Last Drop td-54

by Warren Murphy

  When he awoke again, he was in his office, propped up in his chair by pillows. Chiun had somehow carried him there without so much as disturbing his sleep. But Smith had long since ceased to be amazed by the old man's abilities.

  "Are you in discomfort, o Emperor?"

  "I'm fine," Smith said.

  He waited. And while he waited, he could almost hear death rushing toward him.

  The discipline of Sinanju, as Chiun told Smith, was more than the development of the body. How much more, he could never explain to any man who not only allowed himself to be struck by a bullet, but whose very existence depended on the use of a telephone.

  Chiun retired to a far corner of the office, as distant from the four computers as possible.

  For Smith, the Folcroft computers were infallible, precise, perfect. But for Chiun, they were no more than machines, the emperor's toys, not to be trusted. Their artificial brains, made of tape and wire and droplets of molten metal, revolted him. They did not work the way that a brain was supposed to work. They collected information and regurgitated it on command. To Chiun and all the Masters of Sinanju who went before him, that was the smallest and most insignificant function of the human mind.

  Chiun believed that the mind, with its labyrinthine possibilities and awesome power, held the force of the universe. Even ordinary minds, the dissipated, ignominious minds of the fat white people whom Smith's machines served, could create cities out of the air in the heat of the desert. They called these creations mirages, visions, dreams. They deemed them of no consequence and so were unable to enter and explore them.

  In moments of crisis, frail young mothers were able to lift thousands of pounds with their bare hands to remove automobiles from the bodies of their children. But they discounted feats like this also, saying that they were no more than freak occurrences. Some of them claimed proudly that they were able to move pencils with the power of their minds. These were regarded either as human oddities or as clever charlatans.

  Those who approached real power were disregarded entirely. A yogi in India during the early part of the twentieth century allowed himself to be buried alive for seven years. He was both interred and disinterred before hundreds of witnesses from several countries, including England and America. Yet all but his followers scoffed, calling the yogi's feat, for which he had prepared all his life, a hoax.

  With evidence of their power all around them, people still would not believe.

  And Chiun understood. Because to believe would be to step into the province of the impossible, the irrational, the uncontrollable. A place where there were no rules, no boundaries, no natural laws. A place of absolute freedom. Sinanju was not for everyone, because freedom, with its thousand demon fears, was not for everyone. For men like Smith, there was safety in bondage. That was why there would always be a Master of Sinanju, why his services would always be needed, despite the great mass of knowledge provided by the world's thinking machines, and why he would always be held as a secret, treasured thing by those who did not understand, but who accepted out of need.

  The need was there now.

  Remo was alive. The thread between Chiun's mind and his pupil's was almost a tangible thing, like the string of a harp that vibrates with the smallest breeze. Chiun had made Remo, taught him the arduous discipline of Sinanju, set him free. And with that freedom had come a link to all things seen and unseen, a million slender threads connecting Remo with the limitless universe, but most strongly to Chiun himself.

  And so the old man sat cross-legged in his corner of the room, and cleared his mind of all thought, and slowed the workings of his body to a state approaching death in its stillness, a place where there was neither sight nor sound, and vibrated the string.

  ?Chapter Thirteen

  In the cold stone-lined column where Remo had fallen, his heart pumped harder. The pupils of his eyes widened so that he could see every marking on the stones surrounding him, every filament of moss gathered in the damp darkness. The muscles of his back relaxed to readiness.

  He didn't bother to think about what his body was preparing for. His mind was his body. Deep within him, a thread was coiling, strengthening, preparing to spring. His thoughts voided; he felt as if a heavy veil had been flung over his conscious brain, subduing it, allowing his instincts to take over.

  The wall disappeared. The scent of moss, the cold, gone, all rationality, all reason, vanished, replaced by an urgency, a necessity to escape that was so strong that every fiber and nerve inside him, the very skin covering him, insensate as the shell of a sea animal now, directed him toward it.

