Killer Chromosomes td-32

by Warren Murphy

  A knife going into the brain kills. Yet, if it took a year to enter the human brain, the brain would form around it, accept it, try to reject it or do any one of many things to adjust to the assault. But, if the magnificent human body had to deal with it quickly, it could not adjust. Nor could the body deal with two assaults at the same time. That is why so many autopsies found what Sinanju had always known: that to die humans must suffer multiple wounds or diseases in more than one organ.

  That knowledge was the basis of Sinanju's cures. The technique was to simply allow the body to fight one wound at a time. Every herb and massage worked toward this end.

  Chiun with Remo's occasionally conscious help, treated first one injury, then another.

  The great secret of all human healing was that humans did not heal; their bodies did. What successful drugs and surgery did was enable the human body to do what it was designed to do, cure itself.

  With its nervous system refined through years of training. Remo's body did this better than all others on earth, with the exception of Chiun, the reigning Master of Sinanju.

  And so Remo lived. But there was danger for night was coming. Remo wondered why Chiun was making special preparations.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Tony Fats got a reprieve because Sheila Feinberg and her tiger people, at four in the morning, came for Remo and Chiun instead.

  The decaying residential street in Boston's South End was deathly still and had been for an hour as Sheila and her pack prowled noiselessly around Mrs. Tumulty's house. The circle had grown smaller and tighter with every full circuit of the old frame building.

  In the attic apartment, Remo watched Chiun make elaborate preparations. The wizened Oriental ripped the wooden bottom from a kitchen chair and carefully hacked it with his hand into four lath-sized slats. Then he drove a steak knife through the center of each slat, and with rope mounted one in the frame of each of the small apartment's four windows. The tip of the knife pressed against the glass.

  In the hall, around the apartment door, Chiun sprinkled the contents of a four-ounce box of black pepper.

  Remo rolled back and sank his head deep into the pillow.

  "Very interesting," he said. "But why don't we just run?"

  "Run and we run right into them. If they attack first, then we know the direction they come from and the direction we may escape in," Chiun said.

  "A lot of trouble for somebody you say doesn't amount to much," Remo said. "You better hope they come. Otherwise you're going to have one helluva time explaining this mess to Mrs. Gilhoolihan or whatever that old harp's name is."

  "They will come," Chiun said. He sat in a straight-backed chair next to Remo's bed. "They are out there now. Don't you hear them?"

  Remo shook his head.

  "How slow you are to heal. How quick you are to lose tone and technique. They are there. They have been there for the last hour and they will attack soon."

  He reached out a long-nailed hand and pressed it gently against Remo's throat. Western doctors called it taking the pulse; Chiun called it listening to the clock of life. Then he shook his head too.

  "We will wait for them."

  Remo closed his eyes. He understood for the first time. If Chiun simply wanted to leave, he could leave anytime. But he feared he could not get through the tigers of Sheila Feinberg with Remo as excess baggage. So he was staying with Remo, conceding to the tiger people the opening attack, risking his own life by using a second-best maneuver he hoped would enable him and Remo to get out. Together.

  Survival was the essence of the art of Sinanju but, to be done artfully, it had to be done single-mindedly. Survival was always more difficult when you were carrying a suitcase. If a battle were to come, Remo would be no more help to Chiun than a suitcase.

  Suddenly Remo wanted a cigarette, really wanted one. It was not just the impulsive remembrance of a long-dead habit, but a desire that pinched at the inside of his mouth. He shook his head to drive the urge away and reached out a hand to touch the back of Chiun's hand.

  The old man looked at him.

  "Thanks," Remo said.

  Not many words were necessary between the only two living Masters of Sinanju. Chiun said "Do not get maudlin. No matter what the legend says, these night tigers will find out they are not prowling around in the sheep fold."

  Remo squinted. "Legend? What legend?"

  "Some other time," said Chiun. "Stop your jabbering for now. They draw near."

