by Kōji Suzuki
There was a faint smell. He was in a two hundred square foot space with crumbling walls, where something he'd never encountered before, a man-made smell that couldn't possibly exist in nature, pervaded the air.
There was a pipe-framed bed in a corner of the room. It held no bedding, only an old mattress with several springs poking up through it. There was a sturdy-looking table next to it, and next to that two deck chairs, facing each other, looking more appropriate to a beach than a house. A floor lamp lay tipped over on the floor, and an old leather suitcase rested unsteadily against the table. There were shelves built into one wall, but some of them were broken, their contents leaning crazily. Several thick doorstop-like books sat on the bottom shelf.
Everything in the room looked precariously balanced. He suspected that if he took away just one of the shelves, or moved the bedside table just a few inches to one side, everything would collapse like a row of dominos.
From out of nowhere, the hoarse voice was back, breathing in his ear. Kaoru nearly jumped out of his skin. He looked around in every direction.
Nobody was there. The noise died away quickly, leaving an intermittent buzz in its wake. Kaoru glanced at the space between the table and the wall, and saw an electrical cord. Only then did he notice that there was a radio fixed to the table. It sounded like it wasn't receiving steady current.
Kaoru grasped the cord and moved it around a little. The buzzing decreased, replaced by a man's steady voice, accompanied by a sad-sounding guitar. A radio broadcast. The man was singing some kind of blues song. Kaoru was able to make out the lyrics: something about a love that had ended long ago.
Kaoru bent down and adjusted the tuner, reducing the static further. This was definitely the source of the voice he'd barely heard floating to him on the wind. For some reason this radio was still turned on, plugged in, and receiving signals. Playing music.
It was unthinkable that the power lines could still be supplying electricity to these ruins. The electricity would have been interrupted long ago.
The rooftop solar panel he'd seen must be providing the electricity. It was the only thing that could explain the radio still playing.
Kaoru followed the cord to the wall socket, then adjusted the volume again. No mistake, electricity was flowing from somewhere.
Press on, he urged himself. The knowledge that this house in the middle of the desert wore a crown of modern science gave him a kind of courage.
In one wall there was a door to the next room. He placed a hand on the knob. It opened easily.
Beyond the door was a short hallway leading to what seemed to be the entrance to a basement. The stairs led underground until they were swallowed in darkness. But on second look it wasn't total darkness: he could see a little light seeping out from around a door. There was a light on in the basement.
As he stood at the top of the stairs looking down, Kaoru felt like he was being guided.
There's a light on.
He pondered that fact for a while. Perhaps it had just been left on, like the radio.
A step at a time, he climbed down the stairs.
Stopping in front of the door, he pressed an ear against it and listened for signs of what was beyond. There was no sound, no sign of anybody. The light shining between the door and its frame was fainter than he'd first thought.
He was about to knock, but it came to him how foolish that notion was. In one bold motion he grasped the doorknob, turned it, and walked in.
A single fluorescent bulb hung from the ceiling, dimly illuminating the basement. But in the centre of the room shone another light, a special one that meant civilization.
Spacious as the basement was, its purpose was clear. A computer had been set up in the exact centre of the room, surrounded by associated cabinets. The monitor was flickering.
Kaoru went around until he was facing the monitor. Beside it sat a helmet, to both the inside and outside of which were attached electronic devices. Probably a helmet display: he'd used something like it as a kid to play virtual reality games. He hadn't seen one for so long that the sight of this one brought back pleasant memories.
A wired data glove sat next to the helmet, but Kaoru didn't touch either of them. He headed straight for the monitor.
As if cued by Kaoru's appearance in front of it, letters began to appear on the screen.
W…e…l…c…o…m…e
The word popped up one letter at a time. Kaoru found the idea juvenile in the extreme. Evidently the system was set up so that the display would sense when someone was standing in front of it and turn on.
He felt momentarily faint, and leaned on the chair in front of the screen. He eased himself into the chair, resting his elbows on the armrests, and caught his breath. Then he spoke to the computer.
"Who are you, anyway?"
The computer didn't answer him directly. Instead it showed him a scene.
A barren, windswept desert. An undulating landscape. The scene moved, so that the viewer felt like he was running across the desert. The view slid along just over the surface of the land, following a road up and down slopes, until a village appeared before it. Kaoru had seen it somewhere before.
Then he realized it was Wayne's Rock, albeit a different Wayne's Rock than the one he knew. The one he saw on the monitor was much smaller, with only a few houses visible, and those were made of wood, not stone. If it hadn't been for the distinctive hillside in the background, he wouldn't have even realized what he was looking at.
How long ago is this, he wondered. A hundred years ago, maybe longer? He couldn't see any people; there was no indication as to the era. The scene screamed Old West, though.
Is this a movie? A natural question.
It didn't look like computer graphics. He wanted to think it was a real filmic record, but it was much too clear and well-preserved to have been shot a hundred or more years ago. No, what he was seeing was probably the result of the application of some special technology to recreate the old town on shots of the present Wayne's Rock. But it looked absolutely real.
