Lords of the Earth td-61

by Warren Murphy

  Chiun stood motionless. The director general of the IHAEO got out of the car and went to Chiun. Chiun allowed the little wooden god Ga to come from the folds of his kimono, and dropped it into the hands of Ndo.

  A television announcer following the Ndo car ordered his cameramen to get the shot of the director general speaking to the man in the kimono and to the scientists.

  The announcer spoke into a tape recorder. "After successfully advancing science, the director general stopped to give final instructions to the technicians on how the IHAEO must now keep moving ahead in its relentless struggle against ignorance, disease and famine."

  Ndo, like a chubby sneaking a chocolate, secreted the doll in the vest of his suit and was back in the car immediately. The caravan disappeared down the road making giant dust clouds, leaving half-naked natives behind who watched unbelievingly as their dreaded beetle enemy devoured itself in a writhing massive pile.

  "I don't know how you two got everybody here, but thank you. Both of you," said Dara, who suddenly realized she was still holding onto the obnoxious one of the pair. She liked holding onto Remo too much.

  "One must understand international politics," Chiun said mildly.

  "Did you notice it?" Remo suddenly asked Chiun.

  "Of course," Chiun said.

  "Notice what?" asked Dara.

  "A bug," Remo said.

  "Bug? There are millions, billions of bugs out there."

  Remo nodded. She was right, of course. But there had been another bug and it didn't belong there. It had not been attracted to the pheromone and had flown off crazily toward the hills where the dust now was from the limousines.

  In the caravan, Ndo happily toasted the day with Dom Perignon. The guests, all influential delegates from Third World countries, thought Ndo was toasting the success of that peculiar little demonstration in that dirty little village. They all knew he would have to pay for bringing them out here. Some of them had actually missed cocktail parties to be here. And there was no need for it. What had been done was scut work, the kind of thing that white men or Indians or Pakistanis were hired to do. Not delegates. Ndo, they thought, would surely pay.

  Ndo did not care what his delegates thought. He would take care of them as he had in the past. He had Ga back, his protector, and when he toasted the day, he toasted not the fight against the Ung beetle, but the return of the Inuti god.

  His problems were relieved somewhat by half the delegates being killed on the way to the airport. Ndo, of course, escaped. Ga was with him and this was Inuti land.

  Chapter 9

  The delegates who did live to reach their private jets at the national airport could not describe the horrors of the bush. They were glad that some cameramen had been along so their stories would be believed.

  They had been attacked by chimpanzees-but not just any chimpanzees.

  These ran at them with speeds like motorcycles. These ripped the doors off heavy cars. These crazily smashed their skulls against thick bullet-proof windows. These ate fenders and tore the arms off grown men.

  These bent the barrels of guns.

  Every delegate knew what was wrong. It was white medicine and First World tampering. The new chemicals used back in the Inuti village had made these normally friendly animals into crazed powerful killers.

  The new position of the IHAEO, determined at a caucus in the back of a car, was that IHAEO had developed the part of the chemical that destroyed the Ung beetle. But unfortunately it had been manufactured in a capitalist white factory which had carelessly neglected the environmental concerns so dear to the natural and legitimate inhabitants of the land.

  This neglect had led directly to the chimpanzees going berserk. It was all somebody else's fault.

  On the planes back, a resolution was passed, over cocktails, praising the delegates for their untiring work toward eradicating famine by their attack on the Ung beetle. The resolution also condemned the greedy manufacturers of the product for failing to take into account its effect on the environment.

  The resolution, like all IHAEO resolutions, was passed unanimously. Except this time, there were fewer to be unamimous.

  Remo and Chiun had ridden with Dara Worthington and several other scientists in the first ox cart. Up ahead, near the limousine motorcade, they saw dark hairy objects throwing themselves into trees, running around crazed. Up close, they could see a chimpanzee tear off a piece of rock and attempt to eat it. Others slept in a comalike contentment. All along the road were the littered remnants of black limousines, some of the motors still running, some of the air conditioners still making futile little cool puffs into the hot African summer air.

