Tales of the Red Panda: The Mind Master (13 page)

The winds across the
Annapurna Ridge grew colder and stronger by the day. Even within the secluded
valley it was becoming clear that the route down the mountain would soon be
impassable for long months. It was a sense that every living being in these
mountains could not help but feel – the claustrophobia of an inevitable
and difficult winter.

Within the small kuti
of the Saddhu, three forms sat stock-still and struggled to banish such
thoughts from their minds as they focused their mental powers on meditation.
The howl of the wind faded into nothingness in their ears, partly through
focus, partly through long repetition. Suddenly, a shrill sound that was
unfamiliar to their ears cried out from the corner of the room. Rashan opened his
eyes in irritation, and turned to glance at the small pile of possessions his
younger student kept in the corner of the kuti.

The man he called
“Two” leapt to his feet and pulled apart his pack hurriedly, producing a small
device no bigger than the palm of his hand. The high pitched cries it gave out
wavered, like a signal being tuned in from afar, but to the young man the
warning that the instrument gave him was clear as day. The expression on his
face said that it was not good news.

“What is it?” his fellow
student asked, astounded.

“It’s an alarm,” Two
said gravely. “Someone is coming.”

“What are you talking
about?” One snapped.

“Let him speak,”
Rashan said quietly.

The young man looked
around the room sheepishly. “When I was on my way up the pass, I didn’t know
what I would find, or how long I would be here. But I was fairly sure that I’d
have to take the same narrow path back out again, and I wanted to avoid any
surprises. I left a number of radio beacons, strategically placed.”

Rashan frowned. “Explain,”
he said.

The young man
hesitated as he gathered his thoughts. “I built small devices that emit a radio
pulse when disturbed. That’s what you’re hearing through this receiver. It lets
me know that someone is on their way up through the pass.”

One knit his eyebrows.
“Why does it still make that noise?” he asked.

Two nodded. “That’s
the problem. It means the device is still being disturbed. Which means people
are still walking past it. Which means there are quite a few of them.”

“Where are they?”
Rashan asked, his face betraying no wonder at this marvel.

“Perhaps a half a
mile,” Two said seriously. “The transmitters lower in the pass had different
tones. I don’t know what happened to them, but they weren’t really meant to be
left this long.”

“You made this?” One
said, his voice betraying his astonishment.

Two grinned at the
unintended compliment. “It’s all my own,” he said. “I thought it might come in
useful.”

“It might,” One
snorted. “If we live through this.”

Two turned to Rashan.
“Who are they?” he asked.

The Master shrugged.
“Chinese, British, Gurkha, Tibetans… does it matter? There have been soldiers
before, and they will come again. They seek shelter, water… a place to rest.
They seek it as one who is desperate for it and sees it as his right. If they find
this place, we cannot stand against them.”

Two shook his head.
“But Master,” he protested, “they are on their way, and this pass only leads
here. They will find us.”

“Will they now?” the
Saddhu said, drawing his robes tightly around himself and making for the door.
His two students regarded one another in astonishment for a moment. One broke
the spell by turning to look at the door their master had just walked through.
Two moved back to his pack to return the alarm receiver to its resting place.
His hand hesitated a moment, hovering over a corner of bright red silk that
could just be seen from the depths of his gear.

In an instant Two made
up his mind and pulled the silk from his pack with a sudden sweep. He ran the
sash lengthwise through his hands, bowed quickly in silent reverence to an
unseen presence, and tied the length of silk across his face, leaving only his
eyes visible. The ends of the sash fell to either side, hanging past the young
man’s shoulders.

“What is that supposed
to be?” One asked, annoyed.

“A gesture,” the
masked man said gravely.

His fellow student
snorted derisively. “Oh, good,” he said. “Just what we needed.”

The masked man pushed
past him and out the door.

The two students
regarded the sight before them without comprehension at first. Their master
stood forty yards away from the kuti, at the point where the valley started to
rise sharply. His arms were raised before him and he stood stock still against
the biting cold. The sharp winds caused the long sleeves of his robe to flap wildly,
yet the Saddhu remained as still as any statue. The two regarded him at a
distance.

