Inter Ice Age 4 Read online

  “That’s another kettle of fish. Whether there is or isn’t a natural calamity, the founding of submarine settlements is in itself of much greater significance. Not because it’s inevitable, but because in a positive sense it’s the creation of a remarkable new world. I simply consider the problem of the rise in sea level as a good chance to make the people that count decide on taking steps.”

  “Heresy, Tanomogi, heresy.”

  “Let it be. Our position seems to be different from Tomoyasu’s. It’s quite true, Professor. We have cast our lot together, but that doesn’t mean our thinking is necessarily all the same. I think you’ll agree, Tomoyasu, that our financial magnates are actually planning on making a lot of money on this. Or are you claiming that they’re forking out funds for the future from their own pockets?”

  “You’re exaggerating,” said Tomoyasu with an angry expression, sticking out his jaw. “I don’t care whether it’s secondary or not, one thing’s certain: The cities, the land, and everything else are going to sink. Whatever you say, that much is sure.”

  Again on the television screen, a view of the training school for aquans, and Professor Yamamoto’s commentaries.

  [A tulip-shaped object, supported by a single stem and shining whitely against the dark sea sky, is floating in the trembling water.]

  — This is the model training-school building. Architecturally, it’s rather interesting, don’t you think? It’s completely made of plastic; the walls are hollow and filled with gas. It’s floating by the lift of the gas. Just the opposite of a land structure governed by gravity. And there’s no need for ceilings or floors since it’s inhabited by free-moving aquans. It doesn’t matter whether it’s fastened on a level or not. Entrances and exits open upward. You will agree that it’s a very simple construction. And then whatever you say, it’s convenient that they don’t need air in the rooms; you never have to worry about water leakage or water pressure. The sea depths are peaceful and quiet.

  [We draw closer to the building.]

  — It’s big, isn’t it?

  — At the present time there are only two hundred and forty residents, but as the children increase in number it’s scheduled to hold up to a thousand. It’s a school and dormitory combined. Quite a building. In the future there’s going to be a line of twenty-one of them similar to this one. Each year there’ll be three hundred children from five to seven years old, a total of twenty-one thousand. They’re simple to put up. Soon we’ll shift to large-scale production. They bring four buildings at a time, each folded, occupying approximately the space of a truck. You link them up to the ocean floor, put in the gas, and that’s all there is to it. I suppose getting the foundations to harden on the sea floor is a little troublesome.

  [The camera travels up the side of the structure. Bands of faint light like fluorescence appear one above the other. Apparently the light is fitted into the walls. A school of small fish flashes across the screen.]

  — Notice carefully. These bands of light flashing on and off are put there for a purpose. The rhythm of the alternation of light and dark varies slightly with each band as you go downward. They play the role of fish-luring lights. Each species of fish has its own fixed light preference, and they inadvertently go toward the bottom on that rhythm. There, a fish intake is waiting for them with its mouth wide open. It resembles an improved flycatcher, I suppose. I think that these fishing and hunting methods will be quite widespread in the future. They’re very effective. Then the fishermen who come around here . . .

  — Where’s “here,” for heaven’s sake?

  — About midway between Urayasu and Kisarazu, I should say.

  — How have you ever kept it so inconspicuous?

  — It so happens that the sea in this area is a hundred fifty to a hundred eighty feet deep. Besides, we’ve cleaned away the mud-exactly seventy-five feet, just the height of the building. You couldn’t come down this deep without a diving suit. And the pupils are carefully watched.

  —What are the trainers doing?

  — They’re lengthening the braces until the top gets to about sixty feet from the surface.

  [The camera travels to the top of the structure. A large, round hole in the middle of a curved bulge. A youth hangs floating in the water, one foot on the rim of the hole. In the vicinity of his shoulders swims a fish about the size of the palm of a hand.]

