Jungle Of Steel And Stone Part 6

"I can never repay you for what you did with my . . . woman and my son. G.o.d forgive me for saying so, but not' even He could fill the hole left in my life when they were gone. For many years I have prayed to resolve this conflict. Sometimes I havea"literallya"prayed until my knees bled. But it seems I am all too human, too much of the flesh. The conflict cannot be resolved, and so I am reduced to prayers for the salvation of my soul despite the continual breaking of my solemn vows."

"You don't have to tell me these things, Father."

"Those were things I wanted to tell you. But there is also something I must tell you. It is Carl Nagle whom you must watch out for; I cannot stress this point strongly enough. Vahanian knows nothing, and he would be in great danger if Nagle even suspected that he did. Nagle is more than just one more crooked cop on the take, Veil. He's an enforcer. And he is quite mad. I've heard it saida"oftena" that he enjoys inflicting physical pain. I don't know. Certainly he has no feelings that you and I would be familiar with. I have never known, or heard of, anyone so able to instill pure terror into anyone he chooses to intimidate. The measure of this is the fact that he is an Honors cop, one of the most decorated in the department. He is so successful in solving cases precisely because he can terrorize information out of anyone. He could have been promoted many times, but, of course, he cannot leave the streets because that is where he earns by far the greatest part of his income, for the Mafia. And, of course, he is at home there."

"n.o.body's ever blown the whistle on this guy?"

"Three times his victims have tried. You must remember that the families have strong connections in the police department."

"n.o.body, and no organization, has that much control over the police in this city; I know too many decent, honest cops at all levels of command."

"Nevertheless, Carl Nagle has always been exonerated. His three accusers ended up . . . broken. Word gets around. He is an unbelievably dangerous man, Veil, totally ruthless, without scruples or mercy. He is probably the man who was sent to kill Vito Ricci. He is truly a monster, and it is said that only those who have seen his true face can know just how terrible he is."

"To tell you the truth, Father, I didn't much care for his everyday face. I'll keep an eye out for him."

"There's more. I hear that the responsibility for finding the idol has been given to Nagle personally by the family heads. In fact, influence was brought to bear inside the police department to have Nagle transferred from his own precinct to the East Side after the idol turned up in the gallery; the families hoped that merely being in his jurisdiction would deter petty thieves. The fact is that Nagle has been skating on thin ice for some time, and so he's under particular pressure to see that the capos get the idol."

"Why has he been skating on thin ice?"

"Detective Nagle has always had a difficult time keeping his p.e.c.k.e.r in his pants. It seems he has a penchant for raping and sodomizing young women unfortunate enough to fall into his...o...b..ta"hookers, junkies, sometimes teenage runaways."

"Oh, Jesus."

"Yesa"oh, Jesus. Anyway, even his outside employers have been finding Nagle a bit difficult to stomach lately. As you know, it's not easy to survive the disapproval of these people. Nagle knows that. He won't be raping any kids for a while, but he knows that he needs to get the idol for the capos in order to get back into their good graces. He's under pressure, which means that his low flash point is going to be even lower while he hunts for the bushman and the idol. Since you appear to be involving yourself in this matter, I wanted you to know the nature of one of your enemies. Carl Nagle is perhaps the cruelest and most dangerous man you've ever met."

"Well, those are two t.i.tles he'll have to earn," Veil said as he embraced the priest. "Thank you again, Father. You've been a great help."

"Go with G.o.d, Veil."

Twenty years before, in jungle ooze and rot, Veil had learned from the Viet Cong and Pathet Lao how to wait. And so he waited; for almost two weeks he waited, but there was no word of the missing K'ung warrior-prince or of the idol he carried. It was, Veil thought, as if Toby's G.o.d had somehow moved them both through time and s.p.a.ce and returned them to the Kalahari. Which, of course, Veil knew had not happened.

He began to have the odd but persistent feeling that he knew something important, but he could not determine what it was.

