Number9Dream Read online

  ‘Yes, but, look, Mr Joji, I have to ask you for a retinal scan.’

  ‘Does it tickle?’ Finished. I close the toolbox and approach her desk with my hands behind my back and a gormless grin. ‘Where do I look?’

  She turns a scanner towards me. ‘Into this eyepiece.’

  ‘Kazuyo.’ I check we are alone. ‘Ran told me, about, y’know – is it true?’

  ‘Is what true?’

  ‘Your eleventh toe?’

  ‘My eleventh what ?’ The moment she looks at her feet I pepper her neck with enough instant-action tranquillizer micro-pellets to knock out the entire Chinese Army. She slumps on her blotter. I make a witty pun in the manner of James Bond for my own amusement.

  I knock three times. ‘Goldfish Pal, Ms Kato!’

  A mysterious pause. ‘Enter.’

  I check that the corridor is empty of witnesses, and slip in. The actual lair of Akiko Kato matches closely the version in my imagination. A chequered carpet. A curved window of troubled cloud. A wall of old-fashioned filing cabinets. A wall of paintings too tasteful to trap the eye. Between two half-moon sofas sits a huge spherical tank where a fleet of Okinawan silverspines haunt a coral palace and a sunken battleship. Nine years have passed since I last saw Akiko Kato, but she has not aged a single day. Her beauty is as cold and callous as ever. She glances up from behind her desk. ‘You are not the ordinary fish man.’

  I lock the door, and drop the key in my pocket with my gun.

  She looks me up and down.

  ‘I am no fish man at all.’

  She puts down her pen. ‘What the hell do you—’

  ‘It is a simple matter. I know your name, and you knew mine, once upon a time: Eiji Miyake. Yes, that Eiji Miyake. True. It has been many years. Look. We are both busy people, so why not cut the small talk? I am in Tokyo to find my father. You know his name and you know his address. And you are going to give me both. Right now.’

  Akiko Kato blinks, to verify the facts. Then she laughs. ‘Eiji Miyake?’

  ‘I fail to see the funny side.’

  ‘Not Luke Skywalker? Not Zax Omega? Do you seriously expect to reduce me to a state of awed obedience by your pathetic spiel? “One island boy embarks on a perilous mission to discover the father he has never met.” Do you know what happens to island boys once they leave their fantasies?’ She shakes her head in mock pity. ‘Even my friends call me the most poisonous lawyer in Tokyo. And you burst in here, expecting to intimidate me into passing on classified client information? Please!’

  ‘Ms Kato.’ I produce my Walther PK 7.65mm, spin it nattily and aim it at her. ‘You have a file on my father in this room. Give it to me. Please.’

  She fakes outrage. ‘Are you threatening me?’

  I release the safety catch. ‘I hope so. Hands up where I can see them.’

  ‘You got hold of the wrong script, child.’ She picks up her telephone, which explodes in a plastic supernova. The bullet pings off the bulletproof glass and slashes into a picture of lurid sunflowers. Akiko Kato bulges her eyes at the rip. ‘You heathen! You damaged my Van Gogh! You are going to pay for that!’

  ‘Which is more than you ever did. The file. Now.’

  Akiko Kato snarls. ‘Security will be here within thirty seconds.’

  ‘I know the electronic blueprint of your office. Spyproofed and soundproofed. No messages in, none out. Stop blustering and give me the file.’

  ‘Such a nice life you could have had, picking oranges on Yakushima with your uncles and grandmother.’

  ‘I don’t want to ask you again.’

  ‘If only matters were so simple. But you see, your father has too much to lose. Were news of his whored bastard offspring brat – you, that is – to leak out, it would cause red faces in high places. This is why we have a modest secrecy retainer arrangement.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, this is a cosy little boat you are attempting to rock.’

  ‘Ah. I see. If I meet my father you won’t be able to blackmail him.’

  ‘“Blackmail” is a litigable word for someone still in search of the perfect acne lotion. Being your father’s lawyer calls for discretion. Ever heard of discretion? It sets decent citizens apart from criminals with handguns.’

  ‘I am not leaving this office without the file.’

  ‘You have a long wait ahead. I would order some sandwiches, but you shot my telephone.’

