Kolymsky Heights (10 page)

‘I don’t know which one it is,’ Yoshi said.

‘It’s the nearest,’ Porter told him. He couldn’t see a name, but the gantry was clearly visible. It was a forty-tonner, right specifications. The other ship was a coaster; wrong shape.

‘It’s that one,’ he said.

He examined it for some time. Not only the gantry but the wheelhouse was in its blueprint position. He went over the ship section by section. Two of the derricks were in dismantled heaps on the deck. But he could see another, installed and standing. He couldn’t make out the container-shaft openings. The sun was aslant now and casting heavy shadows. It was blazing fiercely down however, and the workers below were swarming half-naked in the heat.

They were swarming everywhere – on the dock, on the ship, in cradles over the side. Propped high in the cement pit, the hull looked horrible; a bulbous shell, rusty, scabrous, salt-scarred. The men in the cradles were scraping at encrustations with long-handled implements, and being followed by others with power hoses and red lead. Floodlights were rigged round the dock and it was plain that work would be going on all night if the ship was to come out on time.

He heard a click and saw Yoshi at work with the camera.

‘Let me take a look,’ he said.

Through the binoculars everything had quivered in the heat. He needed a clear view of the derrick.

The Nikon had a big telephoto lens and the reflex view was good. But the thing was hard to hold steady. Again the derrick swam in the air currents. A fraction of a second could make a difference.

‘Is this thing motorised?’ he said.

‘Sure.’

Yoshi set the motor and Porter held the camera and shot off half a roll. Then they moved position and he tried again. The view was no better here; the derrick even obscured for some seconds by a group of men in hard hats gesticulating over it. But he kept the camera going and shot off the other half and they went back to the car.

It was after ten when they returned to Tokyo, and almost eleven as they rolled through the tunnel to the Theosophical Society. They had left it at seven in the morning, and 1800 miles had been covered in between. Of the thirty-six photos four were good and one very good, and this one Machiko enlarged.

Midnight passed while she did this; and the thirty-first of August had arrived.

For the thirty-first of August the plan called for Porter to have his first session with the ship’s architect, and also his try-on.

The architect came first and he studied the photographs made the night before. Porter had also studied them, without being able to identify the derrick. The architect couldn’t
identify it either. He said the equipment was obviously old; he would have it looked up and get a copy of the works manual. But he was anxious to proceed with instruction on his model, and Porter moodily allowed himself to be instructed.

They spent the morning on it, but Porter barely listened. He had realised now what he had to do. He kept the matter to himself; and in the afternoon had his try-on.

The kit was all suitably shabby; shoes scuffed and well worn; darned woollens, oiled stockings, long Johns, sweatshirts, jeans, seaboots, donkey jacket, headgear. They had had his measurements for weeks and little alteration was needed, but what there was Machiko attended to. Then she packed everything in a kitbag and a rope-bound case, all to go by hand next day to Hokkaido.

Afterwards they worked on his ‘legend’. This girl seemed exceedingly responsible, acting as house-mother in charge of the servants as well as of himself. Yet Yoshi instructed him to tell her nothing of his identity. The success of an operation, he said, depended on people knowing only what they had to – but attending to that with maximum efficiency.

This aspect he demonstrated himself by returning, after taking the ship’s architect back, with the manual for the derrick. ‘He’d have forgotten about it in the morning,’ he said. ‘I stood over him while he searched. It was a long search.’

Porter looked at the manual, and saw gloomily why this was the case. It was dated 1948.

‘Is there a working model of this around anywhere?’

‘Only on these ships. It’s been out of use a long time.’

‘Can we get hold of somebody who’s used it?’

‘No,’ Yoshi said. ‘We can’t. But he’ll study it himself and explain it to you in the morning.’

‘Yoshi, if this thing is out of use,’ Porter said, ‘it’s because it’s dangerous. I need somebody who’s used it.’

‘We can’t have anybody who’s used it. We can’t have anybody else at all. In any case he doesn’t know anybody.’

I know somebody,’ Porter said.

Yoshi listened to him, aghast, as he explained what he was going to do.

‘Are you mad?’ he said. ‘You can’t do this. I’ve told you why. Don’t you understand?’

‘Yes, I understand,’ Porter said. But he knew he was going to do it anyway.

The bus was almost empty, and in the dark he couldn’t see through the rain-smeared windows. But the driver was calling out the stops, and when he called out ‘Bund’ he got off.

He could see the Bund Hotel twinkling to the left, and the Marine Tower to the right. He located himself then. This bit of Yokohama he knew. It was only half an hour’s train ride from Tokyo, practically a suburb. The bus from the station had been grinding around the harbour, and in the open air now he could smell the diesel fumes off the water.

He was in jeans and a sweatshirt, his pigtail hanging. He had changed at the Lucky Strike. He had walked into the place as Peterson and walked out of it as Sung, by the side exit.

