Spiral (23 page)

She looked to be about five feet tall, with a well-balanced figure. Her tight dress ended a few inches above the knees and showed off her derriere nicely, and she had a lithe walk. With no stockings to cover them, the backs of her legs showed up especially white, making the bruises on her calves stand out even more. The night was so cold that every other person on the street was wearing a coat, and yet off she went wearing nothing but a sleeveless summer dress.

Ando got off the elevator and then just stood there for a while, staring into the darkness after her.

Ando waited for Miyashita in front of the bank like he was told. It was a weekend evening, and the bank was closed. With its metal shutters down, the area in front of it looked curiously orderly. The darkness here was cozy, but as he waited for Miyashita to emerge from it, he couldn't rid his mind of the image of that woman from apartment 303.

He tried, but she was burned onto his retinas. The whole time he'd half-sleepwalked back to the station from Mai's building, and then the whole way here to Tsurumi Station, he'd been seeing her in his mind.

Who was she?

The most sensible explanation that occurred to him was that Mai's sister had gotten concerned about her sibling and come to check on her apartment. Ando himself had called Mai's mother and told her in simple terms what he'd found. If Mai did have a sister, and if she too lived in Tokyo, there wasn't anything in the least strange about running into her at Mai's apartment.

But there was something in the indescribable aura that the woman had exuded that negated such an easy answer. Riding in the same elevator with her had shaken Ando to the depths of his soul. She didn't seem to be of this world, and yet, she didn't look like a ghost, either. She'd definitely been there with him in the flesh. But Ando thought he would have had an easier time accepting her if she had been a ghost.

He saw a bead of light emerge from behind a mixed-occupancy office building and head straight for him.

"Hey, Ando!"

Ando squinted toward the light, and realized it was Miyashita, hurtling toward him on a small ladies' bike, complete with shopping basket. He must have borrowed his wife's bicycle.

With a squeal of brakes, he came to a stop in front of Ando. At first, Miyashita was too out of breath to speak. He just stood there, straddling the bike, elbows on the handlebars, head bobbing up and down as he gasped for air. Ando never thought he'd see Miyashita on a bike. The slightest exertion usually left him panting.

"That was quick." Ando thought he'd be waiting for at least ten minutes. Miyashita was never early for anything.

Having parked the bike on the sidewalk in front of the station, Miyashita put a hand on Ando's back and guided him into an alley where every building seemed to have a red lantern hanging from its eaves. His breathing had finally calmed a bit, and as they walked, he spoke to Ando.

"I think I know what 'mutation' might mean."

That explained why Miyashita had come on a bike. He was dying to tell Ando his ideas.

"What does it mean?"

"Let's have a beer first."

As they ducked under a shop curtain, Ando noticed that it said
Beef Tongue.
Miyashita didn't trouble to ask what Ando wanted; instead, the moment they were inside he called for two draft beers and an order of salted tongue. Miyashita seemed to know the proprietor. They exchanged glances of recognition as Miyashita and Ando headed for two counter seats in the back. Those were the quietest seats in the house.

First, Miyashita asked Ando what he had done to figure out the code embedded in Ryuji's virus. Ando took the printout from his briefcase and began to explain the steps he'd gone through. Miyashita nodded repeatedly. Before Ando was half finished, Miyashita seemed to be convinced of the soundness of his method.

"It looks like 'mutation' has to be the answer, alright. The proof of your approach is that it yields exactly one solution." Miyashita patted Ando on the shoulder. "By the way, I'm sure you've noticed what all this is analogous to?"

"What do you mean?"

Miyashita took a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. It had something drawn on it. Whatever it was, it had been done roughly, merely to illustrate a spur-of-the-moment idea.

"Have a look at this," Miyashita said, handing him the paper. Ando took it and flattened it out on the bar in front of him.

He understood immediately. It was an illustration of how the DNA double helix inside a cell replicates itself. The strands of the double helix are complementary: when the structure of one is determined, the other one is automatically determined, too. When a cell divides, the two strands separate, each one faithfully creating next-generation copies of the original. This process of copying a gene and passing it down from parent to child can be thought of as the basics of heredity.

This was, of course, elementary to Ando. "What about it?" he asked.

"Think for a minute about the mechanism behind the evolution of species."

There was a lot that still wasn't known about evolution. For example, the basic concepts of Kinji Imanishi's theory differed from those of Neo-Darwinism, but it was impossible to determine, definitively, who was right. All in all, it was "let a hundred flowers bloom" in the world of evolutionary theory; everybody, qualified or not, weighed in with strongly held opinions. But even without decisive evidence to settle the question, Ando knew that recent developments in molecular biology had come close to showing that sudden genetic mutations were a driving force in evolution.

So he answered by saying, with some confidence, "It probably begins with genetic mutation." He felt he could guess where the conversation was going.

"Right. Mutation is the trigger that moves evolution forward. So, how do mutations happen?" Miyashita took a long swig of his beer, and then pulled a ballpoint pen from his breast pocket. Before Ando had a chance to reply to his question, Miyashita was writing again on the illustration.
The reason mutations occur.
Ando tried to peer past his hand at the sketch.

"An error arises in the genetic code-some chance damage or displacement to the genes- and that error is copied and passed down. Thus, a mutation. Are you with me? This is the current thinking on the mechanism of mutation."

