Birthday

by Kōji Suzuki

  "No, they can't. Just like we can't peek into the world of the gods."

  But the image that came into Reiko's mind was not of god and man.

  A few days ago Reiko had gone to see her obstetrician, and the doctor had shown her the fetus. She'd lain down on a bed and hiked up her blouse to expose her belly, and the doctor had applied the ultrasound to her skin, summoning an image of the fetus on the monitor.

  The doctor had talked to her about the baby's development. Reiko had been struck by how easily the echo machine showed her the inside of her womb. Here, too, the comparison of the Loop to a womb proved helpful to her.

  A mother could see the fetus in her womb, but the fetus could not be conscious of its mother in her entirety. Perception in this case was a one-way street.

  And so Reiko had no trouble accepting the fact that while the real world could look in on the Loop, the reverse was impossible.

  "I understand. Now let me meet him."

  She intentionally used an expression that implied they'd be in the same space even though she knew that she'd see him and not the reverse. She wanted to feel like they'd be together, even temporarily. If only she could recapture the feeling of his skin touching hers...

  "Alright. It's about time we left this room. I think Kaoru has things he wants to tell you. He was evidently quite insistent that Dr. Eliot promise him this meeting.

  He didn't want to leave you a message by holographic memory. I think he just wanted to feel for an instant that you and he were in the same place at the same time, to feel that you were there before his eyes."

  They went into a laboratory divided down the middle by a standing screen. Amano went to a computer and input a time and a place. Reiko sat where she was told.

  He asked if she wanted to use a helmet display and data gloves.

  "What happens if I use them?"

  "The experience will be three-dimensional. Alto-gether more realistic. The data gloves will allow you to touch Kaoru's body."

  Without a moment's hesitation, she chose to use them.

  She put on the equipment and waited for the time to come. Two minutes to go. She steadied her breathing and wiped the coffee from her hair with a handkerchief, arranging it behind her head. She knew he wouldn't be able to see her, but her feminine instincts insisted.

  It had been two months since she'd last seen his face. Now he was dead—seeing him would feel like they'd put TV cameras in heaven or something. Her anticipation mounted. She wanted to see him calm and at peace. She thought it might reassure her, to a degree.

  3

  In Loop time, it was nearly two pm on June 27, 1991. The latitude and longitude coordinates were aligned precisely as they should be. Reiko was about to experience the Loop world in three dimensions, sight and sound.

  As the system started, she could feel that she was being taken to another place. Her surroundings were blurry white, and countless droplets of moisture floated all around her. Her body was thrust between them. She seemed to be floating in clouds and her body felt light.

  She was not afraid. In fact, she felt quite comfortable, as if she'd obtained a new, freer body.

  It didn't take her long to realize that those were actual clouds obscuring her field of vision. She made her way forward until she passed through a rent in the clouds to the other side. She found herself looking down at a coastline, a peninsula extending out into the sea.

  Her point of view descended until the intricate coastline became so clear she felt she could reach out and touch it.

  The land sloped steeply down to the ocean, leaving precious little space for the seaside pines and only a thin strip of beach.

  A paved road wound its way through the hills, shining up at her grayly. The Loop world's sun seemed to be at her back; she couldn't see it, but she could see the reflection of its rays on the road, and on the waves, glitter-ing. She was able to sense that the sun was there behind her.

  She saw a human figure on an animal track that veered off the road toward the ocean. At first she couldn't tell what it was looking for as it wandered back and forth along the pine-covered hillside. Was it trying to find a clear field of vision? Or someplace where it could bask in the rays of the sun as they broke through the clouds?

  Finally the figure sat down in a grassy clearing on the slope. It then looked straight up at where Reiko's

  "eyes" should be.

  All was silent, except for the surf in the distance and the wind that surrounded her. As her vantage point lowered and the ground rose to meet her she got a curious sense of spatial relationships. It wasn't like landing in an airplane; it was slower than that. She'd never para-chuted, but she imagined this was what it felt like.

