Otherness

by David Brin

  They held hands during the flight home. And for the following four wonderful months Reiko thought her trials were at an end.

  Now Tetsuo came home early often, spurning all but the most important business-and-dinner parties with colleagues. He played with Yukiko and laughed with his family. He and Reiko spoke together of plans for their son, how he would get the finest of everything, the best attention, the best schooling, everything required to arm him for success in a competitive, judgmental world.

  His son's fate, Tetsuo swore, would not be to face an endless subservience to subtle hierarchies and status. He would not be one of those who were bullied in school, in cruel rituals of kumi group solidarity, by children and teachers alike. His son would head hierarchies. When his son toasted kampai, his glass would be highest.

  Touching her swelling belly, Tetsuo's eyes seemed to shine, making Reiko feel it all had been worthwhile, after all.

  Then, in her fourth month, Tetsuo came home with yet another slim white folder containing two pink-and-green airline boarding passes.

  8.

  She gasped in surprise when she saw the image on the screen. The Pak Clinic doctors focused beams of ultrasound into her womb, and computers sorted the muddled reflections into a stunning picture of the life growing within her.

  "It looks like a monkey!" she cried in dismay. Her thoughts whirled, for surely this was something the doctors would never allow!

  One of the men laughed harshly. The other doctor was kinder. He explained. "At this stage of development, the fetus has many of the attributes of our distant ancestors. Only recently, for instance, it had gills and a tail. But these were reabsorbed. And in time he will look like later forefathers, until he at last appears quite human."

  Reiko sighed in relief. Someone mentioned the gaijin-sounding technical term "recapitulation," and suddenly she did remember having heard or read something about it sometime. She blushed, shamefaced, certain her outburst had made them think her a hysterical woman.

  "The important thing we have determined," the doctor went on, "is that the acoustic nerves are already in place, and soon the eyes will be functional."

  "So all is well now?" she asked. "My baby is healthy?"

  "A fine, strong little boy, your Minoru will be."

  "Then I can go home now?"

  The second doctor shook his head. "First we will be fulfilling the next phase of our contract. We must install a very special device. Do not be alarmed. We are very skilled at this. It will not cause much discomfort. You will have to stay for only two nights."

  Dazed, Reiko did not even think of complaining as they gave her an injection. With sudden drowsiness swarming over her, she watched the world swim as they wheeled her into an operating room. There was hushed, professional talk. Nobody spoke to her.

  "S'karaimas. Gomen nasai," she said as the anesthetist's mask came down and a sweet, cloying odor filled her mouth and throat. "Forgive me, I am very tired."

  Reiko's shattered thoughts orbited a burning core of shame. She seemed to have forgotten the reason she was apologizing, but whatever she had done, Reiko knew it had to have been terrible.

  9.

  Dreams began disturbing her sleep soon after her third homecoming. They started out as muddy, uncertain feelings of depression and fear, which did not rouse her but left her tired in the morning when it came time to prepare Tetsuo for work and Yukiko for preschool. Often she would collapse back upon the tatami after they were gone. She had no energy. This pregnancy seemed to be taking much more out of her than the first one.

  Then there was the music. There was no escaping the music.

  At first it had been rather pleasant. The tiny machine that had been implanted in her womb could barely be traced with her fingertips. Nothing extruded. It drew power from small batteries that would easily last another five months.

  And at this stage in the fetus's development, all the device ever did was play music. Endlessly, over and over again, music.

  "Minora wa, gakusei desu," Tetsuo said. "Little Minoru is now a student. Of course his brain is not yet advanced enough to accept more complex lessons, but he can learn music even this early. He will emerge with perfect pitch, knowing his scales already, as if by instinct."

  Tetsuo smiled. "Minoru kun wa on'gaku ga suki deshoo."

  So the harmonies repeated, over and over again, throbbing like sonar within the confined sea of her in-sides, diffracting around and through her organs, resonating at last with the beating of her heart.

  Yumi no longer visited when she thought Tetsuo might be at home. Their father had voiced his disgusted disapproval of Tetsuo and this invasion against the ways of nature. Reiko had been forced to answer loyally in Tetsuo's defense.

  "You are too Westernized," she told them, borrowing her husband's own words. "You too blindly accept the gaijin and their alien concepts about nature and guilt. There is no shame in this thing we are doing."

  "A dubious distinction," her father had replied irritably. Yumi then interjected. "Guilt consists in doing the right thing, even when nobody is watching, Reiko. Shame is making sure you don't get caught doing what others disapprove."

  "Well?" Reiko had answered. "You two are the only ones expressing disapproval. All of Tetsuo's associates and friends admire him for this! My neighbors come by to listen to the music!"

  Her sister and father had looked at each other at that moment, as if she had just proved their point. But Reiko did not understand. All she knew for certain was that she must side with her husband. No other choice was even conceivable. Yumi might be able to have a more "modern" marriage, but to Reiko such ways seemed to promise only chaos.

