Deadstock

They arrived at the Research and Development department; specifically, lab suite RD-3. A recognition scanner appraised Fukuda and buzzed him in. Trailing him into the brightly lit series of large, interconnected rooms, Stake wondered idly if the scanner were good enough to have seen through his mimicry had he presently been imitating his employer.

The two men passed work counters covered in computer systems, arcane equipment, printed documents, petri dishes, and the scattered remnants of take-out food and coffee. A holographic model of living cells had them hovering and crawling in the air above one counter, each individual cell as big as a tea saucer.

They found Pablo Fujiwara alone in the farthest room. Stake didn't know where to look first-at the man or his specimens. Both were equally eye-grabbing. Fujiwara was a slight man with close-cropped hair but a great, curling and waxed Salvador Dali mustache. He was wearing a Buddy Balloon T-shirt, featuring that VT show's star, the 150-pound sphere that was Buddy Vrolik. Beneath his image were the words: SOMEBODY KILL ME. It was Buddy's catchphrase, and he said it at times of duress (as when his family members were having one of their frequent arguments) and at times of overwhelming pleasure (as when a visiting comely female dropped something in front of him and bent over to pick it up). Fujiwara's pants were of a peach-colored leather. Stake realized they were like Janice's bed sheets: living human skin cells. He saw a small support pack clipped to the waistband, to keep the cells alive. A matching leather jacket was draped over the back of a chair.

When they'd come in, Fujiwara was sprinkling something that looked like fish food into a tank filled with a greenish solution, in which writhed a mass of large, fat and lazy eels. They had gill slits but no fins nor even eyes, nothing more than a soft little beak-like mouth, which opened blindly to catch the raining feed. Fujiwara smiled at the approaching men. 'My new pets,' he explained. 'Do you like boneless chicken?'

'Those are chickens?' Stake said.

Fujiwara was as enthusiastic as an artist at a gallery showing. 'A step backwards in deadstock evolution, maybe, but it's all about building the better mousetrap. Or better mouse. I know there are those markets that wouldn't purchase this breed or even its meat, because they have brains and the animal lovers will be barking, but these cuties would actually be easier to set up and harvest than the plugged-in battery chickens. So we'll still find our buyers.'

Stake tapped on the glass as he watched them, then motioned toward a much larger eel-like creature that rested in a long tank dominating a counter against one wall. The tank was so narrow that the thing had no room to move, lying at the bottom like a pinkish log. Stake was reminded of a jumbo-sized shawarma in a Middle Eastern restaurant, ready to be shaved for a sandwich. The living cylinder had a mouth and gill slits but again, no other features. 'And what's that? The king of the boneless chickens?'

'Boneless pork,' Fujiwara said proudly. 'I call it my five-foot-long hotdog.'

'Yummy,' Stake commented.

'Pablo, this is the investigator I told you about,' Fukuda cut in. 'Jeremy Stake.'

Fujiwara shook his hand, and his expression became a bit more serious, maybe even a little wary. 'Hi. You want to know about Dai-oo-ika.'

'Him, and Alvine Products. What were you doing for them?'

Fujiwara picked up a take-out coffee and sipped it, avoiding Stake's eyes in the process. 'I was doing my job. Following orders. Designing and developing.'

'Monsters?'

He snorted. 'What a word-monsters.'

'Well, what were those things they had you making?'

Fujiwara hesitated, still not looking at him. 'A kind of life form unfamiliar to us in this dimension.' Then, he admitted, 'A kind of army.'

'To bring about some kind of apocalypse?'

'I didn't see the whole picture, you know-I wasn't part of their cult. I was just one blind man, with his hands on one part of the elephant. But yeah, they seemed to think some big cosmic event was nearing, or else they were going to set it off, and the army was a part of that.'

'But how much havoc could this army create in a colony like this, no matter how big and dangerous the creatures became? If I wanted to bring about a local Armageddon, I think I'd make microscopic creatures instead. A plague.'

Fujiwara met his eyes at last, and looked very grave as he said, 'They would have gotten very big, my friend. And I didn't understand everything about them, but if they'd been allowed to develop fully and mature, it seemed like they were going to have some powerful attributes. Gifts. A range of psi abilities.'

'You say another dimension. So you didn't design these life forms from scratch.'

'I was given a very unusual DNA sample, and some very unusual information on a chip. They called this chip the Genomicon. I was told the DNA was from an extradimensional life form, but not from any dimension the Earth Colonies have had interaction with, to my knowledge. I don't know if the Kalians bought it on the sly from a Theta researcher, or what. And they sure as hell weren't about to tell me that much. Anyway, the DNA was degraded- prehistoric, actually-and I had to sort of extrapolate. Patch it back together.'

'Is Dai-oo-ika the same kind of life form you were growing for the Kalians?'

'Oh no, but related. Another extrapolation. I consulted the Genomicon in making him, too. No, the creatures for the Kalians weren't as anthropomorphic, though they had some similarities, of course. The Spawn, as they called them, had gills like sharks and just two forelegs, and they were a dark purple color, though like Dai-oo-ika they were eyeless, with only sensory organs like tentacles for a face-a little bit like the eyes of Tikkihottos, I suppose, but I think these were also the creatures' psi organs.'

Stake turned toward Fukuda with deliberate slowness. 'Again, nice pet for your sweet young daughter. You should have made a plague, too, and put it in a locket for her.'

Before Fukuda could say anything, Fujiwara continued, while beginning to nervously twist one end of his mustache around and around his finger. 'Look, Mr. Stake, you've got to be discreet with this information, okay? The cultists that didn't die in the earthquake got themselves assassinated by a rival group called the Children of the Elders, who want to make sure this apocalypse never happens. I don't want these Children coming after me, too, thinking I'm part of the Ugghiutu cult.'

'Mum's the word. I just want to find this doll, this Dai-oo-ika, for your boss here. Did he tell you my suspicions? That Dai-oo-ika might have harmed the girl who stole him, and ventured off on his own power?'

Fujiwara began pacing, twisting and twisting his mustache. 'I thought I'd inhibited his growth. And limited his intelligence.'

'He's a precocious child.'

The bio-designer made a little groaning sound. 'How do you think he harmed her?'

'One of the monsters at Alvine Products consumed a rescue worker like an amoeba would. Could Dai-oo-ika do that?'

'Dai-oo-ika has light harvesting complexes, for photosynthesis.'

'I'm asking you, do you think he could do what that Alvine monster did?'

'How should I know? I didn't even know they could do that, let alone Dai-oo- ika!'

'Scientists,' Stake said.

'The best thing you can do, in my opinion?' Fujiwara looked up at Fukuda while he paced. 'When you find our friend Dai-oo-ika, you should destroy him. If you're still able.'

Stake and Fukuda looked at each other grimly. Fujiwara himself had just echoed Stake's earlier sentiment. Would that be enough to make Fukuda listen?

Stake returned his gaze to the bio-designer. 'Maybe you ought to destroy that Genomicon, too.'

Fukuda spoke up. 'It's in my possession now,'he said. 'And I'll consider it.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR pleasant conversations