Killing Time td-50

by Warren Murphy

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  Chiun, adapted to hot and cold automatically, with the same unthinking speed as a normal person's heart­beat slows when he's asleep.

  So the cold meant nothing to Remo. The visibility was a different matter.

  "I think we've had it," Remo said when they ap­proached a fork in the road. Both tines of the fork were drifted knee-deep in fluffy banks of glistening snow. Beneath the starless, pitch-black expanse of sky, there was no such thing as a tire tread mark.

  "Jokes, always jokes," Chiun grumbled, veering off to the left at a speed so fast that he barely cracked the surface of the new snow. "And not even good jokes at that. Learn to be funny before you make jokes. Old Ko­rean proverb."

  "I'm not joking. Hey, what makes you so sure he went left?" From the traces of Foxx and his jeep that remained, the man might as well have veered upward in a helicopter.

  Chiun whirled around to face him, his almond eyes rounded in surprise. "You are asking me seriously how I knew? Do you not have a nose?"

  "A nose?"

  The old man lifted a handful of freshly fallen snow from the road. In his hand the snowflakes remained as they had been on the road, crystalline and unmelted. "Can you not smell it?"

  Remo craned down to sniff at the snow. He hadn't been paying attention to his senses, concentrating in­stead on his lowered temperature and the extraordi­nary night vision necessary in the blinding storm. But when he pushed his concentration toward his olfac­tory membranes, he did smell something. High-octane gasoline, motor oil, rubber, and faint metallic traces from the underside of the vehicle. Altogether they

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  existed in such small quantities that even an electron microscope might not have perceived the particles, but they were there, wafting through each new layer of snow.

  "Oh, yeah," Remo said with some astonishment. "But I couldn't smell it from here, standing up." He felt ashamed as soon as he said it. His words had smacked of excuses,

  He looked sheepishly at Chiun, but the old man only smiled. "That is why I am stili the Master of Sinanju and you the pupil."

  He was right, Remo thought as he followed the frail old Oriental through the snow. Chiun might act like a loony, but when it came down to it, he could still smell a droplet of motor oil beneath a foot of snow, standing at full height. He could still skim across the flakes with barely a footprint. And his double-spiral air blow had been pretty good, too.

  "You're something, all right, Little Father," he said.

  Chiun glanced back at him in surprise. For a mo­ment, his face took on the look of a small child, im­mensely pleased. But it was the briefest hesitation, and the moment passed.

  "Fool," he grumbled.

  Foxx's jeep was parked, still steaming, at Graham Airport, a small, blue-lit compound some twelve miles outside of Enwood, consisting of a short airstrip, a cinderblock building, an air sock, and little else. Remo checked the car. The distributor had been disman­tled. Foxx wasn't taking any chances with a possible tail.

  Inside the cinderblock building the base operator, a fat man with a reedy, wheezing voice that sounded as if it were being squeezed through a concertina, looked surprised to see him. He was wearing a down vest col-

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  ored neon orange, baggy brown trousers, and a hunt­ing cap with the flaps down. When he breathed, steam billowed out of him like a chimney. He spent several minutes eyeing Chiun's satin brocade robe and Remo's short-sleeved T-shirt before catching what Remo was saying.

  ". . . chart or something?"

  "What's that, boys?"

  "I said, did the guy who just flew out of here leave any kind of a chart?"

  The base op heaved himself out of his chair with a visible struggle and lumbered creakily toward a stained formica counter top, where a clipboard an­chored by a paper cup full of cold and greasy coffee lay.

  "Yeah. Right here," he said, holding the clipboard at arm's length and squinting. "Foxx, that the name?"

  "That's him."

  "Says here he filed for Deaver. Only Deaver's closed." He slapped the board back on the counter.

  "What's a deaver?"

  The fat man chuckled. "Guess you're not a flyer," he said. "Deaver's an airport. Near Clayton, South Dakota."

  Suddenly Remo remembered the cases of procaine Posie said were being shipped regularly to South Da­kota. "Is Deaver in the Black Hills?"

