Orienting himself, Remo looked up. The sea above was choked with feeding, darting squid. When he saw the Master of Sinanju's feet dangling in the water, his skirts floating high like the mantle of a jellyfish, the upturned boat beside him, Remo started up to help.
Abruptly the boat righted itself, and the skirt collapsed like an umbrella. The feet of the Master of Sinanju vanished completely.
Remo broke the surface at the boat's stern. He looked up.
In front of him the face of Chiun hovered. Above his head the flat part of an oar hovered, too.
The other end of the oar was firm in the Master of Sinanju's bony fists as he sat in the rowboat's stern. "You letting me back aboard?" Remo asked.
"After you have troubled Sa Mangsang's sleep as a warning to him that he should remain steadfast in slumber so long as the House of Sinanju exists in the world."
"What if I don't come back?"
"It will not matter, because Sa Mangsang will then drink up the entire ocean and with it this fragile craft and its very sad occupant. So do not fail."
"I don't believe in Sa Mangsang."
"You will soon change your mind, as did I when my Master brought me to this place, as did the Master before him and all Masters before him going back through the mighty ages."
Remo hesitated. But the scattered squid were returning to the vicinity of the rowboat, and so Remo took in a deeper breath, held it and willed his body to sink feetfirst.
THE LIGHT OF THE MOON and stars barely penetrated deeper down in the water. But Remo, with his Sinanju training, could adjust to the lack of ambient light. Compensating for the increasing pressure, Remo worked his way down gradually. He might need his full strength for the swim back to the surface-even if he encountered nothing.
The seafloor was relatively shallow here. A depth of hardly more than an eighth of a mile, not so deep that he couldn't prevent nitrogen narcosis-the bends-upon ascent.
Letting his eyes grow accustomed to his surroundings, Remo at first saw only diatoms floating past. Then the seafloor began to resolve itself.
It was jagged, geometric and encrusted with staghorn coral and other marine life. There were volcanic cones. Thermal vents belched an unnatural subterranean heat.
Then Remo saw the pyramid.
It was not a true pyramid, like the Great Pyramid of Giza. It didn't rise up from the ocean floor to a point. It wasn't four sided, but three sided. The angles weren't true. It was strange. Remo, who hadn't done well in geometry in school, nevertheless realized the angles were incorrect.
Whoever had built the pyramid hadn't used solid geometry correctly. The base of the pyramid was off kilter, and the sides weren't aligned or true.
Yet the pyramid reared up to a flat summit that waved with fanlike hands. Kelp. They seemed to beckon with feathery fingers.
Remo swam to the pyramid, searching its sides. It wasn't made from blocks, he soon discovered. He wiped sea scum from different places, trying to find the joints where giant blocks would have fit together. There were none that he could find. It might have been carved from a solid chunk of matter.
The material under the scum was smooth and hard. Underwater and in this low light, it was difficult to figure out what the material was. If not blocks of stone, then what?
Turning, Remo zoomed up to the flat base to rest. It was big enough to park a sedan on. And as he kicked away the scummy residue and the waving kelp, he uncovered a long rectangular slot in the cap.
Getting down on hands and knees, Remo tried to peer into the slot but could see nothing. He stood up and walked back a few paces, pondering his next move.
And it was while Remo stood waiting in the nearabsolute darkness of the Pacific Ocean that a sinuous length of rubbery matter quested up, out, to curl toward his chest from behind.
Remo felt the cold suction power of a hundred pads attach themselves to his skin, and before he could respond, the thing withdrew, dragging him into the great pyramid with it.
His last thought was a plaintive, Chiun, what did you get me into?
REMO CAUGHT the sides of the slot with both hands. The tentacle-it felt like a slime-coated rubber hosesqueezed reflexively. Remo heard his own rib-cage cartilage crackle. An eruption of bubbles was forced from his mouth. The tentacles squeezed anew.
Suspended with his palms flat on the cold material on either side of the slot, his elbows bent, Remo forced his lungs to retain their energizing air.
