Coin of the Realm td-77

by Warren Murphy

  "It's a tiny island." Shane Billiken was talking fast, making up his facts as he went along. He needed this man. "Kind of a paradise. Just natives there. No army, no government. "

  "Don't discount native fighters. I've seen well-armed professionals gutted by fishbone knives. I'd rather take a dum-dum slug in the face anytime."

  "I have a ship, but I need a team. They have to know sailcraft. "

  "How long a ship?"

  "Actually, I haven't measured it yet. But the salesman said I'd need a five-man crew."

  "I can deliver. But can you meet my price?"

  "Sure, I'm loaded," Shane said enthusiastically. He regretted it a moment later when the man who advertised himself as Ed the Eradicator quoted a price that was five hundred dollars more than Shane Billiken's current bank balance. And that wasn't counting the money he owed on the boat.

  Shane swallowed twice before he burbled, "No problem." What the heck, he'd make it all back soon enough if the cosmic flow went his way.

  "When the money is deposited in my Swiss account, we have a deal."

  "Give me the number. I'll make the transfer the minute we disconnect."

  "Then you've got your invasion team. How soon do you want to move?"

  "The ship is ready to sail. It's at the Malibu Marina."

  "Give me a couple of hours to work out the details."

  "Sure. One thing, though."

  "Yeah?"

  "Can you swing by my place? I could use some help with my luggage."

  Chapter 15

  The High Moo led the Master of Sinanju and his freed slave from the lagoon to the very heart of Moo. They walked up the long mangrove slope where coconut palms waved above expanses of steaming turtle grass. He led them past the rice fields. The farmers were called from their work by the royal priest. Remo noticed that they were very young. Most of them were children. They laid down their hoes and adzes and followed, chanting one word over and over: "Sinanchu! Sinanchu!"

  Chiun beamed with pleasure.

  "See, Remo? Proper respect. You would never see this in America."

  "You don't see bare-breasted girls in America. And I don't see them here either."

  "Have patience."

  They were escorted to high eminence on the far side of the island. Here and there, great bamboo-framed holes gaped from the dark slope like the sockets in a skull.

  "These are my metal mines," said the High Moo proudly. "The greater number of them lie beyond the city where the ground rises sheer from the water. There, workers dig for the metal that makes the coins which bear my visage."

  "I have seen these coins," said Chiun. "They are very fine coins, wonderfully cast. And the likeness is remarkable."

  "Thank you," the High Moo said proudly. "I knew that the coins my daughter carried would bring you here."

  "Truthfully," Chiun returned, "I was not enticed by your coins, fine as they are. I came to meet the High Moo, to join again my house with your house in the bondage of happy service."

  "Liar," whispered Remo in English.

  "What does he say?" the High Moo demanded.

  "I said, I'm anxious to meet the young maidens of your village," Remo replied in Moovian.

  "He speaks Moovian?"

  "I taught him a few words," Chiun admitted.

  "I also helped," added the Low Moo.

  "I'm a quick study," Remo said. And everyone wondered what the freed white slave meant by saying, "I'm a rabbit lover."

  "Does he mean that he eats them or mates with them?" the High Moo whispered to his daughter.

  "I have seen him do neither," she replied, looking at Remo. He smiled at her. She smiled back, her eyes on his moon-pale arms. She had thought him too tall before, but now his long lean limbs interested her. She would ask her father later to grant her a special request about the former slave.

  "Come, I hear the fires crackling," the High Moo called. "And the meat is on the spit. We must hurry, for the sun is dying."

  They trudged up as they grew near the central hill that dominated Moo.

  Remo noticed there were many mosquitoes and sand flies, but they left Chiun and him alone. It was a side benefit of the Sinanju diet that neither of them seemed to attract insects.

  At length they reached the high plateau that was the heart of Moo.

  "This is my city," the High Moo said proudly. He spread his well-muscled arms expansively.

  Remo saw thatch huts on the outskirts. Snapping black eyes regarded him through the reed sides. He saw no women, much to his disappointment.