  "We plan to give our son the best advantages," she concluded in the end. And to that, of course, there was very little the others could reply. "We shall see," her father had concluded. Then he changed the subject to the color of the autumn leaves.

  10.

  At the end of Reiko's sixth month the thing in her womb spoke its first words.

  She sat up quickly in the dark, clutching the covers. In a brief moment of terror Reiko thought that it had been a ghost, or the baby himself, mumbling dire premonitions from deep inside her. The words were indistinct, but she could feel them vibrating under her trembling fingertips.

  It took a few moments to realize that it was the machine once again, now moving into a new phase of fetal education. Reiko sank back against the pillows with a sigh. Next to her Tetsuo snored quietly, contentedly, unaware of this milestone.

  Reiko lay listening. She couldn't make out what the machine was enunciating slowly, repetitiously. But the baby responded with faint movements. She wondered if he was reaching out toward the tiny speaker. Or perhaps, instead, he was trying to get away. If so, then he was trapped, trapped in the closest, most secure prison of them all.

  The doctors were certain it was safe, Reiko reminded herself. Surely those wise men would not do anything to hurt her child. Anyway, though it was a pioneering method, she and Tetsuo were not the very first. There had been a few before them, to prove it was all right.

  Consoled, but convinced that sleep would not return, she rose to begin yet another day before the sun turned the eastern sky a dull and soggy gray. Reiko bent her attention to daily life, to chores and preparations, to doing what she could to make life pleasant for her family.

  One evening soon thereafter they sat together, watching a television program about genetic engineering. The reporters spoke glowingly of how, in future years, scientists would be able to cut and splice and redesign the very code of life itself. Human beings would specify everything about their plants, their animals, even their offspring, making them stronger, brighter, better than ever.

  She heard Tetsuo sigh in envy, so Reiko said nothing. She only laid her head on his shoulder and concealed her own relieved thoughts.

  By that time I will have finished my own child-bearing years. Those wonders will be for other women to deal with.

  Reiko knew what was coming next
. She tried and tried to prepare herself, but still it came as a shock when, a week or so later, her belly began to glow. At night, with the house lights extinguished, faint shimmerings of color could be seen emerging through her flesh from one corner of her burgeoning belly. It flickered like a tiny flame, but there was no added warmth. Rather, it was a cold light.

  Soon the neighbor women were back, curious and insistent on seeing for themselves. They murmured admiringly at the luminance given her skin by the tiny crystal display, and treated Reiko with such respect that she dared not chase them away, as she might have preferred.

  A few of Tetsuo's envious comrades even persuaded him to bring them home to see, as well. One day Reiko had to rush about preparing a very special meal for Tetsuo's supervisor's supervisor. The great man complimented her cooking and spoke highly of Tetsuo's drive and forward thinking.

  Reiko did not much mind showing a small patch of skin in a dim room, nor the cold touch of the stethoscope as others listened in on Minoru's lessons. Modesty was nothing against the pride she felt in helping Tetsuo.

  Still, she did wonder about the baby. What was the machine showing him, deep inside her? Was he already learning about faraway lands Reiko herself had never seen? Was it describing the biological facts of life to him? Where he was and what was happening to him?

  Or was it imprinting upon him the cool, graceful forms of mathematics, fashioning genius while the brain was still as malleable as new bread dough?

  Her father explained some of it to her during Reiko's next-to-final visit to her parents' home. While Yumi and their mother cleared the dinner bowls, Professor Sato looked over some of the titles of the programs listed on the Pak Clinic brochure.

  "Abstract Geometry and Topology, Musical Tone Recognition, Basic Linguistic Grammar . . . Hon ga nan'satsu arimas'ka? Hmmm." Her father put aside the brochure and tried to explain to her.

  "Of course the fetus cannot learn things that an infant could not. It cannot really understand speech, for instance. It doesn't know yet about people or the world. The technicians apparently know better than to try to cram facts into the poor little thing.

  "No, what they appear to be after is the laying down of tracks, pathways, essences . . . to set up the foundations for talents the child will later fill with knowledge during his schooling." Reluctantly, her father admitted that the doctors seemed to have thought these things out. "They are very clever," he said.

  With a sigh he added: "That does not necessarily mean, of course, that they really know what they are doing. They may be too clever by half."

  A warning glare from Yumi shut him up then. But not before Reiko shivered at the tone in his voice.

  Soon she started avoiding her father, and even Yumi. The days dragged on as the weight she carried grew heavier. The fetus stirred much less now. She had a feeling he was paying very close attention to his lessons.

  11.

  Pak Clinic technicians visited their house. They examined her with instruments, some familiar and others very strange. At one point they pressed a unit to her skin very near the embedded machine and read its memory. They consulted excitedly, then packed up their tools. Only as an afterthought one of them told Reiko her son was developing nicely. In fact, he was quite a fine specimen.

