Brain Drain

"You're not planning a movie, are you?" he asked warily.

Wanda Reidel laughed. The laugh started in her mouth and ended in her mouth and involved no other organ or body part.

"With him? God no. We've got other fish to fry."

"I may be one of those fish," Remo said.

Wanda shrugged. "Can't make an omelet without a chicken somewhere being raped, love."

"I'm not worried about rape. I'm worried about being dead."

Wanda hmphhed. "You don't even know what dead is. Dead is when you have to wait for a seat in a restaurant. Dead is when they change their private numbers and you don't get them without asking. Dead is when suddenly everybody has a case of the outsies when you call. That's dead, honey. What do you know about dead? This town is all dead. There's just a few that stay alive and I'm going to be one of them. Gordons is going to help."

"You've got it wrong," Remo said. "Dead is when the flesh starts to turn black and becomes a banquet table for maggots. Dead is arms and legs ripped off and stuck in a wall. Dead is brains scooped out of skulls that look as if they were crushed by a steam-shovel. Dead is blood and broken bones and organs that don't work. Dead is dead. And Gordons will help you do that, too."

"Are you threatening me, lover?" asked Wanda, looking into Remo's deep brown eyes that bordered on black and never imagining for an instant that Remo would kill her if he decided it would help stifle his next annoying yawn. He did not like this woman.

Remo smiled.

"No threats." He stood up and touched Wanda's bangled wrist with his right fingers. He pressed lightly. He smiled again and his eyes narrowed slightly and he moved his fingers again, and when he left the office a few minutes later, he had Wanda's assurance that she would notify him as soon as she heard from Mr. Gordons-and he had a date for Chiun to meet with Rad Rex. Wanda, still sitting behind her desk, for the first time that day did not feel like having anything to eat.

CHAPTER TWELVE

"I saw them," Chiun said.

"Yeah. Well, that's not important now. Mr. Gordons in in town. I've found it out for sure."

"Wait," said Chiun, raising a long bony finger for silence. "Just who is to say that this is not important? Do you alone decide what is important? Is that the way things are to be? After all the time and trouble I have gone to to teach you to be a human being? Now you say 'that is not important'?"

Remo sighed. "Who did you see?"

"I did not say I saw a who. I said I saw them."

"Right. Them. Who's them? Or what's them, if you prefer."

"I saw Doris Day's dogs."

"Gee. Wow. No fooling."

Pleased at Remo's display of interest, Chiun said, "Yes, I saw them in the Beverly Hills. There were many of them. A woman was walking them."

"Was the woman Doris Day?"

"How would I know that? However, she was fair-haired and lissome, and it might have been she. It might have been. She moved like a dancer. It probably was Doris Day, Blonde. Lean. Yes, it was Doris Day. I saw Doris Day walking her dogs."

"I knew you'd see the stars if you took that bus ride."

"Yes, and I saw others. Many others."

Remo did not ask who, and Chiun did not volunteer any names.

"Are you all done now?" asked Remo.

"Yes. You may go on with your inconsequential report."

"Mr. Gordons is in town. We're his targets. And we've got a meeting with Rad Rex tomorrow. I figure that's when Gordons is coming after us."

"It is about time that you performed well some act of importance. When is it, this meeting?"

"At Global Studios. Five p.m."

"Five p.m.," said Chiun. "My bus ride for tomorrow is at four p.m. I will not be back in time."

"Then don't go."

"No. It is all right. I am accustomed to dealing with your ineptitude. I will take a different bus. It doesn't matter." He stopped in mid-sentence. Remo looked. Chiun was staring out the car window toward the sidewalk, where a group of pedestrians waited.

"Look, Remo. Isn't that…?"

"No," said Remo. "It isn't."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"You understand? He will attempt to find you?"

"Here now," said Wanda Reidel. "Of course I understand. Who's the creative one here anyway?"

"Sadly, it is true," Mr. Gordons said. "I am not creative. You are. Forgive my presumptions."

"Of course."

"You must be sure that he does not find you. Then release the information on the computer sheets that I gave you. The way we discussed. He will look for you and that will separate him from the Oriental, with whom I will deal. Then I will destroy this Remo. And you will have the publicity that you think is helpful to your career."

"I understand all that," said Wanda impatiently. "This Oriental must be quite a man."

"He is," Mr. Gordons agreed. "Most unusual. He has no fear and no weakness that I have been able to discern. However, with the element of surprise, I will be able to destroy him. I will now make the telephone call."

Gordons dialed the phone next to the pool at Wanda's home in Benedict Canyon, one of the strips running from Hollywood to the sea, gouges in the earth, as if a giant had scratched his fingers through soft sand. As Gordons dialed, Wanda lay back on her beach chair, eating a bagel, rubbing Nubody cream over her skin.

"Is this the one called Smith? This is Mr. Gordons."

Gordons listened for a moment, then said: "It will do you no good to know where I am. I am calling to tell you that the computer report on the secret organization you command will be made available to the press of your nation."

Pause.

"That is correct. This will be done today at five P.M. by Ms. Wanda Reidel in her office. She will announce plans for a new motion picture about your secret government organization. It will star Rad Rex."

Pause.

"That is quite accurate, one called Smith. I am going to use all the confusion this creates to destroy the one called Remo and the old Oriental. It is a good plan, is it not? Creative?"

He listened for a moment, then yelled "nigger" and slammed the receiver back on its base.

