Author's Note: This tale is a sequel to the original Japanese classic Gojira (1954). As such, it has no connection to the re-cut 1956 American version released as Godzilla, King of the Monsters; for instance, the Dr. Serizawa in this story has no American or Canadian "old college friend," a reporter by the now rather amusing name of Steve Martin. I strongly encourage anyone who has not done so to watch the original 1954 film. When I watched it first, last autumn, I was amazed at the strength and power of its stark anti-war message-worlds away from the cheesy, although admittedly adorable, later incarnations of Toho's Gojira and fellow kaiju superstars. My intense reaction to this film led me to learn more about some of the experiences to which film-makers were responding, such as the horrific Tokyo fire-bombings of 1945. Since everyone involved in making the original Gojira lived through the war and its aftermath, and their war experiences clearly shaped the film, I wanted to further explore some of those issues in this story.

Gojira and the other characters from the film are the property of Toho Studios. I am making no profit out of this, except for the enjoyment of telling a story I wanted to tell.

After Farewell

A Gojira 1954 Fanfiction

This exhilaration, this jubilation! We have won! We can see that Gojira will never rise from the ocean's depths again! This victory could not have been achieved if it were not for the young scientist, Dr. Serizawa.

—Reporter's voice-over during the closing moments of Gojira, 1954

Chapter One: The Destroyer

I was not happy to die.

I imagine that few of the young men our government sacrificed in the war were happy, either, in the final seconds before they rammed their planes into the Americans' battleships and bombers.

I don't know what those youths felt. I think, however, it was not happiness, despite what the propaganda told us—and despite what some of the pilots wrote in their farewell poems.

As for me: as I stood on the ocean floor and I opened the capsule containing my Oxygen Destroyer, what I felt was not happiness.

Instead, I felt peace.

I knew I finally had the answer I sought. I had the best answer I could find.

At last I would end the terror that haunted me since the day I made my horrible discovery. I would turn that discovery into a force for good. I would make it serve the cause of humanity.

In one supreme moment, I would make all of it stop. I would end my discovery, my fear, my guilt. That same moment would end the monster that was ravaging my country—and that threatened all the world.

I watched the bubbles rise from the capsule, spreading the element that would destroy every life it reached. I saw fish flitting around me, as if I were standing in some gigantic version of my aquariums back home. It gave me a pang of regret to see those fish, so happily ignorant of their approaching doom.

Beyond the bubbles, beyond the fish, beyond the towering pillars of rock that surrounded me—I saw the dark, enormous shape of Gojira.

Two nights ago, this animal devastated Tokyo. Gojira was walking now, slowly, in a serene sort of calm. I could not hear the thundering tread of its footfalls. Somehow, I did not even feel them.

The thought came to me that down here, Gojira no longer seemed like a monster. As I watched the stately pacing of that mighty figure, it did not seem the incomprehensible horror it became on land.

Here, Gojira seemed right. Here, it belonged.

Foolishly, I thought, I ought to have written a poem before I left home yesterday.

Stupid, I told myself. Your actions will stand on their own without a poem to speak for them.

Down the telephone line into my diving helmet journeyed a voice from the world above. The voice of Ogata Hideto yelled my name.

"Serizawa!" Ogata shouted. "Serizawa!"

I pictured him on the deck of the ship, with crewmembers, reporters and scientists clustered about him. Beside him I pictured Professor Yamane, the man who for these nearly ten years past had been a father to me. And I thought, Emiko will be next to him. She will be right there beside Ogata; she will be leaning over the intercom with him. Whatever I say to him, Emiko will hear, too.

I saw the bubbles spreading. The water was churning now like the contents of a pot on the boil.

And that animal twice the height of a skyscraper started to feel what was happening. Gojira jerked back and upward. I saw it raise its arms up high—just the way a human would do when trying to surrender.

"What's going on?" came Ogata's frantic voice. "Serizawa!"

I heard elation in my voice as I answered him. "Ogata! It worked!" I took a deep breath and I thought of Emiko there at his side.

"Both of you," I said, "be happy. Farewell … Farewell."

It is not a poem, I thought, but it will have to do.

