religious cult.
'They were growing an army of monsters, right there along with the meat,' Janice related. 'Spawn of Ugghiutu, they called them. Ugghiutu is sort of the Kalian God and Satan in one body. Supposedly, Ugghiutu is one of a whole race of god-like beings called the Outsiders, who once ruled the universe but got shut out of our dimension and put into a sort of suspended animation. So there are these really fanatical schism groups of Ugghiutu worshipers who try to call Ugghiutu out of his sleep. They want to bring about an apocalypse to end our reign, and return Ugghiutu and I guess the other Outsiders to power.'
'So what kind of monsters were these things, anyway? The place was so badly damaged in the big quake.'
'Yeah, that's how it all came to light with Alvine, because of the fire fighters and rescue teams going in there. Anyway, who can tell what would have happened if they'd unleashed all those creatures. No one seems to know just what they would have been like when they were fully grown. The leaders of the cult were either killed in the earthquake themselves, or hunted down by another sort of cult called the Children of the Elders, that seems to be at war with the Outsiders cult.'
'Jeesh. So strange,' Stake mused. 'But why would Fukuda go to the trouble of rebuilding the same structure and assimilating their business, instead of just starting up another similar company elsewhere? I should think that he'd want to distance himself from all that. Controversy can be good publicity, but we're talking about something people put in their bellies, here.'
'Well, John's a bit on the mysterious side; do I need to tell you that? Mainly, I think he was just fascinated by the whole thing with Alvine Products himself, given his profession. They were obviously doing some very strange experimental stuff behind the scenes in Alvine.' She turned toward Stake meaningfully. 'I've been thinking of that a lot since you and I first talked about Tableau Meats.'
'What are you thinking?'
'Yuki's doll. It's a belf. A primitive life form John created for her.'
'Yes.'
'And his name, Dai-oo-ika. In Japanese it means-'
''Great king of squid,'' Stake cut in.
'Yeah. Well, like I said, they didn't find out much about what the cult was growing at Alvine; what the things would have ultimately developed into. But some rescue workers were killed inside by a couple of these monsters. They were on fire and all crazed.'
'One guy was eaten,' Stake said. 'I read an interview with a rescue worker who saw it happen.'
'I read that, too. It sounds like he wasn't eaten so much as absorbed, in something like phagocytosis.'
'Which is?'
'The way an amoeba eats. Hell of a way to die, huh?'
'Right. I hate when that happens.'
'So anyway, these eyewitnesses said the things were very big, and that they didn't have faces. Just tentacles instead, like those of a mollusk.'
''Great king of squid,'' Stake mumbled again, remembering the pictures of Dai-oo-ika that Yuki had shown him on her wrist comp. 'My God, Janice.'
'Yeah,' she said. 'So, what I was thinking is, was John able to salvage some of the research or technology at Alvine? And did he use that when he designed Dai-oo-ika for his daughter?'
'Janice,' Stake said, 'if I ever need to hire a partner, you're in the front running.' He sat up in her bed, the gears in his mind fully lubricated now.
'So what if that were true, and Tableau suspected it, too? Put it together like you did? Would he want to steal Dai-oo-ika from his rival not so much out of spite, but because he wants access to that research himself?'
'Hard to do a job for John when he keeps you in the dark, isn't it?'
'I'd like to know just how much dark there is. The first time he told me he bought up Alvine Products, he admitted that he did a lot to cover up the situation there himself.'
'Can you come right out and ask him about this stuff?'
'He'd have told me if he wanted me to know. He might feel it's not relevant to the task he's given me. He might not trust me with knowledge like that. But if I need to confront him, then I will.'
'Still, you're not a forcer solving a crime, you're a private dick collecting a paycheck.' 'Exactly.'
'You're my private dick, too.' She squeezed his groin beneath the skin sheet.
'You mean Crow Tidwell's dick,' Stake remarked.
'Ohh, jealous of your own face now, huh?' She rolled on top of him. 'It's still you, isn't it? Always you.' She kissed his bland, android-like visage. 'My little plaything.'
He awoke with a start. He had fallen asleep beside her. She might have killed him while he was vulnerable. But she hadn't.
A pounding at the thick wooden door, glazed a glossy blue. Stake sat up, heart thudding, then looked down at the woman beside him on the mattress. She lay on her back staring up at him. The way the light touched her black eyes at this angle, they glowed at him a laser red.
How long had he been asleep? And had she dozed off, too? Or been watching him all this time?
'Sir?' a voice called through the door. Private Henderson. Now, when Stake came in here, he posted only Henderson outside the door. He trusted him the most.
Corporal Jeremy Stake jumped to his feet and struggled into his blue-camouflaged uniform as swiftly as he could, but with his nerves singing it was an awkward enterprise. 'Right there, Henderson,' he said. He fastened his belt. There were no weapons holstered on it. He didn't bring them into the Earth Killer's room.
Still, she could have found another way to kill him while he slept. Had she spared him out of a sense of humanity, or was it only that she felt killing him would gain her nothing except her own death?
Hearing her move, he turned to see her pulling her own clothes toward her, more peasant attire than anything like a uniform: a sleeveless top that fastened down the front and pants that ended at the calf, in a darker shade of blue than her skin; her lovely, sky blue skin. Even as he rushed to get his boots on, he could barely take his eyes off her small, lithe body while she dressed. Her hips only subtly flared, but the thick mat of black hair below her smooth belly belied her body's child-like appearance. In leaning forward to step into her pants, her long, long hair spilled down like ink to hide her little breasts with their nipples the same soft pink as her lips against that cool blue skin.
Finally Stake could go to the door and crack it open. Henderson was a good man, didn't try to peek in past him. 'I'm okay,' Stake told him. 'Just, uh, trying to get her to talk to me.'
In a lowered voice, Henderson said, 'Yes sir; sorry, sir. But I thought you'd want to hear what the other prisoner was telling Private Martin. She just came and told me. It's about the Earth Killer.'
As he left the room, Stake threw a glance back at the woman named Thi Gonh. Now that she had dressed again, she sat cross-legged on her mattress on the floor. She gazed at him in return, her face unreadable. Stake shut and locked the door between them.
Private Martin was the only female in their unit, and as they walked (another Colonial soldier had come to guard Thi Gonh in Henderson's place), Henderson suggested that this was the reason the male prisoner had opened up to her.
They came to the room-one of those the clerics had utilized as their quarters before the Earth soldiers captured their monastery-that was being used as the young prisoner's cell. The guard posted at the door was Private Cortez, and he smiled as Stake approached him.
'Hey,' he said, 'when can I have my turn, ah, interrogating that little blue bitch?'
Stake stopped in front of the man. 'Shut your mouth, Cortez. You aren't to touch her.'
'I see. Want her all to yourself, huh?'
'I said shut your blasting mouth. Now get the fuck out of my way.'
'Yes…
The male prisoner, who had not given his name, looked better off now that the medic had seen to his wound. He was as small and light in frame as the woman, with a short, bristling haircut. The light made his eyes flash red when it refracted off them, too. He lay on his thin mattress, the end of it doubled over to prop up his back.
