High Priestess td-95

by Warren Murphy

  "Marches?"

  "It is less than five hours," announced Chiun.

  "On horse?"

  "By air," said Chiun.

  Lobsang Drom's eyes came open instantly. He and Kula exchanged startled glances.

  "So wide as that?" Lobsang said.

  "It is a very great country in size," said Chiun. "Not so great in culture."

  Frowning, Kula flung aside a tapestry and pressed his flat nose to a window. He squinted.

  "I see no yak herds."

  "They have no yaks," said Chiun.

  "Not one?"

  "Perhaps a few underfed buffalo," Chiun allowed.

  "Not enough to reimburse the invasion army," added Remo.

  Kula's scowl darkened. "Then we will bring yaks with us. As a peace offering. To lull the white man into thinking that we bring peace."

  "You're pretty open with your master invasion plan," said Remo. "You don't expect to just ride into every city and town from Outer Mongolia to L.A. and announce you're now in charge."

  Kula scooted away from the window. "Of course not."

  "So how do you figure to pull it off?"

  "It is simple. Japan has purchased many places in America and other citified lands."

  "True."

  "When they have bought up most of the world, we will take over Japan. Struck numb with fear, the rest will fall into place."

  "Sounds like a long-term project to me."

  "Rome was not sacked in a day," Kula said unconcernedly.

  "You meant Rome wasn't built in a day," corrected Remo.

  "Do you think one can simply sack an empire in an afternoon?"

  "I got news for you. The American people will fight back."

  "I will show you something," Kula said, digging a thick leather-bound book from an ornate chest. He opened it to a certain page and presented it to Remo.

  Remo took it and saw that the book was open to the entry on Genghis Khan. Kula's thick finger pointed to the final paragraph.

  In the past unsympathetic Persian, Chinese and Arab writers condemned Genghis as a ruthless and cruel destroyer, but his terrorism was in reality calculated psychological warfare. He never set out to annihilate a people, like Hitler, or a social class, like Stalin and Mao. Although Genghis did destroy some centers of culture, his administration was generally very tolerant in religious matters and toward ethnic minorities. Today China champions and Russia condemns him, while in Mongolia he is venerated as a symbol of Mongolian nationhood.

  "What idiot wrote this?" Remo demanded.

  "It is from a very wise and famous American book called the Encyclopedia," said Kula proudly.

  Reno looked. He was holding an encyclopedia, all right. One found on the shelves of every library, school and university in the nation.

  "This takes political correctness to new lows," he muttered, surrendering the book.

  Kula beamed. "Boldbator Khan has made a study of Western thinking. As long as we slay and pillage without regard for race, creed or color, no one will condemn us. And of course we will be merciful in our conquests. If a city submits to us without resistance, only the adult males will be put to the sword."

  "You are too kind to us poor backward Americans," said Remo.

  "Pax Mongolia is the wave of the future," said Kula, beaming.

  "It will be a good thing," said Chiun, "to bring Eastern culture to this benighted land."

  Remo looked at him and demanded, "You mean to tell me that when the Mongol cavalry rides in, you're just going to watch? What about the gold America pays you?"

  "The gold of Emperor Smith reserves the services of Sinanju for the express purpose of disposing of America's enemies upon demand," said Chiun. "Not in preventing possible invasions. If Emperor Smith decrees Boldbator Khan an enemy to be slain, I will slay him. With regret, of course," he added for Kula's benefit.

  "And if you slay my Khan, I will be forced to seek your illustrious head in revenge," returned Kula. "Although it will pain me to lop it off."

  "If the Wheel of the Inexorable decrees these events," inserted Lobsang, "what mortal hand can stay them?"

  "We will all be reincarnated anyway," Kula said, laughing. "Except the White Tiger, who, being Christian, is disqualified from rebirth."

  "I don't want to be reincarnated," muttered Remo. "So there."

  "Remo means that he does not wish to be reincarnated as a Christian," said Chiun.

  "Bulldooky," said Remo. He got up to get a glass of water from the washroom sink. When he came back, both Kula and Lobsang looked at the paper cup in his hand with horrified expressions.

  "What?" said Remo.

  "You do not know enough not to drink water intended for washing the hands?" Kula said.

