Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs (16 page)

"How is she?" Indy asked.

"Unharmed physically, I think," Granger said. "But rather in a state of shock mentally. It was the sight of Tzi's soldiers disemboweling some poor herdsmen that put her over the edge. She began to scream hysterically until the soldiers slapped her quiet, then she closed her eyes and hasn't opened them since. It's been close to six hours now, if my sense of time hasn't left me."

"Did you get a chance to peek beneath your blindfold to see where they were taking us?"

"No," Granger said. "But we must be close to the cliffs, with as much climbing as we did."

"What kind of dungeon is this?"

"I'm afraid it's no dungeon. This is where they do most of their meat processing, judging by the bloody pile of bones in the corner.... Ah, Jones?"

"Yes, Walter."

"What's the plan?"

"Sorry, I'm fresh out."

There was the rattle of a key being turned in a lock and then the heavy wood door of the cavern swung open. General Tzi, flanked by two of his machine-gun-toting soldiers, waddled into the room.

Tzi was grotesquely fat, with a black Fu Manchu mustache that hung over his jowls and quivered when he spoke. He was wearing a faded green army uniform from the Great War with rows of medals hanging from the chest. The medals were from a half-dozen nations and had been taken from a variety of soldiers he had killed. On the shoulders of the uniform he had pinned large gold stars. Beneath his arm he carried a riding crop.

Perched on the top of his head was Indy's fedora. It was several sizes too small, and the effect would have been comical if Indy had not known who Tzi was.

One of the guards carried a bucket of water, and at Tzi's command he tossed the water into Joan's face.

"Hello," Tzi said.

"Go to hell," Joan sputtered.

"My dear, we are already there," Tzi said. "The Citadel of the False Lama. I have followed your trek across Mongolia for some time, ever since that business with Feng at the Great Wall."

"You must have some communication network," Indy said.

"The False Lama sees everything," Tzi averred.

"Baloney," Granger spat.

"Actually, you are right. Foreigners have marveled for generations over how quickly news travels here, where there are no telegraph lines or radio stations. The answer is quite simple, actually. Gossip travels from well to well like wildfire, and all of my envoys are trained to listen for any information that might be useful to me. Information is power, don't you agree?"

"I wouldn't agree if you said two plus two is four," Indy declared.

"Such courage in the face of certain doom." Tzi's eyes twinkled evilly. "I will enjoy cooking your heart in a little sherry and eating it for my dinner tonight. That also is power, is it not? To consume the organ that is the source of courage? Hmm, you are a university professor, are you not, Dr. Jones? I might just scoop your brains out of your skull as well."

"I hope I give you indigestion," he said.

"Tzi," Granger put in. "I have had quite a career as a big-game hunter and my courage and resourcefulness are well documented. Why, some might even say they are legendary. Why don't you feast on my carcass, old man, and let the others go?"

"You are an old fool whom I find unappetizing," Tzi said. "You, I will feed to my dogs."

"Really," Granger said. "Jones can't even shoot."

"Now, what will I do with this one?" Tzi asked as he placed his riding crop beneath Joan's chin and turned her head to the torchlight. Then he reached out and caressed the front of her tunic.

Joan spat in his face.

"What shall I do indeed," he continued, wiping away the saliva. "It would be a shame to eat you because then you would be all gone! No, I think I shall keep you around a few days to amuse me, then I will sell you into slavery. Many men in this territory are curious about Western women and I will have no trouble finding a buyer. What a profitable venture your expedition has become for me. What a price this one will bring!"

"Tzi..." Joan assumed a businesslike tone.

"Yes, my little concubine?"

"It is apparent that you desire power and knowledge above all things," she went on.

"What a perceptive woman."

"If you get rid of us, you will never know the secret of the
allergorhai-horhai,
" she concluded.

"The sacred beast?"

"The same."

"Legend has it that to eat the flesh of the sacred stone beast makes one indestructible," Tzi said wistfully. "But it is just a silly folk legend."

"It's not a legend," Joan said. "We have come in search of the
horhai,
and we were close to finding its hiding place when your men seized us."

