IV

The Home Islands

1

At a little before five, Yamazaki was about to leave Plan D headquarters, on the sixth floor of a building next to Harajuku Station. At six o’clock a high-speed helicopter of the Sea Self-Defense Force was to land at Harumi Pier to pick him up and fly him to the Yoshino, then approaching the Sea of Enshu.

“Well, I think I’ll be going. Tonight I’ll be on the waves.”

“Sorry to hear it, answered Yasugawa breezily as he punched the keys of a computer. “I’ve got a full night’s work ahead of me.

“Don’t overdo it,” said Yamazaki, putting on his hat. “It wouldn’t do to ruin your health while you’re still young.” As he spoke, Yamazaki moved over to the window to see how bad was the rush-hour traffic in the streets below.

Just as he came to the window a mass of dark specks, like a billowing cloud of pepper, rose up into the sky in the direction of Yoyogi Grove. Pigeons, sparrow, crows—birds of every kind were taking to flight as though seized with a sudden frenzy.

A cry formed on the lips of the startled Yamazaki, though no sound came from his throat. At the same instant, bolts of lightning, one after another, flashed down from the lead-colored clouds gathered in the already darkened eastern sky and darted over the ground. The staccato flashes covered the horizon with glaring sheets of light.

“Yasugawa!” Yamazaki, whose eyes had been fixed on the scene outside, turned and shouted to his friend in a shrill voice. “Come here! Look! Something’s happening.”

There was no way of fixing their points of origin, but beginning somewhere in the east and extending into the city itself, pillars of light were boiling up from the earth as though to tear it asunder and climbing toward the clouds. The columns—two, three of them—keeping a fixed distance from one another, shimmered brilliantly. A crimson-tinged ball of light spurted up from one of them and, describing a flashing arc, fell back to earth.

“What is it?” asked Yasugawa, rising from his desk.

But at that instant a thunderous shock struck, and the floor seemed to billow up beneath them. Before they had time even to register alarm, the floor rose again, as if a giant hammer were striking from below, blow upon blow, as though to pound every thing to rubble. While the two men struggled to keep their feet, ink bottles, water glasses, and the like bounced up into the air with each shock. A box of thumbtacks turned over in mid-flight, the tacks spilling out over the floor.

“An earthquake!” said Yamazaki. “It looks like it’s going to be a big one.”

When the violent shocks rocking the building lessened, Yamazaki quickly took stock of the situation. Was it best to use this breathing space to dash downstairs?

But they were given no time to flee. There was a rumbling like a distant volley of massed artillery, and then the whole building groaned as it began to sway from side to side. Yamazaki clutched at the wall to keep his feet, but the counter-sway sent him sprawling onto the floor. Two or three of the spilled tacks bit into his palms. Fear gripping him, he struggled to his knees, but, far from being able to stand, he could not even manage to get on all fours. The floor shook from side to side at frenzied speed, and Yamazaki was flattened again.

“Mr. Yamazaki!” Young Yasugawa’s high voice sounded.

“Under a desk,” shouted Yamazaki. “Get under a desk!”

There was a loud crash. A heavy bookcase had fallen over. Cracks raced across the walls and ceiling. Pieces of cement began to rain down amid clouds of grimy dust. Clutching his head, Yamazaki looked out from beneath the desk under which he had finally been able to crawl. In shocked amazement he watched as the glass of the adjacent window, ripped from the strong sash that held it, broke apart in the air with a shattering crash. The lights went out. Outside, glowing curtains of sparks seemed to swirl about one another in the gray sky.

For a moment the rocking slackened off, but then it started up again with renewed fury. A desk computer went sailing through the air, trailing its cord, and smashed into the wall close to Yamazaki. The tremors this time were fiercer yet. The building swayed crazily, its whole frame groaning with terrible force, and chunks of cement crashed down from the ceiling. Yamazaki felt the floor lurch sharply upward.

Would the building go over? With relative calm, he considered the situation. They were on the sixth floor of a seven-floor building. Were it to collapse, their chances of survival were almost nil. To be caught in the midst of that shattered mass of concrete falling to earth!

Now there was a staccato pounding. The window frame swayed again and then came free, and as Yamazaki watched, it sailed leisurely out into space. Was he about to die? In one part of his mind, he coolly weighed the question. Were he to die now, he thought, how void of meaning his life would be!

The rumbling gradually subsided. The floor was tilted several degrees. In the dim light Yamazaki could see that the room was filled with a cloud of dust. When he tried to crawl out from beneath the desk, he found something blocking his way. A section of fallen ceiling was draped over the desk. The aspect of the room, seen by the faint light that came in through the windows, was one of frightful disorder. Through the dust that choked the room, Yamazaki saw cracks in the walls, holes torn in the ceiling. The floor was covered with shattered concrete. Bookcases and lockers were overturned, desks were crushed. All order had been obliterated, leaving nothing but a shambles. The thing that ever lurked behind the geometric patterns of rational order had shown its terrible visage.