My hands were steady as I took out my diver's knife. I sawed the knife through my lifeline: the rope that tethered me to the ship, and the telephone line along with it. Just before the line was cut, I heard Ogata shouting, "Serizawa! Hey, bring him up!"

In the abrupt silence when that connection was severed, I sliced through the rubber oxygen hose.

Like the boy in that story about plugging leaks in Holland's dykes, I jammed one gloved thumb into the severed hose. I wasn't sure how long I could live on the oxygen still in the helmet, but keeping water out of the tube would buy me some seconds, at least.

It wasn't that I had any thought of surviving. I simply wanted to see all I could of the Oxygen Destroyer's effects, for as long as I could. I suppose a true scientist will always be curious, even when he knows he will die before he can write his observations down.

I wondered if I would lose consciousness from my own lack of oxygen, before the Oxygen Destroyer disintegrated me along with Gojira and every other organism in its reach.

Then suddenly I thought I saw a different way that I would die.

Gojira fell. It fell toward me. There was nowhere I could go to get out of its way; I was already backed up against a pillar of rock.

I had made up my mind to die in the monster's fall—metaphorically speaking. I suppose it would have been fitting if Gojira actually fell on top of me.

It did not happen in that way. Not quite.

I saw the animal flail, lunge, twist itself about. In one astonishing moment, its head the size of a small bus raced past me, mere meters from where I stood against the rock. For perhaps the space of a heartbeat, Gojira and I were literally eye-to-eye.

Its head was turned sidelong to me, so I only saw the one eye, an eye nearly as large as my entire body. And I, of course, have only had one eye, since the night of March 9, 1945.

Then the eye and the vast darkness swept past and surged upward, toward the world of light and air.

I suppose what hit me was a massive wave—set off by Gojira's writhing, or by the Oxygen Destroyer, or by both. I don't think any part of Gojira actually struck me, not even just the tip of its tail. If it had, I think it is extremely unlikely that I would have survived. But something hit me. It washed me away from the rocks where I had been huddling and sent me tumbling helplessly like a flower petal riding a tsunami's waves.

Logically, I know I should not trust in the reality of my thoughts and sensations in those moments. Oxygen depletion, disorientation, shock: all of them combine to tell me that my impressions should scarcely be relied upon. And yet subsequent events have shown that perhaps what I sensed was accurate, after all.

I did not believe that the feelings and thoughts I experienced then were mine. They seemed too vast, as if they were linked to a body incomprehensibly larger than my own.

I felt searing agony that seemed to pound through my skull, burn my skin, ripple through me in unceasing waves. And I sensed a thought—not a thought in words such as human beings use them, but still a thought which I felt certain I understood.

It was a question—all-encompassing, despairing. Just one single question, demanded in uncomprehending anguish:

Why?


What I saw when my eye opened again was a bright circle of sky-blue, surrounded by darkness. I blinked repeatedly, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

With my eye focused to the proper distance, I saw a jagged pattern of lines marring the blue. I thought I could see water droplets amid the lines. In one long, thin triangle of space, the blue seemed brighter, without any lines or water to dull its impact.

It's the vision port at the front of my diving helmet, I thought. I'm seeing through the front port, and I'm looking up at the sky.

And the glass of the port must be broken.

Of course it was broken, I realized a moment later. From up above me, in the direction of that blue circle, I could feel the whispering touch of fresh air.

Discovering that the glass had broken so near to my face sent a jolt of fear through me. Immediately I forced my fear back down.

I could feel no indication that the breaking glass had injured me. And the only aspect of my face that truly matters to me is my one surviving eye. There was certainly no sign that my eye had been damaged by the glass.

The circle didn't move, so I must not be moving, either. When I thought about it, it seemed I could feel some solid surface beneath me.

I decided I was experiencing reality, not a hallucination or dream. The underlying ache of my body seemed uncompromisingly real. So did the harsher, raw-feeling ache in my throat and my chest.

A dark shape suddenly blocked out the circle of blue. I gasped at the unexpected change. My gasp set off a series of rasping coughs.

"Easy, son. Easy," growled a rough, human voice. "I didn't mean to scare you."

Calm down, I ordered myself. It's only a person leaning over you. His head just blocked out the sky.

When my coughing stopped, I choked out a one-word question. "Gojira?"

