"Jensen-PacificFront" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jensen Jan Lars)JAN LARS JENSEN THE PACIFIC FRONT SOMEONE HAD CAUGHT A dolphin, it now roasted over an open fire. They'd strung it by the beak and fluke and where it hung closest to the coals the carcass was blackened but the distinct dolphin shape persisted through the cooking. "You like dolphin, Hiro?" someone shouted and laughter went up like sparks from the fire. "Soo-shee soo-shee soo-shee." It only took one of them to start, then they were all chanting. The whole camp joined in, soo-shee soo-shee, from the big tent pitched at the foothills all the way to lookouts wading along the shore. Hiro walked past the fires each beaded with their orange chanting faces, threading his way to the structure known as Non-Flying Fortress. Cross-sections of bomber lay spaced over the foothills, the gaps between each patched with island materials, seaweed and palm leaves, long curtains of frond. Seven days, and the bomber looked as if it had grown into place. "No, they don't much care for you." A rasp of a match, the momentary face of Sergeant Hellerman. "But I don't understand," said Hiro. "We are all members of the Air Force..." "In situations like these men need scapegoats." The sergeant shrugged. "Guess you're the obvious choice." Hiro didn't respond, walked past him through the dark through the trail slapped along the way by its green gauntlet of oversized leaves. He wasn't afraid like some of the others to leave the series of fires, wasn't worried by the island and the unsettling patterns weathered into the rock. He left for the deserted side where cymbal crash chasing cymbal crash of waves over shore shushed out all other sounds. Stepping carefully in his rubber sandals he followed a path through the island wild, stopping at the height of a cliff to stare at moon-tipped waves recurring to the black horizon. Before the crash he hadn't known these men. They had flown a hundred miles together but the bomber had been strictly compartmentalized. Hiro was supposed to have spent the flight alone, huddled into the ball gun turret, the gun removed as a concession to weight. Mile upon mile of blue Pacific scrolled beneath him while he waited for the plane to break through clouds over Japan, his moment. Then, he was supposed to speak into the mike describing what he could see, confirming or denying that they were in position over the target. But they didn't get that far. Somewhere over the Pacific the bomber faltered, the engine dying like someone turning down a radio and just as smoothly descending, bouncing over wavetops and riding onto the island. The transparent ball smashed open throwing Hiro onto this unfamiliar ground. Other crew members emerged from the wreck. This was the first time they met as a complete group. Amazed they were alive. Terrified they had failed so important a mission. "What the hell happened?" "Where are we?" Tense strangers, they stared at one another waiting to be blamed for causing the crash. During the silence they heard a voice. "I'm trapped, someone please, please give me a hand..." The voice seeped out of one upturned segment of plane. It was the bomb bay, the whole section intact but jammed against the hillside. The bombardier inside had no way out. Hiro and the others stared at the compartment wondering how to help. "We could roll it up over a cliff," one lieutenant suggested. "Smash the damn thing open." Great idea, another said, kill him quickly, and the two lieutenants rolled away in a fist fight while the problem of releasing the bombardier remained complete as the cylinder enclosing him. Great effort and several loose pieces of metal went into an attempt to pry open the bomb bay doors. A night, a day, another night. The bombardier started singing about pork chops and baked potatoes and big sloppy buckets of draft beer. "Shut your yap!" one of the men finally yelled. They'd never be able to adjust to this predicament, one of them so boisterously starving to death. The soldiers preferred problems they could solve, and most turned their attention to making camp, outside the range of the bombardlet's voice. Hiro studied the crumpled remains of the cockpit. He fingered different tangles of wire hanging from its sundered walls, and by the time the bombardier started singing of car-sized chocolate cakes and endless apple pie, Hiro had decided which wires controlled the hydraulic bay doors. But this meant nothing without electricity, and the batteries of the bomber were nowhere to be seen. "Citrus fruit," Hiro said. "Copper wire." Both were locally available and with them he patched together an amateur battery, a crude but appropriate marriage of elements from the wreck and elements of the island, and after carrying it gingerly to the bomb bay Hiro took a moment to appreciate the yin-yang balance of his creation. "Look up," someone said. He did, and saw a gun, and behind that one of the men. Carson read the tag stitched over his heart, and Hiro had looked at the man's raggedly wounded ear before and thought of the eastern front; the gun he was pointing looked like something pried from the fingers of a German corpse, too. Hiro and the others stared in confusion. "The item in that compartment isn't for your eyes." "Item?" Carson was obviously confused. "We are trying to save the man inside--" "Enough!" He cocked the hammer. "The item in that compartment is top secret. We were supposed to drop it on Kyoto, go home, game over. Some of you know more about our payload than others. But I don't want to hear anyone talking about it. And nobody -- nobody -- opens those goddamn doors until we get word from above." Someone said, "Not even to save the bombardier?" Carson shook his head. "Fuck the bombardier." Silence, and the day seemed to darken, the only light a candle of fanatical devotion burning behind Carson's eyes, then other fires, bonfires, and Hiro sank into the background after watching the man yank out the critical wires and crush the amateur battery underfoot and eat its lemon heart. "The doors stay shut," Carson said. "For good." But Hiro snuck back to the compartment later, rapping on the wall and whispering to the bombardier inside that he was very sorry his idea for opening the doors had failed, he was sorry to raise hopes, so sorry... A tribute to meatloaf trailed off. "I'm sure you did your best," said the bombardier, weakly. After that the men acted like he no longer existed. They stood at the water's edge and speculated on how the war progressed without them. They stared at the sky and wondered why a rescue mission had not yet arrived. But they no longer spoke of the bombardier, and Hiro wondered if he himself had also slipped from the world as they knew it, because he was no longer invited into conversations, he felt vaguely unwelcome in camp, he was not missed when he started making pilgrimages to the island's loneliest reaches. The night the dolphin blackened and burned Hiro chose the most treacherous path the island could offer, descending a cliffside to the beach below. Was he right about failing the bombardier? Would Carson be so protective of the plane's secret payload if Hiro was not of Japanese descent? Soo-shee soo-shee soo-shee, there was his answer. He walked along the beach until he was so far away he couldn't even imagine hearing their voices. He walked until he saw the length of bamboo sticking upright in the sand, waiting for him. He pulled it free and held it in both hands, savoring the waxy surface against his palms, and memories, memories like waves to a shore flowed to him as he held this bamboo antenna high: he was a child in Yokohama again, learning Kendo, one hundred repetitions of a downward swing, one hundred strokes he re-enacted now with the bamboo shaft. He forced himself to show the ocean Kendo until he no longer felt shamed by the path his parents and grandparents made backward in time. While practicing the swing he heard a violent thrashing of water in the shelves along the shore, glimpsed something flailing in a tidepool. He climbed the rock and saw what looked like a black latex porpoise in the pool, man-made, with goggles sewn across the head. Hiro removed his sandals and waded in, hoisting