by Kōji Suzuki
Including Asakawa and Mai, eleven people had died after coming into contact with the video. The same virus had been found in each victim's blood, and there was no more doubt the virus had been the cause of death. But regarding broken rings, the victims fell into two groups. In Mai's case and Asakawa's, broken rings made up fully half of what was found in their blood, while in everybody else's samples, only one specimen in ten was broken. It was not a particularly surprising result. It seemed that the fate of the infected person hinged on the degree of presence of the broken-ring virus.
The statistics indicated that once the broken-ring specimens exceeded a certain percentage, the host was spared death by cardiac arrest, though it wasn't clear yet exactly what that percentage was.
Mai and Asakawa had watched the video. The ring virus had appeared in their bodies. Up to that point, they were no different from the nine other victims. But something had caused some of the viruses to come apart into a thread shape, and the broken particles had surpassed a certain level. And that was why, even though they had watched the video, neither Mai nor Asakawa had died of a heart attack. The question was, what had caused the viruses in their bloodstreams to come apart? What set them apart from the other nine?
"Some form of immunity?" Ando wondered aloud.
"That's a possibility," Miyashita said, cocking his head.
"Or maybe…" Ando trailed off.
"Maybe what?"
"Is it something about the virus itself?"
"I lean more in that direction personally," said Miyashita, propping his feet on the chair in front of him and sticking out his great belly. "Thanks to the mischief of the four kids who watched it first, the video was doomed to extinction in the not-too-distant future. To find a way out, the virus had to mutate. All of this is just as Ryuji told us in his message. Now, then: how exactly did it mutate, and what did it evolve into? The answer to that, I believe, lies in the ring virus that Mai Takano and Kazuyuki Asakawa carried. In its irregular shape, to be precise."
"A virus borrows its host's cells in order to reproduce itself, by definition."
"Right."
"And sometimes that reproduction takes place at an explosive rate."
This, too, was common knowledge. One only had to think of the Black Death that ran rampant in the Middle Ages, or the Spanish influenza of modern times, to find examples of a virus proliferating wildly.
"So?" Miyashita urged Ando to continue.
"So think about it. The video tells people, 'Make a copy within a week or you die.' Even if the viewer did so, that's just one tape turning into two. That's a pretty slow growth rate. Assuming the subsequent viewers repeat the process, that's still only four tapes after a month."
"You've got a point, I guess."
"That's nothing to be scared of."
"It's not very virus-like, you mean. Right?"
"If it doesn't increase at a geometric rate, then it's hardly spreading at all."
Miyashita fixed Ando with a glare. "What exactly is it you're trying to get at?"
"It's just that…"
Ando wasn't sure himself what he wanted to say. Was he trying to put a worse spin on things? Certainly there were cases when a single virus spread virtually overnight to thousands, tens of thousands of victims. That was the raison d'etre of a virus, to replicate itself simultaneously in large numbers. Having copies made of a videotape, one at a time, was simply too inefficient. The results said as much; only three months after its birth, the tape was now extinct. Unless it had been reborn through mutation…
"It's just that I have a bad feeling about this."
Ando looked again at the photos of the ring virus. Vast numbers of them, piled up on one another. When several specimens overlapped, they looked like unspooled, tangled-up videotape. The psychic Sadako Yamamura, on the brink of death, had converted information into images, leaving some sort of energy at the bottom of that well. The video had been born as a result of the detonation of that energy. It wasn't matter that was spreading, but information, as recorded on videotape and DNA.
He couldn't shake the suspicion that some terrible mutation was taking place somewhere he wasn't aware of. Ando had visited Mai's apartment, and he'd also been to the rooftop exhaust shaft into which she'd fallen. He'd sensed the strangeness of her room and had felt the weird-ness of that roof underfoot. Maybe that was why he sensed danger bearing down on him more than Miyashita seemed to. He could almost hear the writhing, of something, accelerate under the earth.
"Do you sense some catastrophe?" Miyashita still sounded pretty relaxed.
"It's just that it's all so grotesque."
Ever since Ryuji's autopsy, Ando had been plunged into the world of the bizarre. Concrete felt soft and clingy under his footsteps, the scent of life pervaded an uninhabited room. One inexplicable phenomenon after another. And then there was the thing Mai had given birth to; the very thought made him shudder. Mai had been dead for a month and a half, and they still had no clue concerning whatever it was she had delivered. Ando doubted that what she'd had was just a cute little baby.
"Don't be so gloomy. Even if it did manage to mutate, there's no guarantee that it succeeded in adapting to the environment."
"So you think the mutated virus might be extinct, too?"
"We can't rule out the possibility."
"Ever the optimist."
"Recall the Spanish influenza virus, the one that swept the world in 1918. They found the same virus in America in 1977, but nobody died then. The first time around it slaughtered between twenty to forty million people worldwide, and sixty years later, it was basically harmless."
"I guess a virus can weaken through mutation."
It was true that since the discovery of Mai's body, no more suspicious deaths had come to light. He'd kept a close watch on the papers and worked his contacts in the police department, but so far the net had come up empty. It was possible that Miyashita was right and that the newly reborn, mutated virus had failed to adapt to its environment in the short period it had to do so, and had lost its ability to spread. Maybe it was extinct.