He heard hoofbeats behind him. So real did they sound that he turned around to look, only to discover speakers attached to the stone wall behind him.
The scene on the monitor was displayed in only two dimensions, but the sound came through in three.
He kept glancing at the helmet and glove next to the monitor. He finally understood what he was being instructed to do.
If you want to experience it in 3-D, put on the helmet and glove.
So he did. And once he had the helmet on, a turn of his head gave his mind's eye a 360-degree view of the landscape.
The hoofbeats behind him were no longer just a 3-D effect, they were utterly real, echoing in his brain. He could feel the ground shake with them. He should be wearing boots, but somehow he felt sharp pain as a cactus spine penetrated his foot. Human commotion overwhelmed him. A hot wind caressed the back of his neck, and he felt thirsty. Sweat dripped off him.
Kaoru ran on and on, trying to escape the figures bearing down on him from behind. Unable to bear it any longer, he looked back and saw a dozen or more mounted Indians, their feathered headdresses silhouetted against the sun at their backs.
I'm going to be trampled to death.
He tried to jump sideways, out of their path, but just then a muscular arm hooked itself under his armpit and pulled him up. The arm felt firm under his, real to the touch. He smelled sweat and dirt. Before he knew it the rough arm had slung him around and sat him astride a horse.
Kaoru told himself he was dreaming. He knew, or thought he knew, that this wasn't reality. But as he pressed his face against the Indian's muscular back and clung tight to keep from being thrown from the horse, he found himself eye-level with a bunch of scalps hanging like ornaments from the Indian's shoulder. One was still new, still wet on the underside, still smelling of blood.
His eyes swam and his head fell back, though his instincts told him that if he fell off the horse he'd die.
; It was at that moment that the boundary between reality and unreality dissolved.
5
He couldn't figure out how long he'd been bouncing around on the horse. It might have been minutes, but if someone had told him it was hours, he might well have believed it.
They descended into a valley and stopped beside a river. Kaoru was a little surprised at the abundance of water snaking along at the bottom of the deep ravine. From the top of the gorge the river had looked minuscule-he'd never dreamed that it held this much water.
The water was far from clear: it was laden with dissolved brown earth. But in that arid land, just standing in the damp air beside the river was a relief. Kaoru found himself able to share in the group's consciousness enough to be aware of that.
They rode along the banks amidst the spray for a while until they came to a wide spot the river had carved into the valley. Here they halted. Several of the men looked up at the lip of the gorge and imitated the cries of animals. The rest separated into two groups, one keeping watch downriver, one upriver, guarding against pursuers or ambushers.
The brilliant sun scorched the earth: he could feel the heat through the soles of his feet. He could feel the passage of time.
A trembling disturbed the woods covering the sides of the ravine, and then from behind trees and rocks emerged small bands of women, children, and old people. The women and children outnumbered the men on horseback.
At first the women seemed afraid to approach. They looked at the men on horseback with mingled expectation and tension, joy and fear, and prayer. Then women who spotted the faces they were searching for began to raise scream like cries, rushing to their men, while the men answered by alighting from their horses and embracing their women. The reunions were conducted with an urgency in direct proportion to the earlier display of caution.
All of the women's cries sounded like weeping, but a closer listen revealed two distinct types. Some wept for joy, and some for sadness. Those women who realized that the ones they sought were not among the riders fell to their knees, beating the earth with their fists and shouting imprecations. Some women clutched small children and looked up to the sky, and some held the hands of old people and sank down to the ground.
Kaoru suddenly caught on. A tribe of Indians- this area must be their home-had sent its warriors out to battle. How many had gone out? He judged the number of women embracing men and rejoicing over their safety to be roughly equal to the number of women wailing with lowered heads. So: twice as many men had left as returned. A woman who didn't find her man among those who returned had to assume he was dead. Every wife and family member was displaying heightened emotion, some positive, some negative.
Kaoru watched unmoved. Sizing up the situation he decided he was the only one able to look on as a bystander. He felt out of place, uncomfortable.
But a moment later his certainty as to which world he actually lived in was rocked. A hand grabbed him and dragged him sideways. He saw a weeping woman rushing up to him. Her earnest gaze denied his earlier scornful detachment. A ten-year-old boy grabbed him around the waist. Suddenly plunged into this vortex of emotion, Kaoru felt only confusion.
The woman had long hair that was braided down her back, and her broad forehead was exposed. Heedless of the infant she held at her breast, she threw herself at Kaoru. Kaoru felt suffocated. Still, he received the woman. Her passion moved him to an embrace.
The image of the woman before him merged with the picture of Reiko he held in his mind. They did look alike. The hair was different in length and style, but the shapes of their faces, the drooping eyes, were identical. Perhaps Kaoru simply wanted to see things that way, though. Ever since coming to the desert his desire to see Reiko had been stimulated to new heights.
