Last Rites td-100

by Warren Murphy

  "Yes," intoned Chiun. "This is the freaking athloi."

  "Damn."

  Remo looked up. The white sea gulls were hanging in the wind, just like sea gulls the world over.

  "We could be here all night," he warned Chiun. "You do not have all night. There is still the coin to find."

  Remo made his voice resolute. "I say we pack it in and find that all-important coin."

  "You cannot leave until you have completed the athloi."

  "Can't leave tonight? Or can't leave ever?"

  "Ever. That is the rule."

  "Who made up this rule?"

  "The Great Wang."

  "He wouldn't do that to me."

  "Take it up with him."

  "He's been dead for three thousand years."

  "Dawdler," spat Chiun.

  Grumbling, Remo looked around the isle. It appeared to be made of rock and maybe some old coral. It was hard to say. A lot of it was porous. That might have been the nature of coral or the corrosive effect of centuries of gauno action.

  The porous stuff broke off under his weight, so Remo willed his mass to adjust. Then he had a thought. Going to one end of the isle, he stamped hard. This had two results. It spooked the hovering sea gulls and it broke off a chunk of isle, which dropped into the now-very-white water.

  Grinning, Remo repeated his action after moving back a pace. Another section of isle dropped into the water to sink from sight.

  "What are you doing?" the Master of Sinanju shrieked as the west end of the island began to crumble into the Aegean.

  "Completing my freaking athloi, " Remo retorted.

  "What about future Masters?"

  "I'm doing them a favor. They'll thank me."

  "This is against the rules, as well."

  "When the Great Wang tells me so, I'll stop," said Remo, redoubling his efforts.

  "You are willful and disobedient!" Chiun accused.

  "Maybe. But I'm also getting off this stupid rock." By midnight the isle had been reduced to the size of a trash-can lid, and Remo realized that he was going to drop himself into the befouled water sooner or later. So he took a deep breath, jumped up as high as he could and brought both feet stamping down on the last pitiful remainder of the isle.

  It pulverized and dropped Remo into the water.

  Eyes closed, he swam toward the bobbing boat. When Remo surfaced, Chiun glared down at him angrily.

  "You are filthy."

  "But triumphant."

  "You have desecrated a shrine of Sinanju."

  "Let's just get out of here. I'm exhausted."

  Chiun shook his aged head. "You cannot climb aboard as you are. You must swim." And before Remo could protest, Chiun directed the trawler captain to weigh anchor.

  The chain rattled up, and the screws began churning gray-white water. The trawler bubbled away.

  Remo followed at a brisk pace, swearing all the way. After a while he noticed they weren't swimming north toward the Acropolis, but farther south into the island-dotted Aegean Sea.

  "I don't like where this is going," Remo grumbled to himself.

  And back from the muttering trawler came the Master of Sinanju's squeak, "How can you say that when you do not know where you are going?"

  "Because I know you."

  "You wish."

  And Remo wondered what the Master of Sinanju meant by that.

  Chapter 7

  Four hours later the Greek sponge trawler put down anchor within sight of a sprawling island.

  "Oh, no," said Remo, treading water with tired arms. "I'm not cleaning that! No way."

  "This is not your athloi, " returned the Master of Sinanju. "Come, but do not profane this worthy vessel's deck with your soiled tread."

  Chiun padded toward the bow and Remo swam around the boat, keeping pace with him.

  At the bow the Master of Sinanju pointed toward the dark and rocky shoreline and said, "There is a sea cave in that inlet."

  "I'm not going into any cave. And you know why."

  "I am not in this cave, so do not fear to venture within."

  "What am I supposed to do?"

  "Enter this cave," said Chiun, "and find your way to the other end." He pointed down the coast, to the south. "I will await you at its exit."

  "Sounds easy," Remo said reluctantly.

  "Therefore, it cannot be easy."

  "What's the name of this island anyway?"

  "That will become obvious even to you once you enter the cave that awaits you."

  Remo struck out for the cave. As he approached, the sea lapping against the shore made weird sobbing sounds, like an old woman crying.