  I don’t have time for this. ‘Okay, okay, maybe we can discuss this in a more adult way.’ I lower my gun, and Akiko Kato allows herself a pert smile of victory. The tranquillizers embed themselves in her neck. She slumps back on to her chair, as unconscious as the deep blue sea.

  Speed is everything. I peel the Akiko Kato fingerpads over the Ran Sogabe ones, and access her computer. I wheel her body into the corner. Not nice – I keep thinking she’s going to come back to life. The deeper computer files are passworded, but I can override the locks on the filing cabinets. MI for MIYAKE. My name appears on the menu. Double-click. EIJI. Double-click. I hear a promising mechanical clunk, and a drawer telescopes open halfway down the wall. I leaf through the slim metal carrier cases. MIYAKE – EIJI – PATERNITY. The case shines gold.

  ‘Drop it.’

  Akiko Kato closes the door with her ankle, and levels a Zuvre Lone Eagle .440 at the spot between my eyebrows. Dumbly, I look at the Akiko Kato still slumped in her chair. The doorway Kato laughs, a grin twisted and broad. Emeralds and rubies are set in her teeth. ‘A bioborg, dummy! A replicant! You never watched Bladerunner ? We saw you coming! Our spy picked you up in Jupiter Café – the old man you bought cigarettes for? His vidboy is an eye-cam linked to PanOpticon central computer. Now kneel down – slowly – and slide your gun across the floor. Slowly. Don’t make me nervous. A Zuvre at this range will scramble your face so badly your own mother wouldn’t recognize you. But then, that never was her strong point, was it?’

  I ignore the taunt. ‘Unwise to approach an intruder without back-up.’

  ‘Your father’s file is a highly sensitive issue.’

  ‘So your bioborg was telling the truth. You want to keep the hush money my father pays you all for yourself.’

  ‘Your main concern should not be practical ethics, but to dissuade me from omeletteing you.’ Keeping her eyes trained on me, she bends over to retrieve my Walther. I aim the carrier case at her face and open the switchclips. The lid-mounted incandescent booby trap explodes in her eyes. She screams, I roll-dive, her Zuvre fires, glass cracks, I leap through the air, kick her head, wrench the pistol from her grip – it fires again – spin her around and uppercut her over the half-moon sofa. Silverspines gush and thrash on the carpet. The real Akiko Kato lies motionless. I stuff the sealed folder on my father down my overalls, load up my toolbox and exit. I close the door quietly over the slow stain already gathering on the corridor carpet. I stroll down to the elevator, casually whistling ‘Imagine’. That was the easy part. Now I have to get out of PanOpticon alive.

  Drones fuss around the receptionist still slumped in her rainforest. Weird. I leave a trail of unconscious women wherever I go. I summon the elevator, and show appropriate concern. ‘Sick building syndrome, my uncle calls it. Fish are affected in the same way, believe it or not.’ The elevator arrives and an old nurse barges out, tossing onlookers aside. I step in and press the close button to whisk me away before anyone else can enter.

  ‘Not so fast!’ A polished boot wedges itself between the closing doors, and a security guard muscles them apart. He has the mass and nostrils of a minotaur. ‘Ground Zero, son.’

  I press the button and we begin our descent.

  ‘So,’ says Minotaur. ‘You an industrial spy, or what?’

  Blood and adrenalin swish through my body in strange ways. ‘Huh?’

  Minotaur keeps a straight face. ‘You’re trying to make a quick getaway, right? That’s why you nearly closed me in the elevator doors up there.’

  Oh. A joke. ‘Yep.’ I rap my toolbox. ‘Full of go
ldfish espionage data.’

  Minotaur snorts a laugh.

  The elevator slows and the doors open. ‘After you,’ I say, even though Minotaur shows no signs of letting me go first. He disappears through a side door. Floorpad arrows return me to a security booth. I beam at Ice Maiden. ‘I get to have you on the way in and on the way out? This is the hand of destiny.’

  Her eyes dart over a scanner. ‘Standard procedure.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You have discharged your duties?’