In his quest to do what he could to save the K'ung's life and see the idol returned to its rightful owners, Veil viewed himself as a kind of lone guerrilla, without any natural const.i.tuency. To Toby, should Veil find him, he would be nothing but a hostile ghost, something to run a spear through. Also, he was certain that Reyna Alexander did not trust him completely. He did not return to Central Park, reasoning that if Reyna could not find Toby, he could not, eithera"and would not know what to do with the K'ung if he did.

The feeling that he knew something important persisted.

During the first week he'd called Reyna frequently but had found her gone at odd hours; when finally he had reached her, she had sounded sleepya"as though she were catching up on sleep whenever she could. Twice he had waited outside the missionary college, then tried to follow her when she had come out. Each time he had lost her; as good as he was at trailing and tracking, Reyna was better. Obviously wary, she started off each time in a different direction; then, in what had seemed a wink of an eye, she had vanisheda"into a crowd or store or around a corner. It had occurred to Veil that Reyna had found Toby and was hiding and ministering to hima"but he had rejected the idea. If she had found the K'ung, Veil reasoned, she eventually would have convinced him to allow her to take him to a hospital, a police station, or perhaps even a foreign consulate to ask for asylum.

Veil concluded that Reyna was still searching for Tobya" in Central Park, perhaps, but also beyond. She knew something.

They both knew the same thing, Veil thought. The crucial difference was that Reyna realized exactly what it was she knew.

The attention of the media had begun to flag in the second week, and there was only an occasional news updatea"using file footagea"on the tribe itself, which was being kept informed of events by the two Wesley missionaries and had paused in its self-inflicted moral and physical genocide to await the outcome of Toby's strange odyssey.

In Southern California, a Church of the Black Messiah had been formed; emissaries from the mother church were en route to New York in order to consecrate Victor's gallery as holy ground.

Toby emerged from his cover on a Friday night, close to midnight. Veil had been painting at his easel since dawn, working on a new series of canvases, monitoringa"as alwaysa"the news on both radio and cable television. When the bulletin was announced, Veil turned off the radio and concentrated on the CNN coverage. He tried to call Reyna, but she was not home.

After an hour of watching live coverage, interspersed with reporters' speculations on where Toby had been hiding and where he was heading, Veil cleaned his brushes, washed up, and prepared to go out. Then he thought better of it. First, he knew he was exhausted; second, he saw no point in going to Central Park to join the crowd that was already therea"police, reporters, and, undoubtedly, Carl Nagle. There was simply nothing he could do. Also, he strongly suspected that wherever Reyna Alexander was, she was not in Central Park.

Veil downed a stiff drink, then went to bed in order to rest his body and search his mind for the important thing that he knew.

Chapter Seven.

Veil dreams.

He sees Toby running up the street toward Central Park and imagines himself entering the bushman's body, mind, and soul. In the process he wills himself to lose his language, to remember only those few English words Toby would have learned from Reyna and the missionaries. He will see through Toby's eyes, feel with Toby's body, think with Toby's mind, filter sensations through Toby's consciousness.

Veil will be Toby.

He has never seen such a weapon before, one that attacks hearing at the same time as it hurls an invisible spear to pierce the flesh and cause terrible pain. However, at the moment he'd heard the crash of the bang-stick and felt the hot pain in his left shoulder, he'd made a number of split-second decisions. Even as he'd hurled the spear at the man wielding the magic weapon, he'd been planning ahead, aware that he would have to run and seek sanctuary.

Now, as he runs on the street toward the jungle Reyna has called Centralpark, Veil feels weighed down by the clothes the missionaries have forced him to wear. However, there is no time now to remove the clothes; his acute hearing and warrior instincts combine to warn him that a Newyorkcity warrior is close behind him and gaining. His shoulder burns with pain; he cannot stop and fight, so he must reach the safe, green darkness of Centralpark.

The muscles in his back reflexively tense in antic.i.p.ation of the agonizing sting of a bang-stick spear, but he does not slow his pace as he approaches the street with its speeding cars. Buoyed by the feel of the Nal-toon under his arm, knowing that to stop or slow down will mean certain death or capture, Veil leaps out onto the street and races for the other side, rhythmically driving the shaft of the second spear he has taken to the smooth stone at his feet in an effort to maintain his momentum.

