Loop

Loop Koji Suzuki Glynne Walley Stunning Japanese novel with a chilling twist – the follow-up to Ring and Spiral.Kaoru's father, Hideyuki, lies dying in a Tokyo hospital, his body ravaged by viral cancer. This nightmarish incurable disease has sprung out of nowhere and has begun to affect organisms all over the planet.Twenty years ago Hideyki worked on a virtual reality project which replicated evolution on earth, called the Loop. The project failed when the organisms within it inexplicably stopped reproducing normally and started cloning. Nearly all of the other scientists who worked on the Loop are already dead – from cancer.To get to the heart of the mystery, Kaoru must travel to the other side of the planet, to the Mojave desert. The secret he encounters there will overturn everything he thought he knew about the world – and his own identity.In this suspense-filled follow-up to ‘Ring’ and ‘Spiral’, Suzuki masterfully confounds the reader with a stunning new twist on the Ring mythology. LOOP KOJI SUZUKI Translation Glynne Walley Copyright (#ulink_62af5427-1b26-534a-9b99-a384e620bc46) HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk (http://harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk/) First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015 Copyright © Koji Suzuki 2005 First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2006 First published in the USA by Vertical, Inc 2005 Originally published in Japan as Rupu by Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo, 1998 Cover photographs © Sean Murphy/Getty Images (dust cloud); Karl Weather/Getty Images (motorcycle). Koji Suzuki asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication. Source ISBN: 9780007179091 Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2015 ISBN: 9780007331598 Version: 2015-10-06 Contents Cover (#ufde9f1a9-1799-55b6-b184-f63a5110ebc4) Title Page (#u87c1e7e0-52da-599b-b187-6c98db1e2270) Copyright (#ulink_32084e5d-ca8a-5835-ab53-a638773e338b) Part One: At the End of the Night (#ulink_085de9d8-689b-53ab-8a46-5ff55cba714e) Chapter 1 (#ulink_2ce8a74b-fa2f-5333-8b14-921bc654652f) Chapter 2 (#ulink_19ff5ed4-6085-5b9e-82dd-eeccdf1d3849) Chapter 3 (#ulink_d2068672-6199-5206-9f54-e9f02e9ab087) Chapter 4 (#ulink_d0e30e53-c989-5fe5-9ff7-f8ff177a0026) Chapter 5 (#ulink_8af9e432-b99f-558d-a159-100bcd63e9f9) Part Two: The Cancer Ward (#ulink_9e1104d7-5227-5f79-80d6-b02ed4a145c5) Chapter 1 (#ulink_d5a55b18-02e0-5932-988f-1de657f126c8) Chapter 2 (#ulink_4002e5b4-71c3-5b59-926b-70056654e72c) Chapter 3 (#ulink_306b3ee5-df94-5788-a4ee-91e9f7b2d9a7) Chapter 4 (#ulink_d9f184ab-ddcb-50bb-924b-9650767733d9) Chapter 5 (#ulink_5458f071-644f-5f1c-844d-64c50492d6e1) Chapter 6 (#ulink_d6824260-3a97-5a6b-8550-1e8a43b8fbe8) Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo) Part Three: Journey to the End of the Earth (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 1 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 2 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 3 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo) Part Four: The Space Underground (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 1 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 2 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 3 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo) Part Five: Advent (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 1 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 2 (#litres_trial_promo) Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) PART ONE (#ulink_eb99791c-243c-5017-81df-b381898a5b51) At the End of the Night (#ulink_eb99791c-243c-5017-81df-b381898a5b51) 1 (#ulink_f7cf410d-0eb4-584d-863c-acac3df7129f) He opened the sliding glass door, and the smell of the sea poured into the room. There was hardly any wind—the humid night air rose straight up from the black water of the bay to envelop his body, fresh from the bath. The resulting immediacy of the ocean was a not-unpleasant feeling for Kaoru. He made a habit of going out onto the balcony after dinner to observe the movements of the stars and the waxing and waning of the moon. The moon’s expression was constantly, subtly changing for him, and watching it gave him a mystical sort of feeling. Often it would give him ideas. Gazing up into the night sky was part of his daily routine. He’d slide open the door, feel around in the darkness below until he found his sandals, and step into them. Kaoru liked it up here on the twenty-ninth floor of the apartment tower, on this balcony thrust into the darkness. It was where he felt most at home. September was mostly gone, but not the heat of summer. The tropical evenings had arrived in June, and while the calendar now said it was autumn, they showed no sign of faltering yet. He didn’t know when the summers had started getting longer. All he knew was that coming out onto the balcony like this every evening never cooled him off. It just brought him face to face with the heat. But then the stars rushed right down to him, so close that he felt like he could touch them if he only stretched out his hand, and he forgot the heat. The residential part of Odaiba, facing Tokyo Bay, boasted an overgrowth of condominium towers, but not many residents. The banks of windows only gave off a limited amount of light, little enough in fact to allow a clear view of the stars. An occasional fresh breeze took the sea out of the air some, and his hair, just washed and still clinging to the back of his neck, began to dry. “Kaoru, close the door! You’ll catch cold!” His mother’s voice, from behind the kitchen counter. The movement of the air must have told her that the door was open. She couldn’t see the balcony from where she was, though, so Kaoru doubted she realized that he was outside, fully exposed to the night air. How could anybody catch cold in this heat, he wondered, exasperated at his mother’s over-protectiveness. Not that it was anything new. He had no doubt that if she knew he was out on the balcony, she’d literally drag him back inside. He shut the door behind him so he couldn’t hear her anymore. Now he was the sole possessor of this sliver of space jutting into the sky a hundred yards above the ground. He turned around and looked through the glass door into the apartment. He couldn’t see his mother directly. But he could read her presence in the milky band of fluorescent light that shone from the kitchen onto the sofa in the living room. As she stood in front of the sink, cleaning up after the meal, her movements caused slight disturbances in the rays of light. Kaoru returned his gaze to the darkness and thought the same thoughts he always did. He dreamed of being able to elucidate, somehow, the workings of the world that surrounded and contained him. It wasn’t that he hoped to solve a mystery or two on the cutting edge of a particular field. What he desired was to discover a unifying theory, something to explain all phenomena in the natural world. His father, an information-engineering researcher, had basically the same dream. When they were together, father and son discussed nothing but the natural sciences. But it wasn’t quite right to call them discussions. Basically, Kaoru, who had just turned ten, shot questions at his father, and his father answered them. Kaoru’s father, Hideyuki, had started out as part of a team working on an artificial life project. Then he’d elected to move his research into a university setting, becoming a professor. Hideyuki never blew off Kaoru’s questions. In fact, he maintained that his son’s bold thinking, unrestrained as it was by common sense, sometimes even gave him hints he could use in his research. Their conversations were always deadly serious. Whenever Hideyuki managed to get a Sunday afternoon off, he and Kaoru would spend it in heated discussions, the progress of which Machiko, Hideyuki’s wife and Kaoru’s mother, would watch with a satisfied look on her face. Her husband had a tendency to get so involved in what he was saying that he would forget his surroundings; her son, on the other hand, never neglected to be mindful that his mother was probably feeling left out because she was unable to join in the debates. He’d explain the issues they were discussing, breaking them down into bitesize chunks, in an effort to allow her to participate. It was a kind of consideration Hideyuki would never be able to imitate. She always wore the same look of satisfaction as she watched her son, full of gratitude for his effortless kindness and pride that at age ten he could already discuss the natural sciences at a level so far beyond her own understanding. Headlights flowed along on Rainbow Bridge far below. Kaoru wondered expectantly if his father’s motorbike was in that belt of light. As always, he couldn’t wait for his father to get home. It was ten years ago that Hideyuki had gone from mere team member on the artificial life project to university professor; ten years ago that he’d moved from the Tokyo suburbs to this condo in Odaiba. The living environment here—the tall apartment buildings on the water’s edge—suited his family’s tastes. Kaoru never got tired of looking down from on high, and then when night came, he’d pull the stars down close, using them to bolster his imagination concerning the world whose ways he couldn’t yet fully grasp. A living space high above the ground: the kind of thing to foster a bird’s eye. Kaoru fell to wondering. If birds represented an evolutionary advance from reptiles, it meant that living spaces had gradually progressed skyward. What effect did that have on human evolution? Kaoru realized that it had been a month since he’d set foot on soil. As he placed his hands on the balcony railing, about his own height, and stretched, he felt it. And not for the first time, either. He’d felt it from time to time for as long as he could remember. Only never, oddly enough, had the feeling come over him when he was with his family. He was used to it by now. So he didn’t turn around, even though he could feel someone watching him from behind. He knew what would be there if he did: the same living room, the dining room beyond it, the kitchen next to it, all unchanged. And in the kitchen, his mother Machiko washing dishes just like always. Kaoru shook his head to chase away the feeling that he was being watched. And the sensation seemed to take a step back, blending into the darkness and disappearing into the sky. Once he was sure it was gone, Kaoru turned around and pressed his back against the railing. Everything was just as it had been. His mother’s shadow, flickering in the band of light from the kitchen doorway. Where had they gone, those countless eyes watching him from behind? Kaoru had felt them, unmistakably. Innumerable gazes, fastened on him. He should have felt those inky stares on his back when he was like this, staring into the apartment, his back to the night. But now those eyes had disappeared, assimilated into the darkness. Just what was it that was watching him? Kaoru had never thrown this question out at his father. He doubted even his father would be able to give him an answer. Now he felt a chill, in spite of the heat. He no longer felt like being on the balcony. Kaoru went back into the living room and peeked into the kitchen at his mother. She’d finished washing the dishes and was now wiping the edge of the sink with a dishcloth. Her back was to him, and she was humming. He stared at her thin, elegant shoulders, willing her to notice his gaze. But she just kept humming, unmoved. Kaoru came up behind her and spoke. “Hey, Mom, when’s Dad getting home?” He hadn’t intended to startle her, but there was no denying that his approach had been a little too silent, and his voice when he spoke a little too loud. Machiko jumped, her arms jerked, and she knocked over a dish that she’d placed at the edge of the sink. “Hey, don’t scare me like that!” She caught her breath and turned around, hands to her breast. “Sorry,” Kaoru said. He often accidentally took his mother unawares like this. “How long have you been standing there, Kaoru?” “Just a few seconds.” “You know Mom’s jumpy. You shouldn’t startle me like that,” she scolded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it.” “Really? Well, you did it all the same.” “Didn’t you notice? I was staring at your back, just for a few seconds.” “Now, why should I notice that? I don’t have eyes in the back of my head, you know.” “I know, but, I …” He trailed off. What he wanted to say was, People can feel someone staring at them even if they don’t turn around. But he knew that would scare his mother even more. So he went back to his original question. “When’s Dad getting home?” Of course, he knew it was pointless to ask: not once had his mother ever known when his father was coming home. “He’ll probably be late again today, I imagine.” She gave her usual vague answer, glancing at the clock in the living room. “Late again?” Kaoru sounded disappointed, and Machiko said, “You know your dad’s really busy at work these days. He’s just getting started on a new project, remember?” She tried to take his side. He got home late every night, but never did she betray the slightest hint of discontent. “Maybe I’ll wait up for him.” After she’d finished putting away the dishes, Machiko went over to her son, wiping her hands with the dishcloth. “Do you have something you want to ask him again?” “Yeah.” “About his work?” “Unh-uh.” “How about I ask him for you?” “Huh?” Kaoru couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “Knock that off! You know, I’m not as dumb as you think I am. I did go to grad school, you know.” “I know that. But … you studied English lit, right?” Machiko had indeed belonged to a department of English language and literature at the university, but to be exact her focus had been on American culture, rather than English literature. She’d been particularly knowledgeable about Native American traditions; even now she kept up on it, reading in her free time. “Never mind that, just tell me. I want to hear what you have to say.” Still holding the dishcloth, Machiko ushered her son into the living room. Kaoru thought it was a little odd: why should she suddenly take an interest tonight, of all nights? Why was she reacting differently? “Wait a minute, then.” Kaoru went to his bedroom and came back with two pieces of paper. He sat down on the sofa next to his mother. As she glanced at the pages in Kaoru’s hand, Machiko said, “What’s this? I hope these aren’t full of difficult figures again!” When it came to mathematical questions, she knew it was time for her to admit defeat. “It’s nothing hard like that this time.” He handed her the two pages, face up, and she looked at them in turn. A map of the world was printed on each one. “Well, this is a change. You’re studying geography now?” Geography was one of her strong suits, particularly North American. She was confident that in this field, at least, she knew more than her son. “Nope. Gravitational anomalies.” “What?” It looked like she’d be out of her league after all. A faint look of despair crept into her eyes. Kaoru leaned forward and began to explain how these maps showed in one glance the earth’s gravitational anomalies. “Okay, there’s a small difference between the values you get from the gravity equation and those you get by correcting gravitation acceleration for the surface of the geoid. Here we have those differences written on maps in terms of positive or negative numbers.” The pages were numbered, “1” and “2”. On the first map were drawn what seemed like an endless series of contour lines representing gravitational anomalies, and each line was labeled with a number accompanied by a plus sign or a minus sign. The contour lines looked just like the ones found in any normal atlas, where positive numbers equaled heights above sea level and negative numbers depths below sea level. But in this case, the lines