Seoul Survivors (22 page)

If Johnny had ordered her to go shopping, she would have hit him. But she was Jae Ho's hostess, and stretching her legs and getting some free groceries sounded like a great idea. She pulled on leggings and a T-shirt dress, some flip-flops and sunnies, and headed down to the corner shop. When she got back Jae Ho, still naked, was putting the finishing touches to an ink drawing in his sketchbook. She had never seen an artist working before, and she hung back, nervous of disturbing him. His muscles taut, he exuded concentration like a smell. With a pang, she suddenly wished she could draw
him
, but she could only do cartoon characters or stick-figure doodles. There was no point asking if she could take a photo. She would just have to remember him forever. Or make sure he wanted to come back.

He clapped the book shut. “I give you picture. After eat.”

Pleased, she unpacked the groceries: eggplant, Korean zucchini,
udong
noodles, garlic, onions,
kim chee
and a tin of weird rubbery sea creatures she wanted to try. It was silly to be wearing clothes in the cocoon-like warmth of the apartment, so she undressed and cooked naked.
Udong
were usually served in soup, but she liked them in a sloppy, spicy sauce, which she spooned out of the soybean tub. She was careful not to let the hot oil spit, or to splash herself with hot water draining the noodles.

The room filled with the rich aroma of sesame oil. Jae Ho cleared off her bedside table and placed two cushions on the floor. She was anxious presenting the big bowl and chopsticks to him, in case the food was all wrong, but he slurped up the noodles greedily, chasing everything down with crunchy helpings of
kim chee
. Afterward, when she'd cleared the dishes away and wiped down the table, he tore the drawing out of the book and laid it on the table.

“Is for you.”

She gazed at it in silence. He had drawn her blonde hair streaming into the corners of the page, her face thrown back in rapture. It looked exactly like she felt when she came.

“It's beautiful, Jae Ho.”

He impressed his name in the corner with his carved wooden
do jang
and wryly surveyed the result. “Now you blackmail me. But I know nothing; is only drawing of big explosion Canadian model.”

“Is your wife jealous of your models?” The question just popped out, but Jae Ho didn't appear to mind.

“My wife very professional woman. She make big profit from my models!” He returned his art supplies to his bag and checked his watch. “
Aigo!
I go! Mousie, I go to Taegu now, to visit mother-in-law. I see you soon, I promise.”

So that was why he had stayed so long. “Does your wife know you with a woman now?” she couldn't stop herself from asking as he hurriedly dressed.

“Maybe.” He shrugged.

“Will she be very angry?”

“Maybe.” He paused. “Sydney, in Hongdae, we must be very careful, okay?”

“Jae Ho.” There was something she suddenly, desperately needed to know. “Why you make adultery with me?”

“Adult-ery,” Jae Ho zipped up his pants. “What is adul-tery?”

“You know, cheat, have an affair.”

“Cheat?” She couldn't tell if he was just pretending not to understand. She grabbed the bi-lingual dictionary she had bought and found the word. He studied the entry intently.

“Ah! Adultery.” He winked. “I make adultery because I am adult?”

“No! Why? You love your wife, why make adultery?”

Jae Ho sat down on the sofa. “Sy-duh-nee, in Korea, we say: love is song.” Nodding wisely, he stretched out his hand. “First take knife, cut every finger. Open. So is blood. Then pull hand over paper, make five lines.” He mimed this action in the air. “Is music lines. With fingers then, you make the notes.” Poking at the air, he scored his marriage on an imaginary stave. “This song is my love with my wife.”

Sydney stared at the air between them, trying to understand. “I don't know, Jae Ho. It doesn't sound very happy to me.”

“Happy not important in Korea love. My wife, very good to me, every day she try to understand me. Very nice for me. I very lucky man. But every day, also, my wife, headache, or heartache.” He smiled ruefully, pressing his fist first to his temple then to his breast. “Headache, or heartache,” he repeated. Then his face shuttered up a fraction and his tone grew tighter. “And I, always in my life, I must think first about myself.”

That was the remark he left on. The one she tried to instantly forget.