He crossed the road and cut through to the tinny music and the traffic of Chukagai. Away from the harbour the town was quite sedate, a commuter belt for the capital. But this area was not sedate. He passed the massage parlours and the pachinko parlours, the little steel balls rattling as the gamblers fed in coins. The topless places had now become
NO PANTY
, he saw. The gaudy glow of Chinatown hung in the air.

In a few minutes he was in the middle of it. The streets shone in the drizzle, narrow, crowded, crawling with cars. Restaurants lined both sides, the vertical Chinese signs flashing at each other. He looked for the laughing pig and the debonair donkey. The pig he couldn’t see but the donkey was still there. He was flashing on and off in the air, legs crossed, leaning on his cane, asinine ears shooting up and down. Then he saw the pig, too. Its lights were off but the red and yellow snout still grinned its cheerful chinky grin.

The alley was a slit between the two buildings and emerged
into the street behind. Shabbier bars and coffee shops. Ichiko’s lane had had a barber’s on the corner. Yes, still there. He went down the lane and found Ichiko’s.

The same lantern over the door, the same curtain in the doorway and the smell of cooking coming out. Half a dozen men were supping up their noodles on stools at the counter. His pigtail attracted no attention here. He ordered grilled eel with his noodles, the speciality of the house; Ichiko, when on leave, used to catch them himself in the harbour. He supped his bowl with the rest and kept an eye open for Ichiko. He could hear pots rattling in the kitchen; evidently Hanita at work.

‘Is Hanita around?’ he asked the bar girl.

‘Who?’

‘Hanita. The boss.’

The sleepy girl looked at him and went in the back room. A man came out with her, wiping his hands on a cloth. ‘Who did you want?’ he said.

‘Isn’t this Hanita’s place?’

‘She died, two three years ago.’

‘Oh.’ He absorbed this. ‘What happened to Ichiko?’

‘The sailor? He moved out.’

‘Do you know where?’

‘No. I let him have a room for a while. But he went. He’s around somewhere still. Ask at the koban, they’ll tell you. Just along the street at the crossroad, you’ll see it.’

‘Okay,’ he said.

The koban was the police post.

He went out, brooding. He had attracted no attention so far. Yokohama was a seaman’s place, and plenty of Korean seamen were in it. He wondered if he dare risk the police post. The koban would only be a neighbourhood box, one of thousands. The streets were mainly unnamed, as everywhere else in the country. Each koban had its patch: they knew the streets and who lived in them, who moved in, out, who got drunk, who came home late.

The drizzle had eased a little, and now he could see the koban. The box was dimly lit. A policeman was sitting under the porch smoking a cigarette. He saw the man was looking at him. He took Sung’s passport out of his jeans and held it in his hand; poised to snatch it back and run if it was inspected.

‘Excuse me, I’m looking for a mate,’ he said. ‘Ichiko Nagoya. His wife ran a noodle bar up the street.’

The policeman stared at the passport in his hand but didn’t ask to see it.

‘They said he’d moved away. They said you’d know.’

The policeman looked back through the open door behind him. Another policeman was inside, writing. ‘Ichiko Nagoya – was he the one that went cuckoo?’ he called.

The other man came out. He also stared at the passport. ‘Sure. They had him in the bin. He’s out now. Along there,’ he said, pointing, ‘maybe ten minutes – the taxi office. It’s the all-night one, lit up in red. He has a room at the back. He won’t be there now,’ he said, as the Korean thanked him and began moving away. ‘He works as a night watchman, at the Kawakami works, farther along.’

‘Kawakami – is that far?’

‘You can’t go in there.’ The man stared at him. ‘What do you want with him? He owes you something?’

‘No. Just to say I was sorry. About his wife,’ Porter said simply. ‘Maybe I’ll leave a note, at the taxi office.’ He still kept the passport in his hand. They were watching him as he turned to thank them again. The drizzle had stopped now, but he was damp with sweat and didn’t put the passport away till he was out of sight of the koban.

He saw the all-night taxi office presently, but didn’t stop. Farther along, the policeman had said; the Kawakami works. There were few people about now and the street lamps were farther apart. There was the odd bar, a tenement, sheds. From some of the sheds he heard lowing: ćows. There were few fields in the area, and milk for the town came from hundreds of sheds; Ichiko had owned a couple himself.

He walked fast for another ten minutes, and then wondered if he shouldn’t go back to the taxi office after all. There was nobody in the street and nothing like a factory. He stopped and looked about him, and in the silence heard a distant clanking and screeching. The marshalling yard behind the station. He must have walked back parallel with the railway line. Except the screeching was not that of rolling stock. He walked on again, and as the sound became louder suddenly saw the factory.

Now that the rain had stopped the sky had cleared, and the ugly shape loomed against a slice of moon. It was a breeze-block structure, big, square, with hangar doors. Above the roof iron letters were mounted on stilts, and he picked the Japanese characters out against the sky: K-A-W-A-K-A-M-I.

