V 16 - Symphony of Terror

by Somtow Sucharitkul (UC) (epub)

  Osaka, Japan: some months before the Visitors’ recapture of some regions of the Earth

  The sky burned in the distance. Jagged lightning sparks lanced the dark night. Professor Karl Schwabauer, blinded by the brilliance, almost crashed the Toyota into a wall. Setsuko, his companion, screamed.

  “But we must save them!” Schwabauer rasped as the car, painted orange and blazoned with the Visitor insignia in order to camouflage its true purpose, hurtled through the narrow streets of a rural Japanese village about ten kilometers from Osaka Castle, known to be the control center of Lady Murasaki, the Visitor who had usurped the command of the Far Eastern Sector of the reptiles’ terrestrial empire. Only twenty-four hours earlier, Schwabauer and Setsuko, biochemist turned geisha girl, had watched their companions from America, Matt and Tomoko Jones, their adopted boy CB, and the mysterious swordmaster Kenzo Sugihara, as they had set out on their almost insurmountable mission ... to stop those hideous, man-eating lizards from reestablishing their dominion over the Earth. From the minute he’d seen them leave, wearing the dermoplast lizard masks that Setsuko had designed in her laboratory so that they could pass unnoticed among the aliens, the professor had been in a state of continual mental turmoil. For Setsuko, experimenting with a red dust sample in her laboratory, had unearthed a secret that might mean the return of all the saurian conquerors from the dark side of the moon . . . indeed, might mean an immediate end to humanity’s newfound freedom! It was a terrifying discovery. How hopeless the situation of the human race seemed now! But he still had to go on. They were his friends. He owed them much.

  “It’s probably too late already, ja? And I’m not the heroic type. But I have to try, I have to!”

  “Yes, yes . . . watch out for those peasants!”

  The car careened around an embankment. A hot wind roared through the open windows, searing, choking. Outside, a child yelped as she skipped out of the car’s way. “There is the castle,” said Schwabauer, slowing down.

  They stopped and got out of the car. “There, up ahead!” Setsuko was running, her hastily donned kimono fluttering, her wooden shoes clattering on the gravel of the ill-kept road.

  He looked. Tears filled his eyes. “It is a success . . . Osaka Castle is burning.” A success! He thought. Dr. Schwabauer was old enough to remember the Second World War; he remembered how they had bombed Dresden, how the priceless monuments of a great culture had been made victims to the cruel dictates of war. Why do men create such beautiful things? he thought. We only destroy them. “They’re dead,” he whispered. “All our friends. They have to be!”

  Against the far mountain, a pagoda of fire; against the backdrop of the star-strewn night, the mushroom cloud of death. “Their reactor must have been set off,” said Setsuko as he caught up with her. They stood there together, the aged anthropology professor who had left his home to study the way of life of an alien civilization and the beautiful, inscrutable woman who had given up a brilliant career as a scientist in America in order to live as mistress to a swordmaster. “I can’t believe they’re dead.”

  “A bitter victory,” said Schwabauer softly, burying his head in his hands. “Will they never learn? They are eight hundred years beyond us, those aliens, in technology and science . . . but as far as compassion is concerned, they might as well be in the Stone Age. Oh, Setsuko, I’m so angry I could kill myself.”

  “No, Professor Schwabauer.” Setsuko touched his hand. He was grateful for that bit of human warmth. But suddenly she snatched her hand away and began to point excitedly.

  “What’s the matter?” he shouted.

  “In the sky—-overhead—look!”

  He jerked his head up high. His eyes smarted from the heat and brightness of the explosion, and he wanted to squeeze his eyes tight shut against the glare, but he forced himself to look through the veil of spurting tears—what was that tiny black object silhouetted against the burning, bursting free of the flames, arrowed at the stars? “They’re escaping!” he cried, angry. “We’ve failed. It’s the outline of a skyfighter, Murasaki must have managed to make it out before the reactor burst.”

  “No! It’s not true! Look, there, streaming from the castle, down the steps, down the mountainside like swarms of ants . . . people! They have been liberated!”

