The Future Is Japanese (25 page)

“
I believed it because I tried it and it fucking worked!
”

Goku stared at her for a long moment. Then he laughed again. “Whew, for a second there, the look on your face—you almost had me. Do you practice in front of a mirror or is it just plain old hardcore desperation? Don’t answer that,” he said as she opened her mouth. “I think maybe you need some alone time in a holding cell to give your situation some serious thought. But just to make sure you don’t get too bored, I’ll tell the duty officer to load some brochures for you.” He stood up, paying no attention to her protests. “About the programs and facilities available at Mid-Atlantic. Underwater correctional institutions are the most advanced and best equipped in the world. You get used to the emergency drill fast, I’ve heard. They’ve got education programs from the top schools, your Ivy League, Eton, Cambridge—and I mentioned the library, didn’t I?”

As soon he stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind him, her pleading cut off as if someone had flipped a switch, and the ambient noise of the police station suddenly assailed him. A bit disconcerted, he leaned against the wall for a moment; funny, he thought, the way you never noticed how much things echoed under ordinary conditions. Not to mention how much difference there was between quiet and the absence of sound.

The flicker at the left-hand edge of his vision came just as he thought of Konstantin, two separate things happening simultaneously. His initial reaction was reflexive now, a mental smile coupled with mild embarrassment for still not having reciprocated. It took a full clock-second for him to remember that according to what both Celestine and Ogada had told him, nobody had received any messages of any kind from Konstantin for at least four weeks; nobody could. Therefore, nobody had.

The flicker sure seemed like her, though. Even considered in the context of what he knew, there was a Konstantin-ness about it that he told himself to chalk up to wishful thinking. People saw what they wanted to see and more often than not the mind was only too happy to dance along. It didn’t take much fancy footwork to make music out of a stray fragment of noise.

And anyone who didn’t believe that could check out the millions of people who had been sold all those magic beans: beachfront in Kansas, the true Hope Diamond, a deposed king’s hidden gold, the blessing of never-ending good luck, the Deity’s unlisted phone number. Or the absolutely-positively-not-fake-not-a-simulation-but-real conversion code for the Out Door, derived by a scientist using the secrets of the Pharaohs and the Mayans, giving you unlimited access to everything you wanted and more—contact your more successful self in another timeline and see where you went right, ascend to a higher plane of being, join God’s private club! Or just go to Japan.

“To be honest, I felt sorry for her.”

The small round object in the bottom of Goku’s cup opened out into a blossom under the stream of boiling water from the spout of Emmy Eto’s fancy electric kettle. It amused him that most Americans referred to it as a teapot, even though they only heated water in it.

“That was why I gave her a freebie in the first place,” she added, pouring water into her own cup before replacing the kettle in its stand on the coffee table and sitting down on the couch beside him.

“A freebie?”

Emmy Eto chuckled. “On the house,
gratis
. You don’t have to pay.”

“Yes, I know. I’m just not sure what you mean by
you
gave
her
a freebie.”

“That’s a delightful accent. London, am I right?” Emmy Eto chuckled again, eyes twinkling in a way that made him think of Celestine’s smile, although there was no resemblance between the two women. Emmy Eto was ninety-five, with short, silvery hair carefully styled to look unruly and bright green contact lenses. Goku suspected her eyes would have been just as bright without them; no doubt she could be quite unruly too.

“Please, Ms. Eto,” he said, taking a sip of tea. The flower waved at him from the bottom of the cup.

“You’ll want to spoon that out,” she told him. “Unless you’re a typical Brit and like your tea thoroughly stewed.”

The flower went from graceful to drowned as he removed it to a saucer on the table. “Please, Ms. Eto?” he said again.

“I’m a professional relative,” she said. “Isn’t it in the case file?”

Goku felt his face grow warm. “I’m sorry, I obviously missed that.”

“Because you figured I’m just retired. Oh, don’t have a cow, dude,” she added, waving one hand as he started to apologize. “You want to know the truth, I’d have figured that too if I were in your place. Most of the people who live here are
at leisure
, shall we say. They’ve had two, three, even four careers—and that’s not counting all the McJobs for rent money in between. And they’ve had about as many families, formal and informal. Worked their asses off—well, their hips, knees, and shoulders anyway. There’s so much titanium around here we get more spam from salvage firms than funeral homes.

“Anyway, most of my neighbors are tired. They just want to hang out, spark a few bowls of medicinal, and watch a movie. With or without actually putting one on.”

Goku sipped some more tea, even though it was too hot, to keep himself from grinning.

“And I gotta admit, I do that too now and again. Careers and McJobs—I had ’em back to back. I traveled a lot, lived in a lot of different places. But I only ever had one family. One husband, one child, and I had the bad grace to outlive both of them.”

Goku blinked away the definition of McJobs that had popped up in the lower left-hand quadrant of his vision and said, “I’m sorry.”

“It was a very long time ago,” she said, waving away his words again. “You don’t set out to be a widow, but you live with the possibility and what happens is what happens. But surviving your child is an unnatural act, especially when she’s an actual child. Takes a long time to make up for it. So I rent myself out to people who need a nice old lady relative. Grandma for the kids, auntie for the grown-ups. Sometimes both at once, in which case I give them a special rate rather than just double-dipping. Anyone who has to hire a nice old lady relative in the first place deserves a break. And you’d be surprised at how many people that is.”

