Penguin Highway

by Tomihiko Morimi

  There were people gathered in Kamonohashi Park for morning exercises. There was fitness equipment placed alongside the benches and the path. There were people out walking their dogs and people sweating on the equipment. The dentist was doing crunches with a towel around his neck, so I said hello.

  The church was next to Kamonohashi Park. It held mass every Sunday morning. I knew the lady always attended. The town church was about as big as my house, much smaller than the big European cathedrals I’d seen on TV. But there was a cross on the roof, so it was a real church. I sat on a park bench, writing in my notebook, waiting for mass to end and the lady to come out.

  At last I saw her leaving church and waved. “Good morning,” I said.

  “Morning,” she said. “Sunbathing?”

  She sat down next to me. Her head slumped. She was pretending to sleep.

  “Sleepy?” I asked.

  “Was up all night. Weird dreams. I’m bushed.”

  “That’s concerning,” I said. “Can I ask for your help in an experiment?”

  She yawned. “Experiment? What kind?”

  I lowered my voice, taking every precaution. “A penguin experiment,” I whispered.

  “You solve the mystery?” she whispered back.

  “Not at all. That’s why I want to do an experiment.”

  “Hmm. Will the experiment lead to a solution?”

  “We won’t know until we try. Will you assist me in this matter?”

  “Sure. I’m sleepy, but sure.”

  For our experiment grounds, I selected the bus terminal where she’d first shown me how she made penguins. There was little chance of being seen there. As we followed the bus route toward the terminal, I tried to wheedle a hint out of her, one that would help me solve the mystery. But she just blinked sleepily and stared up at the sky. “I feel like no penguins will show up today,” she said. I couldn’t tell if she meant this or was just teasing me like she always did.

  “Honestly, I don’t know why I can do it. I just find myself in a good mood, get fidgety, and then a penguin shows up. Plop.”

  “Is it always throwing a Coke can? Like when you showed me?”

  “Not always, no.”

  “So you’re not clear what the principle is?”

  “It’s your job to figure that out.”

  “Can you only produce penguins? I’d like to see some other animals. Like a bat.”

  “Greedy! I can’t make bats.” She sighed. “You don’t seem to be taking this seriously.”

  “I have been serious since the moment I was born.”

  The bus terminal on Sunday was empty, not a soul in sight. I checked the schedule in the waiting room and discovered we had half an hour before the next bus. The lady stood in the middle of the terminal, squinting her eyes at the sky above.

  I set my rucksack down and began lining up the items I’d brought with me. A camera borrowed from my father and a notebook to record everything. An empty jam jar I’d asked my mother for in the kitchen, an empty tin of the hard candy that I’d sucked on between rounds of research, a softball I used sometimes when Uchida came over to play, a small square cushion from the living room couch, and a glasses case my father no longer needed. I set these up in a circle around the lady.

  “What are these?” she said, frowning.

  “Test samples,” I said. “I want to see if these turn into penguins or not.”

  “You want me to stand here and throw all of these?”

  “Yes. I was standing over here, right?”

  “I forget. It’s been a long while since then.”

  The sky was fairly clear, there was a nice breeze blowing, and I could hear the larks singing in the distance. There was no one else in the terminal. I wrote an itemized list of the conditions on the previous occasion, making it so I could check them off. I went through each carefully. All clear. I started our experiment.

  The jam jar, candy tin, softball, cushion, and glasses case each flew through the air in turn. I stood ready with the camera, but nothing happened. I bought a can of Coke from the vending machine and had her throw that, with the same results. What was different? I reread my notes and remembered that the can had spun in the air like a spaceship creating internal gravity. I asked her to throw it one more time.

  “Again?”

  “In the spirit of experiment.”

  “Right. You are a science kid.”

  But the result was the same. Nothing happened. Just in case, I even had her tie a string to my tooth, made her hold it, and had her throw a can like that. This also ended in failure.

  Experiments failing was always sad.

  I considered other conditions. My tooth being loose, the time of day being the afternoon, me being tied to the vending machine, my notebook being covered in Suzuki and company’s piss; there were a number of other potential factors. But none of them seemed to have anything to do with the penguin manifestation.

  As I scowled at my notes, the lady came over.

  “You can’t rush it,” she said. “I had a feeling it wouldn’t happen today.”

  “Are you sure you really can’t? Is it possible that you’re only teasing me?”

  I regretted this childish outburst the moment I said it. Just because the experiment had failed didn’t give me the right to cast suspicion on the lady when she was helping me out. Before I tried blaming her, I should have reevaluated my hypothesis.

  “Then have fun doing this alone,” she snapped, starting to walk away.

  While I stuffed the experiment equipment into my rucksack, she went up the concrete stairs that led to the back of the athletic field. When I hastily tried to cross the street after her, she shouted “Look both ways!” so loud it echoed. I stopped dead in my tracks, as if she’d cast a spell on me. I looked right, then left, then right again, and then crossed the street. But by this point, she was already at the top of the stairs.

