Time Trial

Remo followed the marsh, swarming with mosquitoes and jungle rats, surrounded by giant ferns grown to the proportions of trees, until the water cleared. Where had they gone?

The sky was fading to early twilight, that time of day when nothing is seen perfectly, when the sky is half light and half shadow, blue alternating with gray, the color of thunderclouds. He narrowed his vision to take in distance. Past the marsh was a row passing through a flat field, grassy as the savannahs of western Africa, where no trees grew. The row looked like flattened grass created by footsteps. But it was too narrow for all the Olmec who had left the square at Yaxbenhaltun. Had they walked in single file? Why?

There was no time to think it over. He stepped out of the marsh to follow the path made through the recently trampled grass.

Two sets of footprints. He was sure of it. Fading light or not, no more than two people had made the path Remo was following. It didn't make sense, but he tracked it doggedly, the bottoms of his trousers growing wet from contact with the high, damp grass. The field stretched for miles, widening after the marsh so that it seemed to go on forever in all directions, green, green grass dotted occasionally by white flowers. As he went on, the flowers grew more numerous, bringing with them the sweet, drugged air Remo remembered. By the time he had followed the footprints for a mile, the flowers blanketed the ground.

Remo's eyelids drooped. He would have to slow his breathing to keep from falling asleep again. Slowly he pumped the air out from his lungs and breathed shallowly, ever more slowly, feeling his heartbeat drop from fifty beats a minute to forty to thirty to ten. His mind cleared somewhat. Still, the delicious fragrance of the field, looking as if it were covered with snow, seeped into his lungs and his mind and teased him with sensual promise.

The Forbidden Fields... Kukulcan's last mission, Remo remembered. Something about building a road. Going to the sea, and going blind. Cooligan of the Forbidden Fields. The flowers killed him, can't you see?

Remo gasped. The swift intake of air sent his senses reeling. He calmed himself, making the white-covered fields stop whirling around him. But when he did, the sight in front of him was still there. Not more than twenty feet away, the trail ended. It ended with the prostrate bodies of two men whose uniforms identified them as members of the palace guard.

He turned them over. Their faces were blue, their bodies already beginning to stiffen and cool. A trap. The two men must have been taken prisoner and set off to walk through the Forbidden Fields until they dropped, while the Olmec took Lizzie on some other route.

He looked around. The fields stretched to every horizon, broken only by the rounded tops of huge rocks. He stilled himself, forcing his breathing to come even more slowly, consciously enlarging his senses to take it every sight, every sound.

There was water. Somewhere. The river, Remo said to himself. If he could find water— a stream, a trickle— he could follow it to the river and get his bearings from there.

The sweet fragrance lingered. The air was thick with it; there was no way to blot out the cloying, sleep-filled scent of the white flowers that beckoned him to rest among their soft petals.

Water. Follow the sound of the water.

He dragged on. Night seemed to fall palpably as he walked, then crawled, following a sound he was no longer sure he heard. The wind in the flowers, sending up its thick, forgetful smoke, drowned out every other sensation with its haunting music.

Remember the water.

And there was water. A swirling river of it, crashing and dancing between a thousand white stones. He shook his head to see if the water were no more than a clouded vision. But it remained, he could smell it, he could feel its cool mist enveloping him. He stood upright, blinking against the lightheadedness that willed him back to the ground. He walked downstream, plodding like a man dying of thirst in the desert, until he stood beside the crest of a small, low fall where the water rushed white and bubbling. And on the crest was a woman, shrouded in mist, naked except for the thick ring of white flowers around her neck, her hair golden. She turned slowly toward him, holding out her arms.

It was Elizabeth Drake.

As if he were in a dream, Remo went to her, stepping through the shallow water at the top of the fall. She smiled. There was no hardness about her now, no cranky modernity. She was Woman, eternal and ageless, soft in her mystery, calling him silently to her.

Without thought, he embraced her. In that moment, their lips touching, his body aching for her, he took in the scent of the flowers, luxurious, devastating, smelling of sin and ecstasy, and gave in to it.

The sky darkened. The earth fell away. He was complete.

* * *

He awoke next to her. His clothes were still wet from the mist of the waterfall, and they clung coldly to his skin. Beside him, on the stone floor where they lay, he could feel Lizzie shivering in her sleep.

His head was pounding. He tried to sit up, but the movement was too difficult for him. Part of him, a great part, wanted just to go back to sleep, despite the cold and the wet and the uncertainty. But the other part of him, that part which was Remo, had to stay awake. He had to force himself out of the feeling of drunkenness and uncaring that seemed to hang over him like a sheet.

He willed his eyes wide open. The first items they focused on were the barrels of the six laser weapons, surrounding the two prisoners in a circle. Their guards, six tall, rangy men with tattoos on their bellies and black ash dots decorating their foreheads, kept at a distance from them both.

No sweat, Remo thought thickly. One turn, a spiral air attack, and...

He couldn't move. Thick ropes cut into his wrists and ankles. Ropes? How had he permitted himself to be tied like a pig going to slaughter?

And then he smelled them. Fresh, enchanting, the scent of the white flowers assaulted his newly awakened senses from the heavy garland he wore around his neck. Lizzie wore one, too, and their perfume weakened and sickened him.

They were in a cave. Behind the fragrance of the flowers, Remo could pick out the dank odor of damp earth. The walls, painted with pictures of grotesquely endowed human figures engaged in sexual activity, were lit by oily torches that sent up strings of black smoke.

The guards seemed to be part of the tableau. Motionless, their fingers poised on the triggers of the lasers, they watched the prisoners. The flesh on their faces sagged with the effort of fighting off sleep.

They're getting drugged too, Remo thought. The white flowers around their necks were affecting the guards. It would be so easy. So easy... But Remo did not struggle against the ropes. There was still time for fighting, and he had no advantage now. He would wait.

He looked over at Lizzie. She lay beside him, naked, unconscious, her clothes in a bundle at one of the guards' feet.

She was neither harpy nor goddess now, just another poor sucker who had been pushed senselessly into a nightmare that might end her life. As Colonel Cooligan had so eloquently written, fate had given them all the finger.

Lizzie was a strange woman. She was as selfish and abrasive as they came, a bra burner of the first water. Yet she had cried over Cooligan's diary. And when the thick of the battle with the Olmec was around her, she had tried to save the time module.

