Paprika by Yasutaka Tsutsui Page B

the Nobel Prize, Atsuko found herself caught in the media spotlight, though few suspected that she was still secretly working as a “dream detective.” Caution was essential, nonetheless, as Atsuko had no way of knowing who was watching her, or from where.
    Now metamorphosed into Paprika, Atsuko had left the apartment building through the garage door. She couldn’t risk using her own car, so had decided to hail a taxi on the street.
    On returning to the building later with Tatsuo Noda, she had come in through the back entrance using her security code and fingerprint. The caretaker who kept watch over the lobby knew Atsuko and had a good understanding of her relationship with Paprika. But if any newspaper journalists or media people had been lying in wait, they might even have inquired into the identity of Noda himself. That would certainly have been counterproductive.
    After entering the apartment, Atsuko had first examined Noda, attached the gorgon to his head and waited for him to fall asleep. Then she’d programmed the PT devices to wake her later, and with that had entered a deep sleep. At five in the morning she’d been awoken by a barely detectable, momentary charge of static electricity. She had immediately put the collector on her head and entered Noda’s dream.
    Now Noda was walking along a beach at night. A bizarrely shaped speedboat was racing over the water.
    “Get down, ******!”
    Noda used some foreign-sounding name to call out to Paprika, who had just entered his dream and was holding his hand. Desperate to avoid being spotted by the speedboat, he then threw himself onto the sand.
    “What is that?!” asked Paprika.
    “*****!” Noda replied with a word that even he didn’t understand.
    In her half-sleeping, half-waking state, Paprika was unable to distinguish the field of vision in Noda’s dream from that on the monitor screen she was watching. In both, Noda seemed to equate her with his childhood friend Mari, now transformed into an adult, a preposterously tall foreign actress wearing a wetsuit. Paprika was not in the habit of watching such things, but even she recognized it as a scene from a Bond film.
    Now the two set off on an insanely fantastic adventure. First they jumped into a river that continued from the sea, then headed off upstream, sometimes gliding underwater, sometimes bobbing on the surface. Something that could have been a boat, or possibly a dragon, started to approach them from further upstream. It projected beams of light from searchlights resembling eyeballs, and spewed flames from its mouth. Noda and Paprika had no choice but to return fire with their submachine guns.
    “What ridiculous dreams you have!”
    Appalled at the realization that she’d been completely transformed into Ursula Andress, Paprika turned her attention to Noda’s thought patterns. He was enjoying this dream.
    Next, Namba, the character whose death had been mourned in Noda’s earlier dream, thrust his upper torso from the head of the boat-beast and started firing wildly at them with his own submachine gun. Namba was Noda’s junior, the maverick Manager of the Development Office; if anything, Noda should have been protecting him. But now they were engaged in a battle that felt more like a war game. Noda showed not the slightest concern that he might kill Namba, nor any fear that he could himself be killed. Perhaps Noda enjoyed having arguments with Namba.
    “What film was this?” asked Paprika.
    Paprika’s question made Noda vaguely aware that it was only a dream. He started acting absurdly and yelling incomprehensible phrases as he crawled out of the river.
    They stood on the bank of a small river next to a broad road. Beyond the river, farm fields stretched endlessly toward a range of mountains in the distance. A small number of rustic shops lined the road. The pair were standing behind one of them, an old tobacco store. Noda seemed to feel a strong anxiety about being there. Paprika followed him