Lords of the Earth td-61

by Warren Murphy

  Schweid's body was in the rear seat of the limousine that had belonged to Amabasa Francois Ndo.

  "The jeep's gone," Remo said. "No telling where Perriweather is now. Do you think he's got more flies?"

  Smith nodded. "He must have. Many more. I'm sure they've bred by now. He's got enough to carry out his threat."

  "Then we've lost," Remo said.

  "It looks that way," Smith said.

  "I'm sorry," Remo said. "He could be anywhere by now."

  "I know."

  "Chiun and I will stay around to look for him, but I wouldn't hold out too much hope if I were you."

  "I won't," Smith said. "What are you going to do?"

  "I'm going to take Barry's body to the American embassy near the airport. They can arrange to ship it home. We'll bury him back in the States."

  "That's a good idea," Remo said.

  Smith nodded and stepped into the car. "Good-bye, Master of Sinanju," he said. "Goodbye, Remo."

  "Good-bye," Remo said.

  Chiun was silent as Smith drove away.

  Chapter 21

  "Well, if the world's all going back to the Stone Age, this is a good place to be, I guess," said Remo.

  "How quick you white things are to surrender," Chiun said.

  "Perriweather could be miles away by now," Remo said.

  "He could be," Chiun said. "And he might be close by. Should one give up without considering the possibility?"

  "All right. We'll keep following the jeep tracks," Remo said without conviction. They were moving along a narrow path through the brush, just wide enough to accommodate Perriweather's vehicle.

  "And what of the curious condition of the red-winged fly?" Chiun said over his shoulder, without turning, as he continued to race along the path.

  "What curious condition? The fly's dead," Remo said.

  "That is its curious condition," Chiun said.

  "If you say so, Little Father," said Remo, who had no idea what Chiun was talking about.

  "Silence," Chiun commanded. "Do you hear it?" Remo listened but heard nothing. He looked back toward Chiun, but the old Korean was no longer there. Remo looked up and saw Chiun skittering up the side of a tall tree, as quickly as a squirrel: The Master of Sinanju paused for a moment at the top, then slid down smoothly. As he reached the ground, Remo heard the sound. It was an automobile engine.

  Chiun ran off through the brush with Remo following.

  "You saw him?" Remo said.

  "He is over there." Chiun waved vaguely in the direction they were running. "The dirt road must curl around through the jungle and joins with another road ahead. We can reach him."

  "Little Father?" Remo said.

  "What, talkative one?"

  "Keep running."

  The road curved around a small hillock and then passed through a dry dusty clearing.

  Remo and Chiun stood in the clearing as Perriweather's jeep spun around the corner from the hill. The man screeched on his brakes and stopped the car with a skid.

  Even in the bright African sun, Perriweather looked cool and dignified. His hair was unmussed. He wore a tailored khaki bush suit, but even at the distance of twenty feet, Remo could see that the man's fingernails were dirty.

  "Mr. Perriweather, I presume," Remo said.

  "Drs. Remo and Chiun. How nice to see you here," Perriweather called out.

  Remo took a step forward toward the jeep but stopped as Perriweather raised something in his hand. It was a small crystalline cube. Inside it, Remo could see a black dot. And the dot was moving. And it had red wings.

  "Is this what you're looking for?" Perriweather asked.

  "You got it, buddy," Remo said. "Is that your only one?"

  "As you say, you've got it, buddy. The only one," Perriweather said.

  "Then I want it," Remo said.

  "Good. Here. You can have it. Take it."

  He tossed the cube high into the air toward Remo. As Remo and Chiun looked skyward toward the descending crystal object, he gunned the jeep forward.

  "Many more," he yelled. "Many more." And then his voice broke into a wild laugh.

  "I've got it, Little Father," Remo said as the cube dropped toward him.

  He reached up and caught the object gently in his hands. But it was not glass or plastic. He felt the spunsugar cube shatter in his hands even as he caught it, and then he felt another sensation. A brief sting in the palm of his right hand.

  He opened his hand and looked at it. The welt on his palm grew before his eyes.

  "Chiun, I'm bitten," he gasped.