And succeeded. The Olmec had taken prisoners, but they hadn't destroyed the Cassandra. Good for you, Lizzie.

He closed his eyes. Sleep would feel good. A long, pleasant sleep to let go in, a sleep of endless dreams...

The harsh voice of a man sounded above him, jarring and loud. It struck his senses awake like a physical blow. By his head, the priest Quintanodan stood, leering.

The priest had changed much. The sharp aristocratic features of his face were painted with rough strokes of white and black, to match the ash dot on his forehead. His hair was matted and awry, falling in ropy strands on his bare, oiled shoulders. He was naked except for a strip of jaguar skin around his loins, and two ringlets of brown feathers on his ankles.

Overhead Remo could feel the vibrations of a hundred feet. The Olmec, he figured, preparing to attack Yaxbenhaltun in force. They had the lasers now. It would not take long to destroy the city.

A chuckle began deep in Quintanodan's throat and grew until it resonated through the dank cave. Then, spitting out a command to the guards, he was gone.

Snapping to attention, the guards kicked Remo and Lizzie to their feet. Lizzie stumbled, moaning.

"It's so cold," she said.

"They're moving us."

"For what, a firing squad?" she said, her unclothed body beautiful in the torchlight.

It wasn't the end, Remo knew. If worse came to worst, he would attack the guards and then fight his way through the other soldiers. But the powerful scent of the white flowers around his neck had weakened him— not enough to stop him, but perhaps enough to throw off his timing to the point where a stray beam from one of the lasers could get to Lizzie and fry her. He would have to get himself free of the flowers before he could work effectively.

But Lizzie didn't know that. To her, the guards were taking them on their last journey. And she was still holding up, bad jokes and all. She was tough, Remo had to give her that.

One of the guards picked up Lizzie's clothes and thrust them roughly at her. She clung to them with her bound hands. "What's that noise up there?" she asked.

"Soldiers, I think. Now that the Olmec have the lasers, they're probably going to attack everything in sight."

"Oh, wonderful," Lizzie said. "There goes history. The twentieth century will never have heard of the great Mayan civilization."

"Maybe it'll be the great Olmec civilization."

Lizzie sniffed. "These animals? They couldn't care less about astronomy or mathematics or engineering. This land will be like the aftermath of the Roman Empire— how it became after it was conquered by savage hill tribes. All of the learning, all of the Maya's work will be lost. Everything Cooligan did will be gone forever."

The guards stopped them in front of a rounded entranceway and shoved them inside, sealing the way behind them with a rock.

"Even cavemen had prisons, I guess," Remo said. Inside the entranceway stood a huge stone demon with eyes of jade.

"Puch," Lizzie said. "God of the dead. How appropriate."

"Don't knock it," Remo said, bending low at the waist. "Getting locked up here is the luckiest thing that's happened to us yet."

"What are you talking about?"

The garland of flowers fell from around his neck to the floor. Raising his bound hands, he snatched Lizzie's necklace and tore it off as well, kicking both strings of the white flowers into a corner. "I was hoping they'd leave us alone," Remo said. "Give me a couple of minutes."

He retreated into the shadows of the stone vault. Away from the weakening fragrance of the flowers, he could at last breathe deeply. The musty air of the vault filled him with new strength, charging his muscles like electricity.

A small line of light lay on the floor. He looked up. Moonlight. It was coming from a crack in the overhead rock. Good, Remo thought. I can use that.

A few feet away lay, inexplicably, a bed of coal smoothed into a square. "Whatever that is, I can use it, too," he muttered.

The ropes strained against his wrists. Breathing rhythmically, concentrating, Remo clenched his hands into fists, rotating them slowly. As he did, the fibers of the ropes snapped, one by one, unraveling in front of his eyes.

At the same time he tensed the muscles in his calves so that the ropes over his ankles frayed and broke. With a pop, both ropes fell away from him at precisely the same moment, landing on the stone floor like discarded snakeskins.

"How'd you do that?" Lizzie asked incredulously.

"Never mind." Effortlessly he snapped the ropes around Lizzie's wrists and legs. "Get dressed."

His strength was back. Escaping would be no problem, not with a half-inch-wide crack in the rock. He explored the fissure with his fingers.

He could break through the rock easily, but it would make a lot of noise, alerting the Olmec warriors. He didn't want a fight now, with Lizzie around. Also, the Olmec didn't fight to the last man. Even the small group of warriors sent for the surprise attack on Yaxbenhaltun had retreated when they were getting beaten. As soon as Remo started fighting, he knew, the priest in charge of the Olmec would send as many of his men off to Yaxbenhaltun, willing to sacrifice a few soldiers in order to keep Remo away from the people who needed him to defend them.

No, the escape would have to be silent. Lizzie would have to be taken back to safety. Then Remo would return with Chiun to dispose of the Olmec— all of them— in their own camp.

He ran his fingernails over the crack in the rock, familiarizing his hands with the natural curve of the break. The rock would have to be cleaved according to its fault in order to break it silently.

Feeling the weakened area of stone, he set up a vibration in his hands. Slowly, with a sound that only Remo could hear, a sound like metal on a chalkboard, his fingernails cut through the rock, forming a circle. When the work was finished, he raised the stone disc above him like a manhole cover and moved it.

A stream of moonlight flooded into the cave. Lizzie stood, awestruck, watching him.

"Come on," Remo whispered, motioning her toward the exit he had carved out of the rock. "We don't have much—"

The words froze in his mouth. Something was behind Lizzie, illuminated now by the moonlight, something low and long and immobile and ghastly.

He spoke softly. "Liz, I'm going to ask you a favor, okay?"

She nodded.

"Just listen to what I tell you. You can't make any noise now, not for any reason. The Olmec aren't far away. They can't see us, but they'll come running if you scream. So whatever happens, keep your mouth shut. Got it?"

She started to tremble. "There's something behind me, isn't there?" she whispered.

"Nothing that'll hurt you."

She turned slowly. Her eyes widened for a moment, then closed tightly, trying to block out the sight. Her hands flew, shaking, to her face.

On a low stone slab lay the body of a man dressed in an astronaut's protective clothing. On his shoulder was an American flag. His helmet was missing. All that remained of his face was an exposed skull. In the center of his forehead was a sharp, ragged hole.

