Paprika (34 page)

“This isn’t ours,” said Osanai, squirming in discomfort. “Seijiro. Wake up!”

Paprika now realized the truth. Himuro’s nightmares as he lay in the hospital were being transmitted directly into Atsuko’s dream, and into the DC Minis worn by Inui and Osanai.

“We’ve got to wake up. If we don’t, we’ll all go insane!” Paprika yelled, shaking with terror.

Paprika tried to restore her waking awareness. It wasn’t easy. She knew the horrors of Himuro’s dreams after his personality had been laid waste, as she’d seen them when she examined him. If she continued to see them for any length of time, she was certain to become schizophrenic herself.

It was the anaphylaxis effect. The DC Mini embedded in Himuro’s head was continuously transmitting the nightmares of a schizophrenic patient, replete with images powerful enough to destroy a person’s mind. The transmission from Himuro may have been gradually growing stronger, or the range of reception by Paprika, Inui, and Osanai may have been gradually expanding. Whichever the case, those nightmare images had traveled through the ether to their DC Minis five kilometers away.

7

“Doctor Chiba! Doctor Chiba!”

Someone was shaking Atsuko in the gloomy half-light. Groaning, twisting, and turning, she summoned up the strength to break through an unseen viscous membrane that confined her to sleep, until, finally, she awoke in her own bedroom.

“Sorry, but you seemed to be in distress,” Ube said with some concern. “I didn’t know whether I should wake you, but it was too much to ignore …”

Her cries must have carried as far as the living room, where Ube had been sleeping on the sofa next to the window. Atsuko found that particularly unfortunate, as she’d only just been boasting that she could wake herself from autohypnosis at any time. She lowered her head and thanked him meekly. “No, you were right. I appreciate it.”

Atsuko suddenly remembered the urgency of the situation. “This is really serious. Himuro’s dreams are coming this way from the hospital. His dreams aren’t funny, I assure you. Everyone who uses a DC Mini will be affected.”

Atsuko played back the scenes recorded from Himuro’s dream to illustrate her point. Ube was shocked by the flood of destructive images and instantly realized the enormity of the matter.

“You say they still have three of these devices?” he asked.

“Yes. But I’ve no idea who else they’re allowing to use them.”

“Himuro must be moved to a remote location, before all else.”

Yes, but however remote that location, anaphylaxis could expand the DC Mini’s viable range infinitely. Atsuko felt overcome by helplessness and a mild bout of vertigo when she thought of that.

“Yes, we’d better move him. Otherwise, they might …” Atsuko stopped short of saying “kill him.” But knowing them, they might do just that. They surely had no alternative if they wanted to keep using the DC Minis.

“Yes.” Ube nodded, intuiting Atsuko’s meaning. “Himuro is in very great danger.”

He immediately called the Chief Superintendent to give his report. Konakawa instructed Ube to stake out Osanai’s apartment on the fifteenth floor and prevent him from leaving the building that night. Atsuko then asked if Saka, who was guarding Shima’s apartment, could keep a watch on Hashimoto as well. She could hope for no more assistance from the police than that. They couldn’t just go marching into the hospital, as nothing demonstrable had happened there.

Atsuko wanted to go to the hospital herself. Ube firmly opposed such a plan, arguing that it would be too dangerous to go there so late at night, especially in her state of fatigue. Atsuko reluctantly agreed to get some sleep first.

Just before nine the next morning, while Atsuko was still eating breakfast, Ube returned from his watch to report that both Osanai and Hashimoto had left for work.

“I’ll have to go too,” Atsuko said as she stood up.

“Be careful,” Ube warned, as if she were setting off on an undercover job in gangland.

The streets that day were oddly shrouded in hazy sunlight, the colors all subdued. This had an unsettling effect on Atsuko as she followed her usual route to the Institute in her Marginal. It was almost as if she hadn’t fully shaken off the effects of Himuro’s dream. She had experienced similar sensations, temporarily, when she’d first started observing the dreams of schizophrenic patients, but that was some years ago now. It was possible that, when using the DC Mini, abnormal sensations acquired from a patient while accessing a dream remained in the subconscious after waking. That would be another dangerous side effect of the DC Mini. And perhaps those sensations would merely become magnified with frequent use of the device.