showed the distribution of gravitational anomalies. In this case, the greater the positive number, the stronger the gravitational force, and the greater the negative number, the weaker the gravitational force at that particular location. The unit was the milligal (mgal). The map was shaded, too: the whiter areas corresponded to positive gravitational anomalies, while the darker areas corresponded to negative ones. It was set up so that everything could be understood at a glance. Machiko stared long and hard at the gravitational anomaly distribution map she held in her hands, and then looked up and said, “Alright, I give up. What is a gravitational anomaly?” She’d long since given up trying to fake knowledge in front of her son. “Mom, surely you don’t think that the earth’s gravity is the same everywhere, do you?” “I haven’t thought about it once since the day I was born, to be honest.” “Well, it’s not. It varies from place to place.” “So what you’re saying is that on this map, the bigger the positive number, the stronger the force of gravity, and the bigger the negative number, the weaker, right?” “Uh-huh, that’s right. See, the matter that makes up the earth’s interior doesn’t have a uniform mass. Think of it like this: if a place has a negative gravitational anomaly, it means that the geological material below it has less mass. In general, the higher the latitude, the stronger the force of gravity.” “And what’s that piece of paper?” Machiko pointed to the page marked “2”. This, too, was a map of the world, but without the complex contour lines: instead it was marked with dozens of black dots. “These are longevity zones.” “Longevity zones? You mean places where people tend to live longer?” First a map of gravitational anomalies, and now a map of longevity zones—she was growing more confused by the minute. “Right. Places whose residents clearly live longer than people living in other areas. This map shows how many of these spots there are in the world,” Kaoru said, indicating the black dots on the map. Four of them were actually marked with double circles. The Caucasus region on the shores of the Black Sea, the Samejima Islands of Japan, the area of Kashmir at the foot of the Karakoram Mountains, and the southern part of Ecuador. All had areas famous for the longevity of their inhabitants. Kaoru seemed to think the second map needed no further explanation. Machiko, though, was looking at it for the first time. She urged him on. “So?” The real question now was, of course, what the two maps had to do with each other. “Put one on top of the other.” Machiko obeyed. They were the same size, so it was easily done. “Now hold them up to the light.” Kaoru pointed to the living room chandelier. Machiko raised them slowly, trying to keep the pages aligned. Now the black dots of the one were showing up in the midst of the contour lines of the other. “Get it?” Machiko didn’t know what she was supposed to get. “Stop putting on airs. Tell me what I’m supposed to see.” “Well, look—the longevity zones correspond perfectly to the low-gravity areas, don’t they?” Machiko stood up and brought the pages closer to the light. It was true: the black dots representing longevity zones only showed up in places demarcated on the first map by low-gravity lines. Very low gravity. “You’re right,” she said, not bothering to disguise her astonishment. But she still cocked her head as if not entirely convinced. As if to say she still wasn’t sure what it was all supposed to mean. “Well, maybe there’s a relationship between longevity and gravity.” “And that’s what you want to ask your father about?” “Well, yeah. By the way, Mom, what do you think the odds were of life arising on earth naturally?” “Like winning the lottery.” Kaoru laughed out loud. “Come on! Way smaller. You can’t even compare the two. We’re talking a miracle.” “But someone always wins the lottery.” “You’re talking about a lottery with, like, a hundred tickets and one winner, where a hundred people buy tickets. I’m talking about rolling dice a hundred times and having them come up sixes every time. What would you think if that happened?” “I’d think the game was rigged.” “Rigged?” “Sure. If someone rolled the same number a hundred times in a row, it’d have to mean the dice were loaded, wouldn’t it?” As she said this, she poked a finger into Kaoru’s forehead affectionately, as if to say, Silly. “Loaded, huh?” Kaoru thought for a while, mouth hanging open. “Of course. Loaded dice. It had to be rigged. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.” “Right?” “And humanity just hasn’t noticed that it’s rigged. But, Mom—what if dice that aren’t loaded come up with the same number a hundred times in a row?” “Well, then we’re talking about God, right? He’s the only one who could do something like that.” Kaoru couldn’t tell if his mother really believed that or not. He decided to move on. “By the way, do you remember what happened on TV yesterday?” Kaoru was referring to his favorite afternoon soap opera. He loved the soaps so much that he even had his mother tape them for him sometimes. “I forgot to watch.” “Well, remember how Sayuri and Daizo met again on the Cape?” Kaoru proceeded to recount the plot of yesterday’s episode almost as if it involved people he knew personally. Sayuri and Daizo were a young couple in their first year of marriage, and a series of misunderstandings had brought them to the brink of divorce. They were still in love, but coincidence had piled on coincidence until they were hopelessly tangled in the cords that bind men and women: now they were in a morass they couldn’t find their way out of. So they’d separated. And then, one day, by pure chance, they’d run into each other on a certain point of land on the Japan Sea coast. The place was special to them—it was where they’d first met. And as they began to remember all the wonderful times they’d had together there, their old feelings for each other had been reawakened. They cleared up their misunderstandings one by one, until they were sure of each other’s love again. Of course, a heartwarming twist lay behind this trite tale. Both of them were under the impression that it was purely by chance that they’d run into each other on this sentimental promontory, but they were wrong. They had friends who were desperate to see them make up, and those friends had colluded, taking it upon themselves to arrange it so that each would be there at that moment. “Get it, Mom? What are the chances of a separated couple running into each other like that—being in the same place at the same time on the same day? Not exactly zero. Coincidental meetings do happen. But in some cases, when the chances of something happening are really small, and then it actually happens, you tend to think that there’s somebody in the shadows pulling strings. In this case, it was Sayuri and Daizo’s nosy friends.” “I think I see where you’re going with this. You’re trying to say that even though there was almost zero chance of it happening, life actually did arise. After all, we exist. In which case, there must be something somewhere pulling the strings. Right?” Kaoru felt that way constantly. There were times when the idea that he was being watched, manipulated, insinuated itself into his brain for no apparent reason. Whether this was a phenomenon unique to himself, or whether it was in fact universal, was something he hadn’t yet figured out. Suddenly he got chills. He shivered. He looked at the sliding-glass door and found that it was open a crack. Still seated on the sofa, he twisted his body until he could close the door. 2 (#ulink_80da8d0d-3e82-57ac-9e58-94d575fb0a0e) Kaoru just couldn’t get to sleep. It was already thirty minutes since he’d crawled into his futon after having given up on waiting for his father to get home. It was customary in the Futami household for both parents and their son to sleep in the same Japanese-style room. With its three Western-style rooms, one Japanese-style room, and good-sized living room, plus dining room and kitchen, their apartment was more than large enough for the three of them. They each had their own room. But for some reason, when it came time to sleep, they’d all gather in the Japanese-style room and lie down together. They’d spread out their futons with Machiko in the middle, flanked by Hideyuki and Kaoru. It had been like that ever since Kaoru was born. Staring at the ceiling, Kaoru spoke softly to his mother, lying next to him. “Mom?” No reply. Machiko tended to fall asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Kaoru wasn’t what you’d exactly call agitated, but there was a faint pounding of excitement in his chest. He was sure he’d discovered something in the relative positions of gravitational anomalies and longevity zones. It couldn’t be just a coincidence. The simple interpretation was that gravity was somehow related to human longevity—perhaps even to the secret of life itself. He’d discovered the correlation purely by chance. There’d been a documentary on TV about villages where people lived to extraordinary ages, and it just so happened that at that moment his computer screen had been displaying a map of world gravitational anomalies. Lately he’d come across a lot of information about gravitational anomalies while fooling around on the computer; he’d gotten interested in gravity. Between the TV screen and the computer screen, something triggered his sixth sense, and he’d overlaid the two maps. It was the kind of inspiration only given to humankind. No matter how prodigious its ability to process information, no matter how fast its calculation speed, a computer has no “inspiration” function, reflected Kaoru. It was impossible for a machine to bring together two utterly disparate phenomena and consider them as one. Were such an ability to arise, it would be because human brain cells had somehow been incorporated into the hardware. Human-computer intercourse. Which actually sounded pretty intriguing to Kaoru. There was no telling what sort of sentient life form that would bring into the world. Endlessly fascinating. Kaoru’s desire to understand the workings of the world manifested itself in a lot of different questions, but at the root of all of them was one basic unknown: the source of life. How did life begin? Or, alternatively: Why am I here? Evolutionary theory and genetics both piqued his curiosity, but his biological inquiries always centered on that one point. He wasn’t a single-minded believer in the variation on the coacervate theory which held that an inorganic world developed gradually until RNA and DNA appeared. He understood that the more one inquired into life the more the idea of self-replication became a big factor. It was DNA that governed self-replication; under the direction of the genetic information it carried came the formation of proteins, the stuff of life. Proteins were made of alignments of hundreds of amino acids, in twenty varieties. The code locked away within DNA was in fact the language that defined the way those acids aligned. Until those amino acids lined up in a certain predetermined way, they wouldn’t form a protein meaningful to life. The primordial sea was often likened to a soup thick with the prerequisites for life. Then some power stirred that thick soup up, until it so happened that things lined up in a meaningful way. But what were the odds of that? To make it easier to comprehend, Kaoru decided to think in terms of a much smaller, neater number. Take a line of a hundred amino acids in twenty varieties, with one of them turning into a protein, the stuff of life. The probability then would be twenty to the hundredth power. Twenty to the hundredth power was a number far greater than all the hydrogen atoms in the universe. In terms of odds, it was like playing several times in a row a lottery in which the winning ticket was one particular hydrogen atom out of a whole universe full of them, and winning every time. In short, the probability was infinitesimal. Essentially impossible. In spite of which, life had arisen. Therefore, the game had to have been rigged. Kaoru wanted to know just how the wall of improbability had been surmounted. His uttermost desire was to understand the nature of that dice-loading—without resorting to the concept of God. On the other hand, sometimes there arose the suspicion that maybe everything was an illusion. There was no way to actually confirm that his body existed as a body. His cognitive abilities may have convinced him that it did, but there was always the possibility that reality was empty. As he lay there in the dim room, illuminated by only a night light, the stillness was such that he could hear his heart beat. So it would seem that right now, at this very moment, it was no mistake to think that he was alive. He wanted to believe in the sound of his heart. The roar of a motorcycle sounded in Kaoru’s inner ear. A sound he shouldn’t have been able to hear. A sound that shouldn’t in reality have been able to reach his ears. “Dad’s home.” In his mind’s eye Kaoru could see his father on his off-road bike skidding into the underground parking area a hundred yards below. He’d bought that bike new less than two months ago. Now his father got off the bike and looked at it with satisfaction. He used it to commute to work, probably because otherwise he’d have no time to ride it. And now he was home. The signs of it communicated themselves to Kaoru intensely. There was no mistaking them. Separated though they were, Kaoru’s sixth sense enabled him to follow his father’s movements tonight. Kaoru imagined his father’s every little movement, tracing each one in his mind. Now he was turning off the ignition, now he was standing in the hall in front of the elevator with his helmet tucked under his arm, now he was looking up at the floor indicator lights. Kaoru counted to see how long it took him to get to the twenty-ninth floor. The elevator door opened and his father strode quickly down the carpeted corridor. He stood in front of the door to apartment 2916. He fished his card-key from his pocket and inserted it … Imagined motions and sounds were replaced by real ones starting with the click of the front door opening. He felt a palpable moment of precariousness, caught between imagination and reality, and a cry rose within his breast. It was Dad after all! Kaoru wanted to jump up and go to greet his father, but he forced himself to hold back. He wanted to try and forecast what his father would do now. Hideyuki seemed to be walking down the hall in the apartment with no care for who might be trying to sleep. The helmet under his arm banged loudly against the wall. His humming was nothing short of its normal volume. At the best of times, Hideyuki seemed to make more than the usual amount of noise when he moved. Maybe it was because he radiated so much energy. Suddenly Kaoru found himself unable to read what his father would do next. All sound stopped, and he had no idea where his father was. His mind was a blank, but then the sliding door to the room where he slept was flung roughly open. Without warning, light from the hall flooded the room. Not that it was that bright, but still Kaoru had to narrow his eyes against it. He hadn’t foreseen this. Hideyuki walked onto the tatami mats until he was right next to Kaoru’s futon. Then he knelt and brought his mouth close to his son’s ear. “Hey, kiddo, wake up.” Kaoru pretended he’d just this minute woken up, saying, “Oh, Dad. What time is it?” “One in the morning.” “Huh.” “C’mon, wake up.” This happened a lot to Kaoru—getting dragged out of bed in the middle of the night so he could keep his dad company over beer, conversing till dawn. Kaoru would always end up missing school the next day, sleeping the whole morning away. Last week he’d been late for school twice on account of his father. Hideyuki evidently didn’t think much of what his son was studying in elementary school. Kaoru often