by Fujii, Taiyo
I’d seen Barnhard many times, though not in the flesh, but he never looked anything other than bored or irritated. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him the way he looked now—apologetic, almost pleading. The mutation at Mother Mekong was eating him up.
“Mr. Hayashida and … Mr. Yagodo, was it? I’m depending on you.”
Barnhard’s projection took a step forward. Now he was embedded in the coffee table with both hands out in a supplicating gesture, staring at an empty wall with an expression of such intense sincerity that I almost burst out laughing.
Yagodo started to move the table, but Kurokawa stopped him with a quiet “That won’t be necessary.” He didn’t seem to be taking it too seriously either.
“Distilled crops are facing an existential crisis,” intoned Barnhard. “I am a vice president of this company, but to be blunt, I don’t care what happens to L&B. There are twelve billion mouths to feed on this planet, and we can’t rely on natural plants if there is any hope of meeting their needs. If distilled crop acreage reverts to these outmoded sources of calories, we’ll lose more than half the world’s supply of wheat, rice, and soy. The topsoil is already close to exhausted as it is.”
Barnhard wrung his hands mutely. For a few seconds, he seemed to have lost the capacity to speak.
“If that weren’t bad enough, a world dependent on natural food means unrestricted genetic modification. No one knows where that might lead.” He looked down, closed his eyes, and shook his head.
“I’m sorry … Mamoru. Isamu.” He sighed and looked up. “As I told Takashi, I want you to go to Mother Mekong. Find out what’s happening. Takashi’s …” Barnhard hesitated. “He is … different, as you see. He needs your support.”
His head dropped again, pleading to a blank wall. The look on his face was close to agony. He didn’t seem to be faking it. By now he had advanced to the center of the table and seemed to be growing out of it. I suppressed another chuckle.
After an awkward few seconds, Barnhard seemed to pull himself together. He patted his lapels, straightened up, and gave a brisk nod toward the wall.
“I’m depending on you, Mamoru. And Isamu, I thank you for your help.”
Yagodo looked at us, openly puzzled. “Maybe the translation engine is too good. We could listen to the English.” He stroked his chin and gave Kurokawa a sidelong look. “Takashi, you’re not an L&B employee, are you?”
“No, I’m freelance. True, most of my work is for L&B.”
“When Barnhard was talking about you, he made it sound like you were a member of his family. Maybe it was the engine?”
Kurokawa nodded, but his expression was hard to read. He put the video file in his briefcase.
“That whole thing about going to Cambodia sounded odd, you know? Like he was asking Mamoru to ride shotgun for his son.” Yagodo’s voice had a slightly sarcastic edge. Kurokawa stared at him intently. From my angle, his glasses partially hid his expression, but his jaw was set.
“Maybe it did sound that way. As you say, it must be the translation engine. The original English didn’t come across that way.”
“Sure. That must be it. It’s not like you could be his son. I mean, look in the mirror. And he’s twice your size.”
“Isamu, stop it!” Nguyen was fuming. “Stop being so insulting. That man is not twice Mr. Kurokawa’s size!” She looked at Takashi. “Mr. Kurokawa, I’m so sorry. He just says whatever comes into his head.”
Kurokawa’s expression had assumed its familiar gentleness. He shook his head and smiled.
“Twice as wide, three times as deep, and four times as heavy. Isamu is right. Don’t worry. I’m not offended, really.”
I was concerned about Barnhard’s request. If we struck out for Cambodia just as our search was about to get on the rails, it was going to kill our efficiency. Mother Mekong was out in the sticks. It wasn’t like we could catch a cab from Phnom Penh.
“Listen, Takashi. Can’t Enrico cover this? I know L&B is shorthanded, but Enrico’s the project manager. He was on this from the beginning. He knows the site.”
“Enrico?” Yagodo was up and halfway to his desk when he heard me. “The SR06 PM, right? Didn’t he go walkabout a couple days ago?”
Kurokawa paused before answering. “Well, I guess you know just about everything. I only found out about it in the meeting this morning.”