  The figure sitting there holding his knees was known in her world by the name Kaoru Futami, while in the Loop he was called Ryuji Takayama. Time in the Loop moved six times faster than in the real world; the month Reiko had spent since last talking with him corresponded to six months there. But that wasn't important. What mattered right now was that Kaoru, too, was aware that Reiko was right in front of him.

  She looked down on him from a height of several meters, gazing at his forehead, his nose, the strong-willed set of his mouth. He smiled up as if searching for Reiko's face floating there in the sky. He knew, he had to know, that she was looking at him.

  Reiko stayed where she was for a while and allowed memories of Kaoru to pass through her mind. They'd spent so little time together, shared so few spaces. The hospital was practically the only place where they'd voiced their love for each other, but Reiko's son had committed suicide there. Pleasant memories of the place coexisted with sorrowful ones.

  Reiko searched for recollections that were purely of Kaoru, fleshing them out, comparing them with the face she was now seeing. Kaoru was right there in front of her, but she closed her eyes.

  An image of herself and Kaoru replayed in her mind.

  He was walking along the hospital corridor. When he saw her, his face lit up with a joy he didn't even try to conceal. She missed that innocence of his. She could recall the warmth of his skin as he hesitantly touched her—as he picked her up with ease and carried her to the bed. She recalled how they had stood looking over the city from the top floor of the hospital, talking about what they'd do if they could conquer the illness, losing themselves in unrealizable dreams.

  Do I want to capture those memories? Do I want to re-experience them?

  No, that wasn't it. She wanted to go forth with Kaoru into the future. But he was dead. He didn't really exist anymore. He wasn't anyone she could go forth with.

  But when she opened her eyes, he was even closer.

  He moved his lips. Clearly he was trying to say something, but she couldn't hear him—was the machine mal-functioning? She told Amano, who was sitting beside her, watching her, and sure enough, it seemed there had been a mistake. He adjusted the automatic translator so that Kaoru's words could reach her.

  Kaoru was looking straight upward, and his gaze bristled with determination. He was saying something, in simple, clearly enunciated words. At first it sounded like static, but as Amano made the requisite adjustments Reiko began to make them out. As a result of passing through the translator, Kaoru's voice sounded subtly different, but she understood what he was saying.

  "It's going—to be—alright."

  He gave a big nod, as if to confirm it with himself.

  It's alright.

  What was alright? Was he beating a drum for the world he'd given his life to protect? Where did he get that kind of confidence? Yet, Reiko could tell that her attitude toward life, which had already undergone such drastic changes in the few hours since she'd come to the research center, was approaching a new conclusion.

  Kaoru had sacrificed himself to save Reiko and the child she carried, and now he sat before them saying,

  "It's alright." With him affirming the world, she had no grounds for doubt.

  I'll live.

  The thought pierced her body. She'd begu
n to lose the sense that she was really alive, but now, in a way that transcended all causes, she suddenly had it back.

  Just before Kaoru had set out for the desert, Reiko had been hinting at suicide, and he'd extracted a promise from her.

  Let's meet again two months from now. Until then, you have to keep living, no matter what.

  His promise was that in two months he'd reappear, a solution in hand. He'd kept his promise.

  Reiko moved her hands, encased in data gloves, and touched Kaoru. She placed her hands on his shoulders and felt his prominent shoulder blades, covered in well-toned muscle. He was just the same.

  Kaoru rearranged his legs so that he was sitting Indian-style and stretched out his hands. Reiko grasped them; he didn't respond. Of course he didn't. He couldn't see her. But she didn't give up.

  She desperately repeated the motion, again and again, hoping that her desire to communicate might move him. She ran her hands up his arms, entwined her fingers in his. Meanwhile Kaoru waved, scratched his head, and in general did exactly the opposite of what she wanted. Finally, he seemed to realize something. He mused, arms hanging at his sides, then held out his hands again. It was a gesture of surrender; her will, not his, would determine the course of this.

