Kiai! & Mistress of Death Read online

  "A woman?" I challenged him because I wanted to get it exactly straight.

  "I didn't see her, but her long nails raked across my face. I—my eyes—"

  "How did you know it was a woman, if you didn't see her?" I demanded, morbidly fascinated. No doubt about it now: this was the female who had scored on me. It hadn't been imagination.

  "My head collided with her body as I fell back." The blank bandaged face turned toward me, and I could almost feel the buried eyes searching my face. "I—I felt her breasts on the back of my neck. If I wasn't dreaming it"

  "You weren't dreaming. I saw her. I fought her."

  He licked his lips, relieved. "That's about all I remember. I woke up here."

  "That's about all there was to remember," I said. "I mixed in with my nunchakus—but that same black bitch kicked me in the crotch."

  "Ouch!" he said. "But you always told us how to guard—"

  "I guess I didn't follow my own advice!" I said. "I was amazed by the sight of her, there among those demons. Never saw a female demon before. And she had a swift motion. Fastest kick I ever experienced."

  "That's some demon," he murmured.

  "Some demon," I agreed ruefully. "I didn't see long nails on her, though. She must have been using metal claws, artificial nails, and took them off later. Maybe you're lucky; she scraped your eyes, instead of gouging them. The eyeballs should be in place and intact. The doctors can fix that sort of damage."

  "You think so?" he asked hopefully.

  "I think so," I said, believing it.

  By this time the nurses had discovered my absence. They were standing in the door, frowning in a manner calculated to intimidate the most resistant patient. "Okay, wardens, I'll go quietly," I said. "Don't take it out on my friend. He didn't know I was an escapee."

  Andy grabbed my arm. "Thanks, Mr. Striker," he said. "Thanks for coming! You've given me hope."

  "You've helped me too," I said. "We'll talk again soon. Get some sleep." I almost said "shuteye," but that remark would have been a disaster for a man concerned about possible blindness.

  Back in my own bed, my thoughts were not quiet. I lay awake, pondering the problem of drugs in general and Kill-13 in particular. For there was no avoiding the fact that this drug had cost me the lives or health of a number of my students, and perhaps cost me my manhood too. I had figured it enough to stay off drugs myself and to keep my students off them, but the drug problem had suddenly come out to find us anyway.

  Drugs have been around a long time, perhaps as long as man himself. We in the martial arts can usually handle them. In fact, judo has been used in a limited way as a cure for certain addictions. If a person has nothing special to live for, and he falls into the crutch of the alternate reality of drugs, participation in a good martial art can provide the meaning he needs. Yoga can do that too, and religion, and perhaps any other disciplined interest. But it couldn't, it seemed, deal with Kill-13. This drug was to other drugs as a grand prix racer to a go-cart. It seemed to be addicting within the first week of use, and it had a special appeal for athletes and martial artists.

  There has always been a drug problem among athletes, with both individual performers like weight lifters and team performers like football players. Not because they crave hallucination or escape. The opposite: they are aggressively competitive. They want to succeed outstandingly, to win. Every contestant wants the trophy, and his ultimate goal is the world's record for his class. Some of the worst offenders are the muscle builders, the Mr. America competitors and similar types. These pretty boys really go out for the muscle-tissue drugs, because in this way they can make tremendous physical gains in a much shorter time than would otherwise be possible. In fact, they can put on more muscle than any non-user can, though there is some question whether they can put it to good use. Appearance is everything, not performance. It is said that a good percentage of them are homosexual. This sort of drug use flowers because there are no regulations governing it in professional sports.

  It is a different matter in the Olympics. After the contests, the players have to give urine samples to be instantly analyzed, and there are always a few caught even though they know of the procedure. There are periodic rumors of unanalyzable drugs, developed by the Communists, that enable them to do so well in competition.

  The thing is, the athlete who comes in second after rigorous training and maximum effort could come in first with judicious use of certain drugs. Quite possibly he comes in second only because the competition is drugged. So the users become winners, and the practice inevitably spreads. The athletes themselves may not like it, but they have little choice in a world that loves only winners. A competitor has three choices: he can use drugs; he can be an also-ran; or he can drop out of competition. It is that simple and compelling.

