Tales of the Red Panda: The Mind Master (2 page)

Kit Baxter bounced along the sidewalk like a truant
schoolgirl. It was starting to get late and the shops were beginning to close,
but the streets yet teemed with life. The night was still cool, but the air was
full of springtime and the promise of the days to come. Every stoop, porch and
open window buzzed with conversation. The folks in the old neighborhood had
spent a long winter indoors and they were clearly making up for lost time with
their favorite game: gossip.

Kit had grown up in this neighborhood – spent her
entire life here – and she knew every family, every building. From some
stoops voices called to her, hands waved as she passed. From others there were
no such greetings. But Kit Baxter knew that every gathering had a new subject
to discuss after she was gone: her. How she was never around much any more. How
her job as a chauffeur to the city’s most notorious playboy kept her out until
all hours. How she would never be able to settle down at this rate.

Some would come to her defense, of course. They would point
out that at least she was working, and that these days people had to take what
they could get and be glad of it. It was, to be sure, a better occupation for a
pretty young thing than her old job driving a cab. Kit made a decent living and
she took care of her mother like a good girl.

No one would deny any of that, of course. There were those
who thought that Kit spent too much time with that ne’er-do-well boss of hers
to be any good. Still others thought she might carry a torch for the rich bird.
But they wouldn’t dare voice those thoughts too loud. Even among gossips, there
was such a thing as carrying matters too far. Besides, the fact that Kit kept
her old apartment rather than moving into the servant’s quarters at his nibs’
mansion seemed to prove there was nothing unusual between them.

It was on this last point that the gossips on the front
stoops were dead wrong. Kit smiled as she walked past, thinking how little they
could possibly dream the truth. That her millionaire playboy Boss was, in fact,
the masked man of mystery known only as the Red Panda. That far from living a
dissolute and directionless life, spoiled by his massive family fortune, he had
directed all of his energies into becoming crime’s greatest foe, and the honest
citizen’s greatest friend.

And what the gaggle from the old neighborhood could never
possibly guess was that she, Kit Baxter, whom they had known all her life,
fought at his side as that fearless fighting female: the Flying Squirrel. That
the two of them, together, though still branded as outlaws, had done more real
good for the city and the most desperate of its people than most could ever
hope to do in a hundred lifetimes.

Kit Baxter bit her lip a little as she thought of it.
Thought of him. The old girls on the porches were right about that much. But
she kept her feelings under wraps as much as possible, and so far her Boss
didn’t seem to have noticed. Times like this, when she had a rare evening off
and was in no danger of being close enough to him to make a slip, were the only
times she really let herself think about it.

And that was what put the skip in Kit Baxter’s step as she
made her way home from the pictures. The situation might be completely
impossible, but they shared both a secret and a life of adventure, and she was
the only person who really knew him, not the ridiculous mask of a man that he pretended
to be. That was more than she ought to have been able to hope for and it would
have to do.

Kit wore an oversize tweed cap, with a shock of red hair
pushed up into it without a great deal of care. She wore pants and a long coat
with her hands pushed in the pockets, but still the figure that she cut was
anything but mannish. She tried to buy an apple from a greengrocer that was
packing up for the evening, but he refused to take her money. He only smiled
and held his own cap over his heart with a pantomime sigh and a quick glance
over his shoulder to make sure that his wife hadn’t seen the gesture. Kit
laughed and pocketed the apple as she took the steps of her building two at a
time. She was almost at the front door when she heard the newsie’s voice, crying
from down the block,

“Extra! Extra! Empire Bank Heist nets untold fortune!”

And then another from the opposite direction,

“
Chronicle
Extra!
Police baffled by Empire Bank caper!”

And then still more, from everywhere, their voices too far
away to be distinct, but their urgency was unmistakable. Soon there would be a
paper amongst every cluster of neighbors on every stoop. Kit Baxter preferred
to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

She threw the main door of the building open and raced up
the three flights to her apartment. She locked the door behind her and turned
the radio on softly, just enough that it might seem like there was someone
there, should anyone be listening, but not enough to attract attention should
she not return to shut it off for several days.

Like a flash, she was at the far end of the apartment,
sliding open the window in the little sitting room at the end of a narrow hall.
The fire escape was on the other side of the building, and a quick glance
confirmed there were no eyes on her. She stepped out onto the narrow ledge and
slid the window closed behind her. The jump to the rooftop next door was only a
few feet across a very narrow alleyway, but even three flights up, it was more
than enough to give most people pause. Kit Baxter was not most people.

She hopped the gap and raced over two rooftops before she
reached the next gap. This was a similar jump onto an escape ladder that hung
from the building at the end of the street. Kit made the leap easily, secure in
the cover of darkness, as little light from the streetlamps spilled this high.
She climbed the escape ladder up two stories until she reached another window,
which she slid open and shimmied through in seconds flat.

She found herself in a long, narrow hallway of offices, none
of which appeared to have been rented in many a day. At the end of the hallway
was a door that read, “T. Conroy. Investments.” The door did not appear to have
been touched in months, and Kit did not disturb the doorknob now. She opened a
panel beside the door which would have never been visible to one who did not
know it was there, and turned a key in a sophisticated mechanism which seemed
completely out of place in these surroundings.