Johnny switched off the TV and flung the remote into the corner of the couch. This round-the-clock coverage of the snukes was getting on his nerves. Why hadn't al-Qaeda, or whichever mutts were responsible, managed to take out Hugh Grant? Instead they'd just created more work for the Sandman. There'd been immediate domino panic in the global security sector, and Johnny's new contacts at Han Air were now desperate for ConGlam's advice on beefing up their tech packages and staff training. He'd spent hours at the airline's head office this last week, stretching his empathy skills to the limit. “It must be terrible for our colleagues in London”; “I understand your fears, Mr. Lee”; “I appreciate your anxiety, Ms. Park”; “I'd feel the same as you if I was in charge of airport X-ray machines, sir.” Fuck, that shit was taxing. No sentimental Korean office worker wanted to hear Johnny's real opinion of the attack: that London had it coming. Had the British government been sleeping in a fucking teapot for the past twenty years? Instead of reducing their
army
, they should've cut their insane funding for all that multiculti shit, and banned the burqa like the French. At least he saw eye-to-eye with LA on that front.

As well as generating and managing the new hardware and protocol consultancy contracts, now ConGlam wanted Johnny to produce a report on the bombings' likely effect on British long-haul travel plans, so he'd had to spend an age researching tourism stats after terrorist attacks, earthquakes, tsunamis, toxic spill catastrophes, and nuclear events. Still, it had to be said, working full-tilt and impressing the fuck out of LA had taken his mind off Kim and Sydney. In fact, some days it felt like the old Johnny was making a comeback. He got up and stretched. It was time for some Sammy Davis Jr. “Climb Ev'ry Mountain” would do it—who knows, he might even sing along.

He was just loading the playlist when his MoPho clattered on the glass coffee table.

That had better fucking not be Kim
, he thought, but no, when he checked the screen, it was the cherry on the cake at last: the call he'd been waiting for.
Fucking yes
: fuck those gimmicky kiddie
clones—flash-in-the-pan, novelty items, who needed 'em? Project ProxyBod was where the action was; that was why ConGlam was bending over ass-backward for Dr. Kim and her ragtag bag of sci-fi tricks and treats.
This
shit was gonna be scary; this was gonna rake in the megabucks, pull up the red velvet curtain on the future of the species. With a grim surge of purpose, Johnny picked up.

“
Annyonghaseyo
, Mr. Cho.”

“Job done.” Cho spoke Korean like it was his second language.

Johnny checked his watch. “I'll be there at two-thirty.”

“With cash?”

“
Ye
,
ye
, no problem.”

“Good.” With a Bakelite clunk, Mr. Cho hung up and Johnny grinned. Naturally, a taxidermist would take a cut-and-dried approach to conversation. Why mince words when . . . well, who wanted to think about the mince that Mr. Cho had to deal with every day?

Scrolling through his MoPho address book, he fetched up the number of GRIP's biotech engineering lab at Yonsei. This Sunday was circled as delivery day for Pebbles, as everyone now called the PB prototype; there'd be no nosy students milling around, and only a skeleton caretaking staff to avoid as he dropped her off. As long as Mr. Cho had done his job right, the boffins would soon be getting some up-market hardware inserted into that beautiful body of hers. He made the call, then returned to Sammy. Yeah, it was “That Great Come and Get It Day.”

It was stifling, but what the hell; at least he wasn't in London, wearing tinfoil. In his new Gucci shades, Johnny drove along Chongno with the top down. Waiting at a traffic light, he checked out a group of chicks in mini-skirts. Catching the eye of the cutest one, he revved his engine and she screamed and jumped up and down. Yup, he was back in the Zone again: turning Anger to Passion. Beacon would be proud.

As he pulled into the narrow alley behind the livestock market, he began to feel queasy; he put it down to the smell of chickenshit and the yapping of dogs about to be beaten and slaughtered. Koreans thought pooches tasted better if they had adrenalin running in their veins just before they kicked it. And maybe they did—Johnny had never eaten unbeaten dog, though he'd been forced to chow down on the supposed delicacy of the penis more than once, or risk losing very lucrative contracts. Did ConGlam care what he did for them, though? You had to be careful which joker in middle
management you complained to about shit like that, or before you knew it the rumor would go round his clients that Mr. San-duh-man positively
loved
doggie cock.

Johnny backed carefully into the space behind the workshop door. Parking always steadied his nerves. Slamming the car door shut helped as well, but as he rang Mr. Cho's bell, there was still an acrid taste in the back of his throat.

Cho was as taciturn as the morning they'd first met. “You're late,” he complained as he bolted them inside the long room.

The sunshine was filtered through sheets of old newspaper taped to the window. Johnny's eyes adjusted to the sepia light. The stooped, grizzled old man in front of him reeked of BO and formaldehyde. Trying not to breathe too deeply, Johnny took the envelope of
man won
bills out of his pocket.

“Traffic's bad today,” he said by way of apology. Cho didn't rate—or ever seem to need—an “I'm sorry.”