Remo climbed down to look at the body. As Lizzie watched, he unzipped the plastic closure on the front of the man's protective coveralls. Inside, on the shirt covering the skeleton, was a plastic tag with "Col. K. Cooligan" inscribed on it.

They had found the final resting place of the white god Kukulcan.

?Chapter Fourteen

Lizzie stood rooted in her tracks, trembling, her hands covering her face. "Get going," Remo said, grabbing her by both shoulders and propelling her toward the exit he had made. She climbed out of the hole and scrambled blindly toward the dark forest behind the Olmec's cave dwellings.

"Where are you going?" Remo whispered.

"The trees," she said, bewildered. "That's how we came, isn't it?"

"The trees?" Of course. The Olmec had taken Lizzie through the forest, bypassing the Forbidden Fields, with their strange evil blossoms. They could make it through the jungle tangle, following the sound of the river, as far as the marsh. Then they would walk toward Bocatan, the volcano, to Yaxbenhaltun.

"Good girl," Remo said. "I mean—"

"That's okay," Lizzie answered, clasping his hand as they entered the black jungle. "Names don't matter. You came back to get me. That makes two times that you've saved my life. Thanks, Remo. You deserve an apology from me."

He laughed. "I never thought I'd hear that."

"It's the truth, and the truth ought to be spoken. While there's still time."

"You're thinking about that Diehl guy back home, aren't you?"

She looked up, startled. "No. No, really—"

"Don't start lying to me now," Remo said, smiling. "I'm just beginning to get used to you the way you are." A macaw shrieked overhead. "What happened at the waterfall between us was great, but I wasn't who you were thinking about," he said.

She looked into his eyes for a long moment. "You still surprise me," she said.

"How'd you wind up on top of a waterfall, anyway?"

She thought. "I came to somewhere in this forest," she said. "One of the Olmec showed up with the garland of flowers and put it around my neck. From then on, I don't remember much, except standing on top of the waterfall. I was trying to keep from falling asleep. I thought that's what the Olmec had planned for me— to fall asleep and then go crashing on the rocks at the foot of the fall. They'd taken my clothes....And then you were there." She stopped and pulled him to her. "I'd never been so happy to see anyone in my life."

He pulled away from her. "Not as happy as you'll be to see Dick Diehl again."

She sighed. "It's too late for that," she said, breathing in the clean, damp air of the rain forest with its thousand birds calling in the night. "I thought that if I could impress him with my brilliance, he'd want me. Now I only wish I had told him that I cared about him." She chuckled. "Not that Dick would have noticed, anyway. Anything that's not made of stone and over a thousand years old has no interest for him."

"Don't wait that long," Remo said.

"Now, don't you start lying to me," she said gently. "We're not going anywhere. Even if you get rid of the Olmec, we'll still be here. Cooligan couldn't get out, and his crew knew the machinery of that time module better than we do." She squeezed his hand. "So no false hopes between us, okay?"

"Okay," Remo said.

As they came closer to the volcano, Remo spotted a dot of red glowing at its peak. "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

"Lava. It's swollen, too."

"What, the volcano?"

"Look at the shape of it." She pointed to the black outline of Bocatan in the moonlit sky.

"It almost looks as if the volcano's pregnant."

"So she is," Lizzie said. "They get that way when they're about to erupt."

"Erupt when?"

"Can't say. Tonight, a month— it varies."

"Hey, that thing can't erupt," Remo protested. "It's been dead for years. At least not since the beginning of the town. As close as Yaxbenhaltun is, it'd get wiped out if the volcano blew."

"Sometimes volcanoes wait hundreds of years between eruptions. Bocatan may have last gone off before Yaxbenhaltun was built. Cooligan got things moving pretty fast, remember?"

Remo stood staring at the red glow for a moment. "I've got an idea," he said.

They climbed to the top of the volcano, feeling the mountain gurgle and swim beneath their feet.

"Look, if I've got a choice, I'd rather be zapped by a laser beam than drowned in lava," Lizzie said.

"Nothing's going to happen. Especially now." With a large rock he picked and pulled at the lip of the volcano until the eastern portion of it was two feet lower than the rest, exactly on a level with the bubbling lava inside.

"What's that for?" Lizzie asked.

"You'll see."

Back in Yaxbenhaltun, he announced the plan. "Po, I want you to get every available man to get to the volcano as fast as possible and collect all the stones they can, enough to make the lava overflow."

"You will start an eruption?" Po asked.

"Nah. You can't make a volcano blow with a few stones. I just want it to spill over a little onto the Olmec's side. I've fixed it so that it will."

He turned to Chiun. "Meanwhile, you and I will go back to the Olmec camp and take back the lasers. By the time the volcano begins to overflow, we'll have the guns, and the Olmec'll be scared out of their pants. That'll be where you come in with one of your Master of Sinanju speeches."

"I do not speak their language," Chiun said curtly.

"That doesn't matter. You point to the overflowing volcano, say 'Kukulcan' a couple of times, and they'll keep away from this place for the rest of their lives. And no lives lost, no interruption of history. It's worth a shot, isn't it?"

Chiun's eyes narrowed. "The boy is right. What if the volcano erupts?"

"I tell you, it's not going to erupt."

"Oh, yes it will," Lizzie said. "It shows all the signs."

"Well, it's not going to erupt tonight. Let's go through with this plan and worry about the volcano later."

Reluctantly they agreed. Po went out to gather all the able-bodied men of the city. Chiun and Remo stole out through the jungle toward the caves of the Olmec.

They stayed close to the river, keeping an eye on the glowing rim of Bocatan. The sky changed from black to blue to slate gray; the crisp crescent moon grew fuzzy and small overhead. By the first red streaks of dawn, the silhouettes of a hundred Mayan warriors stood around the volcano's red mouth.

"Oh, balls," Remo said. "They're not supposed to be there yet."

"It is a beautiful sight," Chiun said. "Worthy even of a stanza of Ung poetry."

"Poetic, maybe. But too soon. The idea was for us to get to the Olmec caves before the Mayans showed themselves."

"No plan works perfectly," Chiun said philosophically.

The Mayans remained on the mountaintop, bending and straightening as they placed their stones carefully inside the brimming volcano.

