The car threw kaleidoscopic shards of light against the far wall, shards that broke and resolved into different planes and quadrants, before they slipped from sight altogether, and the rumbling of the car's engine dwindled. In the temporary abeyance of sleep he was a child again, and heard the rain over Nagasaki and saw winter light annular and refractory through a glass of sake, and the sullen winter shadows. Your first drink, his father had said as he poured the boy a glass. He'd lifted his hands to the boy, austere, circumspect, and a decade later the boy raised his hands, dozing in a cabin on the bluffs, still dreaming a little, and grasped the empty air.
Beside him the girl sighed, threw a leg over his thigh, and was still. He didn't lower his hand. The two of them lay that way for a long time, the girl sighing with each outward breath, the boy's good hand proffered still in an attitude of patient attainment, as if it were not the rafters above his head he was reaching for but something infinitesimal and distant. What his father had said was that light seen through a prism is not rightly light at all, just as the shadow of water is not really shadow. The glass is a prism, the sake, water. Where was the father now? Where was the house in Nagasaki, and the winter shadows? They were sinking again, downward to nothing.
He touched the girl's hairless, unplucked thigh. Felt the curve of her goose-skinned mound. Like the hairless underbelly of a goose. Presently she slept with her leg filleting his, her dominant hand slung over her brow, like a virgin suicide in her vainglory. The ends which she devised are no longer available to her, so she acquits herself of herself. Without preamble he nudged his head into her hairless armpit and inhaled deeply: an odor of pencil shavings and the soap of her bath from the previous night. He was not afraid of her like this.
In repose she seemed even younger than he. He was not afraid of her, though she thought he was. The others joked that she was like defrocked nun, and wanted to be shipped away to a convent, but they balked when she entered a room. He didn't do those things, didn't shy away from her, didn't make jokes. His roommate had said it was in his nature.
What is? he had asked.
To have such a long face, said his copilot. And a bad sense of humor.
You say it like you know me.
The other pilot grinned smartly. No comment, he had said.
…
Beside him she stirred. Mrngh, she said, her hand reaching down and encountering his head; Yuichi.
I'm sleeping, he said into her armpit.
She shoved him away and rolled onto her flank.
What time is it? Refusing to turn her face towards him.
I don't know. Check your watch.
She plucked her silk cravat from the bureau. I left it in the car.
Should we go get it? I can hear birds.
Her hands, each pinching a cuff link like a clove, smoothed her hair and sleeves. We can do that, she said. Her hands stilled. Or…we can stay. It makes no difference.
You're letting me choose?
I said it makes no difference.
That was as acquiescent as she could ever be. He slid over and reached for her button-up shirt and she let him toss it onto the ground. When he tried to pull her down she shucked his hands from her shoulders with such violence that he laughed.
People have told me that I should stay away from you, he said. It was supposed to sound rueful but he was smiling.
People tell me that you're not worth my time. Something about the inferior genotype of the copies...
I'm not sure I follow.
But they didn't say that about the last one. He held open doors for me. He was smarter than you, too, but that just shows how smart you'd be, if you hadn't grown up in Nagasaki.
He's dead, isn't he.
That's right. Dead.
You read my file?
I didn't know we came here to talk, she said, reaching for something on the bureau. He heard a powdered clack, smelled sulfur. The brief snarl of flame ensuing from the lighter stamped their shadows on the wall, and now it was dark again save for the ember at her mouth. She turned back and lay facing him. She smoked slim 120 millimeter cigarettes, a woman's brand. Taking long draughts, she did not cover herself out of a feigned modesty that the other girls learned from old movies.
I read the files of all of my pilots. I hate role playing, but you all seem to enjoy it so much that I relent.
He shook his head. I don't understand you.
Don't worry, she said, and he could spy the remains of a smile on her lips. The ember bobbed as she spoke. As a great favor to him I brought you here, and maybe I'll even tell you one or two things about yourself that you don't know.
What would you have done otherwise?
I would have brought you here the same. But I wouldn't tell you a thing.
And what will you tell me?
That will have to depend on what you ask me. He wouldn't have been so delicate, just so you know. You're wasting time.
The livid receding tip of her cigarette had almost reached the filter, and she put it out with a wet finger. It hissed.
How old are you?
I'm fourteen.
Not physiologically. How old are you in terms of years.
That's a very cruel question to ask a mother, isn't it?
He shrugged. Okay. You don't have to tell me. It's not exactly a question about myself, is it?
No.
Then…why did you say you were waiting for me? When we first met.
