A MEDAL FOR HARRY

                         by Paul Levinson

Copyright (c) 1997 by Paul Levinson.

[Published in BLACK MIST and OTHER JAPANESE FUTURES,
edited by Orson Scott Card & Keith Ferrell, DAW, December 1997]

 
     "Hai!" The waiter bowed quickly and receded like the warm
wind in autumn.  Masazumi "Harry" Harihoto knew he would soon
have the freshest tekkamaki in New York on his plate. He also
knew he wouldn't enjoy a bit of it.
 
     He looked at the rice papers, the rows and rows of crisp,
translucent rice papers on his lap, and shook his head. Somehow
the neat lasered letters on this ancient kind of paper were out
of place.  Such letters belonged on screens; the delicate paper
deserved the tender ministrations of a pen in hand. The
combination of the two -- the government's requirement, its
attempt to cling to some tradition in a written realm otherwise
given over to virtual glyphs -- made him uneasy.
 
     What the letters said -- the report he would deliver
tomorrow -- was even more disturbing.
 
     In fact, it might well make him the most hated person in
Japan.
 
     ***
 
     Harry had few illusions, especially about who he was. An
unknown, though hardworking, bio-historian. One of many
researchers caught up in his nation's obsession to find out why
they had become the undisputed global power on Earth by the
middle of the 21st century.  Computer chips like jewels that
made the world run like clockwork; space stations that gleamed in 
the sky; pearls of bio-mass in the seas to jump-start the food-chain; 
and all the gems were Japanese.
 
     Oh, everyone knew the proximate reason. The 21st century
was the most earthquake prone in recent history.  No one knew
why.  But Japan had finally come up with  buildings that stood
up to them, a saving interface for cities prone to shake like
castanets. "Neuro-spine" construction, the media called it.
Grids ran through the centers of buildings with sensors in every
room, every tile, every wall, every floor -- self-sufficient
networks of such intelligence and interface power that they
could change the arrangement of those rooms, tiles, walls,
floors literally as an earthquake hit, turn the skyscraper into
a lean, tall surfer expertly negotiating the massive waves
below, bending here, leaning just right there, so that it stood
proud with just a splash or two of water on its face, a pittance
from a faucet, when the drum roll was over.  Tokyo had been the
first to be refitted, rewired in a frenzy, spines inserted,
when, as luck would have it, the biggest quake of the century
rolled in.  The monster from below that almost ate Tokyo. Huge
gnashing of tectonic teeth, 9.3 on the scale.  And the newly
jazzed buildings boogeyed to the beat. Swayed madly like kids to
the  rock 'n' roll, dig these rhythms and blues, responding,
adjusting to every tremor their sensors reported -- shuffling the
deck thoroughly and holding on. And when it was over, the Japanese 
sun shone down on steel and glass with nary a cracked pane to
distort its pure reflection.
 
     And then on to the rest of the world, unable to do anything but
cheer and embrace and pay for this astonishing demonstration of
Japanese intelligent technology.  Forget about cars, computers,
holo-screens, even robots and a handful of scientists in space.
There were _people_ at stake here -- masses of plain, workaday,
food-on-the-table people who quite rightly valued their lives
high above any gadget or celestial discovery.  And when
Japanese algorithms and interface safeguarded the lives of
people in San Francisco, Yerevan, Rome, Buenos Aires, when
earthquakes in each of these cities and others shook, rattled,
and rolled with no fuss, no bother, except to a few pots and
pans, their diverse peoples and governments lost all pretension
of superiority, even equality, to the Japanese culture. Japan
can do it better, why not let it in.  Protectionism against
what?  Our own salvation?
 
     America with its faults and West Coast cities ever at risk
was especially grateful, especially receptive.
 
     Nippon was on top, indisputably, at last. Forget hansei --
this was an age of indisputable pride, fulfillment of Japanese
destiny.  No room for any regret, no place for reflection tinged
with even the slightest ambivalence,  At least, not publicly.
 