  — He’s come out to meet us. This is aquan number one. He’s the oldest one. Eight this year, but he looks twelve or thirteen or even more. He has no mother, it’s true. But everything matures with surprising rapidity in the sea. I read in a publication of the Russian Academy of Science that even plant life shows about a hundred per cent increase in biological efficiency compared to the five per cent of land flora. It takes an elephant forty years to develop to full maturity; the great whales produce offspring barely two or three years after birth.

  [The youth, opening his lips slightly and gnashing his teeth, lowers his head. He brushes away the fish that tries to rub against his lips. One has the feeling almost that he is smiling, but perhaps not. His whole body is encased in a gray jacket and tights, and flippers are attached to his feet. His light hair floats about his head like smoke. Aside from the sharpness of his strangely wide-open oval eyes, his graceful stance is quite like that of a girl’s, perhaps because he is supported on all sides by the pressure of the water. Only the gills and the tapered chest are somehow eerie.]

  — The fish is tame. The boy likes pets. His name transliterated into speech is Iriri. It’s just a symbol, so to speak. Now, look up there ... the roof on top. [Close-up of the surface of the roof. Under a cover, apparently made of plastic, something resembling blackish bubbles is growing luxuriantly.]

  — This is called scenedesmus quadricauda, a type of chlorella, but from the very first we acclimated the freshwater type to sea water. It’s actually an ideal source of nutrients. It contains more than twelve kinds of the all-important amino acids. Crackers made of it are the children’s favorite food.

  [The youth bends his knees slightly and in that posture calmly begins to lower himself into the hole. He grinds his teeth, calling the fish. It goes with him. The camera follows behind. The youth wheels around, and lowering his head, moves faster. The tips of his feet to which the flippers are attached move with a subtle rhythm. Beyond, many children are waiting, clinging to a railing that runs along the wall of the hole and cutting in a straight line in front of the camera. A clamor like the buzzing of insects.]

  — A very tame fish. If we go on training them like that, we’ll have fish as domestic pets. [He speaks into the mike.] Would you mind stopping here?

  — [A dull voice in the speaker.] Would you like to see the workroom?

  — All right ... for just a moment.

  [The camera stops. A wall. The long oval doorways all in a line are quite like a beehive.]

  — As there is no one to use it at present, it’s almost empty.

  Over here is the classroom—for practical drill for the most part.

  [We approach one of the doorways. Holding the fish, the youth puts some of his hair in its mouth, and preceding us, slips into the room.]

  — We call it a classroom, but when completed it will be a little factory, completely practical. We’ll be able to perform experiments in physics, manage the machines, process foodstuffs. In five years, when the highest class becomes the regular staff, it will be self-sufficient in the everyday necessities.

  — What happens when one graduates from here? -Submarine factories are under construction, and then we need men to work the submarine mines and oil fields. The submarine stock farms are plagued with a shortage of hands and are delighted to have the graduates. We plan to turn the ones with especially good marks over to a special training division and give specialized instruction as doctors, teachers, and technicians to help us humans and in due course to take over from us.

  — [Tomoyasu, warningly.] But the diametrically opposite view that this special education . . .r />
  — It’s of no importance. There’s a limit to what land creatures can do, and furthermore their number is quite insufficient.

  [The interior of the room. There is no special worktable, but from the floor, walls, and ceiling, shelves, protuberances, hooks jut out. On them tools are suspended from plastic balloons. The youth looks proudly at the camera and the tools.]

  — Look. Those are Iriri’s inventions. [Into the mike.] Would you please use one?

  [The sound of gnashing. The youth nods, grasps a tool, balloon and all, and connects it with the pipe coming out of a corner of the room.]

  — Compressed air. It’s the main power under the water.

  They also have gasified gunpowder and liquid gas. [The youth turns a handle. The tool begins to tremble and to emit bubbles. The bubbles pass before our eyes to the ceiling, where they gather into a huge globule that is slowly sucked up through a vent in the ceiling. The fish follows them, nibbling at them with its mouth. When the youth fits the vinyl board beside him over the trembling protuberance, the bubbles are cut off.]

