Paprika Read online

  As the journalists sat there in stunned silence, beaten into submission by Tokita’s slobbering rant, Atsuko alone held back her anger. She was thinking of a way to flush out the traitor in the camp.

  8

  Atsuko removed the collector. She was already tired of wandering through the bizarre world of the schizophrenic, a sinister, metaphorical world that could have a direct impact on the subconscious of the observer. A world in which, for example, a patient’s mother who was always having affairs and produced too many children appeared in the patient’s dream as a dog. Atsuko discovered the link between the two when the patient dreamt of the dog cooking supper in his kitchen. But now this particular patient was well on the road to recovery. Through the glass wall, a man in his forties could be seen lying on a bed in the examination room next to Atsuko’s laboratory.

  “He says he often dreams of dogs talking to him outside the Inari Shrine,” Nobue Kakimoto said, looking up from the reflector screen to smile at Atsuko.

  “His dreams are more or less normal now, aren’t they. Would you get some coffee?” Atsuko skipped back through some still images of the dream she’d just recorded. She started to write her thoughts on a memo pad as she looked across at the reflector screen. The reflector’s memory device was programmed to automatically scan recorded images at intervals of one second. “All right, Nobue. You can go home now.”

  Nobue seemed unwilling to leave quite yet. “He’s not identifying so much with other people or things now, is he,” she said while pouring coffee for her superior.

  “That’s right.” Atsuko watched the monitor as she drank the coffee. On the screen, a half-eaten grilled fish on a plate was calling out. Atsuko instantly thought of Tokita. He was quite partial to grilled fish. Suddenly, she wanted to see him. Atsuko cleared the screen.

  “I’m going to Tokita’s lab,” she said as she got up.

  Atsuko removed her lab coat to reveal the dark-blue suit she’d worn at the press conference. Now Nobue’s eyes were filled with an expression of rapture. “My! Oh my! How beautiful! How very, very beautiful you look! What have I done to deserve this?! Doctor Chiba, please! Won’t you appear on television again, just for me?”

  Feeling slightly embarrassed at such unfettered adoration by a member of her own sex, Atsuko hurried out into the corridor. The corridor was deserted. It was after nine o’clock.

  From the corridor, Tokita’s laboratory could only be reached by passing through a small anteroom occupied by his assistant, Kei Himuro. The gloomy anteroom was surrounded by shelves piled high with cases and boxes containing general purpose LSIs, custom chips sent in by manufacturers, prototype elements awaiting shipment as samples, and various other components. Electronic parts and tools were scattered haphazardly all over the floor, not to mention the desks. Beneath the shelves, desks lined the walls on either side, allowing just enough room for a person to squeeze through to Tokita’s laboratory. The desks were littered with naked Braun tubes and bright monitor screens displaying an array of graphs and diagrams. Himuro had been using an image scanner to input design drawings. He tensed and stood up when he saw Atsuko.

  “Er, Doctor Chiba! He’s in the middle of an experiment right now. I’m afraid I can’t let you in.”

  Like Tokita, Himuro was fat, but marginally less so; when standing side by side, they resembled a pair of babushka dolls in descending order of size. Himuro, another computer geek, had taken it upon himself to act as Tokita’s bodyguard, a role in which he was extremely resolute. He stood before his master’s door to prevent Atsuko from getting through.

  This was what always happened. But Atsuko knew how to handle him. She went close to him, so close as to frost up his glasses. “Come now,” she breathed as she peered into his widening eyes. “Still so persistent? No one’s going to take your precious master from you!” And she prodded the tip of his nose with her index finger.

  Himuro instantly turned bright red, then cast his eyes down and started muttering indistinctly. “Well, I suppose … It’s just the same old … You know, that bipolar IC … thingy … You know …” And with that he crept back to his seat.