     But success always comes with its thin, inner sister
insecurity, Harry and his people had found.  Yes, they'd
invented a truly breakthrough technology, but why them?  To the
world they presented a face of only smiling, boundless confidence.
But to themselves they wondered: why them? Luck was a poor foundation 
on which to launch a rosy future.  Hard work was more reliable, but not 
very inspiring when you came right down it no matter what the propaganda 
said. Not understanding the true source of their achievements led to
doubts about whether their success would continue, whether Japan
was really the "sun of twenty-one" -- the center and light of
human life in the later 21st century -- but most of all, whether
the United States of North America, still the second most
powerful nation on Earth, might one day come back and reclaim
its throne.
 
     Unlike the Euro imperialists of the 19th century, whose
power derived from far-flung possessions that got minds of their
own in the 20th, the power of America had always come from
within, enhanced now by the voluntary inclusion of Canadian
provinces and Mexican states and Caribbean islands in the
American concordance. This giant was no longer on the cutting
edge of anything any more except antique music and movies, 
but it was still a threat.  A dull blade can do much damage.
 
     "Insecurity is spelled with an i-n-U-s," Yamakira had said
just last year, "in us, and in U.S." He was the Japanese Freud,
so he should know.  Far more than Harry, who was paid with a
lifetime of job stability and semi-respectability not to know
but to do his research. One of many, following a thread.
 
     The waiter appeared again with green tea and a
check-screen, out of sight before Harry had a chance to look up
and say thank you.  He pressed one key for acceptance of the
charges, another for the standard gratuity, and sipped the
liquid.  It felt good on his lips, hot enough to inflame his
thermal nerve, not enough to burn.
 
     In a world in which information was everywhere, as ripe for
the taking as fruit in an orchard, those like Harry who
collected information were low on the pole -- easy come, easy
go, like the data they procured, like the waiter with the check.
Spin,  relationship, position -- wringing meaning and knowledge
from the information, tea-like, wine-like, magic-like -- that
was the plum job, the one truly worthy of respect.
 
     Yet Harry had found, mostly to his dismay, that sometimes
information  is so searing that it writes its own meaning, sets
its own unalterable spin. He hadn't wanted this task, he
reminded himself as he looked at his papers.  He hadn't believed
for a minute that this path would lead to anything other than
another dead end.  Yet he had done his duty and performed all
the tests as stipulated and compiled the statistics and checked
and rechecked his results and he was now sure that what he held
in his lap like a burning filament was truth. The figures before
and after 1945 were conclusive. The pattern they revealed beyond
contention.
 
     And what was he to do with this truth? Simply state it to
his audience tomorrow at Rockefeller University, the
newly-purchased crown of the Japanese educational system?
 
     For God's sake, the Prime Minister himself would be there!
 
     The Master Spinner of all.
 
     ***
 
     Well, it had gone better than he had expected.  No horror,
no ridicule, no crowds laughing out loud and hooting him off the
stage as his nightmares had proclaimed -- just polite attention,
the classic way of his people.
 
     He lay in bed, the earliness of the next morning leaking in 
the window, wondering where he'd go from here. He stroked Suzie's 
head as she lay sleeping on his chest.  She had soft golden hair, 
as if woven from the Japanese sun at daybreak.  But she was as
American as they came.  Blond was still the ideal of American
culture, for that matter of many Japanese men as well, including
Harry.  He'd been attracted to her the moment she'd joined his
research team in Tokyo three years ago.  But he'd kept his
distance.  Don't mix work with pleasure, mud with rainbows.
Builds you nothing but frustration.  Who'd have predicted that
they'd be in his bed together here in New York City, further
away in some ways from her home in Montana than Harry's in
Japan.  But this was no ordinary work.  And the pressure it
engendered, well, it brought people together.
 
     "Still mulling over the report?"  Her eyelids fluttered
open against his neck.
 
     "Yeah," Harry said.
 
     "It's not your responsibility," Suzie sighed, coming more
fully awake and confronting what had been their topic of
conversation for weeks on end now.
 
     "You're wrong.  Of course it is."
 
     She put her lips near his chest, the palm of her hand on
his stomach. "You -- we -- collect the data.  Make the
connections.  We can't be responsible for what those in power do
with them."
 
