"I've never heard of the eyeballs turning blue," Remo said after the sheet had been restored.
"In liver disease patients you can get a really striking yellow. But blue sclera-which is what it's called-is rare. Usually, it means osteoporosis-bone disease, which I can definitely rule out."
"So what's it mean?"
"If I find out, I'll let you know. Meanwhile, I'd better take a look at those Snappers you say are dead."
"Watch out for ants."
"Ants?"
"They're really active this time of year. They'll jump anything that goes near them."
"Except me," added the old Korean.
Parsons's brow furrowed. "Ants don't jump."
"These ones do," said Remo.
Shaking his head, Dale Parsons left the strange pair.
Chapter 17
Outside the tent, where he could hear himself think, Remo said, "As soon as word of the dead Snappers spreads, we're going to be in white water, media sharkwise."
"You are speaking Imbecile," said Chiun. "Speak English."
"We'd better clear out."
"It will grow dark soon, we will not be seen if we do not wish to be seen."
"I need a shower, remember?"
The Master of Sinanju's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You need a cold shower, for you have lust in your eyes."
"Don't let's get started, Chiun. Come on."
They found their car and drove back to the motel in silence.
"You have any ideas about what's going on?" Remo asked after a while.
"Only the brilliant Thrush Limburger can explain it, but where is he?"
"One thing's for sure, he's not anywhere around here. He's too fat to hide inside anything smaller than the Goodyear blimp."
"He is not hiding. He has been spirited away by the secret fiends who are at work in these woods."
"Well, secret fiends or not," Remo said, looking around, "someone or something killed Theodore and that coroner. Something that turns their eyeballs blue temporarily."
"Poison."
"Huh?"
"Poison," repeated Chiun. "That is what the word virus means: poison."
"No, it doesn't. A virus is a bug."
"A bug is a bug."
"A virus is kinda like a microscopic bug. If it gets into your system, it reproduces and takes it over until nothing works. Kinda like congressmen."
"In Latin, a language that is good despite the fact that it is no longer spoken," said Chiun, "the word virus means poison."
Remo looked thoughtful. "I had some Latin when I was a kid. A lot of English words come from Latin, but they don't always mean the same thing as they did to the old Romans."
"You were taught Latin by pagans," Chiun sniffed.
"Those nuns at St. Theresa's taught me a lot."
"Trivia," Chiun sniffed. "They filled your empty head with trivia and superstition. I taught you everything that matters."
"I remember it a little different, Little Father." Remo suddenly remembered something. "Want me to drop you off at the Chinese restaurant?"
Chiun stroked his wispy beard. "Not unless you are going to eat too."
"I figure I'll eat later," said Remo.
"Then I prefer to starve. I am no better than a bug-eater if you prefer the company of that currymongering woman to that of the one who raised you from the muck and ignorance of the nunnery."
Remo sighed. He pulled into the bungalow just as it grew dark.
"Look," he said, getting out. "Eat or don't eat. Just don't lay any guilt trip on me because I want to enjoy a little female companionship once in a while."
"You are welcome to females by the score. As long as they are appropriately colored."
"You mean white?"
"No. Korean. Have I ever told you that the Korean woman is the fairest flower of them all?"
"Yes, and I can dig up my own female companionship, thank you."
"I am going to my room," said Chiun. He eyed his pupil for a reaction.
"Okay by me," said Remo in an unconcerned voice.
"To sleep," added Chiun.
"Pleasant dreams," said Remo.
"If my slumber is troubled by the sound of rutting, I will make myself heard."
"You make yourself heard every night with that goose-honking of yours."
Chiun drew himself up to his full five-foot height. "Slanderer! I do not snore!"
"And I tell no lies."
The Master of Sinanju flounced into his bungalow, slamming the door after him. Remo slammed his door too.
But a few minutes later, Remo was humming. He had hot water and it felt good coursing soapily down his lean, hard body. He was going on a date. He had not had a date-a real date-in years. Women he had had. Dates, no. It was nice to think he could still date, have a good time and get away from work. Especially this assignment.
