From habit Hanamura glanced across the busy street at the huge illuminated sign on the corner of the Kyoto Banking Corporation building. The sign looked anemic in the bright sunlight, yet even so he could clearly read the daily pollution index spelled out in electronic digits in parts per million.
carbon monoxide : 310 PPM
sulfur dioxide: 0.4 6 PPM
The warning was stark enough even for Kenichi Hanamura.
Moving out of the throng of hurrying people he fumbled in his briefcase for his mask. The straps were entangled with something and he tugged impatiently, losing his temper. And now his glasses were misting over again and he couldn't see!
It wasn't his glasses, he realized, it was his vision. Whenever he tried to focus on a particular object there was a round white blob in the way. His heart jumped in panic. He swayed and thrust out his hand to steady himself against the polished granite base of the building. Even though he knew what was happening to him he couldn't understand why there wasn't any pain. He tried to draw breath and couldn't. His chest was locked tight.
Where was the nearest oxygen-dispenser point? Somewhere nearby was a row of plastic cowls with masks attached to oxygen lines. For a few yen you could suck in several pure lungfuls to brace yourself against the city-center smog.
But where? How near? Could he get there?
A pounding steam engine started up inside his head and whined to a shrill crescendo, blocking out the sound of traffic and scurrying feet. The shimmering white blob swelled like a monstrous balloon, cutting off his vision completely.
In the instant that he slithered down the granite wall to the pavement, Hanamura's last conscious thought was tinged with regret that he would never have the opportunity to tell the doctor he was wrong.
For there was no pain. None at all. It was just like going to sleep in a blizzard next to a steam engine.
4
The banks of lights dimmed one by one until the studio became a shadowy twilit cavern. From the angled window of the control gallery Chase looked down, fascinated. He'd caught the last few minutes of the production on the floor and it reminded him of a religious ritual, cameramen, technicians, and stage crew moving silently to commands from above, following a mysterious ceremony with its own inscrutable logic.
"That wraps it up," said the director at the console behind him in the narrow booth. He spoke into the microphone. "Thank you, studio."
Through the adjacent glass walls Chase could see people stirring and stretching. Jill beckoned to him and he followed her into the brightly lit, carpeted corridor. She was wearing a baggy, vivid pink T-shirt with UCLA across her loose breasts and tight, green cord trousers that showed off her rump. And in place of the ubiquitous training shoes, brown brogue shoes, he was surprised to see.
"Have you told him I'm here?"
Jill nodded as they went down the stairs. "He remembered you straight off." She gave him a sneaky sideways grin. "Told me you once tried to hoax him with a fake specimen and he nearly fell for it."
Chase stopped dead on the bottom step and cringed. He'd completely forgotten about the spoof. Three of them had soaked some blue-green algae in a beaker of Guinness and taken it along to Sir Fred, with carefully arranged and rehearsed expressions of bafflement. Could he identify this mutant bloom? How come it had such a peculiar smell? The professor had carried out a series of tests with his usual thoroughness before catching on, and then issued a formal lab report with "Brown Ale Algae" under the species classification.
The professor had had the last laugh too. He'd taken his revenge on the three culprits by setting them the long and laborious task of identifying the percentage carbon yields of the marine food chain, all the way from phytoplankton to third-stage carnivores. They didn't pull any more tricks.
"You seem nervous."
"Does it show?"
"You don't hide your feelings too well, or don't bother to. Why were you so belligerent the other night?"
"Was I?" He was quite genuinely surprised; he thought he'd been successful at the party in putting up a front of meek, mild-mannered marine biologist. Either he was a poor actor or Jill was particularly astute. He guessed it was the former.
After bringing coffee she left them to chat in one of the small reception rooms used to entertain VIP guests. Chase had been wondering how to broach the subject (what the hell
Chase remembered him as a sloppy dresser. Though today, wearing the suit Jill had mentioned, he was positively smart--even though the material was stiff, enclosing his chest in a kind of blue shell, and there was an excess of it in the sleeves and trouser legs. He had an untidy thatch of mousy-colored hair, graying at the temples, and lively brown eyes peering out from beneath bushy gray eyebrows.