     He kissed her head.  "That's what scientists have been
saying for centuries.  Make the connections.  Make the theories.
Make the weapons.  Then log off the project and let the
politicians decide what to do with them.  But if the politicians
use what we give them to hurt people, then it's our
responsibility, isn't it?"
 
     "No," Suzie said, "it isn't.  Politicians will hurt people,
take advantage of people, manipulate them, regardless of what
you and I do.  That's what they do."  She ran her lips and then
her tongue across his breast.  "The hell with the politicians,"
she murmured. "Forget about them."
 
     Harry closed his eyes, felt Suzie's warm breath.
Politicians had all but completely left the premises of his mind
when the phone rang.
 
     "Mmm ... don't answer," Suzie said.
 
     But Harry had to answer, because for him, ever since he
could remember, the phone ring aroused that part of his brain
which was expecting the most important call of his life.
 
     This time, at last, his brain might have been right.
 
     "It's the Embassy," Harry said, moving Suzie's head from his
body to the bed as gently as he could and hustling into his
clothes.  "The Prime Minister wants to see me there in an hour."
 
     ***
 
     An invitation to meet with the Prime Minister. 
 
     This _wasn't_ the classic Japanese way, nor was it an
invitation. It was an order. But it was also an honor, a high
and rare honor, and Harry was proud.
 
     He looked around the Embassy office.  A single blood-red
daffodil, forced to blush in a bowl of bone-white stones in
March, was the only concession to decoration.  This _was_ the Japanese
way -- don't crowd your aesthetic palette like a Western
omelette, take the time to derive the full amount of pleasure
obtainable from the contemplation of a single form.  Time enough
to replace it when it had exhausted your capacity to see
something wondrous in it.
 
     Harry's capacity for such enjoyment had been strained long
before he'd entered the office, had been so for months now...
 
     "The Prime Minister will see you now," the smartly dressed
silken haired woman told him.  She was beautiful, in a
traditional way, but he was too nervous to more than abstractly
note it.
 
     "Dr. Harihoto," the PM rose and shook his hand. "Please,
sit down."
 
     He was even taller than he looked on full-wall screen -- or
at the Rockefeller auditorium yesterday. Some American ancestry
there, his political opponents whispered. But this rumor had
only increased the PM's public appeal.  
 
     Junichi Takahara -- also "Harry" to his close friends, a
coincidence that added to Harihoto's unease -- had come to power
two decades ago.  A national hero,  world-wide hero, because
he'd had the foresight, the good fortune, to speed the re-wiring
of his local Tokyo Prefecture before the 2047 earthquake hit.
The Mayor of Tokyo had become the personification of this
freedom from the throbbings of the earth; his smile was its
emblem. And he was equally adept at taking the pulse of
political events and riding them to perfection.  The combination
had landed him in the Prime Minister's seat -- a seat from which
he seemed increasingly willing and able to drive the world.
 
     Masazumi "Harry" Harihoto bowed deeply and sat down.
 
     The PM nodded slightly.  "Tell me, Dr. Harihoto, are you
surprised that we are not surprised by your finding?"
 
     Tough call, Harry thought. To admit surprise might imply
some sort of disapproval on his part -- as if Harry thought that
the Prime Minister ought not know such things. On the other
hand, to say he was not surprised could give the arrogant
impression that Harry already knew the Prime Minister's
thoughts.  "A bio-historian expects all sorts of possibilities,"
Harry tried a middle, non-committal course.
 
     "Dammit!" The PM banged his hand on the table.  "I want
honesty from you, not politeness.  This courtesy equivocation is
the curse of our country, and it will be our undoing."
 
     "Yes," Harry said carefully. "I understand."
 
     "Please review for me, then, how you came to these
conclusions, and tell me how you feel about them -- not as a
scientist, but a citizen."
 