By the time the knocking came at the door, Remo was whistling.
His whistle trailed off into a startled squawk when he threw open the door.
For there stood Jane Goodwoman, stark naked. More stark than naked, although she was totally naked. She was very stark.
"What are you doing here?" Remo demanded.
Jane Goodwoman smiled as wide as a Cadillac grille. "I got your note, lover!" She threw out her arms and her breasts wobbled like mismatched pink jello molds, setting her hoop earrings jangling.
"What note?"
"The one you sent to my hotel that said 'I love you madly.' "
"I hate you absolutely," said Remo. "Therefore, I sent no mash notes."
Jane Goodwoman gathered up her E-cup breasts, shoved there into Remo's face and demanded, "How can you hate these?"
Looking at the mass of flesh slopping over Jane Goodwoman's clutching hands, Remo remarked, "I didn't know tits could have thyroid problems."
Jane Goodwoman turned red and threw her hand back to slap Remo in the face. Remo was too quick. He slammed the door. The slam and the smack of her hand hitting the door blended into a single short, sharp sound.
"This despicable harassment will be in tomorrow's Blade!" she called through the quivering door.
"Get stuffed. Just be sure you spell my name right. It's Salk. S-A-L-K. With the FDA. And it is Association."
"Bastard!"
"At least I had one parent who owned up to having me."
The sound of a car going away was a relief. It was almost eight. Nalini was due any minute. Remo went over to the connecting wall with Chiun's duplex and slammed it hard enough to loosen plaster.
"Nice try, Little Father, but you blew it. She couldn't wait till eight."
The sound of snoring came loudly. It was not the usual goose-honking, so Remo knew Chiun was faking it, surrendering dignity in return for avoidance of blame.
When she came, Nalini entered the room like a balmy breeze. Her sari was a livid pink and clung to her willowy body like ocean foam. Framed by her shawl, her dusky face was like some dark-hearted lotus blossoming.
"Hello, Remo," she said, lowering her big luminous eyes coyly.
Remo couldn't suppress a grin. "You're right on time. Wanna eat?"
"Certainly."
She took his arm and her perfume flavored the walk to the car.
At the Chinese restaurant, they talked over their meal. Remo was surprised at how he hung on Nalini's every word. He found her fascinating, in a mysterious way. He was halfway through dinner before he remembered he needed to pump her too.
"Clancy still hanging around?" he asked.
"Yes. He is very determined to save mankind from this terrible HELP. It has been his burden since the death of his brothers. Those poor men, Remo. Dying of overwork because they cared about helping people too much to rest themselves properly."
"You don't buy that crap?"
Nalini shrugged languidly. "I am a simple nurse from a foreign land. What do I know of such things? Some say there is a hole in the sky and others a disease in the air. I do not know. Others wiser than I will tell me what is
truth."
"I heard that Jimbo and Robbo Clancy both died of syphilis."
Nalini's dark eyes flared. "That is not true!"
"How do you know it isn't?"
"I hear all the secrets of the Clancy family and I have never heard such a thing said. Why do you ask me these things, Remo?"
"I told you. I'm looking into HELP, and Clancy's been acting strange since he got here. I'm trying to figure out where he fits in."
Nalini looked at him closely. She leaned across the table and said, "You are not with the FDA. Who are you? You can tell me. I am good with secrets."
"Then here's one you'll appreciate. The thunderbug isn't giving people HELP. It isn't helping them either. It's worthless as food, despite what people are saying. Those PAPA crazies are starving with every bite."
"I do not believe that," Nalini said doubtfully. "You are making fun of me because I am different from you."
"There's a pathologist with the CDC who figured it out. He's going to blow the thunderbug part of the scam apart once he finds a reporter with a working brain."
Eyes darkening, Nalini said, "These things are beyond a poor foreign girl like me."
"Where are you from originally?" asked Remo, changing the subject quickly.
