Time Trial td-53

by Warren Murphy

  The captain, who did not at first understand Chiun's desire to watch the movie in peace, finally agreed that the old man had a point. He arrived at this revelation while hanging by his fingertips from a window of the L-1011, flapping like a banner from the flying craft. Yes, indeed, the gentleman certainly did have a point there, the stewardess readily agreed as she evacuated the other passengers to seats in other cabins. Then she brought Chiun foot warmers and pillows and a box of chocolates donated by the passengers in the first-class cabin, who also understood that the Master of Sinanju wished to hear Barbra Streisand's golden tones without the babble of unappreciative louts.

  "It was too the map. You wrote something on the back of it and handed it to her. I saw you."

  "It was paper. On it I wrote one of the finest verses of Wang, the poet and greatest Master of Sinanju. It was something she would treasure in the dreariness of her life."

  "The map on the other side of it was something I would have treasured, too."

  "You are impossible," Chiun said. "I raise you from a nothing— less than nothing, a white man— but do I get even a single shred of respect for my efforts? Did I receive even a thank you when you demanded that I, an old man in the twilight of my life, leap from a moving airplane?"

  "We had to jump out of the plane because every bureaucrat in Guatemala was at the airport waiting to deport us. Smitty would've loved that. And it wasn't like it was flying. It was taxiing."

  Chiun sniffed. "Not even a thank you."

  "Thank you, Chiun," Remo said elaborately. "Thank you for taking the map out of my pocket after I'd already jumped out of the plane and it was too late to take it back."

  "It was nothing," Chiun said, smiling sweetly.

  Remo exhaled noisily. "Well, there's no point in arguing about the map. It's gone."

  "A map is unnecessary."

  "But we don't know where we're going," Remo explained. "I only remember that it was somewhere west of Progresso, in the jungle. Here we are. Information terminated."

  "We could ask."

  "Oh, sure. We've been tramping around this overgrown greenhouse all day. We haven't seen so much as a chipmunk."

  "You haven't," Chiun said. "But that is to be expected. You also did not see the tree we passed three times."

  Remo tossed down the empty canvas bag he was carrying. "Okay, I give up," he said. "Show me this mysterious traffic cop of the jungle. I'll ask directions."

  Chiun nodded. Through the dense brush, Remo could make out a form moving with the subtle signs of human breathing. It was a man, old by the sound of him. He was wearing a loose brown garment of some kind and was bent over at the waist, as if examining something on the ground. In his hands were bunches of white flowers.

  "You were right," Remo said, amazed.

  "Again," Chiun said off-handedly.

  "Hey there, excuse me," Remo shouted. He made it a habit of announcing himself wherever he wanted to be seen approaching. Otherwise, he'd discovered, he seemed to materialize out of nowhere, usually scaring out of their socks whoever it was he wanted to talk to. It didn't make for good first impressions.

  "Holy shit," the old man said, his hand on his heart. "You scared the socks off me. You American?"

  Remo nodded. "You?"

  The old man held up two fingers, making the peace sign. "Sebastian Birdsong. First Church of Krishna the Undraftable, Los Angeles, California. Peace, man."

  Birdsong looked as if he were forty going on seventy. His gray shoulder-length hair was matted with dreadlocks, the result of years of wear without benefit of comb or shampoo. One hoop earring glinted from his right ear. Over his stooped shoulders was draped a cotton caftan, which had once been orange, sporting a paisley design, but had degenerated through unwashed ages to a stiff, uniformly gray-brown color, its sleeves frayed to the elbow. On his feet were crumbling leather strips that had once been a pair of sandals.

  "Birdsong?" Remo asked.

  The man smiled, exposing two rows of rotten teeth resembling dried corn. "It used to be Humberbee, but I changed it," he said. "In the First Church of Krishna the Undraftable, they let you pick your own names. It's like freedom, man. Groovy. Really boss."

  "Groovy?" It had been years since Remo had heard anything described as groovy.

