ONCE MORE we traversed the interminable concrete corridors of that subterranean city, but this time we came out into a hall illuminated by natural daylight. The walls here were neatly plastered, and the doors more ornamental.
"Getting near the high brass," murmured Chamberlin.
The last hall was terminated by a window and balcony, beyond which the green of a distant hillside could be seen. Before we reached this, however, our guide stopped at a heavy aluminum door and directed us into a sort of ante-room, occupied by uniformed guards and a male receptionist. A few words were exchanged in Japanese, and the guards quickly and expertly frisked us, although this had already been done once. This ceremony over, another door was opened and we were admitted to a large and sunny office, whose big windows gave a panoramic view of the whole crater.
Our eyes were so dazzled by the sudden burst of light, and our curiosity was so great to see that fantastic place by daylight, that we did not at once see the man who sat behind a desk opposite the windows, watching us with an expression of high amusement. Baker first noticed him.
"Phobat Rau! So you're back of this, after all!"
The other stood up. He was a short man, evidently Burmese, and wore a tan military uniform. His smile revealed a bonanza of gold teeth, while his thick lensed spectacles glittered in the brilliant sunshine streaming in through the windows.
"It is a great pleasure to have you here, Professor Baker, although there is in the circumstances some cause for regret. But all that in its time. What do you think of our Buddha?"
As he spoke, Baker was glancing about the room, and I saw that his eye had alighted upon an instrument just behind Rau's desk. A second look showed it to be a tape recorder, with the operating lamp on.
"Until we have more data," replied Baker, "our views are still as you have them recorded."
Phobat Rau laughed delightedly. "You're a good observer, Professor. Yes, I must confess I was curious about your reactions to our charge. So you doubt that he is alive?"
Baker nodded. "Under the circumstances last night, there was every chance for a mistake, or a hoax."
"In that case, perhaps you would like a second look. He's right across the valley now, having his breakfast."
We hastened to the window. Rau's office, we found, was in a sort of cliff house perched half way up the northern side of the crater, and commanded a view of the entire area, now brightly illuminated by the morning sunlight. We easily identified the enormous furniture of last night, against the west cliff about a mile away. But we had little interest in these structures, monstrous as they were. For, sitting cross-legged on the ground before the low table, was the giant. At that distance he did not look so huge—in fact, with an effort we could almost ignore scale and perspective and imagine that he was a normal human fifty feet distant. He appeared a typical young Japanese, his hair cut long in the old style, and wearing a sleeveless tunic like the statues of Buddha. His face was smooth and serene, and he was eating a white pasty looking substance from his great steel dish, using a big spoon. Even as we watched, he finished the meal and stood up, causing the whole building to sway slightly. He glanced about for a moment, his eye lingering briefly in our direction, and then he walked in a leisurely way to the lagoon, where he bent over and rinsed out his utensils. Returning to the table, he placed them carefully in the position we had noted last night. He then straightened to his full height, raised his great arms far up into the morning air and began a series of earth shaking calisthenics. After about ten minutes of this he walked over to the leanto structure, entered and closed a curtain behind him.
Rau, who had been watching us with great amusement, offered an explanation.
"His reading room. Books on his scale would be a bit difficult to make, so he uses microfilm and a projector. The microfilm," he added, "is on eight by ten plates, and the screen is two hundred feet square."
We returned to the desk and took the seats Rau indicated.
"So now," said our host, "you would like to hear a word of explanation, perhaps?"
"Several, if you can spare the time," answered Baker with a dryness equal to Rau's.
"It all began," began Phobat Rau, "on a beautiful summer's day in 1945, August 6, I believe, was the exact date. Perhaps you recall what happened on that day, in the city of Hiroshima. If not, I will refresh your memories. A bomb was dropped on that day, a new type of bomb. It caused a great deal of destruction, and killed tens of thousands of people. Some died at once from the blast and heat, but many more, who had escaped apparently uninjured, developed serious illness days later and died. The cause you know, of course. It was called radiation injury, the internal destruction of cell structure by gamma rays emitted by the bomb.
"Many strange things happened in that blast. In some, injury was confined to particular parts of the body, as the hair. Others were made sterile, in fact, the reproductivefunction and apparatus seemed particularly susceptible to the rays. In many cases, the genes—those vital units within the cell which determine growth and structure and all physical and mental characteristics—the genes were altered, so that children grew abnormally, with deformities or mental sickness.
"But these things you well know. Afterwards biologists and physicians and geneticists came from all parts of the world to study the effects of the atomic bomb, and the flow of learned papers on this subject is not ended even now."
THE SPEAKER paused, as if inviting some comment or question. Seeing that we intended to remain silent, he resumed.