“His wife wrote on her wall that her husband hadn’t come home from work. Anyway, you just got here, and now they’re shipping you off to rural Cambodia. I feel sorry for both of you.”
Yagodo was in his chair, swiveling back and forth. I got the feeling he thought of everything that was happening as a comedy of errors.
“I didn’t think we’d have to inspect the site.” Kurokawa looked crestfallen. “If all we had to do was interview the staff, it would be easy, but I left the meeting with a list of assignments to execute while we’re there.”
“Is there anything I can do to help out?”
“We’ll need some extra gear for fieldwork. A camera array to record what we do, a proper container to bring the samples back, and a lot of other things besides. Can you point us to a source that has everything? We’ll need the array for night shooting too. No one has documented the mutation process yet.”
“Why a sample container?” I was puzzled.
“Mother Mekong’s serial DNA sequencer is down. There will be no second round of DNA data out of Cambodia.”
“What? You’re kidding me. We’re not getting more data?”
“I just heard from Thep. We have to take samples ourselves and bring them back for analysis.”
“Then you’d better go to Kim’s shop,” said Yagodo. “Nguyen can take you. Kim is Ho Chi Minh’s go-to bio guy. He should have everything you need. He can do the analysis for you too. I could have everything delivered, but the problem is the suits.”
“Suits?” Kurokawa and I spoke at the same time.
“You can’t risk contaminating your samples. We need to do a proper analysis as soon as possible. I’m sure Kim has some biochem warfare suits in his inventory. Mamoru should be easy to equip, but I’m not sure if he has anything small enough for Takashi. We’d have to check.”
“Do we really have to go that far?” I said. “They’re not using pesticides out there, no manure either. The site is Active Ground Cover certified. The soil purifies the air around the site. It’s probably cleaner than this room.”
Yagodo listened as he played with the model floating in front of him.
“No one knows what’s going on out there. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.” His eyes were shining like a child’s. “We know we’re dealing with a mutation, not a natural plant. I checked Thep out. It looks like she knows her stuff, so I wouldn’t bet on human error. Is there a bug in SR06 that triggered gene collapse? Also hard to believe. If it was gene collapse, we wouldn’t see natural plant DNA in the data. Then there’s the size of the intruder genome. Hopefully it’s mostly meaningless junk, but …”
Yagodo fell silent. He poked a finger into his little cloud and took out a small red point of light. I thought it might be a clue, but his eyes were looking past it into a great distance. His hands dropped to his lap and his mouth opened slowly. Whoever he was talking to now, it wasn’t us.
“Grasshoppers. Distilled site surrounded by DMZ. Can’t allow grasshoppers near the crop.”
DMZ: DEMILITARIZED ZONE floated briefly in front of Yagodo. I couldn’t figure it out.
“Takashi, what’s ‘DMZ’? Is it a military term?”
“It’s kind of a strange area that surrounds the site,” said Kurokawa. “You’ll see when you get there. Isamu, you seem to know everything. I almost wish you could come with us. You’d be a great help. But that would slow down the salvaging.”
“Graft SR06 to the contaminant … no. Genetic distance from contaminant to MAFF standa
rd genome. Start where? Niigata … no. Can’t assume it’s one of their cultivars. Three hundred million base pairs … A Fourier transform rainbow table might be faster … No, wait, maybe a superimposed deep search …”
“Um … sorry.” Nguyen looked apologetic. “When he gets like this, he can’t talk to anyone. I don’t think he’s going to be back for a while. You could wait, but why don’t we go downtown? We can drop by Kim’s shop. You might need to pick up some other things too.”
“In that case, why don’t you take Mamoru with you?” said Kurokawa. “I’ll stay here and wait for Isamu. I have to plan our trip, and when he gets back—” He glanced at Yagodo, who was manipulating his molecular model like a Rubik’s Cube—“I’ll have him take me to get that gear fitted.”
Just Nguyen and me, out and about in Ho Chi Minh City. Now that was an attractive plan.
“Going on a date?” Yagodo was still staring at his model. “Take the mobile stage. It should work fine through your phone. Use it as long as you like.”