Wanda Reidel stopped examining her naked pubis. "What's wrong? What did he say?"

"He said I had the creativity of a night crawler."

Wanda laughed, and Mr. Gordons glared at her.

"I would take that laughter to be mocking me if it were not for the fact that I require your services."

"Don't ever forget it, Gordons. Without me, you're nothing. I made you what you are today."

"Incorrect. The scientist at the space laboratories made me what I am today. You are trying to improve upon her work. That is all. I am leaving now, for there are things to do before I encounter the old one at five o'clock today."

And with a smooth gait, inhuman in its absolute uniformity, Gordons walked away, leaving Wanda at poolside. She was still there five minutes later when the telephone rang.

"Hello, love," she said.

"This is Remo. I thought you were going to tell me when you heard from Gordons. What's all this crap about a new movie?"

"It's true. All true."

"Why are you doing this?" said Remo.

"Because Gordons wants me to. And because I want to. It'll make me a household name. Everybody in this industry, television too, they'll be knocking down my door when this breaks. I'll be the…" She stopped and said, "Five o'clock today. At my office. And don't try to talk me out of it, because you can't. See you, love. Kiss, kiss."

She replaced the receiver with one outstretched finger. Remo hung up the phone at the Sportsmen's Lodge.

"Chiun, you're going to have to go see Rad Rex by yourself."

"I am old enough to travel alone."

"It's not the travel. There'll be a studio car. But I won't be able to go. And Mr. Gordons has figured out a way to separate us."

"See," said Chiun. "It is as I have always said. Even bad machines sometimes do good deeds."

"Oh, go scratch. I hope he eats you. Turns you into engine oil."

"Not before I see Rad Rex. To think after all these years."

"The car'll come for you. I've got to go. To Wanda Reidel's. I'll catch up to you."

"Take your time," said Chiun. "I should have some moments of rest during the day."

Unless they were familiar ones, limousines meant absolutely nothing to Joe Gallagher, a day-shift guard at the front gate of Global Studios.

Nowadays anybody could rent a limousine, and some screwball groupies had been known to do just that. A half-dozen of them would pool their money, hide in the trunk, and then, when they got past an unsuspecting guard, park their rented rig someplace and go harass a star. That had happened just last month, and one of Hollywood's reigning cowboy heroes-one of those ten percent of stars whom Joe Gallagher did not also classify as a bastard-had been gang-raped by six young girls, and an inexperienced guard at the gate had been canned.

So Gallagher raised an imperious hand to halt the gray Silver Dawn Rolls Royce as it made the right-hand turn up the slight incline to the guard's booth. The uniformed driver lowered the window.

"A guest of Miss Wanda Reidel to see Rad Rex," the driver said. His voice sounded bored.

Gallagher peered in through the driver's window and saw an old Chinaman sitting in the back seat, his hands folded calmly in his lap.

The old man smiled. "It is true," he said. "I am going to meet Rad Rex. It is true. Honest."

Gallagher turned away and rolled his eyes up into their sockets. Another nut.

He consulted a clipboard in his booth, then waved the driver past.

"Bungalow 221-B."

The driver nodded and started slowly inside the lot.

"A bungalow?" his passenger said. "For a big star like Rad Rex? Why a bungalow? Why not that big ugly building over there?" Chiun asked, pointing to a tall cube of a building, with black sun-guard windows. "Who uses that building?"

"Nobodies use that building," said the driver. "Big shots use bungalows."

"This is very strange," Chiun said. "I thought in this country, the bigger and more important you are the bigger the building you have to have."

"Yeah, but this is California," said the driver as if that explained everything. And, indeed, it did.

Bungalow 221-B was in the back of the lot. Rad Rex was already there, wearing his doctor's smock, sitting at the makeup table in a large rear sitting-room/office and pouring out his tale of woe to the young man whom Wanda Reidel had sent over to be his escort around Hollywood.

"Is this silly or what?" asked Rad Rex. The younger man, a curly-haired brunet with cheeks so lively they seemed rouged, shrugged and raised his hands, palm-upwards, at his sides, a move which jangled his silver bracelets.

"I guess so, Mr. Rex."

"Call me Rad. It is. It is silly. I've come three thousand miles to meet a nobody who watches my stupid show. Have you ever seen my show?"

The young man hesitated a split second, unsure of what to answer. If he said no, he might offend this creep. If he said yes, and Rad Rex was serious in his disdain for people who watched his show, it might reduce him in Rad Rex's eyes.

The thought of the simple truth-that he watched Rad Rex's show only on infrequent occasions and then only to see if they were still hiring gays never occurred to him.

"Afraid not," he said finally. "It's on when I'm working, you see."

"You haven't missed a thing. I play this doctor. Kind of a Marcus Welby with balls. Very big in the ratings."

"I know that. It's got to be very big for Ms. Reidel to handle you."

"Is Wanda your agent too?" said Rex.

The young man laughed self-deprecatingly. "No, no, but I wish she were. If she were, I bet I could get something better than walkons and clothes modeling."

Rex looked the dark-haired man up and down. "Yes, you look like a model. Your body's got the lines for it."

"Thank you, but I want to be an actor. A real actor, not just a star."

Rex turned back to the mirror and began putting a faint oil on his eyelashes with a Q-tip. The younger man realized he had offended him, that Rex probably had thought he was being insulted when the youth talked about being an actor and not just a star, and the young man stepped forward and said, "Here, Rad, let me help you."