found himself exasperated at his father’s lack of common sense: to a kid, school wasn’t just a place to study, it was also a place to play. His dad didn’t seem to get that. “I want to go to school tomorrow.” Kaoru whispered so as not to wake his mother, sleeping next to him. He didn’t mind getting up to talk—in fact, he’d like nothing better—but he wanted to make it plain that it shouldn’t go too late. “Pretty responsible for a kid. Who do you take after, anyway?” With a devil-may-care tone in his voice, he ignored Kaoru’s efforts to keep the noise down. Frustrated, Kaoru leapt out of his futon. If he didn’t get Dad out of the room now, he’d wake Mom up. Yeah, who did he take after? In terms of facial features, Kaoru and his father sure didn’t have much in common. In terms of personality, too, Kaoru was a lot more sensitive—high-strung, even—than his rough-and-tumble father. Of course, he was still a child, but still, Kaoru was sometimes puzzled by how little he and his father resembled each other, outwardly or inwardly. Kaoru put his hands on his father’s back and pushed him across the room into the hall. Then he kept pushing him until they’d made it to the living room, at which point he sighed and said, “Boy, you’re heavy,” and stopped. If his son was going to push, Hideyuki was going to lean back, which he did, putting up a playful resistance which he supplemented with a forceful fart and a vulgar laugh. Then he noticed that where Kaoru had shoved him to was right next to the kitchen counter: as if he’d just remembered something, he walked over to the refrigerator and opened it. He took out a beer, poured some in a glass, and held it out to the still-panting Kaoru. “You want some too?” Hideyuki hadn’t stopped for a drink on the way home. He was stone-cold sober. This was the first alcohol he’d seen today. “No thanks. Mom’ll get mad at you again.” “Stop being so responsible.” Hideyuki took a showy swig and wiped his mouth. “I guess when a kid’s got a dad like me, he’s got to have his shit together, huh?” With an audible gulp Hideyuki drained his second glass, and in no time he’d finished the bottle. “I’ll tell you, this stuff tastes best when I’m looking at you, kiddo.” For his part, Kaoru didn’t mind keeping his father company when he was drinking. His father took such obvious pleasure in his alcohol that Kaoru had fun just watching him. As the fatigue of the day’s work left his father, Kaoru’s mood, too, lightened. Kaoru went to the fridge, got another bottle, and filled his father’s glass. But instead of saying “thanks,” Hideyuki issued his son an order. “Hey, kiddo, go wake up Machi.” Hideyuki was referring, of course, to Kaoru’s mother. “No way. Mom’s asleep. She’s tired.” “So am I, but do you see me sleeping?” “But you’re up ’cause you want to be.” “Never mind that, just go wake her up.” “Do you need her for something?” “Yeah. I need her to drink beer.” “Maybe she doesn’t want to drink.” “’s alright. Tell her I want her and she’ll come running.” “We don’t need her. We’re okay, just the two of us, aren’t we? Besides, there’s something I want to ask you.” “Gimme a break. I’m asking you here. We don’t want Machi to feel left out, do we?” “This always happens …” Kaoru headed for the bedroom, dragging his feet. For some reason it always fell to Kaoru to wake his mother. Supposedly his father had tried it once a few years ago, and she’d reacted very badly; now he was gun-shy. In the Futami household, Dad always got his way in the end. Not because Hideyuki exercised his patriarchal authority, but rather because, of the three of them, he was the most juvenile. Kaoru respected his father’s talent as a scientist. But he couldn’t help noticing that he was distinctly lacking as a grown-up. Kaoru wasn’t sure exactly what his father was missing, but his child’s mind figured that if growing up was a process of eliminating childishness in favor of adult wisdom, then it was precisely that function that his father lacked. 3 (#ulink_3b6c89c6-647a-55e7-af0b-d991f6876c65) He hated to disturb his mother’s peaceful slumber. Kaoru went to the bedroom door and hesitantly slid it open. But Machiko was already sitting up in her futon, running her fingers through her hair. Kaoru didn’t need to wake her up—his father’s noisy homecoming had taken care of that. “Oh, Mom. Sorry.” He was apologizing for his father. “That’s alright.” The expression in her eyes was as gentle as ever. Kaoru’s mother almost never scolded him. Probably because he never asked for anything unreasonable, she’d always given him what he wanted. Though he was still a child, he could tell from her words and actions how absolutely she relied on him; it made him happy, but also gave him a feeling of grave responsibility. The Futami Family Three-Way Deadlock, was how Kaoru thought of his and his parents’ relationship. It was just like a game of rock-scissors-paper—each of them had someone they could always beat, and someone they’d always lose to. Kaoru was strong against his mother, but weak when it came to his father. So he’d always end up going along with his father’s unreasonable courses of action, doing whatever he was told. Hideyuki was strong enough vis-?-vis his son that he could treat him high-handedly, but somehow he couldn’t manage such a firm front with his wife. When his wife was in a bad mood, he seemed to pale and shrink. So he had to fob the task of waking his sleeping wife off on his son. Kaoru’s mother, meanwhile, was lenient with her son’s demands, but could at times respond severely to her husband’s impossible behavior, scolding him as she would a child. His father would sometimes boast about how this marvelous balance of power maintained harmony in the family. He’d joke about their relationship pseudo-scientifically, calling their family a “self-sustaining structuralization of chaos”. The peculiar situation wasn’t the result of intent on anybody’s part—it had arisen naturally through the interaction and altercations of the three parties involved. “What’s Hide doing?” Machiko scratched her neck and ran her fingers slowly through her hair. “Drinking beer.” “At this late hour? He’s hopeless.” “He wants to know if you’ll join him.” Machiko stood up, laughing through her nose. “I wonder if he’s hungry.” “I don’t know. Probably he just wants to see you, don’t you think?” Kaoru said it with a straight face, but Machiko just laughed, as if to say, You don’t know what you’re talking about. But Kaoru was already quite aware of his parents’ erotic side. One night three months ago—a night in mid-June, a rare dry night in the middle of the rainy season, hot enough to forebode the tropical nights to come—Kaoru had been shocked to run into his father in the kitchen in an unexpected state. That night Kaoru had been shut in his room using his computer, when his thirst finally became too great to ignore. He’d gone to the kitchen to get some mineral water. His parents had apparently shut themselves in their separate rooms, saying they had work to do, and the apartment was quiet. His parents often went to their rooms to work and fell asleep like that. Kaoru had expected it to be the same that night. He didn’t realize they’d been in the same room after all. He didn’t turn on the light. He stood there in the darkness and poured some mineral water into a glass, and then popped a piece of ice into his mouth. Then he opened the refrigerator door again to put the plastic bottle back in, and that was when he found himself facing Hideyuki, who had suddenly entered the kitchen. The light from the refrigerator shone on his father’s naked body. Hideyuki jumped, but in surprise, not embarrassment. “I didn’t know you were there,” he said, and with no thought for his nakedness he grabbed Kaoru’s glass from him and gulped down its contents. What surprised Kaoru was not only that his father was completely unclothed, but that his genitalia was larger than it normally was. It was covered with some sort of thin bodily fluid, and it gleamed slickly. It always hung limply when Kaoru and his father were in the bath together. But now it arched and pulsed, exuding the confidence of having fulfilled its role as a part of its owner’s body. The whole time his father was drinking the mineral water, Kaoru couldn’t tear his gaze from it. “What’re you looking at? Jealous?” “Unh-uh.” Kaoru’s reply was blunt. Hideyuki bent over a bit and placed the tip of his right index finger on the tip of his member. With it he took up a single drop of semen and held it out before Kaoru’s eyes. “Look, kiddo, it’s your ancestors,” he remarked, with mock seriousness. Then he wiped his fingertip on the edge of the sink against which Kaoru was leaning. “Eww,” said Kaoru, twisting away, but he kept staring at the white droplet on the edge of the sink. He didn’t know how he should react. Hideyuki turned his back on him and disappeared into the bathroom. After a while, from the open door came the sound of urination, forced, irregular bursts. Sometimes Kaoru didn’t know if his father was stupid or clever. Sure, he was an excellent computer scientist, but sometimes he did things that were worse than childish. Kaoru respected his father alright, but watching him made him nervous. He could understand his mother’s sufferings. So ran his thoughts as he stared at what his father had called his “ancestors”. The sperm swimming in the tiny droplet gradually died as the stainless steel stole heat from them. They were, of course, invisible to the naked eye, but Kaoru found himself quite aware of the actions of the herd—he could quite easily imagine the faces of each one of them as it died and contributed its corpse to the growing layer of dead. These sperm, born of meiosis inside his father, held, as did his mother’s eggs, half the number of chromosomes contained within the cells of his body. Together they made a fertilized egg, only then supplying the total number of chromosomes necessary for a cell. But it didn’t follow that a sperm was merely half a person. Depending on how you looked at it, the sperm and the egg were the body’s basic structural units. Only reproductive cells could be said to have continued uninterrupted since the inception of life—it wasn’t too much of a stretch to say they possessed a kind of immortality. All that aside, to have a chance to leisurely observe his father’s sperm was something he’d never dreamed of. Right here in front of him was the source of the life form that he knew as himself. Was I really born from something this tiny? He stood there mystified and mute. These sperm hadn’t existed anywhere until they’d been made within his father’s body. Created from nothingness by means of that mysterious power only life possessed. So caught up was he in his examination that Kaoru didn’t notice when his father finished urinating and rejoined him. “What are you doing, kiddo?” He seemed to have already forgotten his own prank. “Observing your … things,” said Kaoru, not looking up. Hideyuki finally realized what his son was looking at and gave a curt laugh. “What kind of idiot would stare at a thing like that? Shame on you.” Hideyuki grabbed a dishtowel, wiped up the semen, and then dropped the dishtowel in the sink. As he did so, the image of life that Kaoru had been constructing fled with its tail between its legs. He suddenly had an awful premonition, as he imagined his own body being wiped up with a rag and tossed away. So his parents’ secret life, something not for him to come in contact with, became, under the influence of his father’s attitude, something subject to no taboo whatsoever. Kaoru remembered that incident three months ago as if it were last night. Of course, Machiko had no way of knowing what mischief her husband had worked on her son as he went about opening the refrigerator and using the bathroom. Had she known, her embarrassment would no doubt have lit a bonfire of anger within her; no doubt she would have refused to speak to her husband for some time. Probably tonight she would have been in no mood to get up and fix him a snack. “What am I going to do with him?” she muttered again and again; still, she fixed her hair with a will, and refastened her misaligned pajama buttons. Kaoru found it a pleasant, warm sight. 4 (#ulink_a15a7005-b551-5b50-8984-55ca0b28e732) Kaoru’s mother put on slippers and headed for the living room, and he followed her. “Sorry to get you out of bed,” Hideyuki said to Machiko. “That’s okay. I’ll bet you’re hungry, aren’t you?” “A little.” “Why don’t I make something?” Machiko was already heading for the kitchen, but Hideyuki stopped her, holding out a glass of beer. “Have a drink first.” Machiko accepted the glass and took a few sips. She didn’t like carbonated beverages, so it was impossible for her to down a beer in one gulp. That didn’t mean she wasn’t a drinker, though—she was above average when it came to holding her liquor. When he’d seen that his wife had settled down with her beer, Hideyuki finally loosened his necktie. As a researcher, he was under no special requirement to wear a tie to work. Still, every day he put on a suit and buttoned the top button of his shirt before getting on his motorcycle to go to the lab. No doubt the sight of him in a suit riding an off-road bike struck people as peculiar, but that didn’t bother Hideyuki in the least. Kaoru’s mother poured some oil into a frying pan and started warming up some sausages, and his father stood next to her and began reporting to her on his day in the lab. Oblivious to the fact that she hadn’t asked him, he recounted the day’s events with brio, mentioning coworkers by name, sometimes with a disparaging comment. Kaoru began to feel bored as his parents receded into their own world, seeming to forget his presence beside them. Then Machiko noticed him, and in her considerate way changed the subject. “By the way, Kaoru, why don’t you show your father what you showed me?” “Huh? What?” He’d been taken by surprise. “You know, those gravitational anomaly thingies.” “Oh, those.” Kaoru took the two pages out of the dish cupboard where he’d put them away and handed them to Hideyuki. “You’ll be amazed at what he’s discovered,” his mother said, but Kaoru didn’t feel it was that great a discovery. “What’s this?” said Hideyuki, holding the printouts up to his face. He gazed at the first one, with its contour lines and their positive and negative numbers, and within a few seconds had grasped its meaning. “I get it, this is a map of the earth’s gravitational anomalies.” He turned his gaze to the second page, and this time he didn’t have such an easy time figuring it out. He frowned. Hideyuki already had a geological map of the earth stored in his brain, but try as he might he couldn’t figure out what the black marks on this map meant. He tried several guesses connected with gravitational anomalies, such as subterranean mineral deposits, before giving up and turning to his son. “Alright, you got me. What is this?” “The earth’s longevity zones.” “Longevity zones?” No sooner had he heard the words than Hideyuki placed the maps over one another and looked at them anew. “Would you look at that. The longevity zones are only found in places with high negative gravitational anomalies.” Kaoru was impressed, as usual. His father’s mental quickness was one of the reasons why he enjoyed their discussions so much. “That’s right!” he said, his excitement lending his words added emphasis. “I wonder why that is,” Hideyuki asked himself, raising his eyes from the maps. “Is this, like, common knowledge?” It had worried Kaoru to think that people had already noticed this correspondence, that it was only he who’d been ignorant of it. “Well, I for one wasn’t aware of it.” “Really?” “So, what? Does this mean that perhaps there’s some sort of relationship between people’s lifespans and gravity? The data’s so clear and specific, it’s hard to think it’s just a coincidence. By the way, kiddo, how do you define a ‘longevity zone’?” It was only