"Any idea what we should do next?" asked Miyashita, kicking the floor and twirling in his chair.
"Well, there's one thing I've let slip."
"What's that?"
"When and where did Mai get her hands on the videotape?"
"Does it matter?"
"It bothers me. I want to nail down the date."
Ando felt he should have checked on this. He'd been too busy analyzing the virus and forgotten. Now, it looked to be the only thing left to do. He was virtually certain that the tape Mai had watched was Ryuji's copy, but he didn't know how or when it had passed into her possession.
7
Finding out proved surprisingly easy.
Assuming that Ryuji's effects, including the tape, had been shipped to his parents' house within two or three days after his demise, Mai could only have obtained it there. So Ando called Ryuji's family.
When Ryuji's mother heard that Ando was an old college friend of her son's, she suddenly became very friendly. Ando asked whether or not a woman named Mai Takano had called on her.
"Yes," the woman replied. She was even able to ascertain the date by looking at a receipt in her household-finance ledger. She'd bought a shortcake to offer Mai. November 1, 1990. Ando jotted down the date.
"By the way, why exactly did Mai visit you?"
Ryuji's mother explained that Mai had been helping Ryuji with a work he'd been serializing by making clean copies of each installment, and that a page had been found missing.
"So she visited your house to look for the missing page, is that it?"
Ando jotted down the name and publisher of the magazine that had been running the series.
And then he hung up. He didn't want to be asked how Mai was doing these days. If he told Ryuji's mother that Mai was dead, he'd be sure to face a barrage of questions, and he simply didn't have the kind of answers that would satisfy her.
A
ndo sat there with his hand on the receiver long after he'd broken the connection.
On November 1st, Mai visited Ryuji's family home. While searching for the missing manuscript page, she found the videotape. She took it home with her. She probably watched it that very day.
He started to put together a hypothesis based on a November 1st starting point. It took a week for the virus to have its full effect. So something should have happened to her on November 8th. Ando's date with her had been for the ninth. He'd called her several times that day, with no answer. It made sense. She'd either been in her room and unable to pick up the phone or already in the exhaust shaft.
He started to calculate backwards. The autopsy had been able to tell them how long she'd been alive in the shaft, and how long she'd been dead before she was discovered. She had died, according to the evidence, on or about the 20th of November, and she had fallen into the shaft about ten days before. It was perfectly in line with these projections to posit that the virus had worked its changes on her on the eighth or ninth, leading to her fall into the shaft. Thus it was probably accurate to assume that she'd watched the video on November 1st.
The next thing Ando did was to head to the periodicals section of the library to look for the magazine that contained Ryuji's articles. He found it. And in the issue dated November 20th, he found the last installment of Ryuji's work, a piece entitled The Structure of Knowledge. This told Ando something.
Mai managed to transcribe Ryuji's article and get it to his editor.
This meant that in the time between her watching the video and her death, there was at least one person she'd definitely had contact with.
He put in a call to the editorial office of the monthly that had run the article and made an appointment with the editor in charge of Ryuji's work. Ando decided he needed to visit the publisher himself; something made him want to actually meet the guy, rather than just talk to him over the phone.
He took a JR train to Suidobashi. From there he walked for about five minutes, looking for the address, before he spotted the eleven-story building that housed the offices of Shotoku, Ryuji's publisher. At the reception desk he asked for Kimura, an editor with the monthly Currents. Ando looked idly around the lobby as he waited. Kimura sent word that he'd meet him in the reception area right away. Ando was relieved that the editor had readily agreed to receive a total stranger. On the phone he'd sounded like a man in his twenties, but on the ball. Ando found himself imagining a handsome young man in wire-rims.
Instead, he saw a tubby man in check pants and suspenders, whose bald head glistened with sweat in spite of the season. In every way he failed to match Ando's image of an editor at a major publishing house, especially one who worked for a magazine that chronicled the latest developments in contemporary thought.
"Sorry to keep you waiting." The man grinned broadly and offered Ando his business card. Satoshi Kimura, Executive Editor. He looked much older than he sounded. He was probably pushing forty.
Ando produced his own card and said, "Thanks for seeing me. Can I buy you a cup of coffee somewhere?" He meant to leave the building.
"There aren't any decent cafes around here. But we have a lounge, if you don't mind."
"That's fine."
Ando decided to follow Kimura's lead, and together they boarded an elevator.
The lounge was on the top floor of the building, overlooking the garden in the courtyard. It was quite well-appointed; as Ando sank into a sofa, he looked around and spotted faces that he recognized from newspapers and magazines. It seemed the lounge was a popular place for editors to meet with their writers. Several people were there with manuscripts in hand.
"We certainly lost a good man."
At these words, Ando's wandering thoughts snapped back into focus, and he looked at Kimura's oily face directly across the table.
"It so happens that Ryuji Takayama and I were classmates in med school," Ando said, watching for a reaction. He'd lost count of how many people he'd drawn out with this line so far.
"Is that a fact? So you knew Professor Takayama."
