ron Goulart - Challengers of the Unknown

by Ron Goulart

  "He calls himself Esteban Satara; he supposedly dwells in the barrio. Do you know about that unfortunate section of San James?"

  "We know," said Prof.

  A patchwork city, built of leftovers. Shacks, shanties, huts. Walls made of scrap lumber, rusty tin cans pounded flat, chunks of shipping crates, bits of discarded automobiles. Held together with twisted nails, barbed wire, frayed twine. A disconnected bathtub was leaning against a hut with walls constructed from hammered-out oil drums; an abandoned sink lay with its pipes pointing skyward like the legs of a dead animal. Dirty water went slugging along deep ruts in the weedy ground, collected in lopsided pools. Hollow-eyed children, ragged and crusted with dirt, stood with stick-thin arms folded. Toothless men waited in doorless doorways, old women of thirty were sleepwalking into the chores of the commencing day.

  There was still a thin mist hanging over the vast barrio sector when Red and Rocky arrived in mid-morning. A few gaunt dogs barked a few times, but soon fell silent.

  "Kee-rist," observed Rocky, fists in pockets, "what a way to live." "Not one health food store," said Red.

  "Aw, don't be so damn flip about everything. This is serious."

  "If I broke down and cried, would it all go away? Would apartment houses bloom out of the garbage?"

  "Naw, but I mean—"

  "People care in different ways, Rocko." Red halted in a lane that twisted between shacks. A one-armed man was sitting in the dust in front of a hut built mostly of cardboard cartons. The names of American supermarket products still glowed faintly on the walls. "We're looking," said Red in Spanish, "for Paco Martinez."

  The sitting man's eyes stayed blank.

  Red squatted beside him. "Paco is expecting us," he said. "I'm going to do business with him."

  "No affair of mine," said the man.

  "Paco tells me everyone in the barrio is his friend. That I have but to ask and I'll be guided to him."

  "I may be Paco's friend, but I'm not yours." He held out his only hand, palm up.

  Red gave him an American dollar. "Where's Paco?"

  For a few seconds the man's eyes brightened. After he slipped the bill under his shaggy poncho, his face was dead again. "Straight ahead for a half mile, you'll see a packing box which once held a piano."

  "Paco lives near that?"

  "Paco lives in that."

  Red straightened up, signaled to Rocky and they continued on their way through the shack town.

  "A wild-goose chase," said Rocky. "I mean, relying on some stiff you meet in a bar last night."

  "Don't knock my expertise, Rock. In the days before I joined the Challengers, I did a great deal of research in the saloons and bistros of the world," Red told him.

  "I assure you I know how to find the kind of bar where a guy like Paco Martinez hangs out. In any big city there are bars like that one, and guys like him."

  "Con job artists."

  "Nope, guys who make it their business to know all kinds of gossip and scuttiebutt. This Paco is a sort of walking almanac of the underground and fringe sections of society. If anybody can locate this Satara the president tipped us to, it'll be Paco."

  "A stool pigeon; that's even worse than, a bunco artist."

  "Give me money."

  "Huh?" Rocky gazed around, then down.

  A small, still relatively chubby little girl of six was walking beside him. "Money. Like you give Romero."

  Rocky stooped, saying, "You're a cute little squirt Don't you know it ain't polite to ask for dough?"

  "Money," repeated the little girl.

  "Sure, okay." Rocky's enormous fist emerged from his pocket. He dropped several coins into the dirt-smeared little hand. "That's local dough; got some this morning at a bank."

  The little fingers snapped over the money; the child scooted away.

  "Somebody ought to fix things so kids don't have to beg," said Rocky. "Kee-rist, she didn't even have no shoes."

  Red nodded at a shack on their right. "This must be the place." _

  A piano crate was the basis of the hut. It had been expanded by the addition of sheets of warped plywood. From out of the structure stepped a small man in a spotless white suit. He was fixing a red carnation to his lapel. "Good morning, senor," he said to Red.

  "Morning. Any luck?"

  "I always get my man," replied Paco. "I saw a policeman in a United States film say that once. He wore a red coat and a strange hat."

