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  CHAPTER SIX

  PIE WIDE. SHE DOES it like she loves it. Pie wide, sucking on a cloudstick.

  Boom!

  The Dead Meat Lice rule over all. What a walkaway. First the tower and then that far-out, far-off explosion. Dead Meat Lice rule over all.

  Some explosions rip bodies by actually mashing them against air resistance. But if the body can move through the air resistance, then it becomes a missile in no more danger of destruction than a bullet —if it doesn’t hit something.

  When the car exploded, Remo was careful not to hit anything. He missed a stand of birch and kept fingernail, toenail tipping, like a spinner, a rudder, knowing that if something even as wide as a palm should touch surface, he would be grated against Route 8 like Parmesan cheese. It didn’t and he wasn’t.

  But it was during that incredibly rapid spin that Remo for a few brief moments understood what sucking on a cloudstick meant. He forgot it, however, when the blood returned to his head.

  The next morning, two messages reached the office of Dr. Harold W. Smith. One, from Remo, was that Vickie Stoner had been tagged and was waiting delivery to the Senate hearings. The other came from a clerk in Lucerne, Switzerland, who earned extra income by providing information.

  He reported that a special bank account of a million dollars had been increased to $1.5 million. There were calls from all over the world about the account and there was a great mystery about it, but his educated guess was that the money was on deposit as payment for someone who could perform a specific task. Yes, he had heard of the last call. It had come from Africa, from a man named Lhasa Nilsson. He hoped the information might be of some value.

  Nilsson. Nilsson. Smith had heard that name but where? He ran it through the giant computer complex at Folcroft, where hundreds of people fed it small packages of information, not really knowing what they were for, and only one outlet issued information, and that only to Smith.

  Nothing. The computer was empty about Lhasa Nilsson. But Smith was still sure he recognized that name. There were two names in his memory. Lhasa Nilsson and Gunner Nilsson. He definitely had them associated with danger. But why? Why would he know it when the computer didn’t? Smith watched a ketch tack across Long Island sound and casually watching the sails, this old form of sea transport, he suddenly remembered where he had heard about Nilsson.

  He rang his secretary on the intercom.

  Miss Stephanie Hazlitt knew Dr. Smith was somewhat peculiar, but all scientists had their foibles and what could one expect in a social research institute. But still, this was a little bit much. To be told mid-morning that Dr. Smith wanted an out-of-print adventure magazine which might be at an occult bookstore in Manhattan. He wanted it that day and if she felt she couldn’t find it by phone, she should enlist the aid of the secretary of urban environment. Well, that was a bit much even for Dr. Smith. Too much.

  Especially when she located by telephone a shop that had it and Dr. Smith told her to take a taxi both ways.

  “To New York City and back, Dr. Smith?”

  “Yes.”

  “That will cost sixty or seventy or maybe eighty dollars.”

  “Probably,” Dr. Smith had said. When she got to the shop they wanted one hundred dollars for the magazine which had originally been priced at two cents. Of course, it was two cents in 1932 and there should be some markup, but five thousand times…well, that was too much. And the ride back to Folcroft was too much. And being stuck on the West Side Highway in traffic was too much, so to take her mind off it all, she read the magazine that was costing Folcroft almost two hundred dollars, not counting her day’s salary. It was awful. Disgusting. Horrid.

  The first article was about garrottes. It told how the most effective kind were made of materials that gave and that contrary to popular opinion, it was not Indian Thuggees who were best at it, but Romanians.

  There was another article on Houdini which said his tricks were not really new but an adaptation of Japanese Ninja, copied from the most awesome assassins in ancient history, the Masters of Sinanju.

  Well, who cared about that?

  And then there was an article about a Swedish family. Perhaps that might prove more interesting, but in the entire article there was nothing about sex or even cooking.