“What is it?” the
masked man said in hushed awe.

“He has them,” the
elder student said with some satisfaction.

Two raced forward
towards the motionless shape of Rashan. He heard One hiss behind him. “Hey! He
will not be able to speak! The Master has clouded their minds, but he must
focus!”

The younger man
ignored his fellow student and moved forward quickly, but as silently as any
cat might. As he neared their master, he could hear One stumbling through the
rocks behind as he raced towards them, eager to exert whatever authority the
situation gave him, which the masked man did not presume to be much.

Suddenly, and without
warning, he felt the presence of another mind in his. There were flashes, like
a bright light before the eyes that leaves the images of sights unseen to be
regarded for a moment only before fading. The technique was forceful and
without grace, but Two could instantly see why.

His fellow student was
right. Their master’s force of will was exerted over many minds in that
instant. In the pass beyond, seventy men or more suddenly blinked hard and
shook their heads. The path before them, which had seemed so clear a moment
ago, had vanished, leaving only impassable rock in front of their eyes. They
peered ahead, up the face of the mountain, all of them straining hard to make
sense of what they saw. If their minds were clouded by the Master, why did they
struggle so? What were they looking for?

Rashan’s mind surged
forth again into Two’s, and the masked man could sense just enough of the
soldier’s thoughts to cause him to gasp with alarm. The main force of men were
fighting this implanted notion that the pass ended suddenly for one reason
– advance scouts had been sent ahead. As many as two dozen men had been
further up the pass closer to the valley, and were now outside the sphere of
the Master’s influence. To the soldiers watching below, it was as if those men
had vanished from the face of the Earth. But to the inhabitants of the secluded
valley, those men were still a threat.

Rashan could do
nothing more from where he was. Nothing more than make seventy desperate
soldiers turn back, empty-handed and without their comrades. The rest was up to
his apprentices, and for that reason he had reached out to the young man’s
mind.

The man in the mask
raced back to meet his rival, silent as a cloud for all his speed. One watched
him running easily over the terrain that he himself was having so much trouble
with and marveled at his skill. A sharp pang of envy sparked within his breast,
not for the first time.

The younger man
explained the vision he had been given. “When the men below saw the scouts for
the last time, they had split into two parties at the base of this final ridge.
Eight or ten of them were headed for higher ground… they’d likely come over
there.” The masked man indicated a point a hundred yards away. “The rest should
come up the main path before us.”

“Who are they?” One
asked, hiding any fear he felt well.

The masked man shook
his head. “No uniforms. Could be militia. The rifles looked new though.”

There was the sudden
sound of a small rockfall on the other side of the ridge near the main path, as
if one of the approaching soldiers had lost his footing near the end of the
climb.

The two students stood
frozen for an instant. At last, the elder spoke. “This will shortly become at
least somewhat academic.” He jabbed his finger towards the higher ground.
“Yours are over there. These are mine.”

The man in the mask started
to protest, but quickly saw the wisdom in the plan. He could cover the open
space much faster than his fellow student. He gave One a quick nod of assent
and raced away, leaping over the rough terrain at astonishing speed.

There were shouts
coming from the path. One could begin to see the forms of the approaching
soldiers calling to him, brandishing their weapons. There were more than a
dozen of them, all heavily armed, all barking orders at the same time as they
waved their rifles at the young man.

“Fools,” One smiled
coldly.

The man who had come
to this valley as August Fenwick raced across the rocky ground faster than most
observers would have thought possible, and still he pushed himself for more.
His heart pounded within his chest, desperate for still more oxygen, still more
power, whatever could carry him to his goal in time.

Everything he had
trained for… everything he had worked for…

August Fenwick had set
himself upon a path: a quest for justice. A lofty goal made all the more noble
by the fact that it could never be truly completed. He had sacrificed the life
of indolence and comfort into which he had been born to fight for those who had
nothing. He had traveled the world to make himself ready, to make himself equal
to the task.

And it could all end
here… before it had even begun…

He had put himself in
this position, coming to this unstable region, looking for the power he knew he
would need; the power to bring the truth to light, to put terror into the
hearts of those who lived on fear. And in so doing he might have deprived the
city that he loved of its would-be champion.

