JEFFREY THOMAS - DEADSTOCK

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."

What had earned Ron Bistro his status as the "Punktown Prince of Porn" was no doubt his very ordinariness, which made it easier for the men who watched his vids to identify with him. It made them less intimidated by the proceedings, made them feel they too might frolic with the likes of a Simone Pattycakes or the belly-dancing twins, Ufuk and Ulku Istanbul. Well, at least through Ron Bistro his fans could do so vicariously. He had come into fame when, on the set of a picture he was shooting back when he was a mere camera operator, the scripted action had developed into an all-out orgy and Ron had been dragged by one actress out from behind the camera. His inept enthusiasm had endeared him to his future audience. Now, ten years later, he was less inept in front of the camera, though time had made him all the more ordinary looking.

Today wasn't the first day he had personally dropped off his daughter Caren at the Arbury School, nor the first time he had applied his charms to his daughter's schoolmate, Yuki Fukuda. But Yuki had not watched any of his vids and didn't find him any more charming than the fathers of her other schoolmates (in fact, there were quite a few who she found much more worthy of a crush), and as for his wealth-well, again, every Arbury girl's father had a wallet that bulged more in the back than anything Bistro had up front. So Yuki merely smiled and nodded politely as Caren's dad tried to make small talk with her, in front of the school before the first bell had sounded.

"So are you in any of Caren's classes?" he asked her, beaming. He had obviously forgotten that he'd asked her this on earlier occasions. She figured he was confusing her with other Asian students with whom he had flirted.

"Yes, a couple," she answered. She glanced toward the parking lot. She still saw the vehicle that had brought her to school waiting there in the student drop-off zone, a Fukuda Bioforms security man by the name of Nelson Soto behind the console, keeping an eye on her until she was safely inside. Soto was a quiet, serious young man who Yuki found very worthy of a crush, though he didn't seem receptive to the idea, himself. She couldn't make out his expression from here, but she picked up the distant vibe that he wasn't pleased with this older man's nearness to her.

Caren had distanced herself from her father, standing in a knot of friends, each with a kawaii-doll poking up inquisitively from their backpack and with a Ouija phone pressed to their ear. Bistro gestured toward them with one hand, the other resting against Yuki's back to direct her attention. "Do you play with those creepy things, too, Yoshi?" he asked her.

Yuki watched Caren's squinting face as she strained to listen to whatever it was she was hearing.

"I used to," Yuki said distractedly, still staring at Caren, "but my father took it away from me. He said it was morbid."

"Aw, he's got to loosen up, huh?" Bistro rubbed his hand up and down her blazer-covered back as if to console her. "It's just a little bit of fun, right? No harm in that."

Yuki heard a car door slam, glanced around to see Nelson Soto leaning against their vehicle with his arms folded, wearing dark glasses and a frown. She couldn't help but smile a little at this, as if his concern for her were of a personal rather than professional nature, but she turned back to Bistro and said, "Let's go over and see what they're doing." She knew Caren hated her, having been friends with Krimson Tableau, but she counted on the girl behaving herself in the presence of her father.

Bistro started to protest, preferring their more personal conversation, but kept up with Yuki as she moved toward the little cadre of teenagers. "Hi, Caren," she said brightly. "I've been chatting with your dad. Pick up anything interesting today?" She pointed to the tiny phone.

Caren's eyes were molten when they shifted her way, and she was ready to growl something nasty for having been disturbed-and by this girl, no less-when she saw her father ambling along behind Yuki with that big goofy grin he wore when approaching an actress on camera. So with strained politeness she said, "Shh. I'm trying to hear her, okay?"

"It's Krimson, isn't it?" Yuki said.

Eyes on Yuki but with her ear focused elsewhere, Caren only nodded.

"If it's for me," Bistro quipped, "tell 'em I'm out!"

The bell sounded. Like programmed animals, the girls milling around outside the school turned and filed toward the entrance, under the similarly watchful eye of the school's security man, inside his weapons-scanning booth. Caren's little group began to break up, but Yuki didn't want to let it go. She knew her father's hired man Jeremy Stake had questioned Caren about Krimson, but because of their enmity she had not been able to ask the girl about it-and of course her father was not very forthcoming with details of the investigation into Dai-oo-ika's theft.

"We were all talking to her," said another girl over her shoulder, more openly helpful, as she started for the entrance. "We all heard her at the same time. Pretty clear, too."

"Well she's gone now," Caren said with a hint of resentment in her tone, lowering the device.

"She must've heard the bell, too," said her father, trying to be noticed.

Yuki said, "Caren, what does she tell you?"

Caren Bistro hesitated to repeat what she'd heard, because of how spooky it was listening to her friend through this instrument, the same one they had once taken turns listening to with giggles of delicious fear. Recently Caren had sworn never again to listen to this or any other Ouija phone, but the first time her phone had rung to let her know a channel was open-that voices were being received-she had found herself drawn back to it.

As much as she disliked Yuki, Caren could not bring herself to tell her what she had told Stake: that Krimson had once said, "Yuki's mom is crying." But she did finally admit, "The other day she said something about your doll, Dai-oo-ika. But I couldn't make that out too well. And she said something funny just now that makes me wonder if she's really dead, after all. Though I guess that's just wishful thinking. You don't hear live people on Ouija phones."

"What did she say?"

"She said, 'I'm at Steward Gardens. Steward Gardens.' Wherever that is."

Nelson Soto sat with the engine of his hoverlimo running without sound or vibration, waiting in the drop-off/pick-up zone of the Arbury School lot for the dismissal bell to sound. He could still smell Yuki's too-fruity girlish perfume, from when he'd brought her to school hours earlier. Whenever he escorted her, he couldn't help himself from stealing peeks of her in his rearview monitor. That adorable face, those adorable legs emerging from the tartan skirt, but he would never dare act upon his desires-even though she seemed flirtatious toward him. He respected his boss, and Yuki herself, too much for that. He took a professional approach to his work.