Number9Dream (3 page)

‘I do mean that.’

‘This?’

‘That.’

‘This is, uh, for—’

‘Yes?’ Ice Maiden reaches for an alarm.

‘—
this
!’ The glass flowers with the first shot – alarms scream – the glass mazes with the second shot – I hear gas hiss – the glass cracks with the third shot, and I throw my body through the window – shouting and running – I land tumbling over the floor of the lobby, flashing with arrows. Men and women crouch, terrified. Everywhere is noise and jaggedness. Down an access corridor guards’ boots pound this way. I engage the double safety catch, switch the Zuvre to continuous plasma fire, toss it into the path of the guards, and dive for the entrance. Three seconds to overload doesn’t give me enough time, and the explosion lifts me off my feet, slams me into the revolving door, and literally spins me down the steps outside. A gun that can blow up its user – no wonder Zuvres were withdrawn from production nine weeks after their launch. Behind me all is chaos, smoke and sprinklers. Around me is consternation, traffic collisions, and what I need most – frightened crowds. ‘A madman!’ I rave. ‘Madman on the loose! Grenades! He’s got grenades! Call the cops! We need helicopters! Helicopters everywhere! More helicopters!’ I hobble away into the nearest department store.

I take my father’s file from my new briefcase, still in its plastic seal, and mentally record the moment for posterity. August 24th, twenty-five minutes past two, in the back of a bioborg taxi, rounding the west side of Yoyogi Park, under a sky as stained as a bachelor’s underfuton, less than twenty-four hours after arriving in Tokyo, I discover my father’s true identity. Not bad going. I straighten my tie. I imagine Anju swinging her legs on the seat beside me. ‘See?’ I tell her, tapping the file. ‘Here he is. His name, his face, his house, who he is, what he is. I did it. For both of us.’ The taxi swerves to one side as an ambulance blue-shifts towards us. I slit open the seal with my thumbnail, and extract the card file.
EIJI MIYAKE. IDENTITY OF FATHER.
I take a deep breath, and far things feel near.

Page one.

The air-reactive ink is already melting into white.

Lao Tzu growls at his vidboy. ‘
Blasted
bioborgs. Every
blasted
time.’ I sup my dregs, put on my baseball cap, and mentally limber up. ‘Say, Captain,’ Lao Tzu croaks, ‘you wouldn’t have a spare ciggie there, by any chance?’ I show him the empty carton of Mild Seven. He gives me a doleful look. I need some more anyway. I have a stressful meeting ahead. ‘Is there a machine in here?’ ‘Over there’ – he nods – ‘in all those plants. I smoke Carlton.’ I have to break open yet another one-thousand-yen note. Money evaporates in Tokyo. I may as well order another coffee to build up my adrenalin before facing the real Akiko Kato. In lieu of a fantasy Walther PK. I deploy my telepathy – ‘Waitress! You with the most perfect neck in all creation! Stop unloading the glasswasher, come to the counter and serve me!’ My telepathy fails me today. I get Dowager instead. This close up I notice Dowager’s nostrils are hairdryer-plug compatible – pinched little slits. She nods gracelessly when I thank her for the coffee, as though she is the customer, not me. I walk slowly back to my window seat, trying not to spill my drink, open the box of Carltons, and fail to coax a flame from my disposable lighter. Lao Tzu slides a box of courtesy matches from a bar called Mitty’s. I light my cigarette, then his – he is concentrating on a new game. He takes it – his fingers are as tough as crocodile skin – drags, and gives a grateful sigh that only smokers understand. ‘Thanks a million, Captain. My daughter-in-law nags at me to give up, but I tell her, I’m dying anyway, why interfere with nature?’ I make a vague noise of sympathy. Those ferns look too perfect to be real. Too lush and feathery. Nothing prospers in Tokyo but pigeons, crows, rats, roaches and lawyers. I sugarize my coffee, rest my teaspoon on the meniscus, and sloooooowly dribble the cream on to the bowl of the spoon. Pangaea rotates, floating unruptured before splitting into subcontinents. Playing with coffee is the only pleasure I can afford in Tokyo. The first three months’ rent on my capsule wiped out all the money I saved working for Uncle Orange and Uncle Pachinko, leaving me with a chicken-and-egg problem: if I don’t work, I can’t stay in Tokyo and look for my father; but if I work, when do I look for my father?
Work
. A slag-heap word that blots out the sun. My two saleable talents are picking oranges and my guitar. I must be five hundred kilometres from the nearest orange tree, and I have never, ever played my guitar for anyone. Now I understand what fuels dronehood. This: you work or you drown. Tokyo turns you into a bank account balance with a carcass in tow. The size of this single number dictates where the carcass may live, what it drives, how it dresses, who it sucks up to, who it may date and marry, whether it cleans itself in a gutter or a jacuzzi. If my landlord, the honourable Buntaro Ogiso, stiffs me, I have no safety net. He doesn’t seem to be a con man, but con men never do. When I meet my father – at most a couple of weeks away – I want to prove I am standing on my own two feet, and that I am not looking for handouts. Dowager heaves out a drama-queen sigh. ‘You mean to tell me this is the very last box of coffee filters?’