He took the Q-tip from Rad Rex, placed his left hand along the side of Rex's right cheek and began to stroke the oil gently on the actor's eyelashes to make them look longer and thicker.

Rex closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair.

"Maybe we could find a spot for you in my show. But you'd have to come to New York."

"I'd walk to New York for a spot in your show."

"I'll talk to Wanda about it."

"Thank you, Mr. Rex."

"Rad."

"Rad."

Knock, knock. The rapping reverberated through the room.

"That must be your guest."

"Isn't this terrible? Why me, Lord?" asked Rex.

"Because you're a star," the younger man cooed, patting Rex's cheek softly and then going to the front of the bungalow to open the door.

"Wait. Do I look all right?"

"You look lovely."

The dark-haired man opened the door and tried to contain his smile at the sight of the wizened old Oriental standing in front of him, wearing a black-and-red brocade kimono.

"Yes?" he said.

"You are not Rad Rex."

"No, I'm not. He's inside."

"I am to see him."

"Please come this way." The man led Chiun toward the back room, where Rex sat staring into the mirror, intently examining a nonexistent pimple over the left side of his mouth. He saw the Oriental in the mirror, and smoothing his medical coat over his hips, rose and turned with a slight smile.

"It is you, it is you," said Chiun.

"I am Rad Rex."

"You look just as you do on the picture box."

With a wink at the young man, Rad Rex said, "People are always saying that."

"I will never forget how you saved Meriweather Jessup from a life as a woman of the night."

"One of my better moments," said Rad Rex, still smiling.

"And the ease with which you cured the cocaine addiction of Ranee McAdams was also most impressive."

As he spoke, Chiun rocked back and forth on his feet, like a young boy called into the principal's office for the first time in his school career.

"The difficult I do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer," conceded Rad Rex graciously.

"What do you think was your most famous case?" asked Chiun. "Was it your saving the unborn child of Mr. Randall McMasters? Or the emergency operation you performed on the husband of Jessica Winston, after she had fallen in love with you? Or the time when you found a leukemia cure for the lovely young daughter of Walker Wilkinson after she had gone into a depression over the death of her prize-winning colt?"

Rad Rex looked at Chiun with narrowed eyes. This was a setup. Maybe "Candid Camera." How did this old geezer know so much about a show whose characters changed so fast the hardest thing an actor had to do was to keep the names straight? How did he remember names and incidents that Rad Rex had forgotten the moment after they had happened? It was a setup. Wanda Reidel had booked Rad Rex for "Candid Camera." Rex glanced at the dark-haired young man but saw nothing on his bland face. At least he wasn't in on it.

Rex decided if he was going to be on film, he'd better look good.

He ignored Chiun's questions. "I've told you my name, but you haven't told me yours."

"I am Chiun."

Rex waited for more, but nothing else was volunteered.

"Just Chiun?"

"It is enough of a name."

"Chiun? Chiun?" Rad Rex mused aloud, and then the name came back to him. "Chiun! Do you have an autographed picture of me?"

Chiun nodded in agreement, happy that Rad Rex had remembered.

Rex sat down cautiously. Maybe it wasn't "Candid Camera." Maybe this old guy was a front man for the Mafia, and they wanted to produce a picture, He had always thought you had to be Italian to be in the Mafia. Best to be cautious.

"Won't you please sit down and tell me something about yourself ?" he asked.

"I think I'd better leave," the young dark-haired man said. "I'll see you later, Mr. Rex. Mr. Chiun."

Rex waved an impatient hand in dismissal. Chiun declined to acknowledge the young man's existence.

He sat in one smooth motion in a chair across from Rex's couch.

"I am Chiun. I am the Master of Sinanju. I am employed to make sure that the Consitution of the United Sates continues to fail to work in exactly the same way it has failed to work for two-hundred years. It is a most important job I have, and its only real reward is that it leaves my daytimes free to watch yours and other beautiful poems on the television."

"Very interesting," said Rad Rex. Who said you had to be sane to be in the Mafia? This ninny was probably the head of the Mafia's Far East office.

"What is your nationality?" Rad Rex asked shrewdly. Maybe the man had some Italian blood.

"I am Korean. There is an old story that when God first made man, he put the dough in the oven and…"

After Mr. Gordons had left her, Wanda Reidel snuggled down deeper into her leather-strapped beach chair and reached for more Nubody oil.

She poured a gob of it onto her right palm, replaced the bottle on the tile-topped table next to her, and began to rub the oil into her abdomen and down onto her thighs.

It was all right for Mr. Gordons to tell her to run away from Remo but that was because Mr. Gordons had not been in her office the day Remo showed up there. Mr. Gordons had not seen the look Remo had given her, had not felt his touch on her wrist. If Gordons had seen or felt that, he would have realized that this Remo posed no threat to anybody's plan. He was so hot for Wanda's body nothing else mattered to him.

She rubbed even bigger gobs of the cream into her elbows and knees and neck.

And why shouldn't Remo be? It was amazing the way most men fell all over themselves at the sight of a young, pretty woman and there was no shortage of that type in Hollywood. But that told you more about the man than about the woman. Those women were crap, just crap in Wanda's book, even though she had built a career on them. Crap. A real man wanted a real woman. How odd that someone like Remo, an outsider, could come to town and on first meeting recognize the real woman, the beauty that reposed beneath the mass of sinew, muscles, fat, suet, and lard that was Wanda Reidel.