the black body onto the rocks. Arms in the outfit were sealed along either side of the torso, the legs merged into an articulated tail, and not until Hiro pulled the central cord did he encounter evidence of man, the pale face of someone who had just completed three days deep sea patrol. The patrolman struggled his arms free of rubber, then suction released him with a thwump, sent him rolling over the rocks, scrabbling on all fours for a moment before he pushed onto his legs. "I remember how to walk," the man said, surprised. "You returned to the wrong part of the island," Hiro told him. "No," said the patrol. "No..." He looked toward the Pacific as if expecting something to ride in on its dark waves, then gravely said, "I've got to tell the others." The patrol remembered how to run but did not remember well: he pointed himself one way but his legs veered off another several times splashing him right back into ocean, more fish than man in his first hour returned to shore. "Damn it! Goddamn it!" Hiro saw the frustration on his face, the urgency of his delayed task. "This way," he said, "like this," and squatted so the patrol could get on his back. The island didn't like Hiro carrying the man, the ground became harder against his feet, the trails less compliant. But he ran, the strangely muscled mass of patrolman bouncing against his back. "What," Hiro panted, "what must you tell the camp?" "A submersible is heading toward the island." "A rescue mission?" But he knew better. "The enemy," said the patrol. "Carson isn't going to like it." No, Hiro thought. He imagined him holding the Luger in one hand, soaking firelight through his skin as someone told him the Japanese were coming. Hiro realized he must have taken a wrong turn, they were running a loop. The patrol said, "I'm glad there are no animals on this island -- but if there are no animals then what made all these trails?" The circularity of this question, Hiro thought, must be a comment on running in circles. He vowed not to fail them with another redundant lap and chose a distinctly unfamiliar path. While he was running, huffing, wondering, the patrolman quietly asked, "What do you know about our gadget ?" "Gadget?" "The bomb we were supposed to drop on Kyoto." Hiro said nothing because that was exactly how much he knew. He didn't want to know more, didn't want Carson and the others to perceive him as a security threat. His resistance to knowing met the patrol's reluctance to breech secrets and the topic was dropped. But apparently the patrol needed to talk, because he started telling a story, a strange fable or fantasy that didn't help Hiro's concentration. A story of malevolent gods in the New Mexico desert. Now you are become death, destroyer of worlds, one god solemnly pronounced. And the sand turned to glass for miles around, and mere mortals were blinded by the event. It was about a fat man and a little boy cursed with power; banished from the desert, they traveled the world looking for someplace to dispel their terrible new energy, but one of them got lost, he had lost his way... The story had no ending. Or the patrolman had sensed the shift around them and become wary. Abrupt quiet. No more insect music, only the movement of plants and trees as the wind shuffled through them, or something. Hiro sensed a great weight rising behind them. He turned with an underwater slowness and watched a silhouette change geometry as the fuku-ryu rose from its crouch. "Oh!" said a crackling voice in Japanese. "I thought this island was deserted!" Crane-like it lifted a leg of aluminum over the bush and altered configuration: these industrial wonders had walked in lines one thousand long across Pacific isles, New Guinea, the East Indies, one nation after another falling before their graceful of outspreading hatches, and Hiro briefly saw past polished barrels spooled ammunition to the Place of Reverence deep inside its fusel where a photo of Emperor Hirohito stared out at him. "Get moving," said the patrol, digging his heels, "run; run!" Hiro ran, heard the fuku-ryu change gears and begin its balle pursuit. The guns started firing, counterpoints to the long-legged strides. Vegetation succumbed to its advance, exploding alongside them and knew he couldn't avoid a similar demise, couldn't outlast a machine whose piston soul fed on recoil. He sprinted toward a fork in the trail. "We must separate," he said. "What--" "Two targets, left and right." "Left and--?" "Right!" They disengaged, the patrolman hit the ground running. Hiro went left, the other right, a palm tree between them slid to the ground as gunfire passed through it. "Warn the others!" the patrol shouted through the trees. "Yes," Hiro said. The fuku-ryu chose the other path. "You've got to tell them!" Yes. The machine picked up speed. He could see its metal surfaces flash through the trees while the patrolman sank into darkness. Could anything outrun such malice? Could Hiro? His only advantage was knowing these trails and hoping they would delay the fuku-ryu. He ran, he ran. He circled the island, went the long way around; he felt like he was running the outside track of a phonograph record and started to wonder if the camp could have ceased to exist. Then the stink of burned fish brought it back, slices of plane staggered over rock, smears of orange blaze surrounded by dancing silhouettes. Dancing silhouettes? Hiro stopped. The men had no reason to celebrate, not unless they'd found some way to get drunk .... The revelry unsettled him. Hiro was reluctant to further, but they had a real enemy now, and he a duty to warn his fellow soldiers. A ring of orange bodies surged around the fire, shirts off, smeared with dirt, hyena faces. One man with a blindfold was made to spin round and round, the rest counting off rotations until he was so dizzy he could barely stand. They thrust a stick in his hands and pushed him toward a tree where they'd hung a silk body, an effigy stitched together from parachute silk -- an effigy, Hiro saw, of himself. Buck teeth, slanted eyes. They'd pissed on it to yellow the skin. The effigy was everyone in Japan, and it was him. His fellow soldiers laughed like drunk Mexicans as they shoved their pig in the middle and encouraged dizzy swings at this makeshift pinata. Hiro pushed through the circle. Some had seen him coming and the laughter tapered off. When he moved to the center, his battered image swinging before him, all fell silent. Orange faces of delight suspended to wide-eyed stares. "We were going to destroy a city," Hiro said. There was no response. "Our bomb," he said. The blindfolded man walloped the effigy, and its swing pitched shadows across Hiro's face, light and dark, light and dark. The patrolman's story returned to him, no longer an elliptical fantasy. Now he understood. "Our bomb was going to kill all living things. For miles, every civilian in Kyoto. Every mother, every newborn child. Death." They said nothing. Was their silence shame? Or disbelief? Some of them knew everything about the weapon: secrets had been shared more freely here. They knew, Hiro decided, and struggled to say something that would hurt them. "The bomb is now property of the Japanese Army." One of the lieutenants managed to pipe up. Excuse me? What?! "A Japanese probe has come to the island. It saw our deep sea patrol and me. It killed him, I am sure. It will kill us all, and claim our secret bomb in the Emperor's name." The men made noises of protest-- not without a fight they sure's hell won't -- but Hiro shoved the pig with his blindfolded swings and spoke through their banter. "There is no time for a fight. We must keep the weapon from falling into Japanese hands. If its technology becomes available to the Imperial Army, the war in the Pacific is lost." "So what are we supposed to do?" For a moment the question lingered, then Hiro pushed through them, up the darkened hillside. Hie sensed more than saw that they followed, someone even pulling along the blindfolded man by his stick. Hiro walked determinedly through the string of fires. The biggest segment of bomber rose before him. Carson sat atop, watching. In his lap was the blackened head of the dolphin. As Hiro and the others gathered before him he