  Reiko placed her hands on his and left them there for a while so that they could begin to feel each other's intentions. She was afraid that any sudden movement might sever her connection to him. Then, carefully, she moved a hand. His hand made a corresponding movement. He'd sensed her. She was sure that Kaoru could intuit that he was holding her hands even if he couldn't see her.

  Reiko cautiously placed his hands on her chest, then slowly moved them downward. Their clasped hands were like an umbilical cord linking the real world with the Loop. She guided his hands downward, to her belly, to her navel.

  "Can you hear it?"

  She hoped that the tiny heartbeat was felt against his skin.

  Kaoru nodded, and said again, "It's going to be alright."

  Perhaps his voice reached the fetus. It moved in her like never before.

  4

  When she walked through the hospital doors, Reiko's heart was a tangle of complicated emotions. This was the hospital where her son Ryoji had jumped to his death, so she'd expected it to affect her badly. She anticipated grief, but to her surprise the first memory that came to her was of meeting Kaoru.

  She went up to the third floor and crossed the spacious lobby to the elevator for the B wing. The third floor was where the cafeteria was, overlooking the courtyard.

  Reiko had first met Kaoru there.

  He'd been looking at her, but men were always looking at her. She'd shot him a pointed glance, but it didn't affect him in the least. In fact, his gaze grew more determined and it soon became impossible for her to ignore it. A few days later, she had the chance to speak with him. Once she learned what kind of person he was—once she glimpsed his ideals—she found herself attracted to him as a woman. It was partly to increase her contact with him that she asked him to tutor her son.

  But then they became lovers, and as a direct result of that, her son resorted to killing himself. She couldn't blame him for despairing, knowing how painful the tests were for him, while she and Kaoru were just waiting for him to leave the room so they could indulge their passion for each other. He'd begun to feel like an intruder, and that had robbed him of his last hope.

  "I'll be gone, so you two knock yourselves out."

  His suicide note had bound her like some spell.

  In the period immediately following his suicide, she had tried to tell herself that he would have died anyway of MHC. Now that Kaoru's biodata had revealed how to fight the disease, Ryoji's death affected her more than ever. If only he'd endured a little longer, the techniques made possible by Kaoru's sacrifice might have saved him.

  The elevator stopped on the seventh floor, and Reiko stepped out into the hallway and looked around.

  For a moment, she lost her orientation. Space seemed to warp around her. Halfway down the hallway was an emergency door, behind which a stairway stretched up and down into the darkness. Reiko's neural cells resisted remembering anything more. On the landing there was a small triangular window that could be opened from the inside or the outside in an emergency. One evening three months ago, Ryoji had jumped from that window, turning himself into a red stain on the concrete below.

  Her meeting with Kaoru, her parting with Ryoji—

  they'd both happened in the same place. No matter where she looked, for her, the hospital was a tangle of memories.

  Though she hadn't regained her composure, Reiko looked at the scrap of paper in her hand, confirmed the number written on it, and knocked on a door.

  "Come in."

  The answer was immediate, as if she was expected just then, and from behind the door she heard the whisper of cloth rubbing against cloth.

  She opened the door to find Hideyuki Futami leaning against the wall in an unnatural posture, his pajamas open in the front. The room smelled of bodily excre-tions. Reiko took a couple of steps into the room and shut the door behind her. She reminded herself that the smell belonged to Kaoru's father, and it ceased to bother her as much.

  "Pleased to meet you. I'm Reiko Sugiura."

  Hideyuki moved away from the wall and a smile lit up his face. "I'm glad you've come. Please," he said, indicating a metal folding chair.

  Hideyuki had known she'd be visiting him—she'd contacted him ahead of time. He already knew that his son Kaoru and she had been lovers, and that she was pregnant. Kaoru had confessed it all to him just before he left.

  Reiko knew that the joy lighting up Hideyuki's face was for her and the child she carried. Though this was their first meeting, she recognized the sincerity in his face.

