Crash Land on Kurai – Chapter 15

I demand the nurse takes out my IV. I am not sticking around so these people can do stuff to me I don’t consent to. This has gotten way out of hand. We were supposed to come here and observe only. Now I’m stranded on a foreign moon, and many of my shipmates are missing or dead. We have to get out of here and find everyone. My hand shakes as I button up the shirt they provided for me. What about my brother? I can’t return to Orihimé without him, and despite our years of loving resentment, I need him as much as he needs me.

That’s it. I have to find him. I finish dressing, and when I open the door, Kazuo is on the other side.

“Oh good, there you are.” He looks relieved as I give him a brief hug.

“Please, Miss Minamoto, you must stay and recover here. You cannot survive out of the temple on your own.” The nurse begs me as I brush past Kazuo and choose a direction to walk in. There’s light down this hall, so maybe I’m heading towards the outside. Kazuo follows behind, and from a doorway we pass, Rin fades in behind us.

“There are no animals out there. We’ll cover up, and we’ll be on our way,” I respond, but then lower my voice to Kazuo. “We need to find everyone and get the hell off this moon. We have to find Shintaro. I’m not letting them turn us into an experiment.”

“What do you mean? What experiment?” Kazuo whispers back.

“Some kind of test Rin wants me to take. I won’t have it.”

“Yumi,” Kazuo whispers at me, harshly. “I took the test.”

This stops me in my tracks, and they both run into me.

“What did you say?” I face him and look him straight in the eyes. He looks like the Kazuo I’ve always known. I grab his hands and turn them over. The scar on his palm — the one he gave himself when he was a teen to fool the palm scanners in his Earth city — is still there. I push up his sleeve and find the tattoo of our Minamoto family crest on the inside of his left elbow.

“It’s me. I promise,” he says, stepping away from me and pulling down his sleeve. “It wasn’t an invasive test. Just physical observation and a series of questions. I… I don’t think we can leave here. Honestly.”

I wave my hand at him. “We’ve seen worse, right? Camping in the desert with lions, we did that, remember? Hiking through the mountains in the middle of winter? We did that, too. We’ll be fine. We have other members of our ship out there hoping we’re coming to the rescue. What about Shintaro?” I hold my fist to my heart. “I can’t live knowing I didn’t do everything in my power to find him and help him.” I catch Rin observing me. I ignore him. “He may be a pain in the butt when it comes to brothers, but I will not leave him behind.”

I push forward down the hall, the worrying nurse and Rin following us.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood, and you need their antibiotics to fight off the infection in your leg.” Kazuo grabs my arm and stops me. “We have a directive here that we can still accomplish. And I was sent along to make sure you’d be safe, and you’d follow through. Your brother is strong enough to figure out how to survive on his own.”

“How can you say that?” I twist my arm out of his grip and stomp my foot. “He’s my twin! I’ve spent every moment with him since birth!”

Kazuo’s steady glare snaps me back in time. We spent every moment together? That’s the biggest lie I’ve ever told. I ignored Shintaro for almost two years after what he pulled with Takéji.

“Still,” I say, my voice descending to normal levels, “he’s my brother. He’s Minamoto. We don’t leave members of our clan behind.”

Kazuo sighs and I take that as I’ve won.

I proceed to the end of the hall and open the sliding door, stepping onto a wide wooden porch. Wow. An expanse of farmland stretches out hundreds of meters in each direction. Green fields and rich dark soil lie beneath kilometers worth of floating sunshades high in the air.

If we’d had time to observe the moon before we landed, we would’ve seen this from orbit. I tilt my head back and follow the semi-transparent sunshades over the top of the temple. I wonder how they’re being held up. Stretching my hand in front of me, the air wafting across my skin is warm and bright but not harsh. Amazing. I’ve never seen technology like this. It’s like being in a giant greenhouse.

A bird chirps in a cage down the length of the wooden porch and diverts my attention from the sunshade-sky to the earth. Proceeding towards the bird, I catalog everything surrounding us, the machines in the field sowing and irrigating the crops, the guards posted at regular intervals, the serenity of the temple, and the size of the land. I smile as I approach the cage, only now realizing how much I missed animals. The bird is white with a plume on top of his head and a large black beak.

“Do you like my bird?”

An older man, someone I haven’t met yet, steps around the corner of the wooden porch. His disorderly hair is graying, and a pair of thick glasses sits upon his nose. They magnify his eyes, making them appear as if they’re about to pop out of his head.

“This is your bird?” I ask, reaching my fingers for the cage. It’s the first animal I’ve seen in months. I miss the menagerie we kept at home. I know birds pretty well, and I believe this is a cockatoo, though who’s to say if it’s anything like the birds we keep at home.

I let the bird nibble on my fingers, its beak surprisingly gentle and easy with me.

“She is. This is a third version white cockatoo. A 3.06 version to be exact.” He folds his arms across his chest and looks between the bird and me. “I take her with me everywhere. She’s resilient, especially for her version.”

“Version? Or a generation?” His nomenclature use surprises me, but perhaps this is a difference between our two dialects.

“Whatever you’d like to call it,” he says, waving his hand as if my question makes no real sense to him. “I have many more like her at home, and other species too, if you’re interested in seeing them.” He clears his throat and walks around me. Kazuo steps out of the way but remains within arm’s length. “I hear we were remiss to fire on you. That you’re actually from the world that was colonized by the other Japanese ship that left Earth.” He laughs, only a slight bit of bitterness tainting the sound. “It’s very hard to believe.”