Even then, Atsuko wondered why she was driving with such feverish haste. It wasn’t that she was really anxious about Himuro’s well-being. But if the struggle over the DC Minis were to result in homicide, it would severely tarnish her reputation, and Tokita’s. That was all. It was just as Inui had said; she was driven by nothing but a greed for fame. Atsuko did feel a twinge of remorse about that, but still wanted to convince herself it wasn’t true. She wasn’t doing it for herself. She was doing it for Kosaku Tokita, the man she loved. That was her excuse.

Atsuko ran to the hospital from the parking lot. Her flustered appearance again caused heads to turn in the waiting room by the hospital reception.

Atsuko was making for her own duty ward when Sugi, a middle-aged woman who’d previously been the senior nurse on Hashimoto’s floor, came rushing out of the nurses’ station to block her way.

“Where are you going? This is Doctor Hashimoto’s ward now.”

“Himuro is my patient. I’m worried about him. I want to see him.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t let you through.”

“Senior Nurse Sugi.” Atsuko deliberately adopted a conciliatory tone. “You would hate the police to be involved, would you not? This is an urgent matter, and I intend to pass you, by force if necessary. Do you want to see your name in the newspapers along with mine?”

Sugi cast a pleading glance at the nurses’ station, then begrudgingly pressed her slender form against the wall to let Atsuko through.

Atsuko entered Himuro’s room to find her worst fears realized, just like a nightmare where the worst fears always come true. Himuro was curled up on the bed. He was dead. He’d obviously been poisoned; his whole body was blue. His already grotesque facial features were even more distorted than usual. His expression seemed to suggest that he’d thought back over the events leading to his murder and couldn’t help but find them amusing. Atsuko hurried out of the room, not wishing to be blamed for his murder.

“Don’t you know he’s dead?!” she shouted loudly as she ran back to the nurses’ station and picked up the telephone, shouting again at the nurses who ran horrified to the scene. “I’ll phone the police. Someone call Hashimoto!”

Of course, Atsuko didn’t call the usual number for emergency services, but dialed the direct number to Konakawa’s office in the Metropolitan Police Department.

“Dead?” Konakawa sounded strangely lethargic.

“He’s been murdered,” Atsuko confirmed, wondering how she could have known that.

“And by whom has he been murdered?” asked Konakawa coolly. He didn’t seem terribly interested.

“Osanai … Hashimoto … Sayama …” There were so many candidates.

Atsuko ran to her lab. She felt sure she would find Hashimoto there. She did find him there, dead. He was lying facedown on the desk that was once her own. He’d been strangled with an object that anyone would recognize – Shima’s yellow necktie with black polka dots. Atsuko removed the tie and ran to Osanai’s lab, clutching it in one hand. As she climbed the stairs, her head started to reel. The stairs were swaying.

Misako Sayama lay on the floor of Osanai’s research lab. Atsuko knew that, and wondered why. She could see Sayama drinking poison and killing herself just moments before she opened the door to the lab.
She’s in there, I know she’s in there
, she thought,
and then … and then …
Atsuko ran to the Vice President’s office. The door was open, but as soon as Atsuko entered the room, it closed behind her with a bang. Atsuko dropped the necktie. It was Osanai who’d closed the door. He was standing right behind her. And sitting at the desk was Seijiro Inui. He was laughing.

“Hello? Is this a good time to be laughing?” asked Atsuko.

“Miss Chiba. Calm down. It may be impossible for you, but please calm down.” Inui spoke as if in song. Then he jiggled his shoulders and laughed again.

Osanai also burst into laughter behind Atsuko.

“Himuro’s dream did not travel all the way from the hospital to your apartment,” Inui continued. “My good friend here was playing it back in the same building, so that it would appear in all our dreams.”

