The Image and the Likeness Part 5

"I have not before had opportunity to talk to men from west. Only from China, j.a.pan, Soviet State. You will tell me of rest of world?"

"With pleasure," said Baker.

I became conscious that the door behind us was opening. I glanced back, and saw Phobat Rau, surrounded by guards and priests. He gestured to us to come in. Baker turned, while Buddha bent his head closer to see also.

Rau came to the door. "Come back," he called urgently. "You are in grave danger. You must come in."

Quite definitely I had no desire to go in. Neither did Baker, for he shook his head and moved away from the door. Rau's face was suddenly enraged. He made a quick motion to the guards, and then held them back.

With an evident effort he calmed himself and called again, softly.

"Please come in. I was hasty this morning. I am sorry. I think now I see a way for you to return safely, if you will come in."

For reply, Baker turned to the giant. He climbed upon the rail of the balcony.

"Take us away from here, if you wish to hear what we have to say. Take us, or they will kill us!"

In answer, Buddha extended one hand, palm up, so that it was level with the balcony. For an instant I hesitated at the sight of that irregular rough surface, big as a city block, and then I heard steps behind us and a click. With one accord we leaped over the parapet just as a scattered volley of pistol shots rang out. We tumbled head over heels down a rough leathery slope into a hollow, and then the platform lifted like a roller coaster. In a second the balcony, the whole hillside vanished and we went rocketing up into the blue sky. A gale of wind blew past, almost carrying us with it, and then a portion of the surface rose and became thirty foot tree trunks which curled incredibly over and around us, forming a small cavern which shut out the wind and held us securely against falling.

Buddha had closed his fist.

For a breathless fifteen seconds we were carried in darkness, and then the great hand unfolded. It was lying flat on an immense smooth area of concrete, which we presently identified as the higher of the two tables.

We got to our feet and staggered to the edge of the palm. Here we met another problem, in the form of a rounded ten foot drop-off to the concrete table. As we stood looking down in dismay, the other vast hand came up from below, carrying a heavy sheet of metal. This was carefully placed with one edge on the hand and the other on the table, forming a ramp. Holding onto each other for mutual support, we made our way to the table and there literally collapsed. Chamberlin became violently sick, and none of the rest of us felt much better. The giant carefully withdrew both hands and watched us from a distance of a hundred yards, with only the head and upper part of his body visible.

From our position on the concrete platform I now looked closely at Kazu for the first time. My first impression was not so much one of size, as of an incredible richness of detail. It was like examining a normal human through a powerful microscope, except here the whole was visible at once. Even at a distance of two hundred feet, the hair, the eyelashes, the pores of the skin showed up with a texture and form which I had never noted before, even in my studies as a biologist. The general effect was most confusing, for I would lose and regain the sense of scale, first thinking of him as an ordinary man, and then realizing the proportion. The nearest comparison that I can think of is the sensation when standing very close to a large motion picture screen, but here the image is blurry whereas I saw with a clarity and sharpness that was simply unbelievable.

Buddha seemed to realize our condition, for he smiled sympathetically, and waited until poor Walt had recovered somewhat from his nausea.

Baker, as spokesman, renewed the conversation. Walking a few steps toward the front of the enormous desk, he spoke in a loud clear voice.

"You have saved our lives. We thank you."

The great head nodded benignly, and after a thoughtful pause, that strange voice began.

"My teachers have brought others before me to lecture, but always I know that they speak only as they are told to speak. You are different. I am glad that I saw you last night, or I would never know that you had come."

He paused, evidently gathering his thoughts for the next foray into an unfamiliar language. Then he leaned closer.

"Phobat Rau has spoken to you of my birth and life here?"

Baker nodded, and then, realizing that Kazu could not see such a microscopic movement, he replied orally.

"He has told us your story in detail. It is a marvel which we can yet scarcely believe. But the greatest marvel of all is that you speak our language, and comprehend so quickly."

Kazu thought of this for a moment.

"Yes, my teachers have done well, I think. I have studied the writings of many great men, but there is yet much that I do not understand. I think it is important that I understand, because I am so strong. I do not wish to use this strength for evil, and I am not sure that those whom my teachers serve are good. I have studied the words of the great Buddha, but now my teachers say that I am to appear as if I were Buddha.

But that is an untruth, and untruth is evil. So now I hope that you will tell me the whole truth."

Kazu stepped back a quarter of a mile, and then reappeared, dragging his four hundred foot chair. Sitting on this, he crouched forward until his face was hardly a hundred feet before us, and his warm humid breath swept over us like wind from some exotic jungle. Baker took a moment to marshal his thoughts, and then came forward, threw out his chest and began speaking as though addressing an outdoor political meeting.