hurled it into a fire, hard, sparks. "What do you ladies want?" "The bomb doors," Hiro said. "We must open them." Carson sneered. "We've been through this already." "The Japanese are here. On the island." "You're the Japanese," he spat. "We must prevent the Imperial Army from taking the bomb. We can't keep them away. So it must be destroyed." Carson stared, his eyes twin bonfires -- the candles had again been lit. Hiro watched the man put his hand inside his flight uniform. "Okay," he said. "I can oblige you there." especially now that he seemed to be smiling. "You see," Carson went on, "I'm prepared for just such an eventuality. Someone has to be. What I got here are instructions for preventing the enemy from acquiring our gadget. The only foolproof way of doing so." "Which is what?" asked one of the lieutenants. "Detonation." The soldiers made noises of consideration. Now Hiro had a sense of how many knew and how many did not know the ramifications of the gadget by the proportion saying things like Great idea! to those who remained stony in silence. "It will kill us all," Hiro said. "That's enough!" Carson barked. "What the fuck do you know? ! You don't know the bomb's yield, you don't know how long we got to take cover --far as I'm concerned you're an agent of the Japs and ought consider yourself under arrest." "Anyone here who knows the weapon and thinks we can survive its detonation," Hiro said, "please speak now." Quiet. "Well, I'm proceeding," said Carson. "This is military business. It's protocol. It don't matter if you been suckered by this slant." He slid off the fuselage, the sheet of instruction flapping in his hand like a flag. "I won't let the Japs take the bomb." "Excuse me, son." All eyes turned to the back of the crowd. It was Sergeant Hellerman, speaking up at last. "I believe I got rank here," he said. "And I want another opinion before you go blowing anything sky high." Hiro didn't even see Carson draw the Luger, just heard the blunt bang of the shot that stopped Hellerman, dropped him, blood running from his forehead like wine from a broken cask. Carson pumped another shell, turning to Hiro. "Now who's going to hold the little Jap still for me?" The little Jap had yanked the stick away from the blindfolded man. Hiro took it in both hands like mock swords of his past; he smacked it sharply against Carson's hand. The gun sailed from his grip and landed in a nearby fire. Hiro took a defensive stance. Carson flexed his struck hand, his face lit with a smile of reflected fire: Hiro had lived up to expectations. Carson reached to his boot and drew a bayonet. He sank to a knife-fighter's crouch and pointed the bayonet at Hiro's belly. Through the unpleasant display of teeth he said, "I've dreamed of doing this to you." But Hiro too had had dreams, moonlit beach dreams that stung of soo-shee, soo-shee, soo-shee, dreams stretching back into his ancestry and reaching over the Pacific, as he showed Kendo all the way to Japan, his reflection rippling over the ocean as he brought his sword down and connected with land, too far away to see but not to feel through the handle. Crack. It split in his hands, the stick. At the opposite end Carson continued to stare at him even though his eyes were no longer level. His face had become asymmetrical beneath the blow Hiro crowned on him. He pulled away his broken sword and Carson fell forward, convulsing against the ground until his body overpowered his spirit. "The doors," Hiro said. They assailed the compartment with more determination than before, more sense, levers and engineering at last forcing the hatch open. A skeleton peered out at them. A skeleton, or the bombardlet, emaciated by his stay inside. His hair had gone strangely white. He pulled his rack of bones over the opening and Hiro thought he heard a dry clatter when the man landed on the ground. "You okay?" someone asked. The bombardier brushed away helping hands. He ignored questions, statements, puzzled stares. As soon as he steadied himself he walked into the forest and they watched the dark eat away his white figure. "Where you going?" someone shouted. Apple pie, they heard him say. He was gone. Attention returned to the open compartment. Firelight revealed the bomb but Hiro had difficulty accepting what he saw: it looked like some swollen prototype of a submarine -- huge. So much bigger than he'd imagined; the possibility of dragging it from this site fizzled in him like a firework landing in a cloud. He stared at messages scrawled over its surface. Take this, Japs! This is for the boys of 141 st Armored! Remember Pearl Harbor! "Can it be..." "Disarmed?" said one of the soldiers. "I don't know. I doubt we have the tools or the knowhow. Maybe if the bombardier helped. He knows his stuff." "The bombardier I think is lost to us," said Hiro. "Me and Bock can try pulling out the physics package. We can try." But could they do so before the fuku-ryu attacked? Hiro wished he could somehow help as he watched the men climb a service ladder and unbolt a hatch at the bomb's apex. "Can you explain to me its operation?" They told him, or tried to, their simplified description echoing from the hole they'd climbed down. An inner sphere made of countless explosive charges would create an implosion. An unusual and rare material would be compressed, this compression causing a fundamental change in its nature, and a great release of energy, which was another way of saying explosion .... A vague understanding made the impact no less frightening. The only question now, it seemed, was which citizens would be vaporized by the great release -- those who fell under the hateful wrath of Axis or Allied commanders? As they listened to the pair work, inside Hiro and the others Stared at the jungle. Some held sticks or rocks, prepared to put up a hopeless fight. Hiro wondered why the fuku-ryu was waiting so long to kill them. Then one of the men came up from the shoreline, in tears. "What is the matter?" It was the second battling lieutenant; he had seen some action on other fronts of the Pacific campaign, in losing efforts spaced over the Marianas. He spoke of the Japanese cunning with no regard for Hiro's ancestry, describing a variety of phonographic box that Japanese agents had placed near U.S. camps. The boxes remained inconspicuous until certain lonely hours of the night, when they would play music, popular hits from back home, maybe Shoo Shoo Baby or Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree. "Those poor dumb jarheads would hear that tune and forget themselves, dancing away from camp, doing the foxtrot or jitterbug past the perimeter into the jungle. When they get close enough -- bang! The box explodes, blowing the poor homesick bugger to kingdom come." He wiped away a tear. "Terrible thing to do to a piece of music," the lieutenant said. "When this is over, you think we'll ever be able to listen to tunes the same way?" He shook his head. "We'll dive for cover every time we hear Chattanooga Choo Choo." The anecdote made little sense to Hiro until he listened past the man's words and heard music. Music, voices, a song. He took a few steps in the direction of the beach. Others stopped to listen to the melody pulsing in with the waves; to them it must have seemed nothing more than beautiful nonsense. "Take cover," Hiro said. "Something is wrong." Some jumped for hiding places, others kicked dirt into the orange glow of the nearest fire. Work on the bomb continued, while the sniffling lieutenant followed Hiro to a vantage overlooking the beach, closer to the source of music. "What's it called?" the lieutenant asked. "I want to know the name of the song that kills me." "The Japanese anthem." Hiro wondered how many people would be required to sing in unison and be heard over an ocean? Could waves carry an anthem, if it was given proper voice? But through these thoughts pushed a more compelling image. The fuku-ryu after it spotted him, transmitting radio pulses to a floating naval base, a request for an expeditionary team, and the Kaitana responding, six of them lining along the deck then diving one by one into the ocean. Now they had arrived. Hiro could make out six heads above the waterline, joined in proud song as