  Chiun did not speak. He backed away from Remo, his eyes filled with sorrow.

  Fifty feet away, on the other side of the clearing, Perriweather had stopped the jeep and was now standing on the seat, looking back toward them, laughing.

  "Isn't life wonderful when you're having fun?" he called.

  Remo tried to answer but no sound came from his lips. Then the first spasm hit him.

  He had been in pain before. There had been times when he had felt himself dying. But he had never before known the agony of being utterly, unthinkably out of physical control.

  As the first seizures engulfed him, he reached automatically for his stomach, where his insides seemed to be riding a roller coaster. His breath came short and shallow, rasping out of his lungs.

  The muscle spasms moved to his legs. His thighs twitched and his feet shook. Then his arms, the muscles straining and bulging out of their sheaths as his back knotted in agony. He moved his helpless eyes toward Chiun. The old man made no move toward him, but stood like a statue, his eyes locked into Remo's.

  "Chiun," he wanted to say. "Little Father, help me." He opened his mouth but no words came out. Instead, he emitted the sound of a wild beast, a low groan that hissed from his body like an alien thing escaping. The sound frightened Remo. It did not belong to him, just as this body no longer belonged to him. It was a stranger's body. A killer's body.

  As he watched the old Korean, he began to drool. The small figure that stood so porcelain perfect before him became an unreal thing, a toy, a focus for the inexplicable rage that was bursting from within every fiber of his new, unfamiliar body.

  For a moment, Chiun, Master of Sinanju, teacher and friend, ceased to exist for him. He had been replaced by the frail little creature standing before him.

  Remo dropped to his hands and knees and began to crawl across the clearing. In the background, Waldron Perriweather's laugh still boomed through the heavy humid air.

  Remo tried to speak. He forced his mouth into the proper shape, then expelled the air from his lungs.

  "Go," he managed. He swatted at the air. The next sound that came from him was a roar.

  "No," Chiun said simply, over the roar. "I will not run from you. You must turn from me and from the creature that inhabits you."

  Remo moved closer, fighting himself every inch, but unable to stop. Froth bubbled from his mouth. The pupils of his eyes were tinged with red.

  The eyes again met Chiun's, closer now, almost within reach.

  "You are a Master of Sinanju," Chiun said. "Fight this thing with your mind. Your mind must know that you are master of your body. Fight it."

  Remo rolled onto his side to stop his forward motion toward Chiun. He clutched himself in torment. "Can't fight," he managed to gasp.

  "Then kill me, Remo," Chiun said. He spread his arms and lifted his neck. "I wait."

  Remo rolled back onto his knees, then lunged at Chiun. The old man made no move to step out of his way.

  You are a Master of Sinanju.

  The words echoed somewhere deep inside him. And in the deepest spot of himself, he knew that he was a man, not some laboratory experiment with no will. He was a man, and more than a man, for Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, had taught him to be more, to see the wind and taste the air and move with the vibrations of the universe. Chiun had trained Remo to be a Master, and a Master did not run, not even from himself.

  With a colossal e
ffort of will, Remo swerved from his path. He had come so close to the old man that the silk of Chiun's kimono brushed his bare arm. Tears streamed down his cheeks as the part of him that was Rerno struggled and clawed and fought with the beast that surrounded him. Shrieking, he threw himself on a boulder and wrapped his arms around it.

  "I ... will ... not ... kill ... Chiun," he groaned, squeezing the rock with every particle of his strength. He felt the lifeless mass in his arms warm, then tremble. Then, with an outrush of air, expelling the poison from his lungs with a final, terrible effort, he clutched the boulder with his convulsive bleeding hands and pressed himself against it one last time.

  The rock snapped, exploding in a spray. Pebbles and sand shot high into the air over him.

  When the dust had settled, Remo stood. Like a man.

  Chiun did not speak. His head nodded once in acknowledgment and it was enough.

  Remo ran across the clearing. Perriweather's laugh stopped short and Remo heard the metal protest as the jeep was forced into gear and started to drive away.

  Remo ran, feeling the perfect synchronization of his body as it responded to the subtle commands of his mind.

