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+Project Gutenberg's The Image and the Likeness, by John Scott Campbell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Image and the Likeness
+
+Author: John Scott Campbell
+
+Release Date: August 21, 2011 [EBook #37145]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IMAGE AND THE LIKENESS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Dianna Adair and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
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+
+
+  Transcriber Note:
+
+  As the limitations of a plain text file preclude the
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+
+
+[Illustration: Cover]
+
+[Illustration: _We stared--frozen--at the great face above us._]
+
+
+
+
+     _Up from the horror of Hiroshima came a god. He gave the people
+     hope and for this they killed him--as they have always killed their
+     gods._
+
+
+
+
+THE IMAGE
+
+and
+
+THE LIKENESS
+
+By John Scott Campbell
+
+
+
+
+Shanghai had changed. We sensed that the moment we came ashore.
+Extraterritoriality was long gone; we had known that, of course. The
+days of exploitation, of clubs where Chinese and Burmese and Indian
+servants waited on Britons and Americans were passed. Pan-Asia had seen
+to that. This was 1965. The white man's burden in the east had been upon
+brown and yellow shoulders for over sixteen years now, and the Indians
+and Burmese and Indonesians were ruling themselves, after their fling at
+communism in the fifties.
+
+The initial bitterness which followed the debacle of 1955 had passed, we
+were glad to see. Porters no longer spat in the faces of white men. They
+were polite, but we had not been in the city a half hour before we
+sensed something else. There was an edge to that politeness. It was as
+Major Reid had written before we left San Francisco--a subtle change
+had come over Asia in the previous few years. They smiled--they waited
+on us--they bent over backwards to atone for the excesses of the first
+years of freedom from foreign rule; but through it all was an air of
+aloofness, of superior knowledge.
+
+Baker put it in his typically blunt British way.
+
+"The blighters have something up their sleeves, all right. The whole
+crew of them. Did you notice that rickshaw boy? When I said to take us
+to the hotel, he answered 'Yes, today I take you'. The Major was
+right--there's something in the wind, and it's damned serious."
+
+We were sitting, surrounded by our luggage, in our suite at the New
+China Hotel. There were four of us: Llewelyn Baker, Walter Chamberlin,
+Robert Martin, and myself, William Cady. Baker and Martin were
+anthropologists, and old China hands as well. Chamberlin was a
+geologist, and I claimed knowledge of zoology. We were here ostensibly
+as a scientific expedition, and had permission from the Republic of East
+Asia to do some work on Celebese man, following up the discoveries by
+Rance of bones and artifacts on that East Indian island in 1961.
+
+We had another reason for coming at this particular time, although this
+was not mentioned to the authorities. Our real objective was to find out
+certain things about New Buddhism, the violently nationalistic religion
+which was sweeping Pan-Asia.
+
+New Buddhism was more than a religion. It was a motivating force of such
+power that men like Major Reid at the American Embassy were frankly
+worried, and had communicated their fears to their home governments. The
+Pan-Asia movement had, at first, been understandable. At first it had
+been nationalism, pure and simple. The Asiatics were tired of
+exploitation and western bungling, and wanted to rule themselves. During
+the communist honeymoon in the early fifties, it was partly underground
+and partly taken over by the Reds for their own purposes. But through
+everything it retained a character of its own, and after '55 it
+reappeared as a growing force which was purely oriental. Or at least so
+it seemed. Our job was, among other things, to find out if Russian
+control was really destroyed.
+
+We had already made several observations. The most obvious was the
+number of priests. Yellow robed Buddhist priests had always been common,
+begging rice and coppers in the streets, but in 1955 a new kind
+appeared. He was younger than his predecessors, and was usually an
+ex-soldier. And his technique was different. He was a salesman.
+"Rice--rice for Buddha," he would say. "Rice for the Living Buddha, to
+give him strength. Rice for the Great One, that he may grow mighty. Rice
+for the strength to cast off our bonds."
+
+And they had organization. This wasn't any hit or miss revival, started
+by a crackpot, or by some schemer for his own enrichment. There was
+direction back of it, and very good direction too. We sensed that it had
+been Japanese, at least at the start, but with the end of the
+occupation, we could no longer barge in and investigate officially. Now
+there were treaties to respect, and diplomatic procedure and all that
+sort of thing.
+
+Instead, we were here to spy. Unofficially, of course. The ambassador
+was very explicit on that point. We were strictly on our own. If we were
+caught, there could be no protection. So here we were. Four scientists
+investigating Celebese man, and trying to find out, on the side, just
+what was back of New Buddhism.
+
+We washed up, had dinner, and presently, as we had expected, Major Reid
+called. After a few jocular references to anthropology, for the benefit
+of the waiter, he got down to business.
+
+"I'll have to be brief," he said, "because I can't spend too much time
+with you without stirring up suspicion. You all know the background.
+They claim that this business is simply a new religion, a revival of
+Buddhism modeled to fit new conditions. President Tung claims that there
+is no connection between it and the state. We think differently. We have
+reason to believe that the direction back of this movement is communism,
+and that its ultimate object is military attack on the western world.
+What we don't know is the nature of the proposed attack. Some of us
+suspect that they are making H-bombs, and have covered up so that we
+cannot spot them. That's what we must find out.
+
+"The headquarters of New Buddhism is on a small volcanic island called
+Yat, off the east coast of Celebes. Your job is to reach that island and
+find out what's going on, and then bring the information back. Clear?"
+
+We nodded. We had received a similar briefing in Washington, and from a
+far more distinguished personage than Major Reid, but we felt no need of
+mentioning this. In such a business, gratuitous information, even to
+friends, serves no useful end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our informant in Washington had told us a good many other things,
+too. In the name of New Buddhism, the priests had been collecting
+immense quantities of supplies, and on an increasing scale. Tons of
+foodstuffs had been gathered and then shipped off to an unknown
+destination. Machinery, lumber, structural steel, canvas by the
+thousands of yards had been purchased, loaded onto ships and barges, and
+spirited away. It appeared that the New Buddhists were maintaining a
+standing army, or perhaps a labor force somewhere east of Borneo, but
+the picture was very incomplete.
+
+Part of the failure of ordinary methods of intelligence may have been
+due to the supersecrecy of the New Buddhists themselves. It was not
+difficult to corrupt priests on the lower levels, but all they knew was
+that certain quotas of food and materials were set for their territory,
+which were then shipped away to Borneo.
+
+The big break had come only a few months ago. One of the OSS men got
+through to a barge captain, who had been to the headquarters itself. He
+identified the location as an island a few miles off the northeast coast
+of Celebes. It was, he said, highly mountainous--in fact he believed it
+to be an extinct volcano, with a water filled crater reached only by a
+narrow passage from the sea. Boats, he said, could go in and out, but
+his barge was not among those permitted. He delivered his cargo, three
+thousand tons of rice and five thousand raw hides, and was then sent on
+his way. Under questioning, he said that there were many people living
+on the island--thousands at least. Most of them lived in barracks among
+the trees fronting the ocean, but some had special privileges and were
+allowed to go to the top of the crater rim.
+
+Of the activities within the crater our informant knew nothing. At night
+the clouds were often lit by reflections from there, and once he had
+heard noises, accompanied by a distinct shaking of the earth, as though
+blasting were being done at a great depth.
+
+This was the extent of our knowledge. We knew the location, but it was
+up to us to find out the rest.
+
+Our departure from Shanghai for the great island of Celebes involved the
+usual exasperation of delay and red tape. The American Embassy did
+everything possible to expedite matters, and brought a little pressure
+to bear, I think, on the strength of the then impending American Sixth
+Loan to China. In any case we were at last cleared, and boarded the
+plane for Celebes.
+
+We took one of the six place compartments on the upper deck, and
+presently had company in the form of two yellow-clad New Buddhist
+priests. Baker, who had the best command of Chinese, engaged them in
+conversation.
+
+As we had expected, they were very willing to talk, and displayed a
+lively interest in Celebes man. That they were here to watch us was
+obvious. Baker bided his time, and then switched the conversation to New
+Buddhism. On this subject too the priests were anything but reticent.
+They described with enthusiasm the great spiritual renaissance that was
+sweeping all Asia "like a wind, the breath of life from the Living
+Buddha." Baker asked a few questions about the Buddha, since to show no
+curiosity about such a life subject might excite suspicion. The priests
+were ready for them, and gave what was evidently the stock answer: the
+Living Buddha was the very incarnation of Gautama himself, a spiritual
+leader who was being groomed to take over the guidance of all mankind,
+in east and west alike.
+
+"Where does the Great One live?" asked Baker, alert for a trap.
+
+"In Celebes, where you are going," was the reply.
+
+"Oh," said Baker innocently, "Then perhaps it could be arranged for us
+to meet him?"
+
+This, explained the priest, was quite impossible. In due time Buddha
+would display himself for the world to see and marvel over; meanwhile,
+while his preparation was yet incomplete, he must remain in seclusion.
+
+By now convinced that the presence of the priests was no accident, Baker
+settled down to the sort of verbal sparring match that he enjoyed. He
+had been speaking in the Cantonese dialect, but now he abruptly switched
+to English.
+
+"You know," he remarked, "you fellows are using an amazing amount of
+material at your headquarters. Enough food to keep a good sized standing
+army."
+
+The two priests, who had professed ignorance of English at the start of
+the conversation, stiffened visibly. Baker returned to Chinese.
+
+The priests recovered their composure with some effort. The older
+replied suavely, "Gossip is a creative art. There is a large monastery
+at our central temple, and much is needed to maintain its activities."
+
+"Truth," said Baker pontifically, "is usually disappointing. The
+imagination changes a mud hut to a palace, and a sickly priest to a
+demigod."
+
+The two priests inclined their heads slightly at this. We watched their
+expressions. If Baker's purposely provoking language brought a reaction,
+it was not visible. But we had learned one thing: they spoke English but
+preferred that we did not know it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our arrival at New Macassar, the Indonesian capital of Celebes,
+was attended by the usual confusion and delay. Our Buddhist friends
+vanished with a speed which suggested special consideration, while the
+man from the American Consulate was still getting our equipment through
+customs.
+
+This business at length completed, we were escorted to a taxi by the
+attache and whisked up one of the wide avenues of the city without a
+question as to where we were to stay. Baker and Martin stared out the
+window with studied ease--they knew that something was up, but were
+content to await further developments. Now I noticed something else. The
+driver of our cab was a European, not a native. I started to frame a
+question, when, without warning, the car ducked into a side street,
+swung around two corners and abruptly entered an open doorway in a tall
+stucco building. Both Walt and I were half out of our seats in alarm,
+when our guide spoke.
+
+"The American Consulate, gentlemen," he said, with the slightest trace
+of a diplomatic smile.
+
+The cab had stopped in the ground floor garage of the consulate, and
+opening the door was the consul himself.
+
+"Good morning, I'm Stimson. Hope Avery didn't give you too wild a ride,
+but I thought it best not to advertise my interest in you at the front
+door. Things have changed a bit in the last few days. Well, Avery will
+show you to your rooms. I'll be in the upstairs study when you're
+freshened up."
+
+There was little to speculate on as we shaved and changed to less
+rumpled clothes, but we worked over the available data for what it was
+worth.