His legs pumped hard.
With a deftness and ease that can only come with long, dedicated training he
sacrificed no iota of speed to the uneven ground. His breathing relaxed and became
more regular, just as he had been trained. He felt the adrenaline surge through
his body and become a quiet force of iron resolve within him.

This valley… this
place… here they must make a stand, or lose all…

On one side, an
unknown number of aggressors, all of them armed, all of them desperate. On the
other, there were only three. The old man was a true master of the mind, but
physically weak. His fellow student he neither liked nor trusted, though he had
no doubt of the man’s power. And then there was him.

The red silk of the
mask whipped behind him in the mountain wind. The man who had come to this
valley as August Fenwick felt the silk against his face, sensed it around his
eyes, felt his face become strong and impassive, almost a part of the mask he
wore as a talisman. He knew now, as the power of his training surged through
him, that the man who had come to this valley was gone. That if he lived
through this he could only leave as someone quite different. He could not help
but wonder who that man was.

He was still twenty
yards from the covering rocks near the base of the ridge when the first of the
soldiers appeared over the lip of the valley.

Too late…

His legs churned
harder. His heart pounded.

Too late…

The man in the mask
had closed no more than five yards when the gunfire started.

There was a bite in the wind as night descended, and the
budding tree branches that stretched above the respectable neighborhood creaked
in protest. There was little of the promise of spring left in the air. A low,
thin fog hung over the lawns and gardens, as if bleeding the last of the recent
warmth away and the new life it carried along with it.

But for the wind, the night air was as silent as the grave,
with no sign of life nor note of movement to be heard. The streets were quiet
and upon the air there were faint wisps of the smell of fires coming from the
houses that ran up the hill. Those fleeting aromas promised warmth and comfort
within the comfortable homes, and suggested to any and all that inside was a
much fitter place than out on such a night as this.

Near the top of the hill, across a wide expanse of lawn,
there were two fleeting shapes that clearly did not share this view. Were there
any present to look for them, it was doubtful that they could have been seen,
so completely did they make the long, grasping shadows their home.

The moon showed itself through the mist and chill, and
bathed the home of Joshua Cain in a pallid, unearthly glow. The approaching
figures froze and clung to the grey stone of the building, as invisible as
ghosts.

Thirty feet away, they could just see the front door of
Cain’s stylish home around the corner. The porch light was out, and there
seemed to be no impediment to their progress. It was difficult to say if this
apparent convenience itself was what had given them pause, but they held their
positions like statues for a full two minutes.

At last the Flying Squirrel turned her cowled head back to
face her partner. She could tell by the total absence of the dull, reflective
gleam about his mask’s blank eyes that he had his night-vision lenses turned
off. She smiled approvingly. It was harder to keep in the shadows when you
couldn’t
see
the darkness, and she
was pleased that he was leaving nothing to chance. She had a pair of fittings
for her goggles stowed within a pouch upon her belt that had the same
properties as his mask-lenses, but she almost never used them. Kit Baxter liked
the giddy taste of fear that hid only in the darkness. Besides, it kept her
senses sharp, and they had need of that tonight.

They spoke not a word to one another, but in the
near-complete darkness they saw enough of one another’s silhouettes to know
each other’s thoughts completely.

“Well?”
the Red
Panda said by turning his head, just slightly.

“Well, what?”
she
replied by tucking in her chin, as if looking over the rims of a pair of
glasses which she was not wearing.

“Shall we?”
he
said with a tiny, involuntary movement of his left hand.

“We shan’t,”
she
said with a waggle of her finger, and then pointed up, as if to the sky.

He nodded his consent. The darkened doorway was too simple
for a man like Joshua Cain. Especially since his household staff had not
returned from their errand of the night before. Cain would have prepared for
them somehow, and if he were foolish enough to think that a dearth of tall
buildings for them to swing down from would cramp their style, so much the
better.

Noiselessly they moved along the edge of the building until
they reached a corner that was shrouded in blackness by the high boughs of an
old oak tree that towered above the gardens.