"Too early, too early," Remo muttered, skittering as quickly as he could through the slimy mud of the river's edge. At Bocatan, a thin stream of red lava poured down the side of the sacred fire mountain.

"Will you look at that," Remo said, disgusted. "The whole plan's ruined."

"It was a stupid plan," Chiun agreed. "But what can one expect of a white man?"

"Now the whole effect will be..." He stopped. "Hey, there hasn't been any effect. No yelling, no stampede from the caves, nothing."

"Perhaps the Olmec are not the dunderheads you assumed them to be," Chiun said.

"What does that mean?"

The old Oriental shrugged. "Only that your escape may have been detected. Did you think of that?"

"Well—"

"Of course not. At your age, one considers only action, never reaction. You never gave any thought to what the Olmec would do if they discovered your absence, did you?"

"What would you do if you were an Olmec?" Remo asked.

"Just what they have done. I would wait."

"Where?"

"Here."

The old man shoved Remo to the ground. In that moment, the sky lit up with six shafts of white lightning, causing the dark jungle brush to burst into flames and the water of the river to shimmer like silver. On the peak of Bocatan, no less than twenty men fell, their silhouetted postures those of men dying in agony.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"It was only now that I became certain of it. Find the men with the guns. They must go first."

They fought their way through the onrush of Olmec warriors, seeking the laser bearers in the rear flanks.

Accustomed to jungle fighting, the Olmec splintered and fled, scattering in all directions so that they could not be taken in a single assault. Remo worked his way through the ranks of warriors, but not a single laser blast was seen again.

"Where'd they go?" Remo said as he launched two Olmec into a double air spin to collide with the soldiers behind them.

Then they came again, the dazzling spears of light that bored holes into the sides of Bocatan. The origin of the beams was high overhead, and considerably closer to the Mayan camp than Remo and Chiun were.

"They're in the trees," Remo said despairingly. "We've been fighting down here, and those guys with the lasers have been moving ahead through the frigging trees." Without waiting for Chiun to speak, he climbed up a tall jujube tree and scrambled over its branches to the next.

They were dangerously close to Bocatan. The Mayans, with no leader, were no match for the warring Olmec with their weapons from the twenty-first century. There was only one way to stop them from swarming over the volcano into the city of Yaxbenhaltun: Remo would have to create a distraction that would give Chiun enough time to work his way through the foot soldiers and then take out the laser bearers.

When he reached the marsh, past the Forbidden Fields, he ran at double time toward the volcano. Earlier, when he had climbed the eastern slope of Bocatan with Lizzie, they had made their way up a narrow pass. If he could collect the Olmec there, Chiun would have an easier time of getting rid of them.

He approached the pass minutes before the six Olmec.

"Hey, you fruits, hubba hubba," he shouted to the oncoming warriors. A laser shimmered in the air toward him. It struck the exact location where he stood, but in the split second it took the beam to travel, Remo was gone. The shaft dug a deep crater into the side of the volcano.

"That's good, fellas. Just what I wanted." He stuck his thumbs into his ears and blurted a rasberry at the confused soldiers. "Come on, creeps, it's target practice."

Another laser lit up the sky, striking the hillside. And another.

"Chiun, get a move on, will you?"

"Watch your tone of voice," Chiun said indignantly from the shadows. He leaped high in the air, taking off the top of a man's head in his descent.

"Good work, Little Father."

"Mind your own affairs."

Remo was ready. One of the warriors, aiming his weapon directly at him, stood in firing position, open from every angle.

"The problem with guns," Remo said as the man's finger moved back imperceptibly on the trigger, "is that your body is wasted." He spun out of the way of the fiery charge. The soldier tried to get a bead on him again, but he was gone.

"The only part of your body you use with a gun is your finger, see," Remo said from behind him. The warrior spun around. No one was there.

"The rest of you is completely vulnerable." The soldier turned again, firing without looking. The beam tore into the side of the mountain.

"See what I mean?" Remo said, delivering a kick to the man's kidneys that turned them to brown jelly. The corpse's fingers twitched spasmodically on the sensitive trigger. A burst of fire sliced into Bocatan's worn and pitted slope. Remo reached the weapon and crushed it to gravel in his hands.

"Okay, who's next?" he shouted. Chiun was in the process of splintering someone's neck into a thousand pieces with a rapid drum of his fingers. The man's weapon soared upward. The other laser bearers were fleeing back toward the caves. "Oh, no you don't," Remo said. "You're not getting another chance, Bonzo." He took off after the man, caught him, and smashed his weapon to shards in front of his face.

The man's mouth dropped open.

Remo said, "You were willing to fight me when you had the laser. Now I insist we go on."

But the man only sputtered, his eyes staring straight ahead of him. He raised a violently shaking finger and pointed behind Remo's back.

"Come on," Remo said in disgust. "That's old. I look behind me and you get a chance to break my nose. Well, it doesn't work that way, chum." He tossed the man to the ground, looked behind him, and within a half a second picked the man up again. "See? Oh, God."

Bocatan was cracking open before his eyes.

The probes made by the lasers had torn her surface to shreds. Now the swollen volcano glowed red from its gurgling mouth to its base, streaked with deep fissures where pulsating red liquid oozed out.

"Remo!" Chiun shouted from the far rim of the volcano's peak. "Leave the warriors."

"Gotcha," Remo said, suddenly remembering the Olmec soldier supported in his hands. Almost absently he tapped the man's solar plexus. The man slumped to the ground.

And the fire mountain exploded.

Its entire eastern side blew in a stream of lava shooting from its base. The red mouth of the volcano darkened and receded as the lava spewed out of its collapsing side.

The heat and force of the molten rock blew Remo aside like a weightless feather as it tumbled onto the valley, swallowing rocks whole and burning a blinding path past the marsh and into the Forbidden Fields, where the burning miles of white flowers gave off a stench of sweet decay.

Above the din of the collapsing volcano could be heard the wails of the Olmec trapped in the inexorable flow of molten death, their screams sounding like the chattering of small birds, insignificant in the roaring eruption.

A man, his face burned horribly, ran toward Remo carrying a long-bladed knife in his hands. The entire top half of his body was blackened. On his shoulders were huge bubbling blisters, sprouting from deep within the muscle tissue. Remo could tell the man wouldn't last for ten minutes.

