The Next Continent (46 page)

“What about our publicity? We revised our safety protocols. We reengineered the core module. We could advertise that more.”

“In that case, here's what happens.” Dorothy created another blue icon with a few keystrokes and linked it with the red icon. The connection pulsated, and the red icon began to shrink, as if its vital force were ebbing away. But after a few moments the balance seemed to shift, and the blue icon withered and disappeared.

“Some influence. Not much,” murmured Dorothy. “The media is fickle. They'll forget about the accident soon. But over the long term, I'm afraid it won't work. The danger will be back in the news. Overemphasizing the safety factor via publicity simply makes everyone more aware of the risks.”

“What should we do?”

“Let's try this.” Dorothy created another connection, this time between the same red icon and another red icon. After resonating for a few moments, they both disappeared.

“Negative destroys negative. Admit the danger instead of trying to minimize it. For example, disclose the failure rate for Eve. Tell the public there's a statistical probability of one catastrophic failure in fifty launches.”

“
What?
” Ryuichi slammed his fist on the desk. Reika retreated a step, alarmed. He suddenly had the look of a demon. “Shinji gave his life for that rocket! He poured everything he had into it. We have no business scaring the public with risk factors that are out of our hands!”

“Out of your hands. Yes, that's precisely what I mean. I wonder if it's fair to conceal that sort of thing?”

Ryuichi was practically nose to nose with her, trembling with anger beyond his control. The old woman's eyes were placid as a mountain lake. “I'm sure some
would
be frightened, just as they feared airplanes at the beginning of the twentieth century. Now millions of people use them every year. I believe everyone knows that airplanes sometimes fall out of the sky.”

“Sixth Continent is different. Customers will be going for a once-in-a-lifetime event—a wedding! Even if we tell them there's an escape system, just thinking about it will scare them away!”

“People use airplanes for their once-in-a-lifetime honeymoons. Are they scared when they see the life jackets under their seats?” Dorothy playfully poked Ryuichi's forehead with a fingertip. “Tell the world. Make it common knowledge.”

Ryuichi grunted doubtfully, but his anger had left him. He straightened up. Dorothy turned back to the laptop.

“That was just an example. There are lots of other problems. Here's one.” She selected another red icon. A window opened next to it: an image of a man on a balcony, raising his hand to a huge crowd below. He was wearing robes trimmed in gold.

“The pope, Pius XIII. He's critical of your attempt to colonize the moon. The Bible says nothing about the moon being given to humanity by God. Western powers used the teachings of the Church to justify their colonization of other peoples. The pope fears a resurgence of that madness. You may find it difficult to conduct Catholic weddings at Sixth Continent. I doubt Catholics would pay large amounts of money to be married in a place their Holy Father has denounced.”

“I'm sorry. I don't know the first thing about this,” said Ryuichi.

“You Japanese are an interesting people. You're willing to swear an oath before a god you don't even believe in. I wonder if you understand the real meaning of the wedding ceremony.”

Her voice had a slight edge. Ryuichi hung his head, a bit too theatrically perhaps.

“I'm afraid you're right.”

“At least you're willing to admit it. That's a very admirable trait. Reika, I think you've chosen well.”

“Of course!” Reika came and stood next to Ryuichi. Dorothy smiled warmly. She typed something on the laptop's keyboard.

“I've made some small adjustments to your parameters, Ryuichi. Still, it's not enough. We need more positive factors, or honestly, your chances for success are quite slim. And the cost of the orbital cleanup could pose a dire threat to your financial health. It's not something poor Tae can handle on her own.”

“We have to do something about the religious issue too,” said Ryuichi. “The pope's words influence a billion believers.”

“Well, if you were only catering to Japanese customers, my husband could help you.”

Ryuichi raised an eyebrow. “You said he was a Catholic priest. Since when are priests allowed to marry?”

“Oh dear, I'm afraid I've been indiscreet.” Dorothy cocked her head and laughed uncomfortably. “Well, I believe you'll be meeting him soon enough. Perhaps you should ask him yourself. I could tell you the story, but it's slightly embarrassing, to me anyway.”

Ryuichi looked to Reika for a clue, but she shook her head, baffled. Suddenly Dorothy clapped her hands. “I just remembered something important. Ryuichi, you'll have to get authorization to establish an embassy.”

“Why would we do that?”

“For your marketing. Some of your customers will want to legally register their unions there. You'll need a government representative. How were you going to deal with that?”

“Hm…I don't know. An embassy, eh?”

“Or maybe a consulate. I'm not sure. You can't send just anyone though. One of your staff will have to be authorized by the Foreign Ministry. It could be complicated.” Dorothy looked at the couple and winked. “I'm sure you won't want to wait that long though.”

“You heard?”

“Of course. You might have picked a more romantic setting. A place where you could both be shy about it.”

“I'm too old to be shy.” So saying, Ryuichi suddenly swept Reika off her feet into his arms.

“Ryuichi, what are you doing?” she said in shocked surprise.

“Dorothy, I'm looking forward to meeting your husband. Thanks again for everything!”

“Omedeto gozaimasu!” Dorothy said, in passable Japanese.

Dorothy waved as Ryuichi left, carrying Reika in his arms.

“
GET OFF OF
there, you rascals. This isn't a playground!”

The old priest was bald, with a semicircle of blond hair. The children jumped down from the stone plinth and scattered. One of them toppled the large stone sitting on the plinth as he jumped. They left it on the ground and scampered off, hooting with derision.

“It's Xavier! He's gonna get us! The chrome dome priest!”

“Little buggers.” Aaron Halifax smiled and watched the children run through the shrine gate and away down the stone steps. Sennosuke frowned.