  The jeep puttered ahead of him at a distance, moving easily over the dirt road.

  And then it stopped.

  Perriweather pressed down on the gas pedal. The wheels whirred and spun but the vehicle did not move. As Perriweather turned and saw Remo's hand holding the back of the vehicle, his jaw dropped open. He tried to speak.

  "Fly got your tongue?" Remo said and then the jeep's rear end was rising into the air, and then it spun over and plummeted off the side of the road, down a hill, turning in the air, bursting into flames.

  It stopped, flaming, as it crashed into an outcropping of rock.

  "That's the biz, sweetheart," Remo said coldly. He felt Chiun standing alongside him.

  "He is dead?" Chiun said.

  "He should already be in fly heaven," Remo said. They watched the flames for a moment; and then Remo felt Chiun's body next to his tense and stiffen. Remo himself groaned as he saw what had captured Chiun's attention.

  A small swirl of insects rose in the air from the burning jeep. In the harsh sunlight, their wings glinted a blood red.

  "Oh, no," Remo said. "There's more. And they've escaped." He looked at Chiun. "What can we do?"

  "We can stand here," Chiun said. "They will find us."

  "And then what? Let ourselves get eaten up by flies?"

  "How little you understand about things," Chiun said.

  The red-winged flies were blown high into the air on the rising gusts of superheated air from the burning jeep. Then they seemed to see Remo and Chiun because they flew toward them.

  "What should we do, Little Father?" Remo asked.

  "Stand here to attract them. But do not let them bite you."

  The flies, perhaps a dozen of them, flew in lazy circles around the two men. Occasionally one would dip as if to land but a sudden movement of Remo and Chiun's bodies frightened them back into the air.

  "This is great until we get tired of waving at bugs," Remo said.

  "Not much longer," Chiun said. "Look at the circles they are making."

  Remo glanced upward. The hovering circles were becoming more erratic. The sound of the flies had changed too; it was uneven and too loud.

  Then one by one the flies buzzed frantically, dove, struggled for a moment in the air, then dove again. They fell on the ground, around the two men, each twitching for a moment, before stopping as if frozen. "They're dead," Remo said in wonderment.

  Chiun had plucked up a leaf and was folding it into an origami box. Inside he put the bodies of the dead flies.

  "For Smith," he explained.

  "Why'd they die?" Remo said.

  "It was air," Chiun said. "They were bred to live in poison but they lost their ability to live for long in the air we breathe. It was why that fly died in the laboratory. And why that fly died after biting that poor fat white friend of Smith's." He put the leaf box into a fold of his robe.

  "Then we weren't even needed," Remo said. "These monsters would have died by themselves."

  "We were needed," Chiun said. He nodded toward the smoldering jeep holding Perriweather's body. "For the other monsters."

  Chapter 22

  A week later, Smith arrived at their hotel room at the New jersey shore.

  "Chiun was right," Smith said without preamble. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "The flies could not live in ordinary air. They lived in Perriweather's lab because the air was so purified and they were mutated to live in poison. But ordinary killed them."

  "Ordinary kills a lot of things," Chiun said. "Great teachers are killed by ordinary, or less than ordinary, pupils."

  His statement sounded, to Smith, like some sort of private argument between the two men so he just cleared his throat, then pulled a note from his jacket pocket and handed it to Remo.

  "This was left for you at the IHAEO labs," he said. Remo glanced at the note. It began, "Darling Remo."

  "She says she's gone to the Amazon to try to find new uses for Dr. Ravits' work with pheromones."

  "Gee, Smitty, thanks for reading it first. You can imagine all the trouble it saves me if you read my personal mail." He dropped the note in the wastebasket.

  "You're not allowed to get personal mail," Smith said. "Anyway, Dara Worthington has been advised that Drs. Remo and Chiun died in a jeep accident in Uwenda."

  "I never died," Chiun said.

  "Just a polite fiction," Smith explained.

  "Oh. I see. A polite fiction, like some people's promises," Chiun said, as he glared at Remo.

  "Smitty, you'd better go now," Remo said. "Chiun and I have something to do."

  "Can I help?" Smith asked.

