From under lowered eyebrows, Chalmers counted twenty adversaries, with their erstwhile guide, but most of those were what the bloody PC crowd back home called "challenged": stunted limbs and missing digits, crooked spines, misshapen skulls. One bugger seemed to have no lips to speak of, while another's nose was nothing but a perforated pimple in the middle of his face. It was a blessing, Chalmers thought, that they had sense enough to cover up their genitals with loincloths.
He imagined running wild among them, swinging left and right with massive, angry fists. One stiff poke in the eye would blind the frigging cyclops, and the dwarfs would be no problem; he could boot them down the trail like flabby soccer balls. Six normal-looking men could be a problem, true enough, but if Pike could grab the bolo knife—or better yet, one of the spears…
On second thought, however, there was something that he didn't like about the bowmen. They were small and stupid looking, Chalmers granted, but they also held their bows as proper archers might, with arrows nocked and ready, pointed in the general direction of their targets. Long, sharp arrows, he couldn't help noting, with the tips discolored, as by some vile potion used to make them twice as deadly in the flesh.
The more he considered things, the less he liked those six-foot lances, either. That was no way for a man to die, with spears stuck through him till he looked like some damned insect on a bug collector's mounting board. And from Kuching Kangar's expression, he would only be too happy for a chance to use his bolo on a proper Englishman. The bloody wogs were all that way, ungrateful bastards to the bitter end.
So he would bide his time, thought Chalmers. Find out where the freaks were taking him—and his companions, too, of course—before he tried to break away. He didn't follow all this rot about Nagaq, but what could anyone expect from savages whose normal microintellect was cooked in a genetic soup that obviously left much to be desired?
He would find out where they were going, keep a close eye on the local landmarks so that he could make his way back out again. If there was profit to be taken at the end of their forced march, he would do everything within his power to secure the lion's share of it—and failing that, he would by God remember the location of his captors' sanctuary, come back later with a solid team of men who knew what they were doing, men who took life seriously, not a gang of bloody scientists who couldn't tell a pistol from a piss pot when the chips were down.
The world would never miss a tribe of freaks like this, he reckoned. It would be a public service to the gene pool, wiping this abomination off the map. If anyone found out and thought about complaining, it would be a clear-cut case of self-defense. There would be weapons to support Pike's claim… and maybe the remains of several recent victims, too.
The more he thought about it, slogging down the trail and sweating like a pig, the more Chalmers came to realize that he should make his break alone, when it was time. He didn't give a damn for Sibu Sandakan, the bloody wog, and Dr. Stockwell was an old man who would slow him down, most likely get him killed if Chalmers tried to pack him out with natives howling on their heels. Looked at another way, the old bone doctor made a perfect sacrifice. His death at savage hands would raise a bloody hue and cry from K.L. to the States, and anything Pike Chalmers did to pay his killers back would likely get a rubber-stamp approval from the powers that be.
All right, then.
By the time the first mile was behind them, Chalmers had his mind made up. He would be careful, watch and await his chance.
A small black plastic box came sailing at him through the trees, and Remo snatched it from the air, examined it and dropped it in his pocket. It was obviously a device for signaling. The brief exchange between their guide and Sibu Sandakan suggested it would summon army troops if Remo pressed the button, but he didn't want a mob of reinforcements rushing in.
Not yet.
The ambush had surprised him, an embarrassment that Remo swiftly overcame in his determination to pursue the natives and their hostages, find out where they were going and what bearing it might have on his mission to the jungle.
The deformities he saw among the natives meant no more to Remo at the moment than they seemed to mean among the tribesmen. He could think of several handy explanations for an isolated tribe where freakish traits had run amok. Inbreeding might explain it, some genetic taint passed down through generations, while new blood became increasingly uncommon. A pollutant in the air or water was another possibility, as with the plague of mercury-infected fish some years ago at Minamata, in Japan. Insecticides and toxic waste were out, considering the territory, but there were minerals and heavy metals found in nature that would have the same effect.
His train of thought was sidetracked as the party started moving. They kept on heading eastward, veering slightly to the south when they had covered half a mile or so. The trail was left behind, but it meant nothing to the natives, who guided their three prisoners by secret paths no white man had traversed in living memory.
Behind them, Remo was their shadow, hanging back enough to keep from being noticed but never falling far enough behind to lose their scent or sound. The natives were adept at forest travel, but they still left traces of themselves behind for anyone with eyes to see. If necessary, Remo could have let them lead him by a day, but he preferred to keep the hostages within his reach in case the end—whatever that turned out to be—came suddenly.