The raw dust from the broken concrete struck Yamazaki’s nostrils with pungent force.

“Yasugawa!” Yamazaki called in a hoarse voice. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” came the weak reply. “Something hit me on the head, but I’m all right.”

Again there was creaking as the room started to rock once more. A tipped bookcase fell over with a crash.

“What should we do?” Yasugawa asked, his voice shaking like a child’s.

Outside the noise of explosions sounded rapidly, one after another. At each report a red glow filled the windows. And now, abruptly, the sound of people shouting and crying out began to reach them, as though coming from a long way off. Mixed with the smell of dust was a scorched, burning stench.

“The first thing we have to do is to get out of here,” said Yamazaki. “There might be aftershocks.”

“The elevator’s no good, I guess. Would the stairs be all right?”

“The fire escape would probably be the best.”

The door to the fire escape was at the end of a short corridor. Broken glass covered the floor and made a grinding noise beneath their shoes. Yamazaki felt a shudder run down his spine as through the gloom he saw the cracks that covered the walls and ceilings.

The steel door leading to the fire escape turned out to be jammed. Yamazaki resolutely threw his body against it, and it finally burst open. Smoke and searing hot air struck their nostrils. The frame building next door was in flames. The gloom of early evening was filled with the sound of running feet, shouts, and cries of pain. The quake had derailed a commuter train at Harajuku Station just below, and people were milling about along the twisted length of track. The scream of fire sirens came from every direction, and black smoke was starting to pour up.

“Come on!” Yamazaki shouted as he dashed out through the fire door. He felt the steel plates beneath his feet rattling ominously, and he could hear Yasugawa’s footsteps behind him. Since the building was tilted, the slightest misstep on the fire escape would be disastrous. They climbed down past the fifth floor, then the fourth, turning one way, then another with agonized care. They had reached the third floor when heaven and earth began to groan once more.

“Careful!” Yasugawa shouted, his voice shrill. “Watch it, Mr. Yamazaki.”

But Yamazaki had already lost his footing. He plunged down ward, struck the steps heavily, buttocks first, and slid on his back until a landing checked his fall. He tried to get to his feet, but he could not. The steel fire escape shook violently, vibrating like a giant gong. The aftershocks seemed to turn heaven and earth alike into a massive, howling whirlpool. The burning building next door collapsed like a house of cards, and showers of sparks burst in all directions. Something whizzed by, grazing Yamazaki’s cheek, whether a tile or a fragment of zinc roofing he could not tell. A deafening roar broke from the somber sky rumbling overhead, and the fire escape shook still more violently. The strain was such that the steel plates and rods that held it fast to the concrete face of the building began to burst free one after another, as though a rapid-fire cannon were going off in Yamazaki’s ear.

When evening came, the sinister rumblings that followed the quake gradually quieted, but the destruction went on. For, since there was no means to check them, the fires that had broken out in well over a hundred places throughout the city gradually spread, and in the gathering darkness the red glow that lit the sky grew ever more vivid. Along the shoreline ravaged by tidal waves, flames burst like red lotus petals from ruptured storage tanks and warehouses, and smoke billowed skyward to form massive black columns.

No trains were running on either the National Railways or the private lines. Fires had broken out in some sections of the sub way. Others were flooded. The streets were everywhere blocked by either fire, rubble, or burning vehicles. The elevated expressways were in still worse condition. Near Nishi Kanda and Shibaura the supporting girders had been twisted out of position, and, all along the expressway, sections of the cement pavement had fallen away, and burning cars, melting the guard rails and turning the asphalt to flaming jelly, had come tumbling down like balls of fire. The seething mass of asphalt on the higher sections of the roadway was flowing down into the tunnels, which were belching fire and thick black smoke. Culverts throughout the city were filled with gas vapors, and periodic explosions sent manhole covers flying. Here and there, rushing water from broken mains clashed with the raging flames to give rise to clouds of steam.

When Yamazaki once more became aware of his surroundings, he was in a grove of of trees on the grounds of the Meiji Shrine, dragging one leg as he walked. His left ankle seemed to be severely sprained, and with every step fierce pain shot through it. Up to this moment, however, he had taken no notice even of this. He looked around him, but Yasugawa was nowhere to be seen. Instead there were masses of men and women, sobbing, breathing harshly as they hurried along distractedly. To Yamazaki’s rear, beyond the grove, the sky was red.