natural for Hideyuki to stick at that point. Kaoru felt the same way. How exactly should he define a longevity zone? Was it an area with lots of long-lived people in it? Perhaps an area where the average lifespan was longer than in other areas? If that was what he meant, there was nothing to prevent him from seeing all of Japan as one big longevity zone. He had to use a more limiting definition. It would be more exact, at least, to stipulate that a longevity zone was an area clearly delineated from the surrounding territory, a high percentage of the inhabitants of which were a hundred or more years in age. But in reality, no such mathematical definition existed. The villages that he’d seen talked about on TV were simply places that had been found, statistically and experientially, to have lots of long-lived people in them, and they were known for it. “I’m not sure there is a mathematical definition.” He found it more and more curious that the villages mentioned on TV, defined as impressionistically and sentimentally as they were, should match up so nicely with gravitational anomalies, so clearly visible as numerical values. Kaoru and Hideyuki both were impressed by this. “Too vague. Still, I wonder why it came out like this?” Hideyuki said this under his breath, as if bothered. “Have you heard anything about the relationship between gravity and life, Dad?” “Well, they did an experiment where they had a chicken lay eggs in a zero-gravity environment, and they turned out to be unfertilized eggs.” “I’ve heard about that. That was ages ago.” Somewhere in the corner of his mind he recalled the sight of his father’s sperm three months ago. He remembered reading an article about the chickens, which had laid unfertilized eggs in spite of the fact that they had copulated. He’d forgotten exactly what the experiment had been trying to prove. He’d read about it in a mass-market weekly, which had seized on the results of what was actually an old experiment in order to make some point about modern sexuality. His imagination started to run away with him. Suppose an egg started to undergo cellular division without fertilization, growing through birth to maturity—what kind of human being would result? Kaoru got a mental image of a woman with a smooth, egg-shaped face. He shivered. He tried to banish the image, but the woman’s slippery face wouldn’t leave him. “Well, nobody’s made a logical connection yet, I don’t think. But anyway, why did you think to compare gravitational anomalies and longevity?” “Huh?” Sometimes the images taking shape in his brain undermined Kaoru’s ability to think, and he couldn’t hear what was being said to him. “Stop making me repeat myself.” Few things annoyed the impatient Hideyuki more. “Sorry.” “What gave you the idea, in other words?” Kaoru explained how a TV special on longevity villages had been playing in the background while on the computer he’d been looking at a map of gravitational anomalies, and how he’d had a flash of intuition. “I think it was just a coincidence.” “Meaningless coincidences produce nothing. Take jinxes, for instance.” “Jinxes?” Kaoru actually had something of an idea why his father would bring up something unscientific like that now. He was trying to give Machiko an entry into the conversation. Having pretty much finished fixing snacks to go with the beer, Machiko had joined them at the dining room table, where she sat listening to the conversation without offering up a word. Not that she’d looked particularly bored, but she did lean forward just a bit when her husband mentioned jinxes. Her reaction didn’t escape Hideyuki’s notice. “Hey, Machi. Know of any interesting jinxes?” “Why ask me?” “You like that kind of thing, don’t you? Fortune-telling, charms, stuff like that. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you reading the horoscopes every week. Plus, you know a lot about folk-tales from around the world.” “Okay, jinxes. How about the one that says if you give a handkerchief to your lover as a present you’ll break up?” “Everybody knows that one. Don’t you know anything, you know, weirder?” Kaoru thought he could guess what kind of thing his father was looking for. He was probably trying to find an example of a belief that connected, seemingly at random, two disparate phenomena. “Something weirder? Okay, how about this? If you see a black cat swimming in a river, someone close to you will die.” Kaoru immediately pursed his lips. “Really?” “That’s what they say. You’ve heard it, haven’t you, dear?” She looked at Hideyuki for support. But he just laughed and cocked his head. “Don’t you have any that are just way out there?” “How about the one that says, when you leave the house, if a chair has its back to the window, you’ll drop your wallet?” Hideyuki clapped his hands. “Okay, we’ll go with that one. Now, it may be true or it may be false, but let’s just take it as a given that such a superstition exists.” “It does!” Machiko frowned. “Alright, alright!” Hideyuki said, putting his palms together. “Now, we have two phenomena brought together. A chair having its back to the window when you leave the house, and dropping your wallet. Scientifically, these two phenomena have no relation to each other. There are lots of superstitions in the world, and no doubt different kinds come about for different reasons. But what I find fascinating is when you have the exact same superstition existing in two distant places, isolated from each other. If this crazy superstition that Machi just told us about happened to exist in different places on the globe, it’d make you wonder, wouldn’t it? Of course it would.” “So, are there superstitions like that? That exist in different places in the world?” Kaoru looked back and forth between Machiko and Hideyuki. Hideyuki prompted his wife. “How about it, Machi?” “Of course there are. The jinx I just told you about is one. It exists in Europe and in the Americas, too.” Kaoru and Hideyuki exchanged skeptical looks. “By the way, Machi, have you ever thought about why superstitions arise?” “No,” she said, curtly. “What about you, kiddo?” “I guess it has something to do with human psychology. I’m not real sure, though.” By this point there were five empty beer bottles sitting in front of Hideyuki. His conversational engine was finally getting warmed up. “Ask yourself: what is a superstition? It’s an oral tradition that if you see something or experience something, a certain thing will happen. With a jinx it’s something bad, but of course a superstition can involve something good, or even something that can’t necessarily be categorized as good or bad. To cut to the chase, a superstition is something that connects one phenomenon with another phenomenon. Sometimes science can explain the connection. For example, the superstition that when clouds move from east to west it means it’ll rain can be explained very easily by modern meteorology. There are others that you can understand intuitively, like the one that says being photographed takes years off your life. Or ones about breaking chopsticks or sandal thongs, or seeing black cats or snakes—those aren’t too hard to understand. Those things are just eerie somehow. There’s something about black cats and snakes that makes people the world over uneasy. “The problem is superstitions that aren’t reasonable. The ones that strike you as totally arbitrary, like, ‘Why in the world do people believe that?’ The jinx Machi told us about is a good example. What could having a chair back toward the window when you leave the house possibly have to do with dropping your wallet?” Hideyuki stopped and looked Kaoru in the eye. “Maybe it’s based on experience.” “No doubt it is. Maybe people found out through experience that the chances of dropping your wallet are greater if a chair’s back is to the window when you leave your house.” “But there’s no statistical necessity that it has to be that way.” “We’re not talking strict accuracy here. Let’s say when you drop your wallet, it just so happens that the chair’s back is to the window. And let’s say that the next time you drop your wallet, the chair’s back is toward the window again. So you tell someone about it, suggesting that the two phenomena are related somehow. Now the important thing is whether or not the person you tell about it has had a similar experience—whether or not they can nod and say, ‘yeah, you’re right’. If the idea is dismissed by a third party, then chances are it won’t be handed down. But once it becomes established as a jinx, then by the mere fact of people’s being aware of it, it can influence their actions, and so it stands a good chance of surviving. Once the relationship is established between the two things, the fact that people are aware of the relationship strengthens the bond even more, see. Reality and imagination begin to correspond to one another.” “So you’re saying that the phenomenon of a chair having its back to the window when you leave the room and the phenomenon of dropping your wallet exert some kind of invisible influence on each other?” “You can’t rule out the possibility that they’re connected on some level, deep down.” What was his father trying to say, using the superstition as an example? Kaoru had the feeling that he could substitute “life” for “superstition” and the argument would still stand up. “Life,” Kaoru muttered. As if that word were a cue, the three exchanged glances. “It reminds me of the Loop.” It was Machiko who brought up the subject. It seemed she felt it was a natural progression from the word “life”. Hideyuki had started his college career in pre-med. He’d switched fields, to logic, in graduate school, studying the concepts of metamathematics, but one thing led to another and he found his old abandoned interest in the world of living things rekindled. He decided it would be interesting to see if the language of mathematics could explain life. His original interest in biology was reanimated as it found expression in numbers. Thus it was that when he’d finished his doctorate and received an offer to join a joint Japanese-American research project on artificial life, he’d accepted without a second thought. To create life within a computer? Hideyuki couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do more. He was still young, in his late twenties, married but childless. Five years after he took the appointment, the project was brought to a halt in an entirely unforeseen way. It wasn’t a failure, having achieved a certain manner of success. But it never felt like success to Hideyuki because the way it all ended stuck in his throat. This project into which he’d poured all his youthful passion, only to see it miscarry, was known as the Loop. 5 (#ulink_cfb825e4-54c0-59d6-bd9a-24f0e3e7d80e) Hideyuki presented a new question to Kaoru, forcefully steering the conversation away from the Loop. “So do you think life emerged by chance or by necessity? Which side are you on?” “The only answer I can give to that question is, ‘I don’t know’.” It was all he could say. He couldn’t affirm the necessity argument just because he himself existed. In the absence of confirmed life anywhere else, it was possible that life on earth was an utterly random gift, unique in the universe. “I’m asking you what you think.” “But Dad, aren’t you always saying that it’s important to recognize what modern science doesn’t know? To be willing to say ‘I don’t know’?” Hideyuki chuckled at the question. A look at his face revealed the alcohol taking effect. The number of empties was up to six. “You don’t have to tell me that. Think of this as a game if you have to. We’re in the world of play. I want to know what your gut tells you, that’s all.” Machiko had gone into the kitchen to fry up some noodles; now she stopped what she was doing and fixed her gaze on Kaoru, a gleam in her eye. Kaoru thought about himself. Things like the emergence of life and the universe were beyond the reach of his imagination, when he got right down to it. It was better to take the emergence of one individual as an example, and work up from there. First and foremost, what about the inception of his own life? When was that? When he’d crawled out of his mother’s womb and had his umbilical cord cut? Or when the egg, after insemination in the fallopian tube, had been safely embedded in the wall of the womb? If he was going to talk about inception, then he figured he should probably take insemination as the first step. His nervous system had taken shape by around three weeks from insemination. Now, he thought, just suppose that a fetus of that age had consciousness, the ability to think. To that fetus, the mother’s womb would be the whole universe. Why am I here, the fetus asks. Immersed in amniotic fluid, he begins to wonder about the mechanism of conception. But as he knows nothing of the world outside the womb, he can’t even imagine that his own conception was preceded by reproductive acts. All he can do is make guesses based on evidence he finds within the womb. So he begins to think of the amniotic fluid itself as his parent—a natural conclusion. He begins to think of the amniotic fluid as the primordial soup covering the primeval earth, churning until twenty kinds of amino acid join hands in brotherhood to make life-enabling proteins; these then begin to replicate themselves … The probability of which is, of course, the same as the monkey at the typewriter, banging keys at random, coining up with a passage from Shakespeare. A probability so low that even with trillions of monkeys banging away for trillions of years, it was still virtually nil. And if a passage from Shakespeare should appear anyway? Would people still call it a coincidence? Of course not—they’d suspect some kind of fix. A man in a monkey suit sitting at one of the typewriters, or an intelligent monkey … But the fetus immersed in amniotic fluid thinks his conception was by chance—he can’t make his imagination comprehend the mechanism behind it. And that’s because he doesn’t know about the world outside. Only when he crawls out of the birth canal after roughly thirty-six weeks in the womb does he for the first time see the outside of the mother who bore him. Only after growing and increasing in knowledge yet further does he come to understand with exactness why and how he was conceived and born. As long as we’re inside the womb—inside the universe—we can’t understand the way it works. Our powers of apprehension are blacked out on that point. They have to be. Kaoru decided to apply the example of the fetus in its universe—the womb—to the question of life on earth and the universe it occupied. In most cases, the womb comes pre-equipped with everything necessary to nurture a fetus after insemination. But does it always host a fetus? Of course not. The phenomenon of insemination itself is controlled largely by chance. And many women choose not to have children. And even if a woman has a couple of children, the length of time in which her womb holds a fetus is still less than two years total. In other words, equipped for a fetus though it may be, the womb is usually unoccupied. Kaoru decided to take a step back and think about the universe again. Given that we are actually existing within it, it seems reasonable to say that the universe is equipped with what is necessary to sustain life. In which case, life arose out of necessity, right? But, no, remember the womb: it may be capable of sustaining the life of a fetus, but it’s usually without one. So life arose by chance, then? The universe is not constantly filled with life—indeed, a universe that does not beget life may indeed be more natural. In the end, Kaoru couldn’t come up with an answer after all. But there was Hideyuki, drinking his beer and expecting a reply. “Maybe we’re the only life in the universe after all,” said Kaoru. Hideyuki grunted. “That’s what your gut tells you?” Hideyuki stared at his son fascinatedly, then shifted his gaze to his