"Don't put yourself through the trouble," Remo said, taking the knife. The man covered his face with his charred hands.

"I'll help you to die," Remo said quietly, placing his arms around the man's body so that he would feel as little pain as possible. Then, with two fingers, Remo prepared to touch a cluster of nerves at the base of the man's throat that would put him to sleep painlessly and forever.

As if he could read Remo's thoughts, his eyes widened. In a burst of strength he pushed himself away.

"You're him, aren't you?" Remo said. "Quintanodan."

At the sound of his name, the priest painfully pulled himself erect. Even through his burned flesh and obvious agony, Quintanodan's expression retained all of its arrogance and cruel authority. He pointed to the rim of Bocatan, where the Mayans watched the inferno below in awed silence.

"You want me to take you there, huh?" Remo said, gesturing.

The priest nodded curtly.

"Why should I? You didn't exactly treat me like your long lost brother. Not to mention your hospitality toward Cooligan."

Again, the dying priest seemed to know what Remo was thinking. He blinked rapidly, striving to keep his eyes in focus. Clearly the man was losing consciousness. Then, with great effort, he bowed to Remo.

"Oh, cut it out," Remo said, picking the man up deftly. The movement, gentle as Remo tried to make it, must have been excrutiating. Still, the priest made no sound. "I guess you're not going to hurt anyone now."

Good guys and bad guys, killers and saints... In their final moment, all men knew terror. It was Quintanodan's moment now, and Remo respected it.

He did not despise the man for being a killer. Remo was one himself, after all, and although he had known since the death of the old king that Quintanodan would have to die, Remo was hard pressed to feel any hatred for him now. He had looked into the eyes of too many dying men to hate an enemy in torment. All life was sacred in the moment it was extinguished.

And so he carried the priest to the top of Bocatan, steaming above the destruction in the valley.

Quintanodan, lying on his back, beckoned to the boy Po to come near him while he spoke. The boy translated the man's anguished words.

"It is written that the voice of the gods will come to rule the Maya and defeat their enemies," he said. "The prophecy has come to pass. My people are dispersed, my tribe decimated. But you will not rule forever, because the Olmec understand what you do not: that the past and the future are one. That which flourishes must decay. That which lives now must return to its ashes. My people are clever. Many have died this day, but others have fled to wait, to fight again. Two of the gods' weapons remain. They are well hidden now, but one day they will be found.

"I have come to tell you this. We will fight you one day, and on that day we will defeat you. Until then, we will wait in secret. The name of the Olmec will be no more. But when our time comes, your empire will crumble to dust at our hands. For all the ages of man, no one will know why the great Mayan civilization vanished, but you will know, and your children, and your children's children, for I speak from the Sight, and the Sight does not lie. Ages hence, the Olmec will conquer you, you will be as dust in the wind of the sea."

He stood up painfully, rivulets of sweat running down his disfigured features. He faced the gaping mouth of the volcano and repeated an ancient prayer:

"All moons, all years, all days, all winds, take their course and pass away."

He held his blackened arms over his head. Then, his face composed, his mouth set, he dived into the distended mouth of the volcano, making no sound as he died.

The Mayans standing atop Bocatan turned to Remo and Chiun and knelt. Dawn flooded the sky with red, looking through the smoke and steam like a vision from hell.

The moment lingered forever, it seemed. Each man tried to take a measure of the events of the past twenty-four hours, and could only remember it as a time of great moment, its details already fading into the realm of legend. Only Chiun remained entirely in the present, lowering himself to the ground, listening.

"What are you doing, Little Father?" Remo said, noticing the strange posture of the old Oriental.

"Take them away from here," Chiun said.

"Why?"

The old man spoke softly. "Earthquake."

The boy was the first to respond. "Nata-Ah," he cried, limping as fast as he could toward the village, where the women and children of Yaxbenhaltun slept.

?Chapter Fifteen

The limestone columns of the palace were already crashing by the time the boy reached it. Remo was inside, pulling the women and the household staff to safety, while Chiun and Lizzie worked with the Mayan warriors to wake the rest of the village.

"Where is Nata-Ah?" Po asked.

"I can't find her. Maybe she's already out."

"She is not. She must be here!" the boy bellowed.

"Look, I've got enough on my hands," Remo said, pulling a bevy of shrieking dancing girls through the falling rock. "The building's full, and it's going to go fast, so get out of the way."

"I will help," the boy said, rushing into the palace. Two old women, balancing a load of clay dishes between them, tottered from the kitchen, blocking the hall where others screamed behind them. The boy knocked the dishes out of their hands and pushed them forward, making room for the stampede.

"Nata-Ah!" he called, forcing his way against the crowd. He scanned the panicking faces that swept past him, but the beautiful young girl was not among them.

Po made his way into the interior of the palace, where the ornate painted ceilings dipped and swayed rhythmically to the deep rumbles of the earthquake. The roof would cave in within minutes with him inside, unless he got out quickly. But Nata-Ah. What if she was still somewhere in the palace?

He walked under the buckling ceiling of the reception hall and into the labyrinth of the palace's great rooms.

"Nata-Ah!" he shouted, but. his voice was drowned out in the splintering crash of stone on ground outside.

She was not in the room where she normally slept. The other rooms were also empty, their doors hanging open. Only the king's throne room was sealed.

He burst in. The girl was inside, sitting straight and tall upon her grandfather's magnificent throne.

"Nata-Ah, you must come. There is danger," Po said in the Old Tongue.

"This is the end of the world," the girl said softly. "I am the world's ruler now. I will remain here."

"Oh, Nata-Ah," Po pleaded. "There is so much I have to tell you. This isn't the end. It's just the beginning. Me, I come from the end, not you. Your people will make a mark on history that will never be forgotten, never."

"You know this?"

"Yes, I know."

"You are the voice of the gods, just as my grandfather said. You are like Quintanodan. You have the Sight."

"Nata-Ah, your grandfather was only setting a trap for Quintanodan when he called me that. And I don't have the Sight. It's just that I come from—"

"You came with the gods," she said. "And you will leave with them. And I will remain here, for I do not wish to live without you." Her eyes shone with tears.