  In the street below, Dr. Sheila Feinberg, B S., M.S., Ph. D., rubbed the back of her left ear and gave final instructions in a whispered feline voice.

  "Save the young one for breeding. If the old one falls, do not eat him here. I think there may be more trouble if his body is found. Do not eat him here. But I want the young one saved."

  She nodded. A man stepped away from the group clustered in the shadows far from the nearest street light. He went to seal off the only escape route.

  The six others moved slowly toward the house, ceremonially sniffing the wind, pairing off without instruction, as if by instinct, into three teams.

  Except for faint sounds deep in their throats, they made no more noise than a swamp maple leaf drifting down to land on a still pond.

  Two went up the back fire escape and two up the escape on the side of the building. Sheila Feinberg, followed by another woman, ripped the lock from the front door and began up the stairway.

  Inside the attic apartment, Chiun put a hand over Remo's mouth to still his breathing.

  A moment later, he released it. "There are six," he said. "Be on your feet. We must be prepared to leave quickly."

  Remo rose. As he got to his feet, pain hammered at his head. His throat and stomach, while healing from the rips Sheila Feinberg had made, felt as if only a thin sheet of tissue paper was holding in a throbbing, red-hot mass of hurt. He staggered slightly, then tried to breathe deeply, as Chiun pushed him gently into a corner of the room next to one of the windows leading to the side fire escape.

  Chiun quickly lit three candles, set them in the center of the floor, then turned off the room lights.

  "Why the candles, Chiun?" Remo asked.

  "Shhhh," Chiun said.

  They waited.

  But not for long.

  Mrs. Marjorie Billingham, chairman of the Good and Welfare Committee of St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Church, was a forty-year-old woman who had worried for the last ten years about, in order of importance, a straying husband, eye wrinkles, and ten extra pounds. She had now lost the eye wrinkles and was shedding the ten pounds on her new all-flesh diet. She no longer worried about her husband because if he ever cheated again, she would simply eat him. Mrs. Marjorie Billingham was the first one through.

  She crashed through the glass of the side window, a murderous roar rumbling in her throat like the fast-growing sound of a forest fire. But the sound changed to a yelp as the knife mounted by Chiun across the glass pane drove itself through one no-longer-so-fatty breast and buried itself deep in her heart.

  The animal scream of death was answered by growls from the front door and back window. Then there was sneezing from outside the apartment door. Chiun reached behind him to touch Remo's hand.

  A second figure loomed in the now broken side window. Chiun's blue-clad, kimonoed arm reached out and grabbed the person by the throat. Like popping a crumpled piece of paper into a wastebasket, he tossed her into the room. The woman turned a circle in the air and landed on all fours like a cat. She turned toward Chiun and Remo with a hiss, then her body remembered her throat had been torn out. She fell heavily to the floor and rolled once into the three lit candles.

  Two of them overturned. Hot wax spilled onto an old newspaper on the floor which flared up as the candle flame touched it. Paper and wax crackled into bright flame as Chiun pushed Remo out the side window in front of him.

  "Up," he ordered. Remo began up the metal steps to the roof of the building.

  Chiun stood in the opening of the window, coverin
g Remo's retreat, as the front door burst open and Sheila Feinberg jumped into the room. At the same moment, the back windows shattered and two forms jumped into the room. Their faces were distorted. Their teeth showed in evil rictus, made more gruesome by the flash and play of the light on their faces from the crackling spreading fire.

  Another woman pushed into the room behind Sheila Feinberg. All stood rooted in their tracks. The fire from the paper had spread to a corner of the bed sheet and from there to a wad of cotton, soaked in a pine oil, which Chiun had used to clean Remo's wounds.

  Dried-out wallpaper behind the bed began burning almost instantly. The room was illuminated like a light show, with dancing flames casting red, yellow and blue glows around the room. The four, human tigers growled again and moved a step forward, toward their own dead, toward Chiun, but a flash of flame stopped them. Chiun darted out the window and followed Remo up the fire escape. Behind him, the snapping of flames grew in volume and intensity.

