Cherry Blossoms Fall
Aug. 22nd, 2011 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsolThe policeman found her hiding behind a dumpster. He had been on foot patrol and had heard a noise in the alley. “Hey, there,” said Haruki, pulling his truncheon out of his trouser pocket and dragging it along the brick wall. “Why don’t you come out from there? Let’s talk!” But nobody came out. Haruki approached the bin with caution – the number of crazies living in City Centre was on the rise – but was astonished to find the young girl, no more than ten, huddled and shivering with shock. She was bald, and naked.
Haruki recovered quickly. “Okay, gently now,” he said, quickly stashing his truncheon. “You’ll be all right. Here.” He quickly unbuckled his stab vest and put it around the girl’s shoulders, covering her up somewhat. The girl was hyperventilating, but Haruki saw no marks, no obvious signs of trauma. He picked her up off the ground. She cried out when she was touched, but then she slumped against his shoulder.
Haruki staggered the four blocks back to his Koban. Yukio was the officer on duty. She goggled at the sight of Haruki carrying the naked little girl in broad daylight and let them in to the police station, then found a blanket and wrapped the girl in it.
“There, you’re going to be all right now,” clucked Yukio, bundling the girl up. “I have some hot tea here and I want you to have some.”
“I’ll fetch a doctor,” said Haruki, taking Yukio’s chair over and dialing on his cell phone.
The girl drank a little tea. Yukio looked her all over. Her skin was a little red, as if she had been at the beach without sunscreen on, but otherwise she seemed unharmed. Yukio decided to let the hospital handle the rape kit and concentrated on holding the girl close. Presently she stopped shivering.
“All right, then, my name’s Yukio,” she said. “I want you to tell me your name.”
“Kii-chan,” the girl said, barely whispering.
“That’s a nice name,” said Yukio. “Do you know where you are?”
The girl nodded once. “Nagasaki.”
“Good,” Yukio said. “And today’s date?”
“Nine August,” said Kii-chan. “It’s Thursday.”
“No,no,” corrected Yukio. “It’s August twenty-two. Today is Monday.” She frowned. “Nine August was a Tuesday.”
Kii-chan shook her head. “Thursday. Mama and I were going to Thursday service at Urakami Cathedral. There was a light. I can’t find Mama.” She started crying.
Haruki and Yukio exchanged glances. “What year, baby?” Yukio asked, following an awful hunch. “What’s the year?”
“1945,” replied Kii-chan. “Eighteenth year of the rule of Emperor Hirohito, may he rule forever.”
“She’s all right. She’s resting comfortably,” said Doctor Nakasone.
“But she’s in a state of mental disorder,” said Haruki. “She thinks she’s from the past.”
“She seems perfectly healthy all the same,” said Doctor Nakasone. “Oh, she’s traumatized, there can be no doubt, but her reactions to her situation are entirely in line with the expected. She seems to be emerging from shock; her memory appears intact.” Doctor Nakasone smiled apologetically. “I don’t know what else to tell you, officer.”
“Then how do you explain the crazy things she’s saying?” demanded Haruki. “That we’re still at war with the Americans; that bombs have been dropped recently?”
“Why do you say that what she says is crazy?” asked Doctor Nakasone mildly.
Haruki folded his arms. “Come on now; you’re joking,” he said.
“I’m just asking a question,” said Nakasone. “The girl has no sign of TB vaccination. Her memories of a Nagasaki from long ago appear vivid and, if my internet searches can be believed, accurate. So why would you say that she’s insane, if you have no evidence to suggest that anything’s wrong?”
Haruki sputtered. “But… but people don’t just vault forward in time!” he said.
“Don’t they?” asked Nakasone, arching an eyebrow.
“No, they don’t!” Haruki said firmly. “At least, no faster or farther then they usually do.”
“Then what about the atomic bomb?” asked Nakasone. “We still don’t know much about the effects it has, you know. There have been only two cases of people being killed with nuclear weapons; that’s not a very big data set.” He squinted and jabbed a finger into Haruki’s chest.
“How do you know,” he said intensely, “that an atomic bomb doesn’t generate a huge pressure wave below it, and if you’re standing at just the right place, you aren’t destroyed – you’re vaulted forwards in time? The girl’s sunburn would be consistent with experiencing the first microsecond’s worth of radiation before being whisked away.”
“Now I *know* you’re joking,” said Haruki, smiling, but his smile faltered. Nakasone appeared deadly serious. “Aren’t you?” he concluded lamely.
Doctor Nakasone dropped his gaze and shrugged. “Come look at this,” he said. He shuffled through a pile of folders on his desk and came out with one that contained a few color photo prints. “I got these from a colleague in Hiroshima,” he said. “He wanted to know what I thought of them.”