  ‘Fully, thank you. You know, ma’am, we at Goldfish Pal are proud to say that we have never lost a fish due to negligence in eighteen years of business. We give each a post-mortem, to establish cause of death. Old age, every time. Or client-sourced alcohol poisoning, during the end-of-year party season. If you are free I could tell you more about it over dinner.’

  Ice Maiden glaciates me. ‘We have nothing whatsoever in common.’

  ‘We’re both carbon-based. You can’t take that for granted these days.’

  ‘If you are trying to disgust me out of asking why you have a Zuvre .440 in your toolbox, I must tell you that your efforts are wasted.’

  I am a professional. Fear must wait. How, how, could I have been so stupid? ‘That is absolutely impossible.’

  ‘The gun is registered under Akiko Kato’s name.’

  ‘Oooh!’ I chuckle, open the box and take out the gun. ‘Do you mean this?’

  ‘I do mean that.’

  ‘This?’

  ‘That.’

  ‘This is, uh, for—’

  ‘Yes?’ Ice Maiden reaches for an alarm.

  ‘—this!’ The glass flowers with the first shot – alarms scream – the glass mazes with the second shot – I hear gas hiss – the glass cracks with the third shot, and I throw my body through the window – shouting and running – I land tumbling over the floor of the lobby, flashing with arrows. Men and women crouch, terrified. Everywhere is noise and jaggedness. Down an access corridor guards’ boots pound this way. I engage the double safety catch, switch the Zuvre to continuous plasma fire, toss it into the path of the guards, and dive for the entrance. Three seconds to overload doesn’t give me enough time, and the explosion lifts me off my feet, slams me into the revolving door, and literally spins me down the steps outside. A gun that can blow up its user – no wonder Zuvres were withdrawn from production nine weeks after their launch. Behind me all is chaos, smoke and sprinklers. Around me is consternation, traffic collisions, and what I need most – frightened crowds. ‘A madman!’ I rave. ‘Madman on the loose! Grenades! He’s got grenades! Call the cops! We need helicopters! Helicopters everywhere! More helicopters!’ I hobble away into the nearest department store.

  I take my father’s file from my new briefcase, still in its plastic seal, and mentally record the moment for posterity. August 24th, twenty-five minutes past two, in the back of a bioborg taxi, rounding the west side of Yoyogi Park, under a sky as stained as a bachelor’s underfuton, less than twenty-four hours after arriving in Tokyo, I discover my father’s true identity. Not bad going. I straighten my tie. I imagine Anju swinging her legs on the seat beside me. ‘See?’ I tell her, tapping the file. ‘Here he is. His name, his face, his house, who he is, what he is. I did it. For both of us.’ The taxi swerves to one side as an ambulance blue-shifts towards us. I slit open the seal with my thumbnail, and extract the card file. EIJI MIYAKE. IDENTITY OF FATHER. I take a deep breath, and far things feel near.

  Page one.

  The air-reactive ink is already melting into white.

