Time Trial td-53

by Warren Murphy

  Again, the dying priest seemed to know what Remo was thinking. He blinked rapidly, striving to keep his eyes in focus. Clearly the man was losing consciousness. Then, with great effort, he bowed to Remo.

  "Oh, cut it out," Remo said, picking the man up deftly. The movement, gentle as Remo tried to make it, must have been excrutiating. Still, the priest made no sound. "I guess you're not going to hurt anyone now."

  Good guys and bad guys, killers and saints... In their final moment, all men knew terror. It was Quintanodan's moment now, and Remo respected it.

  He did not despise the man for being a killer. Remo was one himself, after all, and although he had known since the death of the old king that Quintanodan would have to die, Remo was hard pressed to feel any hatred for him now. He had looked into the eyes of too many dying men to hate an enemy in torment. All life was sacred in the moment it was extinguished.

  And so he carried the priest to the top of Bocatan, steaming above the destruction in the valley.

  Quintanodan, lying on his back, beckoned to the boy Po to come near him while he spoke. The boy translated the man's anguished words.

  "It is written that the voice of the gods will come to rule the Maya and defeat their enemies," he said. "The prophecy has come to pass. My people are dispersed, my tribe decimated. But you will not rule forever, because the Olmec understand what you do not: that the past and the future are one. That which flourishes must decay. That which lives now must return to its ashes. My people are clever. Many have died this day, but others have fled to wait, to fight again. Two of the gods' weapons remain. They are well hidden now, but one day they will be found.

  "I have come to tell you this. We will fight you one day, and on that day we will defeat you. Until then, we will wait in secret. The name of the Olmec will be no more. But when our time comes, your empire will crumble to dust at our hands. For all the ages of man, no one will know why the great Mayan civilization vanished, but you will know, and your children, and your children's children, for I speak from the Sight, and the Sight does not lie. Ages hence, the Olmec will conquer you, you will be as dust in the wind of the sea."

  He stood up painfully, rivulets of sweat running down his disfigured features. He faced the gaping mouth of the volcano and repeated an ancient prayer:

  "All moons, all years, all days, all winds, take their course and pass away."

  He held his blackened arms over his head. Then, his face composed, his mouth set, he dived into the distended mouth of the volcano, making no sound as he died.

  The Mayans standing atop Bocatan turned to Remo and Chiun and knelt. Dawn flooded the sky with red, looking through the smoke and steam like a vision from hell.

  The moment lingered forever, it seemed. Each man tried to take a measure of the events of the past twenty-four hours, and could only remember it as a time of great moment, its details already fading into the realm of legend. Only Chiun remained entirely in the present, lowering himself to the ground, listening.

  "What are you doing, Little Father?" Remo said, noticing the strange posture of the old Oriental.

  "Take them away from here," Chiun said.

  "Why?"

  The old man spoke softly. "Earthquake."

  The boy was the first to respond. "Nata-Ah," he cried, limping as fast as he could toward the village, where the women and children of Yaxbenhaltun slept.

  ?Chapter Fifteen

  The limestone columns of the palace were already crashing by the time the boy reached it. Remo was inside, pulling the women and the household staff to safety, while Chiun and Lizzie worked with the Mayan warriors to wake the rest of the village.

  "Where is Nata-Ah?" Po asked.

  "I can't find her. Maybe she's already out."

  "She is not. She must be here!" the boy bellowed.

  "Look, I've got enough on my hands," Remo said, pulling a bevy of shrieking dancing girls through the falling rock. "The building's full, and it's going to go fast, so get out of the way."

  "I will help," the boy said, rushing into the palace. Two old women, balancing a load of clay dishes between them, tottered from the kitchen, blocking the hall where others screamed behind them. The boy knocked the dishes out of their hands and pushed them forward, making room for the stampede.

  "Nata-Ah!" he called, forcing his way against the crowd. He scanned the panicking faces that swept past him, but the beautiful young girl was not among them.

  Po made his way into the interior of the palace, where the ornate painted ceilings dipped and swayed rhythmically to the deep rumbles of the earthquake. The roof would cave in within minutes with him inside, unless he got out quickly. But Nata-Ah. What if she was still somewhere in the palace?

