"I haven't asked this before, but do you think that Patron, who did the Somersault, is a defeatist too? Are you saying that Patron, without doing a proper self-critique, has come here to this region to restart his church, but he's still a defeatist? And that before anything concrete gets done he's going to be murdered or something? In other words, you guys aren't taking him seriously; you think that if you just bide your time the Fireflies will come out on top?"
Far from flinching, Gii held Ikuo's gaze calmly. To Kizu, Gii's fea- tures-the outline of his ears and nostrils, as well as his clear eyes-looked fresh and soft, like some newly budding plant. Gii chose his words carefully as he replied.
"I haven't given the term defeatist a lot of thought, so there may be con- tradictions in what I said. But I find it interesting that Patron would start his own church and religious movement and then, at a certain point, do a Somer- sault and announce that everything he's preached till then was nonsense. The defeatists I'm talking about never had the guts to do that.
"No, I'm not some optimist sitting just around waiting for Patron's church to self-destruct. We Young Fireflies are planning to make this re- gion independent, and now a formidable opponent has entered the picture- your church. I don't think either Patron or Ikuo are defeatists. The Hollow's legally occupied, as are these large buildings; that's a given. What we have to do is build up our forces so we can compete with you. Anyway, that's the sec- ond thing I wanted to tell you."
Later that day, Kizu recalled their conversation and felt quite keenly that Gii was, as Ikuo had told him, an outstanding young man, the main rea- son being the skillful way he'd wrapped up their conversation.
"Patron told me you have cancer, Professor," Gii had said suddenly, throwing Kizu a challenging look. "The church hasn't begun any new ac- tivities, he said, but he'd like to concentrate his spiritual strength in trying to control your disease."
Looking over Kizu from top to bottom, Ikuo asked, "So has Patron's spiritual concentration had any effect?"
"The exhaustion I felt when I lived in Tokyo doesn't seem to be as bad as it was before," Kizu replied. "And I'm not as depressed."
"Yeah, but having a person's spirit soar when the founder of his reli- gion concentrates his spiritual power for his sake does seem a bit predictable, doesn't it?" Ikuo said, as Gii let out a happy laugh.
23: THE TECHNICIANS
1
"I heard from Gii," Dr. Koga said, "that Patron's trying to use his spiri- tual powers to control your cancer. Who knows but what it might be slowing down the spread of the disease."
He said this as he handed over two weeks' worth of the various medi- cines Kizu was taking.
Putting the question of how he was feeling on hold, Kizu looked at the painting he'd done that was hanging in a frame on the wall of the clinic, the one showing Ikuo from behind, naked down to below his waist. Ikuo's broad back was so muscular it looked like he was carrying a soft shell on his back.
His overall build, with its bulging muscles, looked entirely natural, not like the localized protuberances one expects from weight trainers. Dr. Koga, put- ting all the medications in a paper bag, followed Kizu's gaze.
"Ikuo seems to fit right in with the kids here," he said. "The parents who use my clinic used to consider the Young Fireflies as some reserve youth corps of the yakuza, but with Ikuo in the picture they changed their tune."
"The art class project was turned down, though, thanks to my affilia- tion with the church," Kizu said. "Well, with Ikuo and the Fireflies doing so well, Dancer and Ogi wanted me to ask you something, an internal matter of the church actually."
"About the Technicians?"
"That's right. Ikuo seems to have a good relationship with them too, but there doesn't seem to be much communication between them and Patron."
Dr. Koga fixed his dark deep-set eyes on Kizu and then gave a practi- cal suggestion, hoping to lighten the mood.
"The clinic's closed today, and it's raining a little, so what do you say we take a drive and talk? Patron's spiritual concentration aside, a drive shouldn't be bad for you. In the afternoon I'll drive over down below the dam and honk my horn."
Every two weeks, on days when the clinic was closed in the morning, Kizu went to get a thorough examination from Dr. Koga and refill his pre- scriptions. He'd heard that Dr. Koga had been taking drives here and there in the area, using copies of maps from the town hall, since with all the new logging roads that had been built the standard maps were of little use.
Dr. Koga showed up after lunch, early, and Kizu climbed into his car.
The rain had ended but, instead of a uniformly overcast sky, clumps of dark- gray clouds scuttled across overhead. They drove up the slope toward the forest, which was chockful of lustrous leaves after the morning's rain. The slope was steep, but as long as one paid attention to the shoulder it wasn't dangerous. When they passed the T-shaped intersection below the farm that Ikuo and the Technicians had taken over, they saw a small truck that was going to pick up some materials that had come down and was waiting for them to pass when the rain had let up; some of the Technicians were aboard.
Mr. Hanawa, seated at the wheel, bowed politely to them as they went by.
"As Dancer says, it's true the Technicians haven't made an opportunity to talk with Patron," Dr. Koga said, "but you have to remember their work has kept them busy. That kind of hard physical labor is good for their out- look on things, I'm sure.
"After Patron and Guide's Somersault-and this is actually something they brought on themselves, since as members of the Izu Research Institute they made it all inevitable-the Technicians suffered a lot, though not as much as their colleagues who were dragged off by the police and not taken to court.
"I was able to resume my medical practice, but the other Technicians had to hide their research and use their technical skills somehow to earn a living. With automation taking over factories, these skills were less in demand, but once they took a job at some small subcontracting factory they quickly rose to the top and could show what they were capable of.
"Some of them worked in university and business research labs, doing experiments under the supervision of people who used to be their colleagues, making one-micron incisions in the brain and so on. Universities and indus- tries on the cutting edge needed high-caliber technicians like them.
"I think my colleagues are valuable in that they're hard workers who don't have any academic ambition. Working for ten years at the bottom of the heap has made them tougher. After I met them again, I thought that the self-ridiculing name Technicians they'd given themselves was actually a good choice."
Dr. Koga wound his blue Saab, a car that suited him perfectly, through the sprinkle of hamlets in the area that went by the overall name of the out- skirts-an area along the river that stood in contrast to the highway on the opposite shore. As they drove up the rough ancient-looking road, he explained that the name outskirts wasn't a proper noun.
Kizu was impressed by Dr. Koga's explanation about the Technicians.
Somewhat inadvertently, he said, "Doctor, I guess after all you're the Tech- nicians' highest adviser, aren't you?"
"I'm not even a Aw-level adviser," Dr. Koga said. "Rather, I feel they've cut me off. They don't even let me into the rooms they share in the dormitory."
Kizu was surprised to hear this, though it did fit with what he'd heard from Dancer.
"Ogi and Dancer told me," he said, "that the Technicians won't let them into the five rooms they've taken over either. Of course Ogi doesn't go into the Quiet Women's rooms, but Dancer, too, has refrained from doing so.
Ms. Tachibana and her brother are the only ones from outside whom the Quiet Women allow in, and sometimes they participate in their prayer sessions.