  The sea floor came up to scrape Remo's questing hands and bare feet. It felt like coral, but when Remo reached shore, he saw it was a gray-black volcanic rock.

  He walked up to the cave mouth and listened. All he heard was the incessant sobbing, and when he compressed his eyelids to squeeze out all but necessary moonlight, the black cave mouth remained black and foreboding.

  "Here goes," Remo said, entering the cave.

  Wide at the mouth, the cave became more like a tunnel the deeper Remo passed into it. The feel of porous volcanic rock against his bare soles was unpleasant, but as his tough soles became accustomed to it, he soon put it out of his mind.

  The ceiling sloped downward. Remo was forced to bend his head to keep walking.

  Thirty feet in, the tunnel branched off in two directions. Remo paused and tried to figure out the right way to go. After a moment he realized that one branch went south toward where the cave exit was supposed to be.

  Then again, since this whole test was Chiun's idea, the most logical choice was probably the wrong one. Remo took the northern tunnel, suppressing a grin of confidence.

  It evaporated when he came to a blank wall before a quiet pool. In the darkness his feet discovered the pool. There was no sign of any secret walls or other exits.

  Grumbling, Remo backtracked and followed the southern branch.

  After about the same distance, it too stopped at a blank wall. Only this time there was no pool.

  "Don't tell me I blew it," said Remo.

  He felt the walls for levers or catches. Finding none, he padded back to the north tunnel.

  When he reached the pool, he knelt before it and touched the water with his fingertips. It was cool to the touch. He brought the moistened tip of one finger to his nose and sniffed.

  No scent of poison or predators.

  Sighing, Remo slipped into the pool feet first, knowing if there was something lurking in the pool he stood a better chance of survival if it bit off a foot and not his head.

  The pool swallowed him. There was no light, of course-any more than there had been in the tunnel-but Remo's trained senses enabled him to feel his way down.

  The pool led to a watery shaft, like a well. But it took a sudden horizontal jog and became an underground river.

  Remo hesitated. He hadn't expected this. There was no way to tell if the river ran very far or not. Did he have enough oxygen in his lungs or not?

  After a moment Remo decided to chance it. He swam south, the logical direction, keeping his movements to a minimum to conserve air and energy. There was a current, so he surrendered to it, knowing it would do most of the work for him. This helped conserve oxygen, too.

  Remo knew when the tunnel ran out because he bumped his head. There was almost no warning. He couldn't see. There wasn't even any ambient light down here for his eyes to capture and magnify. The current had begun to slow. Remo had run out of tunnel.

  Recoiling from the unexpected obstacle, Remo got reoriented and tried feeling for a way out. He found no shaft leading up. Nor one down, either.

  There was a hole about the size of his hand in the end of the underground tunnel. The water was flowing on through that. But it was too small for a man, and when Remo attacked it with his fingers, he excavated a distance of about a foot, only to find the tunnel remained narrow as far as he could feel.

&nbs
p; Treading water, he let the bubbles dribble from his mouth as he considered his next move. He might have enough oxygen to keep digging. Then again, maybe this wasn't the correct way.

  In the end the low glow of fear deep in the pit of his stomach forced Remo to retrace his swim. He swam hard, against the current, using up precious air faster than he planned.

  At the juncture below the shaft, he was forced to stop and think ahead. Go up and recharge his air or swim the other way?

  He decided to go for the air.

  When his head popped up at the top of the pool, he immediately sensed a presence.

  Remo went very very still and let the sounds of the presence come to him.

  The predominant sound was breathing-heavy, moist and brutish. He tried to resolve the darkness in the area where the thing hovered. It was impossible. There was nothing to work with.

  So Remo closed his eyes. His energies redirected themselves toward his remaining senses.

  The overall impression was of an upright being-a biped. But its heart action and working of the lungs was greater than that of a man. And the breathing was that of a brute.

  The creature-whatever it was-snorted once, and Remo reacted as he was trained to. He went for the sound.