Miyashita pointed at his diagram with his pen to emphasize his points, but this wasn't anything that had to be explained to Ando. Genetic damage can be caused on purpose in a laboratory using X-rays or ultraviolet radiation. But, usually, mutations occur at random. The DNA sequence, which theoretically should be faithfully copied and transmitted to future generations, sometimes mutates due to a copying error, so to speak, and as enough of these mutations accumulate through replication, gradually a new species arises. A given mutation can be looked at as one small step toward evolution.

"Remember that analogy I mentioned, my friend?" Miyashita murmured. Finally it dawned on Ando what Miyashita was getting at. X was like Y. Now that Ando considered it, there was indeed a resemblance.

"You're talking about duplicating videos, aren't you?" Ando finally said.

"Don't you think it's basically the same thing?" Miyashita shoved two slices of tongue into his mouth and washed them down with beer.

Ando turned the paper over and spread it out on the counter, and then borrowed Miyashita's pen and began to make a diagram of his own. He needed to take stock of the points of similarity. Even if it was something he thought he already knew inside out, he knew it often helped him to map a thing out on paper.

On the 26th of August, a videotape came into the world in Villa Log Cabin. On the twenty-ninth, four young people lodging in that same cabin erased part of the end of the tape-the part that said,
Whoever watches this video must make a copy of it and show it to someone else within a week.
The kids taped commercials over this section of the video. To the videotape, it was as if an unforeseen, random event had damaged its genetic sequence, the chain of images. An error was introduced. The tape, now containing the error, was then copied by Asakawa. Naturally, the error was copied as well. Thus far, the process was exactly like the one DNA uses to replicate itself. Not only that, but the erased section of the tape, the message, was meant to play a critical role in the tape's ability to reproduce. In genetic terms, it was a regulator gene. Shock to a regulator gene can make it easier for mutation to occur. Had a trauma to the end of the tape caused the video to mutate?

Ando let the pen come to rest. "Hold on a second. We're not talking about a living thing here."

Miyashita didn't miss a beat. It was as if he'd prepared his response ahead of time.

"If someone asked you to define life, what's your answer?"

Life, in Ando's view, basically boiled down to two things: the ability of an entity to reproduce itself, and its possession of a physical form. Taking a single cell as an example, it had DNA to oversee its self-reproduction, while it had protein to give it external shape. But a videotape? To be sure, it had a physical form-its plastic shell, usually black and rectangular. But it couldn't be said to have the ability to reproduce itself.

"A video doesn't have the ability to reproduce on its own."

"So?" Miyashita sounded impatient now.

"So you're saying it's just like a virus…"

Ando felt like groaning. Viruses are a strange form of life: they lack the power to reproduce on their own. On that score, they actually fall somewhere between the animate and the inanimate. What a virus can do is burrow into the cells of another living creature and use them to help it reproduce. Just as the videotape in question had held its watchers in thrall by means of its threat to destroy them unless they copied it. The tape had used people in its reproductive process.

"But…" Ando felt compelled to object at this point. He wasn't even sure what he wanted to deny. He just felt that if he didn't, something catastrophic would happen.

"But all copies of the video have been neutralized."

There shouldn't be any more danger, in other words. Even if the videotape had been alive in the limited way a virus is, it was extinct now. All four specimens that had been introduced into the world had now been removed from it.

"You're right. The videotape is extinct. But that's the old strain." The beads of sweat on Miyashita's face grew larger with every swallow of beer he took.

"What do you mean, old?" asked Ando.

"The video mutated. Through copying, it evolved until a new strain emerged. It's still lurking out there somewhere. And it's taken a completely different form. That's what I think, anyway."

Ando could only stare open-mouthed. His mug was empty, but he wanted something stronger than beer now. He tried to order some
shochu
gin on the rocks, but his voice faltered and he couldn't make himself heard to the bartender. Miyashita took over, holding up two fingers and calling out, "Shochu!" Two glasses of the liquor were set on the bar before them, and Ando immediately reached out and drank about a third of his in one gulp. Miyashita watched him out of the corner of his eyes, and then said: "If the videotape did mutate and evolve into a new form during the process of multiple copying, then it wouldn't matter at all to the new species if the old one died out. Think about it. Ryuji went to all the trouble of manipulating a DNA sequence so he could talk to us from the world of the dead. I can't think of any other explanation for why he'd send us the word 'mutation'. Can you?"

Of course Ando couldn't. How could he? He brought the liquor to his lips time and again, but intoxication seemed still a long way off. His head was distressingly clear.

It might be true.
Ando found himself gradually leaning toward Miyashita's viewpoint. Ryuji probably meant the word "mutation" as a warning. Ando could almost see Ryuji's face as he sneered,
You think you're safe. You think it's extinct. But you won't get off that easy. It's mutated, and a new version is rearing its head.

Ando was reminded of the AIDS virus. It was thought that several hundred years ago some preexisting virus mutated and became what is now known as the AIDS virus. The previous virus didn't infect humans, and may well have been harmless. But through mutation, it took on the power to wreak havoc with the human immune system. What if the same thing happened with this videotape? Ando could only pray that the opposite happened, that a harmful thing was now innocuous. But the facts suggested otherwise. Far from becoming harmless, the mutated videotape had turned into something that killed anybody who watched it regardless of whether or not they made a copy of it. If that was any indication, the thing was getting even nastier. And with Ando unable to form any conclusions yet about Mai's disappearance, that left Asakawa as the only anomaly.

"Why is Asakawa still alive?" Ando asked Miyashita the same thing he'd asked him the day before.

"That's the question, isn't it? He's the only clue as to what that videotape has turned into."