wife. Machiko was sleeping peacefully, her head pillowed on her hands on the table. “Hey, go get a blanket for Machi, will ya?” “Okay.” He immediately went to the bedroom and brought back a blanket, which he handed to Hideyuki. Hideyuki draped it over Machiko’s shoulders and smiled at her sleeping face before turning back to his son. The eastern sky had begun to whiten without them noticing, and the temperature of the room had dropped. Night in the Futami household was over, and it was just about time to sleep. Hideyuki’s eyes as he drank the last of the stale beer were hollow. Kaoru waited until his father was finished drinking, then said, “Hey, Dad. Can I ask you a favor?” “What?” Kaoru lay the gravitational anomaly map in front of his father again. “What do you think of this?” Kaoru’s pinky was pointing at a particular spot on the map, a desert region, the so-called Four Corners area of the western North American continent, where the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado met. “What about it?” Hideyuki brought his eyes close to the map, blinking. “Look closely at it. Now take another look at the gravitational anomaly figures for this area.” Hideyuki rubbed his eyes again and again, as the numbers swam in his tired eyes. “Hmm.” “See, the space between the contour lines gets smaller and smaller the closer they get to this point.” “That’s what it looks like.” “That means an extreme gravitational anomaly.” “I see. The negative values are quite large here.” “I think there has to be something there, geologically speaking. It’s like there’s something deep under the earth’s surface there with extremely little mass.” Kaoru took a ballpoint pen and made an X where the four states met. He didn’t have a gravitational figure for that exact point, but the contour lines surrounding it certainly pointed to a spot with particularly low gravity. For a while, Kaoru and Hideyuki looked at the map in silence. Then Machiko raised her head a little and broke in, drowsily, “I’m sure there’s nothing there, dear.” Evidently she’d been listening to their conversation the whole time, only pretending to be asleep. “I didn’t think you were awake.” His mother’s words were provocative. Kaoru tried to imagine a space filled with nothingness deep beneath the desert. If the earth there concealed a huge cavity, it could easily explain the extreme gravitational anomaly. And in that huge limestone cavern lived an ancient tribe of people … Kaoru could see it now, a close-up look at an extreme longevity zone. Even more than before, Kaoru wanted to go there. Machiko yawned and mumbled, “That sounds strange though—if it’s nothing, how can it be there?” She got up from her chair. “See, Mom, you’re interested in the place, too. If low gravity and longevity are connected, then maybe there’s a city of ancient people there, cut off from civilization. It’s at least possible, right?” Kaoru was fishing for a response, based on his knowledge of Machiko’s interest in North American folk tales, especially Native American myths. He figured that he stood a better chance of getting what he wanted if he got Machiko to go to bat for him than if he just blurted it out himself. Just as he’d hoped, Machiko’s interest seemed to grow suddenly. “Well, it is close to a Navajo reservation.” “See?” Kaoru knew—Machiko had told him—that there were tribes who had made their homes in the wildest deserts and ravines, and whose lives today were not all that different from the way they’d lived in ancient times. He hadn’t heard of any noted for their longevity, but he knew that if he suggested it without really suggesting it, he could pique Machiko’s curiosity. “Hey, kiddo, what are you trying to pull here?” Hideyuki had evidently guessed what Kaoru was going for. Kaoru shot a meaningful glance at his mother. “It’d be interesting to go there,” Machiko said. She sounded less like she was pleading Kaoru’s case than like she’d become interested herself. “Yeah, let’s go!” Kaoru said, expectantly. “Four Corners, eh? Talk about coincidences.” “Huh?” Kaoru looked at his father. “Well, in a little while—next summer, maybe, or the summer after that—it looks like my work is going to take me there.” Kaoru yelped in delight. “Really?” “Yeah, I’ll have to be at some laboratories in New Mexico, in Los Alamos and Santa Fe.” Kaoru clapped his palms together as if in prayer. “Take me! Please?” “Want to come too, Machi?” “Of course.” “Well, then I guess we’ll all go.” “That’s a promise, okay?” Kaoru held out paper and pen. If he was bound by a contract, Hideyuki couldn’t turn around someday and pretend he’d never said it. This was just a little insurance. Kaoru knew from experience that his father’s promises stood more chance of being kept if they were backed up by writing. Hideyuki filled out the contract in his sloppy handwriting and waved it in Kaoru’s face. “There, see? It’s a promise.” Kaoru took it and examined it. He felt satisfied. Now he could sleep soundly. Dawn was breaking and September was ending, but still the sun as it climbed was brighter than at midsummer. A few stars still shone evanescently in the western sky, looking now as if they would disappear at any moment. There was no line dividing light from dark—Kaoru couldn’t say just where night ended and morning began. He loved with all his heart this moment when the passage of time manifested itself in changing colors. Kaoru remained standing by the window after his parents disappeared into the bedroom. The city was starting to move, its vibrations reverberating in the reclaimed land like a fetus lacking in the womb. Before his gaze a huge flock of birds was circling over Tokyo Bay. Their cries, like the mewling of newborns, asserted their vitality under the dying stars. At times like this, staring at the blackness of the sea and the subtly changing colors of the sky, Kaoru’s desire to understand the workings of the world only increased. Taking in scenery from on high stimulated the imagination. The sun rose above the eastern horizon, pushing the night aside; Kaoru went into the bedroom and curled up in his futon. Hideyuki and Machiko were already asleep in their different positions, Hideyuki with arms and legs akimbo and no blanket atop him, Machiko curled into a ball hugging the rumpled blanket. Kaoru lay down beside them, hugging his pillow and clutching the paper holding the promise that they’d go to the desert. Curled up like that, he looked something like a fetus. PART TWO (#ulink_f743b105-9411-5974-8c51-dbb802927648) The Cancer Ward (#ulink_f743b105-9411-5974-8c51-dbb802927648) 1 (#ulink_7f88a1e7-18e5-5fec-a36f-e89da5c4413a) Recently Kaoru had begun to look older than his twenty years. It wasn’t so much that his face had aged as that his unusually large frame projected a robust presence. He exuded an air of adulthood. People he met tended to tell him he was mature for his age. Kaoru thought that was only natural, considering how he’d been forced to become his family’s pillar of strength at the age of thirteen. Ten years ago, in elementary school, he’d been skinny and short, and people had often thought him younger than he was. Supposedly he’d been something of a know-it-all, tutored as he’d been in the natural sciences by his father and in languages by his mother. His main job had been to give his imagination free reign, to wonder about the structure and workings of the universe, rather than to involve himself in mundane chores. Ten years ago—it felt like another world altogether. Back then, playing with his computer, sitting up talking with his parents into the wee hours of the night, the road ahead of them had been clear and without shadow. He could remember how he’d started linking about longevity and gravity, and how that had turned into a family plan to visit the Four Corners region of North America. He’d even gotten his father to sign a pact to that effect. Kaoru still kept that contract in his desk drawer. It had never been fulfilled. Hideyuki still wanted to honor it, but Kaoru the medical student knew better than anybody how impossible that was. Kaoru had no skill that could tell him when or by what route the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus had infiltrated Hideyuki’s body. No doubt the virus had turned one of his body’s cells cancerous years before he first complained of stomach problems. Then that newborn cancer cell had probably undergone its first cellular division not long after he’d promised that trip to the desert. And those cancer cells had silently, steadily reproduced themselves until the family trip had become an unattainable dream. Hideyuki’s initial plans to visit some laboratories in New Mexico had been delayed; only three years after the initial promise had he been able to finally work the visits into his schedule. He’d arranged for a three-month stint at the Los Alamos and Santa Fe research centers. He’d planned to depart for New Mexico two weeks early, so he and Machiko and Kaoru could visit the site of the negative gravitational anomaly that still fascinated Kaoru so. And then in early summer, two months before they were scheduled to leave—after they’d already bought the plane tickets and the whole family had their hearts set on the trip—Hideyuki suddenly complained of stomach pain. Why don’t you see a doctor, Machiko said, but he wouldn’t listen. Hideyuki decided it was a simple case of gastritis, and made no lifestyle changes. But as the summer wore on, the pain became worse, until finally, three weeks before their departure date, he vomited. Even then, Hideyuki insisted it was nothing. He kept refusing to be examined, reluctant to cancel the plans they were so excited about. Finally, though, the symptoms became unendurable, and he agreed to go to the university hospital and see a doctor who happened to be a friend of his. The examination found a polyp in his pylorus, and he was admitted to the hospital. Naturally, the trip was cancelled. Neither Kaoru nor Machiko was in any mood to travel. The doctor in charge informed them that the polyp was malignant. Thus did Kaoru’s thirteenth summer turn from heaven into hell: not only did the trip fall through, but he and his mother ended up spending most of the sweltering summer going back and forth to the hospital. Don’t worry, I’ll get better next year, and then we’ll go to the desert like I promised, just you wait and see, bluffed his father. Their one comfort was Hideyuki’s positive attitude. Machiko believed her husband, but, at the same time, whenever she let herself imagine what might happen, she became despondent. She grew weaker emotionally, and physically. And that was why it fell to Kaoru to take a central role in the family. It was Kaoru who stood in the kitchen and made sure his mother ate enough when she couldn’t bring herself to think about food; it was Kaoru who swiftly absorbed enough medical knowledge to plant thoughts of an optimistic future in his mother’s head. There was an operation in which two thirds of Hideyuki’s stomach was removed, and it went well; if the cancer hadn’t metastasized, there was every chance he’d get well. By the beginning of autumn Hideyuki was able to return home, and to his laboratory. It was around that time that a change began to appear in Hideyuki’s attitude toward Kaoru. On the one hand, as a man he had a new respect for the dependability his son showed while he was in the hospital, but on the other hand he began to be stricter with his son out of a new determination to make him into a stronger man. He stopped calling him “kiddo”, and encouraged him to spend less time on his computer and more time exercising his body. Kaoru didn’t resist, but went along with his father’s new expectations: he could detect a certain desperation in his father, as if he wanted to transfer something from his own body to his son’s before it disappeared. He knew his father loved him, and he felt special, as if he’d inherited his father’s will; pride coursed through him. Two years passed uneventfully, and Kaoru’s fifteenth birthday came around. But changes had been taking place inside his father’s body. Those changes were revealed by a bloody stool. This was a red light signaling the spread of the cancer. With no hesitation this time, Hideyuki saw the doctor, who gave him a barium enema and x-rayed him. The x-ray showed a shadow on the sigmoid colon about half the size of a fist. The only conceivable course of action was surgery to cut it out. There were, however, two possibilities for the surgery. One option would leave the anus; the other would remove more tissue and require the insertion of an artificial anus. With the former, there was the fear that they would miss some of the invading cancer cells, leaving the possibility of a recurrence, while the latter option of removing the entire sigmoid colon allowed for more surety. The doctor’s opinion was that from a medical standpoint the artificial anus would be preferable, but because of the inconvenience and lifestyle changes that would bring, he had to leave the final decision up to the patient. But Hideyuki didn’t flinch as he coolly chose the artificial anus. If you open me up and can’t say with certainty that the cancer hasn’t spread that far, then I want you to cut it all out without hesitation, he’d volunteered. He intended to bet on the option with the best odds of survival. Once again the summer found him back in the hospital for surgery. When they cut him open, the doctors found that the cancer hadn’t invaded as far as they had feared; normally, in this situation, leaving the anus in would give at least even odds of success. But the surgeon in charge decided, in view of the patient’s expressed wishes, to remove the sigmoid colon entirely. Once again autumn found Hideyuki checking out of the hospital. For the next two years he’d lived in fear of signs of a relapse, as he strove to get used to life with a colostomy. Exactly two years later there was another sign, this one a yellow light, as it were. Hideyuki became feverish and his body took on a yellowish cast, symptoms that got worse day by day. One look at his jaundiced condition told the doctors that the cancer was attacking his liver. The doctors hung their heads. They thought they’d made sure, over the course of two previous surgeries, that the cancer hadn’t spread to the liver or lymph nodes. It was at this time that Kaoru began to suspect that what they were seeing was the emergence of some unknown illness, something that was indeed a kind of cancer, but one different from those previously known. His interest in basic medicine intensified. In the summer of his seventeenth year, having graduated from high school a year early, he entered the pre-med program in the same university that his father had attended. The third time he lay down on the operating table, Hideyuki lost half his liver. He subsequently checked out of the hospital, but neither Kaoru nor Machiko could make themselves believe now that the battle with cancer was over. The family watched for enemy movements with bated breath, wondering where the cancer would invade next; the return of a peaceful, happy home life was something hardly to be hoped for. That cancer won’t rest until every organ in his body has been plucked out, Machiko insisted, and she wouldn’t listen to any of Kaoru’s medical knowledge. If she heard about a new vaccine, she’d scramble to get her hands on it even before it was fully tested. Hearing vitamin therapy was effective she tried that; she pressured the doctors into trying lymphocyte treatment; she even sought salvation in charismatic religion. She was willing to try anything—she couldn’t swear she wouldn’t sell her soul to the devil if it would save her husband’s life. It depressed Kaoru to see his mother running around like a woman possessed. It was beginning to look like his father’s death would also mean the collapse of his mother’s psyche. After that, Hideyuki spent most of his time in his