  — It’s an automatic circular saw. A valuable invention. He worked everything out himself. It’s hand-made, of course. This processing room for plastics is complete with the usual equipment. Plastic is to life under the sea what iron is to life on land, so you might say that having a mastery of it is a basic art of living here. But it’s slightly strange ... a child scarcely eight years old. They mature so rapidly in the sea, and not only physically.

  — What do you do for energy? In the production of plastics you need rather high temperatures, and then the lighting in this room . . .

  —Electricity, of course. With the development in insulating techniques it was quite easy to set up. One of the touchier problems of life under the sea. One way or another you couldn’t manage without electricity.

  — You can’t?

  — Absolutely not. Not even if you could find something else for heating and power. Take the wireless: You naturally have to use supersonic waves since electric waves are useless in the water. But in sending and receiving, electricity is essential. Besides, in due time we would like the compressed air to be self-sustaining. Right now we’re linked by cable to land, but in the future there’s to be a small-sized atomic generator, or we’ll devise an efficient heavy-oil generator, or we’ll make a gas generator that functions by its own buoyancy. We have to think up some way to get along without depending on land. We’ll then also be able to construct a laboratory fixed to the sea floor, far from any place. It will even be possible to construct huge cities. Well, well. Another invention?

  [About a third of the way up from the bottom the youth comes dragging a straight stick to which pedals are attached, and at right angles at the lower end, a screw. Standing it upright, he mounts and begins to pedal. He rises. When he leans over, he begins to go sideways.]

  — An underwater bike. He’s proud to be seen on it.

  — He’s surprisingly friendly, isn’t he?

  — True. Iriri is particularly amicable. As the boy was our first experiment, perhaps we failed a bit in the developmental process. The exterior secretory glands didn’t completely disappear. You’ve noticed, haven’t you, that the shape of the eyes is oval? There are very slight vestiges of tear glands in the left one. Perhaps they are the cause of imperfect combustion.

  — Imperfect combustion?

  — You must understand that man’s emotions depend in large measure on the sensations of his skin and mucous membranes. For example, “to feel clammy,” “rough to the touch,” “to be sticky,” “to feel itchy”—to take but a few such sensations of the body surface—all, you realize, are metaphors for mood or atmosphere. In short, these surface sensations are an instinct to preserve the sea in us from the air. It may seem that I’m straying from the subject, but I’ll ask you to listen anyway; it’s possibly important. As you know, human beings are highly developed land animals composed almost completely of ingredients from the sea, from blood and bones to plasma. Not only was the first life sea-crystals, but subsequent life has continued to depend on the sea. And even when it came up on the land, it brought along the sea wrapped in its skin. 'When it falls sick, it must be given saline injections. However, the skin itself is nothing but a transformation of the sea. Though its power of resistance is stronger than anything else, sometimes it must be helped by the sea. The exterior secretory glands are the reinforcements of the sea for the hard-put skin. Tears are the sea of the eyes. And so in the final analysis our emotions, that is, the stimulation and control of the exterior secretory glands, are merely the sea’s struggle in self-defense against the land.

  —Without them there would be no emotions?

  —No, I don’t quite say that, but they’re of a completely different quality from what we ordinarily imagine. At present the aquans are in water, and at this point they do not have to struggle with the atmosphere. It’s like saying fish have no fear of fire.

  [The youth manages the watercycle adroitly, playing tag with his pet fish.]

  —Actually when I look at the children other than Iriri, I’m disturbed that they don’t seem to have much feeling. Of course, I don’t mean not at all. It’s just a different sort, I guess, but . . .

  — You mean that only this child is something like a human? —You somehow realize it by watching him. [Sentimentally.] Isn’t having land feelings under the sea only a matter of incomplete combustion?

  [Following the fish, the youth slips by the side of the camera and goes out of the room.]

  —Isn’t that the reason he’s so intelligent?