  The base op wheezed out a sickly chortle. "That it is," he said, shaking his head. "That's some crazy pi­lot, flying out in this weather. For the Black Hills, yet. Hear it's near thirty below there. Snow up to your waist. I told him, but these flyboys'll do anything with a lick or two of whiskey in 'em." He shrugged. "It's his plane, I guess."

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  "We've got to get over there," Remo said. "Is there a pilot who can take us anywhere near Deaver air­port?"

  The base op's wheezing chuckle blossomed into a mirthful roar, his belly rolling. "Listen, son. There isn't a pilot in the country'lf fly you out of this. And most of South Dakota's so bad, nothing but a penguin's got a chance out there. I told that Foxx fella Deaver's closed and he'd have to land somewheres in a field or some­thing, most likely, but he gone on ahead anyway. Hate to say it, but I won't be surprised if he don't make it." He touched Remo lightly on the shoulder. "Take my advice, son. Stay inside. Whatever bravery you been drinkin' or smokin' that got you to come out here in that tee-shirt's going to give you a good case of pneu­monia 'fore long. Go home." There was compassion in his eyes, kindly eyes that had watched a hundred good pilots flame out in the air and hurtle to their deaths in moments of youthful impulsiveness.

  Suddenly Remo remembered the guests at Shan­gri-la. "Can I use your phone?" he asked. "There are some people stuck in a house near here with no phones and no electricity. I want to call the police."

  The base op wheezed. "You city boys're always panicking. Electricity goes out all the time in these parts. And the phones are down all over. The one here ain't working, neither."

  "But you've got a radio or something, haven't you?" Remo persisted. "Foxx made his flight plans with somebody."

  "The FAA don't take kindly to using the radio for a thing like this. And they ain't no cops, anyway, can get out here tonight. Your friends're going to be just fine, son. Just snowed in a while. Their phones'll be work-

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  ing in the morning, same as mine. I'll call the police then, if you want, but they'll probably beat me to it themselves."

  "But the lines were cut," Remo explained. "And everybody at Shangri-la was acting like they were going to die. . . ."

  The base op huffed disdainfully. "You talking about that fancy place up the road?" He made a rude ges­ture. "Bunch of spoiled city folks, that's what they are. Used to having everything they want, more'n likely. ! heard they was all dope fiends, anyway."

  Maybe the man was right, Remo thought. Maybe the hysterical doomsaying of the guests at the clinic was no more than the whining of a bunch of spoiled brats used to having their every whim satisfied imme­diately. "Okay," he said to the base op. He gave the address of the house called Shangri-la. "I suppose it can wait till morning."

  He would set things right as soon as he could. If he could find a phone that worked tonight, he would call Smitty. Smitty would take care of notifying the police about the people at Shangri-la. For the time being, though, he had to find Foxx.

  "Hey, look out there!" the base op called in alarm.

  Chiun, who hadn't been paying any attention to the exchange between Remo and the base op, was over by the door of the cinderblock building, raptly poking and prodding a rackful of skis. One of the bolts had come loose, and the skis were dangling precariously. With one tug, Chiun forced one of them out of the rack and sent the rest clattering to the floor.

  "A strange utensil indeed," he remarked, in­specting the smooth polished wood of the ski.

  "Now just a second there, old timer." the base op said, his rotund face clouding. "It took me near h
alf

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  a day to set up that there rack. I need those skis."

  "I'll pay for any damage," Remo said quickly. The germ of an idea was growing. "Say, what do you use these for, anyway?"

  The base op lumbered darkly toward the pile of skis and inspected them. "These here are cross-country skis," he said. "I come to work in 'em. My old clunker Olds wouldn't make it out here in this weather if I filled her full of diamonds. Keep some extra pairs around in case somebody needs 'em. Out here we're used to bad winters." He was puffing and grunting as he bent over to inspect the fallen rack. "Well, no harm done, I 'spect. Just a hell of a lot of trouble to stick this thing back up." He waddled slowly back to the counter, where he produced a hammer and rummaged for nails.

  "No problem," Remo said. He located the fallen nails on the floor, aligned the rack with the holes in the wall, and pressed the nails back into place. By the time the base op arrived with his tools, the rack was re­paired.

  "Well, that was mighty nice of you," he said, his face regaining its kindliness. "How'd you do that so fast?" "

  "It was nothing," Chiun said.