"There was one case, however, which was not studied by western scientists. In many respects, it was the most interesting of all, for the bomb blast and the accompanying deluge of gamma radiation occurred just at the instant of conception. As usual, damage was sustained by the genes, but this damage was of a peculiar and highly special sort. The only gene affected, apparently, was the one controlling growth, although, as you will see presently, other structural and chemical changes took place without which the growth could never have occurred.
"The infant involved was a male, named Kazu Takahashi. He was born prematurely on March 26, 1946, with a weight of fourteen pounds six ounces. The parents were well to do, and the infant was given the best of care, first in a private hospital, and later in its own home.
"During the first few days of life, little Kazu was apparently normal, except for his prematureness and a rather great weight for a seven-month infant. And then the change began. His nurse first noticed an increasing appetite. He cried constantly and would be silent only when feeding. He emptied nursing bottles in a few seconds, after he learned to pull off the nipple, and was soon consuming a quart of milk every hour. The nurse humored him, in order to keep him quiet, and presently became afraid to tell either the parents or the doctor just how much milk her charge was drinking. As the days passed and no ill effects developed, she became less worried, although the daily milk ration had to be increased twice, to 23 quarts a day on the sixth day.
"Kazu doubled his weight in the first eleven days, and at the end of two weeks tipped the scales at 39 pounds. His pink tender skin was now rapidly becoming normal in color and texture, and he was behaving more and more like an ordinary child, although already of startling size. By the fourth week he was drinking 59 quarts of milk a day and weighed 145 pounds. The parents—by now thoroughly alarmed—called in the doctor, who at once realized the cause of the abnormality. He could offer no suggestions, however, save to continue feeding at a rate to keep the child quiet. This, by the sixth week,soared to the incredible figure of 130 quarts a day to feed a baby now five feet tall and weighing 290 pounds. At this point the Takahashi family felt that their problem was getting beyond them, and being Buddhists, they appealed to the local temple—it was not in Hiroshima, but at a nearby town—for assistance. The priests took the child in, after a generous contribution had been made by father Takahashi, and for a time the embarrassing matter seemed solved. The Takahashis went on a three weeks vacation to the south coast of Honshu, and all was peaceful, externally at least.
"When the family returned, they found a note under the door urgently requesting their presence at the temple. When they arrived, they were met by a highly agitated chief priest. Something had to be done, he said. Things were getting out of hand. He then took them to the nursery. Here they beheld a baby that would have been seven feet eight inches tall if it could stand, and which had weighed in that morning on the platform scales in the temple kitchen, at 670 pounds. After hearing the details of the milk bill, father Takahashi wrote out another check and departed hurriedly.
"After the passage of three more weeks, a delegation from the temple again waited upon Mr. Takahashi, with the news that his son now measured 9 feet 3 inches in length, weighed 1175 pounds, and consumed the entire output of a local dairy. They politely requested that he take care of his own infant. Mr. Takahashi as politely refused, and at this point bowed out of our story completely."
Phobat Rau hesitated again and inquired if his statistics were boring us. Baker glanced out of the window and replied that while he ordinarily did not have much appreciation of figures of this kind, under the circumstances they had a certain interest. Rau smiled briefly and continued.
"The summer of 1946 was one of increasing difficulty for the temple. By the beginning of July Kazu weighed 1600 pounds and cried with a voice like a wounded bull. A number of trustworthy medical men examined him, and concurred that his only abnormality was size. In bodily proportions he was quite ordinary, and, for a 3-1/2 month baby, his mental development was, if anything, a bit ahead of normal. The priests took in their belts, appointed eight of the strongest as nursemaids, and wondered where it would all end.
"It was at this point that a member of the Buddhist priesthood from Burma happened to pass through the neighborhood and heard of the infant. After being sworn to secrecy; even from other members of his order, he was allowed to view little Kazu. Now this priest, whose name I might as well admit was Phobat Rau, had perhaps a bit more imagination than some others, and when he looked upon the little monster, he was struck by an idea which was to grow like Kazu himself."
"The Living Buddha," murmured Baker, "Ye Gods, what a symbol."
Rau nodded like a schoolteacher. "A symbol, and more. A machine to rebuild the world, or conquer it!"
BAKER CHOSE to ignore this leading remark. He wanted more of the story.
"So you took him over?"