  Schwabauer saw. But he did not believe. His heart was heavy. “I have seen so much suffering,” he told her. “I saw the Nazi horror as a child; as an adult, researching the hill tribes of Southeast Asia, I saw more war and more horror. And now I see horror fall from the very skies, from that very outer space on which once all our human hopes and aspirations depended! I don’t believe in freedom anymore.”

  “Don’t give up hope,” Setsuko said. But he could see care behind her well-practiced smile. The Japanese always smile, he thought, when they are delivering bad news; it is against their code of good manners to frown when doing so, because it is improper to inflict one’s own anguish on another. What a strange people. There she stood, this woman who had in all probability lost her lover. Yet she was still trying to preserve propriety; she did not seem at all distraught.

  Suddenly Schwabauer saw another skyfighter emerge from the flames . . . then another! “There are more of them. We’ve accomplished nothing at all—”

  “No!” Setsuko said. “Look, they are fighting!”

  It was true. Lines of blue laser light zapped across the night sky. The skyfighters zoomed skyward, arcing, somersaulting wildly as they dodged each other’s fire. “I can’t tell who is on whose side!” he screamed. Roaring filled the sky. It came from the crowds who were even now running down the narrow road, sprinting across the paddy fields. Many wore martial arts uniforms of an unusual and terrifying variety; they had bright orange headbands and tunics that bore that ominous symbol of the Visitors. But they did not have the joyless look of the converted. They were shouting all at once, chaotically. In a few moments they would reach the place where he and Setsuko stood. Who were those skyfighters? A burst of thunder from the sky. He saw the crowd stop and turn their eyes skyward.

  “One of them is fending off two others!” Setsuko said. “That one must be our people! They must have captured a skyfighter!”

  Could it be true? Schwabauer did not dare believe there was a chance that his friends could have escaped. And yet, what else could it be? There had been four of them against an entire castle. Suddenly one of the attackers blew up. Pieces of bright metal flashed in the sky like a meteor shower. The crowd cried out and began to cheer. “I was right!” Setsuko said. “One for the humans!” In his excitement, he hugged the woman, and her delicate fragrance filled his nostrils, driving out the acrid odor of burning wood and flesh that wafted from the castle.

  The two skyfighters circled each other like matched hawks. For a long moment each seemed in a kind of stasis, each hovered, defying gravity, unmoving against the starstream. Then—

  One of the craft—was it theirs? Lieber Gott, he hoped it was theirs—was hit by a bolt of blue lightning. For another split second it remained motionless . . . then it began to plummet toward the inferno beneath. An ear-splitting boom rent the air as it crashed and splintered. Fire ran down the staircases, with their carved balustrades, that zigzagged up and down the side of the castle. The heat was unbearable. Sweat mingled with his tears.

  The surviving skyfighter changed direction. It gathered speed; a faint whine, a low thrum, and it was soaring across the moon’s face, a comet-tail streaming behind, an arclike smear of light. In spite of the terror and the bloodshed, it was a sight of such profound beauty, such mystery, that Schwabauer could not help but be moved by it. Impulsively, he clasped Setsuko’s hand tight. It was warm and moist.

  “It was
our fighter!” he whispered.

  “I ... I don’t know. But I dare ... I dare hope. I have to!” she said urgently. “If we have no hope we might as well crawl away and die.”

  “They got away,” he repeated, believing more fiercely now. Once he had had faith. But that was a long time ago, when he was a child, before the first of three long and terrible wars he had lived through. He had lost his faith the first time around, when he saw the cathedral of his home city smashed by the bombs of justice. That was why he had turned to anthropology; he had developed an obsessive desire to learn all about man’s mysteries, about what made men do such awful things to one another. “They got away!” He said it over and over like a litany, for he had once found comfort in those Latin formulas in his boyhood.

  “Yes. They did. You can hear it in the crowd’s rejoicing,” Setsuko said.

  “Once ... in the cathedral at Dresden ... I was a choirboy. Did you know that? I used to believe so fervently—”

  “I’m telling you, Karl! They got away!”

  He broke out of his trance-like state. The crowd was nearer now. He heard the pounding of their feet. They seemed to be singing. The sound burst forth from a thousand throats. A vast, elemental roaring, like a typhoon or an erupting volcano.