+
+"Consul takes us in tow," remarked Chamberlin. "That isn't in line with
+the unofficial status so strongly impressed on us at Washington."
+
+"And sneaking us in through the back door isn't according to best
+diplomatic form, either. Stimson wants to protect us from something, but
+obviously doesn't want the local constabulary to know." This from
+Martin.
+
+"It seems to me," I ventured, "that they could check the hotels. It
+shouldn't take them long to put two and two together when we don't show.
+I'm blessed if I can see what Stimson has to gain from this maneuver."
+
+Baker turned from the mirror where he had been adjusting his tie.
+"Suppose we ask him," he commented.
+
+The consul was waiting for us in his study. After the briefest greeting
+which his official position permitted, he got down to business.
+
+"Gentlemen, I've had to pull a diplomatic boner of the first magnitude.
+I refer to the cloak and dagger method of getting you here. But believe
+me, it was the only way. They're onto your scheme. If you went to a
+hotel in New Macassar, you wouldn't be alive tomorrow morning."
+
+"But, the taxi--" began Martin.
+
+"It gave us a few hours. If I had sent the consulate car, they'd have us
+sealed off tight right now. I could keep you safe here, or get you on
+the Shanghai plane, but you couldn't make another move. As it is, we
+have perhaps two hours--with luck."
+
+The consul settled back in his chair, evidently gathering his thoughts.
+We waited, more mystified than before, if that were possible. At length
+Stimson started again.
+
+"You're well briefed on the general situation. Reid gave me the gist of
+his conversation. But there are some other things that even Reid doesn't
+know." He opened a folding blotter on his desk and drew out an eight by
+ten photographic print.
+
+"You're aware of the efforts that have been made to look into the crater
+on Yat. To date we have not succeeded in getting an eye witness to the
+rim. We have flown over Yat, of course, and have taken pictures from
+every altitude from 5,000 to 70,000 feet, but so far they have
+outsmarted us. They have smoke generators all around the rim, which they
+fire up night and day whenever the natural clouds lift. We've used every
+color, including infra red. We've taken stereo pairs, and flash shots at
+night, but, with one exception, all we've ever gotten are beautiful
+pictures of clouds and smoke. The exception I have here. It was taken
+two weeks ago, during a brief break in a heavy storm. Before I say
+anything more, I'd like to have you look at it and form your own
+opinions."
+
+He placed the print on the desk, facing us, and leaned back while we
+four crowded around. My first glimpse was disappointing. Fully two
+thirds of the picture was occupied by clouds. But gradually I made out
+the details. There seemed to be several buildings of uncertain size in
+the lower part, and a fringe of brush extending up to the left. Half
+visible through the mist were several structures which seemed to me, in
+comparison to the larger buildings, like chicken houses or perhaps
+rabbit hutches. No humans were in sight, evidently because of the storm.
+But in the center of the picture was the thing which fixed our attention
+from the first, leaving the other details for later scrutiny. This was
+an immense human figure, lying on its side with the head pillowed on its
+hands in the attitude of the colossal figures of the reclining Buddha
+found in the mountains of China. The body was partly covered by a robe,
+but whether this was part of the figure or a canvas protection against
+the rain, was difficult to tell. Only the head, hands and feet showed.
+The face was partly in shadow, but enough could be seen to identify the
+typical Buddha countenance: closed eyes and lips curled in an enigmatic
+smile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We stared at this peculiar picture for a good minute, taking in
+the details, while Stimson watched us. Then Baker looked up.
+
+"What is it?" he asked.
+
+"Before I tell you our guesses," replied the consul, "I'd like to hear
+your reactions."
+
+"It would appear that the New Buddhists are doing the obvious--setting
+up a Buddhist temple. Although, except for the statue, you'd never guess
+it." This from Chamberlin.
+
+Martin squinted closely at the print. "Yes, the buildings look more like
+airship hangars than a temple."
+
+Stimson raised his eyebrows slightly. "That's an interesting
+observation," he commented.
+
+"Wish there were some humans, or something else to give a scale," said
+Baker. "For all we can tell, it could be anything from doll houses and a
+life sized statue, all the way up to an air base, and a reclining Buddha
+to end all reclining Buddhas."
+
+There was an expectant pause. Stimson, seeing that we had nothing more
+to add, cleared his throat, glanced briefly out of the window behind his
+chair, and hunched forward.
+
+"This picture was made from an F-180A, modified for photo
+reconnaissance. The plane was on a routine flight from Singapore to
+Mindanao, over a solid deck of clouds. The pilot swung south over Yat
+just out of curiosity. He approached the island at 50,000 feet, using
+radar, and was about to pass over when he spotted a hole in the
+overcast. Time was 1800--just sunset--but the edge of the crater was
+well lighted, although the bottom was in deep shadow. More important,
+the smoke generators had been turned off. Obviously the clouds had just
+parted, and would close in again in a minute. The presence of the F-180A
+at this particular instant was just one of those one in a million lucky
+breaks. The pilot realized this. He put the ship into a dive and ordered
+his photographer to ready the cameras.
+
+"The plane approached Yat at a speed above Mach 1.2, so there was no
+audible warning, and evidently the island's radar was off, for the
+surprise was complete. Within 90 seconds the F-180A closed level just
+over the crater and shot past with only a thin stratus layer between it
+and ground. Time over the crater was hardly 10 seconds, and neither
+pilot nor observer saw anything, but the synchronous vertical camera was
+operating and four flashes were made during the middle four seconds.
+Then the plane was in the clouds again at a 45 degree climb and a dozen
+miles towards the Philippines before anyone on Yat could even get
+outdoors.
+
+"As might be expected there was a considerable protest over this
+violation of Celebese territory, although oddly, it was based on moral
+grounds rather than national integrity. The protest was signed by the
+Lama of Macassar, and demanded neither indemnity nor punishment of the
+pilot, but asked merely that incense be burned in Washington to appease
+Buddha. Now of course the Lama isn't that naive, or devout. As you may
+know, Phobat Rau was educated at Harvard and CIT, and is a thoroughly
+trained and tough statesman who knows his way around anywhere, and
+doesn't believe the theological hogwash in Pan-Buddhism any more than I
+do. So it was a question of getting behind his motives. Of course, it
+could be a cover, but our final guess was that the protest was really
+made for the benefit of the faithful in Asia. This opinion was
+strengthened, at least as far as I am concerned, about a fortnight ago
+when Rau attended the British Embassy reception for Lord Hayes. He
+didn't avoid me, but actually seemed to single me out as a foil for some
+of his witty small talk. Asked if I was much of a student of Buddhist
+architecture and carvings, and if I had seen the Kyoto Buddha, or the
+reclining Buddha on the Yangtze. He was fishing, of course, but I played
+it dumb, and presently he gave up.
+
+"Well, there you have it, at least as far as the picture is concerned.
+The Buddhists were considerably upset, for they tightened up security
+all over the islands. And then you came into the scene. Naturally nobody
+believed that you were just after Celebese man, but the governor granted
+permission--so easily, in fact, that we got suspicious. Americans are no
+match for oriental subtlety, but we do have a few tricks, one of whom is
+a code clerk in the Macassar foreign office, and from her we learned
+that you were set for the preferred treatment: to be let in easily, and
+then knocked off in some painless way. Hence the taxi, and the sneak
+ride here."
+
+He paused. "That's the situation to date, gentlemen. Any questions?"
+
+Martin had been studying the photograph. "At what altitude was this
+taken?"
+
+The consul shook his head. "The autorecorder was off. The observer
+forgot to set it, in the rush."
+
+"Well, couldn't they estimate?"
+
+"They did, but it's obviously way off. The pilot swears that he levelled
+at 9,000, but that would make these buildings a quarter of a mile long,
+and the Buddha at least five hundred feet. Unless you want to believe
+that they have another Willow Run on Yat, you can't take that figure."
+
+Another pause. Finally Baker spoke. "You said you had a guess."
+
+"Yes, I have." Stimson seemed reluctant to speak. "But it sounds so
+damned fantastic I hate to tell it to you--well, to be short, I don't
+think that this Buddha is a statue."
+
+We all sat up. "Then what is it?" This from Martin.
+
+"I mean, not a statue of stone or masonry in the usual sense of the
+term. I think that it is a portable image of Buddha--an inflated gas bag
+like they use in the Easter parade. I think they intend to float it in
+the air--perhaps tow it--to impress the faithful. If the thing's really
+500 feet long, it may be a blimp or a rigid airship with its own motors.
+But, whatever the details, I think our mystery is just a piece of
+propaganda for Neo-Buddhism, although a damned good one, from the native
+standpoint."
+
+We all relaxed. This was an anticlimax. Stimson had built us up to
+something--just what, we were not sure--and then had pricked the bubble.
+
+"Well, it sounds reasonable," Baker finally remarked, returning the
+print to Stimson, "although not particularly dangerous, and certainly
+not worth risking our necks to spy on. However, I don't think it's good
+enough to explain all of the supplies that have gone into Yat."
+
+The consul nodded. "Yes, that's the rub. If they hadn't taken such pains
+to conceal the thing, I'd be inclined to call it just a cover for
+something else."
+
+"Maybe it still is," said Baker.
+
+Stimson looked at us carefully, as though making up his mind.
+
+"That is where you gentlemen come in," he said finally. "I have reason
+to believe that our picture has tipped their hand, that they are going
+ahead with whatever they have planned in the next few days. Someone's
+got to get to Yat first--someone who can observe intelligently, and
+speak the language. My staff is all clerical, and there is no chance to
+get any CIA men now. You're the only ones available."
+
+He paused. We looked at each other, and then at Baker. He cleared his
+throat a couple of times, took another squint at the photo, and then
+spoke.
+
+"Speaking for myself, Stimson, when do we leave?"
+
+"That goes for me too," said Martin. Chamberlin and I nodded.
+
+Stimson seemed relieved. "I'd hoped to hear that. In fact, I'd have been
+considerably embarrassed if you gentlemen hadn't come through, because I
+have a seaplane waiting right now to take you to Yat."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The next two hours passed swiftly. Once the decision was made, we
+all became so involved in the details of preparation as to have no more
+time for reflection, either upon the nature of what we should find on
+the island of Yat, or the possible personal consequences of our
+expedition.
+
+First Stimson briefed us on the geography of our objective. Yat was a
+volcanic island, one of a group strung across the shallow sea east of
+Borneo and north of Celebese. It was almost circular, with a diameter of
+about seven miles, and was entirely covered by a dense tropical forest.
+The principal feature of the island was an extinct volcanic crater,
+rising to an altitude of 2,000 feet, at the east end of the island. The
+crater measured about two miles across, and perhaps a third of its area
+was filled with water from a narrow channel leading to the sea. Photos
+taken before the closure of Yat by the Indonesians showed a typical
+Malay isle: cocoanut and mango plantations, with forests of gum and
+mahogany climbing and filling most of the crater. The entrance channel
+was narrow and quite deep and the interior lake constituted an ideally
+sheltered anchorage. On the east coast the land rose steeply in a series
+of mossy cliffs over which waterfalls poured, while to the west, away
+from the volcano, plantations stretched inland from the coral beaches.
+
+As we studied the pictures and charts, Stimson briefed us on the course
+of action.
+
+"Your first objective is to find out what they're doing in that crater.