  "What is it?" asked Dara.

  She saw the remains of one of the delegates who looked as if he had been taken apart, like a chicken sold in pieces.

  "I don't know," said one of the scientists in the cart. They all stopped to examine the creatures. All but Remo and Chiun. Remo was noticing a small object half the size of a fingernail, sitting on a branch that had been denuded of leaves by the recent ravishing of the Ung beetle. Chiun was listening to the researchers. "Its bones are crushed," said one scientist, holding up the limp hairy limb of a chimp.

  Another discovered an extraordinary enlarged heart inside the ripped-open body of another.

  In almost every one of the animals, something had been destroyed, or changed.

  None of the scientists had ever seen anything like it. "What on earth happened?" Dara Worthington asked.

  While the scientists pored over the remains, Chiun spoke to Remo.

  "A chimpanzee, like all other creatures save human beings, uses all its strength. But in this case, look around. It has used more than its strength."

  Remo nodded. He knew that he and Chiun were perhaps the only two men on the face of the earth who could use all their strength and power. It was odd, he sometimes thought. He had become more than man by learning to emulate the lower order of creatures.

  But the chimps were something else again. They had used all their power, and then more. They had slipped past the regulator built into all animals and used muscles and body parts with so much power that they literally ripped themselves apart or exploded under the strain.

  "That's how they killed Dr. Ravits," Remo said. "The cat."

  "Exactly," Chiun said.

  "Only the cat was inside the room."

  "Exactly," Chiun said.

  "Nobody could have gotten by you."

  "Exactly," said Chiun.

  "But something did to the cat what was done to the chimpanzees."

  "Exactly," Chiun said.

  "Which was why I missed the stroke with that dog in the alley. The dog was infected too."

  "No," said Chiun. "You did that because you didn't wear a kimono."

  At that moment on the dusty African road, there was satisfaction. Chiun folded his hands delicately into the folds of the sunrise kimono. Remo nodded. They had isolated the problem finally. Now the only questions that remained were how animals could be infected and who would want to do it.

  The scientists did not, of course, get to share Remo and Chiun's thinking. Nor were they given the strange thing that Remo had noticed on the branch. It was a simple housefly and it had lain on the branch as if tired. And then, for no reason, it too had quivered and floated off on a hot puff of wind, another small sudden death in a land of vast, violent deaths.

  Waldron Perriweather heard about the mass destruction of the Ung beetle near the Inuti village. He heard about the slaughter, the genocide of hundreds of millions of silvery little lives. He wanted to scream; he wanted to infect nurseries; he wanted to drain blood through the skin. He ran to his laboratory and screamed until his eyes almost popped out of his head. "When, damn it, when?"

  "Soon, Mr. PerriweAther."

  Perriweather buzzed off in a fury. He would have to drive his organization to greater heights.

  The Ung beetle had been callously slaughtered, and now it was time to repay that insult. />
  He had thought that Gloria and Nathan Muswasser might have been helpful but when he had learned that the TNT had been detected before it exploded, he realized he was working with just another pair who were more interested in credit than in doing the work.

  "Look," Perriweather had snarled when they reported their failure. "The movement needs workers, not publicity hounds."

  "We were only trying to get credit for the SLA," Gloria had said.

  "We're moving beyond credit. We're moving to victory. But before we can win final and ultimate victory, you have got to do your share."

  Gloria Muswasser, who had dedicated her life to the revolution, who had struggled without credit, answered back sharply to this rich bourgeois:

  "And what's your share? We want to make the world safe for all creatures. And you, you seem animal-insensitive at times. I'm sorry to say it, but it's so."

  Nathan nodded.

  "I do what I feel like doing," said Perriweather. He had been raised that way.

  "Well, we're watching you," Gloria said.

  "And I am always watching you," Perriweather had said.