  "Yeah. Far out. Like wicked, man. A rush. A righteous groove. In the congregation, we got Daffodils, Butterflies, Seagulls— lots of Seagulls. Last time I looked, we had forty-two girls— I mean, women— named Seagull. The Church doesn't allow us to say 'girls.' It's a repressive buzzword of the male chauvinist elitist powermongers. Last time I was at church, they baptized twelve six-pound women. All named Seagull. 'Dove's' big, too," he pondered. "Like for the Dove of Peace, dig it? Like it's an anti-war statement, like."

  "Anti which war?"

  Birdsong looked at him in astonishment. "The war, you apolitical stooge of the military industrialist bourgeoisie. The Vietnam war. The toy of the capitalist powermongers. The genocidal elitist—"

  "That war's over," Remo said.

  Birdsong's eyes widened. "It's over? Over?" He clasped Remo's hand, smearing his palm with the sticky juice from the white flowers he carried. "Well, don't just stand there, man. Like rejoice! It's over!"

  "It's been over for ten years," Remo said.

  Birdsong didn't seem to hear him. "Over! It's over! I can go home now. Outasight." He danced in a wild fury, undulating his hips and pretending to play an imaginary electric guitar.

  "How long have you been here, anyway?" Remo asked.

  Birdsong counted backward on his fingers. "Let me see. This is August, so July, June... fifteen years."

  "Fifteen years? You mean you've been here since the sixties?"

  "Right on, man." He winked. "Fuckin' A I've been here. Alive and breathing. Not diced and wok-fried, you dig? Not shot, bayonetted, grenaded, mined, gassed, stabbed, or dead of Charlie's creepy crawlies. I'm free."

  Remo, who was a veteran, suppressed an urge to crush the man's skull into oatmeal. "The church sent you here?" he asked.

  "Missionary work," Birdsong said gleefully. "It was a great scam. You pay your bread to the main man, and the First Church of Krishna the Undraftable makes you a card-carrying missionary. Get to see the world and save your ass at the same time." His smile turned to an expression of bewilderment. " 'Course, I haven't heard from the church since 1969. They never did tell me how I was going to get out of here. Guess they didn't think of that part."

  Remo noticed the subtle darkening of the trees. Night was falling, and he was wasting time talking to this aging hippie draft dodger. "Listen— do you know your way around here? My friend and I are lost."

  "Friend? What friend?" Birdsong gave a little squeal as Chiun seemed to materialize out of nowhere. "Wow, you guys sure come up quick," he said. "Say, what direction did you come from?"

  Chiun pointed behind him.

  Birdsong held up the bunch of white flowers. "See any of these before you split?"

  "A few," Chiun said. "Not many."

  "Didn't think so," the man said with dismay. "They're rare nowadays. Pain in the ass to pick. I'm taking care of a kid, got a bad leg. Claims these make him feel better."

  "About the directions," Remo said.

  "I mean, I'm a missionary, right?" Birdsong went on, apparently unused to conversing with anyone other than himself. "One crippled kid. Some mission."

  "Do you have a dwelling for your services?" Chiun asked politely.

  "Hell, no," Birdsong said. "Seventeen thatched huts. That's what I had, and every single one of them burned down. The jerks around here don't go for missionaries. Hocus pocus, that's what they want. Geez, give me a hundred tabs of acid, and I'll have more followers than Ringo Starr. One gimp kid." He threw up his arms. "Well, that's over with now. I'm going to find my way out of this dump, and then it's hello Sunset Boulevard."

  "About the directions," Remo repeated.

  "Yeah? Where you cats going?"

  Chiun's jaw tightened. "We cats ar
e searching for what is known as the Temple of Magic. But my apprentice here was so foolish as to keep the map on the reverse side of valuable poetry, and so we are now without directions."

  Remo sighed.

  Birdsong looked up, his eyes round. "The Temple of Magic?" he asked softly. His open mouth formed into a tense smile. "Hey, man. You don't want to go there."

  "Why not?" Remo asked.

  "Well, like I don't want to put you on a scare trip, you know? But they got these people here, they don't like white folks."

  "A very enlightened population," Chiun said, beaming. "I knew there was something about this place I liked."

  "They don't like other folks much, either. Not even the other Indians."

  "They're natives?"

  "Nobody knows where they come from. They paint little black dots on their foreheads, and man, when you see those dots, you better split fast."

  "And if I do not divide?" Chiun asked.