I swallow and think, rack my brain to figure out how to prove this to him. I have my tablet and all the data I captured on the ship before we left, but what I really need is Chiéko’s data device. She told me the information on the data device would save my life, would save us all. I can only assume this would be a situation for it.

“What would you need to believe what I’m telling you? I have video on my tablet I can show you —”

“That sort of evidence could easily be doctored,” he interrupts, waving his hand again. He pushes his glasses up his nose and stares down at me, his enlarged eyes reminding me of an owl.

“Then I doubt I have much to offer in the way of evidence except my word.” I drop my shoulders and bow to him. “Maybe you don’t know my family, but a Minamoto never lies.” Which is a lie because my grandfather was the biggest liar who ever lived. We have a lot to make up for when it comes to our family history.

“I do know your family, which is why I won’t be taking your word for anything.”

I try my hardest not to wince. Being caught in a lie is even worse than lying in the first place.

How can I save this conversation that’s already going so wrong? Do I play the meek girl or come back strong? I sweep my gaze over this unnamed man. His stance is alert but not hostile. He lets his focus waver between his bird and me, which means he feels confident in his place. I should act an equal, not a servant.

“And who are you to question my honor? I’ve spent my life working to uncover lies, forcing people to tell the truth. It is not for you to call that into question, especially since you don’t even know me.”

From behind me, Kazuo grumbles my name. He’s probably so exasperated he can’t even speak up.

“I’m sorry we’ve not been properly introduced. I’m Buichi Tamura, the Principal of Hikari and CEO of Aka Matsuba.” He bows to me, and I snap out of my thoughts to bow back. “I’ve come a long way to meet you, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t take you at your word.”

I clasp my hands together behind my back, squeezing my fingers hard enough that the injury from punching Gen in the face smarts. I’m not sure I’ll like what I hear next. If I came on this mission thinking I would just be a journalist, I am sorely mistaken. Naïve. Now, it’s a matter of survival.

“Let’s figure out some way to work together,” I say, brightening my face within an ersatz smile. I look to my right and a crowd of people, including Rin, have come to watch us negotiate. I hope I’m making a good impression. I’m such a small part of this mission, and I don’t want to screw it up. It would be disastrous if I damage relations without having the ambassador here.

“It would seem that you only have one choice, or perhaps, you have the option of two choices.” He smiles as he looks at Kazuo and me. I remember what Kazuo said on our way out of the temple. He took the test, whatever it is, and he’s still alive. Maybe I’m making a big deal out of nothing. “You can take the test and prove to us you are who you say you are. Or…”

I fill in the blank. “Or you can stick me in jail or kill me or whatever, am I right?”

“It would be more efficient to deactivate you and the rest of your… kind. It’s unlike my enemies to go this far to trip me up, but we’ve been adversaries for a long time, and I won’t put anything past them.”

“Deactivate is an interesting choice of words.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “That’s what we do with illegal androids.” He laughs, opening the cage for his bird and letting her step onto his outstretched hand. “I must admit that I didn’t think Aoi Uma had the kind of skills to make androids like you. You’re so… lifelike. And against the law as well.”

I glance back at Kazuo.

“I took the test, and I’m real,” he says, stepping next to me. “What makes you think she’s not? You had her on the operating table. She’s flesh and bone like any of us.”

I think about the gash on my leg and swallow to keep my stomach in one spot. They probably had to fish around in there and extract foreign objects from it. They would’ve seen blood, muscle, maybe even bone. Is that how advanced androids are here?

Tamura holds his bird to his lips and kisses her head, closing his bug eyes for a moment and savoring the close contact. At least the man has a heart.

“One test subject is not enough. I’m a scientific man, and I require data to back up my theories. Right now, my theory is that my competitor is producing illegal technology in violation of a treaty we signed a hundred years ago. Your claim that you’re not from this world or even this solar system has the ring of truth, but I cannot trust Aoi Uma. They’ve tried to violate the treaty before.”

Sweat coats the back of my neck as I look around at other people watching. They nod their heads in agreement with Tamura, a sure sign this is not some well-guarded secret or a crazy utterance. My eyes meet Rin’s, and he holds the contact, pressing his lips together and folding his arms over his chest. What does he think of all this?

I start a checklist in my head of things I need to remember for later: illegal androids, treaty (signed after a war?), Aoi Uma (which means ‘blue horse’) is this man’s competition, and he said he was CEO of Aka Matsuba (which means ‘red pinecone’).

“So, I think you will take my test,” Tamura continues. “At least the question and answer portions. And you will prove to me you are who you say you are. There’s a saying I’m fond of from way back in Earth’s literary history, ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’ We must eliminate the impossible.”

Questions pop into my head begging to be asked. I stare past him to the fields and the land past the sunshades. This world is recovering from some kind of event, and it’s not from anything natural. Between the crumbling buildings, the lack of animals, and the deactivated androids we saw in town, we’re only aware of a small fraction of what’s going on here. I can’t even begin to negotiate when I know so little. Besides, I’m terrible at compromise. It’s usually my way or no way, but here, the rules have changed. Here, I have to learn a different set of rules to survive.

And if Kazuo says it’s okay, then I have to trust him. I have to trust someone.

“Fine. I’ll take your tests.”