The Ark Sakura (31 page)

She came over and circled halfway around the toilet, her eyes on my trapped leg. “Look, we’ve got to do something about the captain’s leg,” she announced. “Let’s all think harder.”

“You’re wrong,” retorted Sengoku. “It’s
not
only those two.”

He was undoubtedly right. There had to be more of them than that. And as for my leg—in the end the only thing to do was to open a hole in the pipe, which I intended to have done; even so, tracking down the youths’ headquarters might still be the quickest way to a solution. They were stowaways, living undetected in some unexplored section of the ark. Which made it quite possible that they knew all about the passageway to the toilet’s lower mechanisms. Very possible indeed. I had had zero success in locating a passageway to the eastern entrance, by Kabuto Bridge—yet from the outside, one was plainly visible. The opening was midway up a cliff facing the Kabuto River, so it had been left unsealed. What better place for them to settle in?

In the old days there had been a road there, used for hauling rock, but during a huge landslip several months before the closing of the quarry, it had been sliced cleanly away, as if by knife. Compressed air had blasted through the maze of tunnels until the entire mountain howled like a wild beast, jerking half the local citizens from sleep. Over the following two weeks, a waterfall appeared and became a major tourist attraction. Removing fallen rocks from the river took over four months. The cause of it all—whether deliberate or the result of a miscalculation—was apparently the irresponsible actions of the quarrying company at the tangerine grove entrance. Ignoring their allotted boundaries, they had tunneled into the neighboring territory, destroying essential walls and pillars on the way. Seen from Kabuto City on the opposite bank, a portion of the tunnel is recognizable under a canopy of ferns and ivy, but the waterstone, which weathers quickly, has faded into an inconspicuous dirt-black. Through a pair of powerful binoculars you can see rubble lying scattered all around like the aftermath of a bombing raid—and mixed in with it, clear signs of human habitation: tin cans, empty cigarette packs, tissue paper stuck to the ground like jellyfish, comic books, and what look like dried, used condoms… .

“There’s definitely more than two,” repeated Sengoku. “And the skirmishing has gone on three full days now. It’s time for a decisive battle—right around tonight.”

“But your leader is dead,” said the girl, holding her nose and shrinking back as if suddenly remembering the body. “Who’s fighting whom? Who were those two guys running away from in such a hurry?”

“The leadership may change, but not the strategy. The old men are very keen on their strategy.” Something in Sengoku’s way of speaking was terribly disturbing. It made me think of a fishing barb wrapped skillfully in bait.

“How ridiculous,” sighed the shill. “Who gives a damn?” He looked from me to the sheeted bundle and back again. “Maybe we should go ahead and call a doctor,” he said.

Sengoku burst into loud, jeering guffaws.

“What’s so funny?” demanded the shill.

“I was just thinking you wouldn’t talk that way if you knew what the war was all about.”

“I’m talking about a doctor.”

“No doctors make house calls at this hour, and you know it.”

“All right, I give up. What
is
the war about?”

“Oh, you’d be interested, I guarantee. I’d even bet on it.”

“Of course he would,” snapped the girl. Then, reverting to her professional smile, she added more graciously, “After all, that’s his job. His and mine. It has nothing to do with our real feelings. Don’t forget, we’re
sakura.
Decoys. Shills. Our job is showing interest to attract customers. Anytime we can be of service, just give us a call.”

“I must say I don’t think you have the proper attitude,” said Sengoku, puffing himself up self-importantly. “When some problem arises, you’ve got to try to understand the other fellow’s point of view—isn’t that the basis of communal living? Before I express any doubts to the captain, I always think back on all the sweet-potato cakes of mine he’s bought and try to figure out what went wrong.”

“Bully for you.” The shill sucked in his saliva and clucked his tongue. “Sorry if our line of work offends you.”

“I—I didn’t mean it like that.” Sengoku stumbled over his words as if he’d lost his bearings. “I mean—I’ve worked in election campaigns, and that’s pretty much the same thing, isn’t it?”

“What are you trying to say?”

“That cleaning up humanity is part of the Broom Brigade’s business. Also that the kids in the Wild Boar Stew gang are real punks, the lowest of the low.”

“The what, did you say? Wild Boar Stew gang?”

“That’s right. Clever, don’t you think? It’s apparently deliberate provocation. Because the men in the Broom Brigade go around puncturing the tires of their cars.”

“Komono isn’t going to go for any war like that,” I argued, rubbing the back of my knee. “No way.” Even if he was a former SDF man, in love with firearms, at heart Komono was a selfish cynic who believed in nothing but quick, sure profits. Nobody in search of everlasting hope could possibly succeed as a showman like him. “Still, you know, if he ever did catch one of them …”

“Don’t forget, Komono’s got a gold-plated badge with three stripes,” said Sengoku.

“Yes,” said the shill, “and he issues commands like the real thing. He’s probably humoring the old men.”

“No, he’s serious, I think,” I said.

“Don’t be silly,” said the shill. “What is there to worry about?”

