Loop (20 page)

I'll stop at the next town and have some breakfast,
he told himself. He knew if he didn't force himself to stop he'd ride his father's bike until it was out of gas. It frustrated him to have to stop. Watching the change from night to day had proven to Kaoru that the world was revolving on its own; he felt that if he stopped it would go on revolving without him, and he'd be left behind.

Just as the last traces of night disappeared from his rear-view mirror, leaving the land completely covered with light, a town appeared in the distance ahead. It should have a gas station and a place to eat.

Kaoru checked into a motel a little after noon, and then immediately showered and lay down on the bed. He tried to sleep, but the engine vibration had accumulated in his body to the point that his very cells were shaking: he felt itchy and restless. Even as he lay there his body felt like it was still on the bike. The flesh of his thighs in particular, where he'd been squeezing the gas tank, felt like it wasn't his own.

How long was I riding?

He counted on his fingers. Six hours from LA, then he'd dismounted and waited for the diner to open so he could have breakfast. He'd filled up the tank, then ridden for another three hours. Altogether, then, he'd been riding for nine hours. Another nine hours on Interstate 40 would get him to the vicinity of Albuquerque.

His plan was to turn north on Route 25 before Albuquerque, heading through Santa Fe to Los Alamos and Kenneth Rothman's last known address. Of course his final destination was the Four Corners region. But before that he figured it was best to find out what had happened to Rothman, and what his last words meant.

Kaoru reached for his rucksack by the bedside and groped around inside it for his billfold and the two photos he should have inside it. He took them out and studied the face they showed him. Still flat on the bed, he held them over his head and spoke to the beloved figure.

Needless to say, it didn't answer.

Before leaving Japan, Kaoru had visited his father's sickroom to tell him he was going to America. He'd explained why he needed to go, and his father had nodded and said:

"I see."

Kaoru had told his father everything, not even concealing the situation with Reiko. It was possible that his father might die while he was away from Japan: if he was going to tell his father at all, this was the time.

Hideyuki had laughed out loud upon learning that he had a grandchild growing within the womb of this woman Reiko.

"Way to go, kiddo." For a moment the old, healthy Hideyuki was back as he asked with an undisguised leer about Reiko's appearance. "Is she a good woman?"

"To me she's the best," Kaoru answered.

"Can't leave you alone for a minute!" Hideyuki trembled happily. Then he spoke earnestly. "I'd like to live to see my grandkid."

When he heard that, Kaoru was glad he'd told his father about Reiko.

He averted his eyes from Reiko's photographs and put them away in the rucksack again, by touch, not rolling over. His heart beat wildly. Just gazing at her seemed to increase his loneliness.

To distract himself he looked around the room without getting up. On one wall hung a garish round tapestry, and from the ceiling hung a fan, blowing lazily. The sound of the fan bothered him less than the noise of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

All of the furniture and appliances were old, just like the motel itself. He could hear something-a cockroach, maybe?-crawling around under the bed. He'd found one on the kitchen floor earlier. Maybe it was the same one.

Kaoru disliked cockroaches to an unusual degree, perhaps because he wasn't used to them: he'd never seen one in their twenty-ninth floor condo overlooking the bay.

When he'd checked into this motel, he'd figured on falling asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow-he was that tired. More than the all-night ride, it was the sun beating down on him in the morning that had exhausted him. But unexpectedly, sleep eluded him. Maybe he was too excited: it was his first time in a motel outside of Japan.

It wasn't supposed to be like this, this trip. When he thought of the vacation he'd dreamed of ten years ago, the difference nearly brought tears to his eyes. His problems were too many. He had to save his dying father's life, he had to come up with answers for Reiko, he had to prove to his child that this world was worth living in-the child who was now just a cell starting to divide…

He listed his goals in order to bolster his courage. He felt excitement, sentimentality, fatigue, vibration, a sense of mission, fear, and heat all wrapped into one sensation; he felt as if an army of ants was crawling around inside his body. If he didn't find a way to calm his heightened emotions he'd never be able to get to sleep.

