Time Trial td-53 Page 11

  These people think the Olmec are the most evil thing they've got to worry about, but they're wrong. Disease is worse. So is ignorance. And poverty. And despair. My men and I have changed that for them, maybe forever. We've shot all to hell the cardinal rule about not changing the course of history, but one look at how these folks live now tells me it was all worth it.

  Besides, maybe the king is right about this being our destiny. Who knows? Maybe one day the Mayans will be famous for being an advanced civilization. Maybe this is the course of history, and we would have changed it by not coming. Very weird.

  This has been the greatest adventure any man could want. My crew knows that, and so do I.

  I wouldn't have missed this for anything in the world.

  The rest of the pages were blank.

  "I wonder what happened to him," Remo mused.

  "Simple. Metters got the module to work, and they all went home," Lizzie said confidently.

  "Yeah," Remo said, trying to sound convincing. He knew that an experienced commanding officer who'd spent fifteen months trying to escape wouldn't leave without his weapons and his log. Cooligan had grown to love the people he'd lived among. He wouldn't have gone back to his time without saying good-bye. The colonel who had become a god had died, probably somewhere nearby.

  From down the palace's long hallway came the terrified scream of a girl.

  "Nata-Ah," Po said, jumping to his feet.

  They found the girl running toward them in the hall. "My grandfather," she screamed, a topaz amulet dangling from her hand. "He is dead. The priest has murdered him." She ran past them to the palace's main entrance, shouting to the villagers to stop the evil priest.

  But there was no priest. On the outskirts of the city, close to the fortified wall, walked a solitary figure dressed in rags and carrying a large sack over his back. No one paid attention to the beggar, or bothered to look inside the sack, where six laser weapons of green metal, the magic spears of fire of the gods themselves, rested.

  "He's got to be here," the girl shouted. "Find him! Find the man who killed your king!"

  The palace guards rushed into the square. Then, seemingly from out of nowhere, a horde of men, inconspicuous except for the black ash dot each wore on his forehead, rushed out of a thousand hiding places.

  The guards fell first, their necks and chests spurting blood from the black knives that gleamed dully all around them. Then the screams of the villagers began as the Olmec blades sliced indiscriminately through the flesh of women and old men and those who had no defense.

  Nata-Ah, her face a mask of unbelieving terror, rushed up to one of the killers as Po, limping, cursing himself for his slowness, came up shouting behind her. The killer swung wide, just missing the girl's throat. He forgot her immediately, lashing out with his long knife at others. Still fighting, he saw the limping boy out of the corner of his eye and kicked.

  The blow struck Po square in the knees. His legs buckled with the pain, his vision dimming. As he struggled to retain consciousness, he saw a blur of blue, a garment on an old man who moved as swiftly as a wild bird, fly past him and imbedded two delicate fingers into the spine of the killer, stopping him forever.

  "Take the right half of the square," Chiun commanded.

  Remo obeyed, seeking out the black ash dots on the foreheads of the screaming, bleeding people in the square.

  A knife flashed near him for a moment, and in another moment the knife was gone, along with the hand that held it.

  A few yards away, a blade tore through the belly of a man fighting with a stick. The man screamed, watching his bowels spill onto the dirt in a gush of blood. Before the knife was withdrawn, Remo swatted the attacker's head with a flick of his hand, hearing the neck snap under his fingers. Another ash dot rushed at him. He clasped it in the center of his palm, crushing the skull behind it with one movement.

  He let his body move automatically, instinctively. The days of frustration and inactivity were like an anger boiling inside him, and now he could permit it to come out. Too late to save the man with the stick, whose bloody entrails lay beside his corpse. But with speed, with thought, he and Chiun could fight for the others.

  Lizzie, sobbing, dragged the two stunned children back into the entranceway. "Don't ever do that again," she shrieked into their faces. "You could have been killed, both of you...."

  Her tears dried instantly as she saw two Olmec, crouching and guarding their path with vicious slashes of their weapons, heading slowly toward the temple where the Cassandra lay.

