Musical Instruments

THE young Caretaker of the Power Station invites us into his modest quarters. He checks the fire in the stove, then takes the boiling kettle into the kitchen to make tea. It is good to drink the hot infusion; we are cold from our day in the Woods. The wind-cry does not subside.

"I pick this herb in the Woods," the Caretaker tells us. "I dry it in the shade all summer, and in winter I have it for tea. It stimulates and warms the body."

The drink is fragrant, with an unassuming sweetness.

"What is the plant called?" I ask.

"The name? I have no idea," he says. "It grows in the Woods, it smells good, so I make tea with it. It has green stalks about yea high, blooms midsummer, I pick the young leaves… The beasts like to eat the flowers."

"The beasts come here?"

"Yes, until the beginning of autumn. Toward winter, they will not come near the Woods. In warm weather, they come here in groups and I play with them and I share my rations… But winter, no. They know I will give them food, and still they do not come. All winter I am alone."

"Will you join us for lunch?" the Librarian offers. "We have brought sandwiches and fruit, too much for two."

"That is kind of you," says the Caretaker. "I have not eaten the food of another in a long time… Oh yes, there are forest mushrooms I picked, if you care to try."

"Yes, very much," I say.

We share her sandwiches and his mushrooms, and later have fruit and more tea. We hardly speak a word. In the absence of talk, the cry of the empty earth pours into the room and fills our silence.

"You never leave the Woods?" I ask the Caretaker.

"Never," he replies, with a shake of his head. "That is decided. I am to stay here always and man the Power Station… Always, until someone comes to replace me. When, I do not know. Only then can I leave the Woods and return to Town… But now is always, and I cannot. I must wait for the wind that conies every three days."

I drink the last of my tea. How long has it been since the wind-cry started? Listening to its droning wail, one is pulled in that direction. It must be lonely to pass the winter here in the Woods.

"But you have come here to look at the Power Station?" the young Caretaker remembers.

"We have come looking for musical instruments," I say. "I was told you would know where to find them."

He regards the knife and fork crossed on his plate.

"Yes, I have musical instruments here. They are old, I cannot say whether they will play… That is, you are welcome to them. I myself cannot play. My pleasure is to look at their shapes. Will you see them?"

"Please," I say.

He rises from his chair and we follow.

"This way. I have them in my room," he says. "I will stay here and clean up," she says.

The Caretaker opens a door, turns on the light, and invites me in. "Over here," he says.

Arranged along the wall are various musical instruments. All are old. Most of them are string instruments, the strings hopelessly rusted, broken or missing. Some I am sure I once knew, but do not remember the names; others are totally unknown to me. A wooden instrument resembling a washboard that sprouts a row of metallic prongs. I try to play it, but can make no song. Another, a set of small drums, even has its own sticks, yet this clearly will not yield a melody. There is a large tubular instrument, one obviously meant to be blown from the end, but how do I give breath to it?

The Caretaker sits on the edge of his cot, its coverlet neatly tucked, and watches me examine the instruments. "Are any of these of use to you?" he speaks up. "I don't know,"

I hesitate. "They're all so old." He walks over to shut the door, then returns. There is no window, so with the door closed, the wind-cry is less intrusive.

"Do you want to know why I collected these things?" the Caretaker asks. "No one in the Town takes any interest in them. No one in the Town has the least interest. Everyone has the things they need for living. Pots and pans, shirts and coats, yes… It is enough that their needs are met. No one wants for anything more. Not me, however. I am very interested in these things. I do not know why. I feel drawn to them. Their forms, their beauty."

He rests one hand on the pillow and puts his other hand in his pocket.

"If you wish to know the truth, I like this Power Station," he continues. "I like the fan, the meters, the transformer. Perhaps I liked these things before, so they sent me here. But it was so long ago. I have forgotten the before… Sometimes I think I will never be allowed to return to Town. They would never accept me as I am now."

I reach for a wooden instrument. It is hollow and sandglass-shaped, with only two strings remaining. I pluck them. A dry twang issues.

"Where did you find these instruments?" I ask. "From all over," he says. "The man who delivers my provisions brings them to me. In the Town, old musical instruments sometimes lie buried in closets and sheds. Often they were burned for firewood. It is a pity… That is, musical instruments are wonderful things. I do not know how to use them, I may not want to use them, I enjoy their beauty. It is enough for me. Is that strange?"