+Are they building some new weapon, or training an army, or what. You'll
+have Geiger counters and a krypton analyser of course, although the
+analyser is no guarantee in detecting fissionable material production.
+Then we want to know what their plans are, particularly in the next few
+days or weeks. Finally, just who is involved in it? Is New Buddhism
+entirely Asiatic, as they claim, or has Russia cut herself in too?"
+
+"You will be landed on the west coast of the island just after sunset.
+The east, with its cliff and entrance channel is undoubtedly too well
+guarded, but on the west side, with four miles of flat country, they may
+depend on defense in depth, so that you'll have a better chance of
+getting past the beach. The plane will come in low, make a landing just
+off the breakers and drop you off in rubber swim suits. It will then
+taxi to the north of the island and make a fairly long stop, to divert
+attention, since it will certainly be picked up by radar. Your job will
+be to swim ashore, bury the rubber suits, and make your way east to the
+crater. If you reach the rim, see what you can, and report by radio at
+any hour. If you don't make it to the top, observe as much as possible
+on the island, make your reports, and rendezvous with the plane at your
+landing point at 2400 the next day. If you miss that time, a plane will
+be back daily at the same time for four days. After that, we will assume
+that you have been caught."
+
+We were driven to the harbor in the same disreputable taxicab which had
+brought us to the consulate a few hours before. Time was a little past
+three in the afternoon as the seaplane roared down a lane in the swarm
+of junks, tramp freighters and warships of the Indonesian state. We
+hoped that we were not too well observed; there was no way of knowing
+until we arrived on Yat, and the learning might not be too pleasant.
+
+The flight northeast from New Macassar was uneventful. We passed over a
+blue tropical sea, dotted with island jewels. For a time the low coast
+of the great island of Celebes made a blue haze on the eastern horizon,
+and then we had the ocean to ourselves. At dusk there were still two
+hundred miles between us and Yat, a flight of about forty minutes.
+Pulling down the shades, lest the cabin lights reveal us to a chance
+Indonesian patrol, we busied ourselves with packing the portable radio
+equipment and putting on our watertight clothing.
+
+The last fifty miles were made on the deck--in fact, once or twice the
+hull actually touched a wave-top. The pilot extinguished the cabin
+lights and we peered ahead for a first glimpse of our objective. The sky
+was clear, but the moon would not rise until nine, so that the only
+indication we had that Yat was at hand was a slight deepening in the
+tropic night ahead and to the right, which the pilot said marked Mount
+Kosan, the ancient crater. But no sooner had we gotten this vaguely
+orienting information, than the flaps were lowered, the plane slowed to
+under 100 miles per hour, and we touched the water. The co-pilot opened
+the side door, and we crouched together peering out. The plane taxied
+over a choppy cross sea toward the shadow of the island, while we
+squinted through the salt spray. Presently the engines dropped to idle,
+and the rumble of surf became audible.
+
+"Practically dead calm tonight," said the co-pilot reassuringly. "Wind
+usually dies out at sunset. You won't have any trouble getting through.
+Just watch your step when you're ashore."
+
+"That's always good advice for sailors," remarked Baker.
+
+As the plane lost headway, the white line of surf and the silhouettes of
+cocoa palms took shape. Evidently the plantations came right to the
+water's edge at this point, a circumstance for which we were all
+thankful. I was just turning to Martin with some remark about this when
+the pilot called softly and urgently. "We're as close as we can drift
+safely. Jump, and good luck."
+
+"Righto, and thanks," came Baker's voice, and then a splash. I was next.
+I took a deep breath, and clutched my rubber covered bundle of radio
+gear. I leaped out into darkness. An instant later I was gasping for air
+beside Baker. Two more splashes in quick succession and then the engines
+picked up speed, the dark shape of the wing overhead moved off, and we
+were alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a moment we swam in circles, getting our bearings. Baker had
+removed his glasses for the jump, and so we depended mainly on Martin
+for directions. There was really no need for worry, however, for it soon
+became apparent that a strong onshore current was bringing us in to the
+breakers at a good clip. The line of phosphorescence marking their
+crests was now hardly a hundred yards away.
+
+With Martin in the lead we began to swim. Presently one of the swells
+picked us up quite gently, moved us forward, and then suddenly exploded
+into a foamy torrent which tossed us head over heels and left us gasping
+and spitting sand on the beach.
+
+As quickly as possible we got into the shelter of the first ranks of
+trees. Here we dug a hole at the base of a great cocoanut palm and
+buried the rubber suits and cases of radio gear, along with a small vial
+of radium D. This had been provided for us, along with the Geiger
+counter, by the thorough Mr. Stimson as a means for locating our cache
+when we returned, if we should miss our bearings.
+
+It was 7:45 when this chore was completed. We had an hour and
+twenty-three minutes to moonrise.
+
+Turning inland, we walked in silence through the grove for a few hundred
+yards, and then came upon a road. This we recognized, from our map
+study, as the main coastal highway. We hurried across, rather elated at
+the progress we were making and a little surprised at the lack of fences
+or other protective devices on the island. Things seemed just too easy.
+
+On the other side of the road we encountered a rice paddy, which made
+the going a good deal more difficult. But after about ten minutes of
+sloshing through this, we came to a diagonal road, or rather path which
+seemed to be going our way. Thanks to this, by 8:45 we felt the ground
+rising underfoot and sensed a darker bulk in the shadows ahead, which
+could only be Mount Kosan itself. Here we came to our first fence, an
+affair of steel posts and barbed wire, which appeared to be a guard
+against cattle, but hardly more. After inspecting one of the posts for
+signs of electrification, we crawled under the bottom wire and started
+up the slope.
+
+"Are you sure we're on the right island?" asked Chamberlin. "From the
+security measures I don't think we're going to find anything more secret
+than a copra plantation."
+
+Baker shushed him, and whispered back, "We're on the right island, but
+that's the only thing that's right. This is simply too easy to be true."
+
+"Well," said Martin, "Stimson could be all wet. Maybe they're just
+sculping a king sized Buddha after all."
+
+The slope had now steepened considerably, and further conversation died
+out in the effort of climbing. The volcano was heavily forested all the
+way up with mahogany and gum trees, and a dense undergrowth of vines and
+ferns entangled our feet. Twice we came upon rapidly flowing streams.
+
+We were perhaps two thirds of the way up when the moon appeared. Its
+light didn't penetrate very far into the dense foliage, but it did
+enable us to make out the top of the mountain, which took the form of a
+vine covered outcrop of lava. We altered our course slightly, and at
+9:50 P.M. the forest fell away and we faced a rough wall of rock some
+two hundred feet in height.
+
+Before tackling this last obstacle, we paused for a rest and some hot
+coffee from the thermos which was included in our equipment. Then, at
+five minutes past ten, we started the final ascent.
+
+The cliff proved to be more of a climb than we had anticipated, and the
+time was close to eleven before we pulled ourselves up over the last
+boulder and could look across the crater to the other rim.
+
+The last few feet we negotiated with the greatest caution. Martin, I
+think, was first, and he pulled himself on his belly across to the
+beginning of the inner slope. He lay quietly for a half minute, then
+muttered something under his breath which sounded vaguely like "I'll be
+damned", and made way for Baker, who was next. I squeezed in beside him,
+and so we got a look into the crater at the same time. Baker, being a
+very self-contained man, made no audible comment, but I must have, for
+the sight which met our eyes was certainly the last thing I had expected
+to see.
+
+The crater of Mount Kosan was filled with steel and concrete structures
+of gargantuan size, and of the most amazing shapes I had ever seen. I
+say amazing, but I do not mean in the sense of unfamiliar, on the
+contrary these incredible objects had the commonest shapes. Had it not
+been for trees and normal buildings to give the scene a scale, I would
+have sworn that we were looking into a picnic grounds a hundred feet
+across instead of a two mile diameter plain ringed by mountains 2,000
+feet high. The buildings seen in the aerial photo occupied only a small
+part of the crater--all of the other structures must have been concealed
+by clouds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Directly below our perch the rim dropped vertically into deep
+shadows, as the moonlight reached but half the crater. A thousand yards
+west of us, where the light first touched the floor, we could make out
+several clumps of brush or small trees, among which was set a
+rectangular concrete surface measuring perhaps four hundred feet square,
+and resting on hundred foot steel columns. Near this, and partly
+supported by the side of the mountain was what appeared to be a great
+table, of roughly the same area, but standing on trussed columns the
+height of a thirty story building. In front of this was a chair, if by
+chair you understand me to mean a boxlike building twenty stories high,
+with a braced back rising as far again. A half mile along the rim was an
+even larger structure whose dimensions could only be measured in
+fractions of miles, which resembled nothing more than a vast shed built
+against the cliff.
+
+Next my attention was attracted to a number of objects lying upon the
+platform immediately west of us. One of these appeared to be a steel
+bowl-like container some thirty feet deep and a hundred in diameter,
+like the storage tanks used in oil fields. Nearby was an open tank
+measuring perhaps fifty feet in each dimension, and beside this were the
+most startling of all--several hundred foot pieces of built-up
+structural steel resembling knife, fork and spoon.
+
+In retrospect, the deduction from this evidence was obvious, but as we
+stared down at this spectacle, a sort of numbness took hold of our
+minds. As a later comparison of impressions verified, none of us came
+remotely near guessing the truth in those incredible seconds. For what
+seemed like minutes we just stared, and then the spell was broken. Walt
+had squeezed in beside me, where he gave vent to a low whistle of
+amazement. Baker shushed him, and then shifted to a better position, in
+so doing knocking a rock from the ledge. This started a small avalanche
+which went clattering down the cliff with a sound, to our hypersensitive
+ears, like thunder. We all froze in our places, abruptly aware that the
+moon illuminated us like actors in a spotlight. For a good minute we
+waited tense, and then gradually relaxed. Baker started to say something
+when without warning the ground beneath us shook, starting a score of
+rockslides. We recoiled from the edge and braced for a stronger
+earthquake shock. Then suddenly Baker uttered a hoarse cry. He was
+pointing--pointing down into the blackness at our feet where our eyes
+had as yet been unable to penetrate. Something was there, something vast
+and dim and shapeless like a half inflated airship. Then a part of it
+was detached and came up almost to our level. It moved too rapidly for
+any detail to be seen--our only impression was of a vast white column
+large as the Washington monument which swung up into the moonlight and
+then was withdrawn. At the same time the ground quivered anew, starting
+fresh slides.
+
+We blinked stupidly for several seconds, and then became conscious for
+the first time of the sound. It was like a vast cavernous wheeze at
+first, and then a series of distinct wet thuds followed by a prolonged
+gurgling rumble. If these descriptive phrases sound strange and awkward,
+let me give assurance that they are as nothing to the eerie quality of
+the noises themselves. We lay glued to our rocky perch, hardly daring to
+breathe, until the last windy sigh had died away.
+
+Baker found his voice first. "Good God, it's something alive!"
+
+Chamberlin tried to reason. "It can't be--why, it's two hundred feet
+high--it's just a gas bag, like Stimson said. It's--"
+
+He stopped. The thing had moved again, more rapidly and with purpose.
