Lords of the Earth td-61

by Warren Murphy

  Perriweather cleared his throat and it appeared that there were tears in his eyes.

  He said, "We do not ask the destruction of your species, nor your removal from the earth. We ask only to coexist with you, as it was in olden times, when man was but a small link in a natural ecological chain. That was as it should be. That is how it will be again. Good night, ladies and gentlemen, you fiends of the world."

  Perriweather's face was replaced by four newscasters. They all said basically the same thing: That scientists interviewed had said that Perriweather, while wealthy, was a crank with no scientific credibility.

  Smith turned off the television and sat in silence for several moments. Finally he pressed a button that rang a telephone in Barry Schweid's makeshift lab.

  "Come up here, all of you," Smith said.

  "I don't think he's a crank at all," Barry Sehweid told Smith after the CURE director had told them of the television ultimatum.

  "Why do you say that?" Smith asked calmly.

  "All right. Take it in order. We have Dexter Morley's papers. What they tell us is that when he went to work for Perriweather, Perriweather had already created a superfly. First, it could bite; second, the animals that it bit became super-strong and crazy violent.

  "Ravits' cat was bitten and acted that way. The chimpanzees in Uwenda tore people apart. They were probably bitten. And it works on human beings. Mr. Chiun and Mr. Remo saw that at the Perriweather mansion when they were attacked by those two people. They had probably been bitten. So the fly exists and it was already a danger."

  He looked around at the other three men, unaccustomed to keeping anyone's attention for so long. "And now it's worse," he continued. "This redwinged fly is what Morley was working on, and he changed the fly so it can't be killed. Not by DDT or any kind of poison. It's impervious to all those poisons."

  "You could still swat them," Remo said.

  "It would take a lot of flyswatters," Barry said. "No. I don't think Perriweather is crazy or that he is bluffing. I think he intends to do just what he said."

  "Hold on. If this fly is so indestructible, why'd it die before it hit Chiun and me?" Remo asked.

  Barry shrugged. "I don't know. It may just have been a defective fly."

  "Maybe they're all defective," Remo said.

  "That's a big 'maybe' for mankind to hope to live by," Barry Schweid said.

  Smith nodded. "Then it's clear. We have to stop Perriweather. If he releases these red-winged flies anywhere, he'll create maniacs, stronger than human."

  "About nineteen times stronger than human," Schweid said. "According to my calculations. And don't forget. According to Morley, these flies can breed. They're not sterile. That means a new generation of them every twenty days or so."

  "Like white people," Chiun muttered.

  "So the question is, where would Perriweather strike?" Smith said.

  "He might try a place where the insect population might be somewhat low but there are large clusters of people, targets for the insects. That's a possibility," Barry said. "Maybe," he added weakly.

  "And maybe he has a score to settle," Remo said.

  "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Smith said.

  "Uwenda. He went batshit when we got rid of all those beetles there. And if Barry here is right, it's got a low insect population," Remo said.

  "I think you're right," Smith said. "It's going to be difficult to get into Uwenda though."

  "Why's that?"

  "Since the anti-American flap over the beetle business, Uwenda has closed its borders to all Westerners."

  "If we can't get in, Perriweather can't get in," Remo said.

  "Barry, will you check the computer?" Smith asked.

  "Yes, Harold," Schweid said.

  It only took the young man three minutes before he was back in the office. "It's Uwenda," he said.

  "How can you be sure?"

  "Waldron Perriweather bought an airline ticket to Libya three days ago. The ticket's been used. He went there. Libya flies into Uwenda. Our computer has a Libyan passport issued that identifies Waldron Perriweather as a Libyan national. Uwenda's where he's going."

  "Us too," Remo said.

  "If we can get you in without trouble," Smith said.

  "Who could do that?" Remo asked.

  "Ndo. The head of the HIAEO. He's a big shot there. He could do it. But he wouldn't. He's on an anti-American, antiscientific rampage."

  "He could be persuaded," Chiun said.

  "How?" Smith asked.

  "This is negotiable information," Chiun said, casting a glance at Remo.