"They tell us this one is dead," said the voice. "They say the scientist killed it, and the scientist killed himself." The voice was that of an old man. It grated like metal scraping over stone.

The scientist killed it, I thought. The scientist, meaning me.

I managed to ask the old man, "Where am I?"

He answered, "Odo Island."

Odo Island. Of course.

It made sense, I supposed; as much sense as any of this made.

Our expedition had located Gojira in Odo Island's fishing waters. This seemed to be, in some sense, the animal's home territory; perhaps this was where it had its den, or one of its dens. "Gojira" was the Odo Islanders' name for the sea monster of their ancient legends. This island had been the first place we knew of where the massive being made an attack on land.

But how can I be alive? my thoughts wailed. How can this be possible?

I began to cry—silently, I hope. I felt the tears creep along my cheek.

I supposed I had been within the Oxygen Destroyer's range for only a brief period of time. It must have been two minutes at the absolute most before the wave knocked me away, no matter how much longer it had felt.

It took a very great deal less than two minutes for the Destroyer to act on the aquarium-dwelling fish in my lab at home. But perhaps the Destroyer's element entered their bodies through their gills. Since I had been breathing the air pumped down to me from the ship, it meant the element did not get the chance to enter my lungs and disintegrate me from inside.

That much, I could accept. But that I had survived asphyxiation for long enough … and that in being hurled through the ocean, my thumb hadn't slipped free of the severed air hose, sending water into my helmet to drown me …

And that, of all unlikely fates, the wave should have happened to propel me onto the single piece of land for ten kilometers around …

This is wrong, cried my thoughts. It's so wrong. It's so wrong for me to be alive!

Brace up, Daisuke, I told myself. You have got to pull yourself together.

I had to take action before my fate was removed from my hands.

I believe my crying stopped at around that time. I tried to lift my head, and utterly failed at it. Moving my body, for the moment, seemed equally beyond my capacity. My panic was painfully clear in my voice as I asked, "Does anyone else know I'm here?"

"I doubt it," answered the old man. "Not yet. My house is just up on the hill there; that's why I'm the one who saw you."

"No one can know!" I cried desperately. "Please! No one can know I'm alive! Will you help me?" I raced on, while my discoverer doubtless decided I had gone out of my mind. "Hide me! Please! I'm begging you! Don't let anyone know about me!"

The old man, to my heart-wrenching gratitude, voiced no observation on the topic of how insane I was sounding. He only made the matter-of-fact statement, "I don't think you can get off the ground, wearing that suit. I know I can't carry you in it."

"No," I said. "That's true. I've got to get out of it. I think—I think we'll need a wrench to unbolt the helmet."

"I'll go get one from my house," growled the man whom I was rapidly coming to think of as my savior.

He took about five minutes to go to his house and return with the wrench. It took quite a bit longer than that to go through the multitudinous steps of getting me out of the diving suit.

If I had been in any state of mind to feel amusement, I probably would have been amused at the contrast between my getting into that suit, and my getting out of it.

Donning the diving suit had been a thoroughly business-like process. There on the deck of the ship I had been almost as passive as a doll, moving around as I was told while two well-trained crewmembers efficiently went about their task of suiting me up.

I was even more passive now, but the old man of Odo Island was a very great deal less efficient. He puttered about me, muttering more-or-less under his breath. In increasing ill-humor he unbolted the helmet and breastplate and unhooked the various straps. When he finally dragged the helmet off my head, the old man took a break to catch his breath.

For my part, I had been doing nothing but taking a break. But now I was striving to catch my breath as well, at the overwhelming sensation of my head being surrounded by fresh air.

It seemed an insanely difficult task to turn my head and look at my rescuer. There he squatted on the sand beside me, a living embodiment of old-time Japan. He wore nothing but an old-fashioned loincloth, happi jacket and straw-rope sandals. He had close-cropped white hair and a gray-stubbled chin, and his skin was the sun-baked brown of every old fisherman's.

As for his face, it seemed a perfect match for his voice. It looked hard, craggy and weather-beaten, like a cliff overlooking the sea.

We were on a beach, but I supposed that much had already been obvious, since I'd been flung here out of the ocean. Behind the old man I could see the bushes and low trees of a scrubby hillside.