+The great column rose, then pressed down into the ground and pushed the
+main bulk up out of the shadows. There was a moment of confusion while
+our senses tried to grasp shape and scale at the same time, and then it
+all came into focus as the thing arose into the light. At one instant we
+were sane humans, trying to make out a great billowy form wallowing in
+the darkness below. In the next instant we were madmen, staring into a
+human face a hundred feet wide, that peered back at us from the level of
+the cliff top! For a second we were all still--we four, and that titanic
+placid oriental face hanging before us in the moonlight. Then the great
+eyes blinked sleepily and the thing started to move toward us.
+
+I cannot recall in detail what happened. I remember someone screamed, an
+animal cry of pure terror. It may have been me, although Baker claims to
+be the guilty one. In any case the four of us arose as one and plunged
+headfirst off our rock into the tangle of brush at the top of the cliff.
+I think that only the vines saved us from certain death in that first
+mad instant. I know that we were wrestling with them for what seemed
+like an eternity. They wrapped around my legs, tangled in my arms. They
+were like clutching hands, holding me back in a nightmare-like struggle,
+while the thing in the crater came closer. Then abruptly I realized that
+they _were_ hands, human hands seizing us, pulling us back from the
+cliff and then skillfully tieing us up.
+
+It was all over in a moment. The madness was ended. We were once more
+rational humans, tied hand and foot, and propped against the rocky ledge
+in front of a dozen yellow-robed men. For a time we just breathed
+heavily--ourselves and our brown skinned captors alike. Then one of the
+latter spoke.
+
+"You can stand now, yes?"
+
+Baker struggled to his feet in reply. The rest of us did likewise, aided
+not unkindly, by the yellow-robed men. Baker found his voice.
+
+"Thank you," he said. In the brightening moonlight we looked more
+carefully at our captors. They were of small stature, evidently
+Japanese, and, by their costume, all priests.
+
+Baker laughed briefly and glanced at the rest of us. "It would appear,"
+he said dryly, "that we have been taken."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The leader of the priests indicated by a gesture that he wished
+us to move along a narrow trail cut in the vines along the rim. I
+attempted to get another look at the horror within the crater, but the
+ledge of rock down which we had just fallen stood in the way. We were
+guided into a pitch black trail which descended steeply into the forest
+on the outer slope of Mount Kosan.
+
+I lost track of direction almost at once. The trail zigzagged a couple
+of times, and then I sensed that we were in a covered passage. After a
+few more steps and a turn, a light appeared ahead, to show we were
+walking in a concrete lined tunnel. Our captors had split themselves
+into two groups, a half dozen ahead and an equal number behind. Soon
+there appeared a metal door in one wall, which proved to be the entrance
+to an elevator. We all squeezed in, and were taken down a distance which
+surely must have brought us near to the crater floor itself. The door
+then opened, and again we were escorted along a concrete passage. There
+were many turns. Our captors paused before a narrow door with a tiny
+barred window. This was unlocked, we were directed to enter, and the
+door clanked shut behind us.
+
+For the first few minutes no one had anything to say. We examined the
+interior of our cell, but found nothing more remarkable than concrete, a
+small ventilator hole near the ceiling, and a wooden bench along the
+wall opposite the door.
+
+Martin found his voice first. "A human being," he said slowly, "as big
+as the Woolworth Building!"
+
+Chamberlin, apparently still involved in his last abortive try at reason
+said, "But it's impossible. The laws of mechanics--why the biggest
+dinosaurs were only eighty feet long, and they had to be supported by
+water. It's a mechanical device, I tell you."
+
+"It could have been an illusion," I ventured. "Perhaps an image
+projected on a fog bank, or something similar--" Neither Walt nor I were
+very convincing--not with the memory of that face fresh in our minds. We
+all fell silent again.
+
+Several minutes passed, when abruptly we became conscious of a movement
+of the floor, slight but repeated with regularity. A shake, a pause of
+six or eight seconds, then another shake. Baker stood on the bench and
+put his ear to the ventilator. He heard nothing. The movement came
+again. Shake, pause, shake, pause, like some distant and monstrous
+machine. I was reminded of the small earthquakes felt in the vicinity of
+a heavy drop hammer. Shake, pause, shake, pause, and then a heavier jolt
+accompanied by a distinct thud. After that, quiet.
+
+"Obviously," Baker said, "they knew all about us." He was evidently
+thinking out loud. "Probably picked us up on the beach, and then just
+let us go on, clearing out the guards ahead, and keeping near enough to
+see that we didn't use the radio. Why? Maybe to find out how much we
+knew about the place already. I daresay they know one thing now: we
+never expected to find--what we did. Which brings us to our Buddha. The
+big question is, is it mechanical or--alive?" He paused. "I don't
+know--none of us can know yet--but, I'm inclined to believe the latter.
+Cady, what's your opinion?"
+
+I had forgotten for the moment that I was a zoologist. To tell the
+truth, the whole thing had been a little outside of the type of specimen
+I was familiar with.
+
+"Its movements were lifelike," I replied. "They suggest muscular action
+rather than mechanical drive. But, as Walt says, it's just not possible.
+Nature has placed a limit on the size of living creatures. The strength
+of bones, the energy requirements, the osmotic pressures needed to move
+fluids through tissue. Besides, where could it come from? There have
+been giants--eight, ten, maybe up to twelve feet--but this thing is of a
+different order of magnitude. It must weigh millions of pounds. As a
+zoologist, I can't believe that it's alive."
+
+Martin and Chamberlin had a few more remarks of the same nature, and
+then the conversation died away. We waited. Eventually they would
+come--the yellow-robed ones. When they did, we might learn more. I had
+little doubt as to our ultimate fate, but in the dulled condition of my
+senses, I didn't seem particularly to care.
+
+My watch had been smashed in the struggle, so that I had no idea of how
+long they kept us in the cell. It could not have been too many hours,
+for the elementary needs of nature had only begun to assert themselves
+when the sound of a key came from the door. We all stood up. It was our
+conductor of last night, the one who spoke pidgin English.
+
+"Good morning, gentlemens," he said with a bow. "You spend nice night,
+yes? Get plenty sleep?"
+
+We did not reply. Still smiling politely, he beckoned. "Now please to
+come with me. Head Lama talk to you now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+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 reproductive function 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 to
+revise 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".
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+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 chamber save 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 was _his_ voice. 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't _that_ be 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 a French 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 step toward 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 neither we
+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 Kazu who 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
+momentarily on 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.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+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 100^3 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
+100^2, 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 than Yat, 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.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think that the idea hit us all at the same instant. Baker, as
+spokesman, called to Kazu. The giant, for the first time, grinned at us.
+Then he picked up our box and waded into the ocean.
+
+I don't think the people in the little ship even saw us until we were
+practically upon them, because of the mist and sunset glare. What they
+thought I can only imagine, for the water was little more than knee deep
+and Kazu towered fully four hundred feet above it. Then a hand as big as
+the foredeck reached down and gently stopped them by the simple
+expedient of forming a V between thumb and fingers into which the prow
+pushed. I heard the sound of bells and saw tiny figures scurrying about
+on the deck. On the opposite side a number of white specks appeared in
+the water as crewmen dove overboard. Our box was now lowered until its
+door was next to the bridge. We leaped aboard, under cover of a great
+hand which obligingly plucked away the near wall of the pilot house. We
+entered the house just as the captain beat a precipitate retreat out
+the other side, and after a moment in the chartroom we found what we
+wanted. While Martin stood watch at the far door, we took advantage of
+the electric lights to examine the chart of the east coast of Celebes.
+That island, we found, was only sixty miles away and the deepest
+sounding was less than six hundred feet. Kazu could wade the whole
+distance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The nautical charts did not show much detail for the interior of
+Celebes, but from our elevation we could see enough of the terrain to
+guide Kazu quite well. The course which Baker plotted took us across the
+northern part of the big island, and far enough inland to avoid easy
+detection from the sea. As the day progressed, the sky gradually filled
+with clouds, promising more rain, so that I doubt if many people saw us.
+Those who did, I suspect, were more interested in taking cover than in
+interfering with Kazu's progress.
+
+The journey across Celebes took only a couple of hours, and so, by noon,
+we stood on the shore of the strait of Macassar, looking across
+seventy-five miles of blue water to the mountains of Borneo.
+
+It was not until now that Baker explained what he had in mind in
+choosing this particular route.
+
+"We're going to Singapore," he said. "Get under the protection of the
+Royal Navy and Air Force before the commies spot us and start dropping
+bombs and rockets. If Buddha wants to see the world, he'd better start
+by getting a good bodyguard."
+
+Kazu seemed agreeable when appraised of this plan, and so we began to
+plot a more detailed route over the 1,100 miles between us and the
+British crown colony. We stood at the narrowest part of the strait, but
+unfortunately most of it was too deep for Kazu to wade. Reference to the
+charts showed that by going 250 miles south, we would reduce the swim to
+about 30 miles, or the equivalent of some 500 yards for a normal man. To
+this was added a wade of 120 miles through shallows and over the many
+small Balabalagan Islands.
+
+Suddenly Kazu's hand swept down and came up with a 60-foot whale, which
+he devoured in great gory bites. After this midocean lunch, Kazu resumed
+his wading. In the middle of the strait the depth exceeded five thousand
+feet, and he had to swim for a time, after fastening our box to his head
+by means of the trailing cables.
+
+At length the sea became shallow once more, Kazu's feet crunched through
+coral, and the coast of Borneo appeared dimly ahead. We were all taking
+time for the luxury of a sigh of relief when Chamberlin screamed a
+warning.
+
+"Planes! Coming in low at three o'clock!"
+
+Fortunately Kazu heard this also, although the language confused him.
+Precious seconds were wasted while he held the box up to his face for
+more explicit directions. The planes, a flight of six, were streaking
+towards us just above the wavetops. We could see that they carried
+torpedoes, and it was not difficult to guess their intentions.
+
+"Go sideways!" Baker yelled, but Kazu did not move. He simply stood
+facing the oncoming aircraft, our box held in his left hand at head
+level, and his right arm hanging at his side, half submerged. Either
+Kazu was too frightened to move, or he did not understand the danger.
+The planes were hardly a half mile away now, evidently holding their
+fire until the last moment to insure a hit. What even one torpedo could
+do I didn't dare to contemplate, and here were twelve possible strikes.
+After all, Kazu was made of flesh, and after having seen the effect of
+TNT on the steel side of a ship, I had little doubt as to what would
+happen to him.
+
+Now the last seconds were at hand. The planes were closing at five
+hundred yards, the torpedoes would drop in a second.... But suddenly
+Kazu moved. His whole body swung abruptly to the left and at the same
+time the right hand came up through the water. We, of course, were
+pitched headlong, but we did briefly glimpse a tremendous fan of solid
+green water rising up to meet the planes. They tried to dodge but it was
+too late. Into the waterspout they flew, all six with their torpedoes
+still attached, and down into the ocean they fell, broken and sinking.
+It was all over in a moment. We were so amazed it was moments before we
+could move.
