Paprika by Yasutaka Tsutsui Page B

Chiba. Honestly, I assure you. Nothing like that ever happened,” Tokita said in his usual awkward way. “So do you want to keep asking about it? Even when no one else really knows what happened at all? How about asking the question in different words and just going around and around in circles ad infinitum? I really love that kind of argument! Come on then! Come on!” He assumed the challenging expression of a child and rolled his shoulders in excitement as he surveyed the journalists’ faces.
    “She was supposed to be about eighteen years old,” Atsuko said with a snigger. “Five or six years ago I would have been twenty-four. And anyway, an eighteen-year-old would only just have started at university. How could she already have been a practicing psychotherapist?”
    “Well, of course, now that it’s legal to use the devices, I guess we could overlook the fact that they were used illegally in the past,” said the white-faced reporter, with disconcerting calm and an expression as inscrutable as a Noh mask. “But I think a more serious situation has arisen in this Institute recently, has it not? Being able to access a patient’s dreams using PT devices is different than just observing them on a monitor, isn’t it. It means actually identifying with the patient. So doesn’t that mean the doctors themselves could become schizophrenic? In fact, I’ve heard that one of the therapists in this Institute has been infected with a patient’s schizophrenia. Is that true?”
    Atsuko was again shaken by an anger that made her vision blur. The news had obviously been leaked by Vice President Inui, or perhaps by Osanai and his gang.
    “There is absolutely no truth in that either,” she said. She would have to strike back and discover the source of the reporter’s information. “I’m very concerned that you labor under such a misconception. Where exactly did you hear such nonsense?”
    “I’m afraid I cannot reveal my source,” the reporter replied defiantly, betraying no emotion. “But I repeat, I have heard that such a thing did actually happen.”
    Commotion descended on the room once more.
    Atsuko decided to provoke her adversary. “I cannot believe that anyone in this Institute would say anything so utterly stupid. Moreover, I find it utterly incredible that someone who calls himself a journalist could swallow such nonsense from an outsider.”
    With the interrogator’s thrust firmly turned on him, the young reporter at last showed some color in his face. “What do you mean by that? You appear to be questioning my integrity.”
    “Well, I ask you!” Atsuko laughed, looking out over the roomful of journalists. “It’s clearly nonsense! Can you all believe such rubbish? Infectious schizophrenia?! What’s next!”
    Several of the reporters laughed loudly. They were the ones who didn’t know that people close to a schizophrenic can be affected by related delusions – even if not “infected.”
    “But I heard it from a very reliable source, one who knows everything that goes on in this Institute,” the reporter shouted angrily.
    “If your source ‘knows everything that goes on in this Institute,’ it must be someone who works here.”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    With the origin of the rumor gradually becoming clear, Atsuko chose to push the increasingly wretched reporter a little further. “That’s a special privilege of the press, I suppose. Claiming something to be fact without having to disclose the source.”
    “Now, wait a minute. I haven’t claimed it to be fact. All I’m doing is checking out what I’ve heard.”
    “And now I want to check it out too. I want to know whether you heard it from the mouth of someone in this Institute or not.”
    “And as I’ve already said, I can’t—”
    “All right, all right!” For Torataro Shima, it was peace at any price. Now he spoke up to douse the heat of the contest, and not a moment too soon. “If I’m honest, it is possible for a