How long Baker spoke I do not know. He began by outlining history, contrasting the ideals of Buddha and other great religious leaders with the dark record of human oppression and cruelty. Kazu's vast face proved most expressive of his feelings as he listened intently. When Baker came to the subject of communism, he leaned over so far backward in his effort to be fair that I feared that he was overdoing it, and would convince the giant in the wrong direction.

When Baker was only part-way through his lecture, he remarked that some point in geography could be better explained by a drawing, but that obviously he could not make one large enough for Kazu to see. At this the giant laughed and pointed to his big leanto.

"Come," he said, "you shall draw on a piece of gla.s.s and the light will make it great that I may see."

We were thereupon transferred the mile distance to the building by a reversal of our previous route: up the ramp to Kazu's ample palm, a series of breathtaking swoops through s.p.a.ce, and we were in the vast interior of the leanto.

The furnis.h.i.+ngs of this study room consisted of a chair, a sloping writing desk and a screen fully two hundred feet square on the wall opposite the chair. Beside the chair was a sort of bracket on the wall which supported the projection room. Kazu placed his hand level with an elevated balcony leading to this and we scrambled off. With Baker in the lead, we opened the door and entered the projection room. It was larger than we had estimated from outside, when we had the immense furniture for comparison. The dimensions were perhaps forty feet on the side, and most of the interior was taken up by shelves on which were stored thousands of films of book pages, maps, photographs and diagrams of all kinds. In the side facing the screen were a number of ports and a battery of movie and still projectors. One of the latter was, we saw, adapted for writing or drawing on the gla.s.s slide while it was being projected. We studied this for a moment, located the special marking pencil, and then I called out of the door that we were ready.

"Look also," replied Kazu, "you will find device which magnify voice. My teachers use this always."

A further search disclosed a microphone and the switch for a public address amplifier. Baker settled down to his now ill.u.s.trated lecture.

After he had talked himself hoa.r.s.e, Baker asked each of the rest of us to speak briefly on our own specialties. I was the last, and I was practically through when I became aware that we were not alone in the room. I gave Martin a nudge, and turned from the microphone to face eight of the uniformed guards, led by our friendly yellow-robed priest.

Only now he wasn't friendly, and he carried a heavy automatic which was carefully aimed right at us.

"Very clever, gentlemen," he said. "You took good advantage of your chance with our simple giant, did you not? Tried your best to ruin the whole work of Pan-Asia just to save your miserable skins. Well, you shall not--"

He was interrupted by the thunder of Kazu's voice.

"Please continue, Mr. Cady. I find it most interesting. Why do you stop?"

I took a step toward the microphone, but a menacing gesture with the gun stopped me. I looked from yellow-robe to Baker. After a moment's hesitation, the latter spoke.

"I'm afraid, my friend, that you have misjudged the situation. I admit that we jumped into Buddha's hand to escape from Phobat Rau, but if you are familiar with the expression, our leap was from the frying pan into the fire. Your giant is holding us prisoner, and even now forces us to tell him things on pain of death."

The priest looked astonished, and the gun barrel dropped slightly.

"No one," continued Baker in a sincere tone, "could have been more welcome than you. But"--his voice dropped and he took a step toward the other--"we must be careful. If he should even suspect that you are here to rescue us, he would crush this room like an egg!"

The priest, now thoroughly alarmed, glanced about nervously, his automatic pointing at the floor. The guards, who knew no English, looked at each other in surprise.

Baker took quick advantage of the confusion.

"We must not allow him to become suspicious. I will continue talking over the microphone while your guards take my friends to safety."

With this he stepped to the microphone and projector. The priest seemed for an instant about to stop him, and then he turned to the guards and gave a series of rapid orders. They advanced and surrounded Martin, Walt and me, and indicated by gesture that we were to go with them to the walk-way which led to the wall of the great room. In panic I looked at Baker, but he was bent over the gla.s.s plate of the projector, drawing something and speaking in his precise clipped voice.

"I shall now show you a map of the United States and indicate the princ.i.p.al cities. First, on the Atlantic coast we have New York...."

We were out of the room and on the gallery. For a moment I thought that Kazu might see us, and then I realized that the whole place was dark and that he was concentrating on Baker's silly map. Briefly I wondered what Baker was up to anyway, but this sudden terrible turn of events made any kind of calm reasoning very difficult.

Outside the projection room, Baker's voice came booming over the loudspeakers.

"Chicago is located at the southern end of Lake Michigan, just west of Detroit, while St. Louis--"