So he was still with us after all.
“Leave your data here, Mamoru. I’ll look for matches on the Web.”
7 Ho Chi Minh City
The breeze rippled the hem of Nguyen’s ao dai.
“I’m sorry about everything back there.” She dipped her head, embarrassed.
“No worries. It was fun, actually.”
We were in a little market area not far from the office. I was stocking up on things I’d forgotten to bring in the rush to get out of Tokyo. Nguyen was in fine form, forgetting to take the change for purchases, catching her hem on goods piled on tables and sending them scattering to the ground …
We walked along Pasteur Street to where it bisected a large, rectangular park. The lush lawns were dappled with trees. Food stands lined the central promenade. Locals and tourists reclined on the grass in the shade.
Walking next to Nguyen, the heat didn’t seem as oppressive as the day before. Maybe it was partly because we settled into a natural rhythm of walking from shade to shade and veering toward the doors of shops where the air conditioning flowed out onto the sidewalk, but the diaphanous flaps of her tunic and the hem of her sleeve fluttering as we walked along and brushing against my arm now and then might’ve also had something to do with it.
Like everyone in the park, we bought water at a drink stand and looked for a spot to sit. Nguyen used HMC to pay for my water. It was her compensation for Yagodo’s odd behavior. I have to say, HMC did look convenient.
Just as I’d seen coming in from the airport, there was a conspicuous number of people in wheelchairs passing in both directions along the promenade, and many others on crutches with missing limbs. Nguyen noticed me staring at this strange parade of the disabled. Her face darkened. “There are so many of them. It’s because of the herbicide the Americans used during the war.”
I’d heard about Agent Orange, but I didn’t realize it could still be a problem this long after the Vietnam War. Nguyen said that chemical residue from thousands of tons of defoliants dropped almost seventy years before was still leaching into the Saigon River, upstream from Ho Chi Minh City. The effects on people living near the river were actually getting worse.
“The company that manufactured that herbicide was famous for its GM crops too.”
She meant Monsanto, which had been a powerhouse in pesticides as well as genetically modified crops. The company had gone under when distilled crops became the world’s main source of food, since such crops required no pesticides at all. Now Monsanto was ancient history as far as the industry was concerned, but the people of Vietnam weren’t likely to ever forget it.
As she was talking, a small red dot started blinking in my field of vision. Red meant Priority. I opened my workspace in the palm of my hand and checked the message. I could have read it heads up, but superimposing a text message on Nguyen’s face would’ve been a waste of the scenery.
The message was from Kurokawa.
MAMORU: I’M SURE YOU MUST BE ENJOYING YOUR SHOPPING WITH NGUYEN. SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, BUT COULD YOU PICK UP THREE DOZEN BARS OF CHOCOLATE? SOMETHING WITH ABOUT FIVE HUNDRED CALORIES A BAR. I’M NOT CRAZY ABOUT NUTS. TAKASHI
Three dozen? Was he going to eat them all himself? Chocolate bars didn’t seem like a good way to break the ice with Mother Mekong’s team.
“What is it?”
Takashi wants me to get him some chocolate bars. Three dozen chocolate bars.”
“Wow, he must really like chocolate … Oh Mamoru, I just remembered. Could I leave you here for about half an hour? A friend of mine lives near here. I want to drop by. I’ll get Takashi’s chocolates on the way back.”
“Why don’t I just go with you?”
She paused. “No, that’s okay. You can wait for me in the cathedral.”
She pointed to a grove of trees on the other side of the park. A large red-brick building rose beyond the grove. I could see a row of latticework windows shaped like lotus petals set deep in the brick under a large white rosette filled in with stained glass. Two sharp white spires topped with tiny crosses thrust into the sky.
“That’s the cathedral? It looks impressive.”
Nguyen nodded happily and started telling me about Saigon Basilica—how it was modeled on Notre Dame de Paris, how it was a true example of Romanesque architecture, how the bricks were brought from Marseille and the stained glass made by local artisans under French guidance, and many other details she was enthusiastic about but not totally certain about either. Obviously it was a beloved landmark for the Vietnamese.