How had he survived? Yamazaki wondered dully as he dragged his leg along. He was sure that the building had collapsed. Hanging on to the landing of the fire escape, he had watched as though in a dream as, undermined by crevices, it had tipped more and more. Together with the fire escape, together with the building, he had been falling as though in slow motion toward the ground below, against which all alike would be pounded and shattered. And then he had been hurled free. Something had struck him painfully in the back, and his body had bounced about like a ball. Sparks had exploded in his face, and a bitter, pungent smell had struck his nostrils. Somebody had let out a piercing scream. He remembered nothing after that.

The strength was drained from his body, and every part of it ached. He felt something wet and slippery rolling down his face. The arm of his jacket was torn as though slashed with a razor, and his shirt and even his undershirt were ripped in the same way. Blood flowed down his bare arm. The left leg of his pants hung in shreds from the knee down. His shin was covered with abrasions. Oppressed by his weight of pain, he groaned instinctively. Then his heart began to beat at an alarming rate, growing gradually more intense until his ears were ringing.

Just as he was coming out of the grove, Yamazaki felt his legs giving way beneath him, and he fell to his knees. Sweat rolled down his body. His breathing became painful, and he felt a dizziness taking hold of him. Then the whining roar in his ears gradually subsided, and the cries of distraught men and women came to him from a distance like ripples striking his ear. He took two or three deep breaths, and his head cleared at last.

Here beneath the trees of the Outer Garden, thousands of people had already come together. Sometimes the glare of some blaze shone through the trees to light with a dim glow the chaos of this terrible night.

“All of downtown is gone!” somebody shouted. “Akasaka and Shibuya, too. Aoyama is going to be next.”

“Tokyo Bay is a sea of flames, I tell you.” This last was said in low and hurried tones by somebody passing by. “From Tsukiji to Shinagawa . . . the whole area . . . and the Ginza, too—all wiped out.”

Feeling the pain in his leg, Yamazaki got to his feet. Suddenly he began to worry about his family. His weary, grumbling wife . . . his pimply-faced oldest son, who had let his hair grow womanlike in keeping with the latest fad . . . and then his older daughter, who resembled neither of her parents and whose strikingly beautiful face gave him all the more cause for concern now that she was growing into adolescence, and his younger daughter, somewhat retarded because of a mild case of polio . . .

“Excuse me a minute, please,” said Yamazaki to a passing stranger. “Have they got the trains going again?”

“The trains?” the stranger burst out, his voice harsh. “Why, the tracks are twisted like pretzels. And then there’ve been landslides and everything. Why, at Shibuya . . . when a train packed with people was leaving the station, and just as it was starting to move, it jumped the elevated tracks. There’re bodies everywhere. I’ve just seen it with my own eyes.”

“It’s horrible on the expressways,” somebody said in a high-pitched, tearful voice. “In Kasumigaseki it’s horrible. In the tunnel there ...”

“What are the police doing anyway?” asked somebody else. “Where are they? Any other time you’d see them all over the place.”

Suddenly there was a loud, joyful shout at the edge of the crowd. Yamazaki heard the sound of truck engines, and from beneath the trees the glaring beams of headlights lit the faces of those around him. Three trucks pulled up and stopped, and helmeted soldiers in khaki uniforms began to jump down.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a relief squad of the Ground-Defense Force,” a loudspeaker announced. “Are there any injured among you in need of immediate attention? We’ll take charge of them at once. As for those of you who can walk, please proceed to the gymnasiums and indoor pool at Yoyogi. Emergency relief stations have been set up. Please remain calm and maintain your normal behavior. The earthquake is over with. As for the fire, due measures are being taken. It’s too early to say how soon rail service can be restored, but engineer battalions of the Ground Defense Force are laboring right now to open the lines leading from Tokyo to each outlying area.”

“Can you take us home?” somebody yelled. “My family’s in Mitaka. They’re worrying.”

“Any time now transportation units should be arriving over by Yoyogi Sports Center. So please go to the Sports Center. Only, ladies and gentlemen, because there will be such a crush of people, please stay calm and don’t get excited. At the Sports Center there should be news available about the damage sustained in each district and about the resumption of travel. As much food and drink as possible has been prepared there. So, calmly, orderly, proceed to the Sports Center, please. The troops will guide you there.”

A searchlight went on, sending a stir through the crowd. They had yearned so much for light that now that they had it they were uncertain as to whether they could trust it. By the light spilling from the searchlight, Yamazaki studied the face of the officer talking to the crowd. His intrepid face was sunburned, and his cheeks were touched with an odd trace of childish innocence. From overhead came the whirring racket of a helicopter. A wind was beginning to rise. That helicopter will have a hard time of it, Yamazaki thought, as he glanced over his shoulder at the scarlet glow of the fiery destruction behind him.