He was stunned. Long moments passed. Down the hall, the ceiling burst and a ton of rock poured into the smashed palace with a sound like thunder. The door to the throne room flew open and creaked mightily, twisting out of shape as an ocean of debris showered behind it.

Po touched her face. "Then I will stay here with you," he said. "For you are all I need in this life. I have followed you forever, and now that I have found you, I will stay to my last breath at your side."

Suddenly, through the wreckage, a man appeared.

"What the hell are you two doing here?" Remo yelled angrily, grabbing each child in one hand and vaulting to the. window. "Hang on." He tumbled outside, leaping over the piles of fallen cement to safety.

"You've got rocks in your heads, both of you," he shouted over his shoulder as he ran toward the square. "When this is over with, I'm going to spank the daylights—"

"Remo," Lizzie shouted excitedly.

"I don't have time," Remo said.

"But it's an earthquake. That's what brought us here in the first place. 'The vibration of molecules,' that's what Cooligan said made the time module Work."

Remo pulled a screaming man from beneath a slab of rock. "If an earthquake's all it took, then why didn't Cooligan get out during one?"

"Because while Cooligan was here, there wasn't an earthquake. Not one is mentioned in the log. He never had the chance, but we do. Come on," she said, pulling at his arm. "Get the others. It has to be now."

Remo straightened up. He swept his arm over the scene around him. The entire city was a wreckage. White plaster and dust covered the faces of the dead on the street. Hundreds of small fires burned everywhere. "We can't go, Lizzie. People's lives are still in danger. In a few minutes, when the earthquake's subsided, maybe—"

"We can't wait for it to subside! This is the only chance we're going to get, and you know it. If the pod hasn't already been damaged, that is. A few more minutes, and the temple holding the Cassandra might be destroyed."

"We've just got to wait," Remo said stubbornly.

"I don't have to do any such thing," she screamed. "This is my last shot to get out of here, and by God, I'm going to take it!"

"All by yourself? What if the mechanism won't work again?"

"That's your problem," Lizzie said.

Remo shook his head. "Guess I was wrong about you, old girl. Still looking out for number one, aren't you?"

"Can you blame me?"

Remo looked closely at her, and then at the ruin of the city. "No, I can't. I'm the same way myself. No strings, no responsibilities. He travels fastest who travels alone."

Lizzie regarded him suspiciously. "Then why aren't you coming?" she asked.

Remo looked out over the far horizon, shimmering in the wake of the city's flames. "Because I'm tired of hating myself," he said.

Her eyes hardened. "If you think that this is going to make me—"

"I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about me."

Struggling to keep her face impassive, she stood watching him for a moment. Then she turned and strode away.

"Well, that's that for the moment," Remo said.

Most of the rubble had been cleared away from the square. Miraculously, only six lives had been lost. The bodies of the dead lay wrapped in makeshift shrouds near the city's walls. Someone had unobtrusively taken care of the survivors, since the streets were clear of the wandering homeless.

It was nearly twilight. Remo and Chiun had worked with the Mayans for nearly eighteen hours salvaging what they could of the city. Several of the men had collapsed from exhaustion. Po, the improvised bandages on his legs blackened from soot, slept in the open courtyard as Nata-Ah rummaged through the vacant buildings for a new dressing for his wound.

"The boy served us well," Chiun said.

"Yeah, he worked out okay after that stunt in the palace. I guess I won't spank the little bugger."

Chiun surveyed the area with his alert hazel eyes. "The damage is not so great as I feared."

Remo shrugged. "Nothing a good team of masons couldn't fix in a decade or two." He laughed. He was bone-tired, but he knew he couldn't rest until he had delivered the bad news he'd put off for most of the day.

"I might as well tell you, Lizzie's gone," he blurted.

"That is too much to hope for," Chiun said.

"It's true. She took off in the time module. I don't think we'll see her again."

"I do," Chiun said disgustedly. "That woman is like misfortune. She always turns up when you need her least."

"Well, she's not going to turn up now."

Chiun pointed, his face forming an expression of distaste. "Think again, o brilliant one."

Walking from the crumbled city wall, her shirt torn at the shoulder, her hair turned gray-black from dirt and plaster dust, Lizzie ambled over to them and sat down in the dust without a word.

"Where'd you come from?" Remo asked.

"Outside the city. I've been finding temporary homes for the villagers. It's no bed of roses out there, either, but the damage isn't as bad as it is here." Resting on her elbows, she closed her eyes and threw her head back in fatigue.

"So that's where the villagers went," Remo said.

"She helped?" Chiun asked incredulously.

"I know it's not my style," Lizzie said, a bitter smile playing around her mouth.

"What about the pod? Did you try it?"

"Oh, yes. It worked. I sent a vase up in it as an experiment. Turned the switch, presto. Vase gone." She looked into the distance. "I put a note in it. I thought maybe Dick Diehl would come exploring the temple some day and find it."

"Hey, wait a minute. A vase? What about you? I thought you were going home."

She chuckled, a half-laugh born of deep exhaustion. "Yeah, I did, too. And then I started to think about you here, and about all these slobs in trouble, and about Cooligan and how he felt good even though he knew he was going to die here.... Oh, I don't know," she said, getting wearily to her feet. "It was a hell of a time to develop a conscience."

Remo took her hand. "Thanks for sticking around," he said.

"Think nothing—" Her hands flailed in the air and she fell, sprawling. "What was that?"

The earth moved again. "Another tremor," Chiun said. "Milder. This time will be easier."

The boy scrambled to his feet along with the sleepy Mayans, who blinked in astonishment at the new rumblings.

"Another chance," Lizzie said, almost in a whisper. "I can't believe it. I never thought..." Her words drifted off as her eyes met Remo's. "Do you want to stay? I'll stay if you do."

"I don't think we have to this time," Remo said, watching her eyes flood with relief. "Will the time module work?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," she said, running for the Temple of Magic. "I sent the vase into the future, and then set the controls back, but the vase didn't return."

Remo stopped in his tracks. "It didn't?"

"No," Lizzie said quietly.

"Something's wrong. I don't know if we ought to risk it."

"It is time to risk something," Chiun said, his hand on Po's shoulder. "I have spent quite enough time in this place, and I wish to return. I will go."

"If you go, I'll go," Remo said.

"Well, nobody's going without me," Lizzie laughed as she tried to keep her balance on the shifting earth.

