Koji Suzuki - The Complete Ring Trilogy - Ring, Spiral, Loop

“Ryuji, have you ever had smallpox?”

“Idiot. Of course not. It’s extinct.”

“Extinct?”

“Yes. Eradicated through human ingenuity. Smallpox no longer exists in this world.”

The World Health Organization had made a dedicated effort to wipe out smallpox through vaccinations, and as a result it had all but disappeared from the face of the earth by 1975. There are records of the last smallpox patient in the world: a Somalian youth who came down with it on October 26, 1977.

“Can a virus become extinct? Is that possible?” Asakawa didn’t know much about viruses, but he couldn’t shake the impression that no matter how much you tried to kill one, eventually it would mutate and find a way to survive.

“See, viruses kind of wander around on the border between living things and non-living things. Some people even theorize that they were originally human genes, but nobody really knows where they come from or how they emerged. What’s certain is that they’ve been intimately connected with the appearance and evolution of life.”

Ryuji’s arms had been folded behind his head; now he stretched them wide. His eyes glittered. “Don’t you find it fascinating, Asakawa? The idea that genes could escape from our cells and become another life form? Maybe all opposites were originally identical. Even light and darkness—before the Big Bang they were living together in peace, with no contradiction. God and the Devil, too. All the Devil is is a god who fell from grace—they’re the same thing, originally. Male and female? It used to be that all living things were hermaphroditic, like worms or slugs, with both female and male sex organs. Don’t you think that’s the ultimate symbol of power and beauty?” Ryuji laughed as he said this. “It’d sure save a lot of time and trouble when it comes to sex.”

Asakawa peered at Ryuji’s face to see what was so funny. There was no way that an organism with both female and male genitalia epitomized perfect beauty.

“Are there any other extinct viruses?”

“Gee, if you’re so interested I suggest you look right into it when you get back to Tokyo.”

“ If I get back.”

“Heh, heh. Don’t worry. You’ll get back.”

At that moment the high-speed boat they were on was exactly halfway through the voyage linking Oshima and Ito, on the Izu Peninsula. They could have made it back to Tokyo quicker by flying, but they wanted to visit Dr Nagao in Atami, so they’d taken the sea route.

Straight ahead they could see the ferris wheel at the Atami Korakuen. They were arriving right on time, at 10:50. Asakawa descended the gangway and ran to the parking lot where they’d left their rental car.

“Calm down, would you?” Ryuji followed at a leisurely pace. Nagao’s clinic was near Kinomiya Station on the Ito Line—not very far away at all. Asakawa watched impatiently as Ryuji climbed into the car, and then headed into Atami’s maze of hills and one-way streets.

Immediately after he’d settled himself, Ryuji said, with a perfectly straight face, “Hey, I was thinking—maybe the Devil’s behind this whole thing after all.” Asakawa was too busy looking at street signs to answer. Ryuji continued. “The Devil always appears in the world in a different form. You know the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the second half of the thirteenth century? Half of the total population died. Can you believe that? Half, that’s like the population of Japan being reduced to sixty million. Naturally, artists at the time likened the plague to the Devil. It’s like that now, too—don’t we talk about AIDS as if it were a modern Devil? But listen, devils never drive humanity to extinction. Why? Because if people cease to exist, so do devils. The same with viruses. If the host cell perishes, the virus can’t survive. But humanity drove the smallpox virus to extinction. Really? Could we really do that?”

It’s impossible in the modern world to even imagine the terror once inspired by smallpox, when it raged throughout the world claiming so many lives. Such was the suffering it caused that it gave rise to innumerable religious beliefs and superstitions in Japan, as well as elsewhere. People believed in gods of pestilence, and it was the God of Smallpox that brought that disease, though perhaps it should have been called a devil. In any case, could people really drive a god to the brink of extinction? Ryuji’s question harbored a deep uncertainty.

Asakawa wasn’t listening to Ryuji. In some corner of his mind he wondered why the guy was rambling on about this now, but mainly he was just thinking about not making any wrong turns. Every nerve focussed on getting to Dr Nagao’s clinic as fast as possible.

In a lane in front of Kinomiya Station was a small, one-story house with a shingle by the door that read Nagao Clinic: Internal Medicine and Pediatrics . Asakawa and Ryuji stood in front of the door for some time. If they couldn’t pull any information out of Nagao, it’d be sorry, time’s up! There was no more time to scare up new leads. But just what was there to find out from him? It was probably hoping for too much to think that he’d even remember much of anything about Sadako Yamamura from thirty years ago. They didn’t even have any hard evidence that Sadako had any connection at all with the sanatorium in South Hakone. All of Nagao’s colleagues at the sanatorium, except for Yozo Tanaka, had died of old age. They probably could have tracked down the names of some nurses if they’d tried, but it was too late for that now.

Asakawa looked at his watch. 11:30. Only a little over ten hours left until the deadline, and here he was, hesitating to open the door.

“What are you waiting for? Go on in.” Ryuji gave him a shove. Of course, he could understand why Asakawa was hesitating, even though he’d been in such a hurry to get here. He was scared. No doubt he was afraid of seeing his last hope dashed, his last chance to survive eliminated. Ryuji stepped in front of him and opened the door.

A couch big enough for three people stood along one wall of the small waiting room. Conveniently, there were no patients waiting. Ryuji bent over at the little receptionist’s window and spoke to the fat middle-aged nurse behind it. “Excuse me. We’d like to see the doctor.”

Without lifting her eyes from her magazine, the nurse lazily replied, “Would you like to make an appointment?”

“No, that’s not it. There’s something we’d like to ask him about.”

She closed her magazine, looked up, and put on her glasses. “May I ask what this is in regards to?”

“Like I say, we’d just like to ask him a few questions.”

Irritated, Asakawa peeked out from behind Ryuji’s back and asked, “Is the doctor in?”

The nurse touched the rims of her glasses with both hands and studied the two men. “What is this about?” she asked overbearingly.

Both Ryuji and Asakawa stood up straight. Ryuji said, loudly enough to be heard, “With a receptionist like her it’s no wonder there are no patients.”

“ Excuse me?” she said.

Asakawa hung his head; it wouldn’t do to get her angry. But just then the door to the examination room opened and Nagao appeared, dressed in a white lab coat.

Although he was completely bald, Nagao looked rather younger than his 57 years. He frowned and fixed a suspicious gaze on the two men in his entryway.

Asakawa and Ryuji both turned at the sound of Nagao’s voice, and the instant they saw his face, they gasped simultaneously.

And we thought this guy might be able to tell us something about Sadako? No kidding. As if it were an electric current coursing through his brain, Asakawa found himself replaying the final scene of the video in his head. The sweating, panting face of a man seen from close up, eyes bloodshot. A gaping wound in his exposed shoulder, from which blood ran, dripping into the viewer’s eyes, clouding them over. A tremendous pressure on the viewer’s chest, murderous intent in the man’s face … And that face was exactly what they saw now: Dr Nagao. He was older now, but there was no way of mistaking him.