Paprika (32 page)

“There is a ***** of science, a brazen ****** who knows no shame!”

Paprika knew what Inui was trying to say, since she could read his dreaming thoughts. It was his usual dogma; that made her angry. Had it been her own dream, she would have soared through the air, down to where Inui stood before the altar, and laid into him there and then. But sadly, it wasn’t her dream. It was Inui’s dream, and his resistance would probably have rendered such an attack impossible. To make it her own dream she would have to enter a deeper sleep, but then she would lose all control over her actions. There was nothing for it. Paprika would have to use the stairs.

Paprika ran to the bottom of the bizarrely twisting, crazily winding staircase, but still couldn’t reach the altar. She passed through a corridor, a hotel lobby, and a shopping mall, then found herself inside a shop that looked like a beauty salon. Why the detour? It could have been because Inui was trying to prevent her from approaching him, she thought, or because she herself didn’t want to approach him. But in this case, she concluded, there was another explanation.

It was because there was something she had to do before she could confront Inui directly. Facing the mirror, sitting in a chair with his hair in curlers, was Morio Osanai. He must have come to protect Inui. That’s right. She needed to deal with this man first.

“It’s Doctor Chiba … Isn’t it?” Paprika’s image was reflected in Osanai’s eyes. He observed her warily. “As I thought. It’s Doctor Chiba.”

“How did you know?”

“
Poison
. Unmistakable. But why the little girl act? Oh, I know. You’re Paprika. Right? You’re Paprika … aren’t you!”

Paprika wondered how he could smell her perfume when he wasn’t sleeping with her. Perhaps people who used DC Minis to share the same dream could even smell each other’s body odor, even when they weren’t sleeping together. These were Paprika’s half-sleeping thoughts. To her, the bizarre no longer seemed bizarre. She may have been falling into a deeper sleep, and that may have been Osanai’s plan.

Sensing danger, Paprika laughed aloud and started to fight back. “Yes – I’m Paprika! I’m young and I’m coming to get you!”

Osanai analyzed the shock he felt on hearing these words from Paprika. Why was he so startled? Because it meant danger. Yes, that’s right. What was so dangerous? The woman was too confident. Access seemed to be working both ways. If she was only using the collector, she would merely have been observing, not taking part. In that case … Surely not?! … 
She must be using a DC Mini!

“Oh? I thought you’d stolen them all?”

But of course, Osanai could also read Paprika’s thoughts, since he was also using a DC Mini. This was an attack from someone unaccustomed to using the device. She hadn’t had time to familiarize herself with it.

Osanai was visibly unsettled. He stood up and tried to run away.
Damn it! She’s using a DC Mini! Where did she find it?

“I won’t let you get away,” Paprika said with a suggestive laugh, designed to make him sleep more deeply. “Don’t forget – I can always follow you, no matter where you run!”

Osanai picked up a plastic makeup bottle and hurled it at her. Reading his thoughts, Paprika knew his intention was to wake himself up. He would wake up and think out a new strategy. Paprika clung tightly to his will to prevent him from doing that. Now, if ever, was the time to deploy a woman’s disregard of logic.

“I’m awake!” Osanai shouted, almost shrieking.

Osanai was in his apartment on the fifteenth floor. His bedroom was full of PT devices. On the bed, Paprika was grappling with him in his pajamas.

“How can you be here?!” Osanai yelled in terror. “I’m awake! I’m not dreaming anymore!”

He hadn’t returned to reality. In reality, she was Atsuko, but in Osanai’s dream she was still Paprika, clinging to him like a bad girl fooling around. Odd, she thought, that she could sense a smell exactly the same as his breath when he’d tried to rape her.

“You only think you’ve woken up,” said Paprika, “but that’s a dream too. You’re dreaming that you’ve woken up.”

Paprika laughed as she reached out toward Osanai’s head. She knew perfectly well that she was in a dream, but she simply had to remove the DC Mini from Osanai’s head. “Hand this over. I’m confiscating it.”

