Lords of the Earth td-61

by Warren Murphy

  "That's good," said the chairman, who came from one of the central African countries. "We all care about saving lives in the Third World. But do you have to go into such extensive detail?"

  "You mean about how the beetle can be eradicated?"

  "Yes," the chairman said.

  "The pheromone is ready to go," Dara said.

  "Anything else?"

  "You can start the procedures against the dreaded Ung beetle at any time now."

  "Of course we will look into it," he said.

  "I would suggest right away. The rainy season is beginning and if the Ung is allowed to reproduce-"

  "Miss Worthy, we need no lectures about the rainy season from a white woman. We who are from Africa have lived too long with the patronizing attitude of the First World. We come from lands of the rainy season. We do not need to hear about rainy seasons from your sweet pulpy lips. I would suggest you examine your own virulent racism. I would be glad to instruct you in your shortcomings any evening you choose. Do I have a second on the motion?"

  All hands shot up, even though there had been no motion.

  The meeting was adjourned with a call to combat racism.

  There were a few comments on how immature Miss Worthington was to be so crude about procedures. Some even mentioned that if she were in another branch of IHAEO, she might be dismissed on the spot.

  But since she had to deal with the drones, as the members of IHAEO liked to call those funny men in white coats who did things with microscopes and chemicals, she had to be tolerated.

  They all had to be tolerated because the press-relations people said that IHAEO had to have them. Most of these delegates did not have to put up with such problems in their home countries. There, when you ran a government, you ran it. You didn't have to go around pleasing people, and if the citizens didn't like what was going on, they had better keep their mouths shut.

  But since ninety-nine percent of the funding for IHAEO came from First World countries, mainly America, one had to accommodate their unprogressive ways. If they felt that a health organization actually had to have people running around in white coats doing things with microscopes and injecting bush people with medicines, even though those people never affected a Third World government in any way, well, then the committee members of IHAEO would put up with it. But only because their own press people said so.

  But they didn't have to have those sorts of people around their plush-carpeted meeting rooms. They certainly wouldn't want to dine with them in Paris and London. None of those drones knew how to properly condemn imperialism, racism or Zionism. They were such backward boors that they did not understand the sophisticated intricacies of staff meetings, interorganizational conferences, grand international seminars. They thought health had something to do with giving babies injections, babies who weren't even the children of important people. Just babies. Just because they were going to die without medicine. These whites-they were always white-would go around giving medicine to tribes that didn't even matter.

  It was just like the old colonialism with white doctors treating Africans. And everyone on the committee found that objectionable. And so when the young white woman suggested that white doctors go running into African countries, acting like the old colonialists, treating anyone they wished, the Corrimittee on Security and the Inalienable Rights of Struggling Oppressed Peoples not only voted to condemn the usual imperialism, racism and Zionism, but gave her a warning:

  "Miss Worthington, we don't want to hear about rainy seasons in the bush again. Who do you think you are? If we were really in the bush, we would sell you for three goats and a jug of banana wine."

  It came as a very great shock, therefore, when two hours later they were all informed that they were going to fly to central Africa to, of all things, fight bugs. The offices of Paris were informed. Cocktail parties were canceled. In rooms with fabulous carpets and furniture from Louis XIV, delegates listened in disbelief and sent telexes asking for confirmation of the message.

  "Repeat message," they asked.

  And it was repeated, "All IHAEO delegates to be ready for flight to Uwenda for pheromone treatment of Ung beetle menace."

  "My Lord," gasped one coordinating executive director of IHAEO-there were forty-seven of them, all making more than a hundred thousand dollars a year because on less, no one could reasonably live in civilized life in a major city-"I came from Uwenda. I don't want to go back there ever. What sort of career move is that?"

  In his palatial suite near the United Nations headquarters in New York, Amabasa Francois Ndo, director general of IHAEO, heard the chorus of complaints from delegates in all the major capitals of Europe and the Americas. Did he realize that his continued presence as director general of IHAEO depended on those delegates? If they actually had to leave Paris and Rome and New York and Beverly Hills and Las Vegas to go to central Africa, he could expect a revolt.

  Was he ready to handle a massive delegate revolt? Was he ready to be stripped of his rank?

  Was he himself ready to be returned to the bush as he so cavalierly had ordered all the delegates? "Yes," answered Amabasa Francois Ndo.

  Yes to all the questions.

  Because he would do anything never to have to see that kimono again.

  Chapter 6

  Dara Worthington had left the meeting crying. After years of losing scientists while struggling against what had to be the most resilient insect on the face of the earth, the IHAEO labs and poor Dr. Ravits had finally succeeded in isolating a single chemical substance that could conquer the plague of central Africa.

  And now, she had blundered somehow in the intricacies of IHAEO politics. Perhaps she had just lost touch with the organization's administration while she was working with the scientists. Whatever. But somehow she had ruined the one chance the people of central Africa had to survive the rainy season. She had taken the lifelong work of Dr. Ravits and at a simple committee meeting thrown it all away.