"Well, it was not so easy as that. You see, I was only a young priest then, and had no resources to undertake such a project. But the more I thought of the possibilities, the more sure I was. But first I had to convince others, and time was short. The priests were near to their limit, and were about to appeal to the Americans. I secured their promise to wait until I could return to Burma, and then I flew to Bangkok, to Rangoon, to every center of Buddhism where I was known. It was a sales trip, you might say, and for a time I thought that I had failed. But there were also forces working for me. The world was uncertain. The communists were at the start of their triumphal sweep over Asia, and the leaders of our faith foresaw what lay ahead. On the first of August, 1946, a delegation of priests from eight Buddhist countries journeyed to Japan to view Kazu, who was now a lusty 4-1/2 months old, 12-1/2 feet long and of 2914 pounds weight. He was in fine health, and when he slept the resemblance to the infant Buddha was startling. You gentlemen are worldly men, and I pride myself upon freedom from the more naive illusions of my faith, but perhaps you can try to imagine that our feelings were not entirely those of ambitious schemers—that perhaps within us was some higher motive for the step we took. Our poor suffering Asia was in deeper misery than ever before, for atop her own famine and war had come also the troubles of the west. Under the Red flag millions of our deluded countrymen were taking arms against their brothers. Confused by a glib ideology, they were daily turning more from the religion of their fathers. Although we did not speak it, we all felt inwardly that perhaps there was a purpose in this great infant—that, though we made promises with tongue in cheek, perhaps a miracle would occur to fulfill them.
"And so we arranged to transport Kazu Takahashi from Japan to a safe location where he might grow to manhood, where he might be suitably educated to take the place that we would prepare for him. The details of this move were not difficult to arrange. A special traveling crib 20 feet long was built, and in this by truck, lighter and motor junk he was carried by easy stages to this island. Here we established a great monastery, surrounded by rice and fruit plantations. Here we brought physicians and scholars to care for him and plan his education, and we built a nursery to accommodate his increasing bulk.
"We did not know, of course, what his final size would be. We kept careful records of his growth, but even after the first year he was not more than ten times the normal height. But year by year we had torevise our estimates, for his growth soon accelerated beyond our wildest expectations. For a time indeed we feared that it would never stop and that he would die of starvation when the world could no longer feed him. For a time also we were sure that he would never be able to stand, through the action of simple mechanical laws relating to weight and the size of bones, but apparently nature has provided a marvelous compensation, for his bones, as revealed by X-rays, are of a density and strength equal to that of steel.
"His feeding was always a problem, although fortunately its increase was not beyond our ability to organize and plan. At first we supplied him from plantations on Yat and on neighboring islands. Then we were forced to organize Neo-Buddhism as an implement to solicit contributions of food and money. Perforce we took many into partial confidence, but the complete story was known only to those on Yat.
"On his first birthday Kazu was 29-1/2 feet long and weighed 30,100 pounds. By his second birthday he could walk, and now surpassed all land animals save the monsters of the Jurassic age, with a height to 51 feet and a weight of 158,000 pounds. During 1949, while the communists were overrunning China, our Buddha grew from 70 to 82 feet. In June of 1950, while the world watched the flames of war kindle in Korea, we saw him exceed the capacity of our million pound scale. In the year of 1950 also we built his first schoolroom and developed the system of projected pictures and letters used in his education.
"In 1951, Buddha's increasing appetite combined with the inroads made by the communists upon our territory brought a crisis. He was now 200 feet tall, weighed seven million pounds and ate as much as 75,000 men. In spite of all our efforts, his food supply was dwindling and, worse, the communists were becoming suspicious. And so we were forced to a decision. We had to appeal to the western world. But to whom? To America, or to Russia? You all know the situation in 1952, the time of the false peace. We turned to Russia. They sent a commission to investigate, and then acted with dispatch. Russia would feed our Buddha, but on a condition: Neo-Buddhism must sponsor communism.
"We had no choice. Now that the secret was out, Russia had Yat at its mercy. So we agreed, but with one reservation. We alone should direct the education of Kazu. To this Russia agreed. Perhaps they considered that it was unimportant. Perhaps they thought that Kazu was an idiot, useful only as a symbol. But they agreed, and so his education continued in the tradition of Buddhist scholarship. He is well read, gentlemen. He knows the classics of China, and of India, and of the west also. I myself taught him English. At the request of our sponsors, he has studied Russian. He is still young, but he has an inquiring mind. When he takes his true place in the world, he may not always be the tool of the Kremlin.But of these things even I am not given to know."
Rau paused, and indicated the window. Buddha was emerging from his leanto.
"Look well, gentlemen. There stands the hope of Asia. There is the Living Buddha himself. He is only 19 years of age, but he stands 590 feet high, and weighs 198,000,000 pounds. At first he will be but a symbol, but soon he will be much more. The time of compromise, I promise you, will not last forever."
Rau stopped. We waited for him to resume, but instead, he pressed a button on his desk. Immediately several members of the guard entered. Rau now addressed us in a new voice.
"Gentlemen, you probably wonder why I have spoken so frankly of all of this. To be candid, to a certain extent I wonder also. Perhaps it is to get it off my chest, as you say. Perhaps it is just pride in what I have done. But whatever the reason, the consequences for you are regrettable. Your spying trip to Yat alone is sufficient for death; what I have told you makes your return a complete impossibility. I am sorry, particularly for you, Baker. We shall do it as humanely as possible. Good day."