He is immediately a.s.sailed by blinding lights and sharp, blasting cries of hurting sounds that swirl around him like a great desert wind. Then he is across the street. He leaps over a low stone wall, trips, gets up, and stumbles into the protective, dark shroud of Centralpark. He trips again as he goes down a stone embankment and twists onto his wounded shoulder in order to protect the Nal-toon and his spear.

Ignoring the fresh stabs of pain in his shoulder, Veil removes his shoes and socks, then struggles to his feet. Without the shoes he feels lightera"just as the Nal-toon somehow feels lighter than it did in memory. He races through a stand of trees and around the perimeter of a huge clearing; bushes and tree limbs tear at his clothes, slowing him down, but he remains inside the line of trees in order to avoid the white glow of moonlight on the meadow to his right.

He stops on the side of a rocky hillside, starts to remove his clothes, then hesitates. The night is growing cold, he thinks, and he doubts that he will be able to build a fire. The clothes will afford him some protection from the night-cold, and he decides to keep them on.

Veil searches until he finds a large outcropping of rock at the northwest end of a large body of water that is surrounded by a number of the curious, winding paths of smooth stone which the Newyorkcities seem to build everywhere. He sets down his spear and the Nal-toon, then takes a piece of clothes from his body and uses it to soak up the blood running down his left arm. When he is satisfied that he will leave no blood-spoor to follow, he picks up the spear and Nal-toon and clambers up the long, sloping rock face before him.

After a time he finds a cleft in the rock just wide enough to allow his body to pa.s.s through. He eases himself down and finds himself on a narrow, sandy patch of ground that spreads out beneath the clefta"which he can now see is the lip of an overhanging ledge. He pulls the Nal-toon and spear after him, then lies down in the darkness and listens carefully, trying to distinguish those night sounds that could signal danger from the overall din that Newyorkcity emits like the never-ending howl of some great wounded beast.

The relative quiet of Centralpark is suddenly broken by distant, wailing sounds that seem to come from the direction of the place where he found the Nal-toon. Without knowing why, Veil is convinced that the shrieking, ululating sounds have something to do with him; he fears they are the sounds of magic machines the Newyorkcities can use to track him. Clenching his teeth against the pain in his shoulder, Veil stretches up on his toes in order to see over the lip of the ledge.

What Veil sees startles him, and truly frightens him for the first time. A flying machine that is not an airplane, one which he has seen before only in the desert, suddenly comes scudding low, like a giant insect, across the trees at the southern end of the meadow before him. He has seen how these flying machines can soar and sweep and even hover in the air for a long period of time. He had always a.s.sumed that these magic machines were used by the white tribes only to drop bundles of food to the K'ung in times of need, but now one of them is searching for him, lighting the ground with its fire-eyes.

The Newyorkcity hunters have very powerful magic, Veil thinks, and it occurs to him that they may be able to find him, no matter where, or how well, he hides. If that is the case, he wants to die fighting as a warrior, not like some wounded animal cowering at the back of a cave.

He starts to pull himself up through the cleft, then remembers with a sharp jolt that he is under the Nal-toon's protection. He has been a fool, Veil thinks, for the Nal-toon has given these things to the Newyorkcities, just as He gave the desert, and everything in it, to the K'ung. The Nal-toon sees and controls everything, and there would be no point to this trial if the Newyorkcities' magic machines and weapons were all-powerful. No. He will be safe for as long as he displays courage and keeps faith in the Nal-toon.

Veil eases himself down into the darkness beneath the overhang. He touches the face of the Nal-toon and immediately feels better.

When he again peers over the lip of the ledge, Veil can see that the first flying machine has been joined by a second. Both are hovering, lighting the meadow around the water. Newyorkcity warriors, all wearing identical blue clothes, swarm over the meadow and through the trees where he had been only a short time before. All of the warriors carry what appear to be bang-sticks of different sizes.