  "Satara is living in the barrioF'

  "Only scant minutes away," the Ereguayan said. "If you will produce, and discreetly pass over to me, the remainder of my fee, I'll lead you to him at once."

  Red grinned at him. "Your whole and entire fee was paid to you last night, Paco."

  "Ah, no, senor. Apparently you misunderstood. That was my hiring fee merely," explained Paco. "Today you must reimburse me for my actual labors, which will come to twenty dollars American. Shall I draw you up an itemized bill?"

  "Not necessary." Red slipped him two tens. "Now lead on."

  "Stickup artist," muttered Rocky as they moved farther into the vast, sprawling shack town which bordered the city of San James.

  "Our subject is a very interesting man," said Paco. "Well-educated, if I am any judge, and with considerable more experience in the great world than the average resident of this miserable slum. I would venture he's fallen from some higher station in life."

  "You don't know anything about his background?" asked Red.

  "Little beyond what I have surmised. He is almost certainly a university man. For an additional fee I will gladly—"

  "We'll talk to him first."

  "Very well," agreed Paco. "We shall do that in another moment, for there is the shack in which Satara resides."

  The hut was built mostly of scrap wood, with a roof made of halved oil drums.

  "Good, I'd like—"

  Boom!

  Kaboom!

  "Flat out, Rocky!"

  "I'm ahead of you!"

  The shack was coming apart. The roof rose straight up, the walls flew out sideways. There had been a yellow flash and now there was an abundance of gritty gray smoke. The fragments of Satara's shack came tumbling down again, smoke went swirling up, the twisted heap of wreckage started burning.

  Shouting, screaming, cries of surprise and fear.

  "Go easy, buddy," Rocky cautioned, getting to his feet and dusting his bulk off.

  Red sprinted ahead. "Satara?" he called.

  A black shape was crawling out of the burning scraps. A black shape haloed with flame.

  Red pulled the burning man clear, whipped off his own jacket to smother the flames.

  The man's skin was blistered, cracked. His eyebrows were now only smears of soot, his hair scattered tufts of crinkling black. "His name . . . new name," he said in a croak of a voice,". . . new name . . . Escabar . . . Escabar ... in Tierra Seca . . . Fortaleza . . . Escabar knows . . ." He stopped. Stopped talking, stopped living.

  Red rose away from the dead man, after spreading his jacket over the face and torso.

  "Was that poor guy Satara?" asked Rocky.

  Paco shivered. "I don't like to see people die. It's very unpleasant. Horrible, terrible . . . What was it you asked me, senor?'

  "Is that Satara?"

  "Very difficult to tell, he's so horribly . . . No, I don't want to dwell on this. I shall return to my home."

  He turned away, was caught by Rocky. "Well, yes, I believe it is Satara, from what I've seen of him."

  Several of the nearby residents had come running with water, in buckets and dippers. The fire was gone. An old woman in a black shawl was standing close to the dead man, ticking black rosary beads through gnarled fingers.

  Red circled the black remains of Satara's hut. "Nothing left in there," he said to the approaching Rocky. "Nobody else was with him. When it cools off a bit, we'll look for the remains of whatever it was caused the explosion."

  "Will the local cops like us doing that?"

  "I doub
t," said Red, "they do much investigating hereabouts."

  "This whole mess keeps getting spookier," observed Rocky. "I mean, we're coming to see this poor bastard and he ups and has an accident, too."

  "More thorough accident than ours," said Red. "They didn't want him to talk to us."

  "Nobody knew we was heading here, except the president and . . ." He spun, noticing Paco was no longer there.

  "We'll talk to Paco again for sure," said Red. "I suppose it's possible he set this up, or tipped someone."

  "You don't sound like you believe that."

  "I don't," admitted Red.

  Rocky glanced over at the blackened body. "He was mumbling something to you. Didn't make any sense, did it?"

  "But it did," answered Red.

  Very little sunlight could get into the cluttered office. Thick and dusty drapes masked the high, narrow windows. Stacks, mounds and towers of old books blocked most of the light which tried to get into Professor Prolijos' office through the slits between drapes. The small old man, somewhat dusty himself, more or less sat in a carved wooden chair beside his cluttered desk. The old professor fidgeted, tapped his feet, rubbed at his nearly bald head, snapped his fingers, stood and abruptly sat down in a personal sequence June Rob-bins had not quite yet figured out. "... a fascinating subject you've chosen for yourself, young woman," Prolijos was saying.