I whispered to the old man, "Thank you."

He gave an unimpressed-sounding snort—though I will point out here that, as I came to know him, I learned his voice nearly always sounds unimpressed. He said, "There's still a lot to do to get you out of that suit. You can thank me when I've got it done."

Back to work he went on the suit's numerous elements, making his crouching way around me like a methodical and bad-tempered crab. Off came the breastplate and the attached weight. Off, finally, came the ludicrously heavy belt. When he'd pulled the belt free, he sat back on his heels and asked me, "Think you can wriggle out of it now?"

"No," I had to answer, thinking back to all the steps the crewmembers had gone through. "The shoes need to be unstrapped and unlaced. And the backs of the legs lace up, too."

"Damn it," muttered the old man.

After some further minutes' work, my rescuer declared, "I can't see anything more to undo. See if you can get out now."

He held the massive suit in place while I inched painfully out of it. Free at last, and worn out by the effort, I lay in the spot to which I had wormed myself. I let my head flop onto its left side. Against my face, the sand was like a warm pillow.

I shivered in the breeze. Thanks to my sweat, my shirt and trousers felt entirely adhered to my body.

One element of the diving suit was still on: the gloves. Although my hands were badly shaking, I succeeded in pulling the gloves off. Then I reached my right hand to my head.

The bandana I'd used as a headband to hold back my hair was still there. So, to my intense relief, was my eyepatch.

How unbelievable is that? I asked myself. Who would believe I can be hurled who-knows-how-far through the ocean, and I can still wind up here with bandana and eyepatch both neatly in place?

Once again, if I'd been in any mindset to laugh, I probably would have done so. But this was no time for laughing. I also did not have the time to continue lying around.

With fresh force, my fear came back that someone else would come along and find me.

"No can know I'm alive," I insisted feverishly. "I have to hide. I have to. I can't let anybody else see me."

I forced myself to sit up. Unsurprisingly, my head seemed to be whirling as badly as if I was on shipboard, and seasick. I made a feeble gesture toward the discarded diving suit and helmet. "I've got to hide that, too."

The old fisherman was still crouching near me. He also still looked unimpressed.

After a glance around, he jerked one thumb over his shoulder. "Those bushes should do to hide the stuff in, for now."

The old man made a try at picking up the helmet. Then he snorted and decided to roll it along the beach, instead.

I thought I shouldn't allow him to keep on doing all the work. More-or-less crawling, I made my way over to the diving suit, lying before me like some dead and desiccated sea creature. I took hold of it by the shoulders and started trying to haul it up the beach.

That attempt immediately ended. My shaking hands lost their grip. I overbalanced and fell over, just able to stop myself from smacking my face into the sand.

I heard another snort from my rescuer.

"You keep on resting up, there, sonny," he called back to me. "I'll get all of that hidden in due course."

I was at least able to push myself up again until I reached a respectable kneeling position. Praying that I wasn't about to complete my humiliation by vomiting, I gazed out at the sea.

Dark and shining and vast, the water seemed to be taunting me. The distant rolling waves, and their tiny offspring that played nearby against the sand, all seemed in my mind to be mocking me. The ocean, I felt, was mocking my failure to die

I thought, I need to finish what I started.

It should be so simple. I should be able to walk out there, just keep on walking, and end it all.

I could walk out there, if only I could walk!

Of course, crawling into the ocean would achieve the same effect. But I knew it was pointless for me to even try.

As weak and useless as my body was now, the old man could halt my suicide attempt with scarcely any effort. With humiliating clarity, I imagined myself starting to crawl toward the waves—and I imagined him dragging me up the beach, grunting something like, "Hold your horses, sonny; no suicide for you today."

Shivering, hating my failure, desperately promising myself that I would neither vomit nor cry, I knelt there until the old fellow got all my diving gear stashed in the bushes. Then he walked over to me and offered, "All right, then, kid. You want to hide out in my house?"

Of course, I had to let him help me to my feet. I'm not sure that what I did on our way up that hill can even be classified as walking. He didn't quite have to drag me along as a dead weight, but I know my contribution to that process was relatively laughable.

To gain at least some camouflage for my mortifying embarrassment, I decided to talk.