"Musical instruments are very beautiful," I answer. "There is nothing strange about that."

My eyes light upon a box hinged with leather folds lying among the instruments. The bellows is stiff and cracked in a few places, but it holds air. The box has buttons for the fingers.

"May I try it?" I ask.

"Please, go ahead," the young Caretaker says. I slip my hands into the straps on either end and compress. It is difficult to pump, but I can learn. I finger the buttons in ascending order, forcing the bellows in and out. Some buttons yield only faint tones, but there is a progression. I work the buttons again, this time descending.

"What sounds!" smiles the fascinated Caretaker. "As if they change colors!"

"It seems each button makes a note," I explain. "Each one is different. Some sounds belong together and some do not."

"What do you mean?"

I press several buttons at once. The intervals are awry, but the combined effect is not unpleasing. Yet I can recall no songs, only chords.

"Those sounds belong together?"

"Yes."

"I do not understand," he says. "It seems I am hearing something for the first time. It is different from the sound of the wind and different from the voices of the birds."

He rests his hands on his lap, as he looks back and forth between my face and the bellows box.

"I will give you the instrument. Please have any others you want. They belong with someone who can use them," he says, then turns his ear attentively to the wind. "I must check the machinery now. I must see that the fan and the transformer are working. Please wait for me in the other room."

The young Caretaker hurries away, and I return to where the Librarian waits.

"Is that a musical instrument?" she asks.

"One kind of musical instrument," I say.

"May I touch it?"

"Of course," I say, handing her the bellows box. She receives it with both hands, as if cradling a baby animal. I look on in anticipation.

"What a funny thing!" she exclaims with an uneasy smile. "Do you feel better that you have it?"

"It was worth coming here."

"The Caretaker, they did not rid him of his shadow well. He still has a part of a shadow left," she whispers to me. "That is why he is here, in the Woods. I feel sorry for him."

"Sorry?"

"Perhaps he is not strong enough to go deeper into the Woods, but he cannot return to Town."

"Do you think your mother is in the Woods?"

"I do not really know," she says. "The thought occurred to me."

The Caretaker comes not long thereafter. I open the valise and take out the gifts we have brought for him. A small clock and a cigarette lighter found in a trunk in the Collection Room.

"Please accept these. They are a token of my gratitude for the instrument," I say.

The young Caretaker refuses at first, but eventually gives in. He studies the objects.

"You know how to use them?" I ask.

"No, but there is no need. I will be fine," He says. "They are beautiful in themselves. In time, I may find a use for them. I have too much time."

At that, I tell him we will be leaving.

"Are you in a hurry?" he asks sadly.

"I must return to town before sundown, then go to work," I say.

"I understand. I wish I could accompany you to the entrance to the Woods, but I cannot leave the Power Station."

We part outside the small house.

"Please come back. Let me hear you play the instrument," he says.

"Thank you."

Gradually, the wail of the wind weakens as we walk farther from the Power Station. At the entrance to the Woods, we do not hear it at all.

Lake, Masatomi Kondo, Parity Hose

THE girl and I wrapped up our belongings in spare shirts, and I balanced the bundles on our heads. We looked funny, but we had no time to laugh. We left behind the rations and whiskey, so our loads were not too bulky.

"Take care," said the Professor. In the scant light, he looked much older than when I first met him. His skin sagging, his hair going to seed like a scraggly shrub, his face blotched with liver spots. He looked like a tired old man. Genius scientist or not, everyone grows old, everyone dies. "Good-bye," I said.

We descended by rope to the water's surface. I went down first, signaled with my light when I reached bottom, then she followed. Plunging into water in total darkness was bound to be therapeutic. Not that I had a choice. The water was cold catharthis. It was plain, ordinary water, the usual aqueous specific gravity. Everything was still. Not air, not water, not darkness moved a quiver. Only our own splashing echoed back. Once in the water, it struck me that I'd forgotten to ask the Professor to treat my wound.

"Don't tell me those clawed fish are swimming around in here," I called back in her general direction.

"Don't be silly. They're just a myth," she said. "I think."

Some reassurance. I imagined some giant fish suddenly surfacing and biting off a leg or two. Well, let 'em come.