The tentacle around his chest began to grope for better purchase. Through his T-shirt Remo could feel the cold suckers grow warm, as if blood and vitality were flowing through the being in the pyramid after a long hibernation.
As he struggled to keep from being dragged into the slot, some of the suckers let go. Remo strained upward, but relief was momentary. The suckers were simply seeking better adhesion.
The more Remo struggled, the more the tentacle groped and adjusted itself with a casual assurance. A thick length under one arm lifted free, and the warming pads reattached themselves lower down along his ribs.
Other tentacles snaked up to find his ankles. Remo kicked, but the tentacles simply waved loosely with his feet.
Remo looked down. Below, an eye stared up at him with a sleepy, near-human regard. It looked old-older than time itself. There was inhuman confidence in that stare, and a dreadful patience.
A kick like an electric wire ran through Remo's solar plexus. Fear was something he had been taught long ago to master. Not banish, but master and direct. Fear was a good thing, Chiun had assured him many years before. It could spur a man to do the impossible, or convince him to flee a danger that anger or pride or other foolish and destructive emotions might compell him to fight. And in fighting, perish.
Remo looked down at the terrible hooded eye that was so human yet so inimical to all things human, and a fear washed over him that was unlike any fear he had ever before known.
He wanted to escape but could not. He wanted to fight back but was helpless. Above all, he wanted nothing to do with the titanic entity Chiun called Sa Mangsang. No matter what punishment Chiun was prepared to inflict, no matter if Chiun shunned him till the end of time, Remo wanted no combat with Sa Mangsang. The eye glaring up at him looked hungry, and deep in the pit of his stomach-believed by Koreans to be the seat of the soul-Remo felt less like a man than like food.
Food for Sa Mangsang.
Even that knowledge wasn't enough to get him free. The fear was too great, too overpowering.
Remo let go. And the tentacles of Sa Mangsang drew him into the darkness of the great pyramid of greenish blue mineral.
Darkness swallowed him. He could barely see the brooding head that looked old and intelligent, but managed to pick out the single sleepy eye. But that was all. Remo could no longer see his hands in front of his face.
So he closed his eyes.
The fear evaporated. It should have increased, but it went away. The primordial fear that solitary eye stabbed into his belly faded. Remo saw nothing, heard nothing and felt only the gristly arms with their wet, slickly cold skin and warm suckers.
A roiling in the water warned him of grasping tentacles. Remo lifted his arms ahead of the wave pressure. Tentacle tips grazed his wrists. He would need his hands free if he was to breathe oxygen ever again.
His arms vertical, Remo snapped his legs up suddenly. The loose tendrils around his ankles drew taut. They yanked back with a stubborn anger.
Then Remo peeled his T-shirt off his chest with a violent rip. The tentacle constricting his chest slid up with it, squeezing into a small loop around the loose cloth.
Bending, he jacknifed his body. Hands like spear heads, he slashed at the enmeshed tentacles. They parted. He kicked free.
Deep in the the dark water, a deep howl arose. It froze the blood in Remo's veins.
Still kicking, he made for the rectangular slot that meant escape. A boiling knot of tentacle came rushing up after him. Uncoiling, they twisted and grasped.
Fighting fu
riously, Remo kicked at every cold touch. Tentacles recoiled. Others coiled up toward his upper body.
Remo slashed with the edges of his hands, water resistance muffling his blows, but where they encountered tentacles, the tough flesh parted like stretched rubber.
Soon the water around him was full of disconnected tentacles, floating and curling, reaching and hungry. But still fresh slick tentacles quested up for his warm form.
How many arms does this thing have anyway? Remo wondered angrily, kicking at a slick tip creeping for one ankle.
Arching his spine, twisting, Remo stayed ahead of the feelers.
Suddenly he could see the answer to his question.
A tentacle stump lifted lazily in his direction. Black blood was clouding the water at the severed end, so it was hard to see clearly what was happening.
But as Remo watched, the black blood flow squeezed off and the stump began to regenerate before his eyes. There was no question. The thing had been a stump. Now it lengthened, slimmed to a tip and was whole once more.