  The inner buildings were stone. None were more than one story tall. But the palace was different. Made of some kind of kiln-fired brick, it reared up two stories. It had glassless windows and a flat roof with a gazebolike superstructure that Remo realized was the tallest point on the island. A vantage point.

  "It's breathtaking," Remo said in Moovian. His sarcasm was lost on everyone except Chiun.

  Chiun shot him a hard glance.

  "Do not be so smug. I have seen your Newark."

  "I'll take Newark over this jungle paradise."

  "Wait until you see the women."

  "I'm waiting. I'm waiting."

  "Come," said the High Moo. And he led them to the courtyard of the palace.

  In the stone-paved open area, fires burned in rows of rectangular earthen pits. A woman bent over a steaming pot. A man was singeing the body hair of a wild pig by hanging it over an open flame by its hind legs. There were carcasses on spits.

  "There is your woman, Remo," Chiun whispered. Remo craned to see over the heads of the escorting soldiers. He saw a brown-skinned woman bending over one steaming pot. She wore a long Hawaiian-style grass skirt. Her long black hair swished as she stirred the pot's contents.

  When the sounds of their approach caught her attention, she faced them expectantly.

  She smiled. She had three teeth. Her face was as wrinkled as a walnut shell and her bare breasts hung like goatskin bladders.

  "There," Chiun said. "Go to her, Remo, and tell her that you have crossed a mighty ocean just to behold her loveliness. I am certain she will be flattered by your attention. "

  "Very funny," Remo fumed. "She's not my type."

  "A breast is a breast," Chiun said flatly.

  The High Moo motioned for them to form a circle around the fires. He signaled for Chiun to stand beside him and for his daughter to claim the other side. She motioned Remo to her side. The remaining villagers completed the circle.

  The royal priest appeared inside the circle. "Bring the throne," he commanded.

  "It is a beautiful throne," Chiun told Remo. "Gold, with many jewels. And a footrest carved of a single block of white jade."

  Two men in loincloths came out of the palace bearing a squat wooden box with short legs.

  "Here comes the footstool," Remo said. "Doesn't look like jade to me."

  "It is wood. No doubt it is your seat," Chiun said smugly.

  The stool was set behind the High Moo. "The Shark Throne," he said imperiously.

  Remo looked closely. The top of the stool was covered in some kind of gray hide. At each end there were rolled protrusions resembling ornamental cushions, except that they were made of some cracked gray hide. Remo noticed flat, lifeless eyes at either end of these rolls, and suddenly realized that the stool was decorated with the heads of hammerhead sharks.

  Remo grinned as the High Moo sat down. "Good thing they cut off the fin."

  The royal priest motioned for the rest of the circle to sit. "Before we eat," he intoned, "we will show our visitors the greatness of Moo."

  "This is the ceremonial dance," whispered Chiun. "In its fluid motions are the entire history of Moo. We will learn much of what has transpired since the days of Master Mangko. "

  "Wonderful," Remo groaned. "I'm half-starved and we have to sit through a six-hour folk dance."

  But then the circle parted at two points and Remo suddenly sat up very straight.

  Two lines of native Mo
ovian women slithered in and converged inside the circle. They wore skirts of grass or coarse black cloth low on their undulating hips. Colorful blossoms decorated their long hair and dazzling smiles split their happy faces. Their feet were bare, but Remo's eyes weren't on their feet, but on their exposed, jiggling breasts.

  They began to sway in time to their clapping hands, which they held over their heads.

  Remo's blank face broke out into a wide grin. "Moo," he said.

  "Do not stare," Chiun remonstrated.

  "I'm sure not going to look away," Remo said. "Don't want to insult our gracious hosts."

  "Watch their hands. They tell the story. And their hips."

  "I'm watching, I'm watching."

  "But not like that."

  "I don't know any other way to watch," Remo said as a line of sinuous hips undulated in perfect synchronization before his eyes. Firm young breasts bounced and swayed. The most dazzling smiles Remo had ever seen bathed him in a carefree radiance. Remo relaxed. All his cares seemed to ooze right out of him. He felt at peace.

  The women were still dancing when the food began to arrive.

  Chiun was speaking with the High Moo.

