War From The Clouds (15 page)

"Pico was a professor of anthropology at Nicarxa University," I said, looking at Pico to confirm that by memory of what he had told me that day at his hermitage was correct. "He was head of the department of Indian Culture when he became involved in a revolutionary activity that changed his life forever. Am I correct, Pico, in assuming that, as head of the department of Indian Culture, you would have been required to learn the various hieroglyphics used by all the tribes in this area?"

Pico nodded. "You have a map? What kind of map?"

I asked Chief Botussin to explain about the map. It was a mistake. The old chief wound himself up a tangled web of words that seemed to have no ending. It took five precious minutes for him to reach his point: that the map showed Ancio how to find the cave entrance and that his warriors took the map from Ancio and that it had been kept in a secret hiding place ever since and that he would be sorely tried if it fell into evil hands, etcetera.

"May I see it?" Pico asked.

Antonio had the map in a leather pouch strapped to the small of his back. He quickly undid the pouch and handed the fragile parchment over to Pico. The old man studied it for more time than I would have liked him to spend on it. The sun got hotter, the flies meaner and the day much, much shorter. Pico finally looked up and saw the worried looks on all our faces. He grinned at me.

"Don't worry so much about the time, Senor Carter," he said. "I have good news about that. The signal will not be given before sundown. At this time of year, sundown will come shortly after 8:30. You have ample time."

I looked at my watch, a digital creation that was a gift from David Hawk. It was full of lifetime batteries. And the numbers read 12:22. I breathed a small sigh of relief. I had estimated that we had perhaps six or seven hours to stop Don Carlos from sending the signal. We actually had more than eight hours. Yet, it was no great solace learning that piece of good news — we could use, I was sure, more than eight
days
and still be cutting it close.

"The big concern is the map," I said, "and whether you can read the hieroglyphics. Can you?"

"Oh yes. In my time on the mountainside, I had many hours to continue my studies. And I took along textbooks from anthropologists and sociologists, who have recorded the hieroglyphics of all the ancient tribes in Central and South America. I knew them by heart when I was actively teaching, but I could have forgotten them in thirty years, as I forgot the trail to the cave. Fortunately, I loved my work as a professor of anthropology, so I kept up. However…"

We all sucked in breath, anticipating another round of bad news. We got it.

"The critical area of the map is far too faint to be seen, even by the best of eyes. The map shows a trail leading from an ancient encampment over there…" he raised a long arm and pointed off to the west — "to a point near the mouths of seven valleys." He pointed to the northeast. "But that section concerning the hollows and the cave itself are so faded that — I'm sorry, but it's hopeless."

Bad news — in spades. He could read the map, but seeing it hadn't lifted the veil that covered his memory, hadn't triggered any sharp or even faint details of the route to the cave entrance. And a vital part of the map was too faded to be read.

"What I don't understand," I said, "is how Ancio — or Don Carlos — was able to use this map to find the cave entrance."

"It was easy for him," Pico said. "As Chief Botussin said, he was coached by the old man who entrusted the map to him. And there's another thing. This fading is a recent thing, brought on by Ancio's careless handling of the map. Then, again, the man had all the time in the world to find that cave, while our time, you must admit, is sorely limited."

There was a deep silence in the twin circles in the hot sun and the square of the Ninca village. Old Pico looked from face to face, then returned to a study of the map. More minutes passed. My watch read out at 12:36.
Less
than eight hours to go. If we had the answer this very minute, I calculated, it would take us two hours to get to the cave entrance, depending on which hollow it was in. That would give us six hours to make what had been calculated as a four-hour climb. We had, then, two hours to spare, two hours in which to learn the mystery of the map.

It was obvious to all of us that we wouldn't be able to make out that damned map in two hours, two days, or even two years. Perhaps even two lifetimes. Fat old Botussin began to shift nervously on the stool his buttocks had swallowed up on the ground. He was anxious to end this fruitless confab and set up his defenses against Don Carlos Italla's elite corps. We could expect them just minutes after the 8:30 signal was given. I knew the old chief was considering moving the Indian village back to the ancient site shown on the map. That would give the Nincas more time, but we all knew that the elite corps would soon find that location. In a matter of days, perhaps even hours.