Climbing black smoke covered the sky, lit by the baleful glare of the flames. Thunderous booms, probably exploding petroleum tanks, shook the sky again and again.

Suddenly Yamazaki found himself reliving an old memory. During the war . . . the night of the great raid on Tokyo . . . He had been in his late teens then. The night that his neighborhood in Shinagawa had been burned out, the night that his mother and his younger brother had died. The heavy, listless feeling he had felt then came back to him all at once, the mood that had gripped him that night when he had stood straight up, not going down into the shelter, watching the heavy rain of incendiaries and the fiery chaos around him—a sullen mood, a sense of help less frustration . . . Since that long-ago night, Tokyo had expanded to a city of fabulous proportions. The destruction must be incredible, Yamazaki thought. If the oil floating on Tokyo Bay took fire, there would be a dreadful holocaust. And even after the destruction had been checked, civil paralysis, given the incredibly complex system of metropolitan government, might persist for a long period. Disorder could spread through out the whole country.

What a situation, thought Yamazaki, dragging his leg pain fully as he walked in the midst of the now-moving crowd. If the Cabinet should fall in the near future . . .

Black specks and white specks fluttered in the air, lit by the beam of the searchlight. Yamazaki looked up. In the lead-colored sky a seemingly infinite number of black spots danced in the wind, blown along across the sky like a million flickering bat wings.

“Ashes are falling”, muttered an old man next to Yamazaki. “We’ll get soaked. It always happens. There’ll be rain. After a big fire there’s always rain. Isn’t that right? That’s the way it was during the big raids.”

Yamazaki felt a drop strike his cheek from the shower that was indeed beginning. In a corner of his overburdened mind, he gloomily considered the future of Plan D. If the Cabinet should fall, what in the world would they be able to do then?

2

At eleven that same night, the Yoshino passed through the Uraga Channel. Those on board had already seen from afar the fiery destruction raging along the Sagami Bay shoreline while the Yoshino was approaching the Miura Peninsula, but when the ship entered the channel, the salt breeze carried a peculiar, undefined stench. When they were passing Cap Kannon, the rain, which had been intermittent till then, suddenly began to fall in sheets, and little could be made out. Yet Onodera could see from the bridge the flames rising from underground storage tanks, glowing with a deep scarlet intensity like the fires of hell.

“Tokyo is burning,” muttered Kataoka, who was standing beside Onodera at the end of the bridge. “Kawasaki, too, and Chiba . . .”

“I guess the tidal waves hit about three hours ago,” said Onodera, pulling the hood of his raincoat tighter about his head. “The damage must be terrible.”

The Yoshino was proceeding at a reduced speed of seven to eight knots. A steam whistle echoed in the midst of the rain.

Flames shot suddenly upward at a point either in Kawasaki or Yokohama, probably from exploding tanks, and the noise was like the rumbling of the bowels of the earth.

“What an awful stench,” said Nakata, frowning and wrinkling up his nose, wet from the rain. “I imagine we’ll put in at Yokosuka. The city is probably in chaos, but they say that it would be dangerous to go too far north. Because of poisonous gas, heavy oil fires, and wreckage from the tidal waves.”

Peering down at the dark surface of the sea, Onodera realized that for some time they had been surrounded by all sorts of floating objects. Crates, tatami mats, oil drums, planks of wood, shattered fragments of every kind, and what looked like corpses.

“Off the port bow—something adrift!” shouted the watch at the bow.

A searchlight flashed on. There was a groaning roar set up by the front screw, and the Yoshino suddenly veered to one side. A derelict of some thousands of tons passed closely on the port side, nearly submerged, its capsized hull just above the surface.

From out of the rain and darkness came a faint cry.

“On the starboard bow—man in the water!” Again the watch’s voice sounded through the rain.

“Reverse engines!” the captain ordered, speaking into the intercom in a low voice. “Lower a starboard lifeboat. Pick the fellow up.”

While the boat was being lowered with a clattering noise, the glaring beam of the searchlight turned to the right and probed the water, but there was nothing to be seen on the surface of the sea lashed by the rain.

“Up ahead there’s a lot of derelict ships,” said the navigator, studying the radar screen. “Probably fishing boats and lighters smashed by the tidal waves.”

“The lifeboat is coming back,” called a sailor from the end of the bridge.

“How’d you do? Did you find him?” somebody shouted over the rail.

“We got him,” a sailor answered. “The only thing is he’s out of his head.”

“Professor Tadokoro,” said Onodera, turning around to where Tadokoro stood behind him, wearing not even a rain-coat. “The whole coastline around the bay seems to have been badly hit. It looks like the Tokyo waterfront has been wiped out.”