hospital bed. He was still only forty-nine, but he looked like an old man of seventy. His hair had fallen out as a side-effect of the anti-cancer drugs, he was emaciated, his skin had lost its luster, and he was constantly running his fingers over his whole body and complaining of itchiness. But even so, he never lost his attachment to life. As his wife and son sat by his bedside he’d hold their hands and say, “You listen to me, next year we’re going to that desert in North America.” And he’d force a smile. It wasn’t exactly false cheer—he obviously fully intended to fight this illness so he could keep his promise. The sight was both reassuring and painful. As long as his father showed such a positive attitude toward life, Kaoru never entertained thoughts of giving up. No matter how bad the cancer got, Kaoru believed his father would conquer his illness in the end. At around this time, a type of cancer with the same progression as Hideyuki’s began to be identified, first in Japan, then worldwide. At first the true cause of this new strain could not be identified, as if it lay wrapped under a veil. A few medical professionals supported a theory that it was the work of a new virus that turned cells cancerous, but they couldn’t explain how this cancer virus differed from others, and besides, there had been no reports of such a virus being successfully isolated. But the vague suspicion spread. It can take several years after a new disease has been identified to pinpoint the virus that causes it. The lag was especially understandable in the case of the cancer that had afflicted Hideyuki and millions of others, because at first it looked just like any other cancer: nobody realized they were dealing with a new disease. But gradually the world came to be gripped by fear that a terrible new virus had been unleashed. Finally, one year ago, the new cancer virus had been successfully isolated in a laboratory at the medical school of Fukuzawa University. With that they had proof: a virus was the cause of this metastatic cancer. The new virus was named the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus, and it was thought to have the following characteristics. First, it was an RNA retrovirus that actually caused normal cells to become cancer cells. Thus, anyone infected with the virus ran the risk of developing cancer, regardless of whether or not they had been exposed to carcinogens. However, there was room for individual variation: there were confirmed cases, though only a few, of infected people who were mere carriers, never developing cancer themselves. It took on average three to five years from the time of infection for the cancer to grow large enough to be detected clinically, although the degree of individual variation in this was great. Second, the cancer was contracted through the direct introduction of virally-infected lymphocytes into the body. That is, it was not spread through the air, but through sexual contact, blood transfusions, breast-feeding, and similar contact. Thus, it was not what would be called highly contagious. But there was no definitive evidence to say that it would not at some point in the future become transmissible through the air. This virus mutated with frightening speed. Due to the similarity in the manner of its transmission, some scholars speculated that the new virus was the result of some sort of mutation in the AIDS virus. Perhaps the AIDS virus had sensed that it was about to be eliminated by vaccines, and so had colluded with an existing cancer virus, skillfully changing its appearance. And indeed, there was a nasty resemblance between the two viruses, not only in how they spread, but in the way they nested in cells in the human body. When the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus, carrying reverse-transcription enzymes, merged with human cellular tissue, the RNA and reverse-transcription enzymes were released to synthesize the double helix of DNA. Then, this synthesized DNA mingled with normal cellular DNA, turning the cell cancerous. Which was bad enough. But it didn’t end there. The cell could now no longer tell the difference between its own DNA and the viral DNA, and so it kept manufacturing the cancer virus and releasing it outside the cell. The released virus made its way into the bloodstream and the lymph stream, where it deviously fought off attacking immune cells while awaiting the chance to move into a new host. The third characteristic: when the cancer started, almost without exception it metastasized and spread throughout the body with frightful strength. This, of course, was why it was called the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus. There are benign tumors and malignant ones, and the difference between them lies in the thorny questions of invasiveness and metastasis. A person may develop a tumor and still have no reason to fear, as long as it doesn’t spread through the surrounding area, move into the blood and lymphatic vessels, and metastasize. But this metastatic cancer spread through rapid reproduction and extreme invasiveness, and was highly resistant to the immune-system attacks it experienced as it circulated through the lymph and blood streams. It was much more likely than normal cancer to survive in the circulatory system. As a result, anyone who came down with this cancer had to assume a 100% probability that it would metastasize. The question of whether or not one survives cancer can be restated in terms of whether or not one can prevent that cancer from metastasizing. With a 100% chance of metastasis, it was essentially impossible to hope for a complete recovery from MHC. The fourth characteristic was that the cancer cells created by this virus were immortal—they would live forever if their host didn’t die. Normal human cells have a limit to the number of times they can divide over the course of their existence—just like humans themselves, they have a certain span of life allotted to them at birth. For example, by the time a person becomes an adult, his or her nerve cells have lost their ability to reproduce themselves, so that they are no longer replenished. It might be said that nerve cells have the same lifespan as humans do. In this way, the aging and death of cells is intimately connected with the question of human lifespan. But these cancer cells, when removed from a host and sustained in a culture fluid, went on dividing infinitely—they would never die. There were certain religionists who pointed to this and spoke of it in a prophetic vein, saying, If we could harness the power of these cancer cells and transfer it to normal cells, we would be able to achieve immortality—we’d never grow old. But of course these were nothing but amateurish delusions. It was paradoxical that cells which had achieved immortality would then kill their human hosts, assuring that they themselves would die. But it was a paradox that, by and large, people managed to accept. 2 (#ulink_e1a86a2a-b31b-5bf2-9452-3f0ed236f280) It was the rainy season, early summer of the year before Kaoru was to take his national examinations, and every day was a busy one for him. Visiting his dad and working a part-time job took up so much of his life that he barely had time to look after his mother’s mental state—much less study. If left to her own devices, his mother would try to get her hands on anything that claimed to be effective against cancer; Kaoru had to keep a constant watch so it didn’t get out of control. Hideyuki didn’t approve of his son spending so much energy on his part-time job. He felt that his son should concentrate on studying, and that splitting his time between that and working was essentially a waste. The idea that Kaoru was doing it on account of his own illness irritated him even more: Hideyuki insisted that he could pay for Kaoru’s school expenses, that they had enough money in savings. As far as talking big went, he was as healthy as ever; but the optimism in his words was Kaoru’s salvation. In reality, Kaoru was the one who held the family’s finances in his hands, and he knew that they didn’t have much to spare. He had to keep his job. But of course he wasn’t about to complain to his father about their budgetary straits. There was nothing to be gained by letting his father know things were tight. So Kaoru lied to Hideyuki, telling him that he worked because he wanted more spending money. When they were together, Kaoru wanted to set his father’s mind as much at ease as possible. It wouldn’t do to betray the fact that because his illness had decreased the family’s income, Kaoru and his mother were having to squeeze by. Luckily, as a medical student Kaoru had no trouble hanging out his shingle as a tutor, and in fact he made quite a bit of money that way. The hospital connected to Kaoru’s medical school had a lot of child patients whose parents didn’t want them to fall behind in their studies when they went back to school; tutors were always in demand. One day early in his summer vacation, Kaoru visited the hospital to tutor a junior high schooler in math and English, and then had a light lunch in the cafeteria. His father was a patient in this very hospital. Kaoru had just heard that there was a possibility that the cancer had spread to his father’s lungs; his mood was black. His father had recently gone into his annual litany. This year, he said, we’re going to see those longevity zones in the North American desert. But the words had rung hollow. And then came—as if on cue—the indications that the cancer had spread. Kaoru was sitting in the cafeteria, sighing over his father’s illness and his family’s future, when he saw Reiko Sugiura and her son Ryoji. The cafeteria was on the third floor of the hospital, surrounding a courtyard on three sides; the walls facing the courtyard were of glass. There was a fountain in the courtyard, and sitting at a table in the cafeteria one was eye level with the top of its spray. The cafeteria was so carefully decorated, and its food so pleasant to the taste, that it felt more like a stylish outdoor caf? than part of a hospital. Gazing at the water from the fountain had a truly relaxing effect. Kaoru’s eyes were drawn naturally toward the beautiful woman being shown to an empty table. Her tanned body was sheathed in a summery beige dress, and her face was so nicely formed that it was eye-catching even without the aid of cosmetics. If it weren’t for the child at her side, she could have passed for ten years younger than what Kaoru guessed she had to be. The woman and boy sat at the table the waiter indicated, which happened to be diagonally adjacent to Kaoru’s. Kaoru watched them seat themselves, and, after that too, he found his attention drawn to the woman, his eyes riveted to the legs stretching out from beneath her minidress. He realized this was the same mother and child he’d seen at the hotel pool two weeks ago. One of his students’ grades had gone up so much that the kid’s parents had given Kaoru an all-summer free pass to that pool. On the first day he’d gone to swim there he’d encountered this pair, sitting poolside in deck chairs. From the first moment he’d laid eyes on the woman in the green bathing suit, he was sure he’d seen her somewhere before, but when and where he couldn’t say. Kaoru was normally confident in his powers of recall, but poke about as he might in the recesses of his memory he couldn’t place the woman. The experience left him with an unpleasant aftertaste that wouldn’t go away. A woman as beautiful as this he wouldn’t expect to forget, and yet evidently he had. At the time, he’d tried to put her out of his mind, telling himself he was mistaken, but then something about her finally triggered memories of the star of a soap opera he’d watched as a child. He wondered if it was the same woman. The boy made an odd impression, particularly his physique. The blue swim cap that he wore pushed back on his head, the goggles, the check-pattern shorts that Kaoru could tell at a glance weren’t for swimming in, his skinny bowed legs, and most of all his abnormally white skin. He resembled an “alien corpse” Kaoru had seen on some fake TV show a long time ago. Everything about the boy looked strangely off-kilter. The pair stuck in Kaoru’s memory: this woman he’d seen somewhere before and this weird-looking boy. And now they were sitting at the next table over. Kaoru, sitting by the window so he could gaze down at the fountain, found he could catch their reflection faintly in the glass. He observed this instead of staring at them directly. After a few moments, Kaoru figured out why his first impression of the boy had been of unbalance. It was his hair, or rather his lack of it. When Kaoru had first seen the boy poolside, his swim cap had been missing the bulge that would normally have told of a full head of hair. Today, too, the boy was wearing a hat when he sat down at the table, but after a few moments he took it off, revealing his head to be perfectly devoid of hair. Kaoru realized what that meant. The boy was here to be treated for cancer. He’d assumed mother and child were both here to visit a patient, but now it turned out that the mother was accompanying her son to chemotherapy. Hideyuki was undergoing chemotherapy, and his hair too had fallen out, but somehow seeing a child suffer that side effect was even more heart-rending. Kaoru thought about that day at the pool, that swim cap hugging the boy’s bare scalp directly—no wonder he’d left such a peculiar impression. Kaoru rested his head on his hand and watched the beautiful thirty-something woman and her son, who was probably a fifth or sixth grader, eat their lunches without talking. Without being conscious of it, he was comparing them to his father, hospitalized here. His father was forty-nine, while this boy had to be eleven or twelve. Both were taking anti-cancer medication. The mother in her airy beige dress looked too bright and cheerful for a hospital. Once in a while she raised her head and glanced out the window. She didn’t look like she was tasting what she ate—she was just eating to eat, looking at no one in particular with an expression that could have been a smile or the equivalent of a sigh. She paused with her spoon in the air, then returned it to the plate, then started to bring it to her mouth again, and then suddenly shot a glance in Kaoru’s direction. At first her gaze was sharp, as if to ask, What are you looking at? But as her eyes met Kaoru’s her gaze softened. Kaoru found himself unable to look away. It seemed she recognized him from the pool. She looked like she wanted to say something. Kaoru bowed his head slightly, and she answered with the same gesture. And then her attention was taken up by her son, who chose that moment to toss aside his chopsticks and spoon and throw a tantrum. The sight of Kaoru fled her mind. Even then Kaoru continued to watch the two. He was powerless to resist—it was as if his consciousness had been uprooted and physically carried to where they were. Several days later, in the courtyard this time, Kaoru had the opportunity to speak to this mother and her child. By some lucky chance they ended up sitting side by side on the same bench, making it possible for a conversation to start naturally without either one making the first move. The mother introduced herself as Reiko Sugiura and her son as Ryoji. Ryoji’s cancer, which had first appeared in his lungs, now looked like it had spread to his brain, and his days were filled with tests preparatory to radiation and chemotherapy. Not only that, but it seemed that the agent that had turned his cells cancerous was none other than the recently isolated Metastatic Human Cancer Virus—the progress of the illness, from first appearance through subsequent metastasis, was nearly identical to Kaoru’s father’s case. Kaoru felt a sense of kinship. A sense that they were comrades fighting the same enemy. “Brothers in arms.” The expression was Reiko’s, but it echoed Kaoru’s thoughts. However, Kaoru doubted her words, having observed their expressions in the cafeteria the other day. It was resignation he’d seen then, wasn’t it? At the very least, their faces hadn’t been those of people dedicated to battling an illness. Kaoru still remembered the affectless way she’d eaten. He took this opportunity to clear up the doubt that had been nagging at him since their first encounter. “Haven’t we met somewhere before?” It embarrassed him as he said it, it sounded so much like a pickup line, but he couldn’t think of any other way to ask it. Reiko responded with a laugh whose import escaped him. “I get that a lot. I’m told I look like an actress on an old TV show,” she said shyly. It sounded like a lie to him. She didn’t just look like the actress—he couldn’t help but think they were one and the same. But if she was the actress, and was lying so she could escape her past, then he didn’t feel he should press the issue. When they parted, there in the courtyard, Reiko gave him their room number and said, “Why don’t you come visit us sometime? Please.” Three times they’d met, he and Reiko Sugiura. Now more than ever, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. 