Read The Ark Sakura for Free Online Page B

survive.”
    “No, just to enjoy my last moments. Lung cancer isn’t my idea of fun.”
    We looked at each other, and shared a laugh for no reason.
    “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “I guess it would be smarter to go straight to the ship than to waste time stopping by their office on a hunch. Are you coming with me?”
    “Sure—as far as the first-aid room. It’s right on this floor, somewhere in back. You’ve got to attend to a sprain or it’ll get worse.”
    “Hold on just a minute. That’s not what you said before. You promised you’d help me find them.”
    “I did?”
    “Besides, first aid isn’t going to help me drive my jeep. It’s parked down in the underground parking lot. The clutch weighs a ton.”
    “You want me to drive it?”
    “What’s the matter, can’t you drive?”
    “Are you kidding? You’re looking at a former truckdriver. I’m just wondering why I should go that far out of my way for you.”
    “Well, I gave you back your watch, but I notice you haven’t given me back my ticket.”
    “If you want it back, just say so. I thought you’d traded me this for the rest of the eupcaccias.” He started to get up, fumbling in his hip pocket. Alarm took possession of me, as if I were watching an egg roll toward a table edge.
    “Nobody’s asking for it back!”
    “Lower your voice, will you?” he said. “I can’t stand loud voices. Dogs barking, hogs squealing, people yelling—it all drives me nuts.”
    Hogs. Did someone say hogs? My ears buzzed as if filled with crawling insects. I wasn’t always a porker. When I was a boy, I was as skinny as a shish kebab skewer. Not all hogs are fat, either, as far as that goes. “Hog” became synonymous with “Fatso” back when ninety percent of all hogs raised were Yorkshires. The Yorkshire is a lard breed, and before synthetic oils and fats came into wide use, it was an important source of fat. Not just cooking fat: lard from Yorkshire hogs was used for a variety of things, from all-purpose salve and tallow to ointment for rectal suppositories—even a mustache pomade said to have been popular with the French aristocracy. Then, as demand for pork grew, the Yorkshire breed gave way increasingly to the bacon-type Landrace breed and the loin-and-ham-type Berkshire breed, both of which have a thin fat layer and a high proportion of excellent lean meat. With four extra ribs, the newer breeds were considerably longer and sturdier than their ancestors.
    My biological father (a pariah in his own hometown) goes by the nickname Inototsu—literally “charging boar,” which is certainly an accurate description of his personality. Not only is he as reckless and dangerous as a wild boar, but he used to run a fishermen’s inn out on a rocky cove called Inokuchi, or Boar’s Mouth (who would have thought the insect dealer would know anything about it!). The cove, where Mount Boar trails into the sea, is so called because it looks like the snout of a boar.
    That there should be some physical resemblance between my biological father and myself probably couldn’t be helped. Both of us weigh nearly two hundred twenty pounds, but Inototsu is well over six feet tall and has a neck so short that he can’t wear ready-made shirts. He really seems less a hog than a giant boar, with all the domineering brute force of one. As a matter of fact, he is clumsy and timorous, but people always defer to him and are awed by his appearance. To hide a peculiarly wavy hairline, he used to wear a loud green hunting cap, which only increased people’s apprehension.
    He always liked to stand out. He used to hang around the city hall when he had nothing better to do, and even had namecards printed up with some official-sounding bureaucratic title or other. Eventually he got more ambitious, and started hankering after a real councilman’s badge. His wife (my stepmother) was a practical woman; instead of protesting, she had him turn the deed to the fishing inn over to her