  The thing, amazingly, retreated faster than Remo's thrust.

  Remo came out of the water and moved in on it. Where the carotid artery pulsed more loudly than any other point in the circulatory system except the heart, Remo attacked. He employed a simple but effective blow. A lateral slice with the side of his hand.

  The blow, designed to sever the head so swiftly the target never knew what hit him, was clean. So clean, Remo thought as the body fell with a surprisingly soft thud, that he hardly felt the strong muscles and cables of the neck give before it.

  The head fell into his hands, and instinctively Remo snared it.

  He discovered he had grabbed it by a thick, short horn and, startled, dropped the head. In his mind's eye, he visualized a bull's head.

  But the thing he had killed was a biped. He decided to leave the corpse alone.

  Filling his lungs to full capacity, Remo returned to the pool and swam north against the current this time.

  It was a long swim and he began to tire. His oxygen held out, but he had been swimming half the-night. While he had reserves of strength to draw upon yet, the first tendrils of fatigue had insinuated themselves into his nerves and muscles. He sensed lactic acid accumulating in his muscles and willed his body to ignore the approaching fatigue.

  More than a mile along, the tunnel began to curve. Remo used his hands to guide him, walking along the bottom of the tunnel the way he had seen the Aegean octopus do it earlier in the day.

  The tunnel twisted in several directions, and only the magnetic crystals in Remo's brain-crystals present in most higher animals including man-enabled him to keep track of his polar orientations.

  Remo found himself swimming in the same direction as when he had started along this branch of the cave when a fragment of loose, current-borne volcanic rock bounced off his shoulder.

  Instantly all his senses went to full alert. Another tumbled past. And while he was wondering what could have disturbed solid rock without disturbing the water or setting off warning vibrations, Remo swam smack into a blank wall.

  Damn! he thought, panic raising. He had maybe five minutes of good air left. Quickly he began feeling the rock.

  Then there was a small hole, the size of a quarter in the end of the tunnel. Otherwise, it was a dead end.

  A dead end and a fifteen-minute swim back to the pool where life-giving oxygen waited.

  Remo thought fast. Maybe there was a branch trail. As soon as the thought came, he realized eddies in the current would have indicated a side tunnel. There was no side tunnel. He had struck another dead end. A complete dead end.

  Two dead ends, and the Master of Sinanju had told him to follow the cave to its southern exit.

  I must have missed it, Remo thought angrily. Smartass that I am, I must have gone right past it. But where and when?

  With no hope of swimming back in time, his brain wrestled with the problem. What could I have missed? How could I have missed it? It's impossible.

  Unless Chiun faked me out.

  Three minutes of oxygen burning in his lungs, Remo began to consider the possibility that the Master of Sinanju had lied to him.

  Can't be. He wouldn't do that. He said to meet at the exit. There has to be an exit. Remo visualized the Master of Sinanju pointing southward. And he was facing north. The other tunnel had pointed south.

  Then a thought struck him. It came to him with a great cold clarity.

  I'm on Crete. That thing with a bull's head was the Minotaur. I'm on Crete. This is the labyrinth. I'm on Crete.

  And in his mind, the voice of Sister Mary Margaret came to him, telling him how Theseus used his wiles to find his way out of the minotaur's labyrinth.

  Damn. I should have realized this was Crete. But even a thread won't save me now. Goodbye, Little Father. I hope wherever I'm going I'll meet my mother.

  And in his mind's ear he heard the crisp, no-nonsense voice of Sister Mary Margaret repeat the legend of Theseus; With only simple thread, Theseus retraced his way out of the labyrinth of the Minotaur and found salvation.

  That's it! That's what I missed.

  Furiously Remo attacked the quarter-sized hole at the end of the tunnel. Volcanic rock turned to powder under the hydraulic force of his compressing fingers. The water became gritty to the touch.

  When Remo broke through, he shot ahead like an arrow, against the current. He was down to ninety seconds of usable air. If he was wrong, it would all be over soon. He would lose control, thrashing and flailing like an insect as his body surrendered to the inimical watery environment it was never meant to plumb.