"Okay, everybody in," Remo commanded, when they reached the temple. "Might as well give this thing another try." He helped Lizzie into the pod. Imperiously, Chiun followed her in.

"You too, squirt," Remo said to the boy.

Po looked over his shoulder. Footsteps were approaching. Nata-Ah appeared, holding a length of cotton bandage in her hands. Her face fell at the sight of the new gods preparing to depart.

"I cannot go," the boy said awkwardly. "Someone must remain to rebuild the city—"

"For God's sake, that'll take years," Remo said.

"I have years," the boy said quietly. "I have my whole life."

"Now, I can't let you—"

"Please," Po said. "I belong here now, as I never belonged in my own time. I have come to the end of my journey. As my father predicted, I have walked with the gods, and spoken for them. Now it is time for the gods to go. Let them leave behind their voice."

He limped to the doorway of the time module and bowed to Chiun. Nata-Ah was behind him.

Chiun rose, walked over to the two children, and whispered something in Po's ear. The boy nodded. Then they both bowed to Chiun and to Remo and to Lizzie with the cool authority of born rulers.

"Please enter," the boy said to Remo in a voice that sounded more like a man's than a boy's.

Remo went in.

With another bow, Po closed the door and threw the switch. "Good-bye, my friends," he called.

?Chapter Sixteen

Lizzie came to in despair. "The log," she moaned. "I forgot the damned captain's log."

"Not so fast. We may still be there," Remo said. He opened the door.

The Temple of Magic was in ruins. Outside the door to the pod lay a freshly broken vase. "Look here," Remo said, picking up the pieces. "It must have rolled out of the pod. I think we made it."

Among the shards of pottery was a small scrap of parchment, grown as fragile as an insect's wings with the years. On it was a faint message: "I love you, Dick."

Remo handed the parchment to Lizzie. "Is this all you were going to tell him?"

She smiled. "In the end, that was all there was to say."

In the outer chamber, Remo found the ancient laser weapon he had saved to take to Smith. "Everything's just the way we left it."

"Is it?" Chiun said, beckoning them back to the wreckage of the plane. In the chamber reserved for the gods' flaming chariot was a blank space. The Cassandra and everything in her was gone.

"But— we just came from there," Remo said.

Chiun held up a precautionary finger. "You forget, we left five thousand years ago. And five thousand years ago was this machine destroyed."

"Who did it?" Lizzie demanded hotly. "Who would have done such a thing?"

"The only sensible one among you. The boy. It was my last request to him before we left."

Remo stared at him in astonishment. "Do you know what you did? What's been lost?"

"What has been lost? The opportunity for others to walk yet again in the footsteps of Kukulcan, bringing their modern ways to an ancient world? Oh, they would come with good intentions, these others, just as we did. And like ourselves, they would bring confusion and violence to their land. No, Remo. It is a mistake to inflict our time on another. We have left Po as our ambassador. Trust him."

They walked outside. The overgrown jungle was back to replace the village square of Yaxbenhaltun.

You will be as dust in the wind of the sea, Remo remembered. Quintanodan's prophecy had come true; the splendor of the Maya was no more. "Do you think the Olmec won, after all? Are they still around, calling themselves the Lost Tribes?"

"We'll never know," Lizzie said. She tramped through the high grass to the east of the temple. "There's no volcano," she said. "Bocatan's gone." Something on the ground fixed her attention. "Remo, look here."

A mound of blackened, moss-covered rock protruded from the earth beside her. "This wasn't here before."

"It's just a rock."

"No," she said excitedly, scratching at the moss with her fingernails. "That's stone. Cut stone. This was built." Her eyes flashed. "Another temple, maybe. Or, better yet, a tomb. Maybe the city was reorganized after the earthquake. Oh, God, I've got to get a team together."

"How about your friend Dick Diehl?" Remo suggested. "He might be interested."

"He might," Lizzie said. "Think I could go with you as far as the first town with a telephone?"

"If you must," Chiun said.

Lizzie looked up at the old man. He was smiling.

* * *

"What am I going to tell Smitty?" Remo lamented as he and Chiun walked through the double doors of Folcroft Sanitarium. Under Remo's arm was a box marked "Fragile," which had flown with them from Guatemala City.

"Tell him the truth."

"But there's no evidence anymore. The plane's gone, the time module's gone, even Cooligan's log is gone."

Chiun tapped the box. "You have the gun."

"Yeah. And the flowers. I brought some of the white flowers."

Smith opened the box and sifted through a pile of greenish metallic powder covering some rotting greens. "What is this supposed to be?"

Remo looked inside. The weapon had disintegrated during the flight. "It used to be a laser gun," Remo said, feeling foolish as he spoke. "We found them, just the way Dr. Diehl described..."

"This isn't funny, Remo," Smith said acidly. "Now, I realize that you may have cause to feel angry, but this sort of practical joke goes far beyond the limits of good taste. This could have been a matter of national security, and I'm sure that when you're calm you'll realize that not every assignment turns out to be terribly interesting. Nevertheless—"

"Hold it, hold it," Remo said. "Not interesting?"

"I'm referring to Dr. Diehl, of course. I did try to reach you as soon as I found out this morning, but by then you were already en route back from Guatemala. There was nothing I could do."

"What about Dr. Diehl?"

"He's changed his story. Practically admits he was lying. 'Strain,' he calls it. Now that he's no longer suffering under this so-called strain, he's confessed to a certain confusion about the lasers he thought he saw. The CIA is convinced that they never existed. So am I. Just some hostile Indians, no doubt."

"What about the Red Cross transmissions?"

"Garbled. They were probably panicking because of the impending crash of their helicopter. We've sent in rescue squads for the bodies. Your work, I suppose, excavating them from the wreckage?"

"All but Elizabeth Drake. She was alive."

"So I've heard. The rescue team looked for the two of you for some time. Where did you go, by the way?"

"Oh—"

"We continued on our training expedition," Chiun chimed in. "The jungle was ideal for our purposes, o illustrious Emperor."

"That's good," Smith said absently. He was leafing through the most recent batch of computer printouts on his desk. "Er— anything else?"

"I guess not," Remo said.

"Then leave. You're not even supposed to be here at the sanitarium," Smith said.