"You said I could thank you when you got the suit off me," I said—with some effort, for our struggle up the hill had winded me almost before it started. "I thank you. May I ask your name?" As soon as I said that, I regretted it, since I had no intention of telling him my name in return.

The old man rumbled, "Izuma Kenichirou."

Of course, I thought. Professor Yamane had told me about him. Mr. Izuma was the one who first mentioned the name and legend of Gojira to Hagiwara the reporter.

"Yes," I said, "you're the Odo Island village elder."

He answered with one of his snorts. "I say I'm a village elder," he said. "All the younger people say I'm an old fool who doesn't know what he's talking about." We straggled a little way further along the path up his hill, before Izuma asked me, "I suppose you're not going to tell me your name?"

I made no reply to that. Sounding cheerfully smug at having been proved right, old Izuma declared, "I thought not."

I had no intention of speaking my name to him, but I knew such caution on my part was almost certainly pointless. Even if Izuma did not know my name, there was every likelihood the clear-sighted codger understood precisely who I was.

What other diver-in-distress would plausibly get tossed out of the sea, on this day and at this place, except for the famous scientist who was supposed to have died with Gojira?

Mr. Izuma's house, when we reached it, was just about what I'd expected it to be: an old-fashioned one-room place in a very good state of repair. My guess is that when Izuma had gotten too old to keep on fishing, he'd turned most of his formidable energy toward the upkeep of his house.

Gasping for breath and shivering, I sat down in the entryway. Further inside the house, Mr. Izuma pulled out his spare futon and quilts. I didn't have any shoes to take off, having left mine on the deck of the ship. My socks, however, were a mess, caked with sand, dirt and twigs from our climb up the hill. They were so thick with debris that I thought they seemed about ready to walk away on their own. In my thoughts I gloomily joked that my socks could probably walk better now than I could. I peeled off the socks and deposited them next to Mr. Izuma's sandals.

"So, come on in, then, kid," called the rough, mocking voice of Izuma. He helped me to my feet and supported me as I walked inside his house. Gratefully I crawled into the bedding he'd provided for me. And then I set about shamefully abusing his hospitality.

I was a terrible houseguest to Mr. Izuma. I regretted my behavior toward him as soon as I returned to a more societally acceptable frame of mind.

For the two days that followed, he brought me water, tea, broth, rice. I refused them all. That first afternoon, that night, the next day, the night that followed, I took nothing to drink or eat.

My mind was fixed on one conviction: that my suicide was a task I had to finish. I would finish it, I thought, by just lying there, taking no sustenance until I died.

Just lying there, that is, with an occasional break to answer the increasingly feeble call of nature. Single-minded and desperate though I was, I was not quite so far gone that I was willing to soil the bedding Izuma lent to me.

Why did I think this was the way I should behave? Why did I not allow Izuma to help me regain my strength? When I was recovered enough to properly walk again, I could simply have thanked him, left his home, and promptly hurled myself into the sea.

It seemed that ought to make sense. But I felt certain that if I tried to follow that course, I would never succeed in going through with it.

"Humans are weak animals," I'd said to Ogata, back home in my basement lab.

I was terrified of learning that the weakest animal was myself.

If I let myself live, even to the minimal extent of swallowing some tea and rice, I feared I would never again succeed in making up my mind to die.

Would I be able to give it all up a second time?

I wouldn't. I knew I would not.

I would want to talk with Professor Yamane again. I would want to see Emiko, and to tell her I understood. I would want to be a guest at Emiko and Ogata's wedding.

I would never be able to keep my survival a secret. I would go back to my life. But in going back, I would be locking myself in the prison cell that was my guilt. I would be embracing my darkest nightmare.

There was no way to conceal the nature of my discovery, now. Emiko, Ogata and I might keep our silence about it, but the evidence was out there: the evidence of who-knows-how-many kilometers of ocean with the oxygen removed from it, and its every life destroyed.

The politicians, the governments: they would learn what my discovery entailed. And the race would be on.

Could I resist the wooing that I knew would follow: the promises of funding, endless resources, wherewithal to channel my research into so many projects that would benefit mankind?

