The Last Dragon td-92

by Warren Murphy

  King shrieked, "What's the matter with you? He's got to be as old as Methuselah!"

  "I-I can't seem to get him to stop," Colonel Mustard said in a voice that seemed to doubt reality.

  "Try asking nicely," Remo called.

  "Bull. Trip him," spat King.

  The suggestion was executed with breathtaking speed. King had barely got the words out when the old Oriental paused, pivoted, and one sandaled foot caught Colonel Mustard across his unprotected kneecaps.

  The colonel went down clutching them both, curled in a fetal position and rocking on his spine.

  "Not you!" King screamed. "I meant for him to trip you!"

  The old Oriental's voice floated back thinly. "Then you should have chosen your words with greater care."

  "I want that man stopped now!" King caught himself and began pointing. "I mean, I want you-the Burger Berets-to stop him, whatever his name his."

  "His name is Chiun," Remo offered.

  "Stop Chiun," King cried.

  The Burger Berets started forward.

  "He's the Master of Sinanju," Remo added, apparently to see what would happen.

  The train engineer was a Gondwanalandian national. He had been crouching off to one side, poking at the abandoned white-nosed monkey stew. He perked up.

  "The Master of Sinanju!"

  "Yup," said Remo.

  The engineer ran and threw himself in front of the old Oriental named Chiun.

  "I cannot let you do this," he told the advancing Berets.

  "Stand aside. We're not going to kill him."

  "No, but he might kill you."

  "What are they talking about?" Nancy asked Remo.

  "Search me," Remo said in a bored tone.

  Nancy watched with frowning wonder creeping into her expression.

  Chiun stepped out from behind the sheltering engineer and said, "I cannot let you sacrifice yourself for me, child of Gondwanaland." He threw up his hands, his long wide sleeves slipping from his pipestem arms. "I surrender."

  The Burger Berets stepped up to seize him by the wrists-and became airborne. There were four of them. And they flew in four different directions. One human missile rammed Skip King in the stomach with his head and they both went down. The others became human paperweights that flattened assorted brush.

  The rest of the Burger Berets withdrew to a safe distance, bearing the still-curled Colonel Mustard like a piece of driftwood that moaned to itself.

  Then the old man padded up to Nancy. She swallowed. His face was stiff, his hazel eyes cold as agates.

  "You are obviously in charge here," he said.

  "Thank you. How did you know?"

  "You are the only one not yelling. Yelling is a sign of weakness."

  "My name is Nancy Derringer and I'm responsible for the animal you helped save."

  "Are you then responsible for this display of ingratitude?"

  "No."

  "Then you are the one from whom all gratitude flows?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "He wants to know if you're grateful," Remo offered. "He's very sensitive about these things."

  "Yes, of course," Nancy told the little man named Chiun.

  The stern face softened, wrinkled in pleasure. A twinkle came into the steely eyes. His voice became a curious purr.

  "How grateful?"

  "How...?"

  "Careful," Remo warned. "It's a trick question."

  "I don't think I understand," Nancy said slowly.

  The little man, who looked frail but was anything but, pointed toward the Apatosaur stretched on the flatcar and said, "You possess a great treasure in that slumbering dragon."

  "Dragon?"

  "He thinks it's a dragon," Remo explained.

  "Should I humor him?"

  "Normally, yes. In this case, no."

  Nancy addressed the little old man in a firm voice. "It's not a dragon. It's a dinosaur."

  The old Oriental looked to Remo and his face hardened. "You have been whispering lies in this naive woman's ear. Shame on you, Remo."

  Remo threw up his hands defensively. "Hey, the word dinosaur hasn't passed my lips since we got here. Honest."

  "I am sure the company that financed this expedition will offer you a suitable reward," Nancy said quickly.

  "I will settle for ten percent."

  "Sounds reasonable," said Nancy. Then a thought struck her. "Ten percent of what?"

  The old Oriental beamed. His eyes lit up in the darkness, like cat's eyes. "Of the dragon, naturally. A hind leg might be acceptable, provided the thigh bone is intact."

  Nancy's eyes went wide.

  "He means it," said Remo.

  "Not on your life!" Nancy exploded.

  "Ingrate!" And the old Oriental flounced about and returned to examining the Apatosaur, which pulsed slowly like a dying organ.

  Chapter 12

  It took until dawn was creeping over the bush before they could get the train under way.

  There were the unconscious Burger Berets to revive, and the logs to remove from the tracks. Skip King declined to help clear the railbed. He lay on the ground, moaning and holding his stomach and complaining of a hernia instead.

  "Grow up," Nancy told hire.

  "Grow up? I can't even get up."

  "Then I'll help you."

  King scuttled off. "Don't! Do you want to kill me?"

  "Right now, I'd be willing to stand aside and watch a herd of bull elephants pound you into pudding," said Nancy yanking him to his feet. King walked about in wavering circles on wobbly legs.

  "What's his problem?" Remo asked Nancy.

  "No one's quite sure, but any dollar is on undescended testicles."

  Remo grunted, and Nancy took it for a laugh.

  The engineer was leaning out of the cab, and he shouted; "I am ready when you are, Missy Nancy."

  Skip King stopped walking in circles. "Hey! You're supposed to say that native boy stuff to me."

  He was ignored.

  "You and your friend are free to ride with us," Nancy told Remo.

  'We have a Land Rover parked down the trail," Remo said. "And if you want a bit of free advice, you'd better ride with us."

  "Why?"

  Remo indicated the old Asian with a surreptitious finger. "I want to take another shot at explaining dinosaurs to him, and I need backup."

  "Will it persuade him away from his hankering for a drumstick?"

  "That's the idea."

  "Deal," said Nancy. And they shook on it. Remo's grip felt like something cut from fossilized bone, Nancy thought. And as she looked up into his deepset eyes, she felt her heart leap into her throat for no reason that she could think of.

  Remo turned. The Master of Sinanju was hovering about the dinosaur like a fussy little hen. "Come on, Little Father. We're driving escort."

  Stepping away from flatcar, the old Korean followed them, padding silently a few paces behind.

  "That is the ugliest dragon I have ever beheld," he said in an unhappy voice.

  "And exactly how many dragons have you seen?" Nancy wanted to know.

  "That is my first."

  "It isn't even that. It's a dinosaur."

  "Pah! It is a dragon. An African dragon. And it has been cruelly abused."

  "No, we just tranquilized it for the trip back to America."

  "How are you getting it back?" Remo asked, interest detectable in his voice for the first time.

  "You got me there. B'wana King has worked out all the details. I'm just the glorified babysitter."

  Chiun caught up with them and asked, "Where are its wings?"

  "Wings?"

  "I did not see wings. Or stumps where they would be attached."

  "It doesn't have wings."

  "But it does breathe fire?"

  "Not that anyone ever noticed," Nancy said patiently. "Maybe his pilot light went out," Remo said dryly.

  Chiun made a face. Nancy frowned at Remo. But inside she smiled. He was funny in a flat sort of
way.

  They came to the Land Rover. It was parked down the line, sitting between the rails as if that were a perfectly natural place for it to be.

  "You didn't drive it up like that?" Nancy blurted out.

  "The shocks are pretty good," Remo said. "Or were."

  "So how are you going to get it turned around?"

  "Little Father."

  The two didn't speak a word. They just deployed on either end of the Land Rover. Remo took the front, and the little man named Chiun the back. They grabbed the bumpers, bent, and Remo said, "One."

  They straightened their spines. The Land Rover came up with them, its tires hanging low on loose shocks.

  "Two," said Remo in a voice devoid of strain.

  They walked in a half-circle until the Land Rover was turned around. They stopped. "Three," said Remo. And they bent down, setting the vehicle back on its wheels.

  "How did you do that?" Nancy asked in a shocked-thin voice.

  Remo grinned good-naturedly. "Practice. We can actually bench press three Land Rovers each, but we don't like to show off."

  "What I just saw was impossible," murmured Nancy, circling the vehicle.

  "Then you didn't see it," Remo told her, waving her into the Land Rover. She got in back. Remo took the wheel, the old Oriental beside him.

  Remo got the motor started and they began bumping along.

