The Death Strain (7 page)

One of the men standing behind Rita was holding Wilhelmina in his hand. I could feel Hugo still safely strapped to my forearm. The other people in the temple gathered in a semicircle to stare at me. Most of them were oriental but not all, and there was something strange about the whole lot of them. Mostly men, the group contained some women, and most had lined, old faces though there was a sprinkling of younger, well-built males. But all of them had a haunted expression in their eyes, an expression of inner pain. A number of them were crippled and deformed. The old woman finished wiping away my makeup and rose to step back.

Beyond the onlookers I saw corridors leading away from the main part of the temple. Against the far wall rows of candles burned at a kind of altar, a long, flat slab of rock with a peculiar sculpture hanging behind it — a sculpture of twisted, blackened metal and pieces of bone. Carlsbad's voice brought my attention back to him.

"This is the man who almost prevented your getting away with Rita?" he was saying to the large Japanese. The wrestler nodded.

"I'm impressed by your discovery of our little nest," Carlsbad said to me. "How did you manage that?"

"Clean living," I said and the Japanese started to reach one huge hand down to me.

Carlsbad stopped him. "No, let him alone. He can do us no harm. In fact, we can keep him here. He may be of value eventually."

The giant Japanese straightened up but his eyes, small in the folds of his huge head, glittered. He said nothing and I wondered if he was as subservient as Carlsbad seemed to think.

"Where is X–V77?" I asked Carlsbad.

"Here and quite safe, for the moment," the bacteriologist answered. I glanced at Rita and tried to read what was behind those china-blue eyes. I thought I saw uncertainty and I turned back to Carlsbad.

"You've already killed four men over this," I said and saw Rita quickly glance at him. Now I knew what I had seen in her eyes. Surprise, shock. Carlsbad directed his words to me, but he was answering her questioning look.

"A small price to pay to achieve what must be achieved."

"And what's that?" I questioned.

'To make the world's leaders stop their misuse of science," Carlsbad said.

He gestured to those standing by. "Everyone here is a victim of the immorality of present-day science and politics. Every individual here is a victim of one or another scientific advance which, by its use,
is
really injuring mankind."

"For instance?" I asked. "That big oaf looks healthy."

"Mr, Kiyishi, like many of the others, was a child in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing," Carlsbad explained. "He is sterile, unable to produce a child. Some of my people here are workmen, crippled externally or internally by constant exposure to radioactivity in the plants in which they worked. Some were soldiers, permanently disabled by exposure to nerve gases. Others were fishermen whose stomachs are largely gone due to eating fish contaminated by insecticides.

"There are fifteen families here, fifteen out of two hundred killed in the mountains of the Caucasus when a Russian plane accidentally dropped a container of bacteriological viruses. The incident was kept completely silent. In America, thousands of sheep were killed in a similar accident, sheep which could easily have been people."

As I listened to him, I realized with a chilling horror that Carlsbad had gone far beyond the role of a protesting man of science. He was setting up a kind of elite of the damned, with what sounded like political and moral overtones.

"I think we should kill him at once," said the big Japanese, gesturing at me, little eyes hard as stones.

"No," Carlsbad said sharply. "He is obviously a top agent. He may be able to help us in time, willingly or unwillingly."

Rita was still there, but her eyes were on the floor. I knew that if I had a chance to get out of here, it would depend on one slim girl and one slim stiletto. Carlsbad bad turned to his niece and put a hand on her arm.

"We are going now," he said. "You'll be safe here till we return. Your room is not the Grand Hotel but it will suffice. Time has passed without anything having been done by the American government, or any of the others. We are beginning the most critical phase of our mission now, my dear. But it will be worth it one day."

He kissed the girl tenderly on the cheek and turned to the giant by his side. The huge man's impassive face showed nothing, yet I had the distinct feeling he was standing apart, making his own decisions. Perhaps it was the way his little eyes took in everything, glittering and vicious.

"Who are you leaving in charge?" Carlsbad asked, and the mountainous man gestured to a robed figure that stepped forward.

