Monsters and Magicians (19 page)

"Some of the guys actually learned some Japanese. If only I had, too, I might be able to under— Hey, wait a fucking minute! I forgot, I'm a telepath now. If I can understand, even converse with a grey panther, a blue lion and a eleventh- or twelfth-century Norman, then why the hell not a Japanese?

"But wait another minute. Sir Gautier and his bunch were anything but friendly when they first came across me. I had to end up killing one of them

and ail-but kill Sir Gautier himself. I wonder . . . can I just enter the mind of one of those men down there without him knowing? Hell, I wish Puss or Cool Blue or somebody would tell me how this thing works, is really supposed to work, not just force me to blunder through everything the way they have. Dammit all, it's not fair!"

He sighed. "Well, the only way to find out whether or not I can is to try it. At least f m nowhere near as vulnerable to those Japs down there as I was to Sir Gautier and his guys, back when I first met them. I doubt if even those resourceful little Nips would be able to climb the straight, unbranched trunk of this tree easily or quickly should they even suspect that I'm hidden up here. And even if they did try to climb up, I've got enough pistol ammo in it and on my belt to kill them all with rounds left over long before any one of them got within spear-range.

"So the only question remaining now is which one do I start on? The big, mean-looking one? No, he's probably the sergeant, that's what he acts and sounds like. No, the one with the pair of samurai swords is probably an officer; I'll try to get into his mind first. Here goes."

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infantry and one attached light tank have gotten to in the elapsed time before he had decided to stop moving about to no purpose and established a more or less permanent camp?), Kaoru had no slightest trace of an idea where they were. His entire packet of maps was meaningless and the radio never produced anything other than static.

Pressed hard and unremittingly by the mixture of opponents facing them—British, Indian, American and Chinese—battalion command's decision had been to shorten the supply lines by dint of a quick night withdrawal and regrouping at a specified and hopefully more defensible point to the northeast. At the briefing of company commanders, Kaoru had carefully marked out on his map the route he and his company were to take, marking also significant compass coordinates in the margins. He and his newly inherited company also had been "rewarded" with the "honor" of escorting and zealously guarding one of the few remaining and therefore infinitely precious Type Ninety-five light tanks with its cart of diesel fuel, lubricants and ammunition.

The company had departed almost on schedule, leaving their vacated positions manned with a skeleton crew of barely trained, ill-armed Korean conscripts under command of a few Japanese and with orders to fight to the last bullet and bayonet for the glory of the Emperor. Banzai!

It had been raining, or course, it seemed that it always rained on night marches; Kaoru assumed that that was just the natural order of things on military campaigns. The march had been slow, exhausting and frustrating in the extreme, most of their troubles

relating to the light tank. The outmoded track vehicle had sat out most of the preceding two years in some army salvage compound somewhere until necessity had seen it and its mates brought back into field service, and the long neglect and storage under very adverse conditions became more than apparent on the march. Everything that conceivably could go wrong with the motorized abortion seemed to have chosen that night on that wet, muddy, slippery, miserable route to so do.

The crew of the tank had not proven all that much help with their weapon, all of them having been trained and done their fighting on later models; moreover, they tended to treat infantrymen—even while these were performing back-breaking labor on behalf of them and their cranky machine—with scathing contumely, deferring to Kaoru and his junior officers and NCOs because of the varying degrees of rank they held. Had the senior officers not been so adamant about the value of the tank that he and his company were to accompany and guard from harm, Kaoru would have early on had it stripped, booby-trapped and abandoned along the route, but much later he was to find glad that he had not done so.

Company Sergeant Kiyomoto proved the salvation of the problems with the recalcitrant tank. The big, tough veteran had served, it developed, with a mechanized infantry unit in China seven years before, and though not formally trained in automotive mechanics, he was the son of a blacksmith, understood metals, and owned a quick, intuitive mind as well as prodigious physical strength. If one of the crew members could tell him precisely what was the proper

purpose of a non- or ill-functioning part or assembly, it had been found that he could almost always restore it to some near-semblence of that function, though usually by way of highly unorthodox methods.

But because of the repeated delays and enforced halts on the march, the dawn had found them still less than halfway to their rendezvous with the rest of the battalion. After he had carefully chosen an off-trail position that was not only easily defensible from ground attack but would be reasonably simple to conceal from air reconnaissance, Kaoru had had the company radio assembled and its generator attached, and had sent the previously agreed-upon, coded message until battalion had responded. Once he had apprised them of his position, he had gone off the air.