  First, the body curled into a tight ball at the far end of the tower. The motion was smooth and seamless. The retracting of the legs, the slow bending of the neck, the arms crossing in front, the back bent, pliable, then opening, releasing, uncoiling the spring, gaining momentum, thrusting out until his speed was as fast as a bullet's and the force behind it, the power generated by the invisible coiled thread inside his soul, as great as a tank's. He exploded through the wall feet first and landed standing.

  For several seconds he remained still as his heart slowed down to normal and his senses returned. The wall of the stone column was collapsing, pouring gray dust out of the hole Remo had made while the great slabs of rock fell and broke. The noise came up on him slowly as his hearing returned, growing from a muffled rumble to a shattering din.

  His skin warmed; he looked around. He was in a short hallway. The lighting was very bright. The walls and ceilings and floor were covered with white soundproof tile, littered on the far side with small particles of rock. His expulsion from the chamber had propelled some pieces deep into the wall.

  A boulder jutted out of the hole. Others piled on top of one another, filling the gap. The noise muffled, and then ceased. There was no other sound.

  At the end of the hallway, on the left-hand side, was an open door. From it issued a scent Remo recognized: sickly sweet, mingled with chemicals. But there were other smells, too, behind the odor of fallen limestone that permeated the corridor. Somewhere there were also green plants, and another scent as well. Bitter. Rich. Commonplace. Mornings, long ago. The ballet. Smith falling. The warehouse.

  Coffee.

  He walked toward the room at the end of the hall. It was much larger than it would appear from the size of the corridor, and contained a greenhouse of sorts, bathed in eerie ultraviolet light. Coffee plants in pots lined several shelves which stood to the right. Another bank of shelves containing wildly colored flowering plants stood in rows on the left side. Remo sniffed them. Their odor was sweet and cloying.

  "Poppies," Arnold said, walking languidly toward him down the aisle between the two banks of shelves. He was wearing a white lab coat and rubber gloves. In the black light, his craterous face had lost all of its youth. He looked to Remo like a walking cadaver, wasted and rotting. When he smiled, his teeth shone like those in a bare skull.

  "I must say, you do surprise me," he said genially. "My reverse tower was patterned after the French 'oubliettes' of the twelfth century." He extended one hand down the aisle, inviting Remo to lead the way toward the back of the room.

  "You first," Remo said.

  "You have a suspicious nature."

  "Call me neurotic."

  Arnold walked leisurely, picking off an occasional brown leaf as he moved among the plants, and chatting easily. "The term—'oubiliette,' I mean— comes from the verb 'oublier,' to forget. Prisoners were dropped into these holes and then ignored for the rest of their lives, which usually wasn't long." He shook his head. "The ones in France have lasted for centuries. I'm afraid my oubliette just didn't pass muster."

  "I'll call the building inspector in the morning," Remo said. "What are the poppies for?"

  "Ah, yes. I forget that you are unfamiliar with our operation here. We have so few visitors, I'm afraid."

  "A waste of fine hospitality."

  Arnold laughed. "I know. We're really shockingly rude, my stepmother and I. I
do apologize."

  "I'll remember how sorry you are the next time you try to kill me. Now, about the poppies."

  Arnold led him into a partitioned area at the rear of the greenhouse. The ghostly ultraviolet light was replaced by large banks of bright fluorescents strung above a series of metal-topped laboratory tables. On the tables were a number of objects, including several plants, some bearing beans, others with bright flowers. They were all slightly different from one another. Arnold picked up one of the blossoms.

  "Papaver somniferum," he said. "The opium poppy." He set down the plant and picked up a tube of some sticky black-brown material. It was about the thickness of a stick of pepperoni. "Opium is made from the juice of the immature seed capsules belonging to this plant." When Arnold moved the tube, the sickly sweet odor became stronger.

  "Opium, in turn, is refined into morphine, a drug that for years was considered the strongest narcotic available to medicine." He picked up a plastic bag filled with white powder, set it down, and lifted another bag of even more brilliant white.

