by Kōji Suzuki
From inside one of the machine houses he heard a groan that sounded like cable being reeled in by a winch. One of the elevators was apparently on the move. Ando began taking small steps backward to get out from between the machine houses. Their walls were rough and blackened in places, with the paint chipping off, testifying to how seldom people came here.
He got away as fast as he could, rushing to the ladder and climbing down to the balcony of the fourteenth floor. The bottom rung was three feet above the surface, so he had to jump. Ando missed his footing on the landing. The back of his leg went momentarily numb; he crouched over and found himself at eye level with the bottom rung of the rusty ladder.
He went back inside and headed for the elevators. One of them was slowly making its way upward. He pushed the button for that elevator and waited in front of it.
As he waited, he tried to figure out why Mai had gone up to the roof of this building. He considered the possibility that she was being pursued. The warehouse district would be mostly deserted at night, and perhaps, walking along, she realized she was being stalked. She saw those stairs outside, with the iron gate. Judging that she could climb it but not the stranger, she might indeed have gone for them. Perhaps the person managed to scale the gate after all, and Mai had no place to go but up. Her first mistake, as it were, put her in a cul-de-sac. The ladder leading to the roof would have been her last lifeline. The bottom rung was a yard off the floor. Hoping that her assailant would give up at last, Mai had climbed to the roof. Well? Had the stranger been able to follow her up? Ando tried to imagine what sort of person would have a hard time with a ladder, set perpendicular to the ground, and the image that came to his mind was of some four-footed beast.
The elevator doors opened as the thought occurred to him. The elevator was not empty. Ando had been staring at his toes; he raised his eyes to meet those of a young woman. She stared at him as if she'd been lying in wait for him. There could be no mistake, he'd encountered this woman before, under similar circumstances. She was the one who had come out of Mai's room and shared an elevator with him. The cracked nails, and that odor, the likes of which he'd never smelled before-he couldn't forget her if he tried.
Now he stood directly in front of her, facing her, and he couldn't move a muscle. He was confused. His mind couldn't process what he was seeing and his body escaped his command.
Why. Is. She. Here? Ando flailed about for a reason, which he was doomed not to find. The absence of any conceivable reason was what truly frightened him. As long as an explanation could be found, terror could be dispelled.
As they stared at each other, the elevator doors started to close between them. The woman reached out a hand and held them open. The motion was smooth, dexterous. She wore a blue polka-dot skirt, beneath which he could see her legs, bare, unstockinged despite the early winter weather. It was with her right hand that she had stopped the doors; in her other was a small bouquet of flowers.
Flowers! Ando's sight rested on the bouquet.
"I've seen you before, haven't I?" She had spoken first, and her voice drew him in. It was deeper than her willowy proportions had led him to expect.
Ando's mouth hung open until he finally managed to dredge some words out of the parched depths of his throat. "Are you Mai's sister?"
That was what he wanted her to be. If that was who she was, it made sense: her emerging from Mai's room, her coming to this building with a bouquet. Everything would stand to be explained.
The woman made a slight, indecipherable movement with her head. It wasn't quite a nod, nor quite a shake. It could have been affirmation or denial, but Ando decided she'd intended a yes.
She's Mai's older sister, come to leave flowers on the roof of the building where her sister died. It was most natural, quite fitting. People only ever believe what they can understand.
The moment he got that straight, all of his previous cowering struck him as funny. What had he been so afraid of? He couldn't make sense of his own psychology. The first time he'd met her, this woman had given him a strong otherworldly impression. But now that the riddle was solved, that impression faded away like a lie, while her beauty alone came to dominate his view of her. Her long, slender nose, the gentle, round line of her cheeks, her ever-so-slightly slanted eyes with their heavy eyelids. They didn't stare directly at him; rather, they seemed intentionally unfo-cussed. Within them lurked a seductive glow.
Those eyes. When he'd encountered her the other day at Mai's apartment, she'd been wearing sunglasses. This was the first time he'd been able to see her eyes. Their gaze, full upon him, exerted a strong gravitational pull. He found it hard to breathe, and his chest pounded.
"Excuse me, but…" From the tone of her voice and her expression it was clear that she wanted to know his relationship with Mai.
"My name is Ando. Fukuzawa University Medical School." He knew this didn't exactly answer her question.
The woman stepped out of the elevator and, still holding the door open, motioned him in with her eyes. He had to obey. Her elegant movements left him powerless to refuse. As though enchanted, Ando entered the elevator in her place. They stared at each other again from their reversed positions.
"I'll call on you soon with a request."
She said this just before the door closed. Ando heard her clearly and there was no mistaking her words. The doors as they closed were like a camera shutter, removing her from his field of vision but leaving her image imprinted on Ando's brain.
As the elevator descended slowly, Ando found himself overcome with uncontrollable lust. Mai had been the object of the first sexual fantasies he'd had since his family had ceased to be, but this was far more intense. He'd only been with the woman for a few seconds, and yet he could remember every detail of her body, from the curve of her ankles, bare above her pumps, to the corners of her eyes. And his image of her remained sharp, even as the moments passed. Flustered by the sudden flood of sexual desire, Ando rushed out of the building, hailed a taxi, and hurried home.