they walked ashore. The Kaitana rose from the water wearing only breech cloths and perfumed oils. On the shore they kneeled and bowed, touching their heads to the sand. A tortoiselike mechanical waddled after them, issuing a neat package to each. "Can't they see the camp?" said the lieutenant. "They must be able to see our fires." "Yes," Hiro said. "I'm sure they can." "Then why are they just sitting there?" "Meditation. Next comes the ceremony of putting on uniforms. We will have a few minutes before they choose to engage us." He and the lieutenant fell back, Hiro walking to the effigy and carefully untying it from its branch. He took off his uniform and threw it onto the blaze with the dummy. The other soldiers jumped when he returned; they were waiting for an oriental attack, Hiro realized, without his uniform or the stars and bars, he was as frightening a sight his former countrymen on the shore. He threw down the rope. "Tie me up," he said. "Tie my hands to my ankles." "Why?" "Like you mean it. As if I was the dummy you hung from the tree." The lieutenant hesitated, then began wrapping the rope according Hito's instructions. When the knots were completed Hiro fell to rubbing face and hair into the dirt. He said to the men working on bomb, "Have you done enough to make it a mystery?" "No," came the reply. "No. Not for the Japs. They'll be able to figure out what this is. Maybe a few weeks, maybe a month. The more we pull out the longer it'll take them to get a complete understanding." "They're sitting up!" someone shouted. "They're getting ready!" "I think you should take any components you have," Hiro said. "Run with them. Go. Run as far away as the island will allow and if you have a chance throw them into the ocean." "What about you?" "Do it now. They will be here soon. And the only thing the Kaitana dislike more than Japanese prisoners who haven't committed sepuku are their captors." He was facing away from the bomb so he didn't see them pick up the pieces, but he did watch each soldier file past him with a sober expression, as if going to receive communion wafer, then heard the rustle of leaves as each sank into the island wild. He listened. He listened until he heard nothing more but the spit and crackle of bonfires, and knew he was alone here lying in the dirt. Alone between the Kaitana and the bomb. He watched the flames. He could see nothing else. He imagined the swordsmen completing their ceremony and falling into stride as they marched up the hillside; when they actually rose before him it was as if they'd been summoned from the' depths of his mind. They looked not unlike combatants from the mechanized Kendo matches put on in Tokyo gambling parlors; black skirts and black leather cuirasses, articulated armor that transformed their oriental physiques to something wasplike and potent. Every movement of the suits deferred to the swords and lacquered ceremonial rifles fastened onto their backs. The outfits tapered into helmets screened by slats of steel, revealing only narrow stripes of flesh and jewel-black eyes. Staring at Hiro on the ground. And the exposed bomb behind him. Then back to Hiro. The biggest of the Kaitana squatted near his head. "Why haven't you taken your life?" he asked in polite Japanese. "I had no gun. The Americans captured me during my attempt to run off a cliff. Please pardon me. Would someone do the honor of removing my head?" The Kaitana drew his sword, a bright flash of moonlight and fire, the sword rumored to have taken down armored vehicles. Instead of Hiro's neck he slid it against the bindings, cutting him loose. Hiro pretended to rub sore wrists and ankles before staggering to his feet. "You must be happy to see us." Hiro nodded. "How long have you been prisoner?" "Six days. My zero crashed into the ocean. Shot down by Americans." "Where are they now?" "They ran when they saw you coming. Scattered. I don't know to where." "It would be useful to have one of them alive." He pointed his sword at the bomb, then gave instructions that one U.S. soldier must be taken for explanation. "Several times I heard them speaking in negative terms about a demon," Hiro said. The Kaitana looked at him. "Only slowly did I realize they were referring to this bomb." "What did they say?" "They cursed it for making their plane crash. The more knowledgeable ones commented on the crudity of its design; that it was more dangerous for those transporting it than the intended victims. They called it a last ditch effort against the Japanese. So wicked was the spirit surrounding the bomb that it often moved them to disputes, and you can see for yourself the results." He indicated the bodies of Carson and Sergeant Hellerman. "It was the only thing they spoke of worse than me," he added. "Curious they should attempt to deliver the bomb if it's so crude," said the Kaitana leader. "I suppose we will have to leave that puzzle to the scientists aboard Base Shiroyama." He gave orders to prepare the bomb for transport. Wait, said Hiro. "Maybe we should leave it here," he continued, and attempted eye contact with each of the Kaitana. "Perhaps this weapon was not meant to ride the sky or be dropped, anywhere. The American plane was not shot down; the hand of fate knocked it to the ground. Fate, like a divine wind, sending its message. If this bomb is as terrible to the people who wield it as those it destroys, perhaps no better place for it than a deserted rock in the Pacific." The Kaitana paused. They stared at the open hatch and the huge dull surface of the bomb. They had all heard him, but only the leader responded. He raised his sword and pressed the tip against Hito's neck. "If you have a weapon at your disposal," he said, "it only makes sense to use it." He summoned the fuku-ryu to come assist transportation of the bomb. The jungle exploded open, the fuku-ryu thundering forward on its long legs. Surprised by its lack of delicacy, the Kaitana stepped back, avoiding its haphazard trajectory. They were more surprised when it opened gun hatches and wheeled its cannons on them. Gunshots took the commander in the chest. The other Kaitana drew their swords and attacked the rebelling machine. Hiro took the opportunity to fall away, and in the background he glimpsed a halo of white hair. The bombardier. He must have had a hand in the fuku-ryu's mechanics to create such a violent diversion. "Go!" the man shouted at Hiro. "Go!" The bombardier left his shadowy hiding place and ran through the melee, leaping back into the compartment that had imprisoned him. He jumped to the bomb's service ladder. Hiro had no idea what the man was doing: he sang one of his songs as he climbed, something about hamburgers or Coney Island frankfurters, Hiro couldn't be sure. Seeing the bombardier, one of the Kaitana broke from the battle, bringing his sword around in a powerful arc. Hiro reached into the bonfire where the Luger lay white as coals: it still worked, the shot not penetrating the swordsman's armor but knocking him off his feet. The bombardier scrambled up the ladder and dropped into the bomb, one more word echoing up from its depths. Go! Hiro looked around. Go where? And then he saw it. Do you even know how to swim? he asked himself, but there was no time to wonder, because he was already running down the hillside, down the beach, splashing into the water, he was diving... Beneath the waterline was an even stranger sight than those he had so far witnessed. The patrolman, somehow still alive. He was in his deep sea diving suit and beckoning Hiro onward. He didn't understand how the man could have survived the fuku-ryu, and wondered if what he saw wasn't the patrolman at all but a black dolphin. Whatever the case Hiro could not keep up with the strange entity swimming circles around him or remain underwater with such ease. He surfaced briefly to look back at the fires that tinged the face of the island. Then he dove again, deeper, down to where the black dolphin beckoned him, and suddenly the water was flooded by light, light pouring after him, lighting the depths of the Pacific like an underwater sun, and Hiro swam deeper into the strange new world the detonation of the bomb had suddenly illuminated around him. JAN LARS JENSEN THE