3 (#ulink_d44c9b34-b4a0-55bb-a348-825b577b6c43) It was the very next day that Kaoru took Reiko at her word and knocked on the door to Ryoji’s room. Reiko greeted him, with a smile that might have been a bit overdone, and showed him into the room. Ryoji was sitting up in bed reading a book, his legs dangling over the side. As a medical student, Kaoru knew how much the room cost the moment he entered. It was a private room with a private bathroom complete with bathtub. The daily rate was five times that for a normal shared room. “Thank you for coming,” Reiko managed to say. Evidently she’d only invited him as a social courtesy, not really expecting him to come. Now that he was actually here she couldn’t disguise her happiness. She turned to Ryoji and tried to stir his interest. “Look who’s come to see you!” It hit Kaoru that Reiko had invited him up as someone for her son to talk to. He should have realized it before. It was Reiko, not Ryoji, who had piqued Kaoru’s interest. Kaoru didn’t know much about women, but he’d sensed something sexual, some kind of desire, in her unwavering gaze. She had full lips and wide, alluring eyes that drooped a little at the corners; her breasts weren’t especially large, but still there was something undeniably feminine in her five-foot frame. She had a refined air about her that he hadn’t found in women his own age, and it aroused something within him. In comparison with that, there was nothing for him to hold onto in Ryoji’s gaze. As he sat down facing the boy in the proffered chair, he was astonished at how little light the boy’s eyes held. Ryoji didn’t even try to meet Kaoru’s gaze. He was looking in Kaoru’s direction, but plainly he wasn’t seeing anything. His eyes looked right through Kaoru, their gaze wandering across the wall behind. For a long time, they wouldn’t focus. Ryoji set his book down on his knee with a finger still stuck in between the pages. Trying to find something to talk about, Kaoru leaned forward to see what the boy was reading. The Horror of Viruses. Patients want to know as much as possible about their illness. Ryoji was no exception. Naturally he was concerned about this foreign thing that had invaded his body. Kaoru informed the boy that he was a medical student, and asked him a few questions about viruses. Ryoji answered him with a level of accuracy and detail astonishing in a sixth grader. Clearly he understood a great deal about viruses. Not only did he understand how DNA worked, he even had his own views on matters at the farthest reaches of current knowledge about the phenomenon of life. As they went back and forth, questioning and answering, Kaoru began to imagine he was looking at a younger version of himself. He looked on this child, armed with scientific knowledge, the same way his father had looked on him. Kaoru felt like an adult. But it wasn’t to last long. Just as they had warmed up to each other, just as the conversation was really taking off, Ryoji’s nurse showed up to take him to an examining room. Kaoru and Reiko were alone now in the small sickroom. Kaoru was suddenly fidgety, while Reiko, who had been leaning on the windowsill, now coolly came over and sat down beside the bed. “I had no idea you were twenty.” Kaoru had mentioned his age during his conversation with Ryoji; Reiko had noticed. Kaoru was always being told he looked older than he was; he was used to it. “How old do I look to you?” “Hmm. Maybe about five years older …?” She trailed off apologetically, afraid she’d offended him. “You mean I look old?” “You look mature. Really … together.” To say he looked old might hurt him; to say he looked “mature” would sound like a compliment, she evidently figured. “My parents got along well when I was growing up.” “And that makes kids look older than their age?” “Well, they always looked like they’d be happy enough to be left alone, just the two of them, so I had to learn to be independent pretty early.” “Ah.” Reiko’s expression said she wasn’t convinced. She looked at her son’s empty bed. Kaoru found himself thinking about Reiko’s husband. Something about Ryoji suggested that he didn’t have a father. Maybe there had been a divorce, maybe he’d died, or maybe he’d been absent from the start. In any case, Kaoru had the impression that Ryoji’s relationship with his father was, at the very least, extremely attenuated. “In that case, maybe my son will never become independent,” said Reiko, still staring at the bed. Kaoru braced himself and waited for her next words. “It was cancer …” “Oh.” He had expected that. “It was two years ago. Ryoji didn’t mourn his father’s death one bit, you know.” Kaoru could understand that. The kid probably hadn’t let her see him cry once. “That’s how it is sometimes.” But he didn’t mean it. When he imagined his own father’s death an uncontrollable sadness came welling up from the depths of his heart. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to overcome it when he faced the actual event. He realized that, at least in that sense, maybe he wasn’t all that independent yet himself. “Kaoru, would you mind …” Reiko trailed off again, fixing him with a clinging gaze. “Would you mind watching over his studies?” “You mean, as his tutor?” “Yes.” Teaching children was his specialty, and he had time for one or two more students. But he wasn’t sure Ryoji actually needed a tutor. Just from their brief talk together it was obvious that Ryoji was far more capable than other students his age. But it wasn’t only that. If the cancer had already spread to his lungs and his brain, Kaoru knew that all the tutors and all the studying in the world wouldn’t make any difference in the end. There was no chance that this kid would return to school. But then, maybe that was precisely why she wanted to hire a tutor, in the hopes that letting him prepare to go back to school and resume his studies would restore his faith in the future. Kaoru knew how important it was for those surrounding the patient to show by their actions that they hadn’t given up hope. “Sure. I have time to come by twice a week, if that would do.” Reiko took two or three steps toward Kaoru and placed her hands demurely in front of her, one over the other. “Thank you. Not only will it benefit his schoolwork, but I’m sure he’ll be happy to have someone to talk to.” “Okay, then.” No doubt Ryoji didn’t have a friend in the world. Kaoru could understand, because he’d been the same. He’d been just a little of a social outcast at school. But in his case, he’d had a good relationship with his parents that had saved him from feeling lonely. Crazy as his father could be, he’d been the best possible conversation partner for Kaoru. With his father and mother around, Kaoru hadn’t been inclined to wonder why he’d been born into this world. He’d never had doubts about his identity. What Reiko sought in Kaoru was a father figure for her son. Kaoru didn’t have a problem with that. He was confident he could play that role, and do it well. But, he wondered: Does she also want a husband figure for herself? Kaoru’s imagination began to run away with him. He wasn’t as confident on that score. But he wanted to at least try to be the man Reiko needed. They arranged a date and time for his next visit. Then Kaoru left Ryoji’s hospital room. 4 (#ulink_43e92786-64e0-5343-a399-1b58da952948) Kaoru and Ryoji ended up talking with each other a lot, even outside their scheduled lessons. Usually their talks ended up focusing on general science topics. Kaoru was reminded of his own childhood, when his desire to understand the world had led him to delve deeply into natural science. At one time, Kaoru had desired to formulate a system or theory that would encompass and explain things normally dismissed as non-science—paranormal phenomena. But the more he learned, the more he came to see that no matter what unified theory he came up with, there would still be phenomena that couldn’t be accounted for within it. That realization combined with his father’s illness turned his exploring impulses into an interest in a practical field of study, namely medicine. Kaoru snapped out of his reverie and looked at Ryoji, a younger fellow-inquirer into the workings of the universe. Ryoji was sitting cross-legged on his bed as always, rocking gently back and forth. Reiko was in a chair by the window, watching them talk, and she must have been fairly sleepy, for she’d started moving her head back and forth in time with her son’s movements. “So is that what you’re interested in right now?” Ryoji had been peppering Kaoru with questions about genetics. “Yeah, I guess so.” Ryoji turned his normally hollow gaze forward and began to stretch where he sat on the bed. He was smiling like he always did, although there was nothing funny about what they were discussing. It wasn’t a healthy smile. It was the desperate grin of someone at the end of his own life scorning the world. Kaoru thought he’d gotten used to it, but it could still annoy him if he looked at it long enough. If his father smiled like that, he’d give him a good talking-to—he’d rip into him, father or not. There was only one way to wipe that smile off Ryoji’s face: goad him into a passionate debate. Kaoru changed the subject. “So what are your thoughts on the theory of evolution?” It was a natural progression from genetics. “What do you mean?” Ryoji squirmed and rolled his eyes at Kaoru. “Okay, how’s this for starters? Does evolution move randomly or toward a predetermined goal?” “What do you think?” This was one of Ryoji’s less pleasing habits. He always tried to ferret out his interlocutor’s thinking first, instead of coming straight out with his own opinion. “I think evolution moves in a certain direction, but always with a certain latitude for choice.” Kaoru couldn’t bring himself to give a ringing endorsement of mainstream Darwinian evolutionary theory. Even now that he was taking his first steps toward becoming a specialist in a natural science, he couldn’t completely abandon the idea that there was a purpose behind it all. “The direction theory. That’s pretty much what I believe, too.” Ryoji leaned toward Kaoru, as if he’d accomplished something. “Shall we start with the emergence of life?” “The emergence of life?” Ryoji looked truly astonished. “Sure. How you look at the emergence of life is an important question.” “It is?” Ryoji furrowed his brow and looked like he wanted to get out of this question but quick. Kaoru didn’t appreciate this attitude of Ryoji’s. For a kid like him it should be fun to play around with questions like this. The question of why life on earth was able to gain the ability to evolve was intimately connected with the question of how life first emerged on earth. Kaoru, at least, had gotten a lot of enjoyment out of debating this with his father. “Well, let’s move on, then. Let’s grant that life emerged, by some mechanism we don’t yet understand. So, next …” Kaoru stopped to let Ryoji step in. “I think the first life on earth was something like a seed. That seed contained the right information so that it could sprout, grow, and eventually become the tree which is life as we know it, including humankind.” “Are there no variations?” “Yes and no. The biggest tree grows from the tiniest seed. The size of the trunk, the color of the leaves, the type of fruit—all that information is already contained within the seed. But of course the tree is also influenced by the natural environment. If it doesn’t get sunlight it’ll wither, if it doesn’t get enough nutrients the trunk’ll be thin. Maybe it’ll be struck by lightning and split in two, maybe its branches will break in a gale. But no amount of unpredictable influence of that kind can change the basic nature of the tree as contained in the seed. Come rain or snow, a ginkgo tree will never bear apples.” Kaoru licked his lips. He didn’t mean to contradict Ryoji. He basically agreed with him, in fact. “So you’re saying that if sea creatures learn to walk on land, if giraffes develop long necks, it’s all because they were programmed that way from the start?” “Well, yeah.” “In that case, we should assume that there was some kind of will at work before life began.” Ryoji responded innocently. “Whose will? God’s?” But Kaoru wasn’t thinking about God per se, just an invisible will at work both before life began and during the process of evolution. He found himself imagining a school of fish fighting with each other to get to land. There was an overwhelming power in the thought of all those fish, enough of them to dye the sea black, jumping around as they sought dry land. Of course it was possible that sea life had never intended to go on land, but had simply succeeded in adapting to it after orogenic processes had begun to dry up the water. That was how the mainstream evolutionary thinker would explain it. But the image that came to Kaoru’s mind was of those hollow-eyed fish, yearning day in and day out for the land, dying at the water’s edge and making mountains of their corpses. Mainstream evolution had it that a certain fraction of them had simply been lucky enough to adapt. Kaoru simply couldn’t believe that. The transition from a marine to a land-based living environment involved changes in internal organs. Their insides had to be remade to allow for the transition from gill breathing to lung breathing. What kind of bodily trial and error had resulted in those changes? One kind of organ had been reborn as another. It was pretty major, when you thought about it. Right in front of Kaoru was Ryoji’s bald head. Because Ryoji was hunched over, the top of his head came up to the tip of Kaoru’s nose. At this very moment, within that emaciated little body, a violent cellular conflict was being enacted. As it was within Kaoru’s father Hideyuki. He’d lost most of his stomach, part of his large intestine, and his liver. And still, more as-yet-unknown cancer cells had taken up residence in some new spot in his body and were writhing there even now. An unexpected inspiration came to Kaoru. Cancer cells invaded a normal organ, changing its color and shape and constructing new bulges, until the normal functioning of the organ was impaired and it died. The obviously negative aspects of this were what stood out, but at the same time it was possible to detect in the cancer’s actions a certain groping towards something. By infiltrating the blood and lymph to penetrate cells elsewhere, it was experimenting with transplanting its immortal nature bit by bit. But to what end? To create somewhere within the body a new organ adapted to the future. Maybe the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus was nothing but a sort of trial-and-error attempt to create a new organ. In the process, large