Kimura glanced at the business card in his hand and nodded, seemingly reassured of something. The card bore the name of the university Ando worked for. The man had probably recalled that Ryuji had attended that same university's medical department.
"What's more, I performed his autopsy."
Kimura's eyes grew wide. He stuck out his chin and emitted a queer little cry.
"Well, now, that's…"
Kimura lapsed into silence, staring at Ando's hands, which held a coffee cup. He seemed interested in the fingers that had sliced Ryuji open.
"But I didn't come here today to talk about him," Ando said, putting down the coffee cup and bringing his hands together on the table.
"Why have you come?"
"I'd like to ask you a little about one of his students. Mai Takano."
At the mention of her name, Kimura's expression softened, and he leaned forward. "What about her?"
He doesn't know, Ando intuited. But he had to find out sooner or later.
"Are you aware that Mai is dead?"
Kimura let out an even more curious groan and almost jumped out of his chair. It was almost comical how dramatically his features conveyed his emotions; he was the real Man of a Thousand Faces. He ought to audition for a sit com, Ando thought.
"You must be kidding!" Kimura cried. "Mai can't be dead?"
"She fell into an exhaust shaft on a roof last November and died there."
"I guess that explains why I haven't been able to get in touch with her."
Ando felt a certain closeness to the man, who'd been in the same boat. He had no idea if this Kimura was married or not, but he was willing to bet that the guy had had at least a slight crush on Mai.
"Do you remember the last time you saw her?" Ando asked quickly, loathe to give the man any time to wallow in sentiment.
"We were just beginning to proof the New Year's issue, so it must have been the beginning of November."
"Would you happen to know the exact date?"
Kimura took out a datebook for the previous year and started leafing through it.
"November the second."
November 2nd. The day after Mai had visited Ryuji's parents' house and taken the videotape home with her. Mai had probably already watched the tape by then.
"Do you mind if I ask where you met?"
"She called me to say that she'd finished copying the article. I immediately went to pick it up."
"Went where? To her apartment?"
"No, we met at a cafe in front of her station. Like we always did." Kimura seemed to want to stress that he'd never set foot inside her apartment, knowing she lived alone.
"When you saw her, did she seem different in any way?"
Kimura looked puzzled. He couldn't tell what Ando meant by the question. "What do you mean?"
"Well, unfortunately, there's still some doubt surrounding the cause of her death."
"Doubt, you say?"
Kimura folded his arms and thought for a while. The thought that what he said might influence Mai's autopsy results made him suddenly cautious.
"Any little bit could help. Did you notice anything?"
Ando smiled, trying to put the man at ease.
"Well, she did seem a bit unlike herself that day."
"Can you be more specific?"
"She looked pale. And she held a handkerchief over her mouth, like she was fighting back nausea."
The nausea caught Ando's attention. He remembered the brown clump of what had seemed to be vomit that he'd found on Mai's bathroom floor.
"Did you ask her about her apparent nausea?"
"No. I mean, right away she told me she wasn't feeling well because she'd pulled an all-nighter writing out Professor Takayama's manuscript."
"I see. So she said it was from lack of sleep."
"Yes."
"Did she tell you anything else?"
"I was in a hurry, you see.
I thanked her for the manuscript, we had a brief discussion about the book to come, and then I said goodbye."
"Book. You mean Ryuji's."
"Right. From the very beginning we ran the series of articles on the premise that we'd publish them in book form eventually."
"When's this book coming out?
"It's scheduled to appear in bookstores next month."
"Well, I hope it sells well."
"It's difficult material, and were not getting our hopes up. I must say, though, that it's a really good book. Just superb."
After that, the conversation got sidetracked into reminiscences of Ryuji, and Ando found it hard to get back on topic. By the time he'd managed to drag Mai back into the discussion so they could talk about her relationship to Ryuji, the hour Kimura had promised Ando was up. Ando hadn't really learned anything of value yet, but he decided he'd best not overstay the editor's welcome. He doubtless needed to see this man again, and he wanted to leave a good impression. So he thanked Kimura and took his leave.
As Ando stood up, he happened to notice three people entering the lounge. There were two men and a woman, and Ando had seen each of them before. The woman was a nonfiction writer who'd vaulted to bestseller status when one of her books had been turned into a movie. Ando had seen her face on TV and in the weekly news magazines several times. One of the men was the director who'd adapted her work to the screen. But the one who really caught Ando by surprise was the fortyish man who came in with the director. The name was on the tip of his tongue. He wracked his brains. The man had to be a writer or something. As they passed, Kimura spoke to the man.
"Hey, Asakawa. Glad to hear it's going forward."
Asakawa.
It was Junichiro Asakawa, Kazuyuki's older brother. Ando had visited him at his apartment in Kanda in November to pick up the Ring floppy disk. At the time, Ando had been so happy to get his hands on the disk that he hadn't said more than a perfunctory goodbye. But when he'd sent the disk back later, he'd included a very polite thank-you note.
He also remembered that the business card Junichiro had given him had borne the name of this publishing house. Whether by mere chance or thanks to the connection, Ryuji's book was being published by his best friend's brother's company.
