Damn Renton anyhow!
He had a swift kick coming when she caught up with him, and the delivery would be a pleasure. She would have to watch him, though. That one had more tricks up his sleeve than David Copperfield, and Audrey had the feeling he could just as easily have killed her instead of simply knocking her unconscious.
What had stopped him? Did she have a small edge where his feelings were concerned? If so, could she exploit it when they met again, to throw him off his guard?
She made herself slow down and take it one step at a time, or she risked losing everything, her life included. Even as a novice, Audrey knew the jungle was more dangerous at night, when predators came out to stalk the darkness, seeking prey. It would be bitterly ironic if she tangled with a panther, or whatever prowled this territory after nightfall, and wound up as so much raw protein on the big cat's menu.
Audrey found her way in moments, grinning as she realized that Renton had seen fit to leave her within several paces of the trail. She noted, too, that he had left her on the ground, where anything from ants to this Nagaq the natives raved about could come along and nibble on her flesh.
Some gentleman!
Make that two kicks where they would do the most good when she saw him. Nothing personal, old buddy, just a little message to your gonads from my foot!
Despite the darkness, Audrey found the trail wasn't as difficult as she had feared. The party—more than twenty strong now, from appearances—hadn't wasted time covering its tracks, as if the natives had no fear of being followed on their own home turf. So much the better, then, except that Renton Ward would have a decent lead by now. Without the Geiger counter, she couldn't tell exactly how long she had been unconscious, but she guessed at something like two hours, judging from the darkness and the drop in temperature.
Two hours was a lifetime in the wilderness, but she had managed to survive. And that was Renton's first mistake.
She took it easy on the trail, despite the sense of urgency that called for haste. The last thing Audrey needed at the moment was to blunder through the jungle in a rush, make noise enough to wake the dead and wind up drawing every predator and native in the neighborhood. At last she found her rhythm and moved along at a steady pace. She was just congratulating herself for her presence of mind when she realized her assessment might have been premature.
First she became aware of a muted throbbing in the foliage, then realized she must have been hearing the drums for a while. The natives seemed to come from nowhere, as if rising from the earth in front of her. She stopped short, biting off a scream, and turned to flee, but there were more behind her, blocking her escape. She stood her ground, willing herself not to panic as the shadow-shapes moved closer, spears in hand.
It was the moonlight that undid her, breaking through the canopy just then to pick her captors out. Two dwarfs, she saw, with queer, misshapen hands like crab claws, feet splayed out with webbed toes, like a scuba diver's fins. The other three were taller—normal size, in fact—but there was nothing else about them that would classify as normal. One appeared to have no nose, just shiny sockets in the middle of his moon-shaped face, below a pair of bulging eyes. Another had one normal arm, its withered mate the size she would have looked for on a five-year-old. The last one, their apparent leader, was a walking nightmare: earless, bald, with bright eyes glaring from beneath a caveman's brow, and crooked, fanglike teeth protruding from his thin slash of a mouth. Instead of a chin, there was something that appeared to be a second, half-formed face regarding Audrey from the middle of his chest.
She couldn't help it then.
Opening her mouth wide, she screamed and kept on screaming, helpless to resist them as the human monsters swept her up and carried her away.
The city's inner walls were etched with vast, elaborate designs in bas-relief, depicting men and animals, some of them giant creatures that could pass for dinosaurs—or dragons. Remo didn't linger for a critical assessment, but followed the pulse of drumbeats toward their source, a winding trek that led him from the phosphorescent fountain to the ancient city's very heart.
He found guards posted on the way, avoided them whenever possible, but had to kill a pair who blocked his access to a giant, looming structure where the throbbing dirge originated. They died instantly and silently, still on their feet, before they even recognized their peril. Remo took the bodies with him as he crept inside what seemed to be a temple dedicated to the worship of a giant lizard-god.
Nagaq, he thought, and stashed the corpses in an alcove to his left, not far inside the temple where he hoped they would go undiscovered long enough for him to scout the place and find out where the prisoners were being held. If an alarm was raised before he found the others, he would have to carry on and play the rest of it by ear.
So, Remo asked himself, what else is new?
The corridor in which he found himself was dank, dark, musty, lit by torches in the distance, where it turned into another, wider corridor. The sound of drums was louder here, and behind the pulsing drumbeat, he could make out chanting now—male voices, by the sound of it, no language that he recognized.
No language anyone would recognize, he guessed, if his suspicions were correct. This tribe wouldn't have lasted long if strangers from the outside world knew they existed, where they could be found. A generation earlier, they would have been packed off to populate the freak shows of a hundred circuses and carnivals in Europe and America. These days, they were more likely to be singled out for "help" from some well-meaning agency that would invade their world with scholars, doctors, CARE packages—inevitably followed up by medical researchers, newsmen, missionaries, tax collectors and police. The military would be coming, too, when they got wind of weapons-grade uranium.
There goes the neighborhood.
One corridor led Remo to another, on and on. He memorized the twists and turns, took care as he approached each corner just in case another group of sentries might be waiting for him on the other side. But there were none, and soon the throbbing in the ceiling overhead told Remo that he was below the drums and chanting throng. He found a narrow staircase, carved by hand, and scaled it, moving without a sound.
The staircase was blocked off by a hatch made of wood and relatively new, as if—unlike the gates outside—it had been recently replaced. He raised it cautiously, a half inch at a time, prepared to turn and flee if it made any noise at all.
From the trapdoor, Remo had a rat's-eye view of an expansive dais, with a terraced amphitheater in front of it, the stony benches packed by what looked to be scores of tribesmen. Remo didn't bother with a head count, since he was more involved with an examination of their faces and the various mutations they displayed. Except for tentacles and trunks, they could have been the barroom cast from Star Wars, turning out in costume for the grand premiere.
Onstage were Dr. Stockwell, Sibu Sandakan and Chalmers. They were kneeling, arms behind their backs, wrists bound to ankles so they could not rise, hand-woven ropes around their necks tied off to rusty metal rings set in the dais. Standing over them, the honcho of the tribe commanded full attention from the audience.
No wonder, Remo thought.
The guy was tall enough to make an NBA scout promise him the moon—if not eight feet, distinctly pushing it. Where several members of his audience had only one good eye, the chief had three—two normal ones, plus what appeared to be an embryonic orb set in the middle of his forehead, raised an inch or so above the others. Woolly hair was visible beneath a headdress fashioned from a large iguana's carcass, with the lizard's face protruding from above its wearer's, while the dorsal skin and tail hung down his back. Bright feathers had been thrust into the reptile's skin as decoration, to create the likeness of a mythical winged lizard, but the chief was otherwise entirely nude. No loincloth to disguise the mammoth genitalia, which, when added to his stature, clearly marked him as the biggest man in town.