"You'll have to find it first."
"No problem." Audrey raised her left arm, turned it so that he could see the wristwatch, featuring the time zones of the world and phases of the moon. As Remo studied it, the second hand lurched drunkenly from left to right.
"A silent Geiger counter," Audrey said. "I'm getting closer."
"You'll need help," he told her. "Your connection isn't with us anymore."
"I'll manage, Renton. It's a seller's market."
"When did you become an expert?"
"I'm a damned quick study when I need to be."
"I've gathered that."
The pistol came from Audrey's pocket. Remo saw her telegraph the move but didn't try to stop her yet.
"I wouldn't use that now if I were you," he said.
"I'd rather not."
"In case you missed it," Remo said, "the others have been taken prisoner. They're being held back there."
He cocked a thumb in the direction of the ancient city, watching Audrey as her eyes and pistol wavered from the proper target.
"Taken prisoner? By whom? Held where?"
"You won't believe it till you see it," Remo told her. "Come with me."
He turned, pretending to ignore the weapon, kept on turning with a spinning kick that broke her wrist and sent the pistol flying. Audrey's shock gave Remo time to finish it, a tap behind one ear to put her down and out.
He tore the sleeves from Audrey's shirt, used one to bind her hands behind her back, the other as a makeshift gag. With some determination, she could free herself, but she would still be out for a while, and Remo meant to get his work inside the city done as rapidly as possible.
It was a simple rescue mission now, except for pinning down the main lode of uranium. With Audrey's Geiger-counter watch around his own wrist, Remo felt as ready as he ever would.
It wasn't quite an emerald city, and the road in front of him was mud, not yellow bricks, but he was off to see the wizard, come what may.
Chapter Sixteen
It took ten minutes, searching in the dark, but Remo found his secret way inside. There was a small gate, overgrown with weeds, near the northeast corner of the city's high surrounding wall. It was unguarded at the moment, and the hinges had been fashioned out of wooden pegs that had long rotted through. They offered faint resistance, but couldn't prevent his entering.
He wondered how long it had been since anybody used this exit, then dismissed the thought; it was a waste of time to ponder things that had no bearing on his mission. Off to Remo's right, a hundred yards or so, there was a spacious courtyard with a fountain at its center, water burbling from the open maw of what appeared to be a dragon carved from stone.
The fountain caught his eye because it shimmered, almost seemed to glow, as if there was some phosphorescence in the water. It was curious enough to draw him from his hiding place, a slow creep in the shadow of the looming wall, aware of sentries walking on the parapet above him.
Remo was no scientist, but he knew water in its normal state was not a source of light. At sea, you might find phosphorescent plankton, maybe larger creatures from the depths who gave off light from chemical reactions to attract prey, summon mates or frighten off their enemies. The same phenomenon was seen in fireflies, and in some inhabitants of caverns underground.
What did it mean? Were microscopic organisms found in water down below somehow escaping through the fountain, flaring into sudden brilliance as they reached the world above? Could they be toxic? Did consumption of the water help explain some of the freakish defects he had seen?
He had halved his distance to the fountain when a pair of tribesmen suddenly came into view, approaching from the far side of the courtyard. Remo froze, merged with the shadows, watched them as they stood before the fountain, genuflected and reached out to cup their hands beneath the sparkling flow. He saw them drink and bathe their grim, misshapen faces, all the while intoning syllables that ran together, slow and rhythmic, like a chant.
When they were done, the tribesmen rose and kept on walking, straight toward Remo. Neither saw him as he huddled in the deeper darkness at a corner of the wall, but he saw them up close. One was a giant, fully seven feet in height, with wrinkled pits in place of ears and fleshy growths on each side of his neck that looked like gills. His sidekick was a man of average height, who had a tiny third arm sprouting from the center of his chest. It twitched and groped its way across his upper torso, as if someone trapped inside his chest—a midget or a child, perhaps—were trying to break out.
The needle on his silent Geiger counter gave a violent lurch, then fell back to a desultory twitching as the human monsters put more space between themselves and Remo. Staring at the fountain, he knew everything he had to know about the freaks, their hidden city and the new lode of uranium.
They had been drinking, eating, breathing it for centuries, and breeding mutants all the while. Somehow, as if by destiny, the ancient tribe had built its city at ground zero, with predictable results for generations yet unborn.
Don't drink the water, Remo thought, and almost laughed out loud.
For he was standing in the middle of their nightmare now, breathing the same polluted air. According to his Geiger counter, simple ambient exposure held no short-run danger, but he wouldn't like to hang around and test the proposition. Was it sheer, perverse psychology that made him thirsty now, when he couldn't afford to drink at any cost?
Okay. So find the others and get out of here, he told himself.
Somehow, the ancient city had acquired a throbbing pulse. At first, he thought it was the amplified reverberation of his own heart, thumping in his ears, but then he recognized the muffled sound of drums. Big drums, at that, their steady cadence amplified by the acoustics of a chamber somewhere close at hand.
He couldn't name that tune, but he could damned well track it down, and that would have to do. His instinct told him he would find the other members of the Stockwell expedition when he found the drummers.
It wasn't a tune that made him want to tap his foot and sing along. If anything, it put Remo in mind of war drums, or perhaps a funeral march.
Somebody's funeral coming up, for sure.
He let the darkness cover him as he went off to find the pulsing heartbeat of the city.
Chiun was tired of walking through the jungle. He wasn't fatigued, but rather losing patience with the long trek through a landscape he had mastered in his first few hours on the trail. Where was the challenge for a Master of Sinanju? Where was the reward in tramping over muddy trails and following a group of men who made no effort to conceal their tracks?
Remo had shown imagination, taking to the trees, but Chiun wasn't inclined to follow his example. Not yet, anyway. For in addition to the tedium of following these clumsy savages and white men—terms the Master of Sinanju viewed as more or less synonymous—he had another goal in mind.
Chiun was watching out for dragon spoor.
At one point, midway through the long day's march, he thought that he had found it. An aroma, strong and pungent in his nostrils, beckoned him away from the main trail, a little to the north, and he couldn't resist the detour. What he found was a surprise and disappointment all at once.
He stood in front of a steaming pile of excrement. Not small, by any means, but neither was it dragon size, if he accepted the dimensions spoken of in legend. Pausing, peering closely at the mound, Chiun wondered, Could it be a baby dragon?
No.
Another glance and sniff told him the composition of the pile was wrong. Whatever mighty beast had dropped this load was strictly vegetarian, and anyone with common sense knew dragons were carnivorous.
He walked around the reeking pile once more, examining the ground for tracks, and blinked at what he saw. They were not dragon tracks, but they would be no trick to follow, and the effort might pay off. Indeed, if Chiun applied himself, he might acquire a weapon and a means of transportation at a single stroke.