  "Then you'll be looking death right in the eye," Birdsong said sagely. "Even the local Indians, and they've been living in the jungle here for thousands of years now, don't know who these guys are. They call them the Lost Tribes. There's some kind of legend that they were driven off their land by a kingdom run by white gods, and they've been wandering around the jungle ever since, punishing everybody and his brother for it."

  "When did this happen?"

  "Who knows?" Birdsong said. "The locals say the Lost Tribes got lost at the beginning of time. All I know is, those suckers are mean. Every last one of my seventeen missions burned to the ground."

  "The Lost Tribes did that?"

  Birdsong expelled a little puff of air. "I was lucky. At least they didn't kill me. Those freaking wild men slink around the jungle like jaguars. Whenever they come across a settlement, it's open season. Out come their peashooters and spears, zap, zap, adios homestead, you dig? Then it's off into the jungle again till the next time they feel like shrinking some heads."

  "What's that got to do with the Temple of Magic?" Remo asked.

  "That's one of their crash pads or something. God knows why. I've never seen it, but the natives say the place is a wreck. Hasn't been used in a zillion years. But go there, and the Lost Tribes'll be swarming over you like flies at a chocolate orgy. Like killing's their thing, man. Matter of fact, a bunch of white folks just got creamed over there."

  "Yeah, we've heard."

  "They were some kind of archaeologists or something. When I found out they were headed for the Temple of Magic, I took off after them, to warn them, like. But they got too close to the place, and I sure as hell didn't want to follow anybody into a massacre. Like that's why I never volunteered for Vietnam, man. Screw that murder shit, I said. 'Specially when it's me that's going to get murdered. I came back to the mission. It was the sixteenth mission, I think. Maybe the fifteenth. But I was dead right in coming back. Couple of days later, I got word that the Lost Tribes sent every last one of them on the ultimate cosmic trip. It was Croak City for all of them. You dig what I'm saying, man? Like the Temple of Magic is an A-one bummer."

  "We can look after ourselves," Remo said.

  "Suit yourselves," Birdsong said. "It's that way." He pointed in a direction vaguely northeast of the river. "Don't bother looking for it now, though."

  "Why not?"

  "Too dark. It's a half-day's walk, maybe more. And the Lost Tribes come out at night." He slid a finger across his throat, accompanied by appropriate facial gestures. "I've got to get out of here myself. Never can tell when those bastards'll get the urge to waste somebody."

  Gingerly he gathered up a few more of the delicate white flowers. "You can come back to the mission with me if you want. Nothing there but burned ground and a few reeds, but it's home for me and the kid. Say, you haven't seen him anyplace, have you? Little skinny kid, about twelve years old, walks with a limp?"

  "Sorry," Remo said. "We've got to get moving. Thanks for the directions."

  "Big mistake," Birdsong said with a shrug. "Well, see you in the obituary pages." He laughed.

  "Draft dodger," Remo muttered under his breath as they veered away from Birdsong into the darkness of the jungle.

  "He smelled like a hippo. What is a draft dodger?" Chiun asked, eyeing the bent figure of the missionary over his shoulder.

  "Someone who sneaks out of serving his country when it needs him."

  Chiun's eyebrows arched. "For purposes of killing?"

  "For purposes of being a soldier."

  "In the army?"

  "Right. The army," Remo said distractedly, clearing a path for them in the indigo-colored jungle. Overhead the night birds screeched.

  They trod gently through the dense, blackening brush, dotted sparsely with white flowers. "Had this Birdsnest not dodged the drafty army, would he have become like the soldiers we have seen at military bases?"

  "Sort of. The ones we've seen lately have been volunteers. The draft was a duty. That hoople picking the flowers wouldn't know duty from fly droppings," Remo said. "First Church of Krishna the Undraftable. Sheesh."

  "He was right," Chiun said solemnly.

  "Oh, come on. He was a jerk."

  Chiun thought. "That, too. But he was right. No government should resort to hiring amateur assassins when professionals are available. How many casualties did your side inflict during this contest?"

  "It wasn't a contest. It was a war. A long, bloody war."

  "How many casualties?" Chiun insisted.

  "Oh, I don't know," Remo said irritably. "A lot. Hundreds of thousands."