By tomorrow at this time, there would be no more Ninca Indians in the country of Nicarxa. And, unless another miracle occurred, no more Nick Carter. After my killing of Col. Ramon Vasco, I could count on the fact that my name was high on the list of kills, probably higher than the names of the Nincas.

Pico stirred on the ground, held the map up toward the sun to look at it from a new angle. We waited for Botussin to call an end to the meeting, to start preparing his final defenses. The chief opened his mouth to speak, but Pico held up his enormous hand for silence. He had a new thought. Good news or bad news?

"High above my plateau," he said, more to himself than to the rest of us, "there is a certain herb I found that I boiled into a clear liquid. I coated the print on some of my books, print that was growing faint. Or perhaps it was only my eyes going faint. In any event, the print grew darker, more distinct. I could read it more easily."

He paused again and we were all up on our toes, waiting for him to go on. Even old Botussin was leaning forward so far that I expected to hear the invisible legs of his stool snap like matchsticks. He wouldn't have much of a fall, his overflowing buttocks were almost touching the ground as it was. Behind me, Elicia had sucked in her breath and was holding it. I wondered if her brown skin would turn blue if the old hermit didn't continue talking soon.

"Of course," Pico went on, "the liquid used on my books might destroy this old parchment altogether, or it may not work at all. In my opinion, it is worth a try."

It was good news, or potentially good news.

"How long will it take?" I asked, still clock-conscious.

Pico shrugged. "Miracles must not be shackled to the schedules of man," he said. "It will take however long it takes. I will return when the task is done. If it is successful, I will return to help find the entrance to the cave. If it is not, I will return to help defend against the elite corps."

He got up and started off alone. I knew that the elite corps was already taking up positions in the region, in anticipation of Don Carlos Italla's flare signal. I also knew that the guerillas guarding the mouths of the seven hollows would still be out searching for those who had killed so many of their number.

"Some of us will go with you, Pico," I said, stopping the hermit. "Your journey is perhaps the most important ever taken in this country. We can't have you ambushed and killed on the trail."

"I will accept an escort to a certain point," Pico said, grinning again to show that he wasn't ready yet to let others know of his hidden plateau. "But you must remain here, Senor Carter."

"Oh, no you…"

"That is a condition," Pico said curtly. "If you are to lead the climb up the chimney, if we find the cave, you will need all the strength you possess. You have pushed yourself too much already. If you don't stay and rest, I will not even try to clarify the mysteries of this old map."

A part of me accepted what he said; that part of me wanted to rest, to let the tensions and the fatigue drain away. Another part, the part that has made me the top Killmaster for AXE, wanted to continue to push, to be in on the action, all the action. The first part won.

I watched from the edge of the square as the giant hermit went down the trail. He was flanked by Antonio and Purano. Behind them went two dozen warriors, spears in hand. I kept my weapons just in case the guerillas from the hollows found their way into the Ninca camp.

Chief Botussin arose from his stool and I was surprised to find that it hadn't been damaged, that the legs hadn't been punched into the ground.

"You sleep," he said, pointing to the council hut. "My servants will clear out the flies and put shades over the windows and door to provide quiet dark for your slumber. Don't expect the hermit for at least two hours. Sleep well."

Some order that. If it took Pico two hours to return with the solution, that left only six hours. The climb up the chimney would take four hours, at least, but there was a two-hour journey to the seven hollows. We had no slack time at all. With such troubled thoughts, I lay on the pallet in the darkened council hut to try to sleep. Elicia, I presumed, had gone off to stay with the tribal women until Pico's return. I hadn't seen her when I had turned back from watching Pico, Antonio, Purano and the warriors disappear down the trail.

