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yellow the brontosaurus's eyes had been.
"How come we're scared of that yellow light here, and we weren't back at the
Crater?"
"At the Crater we did not look directly into the awful eyes of the gray
dragon."
"Good point, we only saw the back-glow, which wasn't so bad."
"This is no back glow now," said Chiun.
"You want to stop and take a chance?"
"No."
"One of us should."
"I am not afraid, so you should."
"If you aren't afraid and I don't mind admitting that I am, why don't you
stop?"
"Because I have conquered my fear, and you have yet to conquer yours.
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Therefore, you need to test your mettle against your fears."
"Nice try, Little Father. But no sale."
Eventually they ran out of park. The other side of the high bamboo stockade
fence came rushing up.
"You stopping?" asked Remo.
"No."
"Then I'm not stopping, either."
They hit the wall in unison. Bamboo splinters flew in jagged chunks as they
blew through the stockade.
They came to a halt only when they reached a lagoon that bore a sign saying
Vingt Mille Lieues Sous Les Mers De Jules Verne, which Remo figured translated
as Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, but only because he
recognized the submarine from the movie.
At the quietly lapping edge of the lagoon, they stopped and drank in the
tranquil color of the water.
"Boy," said Remo, "that water is sure blue."
"Exceedingly blue," Chiun agreed.
"I love blue. Always have."
"It is a good color, perhaps not as good as gold, but good."
"I can never look at gold with the same eyes again. Too yellow for my
tastes."
"Yellow is not gold, nor gold yellow."
"Gold is still too yellow for me. But man, I just love looking at this blue."
And as they stared deep into the placid, soul-calming blue waters, the deep
blue turned indigo.
"Oh, shit."
"What is it, Remo?"
"Remember that soldier in the Crater? The one who saw a blue color when
everyone else saw yellow?"
"Yes."
"I think that blue is catching up to me."
"I see it, too. It is like a burning in my eyes, except it burns deep blue and
not a correct burning color."
"Damn," said Remo. "I feel awful."
"I, too, feel unhappy."
"Well, at least it's not yellow."
"It is not much of a blessing, but it is a blessing nonetheless," agreed the
Master of Sinanju.
"Maybe if we blink up a storm, the blue will go away."
"It is worth a try."
When they had blinked the deep blue from their burned retinas, Remo and Chiun
mustered up the courage to turn and face Pare Mesozoique.
The stockade fence still held.
Remo licked his dry lips to wet them. "You up for going back in?" he asked.
"It is our duty."
"Then I guess we gotta, although between you and me, I feel more like going
back on strike."
"It is a worthy idea. Worthy of Jool Phairne."
"Who?"
Chiun gestured over his shoulder. "That brilliant writer whose name adorns
that sign."
"You means Jules Verne?"
"That is not how you pronounce it."
"You mean Jules Verne is pronounced 'fool Phairne'?"
"Yes."
"No wonder these people keep getting conquered."
"It is part of their problem. From the Romans and Vikings to the Prussians and
Germans, they have fallen before invader after invader. Perhaps it has given
them an inferiority context."
"It's 'complex.' And you wouldn't know it to talk to a Frenchman. Or woman."
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As they approached Parc Mesozoique, the whine of a rotor disturbed the
stillness of the park. A moment later a small French army helicopter lifted,
canted west and droned out of sight.
"Damn, there goes that damn April May!"
They reached the spot where the helicopter had lifted off. There was no sign
of anyone or anything.
Then the Master of Sinanju noticed the drag marks in the dirt at their feet.
"Behold, Remo. A man was dragged to the helicopter."
"Yeah. And these small footprints on either side belong to Dominique. She must
have dragged someone away. The question is who?"
"Let us discover that."
They followed the footprint-decorated drag marks to an upthrust protuberance
on the park grounds. It was a small volcano, as volcanoes go. Probably twenty
feet high. The sides were molded of some kind of streaked red clay. When they
climbed it, the skin crumbled under their feet, setting bits of clay rolling
and bouncing down to the base.
At the lip of the crater, they looked down and saw a ladder disappearing into
a very black hole.
"Looks like the back way in," muttered Remo.
"Come," said Chiun, swinging around so he could take hold of the ladder's
rungs.
They climbed down into the darkness, which proved to be a flat plug of glassy
obsidian.
"Dead end," said Remo.
The Master of Sinanju said nothing as he moved about the inner walls of the
cone. It was rough but not terribly irregular. Except for a single knob of
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