Loop

“What about it?” Hideyuki brought his eyes close to the map, blinking.

“Look closely at it. Now take another look at the gravitational anomaly figures for this area.”

Hideyuki rubbed his eyes again and again, as the numbers swam in his tired eyes.

“Hmm.”

“See, the space between the contour lines gets smaller and smaller the closer they get to this point.”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“That means an extreme gravitational anomaly.”

“I see. The negative values are quite large here.”

“I think there has to be something there, geologically speaking. It’s like there’s something deep under the earth’s surface there with extremely little mass.”

Kaoru took a ballpoint pen and made an X where the four states met. He didn’t have a gravitational figure for that exact point, but the contour lines surrounding it certainly pointed to a spot with particularly low gravity.

For a while, Kaoru and Hideyuki looked at the map in silence. Then Machiko raised her head a little and broke in, drowsily, “I’m sure there’s nothing there, dear.”

Evidently she’d been listening to their conversation the whole time, only pretending to be asleep.

“I didn’t think you were awake.”

His mother’s words were provocative. Kaoru tried to imagine a space filled with nothingness deep beneath the desert. If the earth there concealed a huge cavity, it could easily explain the extreme gravitational anomaly.

And in that huge limestone cavern lived an ancient tribe of people … Kaoru could see it now, a close-up look at an extreme longevity zone.

Even more than before, Kaoru wanted to go there.

Machiko yawned and mumbled, “That sounds strange though—if it’s nothing, how can it be there?” She got up from her chair.

“See, Mom, you’re interested in the place, too. If low gravity and longevity are connected, then maybe there’s a city of ancient people there, cut off from civilization. It’s at least possible, right?”

Kaoru was fishing for a response, based on his knowledge of Machiko’s interest in North American folk tales, especially Native American myths. He figured that he stood a better chance of getting what he wanted if he got Machiko to go to bat for him than if he just blurted it out himself.

Just as he’d hoped, Machiko’s interest seemed to grow suddenly. “Well, it is close to a Navajo reservation.”

“See?”

Kaoru knew—Machiko had told him—that there were tribes who had made their homes in the wildest deserts and ravines, and whose lives today were not all that different from the way they’d lived in ancient times. He hadn’t heard of any noted for their longevity, but he knew that if he suggested it without really suggesting it, he could pique Machiko’s curiosity.

“Hey, kiddo, what are you trying to pull here?”

Hideyuki had evidently guessed what Kaoru was going for. Kaoru shot a meaningful glance at his mother.

“It’d be interesting to go there,” Machiko said.

She sounded less like she was pleading Kaoru’s case than like she’d become interested herself.

“Yeah, let’s go!” Kaoru said, expectantly.

“Four Corners, eh? Talk about coincidences.”

“Huh?” Kaoru looked at his father.

“Well, in a little while—next summer, maybe, or the summer after that—it looks like my work is going to take me there.”

Kaoru yelped in delight. “Really?”

“Yeah, I’ll have to be at some laboratories in New Mexico, in Los Alamos and Santa Fe.”

Kaoru clapped his palms together as if in prayer. “Take me! Please?”

“Want to come too, Machi?”

“Of course.”

“Well, then I guess we’ll all go.”

“That’s a promise, okay?” Kaoru held out paper and pen. If he was bound by a contract, Hideyuki couldn’t turn around someday and pretend he’d never said it. This was just a little insurance. Kaoru knew from experience that his father’s promises stood more chance of being kept if they were backed up by writing.

Hideyuki filled out the contract in his sloppy handwriting and waved it in Kaoru’s face. “There, see? It’s a promise.”

Kaoru took it and examined it. He felt satisfied. Now he could sleep soundly.

Dawn was breaking and September was ending, but still the sun as it climbed was brighter than at midsummer. A few stars still shone evanescently in the western sky, looking now as if they would disappear at any moment. There was no line dividing light from dark—Kaoru couldn’t say just where night ended and morning began. He loved with all his heart this moment when the passage of time manifested itself in changing colors.

Kaoru remained standing by the window after his parents disappeared into the bedroom.

The city was starting to move, its vibrations reverberating in the reclaimed land like a fetus lacking in the womb. Before his gaze a huge flock of birds was circling over Tokyo Bay. Their cries, like the mewling of newborns, asserted their vitality under the dying stars.

At times like this, staring at the blackness of the sea and the subtly changing colors of the sky, Kaoru’s desire to understand the workings of the world only increased. Taking in scenery from on high stimulated the imagination.

The sun rose above the eastern horizon, pushing the night aside; Kaoru went into the bedroom and curled up in his futon.

Hideyuki and Machiko were already asleep in their different positions, Hideyuki with arms and legs akimbo and no blanket atop him, Machiko curled into a ball hugging the rumpled blanket.

Kaoru lay down beside them, hugging his pillow and clutching the paper holding the promise that they’d go to the desert. Curled up like that, he looked something like a fetus.

PART TWO (#ulink_f743b105-9411-5974-8c51-dbb802927648)

The Cancer Ward (#ulink_f743b105-9411-5974-8c51-dbb802927648)

1 (#ulink_7f88a1e7-18e5-5fec-a36f-e89da5c4413a)

Recently Kaoru had begun to look older than his twenty years. It wasn’t so much that his face had aged as that his unusually large frame projected a robust presence. He exuded an air of adulthood. People he met tended to tell him he was mature for his age.