+
+Kazu turned and resumed his stroll toward Borneo without a single
+backward glance at the havoc wrought by his splash.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As we entered the foothills I became conscious for the first time of a
+curious change. It was a psychological change in me, a change in my
+sense of scale. We had been carried so long at Kazu's shoulder level,
+and had grown so accustomed to looking out along his arms from almost
+the same viewpoint as his, that we were now estimating the size of the
+mountains as though we were as large as Kazu! It is difficult to express
+just how I felt, and now that it is all over, the memory has become so
+tenuous and subtle that I fear I will never be able to explain it so
+that anyone but my three companions could understand. But this was the
+first moment that I noticed the effect. The mountains were suddenly no
+longer 4,000 foot peaks viewed from a plane 500 feet above ground level,
+but were forty foot mounds with a six inch cover of mossy brush, and I
+was walking up their sides as a normal human being! The change was, as
+nearly as I can express it, from the viewpoint of a normal human being
+under extraordinary circumstances to that of an ordinary man visiting a
+miniature world. The whale to me was now a fat jellyfish seven inches
+long, the Chinese warplanes were toys with an eight inch wingspread, the
+little steamer of yesterday was a flimsy toy built of cardboard and
+tinfoil. We had, in effect, identified ourselves completely with Kazu.
+
+And so we climbed dripping from the Straits of Macassar, and entered the
+mists and jungles of Borneo.
+
+Our course toward Singapore carried us across the full width of
+southern Borneo, a distance, from a point north of Kotabaroe to Cape
+Datu, of almost six hundred miles.
+
+After about an hour, the blue outlines of the Schwanner Mountains
+appeared ahead and presently we passed quite close to Mt. Raya, which at
+7,500 feet was the greatest mountain Kazu had ever seen. Then, dropping
+into another valley, we followed the course of the Kapuas River for a
+time, and finally turned west again through an area of plantations. Here
+Kazu made an effort to secure food by plucking and eating fruit and
+treetops together. The result was unsatisfactory, but presently we
+came upon a granary containing thousands of sacks of rice. The
+workmen, warned by our earthquake approach, fled long before we
+reached it. Kazu carefully removed the corrugated iron roof and ate the
+whole contents of the warehouse, which amounted to about a handful. The
+sacks appeared about a quarter of an inch in length, and seemed to be
+filled with a fine white powder.
+
+Following this meal, Kazu drained a small lake, getting incidentally a
+goodly catch of carp, although he could not even taste them. Then, since
+it was now late in the afternoon, he turned northwest to the hills to
+spend the night.
+
+The last part of the journey was almost entirely through shallow
+water--three hundred miles of the warm South China Sea. Baker planned to
+make a before dawn start, so that we might be close to the Malay
+Peninsula before daylight could expose us to further attack. Kazu
+suggested pushing on at once, but Baker did not think it wise to
+approach the formidable defenses of Singapore by night. And so for a
+second time we sought out an isolated valley where Kazu could snuggle
+between two soft hills, and we could get what sleep was possible in the
+wreckage of the projection room.
+
+The China Sea passage was made without incident. We started at three
+A.M. in a downpour of rain, and by six, at dawn, the low outline of the
+Malay Peninsula came into sight. We made our landfall some forty miles
+north of Singapore, and at once cut across country toward Johore Bahru
+and the great British crown colony.
+
+The rice paddies, roads and other signs of civilization were a welcome
+sight, and I was already relaxing, mentally, in a hot tub at the
+officers club when the awakening came. It came in the form of a squadron
+of fighter planes carrying British markings which roared out of the
+south without warning and passed Kazu's head with all their guns firing.
+Fortunately neither his eyes nor our thin shelled box was hit, but Kazu
+felt the tiny projectiles which penetrated even his twelve inch hide. As
+the planes wheeled for another pass he called out in English that he was
+a friend, but of course the pilots could not hear above the roar of
+their jets. On the second try two of the planes released rockets, which
+fortunately missed, but this put a different light on the whole thing. A
+direct hit with a ten inch rocket would be as dangerous as a torpedo.
+Baker tried to yell some advice, but there was no chance before the
+planes came in again. This time Kazu waved, and finally threw a handful
+of earth and trees at them. The whole squadron zoomed upwards like a
+covey of startled birds.
+
+By the time we had reached a temporary haven, Kazu was thoroughly
+winded, and we were battered nearly insensible. Baker, in fact, was out
+cold. Kazu slowed down, and then finding no directions or advice
+forthcoming, he resumed a steady dogtrot to the north. Martin and I
+tried to draw Baker to a safer position beside the projector, but in the
+process one of the steel shelves collapsed, adding Martin to the
+casualty list. Walt and I then attempted to drag the two of them to
+safety, but in the midst of these efforts a particularly hard lurch sent
+me headfirst into the projector, and my interest in proceedings
+thereupon became nil. Walt, battered and seasick, gave up and collapsed
+with the rest of us. Further efforts at communication by Kazu proved
+fruitless. Buddha was on his own.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+I awoke with a throbbing headache to find the steel room motionless, and
+warm sunshine streaming into my face. Looking around, I saw that my
+three companions were all up and apparently in good shape. Baker was the
+first to notice that I was awake, and he came over immediately.
+
+"Feel better?" he inquired cheerfully.
+
+He helped me up and I staggered to the window. The room was perched, as
+usual, on a hilltop, but the vegetation around was not tropical jungle.
+I turned to the others, noting as I did that the room was cleaned up.
+
+"Where--" I started, with a gesture outside. Baker stopped me and led me
+to an improvised canvas hammock.
+
+"You really got a nasty one," he said. "You've been out two days."
+
+"Two days!" I tried to rise, but the effort so increased the headache
+that I gave up and collapsed into the hammock.
+
+"Just lie quiet and I'll bring you up to date." Baker drew up an empty
+film box for a seat. "I was knocked about a bit myself, you know, and by
+the time I came around, our friend had trotted the whole length of the
+Malay Peninsula and was halfway across Burma."
+
+"But the people at Singapore," I began, "Don't those fools know yet--"
+
+"Things have changed," said Baker. "The biggest change has been in
+Buddha's mind. He took our advice and almost got killed for his pains.
+Now he's on his own."
+
+I tried to look through the open door. Baker shook his head.
+
+"He's not here. No--" this in answer to my startled look, "just off for
+a stroll, towards China this time, I think. Yesterday he visited Lhasa.
+Said it's quite a place. Talked to the Lamas in Tibetan, and they
+understood him. He calls it playing Buddha."
+
+Baker got up and searched among the maps, finally finding one of
+southeast Asia. He spread it out before me, and placed a finger rather
+vaguely on the great Yunnan Plateau between Burma and China.
+
+"We're here, somewhere. Buddha doesn't know exactly, himself. He made it
+to Lhasa by following the Himalayas, and watching for the Potala. I hope
+he'll find his way back this time--be a bit awkward for us if he
+doesn't."
+
+He stepped outside and brought in some cold cooked rice and meat.
+
+"Kazu brought us a handful of cows yesterday. They were practically
+mashed into hamburger. I guess you'd call this pounded steak."
+
+I ate some of the meat and settled back to rest again. Presently I dozed
+off.
+
+When I awakened it was dark and Kazu was back. Martin had started a big
+campfire outside, evidently with Kazu's aid, for it was stoked with
+several logs fully eight feet in diameter and was sending flames fifty
+feet into the sky. Kazu himself was squatting directly over it, staring
+down at us. When I came to the door, he spoke.
+
+"Ah, little brother Bill. I am so sorry that you were hurt. I am afraid
+I forgot to be gentle, and that is not forgiveable in Buddha."
+
+I made an appropriate reply, and then waited. Evidently he had as yet
+told nothing of his day's expedition. Finally he plucked a roasted
+bullock from the fire and popped it into his mouth like a nut.
+
+"Today," he said, "I visit Chungking, Nanking, Peking. I think I see
+hundred million Chinese. I know more than that see me. Also I talk to
+them. They understand, for miles. They expected me. As you say, brother
+Llewelyn, Rau has excellent propaganda machine. Everywhere they hail me
+as Buddha, come to save them from war and disease and western
+imperialism. I speak to them as Buddha; today, I am Buddha."
+
+Baker glanced at us meaningfully and murmured, "I was afraid of this."
+But Kazu continued.
+
+"Today all of China believes I am Buddha. Only you and I know this is
+not so, but we can fight best if they believe."
+
+"Have you eaten?" inquired Martin. Kazu nodded.
+
+"At every temple they collect rice for Buddha. Many small meals make
+full belly. But," his face wrinkled with concern, "many thousands could
+live on what I eat today. China is so poor. So many people, so little
+food. I must find ways to help them." He paused, and then resumed in a
+firmer tone.
+
+"But not in communist way. Rau was right about western imperialists, but
+he named wrong country. Russian imperialists have enslaved China. First
+we must drive communists from China. Then I can help."
+
+"Amen," said Baker softly. Then, to Kazu....
+
+"We've been trying to do just that for years. But how can you fight
+seven hundred million people?"
+
+"Don't fight--lead them."
+
+It sounded so simple, the way he said it. Well, maybe he could. But now
+Baker had more practical questions.
+
+"What does the rest of the world think about all this? Have you talked
+to any Europeans, or heard a radio?"
+
+Kazu shook his head. "But I caught communist General. He tell me Russia
+sending army to capture me. He say only hope is for me to surrender, or
+Russian drop atom bomb on me. Then I eat him."
+
+We must have showed our startled reaction, for Kazu laughed.
+
+"Not much nourishment in communist. I eat him for propaganda--many
+people see me do it. Effect very good." He paused. "Not tasty, but
+symbolic meal. China is like Buddha, giant who can eat up enemies."
+
+"What are you going to do next?" asked Baker.
+
+"That is question. I need more information. Where is leadership in China
+I can trust? What will Russians do? How long for British and Americans
+to wake up?"
+
+"You're not the only one asking these questions," said Baker. "But maybe
+you can get some answers."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before Kazu could continue, Chamberlin held up his hand for silence. We
+listened, and presently heard above the crackle of the great bonfire,
+the throb of an airplane engine. Kazu heard it too, for he suddenly
+arose and stepped back out of the light. We four also hastened into the
+shadows and peered into the dark sky. The approaching aircraft displayed
+no lights, but presently we saw it in the firelight--a multi-jet bomber
+bearing American markings. We rushed back into the illuminated area and
+danced up and down, waving our arms. The huge plane swung in a wide
+circle and came in less than five hundred feet above the hilltop. I
+could make out faces peering down at us from the glassed greenhouse in
+front. As it roared past, one wing tipped slightly in the updraft from
+the fire, and then suddenly the plane stopped dead in its tracks. The
+jets roared a deeper note as they bit into still air, and then very
+slowly and gently the great ship moved back and down until it rested on
+its belly beside our steel box. Not until it was quite safe on the
+ground did Kazu's hands release their hold on the wings, where he had
+caught it in midair.
+
+The eleven crew men from the B125 came out with their hands in the air,
+but their expressions were more incredulous than frightened. Baker added
+to the unreality of the situation by his greeting, done in the best "Dr.
+Livingstone-I-presume" manner.
+
+"Welcome to Camp Yunnan. Sorry we had to be so abrupt. I'm Baker, these
+are Chamberlin, Martin, Cady."
+
+"I'm Faulkner," replied the leader of the Americans automatically, and
+then he abruptly sat down and was violently sick. We waited patiently
+until he could speak again.
+
+"My God, I didn't believe it when we heard." He was talking to no-one in
+particular. "One minute we're flying at 450 miles per hour, the next
+we're picked out of the air like a--like a--"
+
+He gave up. Kazu came into the firelight and squatted down, quite
+slowly. Baker introduced him.
