Loop

by Kōji Suzuki

  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

  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 in
clined 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

  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 colour 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 colour 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 th
e 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.