  Lao Tzu growls at his vidboy. ‘Blasted bioborgs. Every blasted time.’ I sup my dregs, put on my baseball cap, and mentally limber up. ‘Say, Captain,’ Lao Tzu croaks, ‘you wouldn’t have a spare ciggie there, by any chance?’ I show him the empty carton of Mild Seven. He gives me a doleful look. I need some more anyway. I have a stressful meeting ahead. ‘Is there a machine in here?’ ‘Over there’ – he nods – ‘in all those plants. I smoke Carlton.’ I have to break open yet another one-thousand-yen note. Money evaporates in Tokyo. I may as well order another coffee to build up my adrenalin before facing the real Akiko Kato. In lieu of a fantasy Walther PK. I deploy my telepathy – ‘Waitress! You with the most perfect neck in all creation! Stop unloading the glasswasher, come to the counter and serve me!’ My telepathy fails me today. I get Dowager instead. This close up I notice Dowager’s nostrils are hairdryer-plug compatible – pinched little slits. She nods gracelessly when I thank her for the coffee, as though she is the customer, not me. I walk slowly back to my window seat, trying not to spill my drink, open the box of Carltons, and fail to coax a flame from my disposable lighter. Lao Tzu slides a box of courtesy matches from a bar called Mitty’s. I light my cigarette, then his – he is concentrating on a new game. He takes it – his fingers are as tough as crocodile skin – drags, and gives a grateful sigh that only smokers understand. ‘Thanks a million, Captain. My daughter-in-law nags at me to give up, but I tell her, I’m dying anyway, why interfere with nature?’ I make a vague noise of sympathy. Those ferns look too perfect to be real. Too lush and feathery. Nothing prospers in Tokyo but pigeons, crows, rats, roaches and lawyers. I sugarize my coffee, rest my teaspoon on the meniscus, and sloooooowly dribble the cream on to the bowl of the spoon. Pangaea rotates, floating unruptured before splitting into subcontinents. Playing with coffee is the only pleasure I can afford in Tokyo. The first three months’ rent on my capsule wiped out all the money I saved working for Uncle Orange and Uncle Pachinko, leaving me with a chicken-and-egg problem: if I don’t work, I can’t stay in Tokyo and look for my father; but if I work, when do I look for my father? Work. A slag-heap word that blots out the sun. My two saleable talents are picking oranges and my guitar. I must be five hundred kilometres from the nearest orange tree, and I have never, ever played my guitar for anyone. Now I understand what fuels dronehood. This: you work or you drown. Tokyo turns you into a bank account balance with a carcass in tow. The size of this single number dictates where the carcass may live, what it drives, how it dresses, who it sucks up to, who it may date and marry, whether it cleans itself in a gutter or a jacuzzi. If my landlord, the honourable Buntaro Ogiso, stiffs me, I have no safety net. He doesn’t seem to be a con man, but con men never do. When I meet my father – at most a couple of weeks away – I want to prove I am standing on my own two feet, and that I am not looking for handouts. Dowager heaves out a drama-queen sigh. ‘You mean to tell me this is the very last box of coffee filters?’

  The waitress with the perfect neck nods.

  Donkey joins in. ‘The very last?’

  ‘The very, very last,’ my waitress confirms.

  Dowager shakes her head at heaven. ‘How can this be?’

  Donkey manoeuvres. ‘I sent a purchase order off on Thursday.’

  The waitress with the perfect neck shrugs. ‘Deliveries take three days.’

  ‘I hope,’ warns Dowager, ‘you aren’t blaming Eriko-san for this crisis?’

  ‘And I hope you aren’t blaming me for pointing out that we are going to run out of filters by five o’clock. I just thought I should say something.’ Stalemate. ‘Why don’t I take some petty cash and go and buy some more?’

  Dowager glowers. ‘I am the shift supervisor. I make that sort of decision.’

  ‘I can’t go,’ whines Donkey. ‘I had my hair permed this morning, see, and it’s going to bucket down any minute.’

  Dowager turns back to the waitress with the perfect neck. ‘I want you to go and buy a box of filters.’ She pings the till open and removes a five-thousand-yen note. ‘Keep the receipt, and bring back the exact change. The receipt is crucial, or you’ll wreck my bookkeeping.’

  The waitress with the perfect neck removes her rubber gloves and apron, takes an umbrella, and leaves without a word.

  Dowager narrows her eyes. ‘That missy has an attitude problem.’

  ‘Rubber gloves indeed!’ Donkey tuts. ‘As if she’s a handcream model.’

&n
bsp; ‘Students today are just too coddled. What is it she studies, anyway?’

  ‘Snobology.’

  ‘She thinks she lives above the clouds.’

  I watch her wait at the lights to cross Omekaido Avenue. This Tokyo weather is extraplanetary. Still oven-hot, but a dark roof of cloud, ready to buckle under the weight of rain, at any moment. The pedestrians waiting on the island in the middle of Kita Street sense it. The two young women taking in the sandwich board outside Nero’s Pizza Emporium sense it. The battalion of the elderly sense it. Hemlock, nightingales, E-minor – thunnnnnnnnnder! Bellyflopping thunnnnnnnnnder, twanging a loose bass. Anju loved thunder, our birthday, treetops, the sea and me. Her goblin grin flashed when it thundered. Raindrops are heard – shhhhhhhhh – before raindrops are seen – shhhhhhhhh – quivering ghost-leaves – dappling the pavements, smacking car roofs, drumming tarpaulins. My waitress opens up a big blue, red and yellow umbrella. The lights turn green and the pedestrians dash for cover, sheltering under ineffective tents of jackets or newspapers. ‘She’ll get drenched,’ says Donkey, almost gleefully. The furious rain erases the far side of Omekaido Avenue. ‘Drenched or undrenched, we need coffee filters,’ replies Dowager. My waitress disappears. I hope she finds somewhere dry. Jupiter Café fills with holiday refugees being nice to one another. Lightning zickers, and the lights of Jupiter Café dip in counterpoint. The refugees all go ‘Wooooooooo!’ I help myself to a match and light another Carlton. I can’t go and confront Akiko Kato until this storm passes. Dripping in her office, I would be as formidable as a drenched gerbil. Lao Tzu chuckles, chokes, and gasps for air. ‘My, my, I ain’t seen rain like this since 1971. Must be the end of the world. I seen it coming on the telly.’