The guards, as upon a signal, closed in on us. For a second I thought insanely of flight, or a plunge through the great windows to certain death on the crags below. But there was no chance. Before any thought could be translated into action we were back in the corridor, escorted by an augmented guard of priests, on our way back to our cell, and death. A death that would be—as "humane as possible".
IT WAS NOT until some minutes after the steel door had clicked shut that the full realization of our predicament came to us. Rau's story had been so fascinating, and his manner so rational and civilized that we all had forgotten that he was of a race and ideology opposed to all that we stood for, and that we were spies caught red-handed in the innermost shrine of Neo-Buddhism. Even after twenty years of cold war, all of our civilized instincts rose against the idea that a suave brilliant intellectual like Phobat Rau could so cold bloodedly order our deaths.
But the awakening was at hand. If we doubted Rau's intentions, one look at the cold Mongol faces of the guards was enough to dispel any hope. Baker tried to sum it up.
"No use trying to argue with him. Fact is, we won't even see Rau again. We could, of course, simply call it quits and wait for them, but I'd rather fight it out. Anyone have an idea?"
Martin hopped up on the bench and studied the ventilator. He reached one arm in as far as possible, and reported that there was a bend about a foot in. While he was doing this, Chamberlin made a minute investigation of the door, but found that neither hinges nor lock were accessible. There were no other openings into the chambersave the electric conduit which presumably entered above the electric fixture in the ceiling. Finally Baker spoke.
"Nothing we can do until they come for us. We'd better plan towards that, unless they're going to gas us through the ventilator."
This unpleasant thought had not occurred to the rest of us before. Martin returned to the opening and sniffed, and then with happy inspiration, he rolled up his jacket and stuffed it in. Baker nodded approval.
So the time passed. We listened at the door for footsteps but none came. Presently we became aware of a now familiar sensation. The floor commenced to shake gently and regularly. We counted the steps. There were twelve, and then they stopped. Chamberlin calculated mentally.
"Say, about 250 feet per step. That would be three thousand feet—six tenths of a mile. Wonder where—"
Martin, still near the ventilator, shushed him, and pulled the coat out. Through the small hole we heard a deep sound, a sort of low pitched irregular rumble. Baker suddenly jumped up and listened at the opening. After a bit the sound stopped. Baker became excited.
"It was a voice," he explained. "I think it washisvoice. It was speaking Japanese. I couldn't catch many words, but I think he was talking about us."
Now the rumble came again, and louder. A few words, a pause, and then more words, as though he was in conversation with someone whom we could not hear. Baker listened intently, but he could catch only fragments, owing to his small knowledge of Japanese and the extremely low pitched articulation of the giant. Presently the voice rose to a volume which literally made the mountain tremble, and then it stopped.
Baker shook his head. "Couldn't make it out. I think he was inquiring where we were, but it was too idiomatic. I think he became excited or angry at the last."
"Fee, fi, fo, fum," said Chamberlin. "Now wouldn'tthatbe an interesting end?"
Martin laughed. "We wouldn't even be enough to taste."
As no one else seemed anxious to pursue this subject further, we subsided into a sort of lethargy. Even plans for what we should do when the guards came were forgotten. And then, suddenly, the door was opened.
We all sprang to our feet. A priest—in fact, the same one who had brought us here originally—came in. A squad of guards stood outside.
"Good afternoon, how are you? Chief Priest ask me to tell you, Buddha wish to see you. Please you come with me." He politely indicated the door.
With a shrug Baker complied, and the rest of us followed. Down the hall we marched again, through all of the turns of the morning and so at last into the corridor which ended in a window. This time we passed the aluminum door and continued right to the end. The window, we now saw, was really aFrench door which opened to a small balcony. Our guide opened the door and pushed us out. The balcony, we found, was about four hundred feet above the valley floor, but we did not spend much time enjoying the view.
Scarcely fifty feet in front of us stood the Living Buddha!
For a full minute we stared at each other, and then I began to realize that he was embarrassed! A wrinkle appeared between his eyes and he swallowed a couple of times. Then he spoke.
"Good afternoon, Professor Baker and party. I am happy to meet you."
The voice, and particularly the language, so startled us that for a moment nobody could think of a reply. The voice was a deep pulsing rumble, like the tone of the biggest pipes of an organ, and filled with a variety of glottal wheezings and windy overtones. I think it was through these additional sounds rather than the actual tones that we could understand him at all, for the fundamentals were surely below the ordinary limits of human audibility. What we heard and could translate into articulate words was hardly more than a cavernous whisper. The important thing was that we could understand him, and, more than that, that he was friendly. Baker made reply at last.