  Tetsuo came home and told her that there was something new and exciting the Pak people wanted to try.

  "A few fetuses, such as our son, have responded very well indeed to the lessons. Now there is something which may make all he has accomplished so far seem as nothing!"

  Reiko touched his arm. "Tetsu, it is so very near the time he will be born. Only another month or so. Why push little Minoru every minute?" She smiled tentatively, making an unusual effort to contact his eyes. "After all," she pleaded, "students on the outside get occasional vacations. Can he not, as well?"

  Tetsuo did not seem to hear her. His excitement was fiercely intense. "They have discovered something truly fantastic recently, Mother. Some babies actually seem to be telepathic during the final weeks before birth!"

  "Te . . . te-re-paturu?" Reiko mouthed the gairaigo word.

  "But it is extremely close range in effect. Even mothers usually detect it only as a vague strengthening of their mother-child bonds. And, anyway, the trauma of being born always ends it. Even the most gentle of cesarean deliveries . . ."

  He was rambling. Reiko lowered her eyes in defeat, knowing how impossible it would be to penetrate past the heat of his enthusiasm. Tetsu had not changed, she realized at last. He was still the impetuous boy she had married. Still as reckless as a zoku. Only now he knew better than to express it in unpopular Western eccentricities. He would choose acceptable Eastern ones, instead.

  When the technicians came the next day, she let them work without asking any questions. They gave her a girdle of finely woven mesh to wear over her womb. After they left, she simply lay there and turned her head to the wall.

  Yumi telephoned, but Reiko would not see her. Her parents she put off, claiming fatigue. Little Yukiko, sensitive as always, was told that ladies get moody late in pregnancy. She did her homework quietly and played with her computer tutor alone in her tiny room.

  Tetsuo was promoted. The celebration with his comrades lasted late. When he returned home, smelling of fish, sake, and bar girls, Reiko pretended to be asleep. Actually, though, she was listening. The machine scarcely lit up anymore. It hardly made a sound. Still, she felt she could almost follow its conversations with her son.

  Shapes filled her half dreams . . . impossible shapes, bottles with two openings, and none. Again and again there came one particular word: "topology."

  Over the following days she tried to regain some enthusiasm. There were times when she felt as she had when she had carried Yukiko . . . a communion with her child that ran deeper, stronger than anything the machines could tap. During such moments Reiko almost felt happy.

  Year End came, and most of the husbands were out all week, weaving and bobbing in bonenkai celebrations, when so many tried to obliterate the old year in a wash of alcohol. The sake-dispensing vending machines at the train stations emptied faster than the drinks companies could restock them. Wise women and children kept off the streets.

  One night Tetsuo returned home drunk and ranted long about her father, knowing full well that by tradition he would not be held accountable for anything he said in this state. Nevertheless, Reiko moved her tatami into Yukiko's room. She lay there quietly, thinking about something her father had said to her once.

  "Both Tetsuo and I believe in a melding of East and West," he had told Reiko. "Many people on both sides of the Pacific want to see this cojoining of strengths. But there is disagreement over how strength should be defined, Reiko.

  "Tetsuo's kind sees only the power of Western scientific reductionism. They wish to combine it with our discipline, our traditional methods of competitive conformity. With this I fundamentally disagree.

  "What the West really has to offer—the only thing it has to offer, my child—is honesty. Somehow, in the midst of their horrid history, the best among the gaijin learned a wonderful lesson. They learned to distrust themselves, to doubt even what they were taught to believe or what their egos make them yearn to see. To know that even truth must be scrutinized. It was a great discovery, almost as great as the treasure we of the East have to offer them in return, the gift of harmony."

  Reiko had not understood, either then or now. But Yumi had seemed to comprehend. "It is not a question, then, of whether East or West shall win, is it, Father?"

  "No," he had said. "There will definitely be a synthesis. The only question remaining is what type of synthesis it shall be. Will it be one of power? Or one of wisdom?"

  The next day Tetsuo apologized without words. Reiko forgave him and moved back into their bedroom.

  Technicians visited them twice a week now. Reiko wondered how they would ever pay for such attention, until Tetsuo told her that the Clinic was refunding all costs. They were special. They would make th
is process famous throughout the world.

  At times Reiko worried that the baby would not be recognizable when he emerged. Would he wear an expression of sage wisdom from the very start, and stare into space thinking great thoughts? Would he spill from the womb already fully forged into that intimidating, imperious creature, an adult male? Would he even need her love?

  Hope also came and went in tempo with those waves of feeling deep within her. Every peak and trough of emotion left her confused and drained. She was glad that it would all be over soon.

  Reiko met the other wives in the special group. Some of them were knowledgeable, more confident than she. Mrs. Sukimura, in particular, seemed so relaxed and assured. She was the furthest along. Already the Pak techs were ecstatic with the results from her child. They spoke of data-transfer rates, of frequency and phase filtering, of Fourier transforms and pattern recognition.