  There were only Count and Colonel Nilsson. The stories about them were enough to make one throw up. The most famous hunters of men alive, the family went back six hundred years to when Sweden was a military power. This one family had often served both sides in a war, selling their services to the highest bidder. They had killed a Polish prince by turning his bed into a pit of swords, and thought nothing, for a price, of clarifying the succession to a throne by removing competition.

  A Burgundian duke had hired them to kill a newborn baby who might in two decades have claim to Burgundy, but the child’s father had also hired them to enhance his newborn son’s chances. The baby was drowned in its bathwater. When the duke heard there was a similar price on his head, he attempted to buy off the Nilsson family. But the father of the dead child was so enraged that he kept raising his offer, until the duke could not match the sum. Knowing the cruelty of the Nilssons, the duke hanged himself.

  Of course, the article stated, that was a long time ago and now neither Sweden nor the Nilssons were warlike. It was easy to believe looking at that lovely picture of the young Nilsson brothers in white shirts and shorts and blond hair, smiling from their ponies. Lhasa, nine, and Gunner, fifteen. Lhasa was going to be a singer and Gunner planned on medical research.

  Well, that was the only nice thing in the entire magazine.

  “Here’s your trash,” said Miss Hazlitt, giving Dr. Smith the magazine.

  “You know, Miss Hazlitt, there is a funny thing about computers. Information that goes in is called garbage in. And information that comes out is called garbage out. But nobody ever feeds it real garbage.”

  “Well, this magazine is certainly garbage, I’ll tell you that.”

  “It certainly is, Miss Hazlitt. Thank you very much.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A WATER BUFFALO IS STRONGER THAN A STEER, but that is not what makes him more dangerous. A water buffalo will attack while dying, but that is not what makes him more dangerous. A water buffalo will attack when neither endangered nor hungry, but that is not what makes him more dangerous.

  What makes a water buffalo more dangerous is that he likes to kill. And in that respect, he is like many men.

  The African marsh ate at his clothes, but Lhasa Nilsson did not mind. His two bearers were huddled high in the crook of a tree, holding the only two guns of his expedition, but Lhasa Nilsson did not mind. His left foot tingled with the beginning of jungle rot, but Lhasa Nilsson did not mind. He had seen his water buffalo, dripping flowers from its mouth, chomping on the rich flora of the African equatorial marsh. His massive black shoulders and horns combined with a thick skull to make a physique that was mockery to all but the most powerful rifle, and then the rifle would have to shoot to perfection just to injure this creature.

  Nilsson drew the arrow back to his cheek. The buffalo was forty yards upwind. If Nilsson had given this animal the advantage of smell, he would have been a dead man. But it was his genius, the genius of his family, that made advantage appear to be disadvantage. Why shoot for the skull when there was the whole body?

  The buffalo lifted its head, listening. Nilsson released the arrow with a spitting swish of a sound. Thwack, the arrow drove into the flank of the buffalo. It snorted its anger, enraged but apparently uninjured.

  A mere sting. The buffalo bellowed. To the horror of the gunbearers in the tree, the white man with the yellow hair lowered his bow and shouted:

  “Buffalo, hah, hah, hah. Here I am.”

  The big black body, in almost arrogant joy, trotted the first few steps through the marsh, crushing plants and saplings. Then the hooves got steady footing and it lumbered into a charge, shaking the very tree in which the two gun bearers were cringing. The horns lowere
d and hooked but Lhasa Nilsson stood laughing, his hands on his hips. He looked up at the gun bearers in the tree and made a motion as if to shake it. One of the bearers shut his eyes and cried.

  The buffalo was within fifteen paces when gray froth appeared at its mouth. It bellowed as its front legs stiffened, even while the body kept moving. The rear legs kicked as the beast boomed into the marshland, then fell and was still.

  Lhasa Nilsson went to the dying buffalo. He took its head in his hands, while straddling its sweaty black neck, and kissed the beast.