  I ran up the long stairs to the back of the athletic field and looked around the overgrown patch between the field and the stairs. This was where Uchida and I had fought the Suzuki Empire. High-tension towers loomed over the wasteland. A gloomy forest lurked on one side. It was the same forest that was behind the hill with the water tower. Exploring a forest this size was dangerous, and Uchida and I had not yet managed to map it.

  The wind carried a pleasant aroma, and the plants swayed like waves in the sea. The lady was standing on the shore of this sea. Holding her hair in place, looking around. “There’s nothing here,” she murmured.

  I went over to her and said, “I’m sorry. That was childish of me.”

  “You’re a child, so that’s just fine.”

  “I’m scheduled to be a grown-up in another three thousand eight hundred and eleven days.”

  “Good lord, you’re actually counting?”

  Not far from us, a lark took off from the field, singing. It flew straight up and vanished into the sky like it was riding on a space elevator. The lady watched the lark go, one hand on her forehead. The lark was quickly out of sight, but we could still hear it singing. My neck hurt.

  “This lot’s vacant,” the lady said, looking around. “Wonder if they’re planning on building something here.”

  “Maybe a new station.”

  “A railroad going all the way to the sea?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nice. Close to the office, too.”

  “If that happens, the Seaside Café really will be near the sea.”

  “Cool. Let’s explore a bit!” the lady said. It seemed she was no longer mad at me.

  We walked across the field. She pointed at the forest on our right. “You been in there?”

  “A little, but we haven’t explored the depths of it. Forests can be dangerous, so precautions are necessary.”

  “You might meet a Jabberwock.”

  “What’s a Jabberwock?”

  “A monster from a book.”

  As we got near the towers, the lady said, “Let’s rest here,” so I decided to
make a base. I took the pea-green blanket out of my rucksack and spread it on the ground.

  “This is our base,” I said.

  “Kiddo, this is a blanket.”

  “It’s a base.”

  The lady sat down on the little blanket. “Feels good,” she said, looking up at the sky. “A base, hmm? I can dig it.”

  I thought this every time, but by making a base with this blanket, the scenery was completely transformed. The sky and land both seemed wider than they did on foot. I took the science magazine the dentist gave me out of my rucksack and read it. While I was passionately studying an article on black holes, the lady leaned against my back. Her back was a curious temperature, both warm and somehow cool.

  “Sorry I couldn’t make any penguins.” Her voice carried over my shoulder.

  “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

  “Maybe I’ll never make another. Maybe I just got lucky that time.”

  “I’m sure there’s a rule somewhere.”

  “And you think you can figure that out when I can’t?”

  “I am very intelligent.”

  “You’re very confident anyway.”

  The wind brushing across the grass was pleasantly warm. Listening to the sound of the wind, I felt like I was conducting a survey from a base at the ends of the earth. The lady turned her head, peering over my shoulder at the article I was reading.

  “Even the boss was struggling to get through that one. I’m amazed you can read it.”

  “I understand some parts of it, and I don’t understand other parts of it. I have to consult other books sometimes to get through it.”

  “Anything interesting written there?”

  “The event horizon is really cool.”

  “The what now?”

  “When a really big star gets old, it becomes unable to withstand its own gravity and collapses. Once that happens, the gravity keeps pulling everything toward the center, so it keeps shrinking. It shrinks so much all the matter gets compressed, and the gravitational force gets even stronger. If this keeps going, the gravity gets so strong that even light can’t escape. At that point, you can no longer observe what’s happening from the outside. The boundary between what can be observed and what can’t is called the event horizon.”

  “Hmm.”

  That was all she said. She wasn’t very interested in outer space.

  Then she made a surprised noise, looking toward the forest. I jumped, wondering if the Jabberwock had shown up, but there was a little girl standing at the edge of the forest.

  “Hamamoto,” I said. “She’s in my class.”

  “A girl shouldn’t be walking alone around here.”

  Hamamoto seemed to be thinking about something. She was treading slowly along the border between the field and the forest. Then she walked off toward the athletic field. I couldn’t tell if she’d seen the lady and me sitting there.

  Notes on classroom rumors.

  A silver moon appears over the hill with the water tower. This is not the real moon, but a ghost moon. The penguins go in and out of the surface of the silver moon. Any kids who see this happen get sick.

  So don’t look at the water-tower hill at night.

  And don’t ever go in that forest.

  The next week, after school, Uchida and I went to the city library together.

  I liked the city library better than the school library. The collection was much more varied, and they had comfortable brown couches to sit on. I always sat on the same couch. It was hidden in the bookcases like a secret lair, and if I looked up from the book I was reading, I could see the garden through the picture windows. In the garden was a big, silver, shiny statue like a giant egg. When I’d used my brain too much, and it got tired, staring at this silver egg was a great way to rest it. I felt like staring at the shiny silver egg made my mind work better.