  "My knowledge of Moo dance is not perfect," the Master of Sinanju admitted. "Does that shaking of hips mean that the Year of the Macaw was the same year that the volcanoes cooled?"

  "No," replied the High Moo. "You must watch their fingers too. The snapping they make keeps the time. One snap means one moon. Ten snaps, and a year has passed."

  "Oh, yes. Now I understand."

  "Do you understand too?" the High Moo asked of Remo.

  "Are you kidding? I was born knowing this stuff," Remo assured him, absently taking a wooden bowl from the old woman with the drooping breasts.

  The aroma had to fill his nostrils before Remo realized what he had been offered.

  "Hey," he said. "This is egg-lemon soup. Where did it come from?"

  "I made it," Chiun told him.

  "When? You were here all the time."

  "During the break in the dance."

  "What break in the dance?"

  "The one where the maidens were not dancing, but instead formed two lines and swayed in imitation of the ocean at rest after Old Moo sank."

  "I thought that was the best part. I was hypnotized."

  "You would. Drink your soup."

  Remo started in on the soup. He drank it straight from the bowl when no one offered him a spoon. He figured it was the native custom.

  The Low Moo watched Remo drink down his third bowl, wondering what kind of a man found naked peasant girls so fascinating. He did not take his eyes off them. Unlike the others, she knew that Remo was not watching the dance, but the dancers. It was strange. But he was from a strange land, she told herself, where all women covered their breasts. The princess had thought that in America every woman was of royal blood, but the Master of Sinanchu had assured her such was not the case.

  Still, why was Remo watching them when the Low Moo herself sat at his elbow? Could it be that he really did prefer rabbits to girls? But then why did he stare? Perhaps, she thought, he had never seen a woman naked before, being interested only in female rabbits.

  "Is the soup to your liking, Remo?" she breathed in his ear.

  "Yeah, yeah. Great soup. I could use another bowl," he said distractedly. His eyes did not leave the peasant dancing girls.

  The Low Moo decided to experiment. "Remo," she whispered.

  "Yeah?" he said, not looking in her direction. "Look, I will show you something."

  "I'm seeing something," he replied dreamily.

  "I will show you something you have never seen."

  "Yeah?" Remo looked. "What's that?"

  The Low Moo was smiling at him. His eyes were not fully focused. The Low Moo changed that when she pulled down the top of her costume.

  Remo blinked. His eyes focused like a zoom lens. "Are you going to dance too?" he asked.

  "No. Not that way. I may dance for you in private." And she quickly covered up, content that she had learned the truth.

  At least Remo did like human females even if he did have low tastes. Perhaps she would do something to elevate them.

  She leaned over and whispered in his ear, "I want to poon you."

  Remo grinned. He turned to the Master of Sinanju. "What does poon mean?" he asked.

  "Eat! Eat!" Chiun snapped, noticing Remo's nearly full bowl. "And stop asking foolish questions when I am conversing with the High Moo."

  A splendid tropical moon lifted from the Pacific. It ascended into the sky, growing smaller and smaller as it sought the very pinnacle of the star-sprinkled heavens.

  The fires grew dimmer, and the Moovian girls had given up their dancing. They took their places in the circle and began tearing chunks of meat off the roasting pigs and ate it with their fingers, laughing and giggling.

  Many pairs of flashing black eyes looked Remo's way. He watched their bodies, tawny and impossibly smooth in the firelight. He decided he might like life on Moo after all.

  The Master of Sinanju watched the fires die. He felt the eyes of the High Moo upon him. Good. The High Moo was doubtless impressed by the wise countenance of the Master of Sinanju as seen in profile. No doubt he was struck with awe at having come face-to-face with the ancestor of him who faithfully served the High Moo's earliest ancestors. Probably he was even now offering prayers of thankfulness to his many gods for the winds that brought Sinanju to him.

  The High Moo regarded the profile of the Master of Sinanchu in puzzlement. The Master of Sinanchu described by the oral traditions of Moo was a tall sturdy man with thick black hair and smooth golden skin like a Moovian's. The Masters of Sinanchu wore strange leggings and loose shirts. This old man came swathed in something that belonged on a woman. And where were his weapons? The High Moo could stand it no longer. He had to ask.