  He walked under the buckling ceiling of the reception hall and into the labyrinth of the palace's great rooms.

  "Nata-Ah!" he shouted, but. his voice was drowned out in the splintering crash of stone on ground outside.

  She was not in the room where she normally slept. The other rooms were also empty, their doors hanging open. Only the king's throne room was sealed.

  He burst in. The girl was inside, sitting straight and tall upon her grandfather's magnificent throne.

  "Nata-Ah, you must come. There is danger," Po said in the Old Tongue.

  "This is the end of the world," the girl said softly. "I am the world's ruler now. I will remain here."

  "Oh, Nata-Ah," Po pleaded. "There is so much I have to tell you. This isn't the end. It's just the beginning. Me, I come from the end, not you. Your people will make a mark on history that will never be forgotten, never."

  "You know this?"

  "Yes, I know."

  "You are the voice of the gods, just as my grandfather said. You are like Quintanodan. You have the Sight."

  "Nata-Ah, your grandfather was only setting a trap for Quintanodan when he called me that. And I don't have the Sight. It's just that I come from—"

  "You came with the gods," she said. "And you will leave with them. And I will remain here, for I do not wish to live without you." Her eyes shone with tears.

  He was stunned. Long moments passed. Down the hall, the ceiling burst and a ton of rock poured into the smashed palace with a sound like thunder. The door to the throne room flew open and creaked mightily, twisting out of shape as an ocean of debris showered behind it.

  Po touched her face. "Then I will stay here with you," he said. "For you are all I need in this life. I have followed you forever, and now that I have found you, I will stay to my last breath at your side."

  Suddenly, through the wreckage, a man appeared.

  "What the hell are you two doing here?" Remo yelled angrily, grabbing each child in one hand and vaulting to the. window. "Hang on." He tumbled outside, leaping over the piles of fallen cement to safety.

  "You've got rocks in your heads, both of you," he shouted over his shoulder as he ran toward the square. "When this is over with, I'm going to spank the daylights—"

  "Remo," Lizzie shouted excitedly.

  "I don't have time," Remo said.

  "But it's an earthquake. That's what brought us here in the first place. 'The vibration of molecules,' that's what Cooligan said made the time module Work."

  Remo pulled a screaming man from beneath a slab of rock. "If an earthquake's all it took, then why didn't Cooligan get out during one?"

  "Because while Cooligan was here, there wasn't an earthquake. Not one is mentioned in the log. He never had the chance, but we do. Come on," she said, pulling at his arm. "Get the others. It has to be now."

  Remo straightened up. He swept his arm over the scene around him. The entire city was a wreckage. White plaster and dust covered the faces of the dead on the street. Hundreds of small fires burned everywhere. "We can't go, Lizzie. People's lives are still in danger. In a few minutes, when the earthquake's subsided, maybe—"

  "We can't wait for it to subside! This is the only chance we're going to get, and you know it. If the pod hasn't already been damaged, that is.
A few more minutes, and the temple holding the Cassandra might be destroyed."

  "We've just got to wait," Remo said stubbornly.

  "I don't have to do any such thing," she screamed. "This is my last shot to get out of here, and by God, I'm going to take it!"

  "All by yourself? What if the mechanism won't work again?"

  "That's your problem," Lizzie said.

  Remo shook his head. "Guess I was wrong about you, old girl. Still looking out for number one, aren't you?"

  "Can you blame me?"

  Remo looked closely at her, and then at the ruin of the city. "No, I can't. I'm the same way myself. No strings, no responsibilities. He travels fastest who travels alone."

  Lizzie regarded him suspiciously. "Then why aren't you coming?" she asked.

  Remo looked out over the far horizon, shimmering in the wake of the city's flames. "Because I'm tired of hating myself," he said.

  Her eyes hardened. "If you think that this is going to make me—"

  "I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about me."

  Struggling to keep her face impassive, she stood watching him for a moment. Then she turned and strode away.

  "Well, that's that for the moment," Remo said.