"Tumo," the giant said, and Tumo bowed deferentially to Carlsbad then shifted his eyes quickly to the huge man. Something passed between the two men, unspoken, fleeting, but nonetheless there. Tumo was in his late twenties, well-built, with a hard line of a mouth and eyes that almost matched Carlsbad's in their dark intensity. On his chest, bared by the loose-fitting robe, he wore a silver medallion with the human bone in the center. They all wore the piece, some as ankle bracelets, others had them suspended from their wrists.

"Tumo and I have carefully gone over exactly what he is to do," Sumo Sam said. "If anything should happen to us, he will carry on."

"Nothing will happen to us." Carlsbad smiled. "So long as I have the strain in my possession, they must take extreme care in their moves. Come, let us go."

Carlsbad kissed the girl again, this time on the forehead, and walked toward the doorway. The giant and the other two Japanese that had been with him right along followed. I had to give it a final try.

"The whole world's alerted, Carlsbad," I yelled after him. "You can't win. Call it off."

He paused in the shadows of the archway and smiled back at me. "You are wrong," he said. "I can't lose."

I cursed inwardly, knowing the truth of what he'd answered. The minute he let that strain loose, he'd made his point. But he wasn't content with just making a point any longer. He was going to use X–V77 to bring the world down around itself. I glanced up to see the man Tumo watching me. He abruptly turned and hurried away. The others had begun to drift off and disappear into the numerous corridors that led from the central portion of the crumbled old temple.

Rita Kenmore still stood there. She was about to say something when the sound of an engine made the walls of the temple reverberate. It was a helicopter. I knew that distinctive sound and I listened as the chopper took off and finally faded from hearing. Only the girl was left looking at me.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I am, really."

"Get me out of here," I said to her quietly. "Now, while nobody's around. Quick!"

The china blue eyes grew even rounder, mirroring her shock that I should even think such a thing. She didn't move but I felt her draw back.

"I can't," she said, keeping her voice low. "I'm sorry but I just can't."

"Look, what if I said I think your uncle is right but I know he can't win," I suggested. "Let me out of here and I will help him."

"I wouldn't believe you," she said, her eyes serious. "You don't think anything like that. But he is right, you know. And what he's trying to do is right."

I gritted my teeth. I didn't have time for philosophical abstractions, but I had to get through to her.

"All right, I'll admit I don't know whether he's right or wrong. But I do know this. You can't do the right thing in the wrong way. When you do that, you destroy whatever lightness there is, and that's what your uncle's doing. Unfortunately, he's not only destroying concepts, he's going to destroy people, flesh and blood people."

She was looking at me, biting her lower lip with her teeth and I held my eyes steady on her. I knew I was finally getting to her. Suddenly Tumo reappeared and got to her first. He had two men and two women with him.

"Take her," he said quietly, and I groaned. Rita looked up as the men moved quickly to her, seizing her arms. She was frowning, not really comprehending. But I knew damn well what was happening. Carlsbad's idealistic movement had a few crosscurrents in it.

"What are you doing?" Rita gasped as they twisted her arms behind her back. "Let me go at once!"

Tumo's answer was a resounding slap across her face that made her pretty head swivel. I saw the tears come into her eyes. "I… I don't understand," she choked.

"I'll explain fast," I answered. "Tumo, here, is your large Oriental friend's man and has his own ideas about running things when your uncle is finished doing his bit."

Tumo smiled, a deadly, evil smile, and kicked me in the chest. As I saw his foot coming and he wore only sandals it merely hurt like hell. He turned to Rita and ran his hands down over her breasts. She tried to twist away, but the other two men were holding her immobile. The woman stood by watching.

"Your uncle is interested only in making the world understand" Tumo said. "We who have suffered and been victimized by the world's misuse of science are interested in making it pay.

He turned to the women. "Prepare the altar first and then her," he said. The men had already finished tying Rita's hands behind her back and her ankles together, just as I was tied. They flung her down beside me and I heard her cry out in pain as she hit the wall. When she finally looked at me, Tumo and the others had padded silently away and her face was tear-streaked.