The waitress with the perfect neck nods.

Donkey joins in. ‘The very last?’

‘The very, very last,’ my waitress confirms.

Dowager shakes her head at heaven. ‘How can this be?’

Donkey manoeuvres. ‘I sent a purchase order off on Thursday.’

The waitress with the perfect neck shrugs. ‘Deliveries take three days.’

‘I hope,’ warns Dowager, ‘you aren’t blaming Eriko-san for this crisis?’

‘And I hope you aren’t blaming me for pointing out that we are going to run out of filters by five o’clock. I just thought I should say something.’ Stalemate. ‘Why don’t I take some petty cash and go and buy some more?’

Dowager glowers. ‘I am the shift supervisor. I make that sort of decision.’

‘I can’t go,’ whines Donkey. ‘I had my hair permed this morning, see, and it’s going to bucket down any minute.’

Dowager turns back to the waitress with the perfect neck. ‘I want you to go and buy a box of filters.’ She pings the till open and removes a five-thousand-yen note. ‘Keep the receipt, and bring back the exact change. The receipt is crucial, or you’ll wreck my bookkeeping.’

The waitress with the perfect neck removes her rubber gloves and apron, takes an umbrella, and leaves without a word.

Dowager narrows her eyes. ‘That missy has an attitude problem.’

‘Rubber gloves indeed!’ Donkey tuts. ‘As if she’s a handcream model.’

‘Students today are just too coddled. What is it she studies, anyway?’

‘Snobology.’

‘She thinks she lives above the clouds.’

I watch her wait at the lights to cross Omekaido Avenue. This Tokyo weather is extraplanetary. Still oven-hot, but a dark roof of cloud, ready to buckle under the weight of rain, at any moment. The pedestrians waiting on the island in the middle of Kita Street sense it. The two young women taking in the sandwich board outside Nero’s Pizza Emporium sense it. The battalion of the elderly sense it. Hemlock, nightingales, E-minor – thunnnnnnnnnder! Bellyflopping thunnnnnnnnnder, twanging a loose bass. Anju loved thunder, our birthday, treetops, the sea and me. Her goblin grin flashed when it thundered. Raindrops are heard – shhhhhhhhh – before raindrops are seen – shhhhhhhhh – quivering ghost-leaves – dappling the pavements, smacking car roofs, drumming tarpaulins. My waitress opens up a big blue, red and yellow umbrella. The lights turn green and the pedestrians dash for cover, sheltering under ineffective tents of jackets or newspapers. ‘She’ll get drenched,’ says Donkey, almost gleefully. The furious rain erases the far side of Omekaido Avenue. ‘Drenched or undrenched, we need coffee filters,’ replies Dowager. My waitress disappears. I hope she finds somewhere dry. Jupiter Café fills with holiday refugees being nice to one another. Lightning zickers, and the lights of Jupiter Café dip in counterpoint. The refugees all go ‘Wooooooooo!’ I help myself to a match and light another Carlton. I can’t go and confront Akiko Kato until this storm passes. Dripping in her office, I would be as formidable as a drenched gerbil. Lao Tzu chuckles, chokes, and gasps for air. ‘My, my, I ain’t seen rain like this since 1971. Must be the end of the world. I seen it coming on the telly.’

