The Cage of Zeus Read online

  The other research area involved gathering experimental data having to do with space medicine. The biggest problems humanity encountered in space were the health impairments posed by living in environments completely different from that of Earth. Impairments from prolonged exposure to low-gravity environments and space radiation, as well as the effects of stress caused by living for extended periods in cramped residential quarters, were the primary concerns of the researchers. With an even harsher environment than that of Mars, Jupiter was an ideal planet to gather the best medical data. Researchers conducted experiments on not only animals but on human subjects too, drawing the ire of bioethics groups, but a special inspection agency stepped in to ensure no unlawful experiments were being conducted.

  “What did the people that first came to Mars eat? What did they do when they got sick? Did they have TV and movies?”

  As Rui continued to ask one question after the next, Hasukawa’s wearable bleeped. It was John Prescott, chief of operations.

  “Sorry to bother you at home, but there’s been a development.”

  “Do we have the assailant?”

  “Yeah, we’re talking to him to now. But there’s another matter we need to discuss. Can you get over here?”

  “Of course.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No—” Hasukawa stopped himself from telling Prescott that he’d been bored anyway, remembering his daughter sitting in front of him. After telling Rui to ask her mother to tell her the rest, Hasukawa got up to grab his coat.

  When Hasukawa arrived at Mars Police Headquarters, the media hounds were already camped out front. The moment he got out of his car, they swarmed him, sticking their recorders in his face, but Hasukawa managed to push past them and entered the building without saying a word.

  Prescott was the only one waiting for him in the division office. “I’ve got someone else on the press conference about the assailant. You and I are going to a briefing.”

  “Did we receive a new terror warning?”

  “There’s another terrorist group, unrelated to the assassination attempt, on the move. I don’t know the particulars, but we have to take the threat seriously considering their target.”

  “What are they targeting? Some sort of government residence?”

  “Jupiter. Seems they’re after the space station.”

  “All three of them?”

  “Just one. Jupiter-I. The special district to be exact.”

  “Where did the intel come from?”

  “Central Intelligence.”

  “Do they have somebody on the inside?”

  “Probably, seeing how they gave us a name. The Vessel of Life,” Prescott said.

  Hasukawa grimaced. The Vessel of Life was an extremist group espousing a rigid bioethical ideology that had perpetrated countless acts of terror in the past. They frequently targeted bioscience corporations, research facilities, and hospitals and opposed the use of scientific technology to manipulate the human body and other species.

  With regard to matters of bioethics, an organization called the Planetary Bioethics Association kept a close watch over the settlements between Earth and Jupiter. It was a legitimate organization, an international agency with the goal of advocating a “happy marriage” between human life and the technologies of genetic engineering. Denouncing the association’s policies as soft, an antigovernment group emerged to form the Vessel of Life.

  But their continued acts of extremism made Hasukawa question whether the group really wanted to protect bioethical principles at all. In addition to engaging in demonstrations, public denouncements, and harassment, they even resorted to bombing the facilities of organizations whose activities they wanted to stop. For this reason, the true goal of the Vessel of Life was rumored to be the incitement of political and economic turmoil from behind the cover of ideology.

  On the other hand, Vessel members were also active in respectable endeavors such as publishing scholarly books on bioethics and exposing medical malpractice in gene therapy, winning them praise as champions of human rights. Thus, the Vessel of Life was not so much a monolithic organization as a global network of people and factions with disparate motives. Which complicated matters all the more. It was for this reason that many people believed the Vessel of Life was created to take up the mantle for bioethics in ways the Planetary Bioethics Association could not.

  “Their aim is to stop the experiments on Jupiter-I,” said Prescott. “The doctors there are conducting some cutting-edge space medicine and reproductive technology experiments.”

  “But the Planetary Bioethics Association approved those experiments on Jupiter-I. Why now?”

  “The group was against these experiments from the start. They must’ve been waiting to act until they could get together the necessary funds and manpower,” Prescott said. “But to think they’d actually go to Jupiter. It’s hard to believe they’ll stir up much publicity worth their trouble. I hope to hell it all turns out to be a hoax.”

  “If they’re prepared to go to Jupiter to carry out their plan, they must think they’ve got a pretty good shot at succeeding. If they haven’t at least come up with a way to penetrate Jupiter-I’s omnidirectional warning system, they wouldn’t even bother to devise a plan of attack.”

  “Sorry to cut your vacation short,” Prescott said.

  “Please,” said Hasukawa. “You’re going to be holed up here at headquarters for a while yourself, Chief.”

  “Better that than the pain of being at home. My niece is having a wedding party I just can’t bring myself to go to. I used the job to beg out of going.”

  “Something the matter with the groom?”

  “That’s just it. My niece isn’t marrying a man.”

  So it was a lesbian wedding. “That’s allowed just about anywhere you go nowadays.”

  “Yeah, but here’s where it gets complicated. The woman she’s marrying is also a transgender.”