He has killed one of their tribesmen, Veil thinks, and the Newyorkcity warriors will surely kill him if he is caught. He will have failed the trial set by the Nal-toon, and the Nal-toon will never be returned to his people.

However, Veil thinks, the fact that the warriors are so earnestly searching for him seems to mean, as he'd suspected, that their magic is not all-powerful. He decides it is a very good sign.

He quickly ducks when he hears footsteps clatter on the rocks near him. Gathering the Nal-toon and spear against his chest, Veil presses back beneath the overhang as a cone of light flashes down through the narrow opening and sweeps the sandy area where he had been a moment before. Then the light goes out and the sound of shoes on stone moves away.

Veil sighs with relief, then rolls over on his right side in an effort to ease the pain in his left shoulder. He knows that the bang-stick has left its small, hurting spear deep in the muscle; he can feel it there, grinding against the bone every time he moves. He knows he must take it out, for the slightest movement of his arm sends jagged flashes of pain down through the muscles to his fingertips. He can only hope that the bang-stick spear is not poisoned. However, poisoned or not, he cannot attempt to remove the spear before morning; he needs a fire, and a night-fire would be certain to attract the Newyorkcity warriors.

He wishes he had more shilluk to ease his pain, but he does not; he consumed all of it during his terrifying journey on the airplane.

But the Nal-toon is with him, Veil thinks as he gently strokes G.o.d's wooden surface, and that is enough for any K'ung warrior. The Nal-toon's face conjures up images of the desert. Home. He will survive this great trial with the Nal-toon's helpa"and, indeed, that help is already apparent, for G.o.d has made Himself noticeably easier to carry. When he returns with the Nal-toon to his people, things will be as they were before; there will be joy, laughter, and dancing in the camp, and for the rest of his life the Nal-toon will look upon him with special favor.

Veil's pain begins to ease as he continues to stroke the Nal-toon's rough surface. Finally he rests his head on G.o.d, closes his eyes, and drifts off to sleep within sleep.

Still imagining himself as Toby, Veil dreams he awakens to find himself sick to his stomach and feverish. The pain in his left shoulder has become a constant, searing ball of agony that sends flickering tongues of flame out into his neck, down through his arm, and into his fingers.

He is being poisoned by the bang-stick spear. The spear must be cut out.

The thought of cutting into his own flesh without the numbing embrace of shilluk fills him with a cold fear, but he knows that he must begin immediately; if he waits any longer, he will soon be too weak to make the effort.

He picks up a dry stick and clenches it between his teeth to keep from crying out as he drags himself from beneath the ledge and struggles to his feet; thunderbolts of pain crash through his arm.

"Nal-toon, help me," Veil whispers around the stick in his teeth. "Make me strong; make this warrior worthy of you."

Using his right arm, Veil pulls himself up to the lip of the overhang. He peers out over the rock formationa"and freezes. His sanctuary is surrounded by Newyorkcities. There are runners dressed in strange, brightly colored clothes loping along the stone paths; other Newyorkcities throw discs that float in arcs through the air; women push babies in machines that roll along the ground like Land-Rovers but are silent.

Newyorkcity warriors in blue clothes walk in pairs. Their eyes are searching, and they occasionally touch the bang-sticks they carry in hiding pouches at their sides.

Struggling against the draining effects of his fever, Veil lets himself back down, then lies under the ledge and waits until nightfall, when he can no longer hear the Newyorkcities in Centralpark laughing and shouting as they carry on their frenzied, apparently meaningless, activities. As the moon rises, Veil once again drags himself out from beneath the ledge onto the narrow strip of sand. He drags the Nal-toon after him.

Despite the great risk of attracting enemy warriors, Veil knows that he must build a fire. He uses a piece of flint from the small medicine pouch he wears around his neck to fire sparks into a pile of dry leaves and twigs he has swept up from the sand and placed against a vertical face of the rock. The leaves catch first, and Veil carefully feeds the delicate wisps of flame with increasingly larger sticks and clumps of dried brush, which he pulls from cracks in the rock.