As they held each other, crushing the baby between them, his hands and arms coming into direct contact with her flesh, Kaoru could feel the woman's emotions flowing into his own breast, just for a moment. He and this woman must be husband and wife. The boy clinging to his waist must be his son, the squalling infant squeezed between himself and the woman must be his newborn daughter. It came to him that he knew the kind of life he and this woman had led together over the years. Things he'd seen and felt growing up here came back to him. Sadness, but more than that, hatred. A desire to avenge his murdered father filled the depths of his soul.
New information kept coming to him. The woman had come from another tribe to live with this one. The marriage was her second. Her first husband had been killed far upriver. And not just killed. A band of white soldiers and ruffians had tortured him and then left him to die on the rocks.
The woman still nursed resentment over the way her first husband had been treated. The mechanism by which resentment goaded people to war was laid bare to his consciousness.
He now knew that the boy he had thought was his son was in fact the child of his wife by her previous husband. The only living people with whom he had ties of blood were his aged mother and his newborn daughter.
Kaoru tasted anew the suspicion that here was the real world casting its shadow over the virtual space. His relationship with this woman was almost exactly the one he had with Reiko. Except that Ryoji was dead. He'd thrown himself from the fire escape window, leaving behind only bloodstains on concrete. He'd gone to the other side. But the boy clinging to his waist now was weak and unreliable, just like Ryoji.
Kaoru realized that his own body and mind had started to go over to the other world, leaving him only half conscious. "The other world" was how he expressed it, unthinkingly, but he had no idea where it was located.
There was a brief interval of peace. He lived in a tent pitched on a gentle slope, surrounded by his wife and children and his aged mother. How long had they been together? Sometimes several years felt like a single moment to him, while sometimes a day lasted like a day.
It felt to Kaoru that time flowed, sometimes thick and sluggish, sometimes quick and nimble. The time that enveloped him was mottled, with patches of intensity and patches of attenuation.
His daughter, a newborn when first he'd met her, was a toddler now. His stepson showed not the slightest talent for fighting: a warrior he'd never be. The way he stood when using a bow made everybody laugh.
Kaoru was used to this body now. Crouching beside the river he saw reflected in the water a form totally different from his old one. Dark skin, thick neck and burly tattooed shoulders. He could touch this body and feel it react. Only, his facial features were obscured by ripples in the water: he couldn't get a clear view of them.
He made love to his wife many times, and each time he grew closer to her. His daughter looked at him differently now, too.
The tribe never lived long in one place: always they were forced to move. From the east and the south they were pressed by a tribe whose skin was a different colour. West was the only way they could go. The most careful judgment was required on the part of their leaders to keep contact with the enemy to a minimum while securing food and water supplies. One miscalculation would mean the end of the tribe.
There was only one place they could aim for.
Fractured and factionalized though the tribe was, everyone's expectations focused on the same point: the old legends.
"You must head for a place at the southern edge of the great mountains, where rivers flowing into the western and eastern seas have their source. A place where no one has gone before. There you will find a great cavern with a lake in its belly. This will be the eternal dwelling place of the tribe. There the Great Spirit will watch over you so that none may threaten you, and you will live forever."
There was nothing left to cling to but legends. If they were to be pushed westward anyway, it was only natural to seek the place the legends spoke of.
Though much diminished, the tribe still numbered over two hundred. It wasn't easy to move all those people. Teams of agile scouts on horseback took turns patrolling the area ahead, and only when they had made sure the way was clear of enemies would they lead
the main camp on. Hunters had to be sent out constantly to procure food.
At night families would pitch their tents in any handy place and gather around campfires to eat the meat of the beasts killed by the hunters earlier in the day. They could never eat their fill. Normally they would have preserved leftover meat by smoking it, but they were always too short of food now to even consider that.
Encountering water they would first wash themselves and then move upstream seeking cleaner water to drink. The most important element in their survival was water. He who discovered it would receive the thanks of everyone.
Now they had reached a place from where, by crossing two more peaks, they should be able to find the land the legends spoke of. Almost in sight of their goal, they camped in the woods, marshalling their last reserves of spirit. And chance blessed them with water.
It was children who found the spring. It was said that several of them had been at play, running around among the trees, when they had found a rocky outcropping peeking out from between tree trunks, with a pretty trickle of water running down its face. They called the news to each other, and several adults nearby set out for the spring with vessels in hand.
Here and there they stood, looking around them carefully. Kaoru counted the people climbing the slope of the mountain. Three in front of him, four behind: eight, including himself. The four behind were all women, with his wife and daughter among them. The three in front were all children, and his son was among them, suddenly eager to prove his worth. Only his mother was absent. She was down in the main encampment.
The child who said he'd seen water had spoken truly. There it was, a thin line of water on the face of a boulder sticking out of the mountainside. It was so weak a trickle that they'd have trouble filling their vessels.
As they were debating climbing higher to search for a place where the water flowed more vigorously, the underbrush behind them rustled.