  “She used to be a man?”

  “Yeah. She had gender reassignment—became a woman. Yet, she wanted to marry another woman instead of a man and chose my niece as her partner. My niece is fine with it. In fact, she said that if her partner even wanted to go back to being a man, she’d be fine with that too. She even said that she might want to try being a man herself one day.”

  “She was joking, right? I know artificial organ transplants have come a long way, but switching sexes on a whim…”

  “I hear people change their gender like they change their clothes lately. They go from being a woman to a man and back again and again over a lifetime. Fluid transgenders, they’re called. I don’t know what the kids these days are thinking,” Prescott said. “Are humans starting to choose their sex depending on their circumstances the way clownfish do? If that’s what’s happening, I don’t know if I can handle it.”

  “Is that why you decided not to go to the wedding?” Hasukawa said.

  “What conversation could I have that doesn’t end with me insulting my niece’s partner? My head hurts just thinking about it. Of course, her friends are going to be there. Look, I understand in theory. This isn’t the twentieth century. The law guarantees the rights of those who call themselves sexual minorities and queer. Discrimination is wrong. Absolutely, positively wrong, I tell you. And anyone that openly shows their disgust, no matter what they may be thinking, is just being a jackass. But actually interacting with one of them is exhausting to people like me who were raised on traditional values. You must think I’m a coward.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Tell me, how old is your daughter now?”

  “She’s six,” Hasukawa said.

  “Then brace yourself. Your little girl won’t necessarily stay a girl forever.”

  Hasukawa lost his first wife to illness. The Planetary Bioethics Association had informed him then that since he had no children, Hasukawa had the right to inseminate synthetic eggs containing his dead wife’s DNA with his own sperm, have an artificial womb carry the child
to term, and register that child as his own.

  Hasukawa had declined.

  He couldn’t imagine raising the child himself and continuing to work at the same time. He could have hired a babysitter, but what would have been the point if he’d simply let the sitter raise the child? That would have been the same as having a convenient pet. If that were the case, he would have been much better off remaining a widower and throwing himself into his work.

  Even so, he ended up remarrying in his forties, having succumbed to loneliness.

  Rui was born to Hasukawa and his second wife, Kyoko. By the time his daughter would be old enough to marry, Hasukawa would be over sixty. When that time came, there was no guarantee that she would still be a woman, according to Prescott.

  As much as such a thing would sadden him as a father, Hasukawa was also resigned to the fact that children grew up. He wanted Rui to go on being a girl, of course, but if she were to declare herself a fluid transsexual, Hasukawa didn’t have the right to reject her even if he might protest. The Planetary Bioethics Association had done away with such restrictive sociopolitical paradigms and established laws to guarantee one’s gender and sexual identities. The individual’s choice to change one’s gender however many times and to marry someone of any gender was now protected by law.

  There was only one choice forbidden on Earth and Mars, and that was the bioengineering of an intersex human having both male and female reproductive organs and then actually registering that person as intersex.

  Of course not everyone chose to live as a fluid transgender, even while that right was guaranteed by law. Fluids were a minority, and an overwhelming majority still held prejudices and bigoted views on such a lifestyle.

  “When I was a kid,” Prescott continued, “I imagined the future and going to space to be something more—you know, spectacular. Sure, we succeeded in making many dreams come true: the lunar cities have grown, the Martian cities are more accessible, the mysteries surrounding Jupiter were solved, our life expectancy is longer thanks to advances in space medicine, and we can even prevent senile dementia. Humanity is on the verge of sweeping across the entire solar system. And yet, we haven’t been able to eliminate the fighting and killing and terrorism on Earth, or the Moon or on Mars. I used to believe that the farther we got from Earth, the more enlightened we would become about how small we are in relation to the universe and therefore become more humble, more peaceful. But the reality was different. We’re still burdened by the intrinsic parts of ourselves that kept us earthbound. And why is that? We refuse to change our Earthian ways no matter how far we’ve come. As long as we insist on clinging to our bodies, we’ll have to go on changing the space environment rather than adapt to it. We’ve yet to become ‘Martians’ or ‘Jovians’ even now. We’re all still ‘Earthians’ living on Mars and Jupiter. We’re imprisoned by this body. This body hinders our psychological growth, like a cage.”

  “By that logic, that would mean humans are capable of changing their psyches by altering their physical bodies.”

  “And that’s exactly what they’re researching on Jupiter. The experiments are beyond what I’m personally able to tolerate, but they’re working on ways to improve human nature—that much I know. That’s why we have to protect Jupiter-I. For the future of humanity. If anyone has a problem with the experiments, they can ask to discuss it or negotiate the issues. There are any number of peaceful ways to get it done. But if any fringe elements would rather solve this with guns and bombs, we have to stop them with deadly force.”

  The two men waited for the top brass from the Mars Police Department and the Central Intelligence Bureau to gather in the meeting room. Once they’d arrived, Hasukawa and Prescott took their seats at the far end of the table.