She felt the sensation of something solid in the palm of her hand. The device was attached to Osanai’s head with sticky tape. She pulled it off. She seemed to have grabbed some of his hair in the process, but what the heck – it was just a dream. She wrenched it out with all her might.

“OWWWW!” cried Osanai. “What are you doing? You said it was just a dream!”

In acute pain, Osanai pushed the dream detective away. She hit her hip on something hard and awoke as Atsuko.

She was sitting in front of her PT equipment. Shima was sleeping on the patient’s bed to her right, and Tokita on Atsuko’s own bed to her left. The room was dark, the only light issuing from the monitor screen.

Atsuko’s hip hurt. She must have had an actual pain there, which had registered as pain in the dream when Osanai pushed her away. Atsuko looked down at her clenched right hand. Human hair was protruding from between her fingers.

Atsuko opened her fist and caught her breath. If her two patients hadn’t been sleeping there beside her, she would have screamed aloud. She was holding a DC Mini, together with some sticky tape and a clump of hair. It was the one Osanai had been wearing. “I brought it back with me,” she said to herself. A shudder went through her. “I brought it back.” From the middle of a dream, to the waking world.

5

“Something unbelievable has happened,” Atsuko told Noda when he called the following morning. She didn’t even give him a chance to state his business.

Noda felt inclined to believe the notion, however incredible, that Atsuko had brought something back from Osanai’s dream. But even he couldn’t resist the urge to check the alternatives. “Paprika,” he said with a little groan, “are you sure it wasn’t the one you had before? The DC Mini?”

“It was still on my head. Now I’ve got two of them.”

“Wow. This is serious.” Recognizing the gravity of the situation, Noda chose his words carefully. “Paprika. Is there any way you could see Osanai and confirm this? Make sure you got it from him?”

“I ought to,” Atsuko agreed. “I’ll go to the Institute today and see him there.”

She had other things to attend to at the Institute anyway. There were bound copies of papers that needed sending, as well as an unfinished paper she’d left there, not to mention her private belongings.

“The Institute? Where your enemies surround you?” Noda lowered his voice grimly. “They’ll slaughter you.”

“I’m not a child.” Atsuko laughed. “And in any case, I’ve got the upper hand now. I’ve got one of their DC Minis. They’re the ones who’ll be sweating now.”

“Be careful.”

“I’ll be all right. Thanks. Anyway, what were you calling about?”

“I’ve contacted one of the directors. I already knew Ishinaka, so I asked him to meet you and hear your side of the story. I think you should tell him everything. Toshimi thinks so too. Ishinaka was reluctant at first, but eventually agreed. I got him to contact the other two, Owada and Hotta.”

“Owada’s on our side already.”

“That’s right. He also agreed.”

“And Hotta?”

“Hotta refused, apparently. He says he wants to hear both sides of the argument first. That’s fair enough, really.”

“What’s fair about it?” Atsuko countered with some annoyance, remembering the Board Meeting just two weeks earlier. “He’s on their side.”

“Anyway, will you meet the other two? How about this afternoon? Toshimi and I will join you.”

The Chief Commissioner’s presence would surely impress the enormity of the situation on Owada and Ishinaka.

“All right. Four o’clock this afternoon. We’ll meet here.”

“And how are your patients getting on?”

“Shima’s making a good recovery. I’ll make a proper start on Tokita tonight.”

“In that case, let’s take Shima back to his own apartment. I’ll contact Toshimi and ask him to arrange protection. You can’t do anything with Shima stuck at your place.”

“All right. I’d appreciate that.”

“We should also arrange a watch on your apartment, for Tokita’s sake. I’d rather you didn’t go to the Institute until that’s been organized.”

“Agreed.”

Konakawa turned up an hour later, accompanied by Superintendent Morita, Chief Inspector Yamaji and two Inspectors. One of the Inspectors was a veteran called Saka, a dark-skinned middle-aged man who’d worked his way up through the ranks. Inspector Ube was considerably younger than Saka. He seemed possessed of an intelligence that would eventually place him among the elite ranks.