“That’s jumping to conclusions,” muttered Tadokoro as the rain beat against his unshaven face. “To say that now would be jumping to conclusions.”

“How are they at home, I wonder?” said Kataoka absently. “I live in Tamachi.”

That night of fire and destruction and tidal waves, of inky black rain came to an end with clear skies at dawn, but the fearful aftermath of a city in ruins remained. Fires still burned along the shore. Black smoke, spreading out like a gigantic sea monster, hung low over the bay.

Onodera left Yokosuka in a helicopter, accompanying Tadokoro and Yukinaga, who had been summoned by the Prime Minister. He looked out the window, his eyes fixed upon the frightful scene below. In Yokohama, Kawasaki, and in Tokyo itself, thin smoke still rose here and there. Beneath a blue autumn sky in which floated high, fleecy tufts of cloud, an eerie quiet lay over that vast population center, the home of more than twenty percent of the Japanese. Aside from the fires still burning along the shoreline, the scene at first glance seemed little out of the ordinary. But when Onodera looked down more intently, the whole panorama of ruin slipped into view, the terrible aftermath of that swift rush of fiery disaster. The packed-together houses lay half in ruins, and burned-out sections, like frightful black blotches, spread out in every direction. In the center of the city, however, the large buildings had come through surprisingly well, despite being cracked and tilted.

“Chiyoda Ward seems to be in pretty good shape,” said Onodera. “Look! There’s a train running on the Yokohama Line.”

Beneath a clear autumn sky, Tokyo had begun to come alive once more. A fleet of bulldozers was already at work beginning to clear away the shattered ruins. Large trucks, probably loaded with relief materials, were streaming into Tokyo. And in the opposite direction moved military trucks and buses loaded with commuters who had finally been given the means of returning home. The Japanese, it seems, are on intimate terms with disaster, Onodera said to himself, feeling tears come to his eyes. Such was the surprised observation recorded by a German visitor to Japan in the middle of the nineteenth century, who had seen the great fires that ravaged Edo and then heard the ring of hammers as the people who had lost their homes to the flames cheerfully started to rebuild without sparing a sigh of distress, even while the fires still smoldered.

This time, however, the scale of destruction was overwhelming. Even allowing for the “traditional” reaction, once the full extent of the disaster became known, and once it became necessary to confront the major problems that would stem from it, what, finally, would be the outcome? Still more—suppose on top of all this . . .

“The government has come out with an interim report,” said Yukinaga, his ear to the radio. “The dead—estimated at more than two million. The total amount of damage is expected to surpass one billion yen.”

“What’s that?” muttered Onodera, who had noticed from time to time something shiny falling from the windows of tall buildings.

“Even after the earthquake is over, the glass will come loose and fall out like that, given some tremor or other,” answered Tadokoro, looking straight ahead. “The same thing happened at the time of the Peru earthquake. People would have their heads slashed by glass like that and die long after the quake was over.”

3

When Nakata, Yukinaga, Onodera, and Yamazaki entered the Executive Building, which housed the Prime Minister’s Office, everything was in disorder, with all sorts of people hurrying up and down the corridors.

Nakata turned to Yamazaki and asked: “Have you been in contact with our patron?”

“Yes ... finally,” answered Yamazaki in a weary voice. His tie was crumpled and his collar dirty. He had aged greatly in a short time. His unshaven cheeks were hollow, and there were wrinkles around his eyes. Besides having suffered the ordeal of the earthquake, he held himself responsible for the severe injuries suffered by young Yasukawa, who had been found in a temporary hospital. “Mr. Watari’s in Hakone. Kunieda is with him.”

“Good. Professor Tadokoro should go to see him. He’s wasting his time trying to corner the Prime Minister in the midst of all this disorder.”

“In any case, it looks like we’ll have to close up shop for a while, doesn’t it?” Yamazaki asked as he opened the door of the small room that had been set aside for Plan D.

“You think so?” Nakata said dryly.

“Well, with everything up in the air the way it is, we couldn’t expect to accomplish anything for the time being, could we? And then, besides, even if it happens, it wouldn’t be for some time, would it? Say for four or five years or even longer?”

“It’s hard to say,” Nakata said quietly. “According to a very rough calculation, it could happen that D would equal two.”

“Equal two?” asked Yamazaki, his jaw dropping. “Two years? Are you sure?”

“Yes. If worse comes to worst.”

Yamazaki looked at the three of them, his face haggard. He shook his head. “That’s hard to believe. . . . Well, at any rate, make yourself at home. I can’t offer you tea because of this chaos. How about a glass of water?”

“Never mind,” said Nakata with a laugh. “The thing I’m concerned about is for you to think about getting in touch somehow with the old Mr. Watari in Hakone.”