And he had. She knew. She had seen that look.

So when Remo called soon after Mr. Gordons left, she did not bother to hide from him. Not really. And when Remo came, they would make wild magnificent love. She would allow him her body. And then the two of them would sit and they would make plans for the disposal of Mr. Gordons who had outlived-make that outlasted-his usefulness.

Wanda finished the oiling ritual and began to apply rouge to the mounds of her breasts and a slightly darker-than-natural skin makeup into the crevice between her breasts and around the bottom and sides of them.

She lifted each breast and examined it carefully as she worked, glad that no purplish veins were visible. She hated those young actresses with those breasts that stood up straight, pert and perky as their little bobbed noses.

Wanda's bosom could do the same thing if that was all she had to worry about during the day, just making sure her breasts were firm. But Wanda told herself that she was a working woman and didn't have time for such frills. Oh, for the day when she would be able to do nothing except exercise and keep her body lean and tan. And diet, too. Perhaps one of those all-protein diets. They seemed to work. She thought of cheese Danish and strawberry Danish and apple Danish and decided that when her great days of leisure came, protein diets were basically unhealthy. The body needed carbohydrate. Without carbohydrate, there was no blood sugar. Without blood sugar, resulting stupidity was followed immediately by death.

No. No fad diets for her. She would simply go onto a careful carlorie-counting regimen that she could be sure would be heathful and sound. There was no reason that a diet had to deprive you of all the things you liked. A diet was supposed to make you feel better, not miserable.

After her triumphant move into the New York television market, after that, she definitely would find time to diet.

And to exercise. But not tennis. She hated tennis. It was a mindless insipid game played by mindless insipid twits who just wanted to show off their young, lean, tanned bodies. Like an advertisement that they were all good in bed. As if the body alone had anything to do with that.

When Wanda had first come to Hollywood, she had been the part-time girlfriend of an assistant producer. Later, when she became well known on her own, he had said at a cocktail party that "screwing Wanda Reidel has all the excitement of a stroll through an unused railroad tunnel. All the excitement and half the friction."

The assistant producer was now working as the assistant manager of a restaurant in Sumter, South Carolina. Wanda had seen to that. But the remark had outlived his career. It was one of the crosses Wanda had had to bear. Often when making love to her, men-even men who wanted something from her-would stop in the middle and laugh and she knew what it was. That goddam railroad-tunnel crack. And it wasn't true. God, it wasn't true. She knew it wasn't true. She was warm and loving and tender and sensuous and worldly, and she would prove all that to Remo today when he arrived.

She continued oiling her body. She heard a throat cleared behind her.

Because of the silence of the approach, she knew it was Mr. Gordons returning.

"Don't get upset," she said without turning. "I was just getting ready to go, so cool it."

She hoped he would leave right away. She didn't want him there when Remo arrived. She didn't want Gordons in the way of the monumental orgy that she envisioned for Remo.

"Why don't you pick up and beat it, love?" she said, still without turning.

"Whatever you want, love."

The voice wasn't Mr. Gordons, but before Wanda could turn around in her chair the way she had planned, thinning out her middle by making it longer with a langorous stretch, before she could do that, she found herself being lifted, still in the leather-strapped chair, and tossed into the deep end of the kidney-shaped purple-tiled pool.

She hit with a splat. The heavy-framed chair sunk away beneath her, and she floundered. Water got into her nose and eyes. She coughed. She could feel mucus running out of her nose, down her upper lip.

Through her teared vision, she saw Remo standing at poolside, looking down at her.

"You bastard," she sputtered as she moved toward the side of the pool. "For that, you'll never get into films."

"Ah well, another promising career shot to hell. Where are the papers?"

"Papers?" asked Wanda as she started to pull herself out of the pool. She stopped when Remo's leather-shoed foot pressed lightly on the top of her head.

"The computer papers. The secret organization you're going to make a movie of. Gordons gave them to you, remember?"

"Wouldn't you like to know, you wise bastard? They're going to be in the hands of the press in just an hour."

"Oh?" Remo pressed down with his foot. Wanda felt her hands slip from the smooth glazed tile and her head was again underwater. She opened her eyes. She saw black swirls drifting past her eyes like a ghostly vapor. That goddam eye makeup. It was running. It wasn't supposed to run. She'd do something about that.

The pressure lessened on her head, and she popped upward out of the water like a fishing bobber when the line below it has been snapped by a large fish.

"Where is it, dearest?" said Remo, leaning over poolside. "You may be getting a clue by now that I'm not fooling."

He smiled. It was the same smile he had smiled in her office, but this time she recognized it. It wasn't the smile of a lover; it was the smile of a killer. It was a professional smile. On a lover's face, it meant love because love was his job; on this man's face it meant death because death was his job.

"They're in my briefcase. Just inside the door," she gasped, frightened and hoping that Mr. Gordons would find a reason to come back.

Remo gave her a wait-there-awhile push under the water with his foot. She felt her toes hit bottom. She spluttered and splashed. By the time she had struggled back to the surface, Remo was trotting out of the house. He had a pile of papers in his arms and was looking through them.

"This is it. Where'd you have the copies made?"

"Mr. Gordons made them."

"How many?"

"I don't know. He gave me eight and the original."

Remo shuffled through the large stack of papers. "Seems right. Nine here. Any more? Stick one in the files at your office?"