     Harry recited the first part of his study.  The careful
intelligence tests -- not the old Stanford-Binet IQ tests, but
new meta-cognitive ones designed by the Tokyo Institute at the
turn of the century -- the ones whose political agenda, every
psychometrician knew, was to maximize the Asiatic IQ advantage
that even the old Stanford-Binet tests had begun to uncover. And
then the special algorithmic retro-treatment of the old
1930-1940-1950 IQ scores to make them comparable to the current
scores.  Followed by exhaustive scanning of current Japanese and
Euro-American genomes -- Suzie's specialty -- and  comparison of
those with genomes available from the last century. And there
was no doubt as to the conclusion: "I'm sure we're dealing with
a slightly but significantly and literally different type of
human being -- one that first appeared in the late 1940s, and
began to reach productive and influential adulthood in the 1970s
and 1980s. A tiny but highly potent genetic change. More
intelligent than our predecessors, that's for sure.  But also
more social, more organized, more hardworking, less
destructively hedonistic. `Homo sapiens _japanicus_,' as I said
in my report."
 
     "Yes," the PM smiled, "that has a ring to it -- but likely
not to American or European ears."  He laughed in raspy barks --
staccato but not unpleasant to Harry's ears.  "Our success in
commerce and science, our inventiveness, our leadership of the
world community, all neatly explained as a consequence of our
being a new human species.  Very nice.  A powerful, reliable
springboard. I like it."
 
     Harry offered a tremulous smile.  "Thank you.  Though as I
said in my report, other cultures in history have had highly
inventive phases too. Edison and Bell and the Americans at the
end of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution itself for
that matter--"
 
     "Irrelevant to our present situation," the PM interrupted
and waved a dismissive hand.  "Maybe they were new species too
-- no one had DNA scans back then -- maybe the definition of
human species needs to be changed.  But those 19th-century
thrusts have run their course now anyway.  What counts is the
correlation of your biograms of today's Japanese people with the
actual performance of Japan that the whole world has witnessed
and applauded."
 
     "Of course," Harry nodded.  But to himself he still
thought: am I really so much more intelligent than Suzie, so
much clearer a thinker and better a worker, as to really
constitute a different human species?  Hard to definitively
say. Even if he and Suzie were close in aptitude, she could still 
be at the top of her class, and he, well, maybe not at the top of 
his, and--
 
     "And now the second part, if you please, Doctor."
 
     Yes, the second part -- the 64 million yen question, as
they said on the ever-popular quiz show.  Discovery of the new
cognitive structure was amazing enough.  But its source -- that
was the atom bomb.  
 
     Literally.

     ***
 
     "Doctor?"
      
     Harry was sweating.  Nuclear weapons were all but gone now
-- their removal the pot of real gold at the end of the Cold
War, insured by a world willing to make sure that no small
bandit nation started producing them again.  Nuclear weapons --
the flesh-melting special anguish of the 20th century.  The
devil incarnate, the inverse horror lining, of every Nipponese
dream.  What further damage would his discovery do to this
injury that every one of his people carried deep in their souls?
What demons was he setting loose?
 
     He and his team had tested their hypothesis very
stringently -- on mice, on monkeys, and yes, even on people.

     Harry cleared his throat, but his mind was beyond any calming
or clarification.  He forced himself to speak. "There is no doubt in 
our findings. Radiation -- of a certain specific kind, a kind engineers 
call general and high-level and dirty -- was the catalyst for our leap 
in intelligence."
 
     "Radiation from the Hiroshima bomb," the PM finished the
thought.
 
     "Yes."
 
     "Nagasaki too," the PM said.  He wanted this spelled out in
every excruciating detail.
 
     "Yes."
 
     "That's where the new DNA strands, the first spurts on the
intelligence tests, first appeared.  Correct, Doctor?"
 
     "Yes."
 
     The Prime Minister nodded slowly and looked at Harry with
intense, probing, but approving eyes.  Why approving? Why not
furious, why not outraged that Harry had located the source of
Japanese ascendancy in the charred dead breath of the only
atomic weapons ever used on human beings?
 
     "And your view, please, of the impact of this news on world
psychology?" the PM prompted.
 
     "Takahara-sama, my area of expertise is not public
psychology--"
 
     "Dr. Harihoto!  Please do not make me repeat myself.  I've
already explained that I want your opinion on this as a private
citizen!  And drop the `sama' please.  I'm not a shogun.  I'm
not a Lord. I'm Prime Minister, elected by the people's
representatives.  Much more appropriate to this day and age."
 