Nalini leaned back and toyed with her curried rice dish. "Ceylon," she said, her voice a pout. "It was called Ceylon when I was a girl. It is Sri Lanka now."
"So you're not Indian?"
"I am a Tamil, a Hindu. It is not so very different to Western eyes. I left my country to escape the strife."
Looking into her large black eyes, Remo felt he had known Nalini a long time, or in some past life. He kept forgetting his food. He kept forgetting everything except those alluring eyes and the perfume that made him feel pleasantly restless. His steamed rice had grown cold and the duck greasy. He had barely touched them.
Before he knew it, they were driving back to his bungalow and she was sitting close to him, her fruity perfume filling his head. He could feel the heat of her body. It was pleasant too. It also made him anxious to get to his destination.
Remo didn't have to invite her in. Nalini entered as if the invitation need not be spoken, and it was not long before they were kissing experimentally. Remo led Nalini to the bed and she smiled unabashedly as he tried to figure out how to remove her sari.
Laughing, she reached down and took it up by one trailing bit of silk. Then, coming up on one foot, she spun in place-unwrapping herself for him. To his surprise, she wore no undergarments.
Her body was a supple brown masterpiece with nipples as dark as her eyes. They seemed to stare at him.
She bent to turn off the light beside the bed. In the darkness, her smile was a thousand silent invitations to pleasure. They began exploring each other's bodies. Remo found her skin silky smooth.
Remo pushed everything he had ever learned about Sinanju sexual technique to the back of his mind and took her the way he would have in the carefree days before he had come to Sinanju.
Nalini was no coy maiden, for all her demureness. She knew sex, and she knew men.
What followed was rough and wild and Remo lost himself in her perfect, responsive body.
After Remo had rolled off her, Nalini surprised him by mounting him. Before, she had been warm and delicious. Now she became a tigress, moving up and down, making tiny, inarticulate sounds of pleasure that built into a crescendo so acute she closed her eyes and bit her lips as if suddenly ashamed to give voice to her passion.
The last thing Remo remembered was her dark breasts bouncing before his eyes, her nipples, so close to his face, like flat, alien eyes. They reminded him of something, but he was suddenly too busy responding to her rhythms to care what.
They came together, and then sleep came.
Sometime in the hours past midnight, Remo woke up with Nalini's scent still in his lungs and a relaxed feeling that he had not felt in many years. His bones felt loose and easy in his skin and his muscles were completely devoid of tension.
Then, a wrench turned something in his stomach.
He was instantly aware that he was alone. No warmth came from the empty spot on the bed beside him.
He was naked, the covers down around the foot of the bed.
And on his stomach something crawled.
Remo lifted his head carefully. Eyes adjusting to the darkness, he spied a long grotesque shape where his navel was.
Even in the gloom, he could see the flat alien eyespots. And he remembered what Nalini's nipples had reminded him of.
And before Remo could react, the longhead opened like a scissors, and from the inner edges of each separate bulb, long pincerlike mandibles unfolded like biological straight razors.
His Sinanju-trained nervous system kicked in and Remo's hand was moving before he willed it to move.
He slapped the hideous thing off his belly and across the room, where it struck the wall with a dry but final sound.
Remo rolled off the bed, hit the lights, and knelt to see exactly what he had killed.
It was dead, its legs already curling up.
The head was in two parts. Long fangs lay revealed.
It was one of the rust-colored ants that had been such a nuisance. Definitely. Only now it looked less like an ant than something else. Remo didn't know what.
Then he felt something on his back.
Remo whirled, and the sensation was abruptly gone. He heard the sound of something tiny slapping into a window curtain.
He looked at the rug under the curtain. Scrambling to find its legs was another of the ant things. Remo dropped a telephone book on it, and that was that.
More came. He brushed one off his shoulder, crushed it under a bare heel. It was like stepping on dry prickly twigs.
They were coming from the window. It had been closed. Now it was open a crack.
Remo slammed the sash down, crushing at least three. Their separating heads wilted, fangs not quite in open position.