  "I'd like to buy a couple of pairs from you," Remo said.

  The base op laughed. "You planning on skiing to South Dakota?"

  "Maybe," Remo said. "I'll give you a thousand dol­lars for two pairs." He pulled out his wallet.

  The base op blinked with surprise. "That's a pretty nice piece of change, boy."

  "It's worth it to me. Will you take it?"

  "Well, I don't know ... I don't feel right sending

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  you and the old fella out in the weather like this, Why don't you wait til! the storm breaks? I'll get a good pilot to fly you over to Deaver in the morning."

  "I can't wait till morning," Remo said. "Is it a deal?"

  "Well . . ." After some thought, the base op reached out and took the bills. "It still don't seem right," he said. But Remo was already fitting the skis onto Chiun's tiny feet.

  The old man grinned ecstatically. "Skates," he said, his eyes sparkling.

  "Skis. We'll cover ground faster than we could on foot."

  The base op held up a pudgy hand. "No, I know this is a free country and all, but traveling to South Dakota on skis is just plain ridic'lous. I can't stop you from kill­ing yourself, sonny, but you got to think of the old fella here. He'll never make it."

  Chiun stood up, wobbled for a second, then clapped to the door. "How do they work?" he asked, obviously thrilled with his new toy.

  "You've got to push yourself along with these," Remo said, holding up a pair of poles. But it was too late. Chiun was already out the door and picking up speed fast, sliding around the small building at eight revolutions a minute.

  "Got to hand it to him. The old guy's got a natural talent," the base op said, bewildered.

  Past the runway lights they watched Chiun speed toward a high drift. He skimmed the top of it with barely a mark and sailed skyward, clearing a high pine. He was cackling exultantly.

  "I don't think you have to worry about him," Remo said.

  Chapter Eleven

  Seymour Burdich set down the crowbar and moved his fingers to get some feeling back into them. He stood knee-deep in snow at the locked iron gate to Shangri-la. Through the swirling snowstorm he could barely make out the dark outline of the mansion.

  They were in there, ail the Beautiful People who made the world go round, only they weren't beautiful now. They were screaming and shivering in helpless terror over the thought that their guru, Dr. Foxx, had abandoned them. Like children, Burdich thought, blowing on his hands. He'd managed, in the hour or so that he'd been outside, to pry open two of the bars, nearly wide enough to squeeze through. He picked up the crowbar and went to work again.

  He was going to be a hero for this. The thought warmed him a hundred times more than the old kero­sene lamp that glowed dully beside the ironwork of the gate. Heroes were immediately accepted with that group. Look at Remo. He wasn't even a member, and they'd let him stay on. Because he was a hero.

  God knew he was the only one in that crowd, al­though, he had to admit, Posie Ponselle was okay. She'd at least kept her wits about her. Posie pulled out

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  blankets and organized a team to keep the fireplaces going and brewed coffee over the open fire in the ban­quet hall and played the piano. Also, she'd talked the group into changing out of those ridiculous togas they were wearing and into party clothes. That was just !ike Posie, turning a nightmare into a party.

  She was okay. Burdich would do a special writeup on her in the Celebrity Scoop when he got back to New York. But the rest of them were completely out of it, screaming their heads off about the end of the world and dying of old age and all kinds of crazy nonsense. A bunch of babies, that's what they were. Some Beau­tiful People. Ai! the guts of a playground full of kin-dergartners.

  And to think that he'd agonized for twenty years about not having the scratch to join them at their pre­cious Shangri-la. What a crock. When it came right down to it, no one had even volunteered to help him pry open the gate. They'd all said they were too old.

  He'd laughed secretly to himself at that one. Here were the creme de la creme, the chosen few who, like Coleridge's dreamer in the poem Foxx read at the cer­emony, had entered the magic circle of eternal youth. Here were people who had drunk the milk of Paradise every month since before the Flood, practically, until every one of them looked twenty years younger than he did, and they were all moaning that they were too old. Crybabies.

  The weird thing was, when Burdich looked at them in the firelight before he left the house, they did, look old. It was scary. Even Posie Ponselle, easily one of the great beauties of all time, was starting to look hag­gard. There was something around her eyes and mouth. It wasn't right there on the surface-she was

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  still a knockout-but it seemed to lie just beneath her skin, something that was trying to come through, something . . . decayed.