  Tokita’s room was in the same state as the anteroom – only much darker, three times as large, and therefore three times as chaotic. But this was no ordinary chaos. The ends of spiral fibre bundles had been shoved into used pot noodle containers, ceramic elements torn to pieces, Braun tubes smashed. Testing monolithic semiconductor chips had been piled up inside coffee cups, while weird electronic components and tools designed by Tokita lay strewn all about. It was clearly the workplace of a genius, but then again, the endlessly bewildering appearance and juxtaposition of objects could equally have been the product of madness. Beads of perspiration glistened on Tokita’s brow as he fabricated some infinitesimal thing using a compact laser processor. His face was bathed in the light emanating from countless display screens that projected design drawings, images, and graphs in full color, as well as CAD line drawings and fractal graphics in high definition mode.

  As Atsuko walked in, Tokita threw his tools down onto the desk. The abruptness of his reaction made Atsuko regret having interrupted him.

  “Oh. Hi there,” said Tokita.

  “Is it OK?”

  “It’s fine. I was just about to open the window anyway.”

  Tokita got up dozily, opened the thick curtain and pushed the double-leafed windows open. His research lab offered the same view as Atsuko’s over the spacious gardens of the Institute, as well as the illuminated office buildings in the center of the metropolis beyond. An evening breeze carried the smell of freshly cut grass into the room.

  “I just came to thank you,” Atsuko said, walking toward Tokita’s back as he stood by the window.

  “Thank me? For what?” Easily embarrassed at the best of times, Tokita did not turn to face her, but continued to stare into the distance.

  “Hey, why don’t you look at me? I won’t bite! It’s so dark in here you won’t even see my face!” Atsuko laughed.

  “True. True.” Tokita slowly turned round, like a good boy. His face was barely visible in the gloom.

  “Now I’ll tell you,” said Atsuko. “It’s thanks to your fine performance today that we got through the press conference in one piece. I just wanted to thank you.”

  “Performance? Oh. That childish nonsense. I’m sorry, I can’t help it.” He turned to look outside again.

  “Well, I’m glad you can’t help it. It was really a great performance. Oh, come on! Why don’t you just face this way?”

  “Because I can see how beautiful you are, even in this darkness. And when it’s dark, your beauty turns into something devilish. It scares me.”

  Atsuko went to embrace Tokita’s massive back from behind, pressing her cheek into his shoulder. “I’ll say it again. Thank you. If they’d kept questioning me like that, I would soon have been driven into a corner. Then they would all have believed that the rumors were true.”

  “That reminds me,” Tokita said carefully after a short silence. “Who could it have been? Who leaked the story about Tsumura to the press?”

  “Well, not Tsumura himself, that’s for sure. How’s he doing, by the way?”

  “I heard he’d been sent home to rest.”

  Tsumura occupied one of the Institute’s apartments, in the same building as Atsuko and Tokita. The building was out of bounds to unauthorized personnel and was under constant surveillance. And anyway, even if someone were to see Tsumura, they would discover nothing, as his appearance was perfectly normal.

  “Tsumura was one of our best therapists. It doesn’t make sense,” said Atsuko.

  “Did he have some kind of trauma?”

  “Well, he’s only human. We all have our psychological scars. That’s why I suspect something untoward here. Actually, that’s partly what I came to ask you about. Can you identify Tsumura’s trauma from the collector he was using?”

  “Sure. Easy. All you have to do is play back the recording of the patient�
�s dream he was accessing.”

  “I thought so. But on the other hand, what if someone had done it deliberately while he was using the collector? I mean, fed his mind with images that spark his trauma, without him knowing it, as if they were part of a schizophrenic patient’s dream?”

  “They could do that. They’d just have to devise a program that let them search for some suitably intense images from the patient’s dream, then project them intermittently into the collector Tsumura was using, below the threshold of consciousness. Easy.”

  “Everything’s easy with you, isn’t it!” Atsuko couldn’t help but laugh. “But what I want to know is whether there’s anyone in the Institute who can do that?”

