Time Trial td-53 Page 4

  The trail was easy to find. The dense underbrush of the jungle lay flattened where three pairs of feet had crushed it, less than a hundred yards from where he and Chiun had lain asleep during the night. Two sets were normal, each foot touching the ground with approximately the same weight as the other. The third set was lighted and uneven, as if one foot had dragged while the other stepped. A wounded man, perhaps. A small man.

  He shivered. He had not heard a sound during the night, had never wakened once. His body was alert to danger, and there was no chance that his reflexes wouldn't have served him in a life-threatening situation. There were just some things you had to trust; Remo's was his body. But the fact that he'd been able to sleep through the noisy passage of three people easily within normal human earshot made him uneasy. He would take back some of the flowers to Smith for analysis. Whatever was in those fat, fragrant petals was strong stuff. If it could knock him and Chiun out, it could drug an army.

  The forest thinned as they neared the river. Heat from the dappled sunlight through the leaves overhead burned into his shoulders. By dawn, it was already eighty degrees.

  He paused. Sound. Not three men. No footfalls. The only movement besides the motion of the river and the rustling of birds and small creatures was coming from straight ahead, in the clearing by the banks of the river.

  One man, he was sure of it. Alone.

  He stepped past Chiun and parted the leaves of a eucalyptus. He waited there for a moment, seeing the elements of the picture in front of him, but not understanding. And then he understood, and wished he didn't.

  On the far bank of the river, beneath the overhanging branch of a tree, swung the body of Sebastian Birdsong. A handmade hemp rope was twisted around his neck. Birdsong's eyes were bulging with black swarms of flies. His bare feet just touched the surface of the river, parting it into two rippling V's. On the rocks and mud of the riverbank were scattered the white flowers Birdsong had picked.

  Standing next to the body, propped on three flat stones piled to make a step, was a boy. He was young, no more than twelve years old, with the black, coarse hair and brown skin of the Guatemalan. He wore only a small cloth between his legs. On his left knee was a gray rag bandage. Birdsong's kid, Remo thought. His one convert.

  The boy held a thick knife in his hands. With one hand he steadied the rope supporting Birdsong's body, while he sawed at it with the other. He stopped when Remo and Chiun walked out onto the riverbank. For a moment, his knife hand came in close to his chest, waiting for the two strangers to attack. But they waited, watching, not moving.

  After a few moments, his eyes never leaving the silent figures of Remo and Chiun, the boy raised his hands to the rope again.

  ?Chapter Four

  They didn't venture near the boy. Instead, Remo dug a deep grave in the soft earth beside the river bank, opposite where the boy stood cutting down the old man's body. When the boy finished and Birdsong's remains lay in the shallows of the water, he looked for a moment to the two strange men on the far side of the river. One was white, like Father Sebastian. He was younger than the white priest, taller, thinner, yet he carried a weight in him that the white Father had not possessed. Something deep within his eyes, a strength.

  The old man had the strength, too, even though he looked to be very old, older than the boy had ever imagined a man could become. In the hills where he had lived with his parents, no one grew to be old. The fever took them, or the spirits of the evil ones. Or the Lost Tribes. They had taken many.

  Before his father died, he had spoken to the boy in the Old Tongue now used only by the hill people who lived apart from the villagers. His family spoke Mayan, too, but for special occasions, for weighty matters, the Old Tongue was used. It was the language of the ancients, of the great ones, the speech of those who had seen the coming of the white god Kukulcan in his flaming chariot. The Old Tongue had been spoken since the beginning of time, and it carried magic.

  The people who lived in villages no longer understood magic. They held their ceremonies to Chac, the rain god, and consulted the village h'men, the priest with the power, when there was sickness in their families, but there was no more magic. The ancient temples had been left to fall into ruin, overrun by white men with their gadgets and papers, and they had forgotten the language of magic, the Old Tongue with which their ancestors had talked with gods.

  But the hill people had not forgotten. And when the boy's father had called him beside the reed mat where he lay dying, his eyes glistening with the killing fever, he had used the ancient language to bless the boy.