Haruki looked through the pictures. They were photos of dead bodies – three men, one woman – all with extensive burns. “All appeared in Hiroshima downtown two weekends ago,” Nakasone said. “One of them was on a roof. Plentiful evidence of radiation burns here. The question was, how did they get them, and where did they come from? All were naked; none had any identifying marks; none of the bodies have yet been claimed.” Nakasone peered at Haruki.
“Now I ask you,” he said, “can you come up with a better explanation than the notion that these people have vaulted forwards from over sixty-six years ago?”
Haruki put the photos down. “Well, if I’m to take this seriously – and I’m not saying I do,” he began.
“Fair enough,” Nakasone conceded.
“Well, why four in Hiroshima but only one in Nagasaki? And why is ours alive?” Haruki asked.
“Hmm,” mused Nakasone. “Perhaps we’re just seeing a leading edge of a spreading effect. The Hiroshima bodies were found more than three days ago, so there’s no exact correlation in the interval. Perhaps these are just the first people to come across; maybe more will be found – a lot more.”
Haruki nodded. “Perhaps you have to get really lucky to survive,” he said. “There may be a zone of safety, and a zone of time travel, and one is larger than the other. Our Kii-chan fell in the perfect place.”
“But neither can be a very big zone,” said Nakasone. “After all, the girl was with her mother, and there’s no sign of her – at least not yet. Or perhaps there’s a chaotic component to where the transported people land; we might find her mother three weeks from now, or in three years.”
“They could start raining down on Nagasaki any day now,” said Haruki, wondering. “Tens of thousands disappeared on Nine August. Who knows how many were blown forwards and will come raining down on us?”
“Like cherry blossoms,” Nakasone agreed. “They fall in a beautiful wave, according to the ancient poets. It is a fragile, graceful rain, as ephemeral as life itself.”
“That’s beautiful,” said Haruki sarcastically. “But if you’re right, you’d better start getting ready.”
Nakasone frowned. “How do you mean?” he asked.
“We have one survivor and four dead burn victims,” said Haruki. “Assuming Kii-chan isn’t a total fluke, isn’t it inevitable that you’ll be getting some living victims who will be suffering from significant atomic contamination?”
Nakasone’s eyes widened.
**
Jaime leaned forward in his battered deck chair and peered around the end of his truck bed. This exposed his head and neck to the full force of the sun, as the tarp that roofed his roadside fruit stand had flapped back in the eastward-blowing wind. That also ran the risk that a sudden gust of wind could carry his hat away. But that was the only way Jaime could see what was coming down the road. There was a curl of dust kicking up from over the horizon. It was too small to be a car but could easily be a motorcycle. Cyclists sometimes bought fruit. You never knew.
A figure came over a rise in the road. It was a man on foot. Jaime sighed. Guys on foot never bought fruit. Sometimes they wanted water, too, and Jaime didn’t have much to last him the whole day. Still, it was a person, and that was interesting. Jaime hadn’t seen many people on his stretch of road today.
The man shuffled down the road. Jaime thought he might be drunk. He was weaving down the middle of the road, apparently not giving a fuck if a truck might come over that hill behind him and plow him under before the driver had a chance to stop. Jaime frowned. He didn’t want to jack with no drunk.
The man staggered up to Jaime’s stand. He was a mess; Jaime gaped. His jeans and coat were mostly absent, and what was left was badly singed. Half of the man’s hair had been burned away, and that side of his scalp was a red, oozing wound. The man was limping, favoring one leg over the other, and he smelled like charred flesh. But his eyes were very much alive, standing out starkly in his soot-stained face.
The man lifted his chin and pointed to a small disc set into his throat. “My zoner’s out,” he said. “Can you make me a call?”
Jaime blinked. “Your what?” he said.
The man looked disgusted. “What year is it?” he asked.
This guy was strange, but Jaime didn’t want to set him off. “Twenty eleven,” he said.
“Fuck,” said the weirdo. His eyes fell on Jaime’s cooler, and when he took a deep swig of the warm water, Jaime didn’t even say anything.
“Here, guy,” said Jaime, reaching in his shirt pocket for his cell phone. “You can use this.”
“Get that thing away from me,” said the man. “Those things cause cancer.” He pointed down the road to the south, the direction he had come from.
“Ames still thataway?” he asked. “Ames, Iowa?”
“Yeah,” said Jaime.
“You live there?” asked the man.
“Close to it,” answered Jaime.
The man nodded and began trudging down the road again. “I’d move if I were you,” he said.
The tarp flapped as the wind shifted; the leading edge slapped forwards and knocked Jaime’s hat loose. He cursed and chased after it as the unexpected breeze tried to carry it away, while the stranger disappeared down the road.