  "Oh, no. Not the pod," she whispered, feeling her throat constrict. She stood, horrified, releasing the hands of the children. "Remo!" she screamed. "They're going to destroy the plane!" But Remo was moving too fast to be seen.

  "Wait here," she told Po. She ran as fast as she could toward the two Olmec warriors. "Stop it. Stop," she called, clawing at their sweating chests with her fingernails.

  One of them clasped both her hands swiftly behind her back, his eyes flashing. The other smiled, with his mouth only, and nodded.

  * * *

  A full set of ribs cracked and imploded beneath the force of Remo's elbow. With a rattle of air, the warrior fell. Remo looked around. To his left, Chiun stood among the dead, his stance calm and ready. Around Remo lay the corpses, most of them with black dots on their foreheads. The remaining Olmec were in retreat, already disappearing into the thick jungle brush beyond the city walls.

  In the palace entrance, Po held the weeping Nata-Ah in his thin arms.

  "You two all right?" Remo asked.

  Po nodded. "But Dr. Lizzie..."

  Remo sighed. "What'd she do now?"

  "They took her," the boy said. "She tried to guard the temple, but she was not strong enough to fight against the soldiers. They took her away with them."

  Remo looked to the vast darkness of the jungle, feeling guilty about a certain relief he was experiencing. Lizzie had been nothing but trouble for them all since the beginning. Perhaps, now that she was gone, it would be possible to forget about her....

  "Leave her." It was Chiun. He seemed to read Remo's secret thoughts. "The woman is an unbearable harpy with no manners and no gratitude. You will risk your life for nothing."

  Remo thought for a moment. "Yeah, you're right," he agreed, walking away from the palace.

  "Where are you going?"

  "To get her," Remo said resignedly.

  "Why?" Chiun's voice was stern. "You are needed here. Who cares about her?"

  Remo turned around. "Nobody," he said. "That's why I'm going."

  ?Chapter Thirteen

  The trail leading from the city was easy to follow. The rush of departing Olmec had worn the jungle undergrowth to a well-traveled footpath. It wound past Bocatan to a marsh, where the muddy, ankle-deep water still churned with the recent agitation of dozens of feet.

  Remo followed the marsh, swarming with mosquitoes and jungle rats, surrounded by giant ferns grown to the proportions of trees, until the water cleared. Where had they gone?

  The sky was fading to early twilight, that time of day when nothing is seen perfectly, when the sky is half light and half shadow, blue alternating with gray, the color of thunderclouds. He narrowed his vision to take in distance. Past the marsh was a row passing through a flat field, grassy as the savannahs of western Africa, where no trees grew. The row looked like flattened grass created by footsteps. But it was too narrow for all the Olmec who had left the square at Yaxbenhaltun. Had they walked in single file? Why?

  There was no time to think it over. He stepped out of the marsh to follow the path made through the recently trampled grass.

  Two sets of footprints. He was sure of it. Fading light or not, no more than two people had made the path Remo was following. It didn't make sense, but he tracked it doggedly, the bottoms of his trousers growing wet from contact with the high, damp grass. The field stretched for miles, widening after the marsh so that it seemed to go on forever in all directions, green, green grass d
otted occasionally by white flowers. As he went on, the flowers grew more numerous, bringing with them the sweet, drugged air Remo remembered. By the time he had followed the footprints for a mile, the flowers blanketed the ground.

  Remo's eyelids drooped. He would have to slow his breathing to keep from falling asleep again. Slowly he pumped the air out from his lungs and breathed shallowly, ever more slowly, feeling his heartbeat drop from fifty beats a minute to forty to thirty to ten. His mind cleared somewhat. Still, the delicious fragrance of the field, looking as if it were covered with snow, seeped into his lungs and his mind and teased him with sensual promise.

  The Forbidden Fields... Kukulcan's last mission, Remo remembered. Something about building a road. Going to the sea, and going blind. Cooligan of the Forbidden Fields. The flowers killed him, can't you see?

  Remo gasped. The swift intake of air sent his senses reeling. He calmed himself, making the white-covered fields stop whirling around him. But when he did, the sight in front of him was still there. Not more than twenty feet away, the trail ended. It ended with the prostrate bodies of two men whose uniforms identified them as members of the palace guard.