  The main drugs used in athletics are steroids, amphetamines, and barbiturates, often in combination. The steroids are related to the male hormones. They facilitate the growth of muscle, much more and much faster than normal. But this must be accompanied by much exercise, so a stimulant is used to prevent fatigue and sleepiness. This is an amphetamine, "speed," "bennies," etc. But then it can be hard to relax, so a depressant drug is taken: barbiturates, "downers," "red devils," etc. Thus the training routine amounts to amphetamines in the morning, steroids in the day, and barbiturates at night.

  Of course there are certain side effects. Amphetamines depress hunger but increase thirst. The user drinks much more than normal, and urinates more. He develops a tolerance, so that heavier doses accomplish less. Hallucinations are possible, waking nightmares. Eventually irreversible brain damage is done, as cells die and brain tissue shrinks. Sexual abnormalities may develop in the male, such as priapism: sustained and painful erection without real desire. Weight is lost, and the user gets extremely nervous. The steroids deliver the muscle, but also cause the man's breasts to enlarge, and his testes may shrink. He loses his sexual appetite. His whole life tempo seems to accelerate, so that he matures more rapidly—but by the same token, he seems to age faster. Body hair is lost. He can suffer liver and kidney damage and is prone to cancer, often of the prostate. And so, gradually, he is emasculated.

  That's why I believe such drug dependence is bad, quite apart from ethical considerations. It is measurably, physically harmful to the body in the long run, and perhaps the short run too.

  But the effects of Kill-13 are worse, in proportion to its potency. It builds muscle so rapidly that the whole body is put under severe strain. Vital nutrients are drawn from the system, impoverishing everything else in favor of the large muscles being developed. Massive infusions of vitamins, minerals, protein and other foods can alleviate this somewhat, but an addict is not the sort to bother with a healthy diet. Not a Kill-13 addict! So this drug can be fatal, leaving behind a muscle-bound body.

  "Live fast, die young, and have a handsome corpse," I muttered to myself, remembering the saying that once had been humorous.

  "Eh?"

  I looked up, startled. I had been alone in my room, but now I saw that I had acquired a roommate. I recognized him, too: the obnoxious old man who had been with Andy. "What are you doing in here?" I demanded.

  "Got moved in while you was snoozin'," he said.

  I hadn't been snoozing; I had been thinking. But the effect was the same: I had failed to protest the addition of a roommate. My fault. "Why didn't you stay with Andy?"

  "They took him to surgery. Guess they wanted to clean up the room."

  So they moved a patient out? Could be; the rationale of hospital procedure was not my strong point. I hated to be ailing, ever, and to be confined however briefly to any such institution—well, I knew I was prejudiced. It was just possible that they considered this man to be a bad influence on Andy, so had moved him in with a less critical patient. If I could get up and walk around, I was a prime candidate.

  "Well, let me snooze some more, okay?" I said.

  "Just one thing, youngster. I didn't puke in there because of
what you kids were talking about. I got a stomach condition. Nothing fazes me except hospital food."

  "That figures." I closed my eyes, dismissing him.

  He shut up, and I resumed my consideration of Kill-13. Its addictive properties only make its side effects worse. So long as an addict was on the drug, he hardly felt the damage. But when he stopped, those months of neglect hit abruptly, often fatally. This was not generally known yet, as there were no long-term addicts; the drug was too new. But I had researched it as well as I could, and this seemed to be the pattern. Even mild withdrawal symptoms could be loss of the sense of touch or even blindness, because of the destruction of blood vessels in the eyeballs. That orange effect.

  The numbness to pain is actually a slow destruction of certain areas of the brain. Perhaps that accounted for the hallucinogenic effect, too. This was a seeming paradox, since the reflexes of demons were notoriously fast and accurate. I had talked with a doctor about it, and he conjectured that the strength of the nervous signals was multiplied by the drug, so that the reflexes were good despite the deterioration of the controlling brain tissue. Like using a sledgehammer on thumbtacks: not good for the tacks or the wall, but devastatingly effective anyway.