Jaime caught his hat, cursing himself more than anything for not being careful. He’d sat out in that roadside fruit stand often enough. More than anybody else, he ought to have remembered that sometimes the wind blows in more than one direction.
Haruki recovered quickly. “Okay, gently now,” he said, quickly stashing his truncheon. “You’ll be all right. Here.” He quickly unbuckled his stab vest and put it around the girl’s shoulders, covering her up somewhat. The girl was hyperventilating, but Haruki saw no marks, no obvious signs of trauma. He picked her up off the ground. She cried out when she was touched, but then she slumped against his shoulder.
Haruki staggered the four blocks back to his Koban. Yukio was the officer on duty. She goggled at the sight of Haruki carrying the naked little girl in broad daylight and let them in to the police station, then found a blanket and wrapped the girl in it.
“There, you’re going to be all right now,” clucked Yukio, bundling the girl up. “I have some hot tea here and I want you to have some.”
“I’ll fetch a doctor,” said Haruki, taking Yukio’s chair over and dialing on his cell phone.
The girl drank a little tea. Yukio looked her all over. Her skin was a little red, as if she had been at the beach without sunscreen on, but otherwise she seemed unharmed. Yukio decided to let the hospital handle the rape kit and concentrated on holding the girl close. Presently she stopped shivering.
“All right, then, my name’s Yukio,” she said. “I want you to tell me your name.”
“Kii-chan,” the girl said, barely whispering.
“That’s a nice name,” said Yukio. “Do you know where you are?”
The girl nodded once. “Nagasaki.”
“Good,” Yukio said. “And today’s date?”
“Nine August,” said Kii-chan. “It’s Thursday.”
“No,no,” corrected Yukio. “It’s August twenty-two. Today is Monday.” She frowned. “Nine August was a Tuesday.”
Kii-chan shook her head. “Thursday. Mama and I were going to Thursday service at Urakami Cathedral. There was a light. I can’t find Mama.” She started crying.
Haruki and Yukio exchanged glances. “What year, baby?” Yukio asked, following an awful hunch. “What’s the year?”
“1945,” replied Kii-chan. “Eighteenth year of the rule of Emperor Hirohito, may he rule forever.”
“She’s all right. She’s resting comfortably,” said Doctor Nakasone.
“But she’s in a state of mental disorder,” said Haruki. “She thinks she’s from the past.”
“She seems perfectly healthy all the same,” said Doctor Nakasone. “Oh, she’s traumatized, there can be no doubt, but her reactions to her situation are entirely in line with the expected. She seems to be emerging from shock; her memory appears intact.” Doctor Nakasone smiled apologetically. “I don’t know what else to tell you, officer.”
“Then how do you explain the crazy things she’s saying?” demanded Haruki. “That we’re still at war with the Americans; that bombs have been dropped recently?”
“Why do you say that what she says is crazy?” asked Doctor Nakasone mildly.
Haruki folded his arms. “Come on now; you’re joking,” he said.
“I’m just asking a question,” said Nakasone. “The girl has no sign of TB vaccination. Her memories of a Nagasaki from long ago appear vivid and, if my internet searches can be believed, accurate. So why would you say that she’s insane, if you have no evidence to suggest that anything’s wrong?”
Haruki sputtered. “But… but people don’t just vault forward in time!” he said.
“Don’t they?” asked Nakasone, arching an eyebrow.
“No, they don’t!” Haruki said firmly. “At least, no faster or farther then they usually do.”
“Then what about the atomic bomb?” asked Nakasone. “We still don’t know much about the effects it has, you know. There have been only two cases of people being killed with nuclear weapons; that’s not a very big data set.” He squinted and jabbed a finger into Haruki’s chest.
“How do you know,” he said intensely, “that an atomic bomb doesn’t generate a huge pressure wave below it, and if you’re standing at just the right place, you aren’t destroyed – you’re vaulted forwards in time? The girl’s sunburn would be consistent with experiencing the first microsecond’s worth of radiation before being whisked away.”
“Now I *know* you’re joking,” said Haruki, smiling, but his smile faltered. Nakasone appeared deadly serious. “Aren’t you?” he concluded lamely.
Doctor Nakasone dropped his gaze and shrugged. “Come look at this,” he said. He shuffled through a pile of folders on his desk and came out with one that contained a few color photo prints. “I got these from a colleague in Hiroshima,” he said. “He wanted to know what I thought of them.”
Haruki looked through the pictures. They were photos of dead bodies – three men, one woman – all with extensive burns. “All appeared in Hiroshima downtown two weekends ago,” Nakasone said. “One of them was on a roof. Plentiful evidence of radiation burns here. The question was, how did they get them, and where did they come from? All were naked; none had any identifying marks; none of the bodies have yet been claimed.” Nakasone peered at Haruki.