"What are they going to do with us?" she asked, fear in her voice.

"Kill us," I said flatly. I didn't say anything about doing it the hard way. She'd find out soon enough. In fact, she found out sooner than I'd figured when the two women returned. One went to the altar and began rearranging the candles, bringing them closer to the stone slab and putting them in a semi-circle behind it. The other woman came over to Rita with a small pen-knife and began cutting away the girl's clothes until she was naked. Her eyes met mine, pained embarrassment and fear sharing room in them. The woman had gone over to the altar.

Embarrassment gave way to a gasp of terror as the two women returned, pulled her to her feet and dragged her to the stone slab of an altar. With a flood of sudden horror I saw what had been rigged over the altar slab. Rita's lovely young body was strapped onto the altar, her ankles untied, her legs spread and then secured by ankle straps. Her arms were tied at her sides. Over the stone slab, the candles had been arranged to drip their hot wax into long metal strips suspended from balanced wires. The two women saw my eyes roving over the arrangement as they finished with Rita.

"That is right," one said, turning to me. "The candles are made of a special wax — one that stays boiling hot for a long, long time. As the wax fills the metal strips they will tilt and pour down upon her. By morning, she will be coated with wax from head to foot."

I knew she was telling the truth. The network of metal funnels and strips over the stone slab looked like a diabolical mobile.

"She will die little by little," the woman said. "She will be our sacrifice to the spirit of pain. Others may pray to the symbols of love and peace and goodness, but we who have been injured beyond repair, we pray to our guiding spirit pain. It is pain which has guided our lives, physical pain, emotional pain."

The other woman was busy lighting the carefully arranged candles that were part of the whole mad contrivance. I saw Tumo enter at the head of a procession, walking slowly, murmuring chants. The two women joined the group as they all knelt in front of the stone slab. As the women kept up the chant, the men, led by Tumo, stood on both sides of the stone and rubbed their hands over the girl's naked form. It was more fear than pain that made Rita cry out. The pain would be coming soon enough. Finally they withdrew from the girl and joined the women in further chants. The candles continued to burn steadily and I could see the metal strips starting to fill up with hot, liquid wax.

I'd long since tested the wrist ropes and found them too tough to break. Hugo was still strapped to my forearm but, for the moment, of no help at all. Unless I found some way to get loose, Rita Kenmore would die and I'd be next. The wax would splash down on her little by little, with burning, scalding pain, finally covering the lovely lips and face until suffocation finished it off.

Unexpectedly the chanting stopped and the whole troupe rose and silently filed out of the main room. Rita's eyes were filled with tears as she turned her head and looked across at me.

I was busy figuring a way to get out of there. My eyes swept over the girl's naked form without regard for the utter loveliness of it I — was looking at her hands. They were free to open and close, even though her wrists were strapped to the stone. She could hold something in them, like Hugo! I didn't know how long we'd be alone,
so
it was now or never.

I started to propel myself across the floor, inch-worm fashion with ankles bound together. I was only halfway across when I realized my clothes were soaked with perspiration but I kept moving along, sometimes turning on my back and pushing myself forward, then scooting along on my side.

When I reached the edge of the stone slab, I had to stop for a moment to regain my breath. My chest was heaving and my mouth was dry, muscles strained and crying out for release. Sitting up, as straight as possible, I leaned my forehead against the edge of the stone slab and balanced myself as I managed to pull myself upright. It was precariously uncertain with ankles bound tightly together. But finally I was standing, hands still tight behind my back, leaning half across Rita's naked body to keep my balance enough to stay upright. My head came to rest on her right breast. In any other circumstances I'd have enjoyed it immensely.

My lips rubbed across one small pink tip.

Pulling myself along the edge of the slab, I stopped where her hand lay against the stone. Still bent forward, my head now resting on her thighs, I glanced up over the rise of the belly and the dark mound just in front of my eyes.