The Master of Sinanju bounded through the glass doors.
"No, Little Father!"
And before Remo's horrified eyes, he too began sinking into the lobby floor.
Chapter 9
Remo tried to get up. His legs refused to obey him. He was on his knees and helpless.
"Chiun! Chiun!"
"O Shub-Niggurath, hear our plea," moaned Delpha. "Smite the clutching hands of the Great Horned One, who pulls your children down into his fiery domain."
"If there's anything constructive you can do," Remo said, strugging to get his legs to work, "do it now."
Delpha closed her eyes. Her green eye shadow made it seem like they had been replaced by dull glass orbs. "It is in the lap of the All-Mother," she murmured.
His face twisting with fear and anger, Remo watched as Cheeta and then Chiun sank into the seemingly solid lobby floor. Randal Rumpp stuck around only long enough to acquire a dark stain in the crotch of his sharply creased pants. Then he fled in the direction of a fire door. He was followed by a knot of people shaking their fists at him.
Remo closed his eyes. He couldn't bear to watch. He willed the blood to return to his legs. He got the pins-and-needles sensation that told of returning function. Still, his legs were slow to respond. Whatever it was Chiun had done, it certainly had been effective. Remo was almost an invalid.
He blocked out Cheeta's frantic cries of, "This can't happen to me! I'm the perfect anchorperson! Somebody do something!"
There was no sound from the Master of Sinanju. Of course, Remo realized, Cheeta's screechy caterwauling may have been drowning him out.
Finally, when his circulation was again flowing normally, Remo regained control over his lower body. He ignored the tingling residual pain and found his feet.
Remo ran to the main entrance. There he found a yellow hump on the pink marble floor that looked like half a grapefruit fringed with cotton. As he watched helplessly it sank from sight, silently, soundlessly, and completely.
"Chiun!"
Remo was swatting at the glass door. It might as well have been a hologram.
Carefully, he put one leg in. It went through without sensation. He let the toe of his Italian leather loafer touch the lobby floor. It dropped down and out of sight. He felt nothing. Not warm, not cold. Simply . . . not there.
Remo withdrew the leg. He moved back and looked around frantically. The biggest thing in sight was a light pole. He went to it and began kicking the concrete base with controlled fury.
The pole shattered and began to tip. Remo raced to meet the descending light housings. There were two. The streetlights along this stretch of Fifth Avenue resembled two-headed serpents. He caught one, laid it down on the ground. Going to the base, he chopped away at the cables and copper wiring until they came loose.
Then, using both hands, he levered the base of the pole in a line with the main entrance and began to shove it in.
Remo kept pushing until he felt the other end beginning to tip. He pulled back about a foot of the pole and, certain of its balance, jumped on.
Hands held out to his sides, Remo began to walk the pole like a log bridge. He passed through the glass entrance and found himself balanced over what looked like solid marble flooring, although he knew it wasn't.
His dark eyes said it was solid. His other senses told him otherwise. If he fell, he knew he would be in deep trouble.
While people gathered around, shouting with their mouths but emitting no audible sounds, Remo got down on his knees. He dropped a hand into the flooring.
His hand vanished up to his thick wrist. He felt around experimentally. Nothing.
Remo shouted, "Little Father! Chiun! Can you hear me?"
No sound came back.
He brought his hand back and cupped it over his mouth.
"Chiun!"
Then he heard something. Faint. A voice. Thin. He couldn't make out the words.
"What?"
A single word was repeated. It sounded like "fetch." "Fetch?"
A "no" came back. It was clear enough. The faraway voice was saying "no."
"Not 'fetch'?" Remo called down.
The word that sounded like "fetch" was repeated.
"Louder!" Remo yelled at the marble. "I can't make it out!"
Then, something jumped out of the floor.
It happened so fast and was so unexpected that Remo's reflexes barely warned him to get out of the way in time.
A man came sailing up in a long arc. The parabola of the arc carried him through the second-level atrium floor and out into the street.
He began to fall.
Remo moved then. He flashed along the fallen lamp pole and out onto Fifth Avenue. Getting under the man, he raised his arms.
Remo had no idea if he could catch him. There was no question he'd be in the right place at the right time, but there was no way of knowing if the man would land in the upraised cushion of his arms . . . or fall through them and into the unforgiving pavement.
Remo set himself for the worst.
The man struck his hands like a bony sack of potatoes. Remo felt the impact bring him to his knees. It knocked the breath out of the man, but Remo's arm bones survived without shattering. He laid the man out.
"Who are you, pal?" Remo asked.
The man who had been ejected from the phantom skyscraper seemed to be staring through Remo, as if he had beheld sights that had dazzled his senses. "Never mind me," he gasped. "The others."
"Others?"
"Catch."
" 'Catch'? Was that the word? 'Catch,' not 'fetch'?"
"Hurry," the man gasped.
Remo moved back, his arms lifted. There was no time to figure out what was happening. He had to be ready.
Cheeta Ching came next. Remo heard her shriek of fright seconds before she popped-literally popped-out from the golden facade of the Rumpp Tower in a shallow arc.
Remo called up. "Don't worry! I'll catch you."
Like an infielder, Remo positioned himself for the catch.
Cheeta Ching, still shrieking, landed across his arms. Her arms flung out and took hold of his neck, her nails gouging red streaks in the vicinity of his jugular. She buried her sticky-haired head in Remo's shoulder.
"You can let go now," Remo said. "It's me. Rocco."
Cheeta Ching looked up dazedly.
Her voice sounding surprised, Cheeta said, "I'm alive."
"And clawing," Remo pointed out. "I'd like my neck back. If you don't mind."
Cheeta's manicured talons disengaged, like a gross of hypodermics withdrawing from flesh.
Remo set her on her feet.
"Thank you, Renko," she said. This time, her voice sounded subdued.
"That's-" Remo caught himself. "Never mind. Did you see Chiun?"
"No."
"No? Then how'd you get out of there?"
"I have no idea. It was all dark. I thought I was dead. I was caught in traffic. But the cars weren't moving. They weren't there. I mean, they were there, but they weren't. It was just like a 'Far Side' cartoon. 'Traffic Jam of the Damned.' I think one of them struck me. Because I was flying through space."
Cheeta Ching squeezed her almond eyes shut and her whole body shuddered so violently that matte finish, like old paint, flaked off her smooth features.
"Never mind." Remo moved back into position. With any luck Chiun would be along any second now. But several seconds passed. Then a minute. And the minute became three.
Delpha had gone to Cheeta's side to offer comfort. She called to Remo.
"I sense great conflict below. The wise old one has joined in mortal battle with Baphomet. He has made the Great Horned One vomit up his victims. Now he must become demon vomit himself if he is to live."
"Crap and double-crap," Remo muttered.
Delpha's deep voice rose. "Beware! The fiends below grow in power. They will demand payment for your blaspheming them."
Disgust on his face, Remo returned to the fallen light pole and walked along it back into the lobby.