  Remo emptied the paper cup in one satisfied gulp, saying, "Well water doesn't agree with me."

  Chapter 7

  On the morning of her sixtieth birthday, Squirrelly Chicane awoke, expecting wisdom.

  She flung off her sleeping mask and blinked blue eyes at the California sunshine flooding in through the windows. Outside, the surging Pacific gnashed at her private Malibu beachfront.

  "I'm sixty!" she cried, sitting up. Her hair was the color and texture of carrot shavings. "I'm a crone. The wisdom that comes to every woman in her rightful time is mine!"

  There was no wisdom in the sunshine. It hurt her eyes. The pounding of the ocean made her head throb in sympathy.

  "Gotta align my chakras," she muttered, closing her dancing blue eyes.

  But her chakras wouldn't align. Especially the yellow one. It was being stubborn again.

  The phone rang.

  "Squid, baby-doll. How goes it?"

  "Wonderfully, Julius."

  "Great. Great. Listen, you read that Mamet script yet.

  "Three pages of it. Gotta say no."

  "No! Why not? It's perfect for you. Free-spirited woman decides to have a baby at fifty, goes to a spermbank and ten years later figures out it was her long-lost high school sweetheart's sperm. She sets out to find the brat's father, they fall in love, but something's not copacetic. Turns out it's the guy's twin brother, and the real guy, the father, he's been dead for years. So your character decides to raise the brat without a father. It's the perfect love story for the nineties woman. She gets laid all over the place and still has her freedom. It's very Bridges of Madison Countyish. "

  "The clothes are the same as my last picture."

  "Clothes-shmothes! We'll hold out for a bigger wardrobe budget, which you get to keep because, after all, it's you."

  "That's sweet of you, Julius, but I'm turning a new leaf today. No more ditzy roles."

  "But you're the queen of ditz. And glitz, of course."

  "I'm sick of ditz. Just Re I got sick of being called kooky, loopy, daffy, dizzy, free spirited and every other ditz synonym the trades could think of. You know, they didn't stop calling me a gamin-faced starlet until I was past forty."

  "Don't knock it. You project youth. That's very important in this biz."

  "From now on, I project crone."

  "Crone! Baby-cakes, I'm third generation. My Yiddish goes only skin-deep. What's this crone?"

  "A crone is what I am-a vital, brilliant, mature sixty-year-old woman"

  "Sixty! When'd you turn sixty?"

  "This morning. I'm a new me, Julius. Throw out all the scripts the majors have been sending you. That's the old Squirrelly Chicane. Get me the kind of scripts that Jessica Tandy gets."

  "Jessica Tandy! No offense to Jessica. A lovely woman. But I think she took advantage of a special discount on predeceased embalming. She looks positively pickled."

  "Jessica Tandy. But I'll settle for Barbra Streisand."

  "Squirrelly, doll. Listen, boobala. If you want to flush your career down the john, that's your business, but don't take your ever-loving agent with you. I got kids."

  "My way or the highway, Julius. Get me all the crone scripts that are out there. Remember, I can always write another book."


  "Okay, okay, I'll do what I can. But I'm not loving this. And this turning-sixty thing? Don't breathe it to anyone, not even your mother."

  "I'm going to shout it from the rooftops. I'm sixty. I'm beyond men and sex and all those unevolved things."

  Squirrelly hung up. Almost immediately she picked up the receiver and dialed a long-distance number.

  "Hello, Bev. Squirrelly. Just great. It's my birthday! I'm sixty! Isn't that a kick? Listen, I just had a brainstorm. Another self-help book. Different angle this time. Here's the title-Squirrelly: Sixty and Sexellent. "

  A prim voice at the other end said, "I don't think that's exactly what your readers want to read."

  "Don't be silly. My readers will buy any book with my name on it. They always have."

  "We need a media tie-in. Do you have anything happening?"

  "You know I'm always happening."

  There was a long silence at the other end of the line.

  "I don't suppose you've uncovered any more past lives?"

  "Did I tell you I was a scullery maid in the days of Henry VIII and he kept hitting on me?"

  "Doesn't sound racy enough for a whole book."

  "What do you want from a scullery maid? Upward mobility hadn't been invented back then."