I lay there and felt the hopelessness, the desolation, of our plight settle down over my mind. It was hopeless, and I knew it. That parchment was two hundred years old and the ink used to make those symbols had no relationship whatever to the inks used in Pico's books. The herbs he found above the plateau wouldn't have the same effect on the parchment that it had on the books. But I was willing to go along because the experiment spelled hope for these people. If they were to die in a matter of hours — days at the most — let them retain hope as long as possible. The death of hope has always signalled the death of the cause. But hope, I was convinced, was all that we had to go on now.

The good news, I was certain, wasn't really good news at all. It was a vision in the jungle, an ephemeral presence like an image projected on a wall of fog. With that unhappy thought, I began to drift into sleep.

A soft, pleasant dream was already starting. I was in the George Cinq Hotel dining room in Parts. Across from me was Diane Northrup, a woman I had loved in an earlier time. She was smiling, sipping from a glass of champagne. The orchestra was playing our favorite song. Diane leaned forward to kiss me and I heard a familiar voice, close by, sweet, bell-like and melodic:

Still half asleep, I couldn't believe that I would mix Diane Northrup and Elicia Cortez in the same dream. I couldn't imagine Elicia in the dining room of the very proper George Cinq Hotel in Paris, anymore than I could imagine Diane here in this hot hut in the middle of an Indian village in the Caribbean.

Something soft crept up along my chest. Something even softer, and smelling of orange blossoms, pressed against my shoulder. And then naked legs touched mine, slipped up over me and began to move gently back and forth.

I came fully awake, out of a pleasant dream into a far more pleasant reality.

Elicia was beside me on the pallet. She was naked and her hair was still damp from having bathed in the stream below the village. Once again, she had found orange blossoms and had crushed them against her skin, from head to toe.

I gazed into her loving eyes and still couldn't convince myself that I wasn't dreaming. She kissed my lips and I found my arm going around her back, caressing the soft, sweet-smelling skin. My hand went down to her gently-rising buttocks and I felt the erection building magnificently at my middle. This was no dream.

"Elicia, do you know what you're doing?"

She shushed me with a fragrant finger across my lips. "I know," she said. "No talk. Only love."

All right, I had tried. Time and again, I had turned away from the pleasures that this girl had offered me. Time and again, I had felt noble about my intentions, about my abstinence. Well, there is a time to put all that jazz behind you. That time was now.

Days of frustration and abstinence and temptation had built up a tremendous drive inside me. My erection was more than an erection. It was a budding, blossoming, flowering instrument of sex and love and lust and frustration. Elicia found the hardness and enclosed it with her hand.

There were no more thoughts about what would happen to Elicia when this caper was over. There were no more thoughts about whether she belonged to me or to Purano. There were no more concerns for whether she was still a virgin by the flesh or by the soul. The future had no place in my mind. Or my body. The needs of the flesh and of the soul were so intense, so ready, for each of us that we shut out past and future and plunged helter-skelter into the present.

I started gently, recalling the brutal rapings this girl had endured for three months from the Cuban Marines. She seemed to like it. I raised up and gazed at those erect, ripe breasts that had tantalized me so often in her loose blouse. I kissed the nipples, tenderly, then with more purpose. I sucked and she arched her back and raised her pubis to me. I lay my hardness along the mound and gently massaged until she let out a moan and bit my ear.

"Enough gentleness," she said, gasping, chewing on my ear. "Take me now and let me know the pleasure of losing my virginity to one I love. Oh, Nick, love me for now, for now only."

When I entered her, she was ready. She climaxed almost instantly and I thought it was over. She took a few seconds of respite and then the passion grew in her to a newer and higher level. She swallowed me up, rising and falling, plunging and withdrawing. She climaxed three more times before it finally happened to me. I had been holding back, savoring it, wanting it to go on forever — or, at least, for the next two hours. But nothing lasts forever. She responded by climaxing again, for the fifth time. I have always envied women that capacity, but I wouldn't have traded that one gigantic climax for all the little ones in the world.