  “You see?” Setsuko screamed. He saw her mouth move, barely heard her over the singing.

  “We must go on,” he said. After the turbulence of his outrage had come a quiet elation. He was calm now. “We must drive on toward the castle. Perhaps one of our friends didn’t make it through. Perhaps someone needs our help. Come, Setsuko.”

  They got back into the car. Even with the windows closed tight, they could scarcely hear each other talk. Setsuko began to pull out boxes of equipment from the back seat: first-aid kits, two guns, an oxygen mask with a small tank of the life-giving gas, and a rubbery, wrinkled sheet of some clear material, neatly folded.

  “And what is that?” Schwabauer said as they pulled back onto the road.

  “It is one of those thermal pressure skins that the lizards have been using to protect themselves from the red dust. You know? Fieh Chan, the brilliant and cruel commander, is said to have invented it. I have been experimenting on it.”

  “Why did you bring it with you?”

  “Oh, nothing. A hunch, Professor,” she said calmly.

  “Stop there,” Setsuko cried out as they lurched up and down the hilly streets, getting nearer and nearer to the castle, the burning mountain. “I think there’s something wrong. Look, up there, by that temple.”

  They screeched to a halt.

  In the moonlight, and by the light of Osaka Castle’s destruction, Schwabauer saw a low temple wall; within it were the pointed eaves of a Shinto shrine. The crowd was pressing against the opening, trying to enter. A single monk was trying to fend them off. “What are they doing?” Schwabauer said. “They seem out for blood.”

  They got out of the car and started to push their way through the crowd. “What’s wrong?” he cried. No one seemed to notice him, so intent were they at trying to break into the temple.

  They were all pointing at the temple roof now, chanting in unison, "Bijitaa da! Bijitaa da!” He knew what it meant. For bijitaa was the Japanese pronunciation of the word Visitor, the most terrifying word in the world. Seizing Setsuko’s hand, he propelled himself deeper into the mob, elbowing people out of the way. A child sobbed somewhere. A woman shrieked shrill imprecations, shaking her

  fist at whatever was up there on the roof.

  “Um Gottes Willen, let us through!” Schwabauer screamed, exasperated. Never in his life had he seen so vicious a crowd before . . . except once, long ago, as a child, one night: the night his parents had joined the mob that razed the Jewish neighborhood of his home town. What a terrifying memory! He tried to push it away. I am an American now, he told himself. “What could be up there?”

  Setsuko screamed, “It’s Sugihara! The swordmaster!” He looked at the roof. There he was . . . running across the roof, his sixteenth-century samurai costume glittering, his sword catching the light—his face the face of a reptile! “They think he’s a lizard because of our disguises. We have to get to him before they lynch him,” she said.

  “How will we get through these people?”

  “The car. We’ll have to crash the wall! Come, it’s only wood.”

  They dove back into the crush, fighting the sea of arms and legs, until they reached the camouflaged Toyota. Someone had broken the windshield with a rock. “They think we are lizards too, because of our disguised car,” he said. “We must move quickly!” They jumped in, the glass shards lacerating his skin and shredding his trousers. How could Setsuko maintain such elegant composure? he thought for a moment, watching her face in the moonlight. A trickle of blood ran down her pale features, like winedrops on a porcelain goblet. Then he started the car, turned, aimed it directly at the wall of the temple—and peeled out!

  People ran screaming on either side. But he couldn’t stop. He braced himself as they smashed through the wall. Wood and plaster scattered. Splinters showered them.

  “There!” Setsuko said. “Around the side!” He could see Sugihara crawling along a ledge. A stone flew up and glanced off the swordmaster’s katana. It clinked as it skimmed the rooftiles. “There. A drainage pipe,” she said. He saw it, glinting against the dark wood. “He’s faint ... he looks as if he’s dying!” she said.

  From beyond the wall came the roar of the angry crowd.

  “No time,” he said.

  They pulled up against the drainage pipe. “You just destroyed one of the most famous rock gardens in Japan,” Setsuko whispered as the car skidded on gravel, and stones flew over the courtyard of the temple.