"Good afternoon. We also are happy, and most honored. How should we address you?"
"My name is Kazu Takahashi, but I am told that I am also Buddha. This I would like to discuss with you, if you have time."
"We have time for nothing else," said Baker.
Buddha's eyebrows raised slightly. "So I was right. They are going to kill you."
Baker glanced at us meaningfully. This giant was no fool. Suddenly there came over me a little thrill of hope. Maybe—but he was speaking again.
"I have not before had opportunity to talk to men from west. Only from China, Japan, Soviet State. You will tell me of rest of world?"
"With pleasure," said Baker.
I became conscious that the door behind us was opening. I glanced back, and saw Phobat Rau, surrounded by guards and priests. He gestured to us to come in. Baker turned, while Buddha bent his head closer to see also.
Rau came to the door. "Come back," he called urgently. "You are in grave danger. You must come in."
QUITE DEFINITELY I had no desire to go in. Neither did Baker, for he shook his head and moved away from the door. Rau's face was suddenly enraged. He made a quick motion to the guards, and then held them back. With an evident effort he calmed himself and called again, softly.
"Please come in. I was hasty this morning. I am sorry. I think now I see a way for you to return safely, if you will come in."
For reply, Baker turned to the giant. He climbed upon the rail of the balcony.
"Take us away from here, if you wish to hear what we have to say. Take us, or they will kill us!"
In answer, Buddha extended one hand, palm up, so that it was level with the balcony. For an instant I hesitated at the sight of that irregular rough surface, big as a city block, and then I heard steps behind us and a click. With one accord we leaped over the parapet just as a scattered volley of pistol shots rang out. We tumbled head over heels down a rough leathery slope into a hollow, and then the platform lifted like a roller coaster. In a second the balcony, the whole hillside vanished and we went rocketing up into the blue sky. A gale of wind blew past, almost carrying us with it, and then a portion of the surface rose and became thirty foot tree trunks which curled incredibly over and around us, forming a small cavern which shut out the wind and held us securely against falling.
Buddha had closed his fist.
For a breathless fifteen seconds we were carried in darkness, and then the great hand unfolded. It was lying flat on an immense smooth area of concrete, which we presently identified as the higher of the two tables. We got to our feet and staggered to the edge of the palm. Here we met another problem, in the form of a rounded ten foot drop-off to the concrete table. As we stood looking down in dismay, the other vast hand came up from below, carrying a heavy sheet of metal. This was carefully placed with one edge on the hand and the other on the table, forming a ramp. Holding onto each other for mutual support, we made our way to the table and there literally collapsed. Chamberlin became violently sick, and none of the rest of us felt much better. The giant carefully withdrew both hands and watched us from a distance of a hundred yards, with only the head and upper part of his body visible.
From our position on the concrete platform I now looked closely at Kazu for the first time. My first impression was not so much one of size, as of an incredible richness of detail. It was like examining a normal human through a powerful microscope, except here the whole was visible at once. Even at a distance of two hundred feet, the hair, the eyelashes, the pores of the skin showed up with a texture and form which I had never noted before, even in my studies as a biologist. The general effect was most confusing, for I would lose and regain the sense of scale, first thinking of him as an ordinary man, and then realizing the proportion. The nearest comparison that I can think of is the sensation when standing very close to a large motion picture screen, but here the image is blurry whereas I saw with a clarity and sharpness that was simply unbelievable.
Buddha seemed to realize our condition, for he smiled sympathetically, and waited until poor Walt had recovered somewhat from his nausea. Baker, as spokesman, renewed the conversation. Walking a few steps toward the front of the enormous desk, he spoke in a loud clear voice.
"You have saved our lives. We thank you."
The great head nodded benignly, and after a thoughtful pause, that strange voice began.
"My teachers have brought others before me to lecture, but always I know that they speak only as they are told to speak. You are different. I am glad that I saw you last night, or I would never know that you had come."
He paused, evidently gathering his thoughts for the next foray into an unfamiliar language. Then he leaned closer.
"Phobat Rau has spoken to you of my birth and life here?"
Baker nodded, and then, realizing that Kazu could not see such a microscopic movement, he replied orally.
"He has told us your story in detail. It is a marvel which we can yet scarcely believe. But the greatest marvel of all is that you speak our language, and comprehend so quickly."
Kazu thought of this for a moment.
"Yes, my teachers have done well, I think. I have studied the writings of many great men, but there is yet much that I do not understand. I think it is important that I understand, because I am so strong. I do not wish to use this strength for evil, and I am not sure that those whom my teachers serve are good. I have studied the words of the great Buddha, but now my teachers say that I am to appear as if I were Buddha. But that is an untruth, and untruth is evil. So now I hope that you will tell me the whole truth."