PACIFIC FRONT SOMEONE HAD CAUGHT A dolphin, it now roasted over an open fire. They'd strung it by the beak and fluke and where it hung closest to the coals the carcass was blackened but the distinct dolphin shape persisted through the cooking. "You like dolphin, Hiro?" someone shouted and laughter went up like sparks from the fire. "Soo-shee soo-shee soo-shee." It only took one of them to start, then they were all chanting. The whole camp joined in, soo-shee soo-shee, from the big tent pitched at the foothills all the way to lookouts wading along the shore. Hiro walked past the fires each beaded with their orange chanting faces, threading his way to the structure known as Non-Flying Fortress. Cross-sections of bomber lay spaced over the foothills, the gaps between each patched with island materials, seaweed and palm leaves, long curtains of frond. Seven days, and the bomber looked as if it had grown into place. "No, they don't much care for you." A rasp of a match, the momentary face of Sergeant Hellerman. "But I don't understand," said Hiro. "We are all members of the Air Force..." "In situations like these men need scapegoats." The sergeant shrugged. "Guess you're the obvious choice." Hiro didn't respond, walked past him through the dark through the trail slapped along the way by its green gauntlet of oversized leaves. He wasn't afraid like some of the others to leave the series of fires, wasn't worried by the island and the unsettling patterns weathered into the rock. He left for the deserted side where cymbal crash chasing cymbal crash of waves over shore shushed out all other sounds. Stepping carefully in his rubber sandals he followed a path through the island wild, stopping at the height of a cliff to stare at moon-tipped waves recurring to the black horizon. Before the crash he hadn't known these men. They had flown a hundred miles together but the bomber had been strictly compartmentalized. Hiro was supposed to have spent the flight alone, huddled into the ball gun turret, the gun removed as a concession to weight. Mile upon mile of blue Pacific scrolled beneath him while he waited for the plane to break through clouds over Japan, his moment. Then, he was supposed to speak into the mike describing what he could see, confirming or denying that they were in position over the target. But they didn't get that far. Somewhere over the Pacific the bomber faltered, the engine dying like someone turning down a radio and just as smoothly descending, bouncing over wavetops and riding onto the island. The transparent ball smashed open throwing Hiro onto this unfamiliar ground. Other crew members emerged from the wreck. This was the first time they met as a complete group. Amazed they were alive. Terrified they had failed so important a mission. "What the hell happened?" "Where are we?" Tense strangers, they stared at one another waiting to be blamed for causing the crash. During the silence they heard a voice. "I'm trapped, someone please, please give me a hand..." The voice seeped out of one upturned segment of plane. It was the bomb bay, the whole section intact but jammed against the hillside. The bombardier inside had no way out. Hiro and the others stared at the compartment wondering how to help. "We could roll it up over a cliff," one lieutenant suggested. "Smash the damn thing open." Great idea, another said, kill him quickly, and the two lieutenants rolled away in a fist fight while the problem of releasing the bombardier remained complete as the cylinder enclosing him. Great effort and several loose pieces of metal went into an attempt to pry open the bomb bay doors. A night, a day, another night. The bombardier started singing about pork chops and baked potatoes and big sloppy buckets of draft beer. "Shut your yap!" one of the men finally yelled. They'd never be able to adjust to this predicament, one of them so boisterously starving to death. The soldiers preferred problems they could solve, and most turned their attention to making camp, outside the range of the bombardlet's voice. Hiro studied the crumpled remains of the cockpit. He fingered different tangles of wire hanging from its sundered walls, and by the time the bombardier started singing of car-sized chocolate cakes and endless apple pie, Hiro had decided which wires controlled the hydraulic bay doors. But this meant nothing without electricity, and the batteries of the bomber were nowhere to be seen. "Citrus fruit," Hiro said. "Copper wire." Both were locally available and with them he patched together an amateur battery, a crude but appropriate marriage of elements from the wreck and elements of the island, and after carrying it gingerly to the bomb bay Hiro took a moment to appreciate the yin-yang balance of his creation. "Look up," someone said. He did, and saw a gun, and behind that one of the men. Carson read the tag stitched over his heart, and Hiro had looked at the man's raggedly wounded ear before and thought of the eastern front; the gun he was pointing looked like something pried from the fingers of a German corpse, too. Hiro and the others stared in confusion. "The item in that compartment isn't for your eyes." "Item?" Carson was obviously confused. "We are trying to save the man inside--" "Enough!" He cocked the hammer. "The item in that compartment is top secret. We were supposed to drop it on Kyoto, go home, game over. Some of you know more about our payload than others. But I don't want to hear anyone talking about it. And nobody -- nobody -- opens those goddamn doors until we get word from above." Someone said, "Not even to save the bombardier?" Carson shook his head. "Fuck the bombardier." Silence, and the day seemed to darken, the only light a candle of fanatical devotion burning behind Carson's eyes, then other fires, bonfires, and Hiro sank into the background after watching the man yank out the critical wires and crush the amateur battery underfoot and eat its lemon heart. "The doors stay shut," Carson said. "For good." But Hiro snuck back to the compartment later, rapping on the wall and whispering to the bombardier inside that he was very sorry his idea for opening the doors had failed, he was sorry to raise hopes, so sorry... A tribute to meatloaf trailed off. "I'm sure you did your best," said the bombardier, weakly. After that the men acted like he no longer existed. They stood at the water's edge and speculated on how the war progressed without them. They stared at the sky and wondered why a rescue mission had not yet arrived. But they no longer spoke of the bombardier, and Hiro wondered if he himself had also slipped from the world as they knew it, because he was no longer invited into conversations, he felt vaguely unwelcome in camp, he was not missed when he started making pilgrimages to the island's loneliest reaches. The night the dolphin blackened and burned Hiro chose the most treacherous path the island could offer, descending a cliffside to the beach below. Was he right about failing the bombardier? Would Carson be so protective of the plane's secret payload if Hiro was not of Japanese descent? Soo-shee soo-shee soo-shee, there was his answer. He walked along the beach until he was so far away he couldn't even imagine hearing their voices. He walked until he saw the length of bamboo sticking upright in the sand, waiting for him. He pulled it free and held it in both hands, savoring the waxy surface against his palms, and memories, memories like waves to a shore flowed to him as he held this bamboo antenna high: he was a child in Yokohama again, learning Kendo, one hundred repetitions of a downward swing, one hundred strokes he re-enacted now with the bamboo shaft. He forced himself to show the ocean Kendo until he no longer felt shamed by the path his parents and grandparents made backward in time. While practicing the swing he heard a violent thrashing of water in the shelves along the shore, glimpsed something flailing in a tidepool. He climbed the rock and saw what looked like a black latex porpoise in the pool, man-made, with goggles sewn across the head. Hiro removed his sandals and waded in, hoisting the black body onto the rocks. Arms in the outfit were sealed along either side of the torso, the legs merged