It was amazing, but here she was showing it off in Chicago, twenty-four hours after she’d first spotted the creature.
“This young specimen will be placed in the aquarium’s largest holding tanks, where it will continue to grow. Nobody knows how large it will be when it reaches adulthood. But it will be huge, and will be the only one of its kind in the world!”
More polite clapping. “If there is a world,” they were all saying to themselves. Impending Armageddon could be a real wet blanket.
Ordonez felt dejected as the crowd shuffled out.
“Cheer up, toots,” said the mayor of Chicago. “This weather thing will blow over and everybody will wake up and smell the roses.” His hand accidentally bumped into the bulge of her bottom.
“They don’t realize how big this is,” she said, mostly to herself. “It’s not even a Giant Squid. It’s a Colossal Squid. Nobody has ever seen one alive. Nobody. Ever.”
“Lying female dog!” It was the director of promotions and events, stomping across the aquarium exhibition hall. “You ripped us off for 1.5 million.”
Ordonez was taken aback by the woman’s ferocity. “What?”
“What’s this about, Colleen?” the mayor demanded.
“She told us it was a one of a kind.”
“It is!” Ordonez insisted.
“It’s not?” the mayor asked.
“She just said that to get the money to move the thing,” the director said. “They’re a dime a dozen. You’re gonna pay for this, Dr. Ordonez.”
“Colleen, relax,” the mayor soothed. “There’s got to be some mistake.”
“There is a mistake, and it was not Dr. Ordonez’s,” said the director of the aquarium, coming over to defend the star of his team. “Any marine biologist will tell you there has never been a Colossal Squid seen alive until now.”
“Maybe you marine biologists ought to get out of your museum and watch some TV every once in a while,” sneered the Chicago director of promotions and events.
Chapter 39
“I was dreaming of being one of Sa Mangsang’s squid,” Howard explained. “Only I was swimming away from the vortex. Swimming hard. He showed me what I was searching for, then he snatched it away again.”
“Maybe you were the Chicago squid,” Remo said. “I heard they caught one yesterday and flew it to the city aquarium for an unveiling today.”
Smith nodded. “It’s said to be a Colossal Squid. The first one ever captured alive—or even seen alive, as far as is known.” He began flipping through the news feeds on the crisp computer display mounted under his desktop.
Sarah and Remo had accompanied Mark to Dr. Smith’s office. Mark had only taken two of the four hours he was allotted for a nap.
“Here it is.” Smith tapped on the screen. They gathered around the desk to watch the live feed from the press conference in Chicago. The beast in the aquarium looked oddly fake, like something too big to be genuine.
“What’s this, then?” Remo asked as another news feed showed another—in fact, two other big squids, thrashing in a canal in California.
“Oh, my God,” Sarah said. “Are those Giants? Or Colossals?”
“They’re twice as big as that houseboat, I’d say,” Remo estimated. “That’s colossal by my standards.”
“Oh, God,” Sarah repeated as a red-faced man bobbed to the surface amid the flailing tentacles and screamed, then vanished under the water again.
“They’re everywhere, Smitty,” Remo said as the news feeds and the live transmissions switched over, one by one, to giant squid footage. Washed up on the beaches of Washington State. Swarming in the waters of central California and wiping out most of the sea lion population in just minutes.
An Oregon news reporter was filing a live report from the open-air dining tables of a restaurant on a pier in Lincoln City. Half-finished meals were still on the tables. The floor was knee-deep in the slimy tentacles and mantle of a squid. Lincoln City police officers were covering the obviously dead creature with a half-dozen shotguns, as paramedics dragged a mottled human body from the slime.
“What are they after, Junior?” Remo demanded.
“I don’t know.”
“You saw it. What are they trying to do?”
“I don’t remember, Remo,” Mark insisted.
“Well, remember! People are getting killed. Why?”
“Dammit, you think I want it to happen?” Mark retorted. “I saw something. Not people. Some thing.”
“Figure it out,” Remo ordered. ‘I’m going to see Chiun.”
He burst in on Chiun seconds later in their suite in the private wing of Folcroft. Chiun hadn’t been watching television much in recent weeks, but it was on now. Chiun was flipping channels, which one after another showed the mayhem of the swarming squid. The macaw’s perch was near the screen, and it cocked its head angrily at the images.
“Little Father, let’s stop pussyfooting around.”
“You have come to demand that we go at once to confront this thing,” Chiun said dispassionately.
“You better believe it.”
“So you will make yourself the lackey of him before even being in his presence.”
“What do you mean?”
Chiun rose from the reed mat and faced his protégé. “My son, why do you think that Prince Howard is being played with? It is to draw you out. It is to pull you in. Why would you change our direction now—when our enemy is weakening?”
“Weakening?” Remo waved at the television. “This looks like his weakening? He’s on the offensive!”
The bird squawked derisively.
“He is taking desperate measures. I believe that we have begun to weaken him. Remo, consider what he is doing—sending his food supply away on errands. He must need something else more than physical power. He seeks the human minds that expand his mental capacity. We are weakening him.”
Remo shook his head. “What if he’s had enough squid meat? What if he’s full? Maybe he’s at full strength.”
Chiun considered it. “Unlikely. Whatever size he must want to achieve, he has not reached it yet. But we do know that his mental powers are not peaked, and maybe they have stopped expanding because of us. Maybe Emperor Harold’s armies have served a purpose for once.”
“So what?”
“If the god grows less able to influence the minds of men, he ceases to be a god. If his intelligence wanes, he becomes only a big beast. A big beast can be defeated more easily than an intelligent god.”
Remo fumed. He glared at the bird, who looked hastily away. “I hate this, sitting around staring at these ugly freaking walls, Chiun. I want to do something. I want to go there and kick some octo-butt.”
“And this is exactly what he hopes you will do,” Chiun said harshly. “What if he makes use of you as I have foreseen, and you—Remo Williams—become the tool of Ru-Taki-Nuhu? At his disposal will be the man who possesses unsurpassed skills. He will send you out hunting.”
“Urk,” agreed the parrot.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Remo said.
“You will be dispatched on sustenance-gathering excursions into the world—and no one will be able to stop you,” Chiun hissed angrily. “You will seek them out, the imbalanced minds of the seers and the sensitives, and bring these sweetmeats to your master. You’ll stalk the most powerful unbalanced minds. Prince Howard shall be one of your first victims. Maybe you will not even be permitted to feel remorse as you transport him to his death. He will be alive and fully aware, so that his mind sings its song of life as Tako-Ika drains him of it and absorbs his very essence and becomes stronger.”