We swam a slow one-handed breaststroke, roped together, bundles on our head. We aimed for where the Professor trained his light like a beacon on the surface of the water. I swam in the lead. Our arms thrashed the water alternately. I stopped from time to time to check our progress and realign our course/

"Make sure your bundle stays dry," she shouted this way. "The repel device won't be worth a thing if it gets wet."

"No problem," I said. But in fact, it was a great struggle.

I was swimming. Orpheus ferried across the Styx to the Land of the Dead. All the varieties of religious experience in the world, yet when it comes to death, it all boils down to the same thing. At least Orpheus didn't have to balance laundry on his head. The ancient Greeks had style.

"You aren't really mad at Grandfather, are you?" asked the girl. An echo in the dark, it was hard to tell where the question was coming from.

"I don't know, but does it matter?" I said, shouting, my voice coming back from an impossible direction. "The more I listened to your grandfather, the less I cared."

"How can you say that?"

"Wasn't much of a life anyway. Wasn't much of a brain."

"But didn't you say you were satisfied with your life?"

"Word games," I dismissed. "Every army needs a flag."

She didn't respond. We swam on in silence.

Where were those fish? Those claws were no figment of even a nonhuman imagination. I worried, after all, that they were cruising our way. I expected a slimy, clawed fin to be grabbing hold of my ankle any second. Okay, I may have been destined to disintegrate in the very near future, but I wasn't prepared to be pate for some creature from the black lagoon. I wanted to die under the sun.

"But you're such a nice guy," she said, sounding like she'd just stepped fresh out of a bath. "At least I think so." "You're one of the very few," I said. "Well, I do."

I looked back over my shoulder as I swam. I saw the Professor's light retreating into the distance, but my hand had yet to touch solid rock. How could it be so far? Decent of him to keep us guessing.

"I'm not trying to defend Grandfather," the girl started in again, "but he's not evil. He gets so wrapped up in his work, he can't see anything else. He had the best of intentions. He wanted to save you before the System got to you. In his own way, Grandfather is ashamed of what he's done."

Saying it was wrong did a hell of a lot of good. "So forgive Grandfather," she said.

"What's forgiveness going to do?" I answered. "If he really felt responsible, he wouldn't create a monster and run off when it got ugly. He doesn't like working for big organizations, fine, but he's got lives hanging on his line of research."

"Grandfather simply couldn't trust the System," she pleaded. "The Calcutecs and Semiotecs are two sides of the same coin."

"Tech-wise, maybe, but like I said before, one protects information while the other steals."

"But what if the System and Factory were both run by rhe same person?" she said. "What if the left hand stole and the right hand protected?"

Hard to believe, but not inconceivable. The whole time I worked for the System, I never heard anything about what went on inside System Central. We received directives; we carried them out. We terminal devices never got access to the CPU.

"True, it'd be one hell of a lucrative business," I agreed. "One side pitted against the other; you can raise your stakes as high as you like. No bottom dropping out of the market either."

"That's what struck Grandfather while he was in the System. After all, the System is really just private enterprise that enlisted state interests. And private enterprise is always after profit. Grandfather realized that if he went ahead with his research, he'd only make things worse."

So the System hangs out a sign: In Business to Protect Information. But it's all a front. If the old man hands over technologies to reconfigure the brain, he seals the fate of humanity. To save the world, he steps down. Too bad about the defunct Calcutecs—and me, who gets stuck in the End of the World.

"Were you in on this all along?" I asked her.

"Well, yes, I knew," she confessed after slight hesitation.

"Then why didn't you tell me? What was the point? You could have saved me blood and time."

"I wanted you to see things through Grandfather's eyes," she answered. "You wouldn't have believed me anyway."

"I suppose not," I said. Third circuit, immortality— who'd believe that straight out, cold?

The next few breaststrokes brought my hand in contact with a stone wall. Somehow we'd managed to swim across this subterranean lake.

"We've made it," I announced.

She pulled up next to me. We looked back to the tiny light in the distance and adjusted our position ten meters to the right.

"Should be about here," she said. "An opening just above the water line."

I carefully undid the bundle on my head and removed the pocket-sized flashlight, then shined it up the wall.

"I don't see a hole," I said.

"Try a little more to the right," she suggested. I swept the flashlight beam over the wall, but still no hole.

"To the right? Are you sure?" "A little further right."

I inched to the right, my whole body shaking. Feeling my way along the wall, my hand touched a shield-like surface. It was the size of an LP record, with carvings. I shined my light on it.

"A relief," she said.

Maybe so, but it was the same two evil-clawed fishes. The sculpted disk was a third submerged in the water.

"This is the way out," she said with authority. "The INKlings must have placed these as markers at all exits. Look up."

Shining my flashlight higher, I could barely make out a shadowy recession. I handed her the light and went to investigate. I couldn't really see the hole, but I felt a damp, mildewy air.

"I found it," I shouted down. "Thank goodness!" she exclaimed.

I pulled her up. We paused there at the mouth of the passage, drenched and shivering.

Undoing our bundles, we changed into dry tops. I gave her my sweater and threw away my wet shirt and jacket. This left me still sopping wet from the waist down, but I didn't have a change of slacks.

While she checked the INKling repel device, I flashed a signal to the Professor that we'd arrived safely. The yellow point of light blinked two times, three times, then went out.

All was pitch black again.

"Let's go," she prompted. I looked at my watch. Seven-eighteen. Above ground, morning news on every TV channel. People eating breakfast, cramming their half-asleep heads with the weather, headache remedies, car export trade problems with America. Who'd know that I'd spent the whole night in the colon of the world? Did they care that I'd been swimming in stinking water and had leeches feeding on my neck, that I'd nearly keeled over from the pain in my gut? Did it matter to anybody that my reality would end in another twenty-eight hours and forty-two minutes? It'd never make the news.

The passage was smaller than anything we had come through this far. We had to crawl on all fours. It led us through intestinal twists and turns, sometimes angling up near vertically, dropping back straight down or looping over like a roller coaster. Progress was hard. This was nothing the INKlings had bored out. Nobody, not even INKlings, would make a passage this convoluted.

After thirty minutes, we exchanged INKling-repel porta-packs, then another ten minutes later the narrow passage suddenly opened up into a place with a high ceiling. Dead silent, it was dark and musty. The path split left and right, air was blowing from right to left.

She trained her light on the divide. Each way led straight off into blackness.

"Which way?" I asked.

"To the right," she said. "Grandfather's instructions put us at Sendagaya, so a right turn should take us toward Jingu Stadium."

I pictured the world above ground. We were directly under the Kawade Bookshop, the Victor Recording Studio, and those two landmark ramen shops—Hope-ken and Copain.

"We're close to my barber shop, too," I said.

"Oh?" she said without much interest.

I thought about getting a haircut before the end of the world. It wasn't, after all, like I had lots of better things to do with twenty-four hours left. Taking a bath, getting dressed, and going to the barber shop were about all I could hope for.

"Careful now," she warned. "We're getting close to the INKling nest. There's their voices and that awful stench. Stay with me."

I sniffed the air. I couldn't smell anything. I couldn't hear anything either.

We shortened the rope linking us to fifteen centimeters. "Watch out, the wall's missing here," she spoke sharply, shining her light to the left. She was right: no wall, only a dark expanse. The beam shot off like an arrow and disappeared into thick black space, which seemed almost to be breathing, quivering, a disgustingly gelatinous consistency.

"Hear that?" she asked.

"Yeah, I can hear them," I said.

INKling voices. More like a ringing in my ears, actually. Cutting through like drill bits of high-pitched sound, like the humming of insects gone wild, the sound careened off the walls and screwed into my eardrums.

"Keep moving!" she yelled in my ear. I hadn't noticed I wasn't.

She yanked on the rope. "We can't stop here. If we stop, we'll be dragged off and liquefied."

I couldn't move. I was glued to the ground. Time was flowing backwards toward primeval swamps.

Her hand came out of the dark and slapped me across the face. The sound was deafening.

"To the right!" she barked. "To the right! You hear? Right foot forward! Right, you lamebrain!"

My right leg creaked ahead.

"Left!" she screamed.

I moved my left foot.

"That's it. Slow and steady, one step at a time."

They were after us for sure, piping fear into our ears, conniving to freeze our footsteps, then lay their slimy hands on us.

"Shine your light at your feet!" she commanded. "Back against the wall! Walk sideways, one step at a time. Got it?"

"Got it," I said.

"Do not raise your light, under any condition."

"Why not?"

"Because there are iNtdings. Right there," she lowered her voice. "But you must never, ever, look at an INKling. If you set eyes on an INKling, you'll never look away."

We proceeded sideways, one step at a time, light at our feet. Cool air licked our faces, leaving the rank odor of dead fish. I wanted to puke. It was like we were in the worm-ridden guts of a giant fish carcass. The INKlings whined, frenzied, disorientingly shrill.

My eardrums turned to stone. Gulps of bile backed up my throat.

My feet kept edging along by sheer reflex. Occasionally, she called out to me, but I could no longer hear what she was saying. The blue light of her INKling-repel device was still on, so I guessed we were still safe. But for how long?

I noticed a change in the air. The stink grew less putrid; the pressure on my ears evaporated. Sounds resonated in a different way. The worst was over. We let out sighs of relief and wiped off a cold sweat.

For the longest time, she didn't speak. Droplets of water echoed through the void.

"Why were they so mad?" I asked.

"We intruded on their sanctuary. They hate the world of light and all who live there."

"Hard to believe the Semiotecs would work with them, no matter what the benefits."

Her only response was to squeeze my wrist.

Then after a bit: "Know what I'm thinking?"

"No idea," I said.

"I'm thinking it would be wonderful if I could follow you into that world where you're going."

"And leave this world behind?"

"That's right," she said. "It's a boring old world anyway. I'm sure it'd be much more fun living in your consciousness."

I shook my head, Hell, I didn't want to live in my own consciousness.

"Well, let's keep going," she said. "We've got to find the exit through the sewer. What time is it?" "Eight-twenty."

"Time to switch porta-packs," she said, turning on the other unit, then wedging the expended one clumsily into her waistband.

It was exactly one hour since we entered the tunnel. According to the Professor's instructions, there ought to be a turn to the left under the tree-lined avenue toward the Art Forum. This was early autumn, I seemed to remember. The leaves would still be green.

Sunshine, the smell of the grass, an early autumn breeze played through my head. Ah, to lie back and look at the sky. I'd go to the barber, get a shave, stroll over to Gaien Park, lie down and gaze up at the blue. Maybe sip an ice-cold beer. Just the thing, while waiting for the end of the world.

"You suppose it's good weather out?" "Beats me. How should I know?" she retorted.

Were the stars out when I left the house last evening? All I could remember was the couple in the Skyline listening to Duran Duran. Stars? Who remembers stars? Come to think of it, had I even looked up at the sky recently? Had the stars been wiped out of the sky three months ago, I wouldn't have known. The only things I noticed were silver bracelets on women's wrists and popsicle sticks in potted rubber plants. There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night. No car, no car stereo, no silver bracelets, no shuffling, no dark blue tweed suits.

My world foreshortened, flattening into a credit card. Seen head on, things seemed merely skewed, but from the side the view was virtually meaningless—a one-dimensional wafer. Everything about me may have been crammed in there, but it was only plastic.

Indecipherable except to some machine.

My first circuit must have been wearing thin. My real memories were receding into planar projection, the screen of consciousness losing all identity.

The couple in the Skyline came to mind. Why did I have this fixation on them? Well, what else did I have to think about? By now, the two of them might be snoozing away in bed, or maybe pushing into commuter trains. They could be flat character sketches for a TV treatment: Japanese woman marries Frenchman while studying abroad; husband has traffic accident and becomes paraplegic. Woman tires of life in Paris, leaves husband, and returns to Tokyo, where she works in Belgian or Swiss embassy. Silver bracelets, a memento from her husband. Cut to beach scene in Nice: woman with the bracelets on left wrist. Woman takes bath, makes love, silver bracelets always on left wrist. Cut: enter Japanese man, veteran of student occupation of Yasuda Hall, wearing tinted glasses like lead in Ashes and Diamonds. A top TV director, he is haunted by dreams of tear gas, by memories of his wife who slit her wrist five years earlier. Cut (for what it's worth, this script has a lot of jump cuts): he sees the bracelets on woman's left wrist, flashes back to wife's bloodied wrist. So he asks woman: could she switch bracelets to her right wrist?