Kazu stepped back a quarter of a mile, and then reappeared, dragging his four hundred foot chair. Sitting on this, he crouched forward until his face was hardly a hundred feet before us, and his warm humid breath swept over us like wind from some exotic jungle. Baker took a moment to marshal his thoughts, and then came forward, threw out his chest and began speaking as though addressing an outdoor political meeting.
How long Baker spoke I do not know. He began by outlining history, contrasting the ideals of Buddha and other great religious leaders with the dark record of human oppression and cruelty. Kazu's vast face proved most expressive of his feelings as he listened intently. When Baker came to the subject of communism, he leaned over so far backward in his effort to be fair that I feared that he was overdoing it, and would convince the giant in the wrong direction.
WHEN BAKER was only part-way through his lecture, he remarked that some point in geography could be better explained by a drawing, but that obviously he could not make one large enough for Kazu to see. At this the giant laughed and pointed to his big leanto.
"Come," he said, "you shall draw on a piece of glass and the light will make it great that I may see."
We were thereupon transferred the mile distance to the building by a reversal of our previous route:up the ramp to Kazu's ample palm, a series of breathtaking swoops through space, and we were in the vast interior of the leanto.
The furnishings of this study room consisted of a chair, a sloping writing desk and a screen fully two hundred feet square on the wall opposite the chair. Beside the chair was a sort of bracket on the wall which supported the projection room. Kazu placed his hand level with an elevated balcony leading to this and we scrambled off. With Baker in the lead, we opened the door and entered the projection room. It was larger than we had estimated from outside, when we had the immense furniture for comparison. The dimensions were perhaps forty feet on the side, and most of the interior was taken up by shelves on which were stored thousands of films of book pages, maps, photographs and diagrams of all kinds. In the side facing the screen were a number of ports and a battery of movie and still projectors. One of the latter was, we saw, adapted for writing or drawing on the glass slide while it was being projected. We studied this for a moment, located the special marking pencil, and then I called out of the door that we were ready.
"Look also," replied Kazu, "you will find device which magnify voice. My teachers use this always."
A further search disclosed a microphone and the switch for a public address amplifier. Baker settled down to his now illustrated lecture.
After he had talked himself hoarse, Baker asked each of the rest of us to speak briefly on our own specialties. I was the last, and I was practically through when I became aware that we were not alone in the room. I gave Martin a nudge, and turned from the microphone to face eight of the uniformed guards, led by our friendly yellow-robed priest. Only now he wasn't friendly, and he carried a heavy automatic which was carefully aimed right at us.
"Very clever, gentlemen," he said. "You took good advantage of your chance with our simple giant, did you not? Tried your best to ruin the whole work of Pan-Asia just to save your miserable skins. Well, you shall not—"
He was interrupted by the thunder of Kazu's voice.
"Please continue, Mr. Cady. I find it most interesting. Why do you stop?"
I took a step toward the microphone, but a menacing gesture with the gun stopped me. I looked from yellow-robe to Baker. After a moment's hesitation, the latter spoke.
"I'm afraid, my friend, that you have misjudged the situation. I admit that we jumped into Buddha's hand to escape from Phobat Rau, but if you are familiar with the expression, our leap was from the frying pan into the fire. Your giant is holding us prisoner, and even now forces us to tell him things on pain of death."
The priest looked astonished, and the gun barrel dropped slightly.
"No one," continued Baker in a sincere tone, "could have been more welcome than you. But"—his voice dropped and he took a steptoward the other—"we must be careful. If he should even suspect that you are here to rescue us, he would crush this room like an egg!"
The priest, now thoroughly alarmed, glanced about nervously, his automatic pointing at the floor. The guards, who knew no English, looked at each other in surprise.
Baker took quick advantage of the confusion.
"We must not allow him to become suspicious. I will continue talking over the microphone while your guards take my friends to safety."
With this he stepped to the microphone and projector. The priest seemed for an instant about to stop him, and then he turned to the guards and gave a series of rapid orders. They advanced and surrounded Martin, Walt and me, and indicated by gesture that we were to go with them to the walk-way which led to the wall of the great room. In panic I looked at Baker, but he was bent over the glass plate of the projector, drawing something and speaking in his precise clipped voice.
"I shall now show you a map of the United States and indicate the principal cities. First, on the Atlantic coast we have New York...."
We were out of the room and on the gallery. For a moment I thought that Kazu might see us, and then I realized that the whole place was dark and that he was concentrating on Baker's silly map. Briefly I wondered what Baker was up to anyway, but this sudden terrible turn of events made any kind of calm reasoning very difficult.
Outside the projection room, Baker's voice came booming over the loudspeakers.