He suddenly remembered that there was a pool in the courtyard of the U-shaped motel. Maybe a swim would wash off this creepiness. He got up and changed into swim trunks.

He dived into the empty pool, and then turned over underwater and looked up at the sky. He loved the feeling of moving suddenly from air to water, from one medium to another. Looking up through the water at the sky, he could enjoy both layers at once. The blazing sun looked warped seen from underwater.

He thrust his head above water and stood in the centre of the pool. The motel surrounded the pool on three sides, but on the fourth he could see the desert stretching out into the distance. Submerged in water as he was, he was even more struck by how parched and unforgiving the land looked.

He thought he could feel lumps of heat dissolving inside his body. When the last one had melted away, he got out of the pool and returned to his room. His body was telling him he could finally sleep.

The sun's rays just got stronger and stronger. He was wearing a long-sleeved sweatshirt and leather gloves, and his jeans were tucked into his boots, and the only skin on his body exposed to the sun was the back of his neck below his helmet. Even so, as he rode he could feel the burning sun all over his body.

He had no street address for the place he was headed.
Wayne's Rock, on the outskirts of Los Alamos, New Mexico,
was all he knew. Just before leaving Japan, he'd contacted Amano again and asked him to look up Kenneth Rothman's last known address. Amano said he'd been living in an old house that doubled as his work space. He had reason to hope that Rothman was still living there, and had cut off contact on purpose, for whatever reason. But even if Rothman was gone, the house at least should still be there in some form. It should at least furnish him with new clues.

On a desert highway with little traffic, it was possible to make travel time estimates that were exactitude itself. He arrived at Albuquerque right on time, took Interstate 25 northward, and after a time turned onto a state road heading toward Los Alamos. Wayne's Rock should be this side of Los Alamos.

He stopped at a gas station not far from his destination. Not to fill up-he had plenty of gas- but to ask directions. Like seemingly all the gas stations on the state road, this one had a little convenience store attached, and so at the very least he'd find a clerk; if he passed it up, meanwhile, there was no telling when he'd meet another soul.

Since he was here, he topped off the tank, then went into the store to pay. A bearded, middle-aged man glanced a hello at him.

Kaoru hadn't even put in a full gallon, so it was a small amount of money that he gave the man. He then asked how to get to Wayne's Rock.

The man pointed northward and said, "Three miles."

"Got it. Thanks." Kaoru turned to leave, but the man stopped him.

"Have you got business there?" The man's eyes were narrowed and he was frowning at Kaoru. His question was certainly a blunt one, but there didn't seem to be any ill will behind it.

Kaoru didn't know quite how to answer, so he kept it short. "An old friend of mine lives there. I think."

The man's lips twitched as he shrugged his shoulders and said, "There's nothing there."

Kaoru nodded that he understood, and repeated the words. "There's nothing there."

The man stared at Kaoru wordlessly. But what was he supposed to do, change his mind just because the guy told him there was nothing in Wayne's Rock? He had to go and see for himself.

Kaoru forced a smile and said, "Thank you" as he walked out of the store.

There was no one else around. Kaoru wondered, as he headed away north, just how many customers besides himself the gas station had seen today.

He wanted to check the time as he rode, so he lifted his left hand, the one he wore his watch on, from the handlebars. But he found his leather glove was in the way: he couldn't see the watch. He tried to pull his glove off with his chin, and in the process took his eyes from the road for a split second. When he looked up again, he saw, just beyond a rise covered with desert plants, a line of old trees stretching northward into the desert. Most drivers wouldn't even have noticed them, but Kaoru was paying attention. He was exactly three miles past the gas station.

He could see what looked like a dirt road running alongside the line of trees. He stopped the bike at the entrance to the road. Up close he realized that what had looked like trees were wooden poles spaced dozens of yards apart; black electrical line sagged from some of them. Power lines, disused for what looked to be quite some time.

