Rikki gazed skyward. “High?”
“Yeah, man. High means to feel good. To get a buzz on. To pack up all your cares and woes,” Ted elaborated.
“I still don’t understand,” Rikki said.
“Have you ever used drugs?” Clara inquired, staring at each of the Warriors.
Blade shook his head. “The only drugs we know are those used by the Family Healers, and they’re all medicinal herbs.”
“Do your people drink alcohol?” Ted questioned.
“The Tillers concoct a home brew for special occasions,” Blade answered. “But no one in the Family drinks on a regular basis, if that’s what you mean. The Elders would not tolerate alcoholism.”
“Well, that ain’t the way it is in Miami,” Ted revealed.
“Those who don’t do drugs do the booze. Findin’ a sober person is next to impossible.”
“You’re exaggerating,” Blade said.
“A little,” Ted admitted. “But not by much. You haven’t been there. The rotten pushers are everywhere, and every pusher is a Dragon.”
“What’s a pusher?” Hickok wanted to know.
Ted did a double take. “A pusher pushes the dope.”
“They sell the drugs,” Clara clarified.
“How many pushers are there?” Blade asked.
“Thousands,” Ted replied. “And they’re just the lower-level Dragons.
There’s a whole chain of command from the pushers to the Masters.”
“Do you know how many Dragons there are, all told?” Blade inquired.
“No,” Ted admitted. “But if you wanted a guess, I’d say there’s seven thousand Dragons, maybe more.”
Hickok whistled. “Whew! That’s a heap of opposition.”
“We’re not here to deal with the lower-level Dragons,” Blade said. “The pushers are none of our concern. We’re after the Masters.”
“If you want my advice,” Ted offered, “I’d say go home. Go back to where you came from. There’s no way you can take on the Dragons. Not with just three of you.”
“We’ve tackled tough odds before,” Hickok observed.
“Are there others like yourselves?” Blade queried. “People who don’t like the Dragons, who don’t like the drugs?”
“Some,” Ted responded. “But not a whole lot. Most of the decent people left ages ago.”
“What about the authorities?” Blade asked. “Doesn’t Miami have a police force?”
“Yeah,” Ted said, his lips curling downward. “The Narcs.”
“How effective are these Narcs against the Dragons?” Blade asked.
Ted snorted. “Effective? You’ve got to be kidding! The Narcs are in league with the Dragons.”
“How can the police force be in league with the Dragons?”
“I might be able to answer that,” Clara said. “It all goes back to the war.
An aunt of mine told me the story when I was a young girl. The federal government, as you probably know, resettled in the Midwest after evacuating a lot of folks from the east. The state governments fell apart.
Florida was no different than the rest. With the government gone, the police and the sheriff departments broke down. Miami was a wide-open city. There was no one in control. The drug gangs took over.”
“Where did these drug gangs come from?” Blade inquired.
“They were always around,” Clara said. “Even before the war. The drug business in the United States was a big operation. A lot of the drug smugglers used Florida as the entry point for the drugs they brought in from other countries. Miami was a hot spot of drug activity. But before the war, at least, the authorities kept a lid on it.”
“And after the war, with the collapse of the government, the drug organizations moved in to fill the vacuum,” Blade deduced.
Clara nodded. “You’ve got it. For forty years after the war, according to my aunt, there were three or four major drug dealers fighting for the upper hand. And then the Masters showed up.”
“From where?”
“No one knows,” Clara said. “The Masters took over the largest drug gang in Miami, and within a couple of years they had wiped out all their opposition. They named themselves the Dragons, and they’ve ruled Miami ever since.”
“The Dragons control all of the land from Fort Lauderdale south,” Ted added. “Alligator Alley is their boundary line.”
“Alligator Alley?” Blade repeated.
“The Everglades Parkway,” Ted explained. “It runs from Naples in the west to Fort Lauderdale in the east. Anything south of the Parkway is in Dragon territory.”
“And they rule it with an iron fist,” Clara went on.
“They pass laws. They appoint people to posts like mayor or councilperson. And they set up their own police force, the Narcs.” Ted laughed bitterly.
“What’s so funny?” Blade questioned.
“The Narcs,” Ted responded. “The Masters have a warped sense of humor. You see, before the war, back in the days when there really was law enforcement, the Narcs were the police who went after the pushers and the dealers. The Narcs were the tough officers who put the drug-runners out of business.” He paused. “But after the Dragons took over, they made drugs legal. All drugs. They set up a system of big-time dealers and thousands of pushers. And they made it illegal for anyone to interfere with the drug trade. If a pusher tried to sell crack or smack to Leo or Ernestine, and if I tried to stop it, I’d be arrested by the Narcs. They’re the so-called official police force, hand-picked by the Dragons. And the Masters must have named them Narcs as a play on words.”
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, who had been listening attentively, gazed at Ted.
“What did you mean earlier about getting high? What is this ‘high’ you speak of?”
“Getting high. Getting stoned. It’s all the same,” Ted said. “The drugs do things to your head, to your body. They make some people feel good, but there’s always a price to pay. The drugs can destroy the mind and the body. They mess up your head. The strong stuff makes you hallucinate.
You can go off the deep end just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“Why do people use drugs?” Rikki asked.
Ted shrugged. “They like the buzz they get. They like to escape from reality.”
“This is most bewildering,” Rikki confessed. “Why would anyone want to escape from reality? Attuning our souls to cosmic reality is one of the purposes of our very existence.”
“You’re a weird one,” Ted remarked.
“Ted!” Clara said.
“Our souls should be devoted to perceiving the nature of spirit reality,” Rikki elaborated. “Without a spirit anchor, our lives are like a piece of dead wood floating on a pond, tossed every which way by the currents and the wind, without direction, without purpose.”
“Are you a preacher of some kind?” Ted inquired.
“I am a martial artist,” Rikki answered. “A perfecting swordmaster. I have devoted my life to the principles of Zen and the Circles.”
“What in the world is Zen?”
“Zen is the art of finding your true spirit center,” Rikki detailed.
“Through Zen, we attain a state of intuitive enlightment.”
Ted shook his head. “I never heard of it.”
“We believe in the Bible,” Clara mentioned. “Do all of you practice this Zen?”
“No,” Blade replied. “The Family Elders encourage each one of us to seek our own spiritual path. We are not forced to follow any one religion.
We have Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, and others. Many follow the teachings of the three blue Circles. Rikki happens to prefer Zen.”
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” Ted said.
“No.”
“You haven’t told us exactly where you’re from,” Ted noted. “And I can understand the reason. The less we know, the better. But why are you here? Why are you after the Masters?”