“Now I ask you,” he said, “can you come up with a better explanation than the notion that these people have vaulted forwards from over sixty-six years ago?”
Haruki put the photos down. “Well, if I’m to take this seriously – and I’m not saying I do,” he began.
“Fair enough,” Nakasone conceded.
“Well, why four in Hiroshima but only one in Nagasaki? And why is ours alive?” Haruki asked.
“Hmm,” mused Nakasone. “Perhaps we’re just seeing a leading edge of a spreading effect. The Hiroshima bodies were found more than three days ago, so there’s no exact correlation in the interval. Perhaps these are just the first people to come across; maybe more will be found – a lot more.”
Haruki nodded. “Perhaps you have to get really lucky to survive,” he said. “There may be a zone of safety, and a zone of time travel, and one is larger than the other. Our Kii-chan fell in the perfect place.”
“But neither can be a very big zone,” said Nakasone. “After all, the girl was with her mother, and there’s no sign of her – at least not yet. Or perhaps there’s a chaotic component to where the transported people land; we might find her mother three weeks from now, or in three years.”
“They could start raining down on Nagasaki any day now,” said Haruki, wondering. “Tens of thousands disappeared on Nine August. Who knows how many were blown forwards and will come raining down on us?”
“Like cherry blossoms,” Nakasone agreed. “They fall in a beautiful wave, according to the ancient poets. It is a fragile, graceful rain, as ephemeral as life itself.”
“That’s beautiful,” said Haruki sarcastically. “But if you’re right, you’d better start getting ready.”
Nakasone frowned. “How do you mean?” he asked.
“We have one survivor and four dead burn victims,” said Haruki. “Assuming Kii-chan isn’t a total fluke, isn’t it inevitable that you’ll be getting some living victims who will be suffering from significant atomic contamination?”
Nakasone’s eyes widened.
**
Jaime leaned forward in his battered deck chair and peered around the end of his truck bed. This exposed his head and neck to the full force of the sun, as the tarp that roofed his roadside fruit stand had flapped back in the eastward-blowing wind. That also ran the risk that a sudden gust of wind could carry his hat away. But that was the only way Jaime could see what was coming down the road. There was a curl of dust kicking up from over the horizon. It was too small to be a car but could easily be a motorcycle. Cyclists sometimes bought fruit. You never knew.
A figure came over a rise in the road. It was a man on foot. Jaime sighed. Guys on foot never bought fruit. Sometimes they wanted water, too, and Jaime didn’t have much to last him the whole day. Still, it was a person, and that was interesting. Jaime hadn’t seen many people on his stretch of road today.
The man shuffled down the road. Jaime thought he might be drunk. He was weaving down the middle of the road, apparently not giving a fuck if a truck might come over that hill behind him and plow him under before the driver had a chance to stop. Jaime frowned. He didn’t want to jack with no drunk.
The man staggered up to Jaime’s stand. He was a mess; Jaime gaped. His jeans and coat were mostly absent, and what was left was badly singed. Half of the man’s hair had been burned away, and that side of his scalp was a red, oozing wound. The man was limping, favoring one leg over the other, and he smelled like charred flesh. But his eyes were very much alive, standing out starkly in his soot-stained face.
The man lifted his chin and pointed to a small disc set into his throat. “My zoner’s out,” he said. “Can you make me a call?”
Jaime blinked. “Your what?” he said.
The man looked disgusted. “What year is it?” he asked.
This guy was strange, but Jaime didn’t want to set him off. “Twenty eleven,” he said.
“Fuck,” said the weirdo. His eyes fell on Jaime’s cooler, and when he took a deep swig of the warm water, Jaime didn’t even say anything.
“Here, guy,” said Jaime, reaching in his shirt pocket for his cell phone. “You can use this.”
“Get that thing away from me,” said the man. “Those things cause cancer.” He pointed down the road to the south, the direction he had come from.
“Ames still thataway?” he asked. “Ames, Iowa?”
“Yeah,” said Jaime.
“You live there?” asked the man.
“Close to it,” answered Jaime.
The man nodded and began trudging down the road again. “I’d move if I were you,” he said.
The tarp flapped as the wind shifted; the leading edge slapped forwards and knocked Jaime’s hat loose. He cursed and chased after it as the unexpected breeze tried to carry it away, while the stranger disappeared down the road.
Jaime caught his hat, cursing himself more than anything for not being careful. He’d sat out in that roadside fruit stand often enough. More than anybody else, he ought to have remembered that sometimes the wind blows in more than one direction.
