Virus: The Day of Resurrection (3 page)

Poseidon’s beloved daughter earnestly continued in her course southward, ever southward, through swimming curtains of fish, crossing one latitudinal line after another. The North Star had descended into the waters at her back, and rising up ahead of her were the stars of the Southern Cross. In her straightforward progression, however, she never raised her periscope to check those stars, instead relying on compass and odometer to keep her bow pointed southward.

At last the dark blue water grew clearer, and the midday sun spilled its vertical rays down onto white sandy seafloor, revealing in the bow’s camera eye vistas of a tropical sea—forests of dazzling coral where brilliantly hued fish danced like butterflies. Volcanic islands jutted up from the seafloor, upon which rested masses of coral and swaying seaweed, and—that’s right! There used to be people up there—cheerful people with bodies that shone like bronze. They had lived in the dark green of tropical islands … among shadows of deep purple cast by palm fronds onto the white sands … singing of their joy for the sea’s bounty, for the goodness of the sun from generation to generation—singing out in answer to the roar of the crashing tide, unchanged since ancient times. Within silvery-white rings blocking the fierce waves of the dark open sea, ultramarine water must be brimming, as blue as if turquoise had been dissolved in it. The strong rays of direct sunlight must be nearly blinding on the blue coral and white foam of the surf that gnawed against the atoll … But now, there was no way to get even a fleeting glimpse of what it must look like up there. Smiling maidens of the southern seas, their glowing amber skin clothed in primary colors … large, sweetly fragrant flowers thrust into hair as black as lacquer … teeth so white they had seemed to sparkle … coal-black eyes …

They had crossed the equator without realizing it. The display on the shipboard monitors had indicated their crossing, but in the gloomy stares of the crewmen, not a single shadow had lifted, and in the end no one even suggested holding one of the cheerful equator-crossing parties that had been all but mandatory until a few years ago. As
Nereid
entered the southern latitudes it turned its bow slightly toward the southeast, then continued on again. Already, there was no work left for which they should surface. The captain stayed shut up in his cabin, spending day after day absorbed in the Bible. The ship had been switched over to automatic rudder and was now continually feeling its way forward completely free of human assistance, measuring the depth of the seafloor with an ultrasound depth finder and using undersea radar and sonar to avoid reefs and guyots. Within a steel-plated pressure vessel ten inches thick, uranium fuel rods quietly continued to radiate heat, and contra-rotating propellers at the stern whirled on and on. The bright, air-conditioned interior was like a graveyard, filled with gloomy air. All of the crew avoided looking at one another’s faces, spoke seldom, and busied themselves with reading and contemplation. Nobody reached for the records, played so many times that everyone was sick of them, and the canasta and mah-jongg tables in the recreation room had acquired a faint coating of dust. Only the cold, clear cracks of billiard balls resounded through the hallways on occasion, when one of the engineering crew went to play alone during his off hours.

As they lay in their assigned bunks, experiencing neither day nor night, listening intently to the faint sound of water swishing past the triple-partitioned bulkhead, it began to feel as if at some point this six-thousand-ton submarine had become just like the
Bateau Ivre
, having no destination at all, merely drifting along on the currents of the sea.

… dispersant gouvernail et grappin.

Yoshizumi, however, had heard from the communications officer that such gloomy return voyages were typical of all survey missions. Each year, they were visited by the sights of those grassy, decaying graveyards, and afterward returned to a harsh and unforgiving land. What kind of cheer could be expected in such circumstances?

Within this giant steel tube that knew neither day nor night, Yoshizumi was collating the results of his investigations into irregular shifts in geomagnetism, geoelectric fields, and gravity—anomalies concentrated on the seafloor off the Pacific coast of North America. He had first started this project after the ship encountered a rather powerful undersea earthquake in waters off what had once been Anchorage. When he had lowered his instruments into the sea in order to test a theory of his, he had been shocked by the results. Since then, he had made corrections for the electromagnetic deviation caused by
Nereid
’s hull and attached remote-controlled sensors he had cobbled together himself to the bottom of the ship. Afterward, he had asked the captain to have the ship run a considerable distance along the Pacific coast of North America.

Despite the fact that the measurements were quite rough, he was logging geomagnetic and gravitational fluctuations of surprising magnitude on his charts. Even when compared against the measurements that Professor Kasty of Palermo University had made on last year’s survey mission—using less precise instruments and simply taking measurements at rough points—the fluctuations were still too great. Once they had gone as far south as California, they had turned around and headed back toward Alaskan waters. In barely a week’s time, the breadth of the fluctuations at the first observation point had become even greater.

As much as was possible, Yoshizumi tried to organize the results of his observations and do a number of preparatory projects while still at sea. As for the rest, he would have to use the computers at headquarters after they returned to the station; there was no way he could do it by hand. Yet even by simply collating the data, he could see a blurry outline of the thing these fluctuations were pointing to. He had grown just a little anxious at the thought, but eventually the pointlessness of such worry had dragged him back down. Even if such a thing were to occur, there was nobody left to bear the brunt of the effects …

Between his periods of arranging data and calculating numbers, he lay in his bunk as visions of his former homeland swam behind his eyelids, and he sank into a hot, languid anger and inexpressible sadness. He could see the lively, cheerful atmosphere of his going-away party from several years ago and superimposed on top of it the ruined corpse of his motherland as he had seen it just a few days ago. It didn’t look as if there was going to be any way to separate the two …

When
Nereid
was in Tokyo Bay, Yoshizumi had gotten permission to put on an aqualung and go outside into the water. However, this indulgence had been granted only on the condition that Vankirk accompany him. There had been no particular observations he and Vankirk needed to make; that little excursion had been allowed purely out of affection on the part of the captain. “The captain
likes
you,” Vankirk had said. “You’d better watch out!”