  That evening after he had brooded all day over the news of the Ung-beetle disaster, the Muswassers came to Perriweather's home. They seemed absolutely gleeful.

  "Why are you smiling?" Perriweather asked.

  "More than a hundred delegates are dead. The TNT didn't work but that other thing we planted did."

  "Dammit, woman, all the Ung beetles are dead. You think that's a victory?" Perriweather demanded.

  "The delegates. More than a hundred. We did it. That thing we planted."

  "Where'd you plant it?" Perriweather asked. "Never mind, I'll tell you. You planted it inside something refrigerated, didn't you?"

  "Right in their refrigerated medicine container," Gloria said with a proud smile.

  "Exactly, you idiot. And by the time it had warmed up enough to be of use, it was too late. And all it could do was infect the chimpanzees. The deaths of all those beetles is on your head."

  "I'll take the blame for that if I get the credit for the hundred delegates," Gloria said.

  Perriweather shook his head. "I can't tolerate this anymore. Now I hear stories about two new scientists at the IHAEO. They say they're preparing even bigger crimes. No more half-measures."

  "What are you going to do?" Nathan Muswasser asked.

  Perriweather said he was going to take out the entire lab, all its equipment and all its personnel, in retribution for the Ung genocide.

  "Impossible," said Gloria.

  "Too dangerous," said Nathan.

  "You know," Perriweather said coldly, "I've been putting up all the money for the Species Liberation Alliance for years. Every time I'm called on, I defend you, and you people will do anything but take real risks. Now, when I need you, where are you? You're telling me things are impossible or too dangerous."

  "You're just too interested in bugs," Gloria said.

  "And you're just too insensitive to their plight," Perriweather said.

  "But we'll work with you," she said. "We need your money, so we'll work with you."

  "I think I'll be able to do this one without you," Perriweather said. "If I need you, I'll call."

  After they left, he sat for a long while staring at the study door. Of course they didn't understand what he wanted. No one, not since he was five years old, had ever understood what this heir to the Perriweather fortune had wanted.

  His wife did not know. He knew what she wanted.

  She wanted to be married to a Perriweather. Sometimes, she wanted to copulate. Eventually, after being turned down by him enough times, she took lovers. Sometimes he would watch them from the floor above but it just didn't interest him.

  He was willing to reproduce. In fact, that had been one of his requirements upon agreeing to marry her. But he insisted that before they copulate, she be with egg.

  "I'm not going to fertilize an empty uterus," Waldron had said to the most beautiful debutante of North Shore society, now his bride.

  "Well, some people, Waldron, you know, some people enjoy it."

  "I guess they do. Some people."

  "You didn't tell me you didn't enjoy it," she said.

  "You didn't ask," said Waldron, his thin elegant patrician features looking like an ice mask.

  "I assumed," she said.

  "Not my fault," he said. They had honeymooned on a tour of Europe. Waldron, his bride found out, liked alleys. Garbage dumps held more fascination for him than the Louvre or British theater.

  He often mumbled as he passed cemeteries, "Waste. Waste."

  "Human life? The death of us all, dear, is inevitable. But we can be remembered by our loved ones," the beautiful young Mrs. Perriweather had said.

  "Nonsense," he snarled. "Brass, steel. Airtight, watertight. Just throw them in the ground. Let them do some good."

  "Have you always felt this way?" she asked.

  "Of course. What a waste. Sealing bodies up like that is so ... so . . ."

  "Futile? Pathetic?" she offered.

  "Selfish," said Waldron.

  At the time, Peiriweather's mother was still living and the young bride asked if Waldron had always been that way.

  "You noticed?" asked the grande dame of North Shore society.

  "When he asks for rotted fruit for dinner, it really is hard to miss, Mother. May I call you Mother?"

  "I'm glad finally that someone does. Yes, Waldron does things that most people might consider different. But he is not, let me stress, he is not insane. Perriweather men have often been different. But they are not, let me reiterate, insane."

  The mother-in-law was on her veranda, which stretched out over the rocky line that met the gray Atlantic that fine spring day.