He made a sweep of the room and found one more. He killed it with a shoe.
Then Remo day down on the bed and willed the wrench in his stomach to loosen whatever emotional bolt had been tightened.
When he got his emotions under control, he felt very cold. And angry.
In the darkness, Remo whispered a single soft word.
"Nalini."
Chapter 18
In the morning, after Remo had explained it all, the Master of Sinanju did not say, "I told you so." His eyes said it, but his mouth only whispered, "I did not know." His tone was strange.
"Know what?" wondered Remo.
"That they still lived."
"Who does?"
Chiun shook away the clouds in his hazel eyes. They cleared. "I have never told you of the Spider Divas," he said solemnly.
"Spider Divas?"
"They were great rivals of ours in the days of the Mogul emperors."
"In India?"
"Yes."
"Nalini told me she was from Sri Lanka."
"Which was once known as Ceylon. The Spider Divas came from the island of Ceylon."
"Why are they called Spider Divas?" asked Remo.
"Because it is said that they could speak the language of the spiders and make them do their wicked bidding."
"Spiders don't speak."
"And ants do not hop. Yet we have seen ants do just that."
They were in Remo's room. The Master of Sinanju was examining the crushed bodies of the dead antlike things. Remo had flushed most of them down the toilet. One or two mashed dry corpses remained.
"They look like ants to me," Remo said.
Chiun frowned. "I can make nothing of them, but it is possible it is true."
"What's true?"
"Although the Spider Divas were seen, their assassins were not. That was the mystery Master Sambari failed to fathom."
"I detect a legend coming on."
Chiun pointed to a spot on the rug. "Sit."
Obediently, Remo sat, first checkin
g the rug for vermin.
The Master of Sinanju sat too. They faced one another, their legs tucked in the classic lotus position.
"Master Sambari," Chiun said, "is a Master of whom I never before spoke."
"Another black sheep?"
Chiun's tiny nose wrinkled slightly. "No. I tell you these stories of my ancestors so that you may learn. The lesson of Sambari was never necessary for you to learn because Sambari vanquished the last of the Spider Divas in the days of the Mogul emperors."
"So how come we have them in this country? Sambari was before Columbus, right?"
"Who is to know?" Chiun said dismissively. "When we return home, I will have to revise the scrolls that extoll Sambari's achievement. The man was a bungler. He let one get away."
"Nalini looked a little young to be this Eldress," Remo pointed out. "Or a long-lost Spider Diva."
"She is obviously a descendant of that unclean clan. There can be no doubt that it was she who dispatched Theodore Soars-With-Eagles, possibly by sending one of her spiders to his toupee."
"Tepee," said Remo absently. "Still, the Harvesters did say that a strange Indian girl had been hanging around Magarac's tent."
Chiun's face gathered up in annoyance. "Indian! You told me a squaw."
"I know I did," Remo said heatedly. "I was told Indian. I thought that meant squaw, not East Indian."
"If you had repeated to me the word Indian, I would have guessed the truth instantly!"
"You'd only have jumped to a conclusion."
"A correct conclusion. One that would have spared you the terror of this night."
Remo folded his arms stubbornly. "So what's the story?"
The Master of Sinanju's bony fingers found their opposite wrists and his kimono sleeves came together, hiding them from sight.
"The Spider Divas were assassins," he said. "Exceedingly cunning temptresses who seduced their victims and left them to sleep the sleep of eternity with their unclean creatures. This is known."
"You're losing me."
"You almost lost yourself through ignorance and lust. I will begin at the beginning."
Chiun looked down at his ivory white sleeping kimono and began speaking. His squeaky voice grew stern in timbre.
"The days of which I speak were the days of the Mogul Emperor Aurangzeb. These were glorious days, although not as glorious as the days of the Egyptians or the Romans or especially the Persians. Still, the Mogul emperors of India had much to offer Sinanju, for they presided over a fractious empire, in which Hindus and Sikhs and unimportant others were persecuted. For the Mogul emperors of India followed the Prophet Mohammed."
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