Ground Zero td-84

by Warren Murphy

  "You see this little doohickey here?" Swindell was saying, pointing to a gleaming stainless steel shower head.

  "Yes. It is obviously a doohicky," Chiun said seriously.

  "You just dial it and get any kind of water massage you want. Pulsing, throbbing, needle spray-you name it. Every home should have one."

  "How about a quick tour before we go?" Remo asked.

  "Your friend here is a hard sell," Swindell said, leading them out to the elevator. "Good thing I already offered him a unit. I'd start to think I was losing my golden touch."

  "The things you touch do not turn to gold," Chiun said coldly.

  "Don't you just love this guy?" Swindell asks Remo. "He talks like an upscale fortune cookie!"

  The elevator took them down into the Condome tower.

  As they descended, the air became cooler, then clammier, and then finally dank with the smell of standing water.

  "The air conditioner must have kicked back on," Remo remarked. "You could get Legionnaire's disease breathing this stuff."

  "If you want the twenty-first-century luxury of living in the desert, you gotta make a few adjustments," Swindell said firmly.

  "What do you think, Chiun?"

  The Master of Sinanju did not answer at first. Remo wondered if he was being ignored again. Then he noticed Chiun's face. It was uneasy, the eyes a little strange.

  The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open. Swindell stepped off. His feet sloshed with each step.

  Remo looked out into the corridor warily. Connors Swindell, wearing a sheepish smile, was standing in a half inch of clammy water.

  "Someone spill something?" Remo asked as Chiun sniffed the air unhappily.

  "Those damn Dirt First!! saboteurs!" Swindell said indignantly. "Don't you fret. It's only a little water. This stuff will all be pumped out before you're ready to occupy."

  Getting up on tiptoe, Remo stepped into the corridor.

  He turned. "Coming, Little Father?"

  The sheet-like look on the Master of Sinanju's face froze Remo's blood.

  "Chiun! What's wrong?"

  "Remo, we must leave this place of horror," Chiun said, his voice squeaking like rusty nails being pulled from dry wood.

  "Horror?" Remo and Swindell said in unison. "What are you talking about?" Remo added, eyes concerned.

  "Yeah," Swindell asked. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "This is a place of death," Chiun intoned. "Death and darkness. I refuse to enter it."

  "But you got a unit just down the hall," Swindell protested. "Don't worry about a little water sloshing around the floor. It won't hurt you none."

  "Remo," Chiun repeated, holding fast. "We must leave. Now."

  It wasn't the edge in the Master of Sinanju's voice that decided Remo-although it grew more metallic and terrible in a way Chiun's voice had never before sounded-it was the soul-shocked light in his hazel eyes.

  Remo wasted no time. He yanked Swindell back into the elevator with him and punched the up button.

  "If you don't want it, at least tell your friends about it," Swindell said disspiritedly. "Fair enough?"

  The elevator ride seemed to take twice as long going up as down. Once at the top, the Master of Sinanju fled the cage for the desert with a hurried padding of his sandals.

  Chiun, Remo realized in surprise, was actually running from the Condome as if he feared it would somehow swallow him.

  "What's eating your friend?" Swindell muttered. "Reverse acrophobia?"

  "No idea," Remo said worriedly. He caught up with the Master of Sinanju. "Tell me what's wrong, Little Father?" he asked.

  The Master of Sinanju slowed. He did not stop. He marched straight to the rental car. His hands found one another, clasping opposite wrists in the hidden folds of his kimono sleeves. Remo noticed that they trembled almost imperceptibly.

  Chiun spoke in a hollow voice. "I smelled death, Remo. Terrible death. A long, black, clammy eternity of death. More grim than the Void from which we come and to which we return."

  "I never heard you speak of death that way," Remo said. "Like you feared it."

  "I do not fear a clean death," Chiun insisted. "A true and correct death is sometimes to be welcomed. The death that waits for me down in that buried place of horror is not such a death."

  Remo lifted a eyebrow. "For you?"

  "Come," Chiun said. "Take me away if you value the gifts I have bestowed upon you."

  "Sure, Little Father," Remo said gently. "Just let me grab the neutron bomb pieces."