+
+"Colonel, I'd like you to meet Kazu Takahashi." The American arose and
+extended his hand, and then dropped it abruptly to his side. Kazu
+emitted a thunderous chuckle.
+
+"Handshake is, I fear, formality I must always pass up, even at risk of
+impoliteness."
+
+I think that the language, and particularly the phrasing, jolted the
+airmen even more than the actual capture. Colonel Faulkner kept shaking
+his head and murmuring "My God!" for several moments, and then pulled
+himself together. "So the story's really true after all," he finally
+said. "We got it on the radio day before yesterday at Manila. It was so
+garbled at first that nobody could make any sense. Ships reported
+thousand foot men wading in the ocean. New Macassar radio reported that
+Buddha was reincarnated, and then denied the story. Announcements of a
+pitched battle at Singapore, and frantic reports from every town on the
+peninsula. Then a statement by some Lama on Macassar that the British
+had kidnaped Buddha, had him hypnotized or doped, and were using him to
+exterminate China."
+
+He paused and looked up at Kazu, who had bent down until his face was
+only a hundred feet above us.
+
+"Part of it is true," said Baker. "There was a giant wading in the
+ocean. As to the rest, I fear we have caught the red radio without a
+script. I'll tell you the story presently, but just now there are more
+urgent things to do. Is your radio working?"
+
+Faulkner nodded and led us towards the plane. Baker continued.
+
+"Briefly, Kazu is a mutation produced by the Hiroshima bomb. He's been
+groomed for twenty years to take over as the world's largest puppet, but
+it turns out he has a mind of his own. We just happened along, and are
+going on for the ride. Want to join the party?"
+
+The Colonel grinned for the first time as we all squeezed into the radio
+compartment of the plane.
+
+"I like travel," he said. "It's so broadening."
+
+The radio was not only operative, but proved most informative as well.
+Every transmitter on earth, it seemed, was talking about the giant. In
+the course of an hour we listened to a dozen major stations and got as
+many versions of the story. The communist propaganda factory had
+obviously been caught flat footed, for their broadcasts were a hopeless
+mixture of releases evidently prepared for the planned introduction of
+Buddha to the world, and hastily assembled diatribes against the
+capitalist imperialists who had so foully captured him. Some of the
+Russians apparently were not in on the secret of Buddha's dimensions,
+for they described in detail how a raiding party of eighty American
+commando-gangsters had landed by parachute on Yat, seized Buddha, and
+taken him away in a seaplane.
+
+Before we went to sleep that night, Kazu extinguished the fire so that
+no one else would be attracted as the Colonel had been.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next morning the first question concerned transportation. Colonel
+Faulkner naturally did not want to leave his plane, particularly since
+it was undamaged, but a takeoff from our narrow mountain ledge was
+obviously impossible, so he regretfully ordered his crew to unload their
+personal effects for transfer to our box. At this point Kazu stepped in.
+
+"If you will enter your airplane and start jets," he said, "Buddha will
+serve as launching mechanism."
+
+Before the takeoff, the Colonel transferred his spare radio gear to our
+box, along with an auxiliary generator, and we agreed on a schedule to
+keep in touch. Then Kazu gently picked up the bomber, raised it high
+above his head and sent it gliding off to the north. The engines coughed
+a couple of times and then caught with a roar. Colonel Faulkner wagged
+his wings and vanished into the haze.
+
+Our plan was to follow the plane east to the Wu River, and then north to
+its meeting with the Yangtze, which occurs some seventy five miles below
+Chungking. While the B125 cruised around us in a great circle, we loaded
+our belongings into the box, and Kazu picked us up and signalled the
+plane that we were ready. Colonel Faulkner's intention had been to
+circle us rather than leave us behind with his superior speed, but in a
+moment it became clear that this would not be necessary. Kazu set off
+down the canyon at a pace better than three hundred miles per hour, and
+the Colonel had to gun his motors to keep up.
+
+We passed only a few small towns on the Wu. Kazu had been here before,
+and had evidently stopped to talk and make friends, for we observed none
+of the fright which had formerly greeted his advent. Instead, crowds ran
+out to meet us, waving the forbidden Nationalist flag and shooting off
+firecrackers. Kazu spoke briefly in Cantonese to each group, and then
+hurried on. Baker explained that he was giving them formal blessings, in
+the name of Buddha.
+
+An hour's time brought us to Fowchow, on the mighty Yangtze Kiang. Here
+Kazu turned left, wading in the stream, and negotiated the seventy odd
+miles to Chungking in fifteen minutes.
+
+The distance from Chungking to Hankow is somewhat more than five hundred
+miles. For much of this distance the Yangtze is bounded by mountains and
+rocky gorges, but in the final 150 miles, the hills drop away and the
+river winds slowly through China's lake country. Kazu made good time in
+the gorge, but his feet sank a hundred feet into the soft alluvial soil
+of the lowlands and he had constantly to watch out for villages and
+farms.
+
+Buddha had not visited Hankow before, but he was expected. Even before
+the city came into view, the roads were lined with people and the canals
+and lakes jammed with sampans. Just outside of the city we noticed a
+small group of men in military uniform under a white flag. We guessed
+that they represented the communist city government, and so did Kazu,
+for he set our box beside the group and ordered the spokesman to come in
+for a parlay. The unfortunate officer who was picked obviously did not
+relish the idea, particularly after Martin cracked in English, "He
+doesn't look fat enough." Giving Martin a glare, he drew himself up
+stiffly and said, "General Soo prepared to die, if necessary for people
+of China."
+
+The communist General showed somewhat less bravado after the stomach
+turning ascent to the six hundred foot level, but he managed to get off
+a speech in answer to Kazu's question. As before, Baker gave us a
+running translation.
+
+"He says welcome to Hankow. The people's government, ever responsive to
+the will of the citizens, joins with all faithful Buddhists in welcoming
+Buddha, and in expressing heartfelt thanksgiving that rumors claiming
+Buddha to be a puppet of western imperialists are all false. Now he's
+saying that there is to be a big party--a banquet--for Buddha, in the
+central square. Rice has been collected and cooked, and a thousand sheep
+slaughtered to feed hungry Buddha."
+
+Kazu replied formally that while he appreciated the hospitality of the
+people of Hankow, he could not accept food from the enemies of China.
+These words, which were clearly audible to the entire city, were greeted
+with cheers by the throng below. The General took this in, thought about
+it a moment, and then made a neat about face.
+
+"General Soo," said he stoutly, "was communist when he believed
+communism only hope for China. You have changed everything. General Soo
+now faithful Buddhist!"
+
+"May I," said Baker with a grin, "be the first to congratulate General
+Soo on his perspicacity."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the General had promised, there was a great banquet spread. In spite
+of Soo's protestations, Baker insisted on sampling each course rather
+extensively for sleeping potions or poison, but either the idea had not
+occurred to the communists, or there hadn't been enough time, or poison
+available.
+
+For the most part the civil government of Hankow joined with General Soo
+in a loudly declared conversion to Buddhism without communist trappings.
+In spite of Baker's skepticism, I believed that most of them were quite
+sincere. At least, they sincerely wanted to be on the side with the most
+power, and for the time being at least, Kazu seemed an easy winner.
+General Soo, in particular, insisted on making a long speech in which he
+declared the Russians to be the true "western imperialists", now
+unmasked, who since the days of the first Stalin had sought to enslave
+China with lies and trickery. Baker shook his head over this, and
+privately opined that Soo was a very poor fence straddler: such remarks
+went beyond the needs of expediency, and would probably completely
+alienate him from the Kremlin. However, the crowd thought it was all
+fine.
+
+Kazu replied with a short, and generally well planned statement of his
+policy.
+
+"Those who follow me," he concluded, "have no easy path. They must be
+strong, to throw off the yoke of those who would enslave them, but they
+must be merciful to their enemies in defeat, even to those who but a
+moment before were at their throats. For though we win the war, if we at
+the same time forget what we have fought for, then we have indeed lost
+all. I proclaim to all China, and to her enemies both within and without
+our borders, that the faith of Buddha has returned, and that
+interference in China's affairs by any other nation will not be
+tolerated."
+
+Colonel Faulkner had landed at the Hankow airport and now, with his
+crew, shared our private banquet on the terrace of the city's largest
+hotel, only a few hundred feet from where Kazu squatted. Under cover of
+the cheering and speechmaking, he relayed to us some news which he had
+heard on the radio, which was not quite so rosy.
+
+It seemed, first, that the Chinese III Army, under General Wu, had
+declared itself for Buddha, and was engaged in a pitched battle with the
+Manchurian First Army north of Tientsin. The communist garrison at
+Shanghai, where there was a large population of Russian "colonists", had
+holed in, awaiting attack by a Buddhist Peoples Army assembled from
+revolting elements of the II and VII Corps at Nanking. A revolt at
+Canton, far to the south, had been put down by the communists with the
+aid of air support coming directly from Russia. The most ominous note,
+however, was a veiled threat by old Mao himself that if mutinous
+elements did not submit, he might call upon his great ally to the east
+to use the atomic bomb. Mao spoke apparently from near Peking, where he
+was assembling the I and V Armies.
+
+We digested this news while Kazu finished the last of his 1000 sheep. We
+all cast anxious glances into the sky. Soviet planes at Canton meant
+that they could be here also, and Buddha, squatting in a glare of light
+in the midst of Hankow, was a sitting duck for a bombing attack.
+
+As soon as the main part of the formalities were over, Baker managed to
+get Kazu's attention, and informed him of the situation. Kazu's reaction
+was immediate and to the point.
+
+"We do not await attack. We go north to free our brothers, and to
+instruct our errant General Mao in Buddha's truth."
+
+By the time we were packed and in our travelling box, the time was
+eight-thirty. Reference to our map showed the airline distance from
+Hankow to Peking to be about 630 miles, and Buddha, greatly refreshed by
+the food and rest, promised to reach the capital by eleven.
+
+To make walking easier, Baker plotted a route which avoided the
+lowlands, particularly the valley of the Yellow River, in favor of a
+slightly longer course through the mountains to the east. We started
+northwest, splashing through the swamps and lakes around Hankow at
+first, and presently reached firmer ground in the Hawiyang Shan. We
+followed the ridge of these mountains for a time, and then dropped to
+the hilly country of Honan Province. At first the night was very dark,
+but presently the light of a waning moon made an occasional fix
+possible, although navigation was confusing and uncertain at best.
+
+We splashed across the Yellow River at ten o'clock, somewhere east of
+Kaifeng, and for a time were greatly slowed by what appeared to be thick
+gumbo.
+
+Our speed improved once we got up into the rugged Taihang Mountains.
+Here also we felt safer from air observation or attack, although Kazu
+was soon panting from the exertion of crossing an endless succession of
+fifteen to thirty foot ridges. This was indeed rough country, terrain
+which had protected the lush plains of China for centuries against the
+Mongols. Here the great wall had been built, and presently, in the
+moonlight, we saw its trace, winding serpentlike over the mountains.
+
+We followed the Wall for almost two hundred miles--all the way, in fact,
+to the latitude of Peking--before we swung east again for the final lap
+to Mao's capital.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the last hour we trailed an antenna and listened in on the world
+of radio. The news was not good. The Shanghai garrison had sprung a trap
+on their disorganized attackers, and were marching on Nanking. Mao's
+armies were closing the southern half of a great pincers on Wu's troops,
+and only awaited the dawn to launch the final assault. Worst of all,
+there had been reports of increasing Soviet air activity over the area;
+a major air strike also apparently would come with daylight.