  She had done everything wrong. She cried all the way back to Washington: There was an IHAEO jet leaving but the executive director of the coordinating committee of Liberation Front Observers needed all the available space for his cases of Dom Perignon, so Dara had to take a Greyhound bus.

  Back at the laboratory, she did not know how she could face the researchers, all of whom knew that Dr. Ravits had finally solved the unsolvable problem of the invincible Ung beetle. Thousands, perhaps millions of people, might live because of his work and now it wasn't even going to be tried out.

  She thought briefly of taking Ravits' solution to an American or French health unit. But if word got out that she was subverting the IHAEO by going to a First World country, no self-respecting Third World country would let in any medical teams at all. She learned quickly, when she had gone to work for IHAEO, that in dealing with a Third Worlder one was always dealing with that great unmentionable: "inferiority complex."

  It clouded everything. It even defined Third World. It was not a matter of being non-white because then Japan would be part of the Third World and it was not. In fact, nations that could be considered white were part of the Third World, whose membership requirement seemed to be that its populations were incapable of producing anything beneficial for the rest of mankind.

  "Garbage countries," as one economist put it. "The only economic role they ever play is that they happen to breed over resources that industrial nations need. Then the industrial nations give them money which they spend back in the industrial nations because they don't produce anything worth buying themselves."

  Dara Worthington could not agree with that cold assessment. People were not garbage even if their government showed no concern for their own populations. She had done missionary work with her parents in Africa and found the people kind and lovely. She loved the people and therefore would put up with anything to help them. She had seen those poor countries suffer the ravages of insect plagues. She had seen proud, decent African farmers facing fields, which they and their families had p
oured years of work into, that had turned into useless shreds of crops because insects had gotten to them first.

  In more advanced countries, a disaster like that would mean that the farmers would lose money and, at worst, have to go on to another job. But in the Third World it meant what it had meant for thousands of years since man had come out of the caves. It meant death.

  That was why Dara Worthington had gone to work for the IHAEO. That was why she could easily put up with the machinations and humiliations of being part of the scientific element of the IHAEO. She didn't care if hundreds of millions were spent on private planes, and if fortunes were spent on luxurious mansions. At least some money was going to help people who needed help and that was important to her. That was her department's responsibility and because she had lost her head and said outright to a committee of the IHAEO that they would have to do something now, before the rainy season, she had failed. If she had not been so desperate, so upset by Dr. Ravits' death, she never would have confronted them like that. Instead, she would have found a willing delegate, bought him an expensive dinner, and gotten him to make the proposal. He would then, of course, take all the credit for the work and present it as a Third World achievement. It didn't matter to her; it was the way things worked.

  But this time she had failed and she cried all the way back to Washington. At the laboratory complex, she found the new scientists, apparently undisturbed by the death of their colleague. The elderly Oriental asked why she was crying. The sexy, obnoxious American seemed more intent on boasting about an even greater discovery that would eclipse that of poor Dr. Ravits.

  "I am crying because I think that by my foolishness I have condemned thousands of people to death."

  "Since when are you a graduate of West Point or Annapolis?" asked Remo.

  "You're a-beast," said Dara.

  "One learns to tolerate him," Chiun said.

  "How do you?" said Dara.

  "I must say that sometimes I do not know," Chiun said.

  "I'm still not wearing a kimono," Remo said.

  "He refuses to wear a kimono?" Dara asked Chiun. Chiun nodded wisely.

  "How sad," she said.

  "You are wise beyond your years," Chiun said.

  "No. If I were truly wise I would have gotten Dr. Ravits' discovery accepted by the IHAEO."

  "Why is that a problem?" Remo asked.

  "You wouldn't understand," Dara said.

  "Maybe I would," said Remo. "Then again, maybe I wouldn't."

  Dara explained about the Third World politics within the IHAEO.

  "You're right," said Remo. "I wouldn't understand, but look. We'd all like to see this experiment work. I think it would probably attract an awful lot of people."

  "Not the killers?" said Dara. "We've had enough killing here."

  "Maybe not enough," said Remo, thinking of the killers who were still alive.

  "How can you say anything so cruel?"

  "I move my lips," Remo said.

  "We wish to help," said Chiun.

  "You're so kind."

  "One learns kindness when one lives every day with ingratitude," Chiun said.

  "But you can't help. You don't understand the intricacies of the Third World and Third World politics, especially on the international level."

  "Who do we have to reach?" Remo asked.

  "You can't reach them. They're an international body. They have diplomatic immunity. They're all wealthy from their jobs. They can't be bought. Nothing can be done."

  "Who is the most powerful man in the IHAEO?" Remo asked.

  "Amabasa Francois Ndo. He is the director general."

  "Where is he?"

  "He is supposed to fly in this afternoon from Paris," Dara said.

  "What tribe is he?" asked Chiun.

  "You wouldn't refer to the director general as a member of a tribe," she said.

  "But what tribe?" Chiun insisted.

  "I really don't know."

  "We will find out," said Chiun.

  "You must never refer to the director general as a member of a tribe," said Dara. "You'll never get anywhere like that. He would have his bodyguards throw you right out of the room, maybe out the window. He is a very proud man."