  —No, the other children are in no way inferior from the standpoint of intelligence alone. A child three months his junior made a clock based on an alternation of air bubbles. We call it a clock, but the hands move every fifteen minutes.

  [The camera follows the youth slowly toward his companions.]

  — [He collects himself and recovers his businesslike tone.] This middle layer is allotted for living quarters; underneath are ordinary classrooms for the various year groups. The course of study is the same as our own, starting with reading, writing, and arithmetic, but after that we’re not sure how to proceed. For the present we’ve settled on a program that gives priority to high-nuclear chemistry and hydrophysics, which are pertinent to their living conditions. After all we can’t project ourselves that much into their position. Of course, only when they produce their own educators will a definitive course of study be decided on. After all, air and water are too different from the standpoint of sensation.

  [A series of balconies, one over the other. Children playing. Some show unreserved curiosity; others are almost completely uninterested.]

  — It’s needless to say, I suppose, but they study nothing like history, geography, or sociology. We couldn’t make up our minds about the best way to teach them the relationship between humans and themselves.

  — [Tomoyasu, sniffing.] That’s quite right. It would be an error to incur their everlasting enmity.

  — No. [He shakes his head slightly.] When you say that, you’re overrating land people.

  [In the children’s curiosity and indifference, there is one element they all have in common. That is their abnormal coolness. When they look at one, one feels that it is oneself that has become an animal. One understands Professor Yamamoto’s expression that they seem without feeling. Darting at the camera, an impish fellow tries to cover the lens with his two hands. Hugging the wall, a girl is rapaciously observing a worm. A school of youths surround Iriri and study his bicycle. A young girl seizes a stray fish and pops it into her mouth. A boy who is nearby puts his finger into her nose, and shaking her roughly, makes her spew it out. Another girl drifts along on her back as she lets a boy lick her armpit. A mixed group, perhaps the people on duty, are running a compressed gas vacuum cleaner over the walls. A boy is pressing his cheek against the face of an aquadog that has curled its tail between its legs.]

  — This has been rather perfunctory, I’m afr
aid. Oh, Aiba.

  Would you cut the power, please?

  [Someone unconsciously lets escape a great sigh. The afterimage on the screen flickers, tapers to a fine point, and dies away.]

  Blueprint

  35

  We watched the picture on the television screen flicker, taper to a fine point, and die away. No one moved for some time. No one attempted to turn on the lights in the room, and no one requested it. Perhaps there was something still to come. I sighed to myself in relief at the thought. At least I should stay alive that much longer.

  But as the silence continued, I was suddenly afraid. The curious thing was that I was overwhelmed by what had been shown me and that while I resisted it emotionally, it was as if in my heart I thought it most interesting. Scarcely realizing what I was doing, I tried to calculate the proportion of boys and girls—roughly the same number of each, I should imagine—and I let my conjectures have free reign about the future forms of marriage. I felt I was with them in experimenting with human beings. But when I recovered myself, surrounded by the dark, I was the one who all along had been experimented on. I was awaiting death. A cup of compassion for one condemned to die. Could they say that a change had occurred in the nature of death? I wondered.

  The fingernails in my fists bit into my palms. It was as if I were encased in plaster; I simply clung to the moment. In spite of this feeling, had I been talked into thinking, by this alter ego of mine, that I wished for my own death? What injected doubt about the ability of the machine was the fact that I followed its judgment, and by recognizing this, approving it, I was caught in a ridiculous vicious circle, as if I were divining my own fortune with a coin the two faces of which were the same. No, to reject a pointless death I needed no more reason than not wanting to die.

  I thought I could not endure it any longer. But action does not occur from thought alone. Of course, it could not be that I did not grasp my predicament. The deep freeze in which I found myself was not one I could escape by tightening my emotions, but rather by somehow relaxing them. I was bound up by my tenseness, the muscles of my body were as stiff as old leather, so that by just moving my head I should have emitted creaks.