September 1945. Los Alamos, New Mexico.
"Is that an Army phrasebook for Japanese?"
"I'm thinking of trying to pick up a bit of it," Jane says.
"Any particular reason?"
"Daria Sloane, of all people, acting like a girl needs a reason to read a book!"
"Point taken."
"It's part of the whole be-a-photographer, see-the-world thing. I want to bring my camera to Japan one day. And bring back, well..."
"Culture," Daria suggests. "So that people here see people as people and it's that bit harder for any of this to happen again."
Jane sets the booklet aside and gets up to plant a kiss into Daria's hair. "Am I being a damn fool idealist? Again?"
Daria lets her hands settle around Jane's waist. "Bohr has been going on lately about the scientific enterprise being a model for a global community," she says. "Maybe it's the kind of mad idealism that we have to believe in right now, because the alternative is atomic paralysis."
"It feels lonely to not be able to celebrate with the rest of America, doesn't it?"
"It feels lonely to be whatever we are."
"We're in love, doll-of-mine. That much I know."
* * *
November, 1946. Pasadena, California.
"Hey, Jane."
"Why, if it isn't the illustrious Mrs. Sloane!"
"Jane..."
"Fine, fine. What's the news?"
"There's talk of organizing a physics conference in Japan. Reconnect with Yukawa and his students. Oppenheimer has heard from a fellow named Tomonaga who has independently developed what might be a big deal for relativistic quantum mechanics... I'm losing you, aren't I?"
"The question is, Mine-stein, will you be able to go?"
"I might be able to convince them to take one woman. Clerical attachée, or however I can sell myself. The real challenge will be convincing them to take two."
"Oh—oh, Daria!" She tries jumping into Daria's arms. Because she is taller than Daria, this does not work very well. Jane is giggling by the time they are standing stably again, and even Daria is smiling a little.
April, 1947. Honolulu, Hawaii.
"Would you like some pineapple juice with your pineapple Spam?"
"I have had my Spam allotment for this lifetime, thanks," says Daria.
"You better hope they're catching actual fish again by the time we get there."
"I'm cautiously optimistic. Which I know is a big departure for me. Now, the plan is for most of us to stay at first at the 'Washington Heights' American housing complex in Shibuya, but the conference will be happening at the best venue they could find, in a district called Ginza..."
The emergency hospital is a charnel house.
The air tastes of copper and piss and carbolic and necrosis. The building was supposed to have been a library, Jane realizes, but the books were never delivered. Instead, it is the flat open space with walls and a roof where people have been brought to die.
Jane stumbles over her words, dread and panic piling up on top of the unfamiliarity. The second nurse she finds understands her question, or perhaps being directed to the other American was enough.
She looks, sees and runs.
"Daria!"
She rests on her side. Her legs are lacerated, worse on the back than the front, like she had been kneeling away from—
"We found her," a doctor is saying in Japanese that she manages to understand, "shielding a small boy in the doorway to a building." Her new jacket is bundled beside her, burned and tattered. "We are trying to find the boy's parents."
"Hi, Jane," Daria says, with what breath she can manage.
"Oh..." And now Jane collapses to her knees and grips onto both of Daria's hands.
"Where are..." Daria begins.
"You were separated from the rest of the group. They're at an Army field hospital. It took me forever to find you. Some of them are..."
"Dead."
Jane nods.
Daria squeezes Jane's hands.
"Oh, my—my—"
My love, Daria mouths without sound.
Jane nods again.
"It was... I remember... the black rain. I remember the black rain. It fell from the cloud over the city. The cloud..." Daria gulps raggedly for breath. "It was so fast, Jane. Towering, crushing, whole buildings going down. No one knew what to do except to run away as fast as we could... I saw it rip a train from the tracks, crush armored tanks underfoot. And it screamed, Jane. It screamed like a world in pain and out for revenge. Then I saw its spine, the armor plates along its spine, start to glow. I knew its power in that moment, Jane, knew the power I had seen at Trinity. It was... the same flash, the same cloud... and then the black rain..." Daria puts a hand behind Jane's shoulder, and Jane lifts her into an embrace. "Nagasaki. Hiroshima. Jornada del Muerto. It's come back for us. It's all come back."
Together, they weep.
Some time later, a time that neither of them can judge in that room of pain in the burned and bleeding city, a man clears his throat. "Ah-hmmm."
Jane looks up. He looks like he's been wearing the same suit for days. His hair is windswept even indoors. His glasses have round lenses, like smaller and thinner-framed versions of Daria's. He introduces himself.
Jane translates: "He says he's Kenji Noda. He's looking for the American scientists. He says that the Army..." She pauses. "Giving him the run-around, I think."
Daria grimaces. "I might be what's left, then. Daria Sloane," she introduces herself.
Noda speaks, and Jane translates again. "He says he met Godzilla on a boat and survived. He says he has a... a plan."
"A plan?" Daria asks. "To do what?"
Perhaps her tone is clear enough. Noda speaks again, and Jane interprets: "To survive."
Now Noda is pulling papers and a pen out of his suit coat. He shows the papers to Daria, who takes them with a reddened, shaking hand. Jane translates his next statement: "He wants to double-check the numbers. He says they need all the scientists they can get."
Daria reads through the pages. "I like these numbers," she says. She looks from Jane to Noda and back. "Survival," she tells them.