The screeching set his teeth on edge. It was coming from a gap in the hangar doors, open a few inches, perhaps to let air in. He peered through, and saw nothing: total blackness. Then a kind of glimmering like the markings on a luminous watch. Denser shapes of blackness were shuddering along the markings. He tried to pull the doors wider but couldn’t manage it, and felt with his hands in the gap and found a safety bar in position. He tugged it upwards, and at once an alarm bell went off. He stepped back, but he had been seen; a torch beam was shining on him from inside. He stood away as the light approached, and then put his face into the gap.

‘Ichiko! It’s me – remember?’ The light was blinding him. ‘It’s Johnny. I came to see you.’

The light swung about his face, then down to the safety bar and the alarm bell stopped. The door slid open, and the torch waved him in. Inside, the noise was horrendous, the screeching and clanking grossly amplified and bouncing back off the walls. His arm was being tightly gripped, and the torch shone up to Ichiko’s face. He had ear muffs on, and he touched his lips and shook his head. Then he put the safety bar back on and pointed the light at an end wall, and moved there. A little
glass cabin, dimly lit, was up on the wall. An iron staircase led up to it and he followed Ichiko there.

In the cabin Ichiko took his muffs off and closed the door, and the noise abruptly decreased; the glass of the cabin multiply glazed. A long desk and a console looked down on the factory. But it looked down on nothing – only the room lights shining back off the glass. But as he moved Porter saw one panel greenly illuminated, like an aquarium, and a scene of weird activity taking place in it.

As if through night glasses, the whole factory was luminously in view there; and all of it crazily at work. Like a computer game a hundred things were jerkily going on. Carts moved along aisles: moved, stopped, moved again. They moved along glowing lines in the floor. Skeletal arms reached out from bays at either side, and skeletal fingers weaved and bobbed in the air. They were picking up bolts, screws, drill heads; touching, feeling, coming back for more, occasionally letting off showers of sparks and filings.

‘Ichiko, what is this?’

‘The new world, no people. No people needed.’

‘They told me you were here. I went to Hanita’s.’

‘She’s gone. Not required any more. Nobody needed.’

‘Ichiko, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’ It was only four years since he had seen him last, when Ichiko had just left the sea – always a cantankerous but a forthright and robust man, jovial in his way. Now he was like an automaton, withdrawn, as jerky in his movements as the machines below. He had shown no curiosity whatever at seeing Porter. ‘So how do you like the night work?’ he asked.

‘It runs itself. I only watch. Nobody needed.’

‘What do they make here?’

‘Robots. Robots make robots. You see? Who’s needed?’

‘Ichiko,’ Porter said. He had a lowering feeling he wasn’t going to get far. ‘You used to give me advice.’ Ichiko didn’t say anything, only looked at him with hollow eyes. ‘I need something, Ichiko,’ Porter said.

Ichiko came closer, and glanced absently through the panel in passing. ‘I’ll give you something,’ he said. Through the panel Porter saw the carts had suddenly stopped and small bulbs on the console were flashing. ‘It’s only coffee,’ Ichiko said. He was filling a mug from a flask. ‘No drink allowed.’

‘Ichiko, something has happened below. Are you supposed to do anything about it?’

‘The robots do it. A drill broke and they’re replacing it. They look after themselves, they doctor each other. They’re cleverer than we are. Here,’ he said, and gave Porter the mug.

‘Aren’t there any workers here at all?’

‘A small shift in the day. They sharpen parts, take away what’s been done. At nights it’s just the robots and me.’ He sneezed and blew his nose. ‘Johnny?’ he said suddenly. He was blinking at him. ‘What do you want here?’

‘I came to see you.’ Porter smiled at him, relieved at the abrupt return to sense. ‘I have to go to sea again, Ichiko. I need some advice.’

‘Leave it alone. That’s my advice.’

‘It’s just for a short while.’

‘You said you were going to the Ainu in Hokkaido.’

‘I went. This is something else.’

‘Another one of your projects?’

‘Yes, another one.’

‘Ah.’ Ichiko looked through the panel and pressed buttons on the console. Below, the subdued row began again. ‘Where are you going?’

‘North, the Arctic’

‘Your Eskimos, eh? Well, best regards to them,’ Ichiko said. He screwed the top back on the flask.

‘Ichiko,’ Porter said. He was glad to see the old robustness back, and he took the enlarged photograph out of his pocket. It was folded small and he opened it out. ‘It’s one of the Yakamoto ships. Remember, you did some trips with them?’

‘Stay away from the bastards. They’re dangerous.’

‘One trip only. But I don’t know the deck gear, Ichiko, the derricks. Take a look here. Maybe you can make it out.’

Ichiko peered at the photo.

‘Make it out? This is the bitch that took Kenji’s arm. Kenji – that fine boy, you remember?’

‘Kenji?’ There were many Kenjis.

‘The whistler, eighteen years old. He helped me catch eels. His first trip on the ship and they put him on this! They gave him nothing for the arm. I tell you – stay away, it’s a killer.’

Porter looked again at the photo. It was one of the last of the roll, among the shots he had thought obstructed by workmen, but it had come out the clearest.