into an articulated tail, and not until Hiro pulled the central cord did he encounter evidence of man, the pale face of someone who had just completed three days deep sea patrol. The patrolman struggled his arms free of rubber, then suction released him with a thwump, sent him rolling over the rocks, scrabbling on all fours for a moment before he pushed onto his legs. "I remember how to walk," the man said, surprised. "You returned to the wrong part of the island," Hiro told him. "No," said the patrol. "No..." He looked toward the Pacific as if expecting something to ride in on its dark waves, then gravely said, "I've got to tell the others." The patrol remembered how to run but did not remember well: he pointed himself one way but his legs veered off another several times splashing him right back into ocean, more fish than man in his first hour returned to shore. "Damn it! Goddamn it!" Hiro saw the frustration on his face, the urgency of his delayed task. "This way," he said, "like this," and squatted so the patrol could get on his back. The island didn't like Hiro carrying the man, the ground became harder against his feet, the trails less compliant. But he ran, the strangely muscled mass of patrolman bouncing against his back. "What," Hiro panted, "what must you tell the camp?" "A submersible is heading toward the island." "A rescue mission?" But he knew better. "The enemy," said the patrol. "Carson isn't going to like it." No, Hiro thought. He imagined him holding the Luger in one hand, soaking firelight through his skin as someone told him the Japanese were coming. Hiro realized he must have taken a wrong turn, they were running a loop. The patrol said, "I'm glad there are no animals on this island -- but if there are no animals then what made all these trails?" The circularity of this question, Hiro thought, must be a comment on running in circles. He vowed not to fail them with another redundant lap and chose a distinctly unfamiliar path. While he was running, huffing, wondering, the patrolman quietly asked, "What do you know about our gadget ?" "Gadget?" "The bomb we were supposed to drop on Kyoto." Hiro said nothing because that was exactly how much he knew. He didn't want to know more, didn't want Carson and the others to perceive him as a security threat. His resistance to knowing met the patrol's reluctance to breech secrets and the topic was dropped. But apparently the patrol needed to talk, because he started telling a story, a strange fable or fantasy that didn't help Hiro's concentration. A story of malevolent gods in the New Mexico desert. Now you are become death, destroyer of worlds, one god solemnly pronounced. And the sand turned to glass for miles around, and mere mortals were blinded by the event. It was about a fat man and a little boy cursed with power; banished from the desert, they traveled the world looking for someplace to dispel their terrible new energy, but one of them got lost, he had lost his way... The story had no ending. Or the patrolman had sensed the shift around them and become wary. Abrupt quiet. No more insect music, only the movement of plants and trees as the wind shuffled through them, or something. Hiro sensed a great weight rising behind them. He turned with an underwater slowness and watched a silhouette change geometry as the fuku-ryu rose from its crouch. "Oh!" said a crackling voice in Japanese. "I thought this island was deserted!" Crane-like it lifted a leg of aluminum over the bush and altered configuration: these industrial wonders had walked in lines one thousand long across Pacific isles, New Guinea, the East Indies, one nation after another falling before their graceful of outspreading hatches, and Hiro briefly saw past polished barrels spooled ammunition to the Place of Reverence deep inside its fusel where a photo of Emperor Hirohito stared out at him. "Get moving," said the patrol, digging his heels, "run; run!" Hiro ran, heard the fuku-ryu change gears and begin its balle pursuit. The guns started firing, counterpoints to the long-legged strides. Vegetation succumbed to its advance, exploding alongside them and knew he couldn't avoid a similar demise, couldn't outlast a machine whose piston soul fed on recoil. He sprinted toward a fork in the trail. "We must separate," he said. "What--" "Two targets, left and right." "Left and--?" "Right!" They disengaged, the patrolman hit the ground running. Hiro went left, the other right, a palm tree between them slid to the ground as gunfire passed through it. "Warn the others!" the patrol shouted through the trees. "Yes," Hiro said. The fuku-ryu chose the other path. "You've got to tell them!" Yes. The machine picked up speed. He could see its metal surfaces flash through the trees while the patrolman sank into darkness. Could anything outrun such malice? Could Hiro? His only advantage was knowing these trails and hoping they would delay the fuku-ryu. He ran, he ran. He circled the island, went the long way around; he felt like he was running the outside track of a phonograph record and started to wonder if the camp could have ceased to exist. Then the stink of burned fish brought it back, slices of plane staggered over rock, smears of orange blaze surrounded by dancing silhouettes. Dancing silhouettes? Hiro stopped. The men had no reason to celebrate, not unless they'd found some way to get drunk .... The revelry unsettled him. Hiro was reluctant to further, but they had a real enemy now, and he a duty to warn his fellow soldiers. A ring of orange bodies surged around the fire, shirts off, smeared with dirt, hyena faces. One man with a blindfold was made to spin round and round, the rest counting off rotations until he was so dizzy he could barely stand. They thrust a stick in his hands and pushed him toward a tree where they'd hung a silk body, an effigy stitched together from parachute silk -- an effigy, Hiro saw, of himself. Buck teeth, slanted eyes. They'd pissed on it to yellow the skin. The effigy was everyone in Japan, and it was him. His fellow soldiers laughed like drunk Mexicans as they shoved their pig in the middle and encouraged dizzy swings at this makeshift pinata. Hiro pushed through the circle. Some had seen him coming and the laughter tapered off. When he moved to the center, his battered image swinging before him, all fell silent. Orange faces of delight suspended to wide-eyed stares. "We were going to destroy a city," Hiro said. There was no response. "Our bomb," he said. The blindfolded man walloped the effigy, and its swing pitched shadows across Hiro's face, light and dark, light and dark. The patrolman's story returned to him, no longer an elliptical fantasy. Now he understood. "Our bomb was going to kill all living things. For miles, every civilian in Kyoto. Every mother, every newborn child. Death." They said nothing. Was their silence shame? Or disbelief? Some of them knew everything about the weapon: secrets had been shared more freely here. They knew, Hiro decided, and struggled to say something that would hurt them. "The bomb is now property of the Japanese Army." One of the lieutenants managed to pipe up. Excuse me? What?! "A Japanese probe has come to the island. It saw our deep sea patrol and me. It killed him, I am sure. It will kill us all, and claim our secret bomb in the Emperor's name." The men made noises of protest-- not without a fight they sure's hell won't -- but Hiro shoved the pig with his blindfolded swings and spoke through their banter. "There is no time for a fight. We must keep the weapon from falling into Japanese hands. If its technology becomes available to the Imperial Army, the war in the Pacific is lost." "So what are we supposed to do?" For a moment the question lingered, then Hiro pushed through them, up the darkened hillside. Hie sensed more than saw that they followed, someone even pulling along the blindfolded man by his stick. Hiro walked determinedly through the string of fires. The biggest segment of bomber rose before him. Carson sat atop, watching. In his lap was the blackened head of the dolphin. As Hiro and the others gathered before him he hurled it into a fire, hard, sparks. "What do you ladies want?" "The bomb doors," Hiro said. "We must open