  He turned them over. Their faces were blue, their bodies already beginning to stiffen and cool. A trap. The two men must have been taken prisoner and set off to walk through the Forbidden Fields until they dropped, while the Olmec took Lizzie on some other route.

  He looked around. The fields stretched to every horizon, broken only by the rounded tops of huge rocks. He stilled himself, forcing his breathing to come even more slowly, consciously enlarging his senses to take it every sight, every sound.

  There was water. Somewhere. The river, Remo said to himself. If he could find water— a stream, a trickle— he could follow it to the river and get his bearings from there.

  The sweet fragrance lingered. The air was thick with it; there was no way to blot out the cloying, sleep-filled scent of the white flowers that beckoned him to rest among their soft petals.

  Water. Follow the sound of the water.

  He dragged on. Night seemed to fall palpably as he walked, then crawled, following a sound he was no longer sure he heard. The wind in the flowers, sending up its thick, forgetful smoke, drowned out every other sensation with its haunting music.

  Remember the water.

  And there was water. A swirling river of it, crashing and dancing between a thousand white stones. He shook his head to see if the water were no more than a clouded vision. But it remained, he could smell it, he could feel its cool mist enveloping him. He stood upright, blinking against the lightheadedness that willed him back to the ground. He walked downstream, plodding like a man dying of thirst in the desert, until he stood beside the crest of a small, low fall where the water rushed white and bubbling. And on the crest was a woman, shrouded in mist, naked except for the thick ring of white flowers around her neck, her hair golden. She turned slowly toward him, holding out her arms.

  It was Elizabeth Drake.

  As if he were in a dream, Remo went to her, stepping through the shallow water at the top of the fall. She smiled. There was no hardness about her now, no cranky modernity. She was Woman, eternal and ageless, soft in her mystery, calling him silently to her.

  Without thought, he embraced her. In that moment, their lips touching, his body aching for her, he took in the scent of the flowers, luxurious, devastating, smelling of sin and ecstasy, and gave in to it.

  The sky darkened. The earth fell away. He was complete.

  * * *

  He awoke next to her. His clothes were still wet from the mist of the waterfall, and they clung coldly to his skin. Beside him, on the stone floor where they lay, he could feel Lizzie shivering in her sleep.

  His head was pounding. He tried to sit up, but the movement was too difficult for him. Part of him, a great part, wanted just to go back to sleep, despite the cold and the wet and the uncertainty. But the other part of him, that part which was Remo, had to stay awake. He had to force himself out of the feeling of drunkenness and uncaring that seemed to hang over him like a sheet.

  He willed his eyes wide open. The first items they focused on were the barrels of the six laser weapons, surrounding the two prisoners in a circle. Their guards, six tall, rangy men with tattoos on their bellies and black ash dots decorating their foreheads, kept at a distance from them both.

  No sweat, Remo thought thickly. One turn, a spiral air attack, and...

  He couldn't move. Thick ropes cut into his wrists and ankles. Ropes? How had he permitted himself to be tied like a pig going to slaughter?

  And then he smelled them. Fresh, enchanting, the scent of the white flowers assaulted his newly awakened senses from the heavy garland he wore around his neck. Lizzie wore one, too, and their perfume weakened and sickened him.

  They were in a cave. Behind the fragrance of the flowers, Remo could pick out the dank odor of damp earth. The walls, painted with pictures of grotesquely endowed human figures engaged in sexual activity, were lit by oily torches that sent up strings of black smoke.

  The guards seemed to be part of the tableau. Motionless, their fingers poised on the triggers of the lasers, they watched the prisoners. The flesh on their faces sagged with the effort of fighting off sleep.

  They're getting drugged too, Remo thought. The white flowers around their necks were affecting the guards. It would be so easy. So easy... But Remo did not struggle against the ropes. There was still time for fighting, and he had no advantage now. He would wait.

  He looked over at Lizzie. She lay beside him, naked, unconscious, her clothes in a bundle at one of the guards' feet.

  She was neither harpy nor goddess now, just another poor sucker who had been pushed senselessly into a nightmare that might end her life. As Colonel Cooligan had so eloquently written, fate had given them all the finger.