  Chiun gasped. "Hundreds of thousands! Imagine how much revenue that would have brought to the glorious House of Sinanju. And the job would have been done right. No booms. Three or four days, tops. Of course, one would have to charge extra for overtime...."

  "The war's over," Remo said.

  "And all the potential profits gone," Chiun lamented. "One commission like that, and catastrophe in my village may have been averted. Alas, the people of Sinanju will have to live in fear forever, hoping that their Master can earn enough tribute to keep starvation from their doors. For without the gold I send them, the people of Sinanju would go hungry, and be forced—"

  "I know, I know. Forced to send their babies back to the sea."

  Chiun stopped, placing his hands on his hips. His face was set to the mode Remo recognized as "Righteous Indignation."

  "There are many things a soft white man would find impossible to believe, many hardships and sufferings which are commonplace in the world."

  "I believe you, Little Father," Remo said, tempering his weariness and frustration with as much gentleness as he could muster. "It's just that I've heard it before. How the village was so poor that people had to drown their infants to ward off starvation. How the first Master of Sinanju saved the village by renting out his services as an assassin to foreign governments. How Sinanju possessed nothing but the secrets of the sun source of the martial arts, known only to the Master. How each succeeding Master has carried on the tradition by offing the enemies of whatever emperor was paying him at the time."

  "It is all true," Chiun said stubbornly.

  "I know it's true. But it happened thousands of years ago. Sinanju at this moment is about as poverty stricken as Houston."

  "Still, one must be on one's guard," Chiun grumbled.

  "I'll keep an eye out."

  "It is too late. The opportunity has already been missed. Hundreds of thousands."

  "There'll be another war someday," Remo said consolingly.

  Chiun's face brightened. "Really? Do you really think so?"

  "There's always hope, Little Father," Remo said. "Little Father?" He backtracked to where Chiun was sitting, inexplicably, on the ground. "You feel all right?"

  "I'm fine," Chiun said, yawning. "But the day has been long, and I am an old man. I grow weary."

  "I've never seen you grow weary before." Remo changed his position to match the old Oriental's full lotus. Suddenly he realized that he, too,
felt tired. No, not tired. Despite the heat and the dampness and the long day's walk, his muscles were still taut and performing well. If they hadn't been, the remedy would have been food, not rest. Both their bodies were long used to functioning on a fraction of the rest ordinary people needed.

  No, it was something in his eyes, in his brain. Something cloudy and pleasant and reminiscent of childhood. "I think I'm sleepy," Remo said.

  "HNNNNNNNK," Chiun responded.

  Remo looked around. The ground was spotted heavily with the strange white flowers Birdsong had been gathering. He'd never seen any like them before, dainty, fragrant. His brain in a haze, he reached over and picked one. Its fluted petals were soft and fat, juicy with fragrance. He held it up to his nose, crushing it inadvertently with fingers grown suddenly clumsy as he brought the blossom closer.

  The odor, thick and inviting, jolted him like the injection of a narcotic. The forest swirled above him, dark and sweet and protective. It would be hard for even the Lost Tribesmen to find him here, he thought with his last strands of consciousness. Well, just a little nap, maybe. Too dark to make good time walking, anyway. Not to mention the pain in the ass it would be to have to fight of a bunch of thrill-crazed natives at the Temple of Magic now, when all he wanted was a minute or two of shut-eye.

  "Hey, Chiun," he slurred, flinging over an uncontrollable hand at the small sleeping figure. "Chiun, we can't sleep here too long. The Lost Tribes. Got to keep an eye out. Missed opportunities. Might be a war or something; Sinanju could strike it rich." His words came slower and softer. "Got to wake up, Chiun. We don't need the ultimate cosmic journey. Chiun...

  "HNNNNNNNK."

  "Okay," Remo agreed.

  * * *

  He awoke to a scream.

  It was dawn. Chiun was already up, his limbs relaxed into fighting position. Instantly the foggy stupor of Remo's senses cleared, his reflexes overtaking the soporific effect of the white flowers now that they were needed for action.

  Remo thrust his chin toward the river, where he thought the sound had originated. The gesture was a question. Chiun answered it with a silent nod.