  Chiun's head snapped around. His wrinkled face twisted in horror. "Do what you must. But do not delay."

  Remo hurried back to the wounded helicopter. He left the mangled casing rings and tucked the beryllium oxide tamper under one arm.

  He ran back across the sand in such haste that he actually left footprints.

  For once, the Master of Sinanju declined to scold him on his carelessness.

  They drove off in strained silence.

  Chapter 17

  Remo was transcending with the sun.

  It was an old Sinanju ritual. A Master of Sinanju would sit cross-legged on a reed mat, eyes closed, feeling the new sun beating on his face. As the sun rose, he would meditate on the events of the previous day and attempt to peer into those of the day to come.

  In over twenty years of transcending with the sun, Remo had never seen a shred of the day to come. Today was no different.

  He opened his eyes. The sun struck them like a double-bladed dagger. Straightening his crossed legs like an unfolding scissors jack, he came to his feet.

  He turned, intending to see how Chiun was.

  "Little Father!" he said, surprised. "I didn't know you were up."

  For standing before him, his face a wrinkled blank, was the Master of Sinanju. He wore a pale peach-colored robe.

  Chiun lifted a quelling hand.

  "I have words to speak to you, Remo Williams," Chiun intoned.

  "Well, pull up a mat," Remo said brightly.

  Gravely the Master of Sinanju toed a tatami mat into place. He settled onto it. Remo slipped back onto his. His hands settled on his lifted knees.

  "I'm all ears," he said.

  Remo half-expected a cutting rebuke. None came. Instead, Chiun began speaking in brittle tones. His eyes seemed unfocused as he talked, as if he were looking at something other than Remo. Remo shivered. Chiun's gaze bored through him and beyond, making Remo feel like a pane of glass. He had never felt that way. The glass was like a barrier, cutting him off from all contact with the man who had raised him up from common humanity.

  "I had not expected to speak these words to you, my son," Chiun said hollowly. "But time is growing short."

  Remo's brows knit together. "Short?"

  "I am very old."

  Uh-oh, thought Remo. Here we go again. Another I'm-in-my-last-days spiel. What's the old reprobate angling for this time?

  "Tell me something new," Remo joked. The hazel eyes of the Master of Sinanju focused suddenly and Remo lost the transparent-as-glass feeling. Chiun's frank regard was devoid of warmth.

  "I have seen many summers," Chiun began.

  "I know," Remo said in a subdued voice. "You're what now? Eighty-something?"

  "I was eighty when I first laid eyes upon you, white man with death in his heart."'

  "That's right. That makes you, what-over ninety?" Remo blinked at the realization. "Christ, where does the time go?"

  "In all the years we have known one another, never have you acknowledged my birthday, never have you honored me for each year successfully completed. So it was last year. And the year before. So it would have been this very summer."

  So that's it, Remo thought. Well, I got him there. "Wait a darn minute here!" Remo said. "I never celebrated your birthday because you never let on when it was. In fact, I distinctly recall once asking, and being told to mind my own business."

  "A truly worthy seeker of truth is not so easily dissuaded as that," C
hiun said, his voice flint.

  "Your exact words," Remo persisted, "'Mind your own business, pale piece of pig's ear.' That was me in those days, a miserable pale piece of pig's ear."

  "You have gained some color since those long-ago days," Chiun said without emotion. Remo tried to read the remark for humor. But Chiun had resumed speaking.

  "In the land of my birth, Korea, men by custom cease to celebrate the days of their natural span with their sixtieth birthday. Their age is not acknowledged after that. To the end of their days, they remain eternally sixty."

  "Kinda like a Korean thirty-nine," Remo remarked.

  "But a Master of Sinanju is different," Chiun went on solemnly. "He celebrates his sixtieth year and his sixty-first and so on until he reaches the illustrious age of eighty."

  "When is your birthday, anyway?" Remo asked suddenly. "I know you're a Leo. That's in what? June? July? A couple of months from now, at least."

  "Beyond eighty," Chiun continued coldly, "a Master of Sinanju does not acknowledge the passing years until he reaches a certain milestone. This he acknowledges, and yet remains forever eighty. For it is an important event in a Master's life."