The hiking gave him time to think about what he had overheard while spying on the Malays and their prisoners. The captives were supposedly en route to meet Nagaq, whatever that meant. Remo didn't like the sound of it, but he was still inclined to wait and see what happened in the short run rather than attacking from the shadows and endangering his recent traveling companions. There was no fear on his own behalf, despite the heavy odds, but he couldn't prevent one of the natives spearing Stockwell, Sandakan or even Chalmers while he dealt with their associates. Whatever lay in store for the three hostages, Remo could be ready in a flash if someone tried to execute them on the trail, but otherwise, he thought it best to watch and wait.
The jungle felt more claustrophobic here, a combination of congested undergrowth and something less substantial—almost metaphysical—but Remo had no problem keeping up with the bizarre procession. Once, he traveled for a quarter mile above them, skipping through the treetops, feeling very much like Tarzan as he left the ground behind. It was a whole new world up in the canopy, some sixty feet above the forest floor, complete with creatures who were born, lived out their busy lives and died without a single visit to the ground below.
He thought of waiting for Chiun, but had no way of knowing where the elderly Korean was, when he would choose to reappear or what he had in mind. Right now, the more important task was keeping up with Dr. Stockwell and the others, making sure they didn't stray beyond his reach.
Some unknown ordeal lay ahead of them—that much was obvious. With luck, Remo thought it might just help him single out the ringer he was looking for and finalize his mission. Once the traitor was eliminated, Remo could decide what he should do about the freakish natives, the survivors of the expedition and the panic button nestled in his pocket.
Choices.
What was all this talk about Nagaq? It seemed that Stockwell's party had been captured by some kind of native cult, though Remo couldn't say for sure. Devotion to a mythic creature wouldn't be the strangest notion he'd ever heard of, and the setting clearly lent itself to legends, whether they revolved around a dragon or a tribe of forest trolls. In fact, it wouldn't have surprised him to discover that the freakish tribe itself had given rise to some peculiar stories in the neighborhood if he had time to ask around.
Mythology didn't concern him at the moment, though. His more immediate priorities were flesh and blood—the natives, their three hostages, the man he had been ordered to identify and kill. The jungle spooks and demons, meanwhile, would be forced to watch out for themselves.
There was a brand-new predator advancing on the Tasek Bera. Grim. Impervious to pity. Ruthless. And he wouldn't stand down until his work was done.
And old Nagaq would have to take a number if he wanted Remo's prey.
Chapter Fifteen
Safford Stockwell slapped at his neck. The heat and the incessant hum of insects buzzing in his head was driving him mad. He'd come so far, risked everything, only to be stopped by these primitives before he reached his goal. It was just too much. It meant that Audrey's sacrifice had been for nothing, all their effort a pathetic waste of time. When he was gone, another white man swallowed by the jungle with no clue to what had happened, how his mocking colleagues back at Georgetown would amuse themselves at his expense!
Kuching Kangar had promised they were being taken to Nagaq. Of course, the comment was intended as a threat, but Stockwell took it as a hopeful sign. The natives obviously meant to kill their prisoners, but there was still a chance that he could change their minds. And if he failed, at least there was a possibility to see his curiosity assuaged.
Stockwell was not an anthropologist, but he was literate, well-read in many disciplines. He knew, for instance, that most cults—at least among the aborigines, where modern drugs and psychopathic "saviors" weren't an issue—had their roots in some concrete and tangible event. The Polynesian cargo cults were an example, sprung to life from Allied air drops during World War II. Some isolated tribes still worshiped mock-ups of the aircraft that had showered them with blessings fifty years ago, a whole new generation waiting for the sky gods to return.
Why should Nagaq be merely fantasy, a witch doctor's hallucination? Was there any reason to rule out that this group, at some point in the past, had encountered some forgotten creature thought to be extinct?
It need not mean Nagaq was still alive, or even that it had been sighted by living men within this century. However, since the last known dinosaur abruptly vanished more than sixty million years ago, which was some fifty million years before the first appearance of a protohuman ape, it stood to reason that no man had ever seen a dinosaur… unless a few stray specimens had somehow managed to survive.
There were alternative hypotheses, of course. Nagaq might not be an official dinosaur at all. Stockwell had seen enough, when he was younger and more heavily inclined toward working in the field, to realize that science still had far to go in terms of understanding life on earth. New species weren't found as quickly as the old ones disappeared, but each year still brought some remarkable discoveries. Most of the "new" arrivals were diminutive—insects, amphibians and reptiles, with a few stray birds and mammals, but a larger species surfaced every now and then. The great Komodo dragon was a "legend" until 1912, and the first specimen of the "mythical" Kellas cat had been bagged—in Scotland, no less—as recently as 1983. If the immense, uncharted Tasek Bera region did not hold some secrets of its own, then Dr. Stockwell would be very much surprised.