     Harry swallowed, said nothing.
 
     "`Sir' will do -- the American way," the Prime Minister
said.
 
     Harry swallowed again.  "Well, Sir, I suppose in a peculiar
way this validates the dropping of the bombs by the Americans.
I doubt that such news would be very popular in Tokyo!"
 
     "Indeed," the PM agreed, "much of our country's motivation
in the past 100 years has come from a hatred of the Americans
for those bombs -- a desire for retribution that was sublimated,
thankfully, into healthy economic competition."
 
     Healthy for whom? Harry wondered. For the myriad
middle-level workers like him, tantalized by the American cult
of individuality on the one hand, obliged on the other to
dissolve their individuality into the group good?  Obliged by
something much stronger than social dictate, obliged by the
deeper commandments of genes? Harry shook his head with some
bitterness, then caught himself and remade his poker face for
the Prime Minister.
 
     Yet his thoughts continued to race. Healthy for the world
in some way, maybe.  Healthy for those freed of the tithe of
earthquakes. But not healthy for his grandparents, who had
worked 15-hour days through the 90s, not healthy for his parents
either, who had worked till they were too old and tired to enjoy
the Spring of the economic revolution they had created.  For the
Japanese miracle was somehow always more statistical than
personal, and even in this great time of Japanese predominance
the average American still lived better than his or her Japanese
counterpart.  
 
     New species indeed, Harry thought sourly. We're no
different than the bulk of all other humans in wanting more
things than our income can buy.  A man's reach must exceed his
grasp, or what's a credit line for --  but then he caught
himself again.  These were personal opinions, not worthy of the
professional bio-historian that he was.  But hadn't the PM asked
him for just such personal thoughts?
 
     He realized the Prime Minister was talking again. "But what
if your discovery led to another conclusion -- an additional
conclusion -- one perhaps more palatable to the Japanese public."
 
     "Sir?"
 
     "Well, Doctor, who do you think was really responsible for
Hiroshima?"
 
     "I -- well, the American military, of course -- a new
President, untutored, under pressure from his--"
 
     "Come, come, Doctor.  Don't bore me with the nonsense we
feed to our school children.  Do you think the American military
started the war?"
 
     Harry wasn't sure what the PM was getting at.  "No, not
literally," he finally stammered.  "But they were cutting off
our resources and--"
 
     "Doctor, please. You know the answer as well as I.  Who
started the war with the Americans?  There's one, unambiguous
answer. Please."
 
     This was something even Japanese historians never talked
about. It pained Harry to even think it.  But he willed himself
to say it. "We did, Sir.  At Pearl Harbor."
 
     "Good. Finally some honesty. Now tell me this: If Pearl
Harbor was responsible for the war that brought the atomic
bombs, and the bombs were responsible for our cognitive edge, is
not Pearl Harbor responsible for our edge?"
 
     "Well, yes," Harry was beginning to see where the PM was
going, but wasn't sure if he liked it. "I suppose one could say
that in as much as Pearl Harbor started the war that brought the
bombs that created the radiated environment that changed our
evolution, we as creators of Pearl Harbor are in a sense
creators--"
 
     "Yes," the PM interrupted, smiling. "We are the creators of
our own destiny! You're beginning to get it, Doctor, good. We,
not the Americans, started the ball rolling on this. Your
discovery shows that contrary to what all of us have always
unconsciously believed, our civilization is not just a reactive,
imitative one that somehow managed to get the upper hand.  No!
We brought our own mastery into being almost entirely on our
own!  The _Americans_ were the reactors in achievement of _our_
destiny!  That's what your painstaking work has shown us.
You've brought great honor to  your country!  I bow to you!"
 
     And, incredibly, the PM bowed, if just slightly.
 
     Harry didn't know what to say. His mind was churning.  What
a price to pay for destiny, a part of him thought -- the agony,
the deaths of innocents, of children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He couldn't think of anything worse. Anything more nauseating.
Yet a part of him felt a perverse itch of pride, of power.  And
a part of him marveled at that perversity.
 