When he is satisfied with the fire's heat, he grasps the shaft of his spear and places the long, iron head into the heart of the flames. Then he strips the clothes from the upper part of his body.

He is ready.

Gripping the spear's shaft just behind the head, Veil fixes his gaze on the face of the Nal-toon. In the flickering firelight, magnified by the fever-heat in Veil's brain, the gnarled face of G.o.d seems very much alive to him; G.o.d is breathing, gazing back kindly at His worshiper. Veil opens his eyes wide and continues to gaze into the carved eyeholes of the Nal-toon. Then he begins to take a series of deep, measured breaths until he feels a kind of misty, numbing warmth seeping into his mind and muscles. When he looks back into the fire, he imagines that he can see the desert in all its countless, shifting guises; when he glances back at G.o.d, the images of home continue to dance on the Nal-toon's face.

He slowly withdraws the iron spearhead from the fire, then holds it aloft for a few moments to allow it to cool. Then, still breathing deeply and clinging to the desert-images in his mind, Veil begins to probe the wound in his shoulder with the needle-sharp point of the spear.

Huge drops of sweat pop from his skin, glisten in the firelight, then roll off his flesh, to be sucked up by the sand. Sweat forms a stinging film over his eyes as Veil struggles to maintain the desert-images, his only shilluk, before him.

Then the small metal bang-stick spear is out. Veil reels from pain, but he knows that there is still one thing left he must do. He shoves the spearhead back into the flames and slowly counts to ten. Then, in one swift motion, he withdraws the iron and slaps its face against the torn, bleeding flesh of his left shoulder. There is a sharp hiss, accompanied by the sweetish smell of burning flesh.

The desert-images explode in a kaleidoscope of color and distant, wailing sound as Veil faints.

Veil's dream-body, his Toby, awakens to the feel of a cold rain falling on his face and an animal sniffing at his left ear. His instincts, born of survival in a narrow twilight zone separating life from death in the desert, tell him to remain still.

He parts his lips slightly to let raindrops fall on his parched and swollen tongue, but even this small movement brings a menacing growl from whatever animal crouches to his left, just beyond his field of vision. It does not sound like a leopard, Veil thinks, and a lone baboon or jackal would not come this close to a breathing man. It could be a Newyorkcity camp dog, but it sounds larger.

Still sniffing and growling, the animal moves forward until Veil can see it; it is a dog, but unlike any he had ever seen before. This animal is all black. Muscles ripple beneath its sleek, glistening hide, and its bare fangs are white and unchipped. The dog's tail appears to have been torn off in a fight, for it is no more than a lump on the animal's hindquarters.

Breathing evenly and staring directly into the dog's eyes, Veil gropes with his right hand for his spear. Suddenly the black dog snaps at his face, and Veil moves his head aside just in time to avoid the animal's sharp fangs. At the same moment his fingers touch the shaft of his spear. He grips the shaft and rolls hard to his left, lunging directly at the startled animal and driving the spearhead deep into its throat.

The dog coughs a thick spray of blood and saliva, then shudders and collapses without a sound across Veil's chest. Veil immediately presses his mouth to the animal's throat and drinks the nourishing blood that pulses from the severed jugular. The blood hits Veil's stomach with the force of a physical blow; its effects spread quickly throughout his body, warming him and lending him strength. He is still drinking in great, deep gulps when the animal's heart finally stops beating.

The Nal-toon is merciful, Veil thinks; evidently satisfied with the courage he has displayed up to this point, G.o.d has provided him with the food he needs to go on.

His strength replenished, Veil carefully wraps the Nal-toon in a piece of clothes, then places G.o.d under the overhang, out of the rain. He drags the dog's carca.s.s under the ledge, then meticulously smooths out all signs of struggle and death from the sand. He builds a small fire, then dresses the cauterized wound in his left shoulder with herbs from his medicine pouch and strips of clothes.

Reasonably free of pain, with his belly full and his mind in peaceful communion with G.o.d, Veil once again lies down and drifts off to sleep within sleep.