Cho turned away as if disdaining the offer of cash. “You see first.” He steered Johnny through a narrow maze, between shelves and tables, past rows of stuffed magpies and weasels, stacks of plastic tubs, jars of what looked like preserved fetuses, brains and hearts. Sprawled on a platform in the musty center of the labyrinth was the carcass of a deer, surrounded by a neatly arranged collection of tools. The antlered head lolled over the edge of the platform as if trying to nip at Johnny's leg. But Cho hurried him past, to where a makeshift curtain was strung up across the width of the room. The taxidermist gestured at Johnny to step forward and tugged at the fabric.

A small, voiceless part of Johnny was afraid that the stiff would sit up and point her finger accusingly, but Pebbles was lying still on a table, her body covered with a thin blanket, and she seemed at peace. Her hair had been neatly combed and swept back off her face; there were no foul liquids drooling from her lips, and a clean, lemony scent had replaced the subtle blend of stale sweat, cheap perfume and putrefaction she'd exuded as he fucked her in the morgue. In any case, she now had no eyes beneath her flattened lids; she couldn't pick him out in a line-up if she tried.

As Johnny assessed Pebbles, he began to feel calmer. That it had been her last screw was an accomplishment. Aspects of the experience had been revolting, sure, but to cross another threshold in life? That was always worthwhile. And the knowledge that he had porked Dr. Kim's priceless body double had been a source of some
consolation after she'd kicked him off the Peonies project.
Maybe I should have let Ratty video it
, he thought,
what wouldn't I give to play it back to Kim sometime?
But no, that was just an indulgent fantasy—and anyway, he didn't need a video to recall how he'd felt when he'd come on her face. It was like he'd climbed an electric pylon, spat on his hands and grabbed hold of the wires. Strangely, he remembered, it had been Sydney's face that had flashed up in front of him then. Well, that slut would be next.

Cho shuffled beside him, his plastic slippers hushing against the concrete floor.

Johnny slipped back down to earth. “Hey, baby,” he drawled, giving vent to a low wolf-whistle.

With a sound that could almost have been a chuckle, Cho pulled back the blanket. The GRIP engineers would insert a mechanical skeleton along with the microchips, so the body lying before him was simply skin and stuffing. Pebbles' breasts were larger than before, but her pussy had been shaved and demurely sewn up—Kim's orders, no doubt. Johnny could also make out rows of tiny stitches along the insides of her limbs, but the stab wound in the stomach had been invisibly mended, somehow, and the only slit left in her—apart from her mouth—was a long gash from chest to pubic bone, where Cho had sewn a zip. Johnny could see the seams around the hair and jaw-line where the Scalper had performed the Faceplant, but on the whole Pebbles looked much less like the Bride of Frankenstein than he'd expected, more like a large, harmless doll.

In fact, with all the silicone and preservatives injected into her, Pebbles looked a lot less dead than before. Her skin wasn't oozing MSG anymore, but looked dry and smooth. And though she was obviously still lifeless, her body was simply an inanimate object now, no longer invested with the dense, fascinating sense of
vacancy
that clung to a fresh corpse like an aroma. Now she was merely a hollow dummy: a Kim Da Mi dummy, Johnny thought with a smirk.

The ProxyBod Prototype team would fit Pebbles up with stainless steel bones and a circuit-board brain, programmed with Kim's particular facial expressions and gestural tics. They'd also enlarge her head and eyes slightly—giving them not quite Betty Boopish but more child-like proportions in relation to her body: this, Kim had said in her PowerPoint presentation, would offset the so-called “uncanny valley” effect that made near-human replicants so creepy to look at. Eventually, of course, GRIP and ConGlam would be moving into bona fide cell-for-cell clones of human hosts, concentrating
on achieving perfect epidermal verisimilitude, but for now, Pebbles was an impressive start, even he could admit that.

“
Kamsahamnida
, Mr. Cho.” Bowing, Johnny handed the old man the envelope.

This time he took it and counted the contents rapidly in that slick backward way Koreans had, holding the bills between the fingers of one hand and flipping through them with his thumb. Grunting his approval, he stuffed the payment in his pocket and nodded once at Johnny. “I get you a bag. Don't worry. Included in price.”

Johnny grinned. Mr. Cho appeared to have made a joke.

Without the clammy glaze that had troubled him in the morgue, Pebbles was much nicer to touch. It was almost too bad her uncanny valley had been stitched up, Johnny thought as he helped Cho wrap up the body. Together they bundled it, light as a fairground prize, into the trunk of his car.