  Lizzie was a strange woman. She was as selfish and abrasive as they came, a bra burner of the first water. Yet she had cried over Cooligan's diary. And when the thick of the battle with the Olmec was around her, she had tried to save the time module.

  And succeeded. The Olmec had taken prisoners, but they hadn't destroyed the Cassandra. Good for you, Lizzie.

  He closed his eyes. Sleep would feel good. A long, pleasant sleep to let go in, a sleep of endless dreams...

  The harsh voice of a man sounded above him, jarring and loud. It struck his senses awake like a physical blow. By his head, the priest Quintanodan stood, leering.

  The priest had changed much. The sharp aristocratic features of his face were painted with rough strokes of white and black, to match the ash dot on his forehead. His hair was matted and awry, falling in ropy strands on his bare, oiled shoulders. He was naked except for a strip of jaguar skin around his loins, and two ringlets of brown feathers on his ankles.

  Overhead Remo could feel the vibrations of a hundred feet. The Olmec, he figured, preparing to attack Yaxbenhaltun in force. They had the lasers now. It would not take long to destroy the city.

  A chuckle began deep in Quintanodan's throat and grew until it resonated through the dank cave. Then, spitting out a command to the guards, he was gone.

  Snapping to attention, the guards kicked Remo and Lizzie to their feet. Lizzie stumbled, moaning.

  "It's so cold," she said.

  "They're moving us."

  "For what, a firing squad?" she said, her unclothed body beautiful in the torchlight.

  It wasn't the end, Remo knew. If worse came to worst, he would attack the guards and then fight his way through the other soldiers. But the powerful scent of the white flowers around his neck had weakened him— not enough to stop him, but perhaps enough to throw off his timing to the point where a stray beam from one of the lasers could get to Lizzie and fry her. He would have to get himself free of the flowers before he could work effectively.

  But Lizzie didn't know that. To her, the guards were taking them on their last journey. And she was still holding up, bad jokes and all. She was tough, Remo
had to give her that.

  One of the guards picked up Lizzie's clothes and thrust them roughly at her. She clung to them with her bound hands. "What's that noise up there?" she asked.

  "Soldiers, I think. Now that the Olmec have the lasers, they're probably going to attack everything in sight."

  "Oh, wonderful," Lizzie said. "There goes history. The twentieth century will never have heard of the great Mayan civilization."

  "Maybe it'll be the great Olmec civilization."

  Lizzie sniffed. "These animals? They couldn't care less about astronomy or mathematics or engineering. This land will be like the aftermath of the Roman Empire— how it became after it was conquered by savage hill tribes. All of the learning, all of the Maya's work will be lost. Everything Cooligan did will be gone forever."

  The guards stopped them in front of a rounded entranceway and shoved them inside, sealing the way behind them with a rock.

  "Even cavemen had prisons, I guess," Remo said. Inside the entranceway stood a huge stone demon with eyes of jade.

  "Puch," Lizzie said. "God of the dead. How appropriate."

  "Don't knock it," Remo said, bending low at the waist. "Getting locked up here is the luckiest thing that's happened to us yet."

  "What are you talking about?"

  The garland of flowers fell from around his neck to the floor. Raising his bound hands, he snatched Lizzie's necklace and tore it off as well, kicking both strings of the white flowers into a corner. "I was hoping they'd leave us alone," Remo said. "Give me a couple of minutes."

  He retreated into the shadows of the stone vault. Away from the weakening fragrance of the flowers, he could at last breathe deeply. The musty air of the vault filled him with new strength, charging his muscles like electricity.

  A small line of light lay on the floor. He looked up. Moonlight. It was coming from a crack in the overhead rock. Good, Remo thought. I can use that.

  A few feet away lay, inexplicably, a bed of coal smoothed into a square. "Whatever that is, I can use it, too," he muttered.

  The ropes strained against his wrists. Breathing rhythmically, concentrating, Remo clenched his hands into fists, rotating them slowly. As he did, the fibers of the ropes snapped, one by one, unraveling in front of his eyes.