In Veil's dream, his Toby has lost track of the time that has pa.s.sed since he found sanctuary in Centralpark, but the wound in his shoulder is now almost completely healed. Also, there has been such an abundance of food in this jungle that his normally lean body has begun to show traces of fat.

While the first dog had been delivered to him by the Nal-toon, he has had to stalk the others he has eaten. The water in the large pool nearby is not as sweet as that in the desert, but Veil has never seen water in such quant.i.ty; here it is not necessary to quickly scoop it up and store it in eggs before it seeps into the ground. He has been free to drink his fill each night, and this has made the long, hot, and waterless days spent hiding under the ledge easily bearable.

Now he feels strong and rested, and he knows that it is time to begin his journey to the vast, smooth, stone fields where the airplanes stay. There, he thinks, the airplane that brought him to Newyorkcity will be waiting to take him home. The Nal-toon will make sure that it is so.

Veil made no attempt to remember the many bends and sharp turns in the streets Reyna used to bring him from the airplane fields to the Nal-toon; there had been no need, for Veil does not travel on streets. He had carefully noted the position of the setting suna"first at the airplane field and again at the place where he had found the Nal-toon. The two sightings are all he needs, and he knows the precise direction in which he must travel to reach the airplane fields. The sun, and the stars at night, will guide him there.

It is night now, and the full moon is partially obscured by clouds. With Centralpark free of Newyorkcities, he goes to the pool to drink and wash himself. Once again, as on other still nights, he hears the roar and cough of great hunting cats; the sounds seem close, to the east. Veil has become increasingly puzzled by the sounds, for they would seem to indicate that there are hunting cats in Newyorkcity, yet he has never found any spoor.

The clothes given to him by the missionaries have become shredded and filthy, an affront to his senses. He removes them, washes them as best he can, and, from the strips, fashions a loincloth, a cloak to ward off the night chill, and a carrying sling.

He walks to the crest of a hill and takes his bearings, using a tall building in the distance as his first landmark. He carries enough strips of dried dog meat in his sling to last many days; he wishes he had an egg in which to carry water but he does not, and he does not dwell on the problem. Water seems to be plentiful in Newyorkcity.

Drenched in moonlight, Veil stands perfectly still for a few minutes, closing his eyes as he offers thanks to the Nal-toon and prays for a safe journey home so that his people may survive. Then he hitches his sling with its precious contents over his shoulder, grips his spear in his right hand, and starts down the hill.

He retraces his original route, skirting the large, open meadow by moving, as silently as his moon-shadow, through the encircling trees. Finally he comes to a wide, stone path which he must cross. He crouches, listening, but can hear nothing but the intermittent whine of cars on the street a hundred or so running-steps to his right. He straightens up and steps out onto the stone path.

Suddenly two Newyorkcities leap out from behind a tree.

"Hold it, turkey!"

Veil stops and a.s.sumes a fighting stance. He knows that he cannot hope to escape with the Nal-toon in the sling weighing him down, and so he will have to fight. He waits calmly, body half turned and spear arm c.o.c.ked, as the warriors approach. Veil is relieved to see that the men carry only knives and not bang-sticks.

"Hey, Mason.' Will you look at this turkey? He's gotta be stone crazy."

"f.u.c.kin loony, all right."

The taller of the two men approaches, waving his knife back and forth in front of his body, then stops a few paces away from Veil. "What's in the sack, man?"

Veil cannot understand the warrior's words, but their threatening tone is unmistakable. He considers his options, then decides that it would be better not to battle the two Newyorkcities if there is any way to avoid it. To fight, he must set down the Nal-toon, and he does not wish to do this. Also, a wounda"even if not fatala"could force him to go to ground again in Centralpark, perhaps for many more days. He wants to go home. Courage, he thinks, must always be tempered by wisdom.

"Let me pa.s.s," Veil says evenly, using his free hand to make the sign of truce used by both K'ung and Bantu.

The short man frowns. "Christ, Blade, you ever hear anyone talk like that?"