  "Yeah?" Remo said, wondering where this was going.

  "You wonder why I have shunned you of late?" "It had crossed my mind," Remo said sourly. "Once or twice. Yeah."

  "It had been my hope that you would come to this knowledge of your own accord."

  "Sue me."

  Chiun's button nose wrinkled in disdain.

  Let him work for it, Remo thought. Two can play this game.

  "Once," Chiun began, launching into the low, wavering tone he used to offer the legends of Sinanju, "the Master Songjong, who was young, being only sixty-"

  "Is this a real sixty or a Korean thirty-nine?"

  "Sixty by anyone's reckoning," Chiun said tartly. "Now, the Master who trained him, who was Vimu, was approaching the great milestone fortunate Masters reach. A summons came out of Egypt. It was a minor thing. Something about a princeling who lacked the patience to become a natural pharaoh. So he sought to slay the one who was ahead of him in the natural order."

  "An old story," Remo noted.

  "With the usual ending. And when word came to Vimu, he summoned Songjong and said to him, 'A summons has come out of Egypt. Since in these days Sinanju enjoys the luxury of two Masters to earn its gold, one of us must go to Egypt and the other remain to guard the gold earned in times past. Which do you prefer, my son?'

  "And Master Songjong, who had been a good Master until now, meditated upon this. Instead of considering Vimu's age, he thought of a Korean maiden called Nari, with whom he was smitten. Being fifty, he had decided to take a wife. And he hoped to make this come to pass soon, for his loins burned with a lust for Nari."

  "Late bloomer, huh?"

  "And so did Songjong say unto the Master Vimu, 'O Master, you are old and approach the venerated age. The task in Egypt is modest, but the responsibility of guarding our village is great and must fall upon my shoulders in coming times. I should remain here now to perfect my skills of guardianship.'

  "Vimu nodded gravely, although this was not the answer he had expected. The task would take him far from his ancestral village, and he would not return until after his coming birthday. Vimu was disappointed, since Songjong had knowledge of this fact, but he surrendered to the decision. For Vimu had placed the matter before Songjong as a test of his competence. And while Songjong had failed, it still remained for Vimu to go to Egypt."

  Chiun's voice fell into a mournful singsong cadence.

  "With much heartache, Master Vimu ventured into the sands of Egypt. The princeling was dispatched as easily as most princelings are. But saddened and advanced in age, Master Vimu did not survive the long journey back through the dark desert. He died, parched of tongue, and his skin hardened to iron."

  Chiun raised an ivory-nailed finger.

  "One day short of his hundredth birthday."

  "Tough," said Remo carelessly. Then it sank in. "Wait a minute! Did you say hundred? That's the venerated age?"

  Chiun nodded gravely.

  Remo pointed to Chiun's sunken breast.

  "You! You're a hundred!"

  Chiun shook his aged head. "I beheld my ninety-ninth summer last year. This summer, if I live to see it, I will attain the venerated age all Masters strive for, for it means that they have completed their mission in life. For ever since the days of Songjong and Vimu, it has been decreed that upon attaining the exalted age, a Master of Sinanju may retire if he so desires."

  "Are you telling me you're planning to retire?"

  "No, ignorant one," said Chiun. "I am telling you this for two reasons. The first is that you are obviously too blind to discover the truth for yourself, as I had hoped. And there are great ceremonies which are your responsibility to initiate."

  "What's the second?"

  Chiun rose. His face was like beige stone weathered by a thousand years of wind and rain. His eyes were bleak and animal sad.

  "The second reason is that I do not believe I will attain the venerated age."

  And with those words the Master of Sinanju whirled and returned to his room. The door closed quietly. Remo stared at it a long time. But he wasn't looking at the wood. Remo Williams was seeing the afterimage of Chiun's stooped figure in his mind's eye. It was as if he beheld the Master of Sinanju's true frailty for the first time.

  "A hundred years old," Remo whispered. "He's a hundred freaking years old."

  He felt a cold wind blow through the room, even though it was a warm spring day.

  A shiver rippled along the bare skin of his forearms.

  Chapter 18

  Connors Swindell's decade was taking a turn for the worse.

