A Midsummer's Equation

TWO

By the time she had both sneakers on, the hands of the old clock on the wall were at half past one. Right on time, Narumi thought. If she took her bike, she could be there in fifteen minutes. That would leave her plenty of time to talk with the others.

“I’m heading out, Mom,” she called over the counter.

Setsuko came out through the long curtain hanging in the doorway to the kitchen. She had a handkerchief tied around her hair, a sure sign she was the middle of prepping dinner. “How long will you be?” she asked.

Setsuko looked young for a woman in her midfifties, Narumi often thought, and if she ever bothered to put on makeup, she would probably look even younger. But the most she could be bothered with in the summer was some sunscreen and foundation.

“I’m not sure. Maybe two hours?” Narumi said. “There’s a couple of guests coming in tonight, right? Know what time they’re getting here?”

“They didn’t say exactly, but in time for dinner I should imagine.”

“Well, I’ll try to be back before then.”

“Don’t forget that Kyohei is coming tonight, too,” her mother reminded her.

“Oh, right. Is he coming by himself?”

“That’s what they said. His train should be getting here anytime.”

“I’ll stop at the station on my way,” Narumi offered. “I’ll pick him up. I don’t want him to get lost.”

“Thanks, dear. I don’t think my brother would be happy with me if I lost his only son.”

Narumi nodded, thinking that was hardly likely in a small town like theirs. Outside, the sun was beating down. The large piece of polished obsidian engraved with the name of the inn reflected the sunlight, making it almost too brilliant to look at.

Slinging her bag over her shoulder, Narumi got on her bike and headed for the station. The roads in the area were hilly, but Green Rock Inn was up on a bluff, so she could coast all the way.

She was there in under five minutes, and passengers from the train that had just arrived were already coming out—only a dozen or so of them in all.

Among them she spotted a boy in a red T-shirt and khaki shorts, wearing a backpack.

The boy’s sullen expression looked familiar, but Narumi hesitated a moment before calling out to him. The reason for her hesitation was twofold. For one, it had been two years since they’d met, and if that really was he, he was a lot bigger than she remembered. Two, he was talking familiarly with the man walking next to him, but her mother had just told her he was coming alone, and she knew this man wasn’t her uncle.

Thankfully, Kyohei noticed her and, after a parting word to the man, came running up. “Hi!”

“Hey there, Kyohei. You’ve gotten big.”

“You think?”

“You’re in fifth grade now?”

“Yeah. Did you come down to get me?” He looked up at her, his eyes squinting in the sun.

“I just wanted to make sure you got here in one piece. I actually have someplace to go, but I have a little time, so if you need help finding the inn, I can show you the way.”

The boy shook his head and waved his hands for good measure. “Nah, I’m fine. I got a map, and I’ve been here before. Just up the road, right?” He pointed to the slope Narumi had just descended.

“You got it. Look for the big rock out in front of the house.”

“Yeah, I remember.” The boy started to walk.

“Hey, Kyohei,” Narumi stopped him. “Do you know that man? The one you were talking to.” She pointed toward the station where the man who had been walking with Kyohei was talking on his cell phone.

“Nah, I don’t know him. We were just on the train together.”

“Do you always talk to strangers?”

The man didn’t look particularly suspicious, but Narumi felt a certain responsibility to instill a little common sense in her cousin.

“Some old man started yelling at me, and he helped me out, that’s all.”

“Oh,” Narumi said, wondering more about why the old man had been yelling at her cousin than anything else.

“Okay, so, see you later?”

She smiled at him. “I’ll be back in a couple hours, we can catch up then.”

Kyohei nodded and started walking up the hill. Narumi watched him go for a bit, then got back on her bike. She saw the man from the train waiting at the taxi stand. Too bad for him, she thought. The taxis came whenever a train was due, but there were only two or three of them in town. If there wasn’t one waiting there now, it would be a good thirty minutes before the next one showed up.

Narumi pedaled along the road paralleling the train line, enjoying the sun on her face. The sea breeze was tossing her hair around, but she didn’t mind. She’d kept her hair short for most of the last decade. It was a lot less trouble that way. Sometimes after a dive, she’d walk over to the bar and have a beer without even taking a shower. Guess I can’t really fault Mom for not wearing any makeup, can I?

Eventually, the road took a turn away from the coast and began to climb. Here there was a shopping center and a bank and a few other buildings, making it more of a proper town than the area near the station. A little further on, she came to the gray building which served as the local community center and the site of a very important hearing that day.

She parked her bike outside and took a look at the large tour bus sitting in the parking lot. She walked over until she could see the name by the bus’s door: “DESMEC.” That’s what everyone called them, but their official name was the Deep Sea Metals National Corporation. To Narumi, they were the enemy.

No one was on the bus, which meant they had already arrived and were getting ready. It’s on, Narumi thought, making a beeline for the entrance.

An official from city hall was checking people in at the door. Narumi showed her admission badge and walked to the lobby, where a large number of people had already gathered. Her eyes scanned the crowd until she heard someone calling out her name.

Motoya Sawamura, weaving between people, was striding toward her. His face and arms were darkly tanned. Since moving home from Tokyo last spring, Sawamura had been working at a home appliances store in town, and he did some freelance journalism on the side.

“You’re late,” he said as soon as he got close enough to be heard. “What were you up to?”

“Sorry. Is everyone else here?”