"Chicago is located at the southern end of Lake Michigan, just west of Detroit, while St. Louis—"
SUDDENLY the room lights came on, and the whole structure of the bridge shook as from an earthquake. The guards ahead abruptly turned and scrambled back, knocking us over in their haste. I grabbed the handrail for support, and then became aware of a vast blurry shape looming above and of a hand as large as a building that reached down toward the guards, now halfway back to the projection room. In a sort of hypnotic horror I watched the thumb and forefinger snap them and a thirty foot section of railing off into space. Then, very gently the hand plucked the roof from the projection room, exposing Baker and the priest. Yellow-robe dropped his gun and ran towards a corner, but Baker neatly tripped him and then stepped back for Kazu to finish the job.
A moment later Baker came out onto the bridge. Martin tried to frame a question.
"What—how did he—?"
Baker grinned and pointed silently at the screen. We looked and understood. Where a map of the United States should have been was a scrawled message in English: "Priests here taking us captive."
We returned to our lecturing, but after what had happened neitherwe nor Kazu felt much like concentrating on geographical or other general facts. We all knew that Rau had not given up. For the moment we were protected by Kazu's immense power, but there were some doubts in our minds as to how long this might last. After all, Rau was his lifelong mentor and protector. For the moment the young giant seemed to have taken a liking to us, but perhaps it was only a passing whim. Presently Rau would assert his authority and Kazu, his curiosity satisfied, would hand us over—in exchange, perhaps, for supper.
After about fifteen minutes more of lecturing, Kazu interrupted.
"Soon will be sunset. Suggest we return to privacy of high table to discuss next move."
The transfer took less than a minute. The afternoon, we saw, was indeed far gone. None of us had realized how long we had been in the projection room. Once we were safely back on the table, Kazu addressed us, using his softest voice, which was a hurricane-like whisper.
"Phobat Rau plans for me to go soon to head armies of Asia in fight against west. My study of history has raised doubts of rightness of such war, and what you say strengthen these. Now I must see for myself, without guidance or interference from Rau. But I need assistance, to direct me how I shall go. I believe you will be fair. Will you help me?"
For a moment the incongruity of that last question prevented our grasping the full implication of Kazu's statement. Then Baker, evidently realizing that this was no time for philosophic quibbling, signified our assent. Kazu proceeded at once to practical plans.
"Tonight I sleep in usual place, where you disturbed me with small rock slide. But you must stay awake by turns to guard against capture. In morning you direct my steps away from Yat to mainland of Asia, where—"
He stopped. Seeing the direction he was looking, we hastened to the edge of the table. Far below, on the ground, was a railroad train surrounded by a small crowd of priests. For a moment we were puzzled, and then we saw that the train was made up entirely of gondola cars such as are used to carry coal and other bulk cargo. But these cars, a dozen in number, contained a white substance which steamed. We did not require more than one guess. The train brought Kazu's supper.
The giant made a slight bow of thanks to the delegation at his feet, and proceeded carefully to empty the cars into his dish. Then, instead of squatting at his low eating table, he brought the dish and other utensils up to our level and dumped a ton or so of steaming rice at our feet. Evidently he wished us to share his supper. We had no tools other than our hands, but since we had not eaten in almost twenty-four hours, we did not stop for the conventions. Scooping up double handfuls of the unseasoned stuff, we fell to even before Kazu had gotten his ponderous spoon into position. Suddenly, Baker yelled at us.
"Hold it!" He turned to Kazuwho had a spoonful poised halfway to his mouth. "Kazu, don't eat. This rice is doped!"
I took a mouthful of the rice. There was not much flavor—only a little salt which I guessed came from seawater. I explored the stuff with my tongue, and presently noticed a familiar taste. It took me a moment to place it. Yes, that was it. Barbiturate. The stuff in sleeping pills.
Kazu bent his great face over us. Baker briefly explained. Kazu appeared at first puzzled. He dropped the spoon into the dish and pushed it away from him. His brow wrinkled, and he glanced down at the ground. Walking to the edge, we saw that the group of priests were standing quietly around the engine, as though waiting for something. What they were waiting for evidently struck Kazu and us at the same time. Kazu leaned toward them and spoke in Japanese. His voice was angry. Baker tried to translate.
"He says, 'how dare you poison Buddha'—Look, they're running off—"
The next second things happened too rapidly for translation or even immediate interpretation. Kazu spoke again, his voice rising to an earth shaking roar at the end. The little men below were scattering in all directions, and the train started to back off down its track. Suddenly Kazu turned and picked up his hundred foot steel dish. He swept it across the table and then down in a long curving arc. There was an earth shaking thud and where the running figures and the train had been was now only the upturned bottom of the immense dish. Priests and cars alike were entombed in a thousand tons of hot rice!
Kazu now turned to us. "Come," he said, "Yat is not safe, even for Buddha. Now we must leave here at once."