* * *

"He thought that laser weapon was a joke," Remo fumed as they headed toward Folcroft's front entrance.

"It did look more like a joke than a gun," Chiun said, chuckling. "Besides, emperors usually discard the truth. Otherwise, politics would be impossible to understand."

A sweating man rushing into the sanitarium whizzed by, narrowly missing a head-on collision with Remo.

"Hey, watch it, fella."

" 'Scuse me," the man said, smiling twitchily. "I was in kind of a rush there."

"It is quite all right," Chiun said graciously.

The man appraised the frail-looking old Oriental in his yellow gown. "Say, I know you two."

"No, you don't," Remo said.

"Sure. Don't you remember?"

"Let's get out of here," Remo whispered in Korean. As it was, they had left too many witnesses through the years. Remo was not supposed to exist. For him to be recognized was unthinkable.

"No, really," the man insisted. "It was out at Edwards Air Base. I ejected from a burning F-24 and got a streamer for a chute. You saved my life."

"Oh," Remo said, forcing a casual smile. "Well, just forget that, okay?" He backed away.

"That's what you said before. But I'll tell you, if it wasn't for you, I'd have never gotten to see my kid. Oh, here." He fumbled in his pockets for two cigars and thrust them at Remo and Chiun.

"It's a boy," he said proudly. "I'm just coming to tell my pop he's a grandpop. He's a patient here."

"That was thoughtful," Chiun said.

"Nah. When they got empty planes over at the base, we can use them, long as none of the brass finds out." He laughed. "Hey, you got kids?"

Remo shook his head.

"It's the greatest feeling in the world. I feel like it's the first time old Mike Cooligan ever did anything just exactly right. Man, this baby is a born flyer."

"Cooligan?" Remo repeated.

"Yeah. Irish from way back. My pop's name is Kurt. That's what we've named the kid. Kurt Cooligan, after his grandpop. The old man's going to love that."

"Kurt Cooligan," Remo whispered, choking on the sounds. "Going to be a pilot too, huh?" He smiled weakly.

"The best. I tell you, this kid's going to know all the basics of every fighter ever made by the time he's twelve. He's going to go to military school, and then a good college, Harvard, maybe, so he gets every chance I never got. Hell, with Harvard he could be president if he wants to. An astronaut, even. Geez, listen to me foam at the mouth. The kid's not even a week old." He laughed and slapped Remo's back heartily.

"Uh, I dunno," Remo ventured. "Maybe flying wouldn't be such a good idea..."

Chiun elbowed him hard in the ribs.

"Oof." Remo doubled over.

"My associate means to say that we congratulate you on your good fortune but, alas, we must take our leave."

"Sure," Cooligan said. "Say, is your friend all right?" He gestured to Remo, who was trying to refill the oxygen supply that had so suddenly left his lungs.

"It is nothing," Chiun assured him.

* * *

"Would you mind giving me a little warning next time?" Remo complained once they were off the Folcroft grounds. "I don't know why you always take me by surprise."

"Because you are a trusting and foolish white man," Chiun gloated.

"I mean why you'd want to," Remo objected.

"That is because your mouth usually contains more material than your brain."

"Just because I told that nut—"

"Fortunately, you told that nut nothing. If, by chance, your words had succeeded in dissuading Mr. Mike Cooligan from forcing his son to be a pilot, the history of the world might be changed."

"So what?" Remo said. "I've been hearing this history-of-the-world crap until it's coming out my gazoo. I don't care about history. I read Cooligan's diary. That poor guy gave up his life for some dumb Air Force mission that never even happened."

"I too read the diary," Chiun said. "Kurt Cooligan did not give his life for a mission, but for a world. And that world was better for him. Does that not make his life worthy in your eyes?"

"Kukulcan," Remo said. "I guess it's something to become a god."

Chiun grunted. "If one cannot be the Master of Sinanju, it is acceptable," he said.

"It's funny, thinking of Cooligan the way he was in the captain's log, and knowing that right now he's just a baby."

"It is as the Mayans say. The past and the future are one."

"But that doesn't make sense," Remo said. "I mean, if that were true, you'd be able to read my future, right?"

"Oh, but I can, I can," Chiun said mysteriously.

"You can?"

"Yes. In your future is a long training expedition."

"A what? We just came off one of those."

"You were inadequate. We will have to begin anew."

"Oh, no," Remo said. "No more North Pole. No more desert. No jungle, no, sir."

"You see? You know the details already. You are a born prophet, my son. Which way is north?"

"That way. Toward the motel. I've got eight quarters for your vibrating bed. And I'll send out for room service."

Chiun's eyes narrowed. "Duck a l'orange?"

"I'll kill the duck myself if I have to," Remo said.

"Cable TV?"

"All night long."

"A swimming pool, perhaps?"

"Kidney shaped."

Chiun put his bony arm around Remo. "Ah, well, there is time for the training expedition tomorrow, I suppose. Would you like me to recite one of the Ung poems of the great Wang? It is very short, only six hundred stanzas."

Remo swallowed. "Love it," he said.

The old man beamed. "Sometimes, Remo, you are not so bad for a white boy."

?Epilogue

LOS ANGELES TIMES

PROGRESSO, GUATEMALA (API)

The husband and wife team of Elizabeth and Richard Diehl, both archaeologists at UCLA, have unearthed what could prove to be the oldest intact tomb in the western world.

Dating from the third millennium, B. C., it is the tomb of one of the first kings of the Classical Period in ancient Mayan civilization.

Named simply Po, the occupant of the tomb was known as the Lame King. According to the inscriptions on his sarcophagus, King Po did so much to make the Mayan empire the advanced society we regard it today that he was called "the voice of the gods" by his people. Next to the king's remains was uncovered the sarcophagus of his only wife, the beautiful and just Queen Nata-Ah.

Lining the walls of the tomb were many precious artifacts and sculptures, including a magnificent redition of the famous white god Kukulcan, adorned with the traditional serpents and feathers found on other statues of the Mayan deity.

Two other statues, also found in the tomb, are currently causing lively speculation in archaeological circles. Previously unidentified in Mayan findings, the statues depict two human males. One is an old man of obviously Oriental features. The other is younger, possibly a warrior. The features of the statue are unimpressive except for a pair of exceptionally thick wrists.

the end