She picked up a small remote and pointed it at a large painting of wild horses running through a countryside under a stormy sky on the wall opposite. The image faded away to a white background, where color photos of various shapes and sizes began to appear. The people in them were various shapes, sizes, and colors as well. Many of the pictures had been taken at special occasions—birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, graduations, and holidays, big elaborate parties and smaller, more intimate get-togethers. But there were also plenty of Emmy Eto sitting with a toddler on her lap or walking in a park holding hands with a couple of small children. And a few not-so-small children.

He was grinning from ear to ear, Goku realized, and tried to tone it down without sobering too abruptly. “That’s quite a lot of people,” he said, “but if we could get back to—”

Nodding, she used the remote again. “You’re just lucky I didn’t cue up the soundtrack.” She chuckled. “You’d have sat through the whole six hours, weeping nonstop. Big, manly, silent tears, of course.” She put a hand to her lips. “Oh, no, wait, I forgot, it’s all stiff upper lip with you Brits.”

The words were out of his mouth before he’d even known he was going to speak. “But I’m also Japanese. Like you.”

“And?” Emmy Eto blinked at him. “Meaning what?”

“I was just thinking that you’re old enough remember Japan, the actual land, before the quakes—”

“Yes, we both existed at the same time, but I never went there.” She sighed heavily. “I’m as much a
sansei
as you are in that respect. What does that have to do with Pretty Howitzer?”

“It’s part of the special circumstances attached to the charges against her. She targeted you not only because you’re elderly but also because you’re Japanese.”

Emmy Eto sighed. “We’ve been vaccinating against plaque and vascular dementia and schizophrenia and all kinds of other head bugs for, what, seven decades? Almost eight? And everyone still thinks that if you’re over eighty, you got nothing above the neck but moths and cobwebs.”

“I don’t feel that way,” Goku said, hoping he sounded kind rather than defensive. “And neither does anyone I know at I3 or—”

Emmy Eto shooed his words away with both hands. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s always some other, much less enlightened dude.” Abruptly, she grimaced. “Oh, hell. I’m sorry, Agent Mura, I’m taking things out on you and I shouldn’t. I just get
so fucking cheesed off
sometimes. You have no idea, the crap aimed at people my age. Nostalgia and religion, religion and nostalgia, like no older person is interested in anything else. Well, I’m all about today,
right
here,
right
now, and then what’s on for tomorrow. You know what I did yesterday? Went to the farmer’s market and bought green bananas. That’s right, you heard me, I’m ninety and
I bought green bananas
—in your
face,
mortality! Woke up this morning—in your face again, mortality! Just because I’m not concerned about getting pregnant—or
not
getting pregnant—and what the hell is it with all that pregnancy hoo-ha anyway? Pregnancy isn’t the permanent centerpiece of
every
woman’s life, even if they’re actually pregnant! It’s ageist, it’s sexist—” Putting a hand to her mouth, she looked down at her lap, smiling with embarrassment.

“Damn, I’m
so
sorry,” she said, laughing a little. “Once I get started, I can’t seem to stop, and it’s so rude. Please forgive me again, Agent Mura.”

He waited for her to look up, but apparently he’d have to forgive her first. “There’s no need to apologize, Ms. Eto. When you’re the victim of a crime, it’s quite normal to feel like the whole world is against you.”

Now she did look up, her face a mixture of surprise and relief. “Oh?”

He nodded. “It’s bad enough dealing with the complications, anything from overdue bills to repo men. Or losing something that means the world to you but has no monetary value to the shithead who took it and probably threw it away.” Emmy Eto gave a surprised giggle at the profanity. “But then there’s the indignity of how people keep referring to you as
the victim
rather than using your name. It adds insult to injury.”

Emmy Eto put both hands over her face for a long moment. Goku thought she was crying and looked around for some tissues, but when she lowered them, her face was dry and composed. “I thought I was being childish.”

“Were you not offered counseling?” Goku asked, making a mental note to ask Celestine.

She made another shooing motion with both hands. “Bitch, puh-
leeze
.” Her cheeks suddenly turned pink. “As we used to say in my day, if you’ll pardon my Hungarian. That little bitch Pretty Howitzer,
she
needs therapy.
I
need my money back.” Pause. “Or am I just shit outta luck on that one?”

Goku made another mental note to follow up on counseling for her anyway. “No, these days we can trace where the money went,” he told her. “But that takes time. And it takes more time to convert it back to liquid form.”

Emmy Eto’s hopeful smiled faded. “Convert it from what?”

“People like Pretty Howitzer love to buy themselves presents, goods or services. Property is usually straightforward, services are trickier.”

“Which means I can’t count on getting
all
my money back.”

“No, but you’ll get most of it. I3’s recovery team seldom recoup less than seventy-five percent of the original monetary value, and it’s usually closer to ninety percent.”

This information didn’t cheer her as much as he’d hoped. “And how much time are we talking about?” she asked.

“Well … longer than anyone would like.” He hesitated, then plunged ahead before he could think better of it. “May I ask you a personal question, Ms—ah, Auntie Emmy?”