Remo spun in place. Another stump was closing off its tendril of flowing blood. And like a rubber telescope, it grew whole again.
Remo held still while the two tentacles converged. He could feel the eye of Sa Mangsang looking up at him. Tentacles were reaching out for his thick wrists, and Remo closed his eyes again. The seeking eddies were a better gauge of their proximity than underwater sight.
When he felt the fine hairs of his wrists stir, Remo lashed out with both hands and brought the tentacle tips together so fast they wrapped around one another like two slashing whips.
Remo chopped at the wriggling knot. Another cloud of blood spurted, and Remo swam under it.
Below, Sa Mangsang watched with a titanic, dispassionate patience.
Now Remo could see two eyes, one on either side of the bloated sac that was its head. He counted eight arms. Just like an ordinary octopus.
But this was no ordinary octopus.
For one thing, it was a mottled greenish blue-gray. It had squid properties. A fin on the horny head that waved lazily. And while it seemed to squat far beneath Remo, it still loomed gigantic in its brooding, alien coldness.
It sat on a dais in the shape of a gigantic starfish, but as Remo looked, the arms of the starfish lifted and fell with a slow agony. It was alive!
Around the throne, clinging to the inner pyramid walls, other starfish adhered like a pox. Their sizes varied. Some had been skeletonized. Others were missing triangular arms.
Remo got the awful feeling the starfish served Sa Mangsang as both slaves and food.
Among the starfish squatted whitish-brown polyps of brain coral, like satellite brains.
The orbs of Sa Mangsang sought Remo's gaze, and he hastily closed his own lids. Too late. A searing stab of fear lanced deep into him.
And all around him the water roiled and purled with regathering sucker-lined arms.
Remo twisted, kicked, fought, but there were too many to fight now. Coils like wet tires wound around his chest and hips. Wrists were captured. His right ankle escaped a groping tip, but his knee was pinioned a second later. His other ankle was soon captured.
And then inexorably Sa Mangsang began to drag Remo down into his lair. Remo punched at the fat rope of gristle across his naked chest. His fist bounced off. And Sa Mangsang squeezed half a lungful of precious air from Remo's chest.
Remo kicked downward, and his body leaped up briefly. The tentacles pulled anew. When he felt an ugly warm nearness, he knew he was being drawn toward Sa Mangsang's great head.
I'm screwed now, Remo thought to himself. Why the hell did Chiun do this to me?
He didn't want to open his eyes. He was afraid to. Still, as the nearness of Sa Mangsang made his skin crawl more so than the touch of his inescapable, multiarmed grip, Remo opened his eyes.
He was down on the level of the great head. It loomed above him, a great bladder with eyes. Orbs so far apart on either side of the blue-green bag of skin, they might have belonged to two different creatures.
That was how vast Sa Mangsang sat on his throne, surrounded by brain coral and slave starfish.
The head lifted, exposing a mouth like the curved beak of a parrot, but upside down. The heavy half was at the bottom. And when it dropped, great inwardcurving teeth showed in a round, pulsing hole, bringing the teeth together to form an angry flower.
Remo twisted, but to no avail. The tentacle drew him in toward the gnashing circle of teeth designed to rip flesh into chunks.
Seeing what fate awaited him, all fear drained from Remo Williams's limp body. Before, he could only guess his fate. Now, with it contracting and expanding before him, he lost his fear. Only a sad surrender suffused his body. He was down to his last dribbles of oxygen anyway.
And he remembered the sign Chiun had told him to make with his fingers.
Twisting them apart, he managed to approximate the sign.
The short siphon off to one side of Sa Mangsang's mouth blew out an angry rush of water. The hooded eyes seemed to darken in anger. But nothing else happened.
The tentacles drew him closer.
In the last moments before he was to be ripped apart like so much human chum, the voice of the Master of Sinanju came into Remo's head.
"You would do well to remember that Sa Mangsang is also known as Hydra."
Hydra, Hydra, Remo thought. What do I know about the Hydra?
And a second voice came into his head. A voice he knew almost as well as Chiun.
Sister Mary Margaret's voice.