Though it was not at all the season for heavy rains, the rain that had so tormented and hampered them on the night before not only continued during the succeeding day but at times increased in its intensity, with periods of heavy drizzle being followed by long bursts of blinding precipitation throughout the whole of the grey, cold, miserable day. Even worse, by nightfall the small stream that they had had to cross to reach their encampment area was become a raging, roaring, white-crested torrent. Two of his men were swept away and presumably drowned while vainly attempting to get a safety line across it.

The tank commander informed him that his vehicle could not possibly ford to such a depth and that a bridge must therefore be constructed. No, he knew nothing about such matters, that was the function of such low-echelon types as engineers and infantry.

The radio was cranked up and activated and battalion, when at last it responded, heard out the encoded problem, then ordered Kaoru to either remain in place until the torrent's waters ebbed low enough for the tank to cross or, better, march cross-country and parallel to the trail until he came across a way to get back on his assigned route of march, but in any and all cases, to arrive at his destination with the tank.

The tank and its mule cart had been enough retardation to any land of a steady advance on the now-inaccessible track, but trying to get them cross-country was an all-but-insurmountable problem to Kaoru and his part of an infantry company. No one could move any faster than dog-tired men could hack a way through vegetation, haul away obstructions and fill holes or soft places, all the while sweating, tortured by all manner of noxious insects and leeches, having to be every wary of poisonous snakes, scorpions and huge spiders. Edges of machetes and axes quickly became dulled and so close to useless that it was necessary to keep a section constantly sharpening the tools. Ropes snapped and had to be knotted together to await resplicing at a later time. And all the while that so many were striving for them, the tank officer, his crew and two mule drivers sat by in idleness, making rude comments about infantrymen in general and these in particular, while flatly refusing to aid in their own salvation by joining the work crews. Nor could Kaoru do aught to change the situation, since the ever-sarcastic and arrogant tank officer outranked him by one grade.

By superhuman efforts, the column had, by late

afternoon, advanced all of about three kilometers, Kaoru estimated, and when the lead line of axe- and machete-men broke through into a more or less clear area filled with tumbled and overgrown stone ruins, he called a halt for the day. Enough was enough; he doubted his men could endure much more such labor this wet, waning day.

A squad was sent to scout out the ruins and returned to report no signs of recent human habitation. So they went into another wet camp. After he had reported and given the compass bearings of his position to battalion, Kaoru was briefly castigated for making so little distance from the previous night's position, but then he had expected such.

Soon after dark the sky above cleared, stars and moon shining bright and full over the forested hills. The roar of aeroplanes was heard twice during that night, but the camp had been well laid out and well camouflaged, the efforts of Kaoru's force aided by nature in the form of many large trees with thick, overhanging foliage and by the long-forgotten builders of the stone ruins in provision of so many places wherefrom the glows of smokeless fires could not be seen from above.

But warplanes and hostile men were not the only enemies of these Sons of Nippon in the trackless wilds of Burma, circa 1945. In the wan, grey and misty false dawn, a tiger tried to get at the mules and ended by ferociously mauling the guard, whose bayoneted Arisaka rifle made precious little impression upon the four hundred pounds of cat. However, the screams of the man brought the nearby tank crew to wakefulness, and the effect of over a hundred rounds

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of 7.7mm ball from the hull machinegun rapidly reduced the predator (and the unfortunate guard, as well) into a virtual blood pudding.

When he had examined the scene and taken the reports, Kaoru disgustedly asked of the tank commander, "Lieutenant, why didn't you use the 37mm as well? Then there'd be less to dispose of."

That worthy, engaged in carefully polishing the long, yellow-white cuspid he had had one of his men pry from out the upper jaws of the much-perforated tiger, replied languidly, in his usual, supercilious way, "Because the tube was not charged, my dear Naka, while the hull gun had an opened breech with a belt in place. Any other questions, Naka?"

Seething with rage, but keeping his color and his outward calm intact, Kaoru had politely thanked the despised tank officer and stalked off, in the light of the new rainless day, to send out a patrol or two to hopefully find a quicker, easier way back to the track than would be a climb up than a descent down the slopes of the heavily forested hill that now separated them from their previous route of march. It was either that or backtrack the previous day's march and go back to where they had been when first they had left the track . . . and he had a notion that battalion would not approve that course at all, for all that it might prove the easiest and fastest in the long run.