  "Perriweather men have sealed themselves in barrels and tried to float down the Amazon. One Perriweather liked to eat roasted bat. Another felt he was the bird god of the Incas, and Waldron's father, I must confess, liked to lather himself in glue before he did 'it.' "

  "You poor woman," said the bride.

  "Water-soluble. I insisted on water-soluble glue," said the older Mrs. Perriweather. "I never would with epoxy. But back to important things. None of the Perriweather men were ever really insane."

  "What does it take for you to call one of them insane?"

  "Spending his principal. Failing to live on just the interest on his money. That, my dear, is lunacy. And that is proof that Waldron is not insane because Waldron would never do that."

  "I guess there have been worse marriages," the bride said.

  "That's what I am telling you, dear."

  There really was only one very difficult moment and that was the night that the doctor told her she was most fertile. Waldron had sex with her as if he didn't want to do any more than light upon her. But it was enough to conceive and carry on the Perriweather name.

  After the baby was born, Waldion ignored his wife totally. She complained to her mother-in-law.

  "He acts as if I am not his wife," she said.

  "The truth is, Waldron does not think that I am his mother," said the old woman.

  "I've heard of children wondering who their father was but not their mother. Who does he think is his mother?"

  "I don't know. He never tells anyone. He doesn't lie really, he just doesn't talk about it anymore. We have shown him hospital records. Had him talk to the doctor who delivered him. Gotten sworn testimony from nurses. And still, he won't accept me as his mummy."

  "Maybe because he was raised by a nanny?" the young woman said.

  "All Perriweathers are raised by nannies. I was as affectionate as any mother in the family. But he just wouldn't call me Mom."

  "You know what he calls me?" said Waldron's wife.

  "What?"

  "His egg-layer."

  "Dear," said her mother-in-law, sympathetically placing a hand on the young woman's arm. "He never spends the principal."

  Waldron Perriweather III not only maintained the
Perriweather fortune but he advanced it brilliantly, showing a sense of business that few would expect outside a top management school. It was beyond ruthless. He just seemed to have an inordinate knack for multiplying money rapidly.

  He never told his secret but many suspected from bits and snatches that he simply looked for a chance to grow on the disasters of others.

  What none of them could know was that in learning to use money, Perriweather had become one of the more efficient killers on his planet. And he did this as he invested: without passion; with only a grand cunning. Money bought services and the difference between a thug and a surgeon was that a thug usually gave more thought to tearing somebody apart and was not so ready with an excuse if he should fail.

  Hit men and arm breakers, Waldron found out early, were far more refreshing to deal with than doctors. A surgeon might blame death on a patient's blood pressure and send the bill nevertheless. But a hit man never charged unless he succeeded.

  So in some elements of the underworld, Waldron Perriweather III was better understood then he was in his own family or on Wall Street.

  Among those who understood him were Anselmo "Boss" Bossiloni and Myron Feldman, even though they referred to him between themselves as "that faggy rich guy."

  Anselmo and Myron looked like two cigarette machines, except that cigarette machines didn't have hair and, some said, felt more mercy than Anselmo and Myron. The pair had met in rehabilitation school. Myron was the better student. He majored in shop and what he learned was how to use an electric drill effectively. He found out if you took the drill bit and put it to someone's kneecap, you could negotiate anything.

  Anselmo majored in gym and learned that if he held the person down, Myron could work better. They became inseparable friends. Anselmo was known as the better-looking one. Anselmo was the one who looked like a Mongolian yak.

  When they first met Perriweather, they were working as collectors for loan sharks in Brooklyn. Perriweather offered them more money and strangely asked them if they had strong stomachs. It would have been an even stranger question coming from this elegant dandy if they had not been meeting in a garbage dump where Anselmo and Myron could barely breathe. Perriweather kept talking away, as if he were on a beach somewhere. Anselmo and Myron stayed just long enough to get the name of their first assignment and then left, retching.