  "But then along came heroin, and even further refinement of the commonplace opium poppy plant. Those who enjoy its soothing effects—"

  "Yeah, yeah," Remo said.

  "Forgive me if I am oversimplifying, but you have come for information, haven't you?"

  "About the coffee. You can dump the lecture on junkies. Thanks to you, there are millions of them in the United States right now."

  "And elsewhere soon, I hope," Arnold said laconically. He looked up at Remo. "Surely you didn't think we were going to stop with the North American continent? That was just the test area. The idea is far too brilliant to contain in one country. No, it belongs to the ages, my coffee. Would you like to know how it's made?"

  Remo nodded.

  Smiling vaguely, Arnold pulled one of the coffee plants under the light on the lab table. Beside it he placed a large square cardboard box, which had rested on a low shelf. He opened the box. Inside was a single dazzling purple blossom. Its fragrance was overpowering, with ten times the intensity of the other flowers in the room.

  "Another strain of poppy," Remo said.

  "Quite. Papaver somniferum Esmeralda. I've named it for my stepmother. They tend to have the same effect on men."

  He lifted the plant from the box. Its gorgeous petals shrank from the light. "Night blooming. Very rare," Arnold whispered.

  "You've crossed coffee plants with these poppies," Remo said.

  "To put it gracelessly, yes. Naturally, the hybrid only works with a certain strain of Colombian coffee and this particular species of opium poppy, but the cross is possible. See for yourself." He took one of the beans from the coffee plant and crushed it with a mallet. The fragments emitted a bittersweet fragrance.

  Remo tasted one of the pieces. "But this is heroin, not opium."

  "It is opium," Arnold said. "But of such an intensity that further refinement is unnecessary. Do you now see why the use of this drug will not be limited to your country?"

  "It's your country, too," Remo said.

  Arnold laughed. "How very provincial of you." He placed the flowering plant back inside its box, then took off the rubber gloves and the lab coat he was wearing. "Would you care to see the plants where they grow? They're exceedingly beautiful."

  "Not really. I've seen enough."

  "I'm afraid I must insist we go upstairs, all the same." Arnold tapped the crystal on his watch. "You see, it's eight minutes to twelve. It will soon be Esmeralda's birthday. I wish to help her celebrate it."

  They walked through the greenhouse and down the corridor, picking their way over the fallen rock and detritus left by the collapse of Arnold's oubliette. At the far end, Arnold pressed a small button, and the tile wall slid away to reveal an open elevator.

  "Clever," Remo said. "This connects to the closet upstairs?"

  "Very good," Arnold answered with an approving nod. "My stepmother will be so glad to see you again. I'm pleased that you managed to be friends with her. She gets so lonely."

  "Wonderful friend," Remo observed. "I suppose she had something to do with my falling into that hole of yours."

  "What do you think?"

  "I think you're two peas in a pod. Nothing like murder to bring a family together."

  The elevator door opened immediately behind the hanging skeleton. "You really do overemphasize that aspect of things. Murder is not our objective in this enterprise. Profit is. If I may say so, I think you have a tendency toward the morbid." He pushed the skeleton aside. "Ah, there's my charming Mater now."

  They walked into the living room. Esmeralda was standing in a corner, looking like a trapped animal. Whether she was afraid of Arnold or of himself, Remo didn't know, but it was clear she was afraid.

  "Come here, Mater dearest," Arnold said. "Our visitor won't harm you. I was just going to show him the poppy fields."

  "You— you told him about the beans?" she asked.

  "Why, of course. You did, didn't you?"

  "Arnold—"

  "It's all right." His voice was soft. "Our secrets are safe with our friend, aren't they?"

  Esmeralda looked at him for a long moment, her eyes wide. Then she lowered them and nodded slowly.

  She was on the kid's side, all right, Remo thought. All the talk about being terrified of Arnold was just a sham. Good old Esmeralda, the best actress in Colombia.

  Arnold broke the silence. "If you'll just follow me, please."

  A flight of stairs led them to the roof. It was flat and bare except for the huge opaque dome that Remo had seen from the air.