  She took a seat in the chair Hideyuki offered her.

  She examined his features, without precisely meaning to. She was curious to see if his face revealed how well he was holding up against the cancer. She also felt a certain gratitude toward him for raising Kaoru.

  Kaoru had come into the world via an implantation of chromosomes from the virtual world into a fertilized egg, which had then been placed in a woman's uterus.

  At the same time, he'd grown up as the son of Hideyuki Futami and his wife. He may not have inherited Hideyuki's DNA, but Hideyuki had raised Kaoru with care as his only child. Meanwhile, the life within Reiko had inherited Kaoru's DNA.

  Given that its ultimate source was an artificial life form, Reiko might have been expected to feel strange about the child, as if she were carrying an alien thing within her. But she found she was able to accept the facts with no qualms whatsoever. She could feel the immense strength of will that had been passed down from Hideyuki to Kaoru and now to her child. Her rendezvous with Kaoru a month ago had confirmed that.

  Kaoru's message had enabled Reiko to find the will to go on living. She felt that a face-to-face meeting with Hideyuki, who was making a miraculous recovery thanks to information Kaoru's sacrifice had made avail-able, should strengthen her determination.

  And that was why she couldn't stop gazing at Hideyuki now with curiosity and gratitude, and concern for his condition.

  "You look like you're doing well."

  Of course, her comment was not informed by the way he'd looked before, but Kaoru had told her all about his condition: how the cancer had moved decisively into his lungs and how, since further surgery was impossible, all that was left was to wait for death. It had been a tug of war between life and death, but judging by Hideyuki's appearance now, life seemed to be winning.

  "I feel good. I feel so light these days. Well, I suppose that might just be because I've had so many organs removed." He laughed.

  They proceeded to tell each other what had been happening in their lives lately. Reiko drew for the over-joyed Hideyuki a verbal picture of how Kaoru had been reborn in the Loop world and how he'd given her his bold message. Hideyuki, ever the scientist, used his body as an example to explain how they'd
taken the telomerase sequence from Kaoru's DNA and introduced it into the cells of MHC patients with groundbreaking results. He was trying to comfort Reiko, who was a carrier of the disease herself, and it worked. The MHC virus was no longer something to fear.

  Finally, Hideyuki's interest turned to Reiko's condition.

  "Is everything going well?"

  Reiko smiled and patted her belly. At the moment there were no problems; the fetus was growing well.

  Hideyuki asked when she was due, and she told him the truth. The date was about three months ahead, and rapidly approaching. But when he asked about the baby's sex, she gave the vaguest of answers.

  "I wonder."

  In truth, she knew the baby's sex. Last month, when she'd gone to the obstetrician for an ultrasound, she'd looked at the monitor and seen a cute little protuberance right where the baby's legs joined.

  Ah—a boy.

  Lying there on the bed watching the screen, she'd actually uttered the words. The doctor maintained a studious silence, but a nurse was standing nearby and her expression indicated that Reiko was right.

  She had decided not to let Hideyuki know that it was a boy. She didn't want him to expect the child to be a reincarnation of Kaoru. She decided that ambiguity was what was called for.

  Reiko gathered herself to leave, and Hideyuki began to get up to see her to the door.

  "You don't have to get up. Please, lie down."

  "It's alright, never mind about me. Where are you planning to have the baby?"

  She lent Hideyuki a hand as he braced himself against the wall and hobbled toward her. She mentioned the name of a local obstetrics clinic.

  At that, Hideyuki stopped in his tracks.

  "So you're not going to have it here."

  She could sense reproach behind his words. The university hospital was close to his heart; he had lots of colleagues on the staff, and his son had studied there as a medical student. He no doubt felt that in an emergency, she'd get better care at the hospital than at some little clinic down the street.

  Of course the idea had occurred to Reiko. But the fact that the hospital was where Ryoji had killed himself held her back.