One hour later and the Kita Street/Omekaido Avenue intersection is a churning confluence of lawless rivers. The rain is incredible. Even on Yakushima, we never get rain this heavy. The holiday atmosphere has died, and the customers are doom-laden. The floor of the Jupiter Café is, in fact, underwater – we are all sitting on stools, counters and tables. Outside, traffic stalls, and begins to disappear under the foaming water. A family of six huddles on a taxi roof. A baby wails and will not shut up. Group dynamics organize the customers, and there is talk of moving to a higher floor, staying put, navy helicopters, El Niño, tree-climbing, an invasion force from North Korea. I smoke another Carlton and say nothing: too many captains pilot the ship up the mountain. The taxi family is down to three. Objects swirl by that have no business being water-borne. Somebody has a radio, but can tune it to nothing beyond torrential static. The flood creeps up the window – now it is up to the halfway mark. Submerged mailboxes, motorbikes, traffic signals. A crocodile cruises up to the window and snout-butts the glass. Nobody screams. I wish somebody would. Something is twitching in the corner of its mouth – a hand. Its eye surveys us all, and settles on me. I know that eye. It gleams, and the animal sidles away with a twitch of its tail. ‘Tokyo, Tokyo,’ cackles Lao Tzu. ‘If it ain’t fire, it’s earthquake. If it ain’t earthquake, it’s bombs. If it ain’t bombs, it’s floods.’ Dowager crows from her perch, ‘The time has come to evacuate. Ladies and babies first.’ ‘Evacuate to where?’ asks a man in a dirty mac. ‘One step outside, the current’ll sweep you clean past Guam!’ Donkey calls from the safest place of all, the coffee-filter shelf. ‘Stay inside and we’ll drown!’ The pregnant woman touches her bump, and whispers, ‘Oh no, not now, not now.’ A priest remembers his drinking problem and swigs from his hip flask. Lao Tzu hums a sea shanty. The wailing baby will not shut up. I see an umbrella shoot down the fiercest artery of the flood, a red, blue and yellow umbrella, followed by my waitress, rising, falling, flailing and gasping. I don’t think. I jump up on the window counter and unfasten the top window, which is still above the water level. ‘Don’t do it,’ chorus the refugees, ‘it’s certain death!’ I frisbee my baseball cap to Lao Tzu. ‘I’ll be back for this.’ I kick off my trainers, lever myself through the window, and – the torrent is a mythical force walloping, submerging and buoying me at a cruel velocity. Lit by lightning, I recognize Tokyo Tower, in floodwater up to its middle. Lesser buildings sink as I am swept by. The death toll must be in the millions. Only PanOpticon appears safe, rising into the heart of the tornado. The sea slants and peaks, the wind howls, an orchestra of the insane. Sometimes the waitress and the umbrella are near, sometimes far away. Just when I don’t think I can stay afloat any longer, I see the waitress paddling towards me on her umbrella coracle. ‘Some rescuer you turned out to be,’ she says, gripping my hand. She smiles, glances behind me, and unspeakable horror is reflected in her face. I turn around and see the gullet of the crocodile closing in. I whip my hand out of hers and shove the umbrella away as hard as I can, turn around, and face my death. ‘No!’ screams my waitress appropriately. I am strong and silent. The crocodile rears and dives, its fat body feeding into the water until its tail vanishes. Was it only trying to scare me?

‘Quick,’ calls my waitress, but barbed teeth mesh my right foot and yank me under. I pound the crocodile but I might as well be attacking a cedar. Down, down, down, I kick and struggle, but only succeed in thickening the clouds of blood spewing from my punctured calf. We reach the floor of the Pacific. It is heavily urbanized – then I realize the crocodile has chosen to drown me outside Jupiter Café, proving that amphibians have a sense of irony. The customers and refugees look on in helpless terror. The storm must have passed, because everywhere is swimming-pool blue and tap-dancing light and I swear I can hear ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’. The crocodile watches me with Akiko Kato eyes, suggesting I see the funny side of having my bloated corpse stowed in a lair and being snacked on over the upcoming weeks. I lighten as I weaken. I watch Lao Tzu help himself to my final Carlton and doff my cap. Then he mimes stabbing himself in the eye and points to the crocodile. A thought unsilts itself. Yesterday my landlord gave me my keys – the one for the shopfront shutter is three inches long and might serve as a mini-dagger. Twisting into striking range is no easy feat, but the crocodile is taking a nap, so he doesn’t notice me fit the key between its eyelids and ram the sharp point home. Squeeze, squelch, squirt. Crocodiles scream, even underwater. The jaws unscissor and the monster thrashes off in spirals. Lao Tzu mimes applause, but I have already gone three minutes without air and the surface is impossibly distant. I kick feebly upwards. Nitrogen fizzes in my brain. Sluggishly I fly, and the ocean sings. Face submerged, searching for me from the stone whale, is my waitress, loyal to the last, hair streaming in the shallows. Our eyes meet for a final time, and then, overcome by the beauty of my own death, I sink in slow, sad circles.

As the first red ray of light picks the lock of dawn, the priests of Yasukuni shrine light my sandalwood funeral pyre. My funeral is the most majestic within living memory, and the whole nation is united in mourning. Traffic is diverted around Kudanshita to allow the tens of thousands to come and pay their respects. The flames lick my body. Ambassadors, various relatives, heads of state, Yoko Ono in black. My body blazes as the sun cracks the day wide open. His Imperial Majesty wished to thank my parents, so they are reunited for the first time in nearly twenty years. The journalists ask them how they feel, but they are both too choked with emotion to reply. I never wanted such an ostentatious ceremony, but, well, heroism is heroism. My soul rises with my ashes and hovers among the television helicopters and pigeons. I rest on the giant tori gate, wide enough to drive a battleship under, enjoying the new perspective of human hearts that death grants.