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"I followed the smell," Chiun explained simply.
Remo nodded. For some reason the strong sulphur odor around him had grown more
powerful since the incident at the zoo.
"You shouldn't have come," Remo said, shaking his head slowly. "I don't want
this thing inside me attacking you, too."
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"I am safe," said Chiun. "It is you the sun god seeks."
Remo smiled darkly. "So, you here to give me a pep talk?"
Chiun's eyes thinned. "I am here because I am here."
Before he could reply, a sudden coughing spasm fshook Remo.
"It is worse?" Chiun asked, face quirking up in concern.
The fit of coughing abated. Remo nodded. "A little," he admitted, wiping tears
from his watering eyes. Something seemed to drain from him at this small
effort. All at once he gripped his head in his hands in a burst of
frustration. If only he could shake the presence within him.
"I don't think I can beat this thing, Chiun. It's already too powerful." When
he looked into the old man's eyes, the tears on Remo's face were no longer the
by-product of coughing. "I'm sorry I let you down, Little Father," he choked
out. "I wasn't strong enough to fight it."
Remo turned away. He wanted to hit something. He wanted to throw something. He
wanted to rip something apart and shred it with his bare hands. Anything to
quell the feeling of loss and utter helplessness welling up inside him.
Instead, Remo found himself staring sullenly at the hard-trampled earth at
Chiun's black-sandaled feet.
Chiun's wrinkled visage had grown stiff. "I will not hear this foolishness,
Remo. You have let nothing down but your guard. Despite the tumult in your
mind, your essence lives." He lifted his bearded chin
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proudly. His scrawny neck extended like a turtle's from its shell. "Hear this
now, my son. Every day you breathe brings glory upon the House of Sinanju. You
do not let me down, because I will not allow this."
In spite of the mocking presence in his mind, a swelling pride at Chiun's
words took root within Remo.
"I will do my best, Little Father," he said, bowing to his Master.
"That is what I expect from you," Chiun replied with a nod of satisfaction.
"For having been trained by the best, only the best resides within you."
"So, you going to wait here for me?" Remo asked. He feared this might be the
last time he would ever see Chiun. A part of him did not want the moment to
end.
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Chiun shook his head. "I must now join Emperor Smith in town."
"Smitty's in Thermopolis?" Remo asked. "Why?"
Chiun shrugged. "The day I understand Smith is the day I surrender sanity,**
he said. "But I have an obligation to my emperor." He started across the
expanse between the fence and the woods, but paused after only a few feet.
"Remember, Remo, the spirit of Apollo resides in the smoke. Be wary of it
always."
They both seemed on the verge of saying more, but at last they bowed with
respectful heads, then turned to their respective paths.
A few hundred yards from the first concrete building, Remo looked back. Chiun
had already reached the edge of the forest. A moment later he was gone.
As he scanned the empty plain, Remo's eyes
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alighted on one of the vacant guard towers. Where were the Truth Church
guards?
He made hard fists and spun back toward the buildings.
"Be careful, Little Father," he said softly to himself.
And somewhere in his mind he thought he heard Chiun's voice warning him to do
the same.
"So, what are you, like Clint Eastwood in that movie?"
Smith raised a narrow grayish eyebrow. He was, of course, aware of the actor,
but he had not seen one of his films in more than twenty years. He shrugged
his incomprehension at the young Senator Cole staffer.
"You know, the one where he played the over-the-hill Secret Service agent?" he
reminded. "I figured you must have seen it a hundred times."
The staffer had been stung by the way the senator had warmed up to Smith. He
knew that in some circles it would be considered a pretty trivial thing to be
worked up over, but in Washington entire careers had been built on things far
less petty.
The staffer bobbed along annoyingly beside him as Smith attempted to survey
the crowd. As far as the CURE director could tell, about twenty thousand
people jammed Arapahoe Street, and so far he had only seen two uniformed
police officers.
If an attack came, he would be alone defending Senator Cole.
The senator appeared to be unfazed by the crush of people. He worked the crowd
like a consummate professional, calling many people by name.
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Smith didn't know what he was looking for, but his old instincts were alert.
He sensed there was some kind of danger lurking just out of sight in the
crowd.
As Senator Cole grabbed a few outstretched hands, his entourage moved deeper
into the packed corridor of humanity that lined the street.
Smith's eyes scanned the crowd on either side as they went, carefully keeping
things in view.
If he had looked more carefully behind, he would have noticed several Mark
Kaspar campaign posters had drifted up, and were now following a safe distance
in their wake.
Remo didn't bother with the bunker tunnels. He had gone straight to the old
airplane hangar on the adjacent lot.
The goat pen he had seen on his first visit to the ranch was less full this
day. The animals bleated in fear at his approach. ,
Remo rounded the back of the building from the direction opposite the one in
which he had escaped with Buffy Brand's help earlier in the week. It was
because he had not left by this route that he had not seen the pile of rotting
carcasses.
Remo almost fell into it.
A shallow pit had been dug, but was nearly obscured by the mountain of dead
goats piled on this side of the hangar. The ground around the pit was damp
with oozing fluids.
The remains of Kaspar's sacrificial animals.
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Pounds of powdered limestone had been shoveled onto the pitiful bodies. But no
amount of lime would have masked the horrid stench. The stink of rotten
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flesh attracted all manner of scavenger insects. The air teemed with thick
black swarms of flies. They bred in the naked eye sockets of the small
corpses, and the oldest of the bodies were covered in part by wriggling white
maggots.
Carrion flies buzzed and swirled around his head as Remo moved toward the
hangar's side door. He steadied himself as he took hold of the handle.
The separate consciousness within his mind seemed poised to attack. He didn't
know if opening the door to the Pythia chamber would unleash the floodgates
once again. It had taken nearly every bit of strength he had to overthrow the
presence of the Pythia back in the zoo.
And what of Apollo?
Remo didn't know if he was up to another conflict with the lesser entity of
Apollo's emissary. The power of the sun god would surely be too great to
withstand.
His only chance a hunch really would be to bound up to the top of the platform
and to attempt to expel the spirit residing within him into the steam
emanating from the fissure before Apollo could take full control of his mind.
For Remo knew if that happened, the battle would be lost.
Nerves tight, Remo flung open the door and leaped into the Pythia chamber.
The noxious yellow smoke overtook him immediately.
A fresh cloud of the sickly sulphur fog belched up from the crevice like ash
from a jaundiced volcano. It flowed around the room, slipping into every
corner, enveloping Remo like an enticing shroud.
He grabbed the door frame for support.
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A voice cried out.
"Remo!"
His head swam. His vision blurred. He was seeing everything around him in a
whirling kaleidoscope of overlapping images. Remo looked up, eyes seeking the
point where he thought the voice had come from. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]