  "All right, Chiun," said Remo with a sigh. "I'll wear the damned thing. I'll put on that stupid kimono. Once, just once."

  "I accept your good-faith promise," Chiun said as he walked from the office.

  "Where is he going?" Smith asked.

  "Don't ask," Remo said.

  Director General Ndo was in his office, shining the wooden god Ga with grease from his own nose. There was a scream in an outer office, followed by a thump.

  Chiun entered the office and with a sinking sensation Ndo looked past him to see his bodyguards lying in a heap in the reception area.

  Ndo said only one word. "Again?" Chiun nodded.

  Like a beaten man, the director general packed Ga into his vest pocket, picked up a briefcase, and followed the Korean outside, in the direction of the airport.

  Chapter 20

  It was a typical summer day in Uwenda, sweltering and fetid at daybreak and growing even hotter as the day wore on.

  A bandstand had been erected in the square of Ndo's home village. The square itself was little more than a brown patch of trampled earth where the town's one public facility-a well once dug by a group of American volunteer students and now a monument-stood. Shortly after the American students left, the well had been poisoned by Ndo's brother, the military commander in chief, who mistook it for a community urinal, a mistake repeated innumerable times by the soldiers of his army. Another villager decided that the well's pump, once decorated with colorful grasses and rings of red pain, would make an excellent African artifact and sold it to a prominent European collector of primitive art.

  Now the well sat unused and stinking, but the site was still where visiting dignitaries chose to speak as they incited the villagers to rise and to protect against Western imperialism.

  When their motorcade arrived in the village, Ndo left the car and began talking to members of his native tribe.

  Minutes later, he returned to the car and said to Smith, "You seek a white man?"

  Smith nodded curtly.

  "He is here," Ndo said. "A man arrived last night and has been seen driving throughout the area."

  Remo looked through the car window with disgust. "Great. How are we going to find anybody in this barren waste? He could be anywhere. It was a stupid idea to come here in the first place."

  "Then we can all return to New York?" Ndo said, ready to give a signal to his chauffeur to turn the car around.

  "Not so quickly," Smith said. "The man we seek wants people. I think we should put a lot of people together in one place for him."

  "Do you want to give away money?" Ndo said. "That always draws a crowd."

  "Too obvious a trap," Smith said. "Well, then how do we attract people?"

  "Think of something," Remo said. "You're the politician."

  "I know," Ndo said, looking at Chiun for approval. The old Korean's face was turned from him, however, staring out at the long bleak landscape. "I will give a speech."

  "Keep it short," Remo grumbled.

  The bandstand was hastily constructed from stone and wood once used to store grain, another imperialist ploy to entice the citizens of Uwenda into an alliance with the warmongering West. It was decorated with the latest flag of Uwenda, a pink-and-black-striped field on which three seersucker lions leapt. Ndo's aunt, official flagmaker to the President for Eternity, had barely had time to cut the lions out of the old dress used for flagm
aking and to paste them on the flag with Super Glue before the speeches were to begin. Villagers were rounded up at bayonet point and herded into the square.

  When Amabasa Francois Ndo approached the speaker's stand, there was not a sound, not a ripple of applause, until the soldiers who ringed the square clicked off the safeties on their rifles. Suddenly the crowd went wild greeting the ambassador.

  Ndo waved his hands in the air and grinned. His teeth sparkled in the brilliant sun.

  "My people," he began.

  There was no applause. He stopped, put his hands on his hips and glared at the General for Life, his brother, who snapped a command to the troops. The troops dropped to their knees in firing position, their weapons pointed at the crowd. A deafening roar of approval for Ndo went up from the throats of the crowd.

  Ndo smiled and waved down the applause cheerfully.

  "My friends. Four score and seven years ago . . ." In the back of the crowd, Remo glanced at Smith. " 'The Gettysburg Address'?" Remo said.

  "You warned him no anti-American stuff," Smith said. "Maybe this is the only other thing he knows."