  “Beautiful, beautiful animal. In you I see me, except I would know better than to charge when wounded by a poison arrow. It is the circulation that kills you when you are poisoned. I am sorry I never had the opportunity to teach you that. Good night, sweet beast, until we all meet in the sunrise fires.”

  Lhasa Nilsson clapped his hands, calling for the bearers. But they would not leave the tree. Did he not know that the water buffalo could spring to its feet with its last flicker of life and kill them all? Did he not understand the water buffalo?

  Nilsson clapped his hands again. But the bearers would not come so he went back to his bow and strung it. Looking up at the tree, he aimed at a loincloth, which he saw was stained wet by fear.

  “Do you know I can hit a target as small as a testicle with this?” he asked, and the bearers, clinging to the guns, scrambled down the tree. Nilsson gave the first bearer the bow and took the rifle.

  “Now,” he said, “where is the village that has the problem with a panther?”

  It was another day’s trek to the village. In the hot summer it was reduced to a collection of huts in a bowl of dust. They had too much water where they didn’t need it, and too little where they did. But that was a mark of civilization, making over the environment to suit man. Funny how travelers would come to these places looking for wisdom. Here, wisdom was only being able to endure the consequences of one’s own sloth, ignorance, and superstition. Lhasa Nilsson ceremoniously greeted the head man.

  “And how is your beloved brother, friend?” asked the head man, who stood as high as Nilsson’s chest.

  “As usual,” said Nilsson glumly, and then, as an afterthought, “doing good works.”

  “He is a very good man. A blessed man,” said the head man.

  “Where is the panther?”

  “That, we do not know. He is a giant among beasts, this panther. As big as the tigers. But where he is we do not know. He has killed a goat north of the village and attacked a man south of it and west his tracks have been spotted, but east is where he has killed a young woman and been seen many times.”

  “I see,” said Nilsson. “You wouldn’t know where and when he was seen, I take it.” He stood with his arms crossed in the dusty little village, as men and women chattered away, trying to remember correctly on which day the black panther did what and where.

  Nilsson knew he would not get a logical answer. He felt that probably the only creature worth anything in this entire valley was the panther. But Gunner had sent him up here and after all, Gunner was now the leader of the family, even if he didn’t act like it. Lhasa was not about to break family tradition. Besides, with that phone call to Switzerland, he might yet convince Gunner that he was a Nilsson, even if the rest of the Swedes had forgotten they were Norsemen who took the Irish as slaves and looted the foul Anglo Saxons at will.

  So Lhasa Nilsson who was fifty, but looked thirty, and felt the strength in his body of a youth of twenty, listened to the little brown man with disdain, trying not to show his true feelings lest Gunner get word that one of his precious little monkeys had been insulted.

  “Thank you very much,” said Lhasa, who received very little useful information. “You have been very helpful.”

  The head man offered Nilsson beaters, but Nilsson shook his head. He wanted to hunt leopard. Nilsson did not tell the head man that beaters turned the proud leopard into just another big frightened cat. He was tired of killing big frightened cats. He wanted that black panther on his terms, and on the panther’s. Besides. The bearers were going to be a problem. They might tell Gunner about the buffalo, and Lhasa Nilsson would have to make sure they didn’t do that.

  So with his two bearers, he began his own hunt, by circling the village in ever-wider circles. He searched the way his family had taught him, not by looking at single twigs or branches, but by looking at the whole valley—seeing where the good drinking streams were, where the high ground was, where a black leopard might well seek a good prowl. He noticed that his bearers were nervous, so he made them walk in front of him. He came to the village where the woman had been slain. Her husband wept as he explained how he had gone to look for her and had found her remains.

  “How many days ago?” asked Gunner. Lhasa.

  But the man did not know. He sniveled that sunshine had been removed from his life.

  “That is too bad,” said Lhasa, who fought the urge to retch at this pathetic creature.

  On the second day, Lhasa found fresh tracks. The idiot bearers suggested it was a good place to climb a tree and wait for the panther.