  As Chiun vaulted the convex tile, topping the wooden railing that ran around the top of the frame building, he looked down and saw a lick of flame tongue its way out the broken window. Faintly, Remo could hear the yowling of cats, as if in distress.

  He puffed like a fat man carrying a load as Chiun came to him.

  "They will not follow," Chiun said. "We will cross to the next building and then go down." He added, almost gently, "Are you able to, my son?"

  "Lead on," said Remo with a jaunty sureness he did not feel. His legs ached from the brief climb up the fire escape. His arms hurt from the effort of pulling himself over the wooden railing surrounding the roof. His stomach felt as if it had been hammered on all day and the wounds were ready to begin bleeding again. He hoped the distance between the two buildings was not far. If it was more than a step, he could not make it.

  It was only a step and Chiun went across first. He turned to give Remo a hand, froze in position, then withdrew the hand. He turned to look across the roof toward the far corner where the shadows were deepest and the blackness most total. In the faint glimmer of the night sky, Remo saw it too. He stepped back onto the roof of the first building. There were two small dots of light in the corner of the next roof. They were eyes. Cat's eyes.

  Chiun raised his arms out to his sides. The blue kimono sleeves draped down in heavy folds toward his waist.

  The twin dots of light moved. They rose, as the tiger man moved from a crouch and stood tall, silhouetted now against the night sky. With a sound that was half triumphant laugh, half happy purr, he moved forward.

  James Hallahan, assistant director for the Boston office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said to Chiun, "And now you'll be a meal."

  He moved forward slowly, toward the center of the roof, making no sound despite his big, strong body.

  Chiun did not move. His arms were still raised as if to shield Remo.

  "What is not man is less than man," Chiun said softly. "Leave us, creature."

  "I'll leave your bones," Hallahan said and opened his throat to laugh.

  He charged. With animal cunning he knew that the old Oriental would move aside from his charge. Then he would simply ignore him, vault the small step between buildings, and capture the young, white man to use as shield and hostage.

  But Chiun did not move when Hallahan reached him. The kimonoed arms moved like windmill blades. They seemed slow, but there was a howl as one of Hallahan's extended arms broke with a loud crack, hit by Chiun's thin and bony arm as if it were a fast-moving two-by-four. Hallahan fell back momentarily, roared again and dove at Chiun, his good arm extended before him, teeth bared and head turned sideways, as if hoping to get his mouth close to Chiun's throat, to rip it out.

  Behind him, Remo could hear the sound of flames growing louder and louder. Then below, in the small space between buildings, he saw a lick of flame spurt out through a small window in the hallway outside their attic apartment.

  Hallahan was almost upon Chiun, his right hand in front of him, fingers curled into claws, almost in a kung fu pose. For a moment, it seemed as if he had buried Chiun under his size and weight. Then there was a string of little, snapping noises. Remo knew the sound of fingers breaking. Chiun's body dipped and Hallahan's own momentum carried him over Chiun's back and the edge of the roof. As he sailed past Remo, Remo could see his mouth still wide open, still anxious to bite. He felt a strange emotion. He had learned to be a Master of Sinanju, a master of men, but he was still civilized man and now was faced with an enemy who shared the killing blood lust of a jungle beast. The new emotion was simply fear.

  He had no time to think about it. Even before Hallahan's body hit the paved yard below, Chiun was helping Remo to the next roof.

  Coming across the buildings, from two streets away, Remo heard the sound of fire sirens.

  The sounds had died when, a few minutes later, they sat in a taxicab heading for the outskirts of the city. Remo slumped against the hard seat of the cab and tried to close his eyes. Chiun kept looking through the back window, darting his glance back and forth, as if expecting to see a pack of wild animals in full-throated chase of Cab Number 2763-B, fifty cents for the first half mile, fifteen cents each additional fifth. Unless you take the group rate.

  Later, in a motel room, Chiun put Remo gently on the bed and said, "The danger has passed."