  "I have a question, Master of Sinanchu."

  "I have the answers to your every question," the Master of Sinanju replied firmly.

  "You carry no weapons. Are they on your ship?"

  "They are not on my ship, for I carry them with me wherever I go," said the Master of Sinanju cryptically.

  "I do not see them."

  "These," said the Master of Sinanju, raising his longnailed fingers in the firelight. "These are my weapons. In my language they are called the Knives of Eternity, for I enter the world with them and I take them with me when I at last go into the Void beyond the stars."

  "Masters of Sinanchu in the days of Great Moo carried swords. "

  "Masters of Sinanju in the time of Great Moo did not know the sun source, which enabled us to unlock the full potential of our minds and bodies. That era began with the Great Wang-not to be confused with the lesser Wang, of course."

  "They were younger. Every Master I have heard of was young and strong of arm, the better to deal with the High Moo's enemies.'

  "Youth is not everything. Age has its benefits," Chiun said. "For with age comes wisdom. And wisdom sometimes reveals a path where force is not needed."

  "I am the High Moo. I rule by the strength of my arm and the hardness of my war club," said the High Moo. He patted an ebony club that leaned against one leg.

  Chiun sniffed. "A club can be broken or a blade taken away. But the mind is the mind."

  "Brains can be clubbed out of a man's skull," returned the High Moo.

  "If it is your wish to behold the color of your enemies' brains, I will undertake it," said Chiun with veiled distaste. "For, thousands of years ago, an unearned down payment of Moovian coin fed my village, and service is still owned Moo."

  "I have enemies," said the High Moo conspiratorially.

  "All rulers have enemies."

  "Assassins."

  "Pah!" spat Chiun. "Do not flatter them. They are mere killers. I am an assassin, and I speak the word with pride."

  "They have tried to kill me three times. My guards have staved off two attempts. I myself have killed in my own defense."<
br />
  "Point out the conspirators to me and their heads will be grinning at your feet," Chiun said boastfully.

  "Not all my subjects are here. Some live apart from us. Each year, more are lured away. Women are stolen for their rites. "

  "Kidnappers?"

  "A cult. An old cult, which is rising again. Old ways, old evils. They covet my throne. They covet my daughter; They want to plunge Moo into backwardness and ugliness."

  "But point the way and they will be dust," Chiun promised. He sensed the High Moo's skepticism and desired to prove his prowess.

  "They dwell in the Grove of Ghosts, at the west end of the island."

  "Remo, listen to this," Chiun ordered.

  "Huh? What?" Remo said, tearing his eyes off the feasting native girls.

  "The High Moo now speaks of our task."

  "I'm listening. Just tell him to talk slower. My Moo vocabulary isn't up to speed yet."

  "What does he say?" the High Moo asked Chiun. "He hangs on your every word," affirmed Chiun.

  The High Moo nodded. "I spoke of old ways. Someone on this island has revived an ancient evil. They have failed to kill me three times. Now they hurl presentiments at me. Just last night, when I stood on the roof of my very palace, a wicked one threw a jug of ocean water at me. It missed, but from the shattered clay emerged . . . "

  Chiun bent his old head. Remo leaned closer. "An octopus," the High Moo breathed. Chiun gasped.

  "No!" he said.

  "Yes. Octopus worshipers!"

  "Did you hear that, Remo? Octopus worshipers."

  "Is that bad?" Remo wanted to know.

  "Bad? It is terrible," Chiun said. "The octopus is the ancient Enemy of Life. Its servants are the most despicable cult of all."

  "Worse than TV evangelists?"

  "Worse than TV evangelists," Chiun said solemnly. "TV evangelists only want your money. Octopus worshipers covet the universe." He turned to the High Moo. "It has been many generations since the last octopus worshipers were thought stamped out."

  "They have started up again in Moo."

  "Then we will tear off their limbs and crush what remains," proclaimed Chiun. Everyone in the feast circle turned to look at him.

  "I can trust no one. Except you," the High Moo said when the laughter and chatter started anew.

  "The House of Sinanju owes service to the House of Moo. Of course, there is the matter of the balance," Chiun suggested.