“That explains the wheelchair.”
“What else did you see, Mark?”
“I should take him back to the doctors,” Sarah insisted.
“It pulled me down through the earth and into the hollow. I saw the water in the hollow. It was too big—I couldn’t make sense of it being something that was inside the earth but so big. Then I was pulled into the water. It was moving fast. I never would have believed it could move so fast. The erosion of the stone walls was visible. Then I was in the water. It was a maelstrom, out of control, chaos. I may never ride a roller coaster again.”
He peered into the middle distance.
“Then it got bigger, the space around me, and the water was boiling. I was riding inside a wall of steam and I was falling—up.”
Mark looked around the room, as if expecting to find what he was looking for. Harold Smith didn’t like the look in his eyes. “I want you under a doctor’s care, Mark.”
“Where it’s cold. My skin was scalded, but when I touched the air, the air was cold.”
Mark was trembling. Sarah pierced Smith with a look as she eased him into the desk chair.
“He was laughing at me, Dr. Smith. He was taunting me. He knew there was nothing I could do about it.”
“Mark, I need to know more details if I’m to take action.”
“There’s no action to take. It was too big. Bigger than anything on Earth, ever.”
“What was it you saw? Clear your mind. Picture it. Tell me what it was.”
Mark nodded and squinted at the desktop. “I saw cold.”
Dr. Smith looked disappointed.
“Antarctica,” Mark blurted. “What’s happening at the South Pole?”
Dr. Smith frowned. “Nothing.” He tapped out commands on his desktop and confirmed the news. “No reports of anything out of the ordinary.”
Mark Howard shook his head. “Not yet, but it’s coming.”
Chapter 25
The Caretaker became miserable in the two years after the bird left him.
Nothing was worse than watching one’s People suffer, especially when one is the Caretaker charged with alleviating their suffering.
Okyek Meh Thih’s dread grew. The legends of Chuh Mboi Aku, the elder god who would destroy this world, appeared to be coming true. Why in his generation? Why now? Countless Caretakers had come and gone and carried the old secret of Chuh Mboi Aku. What evil trick of fate caused the legend to rear its ugly head while he was Caretaker?
Then Chak returned, a bedraggled and emaciated version of its former self. It announced its return by perching outside his hut and shrieking, “Is it come? Have you heard it? Have you heard it?”
The Caretaker felt great joy at seeing the bird, but the bird wasn’t interested in any affectionate homecoming.
“Have you heard it in the cave? Have you heard it?”
The Caretaker had never been in the habit of treating the bird as if it could converse, such as a human could converse, but he answered the question. “I have not been to the cave.”
“In the cave! In the cave!” The bird took wing, and Okyek Meh Thih set off after it.
The bird was crying in the cave when the Caretaker reached it.
“Hear it?” Chak demanded.
Okyek Meh Thih did hear it—a strange sound like a bird note but never-ending. It simply went on forever, but where did it come from? He moved about the cave until he traced the sound at its loudest to the tiny punctures in the stone that was a part of the inscription.
The sound reminded him of the noise a radio could make. They had a radio now, and the People would turn it on every once in a while. The children enjoyed the novelty of hearing voices coming from far away. But they could find no real purpose for the device.
The parrot looked at him long and hard, and Okyek Meh Thih used the patience he had learned from his grandfather. He said nothing, but waited for the bird to do what it was trying to do.
“I could not prevent it!” the bird screeched finally.
“None expected you to prevent it,” the Caretaker said soothingly, but this only inflamed the creature’s self-recrimination—if that’s what it was. Time and again, hour after hour, it seemed to be trying to speak more words of meaning, but it couldn’t break through whatever invisible barriers were hindering it.
Mostly it repeated the old limericks and phrases it had picked up over the years. Sometimes, when it struggled the most, it came up with new fragmented phrases that made little sense.
“Master Lu made bad decisions,” the bird exclaimed, in English. “Master Lu ate a parrot.”
This told the Caretaker nothing. When he and the bird finally returned to the village, they found the People in a panic. The dreams of Chuh Mboi Aku had suddenly become horrific. Almost every one of the People was having the dream and suffering from it.
“Awake. Awake.” The bird’s chant was a dirge. “Caretaker, you will carry out your duties.”
The Caretaker heard a new intonation in the voice that was as familiar as the words of old. “I will,” he answered.
The bird left him again.
The Caretaker wished the bird were with him now. Such good company the bird was, and he was so filled with loneliness and dread. He despised this cold cave in the mountain, his prison, but he wouldn’t break his vow.
He would keep making his plea to Chuh Mboi Aku for as long as it took—until he died of starvation, or the world ended around him.
Chapter 26
Remo felt like a soldier coming home from a humiliating defeat. After a night at the Ritz-Carlton, he had hoped there would be something else for him to do before returning empty-handed to Folcroft.
“At least Cho-gye scored somewhere else and brought some gold home with him,” he complained.
“You bring success,” said Chiun, head craned to look out the window. He was scrutinizing the wing of the British Airways jumbo jet. Chiun didn’t trust people who claimed that the wings of modern aircraft almost never fell off.
“I almost brought failure crashing down on everyone.”
“And how long will you carry the burden around with you? It is an annoyance.”
“Sorry for being annoying.”
“Hardly a sufficient apology.”
They were in the small business-class section on the top level of the jet, which was somewhat better than coach and still allowed Chiun to watch the wing. The flight attendants were aggressive about attending to Remo’s needs, which were nonexistent. He tried making it clear.
“No wine, no meal, no blanket, no lavender- scented hot towel. Just leave me alone.”
They weren’t dissuaded until he paralyzed one and sat her in the empty seat across the row. She was wide-eyed, silent and smiling for fifteen minutes.
Remo had a way with flight attendants—and most other women. It came from his Sinanju training. Chiun had explained how Sinanju’s perfecting of the human body created an allure that the human female could sense. Remo knew it was like pheromones and had something to do with his scent. He could turn it off by eating shark, for example—the shark smell spoiled the Sinanju smell. But he didn’t like shark and Chiun told him he smelled like a stagnant aquarium when he ate it.
Remo had learned, by degrees, to control the production of pheromones, but it was one of his less consistent talents. He wasn’t exactly sure what he did, but he seemed to be able to make it turn off if he really tried. It took a while before the pheromones actually tapered off, and they might start up again without warning. Chiun knew how to do it well. Stewardesses rarely hassled Chiun.