“We don’t have a car, and anyway gasoline rationing is really stiff,” Yamazaki answered as he threw himself into a chair in front of the desk. “Somehow, I just can’t believe it,” he went on as he looked out the window. “Could something like that really take place? This thing . . . couldn’t it be nothing more than the delusion of a senile old man and a scientist a little touched in the head?”

“I suppose we’ve all wondered that,” said Nakata. He paused for a moment. “I’m afraid it’s really going to happen.”

“Well, if so . . . what then? There are a hundred million Japanese, you know.”

“Most of them might die,” said Nakata. “And why? Precisely because nobody is going to believe that such a thing could happen. We ourselves are of two minds, and we’re up to our neck in it. And in the midst of the will-it-or-will-it-not, maybe-so-maybe-no debate, time is slipping away. And the longer the delay, the greater the number of those who will die.”

“You don’t seem to have any hope,” said Yamazaki in a low voice.

“Oh, I can hope as well as the next man. I hope that there’s some equilibrium process at work unknown to us, something that will prevent this from happening, or something, at least, that will greatly lessen its impact. But in the meantime we’ve got to act as though it is going to happen, so that we can save as many as possible.” Nakata smiled ruefully. “I have no desire to be vindicated as a prophet. If this thing happens, it will be pure hell, and there’s no point in putting on prophetic airs in hell.”

Yamazaki crushed out his cigarette. “I’ve got a wife and children,” he said in a hoarse voice. “I wonder what you people think . . . about your families, I mean. If only somebody would take the initiative . . .”

When they arrived at Hakone, it was already the middle of the night. The roads were damaged so severely and the traffic jams had been so fearful that they had been able to average no more than six miles an hour.

A small, almost hidden private road wound through the cryptomeria forest at a point midway between Ubako and Gojiri Pass. As the car was climbing the steep, winding road, a one-story house came into view. A brushwood fence surrounded it, and an air of stillness hung over it. The car stopped beside a gate crowned with a crossbeam. And after someone had gotten out and announced their presence into an interphone, it swung open by remote control. The Oribe votive lanterns in the garden lay overturned. Their stone caps had left gouges in the mossy ground.

The old man was sitting by himself in a rather small room ten mats in size, his legs covered by a quilt concealing a foot-warmer. A cushion seat covered with purple figured silk sup ported his back. He wore a sleeveless padded robe of dark brown over a fine kimono of Yuki pongee. Around his neck a wide scarf of white linen was loosely wrapped. His solitary figure with its bent back looked small and shriveled. His eyes, sheltered by the white brows above, were closed, and he seemed to be dozing.

Their party of five, including Tadokoro, knelt by the door-way, but Watari gave no sign that he had noticed, merely nod ding as though in his sleep.

“Well, Hakone is cold, as usual,” said Tadokoro in a loud, heedless voice, very much in character, as he got to his feet and strode boldly into the room. His greasy socks were baggy at the toes, and they made a floppy sound upon the tatami floor.

A faultlessly groomed girl, dressed in a short Chichibu Meisen kimono too sober for her age, invited them to take places around a huge quilt-covered foot-warmer. Her hair, so thick as to be unruly, was gathered in back. The eyes, set in a face showing no trace of cosmetics, were large. She was tall, and her firm mouth gave her a formidable air. When she happened to laugh, however, one caught a glimpse of dimples and a single crooked tooth which seemed altogether becoming, and her expression became one of artless innocence.

“You’ve taken a little punishment, I see,” said Tadokoro, stretching his neck as he looked at the alcove behind the old man. Up where the ancient alcove posts of cryptomeria from the northern mountains joined the ceiling, raw cracks ran along the wall, and sand had spilled down upon the alcove step of black persimmon.

Yukinaga, noticing the Southern Sung painting that hung in the alcove, spoke abruptly. “I believe that’s a Tanomura Chokunyu, is it not?”

“Very perceptive,” said Watari, his voice hoarse as he laughed. “But it happens to be an imitation. Well done, isn’t it? Do you like the Southern School? What about Tessai?”

“No, I don’t care much for him.”

“I see. Well, I’m not too fond of him myself. At my age, that sort of style becomes tedious, you see.”

The young girl came in with tea, pointing her white tabi-shod feet gracefully as she walked. How like a Noh actor, thought Yukinaga as he watched her.

In the teacups that she distributed, instead of ordinary tea there was a beverage in which lay a single brownish leaf of some sort of plant.

It’s an orchid, thought Onodera as he took a sip. Through the steam that rose from the cup, he gazed absently at the scarlet color of the maple leaves in the Mosochiku vase that stood in the alcove.