"No."

"Press releases? About your new movie?"

Wanda shook her head. Her sparse hair, all the lacquer washed out of it, shook around her head like wet strands of rope.

"I always work verbally with the press. I'm going to do that today."

"Correction love. You were going to do that today."

As Remo walked by her again, he used his foot to press her head down under the surface of the water. He went to a large baker's oven in the rear of the patio, California's nouveau riche version of a barbecue, its only concession to American style being that the giant oven was set atop a mass of red bricks. He found an electric on-off switch, kicked it on, and opened the oven door. Inside gas jets flamed and began to bring a glow to ceramic imitation charcoal. He waited a few seconds until the fire was sizzling, then began to throw in the batches of computer paper, a few sheets at a time, watching them flare and burn orange in the bluish glow of the bottled gas.

When all the paper was in and burned, Remo took a poker, designed to look like a fencing sword, and shuffled up the ashes and incompletely burned clumps of blackened paper. They flashed into fire all over again. Remo stirred up the remainder, turned the oven onto high, and closed the door.

When he turned, Wanda Reidel was standing behind him. He laughed aloud.

Her skin was pasty and dry looking, because the unaccustomed dousing had washed off all the Nubody oil. Her breasts sagged, forming a perfect two-pointed tiara for her stomach which sagged too. Her hair hung in loose strands down around her face, a pasty mass of uncooked dough in which her eyes, shorn of makeup, looked like two unhealthy raisins. Her legs rubbed together from top of thigh to knee, even though her feet were apart.

She had a pistol in her hand.

"You bastard," she said.

Remo laughed again. "I saw this scene in a movie once," he said. "Your breasts are supposed to be straining against some kind of thin gauze, struggling to be free."

"Yeah?" she said. "I saw that movie. It was a doggo."

"Funny. I sort of liked it," Remo said.

"The ending didn't work. It needed a new ending. Like this one." Wanda raised the pistol in both hands up in front of her right eye, squinted down the barrel and took aim at Remo.

Remo watched her leg muscles, waiting for the tell-tale tensing that would announce she was ready to fire. The almost hidden muscles in her calves tightened.

Remo looked up.

"Die, you bastard," Wanda yelled.

Remo's right hand flashed forward. The sword-like poker moved out in front of him. Its point slammed into the barrel of the gun and Remo jammed it in, deep, just as Wanda pulled the trigger.

The hammer hit the shell casing, and the bullet, blocked by the poker from leaving the barrel, exploded, backwards, all over Wanda's face. She stumbled back, her face pulp. Her foot hit the wet edge of the pool and she stumbled back into the water, holding the pistol in a death grip, sword still protruding from the front. And then the gun and poker dropped away, under the water, and Wanda floated limply atop the pool like a dead fish, staring up toward Remo with eye sockets blown empty by the exploding gun.

"All's well that ends well," said Remo.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The conversation could have been dull, but it hadn't been, since the old man talked about the thing Rad Rex considered most important in the world. Rad Rex.

"But I must confess," Chiun said, "there is one aspect of your shows that I find distasteful."

"What's that?" asked Rex, truly interested.

"The excessive violence," said Chiun. "In shows of such rare beauty it is a terrible thing to let violence intrude."

Rex tried to think of what violence the old man might be talking about. He could remember no fights, no shootings. Dr. Witlow Wyatt ran the only absolutely bloodless operating room in the world, and the most violent thing he had ever done was tear up a prescription blank.

"What violence?" he finally asked.

"There was a show. A nurse struck you." He looked at Rad Rex carefully to see if the man would remember."

"Oh, that."

"Yes, precisely. That. It is a bad thing, this violence."

"But it was only a slap," said Rex, regretting almost instantly having said it. From the pained look on Chiun's face, he could understand how the old man might regard a slap as the equivalent of World War III.

"Ah yes. But a slap may lead to a punch. And a punch may lead to an effective blow. Before you know it, you will be dodging guns and bombs."

Rad Rex nodded. The old man was serious.

"Don't worry. If it ever happens again," he said, "I'll take care of her." The actor rose to his feet and assumed a karate stance, arms held high and away from his body. "One blow to the solar plexis and she will never strike a physician."

"That is the correct attitude," said Chiun. "Because you allowed her to deal you a bad blow. Badly done, badly aimed, badly stroked. It can only embolden her."

"When I get her, I'll fix her. Aaaah. Aaaah. Aaaah," shouted Rex, slashing imaginary targets with karate hand swords.

"I can break a board, you know," he said pridefully.

"That nurse did not look like a board," said Chiun. "She might strike back."

"She'll never have the chance," said Rad Rex. He wheeled on an imaginary opponent. Out darted his left hand, fingers pointed like a spear; over his head came his right hand, crashing down as if it were an axe.

He saw a wooden pool cue in a rack in a far corner of the room and whirled toward it, yanking it from the rack. He brought it back and placed it between the end of the sofa and the dressing table, stared at it, took a deep breath, then slashed his hand down onto the cue, which obediently cracked and clattered to the floor in two pieces.

"Aaaah, aaaah, aaaah," he yelled, then smiled and looked at Chiun. "Pretty good, eh?"

"You are a very good actor," said Chiun. "Where I come from you would be honored for your skill as an artificer,"

"Yeah, yeah. But how about my karate, huh?" Rad Rex went into another rapid series of hand slashes. "How about that?"

