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  He was still young, in his late twenties, married but childless. Five years after he took the appointment, the project was brought to a halt in an entirely unforeseen way. It wasn't a failure, having achieved a certain manner of success. But it never felt like success to Hideyuki because the way it all ended stuck in his throat.

  This project into which he'd poured all his youthful passion, only to see it miscarry, was known as the Loop.

  5

  Hideyuki presented a new question to Kaoru, forcefully steering the conversation away from the Loop.

  "So do you think life emerged by chance or by necessity? Which side are you on?"

  "The only answer I can give to that question is, 'I don't know'."

  It was all he could say. He couldn't affirm the necessity argument just because he himself existed. In the absence of confirmed life anywhere else, it was possible that life on earth was an utterly random gift, unique in the universe.

  "I'm asking you what you think."

  "But Dad, aren't you always saying that it's important to recognize what modern science doesn't know? To be willing to say 'I don't know'?"

  Hideyuki chuckled at the question. A look at his face revealed the alcohol taking effect. The number of empties was up to six.

  "You don't have to tell me that. Think of this as a game if you have to. We're in the world of play. I want to know what your gut tells you, that's all."

  Machiko had gone into the kitchen to fry up some noodles; now she stopped what she was doing and fixed her gaze on Kaoru, a gleam in her eye.

  Kaoru thought about himself. Things like the emergence of life and the universe were beyond the reach of his imagination, when he got right down to it. It was better to take the emergence of one individual as an example, and work up from there.

  First and foremost, what about the inception of his own life? When was that? When he'd crawled out of his mother's womb and had his umbilical cord cut? Or when the egg, after insemination in the fallopian tube, had been safely embedded in the wall of the womb?

  If he was going to talk about inception, then he figured he should probably take insemination as the first step. His nervous system had taken shape by around three weeks from insemination.

  Now, he thought, just suppose that a foetus of that age had consciousness, the ability to think. To that foetus, the mother's womb would be the whole universe. Why am I here, the foetus asks. Immersed in amniotic fluid, he begins to wonder about the mechanism of conception. But as he knows nothing of the world outside the womb, he can't even imagine that his own conception was preceded by reproductive acts. All he can do is make guesses based on evidence he finds within the womb.

  So he begins to think of the amniotic fluid itself as his parent-a natural conclusion. He begins to think of the amniotic fluid as the primordial soup covering the primeval earth, churning until twenty kinds of amino acid join hands in brotherhood to make life enabling proteins; these then begin to replicate themselves… The probability of which is, of course, the same as the monkey at the typewriter, banging keys at random, coming up with a passage from Shakespeare.

  A probability so low that even with trillions of monkeys banging away for trillions of years, it was still virtually nil. And if a passage from Shakespeare should appear anyway? Would people still call it a coincidence? Of course not- they'd suspect some kind of fix. A man in a monkey suit sitting at one of the typewriters, or an intelligent monkey…

  But the foetus immersed in amniotic fluid thinks his conception was by chance-he can't make his imagination comprehend the mechanism behind it. And that's because he doesn't know about the world outside.

  Only when he crawls out of the birth canal after roughly thirty-six weeks in the womb does he for the first time see the outside of the mother who bore him. Only after growing and increasing in knowledge yet further does he come to understand with exactness why and how he was conceived and born. As long as we're inside the womb-inside the universe-we can't understand the way it works. Our powers of apprehension are blacked out on that point. They have to be.

  Kaoru decided to apply the example of the foetus in its universe-the womb-to the question of life on earth and the universe it occupied.

  In most cases, the womb comes pre-equipped with everything necessary to nurture a foetus after insemination. But does it always host a foetus? Of course not. The phenomenon of insemination itself is controlled largely by chance. And many women choose not to have children.

  And even if a woman has a couple of children, the length of time in which her womb holds a foetus is still less than two years total. In other words, equipped for a foetus though it may be, the womb is usually unoccupied.

  Kaoru decided to take a step back and think about the universe again. Given that we are actually existing within it, it seems reasonable to say that the universe is equipped with what is necessary to sustain life. In which case, life arose out of necessity, right? But, no, remember the womb: it may be capable of sustaining the life of a foetus, but it's usually without one. So life arose by chance, then? The universe is not constantly filled with life, indeed, a universe that does not beget life may indeed be more natural.

  In the end, Kaoru couldn't come up with an answer after all.

  But there was Hideyuki, drinking his beer and expecting a reply.

  "Maybe we're the only life in the universe after all," said Kaoru.

  Hideyuki grunted. "That's what your gut tells you?"

  Hideyuki stared at his son fascinatedly, then shifted his gaze to his wife.

  Machiko was sleeping peacefully, her head pillowed on her hands on the table.

  "Hey, go get a blanket for Machi, will ya?"

  "Okay." He immediately went to the bedroom and brought back a blanket, which he handed to Hideyuki. Hideyuki draped it over Machiko's shoulders and smiled at her sleeping face before turning back to his son.

  The eastern sky had begun to whiten without them noticing, and the temperature of the room had dropped. Night in the Futami household was over, and it was just about time to sleep.

  Hideyuki's eyes as he drank the last of the stale beer were hollow.

  Kaoru waited until his father was finished drinking, then said, "Hey, Dad. Can I ask you a favour?"

  "What?"

  Kaoru lay the gravitational anomaly map in front of his father again. "What do you think of this?"

  Kaoru's pinky was pointing at a particular spot on the map, a desert region, the so-called Four Corners area of the western North American continent, where the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado met.

  "What about it?" Hideyuki brought his eyes close to the map, blinking.

  "Look closely at it. Now take another look at the gravitational anomaly figures for this area."

  Hideyuki rubbed his eyes again and again, as the numbers swam in his tired eyes.

  "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 coul
d 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 colours.

  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 foetus kicking 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 colours 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 foetus.

  PART II - 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 thinking 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 honour 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 centres. 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 the 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 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 signalling 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.