Jungle Of Steel And Stone

'Yes—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 titles he'll have to earn,' Veil said as he embraced the priest. 'Thank you again, Father. You've been a great help.'

'Go with God, 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 god had somehow moved them both through time and space 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 constituency. 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, either—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 sleepy—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 vanished—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 him—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 Toby— 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 update—using file footage—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, monitoring—as always—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 there—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 anticipation 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 assailed 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 lighter—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.