  " . . . dedicated to the proposition that all men . . ." Remo's eyes continued to patrol the area around the village square. Then he saw it-a jeep that had just stopped behind one of the small tarpaper-and-wood shacks that constituted the village's residential area. He began to move away from Smith, but the CURE director restrained him by grabbing his arm. "Look," Smith said, turning Remo's glance to the speaker's platform.

  " . . . in a great civil war testing whether that nation or-" Ndo stopped speaking and swatted at a fly buzzing around his face. The sudden silence convinced the villagers that the speech was over. Unprompted by the soldiers' guns, they gave out one perfunctory cheer and began to turn back to their homes.

  "Damned fly," Ndo shouted, slapping his fat little fists together.

  No one saw the red-winged fly bite Ndo on the back of his glistening neck, but everyone stopped when he suddenly roared in anguish.

  They turned to see Ndo, his hands balled into fists, crumpling the pages of his speech. He tossed the pages into the air, then spun in a circle, before beginning to flail about him on the bandstand.

  He grabbed the pole holding the Uwendan flag and snapped it in two. Then he shoved the flag itself into his mouth and tore it to shreds with his teeth.

  He jumped to the ground, grabbed a support base of the bandstand and shook it until the middle section of timber came loose in his hand. He crushed the wood to powder and the bandstand creaked and then collapsed around him.

  The crowd watched for a moment, hushed, and then Ndo rose from the wreckage like some giant primordial beast climbing out of the slime, his throat emitting a sound that no human should have been capable of making.

  The villagers, used to Ndo's long boring speeches about Marxism, jumped up and down in glee and began to applaud.

  "Musca perriweatheralis," Barry Sehweid said excitedly. "Perriweather's here. He's released the fly. Do you hear, Harold? He's here."

  "Didn't even give us the full forty-eight hours," Smith said. The CURE director looked to both sides. Remo and Chiun had moved away from him and were walking slowly toward Ndo.

  The IHAEO official's brother approached the bandstand. He extended a helping hand to Ndo.

  Ndo seemed to smile, then as the man moved within the reach of his arm, he swung his arm around in one long sweep and cracked his fist against the side of his brother's face.

  Like a brown ball, the general's head bounded off his shoulders, bouncing through the dust toward the community well.

  A villager screamed. Then another. The soldiers started to raise their weapons toward Ndo, but it was too late. The politician grabbed one of the riflemen, impaled him on his own weapon, and then spun the soldier around over his head.

  He roared a growl as blood sprayed from the man, sending up little puffs of dust where it hit the sunbaked ground.

  "Naaaaargh," Ndo roared, his eyes bulging wildly from his head.

  "He says 'Naaaaaargh' too, Little Father," Remo said. "Maybe that's how we'll be able to tell whoever gets bit. He'll say 'Naaaaaargh.' "

  "Good thought," Chiun said.

  The villagers bolted and ran. They brushed past Remo and Chiun, as Ndo held the dead soldier over his head, and then tossed him, as if he were a light stick, into the midst of the other soldiers.

  The Uwendan Army dropped its rifles and ran, and suddenly almost as if by magic, the square was empty of people, except for Remo, Chiun and Smith at one end, and at the other ... Smith's heart sank.

  Barry Schweid was standing near Ndo, slowly waving his blanket. The pudgy young man's eyes were glazed. Ndo looked toward him and his lips curled back in a savage parody of a smile. The fluttering blue blanket in Barry's hands caught his attention. Like a bull in an arena, Ndo charged it.

  Remo and Chiun started forward but Barry shouted to them.

  "No closer," he said. "I can handle this."

  His body seemed to grow rigid and then his eyes apparently lost their focus and gazed off into a distance no one could see.

  "Remo, Chiun. Help him," Smith snapped.

  Remo ignored him. "He's doing that thing again," he said to Chiun. "The cosmic-power thing."

  Chiun merely watched the battle unfolding before him.

  As Ndo reached Barry and stretched his arms out to encircle him, Barry darted low, under the arms, stuck out his foot and sent the IHAEO officer sprawling on the ground. He thumped Ndo on the side of the head with one chubby fist.

  "Dammit if that kid's not all right," Remo said. "Instant Sinanju."