  Most of the rubble had been cleared away from the square. Miraculously, only six lives had been lost. The bodies of the dead lay wrapped in makeshift shrouds near the city's walls. Someone had unobtrusively taken care of the survivors, since the streets were clear of the wandering homeless.

  It was nearly twilight. Remo and Chiun had worked with the Mayans for nearly eighteen hours salvaging what they could of the city. Several of the men had collapsed from exhaustion. Po, the improvised bandages on his legs blackened from soot, slept in the open courtyard as Nata-Ah rummaged through the vacant buildings for a new dressing for his wound.

  "The boy served us well," Chiun said.

  "Yeah, he worked out okay after that stunt in the palace. I guess I won't spank the little bugger."

  Chiun surveyed the area with his alert hazel eyes. "The damage is not so great as I feared."

  Remo shrugged. "Nothing a good team of masons couldn't fix in a decade or two." He laughed. He was bone-tired, but he knew he couldn't rest until he had delivered the bad news he'd put off for most of the day.

  "I might as well tell you, Lizzie's gone," he blurted.

  "That is too much to hope for," Chiun said.

  "It's true. She took off in the time module. I don't think we'll see her again."

  "I do," Chiun said disgustedly. "That woman is like misfortune. She always turns up when you need her least."

  "Well, she's not going to turn up now."

  Chiun pointed, his face forming an expression of distaste. "Think again, o brilliant one."

  Walking from the crumbled city wall, her shirt torn at the shoulder, her hair turned gray-black from dirt and plaster dust, Lizzie ambled over to them and sat down in the dust without a word.

  "Where'd you come from?" Remo asked.

  "Outside the city. I've been finding temporary homes for the villagers. It's no bed of roses out there, either, but the damage isn't as bad as it is here." Resting on her elbows, she closed her eyes and threw her head back in fatigue.

  "So that's where the villagers went," Remo said.

  "She helped?" Chiun asked incredulously.

  "I know it's not my style," Lizzie said, a bitter smile playing around her mouth.

  "What about the pod? Did you try it?"

  "Oh, yes. It worked. I sent a vase up in it as an experiment. Turned the switch, presto. Vase gone." She looked into the distance. "I put a note in it. I thought maybe Dick Diehl would come exploring the temple some day and find it."

  "Hey, wait a minute. A vase? What about you? I thought you were going home."

  She chuckled, a half-laugh born of deep exhaustion. "Yeah, I did, too. And then I started to think about you here, and about all these slobs in trouble, and about Cooligan and how he felt good even though he knew he was going to die here.... Oh, I don't know," she said, getting wearily to her feet. "It was a hell of a time to develop a conscience."

  Remo took her hand. "Thanks for sticking around," he said.

  "Think nothing—" Her hands flailed in the air and she fell, sprawling. "What was that?"

  The earth moved again. "Another tremor," Chiun said. "Milder. This time will be easier."

  The boy scrambled to his feet along with the sleepy Mayans, who blinked in astonishment at the new rumblings.

  "Another chance," Lizzie said, almost in a whisper. "I can't believe it. I never thought..." Her words drifted off as her eyes met Remo's. "Do you want to stay? I'll stay if you do."

  "I don't think we have to this time," Remo said, watching her eyes flood with relief. "Will the time module work?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine," she said, running for the Temple of Magic. "I sent the vase into the future, and then set the controls back, but the vase didn't return."

  Remo stopped in his tracks. "It didn't?"

  "No," Lizzie said quietly.

  "Something's wrong. I don't know if we ought to risk it."

  "It is time to risk something," Chiun said, his hand on Po's shoulder. "I have spent quite enough time in this place, and I wish to return. I will go."

  "If you go, I'll go," Remo said.

  "Well, nobody's going without me," Lizzie laughed as she tried to keep her balance on the shifting earth.

  "Okay, everybody in," Remo commanded, when they reached the temple. "Might as well give this thing another try." He helped Lizzie into the pod. Imperiously, Chiun followed her in.

  "You too, squirt," Remo said to the boy.

