Deadstock

by all means just ask. But I was impressed that you're able to handle things on your own when they get ugly.'

'You don't expect this to get too ugly, do you, sir? I mean, it's got to be another kid at school who stole this thing, from what you told me on the phone.'

'That is the obvious answer. But even then things could become unsavory, getting the doll back. You don't shy away from the unsavory, do you, Mr. Stake?' 'Unsavory comes with my job description, Mr.

Fukuda.'

Fukuda slowed his pedaling to the point that he could step down from the walker. He switched to a crunch machine, set the weight level, gripped its handles, then began sitting back and forward, back and forward, breathing in and out accordingly. In between that, he managed to go on, 'Security at Yuki's school is tight, as it well should be, but I'll make some calls so that you'll have access to question teachers and even students, discreetly, should you need to do that. I have influence there.'

Stake didn't doubt it, from the looks of this building. This business. But its exact nature was still somewhat unclear to him. The private investigator glanced toward the windows, that massive double-helix sculpture looming up from below. 'What do you do here, sir, if I might ask? Do you make. toys?'

Fukuda laughed, and stopped pumping his body like a bellows to look over at his guest. 'Yes, we make toys, Mr. Stake, but I'm not a toy maker. This isn't the North Pole.' He laughed again. 'Fukuda Bioforms designs and manufactures a wide variety of bio-engineered life forms, for any number of purposes, depending on our clients' needs. Everything from microscopic, organic and partly organic nanomites for the repair of people and machines alike, to very large organisms such as deadstock.'

'Deadstock?'

'Sorry; it's an unappetizing slang we use for comestible battery animals.'

'Ahh. Livestock. Deadstock. I see. A fitting name for a lot of chickens and cows with no heads or limbs.'

'Do you know we bought out Alvine Products after that scandalous situation they had a couple of years ago? We rebuilt their facility and grow our own meat products there, now.'

'Oh yeah, Alvine. They turned out to be owned by a religious cult. They weren't just growing deadstock, but some kind of army of. monsters, too. They thought Armageddon was coming.'

'Something like that. It was run by Kalians. Religious fanatics. There was an attempt to cover it all up, afterwards, and I have to say I've helped to blot out that facility's history myself. It's all in the past now and we don't want to be associated with those former activities. No Armageddon army for us.' He chuckled.

'But you do make toys, too. Living toys, like that girl Maria's doll, there. And like your daughter's 'great king of squid.''

'Dai-oo-ika. He is a one-of-a-kind. I suppose it was naive of me to think that no one would dare steal him. Even at a good school like that, people are people. Of course, Yuki was envied for Dai-oo-ika, and envy in little girls can fester into very ugly shapes.'

'What do you estimate his… its value to be?'

'There's nothing like him, so even if you look at the collector's guides for kawaii-dolls, it's hard to say. But comparing him to other one-of-a-kind dolls, even a conservative estimate would put him in the tens of thousands of munits. Maybe a hundred thousand munits or more.'

Stake whistled. 'For a toy.'

'Not just any toy. A kawaii-doll. And a custom-made kawaii-doll. But it isn't so much the money, at the end of the day, is it? The thing is, this creature belongs to my daughter.' For the first time, Fukuda's face looked hard. He at last betrayed the cold force that a person needed in order to raise up a business of this size. 'Whoever did this has made my daughter unhappy. And my child is everything to me, Mr. Stake.'

'I'll do all I can, sir.'

'Good man. So now, I'll run over everything that happened to Yuki that day, as she related it to me. I'm trying to keep her out of this in case it does get, uh, unsavory. But I'm not afraid of unsavory, either. Not when someone has brought pain to my child. Still, should you need to talk to her in person, just ask me and I'll arrange it promptly.' Fukuda rose, picked up a towel to mop his face. 'Care to sit with me in the sauna as we go over this?'

'I don't really like heat, sir.'

Fukuda smiled. 'No? I find the sauna to be a soothing discomfort. Let's go to the upper level and have a juice, then, instead. And I'll tell you the plight of our dear, lost Mr. Dai-oo-ika. He's become a sort of grandchild to me, I suppose.'

Stake smiled a little at Fukuda's joke, his eyes wandering restlessly around the room. This was his habit. He had tried not to let his gaze remain on John Fukuda for very long. And yet.

Fukuda startled him by reaching out and taking his chin. It was not a forceful gesture, but Stake complied with it and let his client stare directly into his face. 'Amazing,' Fukuda said in a tone of fascination.

With every moment since they had been alone together, Jeremy Stake's eyes had subtly grown narrower. They had even, at last, developed a fold of skin over their inner corners in what is called the epicanthus. Thus, his eyes had become slanted, like Fukuda's. Even his muddy irises had grown darker, nearly black. His lips thinner. His skin more taut over his cheekbones.

'You don't do this on purpose, then?' Fukuda marveled almost boyishly.

'No. Some can do it at will. Not me. I have no control over it, except to look at someone. Or not look at someone.'

'Caro mutabilis, isn't it?'

'It's in that broad spectrum. But my specific disorder is called Caro turbida,' Stake explained. Even his voice was oddly undistinguished, unaccented, like a machine's. 'It means 'disordered' or 'confused' flesh.'

Fukuda lowered his hand, and nodded as if with satisfaction. 'Frankly, Mr. Stake, it's another of the attributes that compelled me to hire you.'

Stake was uncomfortable talking about it. He was always uncomfortable talking about it. 'If you don't mind, sir, how about that juice?' he said.

CHAPTER TWO steward gardens

The nine members of the Folger Street Snarlers ascended from the subway station at Oval Square, bumping elbows with other pedestrians and glaring into faces, puffed up and bristling, because they had come in search of their missing brother. Brat Gentile.

They split up into three groups of three, so as to spread out and cover as much ground as they could, not knowing precisely where Brat may have gone yesterday-knowing only that he had been headed for Beaumonde Square because he had asked Clara, his once-girlfriend, and his two best friends, Hollis and Mott, to accompany him there to help look for his current girl, whom he apparently felt was to be found there. These three friends had banded together in their search for him now. They all three experienced an unpleasant mix of guilt and, knowing something bad might have happened to him, shameful relief that they had not joined him yesterday. But whatever the risks, they had to find him now. Still, they felt better knowing that they were here in numbers, and fully armed inside their lumpy white leather jackets.

Hollis was black, with white Maori-style tattoos on his face, and wearing a purple rubber swimming cap. Mott was a Choom, Oasis's dominant native race, human in all regards except for a mouth that sliced back to both ears, his jaw heavy with multiple rows of molars. Instead of a swimming cap, and instead of the crew cut most Choom males favored, he wore his hair plaited into tight braids clinking with red glass beads and little polished ornaments carved from bone. Clara was pretty in a sneering and surly way, her long curly hair dyed a metallic crimson, and as one of the Snarlers she was just as quick with a gun or knife as her two comrades.

They sauntered ferally through the length of Quidd's Market, pausing here and there just long enough to buy some meat on a stick or little white bags of exotic candy. As they continued on, Mott bit into a chocolate, saw that its center consisted of live bluish grubs, and tossed his own little white bag into the next trash zapper he came to. There was barely a hiss as the bag of candy was disintegrated.

Hollis laughed, slapped him on the back, and proffered his own bag of candy.