  "I only wish you could," Remo said with a sigh. Alone in his office, Smith leaned back in his chair. Barry Schweid's blue blanket lay over an arm of the chair alongside the desk. Smith rose, picked up the tattered piece of fabric, and headed for the wastebasket.

  If Remo could do it with Dara Worthington's note, so could Smith. There was no room in the organization for sentiment. Smith had dispatched his secretary's son with no more thought than he would have given the passing of a bumblebee. Or a red-winged fly. Barry Schweid was dead and he had been a useless, needy fool. His only contribution had been to make CURE's computers, in the rooms below and the backups on St. Martin, tamper-proof. Apart from that, he had been a troublesome childish pest.

  Smith tossed the blanket toward the wastebasket, but somehow clung to the end of it. He felt its torn silky strands hanging on his fingers, almost as if Barry Schweid himself were hanging on to him.

  He touched the blanket with his other hand. Barry had found the only comfort of his life in it. His heart felt weighted.

  He squeezed the end of the blanket once more, for himself, and once again for Barry, then let it drop. He put on his hat, picked up the attache case containing the portable computer, and walked out.

  "Good afternoon, Mrs. Mikulka," he said routinely. "Good afternoon, Dr. Smith."

  He was halfway out the door when he turned around. Mrs. Mikulka was typing with the ferocious speed that made her such a fine secretary. Her bifocals were perched on the end of her nose. Funny, he thought. He had never noticed before that she wore eyeglasses. There were so many things he never noticed.

  The woman looked up, startled to see Smith still standing there. She removed her eyeglasses, looking uncomfortable.

  "Is there anything else, Doctor?"

  He stepped foward a pace, still marveling at what his secretary of almost twenty years looked like.

  "Do you have any children, Mrs. Mikulka?" he said.

  "Besides Keenan?" she asked.

  "Yes. Of course. Besides Keenan."

  "Yes. I have a daughter who's married and living in Idaho and two more sons. One's an engineer and one's going to become a priest."

  Her bosom seemed to puff out slightly while
she spoke and her eyes shone with pride.

  "I'm glad, Mrs. Mikulka," Smith said. "It sounds like a fine family."

  She smiled. Smith tipped his hat and left.

  "I am waiting," Chiun announced from outside the bathroom door.

  "Hold your horses, will you? This thing's as tight as the skin on a turnip."

  "It is an excellent kimono," Chiun said.

  "Yeah, sure."

  "And you are wearing it to the dining room for dinner," Chiun said.

  "That was my promise," Remo said. "And I always keep my promises."

  Chiun chuckled. "Remo, I have waited years for this moment. I want you to know that you have brought sunshine into the twilight of my life."

  "And all it cost me was the blood circulation in my arms and legs. Great," Remo said.

  The bathroom door swung open and Remo stalked out.

  Chiun staggered back across the room in disbelief. His tiny silk kimono, hand-painted with purple birds and magnolia blossoms, covered Remo only up to midthigh. Remo's arms stuck out of the sleeves from the elbow down. His shoulders stretched the thin fabric to the breaking point. The collar opening, neat and taut around Chiun's small neck, jutted open on Remo almost to his navel. Remo was barefoot. His knees shone white next to the smooth colors of the garment: "You look like an idiot," Chiun said.

  "I told you I would."

  "You look like that impertinent creature who sings about the good ship Lollipop. "

  "Tell me about it," Remo growled.

  "I will go no place with you looking like such an imbecile."

  Remo hesitated. It was an opening. "Oh, no," he said. "A deal's a deal. I promised you I would wear this and I'm wearing it to dinner. That's it, case closed."

  "Not with me, you're not," Chiun said.

  "Oh yes, I am. And if anybody laughs, they're dead." He walked toward the door of their room. "Let's go," he said.

  Chiun stepped alongside him. "All right," he said reluctantly. "If you insist."

  But at the doorway Chiun stopped. "Hold," he shouted. "What is that smell?"

  "What smell?" Remo said. "I don't smell anything."

  "That smell like a pleasure house. Wait. It comes from you."

  Remo bent his head over and sniffed his chest. "Oh, that. I always use that. That's my after-shower splash."