Penguin Highway

by Tomihiko Morimi

  “Are you free right now, Aoyama?”

  “I don’t know if I’m free. I am juggling several research projects, so I’m always very busy.”

  “What are you researching?”

  “That’s a secret. All I can say is that these projects are of the utmost importance. But if you’ve got a problem, I definitely have time to help solve it.”

  Hamamoto glanced around the shop. Lowering her voice, she said, “You see, I’m actually researching something myself. And I was hoping to get input from the two of you.”

  “Does the subject of this research start with a P?” Uchida asked, presumably thinking of the penguins. I thought the same.

  But Hamamoto shook her head and said something I didn’t expect.

  “I’m researching The Sea.”

  When the rain stopped, the sunlight hammered down, making it so hot and muggy that my face felt sticky.

  Uchida and I grumbled about the heat, but Hamamoto was almost skipping. She had a grace about her like a nobleman’s daughter, and she reminded me of a girl robot that had just finished charging her battery. Astounding. The roads and roofs ahead of Hamamoto glittered in the sunlight. Beyond those rooftops, the sky was blue, and the water tower stood on a breast-shaped green hill. Hamamoto was leading us to that hill.

  “Hamamoto, how far are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I wondered what sort of sea Hamamoto was researching. Our town was quite far from the sea. Even if that new railroad was built, we’d still have to take a train to get there. But she made it sound like you could get to this sea on foot.

  We passed the white apartment building where the lady from the dentist’s office lived. Hamamoto pointed to the concrete stairs leading up the water-tower hill.

  “Up there,” she said.

  “I know this place!” Uchida said. “I’ve been up there before.”

  “We’ve already explored this area. Are we almost there?”

  “Not yet!” Hamamoto said. She kept walking.

  She went all the way up the stairs, around the water-tower fence, and into the woods. The same path Uchida and I had explored in May, following the Penguin Highway. The athletic field fence was on the left, and the deep forest we’d named the Jabberwock Woods was on the right.

  The rain had stopped, but from the sounds the forest made, you’d think it was still raining. The sunlight beamed down, creating little pools of light in the woods. If we walked much farther, we’d reach the field with the high-tension towers, but then Hamamoto said “There!” and pointed into the forest. There was what looked like an animal path branching off the trail we’d been walking on. It led deep into the woods.

  “Is it safe?” I asked.

  “I’ve been down it lots of times,” she said. “It’s fine. We might get a little wet, though.”

  Hamamoto was very adventurous.

  “Are you sure?” Uchida said nervously. “What if there’s a bottomless swamp?”

  When we were exploring, Uchida was always on guard against bottomless swamps. Apparently, they were found in forests sometimes and could easily prove fatal.

  “They suck you in like a black hole. Put one foot inside, and you can never come out.”

  “Just imagining sinking into a swamp is unbearable.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to breathe. You’d die, and no one would ever know.”

  Uchida was very serious.

  The noises of the town didn’t reach this far. The grass grew high on both sides of the path. There were trees as far as the eye could see. It was like we were in the deepest jungle. In the bright patches where the light made it through, we could see swarms of moths. The Jabberwock Woods was very deep. We weren’t sure just how far this forest went. But Hamamoto just kept walking. She even looked like she was having fun.

  The path sloped slowly downward.

  “It’s getting muddy,” Uchida fretted. Then he let out a little shriek and crouched down. A drop of water had fallen off a branch and moistened the back of his neck. A ray of sunshine hit him like a laser beam, and the drop of water gleamed. Like when there was a sun-shower.

  Suddenly, Hamamoto broke into a run. “Almost there!” she cried.

  “Wait up!”

  We hurried after her.

  Tree branches brushed against us as we ran by. I felt a nervous tension in the pit of my stomach. A feeling that when we left the forest we’d be at the ends of the earth, by a small observation station. That station should be a building shaped like a large white eggshell, built in cooperation between NASA and the Japanese government. Only one researcher had been dispatched here, and he lived there all alone. Would he welcome our exploration party? Maybe he’d have tea and snacks.

  I imagined he would.

  Then I realized I’d left the forest behind, and there was nothing but blue sky above.

  A clearing with grass, like a soft green carpet. Not a single tree growing in it.

  Blinding light made the whole thing glow. I looked up and saw long, jagged silver clouds drifting past at high speed. Nimbostratus clouds form at four thousand meters; up there, the wind was blowing so fast, it could blow everything away, but down here in the clearing, everything was quiet. A strange feeling. Hamamoto didn’t slow down after leaving the forest; she was already halfway across the field. A stream running out of the Jabberwock Woods stretched across the field like a snake. She reached the edge of it and turned back, waving at us.

  Trees surrounded the clearing. A forgotten land in the heart of the Jabberwock Woods. Like a giant soup plate waiting to be filled with some sort of liquid. As I walked across it, it felt like the sky was a lid placed on top of us. As if the top of my head was being pulled up toward the sky.

  Both Uchida and I looked tense.

  We walked slower and slower and finally stopped.

  Right in the middle of the grass, where Hamamoto was pointing, was a strange translucent sphere. Accounting for its distance from us, the sphere’s diameter was approximately five meters. It was hovering about thirty centimeters above the ground. It didn’t seem to be using any sort of engine to keep it suspended in the air. I could tell because it made no sound at all. This mysterious object was just reflecting the sunlight, glittering in silence.

  Uchida tugged my sleeve. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe a new type of spacecraft developed by NASA?”

  We tried to go closer, but Hamamoto stopped us.

  “Better not get too close,” she said grimly.

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “It moves sometimes. Spike-like protrusions extend out of it.”

  “So we can’t prove it’s safe yet.” I knelt down and looked under it. “Still! What is it? This is a very strange object! How is it floating like that?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m researching it.”

  “You called it The Sea?” Uchida asked.

  Hamamoto nodded proudly. “Yes. I named it.”

  The sphere did look like it was made of water. Each time a gust of wind blew across the grass, little waves ran across the sphere’s surface. It was slowly spinning, reflecting the light. There was a faint white pattern across the surface, and parts of it were a navy blue. It was like looking at the Earth from outer space. But it was much more transparent than the Earth in those photos. Looking closely, I could make out the green of the forest on the other side of the rippling sphere.

  I paced on the grass around it, making careful observations.

  “Amazing, right?” Hamamoto said.

  “It is extremely mysterious!” I took out my notebook to record my observations. It opened to a place a few pages back, where I’d written about the rumors in class. A silver moon appears over the hill with the water tower, it read.

  Hamamoto peered over my shoulder. “Oh, those rumors. I started them.”

  “Why?”

  “If there are rumors about the place, then no other children will interfere with my research
,” she said with an impish grin.

  This was completely astonishing to me.

  “Aoyama, will you help me research it?”

  “I am extremely busy… But this is fascinating.”

  “I thought you’d say that.”

  “We’re really going to have to use our brains for this one. Hamamoto, would you like some cake?”

  “You don’t mind?”

  We sat down a safe distance away, observing The Sea while eating Boob Cake. Hamamoto agreed with me about the cake’s flavor. Hamamoto doesn’t have any boobs, though, I thought.

  Feeling the nourishment spreading across my brain, I stared up at The Sea.

  As I did, my brain started working very quickly.

  We established an observation station on the boundary between the woods and the grass.

  Joint research on The Sea would be a long-term endeavor. Some days it would rain, and some days it would be unbearably hot. Constructing a comfortable observation station would be extremely useful.

  Uchida brought a folding chair and a beach parasol. Hamamoto brought a camping hammock. I brought binoculars and a tarp. We hung the hammock at the entrance to the forest so we could nap in the shade when we got tired from all this research. A short nap did wonders to restore the brain’s functions.

  On the field near the forest was an orange penholder. Hamamoto had placed it there as a marker for fixed-point observations of The Sea. The location was some distance from The Sea, allowing for safe observation.

  “This is a good place to make a base,” Hamamoto said. “If we get tired, the hammock is close by.”

  Uchida set up the white parasol where the penholder was.

  We set up the folding chair in the shade of the parasol. Sitting here made the grass field around us feel like the beach. The parasol was large enough that the three of us could fit under it with room for one more. I was sure that the shade provided by this parasol was among the best shade in all the world.

  I always got anxious crossing the Jabberwock Woods to observe The Sea. I’d wonder, What if The Sea has vanished? The possibility made me nervous, and sometimes I’d even break into a run when I saw the light of the clearing through the trees ahead. But there was no need to worry. Every time I came running out, The Sea was still there.

  Rain or shine, The Sea would be hovering in the same place. On clear days, it would look blue, like a giant marble. On rainy days, it gave off a silver light that could be seen through the misty field. When the rain stopped and the evening sun hit it, the northern half of the sphere looked as if it had caught fire.

  Monitoring The Sea through binoculars at the observation station, I took detailed notes.

  “I can’t read what’s written in your notes,” Hamamoto said.

  “They’re in shorthand. I can writer faster than anyone.”

  “You use a red notebook.”

  “And you use a blue one. That’s an extremely good notebook.”

  Hamamoto smiled down at the blue notebook in her hands.

  Her notebook had been made overseas, and each page was much thicker than mine. Inside, the pages had thin blue lines. An aunt of hers had bought it for her while traveling abroad. Hamamoto’s father was a college professor and had taught her how to take notes. She didn’t write as many as I did, but she also took a great deal of notes, so naturally, she’d become extremely intelligent as well.

  She wrote in her blue notebook in letters so perfect, they looked printed. She was recording all her research on The Sea in this blue notebook. Lists of the different phenomena that appeared on the surface of The Sea, a change log of the measurements of The Sea’s diameter taken from the same fixed point. It was extremely excellent research.

  According to her, the core observable activity The Sea took part in was expanding and contracting. She had decided to call periods where it was getting larger “waxing” and periods where it was getting smaller “waning.” She used trigonometry to measure The Sea’s diameter from a fixed point on the grass, made a chart of the results on graph paper, and pasted that into the blue notebook.

  “I see. It’s forming a gentle wave.”

  “It’s waning right now. See? It’s getting slowly smaller.”

  “It can get as large as three times the current size. That’s astonishing!”

  As it waxed, one day, a sudden Prominence occurred. This was Hamamoto’s name for the phenomenon. I was, of course, aware that in astrophysics prominence referred to the phenomenon where portions of the sun’s fire were flung up and away from the surface.

  “What is a Prominence like?” Uchida asked.

  “It fires a smaller version of The Sea like a cannon. You’ll be very surprised if you see one!”

  She showed us a diagram she’d drawn in her notebook. A picture of what looked like a cannon sticking out of the sphere. A marble-size little version of The Sea spilled out of it. She’d drawn an arrow to it with a note that said A small Sea comes out.

  “I’m the only one without a notebook,” Uchida said. “I do have one at school, though.”

  “It’s fun having your own notebook. You can record everything you discover.”

  “But unlike the two of you, I’m not researching anything.”

  “You are, though!” I cried. “Black holes and the birth of the universe!”

  “Do those count?”

  “If it’s new information to you or new ideas you’ve had, then it always counts.”

  Hamamoto looked at her notebook the way one looks at a treasure. “I think it’s good to write down whatever you find interesting.”

  Uchida thought about it. “Maybe I’ll start carrying a notebook, too,” he said.

  I was out for a haircut.

  It was an extremely quiet Sunday. Tiny raindrops fell like mist, coating the town. The mountains on the prefectural border were melting into the gray sky. When I turned the corner at the dentist, I saw my father sitting in the window at Seaside Café, working. I slowed down for a moment, wondering if he’d see me, and he did actually look up. When I dipped my umbrella at him, he tapped on the window glass.

  The shop that cut my hair was next door to the candy shop. The wall facing the street was entirely made of glass, and you could stand outside and see everyone getting their hair cut. I wasn’t sure why they’d designed it like that. I sat on a brown couch, waiting my turn, and when it arrived, I sat in front of a large mirror. This shop didn’t have any magazines worth reading, so I always took a half-read book along. While I was reading, the man who cuts my hair said, “The genius is here!”

  To my surprise, the lady was there, too. She’d arrived before me and was already getting her hair cut. When I sat down on the chair next to her, she looked at me from the mirror world, and said, “Hello, kiddo.” Seen inside the mirror, the lady looked a little different.

  Getting your hair cut right next to someone you knew was oddly embarrassing. When he cut my hair, the man placed a sheet around my neck, and this made me look like a baby. No matter how serious my expression was, I just looked silly.

  While he was cutting my hair, I inspected the lady’s face in the mirror. She was gazing absently at a magazine in her hands. She looked a little pale, like she’d lost some weight.

  “What you looking at, kiddo?” she asked, not glancing up from her magazine.

  “Nothing.”

  “Again with the lies!” Then she said, “Sorry I couldn’t show up the other day.”

  “I was stood up. So I did some research and played chess with Yamaguchi.”

  “Is Yamaguchi good at chess?”

  “He can play chess in his sleep.”

  “He’s a master!”

  “I also fell asleep.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much of a game.”

  After our haircuts were done, the lady said, “Aoyama, let me fix you lunch to make up for standing you up.” I used the barbershop phone to call my house. My father answered and said I shouldn’t impose. I let the lady take over. She was al
ways very polite with him.

  The lady and I walked through the rain with our umbrellas open.

  In the rain, her face looked even more pale.

  “You don’t seem like yourself,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’ve been better. You feeling good?”

  “I am in extremely good health. Reasons unclear.”

  “Reasons unclear!” she echoed, laughing.

  The white apartment building where the lady lived was next to the hill with the water tower. I’d passed in front of it just the other day with Hamamoto and Uchida and had often looked up at it, thinking, That’s where the lady lives. But this was my first time going inside. The Jabberwock Woods came right up against the back of the building, and I could hear the soft sound of the rain on the leaves.

  I am the most collected and levelheaded child you’ll find anywhere, but I messed up a bunch that day. I had trouble getting my galoshes off and almost knocked the flower vase off the shoebox. Then I slipped on the linoleum and almost fell over.

  “Calm yourself, kiddo,” the lady said.

  The lady’s apartment was a single large room. The building was on the side of the hill, so from the veranda you could see the whole town through the gray mist of the rain. Her room had a round wooden table, two chairs, a bed, a small bookshelf, and a round TV. There was a small pea-green single-seat couch facing the TV. She must sit on that couch when she reads or watches TV.

  While the lady was boiling spaghetti and making the sauce, I helped toss a salad in a white bowl. The lady showed me a very professional technique that involved first making the dressing in the bowl, then putting the veggies in and mixing it all up. Lettuce and yellow peppers all tumbled around the inside of the bowl.

  I think I did a good job stirring it.

  We sat at the round table and ate spaghetti and salad. I thought it was extremely good. With her hair cut, the lady’s head seemed smaller. My head looked smaller, too. When the lady moved her head, her shorter hair swung in the light.