“I can’t help it.”

“Even granting the Wild Boar Stew gang is the dregs of humanity—absolute scum—there still isn’t much to choose between them and the old men in the Broom Brigade. Anyway, basically I don’t believe in dividing people into trash and nontrash. Evolution taught me that much.” He gave a quick self-deprecating smile, and added, “Garbage is the fertilizer that makes the trees grow.”

Again my leg began to throb painfully in time to the beat of my pulse. I had a presentiment of terrible pain, as if my skin were to be slashed with a knife. A dangerous sign. Even a person who normally can’t stand dentists will head straight for one as soon as his toothache gets bad enough. You get so you wouldn’t care if he used pliers to take it out. At this rate, I feared I might soon start begging them to cut my leg off. I addressed the shill.

“If anything should happen to me, I guess you’d make the best successor as captain,” I said.

“Me? Captain?” The shill’s face froze in the beginnings of a laugh. “You sure you haven’t got me mixed up with somebody else? If I were the captain, this would be the S.S.
Sakura
—a shill ship. What a laugh! No compass, no charts. Just a ship that pretends to be going somewhere, when all along it has no intention of moving an inch.”

“I never had a compass, either, you know.” My leg continued to swell. “If you could catch one of those hoodlums, though, I sure would like to question him about a tunnel leading up under here.”

“I’ll bet they’re still around, those two—maybe just outside.” The girl supported the crossbow with her knee, and laid her fingers on the bow.

“It’s probably hopeless,” said Sengoku. “They couldn’t know very much about the quarry layout. It’s only the last two or three days they came in this far, running away from their pursuers… . Funny thing is, the Broom Brigade was really after junior high school girls the whole time.”

“I beg your pardon?” I asked.

“You heard me. Junior high school girls.”

We stared at the steel door over the landing. The girl was standing three paces in front of the toilet, crossbow at the ready; the shill was at the foot of the staircase, hand on the pillar, frozen halfway to a sitting position; Sengoku was leaning against the wall that connected with the galley. Each of us pondered separately the possible meaning of that striking remark about junior high school girls. We all sensed the importance of understanding it, in order to catch the youths cowering behind the door.

That was why when a figure appeared in the tunnel to the operation hold, nobody noticed until he spoke up.

“Excuse me,” he said. His manner of speaking and his attitude were different from those of the other two, yet he was unmistakably one of them. Half of his teased hair was dyed yellow, and he looked like a dead branch soaked in oil. Swiftly the girl repositioned her crossbow, as Dead Branch gave the interior of the hold a nervous once-over.

“Excuse me,” he repeated, this time with a bow and a salute in the direction of Sengoku, whom he clearly recognized. Sengoku acknowledged the greeting with an annoyed wave of the hand and said, “What are you doing here?”

“Excuse me,” Dead Branch said again. What set him apart from the Wild Boar Stew gang was the small bamboo broom in his right hand, and the silver badge on his chest. He drew out the antenna on a large walkie-talkie slung around his left shoulder, and called: “Headquarters, come in… . This is Scout A, reporting from room number one by the oceanside entrance. All’s well. Over… . That’s correct. No sign of any suspicious persons. Over… . That’s correct. Four in all. Over… . Roger. Over and out.”

“Calling Komono?” asked the girl. She lowered her crossbow and made a sucking sound, as if rolling a pill on her tongue.

“Commander Komono is on his way here now. He’ll be here very shortly. He’s going to set up mobile headquarters in this room. I’m to wait here for him. Excuse me.”

His peculiar way of accenting every sentence was typical of his generation, yet his expression and demeanor were as flat as those of a tired old man. Not even my queer predicament elicited any sign of interest or surprise. Was he playing the part of a modern, callous youth, or had constant association with old men turned him into a fossil? Or perhaps he was a very model of allegiance—the sort who gave constant obedience, even in the absence of a command. There was no denying that he inspired a certain dread. Yet now he leaped nimbly up onto the first storage drum and seated himself, swinging his legs and beating out a rhythm with the handle of his broom. Surely he wasn’t humming an old war song … ?

“Get a load of him,” muttered the shill.

“He’s a spy,” said Sengoku, loud enough for the youth to hear. “He was a member of the Wild Boar Stew gang till just a few days ago. Inototsu paid him to keep us informed.” He turned to the youth. “Isn’t that so? Why don’t you say something? You’re the one who dragged junior high school girls into it, aren’t you?”

The youth shot him a wordless glance, his face a mask.

The girl turned around and asked Sengoku, “What’s all this about junior high school girls?”

“Ask Komono,” he said.

“It’s nothing for a woman to be concerned about,” said the youth in a crisp and businesslike tone.

“Watch what you say, kid, or I’ll let you have it,” she warned, crouching with her finger on the trigger.

He was unfazed. “Very impressive. But your panties are showing.”