I was interested in your credentials.
He shook his head. I thought you were going to be a little honest, here.
I changed my mind. When you said hello I changed my mind. I was going to tell you then, but I still haven't said it. I'm twenty-five years old this May.
How old was he when he died?
Fourteen.
Not physiologically. How many years?
Fourteen.
Oh.
Yes, she said.
What was his name? But he already knew.
Yuichi, she said. Yuichi was his name.
…
He was quiet and he flew pretty well. A lot of people thought he was timid or slow but that was just because he found it easier to be like that than to deal with—she flung her hand before her. As if to condemn the whole property. To deal with all of this.
With the war, you mean.
Is it war? she asked him. He would have said that it's not war, nor a game, just a profession. We all have to make a living somehow, he said. I was hoping, you know.
Yes?
I was hoping that he would see the error in that way of thinking. But now I know that he never believed it to begin with. Because someone who thought like that would have lived a long, long time. And we all know how long he lived.
I suppose that's true.
So now I simply hope that he tells me one more time, that this time he believes it true. I would rather he live like a cattle than die repeatedly.
I would prefer it if I didn't die at all.
You were always the more impractical of us two.
…
A mosquito was making overtures on his neck, balking as he swatted at it, and returning.
But why, he wondered, was she so difficult? Surely something had changed after Yuichi. As she continued smoking cigarettes, he lay on his stomach. A thin alluvium was filling the air, a stench of sunlight. Though no one visited the cabin it was maintained impeccably; the tray of ice held twelve cubes when he checked, and the hedges were trimmed, and there was no film of dust covering all.
I know what you want, he said. All at once he had sit up without noticing it, and his heart was in labor.
She looked at him. What's that?
You wanted to bring me here because you hoped it would trigger some memory. You hoped it would make me into him.
You're very imaginative. Her voice was steady but her hands searched for something to hold on to—the cigarette case, the sheets, and found nothing.
But I'm already him. Only I'm different. I don't…is that it? I don't think what we do is a job. My father, who never existed, told me that I should always do as I was told, that I would be rewarded for it.
He wasn't wrong.
I hated him for all this time, even though he's nothing more than an imprint from an imposter's head. I know as well as you do it's not a job. But I won't duck my head like you want me to—you don't want me to, either, not really.
No, she said, her jaw bulging. You're wrong.
I don't think we're doomed, like you say. You don't either. Was that what you loved about him? That he was a bad liar?
It was what got him killed! she screamed. It was why he never should have gotten involved with me! Why you shouldn't have!
Stop it, he said. He reached across and caught her arm as she swung it at him and with his other hand he pulled her to him, and for a moment each vied with the other in terrific hiatus, like a man and woman practicing their tango moves. Then she leaned in and bit his lip. Stop it, he said, and the blood that he spat onto his arm dried, smeared and dried into a pitiless rubric. Stop it. I'm not him. I refuse to do the same things he did. I won't. They were still struggling, each trying to pin the other to the bed for reasons that were not clear to them but which incensed them, incensed them, and perhaps the reason has to do with the idea that it is infinitely preferable to be beaten by the man beside you than by the anonymous forces which cannot be blamed, cannot be addressed or deceived, cannot even be surrendered to, and they animate the world.
You can't stop trying because you've failed so many times, he said into her ear.
That's what he said too, Kusanagi whispered, and her body went limp.
You think I'm going to get myself killed, but I won't.
Okay.
I'll be better than everyone else. I'll shoot down my share of pilots, and spare the others. I'll be mediocre.
Okay.
And I'll live for so long that they'll promote me. Then I'll have a desk job like you, and I'll only have to fly once a month.
She shook her head. Okay, she said.
…
On the way back she asked him to drive. After a long time she suddenly spoke: We thought of that as well, you know. We said, one day we'll go missing. Our planes will last be seen below two plumes of smoke. They'll make inquiries. Find the burning fuselage and maybe a burnt limb, but they won't find a single body. We'll be declared dead, they'll send replacements, and that will be that. We thought, surely even we deserve a triumph or two to go along with all the bitterness. But it never works like that. They own us, and so they own our bodies. You know what that means.
It means they don't even need to carry out their threats, because we believed them from the beginning.
Yes, she said. That's true. It was the largest concession she had ever made to him.
Want me to tell you what's going to happen? he asked. One day we'll go missing. They'll make inquiries.
How soon will that be? she asked. Beside her he drove the car with a firm hand and he drove immaculately, and not once did the car broach the dotted line.
As soon as you stop calling me Yuichi.