  Every bone in Nancy's slim body rattled. She began wishing she'd packed a jogging bra and folded her arms under her chest. That helped. By the time they got up to a reasonable speed, Nancy found it tolerable. If she kept her teeth clenched tightly.

  Keeping her mouth closed proved impossible. The Old Asian was talking in a high squeaky voice. Not talking so much as complaining.

  "Perhaps we should speak to the King of Gondwanaland," he was saying.

  "About what?" Nancy asked, puzzled.

  "Proper respect."

  "He means gratitude, as in reward," Remo called over his shoulder.

  "Excuse me," Nancy said. "But why on earth do you want a leg off an Apatosaur?"

  "A what?" Remo and Chiun said simultaneously.

  "Apatosaur. That is the scientific name for the species."

  "Lady, I had every plastic dinosaur toy ever made. That's a Brontosaurus back there."

  "You should get current. Modern paleontologists call it a Apatosaurus."

  "What's that mean?"

  "Deceptive reptile."

  Remo made a face. "I like Thunder Lizard better. Sounds more dinosaurian. Like Pterodactyl. That was another neat dinosaur I used to collect."

  "Pterodactyls were not dinosaurs, I'm sorry to inform you."

  "The hell they weren't."

  "Listen, I don't know where you went to school-"

  "St. Theresa's Orphanage. Never mind where it is. Or was."

  "Fine. But knowledge about dinosaurs has changed dramatically over the last decade or so. You see, what you used to know as the Brontosaur never really existed. That is, its bones were confused with another sauropod. We now call it Apatosaur."

  "It's still the biggest dinosaur that ever was, right?"

  "No, there are bigger. Supersaurus. And Ultrasaurus. All sauropods like Apatosaurus. And let's not overlook Seismosaurus, the biggest known sauropod. You'd have liked him, Remo. He was known as Earthshaker Reptile."

  "Your Greek is abominable," Chiun said disdainfully. "I cannot understand half of what you say."

  "Dinosaurs are classified into orders, such as saurischia, which are lizardlike, suborders like sauropoda, the four-footed herbivores like our own Old Jack-"

  "Can I explain this to him?" Remo asked plaintively.

  Nancy leaned back in her seat. "If you can."

  "Chiun, try to follow this. Back before there were humans, dinosaurs ruled the world. They were giant reptiles."

  "Not all of them." Nancy said quickly. "Some were birds. "

  "Like Pterodactyls, right?"

  "Wrong. Like Triceratops."

  Remo hit the brakes. Nancy almost landed in the front seat with them.

  "Triceratops!" Remo exploded.

  "Yes."

  "Triceratops with the three horns? Built kinda like a rhino?"

  "Yes."

  "A bird?"

  "Yes!"

  "Since when?"

  "Since they came on the evolutionary scene during the Late Cretaceous period. We now know they were Ornithischia, bird-hipped."

  "They're birds because of their freaking hips?"

  "Simplified for the twelve-year-old mind, yes."

  "Bulldookey," said Remo. "Birds don't grow horns and run around goring other animals."

  "The modern ostrich does."

  "That's the bird that hides its head in the sand at the first sign of trouble? Right?"

  "True," Nancy admitted.

  "Then I rest my case. No way a Triceratops would hide its head if a Stegosaur trotted by. He'd bite the other guy's head off, and hide that."

  "For your information, a modern ostrich can kill a full-grown lion."

  "With what? His fluffy tailfeathers?"

  "No, by pecking the lion into submission with his beak. Ostriches are fierce and mean-tempered, and if you place an ostrich skeleton beside an Iguanadon skeleton, you'd see what I'm talking about."

  "I'd see squat, because one's a reptile and the other is a goofy bird. End of story. Where did you get this crap, anyway?"

  "You can look this up in any modern encyclopedia."

  "Wanna bet?"

  "Certainly. Let's say ten thousand dollars, shall we?"

  Nancy offered her hand to shake on it. Remo hesitated.

  "Too rich for your blood?" Nancy asked sweetly.

  "I have to think this through," Remo muttered.

  "I thought so."

  "Thought what?"

  "All talk and balk, that's you."

  Remo frowned. "Little Father, what do you think?"