+
+We were scarcely halfway from the edge of the city to the moated summer
+palace when a small hell of gunfire broke out around Kazu's feet. He
+jumped, with a roar of pain, and then lashed out with one foot, sweeping
+away a whole city block and demolishing the ambush. Limping slightly, he
+made the remaining distance by a less direct route and at last stood at
+the moat before the palace. The ancient building, and, indeed,
+everything about, was quite dark. Kazu peered about uncertainly, and
+then raised our box to ask for advice. Baker was pessimistic.
+
+"I don't think you'll find General Mao here. But at this stage of
+things, I don't believe it would matter if you did. The decision will be
+made tomorrow by the armies."
+
+Kazu stepped carefully over the moat and wall, and sat down wearily in
+the gardens of the summer palace. We peered with interest at the
+foliage, marble bridges and the graceful buildings, illuminated only by
+ghostly moonlight. With Kazu squatting among them, they looked like
+models, a toy village out of ancient China. I wished that a picture
+might be taken, for surely never before had Buddha been in so
+appropriate a setting.
+
+While Kazu rested, we examined his feet. A number of machine gun bullets
+had entered his foot thick hide, and there was one wound a yard long
+from which oozed a sticky gelatinous blood. There did not appear to be
+any serious damage, although the chances of infection worried us. In any
+event, there was nothing we could do except douse it with buckets of
+water from the moat. Kazu thanked us formally, as befitted a deity, and
+added, as though talking to himself,
+
+"Now is the most difficult time. How can I bring peace without the use
+of violence? I can appear before these armies and command them to stop.
+But what if they do not obey? Should I use force? Oh, that I were really
+the Great Lord Buddha--then I would have the wisdom, the knowledge that
+is a thousand times more potent than giant size. Oh Buddha, grant me
+wisdom, if only for a moment, that I may act rightly."
+
+Presently the giant stretched out full length in the garden and, while
+we kept guard, slept for a time.
+
+The first pale glow of dawn appeared soon after five, and we were
+preparing to awaken Kazu when Martin held up a warning hand. We
+listened. At first we heard nothing, and then there came a deep drone of
+jets. Not a single plane, not even a squadron. Nothing less than a great
+fleet of heavy aircraft was approaching Peking from the west. Baker
+fired his automatic repeatedly near Kazu's ear, and presently his rumbly
+breathing changed and he opened his eyes.
+
+"Planes," said Baker briefly. "It's not safe here. Better get moving."
+
+Kazu sat up, yawning, and we climbed into the box. The giant took a long
+draught from the nearest fishpond and tied our cage to his neck and
+shoulder so that both of his hands would be free.
+
+By this time the noise of the planes had increased to a roar, which
+echoed through the silent city. Kazu arose to his full height and
+waited. A pinkish line of light had now appeared along the eastern
+horizon which, I realized with consternation, must silhouette the mighty
+tower of Kazu's body to whomever was coming out of the western shadows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then we saw them. A great fleet of heavy bombers, flying
+high, far beyond even Kazu's reach. Baker seized the glasses to look,
+and then gave a cry of warning. The leading plane had dropped
+something--a black spherical object above which blossomed a parachute. I
+think that Kazu realized what it was as soon as we, but he still stood
+quietly. Baker lost whatever calm he had left and screamed, "Run,
+run--it's the H-bomb!" but still Kazu did not move. In a moment another
+of the deadly spheres appeared, directly over us, and then a third. Now
+at last Kazu moved, but not toward safety. He walked slowly until he was
+directly beneath the first bomb, and reached up, until his hand was a
+thousand feet in the air. Down came the bomb, quite rapidly, for the
+parachute was not very large.
+
+"What's the matter with the fool," yelled Martin. But now Baker seemed
+to get Kazu's idea.
+
+"It has barometric fusing--it's set to detonate at a certain altitude.
+If that's below a thousand feet, and Kazu can catch it, it won't go
+off!"
+
+Martin started something about detonation at two thousand feet, when
+Kazu gave a slight jump and his hand closed about the deadly thing, as
+though he had caught a fly. We cowered, expecting the flash that would
+mean the end, but nothing happened. In Kazu's crushing grip the firing
+mechanism was reduced to wreckage before it could act. When Buddha
+opened his palm, it contained only a wad of crumpled metal inside of
+which was a now harmless sphere of plutonium.
+
+In quick succession Kazu repeated this performance with the other two
+bombs, wadded the whole together and flung it to the ground. Then he
+turned to the north.
+
+By the time we had cleared the city, it was quite light, and we could
+see a dark pall of smoke in the northeast. The armies which had been
+poised last night had finally met, and a great battle was underway. Kazu
+hurried towards it, and presently we could hear the crackle of small
+arms fire and the heavier explosions of mortars and rockets. It took a
+moment or so for Kazu to get his bearings. Evidently we were approaching
+Mao's legions from the rear. Still keeping from the roads to avoid
+killing anyone, Kazu advanced to near the battle line, and there
+stopped.
+
+"My brothers," his voice thundered above the heaviest cannon, "my poor
+brothers on both sides, listen to me. Stop this killing. Stop this
+useless slaughter. No one can win, and all will--"
+
+Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light, a thousand times brighter
+than the newly appeared sun. It came from behind us, and in the terrible
+instant that it remained we could see Buddha's enormous shadow
+stretching out across the battlefield. Kazu stopped speaking and braced
+his shoulders for the blast. Subconsciously I was counting seconds.
+Four, five, six, seven--A sudden, insane hope gripped me. If we were far
+enough from the burst--and then the blast hit us, and with it, the
+sound. Kazu pitched forward a hundred yards, and stumbled on as far
+again. Then he recovered. One hand reached behind him, to the back that
+had taken the full brunt of heat and gamma radiation, and a half animal
+cry escaped from his lips. Over his shoulder we got a glimpse of the
+fireball, of the fountain of color which would presently form the
+terrible mushroom cloud. The thunder of the explosion reverberated, and
+was replaced by silence. The crackle of rifles, the thud of field pieces
+had ceased. From our perch we looked down at a scene straight from
+Dante's Inferno. About Kazu's feet was a shallow ravine in which a
+thousand or so communist troops had taken cover. These were now
+scrambling and clawing at the sides like ants trying to get away.
+Vehicles were abandoned, rifles thrown away. A few had been burned, but
+it seemed that for the most part the soldiers had been sheltered from
+direct radiation by the wall of their canyon, and by Kazu's great
+shadow.
+
+For an eternity, it seemed, Kazu stood there, swaying slightly, one hand
+still pressed against his back, while the little men writhed about his
+ankles. Then, quite slowly, he raised one foot. I thought that he was
+going to walk away, but instead, the foot moved deliberately until it
+was directly over the ravine, and then, like a tremendous pile driver,
+it descended. A faint and hideous screaming came up to us, which
+abruptly ended. The foot came up, and again descended, turning back and
+forth in the yielding earth. Slowly Kazu brought his hand up, and lifted
+our box so that he could look at us. As he did so, I saw that half of
+his hand was the color of charcoal, and I smelled a horrible odor of
+tons of burnt flesh. Now at last he spoke, in a voice that we could
+scarcely understand.
+
+"Guide me," he said, "Guide me, Baker. Guide me to Moscow!"
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Kazu walked quite slowly from the battlefield. His gait was unsteady,
+and at first we feared that he would collapse. We could not tell how
+deep the burns were, nor whether he was internally hurt by the blast. He
+appeared to be suffering from some kind of shock, for he did not speak
+again for a long time. But gradually he seemed to gather himself
+together, and we became almost convinced that the shock was more
+psychological than physical, and that even the atom bomb was powerless
+against his might.
+
+We did not remain to see the outcome of the battle, but presently Martin
+turned the radio on. The news at first was fragmentary. Word that a
+Russian plane had atom bombed the new Buddha spread across China, and
+with it ended the last shreds of communist prestige. The armies which
+had been pro-communist turned on their officers. Mao himself was
+murdered on the battlefield before Kazu was out of sight. The former red
+defenders of Shanghai massacred twenty thousand hapless Russian
+emigrants. All across Asia the story was the same, a terrible revulsion.
+At first it was believed that Buddha had died instantly; later rumor had
+it that he had crawled off to Mongolia to die.
+
+Radio Moscow at first was silent. The horror of what had been done was
+too much even for that well oiled propaganda machine. At last a line was
+patched together: the bomb had been dropped by an American plane,
+bearing Russian markings. Then Radio Peking announced that Chinese
+fighters had shot it down and that the crew was Russian. To this Moscow
+could think of only one reply: Radio Peking was lying; the station had
+been taken over by the Americans! A little later another Moscow
+broadcast announced solemnly that the whole story was wrong--Buddha
+hadn't been there at all!
+
+All the time that this confused flood of talk was circling the globe,
+Kazu Takahashi, still clinging to the battered steel projection room,
+was striding across Siberia, staggering now and then, but still
+maintaining a pace of better than three hundred miles per hour.
+
+At first he simply walked westward without any directions from us. By
+ten o'clock he had put a thousand miles between him and the coast and
+was well across the southern Gobi desert. Now Baker, who had been almost
+as stunned as Kazu, began to look into his maps. He had nothing for
+central Asia as detailed as the charts we had used in Borneo and
+Celebes, but he presently found a small scale map that would do. With
+this he identified the snowy range of mountains now towering on our left
+as the Nan Shan, northernmost bastion of Tibet. He hurriedly called to
+Kazu to turn northwest before he entered the great Tarim Basin, for the
+western side of that vast desert was closed by a range of mountains
+20,000 feet high. Even with the new course, our altitude would be above
+six thousand feet for many miles.
+
+At noon we were paralleling another mighty range, the little known Altai
+Mountains, and at one o'clock we passed the Zaisan Nor, the great lake
+which forms the headwaters for the Irtysh River. Here Kazu paused for a
+drink, and to rinse his burns with fresh water. Then we were away again,
+this time due west over more mountain tops, avoiding the inhabited
+lowlands. At three-thirty the hills dropped away and there appeared
+ahead the infinite green carpet of the Siberian forest. Kazu stopped
+again at another lake, which Baker guessed might be Dengiz. At
+four-thirty we crossed a wide river which we could not identify, and
+then at last commenced to climb into the foothills of the southern
+Urals. Just in time Baker discovered that Kazu's course was taking him
+straight toward the industrial city of Magnetogorsk. We veered north
+again into the higher mountains and then turned east to the forests.
+
+We were sure now that Kazu must be delirious, but after a while he
+stopped at the edge of a lake.
+
+"How far are we from Moscow?" he asked.
+
+"Twelve hundred miles, more or less," said Baker. "You can make it by
+nine, maybe ten, tonight."
+
+Kazu shook his head.
+
+"No. Tonight I must rest, gather strength. We start two AM, arrive
+Kremlin at sunrise. We catch them same time they catch me. No warning
+whatever."
+
+Kazu lay down on the swampy lake bottom while we huddled on the floor of
+the box, courting sleep which never came.
