Slatewiper - Hardcover

Lewis Perdue studied biology and biophysics at Cornell University. He is also the bestselling author of numerous fiction and nonfiction works, including Daughter of God and The Delphi Betrayal. Perdue lives in Sonoma, California.

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Typhoon clouds churned across Tokyo's September skies. Beneath the clouds, down in the unfashionable northern prefecture of Toshima, workers at Otsuka General Hospital struggled through the gathering noontime dusk to clear the sidewalks of the dead and dying before the torrential rains began to fall.
Hundreds of the sickest lay scattered about like cordwood, blanketed by a miasmic stench that rose from suppurating skin abscesses and bloody diarrhea. Some were silent, others moaned in high-pitched whines as loudly as their weakened bodies would allow. The rotting stumps of arms, legs, and fingers attracted flies and showed bare bones. Flesh seemed melted off the skeletons of the dead.
Those in earlier stages of what the newspapers were calling "the Korean Leprosy" sat in stained trousers and skirts, hung their heads between their knees, moaning and coughing. Here and there, entire families gathered, creating microcosms of the crowd with their dead, dying, and walking wounded. Mothers and fathers cradled their children in futile attempts to protect them from a horror that attacked from within.
They matted the sidewalks, the lawns, the ambulance loading ramps; they filled the empty parts of the parking lot, even the spaces between vehicles. The truly fortunate lay thick in the hallways of the emergency room, where medics from the Self-Defense Forces went through the existentially
futile motions of pumping the victims full of antibiotics and intravenous drips.
At the perimeter of the hospital grounds, SDF soldiers garbed in disposable overalls, masks, and rubber gloves worked away at the crowd, loading the live ones onto litters and into olive-drab transports. The gelatinous remains of the dead were scooped up with shovels and placed in a hodgepodge of commandeered makeshift containers: barrels, metal tubs, ice chests, soft drink coolers, even children's plastic wading pools.
Among the carnage walked three men: a white-haired Japanese man, about seventy, wearing a white physician's coat, and two blond Caucasians in jeans and sweatshirts who towered over him. The tall Caucasians each carried a large duffel. All three wore rubber gloves and surgical masks that left only their eyes showing.
The two Caucasians wiped steadily at their eyes that watered against the sharp caustic mist hanging over the hospital grounds. Around them, scores of SDF soldiers walked about spraying a disinfectant solution from large backpack pump applicators normally used for applying lawn chemicals.
The trio moved in lurches, a few steps in one direction and then a stop as the white-coated figure stepped ahead of the two others, turned to them, and blocked their way. They exchanged words, then one of the Caucasians would start off in another direction, leaving the Japanese man scurrying to catch up and repeat the process.
"We really have things well in hand," said the white-coated Japanese man as he stepped into the path of the other two once again. Dr. Yoshichika Iwamoto was chief administrator of Otsuka Hospital, professor at Tokyo University, and former member of the Diet. "You really didn't need to come," he insisted. "It is very kind of you, but so very unnecessary." Like most Japanese doctors, Iwamoto spoke English. Like many of them, he considered it a barbaric tongue.
Iwamoto's face showed none of the internal turmoil stirred up half an hour before when the two U.S. Army doctors had arrived unexpectedly. He wore his shiran kao--his nonchalant face--and tried to explain to them that this was an epidemic, a matter for specialists, that they would only be in the way. To his dismay, they had demonstrated that they were, indeed, experts in this sort of medical emergency, even pulling out published papers the two had coauthored, brought along for just this anticipated problem.
What Iwamoto really wanted to explain to these ill-mannered intruders was that this was a Japanese situation, something like a family emergency to be dealt with as discreetly as possible. That NHK, then other television stations, had broadcast stories since the outbreak of Korean Leprosy a week ago was intolerable. To air one's own dirty linen was disgraceful, unacceptable. He shook his head now as he thought about the broadcasts and the newspaper articles that followed. Soon, there had been attention from foreign journalists--more gaijin. Whatever happened to Japan for the Japanese? Kurata-san would fix that.