“Already inside. Come on.”

Narumi followed Sawamura into one of the waiting rooms off to the side of the main hall. She wondered what strings he’d pulled to reserve a whole room for their group on a day like today. There were already a dozen or so familiar faces gathered. Half the people were the same age as Narumi, while the others were older, in their forties or fifties. They came from a variety of occupations, but all were local residents. Some she had known from before, but most she only met through Save the Cove.

Sawamura took a deep breath and looked over the room. “The pamphlet I passed around has everything we’ve discovered through our research, and you can be sure that they’re going to say some things that disagree with our findings. That’s going to be the battlefield this war is fought on, so look out, and take notes, but keep your comments to yourselves. The real fight’s tomorrow. Today we listen to what they have to say, and tonight, we talk strategy. Any questions?”

“There’s nothing in here about the money,” one of the men said, holding up his pamphlet. He was a social studies teacher at the local middle school. “I’m sure they’re going to make a big point of the economic benefits their proposed development is going to bring to the community.”

Sawamura smiled at the teacher. “I didn’t feel the need to put it in there because that argument’s already so full of holes, we hardly need to poke new ones. The story changes every five minutes depending on who’s doing the talking. Yeah, they’ll bring it up again today, and I’m sure they’ll make it sound sweet, but anyone who thinks those benefits are coming their way is a fool.”

“The money’s not what’s important here,” Narumi chimed in. “Protecting the natural beauty of our coastline is. Destroy the environment, and you can’t put it back the way it was, no matter how many millions you throw at it.”

The social studies teacher shrugged at that, but was silent.

There was a knock, and the door opened. A man who worked at the community center poked his head in. “It’s almost time. If I could get you to move into the meeting hall?”

“Let’s go,” Sawamura said, sounding every bit the leader.

The chairs in the big hall were tiered, like bleachers. If they filled all of them, they could get four or five hundred people in here, Narumi thought. It had been built with the idea of welcoming speakers from other parts of the country, but as far as Narumi could remember, no one famous had ever come to give a talk in Hari Cove.

Narumi and the others from the group sat up front. She set her pamphlet on the table in front of her and got ready to take notes. Next to her, Sawamura was checking his audio recorder.

The seats in the large auditorium slowly began to fill. The mayor and a few other local officials were in attendance. She’d heard there would be people from the neighboring towns as well. The buzz had been building for days. Everyone was interested, and nobody knew anything—the perfect combination to fill a room.

As she was looking over the crowd, her eyes met a man’s eyes. He was probably a little over sixty, with gray hair parted down the middle and a white, open-collar shirt. The man smiled and nodded curtly in her direction. She nodded back, wondering who he was.

A narrow conference table had been set up on the stage, with a line of folding chairs behind it. Small nameplates in front of each seat listed a name and credentials. Most of the people were from DESMEC, but there were some independent scientists, too—an oceanographer and a physicist. A large screen hung on the wall behind the chairs.

Now the doors to the front of the hall opened, and men in suits came filing in, their faces hard. Someone from city hall silently led them to the stage.

A short distance away from the table was a chair for the emcee. A man with glasses, about thirty, picked up the microphone.

“It’s time, so we’d like to get things started. We’re still missing one participant, but he should be here any moment—”

The side door opened with a slam, and a man came dashing in, carrying his suit jacket over his arm.

Narumi noted with surprise that it was the man she’d seen at the station, the one talking to Kyohei. Sweat glistened at his temples. He must have given up on the taxi. It was a short distance from the station by bicycle, but quite a journey on foot.

The man sat down behind the nameplate that read “Manabu Yukawa, Assistant Professor of Physics, Imperial University.”

“Well, now that we’re all here,” the emcee resumed, “I’d like to begin this informational hearing concerning the development of undersea resources in the Hari Cove area. My name’s Mr. Kuwano. I’m in the Deep Sea Metals National Corporation’s public outreach office, and I thank you for your interest in our project. We’ll start with an overview from our technology division.”

A man whose nameplate announced him as a manager in DESMEC’s technology division stood as the lights in the room darkened. The words “Developing Undersea Resources” appeared on the screen in giant, bold letters.

Narumi straightened in her chair, not wanting to miss a word. She knew that protecting the ocean was her job. No one would do it for her. And if she failed, the natural jewel that was Hari Cove would be torn apart in the name of economic progress.

It had all started with a report from the committee of natural energy resources at METI—the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry—that had shocked Hari Cove and the surrounding towns. The report stated that the region of the sea beginning a few dozen kilometers to the south had been selected as a top candidate for testing the commercial viability of developing hydrothermal polymetallic ore.

This ore was found in lumps of rock that formed in the sediment around hydrothermal vents on the seabed. They contained copper, lead, zinc, gold, and silver, as well as rich deposits of the rare metals germanium and gallium. Were it possible to recover these rare metals, then Japan would go from resource-poor to resource-rich overnight. The government was putting a lot into the development of the necessary technologies, with DESMEC leading the charge.

This latest finding had generated such excitement because it was at the relatively shallow depth of eight hundred meters. The shallower the water, the easier and cheaper recovery would be. That it was only a few dozen kilometers from land also improved the viability of the site.

When the report made the rounds, Hari Cove and the towns nearby had erupted—not with anger over the coming destruction of the natural habitat, but with excitement at the prospect of a new industry and the jobs it would bring.