"Awe-inspiring," said Chiun.

The telephone rang before Rad Rex could show Chiun any more of his martial arts skill.

"Yes," said Rex.

The voice was a woman's but a strange woman's voice, ice-cold and iron-hard, with no regional inflection, with not even the touch of the old South that was popular in most parts of California among women who spent their worktime talking on the telephone.

"I am calling for Ms. Reidel. The set to which you are to take your visitor is ready now. You may take him there now. It is the set in back of the main building in the far corner of the lot. Do not tarry. Take him now."

Click. The caller hung up before Rad Rex could speak.

The actor grinned sheepishly at Chiun. "That's one of the things I hate about being in a new town. People herd you about like an animal."

"True," said Chiun. "Therefore one must never go to a new town. One must be at home everywhere."

"How to do that would be a secret worth knowing."

"It is simple," said Chiun. "It comes from inside. When one knows what he is inside, then everyplace he goes is his place and he belongs there. And thus no town is new because no town belongs to someone else. All towns belong to him. He is not controlled. He controls. It is the same with your little dance."

"Dance?" said Rad Rex.

"Yes. The karate hopping that so many of you people do."

"Greatest killing technique ever devised."

"From my son I could not stand such an incorrect statement," said Chiun. "But from you, because you are unskilled and know no better…" He shrugged.

"You saw what I did with that pool cue," Rex said.

Chiun nodded and rose slowly, his black-and-red robe seeming to rise with a will of its own.

"Yes. Karate is not all bad. It teaches you to focus your pressure on just one point, and that is good. Karate is a rifle shot instead of a shotgun. For that it is good."

"Then what's bad about it?"

"What is bad about it," said Chiun, "is that it does nothing but direct your strength. Nothing but focus your energy. So it is an exercise. An art is creative. An art creates energy where none existed before."

"And what is an art? Kung fu?"

Chiun laughed.

"Atemiwaza?"

Chiun laughed again. "How well you know the names," he said. "Game players always do. No, there is only one art. It is called Sinanju. All else is just a copy of a piece of a fragment of a thought. But the thought itself is Sinanju."

"I've never heard of Sinanju," said Rad Rex.

"Because you are a special man and you may need someday to defend yourself properly against the evil nurse, I will show it to you," said Chiun. "This is a gift not bestowed lightly. Most to whom Sinanju is shown never have a chance to remember it or to talk of it."

He lifted up the heavy end of the pool cue which Rex had cracked with the side of his hand. Chiun hefted it carefully before handing it to the actor, who held it out in front of him like a billy club.

"You remember how hard you swung your arm to crack the stick?" said Chiun. "That was the focus of your power. But the power did not come from karate. It came from you. You were as the sun and karate merely a lens that focused your power into a bright dot to shatter that stick. The art of Sinanju creates its own power."

"I'd like to see this Sinanju," said Rad Rex. It did not occur to him to doubt Chiun. Like most Westerners, he assumed anyone with slanted eyes was a martial arts expert, just as all Orientals assumed all Americans could build and fly rockets.

"You shall," said Chiun. He arranged the thick half of the pool cue in Rad Rex's hands. When he was done, the stick was vertical, its shattered end pointed toward the floor, the rubber bumper on its fat end pointed toward the ceiling. It was held lightly by Rad Rex at about the middle of the shaft, between the fingertips of the left hand and right hand, like a young baby holding a training glass of milk.

"Remember how hard you swung to shatter the stick. That was karate. A dance," said Chiun. "And this is Sinanju."

Slowly he raised his right arm over his head. Even more slowly he brought his hand down. The side of his hand hit lightly into the rubber ring that cushioned the end of the cue stick.

And then, by God, the hand was through the rubber ring and moving downward and… Jesus Christ… the hand was moving slowly through the almost-petrified wood of the cue, cutting through almost like a rip saw, and Rad Rex felt the old man's hand pass between his fingertips holding the stick and there was a strange buzzing feeling, almost as if the actor were being electrically shocked. Then the buzz was gone, and the old man's hand continued moving slowly through the wood and then it was out, at the splintered bottom of the shaft.

Chiun looked up and smiled at Rad Rex, who looked down at his hands, then separated them, and each hand held half of the cue stick, sawed through along its length. Rad Rex looked at the stick, then gulped and looked at Chiun. His face was puzzled and fearful.

"That is Sinanju," said Chiun. "But having seen it, you must now forget that you have seen it."

"I'd like to learn it."

"Someday," Chiun smiled. "When you retire from all else, perhaps. When you have years to spend, perhaps. But for now you do not have the time. Consider the demonstration a gift from me. In return for the gift you once gave me. The picture with your own name on it and an inscription to me."

Chiun had just reminded Rad Rex of something. He had wanted all day to ask the old man how he had gotten the Mafia to muscle Rad Rex into signing that photograph. He looked now at the bisected cue stuck in his hands and decided there was no point in asking.

He knew. He knew.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It was a sleepy frontier saloon. Several bottles of rotgut whiskey stood on the bar. Four round tables with chairs around them were poised, empty, as if awaiting the arrival of men after the spring roundup. Swinging doors led, not to the street, but to a large photograph of a street that was posted on a board outside the swinging door.

"Why am I here?" asked Chiun.

"I was told to bring you here," said Rad Rex.

"I do not even like Westerns," said Chiun.