“Well, then,” said the old man, coughing faintly, “how do things stand, Professor Tadokoro?”

“That’s why we’re here, sir,” said Tadokoro, leaning forward.

“As far as the Tokyo disaster goes, I’m well informed.”

“I expected that,” answered Tadokoro, gulping down the rest of his orchid tea. “The way I see things now is exactly in line with what I told you before. We must by all means mount an investigation of still larger scope in order to get the facts more certainly in hand. The question is how are we going to accomplish that. And how, furthermore, are we going to broach our desire to the government?”

The old man, his wrinkled hand like a withered branch, gave the Rakuyake teacup a slight shake. The surface of the orchid tea trembled. His eyes were hidden, sunk deep within their sockets, and there was no way of knowing which way they were looking. He seemed to be staring with a child’s detachment at the trembling liquid. Was he lost in thought, oblivious to every thing? A silence came over the room, and Onodera became aware of a rustling from the dark forest outside. And farther off, the mountains themselves seemed to give off a faint, indistinct noise that was like a moan.

“From now on . . .” Nakata, urged by some impulse, suddenly spoke out, his voice little more than a whisper. “If we go on as we are, it’s hopeless. If you say go on with the number of men we have now, using the means we have now, we’ll go on ... but it won’t do much good. As the day approaches, of course, more and more people will become aware, but by then it will be too late.”

The old man was still jiggling his teacup. A faint cough echoed from the throat covered with wrinkled folds. Everyone stared fixedly at the teacup.

“Professor Tadokoro,” said the old man, raising his eyes and moving his head slightly to one side, “have you seen the flower in that vase there?”

Tadokoro raised his eyes. From one of the posts at the rear of the alcove hung a gourd vase. Within it was a small flower of vivid red, picked in full bloom and set off by two or three branches of dark green leaves.

“A Chinese camellia, isn’t it?” muttered Tadokoro.

“That’s right. Every bush is blooming with wild profusion. It seems to me, Professor, that nature is running wild in all sorts of ways in Japan this fall. A scientist looks at this, and perhaps it strikes him as not too significant. But as for me, I have lived with nature for one hundred years, and I can’t escape the feeling that nature in Japan—plants and trees and birds and insects and fishes—all alike have grown fearful and have lost their composure.”

The sound of quiet footsteps came down the corridor and stopped outside the door.

“Did you call, sir?” came a voice.

“Hanae,” said the old man, “open the door, and then open the outside ones, too. All the way.”

The inner door slid open. “But, sir,” said the girl, her eyes wide, “it’s really gotten rather cold.”

“It doesn’t matter. Open them.”

The girl slid open the glass outer doors with a slight scraping noise. The chill of the autumn night in Hakone rushed into the room, which had no warmth of its own save that from the foot-warmers. There was a ghostly murmur of insects. Branches rustled in the pitch-black darkness of the grove of cryptomeria trees.

One could look beyond the garden and through the tree trunks down to where Lake Ashi lay. The moon of the seventeenth day of the month hung in the sky. The awesome, chill brilliance of its beams shattered itself upon the rippled surface of the water. The ring of peaks surrounding Hakone loomed up, linked together like a huge black screen touched by the light of the moon.

“Professor Tadokoro,” said the old man in a voice of surprising strength, sounding behind them as they gazed out transfixed by the beauty of the scene. “Do you see? Take a good look. Take a good look at the mountains and lakes of Japan. As you know, Japan is large. From southwest to northeast it ex tends nearly 1,700 miles. It has islands large and small. It has ranges of mountains with peaks over 9,000 feet. The extent of its land is 142,000 square miles. And here live 110 million people whose gross national product ranks third in the world. This Japan, this massive group of islands—do you still think, really, even now, that it will sink? Do you really believe, even now, that such a thing could occur in the very near future—the swift submersion of all this?”

“I . . .” Tadokoro spoke as though heaving a deep sigh. “Yes . . . I do believe it. And our next survey will deepen that belief still more.”

Onodera felt his chest tremble as he gazed at the mountains bathed in the light of a moon just short of being full, and at the dark, brimming surface of the lake, over which that same brilliance was scattered in a thousand silver waves. The sensation was uncanny.

“Very well,” said the old man’s voice. “That’s what I wanted to hear. Hanae, that’s enough. Shut the doors.”

Looking up at the moon, whose brightness in that cloudless sky was almost painful, Onodera suddenly frowned. For the ring of brilliance that surrounded the moon sailing through a clear sky suddenly wavered as though a wave of heat had covered it. And then he realized that the chirping of insects had stopped. Even the rustle of the wind in the trees had grown quiet, as though every breeze had died.

Suddenly there came the shrill cry of night birds from the midst of the dark forest, a distressed chorus that sounded on every side. Nearer at hand, on the shore of the lake, dogs began to howl and roosters to crow.