  Burdich shook his head to clear it. It was just his imagination. Posie was tired, that was all. That went for all of them. Tired and hysterical. And it went triple for Burdich. He was half frozen already, and he hadn't even made it out of the gate yet.

  But it would be worth it. Once he carne back with the cops, all the rich nobs at Shangri-la would give him a hero's welcome. He wouldn't be-what did Remo call him?-a mascot. He wouldn't be their mascot any­more, tolerated at their highbrow parties because he was mildly helpful to them. No more. After he saved their rich butts, they would take him into their hearts without reservation. He would be one of them. He would belong.

  Still, at the moment, Burdich's forthcoming triumph seemed empty. Shangri-la, for all its illustrious clients, was a weird place, and he'd come out into the cold as much to get away from it as to perform his heroic act. He wanted to help them, yes. He wanted to be their savior, their champion. But mostly he wanted to get as far away from that dark house full of screaming half-ghosts as he could.

  With one last, back-wrenching tug that pulled his shirt and his undershirt out of his pants so that his back was exposed to the stinging waves of snow, the bars squeaked open the last centimeter or so neces­sary to let him out. He pressed himself through the bars, feeling as if he were going through a spaghetti machine, grateful that he hadn't put on much weight through the years. Keeping his boyish figure had been mostly a function of being stone broke most of

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  the time, but it had finally been of some use. He pulled the flickering kerosene lamp out after him and started the long hike toward . . .

  Toward what? He hadn't seen so much as a bird-house on the way out. But there had to be someplace. This was Pennsylvania, not the Himalayas. Someone had to live around here.

  He trudged off through the trackless, snow-covered road, squinting to see five feet in front of him. The de­cision to leave Shangri-la had been the right one, he knew. He could feel it. Just outside the gates
the air seemed sweeter, somehow, more alive. Inside, with the guests at the mansion, it hadn't smelted good. There was something stale and putrid there.

  Suddenly the image of Posie Ponselle's face came to him again. Something decayed, just below the sur­face. ... He felt ashamed for thinking about her that way. Posie was a good egg, the best of the lot. Still there was something about her that reminded Burdieh of the stink of a beggar.

  Then, with swift, blinding clarity, Burdieh knew what it was in that house that he had feared so much that he was willing to walk all night in a raging blizzard to es­cape. It was death. He knew it as surely as he knew it was snowing. When those wild-eyed nobs in there were screaming about dying, they weren't just whis­tling Dixie. Death crouched in that house like a dog waiting for scraps.

  He walked for what he guessed was a half-hour or more, although it could have been longer or no more than a few minutes. He couldn't tell. His brain had numbed along with his fingers and toes and the ice cube on his face that had once been his nose. Posie's face (just below the surface) kept occurring to him

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  (death crouched in the corners, stinking like a beg­gar), but he tried to blot that out of his mind and con­centrate on his steps, one foot in front of the other.

  His eyelashes were frozen into sparkling spikes. They gave off brilliant flashes whenever he blinked, and that was a nice diversion. One foot in front of the other. His steps were growing shorter, since his legs had numbed with the cold. He had long since stopped rubbing his hands together to introduce some feeling into them. The last time he'd tried that, over the kero­sene lamp, he'd burned off a patch of skin the size of a half-dollar on the backs of his hands, before the lamp had flickered and then gone out-and he hadn't even felt it.

  (Death crouched.)

  And his eyelashes! Jesus, they must weigh a ton. So hard to raise them more than a slot. ... A slit, a slot, a happy thought. . . . His brain was dancing. The Celebrity Scoop was on the presses, banging away to tell the world about Jackie O's new man and "LIZA'S NERVOUS BREAKDOWN," as the headline would read, only to clear itself in the text, by saying she wasn't suffering any such thing, but by then Liza's fans will have already bought the Scoop, so it didn't matter. The Celebrity Scoop was running, and the front pages were shuffling out into the stacker, and all the stars were on it, the Beautiful People, and his pic­ture was there, too, big as life. SEYMOUR BURDICH, BEAUTIFUL AT LAST.