them." Carson sneered. "We've been through this already." "The Japanese are here. On the island." "You're the Japanese," he spat. "We must prevent the Imperial Army from taking the bomb. We can't keep them away. So it must be destroyed." Carson stared, his eyes twin bonfires -- the candles had again been lit. Hiro watched the man put his hand inside his flight uniform. "Okay," he said. "I can oblige you there." The other soldiers exchanged looks of surprise. Hiro knew not to trust the man, especially now that he seemed to be smiling. "You see," Carson went on, "I'm prepared for just such an eventuality. Someone has to be. What I got here are instructions for preventing the enemy from acquiring our gadget. The only foolproof way of doing so." "Which is what?" asked one of the lieutenants. "Detonation." The soldiers made noises of consideration. Now Hiro had a sense of how many knew and how many did not know the ramifications of the gadget by the proportion saying things like Great idea! to those who remained stony in silence. "It will kill us all," Hiro said. "That's enough!" Carson barked. "What the fuck do you know? ! You don't know the bomb's yield, you don't know how long we got to take cover --far as I'm concerned you're an agent of the Japs and ought consider yourself under arrest." "Anyone here who knows the weapon and thinks we can survive its detonation," Hiro said, "please speak now." Quiet. "Well, I'm proceeding," said Carson. "This is military business. It's protocol. It don't matter if you been suckered by this slant." He slid off the fuselage, the sheet of instruction flapping in his hand like a flag. "I won't let the Japs take the bomb." "Excuse me, son." All eyes turned to the back of the crowd. It was Sergeant Hellerman, speaking up at last. "I believe I got rank here," he said. "And I want another opinion before you go blowing anything sky high." Hiro didn't even see Carson draw the Luger, just heard the blunt bang of the shot that stopped Hellerman, dropped him, blood running from his forehead like wine from a broken cask. Carson pumped another shell, turning to Hiro. "Now who's going to hold the little Jap still for me?" The little Jap had yanked the stick away from the blindfolded man. Hiro took it in both hands like mock swords of his past; he smacked it sharply against Carson's hand. The gun sailed from his grip and landed in a nearby fire. Hiro took a defensive stance. Carson flexed his struck hand, his face lit with a smile of reflected fire: Hiro had lived up to expectations. Carson reached to his boot and drew a bayonet. He sank to a knife-fighter's crouch and pointed the bayonet at Hiro's belly. Through the unpleasant display of teeth he said, "I've dreamed of doing this to you." But Hiro too had had dreams, moonlit beach dreams that stung of soo-shee, soo-shee, soo-shee, dreams stretching back into his ancestry and reaching over the Pacific, as he showed Kendo all the way to Japan, his reflection rippling over the ocean as he brought his sword down and connected with land, too far away to see but not to feel through the handle. Crack. It split in his hands, the stick. At the opposite end Carson continued to stare at him even though his eyes were no longer level. His face had become asymmetrical beneath the blow Hiro crowned on him. He pulled away his broken sword and Carson fell forward, convulsing against the ground until his body overpowered his spirit. "The doors," Hiro said. They assailed the compartment with more determination than before, more sense, levers and engineering at last forcing the hatch open. A skeleton peered out at them. A skeleton, or the bombardlet, emaciated by his stay inside. His hair had gone strangely white. He pulled his rack of bones over the opening and Hiro thought he heard a dry clatter when the man landed on the ground. "You okay?" someone asked. The bombardier brushed away helping hands. He ignored questions, statements, puzzled stares. As soon as he steadied himself he walked into the forest and they watched the dark eat away his white figure. "Where you going?" someone shouted. Apple pie, they heard him say. He was gone. Attention returned to the open compartment. Firelight revealed the bomb but Hiro had difficulty accepting what he saw: it looked like some swollen prototype of a submarine -- huge. So much bigger than he'd imagined; the possibility of dragging it from this site fizzled in him like a firework landing in a cloud. He stared at messages scrawled over its surface. Take this, Japs! This is for the boys of 141 st Armored! Remember Pearl Harbor! "Can it be..." "Disarmed?" said one of the soldiers. "I don't know. I doubt we have the tools or the knowhow. Maybe if the bombardier helped. He knows his stuff." "The bombardier I think is lost to us," said Hiro. "Me and Bock can try pulling out the physics package. We can try." But could they do so before the fuku-ryu attacked? Hiro wished he could somehow help as he watched the men climb a service ladder and unbolt a hatch at the bomb's apex. "Can you explain to me its operation?" They told him, or tried to, their simplified description echoing from the hole they'd climbed down. An inner sphere made of countless explosive charges would create an implosion. An unusual and rare material would be compressed, this compression causing a fundamental change in its nature, and a great release of energy, which was another way of saying explosion .... A vague understanding made the impact no less frightening. The only question now, it seemed, was which citizens would be vaporized by the great release -- those who fell under the hateful wrath of Axis or Allied commanders? As they listened to the pair work, inside Hiro and the others Stared at the jungle. Some held sticks or rocks, prepared to put up a hopeless fight. Hiro wondered why the fuku-ryu was waiting so long to kill them. Then one of the men came up from the shoreline, in tears. "What is the matter?" It was the second battling lieutenant; he had seen some action on other fronts of the Pacific campaign, in losing efforts spaced over the Marianas. He spoke of the Japanese cunning with no regard for Hiro's ancestry, describing a variety of phonographic box that Japanese agents had placed near U.S. camps. The boxes remained inconspicuous until certain lonely hours of the night, when they would play music, popular hits from back home, maybe Shoo Shoo Baby or Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree. "Those poor dumb jarheads would hear that tune and forget themselves, dancing away from camp, doing the foxtrot or jitterbug past the perimeter into the jungle. When they get close enough -- bang! The box explodes, blowing the poor homesick bugger to kingdom come." He wiped away a tear. "Terrible thing to do to a piece of music," the lieutenant said. "When this is over, you think we'll ever be able to listen to tunes the same way?" He shook his head. "We'll dive for cover every time we hear Chattanooga Choo Choo." The anecdote made little sense to Hiro until he listened past the man's words and heard music. Music, voices, a song. He took a few steps in the direction of the beach. Others stopped to listen to the melody pulsing in with the waves; to them it must have seemed nothing more than beautiful nonsense. "Take cover," Hiro said. "Something is wrong." Some jumped for hiding places, others kicked dirt into the orange glow of the nearest fire. Work on the bomb continued, while the sniffling lieutenant followed Hiro to a vantage overlooking the beach, closer to the source of music. "What's it called?" the lieutenant asked. "I want to know the name of the song that kills me." "The Japanese anthem." Hiro wondered how many people would be required to sing in unison and be heard over an ocean? Could waves carry an anthem, if it was given proper voice? But through these thoughts pushed a more compelling image. The fuku-ryu after it spotted him, transmitting radio pulses to a floating naval base, a request for an expeditionary team, and the Kaitana responding, six of them lining along the deck then diving one by one into the ocean. Now they had arrived. Hiro could make out six heads above the waterline, joined in proud song as they walked ashore. The Kaitana