DEADSTOCK

"Ga Noh."

"Hi," he said, trying to make his own smile look casual. "Hi, Thi Gonh. It's good to see you again. My friend told you I'd be contacting you, then?"

"Yes. Your friend. Hen-da-son."

Stake nodded. "Good. Thanks for talking to me. How are you?"

"Thi is good," she said. "How are you, Ga Noh? You married now? Children?"

"Me? No. No time, I guess. Busy working."

"Work what?"

"I'm a detective." He saw her features pinch together in confusion. "I'm like a policeman, but for money."

"Ah." But it looked like she only partly got it.

"What are you doing now, for work?"

"I have good money. Farm. Big farm." It seemed to Stake that she watched him more closely, watched for his reaction, when she added, "My husa-bund and me."

"Ah." He nodded again. Husband. "You got married."

"Yes. Six years married."

"Congratulations. Wow. Ah. any children?"

"Oh, no." She shifted slightly, uncomfortably, as if embarrassed at a failing. "Thi body no good."

"No, don't say that. Your body… you…"

His words trailed off. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to cry. He wondered if it were too late to go out after Jones and the other two clones- and shoot them. Shoot their blue-patterned faces off.

Now Thi narrowed her eyes as she scrutinized him even more intently. Why? Was he begi

"Ga Noh, what happen?" She pointed at the screen.

"Huh?" He touched the blood trickling down his neck, and understood. "Oh. I, ah, cut myself shaving." He made shaving motions and gri

"Ga Noh," Thi said. "You okay? Okay?"

"I'm okay."

"Why you call me? You need Thi take care you?

Help Ga Noh?"

"Help? Oh no. No. I just. I just lost track of you so long ago, and I've always wondered how you were. After the trial and all. I'm just happy you made out all right. I'm relieved."

"Someone hurt you, huh?"

"Hurt me? No. No, I'm okay."

"Someone hurt Ga Noh." Her face had become harder, grim.

"Don't worry about me. It's just my job. It's crazy sometimes." He cleared his voice. "Hey, look, I have to go. But I was talking to Rick- Henderson-and I just thought I'd check in with you and say hi. Now that we aren't at war with each other anymore, huh?"

Her eyes still probed him. Sniper's keen eyes. "Thi worry you. Very worry."

"No. No, really. Look, I have to go. Maybe I'll call again sometime."

"Call from where? Where you now?"

"Punktown, on Oasis. I was born here."

She glanced behind her before she continued. "I am afraid husa-bund angry Thi, talk to Ga Noh."

"Yes, yes, I understand."

"But you need Thi, you call. Okay?"

"Sure. Same here. You need anything, call me. Just store my number, all right?"

"Mm."

"Okay, then. Well. nice to see you. Goodbye, Thi, okay? Goodbye."

Sadness in her face. It truly looked like sadness. Ask her! part of him shouted. But what did it matter now what, if anything, she had felt back then? What that had been all about. A husband now. Another life entirely, as if a different woman had been reincarnated inside the same body.

"Goodbye, Ga Noh," she said.

He pressed a key, banished her face. Then let his head droop. And laughed. Wagged his head, and laughed.

"Fool," he muttered. "Stupid, stupid fool." Ten years, for these five minutes. And now it was all over, wasn't it? This was his closure. Finally over, with a whimper. With a chuckle.

Stake lifted his head to make another call. To let John Fukuda know about the visit from Tableau's cloned thugs. And to let Fukuda know that his own life might be in danger.

Back to the case, to take his mind off the call he had just made. The emptiness that it had filled only with pointed, painful heaviness, like the obsolete detritus of their war. Razor wire and spent cartridges, blood-crusted knives and mud-caked guns. Back to the case, because it was all he had.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

conjoined

As he passed through a wide section of tu

Some stretches of tu

On he burrowed. On. Like an archeologist in subterranean ruins, hoping to excavate and piece together the fragments of his memory. There had to be more than just his name, the face of his child mother, snatches of dream. There had to be.

He reached the limits of underground Subtown, but came to a ladder, which he climbed up, up, to a higher level of the netherworld. At one point he crawled on all fours on a web-like metal grille and watched a subway train speed by below him, washing him in a flow of warm and stinking air. Now, just below the crust of the city, he continued following the beckoning call. A voice almost as familiar as his mother's.

He came to a sealed circular grate, but it was not the first that had blocked his path and he pushed it out of its frame with a tortured screech of metal. Dai-oo-ika entered a polished white tu

Dai-oo-ika found himself in a long passage that vanished into darkness in either direction, despite the maintenance lighting. The tu

The access chute was narrow, and he had to squeeze his heavy body through it like the boneless mass it truly was, just as an octopus can ooze its body through the barest crack. But he was able to stand erect again once he had entered the basement of the apartment complex called Steward Gardens.

There were a number of interco