Кобо Абэ - The Ark Sakura

“I know!” The girl’s voice was bright, as if she’d made a great discovery. “All he has to do is pay us a salary. People always follow the orders of whoever’s paying their wages.”

“You may be onto something there,” said the insect dealer slowly, staring at her as if appraising collateral. “The captain may be well off, at that. He’s poured a lot of money into fixing up this place. But his photography business doesn’t amount to anything, and he doesn’t seem to have any other means of employment. so who knows, maybe he’s a man of independent means, who made his fortune by selling off some piece of land or other. Maybe that fishermen’s inn outside under the highway was really registered in his name.”

“Aha. If that’s true, that changes everything.” The shill sank back in the chaise longue, setting down the crossbow and lowering his eyes. “Then we naturally have certain obligations to fulfill, and the captain has certain rights. Maybe I misunderstood the whole situation. How could I help it? Back at the department store rooftop you made it seem as if the ticket and key were for sale.”

“That’s right,” the girl said, nodding.

“But you two didn’t pay!” The insect dealer shook his big round head slowly, with a triumphant smile.

“Did he?” Suspicious, the girl turned to me.

He answered her question himself. “I’ll say I did — to the tune of six hundred thousand yen.”

Swept along by his tone of conviction, I could hardly demur. It was true enough that with eupcaccias going at twenty thousand yen a head, and thirty of them in the suitcase, his figure had some basis in reality.

“Something’s funny.” The shill was not to be put off. “You’ve been letting on that you’re a paid crew member, but this means you’re no such thing. You’re a paying passenger.”

“What, for a paltry six hundred thousand yen? Even for a screening test to permit me to come aboard it’d be a real bargain. I’m really grateful, let me tell you. You should be too — especially considering that neither of you has paid for your ticket yet. When you figure it all out, it’s as if you’d each been paid a handsome sum already. Let’s have no more complaints.”

The shill and the girl seemed completely taken in. You had to give the man credit for being a smooth talker. I began to understand why he had asked for carte blanche in dealing with the shill.

After a pause while he drained his third beer, he continued: “Well, as far as I can see, everybody’s had their say, and nobody’s come out the winner. There don’t seem to be any real victims among us, either. All we need now is some guarantee of mutual trust. Mere verbal agreements aren’t enough, and real intimacy — the kind where you look right up each other’s behinds — takes too long. In the old days, people exchanged hostages as a kind of mutual check. So I have an idea. What if we all show each other a few old scars? Everybody’s got something he’d just as soon people never got wind of — a tail he doesn’t want grabbed. Why don’t we all bring ours into the open, right now? Then nobody would feel tempted to do anything nasty like running to the police.”

“How do we know the other guy isn’t making it up?” asked the shill. “How about you, Komono — can a guy like you bring yourself to be that honest?”

“You don’t understand. Anybody can invent a story that makes him look good, but it’s next to impossible to invent weaknesses for yourself.” He half shut his eyes and licked his lips, serenely confident. “If you think you can do it, try.”

“You might be right,” said the girl, opening her second beer.

“When I’m borrowing money, I can think of things, all right. ” Grudgingly, the shill opened his third beer.

The insect dealer gave a couple of dry coughs and went on. “Captain,” he said, “would you mind setting up a tape recorder? It’s a peculiar thing, but for some reason people can’t lie when a microphone is staring them in the face. Besides, later the tape could serve as material evidence. You’re excused, of course; this ship itself is your weak spot. Let’s flip a coin to see who goes first, shall we?”

Nobody objected. First the girl won, then the shill.

“Okay, turn on the tape, recorder.” The insect dealer started his confession. “My basic reason for joining the SDF was that I liked uniforms and guns. I was disappointed right from the start. From the time I was a kid, I was no good at fitting into groups, see, so I hoped I could straighten myself out with that uniform — but it got to be too idiotic. I decided I’d have been better off becoming a priest. Finally I got so fed up with it all that I took to stealing pistols and selling them to yakuza on the black market. As to who my smuggling partner was, you’ll probably be hearing soon enough from the horse’s mouth. ” He glanced at the shill, who reached out and covered the mike with his hand.

“Hey, no fair.” His speech was slurred; apparently he was the kind whose liquor didn’t show in his face. “Everybody’s got the right to decide for themselves what to tell about, right? Besides, the statute of limitations ran out on that ages ago.”

“Okay, we’ll write that one off. Take your hand away. Anyway, three times it went off without a hitch, but the fourth time I blew it. They had a room displaying small arms from around the world, including a Belgian gun called an M.W. Vaughn. Ever hear of it? It’s one helluva gun — functions like a machine gun, and it’s no bigger than a pistol. Its only flaw is the price tag. So what was I supposed to do, just stand there with my tongue hanging out? My grades were high, so I was able to get a special study pass. The room had nearly a thousand guns on display, and right in the doorway was a computer-controlled surveillance apparatus. The system was surprisingly lax. When you went in you inserted your pass in the apparatus, which recorded your name and weight, and then when you went out you put your pass in again. It was set up so if your weight showed a discrepancy of ten ounces or more, the door would lock and an alarm would sound. So how do you think I did it?”

“You must have taken it apart and carried it out piece by piece,” said the girl, stating the obvious.

“Of course. Piece by piece, starting in the middle, till finally only the gun barrel was left. That alone weighed almost two pounds.”

“I’ve got it.” This was the sort of problem I liked. I thought I could give a better answer than she had, anyway. “All you’d have to do is carry in something that weighed a little over a pound, and leave it there.”

“Too lacking in originality.” He disposed of my idea like that. “They’d already anticipated that little tactic. When you got up to go, you pushed a switch to signal you were through, and if at that time the weight for the area around the desk in a three-foot radius wasn’t zero, a red light flashed. Even the wastepaper basket sounded an alarm if you put in anything weighing more than two ounces.”

“Hmm, that makes it tough.” The shill was staring into space, tracing squares in his lap.

“Don’t keep us guessing.” The girl crossed her legs on the chaise longue, slipping off her low-heeled sandals and throwing them on the floor.

“There was one blind spot.” Bobbing his head up and down, lips pursed in triumph, he went on: “What do you think it was? The drinking fountain. After setting everything up so carefully, they went and installed a drinking fountain. That set me thinking, and finally it hit me. Are you ready? I brought in three cups’ worth of water in a plastic bag and dumped it down the drinking fountain.”

Silence, as everyone absorbed this.