CHAPTER 19
Shining Uncut Gems and Bloodied Concessions
Second Friday of October
Every last one of these damn Academy City General Board members was a rich asshole, and it frustrated Seria Kumokawa to no end.
Looking around the home theater that Tsugutoshi Kaizumi had personally created for himself, girl genius Seria found herself pressing a finger to her temple once more at the inequity of it all.
The room was dome shaped—ill-suited for a private residence—and while she’d dubbed it a home theater, the space put a lot of store in acoustics. Clusters of speakers surrounded her in every direction, filling every last bit of available wall space, so painstakingly arranged that they were even installed on the back of the door.
“One of my acquaintances is a professional conductor, you see,” said an old man in full dress who would be more at home among antique equipment. “I decided I’d let his obsession with live performances run wild, and so he did one thing and another, and the next thing I knew, he’d created this. My wife and daughter were just as astonished.”
“Not that I care about any of that, but you’d need to create some pretty specialized music data to make use of this many speakers.”
“Indeed. The sound quality is heavenly, but each song costing twenty million yen is a bit of a fly in the ointment.”
“I hope you die,” spat Kumokawa, glancing at the theater’s large monitor. That was no cheapskate projector. It was a super-high-resolution display easily over three hundred inches. With one of these, you could buy an entire theater and the land it sat on.
And it was not showing a big hit movie that would be forgotten within a year.
No—all there was to see was the face of a sorry excuse for a man.
Kumokawa took a seat in a leather chair that was so soft, one could slip into eternal slumber while sitting in it. Then, taking a drink from the side table, she looked back at the screen.
“I hate the profiteering business, but this place is at least soundproofed enough for us to speak in secret,” she said, pausing. “I suppose I’ll deign to listen to your trivial grievances now.”
“I…I haven’t done anything I’d need to make excuses for,” said the giant face displayed on the screen. “And I find it a bother to explain this, but we aren’t involved in this matter. Go ahead—look into it. This string of actions occurred spontaneously, without our involvement.”
“I see,” said Kaizumi, placing a hand on the back of the chair Kumokawa was sitting in. “Then you’re saying you have nothing to do with the Uncut Gems in France, India, Australia, Thailand, Argentina, and other places around the world suddenly all being sought after for research samples?”
“That’s right.” The man on the screen nodded. “It’s true that in the past, we developed and executed projects like Stargate with serious aspirations to put espers to military use. But not this time. If you investigate the composition of all these organizations, you’ll understand. There’s no connection between them. And they’re not groups created with our investments.”
“Indeed,” said Kumokawa, taking a sip of the pink-colored liquid through a straw. She glanced at the documents sitting on the side table. Assembled like a variety of fruits, they were investigative reports on the groups who were now making passes at the Uncut Gems.
“They’re many things,” she said. “Academic organizations, scientific think tanks, sports engineering groups, and even a somewhat odd human trafficking ring. There certainly isn’t any evidence that there’s any networking between them, and they also don’t seem to be using you as a shield.”
“Of course not. However famous the CIA might be, you can’t just pin the blame on us for every conspiracy you find in the world.”
“I’d think not. By the way, I had a little question for you.” Kumokawa tossed the papers aside. “Academic organizations, scientific think tanks, sports engineering groups, somewhat odd human trafficking rings… Each of them has been infiltrated by two of your vaunted CIA spies. What is the meaning of that?”
“?!”
“Did you think we wouldn’t notice? You have, in fact, personally created a network distributed throughout all these independent groups.” Kumokawa frowned. “But why? As the brains behind your country, this sort of methodology isn’t the thing I’d think you’d want to use.”
The man on the screen began denying the allegations vehemently, but Kumokawa ignored him and ended the call.
Kaizumi looked down at the crown of her head. “What do you think?”
“Well,” said Kumokawa, shaking her glass to spin the ice in it around a bit. “The individual organizations aren’t a worry. However they decide to mess around with the Uncut Gems, they’ll never be able to get their hands on any Ability Development technology that would put them to practical use. If they’re just going to fail on their own regardless, we can leave them alone.”
“……”
“Still, the Stargate people will probably try to acquire all the data gathered from their collective failures and aggregate it. Failure begets success and all that—they might make progress by using all those failures to narrow things down.”
“What is the risk of that, in concrete numbers?”
“Hmm,” replied Kumokawa airily.
“Zero percent. It’s not a worry.”
Kaizumi sucked in a breath.
It wasn’t relief—it was more like mild amazement. He’d probably predicted this.
Kumokawa continued, “Even if they go that far, they’ll fail. They won’t know how to apply the data they gather in practical applications, and they’ll end up deadlocked. But as long as they don’t realize their failure, they’ll probably keep expending their Uncut Gems.”
“I see. Then we have no more trivial concerns,” said Kaizumi briefly. And then, he ventured, “Let’s get to the main subject… What do we do now?”
“Hmph. Naïve as always, I see.”
“I understand that each of those groups will fail on their own. But I don’t like them expending Uncut Gems while they’re doing it… Actually, I’ll stop referring to them as that. The people whose lives are threatened right now are just children who happen to have predominantly minor talents.”
Capture operations might have already been under way. If they wanted to secure the Uncut Gem children unharmed, they’d have to move decisively before those other organizations began their research in earnest. In any case, though all these various groups styled themselves “research organizations,” realistically, they possessed almost zero relevant knowledge or technology when it came to Ability Development. Biased by their beliefs and preconceptions, it wouldn’t have been surprising even if they ended up dissecting the children as soon as they captured them before preserving them in formaldehyde.
“I thought I’d already answered that question,” answered Kumokawa, annoyed. “Only fifty or so Uncut Gems even exist. But countless weirdo scientists are after them. That means it would be faster to deal with the Uncut Gems instead.”
“……”
“Invite them to Academy City. It would be the most efficient way of guaranteeing their safety. You are the one who argued that those children have their own lives to live, or something along those lines, and then did nothing. We’re on the back foot now thanks to your kindness.”
“I admit my error,” said Kaizumi in a hard voice. “But I still submit that you, the brain, are making an impossible request. When you get right down to it, what do we do? They’re immediately going to work off the Uncut Gems list that the CIA put together without our input, then start mining for the children nearby. Even if we dispatched people from Academy City right now, they wouldn’t make it in time when everywhere else in the world is starting the mining process at the same time. Do you have a plan to get around this?”
“It’s true that dispatching people from Academy City alone won’t be enough. Even using supersonic passenger planes, there are geographical limitations to consider.
“However,” she added plainly, “the situation changes if we use the groups cooperating with Academy City around the world. If our rivals are simultaneously stirring the pot across the globe, then all we have to do is take action against them on the same scale.”
“You say it like it’s so easy,” objected Kaizumi. “They may be cooperating with us, but none of them are as powerful as you seem to be suggesting. Most of them are corporations we’ve made business agreements with and groups who supply us with resources and the like. I can count on my fingers the number of them with military assets that we could entrust with a request potentially involving violence. It would be impossible for them alone to secure the fifty or so Uncut Gems right away.”
Academy City could indirectly control almost all of modern society that relied on science, but the indirect nature of that relationship meant orders were carried out slowly, and there were not a great many fast response options available. “Get all the military in the world to act right now” was not a card they conveniently had in hand.
“Well, that’s how it appears on the surface,” said Kumokawa.
“?”
“I’d rather not place myself in his debt, but we should swallow our pride and ask that frog for help.”
“What are you talking about, exactly?”
“What?” Kumokawa drained the rest of her glass’s contents through her straw, then smiled. “I’m just saying we should ask a bunch of girls who all share the same face to do the fighting for us.”
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