"The Enemy of Life is no more," said the royal priest solemnly.
"No," called down the High Moo wearily. "Only one of his children sent as a warning to me that nowhere am I safe, and no one may I trust, not even those closest to me."
"But, your highness-"
"Hold your tongue," said the High Moo. "You guards return to your stations. You, priest, find the guards who ran and punish them. I care not how you do it, just so that it is done. The sun comes up soon, and I will be here to see it rise." Then under his breath he added, "And the Sun God willing, it will bring my daughter, who alone is my only hope."
Chapter 11
Dr. Harold W. Smith settled behind his shabby oak desk. It was Saturday and his secretary was not at her desk in the reception area. That meant Smith would not be interrupted. He had told the lobby guard that unless the missing patient, Gilbert Grumley, who still had not been found, came to light, officially he was not on the premises. Smith pressed the concealed stud that brought the terminal linked to hidden basement computers rising from a recess in his desk. It clicked into place like an obedient robot. Its glass face stared at him blankly.
He keyed in the password for the day. When the system was up and running, Smith began to key in a series of questions.
The problem was a simple one: to discover the identity of the new owner of the house next to his own. That information could not be found in Smith's data base, of course. Even after over twenty years of methodically collecting data-some gathered from anonymous field workers who believed they were really feeding their monthly reports to the CIA or the FBI or even the IRS, and some of it siphoned off America's burgeoning computer networksthere was just too much raw data out there, much of it trivia.
Ordinarily a change in home ownership would also be too trivial to note. Not this time. This time the strangeness was too close to home. Smith knew he was not being paranoid in suspecting the mystery of the empty house next to his own was a possible CURE problem. CURE security had been breached before. Even the Folcroft cover, as innocuous as it was, had nearly been compromised, most recently by a fluke of the last presidential campaign. That problem proved manageable, but it was not beyond the realm of possibility that this could be fallout from that incident. A leak or a slip of the tongue during the pressure of the campaign.
A pattern was forming. First the mysteriously missing patient. Then the empty house whose owner's face had triggered a memory in Mrs. Smith's mind. Something was going on.
It was time to put a name to that owner, and if he proved to be a security threat, then Harold Smith must eliminate him.
Smith logged onto the computer records at the Westchester County Registry of Deeds. The password was easy for a man as computer-skilled as Smith to break. It was simply a date code. He began paging through recent files.
After twenty minutes he was forced to admit defeat. There was no record of the transaction. That meant one of two things: either the transaction had not yet been filed in the computer-which was reasonable, given the time frame-or the transaction might have been conducted illegally.
Before he could jump to that last damning conclusion, Smith would have to pay a call on the Registry of Deeds himself. If the house had changed hands legally, their books would contain the answer he sought.
Chapter 12
"It is your turn at the rudder, Remo," laughed the Low Moo, Dolla-Dree. Just as Remo reached for it, she threw the tiller to one side. The Jonah Ark heeled sharply and cut away from the wind. Remo grabbed it and hauled back. The ship righted itself.
The Low Moo giggled, shaking her lustrous hair. It hung long and free. Remo noticed a natural wave.
"Very cute," he said dryly. "Sit with me?"
"Maybe," she said coquettishly.
"Please?" Remo said. He had to say it twice before he pronounced the Moovian word for "please" correctly.
"Only if you promise not to bore me," the Low Moo said.
"Promise," said Remo. He decided he liked her. Now that they were on the open sea, she had changed. Gone were her dark moods, her smoldering anger. She was going home, and the knowledge had liberated her spirit. Watching the Low Moo shake the windblown hair from her laughing face made Remo think of free-spirited island girls out of old Hollywood films. She had island written all over her. Remo decided he liked that.
"Tell me about Moo," Remo suggested.
"What do you wish to know?"
"Chiun said it disappeared thousands of years ago."
"Old Moo sank, yes," the Low Moo said sadly. "Our folk tales say that the sun looked down upon Moo and saw only greed. In punishment, he made the seas to devour Moo. But Kai, the Sea God, spared the highest portion of the empire and those who lived on it. That is where I come from, where we are bound."
"Is it big?"
"Oh, very big. It stretches from the north sea to the south sea, and there is the west sea to one side and the east sea to the other. There is a great palace and a city. My father is the High Moo, you know."
"So I gathered. But you don't act like a princess."
"And how many princesses do you know, Remo?"
"One or two. You don't act like either of them. You're more ... down-to-earth."
The Low Moo's brow puckered. Remo's translation of "down-to-earth" into Moovian came out as "wallowing in dirt."
"Why do you say that? Why do you say I wallow in dirt?"
"I didn't mean it like that," Remo said hastily. "It's an expression. I mean 'regular'. 'Normal.'"
The Low Moo frowned prettily. As a member of the royal house, being called normal was an insult. Every man of Moo would gladly slay his brother for her hand in marriage.
"'Nice'?" Remo ventured.
Her brow smoothed suddenly. "Oh, I am that. You are nice too-even if you are a slave."
"Slave?"
"You are the Master of Sinanchu's slave. I see him order you about and you obey. I do not mind that you are a slave. I like your white skin. It is so different. I wonder what you are like inside."
"I'm like I am. Like you see me. And I'm not a slave."
"Do not be ashamed. On Moo we have no slaves. In older times white men did come to our land. Some we made to be slaves, but not for long. Slavery is cruel and so they were set free."
"Really? Then what happened to them?"
The Low Moo looked away suddenly. She started toward the bow, and shaded her eyes from the sun. Seeing nothing, she looked back. She rubbed her stomach. "I am hungry," she said, sounding like a petulant child.
"Chiun's catching fish."
"I will go to him and see."
"Can't you stay a little longer?"
"I will return," the Low Moo said. She took hold of Remo's arm and stroked it gently. With her fingers she felt his hard muscles. "I like your nice white skin." She gave his arm a playful squeeze and jumped up suddenly.
Remo thought she was going to kiss him, but instead she bit him on the earlobe, not hard. It was more of a nip. "What was that for?" he asked, taken aback.
"I like you. I will come back to you."