  “Well, if he could get hold of the images, my man Himuro could manage it. He could do the programming, no sweat. I wonder if someone’s been leaning on him. I’ll just ask him, shall I?”

  Tokita started toward the door. “No – wait!” said Atsuko, quickly barring his path. “We need to keep this quiet, don’t you see?”

  “Ah. Really. All right, I’ll look into it later. Everything he does is recorded in a log.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But anyway, what would be the point of doing that to Tsumura? Who would stand to gain from it?”

  “Someone, I’m sure. There’s someone who’d stand to gain if the Institute’s reputation took a nosedive.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “Exciting! So now you’re a real detective?!”

  “Silly!” Atsuko laughed again.

  “But you know, on that subject, it’ll be a lot easier if you use the unit I’ve just developed. Daedalus plus the collector.” Daedalus was basically the gorgon without cables. Tokita had invented the next generation of devices before they could even be tested.

  Atsuko stood open-mouthed. “What?” she said at length. “What did you invent that for? What will you do with it?”

  “I thought it was your job to think of that. Look what we can do already! If it’s used properly, it’ll improve the treatment, won’t it?”

  “Just a minute. That’s way too dangerous. It’s too much.”

  “But see, it’s been my ambition all along! To go into each other’s dreams, you know …”

  Atsuko’s head started to reel. “A unit, you said? How big is it, then?”

  “That’s the point.” Atsuko’s surprise seemed to suddenly excite Tokita. “It’s about the same size as a calculator. Once I’ve finalized the principle, I’ll be able to make it infinitely compact. The other day I was hacking into computers to see what other people had invented, when I accidentally accessed the biology department of some university. There I pocketed some samples that were being researched by some bloke doing bionics. I was amazed to see all that stuff, so I applied it to make a basic element that can process practically anything! If we used it for our devices, we could make them as small as we liked!”

  “By which I suppose you mean biological elements? The ones that permit self-assembly of proteins? And how much smaller are they than the silicon chips currently being used?”

  “Well, they’re a hundred ångström each, so, er, their memory capacity would be ten million times that of a silicon chip. I should think.”

  Atsuko gazed at Tokita. “You’re a genius. That’s what you are. Think of the stir this’ll cause when it’s announced!”

  Bashful as ever, Tokita looked out at the gardens once more. “Actually, I hope it won’t be announced. I mean, of course I’m glad you’re surprised, but I’m not interested in what the rest of the world thinks. Some people yak on about nothing else once their work has been recognized. And usually that’s the end of the road for them.”

  Atsuko went to hug Tokita from behind again. “That’s exactly what a genius would say.”

  They remained in that pose for some time, until Atsuko could feel Tokita’s body stiffen with tension through her breasts. He obviously wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words to express it.

  “What is it?” asked Atsuko.

  “Well … You remember when I was just an assistant, when we were developing these things, and you came into my dream? And I thought, well, it’s just a dream after all, so I could easily, you know, make love to you?”

  Atsuko laughed. “I remember. But you only thought it, didn’t you.”

  “I’ve often had that dream since then.”

  “And do you make love to me every time?”

  “I can’t. Even though I know it’s a dream, I just can’t. What’s it called? That kind of resistance. ‘Reason within a dream,’ wasn’t it?”

  “No. ‘Reason within a dream’ means thinking you can do something just because it’s a dream. The inhibition that prevents you from doing it is what I call ‘dreason’ – dream reason.”

  “Do you think it’s because I love you?”

  Atsuko embraced Tokita so firmly that her arms sank into the soft flesh of his belly. “Yes. So why don’t you just come out and say it? Say you love me!”

  “I can’t. Whenever I try, all I can think of is Beauty and the Beast. Like earlier today.”