     The Prime Minister seemed to see all of this in him. "Yes,
it feels good, doesn't it?  Don't deny it.  It feels good.
Creators of our own destiny.  Scientists -- our scientists,
American scientists, scientists all over -- have struggled for
decades to improve our species through genetic engineering.  But
it doesn't work. Evolution doesn't work that way -- can't be
trifled with by a cut here, a snip there.  Those things work on
rice and tomatoes, but don't seem to have  lasting effects on
our complex human species.  But our ancestors triggered a way
that worked!  They did it the old-fashioned way.  By hard work.
You change the human genome not by editing _it_, but the world all 
around it. Then the world bombards the genes, some of the radiation 
gets through, some of the genes change, and these genes build
technologies that change the world.  Make the world safe from
earthquakes.  The spiral of progress.  That's always been the
way of natural selection and human technology."
 
     "But our great-grandfathers couldn't have known this would
happen when they first attacked the Americans," Harry objected,
though impressed by the PM's reasoning. "Surely they didn't
_intend_ for the Americans to drop the atomic bombs."
 
     "Irrelevant," the PM gave his dismissive wave again.
"Irrelevant what our great-grandfathers did or did not intend.
What counts is what they did, how they acted -- and your
discovery shows that their actions, their hands, were moved by
destiny.  The militarism of our forefathers was but the
irrepressible yearning of the old species to shed its cocoon and
let the new species emerge, to bring that cocoon into the harsh
light of day that would burn away the old, and set the butterfly
free."
 
     Harsh light indeed, Harry thought, and shuddered as he saw
before him the immediate aftermaths of the Hiroshima and
Nagasaki bombings that every child at every computer screen in
Japan must have seen hundreds of times.  For an instant he
imagined that maybe what this other Harry was getting at was
using the atom bomb again to somehow make the Japanese even more
intelligent.  Could this PM be so heinous as to contemplate
creation of earthquakes worse than earthquakes, hells so hot that
they'd burn out even the insulated circuits in the buildings of
the world, reducing them to so much rubble like the dumb gaping
structures of the past? But no, the PM was a master politician,
not a madman, and besides, Harry's report made clear that other
background conditions were necessary, industrial pollutants in
the air and water that the 21st century had long since cleaned
away.  No, the spurs of evolution are always multi-factorial,
and the irretrievability of some of those factors meant that,
even if someone dared to resurrect the decisive factor of the
bomb, the  emergence of the homo japanicus butterfly was not
likely to be repeated or enhanced.  The emergence was unique, a
one-shot, long-shot odd-ball twist in history.
 
     Emergence of the butterfly -- the PM did have the
politician's way with words, even if his metaphors of species
phylogeny and individual ontogeny were a bit jumbled. "And will
the Japanese public like this?" Harry finally asked, though he
knew the answer.
 
     "The shine in your eyes a few seconds ago demonstrated that
it will," the PM answered.  "We will release your report with
the proper spin. And next year, we will begin the rehabilitation
of Tojo with a medal awarded to his memory."
 
     "Oh, the Americans won't stand for _that_," Harry replied,
emboldened now that the burden of his delivery to the PM was
obviously behind him. "They have a stubborn sense of their own
righteous role in history.  And even in their weakened
condition, we need their cooperation -- their consumption."
 
     The PM smiled his smile.  "Really?  I think to the contrary
that the Americans will more than stand for it -- they'll cheer
it. Because your report will not only praise Tojo's role in
this, but the American President's as well.  And we'll
commission, and pay for with great ceremony, a major
international medal issued in his honor too.  After all," the
Prime Minister suddenly produced a small choice bottle of sake
and offered Harry a bowl, "your namesake, my namesake, deserves
credit for dropping the bombs, for completing the tragedy with
an awful final act from which our new victorious age arose.
Death when pushed to its limits feeds life.  This has always
been the way of the universe.  He is a hero, however unwitting,
in the origin of our new species."
 
     Harry tried to sip his sake.  His hand shook, as if the
very building they were in were, impossibly, in the palsying throes 
of a quake. "You wouldn't dare...," he managed.
 
     "Oh yes.  I would.  And will. We'll mint a solid gold medal
for Harry S. Truman."

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