Spiral

Kitano stood the moment Liam entered. He was very thin, his clothes hanging on him, his skin stretched over the angular bones of his face. His hands were cuffed together. His right cheek was noticeably swollen. Scilla told him he’d had an infected tooth. He’d refused any treatment, any medications, finally acquiescing to letting them pull it, minus any painkillers. They said he’d barely flinched.

They introduced themselves politely, Hitoshi Kitano’s English crisp and clear, accented but clearly understandable. Kitano sat with his back perfectly straight in his chair. Though no older than Liam himself, he looked ancient in a way that Liam couldn’t at first quite sort out. It was the eyes, Liam realized. His eyes seemed dead.

Liam had a number of questions for Kitano. Most prominent was how the Japanese would defend themselves against blowback from the Tokkō missions. Biological weapons were notoriously difficult to control. It was inconceivable to Liam that the Japanese would use a weapon as virulent as the Uzumaki if they didn’t have a way of protecting their own people. If it was a fungus native to Japan, they might be naturally resistant, or have an old folk remedy. Alternatively, scientists at Unit 731 might have developed a preventative, or even a cure. There were no good antifungals, Liam knew. But if you are willing to kill people, you might be able to develop one. You infect a prisoner, you try out a cure. You fail, you try again. If such a program existed at Unit 731, Liam was willing to bet that Hitoshi Kitano knew about it.

“I am a scientist-a mycologist,” Liam said. “I study fungi. Mushrooms. Molds.”

Kitano nodded. “My father was also a scientist, an ornithologist. He studied magpies mostly, but he also kept pigeons. My mother said he loved the birds more than her.”

“My wife has said the same sort of thing. About me and mushrooms.”

Kitano smiled slightly.

“I was told that your parents died at Nagasaki. I’m sorry.”

“Many died. On both sides.” Kitano tilted his head like a bird. “I learned an interesting fact from Professor Oppenheimer. He said that Nagasaki was not the original target. It was Kokura. But it was cloudy in Kokura, so they went on to Nagasaki.”

Liam tried to imagine what it must feel like to know that your family was dead because of the weather. War was a series of random catastrophes.

Liam got down to it. “At Unit 731 you worked on the Uzumaki. How did they create the different strains?”

“I am not a biologist. I was an engineer. I oversaw the tests. My understanding is they had some way to mix the traits. They could change the fungi. Make them adopt the properties of other fungi. They mixed the spores together with special chemicals. I do not know what kind.”

“Was it acidic? Basic?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you wear gloves?”

“Yes. Rubber gloves. And masks. After we made it airborne.”

“How did you do that?”

“We would inject the Uzumaki variants into the maruta, wait for the madness to take hold.”

“Maruta?”

“The prisoners were maruta. Logs.”

“Logs? I don’t understand.”

“The official story is that Unit 731 was a lumber mill. We were cutting logs. We could have as many logs as we wished. We simply filled out a requisition form.”

Liam tried to contain his loathing for the man in front of him. The bureaucracy of genocide. It was not unlike the German death camps, the experiments of Mengele. People became chunks of flesh to be manipulated, tortured, disposed of like rats.

Kitano continued. “After we infected them, we had them breathe on a glass slide. Then the doctors cultivated the spores on the slides. It took many tries, but finally it worked. A variant that was both highly infectious and could be spread by the breath. We called this maruta the Mother. The Mother of the Uzumaki.”

“How many tries did it take?”

“Perhaps three, four hundred.”

“You killed hundreds of people in the tests?”

“For the Uzumaki, we killed eight hundred and seventeen before we had the breather. But there were many programs like this. We downed approximately ten thousand maruta overall.”

“Ten thousand? How could you stand it? It’s inhuman. Monstrous.”

“Perhaps. But the subjects at Unit 731 were well treated, well fed. Not like the other POW camps. Typically we injected them with the pathogen, systematically varying the dose. Then we watched as the disease progressed through them. It was very effective. Different strains could be crossed endlessly, the most deadly variants carefully selected by injecting them into prisoners and culturing the blood of those who died the fastest. After they began to show symptoms, we would take constant readings. Temperature, blood pressure, reaction times. Some we would dissect.”

“After they were dead.”

“No. While they were alive.”

Liam was aghast. “Why in God’s name would you do that?”

“To yield the most accurate picture. Anesthetic causes biochemical changes, affects the blood, the organs. As does death.”

“It’s murder. Sadistic, inhuman murder.”

“Research, Mr. Connor. Very important research.”