “We’re on our way over. What’s your situation?”

“I’ve found the Silver Angels. They’re in an underground area, seven or more rooms, two exits into ground-level buildings.
At least”— he thought for a moment—“twenty violent suspects, possibly more. Twenty or more nonviolent. I recommend gas but…”

“Leave that to the squad,” she said.

“No, wait,” he said roughly. “They’re attempting to disrupt the NDN from within the computer system. Can you cut off the lines
around this area?”

There was a second of stunned silence on the other end, broken by Funo’s curse. “The NDN? What level would you rate the threat?”

Ishihara thought of McGuire’s mutilated hand. “Genuine and extreme.”

“Security on the data network is supposed to be uncrackable.”

“That’s what they said about the Betta systems.”

“I’ll get back to you.” She cut the connection.

“What about this fellow?” The constable looked at the man on the ground. His robe was torn; underneath he wore a T-shirt and
cotton trousers.

“Take him to the station. He can wait for his mates there,” said Ishihara. He walked over and shut the warehouse door. The
Angels should all be joined in Adam’s networking by now, but there might be more of them who planned to run away, like this
one.

He chivvied the other men out the gates of the yard for the same reason. The constable’s partner walked off with the handcuffed
Angel.

Delivery trucks rumbled down the main road on the other side of the shopping street. In one of the apartment blocks across
the road a light flickered on. Everything seemed so normal.

“Have you got a smoke?” he asked the young constable.

“Nasty habit, sir. Never took it up.”

Ishihara groaned and waited.