Loop (30 page)

He tried to drive away negative thoughts with memories of Reiko's face. He thought of his father and his mother; He tried to muster some courage. But he was too weakened. The moment he let his guard down, the shadow of death crept back over him.

All he had to do was go to sleep and it would all be over. The cold would take care of him, the darkness would carry him off.

Kaoru strove to retain his grip on consciousness.

He was fading fitfully in and out now. When he came to, he sometimes didn't know where he was. If he stayed out for longer, death would take him.

As he shivered from the cold, he longed for the dawn. Once the sun came up, the temperature was bound to rise. Then, if nothing else, he'd be delivered from this fearsome darkness.

As it was, the unrelieved blackness was a breeding ground for delusions. He thought he sensed somebody nearby. Not the familiar Indian, but somebody whose scent was far stronger as it wafted past his nose. Voices of indeterminate gender whispered back and forth. There had to be at least two of them, shadows in communication.

"Is somebody out there?" Kaoru yelled as loud as he could, loud enough to be heard over the rain, loud enough to chase away evil spirits.

But the shadows didn't recede. Instead they increased-there were three of them now, four, five. They surrounded him, muttering. Kaoru couldn't make out what they were saying, couldn't even identify what language they were speaking. They sounded like they might be sympathizing with him, but then he thought he caught a mocking undercurrent. Maybe they were laughing at him after all.

At length, the rain began to lessen and the darkness started giving way. He could gradually make out his surroundings. Everything was gray as of yet-that distant peak that poked up like some sort of religious monument should be brownish-red, but instead it was just a black shape. A monochrome world was better than an invisible one though.

Watching the scenery around him change for the better should have given Kaoru courage. The dawn had come. The rain was stopping. But he was feverish now, his mind dazed, and he was still chilled and exhausted. Budding doctor though he was, Kaoru had trouble explaining his condition.

He hoped he'd simply caught a cold, but he could feel a tortuous rasping in his lungs. He'd never experienced these symptoms with a common cold. Pneumonia? He put his hand to his forehead, his chest, under his arm, trying to gauge his temperature. He seemed to be running a considerable fever. He couldn't make himself move.

The rain had stopped and morning had come, but he was still curled up in the mud. He wiggled like a shrimp, trying to get to someplace out of the standing water.

What he wanted now was sunlight. He wanted to bask in it, to dry his body and his clothing. His waterlogged clothes were warm now, but from his fever, and he couldn't stand the feel of them.

He took them off and wrung them out. Even that was a hard task in his present state of weakness. When the wind hit his bare skin, he shivered so much that he almost fell over. Still, he managed to get rid of enough water that he felt lighter.

He crawled into a space between the rocks to get out of the wind whipping up the ravine. There he rested for a while. He'd have to husband his strength by staying still until the temperature rose.

As he lay there among the rocks, fighting his fever, the world around him continued to transform. Colours appeared, and distant objects became clearer.

He watched it all, waiting for the clouds to part.

Hours passed. As the temperature climbed, Kaoru was able to sleep for short periods of time. Every time he opened his eyes he gazed vacantly at the movements of the clouds. Still the sun hadn't broken through.

He awoke to a roar. Reminded of his sufferings of the previous night, he sat bolt upright in terror.

He saw something hovering in the sky. Right behind it, the sun was finally emerging. The clouds split apart and rays of sunlight shone on the floating object. Kaoru squinted against the brightness, staring at the heavens beyond the gleaming black thing.

This thing that had appeared was not what Kaoru had imagined. He'd expected to find ruins that bespoke the very beginnings of time, a group of people shrouded in mystery. Instead, what hovered there in the sky backlit by the sun was the product of the most cutting-edge modern science: a jet helicopter. And, just like the Indian's bow had been, the antenna projecting in front of it was aimed straight at Kaoru.

The wind from its rotors buffeted him. Appearing like this, it was almost as if it had been waiting for him to arrive. For a time the helicopter stayed in one spot in the middle of the air, bombarding his ears with its noise. Then it turned, showing him its underbelly, and climbed.

Its rotors rent the clouds, enlarging the hole through which the sun shone. The light that came through now looked to Kaoru like a halo.

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the whitish ceiling. Kaoru next turned his gaze on all four walls in succession, then on anything else that came within his field of vision.

The room was perfectly sealed off, with no windows. There was a rectangular grating in one corner of the ceiling, most likely a vent for the climate control system. That had to be what kept the room at such a steady, comfortable temperature.

There were two cracks in the walls, each tracing the shape of a rectangle. Doors, of course, but since they were exactly the same colour as the walls he wouldn't have noticed them had it not been for the cracks. One had a sturdy-looking doorknob. He guessed this door connected to a hallway. The other door only had a little handle, and looked like it couldn't be locked from either side; probably it led to a bathroom or something.

The walls were covered not with wallpaper but with leather. At first he'd thought they were white, but as his eyes got used to what they were seeing he realized the walls were actually a light beige.

Over the course of these observations, Kaoru was able to confirm that his consciousness was in good working order. He was still alive, or so it seemed.

Still lying on his back, he stopped looking at things for a while, instead concentrating on each part of his body in turn. He commanded his chest to move, then his belly, his arms, his legs, and finally his fingers and toes. He was relieved to note that he could feel them all move.

It was easy enough to explain to himself the situation in which he'd been placed. He was in a little room with leather-covered walls, lying on a bed. It was that simple. Kaoru was the only person in the room.

Naturally, he was put in mind of hospital rooms, which made it even harder to figure out where he was.

He'd travelled to America alone and ridden a motorcycle to a point in the desert-or had he? Had he done all that in reality, or in a dream? He wasn't sure he could say. At the moment it would have been easier for him to believe he was in his father's hospital room, and that the whole thing had been a dream.