He only hoped that he would live to find an answer to the riddle, even if he never had the chance to share his information with the world at large. There would be satisfaction just in knowing for himself, a certain pride in realizing that his last great effort hadn't been a total waste.
They didn't stop for rest at all that day, and there were times when Stockwell thought he would collapse from sheer exhaustion on the trail. Each time he faltered, though, one of his captors would rush forward, jabbing at him with a spear or crude stone knife until he found fresh energy and struggled onward. Sparing sips from his canteen kept Stockwell going, that and fear, but he grew famished as the afternoon wore on, exertion burning up the calories with nothing to replace them. His stomach growled like a caged animal, but no one seemed to notice, and the feeling of embarrassment passed.
By late that afternoon, their path was winding downward, losing altitude, although he reckoned that must be a function of his own fatigue. According to the topographic maps he carried, this whole region was a sort of swampy floodplain, nearly level, with no striking highs or lows. There were no mountains in the district, for example, and it stood to reason there would be no valleys, either. Still…
But as dusk approached, he realized there could be no mistake. Their path was intersected by a gully that led steeply downward for a hundred yards or so, then leveled out again. Trees from each side of the gully met overhead and blocked out the sunlight. More than once, he saw the disappearing tails of serpents startled by their passage and half expected a king cobra to rear up and block the path at any moment.
Watching out for snakes made Stockwell think of Renton Ward, and that in turn brought painful memories of Audrey Moreland back into the forefront of his mind. Such beauty, squandered in a godforsaken wilderness, and she would be forgotten almost overnight back home.
The trees cleared out in front of them, a sudden break in the oppressive gloom, and in the few short yards before they closed in overhead once more, he saw it.
He stood rooted to the spot until his captors shoved him on.
Stockwell thought he must have lost his mind. The heat had poached his brain; that must be it.
He blinked, then blinked again, but nothing changed. The scene in front of him was real, and his companions saw it, too. Pike Chalmers, too, had stopped dead in his tracks, dumbstruck, until a couple of the pygmies prodded him with spears. Stockwell now kept on moving, even though his legs had lost their feeling. He was giddy with excitement, close to passing out from the combined effects of hunger, heat, exhaustion and surprise.
But he kept moving.
Toward the ancient, hidden city that had risen from the ground in front of them, as if by magic.
Coming home was always a relief and pleasure for Kuching Kangar. He hated visiting the outside world, but he had no real choice. Cruel Fate had marked him with a face and body that were different from others in his clan—"normal" in the words of men who didn't know his people—and it meant that he was preordained to bridge the gap between his tribe and those Outside.
In every generation of his people, there were six or seven normal ones, enough to carry on their necessary commerce with the world of common men. It was a part of great Nagaq's own master plan, and while Kuching Kangar could recognize the genius of it, he was still uncomfortable with his special role. Raised from birth to be as those Outside, he always knew that he was strange, a fact the other children of his tribe wouldn't let him forget. They teased him constantly, threw pebbles at him when he tried to join them in their games and made it crystal clear that he would never be entirely welcome. The young women of the tribe had shunned him, too, as if his normal aspect was revolting, something to be feared. In time, he knew from adolescence, elders of the tribe would choose a normal female for him, to perpetuate the freakish bloodline, even if they had to snatch one from Outside.
The normal ones must never die out absolutely, after all. They were the only link between his people and the larger world that brought them special treasures: gold and silver, precious stones and sacrificial offerings for great Nagaq.
When he was sent away for education with the common men, Kuching Kangar had worried they would find him out, see something in his eyes or in his manner that would instantly betray him as a member of the tribe. He had been wrong, of course. The men Outside were idiots, for all their schooling. They knew nothing of his people or Nagaq. They even raised their children to believe that dragons were a figment of imagination.
Fools.
These days, he lived between two worlds, with one foot in the City and the other one Outside. With his diplomas duly registered and filed away, Kuching Kangar took pains to hide his education, building up a reputation as one of the foremost hunting guides in all peninsular Malaysia. He was famous, in his way, among the Outside men who came with guns or cameras to stalk the native wildlife, study plants or mingle with the aborigines. Some came in search of oil or other minerals, but it was all the same to him. Each year, a number of his clients vanished in the jungle, always under circumstances that would not reflect upon Kuching Kangar or make him suspect in the eyes of the authorities.