  "Well, if you get something publishable, give me a call."

  The line went dead, and Squirrelly Chicane stared at the holes where the dial tone was coming from.

  "What's with everybody today? You'd think I'd contracted the plague. I haven't had the plague since-well, whenever that awful time was."

  Squirrelly lay back and stared at the ceiling. It was pink. So were the bedroom walls. Not to mention the bed, the covers and everything else that would take paint.

  "Okay," she said slowly. "I'm having an off day." She corrected herself. "A bad birthday. It was bound to happen sometime. I've had such wonderful karma up till now. It'll pass."

  She closed her eyes and focused on her chakras. Once she got them lined up, the day would fall into place.

  But they refused to align, and the day wasn't getting any younger.

  "What I need," she told herself, sitting up, "is a good old-fashioned past-life regression."

  Scooting around on the spacious heart-shaped bed, Squirrelly took a pair of silver chopsticks from the night table and used them to extract a cake of brownish material from a turquoise box. She placed the cake in the brass bowl of the silver-filigreed hookah that dominated the night table. The cake crumbled to powder under the rapping of the chopsticks, and a Zippo brought the bit of coal under the bowl to smoldering.

  The pipe began bubbling, and Squirrelly Chicane took up the pipe with its amber mouthpiece. She took a hit, held it in her lungs and exhaled it with studied langour.

  It felt good. In fact, it felt great. She took another hit, slid back under the pink satin covers and smoked contentedly. It was good bhang. Very excellent. It mellowed her right out.

  As she sank deeper into a fog of smoke, Squirrelly thought that she was a long way from the sleepy Virginia town where she had been born.

  The bhang brought back her most treasured memories. It was hard to believe it was sixty years ago.

  "Sixty years," she murmured. "Sixty years. Two hundred forty seasons. Forty-three pictures. Twenty-eight plays and musicals. Six autobiographies and one self-actualization book. Thirty-two past lives-so far. One flop TV comedy, true, but a gal's gotta eat."

  It had, Squirrelly Chicane decided, been a very fulfilling sixty years. She had traveled everywhere. And everywhere she went, she was recognized and feted. It's true the Peruvian authorities had tossed her out of their country for insisting that saucer men had built the Inca pyramids. And there were those unfortunate run-ins with customs over some inconsequential amounts of recreational hallucinogens. But the best was yet to come. She could feel it in her bones. After all, she was a Taurus.

  Once she felt loose and relaxed and ready to take on the world, Squirrelly laid aside the pipe and started to rise.

  She got her head clear of the pillow when she heard a distinct crack in the area of her lower spine. Then she fell back.

  "What's wrong with my back?" she muttered.

  She tried rolling over. It was an effort.

  "Imelda! Bring me my healing crystals. Quick!"

  But the healing crystals failed to work after her trusted Philippina maid had rubbed them up and down her bumpy spine.

  "I will call doctor, Miss Squirrelly."

  "No way. Doctors are old-fashioned."

  "But you cannot get out of the bed."

  "It'll pass. It's probably just a crick from the cold. Close all the windows and get a good fire going. That'll warm up my wise old bones."

  "I think that is a good idea," Imelda said, replacing the covers.

  "Good."

  "Heat is good for arthritis."

  "Arthritis?"

  "My poor mother had it just like you got it, Miss Squirrelly. On damp mornings she could not even turn over."

  "Arthritis! It can't be. I eat smart. I do my yoga. And I'm a Taurus."

  "You are not a young woman anymore."

  And the maid slipped from the room to start the great fireplace going.

  Squirrelly Chicane lay on her pink silk sheets, her disordered mop of red hair on the pink satin pillow, and stared at the pink ceiling with troubled blue eyes.

  "I'm sixty and I'm falling apart," she moaned. "Why me? Why now?"

  Chapter 8

  At LAX, Lobsang Drom and Kula the Mongol looked to Remo Williams with expectation writ large on their faces.

  "Which way lies the Bunji Lama, White Tiger?" asked Kula.

  "What are you looking at me for?" Remo replied.

  "This is your land," said Kula. "Do you not know your own neighbors?"

  "We just crossed the entire freaking country."

  "We must consult another oracle," announced Chiun.

