by Kōji Suzuki
“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
The Cancer Ward
1
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 t
he 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 can
cer 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.
