Paprika (6 page)

“But you feel protective toward him.”

“Frankly, it’s getting to be a bit of a pain. Though yes, he is a valuable person.” Noda noticed how terribly tired Paprika looked. “Well, it’s getting rather late, isn’t it. Should we leave it there?”

“Thank you. And sorry. It’s just that I’ve got an early start tomorrow, and there are still things I need to do.”

“All right then, that’s it for now,” said Noda, getting up quickly. “I look forward to the next session.”

“Right. I’ll be in touch.”

“By the way … Paprika?” Noda said as he made to leave. “That second part of the dream? Does it mean I should protect Namba more than ever, because he has so many enemies?”

Paprika opened her eyes wide and laughed. “That’s maybe how Jung would have seen it! But I think something else caused your neurosis. Something to do with your school days, I’d say.”

6

It was already past one in the afternoon when Atsuko finally arrived at her laboratory. She’d been up all night studying a memo of questions from the newspaper companies.

A press conference had been called for two o’clock. The memo contained a schedule of the questions to be asked; the newspaper companies always provided them in advance. Atsuko usually needed to prepare the answers beforehand, partly because Kosaku Tokita was such a blubberingly inept speaker. And since there were always bound to be some questions that weren’t on the memo, Atsuko had to prepare answers for the hypothetical ones as well.

Atsuko ordered Nobue Kakimoto to make two copies of the answers and to take one each to Shima and Tokita. Then she made some coffee. She loathed press conferences. There would always be some jumped-up new science or academic correspondent who really thought he knew his stuff, but just asked the same old questions as everyone else. No matter that Atsuko had answered that very question ad nauseam in the past; they still expected her to provide a neat, easy answer every time. On this occasion, as it happened, the news that Tokita and Chiba were leading contenders for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine had started to circulate. There were bound to be a few social affairs correspondents who were itching to ask banal questions about that; it was Atsuko’s job to protect her naive colleague from them.

Torataro Shima had always insisted that it was important to inform society of the Institute’s achievements and enlighten the public as to the value of its research. But to Atsuko, attending a press conference simply meant being exposed to public view in a way that was barely welcome. In her view, the journalists weren’t interested in noting some form of higher intelligence in the young, beautiful woman called Atsuko Chiba. They hated the idea that she was their intellectual superior, and merely seemed bent on finding something in her that would reinforce their preconceived image of Japanese femininity.

At five to two, an employee from the Secretariat came to call Atsuko. The Meeting Room reserved for the press conference was already humming with the chitter-chatter of more than two hundred journalists and photographers. The room was like a pressure cooker ready to blow.

The seating arrangement had been decided long ago by Torataro Shima. As always, Atsuko sat in the center with Tokita to her right and Shima to her left. Behind them in the corner sat the Secretary-General Katsuragi, who acted as moderator. Once Atsuko had taken her seat, the party was complete. Some social affairs correspondents who were attending for the first time let out involuntary gasps of astonishment at her ravishing beauty, which even exceeded its reputation. Atsuko wore a navy-blue suit.

Katsuragi stood, declared the press conference open and introduced the trio. Then Shima himself stood and greeted the throng most genially. He stressed, somewhat patronizingly, that the press conference was being held at the urgent request of the media; he stopped short of mentioning that Tokita and Chiba had been shortlisted for the Nobel Prize. But no sooner had Katsuragi invited the journalists to ask questions than a man who was obviously a social affairs correspondent started grilling them on that very issue. What chance did they each have of actually winning the Prize, in terms of percentage? None of the three could find words to answer such a half-witted question. So then the journalist directed his question to Atsuko in person.

“I don’t think that’s a question I’m qualified to answer,” she answered.

“Why is that?”

“Because I’m not qualified to answer it.”

A modest round of laughter ensued. Then a science correspondent, a familiar face at the Institute, rephrased the question. He prefaced it with an apology that a social affairs correspondent who was attending his first press conference had been allowed to start proceedings with a question of the very lowest caliber. “This is a question for Doctor Tokita,” he went on. “Doctor Tokita, your nomination for the Nobel Prize must of course be related to your achievement in developing PT devices. Now, I’ve heard it explained a number of times, but I still have a lot of trouble understanding the actual principle behind these devices. Do you think you could explain it to us once more, in words that we can actually understand?”

In fairness, the question
was
on the memo; Atsuko had no choice but to let Tokita provide the answer himself. The problem was that there were no more than three people in the whole world – including Tokita himself – who understood the principle behind the PT devices. And now Tokita, a bad speaker at the best of times, was going to explain it all in words that everyone could understand? The very thought made Atsuko squirm, and Shima must have felt the same. Nevertheless, Tokita began to reply. He normally spoke with a pronounced lisp, owing to his short tongue, but when he became agitated it developed into a veritable slobber. He always did his level best to speak intelligibly, in his own way. But it was always after the first few words that his intelligibility began to fall apart.

“Well … Um … Er … To explain it all from the beginning, er, when I was at primary school, and secondary school for that matter, I was known as a ‘geek,’ you see, because I did nothing but play computer games, but then I gradually started programming games and messing about with semiconductors and making all kinds of things. You know. But then my late father said I should become a doctor, so I went to study psychopathology at a medical university, you follow, but even then I kept messing about with computers on the side, and apart from that I got quite interested in ECG, that’s electrocardiograms, so then I thought, what if I were to put the two together, and then I suddenly hit on the idea of using fiber bundles to create a slit-no-check system for floating computer image processing, and when I did brain tests using this, all sorts of things started to appear on the images besides the brain waves—”

“Er, sorry, but that’s where you always lose me,” the science correspondent interjected hurriedly. “What exactly do you mean by a ‘slit-no-check system,’ for example?”

