Kojo Suzuki - Spiral

“By the way,” said Ando, changing the subject, “did you learn anything from Ryuji’s tissue sample?”

It was Miyashita’s Pathology Department that usually handled any diseased samples that needed to be analyzed.

“Oh, that.” Miyashita sighed.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know quite what to tell you. I’m at my wits’ end with that. What do you think of Professor Seki?”

Seki was the doctor in charge of the pathology lab. He was famous for his research on the initial formation of cancer cells.

“What do I think of him? Why?”

“The old man says some funny things sometimes.”

“What did he say?”

“It’s not the arterial blockage that he’s focusing on. You remember the throat was ulcerated?”

“Of course.”

It wasn’t very noticeable, but he definitely remembered it. He’d overlooked it until his assistant had drawn his attention to it. After the autopsy, he’d cut the affected portion out complete.

“He took one look at it with his naked eye, and what do you think the old man said it looked like?”

“Knock it off and just tell me.”

“Alright, alright, I’ll tell you: he said it looked like what you see on smallpox victims.”

“Smallpox?” Ando yelped in spite of himself.

Smallpox had been stamped out through a concerted global vaccination effort. Since a case in Somalia in 1977, not a single patient had been reported worldwide. In 1979, the WHO had declared the disease eradicated. Smallpox only infects humans. No new victims meant that the virus itself had effectively ceased to exist. The last specimens were being kept frozen in liquid nitrogen in Moscow and in a lab in Atlanta, Georgia. If a new case had appeared, it could only have come from one of the two research facilities, but, given the tight security the virus was under, it was unthinkable.

“Surprised?”

“It has to be a mistake.”

“Probably is. Still, that’s what the old guy said. Respect his opinion.”

“When will you have the results?”

“In about a week. Listen, if we actually do turn up the smallpox virus, it’ll be huge for you.”

Miyashita sounded bemused; he didn’t believe it himself. He was sure it was an error of some sort. It was only natural, since medical professionals their age had never even had the chance to see a real smallpox patient. The only way for them to learn about the illness was through specialist works on viruses. Ando had seen a picture once, in a book, of a child covered with smallpox eruptions. A cute kid, mercilessly defiled by the pea-sized pustules, turning a hollow gaze on the camera. Those sores were the primary visible characteristic of smallpox. Ando seemed to remember reading that they reached their peak seven days after infection…

“First of all, Ryuji didn’t even have a rash on his skin.”

That much had been clear at a glance. His skin had glistened smoothly under the glare of the lights.

“Listen. This is so stupid I don’t even want to say it. Did you know there’s a strain of smallpox that produces obstructions in blood vessels, with a near one hundred percent mortality rate?”

Ando shook his head, ever so slightly. “No.”

“Well, there is.”

“Don’t tell me that’s what caused Ryuji’s arterial blockage.”

“Fine, then, I won’t. But listen, that sarcoma he had on the interior wall of his artery-what was that? You looked at it under magnification.”

Ando didn’t answer.

“What caused it?”

Ando couldn’t answer.

“I hope you’re inoculated,” Miyashita laughed. “It’d be pretty funny, though, wouldn’t it? If that’s what it turned out to be.”

“Jokes aside, I just thought of something.”

“What?”

“Forget smallpox, but suppose the sarcoma in his artery was actually caused by some sort of virus. There should be other people who’ve died with the same symptoms.”

Miyashita grunted. He was weighing the possibilities. “Maybe. Can’t rule it out.”

“If you have the time, could you ask people at the other university hospitals? You’ve got the connections. It shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Gotcha. I’ll see if any other bodies presented the same symptoms. If this turns out to be part of a larger syndrome, we could be in trouble.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll have a good laugh over this, I’ll bet.”

They said goodbye and hung up at the same time.

The damp night air had stolen in through the open window. Ando went to shut it, sticking his head out before he did. The rain seemed to have stopped. The street directly below was lit by street-lamps at regular intervals; tire tracks stretched into the distance, twin dry stripes. Headlights streamed past on the No. 4 Metropolitan Expressway. The seamless whole of the city’s din had become waterlogged, turning into a listless eddy. He shut the window, abruptly cutting off the sound.

Ando took a medical dictionary down from the bookshelf and leafed through it. He knew next to nothing about smallpox. It was the kind of thing there was no point in researching unless you had a scholarly interest in viruses. Smallpox was the common name for the viruses variola major and minor, genus orthopoxvirus, in the poxvirus family. Variola major had a fatality rate of thirty to fifty percent, while variola minor’s was under five percent. There were also pox viruses that affected monkeys, rabbits, cows, and rats, but there had been hardly any cases of these in Japan; even if they did break out, they involved no serious danger, causing only localized rashes.

Ando closed the dictionary. The whole thing seemed ridiculous. Professor Seki had only glanced at the sore with his naked eye. And what he’d said was hardly a conclusive diagnosis. All he’d said was that the affected area looked like what happened with smallpox. Ando made denial after denial to himself. Why was he trying so hard to deny the possibility? Simple: if by some chance a virus was discovered in Ryuji’s body, then he’d have to worry about whether Mai Takano had been infected. She and Ryuji had been intimate. In the case of smallpox, eruptions would occur in the mucous membrane inside the mouth; when they ulcerated, the virus would spread. As a result, saliva was a major medium for the spread of the disease. Visions of Mai’s lips touching Ryuji’s danced in his head. He hurriedly shook them off.

He poured whiskey into a glass and drank it down straight. The alcohol, after a year and a half of temperance, had a powerful effect on him. As it burned his throat and seeped into his stomach, he was engulfed in lethargy. He sat on the floor, leaned back against the bed, and spread his limbs carelessly. Only a part of his brain remained alert. He stared at the stains on the ceiling.

The day before his boy had drowned, Ando had dreamed of the ocean. Looking back now, he knew the dream had come true. He’d known his son’s fate ahead of time, and he still hadn’t been able to do anything about it. Regret had made him a more cautious man since.

And now, he was having a definite premonition. A piece of newspaper had poked its way out of Ryuji’s belly after the autopsy, and he’d been able to take the numbers written on it and find the word “ring”. He couldn’t believe it was just a coincidence. Ryuji was trying to tell him something-in his own way, using a medium only he could manipulate. By now, most of Ryuji’s body had been reduced to ash, all but a small part which remained in the form of a tissue sample. Ando got the feeling that even in his dismembered, tissue-sampled state, Ryuji was speaking to him. Which was why he felt his friend was still alive. His body had been cremated, but Ryuji was not without words and some means to communicate them.