  One hour later and the Kita Street/Omekaido Avenue intersection is a churning confluence of lawless rivers. The rain is incredible. Even on Yakushima, we never get rain this heavy. The holiday atmosphere has died, and the customers are doom-laden. The floor of the Jupiter Café is, in fact, underwater – we are all sitting on stools, counters and tables. Outside, traffic stalls, and begins to disappear under the foaming water. A family of six huddles on a taxi roof. A baby wails and will not shut up. Group dynamics organize the customers, and there is talk of moving to a higher floor, staying put, navy helicopters, El Niño, tree-climbing, an invasion force from North Korea. I smoke another Carlton and say nothing: too many captains pilot the ship up the mountain. The taxi family is down to three. Objects swirl by that have no business being water-borne. Somebody has a radio, but can tune it to nothing beyond torrential static. The flood creeps up the window – now it is up to the halfway mark. Submerged mailboxes, motorbikes, traffic signals. A crocodile cruises up to the window and snout-butts the glass. Nobody screams. I wish somebody would. Something is twitching in the corner of its mouth – a hand. Its eye surveys us all, and settles on me. I know that eye. It gleams, and the animal sidles away with a twitch of its tail. ‘Tokyo, Tokyo,’ cackles Lao Tzu. ‘If it ain’t fire, it’s earthquake. If it ain’t earthquake, it’s bombs. If it ain’t bombs, it’s floods.’ Dowager crows from her perch, ‘The time has come to evacuate. Ladies and babies first.’ ‘Evacuate to where?’ asks a man in a dirty mac. ‘One step outside, the current’ll sweep you clean past Guam!’ Donkey calls from the safest place of all, the coffee-filter shelf. ‘Stay inside and we’ll drown!’ The pregnant woman touches her bump, and whispers, ‘Oh no, not now, not now.’ A priest remembers his drinking problem and swigs from his hip flask. Lao Tzu hums a sea shanty. The wailing baby will not shut up. I see an umbrella shoot down the fiercest artery of the flood, a red, blue and yellow umbrella, followed by my waitress, rising, falling, flailing and gasping. I don’t think. I jump up on the window counter and unfasten the top window, which is still above the water level. ‘Don’t do it,’ chorus the refugees, ‘it’s certain death!’ I frisbee my baseball cap to Lao Tzu. ‘I’ll be back for this.’ I kick off my trainers, lever myself through the window, and – the torrent is a mythical force walloping, submerging and buoying me at a cruel velocity. Lit by lightning, I recognize Tokyo Tower, in floodwater up to its middle. Lesser buildings sink as I am swept by. The death toll must be in the millions. Only PanOpticon appears safe, rising into the heart of the tornado. The sea slants and peaks, the wind howls, an orchestra of the insane. Sometimes the waitress and the umbrella are near, sometimes far away. Just when I don’t think I can stay afloat any longer, I see the waitress paddling towards me on her umbrella coracle. ‘Some rescuer you turned out to be,’ she says, gripping my hand. She smiles, glances behind me, and unspeakable horror is reflected in her face. I turn around and see the gullet of the crocodile closing in. I whip my hand out of hers and shove the umbrella away as hard as I can, turn around, and face my death. ‘No!’ screams my waitress appropriately. I am strong and silent. The crocodile rears and dives, its fat body feeding into the water until its tail vanishes. Was it only trying to scare me?