“Ah. Yes. Well, how shall I put it. Er. A slit electron stream electro-transmission efficiency, by which I mean, the electrode in the slit through which the electrons pass, well, the ratio of the average rated current to the non-slit current injection, if we applied that directly to the fiber bundle designed to universalize the conversion code on the analogous mapping space using discrete fractal compression, we would no longer need a validity check, nor a slit, nor a floating core, and so—”

“Er – sorry,” the science correspondent interrupted again, now growing quite impatient. “Could we possibly take these phrases one by one? First off, this ‘fiber bundle’ – is it the same as the ones they use in a gastrocamera? It’s a bundle of fibers just like that, yes?”

Atsuko gave an involuntary sigh. It was quite a loud sigh. The journalists all turned to look at her.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“The reason why Doctor Chiba sighed just now”—Tokita laughed, gallantly trying to cover for his colleague—“is that I have only just started to explain the principle of PT devices, and if I were to explain all the concepts one by one, as you say, we would quite literally be here for hours! If I may just answer about the fiber bundle, though, you’re quite right. Yes. So then we construct horizontal parallel buffers with these bundles of fibers, and then superimpose vertical parallel arrays over them. So then the field quite literally becomes infinite, and we no longer need to check the input data, or what have you. That means we don’t need a floating core or anything like that, you see.” In his own mind, Tokita felt sure he’d explained the principle in terms that any schoolboy could understand. He nodded in satisfaction at his feat. “Are you with me thus far?”

The room fell silent. None of the reporters had a single idea what he’d been talking about.

A middle-aged journalist stood up, his face contorted in an ironic smile at the sheer unintelligibility of it. “Sorry, but I’m not
with
you at all. And if
we
can’t understand it, how are we to write articles that our readers will understand?”

“I see,” replied Tokita, a look of discomfort on his face.

“So you see, Doctor Tokita, it’s really up to you to help us understand, isn’t it.”

“Yes. I see.”

“Doctor Chiba. Of course, you understand it all very well, don’t you,” the science correspondent said, now turning to Atsuko.

“Yes, I think I do.”

“You think you do? What do you mean by that?”

“Most of these PT devices have only just been developed, including their components. Some of them don’t even have names yet. Even the principles by which they work are new. So there are no existing scientific terms that can describe them.”

“Well, that certainly is a problem.” The journalist broadened his nostrils and changed his tone. “Sorry, I should have introduced myself. I’m the Senior Science Editor at the
Shinnichi
.” And he paused as if to confirm the effect.

Atsuko now saw her chance for some retaliation. “And when did you start thinking
that
, exactly?”

The room erupted in laughter and the tension was dispelled. The Senior Science Editor raised his voice in irritation. “Excuse me, would you mind? I know you have your corporate secrets and all that, but I’d be grateful if you’d desist from these smokescreen tactics. They’re very confusing.”

“Yes, yes. Understood, understood,” Shima said loudly, silencing the Senior Science Editor. “It has nothing at all to do with corporate secrets, I can assure you – Doctor Tokita has even published papers on the subject. Of course, they’re all in English, so that foreign scientists can read them. Anyone who wants to use the research results is welcome to do so. I’ll get these papers rewritten in simple, everyday Japanese and have them distributed to you all.”

“Actually, I’d rather have heard it directly from Doctor Tokita,” the science correspondent said glumly before moving on to the next question. “Incidentally, I understand that these PT devices aren’t limited to accessing the subconscious of your patients. They could also be used – or misused – on ordinary citizens, for example. Did you not realize that? Of course, it would be fine if it was just for criminal investigation or the like, but what about a company trying to modify its employees’ personalities? Or a government manipulating the minds of its subjects? This is a question for either Doctor Tokita or Doctor Chiba. In your own time.”

Tokita hadn’t fully read the model answers Atsuko had given him. Instead, he now started to regurgitate his usual grievance, like a toddler about to have a tantrum. “Why, oh why, oh why does it always have to go like this?! We’re working at the forefront of science here! Why do you always have to trivialize things for the sake of the masses?!”

“What are you implying, exactly?” Atsuko interrupted quickly from the side. “That we’ll just go around scanning people’s minds willy-nilly? Utter nonsense. The public will of course have every right to refuse treatment. If done without permission it would be a criminal act. In any case, there are only a limited number of specialists authorized to access a patient’s subconscious using the collector. The reflector can detect the user’s intentions, and access may be denied if those intentions are deemed improper.”

“And I’ve asked Doctor Tokita to ensure that all devices developed from now on are equipped with this kind of function,” Shima said helpfully.

“A bit like Asimov’s three laws of robotics.”

No one reacted at all to Tokita’s infantile muttering. The journalists had already despaired of hearing normal everyday speech from him.

“Doctor Chiba, it seems you’ve been collaborating with Doctor Tokita for some years now,” said a bespectacled female reporter who looked about thirty. She was doing her best to conceal her burning curiosity under a contrived smile. “One thing I’d like to ask, out of interest as a woman, is whether there’s been any hint of romance in the meantime?”

The journalists all grinned. Not only were they inwardly keen to mock Tokita’s repulsive obesity, thereby absolving their sense of intellectual inferiority; they would also happily grasp any chance of belittling Atsuko Chiba, whose exasperating combination of beauty and genius made her a suitable target for their wrath. A scandalous affair with the unsightly Tokita would surely do the trick.

“The question received from the Press Club concerned only my involvement with Doctor Tokita’s development work. So I shall answer that question.” Atsuko managed to maintain her practiced expression of affability. “It started when I was a student in the Medical Faculty. One day, Doctor Shima gave me the chance to collaborate with Doctor Tokita in his research. Well, I say Doctor, but he was just an assistant then.”