Wouldn't I be trapped by that siren's song? And while I listened to it, and I fooled myself, they would take my discovery of the Oxygen Destroyer and would build with it the next super-weapon—the next destroyer of worlds.

I'm not claiming I was thinking rationally. If I had been, I would have realized old Izuma would never let me get away with killing myself.

His many efforts to make me eat and drink tend to blend together in my mind. I think I remember one specific instance taking place in the second afternoon. This time, all he'd brought was water. I remember him urging me, "Come on, now, kid. A little water won't hurt you."

I think I only answered him by keeping my mouth shut. Sounding increasingly exasperated, Izuma repeated, "Come on! You need it."

"No, I don't need it," I rasped. "I need to die."

"Yeah?" the old man challenged me. "Why's that? What's so important about you dying?"

I had the notion in my head that if I told him my thoughts, he would understand it all and leave me alone.

"If I don't die," I murmured to him, "maybe the world will die. If I die, I can save it … or keep it alive a bit longer. Please, Mr. Izuma. Please help me. Please let me die. Please let me save the world."

I heard him mutter, "Idiot."

He didn't try to urge me again, after that. I thought perhaps he was going to do as I had asked. But shortly afterward, he left his house. I remember feebly calling after him, "Please, Mr. Izuma. I'm begging you. Let me do this. Don't tell anyone about me."

I was afraid that, when he came back, he would bring someone to take me away. But as I drifted through half consciousness and noticed that Izuma had come home, he simply went back into his daily routine. I smelled it when he fixed and ate his dinner—the smell of which was distantly agonizing to me—but he seemed to have given up having anything to do with me. Later,

I remember his gruff voice saying through the darkness, "Sleep well, kid." He sounded serenely unconcerned by how unlikely it was that I would sleep well.

Indeed, I'd slept very little since I had entered his house. For the most part, I just seemed to float, not quite awake nor asleep. I prayed that eventually I would float right out of life itself.

Sunrise came. Soon I began to hear Izuma puttering through his day. To my happiness, he still didn't bring anything that he wanted me to eat or drink.

Suddenly he dragged my floating mind back to earth. "Hey, there, kid," Izuma called to me. "Somebody's here to see you."

My whole being seemed to jolt. I heard a voice cry out, "Dr. Serizawa!"

I squeezed my eye shut, as though I could close out reality as easily as I obscured my view of the house's far-away rafters.

"Mr. Izuma," my parched voice protested. "I begged you not to tell anyone about me."

"Yes," he said pitilessly, "you begged me. I didn't make any promise. I'm sorry, son. I don't want you killing yourself in my house."

"Dr. Serizawa," the other voice said, "please, won't you look at me? It's Shinkichi."

I opened my eye and tried to look toward his voice. The blurs in that direction slowly resolved themselves into two figures sitting side-by-side: my unsentimental host, and the sixteen-year-old whom Professor Yamane had more-or-less adopted after Shinkichi lost his family in Gojira's first land attack, here on Odo Island.

"Shinkichi," I repeated. "What are you doing here?"

"Mr. Izuma phoned the Yamanes' house yesterday and asked me to come see him."

I groaned. "The Yamanes …"

"Please don't worry!" the boy interjected. "They don't know about you. Mr. Izuma didn't even tell me about you until I got here. All the Yamanes know is Mr. Izuma asked me to come help some of the villagers move off-island, since there aren't any fish in the waters here anymore."

No, I thought, I suppose there aren't. I suppose the Oxygen Destroyer did put at least a temporary end to Odo Island's position as the base camp for a fishing fleet.

I looked at the two who were watching me. The old man, at that moment, looked to me like a statue carved out of driftwood—and he looked as though he cared as little for what might happen around him as the driftwood statue would have cared. In contrast, the tension-filled youth beside him seemed to radiate worry as he looked at me.

It occurred to me that in the brief time I'd been acquainted with Sieji Shinkichi, I had never seen him smile. Then I reminded myself that in that time there had been no reason for the boy to smile.

Shinkichi had almost certainly never seen me smile, either.

I attempted to speak persuasively, despite the dry, cracked sound of my voice. "Shinkichi," I said, "maybe you can persuade Mr. Izuma. You must understand why I have to die. Ogata and Emiko must have told you something of why I chose to do it."