  "Only a fool would wager against a woman who owns a dragon," the Master of Sinanju said thinly.

  Behind them, the train was rattling along, getting closer. The steam whistle blew one long blast when it rounded a shallow turn and the engineer sighted them.

  "Unless you're looking forward to abandoning ship," Nancy suggested, "I suggest you start us rattling along again."

  Fuming, Remo got the Land Rover going. He was silent a while, then he asked, "Triceratops didn't have feathers, did they?"

  "No."

  "Good."

  Nancy couldn't resist. "But you know, Pterodactyls had hair," she said in a bright voice.

  "They did not!"

  "Sorry to pop your bubble, but you should really read up on these things."

  "You are both talking nonsense," snapped Chiun.

  "Why would we do that?" Nancy wanted to know.

  "To dissuade me from living to the fullest span of my years."

  Nancy frowned. "Say again?"

  "I'll tell it," Remo said. "One of his ancestors had a close encounter of the dragon kind a few centuries ago, and made off with a whole skeleton."

  Nancy perked up. "Do you still have it, Mr. Chiun?"

  "The proper form of address is Master, and no, Yong consumed it to the last finger bone and wing rib," Chiun said flatly.

  "Your ancestor ate a fossil skeleton?"

  "No, he drank it."

  "Chiun's ancestor supposedly slew a dragon," Remo explained.

  "A true Chinese dragon," Chiun sniffed. "Not like your ugly thing."

  "Thank you," said Nancy.

  "And he ground up the bones to make some kind of medicine, so he could live forever, or something," Remo added.

  "In the East, dinosaur bones are sometimes ground up and mixed in philters," Nancy said thoughtfully. "They are believed to be very beneficial. How far along did your ancestor get, Master Chiun?"

  "He squandered one hundred forty-eight winters," said Chiun.

  "Squandered?"

  "Chiun thinks he should have saved a few bones for h
is descendants," Remo added.

  "Oh. "

  They drove along in silence. The sun was climbing the sky, turning it the color of brass. The jungle birds were screeching and calling. Somewhere a hippo bellowed. And Nancy began to sweat profusely.

  She noticed that Remo and the old Oriental named Chiun were not sweating and wondered why.

  "We don't sweat," Remo said unconcernedly.

  "Nonsense. All mammals sweat. Or pant."

  "We don't pant either."

  "What is a mammal?" asked Chiun.

  "A dinosaur is a reptile and we're mammals," Remo explained.

  "Does that mean monkey?"

  "A monkey is a mammal, just like us," Nancy said.

  "Just like you. I am Korean."

  "What does that mean?" Nancy asked Remo.

  "I am not like whites," Chiun said stiffly, "who believe they are the offspring of monkeys."

  "That's a fallacy," said Nancy.

  Chiun indicated Remo with a long-nailed finger. "Tell this baboon."

  "Hey! I resent that."

  "Humans are descended from a monkeylike primate ancestor, not a monkey per se."

  "Some have not descended very far," Chiun sniffed.

  "Chiun's people think they're descended from the Great Bear that came down from the sky, or something," Remo explained.

  "Bears are mammals, too," Nancy said. "But that still doesn't explain why neither of you are sweating in this heat."

  "Chiun can explain it better than me."

  "We do not sweat because we understand that we do not have to sweat," Chiun said flatly.

  "You have to sweat."

  "Enemies can smell sweat. To sweat is to die."

  "That's a very mammalian sentiment," Nancy said dryly, "but that doesn't change the basic fact that you have to sweat in order to cool your body."

  "We sweat when we wish to," Chiun allowed. "In private."

  "Sweating is optional," Remo added.

  "Are you saying you can stay cool without having to sweat?"

  "That's about the size of it," Remo said.

  "What you are describing is supermammalian physiology," Nancy said slowly.

  In the front seat, Remo and Chiun looked at one another, lifted doubtful eyebrows, and said nothing.

  "That would be an amazing adaptive response," Nancy went on.

  Remo shrugged. "Hey, what do you expect? We mammals outlived the dinosaurs, didn't we?"

  "An accident."

  "My foot. Dinosaurs died out for two reasons. They were too slow and too stupid."

  "Wrong."