Allowing his artistic impulses to guide his hand, across the gray surface he sprayed a life-sized figure, like a blueprint for another of those statues, but with one arm raised in an obscene gesture. He chuckled. There were no features yet inside the head's outline. Well, the last door was 12-B, so why not paint a 13 on this figure's forehead? He was about to accomplish this, when a crunching sound distracted him and caused him to turn about quickly.
A crunching sound like feet crushing dead leaves.
The briefest flash of a figure, darting behind the opposite side of the trash zapper.
Brat became mindful of the handgun holstered under his jacket. He eased himself one stealthy step forward, leaning ahead so as to peer around the body of the disposal machine. If it was the member of some Beaumonde Square gang, with his pretty green paint and a white leather jacket his Mom had bought for him, and he was trying to defend his territory from this stray outsider, he was in for a
While Brat was straining his hearing forward, another sound came from behind him. A metallic squealing sound. Loud, rasping, screeching. He whirled to confront it, his hand darting for his pistol, in time to see the great mechanical talons a second before they seized him in their grip.
Brat was lifted into the air and squeezed at the same time. The breath was jetted out of his lungs. Though his quick hand had slipped out his pistol, his arm was crushed against his chest and the weapon dropped from his fingers into the leaves below.
Kicking his legs, unable to cry out, Brat looked down and saw three things in the final moments of his young life.
He saw the cover of the trash zapper slide open with a grating noise. He saw the green bulb on its side come on instead of the red.
And in wildly looking around for help, as the mechanical arm lowered him toward that humming maw, he saw that a person was standing near the edge of the building, watching him calmly and making no effort to come forward and shut the zapper down.
A person with a huge red phallus painted on his front.
CHAPTER ONE
my little deity
'Burikko suru' was the Japanese expression for this popular look. It meant, 'to fake-child it.'
His client's daughter and her three schoolmates were sixteen years old-Jeremy Stake knew that part already-but they all seemed shorter perhaps than they should have been, not even five feet tall, as if they had willed themselves to remain so petite in order to further their cute and child-like appearance. Stake wondered if they had undergone some process that, at least temporarily, would suppress their height to engender this effect.
They all had the same figure, too, as far as he could make out: slender, delicate, with coltish legs. The legs were particularly noticeable, because as part of their uniforms they wore very short, pleated tartan skirts in black and gray with a touch of blue. Their trim blazers were black, with their private school's crest emblazoned in metallic gold and blue thread. They wore white blouses and blue ascots.
'Hello, mister-I'm Yuki,' said one of the four girls, smiling shyly, blinking her long lashes under a mathematically straight fringe of bangs.
He could already tell she was Yuki, because she was the only one without a kawaii-doll. Despite the sameness of their uniforms and bodies, there were small touches of individuality about the four friends (but if one looked at all the girls from their school, one would no doubt see these individual touches widely repeated). One girl wore white ankle socks. Another wore very baggy knee-high white socks, bunched up in folds that contrasted in an interesting way with her smooth brown thighs. Another wore knee-high white stockings that instead clung tightly to her calves. Yuki wore socks like these, but hers were a deep navy blue color.
'You're here to see my father, aren't you?' Yuki went on, when Stake had smiled and nodded to acknowledge her greeting.
'Yes,' he admitted, trying not to let his eyes flick down to her legs again. Her thighs were glaringly empty. The other three girls had dolls resting on their laps.
Yuki had long blue-black hair and huge eyes that were both black and luminous at once. There was another girl of Asian origins whose hair was dyed a reddish color. A third Asian girl had her inky hair cut very short, but with bangs like Yuki. The fourth girl appeared to have a more Hispanic bloodline, her long hair bunched into two tails on the sides of her head, floppy like the ears of a cartoon rabbit, but her thin features had a kind of imperious sharpness that disagreed with the cute effect. Yuki's two Asian friends might have been going for pouty but came off looking bored or sullen. Stake thought that only Yuki really pulled off the soft, sweet, innocent look that they were all shooting for.
'It's about my doll, isn't it?' Yuki said. 'My father is asking you to find it for me.'
The girls sat on a marble bench within the garden-like courtyard of the company that Yuki's father owned. It was a cylindrical building hollowed by this open core, the bright blue sky of the planet Oasis showing far above them like a telescope's view of heaven, but it was a deceptive view. Beyond the walls of this structure, Punktown was anything but heavenly. At least this courtyard seemed like a microcosmic paradise. A double-helix sculpture twined up from the fountain at the center of the garden, reaching almost to the top of the building like a ladder. Brightly blossoming vines had entangled the bronze chain's loops. Encircling windows looked out upon this rising symbol, so significant to the work being done within the building's offices and labs. Stake had passed through a lobby area, and been directed to wait here for Mr. Fukuda to join him.
'I really shouldn't discuss the business I have with your father,' he said to the girl politely.
'Well, I'm sure my father will want you to question me about Dai-oo-ika's disappearance.' Yuki smiled again, but her lips quivered and her eyes suddenly took on a moist sheen. The reddish-haired girl reached over to clasp her hand on one of Yuki's legs consolingly. Stake tried not to look at the small hand upon the plastic-smooth thigh.
'I'm sorry about… your doll,' he said awkwardly. 'So it's name is what?'
'Dai-oo-ika,' said the short-haired girl. 'It means 'great king of squid.''
'I see.' Stake nodded, and now took in the three kawaii-dolls of Yuki's pals. 'Kawaii' was a Japanese word for 'cute,' and kawaii-dolls of all types had been the rage with children in the Earth colonies for the past few years. Of course, the more expensive and elaborate dolls held more value for collectors, and hence more appeal-more esteem. Stake had done a little reading about these toys on the net this morning and could tell that these three dolls were of the highest order.
The short-haired girl watched Stake staring at the dolls, so took it upon herself to introduce them. She hugged her own and said, 'This is Mr. Gau.' It seemed like a very realistic bear cub in some ways, but its eyes were too large and it had no nose or mouth and only stubby vestigial limbs. The lack of a mouth and ineffectual arms and legs were a common theme with kawaii-dolls, to make them look helpless, vulnerable, submissive. Stake had read that critics of the dolls viewed this as a conspiracy, sending signals to young girls that these passive qualities were what would appeal to men when they became adult women.
There was a little metal straw extending from between Mr. Gau's legs. Yuki's friend uncapped it, held the teddy bear up and sucked at the straw, keeping her eyes on Stake's. At this, the bear lifted its head higher, blinking, and made a rumbling sound like a purr or muffled growl in spite of its missing mouth. Its tiny half-limbs swam in the air. Finished, the girl recapped the straw and the bear went immobile again. She smiled, licking her lips. 'Ruou gau is a rice wine the Vietnamese like, made with bile from a bear's gall bladder. The Chinese used to have bear farms where they put catheters in live bears to drain it. But Mr. Gau is filled with pineapple CandyPop.' She giggled.
'Mm,' Stake said. He hadn't realized the dolls could be so educational. But however slight his knowledge of animal anatomy, he knew a bear's gall bladder was not between its hind legs.
'There were only a hundred-fifty copies of the Deluxe Mr. Gau made,' the girl announced proudly. She gestured to the reddish-haired girl's pet. 'Suzu's doll is number four in a series of only a hundred!' She pouted as if in sad envy. Suzu giggled, less sulky all of a sudden, and held her doll higher for him to see. It was a thing like a clockwork robot from some long-antiquated future vision, made from a goldish tarnished metal (or plastic resembling metal), somewhat turtle-like in form. The whole time they had been talking, this thing had been