He gave a reluctant-looking nod and began, "They said that your invention—"

"My discovery," I obsessively corrected him.

"Your discovery," he repeated. "They said your discovery could be turned into a weapon as terrible as the atom bomb. So you destroyed all your notes and you made up your mind to die with Gojira, so the weapon couldn't be made."

"Yes," I whispered. "Yes. You see, now, Mr. Izuma? Now do you understand?"

Shinkichi hastily rubbed the back of one hand over his nose and his eyes. Mr. Izuma waited until the boy had himself under control. Then he grated, "What I see is that there's almost never only one solution to a problem."

"Yes," Shinkichi put in excitedly. "Mr. Izuma and I have an idea. We were talking about it outside. We've got an idea for what you can do instead of dying. Please, Dr. Serizawa! Will you let us tell you about it?"

Humans are weak animals, I thought again. I felt an edge of panic. My first impulse was to tell myself I mustn't listen to them. I couldn't let myself be tempted.

Then I asked myself, What choice have I got? If they aren't going to let me starve myself to death, I have to come up with an alternative plan, anyway. So what harm can it do for me to listen?

"All right," I murmured. "All right, just … just let me sit up …"

Weak though I was, I felt I should not participate in this conversation lying down.

Both of my interlocutors made lunges at me. Shinkichi protested, "No, Dr. Serizawa, you don't need to sit up," and old Izuma grumbled, "Honestly, kid. You've been trying to starve yourself for days; it's all right for you to stay horizontal."

I insisted. Of course, I was not in any state to sit unsupported. Finally, Mr. Izuma got me propped up against a wall, with quilts still bundled around me. Shinkichi suggested hopefully, "Maybe you'll have a little water to drink, now?"

"No. Tell me your idea, first."

"Well … what we think is that you don't really have to die. Just let everyone keep on believing you're dead. And you go on living, under a new identity. If no one thinks Dr. Serizawa's alive, they won't have any reason to search for you, so they'll never find you and force you to build that weapon."

I believe I smiled a little, thinking that Shinkichi's idea probably came out of some novel he had read. I pointed out, "New identities aren't easy to create. And they cost money. I haven't got any. I can't get access to any of my own money, not without revealing that I'm alive."

Mr. Izuma put in, "He's not suggesting that you buy an identity from gangsters. Go on, Shinkichi. Tell him the rest of your idea."

The boy said eagerly, "There's an identity I can give you. You know that my … that my brother and our aunt were killed here on the island, the first time Gojira came ashore?"

"Yes. The Yamanes told me about it. I am sorry."

He hurried onward. "Gojira didn't burn any of the houses here. All that happened to our house was that … I think his tail hit it. So nearly all our belongings were saved from the wreckage."

He paused for a moment, with a miserable little grimace. I'm sure that Shinkichi, the old man and I were all thinking of the same thing: the tragic irony in the fact that what could not be saved from the wreckage was the lives of his family.

"So you see," Shinkichi continued, "I've got my brother's identity papers. I can give them to you. The ones with photographs won't help, you don't look like him, but there's enough without photos that, if you've got them, it should establish the fact that you're him. You can use them to … to open a bank account, to get housing … to do everything you'll need to do to start a new life."

I took time to collect my thoughts before replying to this strange and moving offer. At last I asked, "You would be willing to do that? To let me use your brother's name?"

"Yes, of course! If Masaji knew about all of this, I'm sure he'd think it's a good idea. And I—I would be honored to have you as my brother."

"Shinkichi, I am grateful," I told him. "But … hasn't your brother's death already been reported?"

"Ah," said Mr. Izuma, "that's where Gojira may have helped us out by wrecking Tokyo. There's a good chance Masaji's death registration was lost in the destruction. Even if there is some record of it left, all the government offices will be in a shambles for months. It won't be anyone's priority to cross-check and learn that the guy who's opening a bank account in Tokyo is registered as having died on Odo Island."

"That could work for a little while," I argued, "but eventually the discrepancy will be caught. The Odo Island authorities will send a report to the government at the end of the year, won't they, that includes all the deaths on the island in the past year?"