  “According to the communiqué from the agent we have on the inside, the Vessel of Life will attack Jupiter-I within a month,” said the director of the CIB. “We don’t have time to send in reinforcements from Earth or Mars. The threat will have to be put down by whatever personnel we already have at the space station. How many do we have stationed there right now?”

  “Just the usual complement of twenty,” answered Prescott. “But there’s another team on a vessel headed there now to relieve the team stationed there. They’ll be able to work together to secure the space station. I’ll notify the commander of the relief team immediately.”

  “That makes forty. Will it be enough?”

  “The Vessel of Life may be an extremist group, but they don’t have the necessary cash flow to mobilize an army to Jupiter. Not to mention, that would require a large transportation vessel, increasing the risk of their being picked up on Jupiter-I’s omnidirectional warning system. It’s likely they’ll send in a small but elite team to carry out the attack, in which case they’ll try to come in on a cargo or research vessel. Our security teams are adequately equipped to neutralize the threat.”

  The director nodded, satisfied. The members of the police department, on the other hand, were red-faced, choking back the words that came to mind. Why hadn’t they been alerted sooner? What the hell good was having someone on the inside? This last-minute warning limited their counterstrategy severely. What the hell had the CIB been doing?

  “Who are the commanders in charge?” the director asked.

  “The commander in charge of the first unit, the team on the space station, is Jeff Harding. Shogo Shirosaki commands the fifth unit, the relief team heading there now.”

  “The composition of the teams?”

  “All of the members of both teams are from Mars, although there’s some ethnic imbalance,” Prescott said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Harding’s team has a good ethnic mix, but Shirosaki’s team is comprised mostly of Japanese members.”

  “How did that happen?” asked the CIB director.

  “With some recent transfers, the team just happened to stack up that way. But the members are quite used to working on a multiethnic team.”

  “Any experience working with Harding’s team on a joint mission?”

  “No, sir, but I believe both men are capable of executing the mission,” Prescott said. “Would you like to have a look at their files?”

  “Please.”

  Several hours later, Hasukawa compiled a report detailing the action to be taken.

  He transmitted the information to Jupiter-I and the spaceship carrying Shogo Shirosaki’s twenty-member security team.

  This was where Hasukawa’s job as an administrator ended.

  After this, any amount of worrying was pointless. The voyage from Mars to Jupiter took several months. He would only receive reports and images, and whatever happened on Jupiter from here on out, Hasukawa would have no way to get a direct read of the situation.

  Prescott had told him that he would not hesitate to use deadly force for the future of humanity. He was right, of course, but Prescott was only thinking in terms of the end result. Neither Hasukawa nor Prescott had ever been witness to any sort of bloodshed on the job. The only information that ever reached them came in the form of data and reports from which Hasukawa could sense nothing. Such reports contained only condensed fragments of the truth.

  It would be Shirosaki and Harding in the field who would have to bear the burden of this mission.

  II

  1

  THE FIRST THING he sensed was the smell of summer grass. A pungent smell, as though someone had just finished cutting the grass only moments before.

  A feeling not so much nostalgia as restlessness came over him. Shirosaki recalled the summers he had spent as a boy on Earth. The lush vegetation overflowing from the conservatory. The thick, sweet smell of overripened fruit tickling the nose like spices.

  The memories came flooding back. The odd shape of a caterpillar wriggling between the leaves. Candy-colored ants marching up a tree single file. Butterflies with wings like metallic plates flitting around the orchids. Richly colored birds and the chattering of squirrels. The Summer Dome of
his youth fraught with excitement.

  In his daydream, Shirosaki was a boy of ten. Even as he remembered the Summer Dome at forty, his point of view was that of a small child.

  When he was ten, the trees inside the conservatory looked to him like monsters lurching toward him with outstretched limbs.

  The humid air was stifling.

  The winding path was free of traffic. Unlike the energy inside the dome, a comfortable stillness pervaded the indoor area before dusk.

  Shirosaki caught something moving out of the corner of his eye and stopped.

  He worked his way through the brush to find a little girl standing atop a stone wall.

  She looked to be about six or seven. She was standing precariously on her toes, reaching for a mango on a tree.

  Shirosaki held his breath and looked on. The girl pulled the mango closer, branch and all, then twisted the yellow fruit off the branch.

  The leaves rustled as the branch snapped back. The girl cuddled the fruit in her arms and caressed it tenderly. Shirosaki blushed as if she were caressing him.

  The girl turned in his direction. Her black eyes growing wide, she jumped up like a spring-action doll.

  “Do you like mangoes?” he blurted out.

  The girl did not speak and stood stiffly on the stone wall. He approached the girl and quietly clambered up the wall so as not to scare her. He looked around to make sure no adults were about. He began to pick one fruit after the next and toss them into her arms. He continued to pluck the fruit from the branches until the girl’s face grew cloudy. “Stop, that’s enough.”