"I don't really know what kind of person the Savior was, but if as you say he's come back from hell, you should have him show you your real face once more. This time try to keep from crying and give him a big smile!"

"If he has returned, that's enough for me," the one-eyed woman said, calmly yet passionately. "But more than my own healing, everything will be healed, since he's atoned for all our sins in hell. Actually, in the past ten years, I don't hate this face so much anymore."

"That's the way to think about it!" the farm owner shouted, his voice filled with both indignation and self-reproach. "My unthinking better half said some stupid things, but you have your real face now! Why do you have to hate it?"

"I think that's quite enough of your little marital spats and solutions to the problem, Mr. Sasaki. These two men have come all this way to see us. Shouldn't we let them speak?" The speaker here was a woman around forty or so who looked like she'd been an athlete in her younger days.

Saying this, the woman turned a somewhat sullen smile toward Kizu and Ikuo. With her lightly tanned face and strong look, she stood out among all the pale faces. The woman seemed frankly surprised that the doctor's widow, the woman with the congenital defect in her face, and all the other women who had listened so intently to their stories had opened up so much to these two strangers who had suddenly appeared in their midst. Only this woman who had just spoken seemed to have some complicated psychologi- cal barrier.

"The Savior-Patron, as the newspapers now call him-well, if he truly is to return to us, I expect he'll make a direct appeal. Since the two of you just planned to take a look at how we're living, I don't expect you have any sort of message for us from him, do you?"

"No, we don't," Kizu said, feeling a bit wretched as he said it. "We didn't even tell Patron we were coming."

"You haven't been believers very long, have you?" the woman asked.

"Apart from these young people here, I know the faces of most of the believ- ers above a certain age. My job in the church kept me in contact with them."

As he turned a searching look at Kizu, the farm owner had now calmed down from his earlier pronouncement, his skin color fading back to match his white hair and whiskers.

"The Professor and I are much newer believers than all of you," Ikuo answered in Kizu's stead. "I know this might sound a little vague to you. Even though I say we're followers, we haven't done much yet to help Patron with his religious activities. We got to know Patron and Guide just before they restarted their religious activities-years after the Somersault, of course. It's clear, though, that Patron will be relying a lot on the Professor in the days to come. I only knew the late Guide for a short time, but he was someone I re- spected very much. And Patron-well, I've never met a person like him before, a leader like that."

"What are your feelings about the Somersault?" the woman asked. "I ask because all of us are somewhat fixated on it… We gathered a small group together, after we were abandoned by our leaders, and lived as if in the wilderness for ten years. And we suffered-which made Guide's death all the more painful. They didn't take us with them when they descended into hell, but now that they came back after atoning, and are starting this new movement, I think we'll be waiting for a call."

Kizu was apprehensive about how Ikuo would reply, but he answered quite seriously. "I'm sure you've read this in the newspaper, and I don't know much more than what Patron said at the press conference for Guide's me- morial service. I read about the Somersault in the papers and saw it on TV, though I was still a child at the time.

"As I've been working alongside Patron, though, I've learned this: Since the police had figured out what the radical faction was up to, if Patron and Guide hadn't abandoned the church the authorities would have come down hard on the entire movement. The whole thing would have exploded-maybe to the point where politicians would be up in arms trying to enforce every word of the Anti-Subversive Activities Law.

"But as long as the leaders discarded their church, the whole thing could be dismissed as some petty scandal. And that's exactly what happened. It was the Somersault that the TV news shows had such great fun with. There was a pitfall in this, though, because the authorities and the police were under the impression that they'd uncovered all the activities the radical faction was in- volved in. But the investigation didn't go as smoothly as they hoped. The church avoided self-destructing, and a core remained active.

"In a sense what was emphasized was what I saw as a child and what the Professor saw reported abroad-namely, Patron's Somersault pronounce- ments on TV. But after I had a chance to talk with Patron and Guide, and meet all of you here, I understand a lot more about how much you all have suffered, and especially Guide, before he was murdered."

"What's the motivation behind Patron's deciding to start a new move- ment?" the woman asked. "I understand he was thinking of doing this even before Guide was killed."

'Tm not in a position to say, really," Ikuo replied, "but my opinion is that if this crisis hadn't ended with a small bang as it did, Patron and Guide- and the whole church-would have taken things as far as they possibly could.

The Somersault prevented this, but somewhere along the line the idea of repentance as the end of the world approaches disappeared. Maybe I shouldn't say this, but hasn't the true mission of the church remained alive only among those people Patron abandoned? And now isn't Patron-as someone who's experienced hell-trying once more to take on this mission? Well, those are my thoughts. Please understand that my generation is pretty ignorant of what went on in the past. After the collapse of Aum, young people who were search- ing for salvation lost a forum to carry out this search. What are they supposed to do? Patron and Guide felt a sense of responsibility toward this situation, and that's what motivated them. And, as if waiting for this chance, some people killed Guide."

"You can call it a return or a resurrection or whatever, but what I want to know is what are his immediate plans? Now that Guide isn't with him anymore." This was asked by the old lady who was sitting up erect, her legs out to one side.

"I think Patron wants to take responsibility for the gap in time after he and Guide fell into hell," Ikuo said. "Because he abandoned people like your- selves who continued to keep the faith. Actually, you should be getting a message from him quite soon.

"At the time of the Somersault, Patron stated that everything he'd said and done up till then was all a joke, a big gag. I don't know anything about the real substance of this, so what I did was read through the transcripts of his sermons that predated the Somersault that were among the documents my colleagues have been looking at. In one of the sermons, Patron remarked on the increase in the number of people who need to be saved. This latent power of the soul's thirst now, he said--and this was ten years ago-exists on a large scale, from urban areas like Tokyo to provincial cities, even reach- ing to disintegrating farming communities. In my visions, Patron said, these countless young people, filled with anxiety and pained frustration, all take on one face. And this face, he said, raises a silent cry: The flames are coming!

Was this, too, just a joke? I think he'll be taking action that gives us the answer to that."

From over toward the mountains the same hand bell Kizu had heard at their office rang out, startling him. He looked out through the three-level window, and in the shafts of twilight sun shining through breaks in the wind- tossed clouds he saw the children who had earlier been gazing into the green- house all filing away, led by a tall girl ringing the bell.