He extended his hand towards us, and then, with another thought, turned and strode to the leanto. In a moment he returned carrying the projection room, with a tail of structural steel and electric cables hanging below. This he placed on the table and indicated that we were to enter. As soon as we were inside, Kazu clapped on the roof and picked up the stout steel box. We clung to the frame supporting the projectors, while a mass of slides, film cans and other debris battered us with every swooping motion. We could not see what was going on outside, but the giant seemed to be picking up a number of things from the ground and from inside the leanto. Then he commenced a regular stride across the crater floor. Now at last we got to a window, just in time to glimpse the nearby cliff. On the rim, some hundreds of feet above I saw a group of uniformed men clustered about some device. Then we were closer and I saw that it was an antiaircraft gun, which they were trying to direct at us. I think Kazu must have seen it at the same moment, for abruptly he scrambled up the steep hillside and pulverized gun, crew and the whole crater rim with one tremendous blow of his fist.
I got a brief aerial view of the whole island as Kazu balanced momentarilyon the rim, and then we were all thrown to the floor as he stumbled and slid down the hillside to the level country outside of the crater.
UP UNTIL this moment we had been engaged in an essentially personal enterprise, even though its object was to secure information vital to the United Nations. From this time on, however, the personal element was to become almost completely subordinate to the vast problems of humanity itself, for, as we were to soon find, we had tied ourselves to a symbol that was determined to live up to all that was claimed or expected of him, and further, who depended upon our advice. The situation for us was made much worse because at first we doubted both his sincerity and good sense—in fact, it was not until after the Wagnerian climax of the whole thing that we at last realized, along with the rest of the world, exactly what Kazu Takahashi believed in.
Kazu crossed the flat eastern half of Yat in less than a minute, evidently wishing to get out of range of Rau's artillery as quickly as possible. His feet tore through the groves as a normal man's might through a field of clover; indeed, he experienced more trouble from the softness of the ground than from any vegetation. As we were soon to learn, one of the disadvantages of Kazu's size lay in the mechanical properties of the world as experienced by him. Kazu stood almost 600 feet high, or roughly 100 times the linear dimensions of a normal man. From the simple laws of geometry, this increased his weight by 100³ or 1 million times. But the area of his body, including the soles of his feet which had to support this gigantic load, had increased by but 100², or ten thousand times. The ground pressure under his feet was thus 100 times greater, for each square inch, than for a normal man. The result was that Kazu sank into the ground at each step until he reached bedrock, or soil strong enough to carry the load.
At the beach he hesitated briefly, as though getting his bearings, and then waded into the ocean. The surf which had used us so violently was to him only a half inch ripple. He strode through the shallows and past the reef in a matter of seconds, and then plunged into deeper water. From our dizzy perch, now carried at hip height, we watched the great feet drive down into the sea, leaving green walls of solid water about them.
Although we did not realize it at the time, we later learned that Kazu's wading forays were attended by tidal waves which inundated islands up to a hundred miles away. This trip across a twenty mile strait swamped a dozen native fishing craft, flooded out four villages and killed some hundreds of people.
We fared better than some of these innocent bystanders, for Kazu carefully held our steel box above the sea, and presently lurched through shallow water to the dry land.
The new island was larger thanYat, and entirely given over to rice growing for Kazu's food supply. He threaded his way easily among the paddies, up through some low hills, and then down a narrow gorge into the sea again.
Ahead lay a much more extensive body of water. The sun was now hardly fifteen degrees above the horizon, and its glare plus a bank of clouds made it difficult to see the distant land. Kazu raised our room to the level of his face.
"Is that Island of Celebes?"
Baker started to pick up the microphone, and then abruptly realizing that it was dead, he shouted back from the projection port.
"I think it is. Let me look for a chart."
Kazu waited patiently while we searched, placing the room on a hilltop to give us a steadier platform. We all began a mad scramble in the mass of debris. Kazu removed the roof to give more light, but it soon became clear that there wasn't much hope. All that we could find were thousands of slides of the Chinese classics. At last we gave up. When we told Kazu this, he looked across the water and wrinkled his brow. We could sense the reason for his anxiety, for the distant shore could hardly be less than seventy miles away. Mentally I reduced this to terms I could understand. Seven tenths of a mile, of which an unknown percentage might be swimming.
Kazu's voice rumbled down to us, "I would prefer to wade. I cannot swim well." He peered down into our roofless box anxiously.
"If we only had one chart," began Baker, when Walt, who had been rummaging near the projector window, called to us.
"Take a look over there, just around the point."
We saw the prow of a ship. There was a moment of terror lest it be an Indonesian coast patrol, and then we saw that it was just a small island steamer of a thousand tons or so, chugging along less than two miles offshore.