The water in Tokyo Bay had been clear. A great hush hung over deep black silt that lay undisturbed on the bottom. Countless schools of fish—when had they started to return?—swam all around, and cold, fresh water poured in from the mouth of the Sumida River. It was if Tokyo Bay had somehow recovered a vestige of its older days, when its name had been Edo Bay. All that bore witness to what had once been Greater Tokyo, however, were the many sediment-covered wrecks of barges and tugboats and the giant cylindrical pillars that supported Marine City’s bristling forest of towers, which were built on the sea across from Harumi Wharf on the outskirts of Chuuou Ward. Innumerable white bones were scattered across the inlet of the Arakawa drainage overflow, buried in reddish clay and resembling shards of broken porcelain. Near New Tokyo Harbor, the bottom of a large boat was visible overhead, its underside thick with barnacles casting countless long, black, ovoid shadows across it. Its screw and rudder were covered with slimy sea algae, and tiny crustaceans moved to and fro like flecks of dust. A large school of both large and small fish gathered to hunt them. Yoshizumi watched as a black sea bream more than a foot in length swam past and suddenly remembered an uncle of his who had loved fishing.

He would’ve wept for joy if he’d dropped a line off the Harumi cliffs and pulled up a one-footer. No, stop it. That’s something I shouldn’t be thinking about.

Behind his swimming goggles, Yoshizumi blinked his eyes often.

In the long shallows near Shinagawa, Yoshizumi went as close to shore as the depth of the water would permit. Eventually, it became impossible to stand, so placing his hands in the sticky mud, he crawled forward through the water.

Sticking your head up out of the water is forbidden.

The doctors said it was safe underwater as long as you kept to a minimum depth of fifty centimeters. However, Yoshizumi had already crawled to a place where the surface was only eight centimeters above him. Vankirk, who had crawled up on his stomach in the same manner, grabbed his arm firmly. Yoshizumi waved a hand, signaling that he understood, and turned over to look straight up, resting his air tank on the muddy bottom.

Through his goggles, just beyond his eyes and nose, there was a drifting, wavering ceiling of silver. The bubbles made
glub-glub
noises as they ascended toward that ceiling. Just above that dull silver membrane, overflowing with light, was the air of spring. A warm breeze drifted across the lazily undulating surface of the sea, carrying its fragrance toward a land beyond that lay covered in young shoots of light yellow-green. If he had crawled through the mud just a little farther—no, if he had just stood up straight where he was and broken through to the surface—he could have gone back to the world where he had once lived, that world that had once been his
own
, of which he had once been a part. He had once shared bonds with several hundred acquaintances and a hundred million countrymen—yet now that thin silver membrane separated him from that world. Forever? Impossible! But how long was this going to go on?

As he lay in the cold, sticky mud of the seabed, he thought of the world spreading out beyond that surface. A world filled with people … overflowing with kindness and bustle and good cheer … that whirlwind of pleasures that he had handled so clumsily. He thought of a hundred million friendly faces and most especially of his elderly mother’s bleached bones, probably lying in that old house with the big roof where he had been born and raised. His mother—had she been able to go without suffering? He thought of his timid but kind elder brother’s bones and those of his sister-in-law … of the small, thin bones of his nephew … And then he thought of a certain woman’s bones—lost amid ten million bleached skeletons, lying somewhere in this unkempt graveyard called Greater Metropolitan Tokyo.

Tears overflowed inside his goggles. Wouldn’t it bring him far greater peace, he wondered, just to stand up now and go walk among the bones, among that great multitude of skeletons that had once been his countrymen, and become one of them? Wouldn’t that be so much easier than going back to the sanitized air of that six-thousand-ton sewage pipe? Vankirk tugged on his arm, indicating that it was time to go back to the ship. They departed as they had come, crawling on all fours, making for deeper water. Again, the thought had begun to gnaw at Yoshizumi’s heart:

Why in the world? Why did such a thing have to happen?

East of the Tonga Trench,
Nereid
bid farewell to tropical waters and continued on ever southward through the southern hemisphere. In the waters near New Zealand, she raised her periscope briefly, but then continued running under the sea just as before. After a week,
Nereid
was shaken by a strong upward shock wave and for a while afterward was rattled about by a wide, undulating front where cold and warm water mixed. Navigator Vankirk placed his hands on the auto-adjuster for differential current. They had entered into the cold, fierce Cape Horn Current.

Not long after, the ship dove to a depth of two hundred meters. This was to avoid the undersides of icebergs. The watch was increased to two men on four shifts. Eighteen days after putting the spring weather of the northern hemisphere behind it,
Nereid
plunged into the southern hemisphere’s autumn, ravaged by the west wind, then headed even farther, closing in latitude by latitude on the eternal winter of the polar cap. She passed under the raging Westerlies that stirred the face of the sea to a foamy froth up above, and it was then, when the dark, ghostly shadows of icebergs overhead began to appear in the forward camera view, that the order to surface was given for the first time in four months.