If he hadn't been keeping his eyes open, he probably wouldn't have realized there was a road here. It was little more than a slightly levelled off space next to the power poles. The strip was the only place where cacti didn't grow, raising their gnarled arms skyward-proof that this was indeed a road, or at least had been at one time.

Kaoru scanned the northern horizon, wondering if following the power poles down this road would take him to the village of Wayne's Rock. The road disappeared over a hill. Wayne's Rock was invisible from the state road. But Kaoru had the feeling that distant ruins were calling to him.

At least I won't get lost: all I have to do to get back to the state road is follow the power poles,
he thought to himself.

With that he grasped the handles, turned left, and sped off toward the middle of the desert. It was the first time since getting to America that he'd taken the bike off-road.

There was a dip in the road ahead of him; he could see it coming, but it didn't look that big. But when he went over it the bike flew more than he'd expected. He dropped his waist back and into the jump, and when the bike landed he wrestled with the violent motion of the handlebars until with precise timing he stabilized the bike. One mistake and he might have tipped over. He cursed himself for his recklessness, and did his best to avoid the craters in the road from then on.

After some initial ups and downs, the road flattened out and ran straight for a while. The dilapidated wooden poles still ran alongside the road, a dotted line linking civilization and wilderness.

"Aha," he said. He'd spied some broken-down buildings ahead, in a ravine cut into a hill. Both the road and the line of poles disappeared into the village. At some point, at least, this town had been connected to an electricity supply and phone service. He couldn't see any poles beyond the village. The lines seemed to end here.

He stopped on a hill maybe a hundred yards before the village. Still straddling the bike, he counted about twenty houses made of brownish stone. Even if there were some on the other side of the ravine that he couldn't see, the whole settlement probably held only a few dozen houses. He couldn't imagine what had led the first inhabitants to decide to dwell here. What had they been seeking out here in the middle of the desert? Judging from the way the houses were constructed, the first settlers had gotten here a long time ago. But the whole village was barren and windswept now. He couldn't see anyone. Even from a hundred yards away he could tell that the place was abandoned.

He remembered the words of the man at the gas station.
There's nothing there.
It looked like he was right. This was a ghost town, rotting away until only traces of its former inhabitants remained.

The sunlight was coming from the west now. A look at his watch told Kaoru it was past five o'clock. It wasn't quite yet time to head back to the state road and look for a town with people living in it.

So Wayne's Rock was a pile of ruins in the middle of the desert. The place filled him with a primal fear, and he asked himself why. Was it because the place represented for him such a fusion of unnatural contradictions? Why had Kenneth Rothman, a cutting-edge information engineer, chosen to live in such a remote place anyway? There were too many things Kaoru didn't understand.

But he'd come too far to back down now. He opened the throttle, gunned the engine, and was cheered by the extravagant noise he was able to summon forth. He sped down the road into the village.

On the way he spied a sign of the type common at the edge of American towns:
WELCOME TO WAYNE'S ROCK

It looked like a bad joke to Kaoru.

As he approached, netlike patterns on the walls began to stand out. Sand and gravel, probably blown by the wind, clung to spots where the stone of the walls was crumbling. Several cars stood abandoned on what looked to be the town's main drag. These, too, were covered in sand.

There was a gas station/convenience store here, too. A single pump stood on the cracked concrete apron; the nozzle was off the hook, and the hose lay on the ground, twisted and black like a cobra, the nozzle its head curled to strike. The store's windows were boarded up tight, and shards of glass were scattered over the ground.

He rode slowly down the main street, peeking at the empty houses on each side, searching for nameplates or the like.

There were more trees inside the town than in the desert surrounding it. Perhaps people had chosen to live here because there was water to be had. The trees thrived on that water, flourishing in and around the ruins. The street was lined with them, and at first they did indeed give an impression of health. But when the wind stirred their limbs and exposed their trunks, Kaoru noticed the strange lumps and pits in the rough bark. He approached one and inspected it to find that the bark on the swollen parts was a different colour from the rest. The trunks were mottled in colour like human skin peeling from severe sunburn.