“As I thought. A trick. And you even acted so surprised! But why? Why did you do something so obviously dangerous? When you knew we could all have lost our minds?”

“Ha! Didn’t you know? We both woke straight after that, momentarily!” Inui flashed a look at Osanai, who was still standing behind Atsuko. They seemed to be smiling at each other. “You were the one who didn’t wake up.”

Atsuko felt somehow troubled by the word
momentarily
. “Yes,” she said. “I had a lot of trouble waking up.”

Inui and Osanai bellowed with laughter. It was a coarse laugh, the type a woman would never have produced.

“Yes, I’m sure. I’m sure you did.” Inui nodded in hearty agreement. “In other words, it was the same as when you stole the DC Mini from Morio. He thought he’d woken up momentarily, as it were, when in fact he was still dreaming. You see, the DC Mini has the function of repeated effect and side effect, effect and side effect. Yes it does. It makes you dream, then dream of waking, and your waking dream is so very true to reality that you think it is reality, then you fall into an even deeper sleep, dream even deeper dreams, and so on. You see?”

Atsuko understood very well what Inui was saying. Almost too well. Even more so because of his faltering speech, which was quite unlike him. She felt she could even read his thoughts, just as she could when she accessed a patient’s dream. The things he was saying seemed altogether too preposterous, but that might just have been a misapprehension on her part.

“So you researched those functions, those effects and side effects, and then you … Yes! Then you tried them out on me? You experimented on me!” Atsuko exclaimed.

Inui declined to answer but stood up. He almost appeared to be floating on air. “It seems you are at last trying to understand. After all, have you not already written, in an unpublished paper, that if you access the dreams of a schizophrenic patient for too long you will become trapped in his subconscious and unable to wake up? …”

“Who said you could read that?!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Inui spat out irritably. “I’ve got more important … What?! That’s why a woman! …”

“By
more important
,” Osanai interjected, though still remaining behind Atsuko, “he means that, well, I think you’ve already started to realize that now, right now, right here and now, this
trying out
on you, this experimenting on you that you mention … Those functions, well … You know …”

Osanai’s thoughts were also being relayed to her. In a flash, Atsuko thought back with horror over events up to that point. Inui’s tongue-tied manner, not unlike the speech heard in a dream. Konakawa’s oddly disinterested tone on the telephone, which was quite uncharacteristic of him. The series of improbable murders at the Institute. The grim appearance of the streets as she drove through them. Before she knew it, Hashimoto was standing next to Osanai, smiling weakly.

Atsuko cried out and leapt to the wall, bracing herself in combat position. “It’s a dream, isn’t it!”

“My, aren’t you quick.” Osanai smiled wryly as he approached her. He clearly intended to steal the DC Mini from her head.

“You’re quite right, Paprika,” said Inui, staring at Atsuko.

Paprika
?!

Atsuko looked down. She was wearing a red shirt and jeans. At the very moment she’d realized that it was a dream and that her DC Mini could be stolen, she had automatically turned into Paprika.

8

Atsuko was dreaming. It did seem a surprisingly realistic dream, though parts of it were typically outlandish. She’d gone back to sleep after Ube had woken her. Or had she? Had even that been part of the dream? According to Inui, he and Osanai had woken “momentarily” before that. Then Atsuko, alone of the three, must have remained asleep. In that case, it must all have been a dream. She had dreamt of going back to sleep and waking the next day. Her discussion with Ube about Himuro’s well-being, and the detailed arrangements with Konakawa over the telephone, must also have been a dream. A dream that was impossible to distinguish from reality.

But then that realistic dream had started to lose its realism. Perhaps it was because Atsuko had succumbed to a deeper sleep. She had fallen into their trap. As she stood there in combat-ready position, Atsuko, now transformed into Paprika, observed the three men and wondered how she could regain the upper hand. She had to find an effective way of waking herself, and soon. Otherwise she would fall into a sleep that grew ever deeper – and the ultimate conclusion of that could only be death.