  "Be strong, for you alone will walk with the gods," he had said.

  The boy had wondered then if that meant that he would die next. He did not fear death. He had watched two sisters and an infant brother die, and it had not seemed a terrible thing. There were many deaths in the village, too, and when he had taken the vegetables his father grew and the woven mats his mother made to the village to exchange for a chicken or a ceramic bowl, he had seen the death ceremonies where women wept and the h'men chanted, and could not understand why something so commonplace as death should be treated with such grief.

  His father had died after he spoke with his son, and then the boy and his mother carried the body from the house to bury it while the younger children looked on. And while he buried his father, the boy guessed that he would die soon, too.

  He was not strong. Though he was the oldest child, he was only barely taller than his brother who was three years younger. And then there was his leg. It was malformed at birth, and his father had broken the bone at the knee to straighten the leg. Perhaps the remedy had worked. He could walk, at least, although the pain in his knee was often so great that he lost consciousness. His mother had kept the knee wrapped with poultices made of the white flowers that grew in the terrible parts of the jungle, and that helped. But the pain was always there.

  No, death would not be so bad.

  But it was not he who died. After the rainy season passed, while he tried to cultivate the land washed down to clay by the heavy rains, the Lost Tribes had come with their spears and knives and their own magic, the spears of light that their people, according to legend, had stolen from the gods themselves at the beginning of time.

  He had spotted them, running out of the jungle brush like savage cats, lithe, menacing. He moved as fast as he could to warn his mother and his brothers and sisters.

  What would that have done, he wondered later. Where could they have gone? The Lost Tribes were swift, and they wished only to kill. There was no place to hide from them. But he tried to reach his kin.

  If he had reached them, they would have died together. But his bad leg moved slowly, and the warriors of the Lost Tribes were on him before he could even shout to the house. One of them slashed the boy's arm with a knife. The boy rolled down the rocky hill, sliding, skidding. He landed on a heavy rock, square on his knee. The pain had surged through him like a flood, sending bile shooting up into his mouth and the ringing, throbbing red pain into his head. And then the blackness had come.

  When he awakened, they were all dead. His mother, three sisters, four small boys. The village had been attacked, too, the first of the attacks on the village.

  Father Sebastian had found him several days later, grubbing at roots and eating leaves. His arm had grown swollen and painful, and his knee hurt so much that the boy had chipped one of his teeth as he tightened his mouth to bear the pain.

  Father Sebastian was not a strong man, but he had kindness. He had saved his life. He had fed him and kept him with him.

  And now he was dead, too, the boy thought, numbly. He could not live in the jungle alone, not with a leg that was like a beast gnawing at him. Certainly none of the villagers would take him in. A lame boy, one more mouth to feed. All that was left for him was a swift death by the Lost Tribes, if he was lucky. If he was not, then it would be a slow death, starvation, fever, mauling by baboons. Or death by the two stange men on the opposite side of the riverb
ank, the young white man and the old creature who was not like any man he had ever seen. He looked like a prophet.

  Or a god.

  They did not beckon to him, did not speak. The hole the white man had dug must be a grave. It was the right size and shape. What else could it be?

  But why would they help bury Father Sebastian?

  As the boy watched the still, silent men, still with a quiet that was almost not human, so precisely unmoving that the very air seemed to swirl and thunder around them, one word came to him, a name from the sacred sounds of the Old Tongue: Kukulcan.

  Kukulcan, the white god. Kukulcan, magic one, he of the flaming chariot come to lead his ancestors to greatness. As old as the wind by now. As old as the strange old man across the river.

  "Kukulcan," he said softly, then dragged the body of Father Sebastian through the shallows toward the grave.

  * * *

  "What'd he say?" Remo asked.

  Chiun wasn't listening. His eyes were on the boy as he dragged his heavy burden toward them.

  It was Chiun who had insisted that they let the boy come to them. To approach him would have only frightened him away, and there was danger in the jungle for a child alone, even an Indian child who knew his way.