But just before the patrols returned, neither of them with at all promising information, Sergeant Kiyomoto had come and reported to him in his proper, by-the-book way. He had informed his superior that there was, behind a screening of vegetation, a high,

wide opening at the base of the steep hill to the west, the one that separated them from the track. The roof, walls and pavement of the seeming tunnel was of ancient worked stone, and it seemed to run directly through the hill in a straight line, light being visible at the other end of it.

Kaoru had first felt his heart leap, then he had frowned—that cursed tank and mule cart! —and he had asked, dubiously, "But is it high enough, wide enough, to take the tank, Sergeant?"

The opening, when he paced it off, certainly was more than wide enough for the tank, and easily high enough, Kaoru had then estimated. Then, once the highly discouraging reports of the patrols had been received and disgested, he had had a supply of torches prepared and he, Lieutenant Ozawa and Sergeant Kiyomoto had gone almost the full length of the underhill tunnel, often slipping or sliding on the damp, slimy stonework floor, while half-seen things scurried and scuttled and slithered out of their path and away from the dim and flaring light of the torches. The brush and vines and small trees at the western mouth of the tunnel had been too thick for him to get much of a look at what lay outside it save that there was a gradually descending slope and a stream at the base of the hill, as he had seen on his maps of the area. Although he could see only a rise of sorts lined with trees beyond the stream, he knew that the track must lie just the other side of that tree line.

Immediately upon their return, he had set his company to the sole task of fashioning torches with which to light their way in transit of the long, very dark tunnel to the western side of the steep hill.

Then he had gone to impart of this finding of a quick and easy way back to their assigned route of march to the tank commander. He had thought that his information would please the officer. He was quickly made aware of just how wrong he was.

Not even trying to mask his impatience, the armor officer had heard Kaoru out in foot-tapping silence, then he snapped, "Impossible, Naka, utterly impossible, you must put your uniformed aggregation of cretins to the task of finding another way. My tank is of exceeding value just now, to the Army, to the very Empire. It must be given the care you would give a personal possession of the very Son of Heaven, our Emperor, had such been placed within your keeping.

"Why, what if the machine should break down, develop some type or variety of trouble within that tunnel? Do you think it could be repaired by torchlight, even by your hulking, rural blacksmith of an infantry sergeant? I think not!

"Besides, these ruins all are incredibly ancient, uncared for, given any land of repair who knows how many centuries ago, and that applies to your precious tunnel, too. Naka, it could well be a real deathtrap, for in case you hadn't noticed the fact, tanks make noise, they make a great deal of noise, enough noise that the vibrations of that noise might very well bring the whole of that damned hill down upon us all.

"I must tell you this, Naka, my estimation of your fitness for command—indeed, of your overall intelligence—has not been at all enhanced by this last few days' blunders and real lack of even the bare rudiments of effective leadership of that idiot rabble you

choose to call a company of soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army. And now this suggestion that I take part in your lunacy? No, Naka," he had shaken his head, "I fear that in all conscience, it must be my duty to inform the battalion commander of just how inept you are and rather strongly suggest your quick replacement/'

It had all welled up in Kaoru then, welled up with such force and pressure as to defy restraint. But, as was his way, the final bursting forth had come not in physical violence or in shouts of rage. "What's your real problem, Lieutenant," he had inquired gently, solicitously, "are you afraid of the dark? Afraid of going through an old tomb? Afraid of Burmese ghosts, is that it?"

The only thing that had saved Kaoru's life at that moment had been that the tank commanders 8mm Nambu pistol had failed to fire—as was common in that ill-designed model—and before he had been able to clear it, the quick and powerful Sergeant Kiyomoto had twisted it from out his hands.

Disarmed, the tank crew and their officer had been marched through the tunnel under guard of the infantry riflemen they so despised, while Sergeant Kiyomoto had trailed the column in the tank, that its exhaust fumes not choke the men and that, in the event of a breakdown, it not block the tunnel to the column and the mule cart. The unquestionable age of the structure of the tunnel and the announced fears of the tank officer notwithstanding, not one sfone fell or so much as shifted during the transit of the tank and the column.

