Tales of the Red Panda: The Mind Master
Page 19
Shah stepped past him and put his hand upon the crate proudly. “You recognize this for what it is, yes? You have been tantalizingly close to two of its brothers when they were detonated. There is beauty in destruction, if it is artfully applied. Like you, I thought it best to diversify. This model was intended to bring the house down as a last resort. I see it will not be needed, since you were too much the fool to expect me to use your own techniques.”
The Red Panda gasped for breath but could not speak. He struggled to raise himself to his feet and could not. He could taste the blood and bitter adrenaline in the back of his throat. He could feel his heart racing like an engine as his body struggled to cope with the pain, the damage. At last a few, halting words escaped his lips.
“I know… I know… why you are… doing this…”
Shah preened. “You know nothing!”
“He told me… Rashan… before I left…” The breath was coming easier now. Just a few more seconds.
“Before you left him to die alone, like an animal on that mountain?” Shah spat his question like a curse.
“At least I… didn’t promise to kill him…”
Shah’s sneer lifted and showed a single tooth, like a fang. “And I always keep my promises, do I not, rich boy?”
The Red Panda rolled to the side, his hand reaching for his belt as he rolled, like a gunfighter in a talking picture. His arm came up as he rolled flat like a log and fired the only instrument within his reach. His Grapple Gun. The harpoon flew wide of the mark, catching Ajay Shah by the jacket just under the arm and pinning the cloth to the pillar beside him.
Shah laughed with a furious glee. “A last, desperate attempt with a useless weapon!” he shouted. “Now die, Red Panda! Die!”
The Red Panda could feel the tendrils of pure mental force close around his throat, crushing the life out of him. He tried to struggle against it and only brought the rush of blackness faster as he burned through the last of his oxygen. In the final instant before consciousness left him he recalled the voice of his enemy,
“…you were too much the fool to expect me to use your own techniques.”
The Red Panda closed his eyes, summoned his last reserves of strength and reached out with his mind towards the crate beside which Ajay Shah stood. He forced his energy beyond the limits of his body, the last failing vestiges of strength into the ether…
…and from there into the detonator on Shah’s spoilsport bomb.
The Red Panda felt the sudden rush of air into his dry and gasping lungs as the tendrils released his throat. Shah had heard the clicks and whirls of the fiendish device by his right side as they sprang to life, and his concentration was shattered. The Red Panda forced himself to his feet, his head spinning, his stomach churning. He saw the man who wished to hold all the world in his thrall squealing in terror as he struggled to free himself from his coat, which was still pinned to the pillar behind him by his enemy’s Grapple.
The Red Panda felt his vision tunneling, almost disappearing into blackness as his body shook with the effort of keeping upright. He forced himself to run, hoping the momentum would carry him on beyond the power of his own will, which was almost lost. He pushed aside his final glimpse of the would-be master of the mind, panicked, frantic… not knowing whether to struggle with the harpoon in the pillar, the coat itself, or to reach out for the bomb mechanism, just beyond his grasp.
Shah called something as Fenwick staggered away, frantic words in a tongue the Red Panda had long-forgotten or never known. A plea… a curse… he would never know.
With the last strength left to him, the masked man threw himself through the heavy glass of the nearest window and into the blackness beyond. He thought nothing of the unknown open space before him, and nothing of the shattering wave of fiery death that roared through the building behind him. From the moment that his mind felt the raw concussive blast of the terrible bomb rip the body of Ajay Shah into pieces, the Red Panda knew nothing more.
Thirty-Nine
The bitter winds of winter were closer now. Upon the mountain top, the air was cold and bit like a desperate animal. Within the thin walls of the kuti, August Fenwick drew the last of his gear together and gazed up at the silent form of the man he had called Master. At last he spoke.
“Are you certain you do not need me to stay?” he said with some hesitation that revealed his desire to be gone.
Rashan snorted, but smiled. “There is little that I need from any man that lives, young one. And you have your own path to follow. Soon the snows will swallow up the path and you will winter in the high hills whether you wish it or no.”
Fenwick nodded. “You could come with me as far as the village below. I’m certain you would be more comfortable there. At least until the spring.”
Rashan turned his gaze impassively upon his remaining pupil. “This mountain is my home. It is my place. This life is my destiny. Why would you have me leave it?”
Fenwick sighed. “It is dangerous, Master. You will be alone for months.”
“You leave this place for your city, do you not?” Rashan questioned. “A place where you will seek out danger you need never have known. Where you will live a life of many masks that will have you always and ever be alone. And yet you seek out this existence for yourself. Why do you do it?”
Fenwick nodded and grinned a little. “It is my place,” he said with quiet conviction. “My destiny.”
The Saddhu nodded. “We are what we make of ourselves.”
August Fenwick was quiet for a moment. “And what about… him?” he asked. It had been ten days since the battle, and they had not spoken of his fellow student in that time. “What will he make of himself?”