"I refuse," she says. "I wear my bracelets on my left wrist."

Cut: enter piano player, like in Casablanca. Alcoholic, always keeps shot glass of gin, straight with twist of lemon, on top of piano. A jazz musician of some talent until his career went on the rocks, he befriends both man and woman, knows their secrets…

Par for TV, totally ridiculous underground. Some imagination. Or was this supposed to be reality? I hadn't even seen the stars in months.

"I can't stand it any more," I spoke up.

"Can't stand what?" she asked.

"The darkness, the moldy stink, the INKlings, you name it. These wet slacks, the wound in my gut. I can't even imagine the world outside."

"Not much longer," she said. "We'll be out of here soon."

"My head's out of it already," I said, "Ideas are warping off in weird directions. I can't think straight."

"What were you thinking about?"

"Movie people. Masatomi Kondo and Ryoko Nakano and Tsutomu Yamazaki."

"Stop. Don't think about anything," she said. "We're almost there."

I tried not to think and my mind lowered to the clammy slacks clinging to my legs. When was the last time I took a leak?

At the very least, I hadn't pissed since going underground. Before that? I was driving, ate a hamburger, saw the couple in the Skyline. And before that? I was asleep. Then the chubby girl came and woke me. We'd headed out soon after. So before that? Probably I'd used the toilet at the hospital, when they sewed me up. But if I'd gone then, the pain would have been something to remember; the fact that I didn't remember meant I hadn't relieved myself—for how long?

Everything wheeled around closer and farther, closer and farther, like a merry-go-round.

When was it those two had come and done their dirty work on my belly? It had to have been before I was sitting at the supermarket snack bar—or no? When had I last pissed?

Why did I care?

"Here it is," she proclaimed, tugging my elbow. "The sewer. The exit."

I swept all thought of urination from my head and directed my eyes toward that one section of wall illuminated by her flashlight beam. I could make out the squared mouth of a dust chute, just big enough for one person to squeeze through.

"That's not a sewer pipe," I observed. "The sewer's beyond. This is a side vent. Just smell." I stuck my head in and took a whiff. A drainpipe smell, to be sure. After wandering in this stinking underground maze, even the smell of sewage was comforting.

A definite wind was blowing from up ahead.

Presently there came slight ground vibrations, accompanied by the far-off sound of subway cars. The sound kept up for ten, maybe fifteen seconds, then passed, like a tap turning off. Yes, this was the exit.

"We made it," she said, planting a peck on my neck. "How do you feel?"

"You had to ask," I said. "I don't know myself."

She crawled head first into the opening. Once her cushiony tail had disappeared into the hole, I followed suit. The narrow conduit led straight for a while. All my flashlight revealed was the wiggling of her bulbous behind. It reminded me of a head of Chinese cabbage in a wet skirt, tight over her thighs.

"Are you back there?" she yelled out.

"Right behind you," I shouted.

"There's a shoe lying there."

"What kind of shoe?"

"A man's black lace-up."

It was an old shoe, the kind salarymen wear. Worn-out heel, mud caked on the toe.

"Do you suppose the INKlings… ?" I wondered out loud.

"What do you think," she answered.

There was nothing else for me to look at, so I kept my eye on the hem of her skirt. It would rise way up on her thighs, revealing unmuddied white flesh. Up where women used to affix their stockings, up in that band of exposed skin between their stockings and their girdles. This, of course, was before the appearance of panty hose.

One thing led to another, and soon my thoughts were wandering down memory lane.

Back to the days of Jimi Hendrix and Cream and the Beatles and Otis Redding. I started whistling the beginning riff to Peter and Gordon's Go to Pieces. Nice song, a hell of lot better than Duran Duran. Which probably meant I was getting old. I mean, the song was popular twenty years ago. And who twenty years ago could have predicted the advent of panty hose? "Why are you whistling?" she shouted.

"I don't know. I felt like it," I answered.

"What's the song?"

"Something you probably never heard of."

"You're right."

"It was a hit before you were born."

"What's the song about?"

"It's about coming apart at the seams," I said simply.

"Why'd you want to whistle a song like that?" I couldn't come up with any cogent reason. It'd just popped into my head.

"Beats me," I said.

Before I could think up another tune, we arrived at the sewer. A concrete pipe, really.

Maybe a meter and a half in diameter, with effluent running at the bottom, about twenty centimeters deep. The edge was covered with mossy slime. The sound of several passing subway cars came from up ahead. Quite loud, actually. I could even see a brief glimmer of yellow lights.

"What's a sewer doing connected to the subway tracks?"

"It's not really a sewer," she said. "It channels ground-water into the track gutters. It's full of seeping wastes. Okay, only a little further. But we can't let down our guard yet. The INKlings' power extends all the way into the stations. You saw that shoe, didn't you?"

"Sure did," I said.

We followed the stream down the pipe, our shoes splashing in the liquid, dubbed over by the rumble of the trains. Never in my whole life had I been so happy to hear the subway.

People boarding trains, reading papers and magazines, bound for work and pleasure. I thought about the color advertisements hanging over the aisles and the subway sys-tern maps over the doors. The Ginza Line is always yellow. Why yellow, I don't know, but yellow it is. When I think Ginza Line, I see yellow.

It didn't take very long to reach the mouth of the pipe. There was an iron grill over the opening, with a hole torn just big enough for a person to pass. The concrete was gouged where an iron bar had been ripped out. INKling handiwork, happily for once. If the grill weren't broken, we'd be stuck here with the outside world dangling before our eyes.

Beyond the hole was a box for signal lanterns and other equipment. On the blackened row of oar-shaped columns between the tracks were lamps, the ones that always looked so faint when seen from the station platform but which now glared inordinately bright.

"We'll wait here until our eyes adjust to the light," she instructed. "About ten minutes.

Then we'll go a little bit further and pause until we get used to stronger light. Otherwise we'll be blinded. If the subway passes, do not look at it, not yet."

She sat me down on a dry patch of concrete, then took her place next to me.

When we heard a train approaching, we looked down and shut our eyes. A flashing yellow light streaked across my eyelids. My eyes began to water. I wiped away the tears with my shirt sleeve.

"It's okay. You'll get used to it," she said, tears trailing down her cheeks as well. "We'll just let the next three or four trains pass. Then our eyes will be ready for the station. Once we get there, we can forget about INKlings."

"I seem to remember this happening to me before," I said.

"Waiting in a subway tunnel?"

"No, the light, the glare, my eyes tearing up."

"That happens to everyone."

"No, this was special light, special vision. My eyes had been altered. They couldn't tolerate light."

"Can you remember anything else?"

"No, that's it. My recall is gone."

"Your memory is running backward," she said.

She leaned against me. I was cold to my bones, sitting in my wet slacks. The only warmth on my body was where the bulge of her breasts touched my arm.

"Now that we're going above ground, I suppose you have plans. Places to see, things to do, maybe some person you want to see?" she urged, looking over at my watch. "You've got twenty-five hours and fifty minutes left."

"I want to go home and take a bath, then go to the barber shop," I said.

"You'll still have plenty of time left."

"I haven't thought that far ahead," I said.

"May I go to your place with you?" she asked. "I'd like to take a bath, too."

"Sure, why not."

A second train was passing from the direction of Aoyama Itchome. We lowered our gaze and closed our eyes again.

"You don't need a haircut," she said, shining her light on my head. "In fact, you'd probably look better with longer hair."

"I'm tired of long hair."

"Okay, but you still don't need to go to the barber. When was the last time you had a haircut?"

"I don't remember," I said. I really couldn't remember. I couldn't even remember if I'd taken a leak yesterday; what happened a few weeks ago was ancient history.

"Do you have any clothes I could fit into?"

"Don't think so."

"Oh well, I'll think of something," she said. "Are you going to use your bed?"

"Use my bed?"

"You know, call a girl over for sex?"

"I hadn't exactly planned on it," I said.

"Well, can I sleep there? I'd like to rest before going back for Grandfather."

"Fine by me, but the Semiotecs and System boys might barge in at any moment. I'm still quite popular, you know. And I don't have a door."

"I don't mind," she said.

A third train approached from the direction of Shibuya. I closed my eyes and counted slowly. I'd reached fourteen by the time the last car went by. My eyes were hardly affected at all.

She released my arm and stood up. "Let's get going."

I rose to my feet and followed her down to the tracks toward Aoyama Itchome.