  I had a notebook on my knee, and I was making notes in tiny handwriting about anything interesting I found in the book. This way, I could remember the important points without having to borrow the book.

  I was sitting on the couch reading a book on the theory of relativity that the librarian had recommended. I hadn’t really understood the magazine the dentist had given me, so I was reading other books as further research.

  As I read, I wrote E = MC² in my notes. A strange equation.

  My father had taught me about the principles of equations, so I understood what this equation meant. Until second grade, I’d thought = meant “The answer is?” Like, “2 + 2 is ?” But this was incorrect. = meant that what was on the left and what was on the right were the same value. When my father told me that, it was like my world was turned upside down. I remember it clearly—a very strange sensation.

  Uchida was on the couch next to me reading a book on penguins.

  “Penguins definitely do eat fish,” Uchida said.

  “Penguins are great at swimming in the ocean,” I said. “They go off like space rockets.”

  “I wonder if our penguins eat fish, too?”

  Uchida was talking about the penguins that had appeared in our neighborhood. I thought about this. After all, these penguins had started out as Coke cans. Did Coke cans eat fish?

  “I don’t know, but I guess they probably do,” I said. I wasn’t at all certain, though.

  “There aren’t a lot of fish around here.”

  “There were a few little fish in that drain. But it’s possible the penguins are hungry.”

  “Do you think those penguins are ghosts?”

  “Why?”

  “There’s a rumor going around. About a ghost moon. Have you heard it, Aoyama?”

  “I made a note of it. But that’s just a rumor. We’ve seen the penguins a number of times, but nobody’s gotten sick. Without solid evidence to back that rumor up, I’m not scared.”

  “Right. Good point.” Uchida looked a little relieved. He glanced at my notebook. “Is that English?”

  “It’s a formula. Math.”

  “You know a lot about math, huh? That’s amazing.”

  As I was telling him about E = mc², Uchida suddenly looked surprised. Hamamoto was standing in the aisle between the shelves. I’d never seen her at the library before. Her chestnut hair was sparkling. She had a book clutched to her chest. She wasn’t a grown-up yet, so she didn’t have any breasts.

  Hamamoto came down the aisle toward us.

  She looked down at my notes and whispered, “The theory of relativity?” I was very surprised. I didn’t think anyone else my age knew about the theory of relativity.

  “I’ve read that book. You understand it, Aoyama?”

  “It’s a little difficult. I don’t have a full grasp of it yet.”

  “Me, neither. It’s very hard.”

  The book in Hamamoto’s arms was about oceanography.

  She pointed at the book Uchida was reading and said “Penguins!” with a grin. Then she walked away. Uchida and I watched her go. Just before she vanished around the edge of the bookshelves, she glanced back and stuck out her tongue like that photo of Einstein. Of course, she didn’t stick her tongue out as far as he did.

  “Hamamoto is very strange,” Uchida said.

  “Yes. She’s strange, but in a good way.”

  “Mm. I agree. I meant it like that. Just saying strange sounds mean.”

  I was reading books and taking notes and exploring, and there were other people like Hamamoto doing their own research. I regretted thinking I was the most knowledgeable child in town. Hamamoto might actually be more knowledgeable than me. I’d better be more careful, I thought.

  Not letting my pride get the best of me was one of my better qualities.

  On my father’s three principles.

  When my father showed me how to solve problems, he taught me three useful ways of thinking about them. I’ve written these on the back cover of my notebook so I can check them anytime. They’re very helpful when solving math problems. This list is below.

  Break the p
roblem into smaller pieces.

  Change the way you look at it.

  Look for a similar problem.

  I think we can divide the Penguin Highway research into two main areas of consideration. The Lady and The Penguins. I like the lady, so I’d been focusing all my research efforts on her. That’s why I’d gotten stuck. If I changed how I looked at it, this was really a mystery about the penguins. I should have been researching the penguins.

  And I needed to look for a similar problem.

  This was an extremely unusual problem. Was there anything like it?

  Project Amazon.

  Uchida and I followed the drain canal behind the school back to that reservoir. It was a humid day and quite hot, as if summer had suddenly arrived. It seemed like the plants along the drain were getting bigger.

  Uchida was particularly silent that day. On days like this, I practiced being silent myself. Being silent all day was actively painful, but I could manage about two hours without much issue. I pushed past the broad-leaved bamboo without a word, thinking about my lack of progress on the Penguin Highway research.

  We made it to the reservoir again. It had rained the day before, so the water level was a little bit higher. We walked around the perimeter of the reservoir to the drain that emptied into it. There was another fence on that side.

  Last time, we had called off our exploration here. Today we were pressing farther on.

  We climbed the fence and followed the narrow path next to the drain. The broad-leaved bamboo grew high here, as well, and it was rather dark. At last, we emerged from the broad-leaved bamboo and found ourselves in an area with a number of rice paddies surrounded by bamboo groves. Paved roads and drains snaked between the rice paddies. Every now and then, there was a small metal sluice gate. There was water in the paddies, but nothing growing yet.