The more Remo struggled, the more the tentacle groped and adjusted itself with a casual assurance. A thick length under one arm lifted free, and the warming pads reattached themselves lower down along his ribs.
Other tentacles snaked up to find his ankles. Remo kicked, but the tentacles simply waved loosely with his feet.
Remo looked down. Below, an eye stared up at him with a sleepy, near-human regard. It looked old-older than time itself. There was inhuman confidence in that stare, and a dreadful patience.
A kick like an electric wire ran through Remo's solar plexus. Fear was something he had been taught long ago to master. Not banish, but master and direct. Fear was a good thing, Chiun had assured him many years before. It could spur a man to do the impossible, or convince him to flee a danger that anger or pride or other foolish and destructive emotions might compell him to fight. And in fighting, perish.
Remo looked down at the terrible hooded eye that was so human yet so inimical to all things human, and a fear washed over him that was unlike any fear he had ever before known.
He wanted to escape but could not. He wanted to fight back but was helpless. Above all, he wanted nothing to do with the titanic entity Chiun called Sa Mangsang. No matter what punishment Chiun was prepared to inflict, no matter if Chiun shunned him till the end of time, Remo wanted no combat with Sa Mangsang. The eye glaring up at him looked hungry, and deep in the pit of his stomach-believed by Koreans to be the seat of the soul-Remo felt less like a man than like food.
Food for Sa Mangsang.
Even that knowledge wasn't enough to get him free. The fear was too great, too overpowering.
Remo let go. And the tentacles of Sa Mangsang drew him into the darkness of the great pyramid of greenish blue mineral.
Darkness swallowed him. He could barely see the brooding head that looked old and intelligent, but managed to pick out the single sleepy eye. But that was all. Remo could no longer see his hands in front of his face.
So he closed his eyes.
The fear evaporated. It should have increased, but it went away. The primordial fear that solitary eye stabbed into his belly faded. Remo saw nothing, heard nothing and felt only the gristly arms with their wet, slickly cold skin and warm suckers.
A roiling in the water warned him of grasping tentacles. Remo lifted his arms ahead of the wave pressure. Tentacle tips grazed his wrists. He would need his hands free if he was to breathe oxygen ever again.
His arms vertical, Remo snapped his legs up suddenly. The loose tendrils around his ankles drew taut. They yanked back with a stubborn anger.
Then Remo peeled his T-shirt off his chest with a violent rip. The tentacle constricting his chest slid up with it, squeezing into a small loop around the loose cloth.
Bending, he jacknifed his body. Hands like spear heads, he slashed at the enmeshed tentacles. They parted. He kicked free.
Deep in the the dark water, a deep howl arose. It froze the blood in Remo's veins.
Still kicking, he made for the rectangular slot that meant escape. A boiling knot of tentacle came rushing up after him. Uncoiling, they twisted and grasped.
Fighting furiously, Remo kicked at every cold touch. Tentacles recoiled. Others coiled up toward his upper body.
Remo slashed with the edges of his hands, water resistance muffling his blows, but where they encountered tentacles, the tough flesh parted like stretched rubber.
Soon the water around him was full of disconnected tentacles, floating and curling, reaching and hungry. But still fresh slick tentacles quested up for his warm form.
How many arms does this thing have anyway? Remo wondered angrily, kicking at a slick tip creeping for one ankle.
Arching his spine, twisting, Remo stayed ahead of the feelers.
Suddenly he could see the answer to his question.
A tentacle stump lifted lazily in his direction. Black blood was clouding the water at the severed end, so it was hard to see clearly what was happening.
But as Remo watched, the black blood flow squeezed off and the stump began to regenerate before his eyes. There was no question. The thing had been a stump. Now it lengthened, slimmed to a tip and was whole once more.
Remo spun in place. Another stump was closing off its tendril of flowing blood. And like a rubber telescope, it grew whole again.
Remo held still while the two tentacles converged. He could feel the eye of Sa Mangsang looking up at him. Tentacles were reaching out for his thick wrists, and Remo closed his eyes again. The seeking eddies were a better gauge of their proximity than underwater sight.
When he felt the fine hairs of his wrists stir, Remo lashed out with both hands and brought the tentacle tips together so fast they wrapped around one another like two slashing whips.
Remo chopped at the wriggling knot. Another cloud of blood spurted, and Remo swam under it.
Below, Sa Mangsang watched with a titanic, dispassionate patience.
Now Remo could see two eyes, one on either side of the bloated sac that was its head. He counted eight arms. Just like an ordinary octopus.
But this was no ordinary octopus.
For one thing, it was a mottled greenish blue-gray. It had squid properties. A fin on the horny head that waved lazily. And while it seemed to squat far beneath Remo, it still loomed gigantic in its brooding, alien coldness.
It sat on a dais in the shape of a gigantic starfish, but as Remo looked, the arms of the starfish lifted and fell with a slow agony. It was alive!
Around the throne, clinging to the inner pyramid walls, other starfish adhered like a pox. Their sizes varied. Some had been skeletonized. Others were missing triangular arms.
Remo got the awful feeling the starfish served Sa Mangsang as both slaves and food.
Among the starfish squatted whitish-brown polyps of brain coral, like satellite brains.
The orbs of Sa Mangsang sought Remo's gaze, and he hastily closed his own lids. Too late. A searing stab of fear lanced deep into him.
And all around him the water roiled and purled with regathering sucker-lined arms.
Remo twisted, kicked, fought, but there were too many to fight now. Coils like wet tires wound around his chest and hips. Wrists were captured. His right ankle escaped a groping tip, but his knee was pinioned a second later. His other ankle was soon captured.
And then inexorably Sa Mangsang began to drag Remo down into his lair. Remo punched at the fat rope of gristle across his naked chest. His fist bounced off. And Sa Mangsang squeezed half a lungful of precious air from Remo's chest.
Remo kicked downward, and his body leaped up briefly. The tentacles pulled anew. When he felt an ugly warm nearness, he knew he was being drawn toward Sa Mangsang's great head.
I'm screwed now, Remo thought to himself. Why the hell did Chiun do this to me?
He didn't want to open his eyes. He was afraid to. Still, as the nearness of Sa Mangsang made his skin crawl more so than the touch of his inescapable, multiarmed grip, Remo opened his eyes.
He was down on the level of the great head. It loomed above him, a great bladder with eyes. Orbs so far apart on either side of the blue-green bag of skin, they might have belonged to two different creatures.
That was how vast Sa Mangsang sat on his throne, surrounded by brain coral and slave starfish.
The head lifted, exposing a mouth like the curved beak of a parrot, but upside down. The heavy half was at the bottom. And when it dropped, great inwardcurving teeth showed in a round, pulsing hole, bringing the teeth together to form an angry flower.
Remo twisted, but to no avail. The tentacle drew him in toward the gnashing circle of teeth designed to rip flesh into chunks.
Seeing what fate awaited him, all fear drained from Remo Williams's limp body. Before, he could only guess his fate. Now, with it contracting and expanding before him, he lost his fear. Only a sad surrender suffused his body. He was down to his last dribbles of oxygen anyway.