"You scared?" Remo asked Chiun.
"A Master of Sinanju does not acknowledge fear."
"If he did, would you be as scared as I am right now?"
"You are a Master of Sinanju. You are not afraid, either."
"Then why are we running like two scared rabbits?"
"Do not underestimate the rabbit. In my village it is considered wise beyond all other creatures."
"If you're a rabbit, how come you look like a scared little rabbit, not a wise rabbit?"
"A wise rabbit knows when to embrace fear," Chiun snapped.
Remo started to look over his shoulder, then remembered how spine-chilling yellow the brontosaurus's eyes had been.
"How come we're scared of that yellow light here, and we weren't back at the Crater?"
"At the Crater we did not look directly into the awful eyes of the gray dragon."
"Good point, we only saw the back-glow, which wasn't so bad."
"This is no back glow now," said Chiun.
"You want to stop and take a chance?"
"No."
"One of us should."
"I am not afraid, so you should."
"If you aren't afraid and I don't mind admitting that I am, why don't you stop?"
"Because I have conquered my fear, and you have yet to conquer yours. Therefore, you need to test your mettle against your fears."
"Nice try, Little Father. But no sale."
Eventually they ran out of park. The other side of the high bamboo stockade fence came rushing up.
"You stopping?" asked Remo.
"No."
"Then I'm not stopping, either."
They hit the wall in unison. Bamboo splinters flew in jagged chunks as they blew through the stockade.
They came to a halt only when they reached a lagoon that bore a sign saying Vingt Mille Lieues Sous Les Mers De Jules Verne, which Remo figured translated as Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, but only because he recognized the submarine from the movie.
At the quietly lapping edge of the lagoon, they stopped and drank in the tranquil color of the water.
"Boy," said Remo, "that water is sure blue."
"Exceedingly blue," Chiun agreed.
"I love blue. Always have."
"It is a good color, perhaps not as good as gold, but good."
"I can never look at gold with the same eyes again. Too yellow for my tastes."
"Yellow is not gold, nor gold yellow."
"Gold is still too yellow for me. But man, I just love looking at this blue."
And as they stared deep into the placid, soul-calming blue waters, the deep blue turned indigo.
"Oh, shit."
"What is it, Remo?"
"Remember that soldier in the Crater? The one who saw a blue color when everyone else saw yellow?"
"Yes."
"I think that blue is catching up to me."
"I see it, too. It is like a burning in my eyes, except it burns deep blue and not a correct burning color."
"Damn," said Remo. "I feel awful."
"I, too, feel unhappy."
"Well, at least it's not yellow."
"It is not much of a blessing, but it is a blessing nonetheless," agreed the Master of Sinanju.
"Maybe if we blink up a storm, the blue will go away."
"It is worth a try."
When they had blinked the deep blue from their burned retinas, Remo and Chiun mustered up the courage to turn and face Pare Mesozoique.
The stockade fence still held.
Remo licked his dry lips to wet them. "You up for going back in?" he asked.
"It is our duty."
"Then I guess we gotta, although between you and me, I feel more like going back on strike."
"It is a worthy idea. Worthy of Jool Phairne."
"Who?"
Chiun gestured over his shoulder. "That brilliant writer whose name adorns that sign."
"You means Jules Verne?"
"That is not how you pronounce it."
"You mean Jules Verne is pronounced 'fool Phairne'?"
"Yes."
"No wonder these people keep getting conquered."
"It is part of their problem. From the Romans and Vikings to the Prussians and Germans, they have fallen before invader after invader. Perhaps it has given them an inferiority context."
"It's 'complex.' And you wouldn't know it to talk to a Frenchman. Or woman."
As they approached Parc Mesozoique, the whine of a rotor disturbed the stillness of the park. A moment later a small French army helicopter lifted, canted west and droned out of sight.
"Damn, there goes that damn April May!"
They reached the spot where the helicopter had lifted off. There was no sign of anyone or anything.
Then the Master of Sinanju noticed the drag marks in the dirt at their feet.
"Behold, Remo. A man was dragged to the helicopter."
"Yeah. And these small footprints on either side belong to Dominique. She must have dragged someone away. The question is who?"
"Let us discover that."
They followed the footprint-decorated drag marks to an upthrust protuberance on the park grounds. It was a small volcano, as volcanoes go. Probably twenty feet high. The sides were molded of some kind of streaked red clay. When they climbed it, the skin crumbled under their feet, setting bits of clay rolling and bouncing down to the base.
At the lip of the crater, they looked down and saw a ladder disappearing into a very black hole.
"Looks like the back way in," muttered Remo.
"Come," said Chiun, swinging around so he could take hold of the ladder's rungs.
They climbed down into the darkness, which proved to be a flat plug of glassy obsidian.
"Dead end," said Remo.
The Master of Sinanju said nothing as he moved about the inner walls of the cone. It was rough but not terribly irregular. Except for a single knob of obsidian. Chiun took hold of it, pushing and pulling it experimentally until, with a jolt, the obsidian plug dropped two inches, then continued dropping with the smoothness of an elevator.
Black-and-yellow safety stripes appeared on the walls as Remo and Chiun rode past.
"How do we know this isn't a trap?" Remo asked.
"How could anyone trap a Master of Sinanju and his trusty badger?"
"That's 'gofer.'"
"Consider it a promotion to a higher order of animal," Chiun said magnanimously.
At the bottom of the cone, they found themselves standing before one end of a concrete tunnel with a great black mouse-head silhouette painted onto the floor.
Then they smelled a smell they knew very, very well.
"Death," said Chiun.
"A lot of death," said Remo.
There were a lot of dead, they discovered as they crept along the concrete tunnels and corridors of the French Utilicanard. People lying dead at their desks, in their dormlike rooms, even lying fallen over their maintenance brooms.
And every one of them clutched an amber lollipop shaped like the head of Mongo Mouse and smelling of almonds.
"Dead about two days," said Remo, touching a cool fallen body.
The dead all wore the jumpsuits they associated with Utiliduck workers except these weren't white as they were in the States but a very chic peach.
"Looks like a mass suicide," Remo said, straightening up. "When the French bombs started to hit, they must have decided to take the hard way out rather than risk capture."
"This is very sinister. Could a color have done this?"
"I dunno. In fact, I don't get this color stuff. How can colors affect us this way?"
"Colors are very powerful. The ancient Egyptians knew this. Pharaoh slept in a red room because it helped him to sleep. And when he died, he was entombed in a room of gold because this helped his body to retain its royalty throughout eternity. In my village it is well-known that scarlet wards off evil demons."
"I don't buy that superstitious bulldooky. Color is color. I don't even have a favorite color."
"Not even pink?"
"Well, maybe pink. Pink is good."