  They looked around the airport. Video monitors were mounted at several locations.

  "But which one?" asked Lobsang. "There are so many."

  "We will each seek the answer, and good fortune smile upon him who discovers the truth first," proclaimed Chiun.

  Kula and Lobsang stood before different monitors, attracting rude stares.

  "Quick, Remo!" Chiun urged. "We must discover where Squirrelly Chicane lives, or I will forfeit my Mongol gold!"

  "Couldn't you have thought of that before we left?"

  "What is a pilgrimage without uncertainty?"

  "Over with quicker," said Remo. "Look, let's call Smith. He's got every useless piece of trivia that ever was stored on those computers of his."

  "No, not Smith."

  "Why not?"

  "If you ask Smith for Squirrelly Chicane's address, he will want to know why you wish this knowledge. I do not want him to know that I am sunlighting. "

  Remo sighed. "The word is 'moonlighting.' And have it your way."

  Chiun clapped his hands abruptly. "Remo has had a revelation," he called out. "We must do as he says."

  The others returned and regarded Remo with narrowed eyes.

  "I say we rent a car to start," said Remo.

  Reluctantly Kula and Lobsang followed Remo and Chiun to a car-rental counter. Seeing that it was staffed by a woman, Kula said suddenly, "I demand the honor of renting the vehicle that will transport us to our destiny."

  When no one else claimed the honor, Kula whispered, "Remo, teach me the honeyed words American men use to impress their women with their virility and yaks. I wish to practice wooing your women so that when America writhes under our merciful heel, no woman will go unsatisfied."

  " 'I have herpes' is a pretty arresting opening line," said Remo.

  Purposefully Kula marched up to the counter and, slapping down his gold card, announced, "I am Kula the Mongol, owner of many yaks. I also have herpes in plenty, unlike your weak American men."

  A minute later Kula came back with the rental keys in his hand and a broad smile on
his face.

  "She was very impressed. Her face paled in surprise, and her eyes went exceedingly round in her head."

  "Would I steer you wrong?" said Remo.

  The rental had a cellular phone, and once they were in traffic, Remo dialed directory assistance, breathing through his mouth because the smell emanating from the old Bunji Lama's trunk in the seat beside him hadn't improved any. Opening the windows didn't help, either. The stench of pollution smelled almost as bad.

  "Give me the numbers of the Hollywood tour-bus services," he asked. "All of them."

  "Do you have a pencil handy?" asked the operator.

  "Don't need one," said Remo, and held up the phone so the Master of Sinanju could absorb the numbers when they emerged from the receiver.

  One by one Chiun repeated the telephone numbers back to Remo, who then dialed and asked whoever answered, "Does your tour go by Squirrelly Chicane's place?"

  When he got a yes, Remo asked for the tour company address and they drove there.

  They were in luck. As soon as they pulled up, a tour bus was pulling out, and Remo got behind it.

  The bus led them to the seaside community of Malibu, and they listened for the amplified voice of the driver to announce Squirrelly Chicane's residence.

  Over the sound of the bus's engine, the driver started to say, "And just up the road ahead is the home of the multitalented Squirrelly-"

  The caterwauling of an ambulance overtook them, forcing Remo to pull over. The bus got out of the way, too, and the white-and-orange ambulance roared up the road marked Private.

  "Uh-oh," said Remo.

  "What is it?" asked Lobsang, his voice stricken. "What means that awful sound?"

  "It is an ambulance," explained Chiun, tight of voice. "In this land it serves but two purposes-to fetch the sick to a doctor and to carry off the dead."

  "It is going to the place where the Bunji Lama dwells," muttered Kula uneasily.

  Lobsang swallowed hard. "If she has died, we must begin the search anew."

  "Quickly, Remo!" squeaked Chiun. "We must save the Bunji Lama from death, else our quest will go on for years to come."

  And Remo, trying to keep the dead smell of the old Bunji Lama out of his lungs, floored the accelerator.

  SQUIRRELLY CHICANE LAY on a throw rug before her environmentally correct fireplace with her eyes closed, trying to align her chakras. Maybe if she got there lined up, her spine would fall into place. It was a good theory and it might have worked, but for some reason she was seeing double. Even with her eyes closed. Maybe it was the bhang.