  “Well, we know each other’s feelings. We don’t have to say anything. But if we did say it, would it have to come from me? It could, if you liked. On a rational level I want to deny you, despise you for your obesity, your lack of self-control. And your face is no oil painting. I often think that, if we were to marry, the incongruity of our looks would be just too awful. But I love you so much I can’t help it. You know that, don’t you?”

  As Atsuko spoke, Tokita continued to moan feebly as if he were about to cry. Now, at last, he slowly turned to face her. “I know. But it’s the first time you’ve said it.”

  Atsuko grasped his cheeks with both hands and brought her face close to his. Tokita timidly put his hands around her waist. And they kissed. Those thick lips of his, always glistening, always moist with dribble like those of a small child, yielded so softly to hers.

  Tokita pulled himself away and turned to look out of the window once more, almost apologetically this time. “It’s only because it’s dark, isn’t it. You could never have kissed me otherwise.”

  9

  Tatsuo Noda managed to extricate himself from the party and find the toilet, where he splashed his face with cold water from the tap. That made him feel slightly better, but did nothing to improve the pallor of his face in the mirror.

  The party was meant to mark the appointment of a new CEO by one of the company’s parts manufacturers. Though held in a top-class hotel in the center of Tokyo, it was not a particularly important event; Noda, together with his President and Sukenobu, the Managing Director for Sales, had planned to make a brief appearance and then leave. But many of their counterparts from the industry were also present, and the President had been pulled this way and that by people needing a moment of his time. As a result, neither Noda nor Sukenobu had been able to get away as planned. There were people they hadn’t met in a while; there were even some that Noda needed to talk to.

  It was just at this time that Noda had started to feel anxious. He’d started to imagine what would happen if he had an attack at the party, a gathering of all the main players in his trade. Suddenly a chill had gone down his spine and he’d broken out in a sweat. If he’d stayed where he was, he would definitely have had an attack. And with that certain knowledge in mind, he’d managed to pull himself away.

  He hadn’t suffered any further attacks since the session with Paprika. But a single treatment was never going to cure anxiety neurosis altogether. The awful knowledge that an attack could occur at any time – naturally, choosing the most inopportune time and place, like tonight – remained the same as ever. He’d already finished the anxiolytics Paprika had given him.

  Noda decided not to return to the party venue. Instead, he made his way to the lobby. There, he announced his imminent departure to the reception desk staff, and graciously accepted his pap
er bag containing the customary party gift. Then he went to sit on a black leather sofa offering a view of the entrance to the party venue. There he rested while waiting for the President and Sukenobu to emerge. The lobby was well ventilated. Noda was feeling better already.

  The President appeared, released at last by his petitioners. “Where’s Sukenobu?” he asked.

  “I saw him just now … He was nabbed by the President of Aoyama Seiki … Getting an earful of something or other …”

  The President sat in the armchair opposite Noda. He was the second President in the company’s history, and fifteen years older than Noda. But his healthy complexion gave him a rather youthful look.

  “Now, what was his name? That Managing Director of Teisan.”

  “Segawa?”

  “That’s it. Segawa.” The President smiled. “He was here, wasn’t he.”

  “Yes. He was here.”

  The President seemed only too aware that Segawa was the chief opponent of the zero-emissions vehicle.

  Segawa, fat and bull-necked, emerged from the party in conversation with Sukenobu. Sukenobu took his party gift. Segawa did not; that meant he was staying. Noda had heard that he was always one of the last to leave any party.

  Sukenobu looked a little flustered when he saw Noda. The President didn’t notice the pair, as he sat with his back to them. Not realizing who was sitting opposite Noda, Segawa moved toward him with a leer, fully intent on making his customary snide remark.

  “Well hello there, Noda. Haven’t seen you at the usual place recently? Kurokawa misses you so badly!” Kurokawa was a Ministry official.

  The President turned to look. Segawa was taken aback. “Oh! Hello, Mr. President. Leaving so soon? Really. Well, well.”

  Smiling inscrutably, the President watched Segawa walk off toward the toilet.