rose from the water wearing only breech cloths and perfumed oils. On the shore they kneeled and bowed, touching their heads to the sand. A tortoiselike mechanical waddled after them, issuing a neat package to each. "Can't they see the camp?" said the lieutenant. "They must be able to see our fires." "Yes," Hiro said. "I'm sure they can." "Then why are they just sitting there?" "Meditation. Next comes the ceremony of putting on uniforms. We will have a few minutes before they choose to engage us." He and the lieutenant fell back, Hiro walking to the effigy and carefully untying it from its branch. He took off his uniform and threw it onto the blaze with the dummy. The other soldiers jumped when he returned; they were waiting for an oriental attack, Hiro realized, without his uniform or the stars and bars, he was as frightening a sight his former countrymen on the shore. He threw down the rope. "Tie me up," he said. "Tie my hands to my ankles." "Why?" "Like you mean it. As if I was the dummy you hung from the tree." The lieutenant hesitated, then began wrapping the rope according Hito's instructions. When the knots were completed Hiro fell to rubbing face and hair into the dirt. He said to the men working on bomb, "Have you done enough to make it a mystery?" "No," came the reply. "No. Not for the Japs. They'll be able to figure out what this is. Maybe a few weeks, maybe a month. The more we pull out the longer it'll take them to get a complete understanding." "They're sitting up!" someone shouted. "They're getting ready!" "I think you should take any components you have," Hiro said. "Run with them. Go. Run as far away as the island will allow and if you have a chance throw them into the ocean." "What about you?" "Do it now. They will be here soon. And the only thing the Kaitana dislike more than Japanese prisoners who haven't committed sepuku are their captors." He was facing away from the bomb so he didn't see them pick up the pieces, but he did watch each soldier file past him with a sober expression, as if going to receive communion wafer, then heard the rustle of leaves as each sank into the island wild. He listened. He listened until he heard nothing more but the spit and crackle of bonfires, and knew he was alone here lying in the dirt. Alone between the Kaitana and the bomb. He watched the flames. He could see nothing else. He imagined the swordsmen completing their ceremony and falling into stride as they marched up the hillside; when they actually rose before him it was as if they'd been summoned from the' depths of his mind. They looked not unlike combatants from the mechanized Kendo matches put on in Tokyo gambling parlors; black skirts and black leather cuirasses, articulated armor that transformed their oriental physiques to something wasplike and potent. Every movement of the suits deferred to the swords and lacquered ceremonial rifles fastened onto their backs. The outfits tapered into helmets screened by slats of steel, revealing only narrow stripes of flesh and jewel-black eyes. Staring at Hiro on the ground. And the exposed bomb behind him. Then back to Hiro. The biggest of the Kaitana squatted near his head. "Why haven't you taken your life?" he asked in polite Japanese. "I had no gun. The Americans captured me during my attempt to run off a cliff. Please pardon me. Would someone do the honor of removing my head?" The Kaitana drew his sword, a bright flash of moonlight and fire, the sword rumored to have taken down armored vehicles. Instead of Hiro's neck he slid it against the bindings, cutting him loose. Hiro pretended to rub sore wrists and ankles before staggering to his feet. "You must be happy to see us." Hiro nodded. "How long have you been prisoner?" "Six days. My zero crashed into the ocean. Shot down by Americans." "Where are they now?" "They ran when they saw you coming. Scattered. I don't know to where." "It would be useful to have one of them alive." He pointed his sword at the bomb, then gave instructions that one U.S. soldier must be taken for explanation. "Several times I heard them speaking in negative terms about a demon," Hiro said. The Kaitana looked at him. "Only slowly did I realize they were referring to this bomb." "What did they say?" "They cursed it for making their plane crash. The more knowledgeable ones commented on the crudity of its design; that it was more dangerous for those transporting it than the intended victims. They called it a last ditch effort against the Japanese. So wicked was the spirit surrounding the bomb that it often moved them to disputes, and you can see for yourself the results." He indicated the bodies of Carson and Sergeant Hellerman. "It was the only thing they spoke of worse than me," he added. "Curious they should attempt to deliver the bomb if it's so crude," said the Kaitana leader. "I suppose we will have to leave that puzzle to the scientists aboard Base Shiroyama." He gave orders to prepare the bomb for transport. Wait, said Hiro. "Maybe we should leave it here," he continued, and attempted eye contact with each of the Kaitana. "Perhaps this weapon was not meant to ride the sky or be dropped, anywhere. The American plane was not shot down; the hand of fate knocked it to the ground. Fate, like a divine wind, sending its message. If this bomb is as terrible to the people who wield it as those it destroys, perhaps no better place for it than a deserted rock in the Pacific." The Kaitana paused. They stared at the open hatch and the huge dull surface of the bomb. They had all heard him, but only the leader responded. He raised his sword and pressed the tip against Hito's neck. "If you have a weapon at your disposal," he said, "it only makes sense to use it." He summoned the fuku-ryu to come assist transportation of the bomb. The jungle exploded open, the fuku-ryu thundering forward on its long legs. Surprised by its lack of delicacy, the Kaitana stepped back, avoiding its haphazard trajectory. They were more surprised when it opened gun hatches and wheeled its cannons on them. Gunshots took the commander in the chest. The other Kaitana drew their swords and attacked the rebelling machine. Hiro took the opportunity to fall away, and in the background he glimpsed a halo of white hair. The bombardier. He must have had a hand in the fuku-ryu's mechanics to create such a violent diversion. "Go!" the man shouted at Hiro. "Go!" The bombardier left his shadowy hiding place and ran through the melee, leaping back into the compartment that had imprisoned him. He jumped to the bomb's service ladder. Hiro had no idea what the man was doing: he sang one of his songs as he climbed, something about hamburgers or Coney Island frankfurters, Hiro couldn't be sure. Seeing the bombardier, one of the Kaitana broke from the battle, bringing his sword around in a powerful arc. Hiro reached into the bonfire where the Luger lay white as coals: it still worked, the shot not penetrating the swordsman's armor but knocking him off his feet. The bombardier scrambled up the ladder and dropped into the bomb, one more word echoing up from its depths. Go! Hiro looked around. Go where? And then he saw it. Do you even know how to swim? he asked himself, but there was no time to wonder, because he was already running down the hillside, down the beach, splashing into the water, he was diving... Beneath the waterline was an even stranger sight than those he had so far witnessed. The patrolman, somehow still alive. He was in his deep sea diving suit and beckoning Hiro onward. He didn't understand how the man could have survived the fuku-ryu, and wondered if what he saw wasn't the patrolman at all but a black dolphin. Whatever the case Hiro could not keep up with the strange entity swimming circles around him or remain underwater with such ease. He surfaced briefly to look back at the fires that tinged the face of the island. Then he dove again, deeper, down to where the black dolphin beckoned him, and suddenly the water was flooded by light, light pouring after him, lighting the depths of the Pacific like an underwater sun, and Hiro swam deeper into the strange new world the detonation of the bomb had suddenly illuminated around him. |
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