  "Newsmag agrees with you." The blonde girl, wearing a sky-blue pantsuit, was sitting in the only other chair in the professor's university office, nearly walled in by books.

  Prolijos stood, slapped at his skull, chuckled, sat down, picked up his fountain pen, uncapped it, capped it, dropped it on a tumble of unopened letters,

  tapped his feet and said, "Oh, Newsmag. With all due respect, and I do admire the aggressive journalism of that particular periodical, I sincerely believe, if you'll forgive my saying so, that the subject of the monstruo of Lake Sombra needs a more thorough treatment than such a magazine can provide."

  "Well, this is probably going to be a two-part article, professor." -

  Chuckling, smoothing down his sparse hair, linking five paper clips, standing up, sitting down, Professor Prolijos said, "To deal adequately with the legend of Zarpa one must distill the speculations and researches of centuries."

  "I was hoping," said June with a smile at the twitchy old historian, "you could do a bit of that distilling for me. Since the lore of Zarpa is your specialty."

  "I am, without any doubt, the leading Zarpa scholar in the world," admitted the old professor, clipping a few of his fingernails with his desk scissors. "You read Spanish?"

  "Fairly well."

  "Bueno. I'll give you a copy, suitably inscribed should you so wish, of my book on the subject. Published in 1926 and, such is the stupidity of the publishing world, long out of print and shamefully neglected. I still have three hundred and eight spare copies stored around this office somewhere." He rose, walked toward a wall of books, came back, sat down, patted his knees.

  "That would be wonderful," said June. "Can you tell me, before I dip into your book, something of the history of the creature?"

  "Of course, of course." Prolijos wiped his nose, tugged at his ear, scratched his elbow. "You must realize I don't at all agree with Dr. Mandell as to the origins of the monstruo. I grant, mind you, Zarpa was once probably worshiped by the Incas, as the findings of Reisberson strongly indicate. The key issue, Miss Robbins, and the point which has caused me to fall out with more than one of my esteemed colleagues, is this." He stood, dug one shoe tip across the pattern of the ancient rug, nodding several times. "The point is, where did old Zarpa come from. Eh?"

  "Your theory is ... ?'

  Professor Prolijos pointed upward. "There."

  June's head ticked back; she stared at the spider-webbed hanging lamp in the ceiling. "Where?"

  The old man sat, his voice went low. "He is not some leftover from an earlier epoch, this monstruo of ours. He is not, furthermore, a throwback. No, indeed, not at all."

  "Then where did Zarpa come from?"

  "They brought him with them," explained the old man. "Across that vast gulf. He was, at least I'm leaning rather strongly toward the notion, their god. A god, however, incarnate, and one with an incredible life span." Prolijos stood up, paced, zigzagged around stacks of books with bookmarks sticking out like yellow tongues. "You follow my drift, young woman?"

  "You seem to be implying Zaipa is unearthly," said the girl, "that he came to earth from another planet."

  "Exactly, exactly." He circled his chair twice, sat down. "They brought him with them."

  "I'm not clear who they are."

  "There has never been any agreement as to the origin of the Incas," said Professor Prolijos. "A magnificent civilization, highly advanced. It springs up, suddenly and inexplicably, at least to my way of thinking. The branch of the Inca civilization which flourished in Ereguay claimed to have come originally from the area around Lake Sombra. There is some archaeological evidence to substantiate this." He got up, tapped his left foot on the rug, scratched his left side. "The Ereguayan Inca legends, those which have survived for us, say they were sent here by the Sun God. Sent, yes. Sent from another planet, landed near the lake of shadows."

  June said, "But the Inca civilization was already going strong when the Spanish conquistadores reached South America in the sixteenth century. You believe Zarpa was already in residence in Lake Sombra by then?"

  "Not merely believe, young woman, know," said Prolijos. "By the time Pizarro and the rest reached our land, Zarpa had been here for untold centuries."