Suddenly, silently, the entire door frame slid back into the
wall itself, just far enough and long enough for Kit’s slender form to slip
through before the mechanism swung shut behind her. A touch of another panel
revealed the object that had set her on this wild chase above the streets: the
entrance of a long, clear tube, constructed of an unknown material of
extraordinary resilience. It ran from floor to ceiling, and was easily three
feet wide. She touched the smooth, cold surface and a section of the wall of
the tube opened up to admit her. Just before the panel in the office wall closed
behind her, plunging the hidden tube into darkness, the floor opened up beneath
her feet and Kit Baxter disappeared in an instant.

She tried, at first, to contain her cries of delight at the
ride. There were few people in the world who could stomach speeding through the
darkness beneath the city in a giant pneumatic tube, riding a carefully
engineered tide of compressed air at tremendous velocity. There were even fewer
people who would find it fun. The burbles of wild laughter that escaped the
girl’s lips as she rode made it clear that she was the exception.

She braced herself momentarily, knowing that there was a
jarring bump ahead where this new section of tube joined the main downtown
line. He had been apologetic about it, of course, but getting such a thing
built in the first place was a major undertaking, to say nothing of the dozens
of workmen whose memories he had to alter through hypnosis. She wasn’t about to
complain. He had said that he wanted to build an entrance to their top-secret
underground lair that was closer to her home so that she could lead a slightly
more normal life – to take more time away. But she knew the truth. He
built the tube to bring her back to him faster.

She felt the pressure slacken, the rolling tide of air
gathering at her feet to slow her approach, and knew that she was almost there.
Her feet touched solid ground and with one motion, she threw the tube open and
raced down the five steps from the platform. She was in a large room, deep
underground and illuminated from high above. There were a half dozen identical
tubes around the walls and dozens more extraordinary devices unknown to the
scientific world at large. Each was remarkable and worthy of study, but Kit
Baxter had seen them in action, and of all the remarkable sights before her,
she only had eyes for one.

He sat in an old wooden chair that he had pulled into the
centre of the room, with his left leg crossed over his right. His face was
hidden by a special edition of the
Toronto
Chronicle
with a headline that blazed in oversize letters,

“EMPIRE BANK ROBBED!”

She almost tripped over her feet as she came to a sudden
halt. A corner of the newspaper peeled back to reveal a red mask and a wry
smile.

“What kept you?” the Red Panda asked.

The wind that swept
across the jagged hills was bitterly cold, but to the ragged young man who
approached the kuti, it seemed like a blessing. He had just crossed the
Annapurna Ridge, one of the highest and most foreboding places on Earth, to
reach this spot, nestled as it was in the bosom of a tiny valley. He tried very
hard not to think about the fact that he would have to cross it again to get
out.

He pulled the thin air
deep into his lungs as he gazed at the mountain tops around him. He had been
told that Annapurna meant “Goddess of the Harvests.” He could only imagine that
they had been named by those who dwelt far below to whom the spring thaw would
bring precious new life, not by those that eked out such an existence as was
possible in this desolation. And yet still it seemed to him to be the most
beautiful place that ever was, or ever could be. The young man who stumbled on
towards the mud hut was, like most who walked this path, on a great quest.
Unlike most, this valley was not the end of that quest, but merely a step upon
a long journey. He was tall and taut, muscular and lean. Few that had been born
into the life of leisure and privilege to which he had could have ever summoned
the will to cross that mountain pass.

For a man is shaped by
the forces around him. Those born into great wealth are rarely gifted with the
drive to do more than spend that wealth on their own luxury or vanity. Those
whom fate has shielded from all fear or pain are seldom able to see it in
others. But, as is so often the case, when an exception rears its head, it
cannot help but run to the opposite extreme.

August Fenwick’s quest
came from a burning need for justice. Justice for those who could never know
the comfort or security that he had always enjoyed. Protection for those who
could not protect themselves. And redemption for the Fenwick bloodline, whom he
had judged to be guilty of a long history of wrongs in the name of the great
God, Money.

But where to begin? He
could, living the much-observed life of a wealthy family’s only son, study only
so much before those around him took note. Inventing and criminology were not
normal pursuits for a man of his status, he had been told in no uncertain
terms. And so he did what any brash young fool might do in his circumstances
– he ran away with the circus.

His parents had
thought he was on the typical Dissolute Gad-About’s tour of Europe, when in
reality he had adopted a disguise and was himself adopted by a family of
traveling acrobats. He had proved to be a star pupil as he absorbed their
techniques, their fearlessness, their discipline. To the thrill of the crowds,
he soared high above where most men would dare to be, and in time learned to
love the taste of fear.

From time to time he
would leave the circus as they traveled to a city where a great expert lived
– a detective, a martial arts master, anyone whose skills he would need
in the life’s work he was creating for himself. Then, by deceit, by imploring
or by outright bribery, he would study under them for as long as seemed
valuable, always disguised, always under a new identity.