"Ah, well," said the indefatigable old codger, "I should be able to take care of that. I used to be Odo Island's mayor; I know how all that paperwork works. I even know where the current mayor has it all filed. Come the New Year, I can get Mayor Inada drunk—that shouldn't be difficult! And I can smuggle out his list of the past year's deaths, and smuggle back in a version that I've written, without Masaji's name on it."

I stared at the old man, not quite able to believe what I was hearing. I said, "So the fate of the world may depend on you getting the mayor drunk and falsifying some documents?"

"I wouldn't worry about it if I were you, son," Izuma said placidly. "I'm sure the fate of the world is regularly held in hands less reliable than mine."

Well, that's true enough, I thought. If you were in charge of the world, Mr. Izuma, I wouldn't be worried about my discovery becoming the focus of an arms-race.

I sighed. "This whole idea of yours would work better if I could get out of Japan. I'm too recognizable here. My photograph has probably been in every newspaper in the country. But I don't see how I could get out. Not without the kind of money the three of us just don't have."

There was maddening irony in that, I realized. As Dr. Serizawa Daisuke, I could leave the country easily. I had the money, and it would be no problem at all for me to go abroad on a research trip, or to attend a conference with my international colleagues.

But the whole point of this scheme my companions were hatching was that I couldn't be Dr. Serizawa Daisuke any longer. I wasn't him, so I no longer had his privileges and opportunities. If I took on the identity of Sieji Masaji, I would have no more chance to get out of the country than the real Masaji would have had.

"I suppose," Shinkichi put in a timid suggestion, "you won't want the Yamanes or Mr. Ogata to know about your being alive? At least the professor? If we could let him in on the secret, Professor Yamane might be able to get you the money you'll need to leave the country…"

"No!" I said emphatically. "That is the worst thing we could do."

Not quite the worst thing, I mentally rebutted my own statement. The worst thing would be for me to present myself to some government and offer to build them the Oxygen Destroyer as a weapon.

But still—if I went along with Shinkichi and Izuma's plan, and I made this attempt to go on living, then letting any of our friends know the secret seemed like a recipe for catastrophe.

The more people who know I'm alive, I thought, the more chance there is that governments will learn it, too. And if any politicians or agents suspect it, the Yamanes are the people they will go to first, to try and force them into revealing the truth.

It was in vain that I told myself my fears sounded like they'd come from the same sort of novel as I'd thought was the source for Shinkichi's "new identity" plot.

Sadly, the things people do in real life are frequently as evil as the deeds in any spy novel.

If government agents suspected I was alive, they might take the Yamanes as hostages—to force me out of hiding, and to pressure me into doing their bidding.

"So you'll have to stay in Japan," Mr. Izuma stated. "The plan will still work. You'll just need to change your appearance. Get a haircut, maybe grow a beard … no one'll recognize you, even with your picture having been in all the papers."

Ruefully, I reached up and touched my right hand to my eyepatch.

Izuma seemed unconcerned by that aspect of the question. "Fact is, kid," he said, "you aren't the only person in Japan who's lost an eye. Some of those other people are bound to be young men with long faces and high cheekbones. There's only so many different types of faces in the world."

I stared at the old man and the boy. They stared back at me, expectantly, awaiting my answer.

I found I did not know what my answer would be.

The idea that I might have some hope was so very foreign to my thoughts. I think I would have had a difficult time adjusting to it, even if I hadn't spent the past two days attempting to starve myself.

You can always go along with them for now, I told myself, and still commit suicide later. There is always that way out. If someone figures out you're Serizawa, and you're about to be caught, you can just step in front of the nearest train.

At last I murmured, "There is a chance it might work."

"Good!" Shinkichi joyously exclaimed. "Then you'll do it?"

For the first time, I saw a smile on the boy's face. Not merely a smile; this expression of his was a triumphant grin.

"I suppose … I suppose I ought to give it a try."

"Right!" whooped Mr. Izuma. The sound seemed more like the bark of a dog than like any person's voice. To my surprise, the old man was grinning slightly. I smiled, myself, at the strangeness of that sight. With a typical younger person's prejudice, I suppose I'd had the idea that the old codger's facial muscles were no longer capable of producing a grin.

Leaning my head against the wall of Mr. Izuma's house, I whispered, "Could I please have that drink of water now?"