They left the camp in the ruins at about ten o'clock

in the morning, under a cloudy sky that threatened imminent rain, but as the tank exited through the space the men had hurriedly hacked and chopped through the heavy growths at the western mouth of the tunnel, Kaoru suddenly realized that it seemed to be—at least to judge by the position of the sun which burned hot upon them there on the hillside— not much more than two hours before sunset. He was certain that the tunnel's length had been no more than a couple of hundred meters, at the most, so how could this time lapse be?

But no one else had seemed to notice and, with so much else of serious import to occupy his thoughts, he just allowed the enigma to remain that and turned to other matters. First, he sent out a platoon-strength probe under command of one of his remaining junior officers—a one-time classmate—to scout out the track that lay beyond the visible line of trees and be certain that no enemies lay in wait to ambush them.

Disastrously, one of his primary problems of the moment was effectively resolved while still the strong patrol was on its way to the stream and the trees beyond. Upon being refused return of any of his personal weapons by Kaoru the tank officer had gone into a livid, frothing rage, shouting vile utterances at his captor the one moment, the next lying upon the ground, writhing, face twisted in obvious agony, hand clutching clawlike at his chest. Then, suddenly, he had gone first board-stiff, then limp, lifeless, unbreathing.

Kaoru would have liked it better to have put Sergeant Kiyomoto into the vacated command of the tank—he understood the vehicle better than any other infantryman, he had proven that he could drive it

and, moreover, the surviving crew members all moved in undisguised fear of him—but he was needed too much in the day-to-day management of the infantry company, so the young commanding officer had put the vehicle under one of his juniors.

He would have liked to order the proper disposition made of the newly dead corpse of the tank officer, but he knew not but that the ascending smoke of a funerary pyre would attact the decidedly unwelcome attentions of the enemy in one form or another, so he had the body stripped of all its equipment and most of its uniform, then buried on the hillside near the mouth of the tunnel, taking a compass bearing of the location and noting it down for the eventual turnover to battalion headquarters. Under the circumstances, he felt that he had done his best by his deceased brother officer.

The patrol was gone far longer than the mission should have required and, although Kaoru had made good use of the time by positioning the men out of sight from the ground or air and positioning the tank just inside the mouth of the tunnel with the cart behind it, the company commander was getting more than a little worried when the watching Sergeant Kiyomoto came to report that the missing patrol had been seen recrossing the stream, apparently bearing with them at least one body, either seriously wounded or dead.

While the soldier who had died of a broken neck when he had fallen from a tall tree after being sent up to try to spot the track was being stripped and buried beside the tank officer, Kaoru had occupied the commander's place while Sergeant Kiyomoto had

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driven the tank over to seek himself for the mysteriously missing track. They had not found it then or ever since. Nor, since setting off to the west in search of it, had they ever again been able to relocate the tunnel mouth or the two graves, despite the carefully noted compass readings.

When diesel fuel for the tank was almost nonexistent, Kaoru had discussed the matter with his two officers, and the decision had been reached that they should make a permanent camp where they then happened to be. It was a place that seemed to offer many benefits; both large game and smaller seemed abundant in the vicinity along with several types of edible wild plants and both fish and crustaceans in the flanking stream.

And there was abundant proof that some other party once had found this spot favorable. On the hillslope about halfway between base and low crown, there still stood the log walls of a structure about thirteen meters long and four meters wide in outside measurements. Two other, smaller, almost square huts of identical construction stood downslope closer to the stream and, farther down still, lay the tumbled logs of still another that seemed to have been wrecked by some flood which had undermined its footings.

The decision being made, the logs of the larger building had been meticulously examined and, upon being determined basically still sound, Kaoru had ordered the interior dug clear of earth and debris. The excavations had, early on, revealed the way in which the collapsed roof had been constructed— interlaced branches holding a layer of turf and itself supported by interior columns and girders of wood.

Beneath the last layers of earth and rotted wood had been found two circular firepits and, most welcome, a fine selection of cooking pots and pans wrought of verdigrised brass, bronze, and copper and some lumps of useless rust that had once been knives or utensils of some nature-There had also been moldering bones beneath the last layers. At least six sets of them had been human remains—ranging from one that had been an infant to at least three full-grown adults—and some had the appearance of butchered animals bones or bone tools. One, however, that one found nearest to the entry and between the two firepits, had been that of a gigantic beast. Kaoru had been sent for when first the size of the thing had been realized—at least four full meters from tailtip to snout—and had been on the spot throughout its disinterment.