  "You just get Dr. Ravits' discoveries ready for us and we'll take care of convincing Ndo," Remo said.

  "You mean the anti-immune pheromone molecules," she said.

  "Right. That," said Remo.

  "Absolutely that," said Chiun. After all, they were supposed to be scientists.

  Amabasa Francois Ndo heard his pilot announce in his clipped British accent that the IHAEO diplomatic jet was about to land at Kennedy International Airport. He burned a little sliver of chateaubriand before the god Ga, a wooden replica made from the first willow to bend in the first storm of the rain season. A good Ga protected one during dangerous times. A good Ga could take an Inuti boy and make him a great man, make him a director general of a worldwide organization.

  Ndo always had the Ga with him. He had brought it with him to the Sorbonne, when he was young and poor, living on the pittance paid by the French colonial government.

  They had sent him to school where he became part of the revolutionary movement to remove France from Inuti lands. The French had built roads for the Inuti, established police for the Inuti, hospitals for the Inuti, laws for the Inuti lands. But the French lived in the big houses and the Inuti served them drinks on cool white porches as their untouchable cool white ladies looked on.

  Amabasa Francois Ndo had two ambitions as a young man going to Paris for his education. One was to become the head of police, the other was to have one of those cool white women.

  The second ambition was realized seven minutes after he rented a cheap room. He didn't even have time to unpack. The daughter of an industrialist, determined to end racism in the world, came into his room calling for a form of solidarity against people whom Ndo figured out were just like her father.

  She issued this call while undressing him and herself. It was her favorite way of fighting racism. Unfortunately, Ndo, like all the other African students she met, needed penicillin to escape the ravages'of solidarity with the young woman.

  Amabasa hoped his other ambition proved more satisfying. But he abandoned it when he saw how policemen lived compared to how ambassadors lived. He had a knack for seeing where movements went and gliding along with them. He also found he had a knack for eating at fine restaurants, and more than a knack for public speaking.

  When an African student raped and then hacked to death a local Parisian girl, he knew immediately it was a case of a madman who should be put away but he also knew that all Africans would be blamed by some whites and that might eventually affect him.

  So he took his last piece of a stolen crepe and burned it before Ga secretly in his Paris room. The smoke rose and he chanted requests for protection. Then he went out and made the first of his speeches about the ravages of French colonialism as if the only reason anyone could commit such a mad brutal murder was a century of oppression. He put on trial all the things and people he so envied: the gendarmes, the law courts, the big white houses and even the cool white women.

  Surprisingly, none of the young white radical women were offended. They wanted to hear whites attacked, their fathers attacked, their brothers attacked, their lovers attacked.

  This realization stood the young Inuti student well, because in an instant he understood that there was nothing so fraudulent or so malicious that would not attract support from some white groups, provided they agreed with the choice of target.

  With proper respect for Ga, a brilliant appreciation of abstract concepts and a disregard for truth that would have gotten him stoned out of any Inuti village, Amabasa Francoia Ndo rose in the ranks of Third World diplomacy.

  It did not matter that First World nations supported the IHAEO. The way to success was not gratitude but treating white nations like those white radical girls so long ago in Paris. Applause followed. Awards. Honors fro
m the white countries he attacked. Occasionally there were efforts to turn the health organization into some form of international clinic but Ndo always managed to convince members to address broader issues. Colonialism was a health issue. Imperialism was a health issue. And when Russia weighed in, totally on the side of the Arabs, Zionism became a health issue.

  Considering the makeup of the delegates, these were easier issues to deal with. Ndo was sure there weren't three delegates who knew a corpuscle from a tractor trailer. Most of them did have college degrees but had gotten them in sociology which made them virtually useless for anything but unfounded speeches anyway. He would never express that opinion, of course, because of the strong support of most sociologists for IHAEO. Not that he would ever let his son become one.

  Amabasa Francois Ndo was at the pinnacle of his career when his private jet landed at Kennedy International Airport and his bodyguards motioned his armor-plated Cadillac limousine in from the hangar. He took the small wooden god and put it into the vest pocket of his three-piece Saville Row suit and prepared to debark. There had been some recent troubles with America threatening to withdraw its funding unless IHAEO started doing more health and less politicizing, but that would be easily quelled by a stroke of good fortune.

  The stroke of good fortune was Dr. Ravits. One of the drones had been killed in the laboratory which had been having nothing but trouble since it started. They were always having killings there, and to Ndo the lab was nothing but a pain. None of the employees seemed politically aware and they certainly didn't know how to throw a party and if they weren't necessary for public relations in the West, he wouldn't have had them at all. But now this Ravits person had gotten himself killed and Ndo was going to use it.

  That was why he was flying into New York City: to address the United Nations on one more attempt to destroy IHAEO.

  Ndo loved New York, loved the skyline, loved it even more than Paris. New York was power and action and all those wonderful furriers from which he supplied his girlfriends and his sons' girlfriends.

  He didn't like the people, of course, but then again, he never had to meet any of them. They rode in subways and they walked on the streets. Ndo never did either.