Tzi barked orders for the guards to release her.

Joan put her arms around Tzi's neck.

"You know what else the flesh of the
horhai
makes you?" she whispered.
"Immortal."

"Let us go upstairs and discuss this with the Black One," Tzi said. "He will know how to interpret it. Guards! Prepare these two Americans for the evening meal. Do be careful not to spoil the heart tissue this time, will you?"

The guards slung their machine guns on their backs and advanced toward Indy and Granger with skinning knives. Between them was the water bucket, where they intended to fling the choicest cuts.

"Tzi," Joan wheedled.

"Yes, my morsel?"

One of the guards ran his blade down the front of Indy's shirt, popping the buttons. The second guard, who had hesitated because of the reprimand he had received from Tzi, asked the first guard for advice on technique.

"We need them. They have all the maps and clues and things in their heads, and if you eat them we won't know where to look for the
horhai
because I'm just no good with things like that. I get lost just going around the block, you know?"

Tzi paused.

The guard ran the tip of the skinning knife over Indy's bare chest and ribs, leaving a thin red line indicating the preferred pattern for butchering. Then he invited the other guard to proceed.

"Release them," Tzi said.

The knife had just drawn a trickle of blood along Indy's sternum when the guard was forced to release the pressure on the blade. Muttering, he threw the knife into the bucket and unshackled Indy's wrists.

"Thanks." Indy grinned.

The other guard did the same for Granger.

"Remind me," Granger muttered as he rubbed his wrists, "to kill as many of these buggers as I can before we get out of here."

The guards led them out of the dungeon and up a winding corridor of steps that emerged into a great hall. Black prayer wheels lined both sides of the hall, and whenever one of the monks in the black robes with red cuffs passed, the wheels were spun backward. Instead of prayer staffs, the monks carried with them long black pikes tipped with silver blades. In the center of the hall was a huge caldron on a tripod over a crackling fire, and as the caldron bubbled Indy could catch glimpses of human arms and legs churning in the broth.

At the end of the hall, on a high throne carved from red sandstone, sat a painfully thin figure in a black robe and hood. Indy could not see a face. Beneath the hem of the robe peeked a pair of antiquated and yellowing shoes called
crakows,
their floppy points looking like bird's feet.

"Let's get on with it," Indy said. "I have places to go."

"Before an audience with the Black One," Tzi said as a trio of monks came forward with wooden bowls of an amber-colored liquid, "you must be prepared."

"You can kill me, but I won't drink what's in that pot," Indy swore, and clenched his teeth.

"Don't be so dramatic, Dr. Jones," Tzi said. "The milk of human kindness, as we call it, is reserved for those of us who have pledged our souls to the Dark One. This is merely something to loosen your tongues so that we can get at the truth."

"What is it?" Indy sniffed the bowl that was held in front of him by the monk.

"It is reindeer urine, provided by our friends in nearby Siberia," Tzi explained. "The reindeer feast on the mushroom known as redcap, the fly agaric, and its already potent hallucinogenic qualities are rarefied as they pass through the kidneys of the deer."

"I won't drink it," Indy said.

From behind, Tzi's lieutenant—the same one that had taken them at gunpoint from the camp—jammed a dowel into Indy's mouth and pulled his head back as if he were reining in a horse. The guards held Indy still. He attempted to bite through the wooden dowel, but it was too stout. The monk poured the contents of the bowl over the dowel, and the ammonia-smelling liquid ran down Indy's mouth and pooled in his throat. As the guards held him between them the monk placed his hand over Indy's nose and mouth. Indy was faced with either swallowing the liquid or choking.

Indy swallowed.

The lieutenant laughed.

"Well done, Chang," Tzi told the lieutenant.

The dowel was removed.

"It won't hurt you," Tzi told the others. "Oh, it will upset your stomach and you may have a little vomiting spell when it is over, but you'll experience far more pain if you put up the kind of fight Dr. Jones did."

Granger and Joan swallowed the contents of their bowls.