  One minute of oxygen remained. He began counting the seconds as he reached out to use the jagged roof to pull him along. A few more yards, he thought. If I'm right, it's just a few more yards.

  He was out of oxygen when his questing fingers lost all purchase.

  He shot upward and felt the blood rush from his head and brain. Everything started to go dark.

  He was wondering how it could get any darker since he was already in impenetrable darkness when he completely lost consciousness.

  WHEN REMO AWOKE he found himself floating. And breathing.

  For a moment he wondered if he could be dead. But the coldness of the water and the sweet-stale tang of cave air told him otherwise. He drew in a full double lungful and charged every lobe of both lungs.

  "I'm alive," he whispered.

  Hoisting himself out of the pool, Remo used his bare feet to feel for the body of the fallen Minotaur. It was gone. Only the coarse-haired head remained.

  Remo picked it up and tucked it under one arm. It wasn't much of a trophy, but it was better than facing the Master of Sinanju empty-handed and wearing complete failure on his face.

  When Remo emerged from the sea cave, the Greek fishing trawler still lay at anchor. And the Master of Sinanju stood stiff-faced at the entrance, his hands tucked into his scarlet kimono sleeves.

  "I thought you said you'd meet me at the exit," Remo said.

  "And I have kept my word," said Chiun.

  "You pointed south when you said that," Remo said hotly.

  "And if I had scratched my nose instead, would you have emerged from one of my nostrils?"

  "That's not funny. I came this close to drowning."

  "Master Nonja nearly drowned too. But he did not and you did not and that is that."

  "This is Crete, isn't it?"

  Chiun looked pleased. "Kriti." He gestured to the object tucked under Remo's arm. "And I see you have bested the Minotaur."

  Remo lifted the bull's head to the moonlight. For the first time he got a clear look at it. The head was definitely bullish. It was also hollow and made of hardwood covered in scratchy black fur. Its nostrils were twin bovine flares, and the horns we
re tipped with hammered silver. The eyes were two polished gems that reflected the moonlight with a greenish-red smoldering.

  "It's only a stupid helmet."

  "Do not insult the proud skull of the mighty Minotaur," said Chiun, snatching it from his pupil's fingers.

  The Master of Sinanju carried it down the shore and stepped on a black horn of volcanic outcropping. A shelf cracked open, revealing a boxlike cavity into which he deposited the Minotaur head.

  When Chiun took his foot off the horn, the shelf dropped back into place, showing no seam.

  Remo pointed an accusing finger at him and exploded, "You were the Minotaur! You made your heart and lung action sound different, didn't you?"

  "I admit nothing of the kind."

  Chiun padded past him toward the waiting trawler. Remo followed angrily.

  "That's why there was no body when I came back. You'd taken off."

  "Next you will tell me that I was also the Santa Claus of your youth."

  "Santa didn't visit the orphanage much," Remo said glumly. "You old fake."

  "Rest assured that the Minotaur will live again if there are any Masters of Sinanju after you or I."

  Remo went on. "The water tunnel was a circle. If I broke through from either direction, it would lead me back to the pool and the Minotaur."

  "Gi the Lesser realized this without having to break the labyrinth. Now you have ruined it for future Masters."

  "Sue me."

  They entered the water and got on the boat. Chiun didn't object, but the Greek sponge captain didn't look very happy when he saw the wet footprints Remo tracked all over his deck.

  As they beat back toward Athens, Remo laid himself out among a coarse pile of dragnets and said, "I don't think I would have made it without Sister Mary Margaret."

  Chiun eyed him coldly. "Why do you say that?"

  "I heard her voice telling me how Theseus did it. He used string."

  "If you had employed string, you would have cheated."

  "That's not the point. She said Theseus used string to retrace his way out of the labyrinth of the Minotaur. Not to find the exit. But to retrace the way he came. That meant the entrance was also the exit."

  "That is obvious," Chiun said in a chilly voice.

  "Even then, I couldn't be sure. But there was another way I figured it out."