  “This is where he has been, not where he is going,” said Lhasa.

  “But panthers often return on their tracks,” the bearers said.

  “This is not where he is going. I know where he is going. He is becoming annoyed with us and I know where he is going. In three minutes, we shall see an even fresher track.”

  They pushed on and almost within three minutes, one shouted out, pointing in astonishment to a wet track. Water was still oozing up into the paw print.

  The bearers refused to proceed.

  “Then this is the place you wish to stay?”

  They both nodded.

  “Then I shall go on alone.” They followed as he knew they would. They who followed were being followed, he knew from that special almost-silence behind them that comes when a predator stalks. Birds sing differently and ground animals disappear.

  “Would you like to climb your tree now?” asked Lhasa. The bearers, who had been stumbling over one another, couldn’t agree fast enough. Lhasa told them to give him the guns and the long brush-cutting knives so they could climb better.

  The first gripped the trunk with his legs and shinnied up a few feet; he was followed closely by the second. Lhasa gripped one of the bearer’s guns by the barrel and swung it like an axe handle into the kneecap of the topmost man. Then with deft speed he positioned himself for the second man, as the first tumbled to the ground, screaming. Thwack and Lhasa Nilsson got another man, another kneecap.

  The first tried to crawl away, but Nilsson got the other kneecap and stomped the left wrist into shattered bone. The second lay on the ground, face forward, unable to move, his breath knocked out of him. With a savage kick, Lhasa shattered the man’s left shoulder.

  Naturally, if the men were found in this condition, it would be obvious that they had been beaten. But Lhasa knew he had an accomplice. The man with the broken wrist cried and begged Lhasa to spare his life.

  “I will not take it,” said Lhasa, “even if you beg me, and you will, you smelly little monkey.”

  Lhasa lit a cigarette, a gross foul-smelling local brand, and walked off into the jungle about thirty yards. The panther emitted his characteristic hiss and growl, and Lhasa heard the man scream, begging for quick release.

  Well, he had promised he would not kill him, and he would not break his word. He heard the shrieks of terror, the growls, and then the chomping of bones. He wondered idly why chicken bones were dangerous for house cats but human bones didn’t seem dangerous for the larger cats. Lhasa Nilsson finished the cigarette. He did not want to disturb the panther before the job was done. That wouldn’t do. He checked the rifle again, quietly moving back the bolt. A copper-tipped beauty rested in the chamber.

  Quietly, step by silent step, he made his way back toward the tree. With a sudden roar, the black panther, its open mouth still dripping blood, was launched in its leap at Nilsson. In the spl
it second before he fired, Nilsson marvelled at the size and power of the beast. Surely the biggest panther he had ever seen. Then crack, thud, and the copper-tipped beauty went through the roof of the panther’s mouth into the brain. Its charging body hurled Lhasa backward into a tangled vine, but he managed to block the claws with the stock of his rifle.

  All in all, he was very relaxed, which was the only way to come out of one of these things alive.

  He rolled out from beneath the leopard’s heavy, twitching body. Its breath smelled like a sewer. He felt a numbing pain at his left shoulder. Why, the bugger had scored. His finger searched out the gash. Nothing too bad and it would look good for Gunner. Gunner would like that, especially since the bearers were dead. All in the love of his favorite little monkeys.

  At the tree base, Lhasa saw the remnants of his bearers. Excellent. There would be no trace of a beating after that mauling. The bugger had been hungry indeed. Good thing. Sometimes, panthers wouldn’t attack. Not like the beautiful water buffalo.

  By the time Lhasa reached the hospital at what maps indicated as a town, the story had preceded him. It was just as he had told it at the village, just as the villagers had discovered the remains.

  The village informed him that they would send the panther skin and two live pigs in thanks. Such was the generosity of Lhasa Nilsson that he announced to the natives that he would donate the skin to the widows of the bearers. “Let them sell it,” he intoned. “I only wish I could have brought back their husbands.”