“These four,” Konakawa said, pointing to his subordinates, “are my right-hand men. You can ask them about anything.”

Atsuko spoke with the officers over coffee. It was decided that Yamaji and Saka would guard Shima while Morita and Ube would watch Atsuko’s apartment. Yamaji and Morita would occasionally return to the Department to see to their normal business. It would be a kind of rotating watch.

Once Shima had been returned to his apartment, Atsuko was to be driven to the Institute in a Met car, accompanied by Konakawa and Morita. Atsuko was concerned that arriving in a police car would cause unnecessary commotion at the Institute. Fortunately, though, the car was unmarked.

Since visiting vehicles could go no farther than the hospital’s front entrance, Atsuko was obliged to pass through the hospital reception after getting out of the car. The doctors, nurses, medical office and administrative staff who happened to be in the vicinity looked on in stunned amazement, stared wide-eyed, or stopped in their tracks when they saw Atsuko. She deliberately greeted them with a cheery smile or a glib wave of the hand as she made her way through to the Institute building and headed for her own lab.

There, she found Hashimoto in the process of taking documents from her drawers and piling them high on her desk, peeping at them whenever he thought it necessary.

“Hashimoto! What do you think you’re doing?” Atsuko demanded, glaring at him angrily.

“This is my lab now,” he replied with a sardonic smile, as if he’d been ordered to taunt her as much as possible.

“That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” Atsuko said, snatching her papers from Hashimoto’s hands. “What you’re doing is criminal!”

“It’s your own fault for going absent without leave. If you don’t like it, go tell the Vice President.” He started to pile Atsuko’s personal belongings together on the desk. “Here, these are yours.” He’d brought his own things in and had placed them on the chair.

“I think you’d better stop what you’re doing right now.”

“There’s no place for you here anymore. The system has changed.” Hashimoto was enjoying his moment.

“Is that right. Well, shall we call the police then?” Atsuko picked up the telephone.

Hashimoto instantly reverted to his usual chicken-livered self. “OK, OK!” he whined. “I’m leaving. OK? I’m leaving.” He grimaced and mockingly twisted his body like a girl. “Gee, you’re so scary!”

“Ha! So you’re saying the whole thing was a joke?” Atsuko laughed back. “In that case, I’m sorry!”

Atsuko picked up the heavy bundle of documents Hashimoto had brought with him, hurling it through the open door onto the floor of the corridor.

Half an hour later, while Atsuko was still clearing up her papers, Osanai walked in. Hashimoto must have told him of Atsuko’s arrival.

“Doctor Chiba.”

“Well! Doctor Osanai. So sorry about last night.”

It was a line she’d prepared in anticipation of his visit. Stunned by her pre-emptive strike, Osanai rolled his eyes in bewilderment. Now Atsuko was sure she’d taken the DC Mini from him in the dream.

“And did you know the DC Mini had such dangerous functions?” Osanai regained his composure and glared menacingly at Atsuko.

Atsuko glared back at him. She pretended to know, to maintain the momentum of her offensive. “What dangerous functions? There are so many. Do you mean the one where the DC Mini can be moved from one real location to another through a person’s dream?”

“From a dream. Not from a real location. From a
dream
!” Osanai screamed as if momentarily afflicted with madness.

“What? You were awake, weren’t you?”

“No! I only thought I was awake. You said so yourself. After that, I woke up properly.” His hand made an involuntary move toward his head, as if in search of the missing clump of hair. “When I woke up, the DC Mini was gone. You’d stolen it!”

So she hadn’t brought it back from reality via her dream. She’d brought it back from reality via
both
of their dreams. That aside, Atsuko was bothered by Osanai’s mention of danger. She wasn’t sure what he meant by it.

“Are there any other functions we don’t know about?” asked Osanai. “If there are, you’d better tell us quickly. This device is dangerous. We need to control it rigorously, under high-level isolation and in all secrecy. Please return all DC Minis in your possession to us.”