  And there was something else, something special about this boy. It showed around his eyes and mouth. Serenity, for one so young. Strength, perhaps. Possibility. Not possibility in Remo's way; the boy was lame. He could never learn the ways of Sinanju. But his eyes had met Chiun's, and in them the old man had seen something rare and ancient.

  "Let me help him," Remo said.

  "There is no need."

  The boy dragged the body to the gravesite, his head down. He raised it only once, to look at Chiun. The old Oriental nodded, then took Birdsong's body from the boy and lifted it over the open grave.

  Birdsong was nearly twice Chiun's size, yet the old Oriental handled him as if he were made of cotton, holding him aloft, closing his eyes and mouth and arranging his clothing with hands so swift, they seemed to move in a blur. When he laid the body in the grave, it appeared to float into the waiting earth. Remo covered it.

  The boy said nothing.

  "Okay, kid, it's been a rough day for you," Remo said, slapping the last particles of dirt from his hands. "Let's get you home."

  "Imbecile," Chiun said. "He lived with the dead person. The person's mission burned down. He said so himself."

  "The village, then. We've got to get him to the village. Wherever that is." He turned back to the boy. "Village," he enunciated carefully. "Town. People. Coca Cola." He pointed in several different directions, querying with his eyes. "Village that way? There?"

  The boy was silent.

  "Oh, hell," Remo said. "We'll have to take him back to Progresso. We'll miss at least three days getting to the temple. Well, come on, then." He reached absently for the boy's arm.

  The boy skittered away. Standing a few feet away, he stared at Remo. There was no way to tell what the child was thinking. His dark eyes conveyed nothing. Not fear, not hope, not sadness. Nothing. It was as if he were waiting for something. But what?

  "That's one funny kid," Remo said. "What does he want?"

  "He will let us know," Chiun said.

  "Well, I'm not in the mood for playing games." Remo walked toward the boy. "Now listen. We've got to find a way to get you to somebody who'll take care of you, understand? You can't stay here by yourself. And you sure can't come with us. The Temple of Magic is off limits to you."

  The boy ran away, limping, his leg dragging behind him as he disappeared into the soggy marsh of the riverbank.

  Chiun placed a restraining hand on Remo's arm. "Let him go," he said.

  "Are you crazy? We can't leave a crippled kid alone out here. You saw what whoever-it-was did to Birdsong."

  Chiun turned away and began to walk delicately through the brush.

  "Didn't you hear me, Little Father? We can't leave him alone."

  "He is not alone," Chiun said.

  Remo ran to catch up with him. "You're talking in riddles again. He looked alone to me. Who's with him?"

  "We are." He nodded toward the left. Two dark eyes peered out of the foliage. A small hand beckoned them forward. When they arrived at the spot where the boy had stood, he was gone, staring at them from a place beyond.

  "He is leading us to the temple."

  "We can find our own way," Remo said. "This is no place for a kid."

  Chiun sighed. "You forget, my son. He has lived here all his life."

  "We can't be responsible for him."

  "And so, then, to whom are we responsible?" Chiun's withered old face was suddenly, passionately full of emotion. "I carry the responsibility of a whole village upon my shoulders each day. For whom do you toil, my son? For yourself, who has no family, no home? For me, who already possesses the skills of a thousand men? For your Emperor Smith, perhaps, who loves a country, but cannot see the faces of the people who make up that country?"

  A heavy feeling settled into Remo's chest. He did not like to be reminded that he was an outcast. An orphan, raised by nuns. A soldier, returning from a hideous war to no one. A policeman, framed and scapegoated by his peers. And now an assassin with no official identity, no friends, no family. He had been born, it seemed, to dance on the fringes of humanity, never touching the real people of the real world.

  "Don't get philosophical on me," he said thickly.

  The boy beckoned. They followed.

  "He needs a doctor or something," Remo said. "He can hardly walk."

  "And yet he struggles to keep ahead of us," Chiun said.

  It was true. Through the orchestra of sound that pervaded the jungle at full daylight, Remo could make out the boy's raspy breathing. He was gasping as his footfalls fell harder and more unevenly with each step.