numbers of human beings would die, just as most of the fish had died at the water’s edge. But just as after a hundred million years sea life had finally made it onto the land, someday, after countless sacrifices, maybe the human race would find itself with a new organ. Humanity would have evolved. Maybe an evolutionary leap comparable to the movement from the water to the land was impossible without something like a new organ. When would it happen? Human cancer deaths were surging upward, but without knowing when the cancer cells had started their work it was impossible to know if the human race had just begun its fumbling toward evolution, or was about to complete it. The only thing certain was that the pace of evolution was accelerating. The time it took for apes to evolve into humans was shorter than what had been needed for sea creatures to evolve into amphibians, so much shorter that there was almost no comparison. So it was possible. The intervals in the evolutionary process were gradually getting shorter, so maybe it wasn’t too soon for this to be evolution, too. Kaoru wanted to think so. He wanted to turn his attention to anything that would afford him hope. He wanted to believe that his father would be the first one to successfully evolve, rather than just another sacrifice. To be reborn. Kaoru would have wanted that, if it were possible. No doubt everybody wanted to live again. The gift of eternal life. Since it was a property of the MHC virus to create immortal cells, it was only natural to fantasize about human immortality. Maybe even Ryoji had a chance. Kaoru almost said so, but bit back the words. Anything that sounded like an affirmation of the illness might have the effect of loosening the boy’s attachment to living. He heard faint snoring right behind him. Reiko, who had been nodding off for some time, had finally lowered her face to the table and gone to sleep. Kaoru and Ryoji looked at each other and giggled. It was still early, not even eight o’clock. Outside the window, the evening cityscape was starting to emerge from the summer dusk. From below the window came the sounds of highway traffic, suddenly loud. Reiko’s elbow twitched, knocking an empty soda can to the floor, but she didn’t awaken. Kaoru spoke cautiously. “Your mom’s asleep. Maybe it’s time I was leaving.” The lesson had ended long ago. “Weren’t you about to say something to me just now, Kaoru?” Ryoji looked discontented, as if he hadn’t had his fill of talking yet. “We’ll pick up where we left off next time.” Kaoru stood up and looked around the room. Reiko had gone to sleep with her right cheek pillowed on her hands and her face turned in his direction. Her eyes were closed but her mouth was half open, and the back of her hand was wet with drool. Fast asleep, she looked quite cute. It was the first time he’d thought that about a woman ten years older than him. Kaoru felt affection for her entire body, and harbored a momentary desire to touch her. Ryoji reached out and shook her shoulder. “Mom, Mom.” She still didn’t wake up. “It’s no good. She’s out like a light.” Ryoji trained his innocent eyes on Kaoru, and then on the extra bed provided for relatives accompanying the patient. “Mom gets tired taking care of me, so I like to let her sleep when she can. She’ll have to wake up in the middle of the night tonight anyway,” he said, as if he weren’t making a veiled entreaty. Kaoru felt an unaccustomed warmth in his body, as if Ryoji had managed to peek inside his heart. He realized that what the boy was really saying was, Would you pick her up and move her to the extra bed real gently so she doesn’t wake up? If he could manage to pick her up, it was only about six feet to the bed. Reiko’s knees beneath her short culottes were pressed tightly together as if to fend off any attempts to touch her. Carrying a woman to bed was nothing for someone of Kaoru’s physical strength, but his guard went up at the thought of touching her—he wasn’t sure he’d be able to control his desires in the face of that stimulus. “When she’s like this you couldn’t move her with a lever.” Ryoji’s expression as he said this was suggestive; then he pointedly turned his face away from Kaoru, even as he seemed to be looking right through him. It was as if he knew Kaoru was interested in his mother as a woman, and was egging him on. Look, I know you want to touch my Mom. It’s okay. You have my permission. I’ll even give you the opportunity. Ryoji was provoking him, biting back laughter while he did it. Kaoru wordlessly set up the extra bed. It wasn’t so much that he was caving in to Ryoji’s challenge as that he was eager to yield to whatever he felt on touching Reiko. If his feelings were going to deepen, let them. As yet he didn’t understand the effect physical contact with her would have on his psychological state. Kaoru placed his arms behind Reiko’s neck and under her knees, and in one motion lifted her up and placed her on the bed. As he laid her down, her lips brushed against his neck, just for a moment. She opened her eyes slightly and flexed her arms so as to hug him closer, then loosened her grip with a contented look on her face, and fell back to sleep. Kaoru stayed silent and motionless for a little while, afraid she’d wake up if he moved. For several seconds, his body covered hers. With his face between her chest and belly, he could feel the resilience of the flesh of her abdomen; his eyes were trained on her face. He was looking up at her face from below, essentially. He could see the fine lines of her jaw, and above it the two black holes of her nostrils. He’d never seen her face from this angle before. At length he stood up again. As he separated himself from her body, he asked himself, repeatedly: Am I falling in love with her? The touch of her lips was still vivid on the skin of his neck. “Well, then, I’ll see you next week.” Kaoru put his hand hesitantly on the doorknob, so as not to reveal the pounding of his heart. Ryoji still sat cross-legged on his bed, rocking back and forth, cracking his knuckles. Unlike a few moments ago, his face held no look of provocation or mockery now—he’d stifled all expression. “Good night.” Kaoru slipped out of the room. He could feel Ryoji’s unnatural smile fixed on the door as he shut it behind him. Kaoru had a flash of intuition. This meeting was not mere coincidence. His future would be intimately tied with Reiko and Ryoji. 5 (#ulink_fa7bcbfa-6a50-50f7-969c-3c78c886d4dd) Among Kaoru’s pleasures in life were his visits to the office of Assistant Professor Saiki in the Pathology Department. Saiki had been a classmate of his father’s in this very university, and now, with his father in this unfortunate condition, Saiki was always ready to lend an ear or some advice. Officially, he wasn’t Kaoru’s advisor, but he was an old friend of the family, someone Kaoru had known since childhood. These days there was a specific purpose to Kaoru’s regular visits. Cells from the cancer torturing his father were being cultured in Saiki’s lab, and Kaoru liked to come by to look at them under the microscope. To adequately fend off this enemy’s attacks, he felt he needed to know its true visage. Kaoru left the hospital proper and entered the building containing the Pathology, Forensic Medicine, and Microbiology laboratories. The university hospital was a motley collection of new and old buildings; this was one of the older ones. The Forensic Medicine classrooms were on the second floor, while the third housed Pathology, where he was headed. He climbed the stairs and turned left into a hallway lined with small labs on either side. Kaoru stopped in front of Professor Saiki’s door and knocked. “Come in,” Saiki called out. The door was open a crack; Kaoru stuck his head in. “Oh, it’s you.” This was Saiki’s standard response on seeing Kaoru. “Is this a bad time?” “I’m busy, as you can see, but you’re welcome to do what you like.” Saiki was involved in examining cells taken this afternoon from some diseased tissue; he barely looked up. That was fine with Kaoru; he’d rather be left alone to make his observations in freedom. “Don’t mind if I do, then.” Kaoru opened the door of the large refrigerator-like carbon dioxide incubator and searched for his father’s cells. The incubator was kept at a constant temperature and a nearly constant level of carbon dioxide. It wouldn’t do for him to keep the door open long. But the plastic Petri dish in which his father’s cells were being cultured was in its usual place, and he had no trouble finding it. So this is what immortality looks like, he thought. It mystified him, as it always did. His father’s liver had been removed—having changed from its normal reddish-pink to a mottled hue covered with what looked like white powder—and was now sealed in a glass jar, preserved in formaldehyde, in another cabinet, where it had been stored for three years now. Sometimes it seemed to squirm or writhe, but maybe that was a trick of the light. The liver was dead, of course, pickled in formaldehyde. Whereas the cancer cells in the Petri dish were alive. The dish contained cells grown from Kaoru’s father’s cancer cells, cultured in a medium with a blood serum concentration of less than one percent. With normal cells, growth stops when the growth factor in the blood serum is used up. And within a Petri dish, they won’t multiply beyond a single layer no matter how much growth factor is added, due to what is called contact inhibition. Cancer cells not only lack contact inhibition, but they have an extremely low dependence on the blood serum. Simply put, they are able to grow and reproduce, layer upon layer, in a tiny space with virtually no food supply. Normal cells in a Petri dish will only form one layer, whereas cancer cells will form layer upon layer. Normal cells reproduce in a flat, orderly fashion, while cancer cells multiply in a three-dimensional, disorderly manner. Normal cells have a natural limit to the number of times they can divide, while cancer cells can go on dividing forever. Immortality. Kaoru was fully aware of the irony in the fact that immortality, the object of man’s deepest yearnings from time immemorial, was in the possession of this primeval horror, this killer of men. As if to demonstrate their three-dimensional nature, his father’s cancer cells had bubbled up into a spheroid. Every time Kaoru looked they had taken on a different shape. Originally, these had their source in normal cells in his father’s liver, but now it might be more appropriate to see them as an independent life form. Even as their erstwhile host faced his crisis, these cells greedily enjoyed eternal life. Kaoru set this dish full of concentrated contradiction into the phase contrast microscope. Its magnification only went up to x200, but it allowed easy color imaging. He could only use the scanning electron microscope when he had time to spare. The cancer cells, these life forms which had gone beyond any moderating influence, presented a peculiar sight. Perhaps there was something actually, objectively grotesque about their appearance, or perhaps they only looked grotesque to him because of his preconceptions about them as usurpers of human life. Kaoru struggled to abandon this bias, his hatred of the agent of his father’s suffering, as he observed the sample. Raising the magnification, he could see that the cells were clumping together. The long, spindly, translucent cells grew as a thicket, stained a thin green. This wasn’t their natural color; the microscope had a green filter attached. Normal cells would have been evenly distributed in a flat, orderly fashion, with no one part sticking out, but these cancer cells revealed, here and there, a thicker green shadow. He could see them clearly: a multitude of points, bubbling up roundly, shining. These were cells in the process of dividing. Kaoru changed the dish under the microscope several times, comparing the cancer cells to normal cells. The surface difference was readily apparent: the cancer cells displayed a chaotic filthiness. But the surface of the cells was all he could examine: an optical microscope wasn’t powerful enough to show him their nuclei or DNA. Still, Kaoru gazed on untiring. His heart was heavy with the knowledge that he was wasting his time: just what was he going to learn looking at them from the outside? Still, even as he cursed himself for doing so, he examined the external part of each and every one of them. The cells all looked alike on the surface. Thousands of identical faces, all in a row. Identical faces. Kaoru raised his face from the microscope. Totally out of the blue, he had compared the cells to human faces. But that was what they looked like: the same face thousands of times over, gathering and sticking together in a clump until they formed a mottled mass. Kaoru had to look away for a while. That image came to me intuitively. Was it for a reason? That was the first question to consider. His father had taught him to pay attention to his intuition. It often happened that Kaoru would be reading a book or walking down the street and suddenly a completely unrelated scene would present itself to his mind’s eye. Usually he didn’t inquire into the reason. Say he was walking down the street and saw a movie star on a poster: he might suddenly remember an acquaintance who resembled the movie star. If he didn’t register having seen the poster, which was entirely possible, it would seem as if the image of his acquaintance had come to him out of nowhere. If it was a kind of synchronicity, then Kaoru wanted to analyze it to find out what had synched up with what. He’d been looking at cancer cells under x200 magnification, and something had been triggered so that the cells looked to him like human faces. Now: did that mean something? Pondering it brought no answer, so Kaoru returned his gaze to the microscope. There had to be something which had elicited the comparison in his imagination. He saw narrow cells piled up in three dimensions. Little glowing globes. Kaoru muttered the same thing as before. No doubt about it, they all have the same face. Not only that, but it was clearly not a man’s face, not to his imagination. If he had to choose he’d say it was somehow feminine. An egg-shaped, regular face, with smooth, even slippery, skin. This was weird. In all the times he’d looked at cells through the phase contrast microscope, he’d never thought they looked like human faces. 6 (#ulink_69594be8-7d67-513f-80bb-9aec50e73fff) Kaoru was in a hospital room face-to-face with Ryoji, but his mind was on the sounds coming from the bathroom. Reiko had been in there for some time, with the water running. She wasn’t showering; maybe she was washing underwear. While tutoring Ryoji he’d seen Reiko hurriedly gathering up underwear that had been hung up to dry in the room. Distractedly, Kaoru set about answering Ryoji’s questions about his father’s condition. He gave him a brief rundown, but Ryoji’s body language said he wanted to hear more. Maybe he wanted to sketch in the future of his own illness based on what he could learn of Kaoru’s father’s. Kaoru stopped the conversation before Ryoji could start to guess that the cancer had spread to his father’s lungs. Partly he hesitated because he thought the knowledge might have a negative influence on Ryoji, but partly he simply didn’t want to say it out loud. When the cancer had become heavy on his lungs, Hideyuki’s face had started to betray weakness; he’d started to talk about what would happen after he was gone—to talk about entrusting Kaoru with his mother’s care. Look after Machi, okay? At the sight of this weakness, Kaoru was seized with a desire to deliver the full force of his anger upon his father. And just how am I supposed to comfort Mom after you die, he wanted to say. Quit laying these impossible tasks on me! Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». 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