In time, word had
reached him that his father was commanding him home, and he left the circus for
good. The elder Fenwick had expected his only son to be ready to assume a
mantle of respectability, to carry on the family name with dignity.

“After all, my son, I
won’t live forever,” he had said, with the smile of a man who does not really
believe that in his heart.

It had taken a great
deal of persuasion in order to be loosed upon the world again. After all, his
father yet held the purse strings, and the next phase of his mission would be
an expensive one. But soon enough, he had departed for the Orient. The need for
papers and passports made it more difficult to hide his identity, but a smile
and a bribe can do wonders if the bribe is large enough.

In Japan, in China and
throughout the sub-continent, young August studied under the greatest masters
in the many arts of combat. He learned of ancient devices and techniques, and
learned to adapt them with his considerable mechanical skill. He knew that in
order to succeed in his mission, even for a time, he must be able to do more
than seemed possible for any mortal man. But as he traveled he heard of even
greater powers, long lost to the modern world, which were still practiced by a
handful of faithful disciples.

His travels brought
him through India, where he absorbed many secrets, but always the true power
that would aid him in his fight for justice seemed just out of reach. At last
he had heard of a teacher, a Saddhu, in the high steppes of Nepal that had
knowledge such as that he sought. A holy man who seemed to know the innermost
workings of the mind as no man ever had.

He was, in every other
respect, prepared, in mind and body. He considered himself ready to take the
final step. Ready to return to the city that had been his home, and would
become his battleground. To fight and, in all probability, to die for what he
believed. Fenwick had sent a final cable back to Toronto through one of his
father’s companies, informing those at home of his intention to see the high
country before returning at last, and set off the next day without waiting for
a reply.

It had taken longer
than he had thought to reach this far, and as a small, wiry man with a long
black robe wrapped around him like a tunic came to the door of the kuti, he
hoped that it was only the beginning.

“Greetings,” he said
in a halting mutilation of the local dialect. “I am one who comes to you in
order… of you finding of that which hides… darkness which rides far before
him…”

“You were doing all
right for a moment there,” said the Saddhu in perfect English, “but you lost me
somewhere around the riding darkness. Actually, everything after ‘greetings’
was kind of a mess.”

The young man stared
at the mystic, blinking in astonishment.

“Sorry,” said the
Saddhu with a twinkle in his eye, “I didn’t mean to break your rhythm.”

The young man
recovered. “I was just trying to think of something to say other than ‘you
speak English’, which seemed a little obvious. Forgive me for being so
surprised.”

The Saddhu shrugged.
“It is a common reaction. Some people seem to feel I would have more to teach
them if I knew nothing of the world beyond these mountains.”

“You are here because
you choose to be,” the young man replied. “So am I. Who am I to judge?”

The mystic seemed
amused, but not displeased. “You have studied well to be so versed in the fine
art of double talk. You are an American?”

“Canadian,” came the
reply.

“Ah,” said the old
man, looking at his guest with a hard squint as if trying to tell the
difference. “You have traveled hard and far. I hope it was for a reason.”

“It is said in many
places that the Saddhu of this valley knows much that is hidden or lost. That
you understand the ancient secrets of the human mind. The arts that we in the
West might call Hypnosis.” The young man’s eyes seemed to blaze.

“They say a great
deal. Some of it happens to be true,” came the reply.

“I wish to study. To
learn what you know.”

The old man seemed
genuinely amused by this. “That is no small task, young one. I think perhaps
you would not have patience for that. In time, as I come to learn your desires,
I can shape your training accordingly.”

“Then you will teach
me?” the young man said eagerly.

“You can pay?” The old
man raised an eyebrow. When his guest nodded he continued, “Forgive me if that
seems crass. I think you will find I am not much of an orthodox Saddhu. It is
just possible that I was corrupted by the West. But that corruption also allows
me to see the ancient techniques for what they are. A true science of the
mind.” He crossed to his young guest and extended a hand. “What is your name,
son?”

There was an instant
of hesitation. “There would be little point in lying to one to whom the secrets
of the mind are an open book,” the young man said.

“It is true,” the
Saddhu smiled.

“But a secret is not a
lie.”

The old man nodded.
“Sometimes a secret is the most true thing there is. Very well then. For the
moment, I will call you Two.”

The young man’s brow
furrowed. “Why ‘Two’?” he asked.

“Because,” the old man
waved an arm towards the kuti, “I already have one student.”

The man now called
“Two” looked up and saw that it was true. Another man, perhaps three or four
years his senior, stood in the doorway, his face an impassive mask. His
complexion was dark, his eyes predatory, but it was difficult to tell his
ethnicity.

“Come meet your fellow
initiate,” the old man said. “This is–”

“My name is
unimportant,” the student said.

The Saddhu seemed
surprised. “It is?” he said.

The eyes of the two
students locked. The elder spoke with a wry smile. “Secrets are important,” he
said.

“When did this
happen?” The old man seemed frustrated.

His pupil shrugged.
“Just now.”

The Saddhu threw his
hands in the air. “Fine. Have it your way. One, meet Two. Two, this is One.” He
pushed past them into the kuti. “My name is Rashan. But you can call me
Master.”