+
+At one o'clock we at last gave it up, and Baker fired his pistol until
+Kazu stirred. While he was awakening we listened to the radio. Things
+had calmed down quite a bit, and as we pieced the various broadcasts
+together, an amazing realization came over us. Everyone believed that
+Kazu was dead! Evidently no word of our trip across all of central Asia
+had been received! Search planes, both Soviet and Chinese, were combing
+the eastern Gobi for the body.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Other news included a war declaration by China upon the Soviet
+Union, and the announcement that the Russian Politbureau had scheduled a
+meeting in the Kremlin to consider the emergency.
+
+We passed all of this on to Kazu, whose grim face relaxed for the first
+time in a fleeting grin.
+
+"Good reporters. Know what are most savory items. Now guide me well, and
+away from towns until we reach it."
+
+The trip across the Urals and the plains of European Russia retains a
+nightmare quality in my mind, comparable only with that first night on
+Yat. Even Baker, who plotted the course, can remember it little better.
+Now and again we caught glimpses of the dim lights in farms, and once we
+saw the old moon reflected in the Volga. Much of the low country was
+covered with ground fog, which reached to Kazu's waist; this, combined
+with the blackout which had been ordered in every town, made observation
+by us or the Russians either way difficult. A few people saw Kazu, and
+their reports reflect a surrealist madness; those who had the horrifying
+experience of suddenly meeting Buddha in the early morning mists were
+universally incapable of making any coherent report to the authorities.
+
+And then, just as the ghostly false dawn turned the night into a misty
+gray, we saw ahead the towers of Moscow. Now Kazu increased his speed.
+Concealment was no longer possible; he must reach the Kremlin ahead of
+the warning.
+
+At 500 miles per hour Buddha descended upon Moscow. His plunging feet
+reduced block after block of stores and apartment houses to dust, and
+the sky behind us was lighted more brightly by the fires he started than
+by the dull red of the still unrisen sun. Now at last I heard the tardy
+wail of a siren and saw armored cars darting through the streets. On the
+roof of an apartment house I glimpsed a crew trying to unlimber an
+antiaircraft gun, but Kazu saw it also, and smashed the building to
+rubble with a passing kick.
+
+And then we were at the Red Square. St. Basil's at one end, the fifty
+foot stone walls of the Kremlin along one side and Lenin's Tomb like a
+pile of red children's blocks. Kazu stood for a moment surveying this
+famous scene, his feet sunk to the ankle in a collapsed subway. It was
+my first view of the Red Square, and somehow I knew that it would be the
+last, for anyone. Then Kazu slowly walked to the Kremlin and looked down
+into it. I remember how suddenly absurd it all seemed. The Kremlin
+walls, the very symbol of the iron curtain, were scarcely six inches
+high! The whole thing was only a child's playpen.
+
+But now Kazu had found what he wanted. Without bothering to lift his
+feet, he crushed through the walls, reached down and pulled the roof
+from one of the buildings. He uncovered a brightly lighted ant-hill.
+Like a dollhouse exposed, he revealed rooms and corridors along which
+men were running. Kazu dropped to his knees and held our box up so that
+we might also see.
+
+"Are these the men?" he asked. Baker replied in the negative.
+
+Kazu abruptly pressed his hand into the building, crushing masonry and
+timbers and humans all into a heap of dust, and turned to a larger
+building. As he did, something about it seemed familiar to me. Yes, I
+had seen it before, in newsreels. It was--
+
+But again Kazu's fingers were at work. Lifting at the eaves, he
+carefully took off the whole roof. Through a window we saw figures
+hurrying toward a covered bridge connecting this building with another.
+At Baker's warning, Kazu demolished the bridge, and then gently began
+picking the structure to pieces. In a moment we saw what we were after.
+A wall was pulled down, exposing a great room with oil paintings of
+Lenin and Stalin on the wall and a long conference table in the center.
+And clustered between the table and the far wall were a score of men.
+Anyone would have recognized them, for their faces had gone round the
+world in posters, magazines and newsreels. They were the men of the
+Politbureau. They were Red Russia's rulers.
+
+There was an instant of silent mutual recognition, and then Kazu spoke
+to them. As befitting a god, he spoke in their own tongue. Exactly what
+he said I do not know, but after a little hesitation they came around
+the table to the precarious edge of the room where the outer wall had
+been. Kazu gave further directions and held up our steel box. Fearfully
+they came forward and jumped the gap into our door. One by one they made
+the leap, some dressed in the bemedalled uniforms of marshals, others in
+the semi-military tunics affected by civilian ministers. The last was
+the man who had succeeded Stalin on his death, and who had taken for
+himself the same name, as though it were a title.
+
+As he entered our room, we saw that he even looked like the first
+Stalin, clipped hair, moustache and all. He was a brilliant man, we
+knew. Brilliant and ruthless. He had grown up through the purges, in a
+world which knew no mercy, where only the fittest, by communist
+standards, survived. He had survived, because he was merciless and
+efficient and because he hated the free west with a hatred that was
+deadly and implacable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I often wonder what his thoughts were at that moment. He came
+because he was ordered to and because he knew the alternative. He knew
+he was to die, but he obeyed because by so doing he could prolong life a
+little, and because there was always a chance.
+
+At that moment I deeply regretted knowing no Russian. The twenty one who
+came in talked among themselves in short sentences. They saw us, but
+ignored us. Baker spoke, first in English and then in German. The one
+called Stalin understood the German, for he looked at Baker searchingly
+for a moment, and then turned away. Only one of them replied. This was
+Malik, the man who wrecked the old United Nations and then became
+Foreign Minister after Vishinsky was murdered. He ignored the German and
+spat out his reply in English.
+
+"You will not live to gloat over us. He will kill you too, all of you!"
+
+We can never be sure of what Kazu planned, because now--and of this I am
+certain--his plans changed. There was suddenly a stillness. We waited.
+Then I ran to the window and looked upward into the great face.
+
+It had changed. A deep weariness and a bewilderment was upon it--as
+though Kazu had suddenly sickened of destruction and slaughter. His
+whispering was the roaring of winds as he said, "No--no. This is not the
+way--not Buddha's way. They must talk. They must understand each other.
+They must sit at tables and settle their differences, that is my
+mission."
+
+Kazu took five steps. Below us was an airfield.
+
+"Can you fly?" he asked us. Chamberlin had been an army pilot in the
+fifties. Kazu pushed the box up to a transport, an American DC8.
+
+"Go in this," he said quite clearly. "Go in this plane until you are in
+Washington. Tell America about me. Tell America I am coming--that I am
+bringing--_them_. Tell America there must be--peace."
+
+We scrambled out of the steel box, leaving the Russians in a miserable
+heap in one corner.
+
+He arose to his full height and carefully adjusted the cables around his
+neck. I noticed that his fingers fumbled awkwardly, and that he
+staggered slightly. Then he spoke once more.
+
+"I cannot cross Atlantic. Only route for Buddha is Siberia, Bering
+Straight, Alaska. But this not take long. You better hurry or I get to
+Washington first!"
+
+He turned on his heel and walked a few steps to the end of the runway.
+
+"Now get in plane. I give little help in takeoff!"
+
+We climbed into the familiar interior of the big American transport. A
+moment later it arose silently, vertically like an elevator. Chamberlin,
+in the pilot's seat, hurriedly started the engines. He leaned from a
+window and waved his arm, and we shot forward and upward. For a moment
+the plane wavered and dipped, taking all of Walt's ability to recover.
+Then with a powerful roar, the big DC8 zoomed over the flames of Moscow
+toward the west.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The flight to London and the Atlantic crossing seemed unreal.
+We lived beside the radio. War and revolt against the Soviets had broken
+out everywhere. With the directing power in the Kremlin gone, the
+top-heavy Soviet bureaucracy was paralyzed. The Yugoslavs marched into
+the Ukraine, Chinese armies occupied Irkutsk and were pressing across
+Siberia. Internal revolution broke out at a hundred points once it was
+learned that Moscow was no more.
+
+Eagerly we listened to every report for word of Kazu. At first there was
+nothing, and then a Chinese plane reported seeing him crossing the Ob
+River, near the Arctic Circle. They said that he carried a box in his
+hand and appeared to be talking to it. Then news from the tiny river
+settlement of Zhigansk on the Lena that he had passed, but that he
+limped and staggered as he climbed the mountains beyond.
+
+After that, silence.
+
+Planes swarmed over eastern Siberia, the Arctic Coast and Alaska, but
+found nothing. Five hundred tons of C ration were rushed to Fairbanks,
+and tons of medical supplies for burns and possible illness were
+readied, but no patient appeared. At first we were hopeful, knowing
+Kazu's powers. Perhaps he had lost his way, without Baker and the maps,
+but surely he could not vanish. As the days passed Baker became more
+worried.
+
+"It's the radiation," he explained. "He took the full dose of gamma rays
+right in his back. He might go on for days, and then suddenly keel over.
+He's had a bad burn outside, but it's nothing to what it did to him
+internally."
+
+So the days passed, and so gradually hope died. And then, at last, there
+was news. It came, belatedly, from an eskimo hunter on the Pribolof
+Islands, in Bering Sea. He reported that a great sea god had come out of
+the waters, so tall that his head vanished into the clouds. But, he was
+a sick god, for he could hardly stand, and soon crawled on his hands.
+Around his neck, said the eskimo, he carried a charm, and he spoke words
+to this in a strange tongue. And the charm answered him in the same
+tongue, and with the voice of a man. And the two spoke to each other for
+a time and then the great one arose and walked off of the island and
+into the fog and the ocean.
+
+Questioned, the man was somewhat vague as to the exact direction taken,
+although it seemed clear that Kazu had headed south. When Baker examined
+his chart of Bering Sea, he found that the ocean to the north and west,
+towards Siberia, was shallow--less than five hundred feet. But the
+Pribolofs stood on the edge of a great deep. Only twenty miles south of
+the islands, the ocean floor dropped off to more than ten thousand feet,
+for three hundred miles of icy fog shrouded ocean, before the bleak
+Aleutians arose out of the mists. This desolate area was searched for
+months by ships and planes, but no trace ever appeared from the treacherous
+currents of the stormy sea. Kazu had vanished.
+
+So here ended the story of Kazu Takahashi, who was born in the days of
+the first bomb, and who died by the last ever to sear the world. He was
+believed by millions to be the incarnation of the Lord Buddha, but to
+four men he was known not as a god but as a great and good man.
+
+
+          THE END
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Transcriber Notes:
+
+  This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction November 1952.
+  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
+  on this publication was renewed.
+
+  Obvious punctuation errors have been corrected.
+
+  Corrections made:
+
+  page 6
+    original: wind, and its damned serious."
+    replacement: wind, and it's damned serious."
+
+  page 16
+    original: first fence, and affair of steel posts
+    replacement: first fence, an affair of steel posts
+
+  page 31
+    original: When Baker as only part-way
+    replacement: When Baker was only part-way
+
+  page 34
+    original: handfulls of the unseasoned stuff,
+    replacement: handfuls of the unseasoned stuff,
+
+  Unchanged:
+
+  page 16
+    sculping a king sized Buddha after
+    sculping is an old useage of the word
+
+  page 55
+    Straight, Alaska. But this not
+    Straight is an old useage of the word
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Image and the Likeness, by John Scott Campbell
+
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