In the cab, he thought about the last words she'd said.
I'll call on you soon with a request.
What was her request? Where did she mean to "call on" him? Was that supposed to be some sort of social pleasantry?
He'd rushed out of the building and into a taxi as if pursued by her gaze. He regretted not asking her for her name and number at least. Why hadn't he? He ought to have waited for her to come down from the roof. But he hadn't. Or rather, he couldn't. It was as though his every movement had been controlled by that woman. He had acted against his will.
5
A week had passed since Mai's autopsy. It was December, and the weather had suddenly turned wintry. Ando had never liked winter-he much preferred late spring to early summer-but ever since the death of his son he'd stopped paying much attention to the changing seasons. The morning's drastic chill had forced him, nonetheless, to recognize the advent of winter. On the way to the university he'd stopped in his tracks several times to go back and get a sweater, but in the end he'd simply continued on his way. He didn't feel like going all the way back, and the walking was warming him up.
His apartment in Sangubashi was close enough to the university that he could walk to work if he felt like it. And though he usually went by train, the transfer he had to make despite the short distance never went smoothly. As a result, and because he knew he needed the exercise, Ando sometimes ended up half-walking, half-jogging to and from work. The day had started out as one of those days, but halfway to campus he changed his mind and caught the JR train at Yoyogi Station. He wanted to get to the university sooner than later.
With just two stations to go, he didn't have the time to organize his thoughts in the rocking cradle of the train carriage. This morning he was supposed to look at samples of Mai's cells and Ryuji's through the electron microscope. Miyashita was going to be there, as well as Nemoto, an electron microscopy expert. The thought of what lay ahead made Ando want to hurry.
Up until then, th
e smallpox-like virus hadn't been found in anybody who hadn't watched the video. There had been no reports of the virus being spread by physical contact. In Mai's room he'd found a copy of the video, already erased. These two facts meant that if Mai's blood cells revealed the presence of the virus, it would be safe to conclude that she had actually watched the tape. The calamity that had befallen her would have been the video's doing.
He was so deep in thought that he almost missed his station, but he managed to jump off the train just before the doors closed. He allowed himself to be swept along with the rest of the crowd toward the ticket gates. The university hospital stood in all its grandeur right outside the station.
Ando poked his head into the lab, and Miyashita turned his ruddy face toward him.
"Finally he shows up!"
Miyashita and Nemoto had spent the previous week making preparations for today's session with the electron microscope. A virus wasn't something one could just pop into a microscope and take a gander at when the mood struck. There were a lot of things that had to be done first, applying a centrifuge, cell sectioning, and so on. The procedure was beyond the skill of a non-specialist like Ando. Given all the preparation it took, Miyashita could hardly wait for the moment. He'd been up since early morning getting ready.
"Lower the lights," Nemoto said.
"Yessum!" replied Miyashita, who quickly turned them off. Although they'd completed the base sequencing some time ago, this was their first chance to see the virus directly, with their own eyes. The virus that had been found in the blood of Ryuji and possibly Mai.
Nemoto went into the darkroom alone and fixed the ultrathin section on the holder. Ando and Miyashita sat in front of the console, staring at the screen in utter silence. Though it was still blank, both men's eyes were active as they chased mental images of what they would soon be seeing.
Nemoto came back and turned off the last overhead light. All set. Holding their breath, the three men watched the screen. Gradually, as the ultrathin section of cellular matter was illuminated by an electron beam, a microscopic world began to open up before them.
"Which one are we looking at?" Miyashita asked Nemoto.
"This is Takayama's."
The green pattern on the screen before them was a universe unto itself. A twist of a dial sent their field of view racing across the surface of the cells. Somewhere in there lurked the virus.
"Try increasing the magnification," Miyashita instructed. Nemoto responded immediately, taking the machine up to x9000. Another pass over the surface gave them a clear view of the dying cells. The cyctoplasm gleamed brightly, while the organelles had collapsed into black clumps.
"Home in on the cytoplasm on the top right and increase the magnification." As he spoke, Miyashita's face caught the reflection of the dying cells' mottled appearance and had the dull glow of a bronze bust. Nemoto increased the magnification to x16000.
"More."
x21000.
"There. Stop." Miyashita's voice rose, and he shot a glance at Ando, who leaned forward so that his face was right near the screen.
There they were… swarms of them!
The strands writhed around in the dying cells like so many snakes, biting and clinging to the surface of the chromatin.
A chill ran down Ando's spine. This was a new virus, the likes of which had never been seen before. He'd never seen the smallpox virus through an electron microscope, yet he did know it from medical textbooks. The differences between that and this were obvious at a glance.
"Oh my God."
Miyashita sat there sighing, his mouth hanging open.