“You idiot!” yelled the shill. “She means it!” He scooped up the surveying scrapbook from the floor by the toilet and hurled it at the girl. It grazed her shoulder and fell on the sight of the crossbow, knocking the arrow off course so that it glanced loudly against the drum and ricocheted up to the ceiling.

“What did you do that for!” cried the girl, jumping up.

The shill strode past her to the youth, and slapped him in the face. The youth leaped to the floor and raised his broom threateningly. “What’s the big idea?” he snarled.

“I’ll tell you the big idea, pal. You owe me a little gratitude. I just saved your life.”

Slowly the youth relaxed; then he began to fidget in evident embarrassment. “Uh, excuse me.”

“All right. That’s more like it.”

“Horrid little person,” said the girl. She held out her crossbow and the shill took it, drawing the bow to the full.

Sengoku, in apparent shock, pulled away from the wall, stiff with amazement; I, however, could guess what was going on. It had to be some sort of a trick by these two con artists. They had carried it off magnificently; the tables were entirely turned. Now was my chance to ask my question.

“There’s some kind of engine room under here, isn’t there?” I said. “You know about it, don’t you? Tell me how to get there.”

For the first time, the youth looked straight at me. His eyes dropped to the toilet, then rose again to my face. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Never mind,” said the girl, fitting another arrow to the taut bow. “Answer the captain.”

“We’ve had nothing to go on but copies of the sketches.”

“What sketches?”

With his broom handle the youth pointed to my scrapbook, lying on the floor where the shill had thrown it. The girl picked it up, smoothed the pages, and returned it to me.

“How do you know about this?”

“I borrowed it from that shelf and got it copied at a bookstore in town.”

A double blow. First the humiliation of having been hoodwinked by a pup like him, all the while I went on foolishly believing the scrapbook was my private secret. As if that weren’t enough, this destroyed my last hope of escaping by adjusting the mechanism in the pipes from below.

“But you people are holed up at the old tunnel site out by Kabuto Bridge, aren’t you?” I said in desperation. “It’s got to connect out there. Try to remember if there’s a tunnel leading down in. There’s got to be. That’s the only explanation.”

“Leading down under here, you mean?”

“Yes, exactly beneath here.”

“Then maybe that’s where …”

“Does it ring a bell?”

“Isn’t there someplace you might have overlooked?” he said.

“Come on, tell me,” I begged. “At least give me a hint.”

“Down by the Kabuto Bridge entrance—the cave in the cliff facing Kabuto River, that is, on the east … I suppose you know there was a big cave-in there once.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, that cave comes to a dead end barely ten yards in.”

“That can’t be,” I protested. “Then how do you know there’s a room under here?”

“You just told me there was.”

“But you said I’d overlooked something.”

“How the hell else do you explain it?”

The girl re-aimed her crossbow, planting her feet firmly. “Watch the way you talk.”

“Excuse me.” He went on, his face still devoid of expression. “Actually we’d like to know too.”

Sengoku interrupted in seeming irritation. “That could be true. I know they’re out looking. All fifteen or so of the girls have disappeared.”

“Huh?” The shill swallowed noisily.

“You baited the tangerine grove entrance somehow, and lured them in from there, was that it?” Sengoku said casually.

“We gathered up runaways and brought them here,” the youth declared, speaking for the first time with youthful enthusiasm. “We’re not spying on you. We just wanted to do our own thing without any interference from adults. We were going to make our own village and settle down. So we negotiated with Mr. Inototsu, the head of the Broom Brigade, and paid some money and got a share of the rights to this place. We’ve got a perfect right to be here.”

“I don’t know what to make of this, do you?” said the shill, an eye on Sengoku’s face.

“Quit making excuses,” said Sengoku with a jumpy laugh. “You tricked those girls into coming here, and then you had the Broom Brigade attack—admit it.”

“No. Somebody was waiting for us in ambush,” said the youth.

“Who?”

“The pig here and his men.”

The shill ambled forward. “Now you’ve gone too far. Look here, you—”

“Never mind. Let him finish,” I said. At last I was beginning to see. The Wild Boar Stew gang, having been attacked, must have escaped through the dark maze of tunnels. In the process they had gotten separated and some—including all the junior high school girls—were lost. Their whereabouts were a matter of immediate consequence to me. This was nothing I could close my eyes to.

Addressing the youth, I said, “Until now the only one living here was me. The other three all just came on board today. You can ask Komono. I couldn’t attack you all by myself, now could I?”

“But we were attacked.”

“Yes. By the Broom Brigade.”

“No, they were there to protect us.”

“What an idiot!” shouted Sengoku, swinging his two arms before him, hands clasped. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve known plenty of liars, but here’s a guy who can’t face the truth. If what you say is true,” he went on, “why did everybody but you run away from them? Don’t talk nonsense. You knew there was only one person here. You knew everything. That’s because you’re a spy. Can you get that into your head?”

Suddenly the youth burst into tears. He pressed his forehead against the broom handle and sobbed, his shoulders heaving.

“Fool.” The girl lowered her crossbow and went back to the stairs.