  Po looked over his shoulder. Footsteps were approaching. Nata-Ah appeared, holding a length of cotton bandage in her hands. Her face fell at the sight of the new gods preparing to depart.

  "I cannot go," the boy said awkwardly. "Someone must remain to rebuild the city—"

  "For God's sake, that'll take years," Remo said.

  "I have years," the boy said quietly. "I have my whole life."

  "Now, I can't let you—"

  "Please," Po said. "I belong here now, as I never belonged in my own time. I have come to the end of my journey. As my father predicted, I have walked with the gods, and spoken for them. Now it is time for the gods to go. Let them leave behind their voice."

  He limped to the doorway of the time module and bowed to Chiun. Nata-Ah was behind him.

  Chiun rose, walked over to the two children, and whispered something in Po's ear. The boy nodded. Then they both bowed to Chiun and to Remo and to Lizzie with the cool authority of born rulers.

  "Please enter," the boy said to Remo in a voice that sounded more like a man's than a boy's.

  Remo went in.

  With another bow, Po closed the door and threw the switch. "Good-bye, my friends," he called.

  ?Chapter Sixteen

  Lizzie came to in despair. "The log," she moaned. "I forgot the damned captain's log."

  "Not so fast. We may still be there," Remo said. He opened the door.

  The Temple of Magic was in ruins. Outside the door to the pod lay a freshly broken vase. "Look here," Remo said, picking up the pieces. "It must have rolled out of the pod. I think we made it."

  Among the shards of pottery was a small scrap of parchment, grown as fragile as an insect's wings with the years. On it was a faint message: "I love you, Dick."

  Remo handed the parchment to Lizzie. "Is this all you were going to tell him?"

  She smiled. "In the end, that was all there was to say."

  In the outer chamber, Remo found the ancient laser weapon he had saved to take to Smith. "Everything's just the way we left it."

  "Is it?" Chiun said, beckoning them back to the wreckage of the plane. In the chamber reserved for the gods' flaming chariot was a blank space. The Cassandra and everything in her was gone.

  "But— we just came from there," Remo said.

  Chiun held up a precaut
ionary finger. "You forget, we left five thousand years ago. And five thousand years ago was this machine destroyed."

  "Who did it?" Lizzie demanded hotly. "Who would have done such a thing?"

  "The only sensible one among you. The boy. It was my last request to him before we left."

  Remo stared at him in astonishment. "Do you know what you did? What's been lost?"

  "What has been lost? The opportunity for others to walk yet again in the footsteps of Kukulcan, bringing their modern ways to an ancient world? Oh, they would come with good intentions, these others, just as we did. And like ourselves, they would bring confusion and violence to their land. No, Remo. It is a mistake to inflict our time on another. We have left Po as our ambassador. Trust him."

  They walked outside. The overgrown jungle was back to replace the village square of Yaxbenhaltun.

  You will be as dust in the wind of the sea, Remo remembered. Quintanodan's prophecy had come true; the splendor of the Maya was no more. "Do you think the Olmec won, after all? Are they still around, calling themselves the Lost Tribes?"

  "We'll never know," Lizzie said. She tramped through the high grass to the east of the temple. "There's no volcano," she said. "Bocatan's gone." Something on the ground fixed her attention. "Remo, look here."

  A mound of blackened, moss-covered rock protruded from the earth beside her. "This wasn't here before."

  "It's just a rock."

  "No," she said excitedly, scratching at the moss with her fingernails. "That's stone. Cut stone. This was built." Her eyes flashed. "Another temple, maybe. Or, better yet, a tomb. Maybe the city was reorganized after the earthquake. Oh, God, I've got to get a team together."

  "How about your friend Dick Diehl?" Remo suggested. "He might be interested."

  "He might," Lizzie said. "Think I could go with you as far as the first town with a telephone?"

  "If you must," Chiun said.

  Lizzie looked up at the old man. He was smiling.

  * * *

  "What am I going to tell Smitty?" Remo lamented as he and Chiun walked through the double doors of Folcroft Sanitarium. Under Remo's arm was a box marked "Fragile," which had flown with them from Guatemala City.