As one, they made identical motions with their hands,
curling in the fingers on each hand, one after the other, as if grasping an
invisible object. Hidden controls within their gauntlets interpreted the
gesture, and power coursed through the soles of their feet as the remarkable
Static Shoes they each wore sprang to life.

The Red Panda reached his right leg forward, until the
bottom of his foot pressed against the stone wall. As it bound to the solid
object with the power of a massive static electrical charge, he hoisted himself
forward and walked up the side of the building as an ordinary man might walk
down the street.

It was more of a process, to be sure. The constant tiny
motions of the hand-sensors required to grip and release the walls and push his
feet forward upon the vertical path was like gently working a marionette, but
the gestures required were miniscule and through long practice he barely
thought of them as he climbed, his partner moving silently a few paces behind
him, and just to his right.

When they reached the top story of Cain’s home, they each
settled into a crouch and scuttled across the open space of the wall until they
reached a landing onto which they dropped with a sound that was barely a
whisper upon the wind. The large French doors were locked, but the latch was a
simple one and delayed the man in the mask no more than a dozen seconds. They
passed into the darkness of the house beyond quickly and quietly, so that as little
wind as possible might disturb the silent stillness beyond.

The latch closed behind them with the smallest of clicks,
but the masked heroes froze in their tracks just the same. For a full minute
they stood stock-still and listened for any sign that their presence was known.
Listened for any creak, any footfall that might betray an opposing force.

Kit Baxter’s ears were naturally sharp, and her keen senses
had been honed by adventure. She heard nothing but the even thump of her own
heartbeat and the controlled breath of her partner. Another thirty seconds went
by. He turned his head to face her. She shook her head. In the slight glimmer
of moonlight that had survived the journey she could just see the outline of
his grin.

He touched the side of his mask with a red gauntleted hand
and there was a momentary dull flash as his lenses sprang to life. He gazed
about the small sitting-room in which they stood. It was comfortable enough,
though it looked as if it had recently been disturbed. A drawer in a small end
table was still half-open, and several papers poked through the opening, as if
something else had been hurriedly sought and removed. He moved noiselessly
around the space, his footfalls casting no more sound than those of a cat.

The Red Panda ran his fingers along the edge of a bookshelf.
Several large tomes had been disturbed and not replaced and now lay carelessly
upon the ground. He reached behind the books that remained and felt an open
space that would normally have been hidden. It was empty.

He turned and saw the Flying Squirrel on point, close behind
him, alert for any disturbance and finding none. He leaned in towards her,
bringing his lips close to her right ear as she watched their backs.

“Looks like Mister Cain made tracks,” he whispered, trying
not to be distracted by the smell of her hair.

Kit’s heart skipped at the feel of his breath, but she never
lost her focus. She tilted her chin up slightly and twisted her head just a few
degrees to the right to be heard.

“Think he’s gone to ground?” she breathed.

“Wouldn’t you?” came the reply.

Before she had a chance to answer that, there was a sudden
burst of loud static coming from one floor down, as if a phonograph arm had
just been dropped upon a waiting record. An instant later the halls were filled
with the recorded sound of an operatic tenor.

“Interesting,” the Red Panda said quietly, breaking for the
door.

The Flying Squirrel gripped his arm. “If anyone had been
putting that record on, I’d have heard them doing it,” she hissed.

He smiled at her. “I said it was interesting, didn’t I?”

Moments later, the door to Joshua Cain’s study opened
silently. The room was in precisely the same state of disarray that it had been
that afternoon when Ajay Shah had seen it last. The false front in the bookcase
was still open revealing the wall safe, now nearly empty, but ajar. Papers were
strewn about the floor with little regard to their importance, and the great
mahogany desk bore several piles of documents, clearly assembled in haste. The
black leather chair was turned away to face the wall, but from the doorway, the
Red Panda could tell that it was occupied.

“Joshua Cain,” he intoned gravely.

There was no reply. The music played on, but not so loud
that Cain could have helped but hear the masked man’s voice.

“Don’t be coy, Cain,” the voice boomed again. “We are far
beyond that.”