"This is a nightmare, right?" Joan said. "I mean, I'm asleep in my tent and I'm having this terrible nightmare. Wild dogs, I can believe. But being held prisoner by cannibals and being forced to meet the devil—this has to be a dream. I've had enough of it, and I'm going to wake up now."

"It's no nightmare, Sister," Indy told her.

"Darn," she said. "I'm still here."

"All right," Tzi said. The guards shoved the trio across the stone floor toward the throne. "On your knees."

"Nope," Indy said. The guards clubbed the backs of his knees, causing his legs to buckle. He hit the floor on his hands and knees.

Granger was treated to the same procedure.

"God forgive me," Joan said as she knelt.

"That is not the one you have to worry about here," Tzi said.

"What now?" Indy asked.

"Stare into the face of the False Lama. Allow the Dark One to enter your soul, to become intimate with the secrets you are careful to hide from the light of day. We are all intrinsically evil; we come from darkness, and to darkness we shall return. The light is merely illusion."

Indy attempted to look anywhere but at the figure on the throne, but he found his eyes being inexorably drawn to the darkness within the hood. In a few moments he was fascinated by the void, and the darkness seemed so complete and reassuring that he forgot why he had been fighting in the first place.

Granger and Joan could not remember, either.

A constellation of stars seemed to gather within the void. With a bony hand enclosed in a red glove, the figure on the throne slowly reached up and pulled back the hood.

Indy gasped as he saw a tangle of red hair spill over the shoulders of the black robe. Alecia smiled at him, her blue eyes burning into his very soul, and she asked who it was that he had expected to meet.

"I don't know," he stammered.

"You don't think love would torture you like this for so long, do you?" she asked. "How could true love be this painful? How could real love be so cursed? No, Junior. But you've known the answer to this one all along. My names are Fear and Desire, and you will never be able to reconcile the two."

"No," Indy said.

"These emotions govern the world. Desire is the bait. Death is the hook. Love is an illusion, a convenient excuse for those who are too weak to take what they really want. You are weak, and so far you've gotten exactly what you deserve: nothing."

"You are not Alecia."

"Of course I am," she said soothingly. "Or don't you remember the tattoo across my back? Or the search for the Philosopher's Stone? Or any of a thousand other things we have shared since that day you walked into the British Museum?"

"Sometimes I hate you," he said.

"Of course you do," she murmured. "Hate is a healthy thing. At least it is passionate. If you loved me, do you think you'd be having those thoughts about that nun? And why shouldn't you hate me? We have shared everything except that one thing which you desire most. And you could have it so easily, and so completely, if only..."

"If only what?"

"If only you would quit trying to save the world," she replied. "The world doesn't want to be saved. If it did, there wouldn't be a Hitler or a Mussolini. And you know what else? In your heart of hearts, you know that
one person
can't make a difference. It's stupid and useless. And the reason you hate those guys in the starched uniforms so much is because they remind you of yourself. Junior, you would make one perfect Nazi."

Alecia began to laugh.

"I
can
make a difference," Indy said, nearly pleading. "I have to make a difference...."

As Alecia's laughter died out the face in the hood slowly transformed. The blue eyes turned to golden slits and the hair receded into scales.

"I am the Serpent King," a reptilian voiced boomed from the snake's mouth. "The Wyrm Primeval, consciousness engaged in the field of time, the cycle of life, the consumption of the weak by the strong. There is no meaning to life. It is an unending alimentary canal...."

Indy looked away.

"There
is
meaning," he said, his knees shaking.

When he dared to glance back he found himself staring into the orbitals of a grinning crystal skull.

"Tell us about the
horhai,
" the skull asked pleasantly in a female voice.

"The triceratops." Indy shook his head in an attempt to understand why he was suddenly talking to the skull.

"Go on."

Indy took a deep breath.

"Continue, I said!"

"Now let me get this straight," Indy said. "You're the all-powerful and all-knowing False Lama, right? Then why are you asking me things that you should already know?"

"Worm bait! How dare you answer my questions with questions."

"Granger," Indy said. "Are you here?"

"Here and there," Granger replied.

"Remember what you asked me to remind you of?"