Gojiro (42 page)

Letter to a Friend Left at Lavarock Promontory, Radioactive Island

P
LEASE FORGIVE THIS INTRUSION OF YOUR PRIVACY.
On this day, however, fourteen years since we last were together, I was feeling quite lonely for your presence. It was Sheila who suggested we make this journey, inasmuch as today, as you might remember should you care to retain such trivial details, is also my birthday—another August 6—the forty-sixth in my altogether insufficiently productive life.

The boat trip has been pleasant. The waters off Past Due Point were calm, unlike our last voyage, when we came quite close to capsizing. Today we have had perfect weather. Our sun still shines, more brilliantly than ever, I am proud to say. Its warming glow has guided our trip.

The children have been insistent about coming ashore. Little Ebi, who has just reached six, wants very much to pet you. When I attempted to explain that you were perhaps not the petting type, she broke into inconsolable tears.

Joseph Jr. has taken me to task for my prohibition. It is their right to go onshore, he says, citing a recent case brought before the Budd Hazard Court in which the residents of New Cognition Village, many of them newcomers, pressed for a measure limiting access to Lavarock, seeking to enshrine it as a Landmark of the Evolloo. This was in deference to your residence on the Promontory. I opposed the initiative, arguing that you would have resented such special treatment. I trust my statements, modeled on a speech of yours given before the Anti-Speciesist Tribunal stressing “the bogusity of personality cults, Zardic or otherwise,” continue to coincide with your true stance. Now Joseph Jr. has thrown these words back at me, claiming that as legitimate organisms of the Realm he and his siblings should be given free access to all niches. Furthermore, he asserted, it has never been established that you are “not the petting type.”

Joseph Prometheus, Jr., only thirteen and already a sage of Quadcameral Law!

(Can you see him? Is he not a strapping boy? Nearly as tall as his namesake already! I dare think his mind may be as fine, but that might be a father’s pride.)

Stumped by young Joseph’s eloquence, I am forced to retreat into parental authority: “You’ll stay in the boat because I say so!” This outburst, which I repeat for your amusement, incited great peals of laughter, nearly tipping the vessel. Even tiny Walter, who last month enjoyed his second birthday, found his father’s attempt to point a stern finger to be exceedingly hilarious.

Still, they have stayed in the boat, much more for your sake than mine. After all, they are aware of your once-stated fondest wish “to be seen from the sea and not seen, to look no different than every other zard ever seen from the sea.”

By now it has become a little game. We paddle in, close to the reptilian tangle basking on the Great Rock, near enough to see the seams in the carpet of your fellows. Then the children shout, “But mom and dad, which one is he? They all look alike . . .” From there they begin their refrain: “One hundred yards at sea, / Which one is me? / Which one is me?” To which they reply, “It’s me! I’m Gojiro!” Things generally grow somewhat raucous at that point, everyone screaming, “No, it’s
me! I’m
Gojiro!”

They carry on until Sheila calls a halt with an extension of her hand. “Silly,” she says so softly (
so lovingly!
). “You’re all Gojiro.”

Then everyone sits in the rocking boat, quietly, simply looking, for they know you are in them and they in you.

Oh, my friend, life does go on.

In the beginning, soon after our separation, I felt a terrible weight on my shoulders. It was only then that I glimpsed the terror of responsibility that must have haunted you. I felt as if a New World was dawning and I, being already resident, needed to set a certain standard, one of which I could not be sure. It was a dark time, full of doubts. But, somehow, in my self-obsessed despair I managed to raise my head, take a bearing. I saw I was not immobile, not cemented in a vault, but was moving, that the Evolloo was carrying me along, in spite of myself.

Ours is a wonderful world, my friend. You would not believe its splendor, the great range of its treasures. I walk with Sheila into Asbestos Wood, sit silently as she records her taxons much as Ebi did, and I am amazed. Overnight five new species have hybridized. I pause to breathe that air, let it fill my lungs. Creation!

Myself, I work. You’d never recognize the laboratory. I attempt to further penetrate the studies we once undertook together, although I must say, without a Budd Hazard to lay planks over the unfathomable, illumination is an elusive thing. I plod. A new Fayetteville Tree has arrived to replace the one that was lost. The vessel is larger; 209 species thrive within it at the latest count. Despite my greatest efforts, I still have not been able to reproduce the Instant of Reprimordialization. Shig, however, I must report, has filled in the 0.0247-second missing sector in
Gojiro vs. Joseph Prometheus Brooks in the Valley of Decision
. The film continues as a worldwide hit, but somehow I have no desire to see it in this “augmented” version.

Yes, life goes on. Sheila is pregnant once more. We are quite excited, since it will be the last one. Sometimes, when we are feeling giddy, we imagine our lives beginning that moment in Encrucijada, but we know we are much older than that. Are we too old? we ask ourselves. Only time will tell.

We must leave now, the children say they’re hungry. The Island’s so big these days, it’s a five-hour sail back to Corvair Bay.

(Remember when I sat upon your shoulders and we’d go from here to there in as many giant steps?)

I still sing “Heartbreak Hotel” at bedtime, you know. I can’t be late.

(Remember that first time, your eyes alive with fire, me with slicked-back hair?)

I throw this letter on the wind, from the speeding ship, that it may come to you.

Long be your Line, my own true friend.