  "In the water all that time?" June shook her blonde head. "I can't see why no one has ever been able to locate him, then."

  "Lake Sombra is very large and very deep," said Prolijos. "It lies in what is now a remote and difficult area to reach." He seated himself, picked up a fat book, blew the dust from its pebbled cover, opened it, shut it, dropped it to the floor. "And you are wrong when you say no one ever found Zarpa in the lake of shadows."

  "I've never heard of—"

  "In 1923 the Englishman Emlyn Warburton, of the Barchester Geographic Institute, led a group into the jungle. He was able, using diving gear of his own design, to locate the creature." The professor tapped both feet on the floor. "You see, it was Warburton's theory, one which he and I agreed on, that Zarpa spends much of his time dormant. In a state somewhat akin to the hibernation of some animals or even the cryptobiosis of lower forms of life. Only for longer periods; yes, considerably longer."

  "If your friend Warburton trailed Zarpa to his underwater lair, why then—•"

  "Poor Warburton awakened the monstruo," explained the professor. "It destroyed him, returned to life and surfaced. All nine of the others in Warburton's party, including his lovely, gifted daughter, were torn to bits by Zarpa. At one time I had hoped the girl and I . . He sighed, thrust a knuckle into the corner of his eye.

  "HoW," June asked him, "do you know all this?"

  "I ventured into the jungle to find them," replied the old man. His fidgeting had ceased; he sat in his chair with his hands palms upward in his lap. "When she . . . when the party did not return after a reasonable time, I organized a group and went in search. Too late to . . . that is how I know. I was able to deduce what must have happened from what I found there near that dreadful lake."

  "I see," said June.

  Right down out of the trees.

  The husky man dropped and landed, flat-footed, directly in front of June.

  This tree-lined path led from the back of Professor Prolijos' office building to the San James University parking lot where June had left her borrowed car. There were no other people on this stretch of path.

  Only June and the big man. And the second man, who had stepped out from behind a screen of hedge.

  "Well, gents, you've succeeded in making me feel pretty much like Little Red Riding Hood," the girl told the pair in a calm voice. "What can I do for you?"

  The one from the tree br
anches only grunted. From a pocket in his sport coat he extracted a hunting knife. He stalked toward the girl.

  The second heavy was coming at her from the side and, as yet, showing no weapon.

  "Give you a choice," said June while she, carefully, placed her large canvas purse on the gravel. "Go away right now and we'll forget the whole thing. Okay?"

  They both moved closer to her.

  "The other half of the choice is you try anything funny and I'll deck you both," the girl warned.

  This caused the knife-carrying one to laugh.

  "Okay," said June, "so much for the peaceful negotiations." Before the sentence was finished, she'd dived straight into the husky man with the hunting knife.

  Her head rammed him hard somewhere above the groin and below the rib cage. The force ;was sufficient to cause him to emit an oofing bellows sound. He would have slashed at the girl's slim back, but found his knife hand caught in an impressive grip.

  June straightened, levered the big man with his arm, sent him galloping sideways away from her.

  She didn't follow him. Instead she gave a sudden dip, tackled the other assailant around the knees. This off-balanced him before he could utilize the blackjack he'd produced.

  While he was spreading out on his back, June stepped on him. One foot on his throat, one on the wrist of the hand which held the sap. The pain from his hand made him want to shout; the pressure on his windpipe prevented that.

  "Oops." June executed a swift somersault off and away.

  The knife man's attempt to grab her from behind came to naught; he ended up stabbing air and kicking his fallen partner s stomach.

  June returned while he was still wobbling. She twisted his arm behind him, shoved. He went hopping and skipping straight into the wide, unyielding trunk of the nearest decorative tree.

  His partner was trying to go away, on hands and knees.

  June booted him in the tailbone, and, when the man stiffened out and fell fiat, she dealt him an impressive series of sidehand chops to the neck.

  With a short, somewhat surprised groan, he dropped into unconsciousness.

  The other man was also out, as a result of his sudden contact with the tree.

  Very deftly, and rapidly, the girl, after pushing her blonde hair back into place, frisked both of the men. Neither carried any identification at all.