"I don't know why you're here. I was told to bring you here."

"By whom?"

"By one of Wanda's assistants, one of those nameless, faceless zombies she's got working for her."

"Would you say mechanical?" asked Chiun.

"You bet," said Rad Rex and then was propelled toward the door of the empty set by Chiun.

"Quick," said Chiun, "you must go."

"But why? Why should…"

"Go," said Chiun. "It may not go well for you here and I would not deprive the world of the genius of 'As the Planet Revolves.' "

Rad Rex looked at Chiun again, then shrugged and walked out into the bright sunlight of the Global Studios lot. So the old man was a little nuts. Who wouldn't be from watching soap operas all day long?

Inside, on the set, Chiun pulled a chair away from a table and sat on it lightly.

"You may come out now, tin man," he called aloud. "You gain nothing by waiting."

There was silence, then the swinging doors at the entrance to the saloon opened wide and in walked Mr. Gordons. He wore a black cowboy outfit and a black hat. Silver-studded black boots adorned his feet, matched by the silver-studded black hat he wore. He had on two guns, white-handled revolvers slung low at his side.

"Here I am, gook," he said, looking at Chiun.

Chiun rose slowly to his feet. "You are going to shoot me?" he said.

"Reckon so," said Gordons. "Part of my new strategy. Separate you from the one called Remo and pick you off one at a time."

"You put such faith in your guns?"

"Fastest draw in the world," said Gordons.

"How like you?" said Chiun. "A being made of junk relying upon junk to do a man's work."

"Smile when you say that, pardner," said Gordons, "Do you like my new way of speaking? It is very authentic."

"It could not help but be an improvement," said Chiun.

"Reach for your guns, mister," said Gordons.

"I have no guns," said Chiun.

"That's your tough luck, old timer," said Gordons, and with hands that moved in a blur, he flashed two guns from their holsters and fired at Chiun, who stood still across nine feet of floor, facing him.

The cab let Remo off in front of the driveway to Global Studios, and the first thing Remo saw was Guard Joe Gallagher in the watchbooth. The second thing he saw was a golf cart, used by messengers for deliveries on the lot, parked next to a car at the curb while a young messenger placed something into the trunk of the parked car.

Remo hopped aboard the golf cart, stepped on the gas, and it lurched forward past Gallagher's watch booth.

"Hi," Remo called, driving by.

"Hey, you, stop. Whatcha doing?" yelled Gallagher.

"You see my ball?" Remo called. "I'm playing a Titleist Four." And he was past Gallagher and onto the lot. But where was Chiun?

Up ahead Remo saw a familiar face and drove up to the man who was walking along, slowly shaking his head.

Remo pulled up in front of him and said, "Where's Chiun? The old Oriental?"

"Who wants to know?" said Rad Rex.

"Mister, you've got one more chance. Where's Chiun?"

Rad Rex rocked back on his heels and raised his hands in front of his chest. "Better not fool with me, buddy. I know Sinanju."

Remo took the front of the golf cart in both hands, twisted and ripped out a piece of the fiberglass the size of a dinner plate and tossed it to Rex.

"Is it anything like this?" he said.

Rex looked at the heavy slab of fiberglass, then pointed over his shoulder to the closed door of the sound set. "He's in there."

Remo drove off. Behind him Rad Rex followed him with his eyes. It looked like everybody knew Sinanju except Rad Rex. He did not think he liked being in a town of martial arts freaks. He was going back to New York, and if Wanda didn't like it, screw her. Hire somebody to screw her.

Inside the building, Remo heard shots. He jumped off the still-moving golf cart, opened the door and raced inside.

As he moved through the door, Mr. Gordons wheeled and fired at the movement.

"Duck, Remo," called Chiun, and Remo hit the floor, rolling, spinning toward a large crate on the floor. Two bullets hit the door behind him.

Remo heard Gordons' voice. "You will be next, Remo. After I have disposed of the old man."

"He's still kind of talky, isn't he, Chiun?" Remo called.

"Talky and inept," said Chiun.

Remo peered over the top of the wooden crate, just in time to see Gordons fire two more shots at Chiun. The old man seemed to stand still, and Remo wanted to shout to Chiun to move, to duck, to dodge.

But the old man seemed only to twist his body slightly and Remo could see the sudden thuds of the fabric of his robe as the bullets hit it, and Chiun called: "How many bullets, Remo, have those guns?"

"Six each," Remo yelled back.

"Let's see," said Chiun. "He has fired nine shots at me and two at you. That is eleven and leaves him one more."

"He fired three at me," Remo said. "He's out of ammunition."

"Eleven," Chiun called.

"Twelve," yelled Remo. He stood up and again, Gordons wheeled and squeezed the trigger at Remo.

Bang! The gun fired but Remo moved on the flash of light, before the sound, and the bullet hit the wooden box, gouging out a large slash from it.

"That's twelve now," said Remo.

"Then I will destroy you with my hands," Gordon said. He dropped both guns on the floor and advanced slowly toward Chiun, who backed off and began circling, away from Gordons and away from Remo, opening Gordons' back for Remo.

Remo moved forward, between the box and the wall, toward the old Western saloon set.

His hand brushed something as he moved, and he looked down and saw a fire extinguisher on the floor. He grabbed it up in his right hand, and came forward.

Chiun had continued circling and now was almost over Gordons' guns. In one smooth movement, he scooped up both revolvers.