  It was the next morning. His secretary, seeing the ashen look on his usually flush-with-prospects face as he entered his Palm Springs condo, accidentally pricked herself with the needle she was busily wielding.

  "Ouch!" she said, sucking on her thumb. She threw down the needle and tossed the now-bloodstained condom into the wastebasket, saying. "That one's no good now."

  "That's what I want," Connors said savagely. "You fetch it back, hear?"

  Reluctantly Connie Payne fished the rolled-up condom from the basket, and wetting a Kleenex with her tongue, wiped the blood off. Then, after holding it up to the light to make sure the pinhole went clean through the lambskin, she slipped it into the slot of a small device on her desk that resembled a high-tech stamping machine. As she tapped the lever, the device hissed and spat out the condom, now sealed in foil stamped with the name Connors Swindell on one side. The other side held a strip of Velcro. She affixed the packet to a similarly Velcroed business card and flipped it onto a growing pile.

  As she unwrapped another condom from its fresh-from-the-factory packet, Connie looked up at her employer.

  "You know, I could be doing this for years," she complained.

  "I pay you," Swindell said, stripping off his jacket and hanging it on a peg. "And you might as well be doing something as sitting on your pretty little butt. We ain't moving units like the old days, you know."

  "I heard about those Dirt First people on the radio. Are they all dead?"

  "What ain't road kill is. They messed up my Condome but good. Insurance don't cover this. We may have to cash out."

  "What about all that Missouri property you were going to buy? Can't we stall the creditors until they come on the market, Con honey?"

  "How many times I gotta tell you? Don't 'Con honey' me. It ain't professional. In bed you can 'Con honey' me all you like. No place else."

  "Sorry Mr. Swindell," Connie said frostily, piercing the condom and feeding it through the stamper. Another packet clicked into the pile.

  "That's better, but don't skimp on the warmth."

  "This is a long way to go to start another baby boom." She pouted. "I'll be a saggy old lady by then."

  "You always got a stall in my stable, you know that," Swindell said absent
ly, looking through the stack of letters on his secretary's desk. "Anything special in here?" he asked.

  "The one on top's another paternity suit."

  Swindell dropped the envelope into the waste basket. "Nobody wants to pay the piper no more," he muttered.

  "The electric and phone bills are both overdue."

  "So? Draw two checks."

  "Against what? We're tapped."

  "Do it anyway. Just make sure you stick the phone check in the electric envelope and vice versa. That oughta tangle up their shorts for another three weeks.

  "Oh, Con. You're such a genius," Connie said admiringly.

  "If I'm so smart, how come I'm in so much debt?"

  "Maybe you should pay more attention to your horoscope, like I told you to."

  Swindell grunted. He dropped the remaining mail into the wastebasket. "Taggert call yet?"

  "Not yet."

  "If anybody wanting to buy calls," Connors Swindell said wearily, "I'll be in my office. I'm out to salesmen, lawyers, and creditors."

  The door slammed sullenly, and Constance Payne went back to putting pinholes in condoms. It was boring work, but every time she passed a newborn in a stroller, it gave her a tiny swell of pride. Who knew how many newborns owed their lives to the most brilliant real-estate-promotion scheme in human history?

  In the sunshine-filled sanctity of his Palm Springs den, Connors Swindell didn't feel at all brilliant. He felt instead like he was drowning in warm air.

  This latest setback to the Condome development looked to be a mortal blow. The banks would be all over him when they got the news that Dirt First!! had trashed the site. He had spent the entire night trying to clean it up, but it was useless.

  "Damn those ecobusybodies!" he burst out. "Imagine them messing with my plans twice."

  The phone rang. Swindell scooped it up.

  "Mr. Taggert on line one," Connie chimed.

  "Put 'im through." A moment later: "Hello, Taggert? About time you got back to me."

  "I don't appreciate your tone," said a voice that sounded like Humphrey Bogart in a dry well.

  "Sorry. I'm having a bad decade. Listen, the reason I called yesterday is, I got another special job for you."

  "Yeah?"

  "The La Plomo thing is fixing to work out fine," Swindell said. "I aim to scoop up all them fine houses-the ones still standing, that is-real cheap, just like I planned."