He'd been walking along the ridge in search of the cavern containing the long-lived ones, along the way glimpsing rock-paintings done by ancient Indians on the walls of little caves, illustrations that created an irresistible sense of mystery and perhaps foreshadowed the underground space that he believed was soon to manifest itself to him. But then had come the rainstorm, casting him into the depths of terror, pummelling him half to death.

His head still echoed with the sound he'd heard at dawn, just before the sun came out. That thunderous roar, that strangely out-of-place object hovering in space. An ultramodern jet helicopter painted gunmetal black. It seemed to him now that he'd lost consciousness just as it had flown up and away, showing him its underside.

He could string together the recollections, alright, but there was no way of verifying them. Reality and virtuality had become so confused that he didn't trust his memories.

The only way to confirm things would be to wait for the testimony of a third party. But he'd been awake for an hour now, and he'd been left alone the whole time.

Maybe I'd better get up and leave the room on my own…
Kaoru sat up slowly. He felt no pain, but the difficulty with which he managed to raise himself told him that his body was still exhausted. He sat there on the bed trying to bring his breathing under control-he felt a rasp in the back of his throat. Sitting up was one thing. Moving around was another thing altogether.

He looked down to find a pair of sandals waiting for him beside the bed. They didn't belong to him. Somebody had put them there. Huge sandals. They'd dwarf his feet.

In the end it seemed that those sandals were urging him into action. He summoned all his willpower and lowered his feet over the side of the bed and into the sandals. They felt just as oversized as they looked, and they were heavy as well.

He tried walking across the room in them. He made for the room's single point of interface with the outside: the door.

But his feet were tired, and the footgear was bulky and heavy. His feet dragged. The hem of his white gown parted and he saw his thighs. He suddenly realized that he was wearing no underwear beneath the gown. He was buck naked except for this flimsy white gown he'd been dressed in.

The door was right in front of him now. He had no idea where he'd go once he opened it; he just wanted to know where he was. That was his only motive. What kind of place was this? He wanted to see what was outside. And if there was somebody, anybody, there, he wanted to hear what they had to say.

Kaoru placed a hand on the doorknob. Up until that moment it hadn't occurred to him that the door might be locked, but as he touched the knob, his intuition told him that it was. He turned the knob, pushed and pulled, but the door wouldn't budge.

So now Kaoru had achieved a deeper understanding of the situation into which he'd been placed. He'd been confined.

Even standing up was tough. He felt he'd better give up on going out and go back to bed instead. He released his hold on the doorknob and turned around.

At that moment, though, he sensed somebody on the other side of the door. Kaoru froze in place and listened to the
click
as the door unlocked.

He took a couple of steps backward and waited for it to open. He'd been denied any information about the person or thing about to appear. The person could walk through that door and introduce himself as a Martian and Kaoru wouldn't have been surprised.

The door opened quietly. He'd been expecting to see someone standing there. Instead, he saw someone sitting there: an old man in a wheelchair, staring straight ahead.

"I see you're awake," the man said in English. Kaoru nodded reflexively.

"You're Kaoru Futami. A pleasure to make your acquaintance. My name is Cristoph Eliot."

The old man held out his hand for Kaoru to shake. Kaoru glanced at the hand: it was abnormally large.

As were the feet that stuck out in front of the wheels of the wheelchair. Even seated as the man was, Kaoru got a good idea of his size. Overall, he was on the small side for a foreigner, but his hands and feet were disproportionately big.

Kaoru then wondered at himself and the way he was remarking on the irregularity of this man Eliot's body. Shouldn't he be in shock right about now?
Why does this old man know my name?
All of his identification, all his papers, had been lost with the rucksack.

He shook the man's hand, observing him closely. He had a head like an egg: not a single hair grew on it. His skin was porcelain white and lustrous. Judging by the hue of his skin, it was probably unfair to think of him as an old man. At the same time, he had a dark spot on his neck and left cheek, the kind of mark peculiar to old age. It contrasted sharply with his pale skin.

From Eliot's grip, Kaoru realized the man bore him no ill will, so he decided to ask the question that had been on his mind.

"What is this place?"

Eliot's greyish eyes narrowed and a smile played over his lips.

"The place you were trying to get to."

But the place Kaoru had been trying to get to was supposed to be a huge cavern with a village of very long-lived people in it.

He looked around the room with new eyes. The little sealed room, the beige leather walls- no, it couldn't be. This was too different from what he'd imagined.

Eliot seemed to pick up on Kaoru's perplexed expression. He raised one great finger and asked a question of his own.

"What do you think is above us?"

The ceiling, and beyond that-what? How was Kaoru to know?

Seeing he couldn't answer, Eliot answered for him.

"A thick layer of water." Not a "tank". A "layer of water".

Kaoru couldn't figure out what he meant. Was he using some sort of symbolic expression for rain? After his experiences of the last few days, Kaoru found that idea plausible.

Next Eliot pointed down with the same finger.

"And what do you think is below where you're standing?"

What could be beneath this little room? Earth, of course. But Kaoru wasn't about to give the obvious answer. He remained silent.

Eliot provided the answer to this question himself, too.

"A vast space."

Kaoru realized what he was being told: that he was suspended between water and space. But it still didn't make sense to him.

It would, however, explain some things. If what Eliot was saying was true, then the force of gravity in this area should be abnormally low. Gravity increases in spots with great mass underneath, and decreases in spots with low mass underneath. A vast empty space beneath his feet would account for the gravitational anomaly. It was persuasive.

Kaoru still couldn't believe it, though. Had he really reached his destination? If he had, if this was the place indicated on the fictional gravitational anomaly map, then he shouldn't be surprised that Eliot knew his name.

The old guy's trying to tell me that gravity is lower here. He knew I was trying to reach this place.