“In the visitor guidebook it says the name is Saigon Basilica, but in Vietnamese we call it the Basilica of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.”
“Is there an image of Mary?”
“Of course.” Nguyen pointed to a pathway through the grove. “Go through there and turn right. You’ll see the statue in front. Go up to it. From there you can see the whole building. It’s beautiful.”
“Isn’t the entrance under those windows?”
“That’s the side transept. Could you wait for me inside? It’s really nice. Cool too.”
“All right. See you.”
“I hate to do this to you. I’m supposed to be your guide. I’ll be right back.”
She got up and walked in the other direction, away from the church. I decided to follow her suggestion and get a look at the building from outside. As I stood up and took a swig of water, I got another message from Kurokawa.
POSTCRIPT: WE LEAVE TOMORROW. MEET ME IN THE LOBBY AT SIX. WE’RE STAYING ONE NIGHT. YOU WON’T NEED ANY CLOTHES FOR THE FIELD WORK. I JUST FOUND OUT WE’LL BE SUITING UP NAKED. TAKASHI.
Tomorrow. Again. Go ahead, jerk me around. And why did we have to get into our suits naked? What kind of gear were we using anyway? I hoped Cambodia would be more temperate than Vietnam.
* * *
Nguyen was right about the basilica. The bone-white bell towers stabbing into the empty blue made a lovely contrast with the red-brick façade. The towering yellow sunflowers in the noon light around the plaza added a touch of quiet mystery. On the other hand, the statue of Mary struck me as a bit roughly hewn. The eyes seemed too large.
Maybe it was because Nguyen was gone, or maybe because I’d been sitting in the shade too long, but under the noonday sun facing the huge basilica, it seemed as hot as the day we arrived. I hurried toward the entrance.
The doors stood open. As I passed through the arch, I noticed Chinese characters engraved in the stone. I couldn’t make out all the old-style characters, but I could see “basilica” and “holy mother.” Kurokawa was right. Vietnam was full of Chinese characters.
I passed through the vestibule and almost stumbled into a camera crew with piles of equipment. The crew was busy setting up a shot. A multipoint camera with an eight by eight flash array was flanked by huge mesh panels studded with more cameras. I didn�
��t have to look for the True Vision logo to recognize the equipment. This was a 3D RealVu shoot.
“Want a kick in the ass, moron? Move that light over there, now!”
A woman in sunglasses with a black bandanna on her head—the same woman who had called Takashi “kid” at the airport—was braying at a crewmember who was pushing one of the big flash arrays. Yagodo’s translation engine was rendering the voices of the crew into Japanese with such smoothness and naturalness, it was hard to believe it was coming through a portable stage. I wished it wasn’t translating the woman’s barking so vividly. I decided to get as far away from her as I could.
A detour around the knot of people and equipment took me farther into the nave. As I was looking for a place to sit, my call light started flashing. Kurokawa, I thought. I accepted automatically.
Shit. As I was accepting, I realized the call was anonymous. An instant later, I was in Private Mode staring at an avatar I’d never seen before.
The man had straw-colored blond hair falling across his forehead, with eyes the blue of the sky outside. They drooped at the corners. He looked to be in his thirties, but the unnaturally deep lines around his mouth meant he was probably fifty or so and didn’t want to be seen as faking too much.
“Mamoru Hayashida? I am Enrico Conti. L&B.”
“Enrico? Is that really you?” This was the first time I’d “met” him. His appearance caught me off guard. Given his name, I wasn’t expecting someone so Nordic.
“Thank you for accepting my invitation. This is the first time to meet, no?” He extended his hand. The AR feedback supplied a sensation of resistance as I shook it.
“What’s going on, Enrico? Why did you invite me anonymously?”
“I apologize for that. There is something I have to tell you about the mutation at Mother Mekong. Can you give me a few minutes?”
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the pews behind him. The people in the church were now gray, featureless avatars, moving like phantoms in a dream.