The news reports had brought these gaijin doctors. That alone was an insult, evidence of their lack of faith in his ability, in the ability of the entire Japanese race. Big, white, racist bullies who automatically assumed that little wheat-colored people couldn't handle things by themselves and so forced their filthy "help" on them. Iwamoto seethed inside. And their bad manners! They had arrived unannounced; it embarrassed him that they had given him no opportunity to welcome them properly.
They were so arrogant these ketojin, these Americans.
He said a small prayer of thanksgiving that at least they weren't Japanese forcing their help on him. That would create an on, an obligation, a debt that he and the hospital would be duty-bound to repay. Fortunately, gaijin were without virtue, without value. Those without virtue could not create on, nor were they to be afforded the courtesy or protection due true sons of Yamato. Iwamoto knew his only obligation was to rid himself of these two pests as quickly as possible, to keep them from hindering the removal process that was proceeding so efficiently.
They walked along in silence for several steps, making a wide detour around a man who retched convulsively at the edge of the street.
"I'm afraid you will not be comfortable," Iwamoto said hopefully as he stepped ahead of them and stopped their progress once again. "Our sanitary facilities are quite overstressed."
"No problem," said one of the gaijin. "We're Army. We're used to being uncomfortable."
"It's part of regulations," joked the second as he headed off in another direction.
Iwamoto cringed inside as he scurried to catch up with him. How could they be so insensitive as to ignore his distress? How could they miss such obvious communication?
Blocking their path, Iwamoto marshaled his resolve and tried again. "Ah, you see, we have limited supplies and equipment. I am afraid that--"
"Brought our own," the gaijin said almost simultaneously. One slapped the big duffel bag for emphasis, then turned and continued walking in yet another direction.
Desperation welled up hot and sour in Iwamoto's throat as he set out after them again.
In the distance, thunder rolled; stiff winds tore at the trees and rolled off the massive hospital building in chaotic gusts. Looking hopefully at the sky, Iwamoto maneuvered himself in front of them again and stopped. Instead of speaking immediately, he made a point of studying the weather carefully. The two Caucasians looked upward for a moment, then back at him as he spoke.
"These very early typhoons can be serious," he said. "It could be dangerous for you here." He looked expectantly from one white face to the other. "Perhaps you will be needed by your own people at Camp Zama."
The gaijin shook their heads synchronously, as if their necks were linked by gears. Almost as precisely, they turned and resumed their stroll.
Iwamoto made an audible hissing sound as he sucked in wind through pursed lips; he pursued them yet again. The older physician was winded by the time he stopped them again, this time just yards from the entrance to the hospital.
"It's a disgusting disease," Iwamoto said. "The soiling, the rotting, the bloody discharges--the odors."
Pungent antiseptic now masked most of the nauseating stench that earlier had hit the Caucasians like a squirming fist in their bellies as soon as they had stepped off the train at the Shin-Otsuka rail station.
"Look, Doctor, we've been through it before," said Lieutenant Colonel Denis Yaro, M.D., infectious disease specialist with the U.S. Army 9th Corps, stationed at nearby Camp Zama in Kanagawa Prefecture. "We're big boys. This won't be the first time we've gotten shit on our nice white coats. We happen to think this is a pretty important situation, and we'd like very much to help you to get to the bottom of this weird strain of glanders--if that's really what it is--but if you don't want us here, then why don't you just come out and tell us that?"
I have been, Iwamoto thought to himself. But you are too thick to hear me.
"Cool it, Denis," cautioned Jim Condon, M.D. Condon was another army light colonel, an epidemiologist and internal medicine specialist whose offices adjoined Yaro's at Zama's Medical Corps facility.
They had come--in violation of specific orders for all of Zama's physicians to stay clear of the area--as volunteers, partly because they wanted to help and partly because Yaro hoped to snag a sample of a totally new, undiagnosed disease that could be turned into a publishable paper.
Iwamoto fought to control his anger. When he spoke, it was formally, stiffly. "The pathogen has not yet been identified," the doctor continued. "It does not seem to be any known bacteria, virus, or even a prion or single-celled amoeba or other organism. Because of this there seems to be no natural immunity and as a result, none of the patients has, so far, survived."
Condon and Yaro thought they saw a faint look of satisfaction.
"The genetic fragments we have been able to identify at this very preliminary stage of the investigation indicate that it could be identical to the unknown variant a-087 that killed all the inhabitants of that small settlement on the northeast coast of Cheju-do."