Ando understood the workings of the virus: how it was carried along inside the blood vessels to the coronary artery, where it affixed itself to the inner wall of the anterior descending branch and caused mutations in the cells of that area until they formed a tumor. What he couldn't understand was how this virus he was looking at now could have been created via the victim's consciousness. This virus didn't invade the body from outside. Rather, it was born within the body as a result of watching a videotape; it was a function of the mind. That went beyond mysterious and Ando was dumbfounded. It represented a leap from nothingness to being, from concept to matter. In all earth's history such a thing happened only once, when life first came to be.
Does it mean, then, that life emerged due to the workings of some consciousness?
Ando's thoughts were veering off track. Miyashita brought him back with his next comment.
"'Ring', anyone?"
Ando returned his gaze to the electron microscope screen. It didn't take long to figure out Miyashita's remark; he was angling for something with which to compare the shape of the virus. Some specimens were twisted and some were u-shaped, but most of them looked like a slightly distorted ring, the kind one wears on a finger. "Ring" hit the nail on the head. There was even a protrusion at one point that resembled nothing so much as a stone on a setting. The screen looked like a view of a floor across which tangled-up rings and snakes and rubber bands had been strewn indiscriminately.
It fell to Ando and Miyashita, who discovered it, to name this strange new virus, and Miyashita's comment was by way of a suggestion. The ring virus.
"How about it?"
Miyashita wanted Ando's opinion. The name was perfect, but Ando felt uneasy for precisely that reason. It was too perfect and made him wonder if a God-like being were making itself felt. How did all this begin? Ando had no trouble remembering: it was with the numbers on the newspaper that had been sticking out of Ryuji's sutures. 178, 136. They'd given him the English word "ring". Then he'd found that astonishing report, and it was entitled Ring. And now, this, which he beheld-a virus shaped like a ring. It was as if some will, changing form with each rebirth as it strove to grow into something ever larger, had chosen this shape as its symbol.
The microscopic universe contained kinds of beauty that came from cyclic repetition, but what Ando saw now was an ugliness that mirrored such beauty. And it wasn't just the abstract knowledge that this virus brought evil to humanity that made it appear ugly to Ando. What he felt was closer to an instinctive hatred of serpentine creatures. Any human being shown the image, with absolutely no prior knowledge, would probably react with revulsion.
As if to prove this, Nemoto, who had little idea of the origin of the virus, was visibly shaken. His hands on the controls trembled. Only the machine remained unaffected, emotionlessly spitting out negatives. Once he'd taken seven photographs, Nemoto gathered them up and went to the darkroom. While he waited for them to develop, he set the ultrathin section from Mai's blood cells in the holder. Then he resumed his place in front of the console and flipped the switch without ado.
"Next we'll be looking at Takano's."
They gradually increased the magnification, just as they'd done with Ryuji's sample. They had no trouble finding what they were looking for. Without question, it was the same virus. They were writhing just like the other ones.
"Identical," Ando and Miyashita stated at the same time. Neither of them could see anything to prevent them from reaching that conclusion. But Nemoto, the electron microscopy expert, was more sensitive to minor inconsistencies.
"That's strange."
Miyashita watched him tilt his head and stroke his chin, then asked, "What is?"
"I'd rather not say anything until I get a chance to compare the photographs."
Ever cautious in all things, Nemoto hesitated to draw a conclusion based solely on his impressions of Ryuji's virus. Science was about proof, not impressions, was his motto. That aside, Nemoto could swear he saw a quantitative difference. It wasn't a variation in the overall number of specimens of the virus present in each sample. What struck him was that, in Mai's sample, there were more broken rings. In Ryuji's sample, too, of course, some of the virus specimens had come undone, making u-shapes, or snake coils, but most of them were whole and looked like rings. In Mai's case, more of the rings were broken, and stretched out like threads.
In
order to confirm his suspicions, Nemoto homed in on a likely-looking specimen and adjusted the focus until the specimen filled the screen. If the normal virus looked like a ring, then this specimen looked like a ring which had broken just on one side of the stone. The "stone" and its "setting" now looked like a head with a flagellum wiggling behind it.
The result was a shape that Ando, Miyashita, and Nemoto were quite familiar with. All three men were reminded of the same thing at the same time, but none dared say it.
6
Nemoto's first impression was borne out when he compared the photos he'd taken of the ring virus. In any given area of Mai's sample, there were more virus specimens that looked like broken rings or threads than in a comparable area of Ryuji's sample. Statistically speaking, roughly one in ten of Ryuji's viruses were broken, while in Mai's case, the distribution was around fifty percent. Such a manifest difference was unlikely to occur without a reason. Ando requested that samples from all the videotape's victims be put under the electron microscope.
It wasn't until the Friday after the New Year's holiday that all the results were in.
Glancing out the window in the lab, he could see that some of the previous night's snowfall still lingered among the dead trees of the Outer Gardens of Meiji Shrine. When he grew tired of analyzing the photos, Ando went to the windowsill to feast his eyes on the scene outside the window. Miyashita never rested though, carefully comparing the photos spread out on the desktop.