  "There is no instant Sinanju," Chiuri said and moved forward toward Barry.

  Ndo was on his feet again, circling around Barry. The little fat man had dropped the blue blanket as he turned, keeping his face toward Ndo.

  Then, almost visibly, the strength seemed to drain from him. He was staring at the ground where Ndo's stomping feet had stepped on the blanket.

  The young man paused. Chiun called out, "Here. Ndo. Here." But before Ndo could move, Barry dove forward to the ground to try to pick up ... what?

  "He's going for that damned blanket," Remo snarled.

  Chiun ran forward to stop him but he was too late. One blow was enough. Ndo caught Barry between the shoulder blades with a powerful down-crashing fist and broke the young scientist's back with a sound like the snap of a dry twig. Barry dropped into the dust as if all the bones in his body had suddenly vanished.

  He seemed to try to crawl forward a few inches. His hand dug into the dust. And then his face thunked down onto the ground.

  Chiun was on Ndo, his arms and legs invisible inside the kimono he wore, the flowing and swirling of the garment making his movements look gentle and almost slow. But there were the sounds. The thud and thud of blows to Ndo, the crack and crack as bones snapped, and then the African lay in a heap, his sightless eyes staring upward at the sun, his hands twitching in the final reflex of death.

  Remo bent over to Barry as Smith ran up to them. "Why did you stop, kid?" Remo asked. "You had him and then you stopped."

  Chiun knelt on the other side of Barry Schweid, who offered a pained little grin.

  He opened the palm of his hand. Inside was trapped a red-winged fly. The insect was not moving.

  "I saw this on the ground near Ndo. I jumped to catch it so it wouldn't get away and bite anybody else. Wasted my time," Barry said. "It was already dead."

  "We're going to get you to a hospital," Smith said. He knelt in the dust alongside Barry's head.

  Barry shook his head weakly: "I don't think so," he said. "Death is something tangible, something you can feel. Did you know that?" he asked, his scholar's mind still fascinated by the workings of his own organism, even in its last moments of life. "Will you write that down somewhere?"

  Smith nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and Remo said, "Where does it hurt, kid? I can take the pain away." He realized that it was death he could not con
quer.

  "It doesn't hurt anymore. Not at all." He glanced toward Chiun and smiled again. "You understood what I was doing. It was the same thing I did in the lab, harnessing the cosmic energy. The same thing you do with the breathing. I had it, but then when I went for the fly, I lost it. Why'd that happen?"

  "I do not know, my son," Chiun said.

  "You said it was breathing. I was breathing right," Barry said. He closed his eyes for a moment in a wince of pain, then opened them again, searching Chiun's face for an answer.

  "You breathed correctly," Chiun said softly. "But breathing is only one part of it. You did not have the training to sustain it. The power comes from the breathing. That is correct. But keeping that power comes from training, from knowing you have that power and that you can use it." He held both hands over his chest. "It comes from in here. But not from the lungs, from inside the heart. And from here." He raised his hands to touch his forehead. "Tell me. Was there not a moment when you worried that the power would leave you?"

  Barry tried to nod and grimaced with the pain. "When I saw the fly. I wondered if I would be fast enough or strong enough to get it."

  "That was the moment of your weakness," Chiun said. "In that moment, when first you doubted it, the power left you."

  "I was so close," Barry said.

  "You would have been a fine pupil," Chiun said. "You had wisdom and courage. You lacked only the confidence of knowing you could do it. That is the true secret of Sinanju: that a man can overcome any obstacle if he knows in his heart that he must and in his mind that he can," Chiun said.

  "You think I could have been a good student?" Barry asked.

  "Yes," Chiun said. "You would have been my best."

  "Thank you," said Sehweid. His eyes rolled up in his head and he saw Smith kneeling behind him. "Thank you, Harold, for everything."

  "And thank you, Barry."

  "You're the closest thing I ever had to a friend, Harold."

  "I feel that way too, Barry," Smith said.

  Barry Schweid smiled once and died. Forgotten in the courageous moments of his final battle and death was the little piece of blue blanket which lay in the Uwendan dust.