“They shouldn't do that. You're too easy on them.”

“Think so? At least they ran off. They know they've incurred God's wrath.” He squatted and picked up the fallen stone. It was about the size of a baby's head and shaped like a crescent, its weathered surface mottled with lichen. Clearly the stone had been worked by hands that had vanished centuries, if not millennia ago.

He hefted it back into place.

“There we go. They know this is sacred. They like to scare themselves by knocking it over. Even in this day and age, children haven't lost their innocence. Don't you think that's a miracle?”

“But that stone is your principal image. Getting it knocked over isn't very auspicious.”

“‘Principal image' is a Buddhist term. This stone houses Tsukuyomi no Mikoto, the Shinto moon god. The deity also resides at Ise Grand Shrine.”

Aaron straightened up and looked toward the southern sky above the cryptomeria forest surrounding the shrine. “Ise doesn't have branch shrines, so our founder brought the deity here on his own initiative, if you take my meaning.”

“Shinto is all rather mysterious to me.”

“It can be very hard to understand. Still, it's an interesting way of looking at the world. Very accommodating. It's the religion of your ancestors. Don't you think you should know more about it?”

“Uh-oh, here comes the sermon.” The two old men laughed and continued their stroll across the open hilltop in the early winter sunlight. Tsukiyama Shrine was deep in the mountains of northern Mie Prefecture. Aaron was the head priest.

As a Shinto shrine, Tsukiyama was unusual. There was no main building, only the stone plinth where the principal deity was enshrined. The shrine grounds also served as a park for the surrounding villages, and littering was rampant. The two men walked slowly around the grounds, stooping to pick up the odd bit of trash.

“Is that why you converted to Shinto from Catholicism? Because it's accommodating?”

“Well, I haven't returned to the laity, at least not yet. Maybe my letter of excommunication just hasn't caught up with me here in the mountains.” Aaron seemed wholly at peace. “I was ordained in the diocese of Los Angeles. As a young man I hadn't the slightest doubts about my faith. But then something happened that plunged me into despair: love.” Aaron gathered up another scrap of litter. “I met Dorothy. Naturally, Roman Catholic priests are forbidden to marry. For the first time I was confused. ‘May God Almighty bless you and make you fertile, multiply you that you may become an assembly of people.' It suddenly made no sense that this path was closed to me. Of course, I knew the Church's teaching on celibacy for priests in great detail. But once the seed of doubt was planted, those teachings seem tinged with sophistry. I was hungry for a faith that offered space for me as a human being. Then I discovered Shinto.”

“But didn't you find it…incomprehensible?”

“It is incomprehensible, in some ways. Maybe that's why it's flexible enough to encompass the whole of life. Shinto finds a spiritual essence residing in all things: the sun and moon, mountains and rivers, water and fire. Everything has this essence, the myriad gods that populate our world and what lies beyond it. Is there any other faith so wild, so lacking in reason and discrimination? Shinto might pick out a tree or a stone by the roadside as an object of worship. I was stunned to discover such a primitive religion thriving in a nation built on science and technology.”

“Of course, the original practices were shaped by the ruling classes,” said Sennosuke. “The ritual forms and practices changed a lot after Buddhism arrived in Japan. Then there was State Shinto during the war.”

“Yet Shinto survived it all, absorbing everything without being changed. Christianity is based on the Bible. It wouldn't occur to anyone to make changes to the story of the life of Christ or write a new god into it. But Shinto is flexible enough to change. Taoism is a bit similar, but not quite the same. The urge to worship is very strong in Shinto. The object of veneration might be the fire on the hearth, even the location of a toilet. You Japanese are a strange people to worship such things.”

Sennosuke stroked his beard. “So you fell in love with this strange faith and came to Japan.”

“Yes. I studied for two years at Kogakkan University, passed the Association of Shinto Shrines' qualifying exam, and became a priest. I had a hard time—even my wearcom was no help in deciphering the ancient texts.”

“Were you happy with your decision?”

“I was. Dorothy hated it. We had a huge blowup. I was supposed to come back and marry her, and instead I ended up staying here, putting the cart before the horse. But the fact is I didn't study Shinto just so I could be with her. Anyway, we agreed that I'd visit

California four times a year. It was a near thing, but I convinced her.” He chuckled. “Thanks to a few lucky connections, I was assigned to this shrine. I didn't see it at first, but it's perfect for me.

The deity here is the moon god, but it's just a stone without the slightest adornment. Simple nature worship.”

Aaron looked toward the curved stone resting on its plinth in the center of the open space. He walked over to it and stood on the west side.

“During the annual festival, we hold a ceremony here for the rising moon. I was quite nervous the first time. I'm not Japanese, after all, and I wondered if I was even qualified to do it. But I needn't have worried.” He looked off into the sky. A thin crescent floated just above the trees, faint against the bright blue.

“When I saw the moon that night, I had a spontaneous experience of wonderment. Thanks to the moon, grains fruit, tides move, women ovulate. The moon looks down on us from on high, but it's so close compared to the stars. Its power flows down on us all. All you need to worship it is to be human. I can easily understand why the people of ancient Japan looked up and revered it.”

The two men stood gazing quietly at the crescent in the sky. Like most Japanese, Sennosuke did not hold any deep religious faith; for him, Aaron's view of the world held a certain freshness. Still, there was a fundamental difference between that worldview and his own. The Japanese veneration of the spiritual in everything, including the moon—often referred to with honorifics in Japanese—was something quite ordinary, simply a part of life, and very different from the serious way Westerners seemed to approach matters of faith. Sennosuke was struck anew by this curious fact, like seeing the rough surface of a stone come to light again after years covered over with moss.