Again, there was no reply.

“I’ve had about enough of this,” the Flying Squirrel said.
Before her partner could move she had flung a combat boomerang across the room,
hitting the corner of the black leather chair with a loud
thwack
before returning to her hand. The chair began to spin in
response to the force she had applied, revealing a well-dressed young man with
an utterly vacant stare. He spun with the chair, making no effort to stop himself,
and showed no reaction to the presence of the masked newcomers.

“That’s not Cain,” she said as he spun.

“It’s… it’s young Randall Allyn,” the Red Panda said
gravely.

“As in the Allyns with more money than God and only slightly
less than you?”

“The very ones,” he said, moving into the room quickly.

“What’s he got to do with Cain?” she said, annoyed at a turn
of events that made no sense.

“Not a thing,” the Red Panda said seriously. “Randall is too
vapid for much, and far too rich to be tempted by crime.”

“He looks like he’s been drugged.”

“He’s in a trance,” came the reply at once.

“A tr– okay…,” she said with a shake of her head. “So
how did he put that record on? Even if he could move, I’d have heard
something.”

“He didn’t put the record on,” the Red Panda said, his fists
clenched instinctively. “Our mysterious friend did.”

“He’s
here
?” she
cried, producing a pair of throwing stars in each hand in a blur of speed.
“Where?”

“I expect he’s far from here. Using Randall’s enthralled
mind as a conduit… a relay station, if you will, for his telekinesis.”

“Telekin-how-much?” she said, scrunching up her nose in
distaste. She liked a straight fight.

“Exerting control over the physical world using pure mental
power. That’s how he knew that we were in the house. He had a slave mind here,
waiting for us.”

“Swell. Why?” she said, quickly crouching to better see
beneath the phonograph.

“I don’t know,” the man in the mask grimaced. “Come on,
we’ve got to get Allyn out of here. If I can get him into a neutral space I might
be able to help him.”

“Boss?” she said. “I think we might have bigger problems.
The phonograph is wired up to a nice big strongbox on the floor.”

“What?”

“And if that strongbox doesn’t have another one of those big
stinkin’ bombs in it, I’ll eat my cowl. My guess is we’ve got ‘till the music
stops.”

“Let’s go,” he said quickly, reaching out for the catatonic
young man seated in the chair. His hand suddenly froze as a hideous smile
spread across young Randall Allyn’s face, seeming to transform it into one the
Red Panda had seen before.

“Boss!” the Squirrel called out in alarm. An instant later,
the Red Panda realized that she was not responding to Allyn’s change. He turned
to the doorway and saw a small collection of toughs standing
shoulder-to-shoulder, three men deep in the doorway. They each wore the same
glazed, blank expression as Randall Allyn and stood stock-still, like statues.

“Well, come on!” she shouted at the assembled gorillas as
she settled into a crouch, prepared to launch into the amalgam of martial arts
she called
Squirrel-Fu
. “Let’s do
this!”

The men in the doorway made no movement, nor any sign of
having heard her.

“What kind of fight is this?” she snapped, annoyed.

“They aren’t here to fight us,” he said with a glance back
at the record, which was rapidly reaching its end. “They’re here to slow us
down.”

“He thinks I can’t get past six zombie mooks?” she snorted.

“Carrying Allyn? Before the record ends?” the Red Panda
cried, hoisting the slight form of the wealthy young man on his shoulders. He
shuddered as he heard a voice pass through Allyn’s lips. A voice that was the
pitch and timbre of the boy’s own, but carried the essence of a ghost from the
past, a voice the Red Panda had never expected to hear again.

“Choose,” the voice hissed.

Moments later, as the final notes still echoed triumphantly
throughout the halls of Joshua Cain’s comfortable home, a wall of fire rose
from the study and tore the building apart as if it were made of matchsticks.
The roar rose like thunder across the quiet neighborhood. The thick black smoke
masked the comfortable smell of wood fires. The tranquil song of the cold wind
in the branches was lost to a cacophony of sirens from all directions.

And of the Red Panda and the Flying Squirrel there was not a
single sign.