  The demons gradually or not so gradually lost their gentler emotions, becoming like spoiled children: imperious, short-tempered, quick to physical violence, and without remorse for their mischief. They seemed to have no feeling but hatred and anger. Of course I had not known any demons personally; possibly they had better qualities when among their own kind. But I doubted it, and I never expected to see an old demon, unless he started old.

  Kill-13 had appeared on the scene only six months ago, though probably it had been around longer in the underground arenas of the world. Its popular impact had been immediate and, to my mind, catastrophic.

  Martial arts is my profession. I hate to see any aspect of it perverted. When the vast improvement in body, mind and spirit that proper training and discipline can bring is destroyed by a debilitating drug, I hurt.

  The demons of the so-called Kung-fu Temple were indeed hellish. Not because of their ferocity; because of the mockery they made of the philosophy and integrity of all martial art.

  So I had tried to abolish Kill-13, at least in my own area. I allowed no demons in my judo or karate classes, and warned all students against the use of any of the other drugs, including alcohol and nicotine. I don't smoke or drink myself, and my reasons are not moral but physical: these vices weaken the body. I am not much of a public speaker, but I spoke out against Kill-13 wherever I could. Church groups, civic clubs, high schools they wanted to hear how it was possible to kill a man with one blow, but I gave them warning about the killer drug instead. I hadn't thought my effort was having much effect, but evidently it had, because it had aroused the demons against me.

  Now those demons had struck back, viciously. Probably half my class was dead or permanently mutilated. Only luck had spared me. The police must have come before the demons could complete their massacre or I would have been dead too.

  If the demons thought they had silenced me or scared me off, they had misjudged their man. After this, I was going to go after the drug full time. I would not rest until I had eliminated Kill-13, and not just from my neighborhood. From the face of the earth.

  CHAPTER 4

  AMALITA

  I slept again; I needed it. I woke, ate, slumbered. I had, I learned, received other wounds, and lost some blood. That accounted for my unseemly weakness. The cuts on my arms and legs were healing nicely; I had not even noticed the bandages during my first illicit walk. The bruises about my torso hurt more. But the off-and-on numbness in my groin bothered me most. Would I ever again be able to...?

  Then a female vision trotted in. The old man in the next bed whistled wistfully. Long black hair, angelic face, figure like Miss Latin America. Young, but full. She wore a pair of white calfskin boots up to the middle of her thigh, and they fitted as tightly as gloves. Her pants were as close and short as a tanksuit, made of some kind of rubber or plastic. Above that was a skimpy halter, almost transparent, leaving her midriff bare. I'm a belly-button man; I notice the midsection. A faint line of black hairs went up to her navel, suggesting the contours in the other direction. Most women shave their bellies, so that most men do not realize that pubic hair extends, faintly, up to that area, but as I said, I know. Her eyes were blacked with thick mascara; her lips were ruby red—with modern lipsticks, that's no hyperbole!—and her long fingernails were painted to match. Her lustrous black hair was braided down beyond her buttocks, which showed a certain cleavage as she turned. And a red beret perched on one side of her head, with a white pompom ball on top.

  I looked her up and down, and vice versa, checking and rechecking, and then I realized who she was. I hardly concealed my groan. "What in God's name are you doing here, Amalita?"

  "How could you be ill, and near to dying, in need of comfort, and I not close by your side?" she said, pouting. She was enveloped in a cloud of musky perfume; I could almost see it wafting over me. "After what you did for me, lover..."

  "You're a married woman!" I reminded her urgently, acutely aware of the listening ears in the next bed. "And the mother of Pedro's child. You should be home in Nicaragua."

  "Pedro's child in name only," she said. "As well you know, handsome man."

  "Pedro's child in name and in fact," I said firmly. "Amalita, what's past is past, and I'm not up to—"

  "I left it with the nurse at home," she said. "Pegado a la teta. So I could come here."