“It’s coming, you see,” whispered Tadokoro.

Before he pronounced his last word, the mountains and forests spread before them began to rumble. Tiles trembled. The posts and lintels began to creak and moan, till finally the whole house began to vibrate loudly and the lights went out. The furniture rattled, sand’fell from the wall with a dry rustling noise, and there was the light sound of something spilling over the tatami. The girl gave a frightened cry.

“Don’t worry. It’s just an aftershock. Hakone and Tanazawa, after sinking a bit, are now coming up somewhat to restore the balance. It’s nothing of significance.” Tadokoro’s composed voice spoke in the darkness. “This isn’t what we have to worry about.”

Before they realized it, the quake was over. The whole group sat in silence within the darkened room, looking out upon the night scene of the bright moon shining down upon the shimmering, tranquil surface of Lake Ashi as though nothing had happened. The moon was rising higher and higher, and its pale brilliance covered an ever larger portion of the tatami floor.

“Nakata . . . that was the name, wasn’t it? The young fellow who said something a moment ago,” came the old man’s voice from the darkness behind them.

“Yes, sir,” Nakata answered.

“Do you have a fair idea of what has to be done with regard to this next stage?”

“I have a plan in mind, sir,” said Nakata, altogether com posed. “It’s not yet complete in all respects, but I have the general scheme laid out.”

“Good. Get it in final order as quickly as possible. Tomorrow I’m going to phone the Prime Minister. I want to meet with him. And furthermore, tomorrow I want somebody to go to Kyoto. Two of you go. In Kyoto there’s a scholar named Fukuhara. He’s still very young, but I know from reading his writings that he’s genuine, a true scholar. Take him a letter from me. I’ll explain the circumstances and ask for his cooperation. Tomorrow I’ll tell you what to say. It’s essential that we get the benefit of his thinking on this matter. The scholars of Tokyo, if you’ll pardon me, have from long past shown a propensity for fads and an incapacity to think their way through complex problems.”

“Fukuhara. . .” said Yukinaga in a low voice. “He’s in comparative civilization, isn’t he? Have you known him for some time, sir?”

“I’ve never met him,” said the old man, coughing slightly. “But we’ve exchanged one or two letters. I’m sure he’ll be receptive to us.”

A light shone from the crack in the doorway at the rear of the room. The door slid open, and the girl came in holding an old-fashioned lamp.

“Oh, my!” she said frowning. “The camellia . . .”

In the pale yellow circle of light cast by the old lamp, the tiny flower, fallen from the alcove post, lay like a spot of vivid color on the tatami, red as blood.

The next morning Onodera left for Kyoto with Kunieda, carrying Watari’s letter. The Super Express was in operation west of Shizuoka, but because of the precautions that had to be ob served, it took more than three hours to get from there to the express terminal in Osaka.

As he stood swaying back and forth in the jammed aisle, a sensation hard to define suddenly took hold of Onodera when he noticed that the train was crossing the Tenryu River. It was just a year ago that he had run into Goh at that water fountain near the rear entrance of Tokyo Station.

Now, as he thought back, he realized that that was when everything had started. He had not had the least idea at that moment what the future held in store for Japan or that he himself would become caught up in this kind of mission. A sense of secrecy and peril weighed upon him with oppressive force.

Osaka had almost entirely recovered from the effects of the great earthquake of the year before, but in Kyoto there was no way of missing the devastation evident in Gion, Ponto-cho, and the other districts making up the old Gay Quarters, which were the heart of the city, and in the close-packed downtown areas wracked by quake and fire.

When they arrived at the professor’s house in the northern part of the city, they learned that he had become somewhat ill the day before and had not gone out since. When he appeared in the parlor, wearing a pongee haori jacket, he seemed so youthful, with his boyish face and with no trace of gray in his hair, that Onodera, who knew that he was over fifty, would have had a difficult time guessing his age.

Professor Fukuhara read the old man’s letter again and again, his head tipped to one side, and Onodera and Kunieda, in turn, explained the situation to him. All the while he pursed his lips and finally uttered but a single phrase: “My, what an awful thing . . .”

And with that he got up at once and walked out of the parlor. Thirty minutes passed, then an hour, and still there was no sign of the professor. Their legs aching from being bent so long beneath them on the tatami floor, Onodera and Kunieda called the maid to find out what happened.

“The master is lying down upstairs,” was the answer she gave them.

“What the devil! This is what you call a Kyoto scholar? Making fools of us like this?” said the furious Kunieda. “We come all the way from Tokyo to tell him this, and all he can do is say ‘My, what an awful thing!’ and go up to take a nap.”