Yaro nodded his head. Condon saw the lightning in his colleague's eyes. Just two weeks previously, more than nine hundred people on Cheju-do--a small island in the South Sea some fifty miles south of the tip of the Korean Peninsula--had been wiped out before help could arrive from the mainland. Nobody knew where the disease had come from, but it ravaged the settlement and then, ten days later, seemed to self-destruct.
"You should also know," Iwamoto said, "that it is clear that this is a biotype that is more likely to exist in a carrier state specifically restricted to the Korean race. I believe--"
"Carriers! Race!" Yaro's tone was contemptuous. "You know as well as I do there is no such thing as a Korean race!"
Iwamoto stumbled back away from the tall white man and quickly caught his balance.
"This is all about power and politics and nothing about science," Yaro continued, his voice deep and angry. "But your use of those words--your use, Doctor--on television has been a disaster for Japan's Korean community. Your implications in all those interviews are impossible to miss. You're telling everybody what they want to hear: that Koreans are carriers of this dirty disease because they're racially inferior."
"I resent your implications that I--"
"Look, asshole, I was watching the television when you told one interviewer that it was as if the gods had invented the perfect disease to personify a race of people despised almost universally by the entire Japanese nation."
"Calm down, Denis." Jim placed a hand on his colleague's forearm. "Back off." But Yaro took another step toward Iwamoto.
"You're fucking Nazi hypocrites, Doctor. You and your countrymen. You occupied Korea, forced the people into slavery, kidnapped Korean women, and locked them into army-run brothels as "comfort girls" that soldiers raped day after day. A lot of people calling themselves 'doctor' used Koreans as convenient laboratory animals for Japanese medical experiments."
As Yaro advanced, Iwamoto stumbled over his own feet and sat down hard on the well-tended turf.
"That's enough, Doctor," Condon said firmly as he grabbed Yaro by the shoulders and wrestled him back. Iwamoto got slowly to his feet and dusted himself off. Jim Condon stepped between the two men.
"If this truly is only a Korean disease, then it poses no threat to my colleague or me, does it, Doctor?" he asked. "Why should we be concerned?"
With Yaro no longer an immediate threat, Iwamoto felt the searing anger rising from deep in his gut. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to center his emotions. He looked deep inside to avoid being provoked by the keto, but it was to no avail; he would later offer prayers to remove the shame of losing control.
"Of course it is a Korean disease, you round-eyed fools! We have the genotype. That is why this should mean nothing to you, nothing at all. These are Koreans! The dogs that these animals eat have more value, don't you understand? Treating them is beneath the dignity of the medical profession."
Iwamoto's outburst stunned them like a slap in the face. For a long moment silence grew large and awkward. Condon finally filled the void. Softly, his voice cold with barely restrained anger, he said, "Doctor, in our country, even dogs get medical care."
"Yes, and in your country, you also sleep with the kurombo--niggers--so what more is it necessary to say?" Iwamoto spat as if the words themselves had contaminated his mouth.
"Thank you so very much for your enlightened worldview. But we, Doctor, came here to figure out how to cure the dogs."
Yaro was quivering with anger. Condon turned him around, handed him the duffel he had dropped, and led him toward a family of six sprawled on an old tarp some ten yards away.
"There is no cure; there is only death!" They heard Iwamoto screaming after them. "Suit yourself! You are wasting your time! Only death! Only death!"
Fifty yards away a tall, young Japanese man dressed from head to toe in hospital white held a clipboard and walked from one devastated family group to another, taking notes and an occasional photo. Tears soaked the upper edge of his surgical mask. As Iwamoto's words ricocheted across the hospital's immaculately landscaped grounds and found the ears of Akira Sugawara, the tall, young man turned from the body of a four-year-old Korean girl and her grieving parents and watched Dr. Iwamoto walk away from the tall gaijin.
What is this hell? Sugawara wondered again. An irresistible alien gravity clutched at his heart, creating a weight so profound he was sure it would rip out the whole organ and carry it to the center of the earth.
What is this hell? And why had his uncle sent him to document it?
 
Copyright © 2003 by Lewis Perdue