  "What's that?" he asked.

  Arnold shook at finger at him. "Now, if I told you everything, we wouldn't have any conversation left for later."

  "Oh, yes, we would. We could discuss who your father is, for instance."

  Arnold chuckled and put his arm around Esmeralda, who was shivering. "My, my, we have been talkative, haven't we, Mater?"

  She didn't answer.

  "But to the business at hand," Arnold went on. He flipped a switch on the side of the outer wooden wall of the mansion, and a thousand powerful spotlights blinked on to reveal acres of shimmering, violet-colored flowers in the fields far below the house.

  "Magnificent, aren't they? The only ones in existence. Their seeds are filled with the purest natural variety of opium known to man. When these blossoms are crossed with Peruvinian coffee beans, the result is even purer than refined heroin." He inhaled deeply. "And you can drink it for breakfast, too."

  Remo waited. The young madman had already told him and shown him far too much to let him live.

  "Now that I've seen your flowers, I guess the two of you are going to push me off the roof."

  Arnold shook his head. "Certainly not. After all, if you escaped from my oubliette with nothing but the strength in your limbs, you would most decidedly win in any physical struggle with me or my stepmother." He consulted his watch again. "It's nearly midnight. Come back downstairs. We must usher in Esmeralda's birthday with a toast."

  With a backward glance at the strange opaque dome on the roof, Remo followed the two of them back into the living room. Arnold passed glasses of brandy around.

  "You, Mater, must sit in the place of honor while we toast you." He led her to a small settee facing the curved glass wall overlooking the cliff, and raised his glass.

  Esmeralda cast a glance at Remo. "I did not wish to kill you," she said.

  Remo shrugged. "Forget it. Happy birthday."

  "My sentiments exactly," Arnold said, moving behind her. He raised his glass. "A very happy birthday to you, Mater. A short life and a merry one."

  He leaned forward slightly. Remo heard a faint ping, a sickening, familiar sound.

  "Move!" he shouted. But it was too late. The drink flew out of Esmeralda's hand as the bottom cushion of the settee sprang out, thrusting her like a rocket toward the sheet glass wall. Her head broke through the glass, and her body followed, flying, out into the empty air. She screame
d, a long wail that cascaded downward and died long before the faint thud of her body striking the ground sounded.

  Arnold finished his drink calmly. "She never was a part of the plan, not really," he said, his eyes glistening with pleasure as he spoke to Remo. "She was far too stupid. But rich. Her family's fortune has helped both my father and me enormously. Cheerio, Esmeralda." He tossed his glass out the broken window after her, then ran across the room past the archway leading to the closet.

  "Oh, no you don't," Remo said, lunging after him.

  He heard the click. He knew that something else was coming, a knife, a bullet, maybe, but he had expected it in the corridor ahead, in one of Arnold's peculiar passageways. When the midst shot out of the archway itself, covering Remo with fine droplets, he was more annoyed at himself for not seeing it coming than bothered by any discomfort it caused.

  It was, after all, only a fine liquid spray that lightly touched his skin and clothing. It had no odor. It was not a drug of any sort Remo could identify. Yet Arnold stood only a few feet away from him, backing away slowly, and Remo couldn't catch him. With each millisecond he felt himself hardening into stone, unable to move even a muscle of his face.

  "A plastic polymer," Arnold explained helpfully. He strolled past Remo, poking him gently on his arm. "Very effective, I'd say. I never tried it before on a human, but it seems to have done the job nicely. You're as immobile as Lot's wife. Excuse me."

  He picked up the decanter of brandy, poured himself another glass, and brushed past Remo again into the corridor, where he stood beside the telephone with its red button. He scrutinized the human statue standing beside him.

  "You'll suffocate, you know. But for all that, you'll have to die twice." He sipped at his drink. "Frankly, I'm surprised you're still alive. But then you may not be. The polymer seals the eyes open. The hamsters and monkeys I've experimented with remained quite lifelike long after death. A real boon for taxidermy."