  "True strength is not in the muscles of the body," Chiun said. "It is something in the mind, a power that makes the muscles work beyond endurance. That is the difference between man and beast. It is what separates the teachings of Sinanju from the trickery of the lesser martial arts. The boy has strength. The Master respects that."

  "Even if he dies?" Remo said with more than a touch of sarcasm.

  "Death comes to us all at the appointed time," Chiun said simply. "The boy knows that. Why don't you?"

  "For Pete's sake, he's a child. A baby."

  "And he is showing us the way," Chiun said, following the trembling, beckoning hands of the boy.

  They walked for several hours, the boy darting ahead, silent, waiting. The jungle changed color from green to indigo again, the sunlight blocked out by the thickening foliage.

  "One thing I'd like to know," Remo said. "Why are you making such a big deal about this kid? You act like you know him."

  "Perhaps I do," Chiun said cryptically. "There is something in his eyes. Maybe what I see there is all the children of Sinanju who were sent back to the sea."

  Remo took a deep breath. "If there's one thing I can't stand, it's Oriental sentimentality," he said.

  There was a crackle in the forest, nearby. Feet, many feet moving swiftly, intakes and outrushes of breath. The boy's ragged gasp. Chiun leaping ahead like a bird, grasping the boy in one swift motion, hurling the child behind him to safety. Remo's reflexes, like lightning, shooting through his body, melting it to liquid, moving it smoothly, automatically.

  Seconds expanding into hours. Time, time enough for everything as Remo's body readied, his senses taking in everything, his mind sorting, storing, reacting. The men— six of them— their naked bodies brown and tough as leather, their faces stained with color to make them look ferocious. At the center of each brown forehead was a black ash dot, the tribal marking.

  The Lost Tribes. They fought, not like modern men with soft hands and clumsy legs, but like jungle fighters. Smooth, interchangeable cogs, surrounding the two of them, a circle of black dots, like third eyes peering from the dense greenery. Their weapons were primitive but wielded with prec
ision. The first spear was aimed at Chiun. He caught it in midair and turned it, in the same movement, on the attackers. One fell, screaming. The others did not even seem to notice. The knives came. Slingshots filled with sharp stones.

  They kept away. No hand-to-hand. No way to use Sinanju until they were close enough. But they would be close enough. A frontal rolling attack, two of them at once, and...

  Remo stopped cold. Two men stepped out in a blaze of the whitest light Remo had ever seen. Behind Chiun, giant trees crashed to earth like broken toothpicks. Yards of moss and dense, low plants turned into smoldering black goo.

  In the warriors' hands were weapons. They vaguely resembled the M-16s used during the Vietnam war, but they were sleeker, cleaner looking. The metal they were made of was green and sparkling with newness. The men handled them as if they were made of balsa wood, tossing them onto their shoulders with delicate deftness. When they fired, there was no explosion, no crack as bullets shot out from the barrel. Except for a whining ping like the sounds on a television video game, the weapons worked in silence, sending out beams of blinding light.

  "Lasers," Remo whispered, marveling at the destruction wrought by the two weapons.

  "Move," Chiun commanded. "Match me."

  Automatically Remo obeyed, his body moving opposite Chiun's, circling, crouching, leaving the ground in what would have been a flying tackle if there had been less flying.

  They moved so fast that the men with the weapons hadn't even turned their heads to follow them when the assault came, crumpling the two warriors into one another, kicking out at the others who rushed to their flanks, circling, moving, always moving, a cracked spine, a crushed skull, two fingers in the windpipe, a kick that turned one warrior's intestines to jelly.

  A weapon was pointed directly at Remo. One stroke, and it lay on the ground in shards. Metal was easy enough to break, but this metal had shattered as if it had been made of glass. Remo finished the man off with a snap of the neck, and then everything was still.

  "These things fell apart like Tinker Toys," Remo said, picking up the shattered fragments of the weapon. Only one remained whole. Remo fired experimentally into the air. With a ping, a shaft of light blazed in a visible line from the barrel to the sky. Everything in its path— leaves, branches, even a low cloud— disintegrated. The cloud rumbled once, distant thunder, and then dissipated into thin air. "Well, it works," Remo said.