"They are expended, gook," Gordons said. He circled, keeping his eyes on Chiun, and Remo moved up behind him until he was only five feet away.

"No weapon is useless to the master of Sinanju," said Chiun. He twirled both guns in the air above his hand, seemed ready to unloose the gun from his left hand, then let fly the gun from his right hand.

It buried itself deep in Gordon's stomach, but there was no sparking, even though the force of the projectile had penetrated the hard wall of the abdominal cavity.

"His circuit controls are somewhere else, Chiun," said Remo.

"Thank you for telling me what I have just learned," said Chiun.

"It will do you no good," said Gordons. He moved a step closer to Chiun. "This is your end, old man. You will not evade me as you evade my bullets."

"And you can't evade me," said Remo. He turned the fire extinguisher upside down. There was a faint chemical hiss. Gordons spun toward Remo, just as Remo squeezed the handle and a heavy white foam spritzed out of the extinguisher and swallowed up Gordon's face. As he turned, Chiun unleashed the second gun, firing it, like a deadly frisbee, end-over-end into the heel of Gordons' right foot.

There was an immediate sparking. Gordons' hands reached up to claw the foam from his eyes, even as Remo fired more at him.

And as he watched, Gordons' hand movements grew slower and slower and his heel continued to spark against the revolver imbedded deep in it and then Gordons said:

"You can not escape me," but each word came out slower than the word before it until "me" sounded like "mmmeeeeeeeee," and the android dropped onto the floor at Remo's feet.

"Bingo," said Remo. He continued spraying Gordons until the whole body was covered in a mound of thick white chemical foam, then he tossed the empty fire extinguisher into the corner behind him.

Chiun stepped forward and touched Gordons' prone body with a toe. There was no reflex movement.

"How'd you know the circuits were in his heel?" asked Remo.

Chiun shrugged. "The head was too obvious. Last time it was the stomach. This time, I decided, the foot. Particularly since I had seen him limp at the hospital."

"This time, we get rid of him," said Remo who looked around until he found a fire axe on the wall and began chopping into the mound of foam, sending splatters ceilingward, feeling like an axe murderer and he dissected Mr. Gordons into a dozen pieces.

"Hold," said Chiun. "It is enough."

"I want to make sure it's dead," said Remo.

"It is dead," said Chiun. "Even machines die."

"Speaking of machines," said Remo. "We've got to get Smith loose."

"It will be nothing," said Chiun.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Chiun freed Smith by long-distance telephone from the Sportsmen's Lodge.

On the way back to the lodge, he had Remo stop in a drugstore and buy a simple bathroom scale.

In their room, he directed Remo to call Smith.

"Tell the emperor to have a scale brought into his room," Chiun directed. He waited while Remo transmitted the message and then waited some more while Smith got on a scale.

"Now tell him to find his weight," said Chiun.

"One hundred forty-seven pounds," Remo said to Chiun.

"Now tell him to put ten pounds of weight into each pocket of his kimono and to walk from the room," said Chiun.

Remo passed along the message.

"Are you sure this will work?" asked Smith.

"Of course it will work," said Remo. "Chiun hasn't lost an emperor yet."

"I'll call you back if it works," said Smith and hung up.

Remo waited by the phone as seconds turned to minutes.

"Why doesn't he call?" he asked.

"Do something productive," said Chiun. "Weigh yourself."

"Why? Is this room mined too?"

"Put your feet upon the scale," ordered Chiun. Remo weighed one hundred fifty-five.

The needle had barely stopped jiggling when the telephone rang.

"Yeah," said Remo.

"It worked," said Smith. "I'm out. But now what? We can't leave the room mined."

"Chiun, he wants to know now what," said Remo.

Chiun looked out the window at the small trout stream.

"Have him prepare weights of one hundred forty-seven pounds for him, one hundred fifty-five pounds for you, and ninety-nine pounds for me," said Chiun. "He should put these weights on rollers, roll them all into the room, and stand back from the force of the boom boom."

"He'll do it after he gets bomb experts there," Remo told Chiun after passing along the message.

"How he does it is of no concern to me," said Chiun. "I do not bother myself with details."

The next morning, Smith called to announce that the plan had worked. The room had exploded, but that section of the hospital had been evacuated and with heavy explosion-resistant mesh and padding,

Smith's experts had been able to contain the blast with little damage and no injuries.

"Thank Chiun for me," said Smith.

Remo looked at the back of Chiun, who was watching his daytime soap operas. "As soon as I get a chance," he said.

Later that day, he told Chiun of Smith's success.

"Of course," said Chiun.

"How did you know it was mined to explode by our weights?" asked Remo.

"I asked myself how you would set such a boom boom. I answered myself, Remo would do it with weights. What other way, then, would another uncreative creature do it?"

"That's your final word on the subject?" asked Remo.

"That word is sufficient," said Chiun.

"Go scratch," said Remo.

When they left Hollywood the next day, Remo managed to drive his car into a long line of limousines cruising slowly along with their headlights turned on in broad daylight.

He pulled out of the line, up alongside a car, and called to the driver: "What's going on?"

"Wanda Reidel's funeral," the man called back.

Remo nodded. In the rearview mirror, he saw the limousines stretched out behind him for almost a mile.

"Big crowd," he called to the driver.

"Sure is," the driver called back.

"Just proves what they always say," said Remo.

"What's that?"

"Give the people something they want to see and they'll come."