  Some mother love! "Where's Pedro?"

  "Uncle is having a long—"

  "He's your husband now!"

  She shrugged. "In name."

  "In fact!" I shouted.

  My elderly roommate sniggered from the other bed. "You sure know how to string along the girls," he said. "Married ones, yet!"

  Brother! I had to lay it on the line. "Amalita, you and I had an acquaintance in Nicaragua—"

  "I thought you Americans called that an affair," she said.

  "We Americans," the oldster said gleefully, "call it good old-fashioned f—"

  "Shut up!" I yelped. Then, to her: "But after that your uncle recovered from his paralysis, and learned to walk again, and you married him and bore his child." This was rough, considering the audience, but I continued determinedly. "Vicente Pedro is an extremely jealous man. You should not be here."

  What I didn't say was more complex and significant. I had met Amalita on Pedro's vast Nicaraguan estate over a year ago. She had joined me in a naked swim, and I had thought her to be an innocent Indian servant girl. The last thing I had imagined was that she could be my wealthy crippled host's intended bride. When I learned that, I tried to keep away from her. But she had come to me at night, impersonating another girl. My folly; that episode had aroused Pedro's deep, implacable wrath, however unwitting my part in it had been. Amalita had killed a servant in an effort to cover up, but my own life had nearly been forfeit before that entanglement eased.

  I knew this young girl—she was still hardly sixteen—for a conniver and murderess, and the wife of a justly jealous man I now called friend. Beautiful she was, but she was bad trouble in several ways, and I wanted no part of her. It was my misfortune that she appeared to retain a certain idle hankering for me.

  Once I had thought her shy and naive. I had been naive, in the manner of so many men. But not anymore.

  "So thanks for the visit, and please go home," I finished aloud.

  My roommate cackled. "But the lass is trying to tell you something, hero!"

  I glanced at him in annoyance, then back at Amalita.

  She had removed her jacket—I had not even noticed it before, which showed where my attention had been—and was starting on her halter. Or perhaps it was better termed her blouse. I could hardly think straight, with my eyes playing tag with those contours beneath it.

  "What are you doing?" I demanded foolishly, knowing very well what she w
as up to. I had seen her strip for action before. She paused, leaning forward impressively. "I am bringing you news of muerte thirteen."

  "Amalita, you can't—" Then her mixture of language penetrated. "Do you mean Kill-Thirteen?"

  "She'd kill more than that, with that outfit!" the oldster said. "They don't make 'em like they used to, they make 'em better! Look at them boobs!"

  "Mind of an adolescent," I muttered.

  "Mind of a connoisseur," she said, her breasts bursting into full view as the meager covering came off.

  "What a body!" the oldster remarked. "If I was you, I'd get her under the covers before she gets tired waiting. Don't get a shot at stuff like that often."

  I realized it was useless to argue about her dishabille. Soon enough a nurse would check in and put a stop to the show. And she had known how to hook me verbally. "What do you know about the drug?"

  She continued undressing, with somewhat more motion than was strictly necessary, particularly in the torso. "It is a mixture of poppy and coca and mushroom and chemical," she said. "Ancient Mayan formula, very potent. The priests used it—"

  "Wait, now, wait!" I exclaimed, concentrating on her words so I wouldn't have to concentrate on her body. She had filled out some since I had known her, especially in the bosom. Her pregnancy must have done that. Did she nurse her baby now? Her breasts were high but solid, like two pointed pears. "Poppy—that's opium. Coca is cocaine. Cactus is peyote. But chemical—are you talking about acid? LSD?"

  "LSD!" the oldster repeated, savoring it. "Wow!"

  Amalita sat on the edge of the bed and peeled off her boots. Her legs, too, were—Never mind! I told myself. But my eyes wouldn't cooperate. Now her panties came down. No stretch marks, I noted; her abdomen was as smooth as I remembered. "That and more," she agreed. "I do not know all the ingredients, but together they are very strong. Pedro said—"

  "Don't you see," I said, "that it couldn't be any ancient Mayan formula! They didn't have LSD."