  "They didn't seem like much, Chiun. You handled them kind of easy," Remo said.

  Chiun shook his head sadly. "They are tigers," he said, "but not yet tigers. They are cubs but when they are grown, we may all have much to fear. But it will not matter because we will not be here."

  Remo turned his head and felt the pain of the movement in his injured throat.

  "Oh? Where will we be?"

  "We will not be here," Chiun repeated as if that were explanation enough.

  "You said that."

  "It is time to move on. We have done all we can for this Constitution of yours and now must be on about our business."

  "Chiun, this is our business. If these people... these things are going to be as bad as you say when they grow up, now is the time to stop them. Otherwise, we may not be safe anywhere."

  Chiun's bland expression convinced Remo there was no flaw in the logic, but Chiun said stubbornly, "We are leaving."

  "Wait a minute," said Remo. "It has something to do with the legend, doesn't it?"

  "You should rest now."

  "Not until I hear the legend," said Remo.

  "Why is it, when I want you to heed the ancient wisdom of Sinanju, to read the records and learn the history, you ignore me. But now, when it is nothing, you bother me with foolish questions about a legend?"

  "Nothing?" Remo said. "The legend?"

  "I suspect I will never rest until I indulge your one-thought mind."

  "You said it, Little Father. The legend."

  "As you wish. But you know legends are like old maps. They are not always to be trusted. The world changes."

  "But Sinanju goes on forever," Remo said. "The legend."

  Chiun sighed. "It is really one of our least important legends, concerning as it does people of no worth."

  "Then it's about me." Remo said.

  Chiun nodded. "Sometimes you learn very quickly. When you do, it always surprises me."

  "Get on with it, Chiun."

  "All right." He began to mumble speedily, in Korean.

  "In English," said Remo.

  "The legends lose their flavor in English."

  "And I lose their meaning in Korean. In English, please."

  "Only because you say please. As you know, you are Shiva, the Destroyer."

  "I don't know if I believe that," Remo said.

  "See. I told you this legend is foolish and not worth the telling."

  "Try me anyway."

  "Then be quiet and do not interrupt. Whose legend is this anyway? You are Shiva, the Destroyer, avatar of the god of destruction."

  "Right," said Remo. "None other but Shiva, that's me."

 
Chiun fixed him with a glance that would have curled plate glass. Remo closed his eyes.

  "You have not always been Shiva. The story is told of the Master of Sinanju, a wise, good, and gentle man..."

  "You, right?"

  "A gentle and good man everybody takes advantage of finds among the white barbarians a man who was once dead. This creature is the dead night tiger made whole by the Master of Sinanju," Chiun said.

  "When did I get to be a god? That's the part I like."

  "Only after the wasting of much wisdom on you by the Master of Sinanju did you become Shiva. It is just a legend, after all."

  Remo, who had "died" in a phony electric chair after being framed for a murder he did not commit, was resurrected to work for CURE as a man who did not exist. He nodded.

  "The legend says you have been through death before and now can be sent to death again only by..." He stopped.

  "Only by who, Chiun?" asked Remo.

  "The legend is vague." Chiun shrugged. "Only by your kind or my kind."

  Ignoring the pain in his stomach, Remo rolled on his side to look at Chiun.

  "Now what the hell does that mean? Your kind and my kind? That's white men and yellow men. That means two-thirds of the world can kill me."

  "Not exactly," Chiun said. "The legend is more detailed than that."

  "Then be detailed. What's your kind and my kind?"

  "My kind are from the village of Sinanju. Even the lowliest from my humble village, if given the opportunity, can slay you. Which is as it should be considering what you have allowed yourself to become."

  "Can the editorial comment. And what's my kind? Ex-cops framed for murder? Government employees? Everybody from Newark, New Jersey? What's my kind?"

  "Not those," Chiun said.

  "Who then?"

  "Not who, what. The legend says that even Shiva must walk with care when he passes the jungle where lurk other night tigers."

  "And you think this Doctor Feinberg and her gang of vampires..."