  So I too am like the ones who burned the Jewish neighborhood, the ones who bombed the cathedral —like all men—a destroyer! he thought, hating himself. Then he saw Kenzo Sugihara trying to climb down towards them. Halfway down, he began to slide, unable to keep his grip. “He’s very weak,” said Schwabauer. “I think he’s dying.”

  They ran to where he lay in the gravel. The moonlight shone on the swordmaster’s features.

  Something about his features—

  “That’s not one of our disguises,” Setsuko whispered. “He’s a real alien!”

  “Yes . . . help me ... I am not your enemy . . .” said the alien. He seemed to be succumbing to the red dust, but agonizingly slowly. “I was thrown clear by the blast, I crashed into the field beside this temple ... 1 assure you that I am Kenzo Sugihara . . . my thermal pressure skin has not yet dissolved, because I was thrown free before the enzyme could act on it . . . but it is weakening ... I am dying, slowly dying.”

  “It’s Kenzo,” Setsuko said. “I was his lover. I know him, even though he comes to us in the shape of a reptile.”

  “What do you mean?” said Schwabauer, astonished.

  “I mean,” she said, pulling the pressure skin from the car and throwing it over the injured saurian so that it began bonding to his flesh, “that 1 have always known how alien the mysterious swordmaster who helped you Americans really was. I always knew that he was Fieh Chan—” “The lizard commander!” Schwabauer said incredulously.

  “—a secret adept of preta-na-ma, a creature torn between two worlds and two identities! We must save him.”

  “Are you telling me that Kenzo Sugihara, the swordmaster who saved the lives of the Americans time and time again, is also ... the commander of the Eastern Sector of the lizard fleet?” Schwabauer shook his head ruefully. “It’s hard to believe.” “Help me with him.”

  He and the woman lifted up the body and laid it down on the back seat. Sugihara stirred. “Tomoko

  . . . Matt ... do they live?” he whispered.

  “I think they fled in a skyfighter,” said Schwabauer, trying to reassure him. Could he be one of the evil ones, if he expressed concern over the resistance fighters like that?

  “Quick,” Setsuko said. “We must flee. Or they’ll know we have him!”r />
  “Shouldn’t we kill him?” Schwabauer said. But he knew even as he said it that it was useless to kill. He would become even as they, even as the monstrous combatants in the many wars he had endured. Starting the car, he said, “No. You are sure he is on our side?”

  “As sure as it is humanly possible,” she said. “You love him!” said Schwabauer.

  “Yes,” she said defiantly. “Is that wrong? Yes. I protected his secret. I had to show him I trusted him. Please, Dr. Schwabauer, let’s go now!”

  The crowd was jamming in through the sundered temple walls now. If they didn’t leave they’d all die. He gunned the accelerator and they were off, weaving wildly through the temple compound, trying to find a different gate. At last they found a road. Members of the crowd were trying to throw themselves on the car, shouting “Death to the Visitors!” in a raucous, terrifying chant. Faster, faster, he thought, as they speeded ahead. The speedometer hit 120 kilometers per hour, then 160. The road was narrow, but the moonlight and the exploding castle in the distance illuminated its reflective surface, and it was like a silver thread that sutured the black night.

  “We’ve lost them,” he said at last, as they turned onto the highway that led towards the safety of Tokyo. “Now will you tell me what’s going on?”

  “He’s coming to now,” Setsuko said, after they had been on the road for about an hour.

  “I still want an explanation,” he said. The moon had set. They sped past picturesque villages, and mountains terraced with paddy fields. He looked in the rear view mirror and saw that the lizard was sitting up now. The eyes glowed like topazes. That was what was truly alien about these creatures. You couldn’t read their eyes.

  “I will tell you,” said the lizard who had been both Kenzo Sugihara and Fieh Chan, the fearsome saurian commander. “But first, you must know that the mission was a success; all the leaders of the Eastern Sector are now fried in the rubble, victims of their own lust for power. As for the resistance fighters from America, I simply don’t know.”

  “As I told you,” Schwabauer said, “I think they may be safe.” They were silent a while: they crossed a bridge and watched a lone fisherman asleep on his boat, a pointy straw hat covering his features. Rooftops in the valley beyond: tiles glinting like the scales of a dragon.