"The Hydra was the fearsome beast, some say a great serpent, some say a dragon, which possessed nine heads. Each time Hercules chopped off a head, another grew back. But Hercules knew the Hydra had an Achilles' heel. And that was its immortal ninth head."
But this thing has only one head, Remo thought. Eight tentacles but one head.
The truth struck Remo in the last ebbing moments of life.
Relaxing, he let the tentacles draw him closer and closer. He closed his eyes. He would not need them for what he had to do. Maybe vision would be a hindrance.
When the water before him was as warm as a sleeping body next to his, Remo drew his hands together. The entwining tentacles reacted spasmodically. They tightened.
And Remo kicked out with both feet at the great monster's brooding head.
A bubbling scream washed over him. Remo's eyes snapped open.
Sa Mangsang was changing color! Furious bands of red and orange were washing over his aquamarine skull. The tentacles, including the loops at his ankles, were alive with moving bands of angry colors, like neon racing through glass tubes.
Then, like great curtains, the hooded lids began to descend over the sleepy orbs.
Tentacles relaxed, let go and fell away as if in death. Remo kicked upward as hard as he could. He had no time to waste. The air was almost exhausted from his lungs. And the rectangular slot above beckoned.
As he arrowed up toward the opening and away from the great arms of Sa Mangsang, Remo looked down. Retracted tentacles curling into tight, perfectly spaced coils about his throne, Sa Mangsang had turned the color of bone. His great orbs were closed. He slept. He might have been dead. He might have been dead a million years.
But he only slept.
Kicking upward with all his ebbing strength, Remo Williams could only think of two things he wanted most in life-oxygen and sleep.
But as he fought to reach the world of men and breathable air, he felt the last bubble of carbon dioxide escape his lips and the entire world began to darken around him.. . .
REMO SNAPPED AWAKE at the bow of the rowboat. He looked around dazedly. "Where the hell am I?"
"With me," said Chiun, folding his hands in his lap.
"But I-" Remo swallowed hard. "A minute ago, I-"
"-escaped Sa Mangsang?"
"Yeah. Did you pull me out of the water?"
"No. You did that."
"I don't remember it."
"Unle
ss you think it was a dream...."
"Dream. Yeah. It was a dream. I fell asleep. I thought I was awake, but I was really asleep. I woke up in my dream but I was still dreaming. I never had that happen to me before."
"If you were dreaming," Chiun asked suddenly, "then why are your clothes wet?"
Remo looked down. His chinos were soaked. His feet were bare. And his T-shirt was missing. "You threw water on me," Remo accused.
"Why would I do that?"
"And you stole my shirt."
"To match your dream?"
"Exactly."
"If it was a dream, how would I know you had lost your shirt to Sa Mangsang's tentacles?"
Remo thought hard. "Maybe I talked in my sleep. Yeah, that's it. I talked in my sleep."
"Possibly."
"What other explanation was there? There's no way an octopus could grow as huge as the nightmare I saw in my dream."
"The Sa Mangsang of your dreams was very large?"
"Titanic."
"And how big were its awesome suckers?"
"Who cares? Big."
Coolly Chiun said, "Show me how big, my son." Remo brought his hands together and made a circle by touching forefingers and thumbs together.
"That big," he insisted.
"That is very large."
"You know it."
"As large as the angry red marks on your naked chest?"
Remo looked down.
Marching across his pale wet chest were livid scarlet circles such as would be left by the sucker pads of a gargantuan octopus.
"You have nothing to say now?" Chiun inquired coolly.
And looking at the luminous squid who slashed the waters all around them, feeding on tiny surface fish, Remo did something rare for a full Master of Sinanju. He trembled from head to foot.
Chapter 15
Dr. Harold W Smith was following his enforcement arm.
The audit trail was very clear. Boston to Madrid. Madrid to Athens. Athens to Cairo and Canada, with many stops in between.
Remo and Chiun were bouncing around the world like two hyperactive rubber balls. But what did it mean? Since they were not on assignment, there was no immediate cause for alarm. But Remo and Chiun, since joining CURE, never raced around without a clear purpose in mind.
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