Rashan’s eyes remained firm, but his shoulders fell slightly. “I do not know,” he said sadly. “But whether good or ill, I have failed him.”
Fenwick protested. “But, Master… his destiny was his to create as well.”
Rashan shook his head. “It is not the same.” His eyes met those of his pupil and held them with an intensity that seemed to look right through the younger man. “There is another reason why you are loathe to leave me here,” he said. “I wonder if you know what it is.”
Fenwick cleared his throat. “Why do you wish to know?” he asked.
His master shook his head. “I do not,” he said. “I wish for you to know.”
Fenwick held Rashan’s eye. “I have to leave. I have disobeyed my father’s wish for my return for a very long time. But if I could return to one father without abandoning another…,” his voice trailed away. “That would be best,” he said calmly, but with a smile.
Rashan nodded. “It is the same reason I cannot allow you to stay,” he said. “I have failed one son already.”
Fenwick started. “Master Rashan?” he asked. “He– was he–?”
Rashan held his hand up to cut off the question. “He was and he is. And he always will be.”
August Fenwick felt a grip of panic he could not explain in his heart. “Do… do you think he will return?”
“Yes.”
“But he swore–”
“Sons may swear a great many things. Fathers may yet hope for the best,” the old man said with a rueful smile of one who has been both.
The two men spoke not another word, but walked together to the lip of the valley, where the pass through the Annapurna Ridge began its lonely descent. Fenwick pulled his pack onto his back and held out his hand. There was a length of bright red silk within it which he offered to the older man. Rashan shook his head.
“You keep it,” he said. “There is little room in my life for the sentiment of objects. Besides,” he offered a smile to his pupil, “I thought it looked well on you. Like the face of the shining cat.”
Fenwick arched an eyebrow. “The shining cat?”
“Some men call it the firefox. Or…,” Rashan paused, as if struggling to recall. “Or the red panda.”
“The red panda…,” Fenwick’s imagination seemed t
o catch the words.
“Yes.”
“But…,” Fenwick’s brows furrowed, “isn’t the red panda red with a white mask? While I would be the other way around?”
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” the old man said with an exasperated smile as he turned and walked away. “I said you reminded me of one, not that you could pass for one. Try not to be so literal.” His voice faded quickly into the howling wind. “And try to forgive your father his failings, as you would have him forgive yours.”
August Fenwick felt the silk between his fingers one last time before returning it to his pocket. He resolved to take his master’s advice upon his return. It would be weeks before he would learn that he would never have the chance… that his own father had passed away suddenly during his long absence. For him, just as for his fellow pupil, there would be no final resolution – only a search that could never be satisfied, and perhaps could never end.
But those were the sorrows of another day. The man who had arrived in this valley as August Fenwick and lived there as “Two” strode down the narrow path with new certainty of who he was, and who he must be.
He was, and would always be, the Red Panda.
Forty
The sky above Toronto seemed to glow with the fires of sunset. The day had been warm and clear, and there could be no doubt that spring had come at last. The pavement and the bricks of the city all seemed to bleed the warmth of the day back into the evening air, and the people who might have scurried back to home and hearth now lingered once again, spoke to neighbors they had seen little of in the months before, and felt a rise of hope within their hearts. It was hope that grew in the rocky ground of hard times, but it grew nonetheless and every man and woman felt it to some degree.
Certainly the man who stood calmly beside the edge of the high rooftop felt it. By the dizzying height that might have caused most men to quake in fear he stood casually and gazed with a possessive pride over the city – from the great avenues to the slums and at every point in between.
The woman who reclined across the top of a nearby gargoyle felt it too, and she gazed up at him a short distance away. She smiled to herself. You could hardly see the bruises under his domino mask now, and she might be the only person in the world who could tell just by looking that he was still a little stiff. She flexed the fingers on her right arm, almost without thinking. There were still some pins and needles, but they would soon go.
He turned his head slightly and watched her watching him. She dared him with her eyes to comment. He declined and turned back to the embers of the setting sun. She would follow him into Hell if he asked, and was almost sure that he could tell. He could face any danger if she fought by his side, and he hoped that she knew it in spite of his silence.
The final rays of sunlight dipped below the horizon and night came to the city once again. From somewhere, down the canyons between the buildings, came the growing wail of police sirens.
The Red Panda and the Flying Squirrel exchanged the briefest of looks, and said nothing at all. As one, they threw themselves off the edge of the building towards the call of adventure and into the growing blackness of the night.
--THE END--
About the author:
Gregg Taylor has been creating new stories in the pulp tradition since 2005 with the Decoder Ring Theatre, for whom he fills the functions of writer, director, performer and chief bottle washer. The radio-style adventures of the Red Panda and the Flying Squirrel can be found for free download in mp3 format at www.decoderringtheatre.com, together with Taylor's detective series Black Jack Justice and other programs.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty