Last Rites

As Stomique fell more and more into ruin, Anin was forced to pay his followers in shiny ingots until his gold stocks began to dwindle.

Now, three years after the Americans had left, Mahout Feroze Anin realized there was no percentage in being Supreme Warlord over a smaller and smaller corner of lower Stomique if in the end there was no country left and, in consequence, no place to hide.

So it was time to play his last card.

"Why are you calling, General Anin?" the American ambassador asked in a cool voice.

"Our fight has not yet been decided."

"You won."

"I do not agree. Tell your President I am prepared to give him the rematch he secretly covets."

"The U.S.," the ambassador said patiently, "has no interest in a rematch."

"Cowards! You run away at the merest casualties."

"We entered to feed your people, disarm all warring factions and restore peace, and your particular faction turned it into a shooting gallery. Fine. Now it's your private shooting gallery. Best of luck with it."

"I will not be trifled with in this unseemly manner. It is an insult."

Anin cringed from the sudden thoom and crump that came through the French colonial windows of his office.

"Is that mortar fire I hear in the background?" the ambassador asked pointedly.

"Firecrackers. We are celebrating our glorious triumph over the cowardly US."

"Three years later?"

"It is a victory that will reverberate down the ages," Anin said in a grandiose voice from the well of his bulletproof steel desk. "Unless you move swiftly to reengage on the field of honor."

"What do you know about honor? You called yourself a patriot of Stomique while you pillaged the relief food that poured in to feed your own people."

"My people do not need food. For their bellies are full of victory. Hah. How do your citizens feel?"

"Stomique is last year's news. They're already onto something else."

Mahout Feroze Anin made his voice wheedling. "Do you not desire to occupy your luxurious ambassadorial residence once again?"

"Absolutely. When there's a stable country surrounding it. In the meanwhile, Washington will do just fine."

Anin pounded the floor in anger. "There will never be stability while I am Supreme Warlord. You must know this. You will have to dislodge me if you wish to enjoy stability again."

"Do I detect you angling for something?"

Anin took a deep breath and threw down his cards. "I will agree to surrender to the despised US. in return for guaranteed safe passage to an exile country of my choosing-provided, of course, a lifetime stipend comes with it."

"Sorry. We have no vital interests in Stomique."

"Did I mention my nuclear reacting? I will soon be in possession of many kilograms of enriched helium. Weapons grade, of course."

"Nice try," said the US. ambassador just before the line went click in Mahout Feroze Anin's ear.

"Idiot!" said Warlord Anin, throwing the receiver against his official presidential portrait, puncturing the black velvet.

The tapping of shod feet came from outside the heavy mahogany double doors of the presidential office. They were not the heavy clump of boots, so it couldn't be his personal guard or the rebels. Since almost no one else owned shoes in post-UN-occupied Stomique, Anin knew it had to be a relative.

"Father! Father! The enemy approaches!" came a husky voice.

Anin looked up from under the desk. It was his eldest daughter, Persephone, her dark face a sheen of sweat.

"How did you get past my personal guards?" Anin demanded.

Persephone looked perplexed. "What guards? There is no one here."

Anin leaped for the door and looked out. The corridor was bereft of guards.

"Who guards my gold?" he demanded hotly, wiping his high balding forehead.

"Eurydice and Omphale."

Anin nodded. "Excellent. If a man cannot trust his daughters, who can he trust?"

Persephone took hold of his chest, which rattled from clusters of medals he had awarded himself for every engagement in his military career from shooting rival foes in the back to surviving a six-year drought. "Father, we must flee. The rebels have secured their hold on the main roads and are now advancing on your palace."

"I will not leave my gold behind."

"But who will carry it?"

"You and your wonderful and loyal sisters, Persephone. Of course."

"We are not strong enough. The gold will slow us down."

Anin ripped his daughter's hands from him and turned away in disgust. "Bah! I curse the day I had daughters instead of strapping warrior sons. Sons would never fail me as you three have."

Persephone sank to her knees, taking Warlord Anin's legs in her tapered brown fingers and pressing her strong cheeks to his knees. "I do not want to die, father. You must save me."

"Your sisters, they have good weapons?"

"Oh, the best. Soviet-made Kalashnikovs. Not those shoddy Chinese ones."

"And the basement vault door, it will withstand mortar and grenade attacks?"

"Just as you decreed it should."

"Then go to the basement vault and shut yourself in until I come for you and the gold."

"How long will that be, Father?"

"Until I have vanquished the rebels."

"You cannot fight them single-handed."

Anin shook a defiant fist like mahogany. "And I will not. The Americans will fight them for us." Persephone stood up. "But the Americans are our enemies."

"In the past, yes. In the future, absolutely. But for this crisis, I will inveigle them into siding with me. For they are fools who are easily hoodwinked. Now, go shut yourself in. Be certain you have food and water to sustain you, for it may be two or three days."

"You expect to defeat the rebels in so short a time?"

"Yes," said Mahout Feroze Anin, guiding his flesh and blood into the secret trapdoor in the downstairs kitchen and into the underground vault room.

Pushing the ponderous door shut, he waved farewell to his smiling and tearful daughters, who blew him kisses and swore undying love.

With the door closed, Anin activated the time lock, after first setting it for the year 1999.

By that time, he reasoned, the revolution should have settled down. The heat would be off, and Mahout Feroze Anin could reclaim his gold unchallenged.

And bury his long-dead and useless daughters, as well. He cursed their mothers, all of whom had promised him a male heir and every one of which were ceremoniously beheaded when they failed so simple a task.

Throwing a lever that caused a thick wall of rough boards to drop into place before the great stainless-steel door, Anin went to the trapdoor in the floor-which he had kept secret even from his trustworthy offspring-and slipped down into his cool, roomy burrow.

From here it was a simple matter to walk the three or four miles to the secret boat house on the water, from which he would escape to a safe haven.

What safe haven, he didn't know, but Africa was full of safe havens for brave and cunning men like Mahout Feroze Anin. Perhaps there would be a place for him in Rwanda, he thought as he walked along. There was always someone to be slain or relief food to be pilfered.

As he moved through the insect-ridden tunnel, he wondered if Rwanda was accessible by boat. He had no idea. During his brief regime, Anin had the official Stomique map of Africa redrawn so that it appeared to occupy eighty-six percent of the continent.

It seemed only fitting that the unconquered and unconquerable defier of the United States of America should govern a nation as vast as his ego.

THE LANDING at Nogongog Inter-African Airport was smooth, considering the cratered condition of the single runway.

The plane didn't come to a full stop. Engines spooling down, it trundled past the terminal and the door was flung open by stewardesses in flak jackets.

A speeding truck with a set of bullet-pocked air-stairs scooted out from a hangar and ran parallel to the open door.

"I demand this craft halt and I be allowed to leave it with the dignity befitting my station," Chiun told the stewardess in charge.

"It would be suicide to stop," the stewardess said.

"Come on, little Father," said Remo, hanging in the door frame. "Shake a leg."

The stewardess tried to pull Remo back in with her gold-painted nails. "No, please do not go. It would be suicide."

"Why are you okay with him getting off and not me?" Remo wondered, indicating the Master of Sinanju.

"He is old and will die soon. You are full of youth and brimming with sperm."

"Sperm?"

"Your sperm is important to us,"

"Check with me on the ride back," said Remo, jumping off and onto the rattly top step of the speeding air-stairs.

The Master of Sinanju floated off and joined him. There were no other passengers.

The truck careered toward the terminal and came to a brief stop at the gaping hole where the jetway ramp used to be before a mortar barrage had taken it out. It still smoked a little in the brassy midday sun.

Remo and Chiun stepped across the gap and entered the refugee-choked terminal. On the tarmac the jet screamed back into the sky with tracers chasing it.

There were no taxicabs waiting outside, but there was a line of scarred and bullet-pocked camels.

Chiun walked up to the man who seemed to be in charge of the camels and began conversing with him in fluent Swahili.

"I am not riding any camel," Remo called over. Chiun continued his haggling. Hot words were exchanged, and the argument might have gone on two or three hours except one camel expectorated on the Master of Sinanju's sandals.

Emitting an offended scream, Chiun began walking in circles, alternately pointing at the offending camel, at the offending camel's owner and at the offending camel again, his squeaky voice escalating into fulsome shrieks.

Chiun came back leading the offending camel by a thick rope. "We have a steed," he announced.

"No, you have a spitting camel."

The camel obligingly backed up Remo's statement by spitting rudely in the dust of Nogongog.

"He cannot spit on those perched atop him," Chiun declared.

"No sale. And don't think I didn't see what you did, because I did."

"I have gotten redress for an insult."

"My left foot. You saw that camel was spitting to beat the band. You moved your sandal closer to take a shot in the foot."

"Ridiculous. It was an insult."

"Even if you didn't move your foot into spitting range, you could have moved it away in plenty of time."

"I gave the camel drover a choice. Loan me the offending beast without charge or wipe my sandal clean with his beard."

"You don't have to tell me how it turned out," Remo said, glumly, eyeing the camel. The camel eyed him back. His rubbery mouth masticated something dark and malodorous with ominous relish, and Remo took three hasty steps back and one to the right.

The saliva made a greenish splash off to his left. The camel resumed his patient masticating.

"I'm not riding that spitball maker!"

"Of course," said Chiun. "You must bargain for your own camel."

"I don't ride camels. They smell, they're unsanitary and they're rude."

"Then you may walk," said the Master of Sinanju, motioning for the camel to kneel. To Remo's surprise, it did, getting down on all four knobby knees.

When Chiun was comfortably balanced atop its hump, he made a clucking sound, and the camel rose with a strange grace to his feet.

The camel started off. Remo followed.

He soon found there was no happy place to walk near a moving camel. If he led, the camel tried to taste the back of his T shirt. Walking on either side invited expectoration.

And walking in the rear subjected Remo to camel gas or puddinglike droppings.

The city seemed to be victim to the immediate aftermath of revolution. There was looting. Dark, frightened faces peered from bullet-broken windows. Fires had blackened many buildings.

They were only challenged once when a Stomique technical came rattling up a dirt road to block their path.

It was a pickup truck, a .35-caliber machine gun bolted to the bed. The perforated muzzle swung in Remo's direction, and something was said in harsh Swahili.

Remo lifted his hands to show he was unarmed, walking up to the muzzle as if it were no more threatening than a water pipe. He offered his wallet. An eager hand reached out to snatch it. Remo pulled it back before questing fingers grazed it.

The red-bereted Stomiqui soldier screeched something angry and brought his thumbs down on the machine gun's trips.

The bullets began knocking out of the barrel.

The first shell exploded a full second and a half after Remo had given the cold muzzle a casual bat with one hand.

The weapon spun on its steel tripod so fast that when the first bullet emerged from the flaming barrel it had swung a full 180 degrees.

The machine gunner screamed surprise as his belly was ripped apart by the very bullets he himself had unleashed.

There were other rebels in the truck. They stuck their heads out of the cab to see what had happened, and Remo showed them how vulnerable their eardrums were. He clapped their ears between his hands, producing a thunder that never ended.

The two ran off with their eardrums permanently ringing.

"Okay," Remo said as they resumed their stroll through the remains of Nogongog. "What brings us to this hellhole?"

"We have come for the gold," said Chiun, searching the neighborhood from the high vantage of his ungainly perch.

"What gold?"

"Do you not see that there is a rebellion?"

"It looks more like an earthquake with small-arms fire for punctuation."

"This sorry nation is in revolt. Ruling heads are about to be separated from ruling shoulders. Allegiances are soon to change. And where there is revolution, there is sure to be gold and treasure destined to change hands."

"I take it we're after the gold and treasure?"

"No. You are."

"It's mine to keep?"

Chiun nodded. "If you can seize it without losing your life."

"Is mere gold worth my life?"

"Ordinarily, perhaps."

"Do I have any say in this?"

Chiun shook his head firmly. "None."

THEY CAME UPON the presidential palace in what had been the southern outskirts of the city before the jungle had begun to overrun it. Two things were noteworthy about it. It looked like a giant frosted cake standing at the jungle edge. And it was the only building in all Stomique that had not been scorched and broken by rebellious residents.

The Master of Sinanju brought his ungainly steed to a halt outside the palace gates.

"I don't see any guards," Remo said.

"A good sign."

"Couldn't that mean the gold is already gone?"

"If you are unfortunate, that is possible," Chiun admitted.

"I don't care if I grab off any gold or not. I'm on an unlimited expense account."

"If you do not seize this gold, you will be reduced to pillaging Fort Knox."

"I don't think they have gold in Fort Knox anymore, Little Father."

"Then you will have to strain the very gold dust from the ocean to accomplish your task."

"That could take years."

"Especially if you strain this gold with your teeth."

"Be back in a minute or two," said Remo, hopping the twenty-foot fence from a standing position. There was no warning. Remo didn't even flex his knees visibly.

When his feet hit the ground on the other side, they did so with no more noise that an autumn leaf touching grass.

Remo advanced, his entire body keying up. His eyes scanned the ground for faint depressions that would tell of buried land mines. None. Motion-vibration detectors were either off line or untended.

No one took a shot at him as he crossed to the veranda and stepped into the great French colonial villa. Remo pushed open one of the double entrance doors and heard a distinct click.

Instinctively he grabbed the hand grenade that dropped off its spoon that had been held to the door with bungee cord.

Pivoting on one foot, Remo relaxed his fingers when he felt the grenade's mass tug at the top of his throw. The steel egg flew nearly fifty yards and let go in midair. Hot steel went in all directions, breaking windows and setting tiny fires in the dry grass.

One fragment arced toward Remo, its velocity nearly spent.

Casually he broke a spindle off the veranda and used it to bat the grenade fragment away.

Then he entered.

The place echoed with no sounds. Remo shut his eyes. He sensed no living beings-unless the mice skittering in the partitions counted. They didn't.

Remo swept up the great staircase that looked as if it had come out of Gone with the Wind and found the presidential office.

The room was empty. Every room was empty. He opened every door to make sure. He encountered no more boobytraps until he tried a cleverly concealed trapdoor in the downstairs kitchen.

It was a solid piece of carpentry, invisible except for the faint imprint of human oil left by four fingers on the floor where the last person to go down had braced himself while dropping the trap shut after him.

Remo got down on one knee and looked for a catch or keyhole. He found none. So he punched a finger into the hard wood and curled it.

When he retracted his arm, the trap came up, something mechanical coughed and an ironwood spear with a barbed point ripped through the spot where he would have been had he opened the trapdoor normally.

It impaled the ice dispenser of an imported avocado Hotpoint refrigerator. Ice cubes clattered out.

Remo let the trap clank back and, ignoring the wooden steps that might be booby-trapped, dropped into the space.

There was a concrete conduit that smelled of heavy air, and Remo padded along it to a room at the other end.

There was no door, only a bead curtain, and Remo passed through it without rattling the beads. There was an open trapdoor in the center of the floor, showing a tunnel. There was no gold in the room. In fact, there wasn't anything in the room expect the square hole in the center of the concrete floor.

Anyone else would have turned back, but the faint hum of electricity reached Remo's sensitive ears and made the hairs on his bare forearms lift slightly in warning.

The south wall. It was faced with crude planks, resembling barn-board. Remo attacked the boards and exposed a dirt wall. But the wall looked wrong. The dirt was too dry. This deep in the humid ground, it should have been moist and busy with insects and rootlets.

Plunging a finger in, Remo felt a hard surface behind the dirt that was plastered to it like dried mud. The catch was actually a small hole near the floor. Remo poked his fingers into it, there was a click and he jumped straight back and down the convenient hole in case it was wired to blow.

It was. Clods of dirt and wood shards went flying. Some showered down into the hole.

When the concussion waves abated, Remo climbed up and took stock.

The explosion had revealed the ponderous face of a time vault that would have done credit to Chase Manhattan Bank.

Remo approached. The mechanism was locked. There was a digital window that silently counted down the days, hours, minutes and seconds to April 28, 1999.

"Oh, great," said Remo in the echoing, post-blast silence.

Making a fist, Remo drove it into the door. The steel rang like a bell.

And deep behind the door, someone rapped in response.

Remo hit the door again. Harder this time. He got another response. There seemed to be more than one person inside, because the return rap was a confused tattoo of overlapping sound.

Feeling around the thick edge of the door, Remo sought weak points. When he had something, he dug his fingers into the flange.

He yanked. The door groaned slightly. Remo moved in, finding another place. He yanked again. Each time, the door groaned slightly. And as he moved his hands around the dial of the door, the hard, thick steel began to look frilly.

Three times around the dial Remo worked, each time making the steel looser and looser.

When the safe door resembled some bizarre, giant frilly flower, Remo had the edges of the two great hinges partially exposed. After that it was easy. He just hammered at it with the edge of one hand until the steel, vibrating higher and higher, succumbed to Sinanju-induced stress fatigue.

The door toppled out and hit the floor with a ringing clang.

Remo peered into the space beyond.

Three dark faces stared back. They were pretty faces, and the eyes in those pretty faces were almond shaped and exotically beautiful.

Until they went wide at the sight of his unfamiliar white face.

Then they lit up their Kalashnikovs.

Chapter 12

Three screaming bullet tracks converged on the same point, where the white intruder stood.

They collided and began ricocheting wildly, bouncing off steel, burying themselves in planks and bringing screams from the three African women who had unleashed them.

"Where is he, the white one?" asked Persephone, blinking dully into the hanging gun smoke.

"I do not know," said Eurydice, yanking out a clip and inserting another into the receiver.

"Maybe we have shot him to tiny white slivers of flesh," suggested Omphale.

But when they stepped out of the vault to see, there wasn't a solitary drop of blood on the concrete floor to show that a man had stood there a moment before.

"We have missed...." Eurydice hissed venomously. "How could we miss? These are Russian-made Kalashnikovs, not shoddy Chinese rip-offs"

"That's 'knockoffs,' foolish one," said Persephone. A commotion from the vault brought them swinging around.

It was the white man. He was opening the apple crates that filled the vault. The amazing thing was that they were nailed shut by ten-inch nails driven by pneumatic nail guns.

Yet the white was lifting each lid with no more effort than a child peering into a cookie jar. Except the nails screeched. They screeched like tortured Stomiqui dissidents. It brought nostalgic smiles to the three sisters' fine-boned faces.

Persephone screeched, too. "Get away from our father's crates!"

"He lock you up in this vault?" asked the white, not looking up from his investigations.

"Oui. And we are sworn to protect his property with our very lives."

The white pulled out a can of pina colada mix. "I don't think he left you enough food," he said. "Get away or we will blow you to Chicken McNuggets, white meat," Omphale boasted.

"You tried that already. Remember?"

"Oui. So why are you not dead?"

"It's not my time."

"You are protected by Shango?" asked Eurydice.

"Who's Shango?" asked the white, reading the label on a tin of imported Bulgarian caviar and making a face.

"Shango is our god. After our father, who is more than a god to us, having given us life."

"Guess he felt he could take it away any time he pleased, too," the white said with casual disinterest.

Persephone demanded, "Why do you say such a blasphemous thing?"

"You've got around three weeks' supply of food here."

"That is none of your damn business, stringy chicken meat."

"Maybe not, but it's yours if you thought it was going to last you till 1999."

"What does he mean?" Eurydice asked Omphale.

"Oui, what do you mean?" Persephone asked the white who was now hovering dangerously near the gold.

"Check the time clock."

"Do this thing," Persephone told Eurydice.

"Do this thing," Eurydice told Omphale.

"Why do I have to do this if Persephone told you to do it?" Omphale grumbled.

"Because you are the youngest," sneered Eurydice. "Someday I will be older than both of you and we will see who bosses who about like a Filipina maid. I was not named after a Greek goddess to be a slave." Omphale looked at the time-clock display. It was still counting down. It had counted down nearly a day and, according to the digital display, it was a long way from opening by itself.

"It says 1999," she said.

"Liar!" Persephone screeched.

"See for yourself."

Persephone rushed to the display. "You changed it," she accused the white.

"If I could change it," the white countered, "wouldn't I have changed it so I could just throw the handle and open the door instead of ripping it apart?"

"This is a reasonable point," Omphale whispered.

Everyone agreed it was reasonable point. Then realization dawned on their dusky faces.

"You have saved our lives!" Persephone cried.

"You're welcome. Where's the gold?"

"It is our father's gold. You cannot have it."

"Is that the same father who locked you in to starve to death slowly?"

"Oui..."

"Don't see that you owe him much." The white ripped open another crate. "You sure have a lot of apples in these boxes."

"They are apple crates," said Persephone.

"We like apples," added Eurydice.

"Oui, " Omphale said. "They are very exotic fruit."

The white lifted a deep red apple out of the crate he was inspecting. "Waxy, too," he said.

"The wax is to keep it fresh," Eurydice said. "So that they do not spoil in the baking heat."

"Oui," Persephone added. "Apples are very delicate."

The white tossed the apple into the air. It returned to his palm with the meaty smack of a cannonball. "Heavy, too."

"These are magic apples. They were picked to sustain us many weeks."

"All the way to 1999?"

The three sisters wavered in their defiance. Their AK-47 rifle muzzles wavered, too.

"Should we shoot him?" Omphale hissed.

"He saved our lives," Eurydice countered.

"What good is being alive if we have no country, no father and no wealth?" Persephone persisted.

"Oui. Without wealth, life is not worth living."

"Let us kill him and enjoy life," Persephone urged.

"Oui, let's," agreed Omphale.

And the three AK-47 muzzles lifted toward the white who was puzzling over the waxy apples that were too heavy for fruit.

Three simultaneous bursts ripped toward him. He was already behind a stack of crates when the bullets arrived in the space where he had been.

The crates shook under the thudding lash of lead, and splinters flew everywhere.

One grazed Persephone in the arm, and she dropped her weapon screaming, "I am hit! I am hit! I am bleeding to death!"

"Good," said Omphale, who redirected her fire at her sister's heaving chest. "Let me put you of your misery."

The muzzle erupted.

"Aiiee!" shrieked Persephone, crumpling to the dirt floor.

The white was suddenly among them, and the first hint of being disarmed came when their fingers began stinging the way they did when their father used to take an admonishing riding crop to them.

The rifles went down the hole in the floor.

The two surviving sisters dropped to their knees and began begging for their lives.

"You can have your useless lives. I don't want them," said the white, returning to the crates. He picked up an apple and balanced it on one thumb. He set it spinning and dug the opposite thumbnail into the waxy flesh. Skin skimmed off like red wood shavings under the action of a high-speed lathe.

The meat exposed was not white, like the pulp of an apple should be, but yellowish and metallic. Gold. "Bingo!" said the white.

"You worship Bingo?" said Eurydice.

"Today, definitely."

"Bingo is more mighty than Shango?" asked Omphale.

"Shango," said the white confidently, "has nothing on my man Bingo."

"If you do not want our lives, we offer our bodies."

"Bingo has forbidden me from taking the bodies of beautiful women," said the white while he hammered the crate lids back on with no more tools than his hard fist. "I can only have ugly ones. It's the price I pay for having my magical powers."

"Then take us with you and keep us until we are old and ugly like the women the great Bingo has decreed that you enjoy."

"Who said I enjoy them?"

"You cannot leave us here to be tortured and killed by the enemies of our treacherous father, who slew our mothers for no reason."

"Your father the warlord who stole all that UN relief food that was supposed to feed his people?"

"Pah! They are beggars of no value," Omphale answered.

"You eat the food he stole?" the white countered. Omphale scrunched up her face. "It was not very good. Mealy and wormy."

"Then you gotta pay for your meal."

"We will be your love slaves. Bingo will never know."

"Bingo sees all, hears all, knows all. But tell you what. Help me carry this gold out, and we'll see if we can get you to the airport."

"We will do as you say because we respect your god and your mighty manly powers," Eurydice announced.

Remo carried three crates of gold on either shoulder without stooping a micron. Eurydice and Omphale each bent under the weight of one crate apiece.

That way they got every crate up to the veranda. When Eurydice dropped the last crate onto the stacks and fell panting across it, Remo whistled.

The gates parted and the Master of Sinanju padded up, eyes shining.

"Who are these?" he asked, indicating the panting women with a curt nod of his bearded chin.

"The warlord's black-hearted daughters."

"You have been abusing them?"

"If you call honest work abuse, yeah."

Chiun examined the crates with interest. "There is much gold here. You have done well."

"You should have seen what I had to go through to do this."

"You should have seen what I had to do to win my first gold."

"Tell me about it some other time," Remo said. "So, how are we going to get this stuff to the airport? This is camel-flattening gold if I ever saw it."

"We are not."

"Huh?" said Remo.

"They are," said Chiun as an armored column came up the dusty road.

The half-tracks and Soviet-era T-55 tanks deployed all over the compound and a man sporting a red beret and eight gold stars on each shoulder jumped off a half track and advanced confidently.

"I am Major Domo General Supreme Jean-Renoir Bazinda," he announced.

"I could tell by the sixteen stars," Remo said dryly. "You are all war criminals and must be shot."

"Do you have a Federal Express office in this city?" inquired the Master of Sinanju in an even tone.

"Your diplomats will not save you in revolutionary Stomique."

"I will require the gold of my son to be packed well for shipping to an American address I will provide," Chiun continued.

And Major Domo General Supreme Bazinda threw his head back and laughed at the tiny little Asian who dared to threaten the only sixteen-star general on the entire African continent.

As he laughed, he waved for his soldiers to come and stand these interlopers before the villa wall for proper shooting.

Instead, someone handed Bazinda a human head. The head plopped wetly onto one palm, and instinctively Bazinda grabbed it to keep it from falling into the dirt.

He saw that it was the head of his second-in-command, Colonel Avenger Barang. There was a very serious expression on the colonel's face. When he realized what he was holding, Bazinda's face mirrored it almost exactly. Except for the tendril of blood just starting from one corner of Barang's slack mouth.

Bazinda looked up to see the old Asian. His thin fingers were slipping back into the sleeves of his kimono, which closed over the long, sharp nails. Making the connection, Bazinda shuddered.

"If there is not a Federal Express office in Nogongog, I will decree that one be established for your every need," he announced loftily, handing the head to his startled third-in-command, Super Sergeant Mobondo.

"And whistle us up a plane, will you?" asked the white boy with the thick wrists. "We're anxious to be on our way."

"You will not stay for the celebration feast?"

"What's for dinner?" asked Eurydice.

"Oui, " Ornphale chorused, "we have not eaten well in nearly a day. Only old tinned caviar."

"Are these harlots with you?" Bazinda asked.

"No," said Remo.

"In that case," Bazinda said, stepping up to pinch Eurydice on her fleshy arm, "you are both for dinner."

Eurydice and Omphale fell to the ground and beseeched Lord Bingo to intervene on their behalf.

In the end it cost Remo a case of golden apples to take the daughters of Mahout Feroze Anin off the revolutionary menu. He regretted it almost immediately.

"I am your slave," Omphale said, falling to her knees before Remo.

"I need a slave like a fish needs a wheel," said Remo.

"Then I am your love slave."

"You know what Bingo says about love slaves," said Remo.

"Then what will we be?" asked a tearful Eurydice. "You can be our personal stewardesses on the flight out of here," Remo decided.

ON THE AIR GHANA FLIGHT leaving Nogongog, Omphale and Eurydice wanted to know if Remo was someone famous.

Before he could answer, the Master of Sinanju said, "This is being investigated even as we speak."

"Why?"

"Because this poor man's parentage is uncertain. He is seeking his father."

"I am not," said Remo.

"There are those who believe he is the long-lost son of Montel Williams," whispered Chiun.

"Who is Montel Williams?" asked a hovering stewardess.

"Some talk-show guy," said Remo.

"Is he famous?" asked Eurydice.

"He's bald," said Remo. "I'm not."

"And rich," added Chiun.

"I am not Montel Williams's son. Montel Williams is black. I'm white."

"Perhaps," Chiun allowed. "I'm obviously white."

"You have a nice tan," the stewardess said. Omphale shot her a look full of daggers. Eurydice tried to intimidate her with a nail file clenched in a tight fist.

"You would too if you were being dragged all the way around the planet by him," said Remo, indicating Chiun.

"Is it true that you will inherit Montel Williams's millions when he dies?" asked Omphale.

"Montel Williams can keep his money," snapped Remo.

"Others," Chiun inserted, "believe him to be the illegitimate offspring of Clarence Williams the Third." Remo's brows knit together. "Clarence Williams the Third is black, too. How can I be the son of Clarence Williams the Third?"

"If San Fermin, a Christian saint, can be a Moor, you can be the son of Clarence Williams the Third," said Chiun.

Remo looked skeptical. "I don't believe San Fermin was a Moor. He probably had a deep tan."

"And Jesus was black," Chiun added.

"Jesus was not black."

"He was not white."

"Stuff it," said Remo, turning away.

"Master Pak met Jesus," Chiun said casually.

Remo looked interested again. "That so? What did he say about him?"

"He called him a long tallow with a short wick." Remo looked blank.

"That means that same thing as all hat and no cattle."

Remo grunted. "That shows how much Pak knew."

Chiun shrugged unconcernedly. "It has been barely two thousand years. The House is far older."

"Back to Clarence Williams the Third," said Eurydice. "Will you inherit his lands and title when he dies?"

"No."

"Could you be the son of Billy Dae Williams?" asked the still-hovering stewardess.

"He's black too," Remo answered wearily.

"You say that like there is something wrong with it."

Remo threw up his hands. "I didn't mean it that way. Look, can we just change the subject?"

The three women were only too willing to oblige. "Are you married?" asked Omphale.

"Or at least separated from your wife?" Eurydice asked.

"I don't have a wife," Remo growled.

The stewardess clucked in sympathy. "Any of us would be willing to marry you to save you from unhappy bachelorhood," she offered.

Remo folded his bare arms. "My bachelorhood is not unhappy."

"Then why are you so cranky?"

"I am not cranky," Remo shouted, storming off to the back of the cabin to sit by himself.

"He is not getting any, is he?" Omphale whispered to the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun shook his aged head sadly. "No sensible woman would have him."

"Why not?"

"It is not obvious? He is incurably cranky."

This made perfect sense to the Air Ghana stewardess, who nevertheless made sure Remo did not lack drinks, food or female companionship all the way across the Asian subcontinent.

"I don't need anything, unless it's information on where that old reprobate is taking me next," Remo snarled.

"I will ask," said the stewardess.

But it was Omphale who came back with the answer, along with a welter of scratches on her face. They were flecked with bits of gold, and remembering the stewardess's nails were gold painted, Remo figured there had been a cat fight over who would carry word to the back of the plane.

Another clue was the fact that Omphale was wearing the stewardess's green uniform, which was very snug in the hips and rather loose at the chest.

Omphale smiled triumphantly. "You are going to Nihon, the old man has told me."

"That's big help," Remo said glumly.

"Where the heck is Nihon?"

"It is the same as Japon."

"You mean Japan?"

"In French, the name is Japon."

"I wish countries would just pick one name and stick with them a few centuries," Remo complained.

"I have always thought this," Omphale said agreeably. "Is there anything I can get you now that I am your personal serf stewardess?"

"Yeah. A parachute."

To Remo's surprise, Omphale came back with a big fat one. Remo used it for a pillow and soon nodded off.

THE SKY WAS the color of lead and oysters. Remo found himself on the terraced side of a red hill. The terraces were paddies, and falling raindrops made them pucker and rill.

Standing bareheaded in the rain was a Master wearing green silk decorated with gold trim. He was ancient but carried himself with ramrod erectness as he approached Remo.

"I am Yong. No Master lived longer than I."

"Good for you," said Remo.

"I slew the last dragon and for the rest of my days drank dragon-bone soup. My days were very long because of dragon-bone soup."

Remo snapped his fingers. "Right. Chiun told me about you. He said you ate every bone so no succeeding Master had any."

"And for my greed I dwell in perpetual rain."

"At least there's rice."

Yong looked Remo up and down critically. "Where is your kimono?"

"Out of fashion."

"Your nails are too short. How can you fight?"

"Oh, I get by."

"The Masters who came after me were wrong. I saved a piece of the dragon's spine." Yong opened his fist. "I give it to you."

Remo took the piece of bone. It was gray and porous. "What am I supposed to do with it?"

"It is powerful medicine. You will know when the time comes."

And Yong walked back into the rain, which increased its tempo upon the beaten ground until the red mud ran.

Chapter 13

They said it was impossible for an American.

For a Japanese it was exceedingly difficult. This was well-known.

For a Korean it was unacceptable even if it were possible. Koreans were not Japanese, no matter what airs they took on. Chinese couldn't do it. Not the best Chinese man who was ever born. Not even if he trained until the end of time.

But for an American it was utterly, absolutely unthinkable.

Yet Wade Pupule had done it. He had become sumo. Becoming sumo, of course, was only the beginning. A first step. And as difficult as it might seem, it was in fact the easiest step.

For Wade, born on Oahu, Hawaii, an American by nationality but of Hawaiian parentage, it was just a matter of reaching his goal weight, which in this case was a well-rounded 350 pounds.

This was accomplished by eating prodigious quantities of fermented bean paste and a thick stew flavored with raw sugar called chanko-nabe, washed down with Sapporo beer.

And beef. Whole sides of steer-which was criticized severely. Not even Kobe beef, raised in Japan-which every Japanese knew was vastly superior to Hawaiian beef and especially Texas beef. Every Japanese, that is, who had never sampled any beef other than Kobe beef.

But the real secret of Wade Pupule's success was a simple one: his mother's meat loaf. It couldn't have been more fattening if it was deep-fried in liquid lard.

When Wade petitioned one of the great sumo stables for acceptance, he sent a grainy photograph that concealed his Hawaiianness and was granted an audience.

"But you are not Japanese," the stable master sputtered upon meeting him. They had just exchanged bows. Wade had gotten down on hands and knees, prostrating himself in a full bow. The sumo stable master had barely nodded his head.

"So sue me," Wade shot back angrily.

To his surprise, the stable master allowed his face to acquire a faint smile of surprise. "Ah, last name Sosumi. You are half-Japanese, no?"

"Yes," Wade lied, immediately adopting the Japanese name of Sosumi. And he was in.

They laughed when Wade Sosumi entered the Jifubuki Sumo Academy. They called him Wahini Boy and Pearl Harbor and Beef Brain. They made him shower last and eat after everyone else was through, even though he had cooked the very food he was forced by his lowly rank to eat cold. They hit him in the head with glass bottles to show their contempt for the Hawaiian-American who would be sumo. And to show his humility, Sosumi was forced to say "Domo arigato" in thanks.

After a while they were calling him Beef Blast because that was the way it seemed when his 350 pounds of solid body fat collided with the shuddering bulk of his worthy opponents. He began to best true sumo in the ring. Japanese sumo. It was unthinkable.

When Sosumi had worked his way up to ozeki-champion-they began calling him Beef Blast-san. Still, they insisted it was impossible for a gaijin to become yokozuna-a grand champion. Culturally impossible, that is. Because in the tournaments there was no one greater or stronger or more agile than Sosumi, a.k.a. Beef Blast-san.

But he had done it, winning the prestigious Emperor's Cup. Japan was rocked. Internally it was a scandal of the highest order. But because the Japanese had been so long vilified as xenophobic, they dared not deny Beef Blast-san what he had rightfully earned in the circle of sumo.

Sosumi Beef Blast-san had fame, women and, most important in Japan, a large house with a spectacular view of Mount Fuji's snowcap-which one certainly required when one weighed 350 pounds.

But having achieved the pinnacle of success in his chosen field, Sosumi still ate his mother's meat loaf every Saturday to keep his strength up. It was overnighted from Honolulu in a heat-retaining box the size of a small safe.

Wade was thinking that hundred-pound meat loafs just didn't get him through the week the way they used to as he wolfed chanko-nabe from a bamboo wok the size of a garbage-can lid while straddling a ceramic throne designed for his special needs when the tiny little man appeared before him.

"You a priest?" Sosumi asked.

"No," said the little man, who wore a scarlet-and-lavender silken kimono. It was not Japanese. Too gaudy. Maybe Chinese.

"Because if you are, I'm no Buddhist. Though I'm sometimes mistaken for him on the street." Sosumi chuckled. His big Buddha belly shook.

Not a wrinkle moved on the old man's papery face-and that was a lot of wrinkles.

"I am no priest," he repeated.

"What, then?"

"I offer you a challenge."

"I'm king of the hill, pal. I don't need any challenges."

"You will fight my son."

"How much does he weigh?"

"Nine stone."

"Give that to me in pounds. I don't know from stones."

"He weighs 155 pounds."

"Never heard of a sumo that skinny."

"He is not a sumo."

"I kinda figured that. What is he, then-suicidal?"

"No."

"You looking to have him bumped off, I'm not your man. I'm a wrestler. All I'd have to do is sit on a 155-pound guy and every bone would break, his internal organs would liquify and I'd be up on manslaughter charges faster than I could say, 'So sorry san.' Which would be my name if it ever happened."

"My son is not sumo. He is Sinanju."

"Never heard of it. Is it like jujitsu? I've seen jujitsu men do amazing things."

"Such as?"

"Saw one once walk up to a guy and just tap him in the clavicle. The other guy went flying backward like he'd been zapped by a live wire."

"I can do that."

"You a jujitsu man?"

The little old man bowed formally. A ten-degree bow. The smallest, most meager bow. As a grand champion, Sosumi had earned a forty-five degree bow. Minimum. Anything less was an open insult.

"I am Sinanju. I am a Master."

"Just a second," said Sosumi, polishing off his chanko-nabe and tossing the empty wok aside. Reaching behind him, he tapped a solid silver handle. From under the rolls of fat spilling over the seat of his ceramic throne came a loud flush.

"Gotta maintain my weight," Sosumi said, standing up and pulling up his cotton britches, which he drew snug with a drawstring. "The Nagoya tournament is this month."

"That is disgusting."

"That's the price I pay to keep my title. In one orifice and out the other. Sometimes I feel like a human shit processor."

"You were bred to battle my kind."

"No, I was bred to battle other sumo."

"That is now. In the past it was different. My kind defeated yours, and you turned your might against others because what else was there for you monsters to do?"

"Hey, I don't appreciate being called a monster. Have you know I'm a god in these parts. I devoted my entire life to sumo. I don't need your crap."

"You obviously possess sufficient crap of your own," the old man said, voice dripping with disdain.

"More than sufficient," said Sosumi, giving the silver handle another bat. "Takes two, sometimes three flushes to do the job. Wonder if they got a Guinness world-record category for turd size?"

"If they did," said the little man, "you would be both immortal and undefeated."

Sosumi smacked his meaty paws together. "Okay, bring on your boy."

"Tonight at midnight."

"Hope he's insured."

REMO TOSSED AND TURNED on his tatami mat in his suite at the Tokyo Bay Grande Sheraton Hotel.

In his dream he sat facing a Korean of indeterminate age who wore the formal silk kimono and topknot of the unified Shilla Dynasty. He was very lean, as if he ate only straw.

The Korean had kindly eyes, and when he spoke, his voice was like water rippling along the stones of a clear brook.

"'The bee sucks,'" he said.

"So?" said Remo.

"No. Now it is your turn. I have said the bee sucks. What do you say?"

Remo shrugged. "The bee sucks eggs."

The Korean's kindly eyes grew troubled. "Bees do not suck eggs."

"This isn't word association?"

"No. I have provided the first line of a poem. You must provide the second line."

"Oh. Okay. How's this? 'The turtle ducks.'"

"Why do you introduce turtles into a poem about-"

"Because 'ducks' rhymes with 'sucks,'" Remo said, "Rhyming is for Greeks and children. We do not rhyme. You must try again."

"Try this. 'The flower waits.'"

"What kind of flower awaits?"

"Is that the third line?" Remo asked.

"No!"

"Don't get upset. It was just a question."

"You must specify which flower. 'Flower' means nothing. Would you ask for fruit when you desire pear?"

"'The tulip awaits,' then," Remo said hastily.

"Tulips are not Korean."

Remo sighed. "Why don't you take my turn?"

"Very well. 'The chrysanthemum trembles like a shy maiden.'"

"Nice image. I add, 'The bee stings.'"

"What does this bee sting?"

Remo shrugged carelessly. "Whatever he wants. It's my turn so it's my bee. Your turn now."

"No, you must specify. Why can you not specify? Ung poetry is very specific. Image is all. Meaning is what is gleaned from the image."

"Okay, 'The bee stings you.'"

"Why me?"

"Because you're annoying me with this dippy Ung stuff."

"What means 'dippy?'"

"Silly. Stupid. Take your pick."

And the Korean drew himself to his feet. His face became a thunderhead. "But I am Master Ung. To insult the purity of my poems is to challenge me. Prepare yourself, ghost-face."

Remo backed off fast. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. Tell you what. I'll take the next three lines. How's that?"

"No, you will stand quietly while I recite the next three thousand lines."

Remo's face fell. "Three thousand lines?"

"Because I am angry," Ung said in an injured tone, "I can recite only a short Ung poem."

And in his dream, Remo groaned while Master Ung said, "Chrysanthemum petals fall from a celadon sky" three thousand times, varying in the intonation each time but leaning toward angry nine falls out of ten.

A STEELY VOICE BROKE the endless rain of petals. "It is time to face the wrestler."

Remo shot up out of bed, bathed in sweat.

The Master of Sinanju stood like a stern idol by his tatami sleeping mat. His face was in shadow and unreadable.

"Christ, Chiun-what time is it?" Remo asked. "Midnight approaches."

"Midnight! Feels like I just closed my eyes."

"You may sleep again after you have faced the most fearsome foe you have ever faced."

"I don't want to face any foe, fearsome or otherwise."

Chiun clapped his hands peremptorily. "You have your duty to the House."

Remo pulled the sheets over his head. "Make me." Something that felt like a red-hot needle touched Remo's elbow. It connected with his humerus. He snapped up again.

"Ow! What did you do?" Remo demanded, rubbing his elbow.

"I merely grazed what you whites call your funny bone."

"It doesn't feel very funny to me," said Remo, willing the pain up his arm and into his central nervous system, where it diffused and left his body tingling mildly.

Chiun turned abruptly. "Come. Your foe awaits." On the way through the darkness of the seacoast south of Tokyo, Remo tried to keep the fishy smells wafting into the cab from clogging his lungs.

"I had another freaking dream," he volunteered. "They are the only kind you have been having of late," Chiun said with no touch of interest in his voice. "Don't you want to hear about it?"

"No."

"I dreamed of Ung."

"Goody for you."

"We had a poetry face-off."

"I assume Ung won."

"He buried me in chrysanthemum petals."

Chiun flicked a speck off his silken lap. "There was no Master greater than Ung. Unless it was Wang. Or possibly myself."

"Says you," said Remo, rubbing his still-tingling elbow.

By the beach there were squid drying in lines strung between bamboo poles, their triangular heads flat as tapeworms. The breeze coming in from the Pacific made their tangled tentacles wriggle fitfully. They reminded Remo of the Greek octopuses drying in the sun, but for some reason their flat, dead eyes made him shiver deep inside.

"Why do squid suddenly make me feel creepy?"

"Because squid are creepy."

"I hate octopi, but I've eaten squid in the past and they never bothered me before."

"The octopus is harmless. But the squid is a fearsome creature, for they grow to great size."

"Everywhere we go lately, I see tentacles."

"Did I ever tell you how the sumo came to be?" Chiun asked suddenly.

"Not that I can remember."

"Good."

"That's it? Good?"

"Yes."

"Why is it good that you never got around to telling me how the sumo came to be?"

"Because it is."

Remo eyed Chiun. "Well, aren't you going to tell me now?"

Chiun's almond eyes grew heavy and hooded. "Beg me."

"I am not going to beg you to tell me about the sumo," Remo scoffed.

"Good."

"Not if we both end up on a deserted isle, just the two of us, a sick monkey and a coconut palm for entertainment, will I ask you how the sumo came to be."

"I accede to your wishes."

Remo returned to staring out the cab window. "Fine. Good."

Silence filled the car. Patterns of light and shadow cast by passing street lamps whipped through the cab's interior, making their stiff faces come and go by turns.

"So why'd you bring it up?" Remo asked after a long time.

Chiun began to hum. It was a contented hum. But as Remo listened, it grew more and more to sound like an I-know-something-you-don't-know hum. But he couldn't be sure, so he kept quiet during the rest of the cab ride.

"Is it important that I know how the sumo came to be?"

"I do not know," Chiun said vaguely.

"Am I going to meet any sumo?"

"You might. You might not."

Remo folded his lean arms defiantly. "Well, I pity the sumo I meet in the bad mood I'm in right now. He gives me any lip, and I'll roll him around the block for exercise."

"Sumos do not give lip," said Chiun.

"Good for them," said Remo.

"They are very polite. They give hip."

"Hip?"

Chiun nodded. "Hip."

"Hip, hip, hurray for the sumo," Remo said sourly.

THE CAB LET THEM OFF before a great Japanese-style house on a low hillock, and the Master of Sinanju led Remo through a gate into a walled courtyard where stunted bonsai trees crouched in perpetual agony. In the center of the courtyard lay a circular clay spot. A shinto-style roof protected the clay from the elements.

Warm amber light came from the closed screen of the house that faced the roofed courtyard.

"What's this?" Remo asked, enjoying the faint scent of cherries in the night air.

"The ring in which you will fight your fearsome foe."

"What foe?" asked Remo, looking around warily. And suddenly something as large as a baby elephant appeared on the other side of the screen, cutting off almost all trace of the warm amber light.

"That looks like a sumo's shadow to me," Remo said.

The screen slid aside and out stepped a great pink hulk, naked except for a cotton loincloth, his head shaved all around a ponytaillike topknot. He resembled nothing so much as an overweight baby who had outgrown his Pampers.

"Quick," urged Remo, "tell me how the sumo came to be."

"It is too late. I must instruct you in the rules of sumo."

"Shoot."

"You face your foe in the clay circle. There is no hitting with the closed fist or below the belt."

"Got it."

"You must not inflict harm or mortal injury on your foe."

"Does Baby Huey know this?"

"You may ask him after the bout."

"The winner is decided when one opponent is forced out of the circle or if any part of the body touches clay but the soles of the naked feet."

"My feet aren't naked," Remo stated.

"You will remove your shoes and your shirt."

Stripping to the waist, Remo stepped out of his shoes, complaining, "I'm going through a lot of shoes lately."

"Sandals wear better."

"I'll stick with shoes."

Chiun extracted a small vial of glass from one sleeve and, as the giant sumo wrestler waited patiently as a mute Buddha, he shook the vial around the ring of clay.

"What are you doing?" Remo asked, one eye on the inscrutable face of the sumo wrestler.

"Blessing the ring with salt."

"I thought that looked like one of the salt shakers from the hotel restaurant."

"They will not miss it." Finishing, Chiun said, "You may enter and face your worthy opponent."

Remo stepped into the circle, feeling the cool, moist clay against the bare soles of his feet.

The great sumo regarded him with a dour face. He bowed from the waist. The merest of bows. Ten degrees.

Remo bowed equally in return, saying, "I'll try to make this quick."

"Suit yourself, skinny," rumbled the sumo.

"You speak English?"

"So sue me."

"Huh?"

"Private joke. It's my stage name. I'm as American as you, chopstick legs. Born on Oahu. Raised on MTV. Destined to stomp your gourd."

"Says you."

And with a speed that surprised even Remo, the giant lunged, sweeping his great flabby arms around in a bear hug.

Remo ducked under the scissors of flesh and aimed two stiffened fingers for a nerve cluster under one sweaty armpit.

The fingers sunk in up to the second knuckle and came out again. Remo wove to one side so the falling sumo didn't land on him.

Except that the sumo didn't fall. He laughed again and took Remo's shoulders in each hand. Remo felt himself lifted off his feet and, when he landed outside the ring, he rolled and snapped to his feet unharmed.

He found himself facing the Master of Sinanju. "Does that mean I lose?" Remo asked.

"You wish. I neglected to say two falls out of three."

"Good," said Remo, jumping back into the ring.

The sumo lifted one foot and slammed it down. The other came down a moment later. He assumed a crouching defensive posture.

"Get set for a ride, skinny."

"Any time you're ready, fat boy."

From outside the ring, the voice of the Master of Sinanju floated out. "In the time of the early Chrysanthemum Throne, a shogun of Japan, jealous of the spreading fame of Sinanju and unable to secure the secrets of the House, sought to create an invincible army that would protect him from a rival shogun. These warriors were called sumo."

"I never heard that," said Sosumi.

"History is written by the victorious," Chiun countered.

Remo circled his foe warily. The sumo held his ground as if daring Remo to strike first.

"This shogun discovered that no weapon, no samurai or ninja, was proof against Sinanju," intoned Chiun.

A hand as broad as a seat cushion swatted at Remo. Remo evaded it easily. Still, the speed of the sumo was greater than he imagined possible.

"The shogun knew that there was no speed equal to Sinanju. No blow faster than Sinanju. And no skill greater than Sinanju. So he consulted his advisers for a defense against Sinanju."

Remo feinted for the blubbery, rolling stomach and came around with an open-handed spank to the kidneys.

"He discovered an armor that was proof against the blows and strikes of Sinanju."

With a meaty smack, Remo's hand bounced harmlessly off-and the sumo laughed boisterously.

"This was called fat," said Chiun.

Remo tried for the solar plexus. He stepped in, using the hard heels of his hands, machine-gunning the rolls of fat that lay there.

"Fat, the shogun discovered, was proof against the blows that could otherwise paralyze nerves and break bones."

The sumo's stomach muscles rolled like pink waves. He laughed from deep within his gargantuan belly. A red mark like a rash bloomed where Remo had struck, but otherwise no harm had been done.

"For fat gave before the hand of Sinanju, accepting and resisting like water."

"I can see that, damn it," Remo said in frustration.

"Big surprise, huh, skinny?" The sumo laughed. "You thought a big guy like me would be a pushover for your slick kung fu moves. Not so easy, huh?"

"Get stuffed."

"How do you think I got to where I am?"

"Fat, dumb and happy?"

"Yokozuna. That means 'grand champion.' I'm the first American to pull it off."

The Master of Sinanju resumed his tale. "The shogun surrounded himself with giant men who shook the earth with their tread. Word was sent out to the countryside. The Master of Sinanju of those days was challenged to assassinate the shogun, if he dared."

Remo eyed the ankles like fleshy tree stumps. "What do the rules say about tripping?"

"Tripping is forbidden," Chiun said.

The sumo grinned like a Mack truck. "You gotta grab me about the waist and try to muscle me out of the ring," he said. "Too bad you don't have the wingspan for it."

"Master Yowin came to Japan to meet this challenge," Chiun continued from the shadows. "By night he stole into the sleeping chamber of the shogun, but a wall of living flesh blocked him. Blows were struck and landed forcefully. But the sumo wall stood resolute. And in the safety of his bed, the shogun laughed heartily and long."

Stepping back, Remo coiled his muscles tightly. He drew in a deep breath and sprang.

Both hands slammed into the sumo's great chest. He staggered back. Staggered one step, then two-but five feet from the periphery of the ring of clay, he recovered and flung his bulk forward like a cannonball with pumping legs.

Remo backpedaled, staying one tantalizing step ahead of the sumo. When he felt the bite of gravel under his right heel, he leaped high over the Sumo's head, pivoted and gave the sweaty pink back a hard push.

Sosumi leaned like a sequoia in a hurricane-his upper body tipped out of the ring, but his feet stood firm, like immobile roots. Body nearly perpendicular to his legs, he grunted explosively as he fought the natural tendency of his great bulk to topple.

Remo watched in helpless frustration as he slowly righted himself and turned to face him again.

"I'm going to kick your ass for that," Sosumi warned.

"Can I kick him?" Remo asked Chiun.

"You cannot kick him below the waist or above the neck, nor may you land an injurious blow."

"That means my feet are tied," Remo growled.

"It means only what I have said," Chiun intoned. "Nothing more, and not a breath less."

"It means your ass is sassafras." Sosumi grinned, lifting his meaty paws before Remo's face.

Watching those giant hands, Remo stepped back and planted his bare feet in the moist clay, digging his toes in.

"Rules say whoever touches clay with anything but his feet, loses, right?" said Remo.

"Yes," said Chiun.

"Then get ready to lose, tubby," Remo told the looming sumo.

Sosumi lunged without warning. Remo was ready, exploding off his feet and launching a double kick so sudden and violent Sosumi felt Remo's left foot bouncing off his right hand and the right foot rebounding from his left hand as one jarring impact.

The sumo staggered back a half step-no more. His eyes held a stunned light. But he quickly blinked it away. "Hah!" he laughed. "If that's your best shot-"

"You lose," announced Chiun.

"What are you talking about?"

"You have touched clay. You have lost this round."

Frantically Sosumi looked around. He was still in the ring. His knees were clean. He looked behind him, and his nearly naked cheeks were clean. "Where? Where did I touch clay? Show me."

"Look upon your unwitting palms, sumo," said Chiun.

Sosumi unclenched his fists. And the angry lines of his face collapsed in shock. They were brownish gray. "No fair. You wiped your feet off on my hands!"

Remo grinned. "And now I'm going to wipe the ground with your stupid face."

The sumo stamped his feet like a toddler throwing a tantrum and, shaking the house walls with his roaring, he crashed around the ring as if trying to get up a head of steam.

"We're even, blubber butt," Remo said as they circled one another like belligerent binary stars.

"The shogun slept peacefully for many weeks," Chiun said, resuming his tale.

The sumo grunted like a mad bull, eyes turning fierce. "Not so cocky now?" taunted Remo.

The sumo said nothing. He was all business now. He dropped into his grunting crouch and wriggled his pudgy fingers at Remo in a come-on gesture.

Remo began circling, looking for an opening. Hitting below the belt was out. Punching was out. Not that any punch less than a death blow would fell the big behemoth. Couldn't do him. Couldn't kick at the vulnerable ankles and bring him down like a big tree. The power of a Sinanju Master lay in his ability to deal swift and sudden death. But in this arena, Remo's best moves were forbidden.

Chiun's remote voice resumed speaking.

"Long nights the Master of Sinanju slept under the stars, fretting over this new foe that seemed invincible to all of his wiles and skills."

Remo ducked between the sumo's legs suddenly, catching the man unaware. Coming up on the other side, he tried something simple. He grabbed the fat ankles and pushed hard. The sumo stood his ground. Bent over, Remo redoubled his effort. Little by little the sumo's feet began to slide along the moist clay. He refused to budge. He simply held his stance.

The sumo's feet scraped an inch of clay. Then two. Three.

Remo got him to the edge of the clay when abruptly the sumo reached between his dimpled knees and grabbed for Remo's wrists. Remo evaded a hand as big as a TV screen by fading back.

And Sosumi calmly lumbered back from the edge of the ring.

"This could take all night," Remo grumbled.

From the shadows Chiun intoned, "You are Sinanju. He is only sumo. It is too bad you did not beg me to tell you how the sumo came to be."

"Aren't you telling me now?"

"If I had told you before, the bout would not be even, and you would not now be frantic with worry that you are going to disgrace me against this fat tub of entrails."

"Hey, I resent that," Sosumi said in a hurt voice.

"If the diaper fits," Remo said.

The sumo wriggled his fingers again, mocking Remo's impotence.

Remo called over to Chiun. "I'm open to broad hints."

And the Master of Sinanju resumed his tale where he had left off. "Master Yowin thought long and he thought hard. And in time he realized if to strike fat was to be foiled, he must therefore strike not-fat."

"There isn't any such place on this blimp's body," Remo complained.

"Tell it to my momma," Sosumi said.

Remo called out, "How about another broad hint?"

"It is up to you not to disgrace me or the House," Chiun said.

"Can I stick him in the eyes?"

"You stick me in the eyes, runt," Sosumi growled, "and I'll wrench your head off, plant my mouth on your exposed windpipe and inflate your dead body like a puffer fish."

"You cannot strike him in the eyes," Chiun called out. "But you are getting warm."

"Warm?" Remo wondered, searching the sumo's broad, fleshy face.

A knowing grin coming over his face, Remo began weaving his hands in the air with casual menace. Sosumi blinked. "You better not be thinking what I think you're thinking," he growled.

"Come on, let's go. I don't have all night," Remo said.

"Sticking me in the eyes is against the rules."

Remo continued weaving.

"This time I'm going to nail your big fat butt to the ground," Remo warned. "No outside-the-ring stuff this time."

Perspiration began forming on the sumo's high, furrowed forehead. It drooled down. His topknot, coated with linseed oil, began to droop.

Lifting one fist, Remo popped two fingers. And drove them forward at high speed.

Sosumi saw the forked fingers coming at him like pink arrows and did the only thing possible. He clapped both hands over his eyes protectively.

And so never saw the flat heel of a hand that bopped him on the cartilage tip of his broad nose.

The resulting howl would have done justice to a wounded elephant.

And the sound Sosumi a.k.a. Beef Blast-san made as he fell into the clay was like a big wet smack of a whale's kiss.

"So much for Baby Huey," said Remo as the big sumo lay there quivering. He turned to the Master of Sinanju, who offered him a forty-five-degree bow. Remo returned it equally.

"Is that how Master Yowin did it?" Remo asked.

"No," said Chiun as they walked from the courtyard. "Yowin used his killing nails to gouge out their eyes. For what good is a wall of protective flesh if it is stamping about in circles and bumping into one another howling that it is blind while the Master of Sinanju steals up on the waking shogun in time to slice open his unprotected throat?"

And Remo laughed.

Chapter 14

Remo found that by pretending to sleep all the way from Tokyo to Honolulu, the geisha-style flight attendants of the JAL flight kept their hands to themselves.

It was hard not to sleep. He felt like he had circumnavigated the planet at a dead run.

When the plane landed in Honolulu, they bowed him out of the cabin, and when Remo neglected to bow back, ambulances had to be summoned when it was discovered that the flight attendants had all repaired to the gallery and tried to sever their wrist arteries with knives.

Since all the cutlery available to them were butterknives, there were no deaths and only minor stitches were needed.

Remo and Chiun were entirely oblivious to this. Hawaiian girls had accosted them in the terminal, cooing "Aloha" and decorating their necks with sweet-smelling leis of pink carnations mixed with white-and-yellow ginger flowers.

When Remo said "Thanks" in a deliberately uninterested voice, they tried to anoint his face with kisses. When he evaded their lips, they removed their own leis and showed him their bountiful breasts.

That caught Remo's attention. The fact that these weren't technically stewardesses probably softened his attitude somewhat.

That and the fact he couldn't immediately recall if he had ever slept with a Hawaiian girl or not.

"How long are we staying in Hawaii?" he asked Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju passed among the grass skirts and bare breasts, and although he seemed to keep his hands to himself, the Hawaiian girls began grabbing at and covering their grass-covered bottoms as if spanked by unseen paddles.

"Hussies," he hissed. "Begone! And bother us no more."

"Hey!" Remo complained, watching six gorgeous pairs of breasts bounce out of his life. "What happened to me siring a son?"

"You have no intention of impregnating those flaunting ones," Chiun sniffed, moving on.

Reluctantly Remo followed. "How do you know?" he asked.

"You would only have held back your sperm."

"Maybe. But I seem to recall you were the one who taught me how."

They walked out of the terminal into the heavily moist and jasmine-scented air of Honolulu.

"So you didn't answer my question. How long are we going to be in Honolulu?"

"Ten, possibly twenty minutes."

Remo frowned. "That's not very long."

"It is long enough," said Chiun, gesturing for a cab. He was ignored. When Remo inserted two fingers into his mouth and whistled, a cab pulled up with alacrity.

"Long enough for what?" Remo asked dubiously, holding open the door for Chiun.

"Long enough to acquire a vessel worthy of conveying us to our destination."

Remo got in. The cab got going. "Which is what?"

"Which is a boat."

"I meant the destination, not the vessel. And where are we going that can be reached by boat?"

"When you have conveyed us there, you will know."

"Do you mean 'convey' as in 'get there by cab,' or 'convey' as in 'boat?'"

"You ask too many questions," said the Master of Sinanju, lapsing into silence.

Near the waterfront the Master of Sinanju left Remo to contemplate the blue Pacific, but as he waited, his attention was drawn to a bus-stop billboard advertising one of the summer's films.

It showed a green-faced man with roots and leaves growing from his mottled skin. The film was titled The Return of Muck Man. It wasn't the swampy face that caught Remo's eye, but his deep, soulful mud brown eyes.

Something about them held Remo spellbound. The eyes seemed to be looking at him. When Remo moved to the right, the eyes seemed to follow him. The same thing happened when he drifted left.

Chiun returned minutes later, saying, "I have found a worthy vessel."

Remo seemed not to hear.

"What are you looking at?" Chiun asked.

Without shifting his gaze, Remo said, "That face on that billboard seems to be looking right at me."

"Perhaps it is your long-lost father."

"Not funny, Chiun."

"He does have your complexion."

"Something about those eyes strikes me funny." And Remo started to approach the billboard.

Chiun clapped his hands abruptly. "Enough. Come." Remo snapped out of his pensive mood. Chiun led him to the end of a wharf, and Remo found himself gazing out over the sparkling blue Pacific.

"So where is it?" he asked.

"You are looking out when you should be looking down."

Remo looked down and saw the rowboat. Its oars were tucked in at the gunwales. It could seat two people comfortably and a third in a dire emergency. "Who's rowing?"

"He who boards last, of course," said the Master of Sinanju, stepping off the wharf. He floated to his seat in the stern with the ease of a feather landing.

"Figures," said Remo, climbing a ladder to take his position at the oars. "Where to?" he said sourly. "Row south. And take care that you do not bump any larger craft."

Remo took up the oars. "Bump? If we hit anything bigger than a Coke bottle, we're going under."

"Save your breath for rowing," Chiun admonished, rearranging the splendid folds of his kimono skirts. As they beat out of Mamala Bay, the sun began to dip in the sky once more, and Remo realized he had lost track of the days since they had left the U.S.A.

"How long does this go on?" he asked an unperturbed Chiun.

"Until we reach our destination, of course."

"No, I mean how long does this marathon go on?"

"It is not a marathon. That is something else. These are your athloi."

"How long do they go on?"

"Until you reach your destination."

After Remo had rowed many hours, with the Master of Sinanju frequently looking up the night sky, Chiun lifted his hand sternly.

"Cease rowing!"

"A pleasure," said Remo, stowing the oars.

"We are here."

Remo looked around. The Pacific in all directions was as black as ink. The sky was a litter of bright stars around the misty arm of the Milky Way.

"How do you know this is the right place?"

"What star is that?" Chiun asked, indicating an especially bright bluish white one directly overhead. "Vega."

Chiun made a disgusted face. "Pah. And that?" he asked, pointing to another.

"Altair."

"Again you are wrong."

Remo craned his head, trying to fix the positions of the stars. There were the two brightest in the early-July sky, and they straddled the Milky Way.

"That's Altair and that's Vega," he insisted.

"Only to a white," retorted Chiun unhappily. "They are known to my people as Kyon-u the Herder and Chik-nyo the Weaver. They were lovers, who having neglected their duties, were exiled to opposite sides of the Silvery River, by Kyon-u's father, the king. It is said that the seventh day of the seventh moon always begins with a light sprinkling of rain, signifying the beginning of another year of bitter separation for Kyon-u and Chik-nyo."

Remo looked down. "So what do we-or should I say I-do now?"

"We wait."

"In the middle of the freaking ocean?"

"Unless you would rather row in stately circles."

"On the other hand," Remo said quickly, "waiting can be very restful."

Chiun smoothed his silken lap. "If you wish to sleep, you may."

"I'm tired but I'm not that tired." Chiun looked up.

"You are certain?"

"I've been sleeping too much as it is. And I'm sick of these dreams I've been having."

"Dreams cannot harm you," Chin said thinly.

"I said I'm not tired. I just need to rest."

The Master of Sinanju said nothing. His unwinking eyes came to rest on Remo's own. He stared. Remo stared back. After a while Remo looked away. When he looked back at the Master of Sinanju, the Master of Sinanju was still regarding him like a stern old owl. "What are you staring at?" Remo asked peevishly.

"You."

"Cut it out, will you?"

"I have nothing but darkness surrounding me," Chiun intoned. "I will stare where I will."

"It's making me uneasy."

"Then do not look back," said Chiun, looking hard and unflinchingly at his pupil.

Remo averted his eyes again. Every time his gaze wandered back to the Master of Sinanju sitting at the stern, Chiun's hazel eyes were fixed and unblinking upon him.

After a while Remo closed his eyes.

He never felt himself drop off. He just did. There was no transition from wakefulness to slumber. But he dreamed.

A SPLASHING BROUGHT HIM out of sleep. Remo sat up on his hard wooden seat of the rowboat. "Where am I?" he asked.

"Beneath the Silvery River."

"No, I meant what's making this splashing? Sharks?"

Chiun shook his aged head coldly. "These are the children of Sa Mangsang."

Remo looked over the side. Luminous shapes glided in the water, just beneath the surface. They resembled circling torpedoes with flexible tails. A few wallowed on the surface, slashing it with birdlike beaks. Several disconnected circular eyes stared skyward.

"What are those things?"

"Squid."

Remo looked more closely. He recognized them now. The flexible tails of the circling squid were their bundled and trailing tentacles. They were an eerie sight. "What's got them so riled up?" he asked Chiun.

"They are feeding."

"Any danger they'll bite the boat?"

"Yes."

"I hate squid."

"Squid cannot harm you. Not squid so small."

"Small! They're easily five feet long."

"They are small for squid. In the deeper parts of the Pacific, some grow large enough to pull down whales to their doom and eat them."

Remo said nothing. On every side, for nearly a quarter mile around, the long phosphorescent shapes sped, wallowed and slashed. Occasionally a whipping tentacle would lift and slap the water.

Remo felt a preternatural chill run through him.

Chiun spoke up. "Do you remember my telling you of Sa Mangsang?"

"What Master was he?"

"Sa Mangsang was no Master of Sinanju. He was-and is-the dragon of the abyss. In Korean, 'Sa Mangsang' means 'Dream Thing.' In Japanese, he is known as Tako-Ika, Octopus Squid. To the Vikings, he was Kraken. To the Arabs, Khadhulu. To the Moovians, he was Ru-Taki-Nuhu, the enemy of life."

"Wait a minute. Are we talking about the lost continent of Moo here?"

"We are."

Remo's strong features grew grim. Years ago he and Chiun had discovered an island outpost of an ancient continent that had sunk during a Pacific upheaval, leaving only its highest hill, which poked above the sea like an island. The continent was called Moo. It was an ancient client state of Sinanju five thousand years ago. One of its beliefs was in Ru-Taki-Nuhu, the Heaven Propper, a giant octopus that had fallen from the sky to sleep beneath the waves, awaiting the end of the world, during which it would drink up the oceans. Remo and Chiun had briefly lived with the survivors of Moo until even the island was swallowed by the Pacific.

"I remember," Remo said quietly. "The people of Moo thought Ru-Taki-Nuhu held up the sky with his tentacles."

Chiun held a fist over the side. A finger coiled out and down. "Ru-Taki-Nuhu, known to Sinanju as Sa Mangsang, sleeps below us."

"Good for him. Not that I believe in him, that is."

"These squid are his offspring and acolytes. They guard his resting place, dreaming of the hour their lord will awaken to consume them, as he will consume all earthly life."

"Why don't we just be on our way?" Remo said suddenly.

"Because you are going to awaken Sa Mangsang."

"And have him drink up the ocean? No, thanks."

"You must awaken Sa Mangsang so that he sees you. Then you must make a certain sign with your fingers. Like this." Chiun made an arcane gesture by separating his two middle fingers.

"I don't think my fingers bend that way."

"You will make this sign, and once Sa Mangsang has seen it, he will know you for Sinanju. Then and only then you must return him to slumber."

"With what? I don't exactly carry sleeping pills on me."

"You would do well to remember that the Greeks had another name for Sa Mangsang."

"What's that?"

"Hydra."

Remo made a thoughtful face in the murk. "Hydra. Hydra. I've heard of the Hydra."

Chiun pressed his hands together firmly. "Enough! It is time for you to awaken Sa Mangsang from his ancient sleep."

Remo folded his arms. "No way I'm jumping into a sea full of unhappy squid," he said defiantly.

Chiun's eyes narrowed in the darkness. "I will not insist that you jump, if you are afraid to," he said, voice as thin as his unreadable eyes.

Remo looked at his master's stern eyes, "You don't exactly say that like you mean it."

"I mean it exactly. I will not insist that you jump into these evil waters."

"Good," said Remo. "Because I'm not jumping." And taking the rowboat's creaking oarlocks in both hands, Remo held on.

Chiun took hold of his gunwales and began rocking on his seat. The boat began rocking in sympathy. Remo tried rocking in counterbalance. Chiun redoubled his rocking. Having established the rhythm first, he had the advantage. Remo tried to find the rhythm in the hope of setting up a counter-rhythm. But during the precious seconds in which he was searching, he only aided Chiun in destabilizing the tiny craft. The boat took on water on the port side, then in the bow.

Quickly it began swamping.

"If you don't stop," Remo warned, "we're both going in."

And they did. The boat tipped precariously one way, and letting go of the oarlocks, Remo threw his weight to the other side desperately.

With the end result that the rowboat capsized completely.

Remo plunged into the cold water, automatically charging his lungs with oxygen. Though caught by surprise, his body did the natural thing and took in as much air as possible.

Orienting himself, Remo looked up. The sea above was choked with feeding, darting squid. When he saw the Master of Sinanju's feet dangling in the water, his skirts floating high like the mantle of a jellyfish, the upturned boat beside him, Remo started up to help.

Abruptly the boat righted itself, and the skirt collapsed like an umbrella. The feet of the Master of Sinanju vanished completely.

Remo broke the surface at the boat's stern. He looked up.

In front of him the face of Chiun hovered. Above his head the flat part of an oar hovered, too.

The other end of the oar was firm in the Master of Sinanju's bony fists as he sat in the rowboat's stern. "You letting me back aboard?" Remo asked.

"After you have troubled Sa Mangsang's sleep as a warning to him that he should remain steadfast in slumber so long as the House of Sinanju exists in the world."

"What if I don't come back?"

"It will not matter, because Sa Mangsang will then drink up the entire ocean and with it this fragile craft and its very sad occupant. So do not fail."

"I don't believe in Sa Mangsang."

"You will soon change your mind, as did I when my Master brought me to this place, as did the Master before him and all Masters before him going back through the mighty ages."

Remo hesitated. But the scattered squid were returning to the vicinity of the rowboat, and so Remo took in a deeper breath, held it and willed his body to sink feetfirst.

THE LIGHT OF THE MOON and stars barely penetrated deeper down in the water. But Remo, with his Sinanju training, could adjust to the lack of ambient light. Compensating for the increasing pressure, Remo worked his way down gradually. He might need his full strength for the swim back to the surface-even if he encountered nothing.

The seafloor was relatively shallow here. A depth of hardly more than an eighth of a mile, not so deep that he couldn't prevent nitrogen narcosis-the bends-upon ascent.

Letting his eyes grow accustomed to his surroundings, Remo at first saw only diatoms floating past. Then the seafloor began to resolve itself.

It was jagged, geometric and encrusted with staghorn coral and other marine life. There were volcanic cones. Thermal vents belched an unnatural subterranean heat.

Then Remo saw the pyramid.

It was not a true pyramid, like the Great Pyramid of Giza. It didn't rise up from the ocean floor to a point. It wasn't four sided, but three sided. The angles weren't true. It was strange. Remo, who hadn't done well in geometry in school, nevertheless realized the angles were incorrect.

Whoever had built the pyramid hadn't used solid geometry correctly. The base of the pyramid was off kilter, and the sides weren't aligned or true.

Yet the pyramid reared up to a flat summit that waved with fanlike hands. Kelp. They seemed to beckon with feathery fingers.

Remo swam to the pyramid, searching its sides. It wasn't made from blocks, he soon discovered. He wiped sea scum from different places, trying to find the joints where giant blocks would have fit together. There were none that he could find. It might have been carved from a solid chunk of matter.

The material under the scum was smooth and hard. Underwater and in this low light, it was difficult to figure out what the material was. If not blocks of stone, then what?

Turning, Remo zoomed up to the flat base to rest. It was big enough to park a sedan on. And as he kicked away the scummy residue and the waving kelp, he uncovered a long rectangular slot in the cap.

Getting down on hands and knees, Remo tried to peer into the slot but could see nothing. He stood up and walked back a few paces, pondering his next move.

And it was while Remo stood waiting in the nearabsolute darkness of the Pacific Ocean that a sinuous length of rubbery matter quested up, out, to curl toward his chest from behind.

Remo felt the cold suction power of a hundred pads attach themselves to his skin, and before he could respond, the thing withdrew, dragging him into the great pyramid with it.

His last thought was a plaintive, Chiun, what did you get me into?

REMO CAUGHT the sides of the slot with both hands. The tentacle-it felt like a slime-coated rubber hosesqueezed reflexively. Remo heard his own rib-cage cartilage crackle. An eruption of bubbles was forced from his mouth. The tentacles squeezed anew.

Suspended with his palms flat on the cold material on either side of the slot, his elbows bent, Remo forced his lungs to retain their energizing air.

The tentacle around his chest began to grope for better purchase. Through his T-shirt Remo could feel the cold suckers grow warm, as if blood and vitality were flowing through the being in the pyramid after a long hibernation.

As he struggled to keep from being dragged into the slot, some of the suckers let go. Remo strained upward, but relief was momentary. The suckers were simply seeking better adhesion.

The more Remo struggled, the more the tentacle groped and adjusted itself with a casual assurance. A thick length under one arm lifted free, and the warming pads reattached themselves lower down along his ribs.

Other tentacles snaked up to find his ankles. Remo kicked, but the tentacles simply waved loosely with his feet.

Remo looked down. Below, an eye stared up at him with a sleepy, near-human regard. It looked old-older than time itself. There was inhuman confidence in that stare, and a dreadful patience.

A kick like an electric wire ran through Remo's solar plexus. Fear was something he had been taught long ago to master. Not banish, but master and direct. Fear was a good thing, Chiun had assured him many years before. It could spur a man to do the impossible, or convince him to flee a danger that anger or pride or other foolish and destructive emotions might compell him to fight. And in fighting, perish.

Remo looked down at the terrible hooded eye that was so human yet so inimical to all things human, and a fear washed over him that was unlike any fear he had ever before known.

He wanted to escape but could not. He wanted to fight back but was helpless. Above all, he wanted nothing to do with the titanic entity Chiun called Sa Mangsang. No matter what punishment Chiun was prepared to inflict, no matter if Chiun shunned him till the end of time, Remo wanted no combat with Sa Mangsang. The eye glaring up at him looked hungry, and deep in the pit of his stomach-believed by Koreans to be the seat of the soul-Remo felt less like a man than like food.

Food for Sa Mangsang.

Even that knowledge wasn't enough to get him free. The fear was too great, too overpowering.

Remo let go. And the tentacles of Sa Mangsang drew him into the darkness of the great pyramid of greenish blue mineral.

Darkness swallowed him. He could barely see the brooding head that looked old and intelligent, but managed to pick out the single sleepy eye. But that was all. Remo could no longer see his hands in front of his face.

So he closed his eyes.

The fear evaporated. It should have increased, but it went away. The primordial fear that solitary eye stabbed into his belly faded. Remo saw nothing, heard nothing and felt only the gristly arms with their wet, slickly cold skin and warm suckers.

A roiling in the water warned him of grasping tentacles. Remo lifted his arms ahead of the wave pressure. Tentacle tips grazed his wrists. He would need his hands free if he was to breathe oxygen ever again.

His arms vertical, Remo snapped his legs up suddenly. The loose tendrils around his ankles drew taut. They yanked back with a stubborn anger.

Then Remo peeled his T-shirt off his chest with a violent rip. The tentacle constricting his chest slid up with it, squeezing into a small loop around the loose cloth.

Bending, he jacknifed his body. Hands like spear heads, he slashed at the enmeshed tentacles. They parted. He kicked free.

Deep in the the dark water, a deep howl arose. It froze the blood in Remo's veins.

Still kicking, he made for the rectangular slot that meant escape. A boiling knot of tentacle came rushing up after him. Uncoiling, they twisted and grasped.

Fighting furiously, Remo kicked at every cold touch. Tentacles recoiled. Others coiled up toward his upper body.

Remo slashed with the edges of his hands, water resistance muffling his blows, but where they encountered tentacles, the tough flesh parted like stretched rubber.

Soon the water around him was full of disconnected tentacles, floating and curling, reaching and hungry. But still fresh slick tentacles quested up for his warm form.

How many arms does this thing have anyway? Remo wondered angrily, kicking at a slick tip creeping for one ankle.

Arching his spine, twisting, Remo stayed ahead of the feelers.

Suddenly he could see the answer to his question.

A tentacle stump lifted lazily in his direction. Black blood was clouding the water at the severed end, so it was hard to see clearly what was happening.

But as Remo watched, the black blood flow squeezed off and the stump began to regenerate before his eyes. There was no question. The thing had been a stump. Now it lengthened, slimmed to a tip and was whole once more.

Remo spun in place. Another stump was closing off its tendril of flowing blood. And like a rubber telescope, it grew whole again.

Remo held still while the two tentacles converged. He could feel the eye of Sa Mangsang looking up at him. Tentacles were reaching out for his thick wrists, and Remo closed his eyes again. The seeking eddies were a better gauge of their proximity than underwater sight.

When he felt the fine hairs of his wrists stir, Remo lashed out with both hands and brought the tentacle tips together so fast they wrapped around one another like two slashing whips.

Remo chopped at the wriggling knot. Another cloud of blood spurted, and Remo swam under it.

Below, Sa Mangsang watched with a titanic, dispassionate patience.

Now Remo could see two eyes, one on either side of the bloated sac that was its head. He counted eight arms. Just like an ordinary octopus.

But this was no ordinary octopus.

For one thing, it was a mottled greenish blue-gray. It had squid properties. A fin on the horny head that waved lazily. And while it seemed to squat far beneath Remo, it still loomed gigantic in its brooding, alien coldness.

It sat on a dais in the shape of a gigantic starfish, but as Remo looked, the arms of the starfish lifted and fell with a slow agony. It was alive!

Around the throne, clinging to the inner pyramid walls, other starfish adhered like a pox. Their sizes varied. Some had been skeletonized. Others were missing triangular arms.

Remo got the awful feeling the starfish served Sa Mangsang as both slaves and food.

Among the starfish squatted whitish-brown polyps of brain coral, like satellite brains.

The orbs of Sa Mangsang sought Remo's gaze, and he hastily closed his own lids. Too late. A searing stab of fear lanced deep into him.

And all around him the water roiled and purled with regathering sucker-lined arms.

Remo twisted, kicked, fought, but there were too many to fight now. Coils like wet tires wound around his chest and hips. Wrists were captured. His right ankle escaped a groping tip, but his knee was pinioned a second later. His other ankle was soon captured.

And then inexorably Sa Mangsang began to drag Remo down into his lair. Remo punched at the fat rope of gristle across his naked chest. His fist bounced off. And Sa Mangsang squeezed half a lungful of precious air from Remo's chest.

Remo kicked downward, and his body leaped up briefly. The tentacles pulled anew. When he felt an ugly warm nearness, he knew he was being drawn toward Sa Mangsang's great head.

I'm screwed now, Remo thought to himself. Why the hell did Chiun do this to me?

He didn't want to open his eyes. He was afraid to. Still, as the nearness of Sa Mangsang made his skin crawl more so than the touch of his inescapable, multiarmed grip, Remo opened his eyes.

He was down on the level of the great head. It loomed above him, a great bladder with eyes. Orbs so far apart on either side of the blue-green bag of skin, they might have belonged to two different creatures.

That was how vast Sa Mangsang sat on his throne, surrounded by brain coral and slave starfish.

The head lifted, exposing a mouth like the curved beak of a parrot, but upside down. The heavy half was at the bottom. And when it dropped, great inwardcurving teeth showed in a round, pulsing hole, bringing the teeth together to form an angry flower.

Remo twisted, but to no avail. The tentacle drew him in toward the gnashing circle of teeth designed to rip flesh into chunks.

Seeing what fate awaited him, all fear drained from Remo Williams's limp body. Before, he could only guess his fate. Now, with it contracting and expanding before him, he lost his fear. Only a sad surrender suffused his body. He was down to his last dribbles of oxygen anyway.

And he remembered the sign Chiun had told him to make with his fingers.

Twisting them apart, he managed to approximate the sign.

The short siphon off to one side of Sa Mangsang's mouth blew out an angry rush of water. The hooded eyes seemed to darken in anger. But nothing else happened.

The tentacles drew him closer.

In the last moments before he was to be ripped apart like so much human chum, the voice of the Master of Sinanju came into Remo's head.

"You would do well to remember that Sa Mangsang is also known as Hydra."

Hydra, Hydra, Remo thought. What do I know about the Hydra?

And a second voice came into his head. A voice he knew almost as well as Chiun.

Sister Mary Margaret's voice.

"The Hydra was the fearsome beast, some say a great serpent, some say a dragon, which possessed nine heads. Each time Hercules chopped off a head, another grew back. But Hercules knew the Hydra had an Achilles' heel. And that was its immortal ninth head."

But this thing has only one head, Remo thought. Eight tentacles but one head.

The truth struck Remo in the last ebbing moments of life.

Relaxing, he let the tentacles draw him closer and closer. He closed his eyes. He would not need them for what he had to do. Maybe vision would be a hindrance.

When the water before him was as warm as a sleeping body next to his, Remo drew his hands together. The entwining tentacles reacted spasmodically. They tightened.

And Remo kicked out with both feet at the great monster's brooding head.

A bubbling scream washed over him. Remo's eyes snapped open.

Sa Mangsang was changing color! Furious bands of red and orange were washing over his aquamarine skull. The tentacles, including the loops at his ankles, were alive with moving bands of angry colors, like neon racing through glass tubes.

Then, like great curtains, the hooded lids began to descend over the sleepy orbs.

Tentacles relaxed, let go and fell away as if in death. Remo kicked upward as hard as he could. He had no time to waste. The air was almost exhausted from his lungs. And the rectangular slot above beckoned.

As he arrowed up toward the opening and away from the great arms of Sa Mangsang, Remo looked down. Retracted tentacles curling into tight, perfectly spaced coils about his throne, Sa Mangsang had turned the color of bone. His great orbs were closed. He slept. He might have been dead. He might have been dead a million years.

But he only slept.

Kicking upward with all his ebbing strength, Remo Williams could only think of two things he wanted most in life-oxygen and sleep.

But as he fought to reach the world of men and breathable air, he felt the last bubble of carbon dioxide escape his lips and the entire world began to darken around him.. . .

REMO SNAPPED AWAKE at the bow of the rowboat. He looked around dazedly. "Where the hell am I?"

"With me," said Chiun, folding his hands in his lap.

"But I-" Remo swallowed hard. "A minute ago, I-"

"-escaped Sa Mangsang?"

"Yeah. Did you pull me out of the water?"

"No. You did that."

"I don't remember it."

"Unless you think it was a dream...."

"Dream. Yeah. It was a dream. I fell asleep. I thought I was awake, but I was really asleep. I woke up in my dream but I was still dreaming. I never had that happen to me before."

"If you were dreaming," Chiun asked suddenly, "then why are your clothes wet?"

Remo looked down. His chinos were soaked. His feet were bare. And his T-shirt was missing. "You threw water on me," Remo accused.

"Why would I do that?"

"And you stole my shirt."

"To match your dream?"

"Exactly."

"If it was a dream, how would I know you had lost your shirt to Sa Mangsang's tentacles?"

Remo thought hard. "Maybe I talked in my sleep. Yeah, that's it. I talked in my sleep."

"Possibly."

"What other explanation was there? There's no way an octopus could grow as huge as the nightmare I saw in my dream."

"The Sa Mangsang of your dreams was very large?"

"Titanic."

"And how big were its awesome suckers?"

"Who cares? Big."

Coolly Chiun said, "Show me how big, my son." Remo brought his hands together and made a circle by touching forefingers and thumbs together.

"That big," he insisted.

"That is very large."

"You know it."

"As large as the angry red marks on your naked chest?"

Remo looked down.

Marching across his pale wet chest were livid scarlet circles such as would be left by the sucker pads of a gargantuan octopus.

"You have nothing to say now?" Chiun inquired coolly.

And looking at the luminous squid who slashed the waters all around them, feeding on tiny surface fish, Remo did something rare for a full Master of Sinanju. He trembled from head to foot.

Chapter 15

Dr. Harold W Smith was following his enforcement arm.

The audit trail was very clear. Boston to Madrid. Madrid to Athens. Athens to Cairo and Canada, with many stops in between.

Remo and Chiun were bouncing around the world like two hyperactive rubber balls. But what did it mean? Since they were not on assignment, there was no immediate cause for alarm. But Remo and Chiun, since joining CURE, never raced around without a clear purpose in mind.

They took no vacations as such. Remo had no known relatives to visit. No friends, past present or future. He had only Chiun. And the Master of Sinanju had his village.

But they weren't going to North Korea, it seemed. They had bypassed it in favor of Tokyo. Now they were in Honolulu, according to the audit trail of creditcard expenditures and airline reservations. Smith, who had Remo's many credit cards under fictitious names on his data base, had access to the credit-card companies' minute-by-minute computerized credit-cheek records. The minute Remo booked a flight, it appeared on the airline's worldwide computerized reservation system and could be called up on Smith's Folcroft office computer screen instantly.

Smith wondered if they were on some kind of extended vacation. But that seemed unlikely. They were in the air more than on the ground in most cases. Thus, they could not be sight-seeing, he concluded.

A check of world trouble spots showed no correlation between their travels and global events.

Perhaps this was some old business of the House of Sinanju, Smith reasoned. Yes, that must be it. Something from Chiun's past had called them to trot all over the globe.

He hoped it was nothing serious, that it would not impact on their availability. Smith had long ago realized his two agents were for all practical purposes virtually uncontrollable.

As it was, he had no missions for Remo. As long as Remo wasn't needed, Smith would force himself not to worry about their activities.

But just to be sure, he popped four extrastrength Tums before leaving his office for lunch. It never hurt to anticipate stomach upsets. And where Remo and Chiun were concerned, upsetting news invariably followed.

SMITH DROVE his aging station wagon to nearby Port Chester, and its post office. In the early days of CURE, letters from field informants and others filled the mailbox every week. In these days of E-mail, Smith received fewer and fewer tips through the mail. One trip a week was usually enough. Rarely did a letter from the field lead to a mission for Remo and Chiun.

Old habits die hard. Smith got in line before going to his box. That way he could scan the foyer unobtrusively. There were no suspicious people hanging about. That was one of the reasons Smith picked up his own mail. Post-office boxes were very safe and extremely anonymous. The federal government didn't tolerate loiterers lying in wait at mail boxes for boxholders.

Smith grudgingly bought a one-cent stamp-the lowest denomination he could purchase-and then went to the bank of boxes. Inserting a brass key shiny from long use, he opened the box.

Inside was a sheaf of mail. He took it, shut the box and left the foyer, clutching the envelopes protectively. Behind the wheel of his station wagon, Smith examined each one to be sure it was addressed to him. Although he had maintained the box for some thirty years now, sometimes Smith still received other people's mail. The fourth letter in the stack brought a chill to Harold Smith's age-curved spine. Written in flowing blue ink, it was addressed to Mr. Conrad MacCleary.

There was no return address. Only an Oklahoma postmark. Smith tore open the envelope and read the folded note inside with startled eyes.

Our Lady of Perpetual Care Home for the Infirm

My Dear Mr. MacCleary,

I trust you are well.

As promised so very long ago, I am writing to inform you of the imminent passing of Sister Mary Margaret Morrow. She has been in declining health for several years now, yet has clung to this earth most wonderfully. But the nurses do not believe that she will survive the month of July.

If it still is your wish to attend the funeral, I cannot say with certainty when this will be, but you should know that Sister Mary Margaret's time is very short. In this case, you would do well to contact me by telephone so I might better advise you. Yours in Christ, Sister Novella.

Harold Smith read with eyes that skated over the ink script uncomprehendingly. He read the short note again. And for the third time.

"She's alive," he breathed.

Smith thought back. Conrad MacCleary had been his right hand in the creation of CURE. Grizzled, hard drinking and indomitably patriotic, he had executed the frame that had brought Remo Williams to CURE in the first place.

Harold Smith had engineered it all. Masterminded the plan. But Smith couldn't go into the field. As head of CURE, he wasn't expendable. MacCleary was.

From stealing Remo's police badge, to rigging the electric chair to deliver a nonlethal charge, to visiting Remo on death row disguised as a Capuchin monk in order to slip him the pill that suppressed his life signs so he could be pronounced dead after the mock execution, MacCleary had done it all, leaving no fingerprints and no witnesses.

Except apparently Sister Mary Margaret, the one person who had shaped Remo Williams's young life. Smith remembered the conversation that had taken place so long ago.

"What about the nun?" MacCleary had asked. "Is she a problem?"

"She was like a mother to Williams. Even after the plastic surgery, she would be able to recognize his eyes or his voice."

"Where is she now?"

"Still holding down the fort at St. Theresa's."

"It's to be burned," Smith ordered. "To the ground. There must be no record of any Remo Williams."

"Got it," McCleary said. "But what about the sister?"

"No one must be allowed to place the program at risk. The nation depends on it."

"Understood," MacCleary replied.

That was all. That was the way they worked. Smith did not have to say that Sister Mary Margaret, despite her good works in life, had to die. Just as Remo Williams had had to die. Just as so many who threatened CURE over the years had had to die. It was understood. MacCleary was a seasoned agent. He had been one of the finest cold warriors Harold Smith had ever known.

It was true he was a hard-drinking SOB with a tendency to get sloppy drunk and sentimental. But it had never interfered with his duty. In fact, MacCleary had a saying for those occasions when the work got nasty: America Is Worth A Life.

But as Harold W. Smith folded the letter after committing Sister Novella's address and phone number to memory and burning it in the immaculate ashtray of his dashboard, he remembered another fact.

Conrad MacCleary had been a Catholic. Although a lapsed Catholic, obviously he'd not been without sympathy for a nun who had done nothing wrong and perhaps everything right.

Smith crushed the warm gray ashes to powder as he drove back toward Rye and Folcroft, his patrician face was thoughtful.

From beyond the grave, Conrad MacCleary may have provided CURE with the one thing it most needed now. A way to hold on to its enforcement agent.

Smith said a silent thank you to the memory of his old comrade in arms.

As a precaution, he emptied the ashes into three different trash receptacles along the route so no one could ever resurrect the note.

Chapter 16

"I'm going to hit the sack," Remo said when the keel of the rowboat finally grated on the sands of Waikiki Beach.

Dawn was peeping over the Pacific. The night wind off the water had abated, leaving only an eerie calm. "If you slept on the boat, as you claim, why do you need more sleep?" Chiun asked, waiting in the boat for his pupil to drag the craft out of the water by its painter so he could step off onto dry ground, as befitted his station as Reigning Master.

To Chiun's surprise, Remo did no such thing. He started inland, saying with utmost disrespect, "I'm going to find a nice quiet hotel and sleep on a Western bed for a change."

Chiun's facial hair trembled in anger. "You will not sleep on a Western bed. I forbid it!"

"Try and stop me," Remo hurled back.

Suddenly the Master of Sinanju was standing in the darkness before Remo.

Remo took a wary step backward. "Do I have to fight you, too?" he asked wearily.

"It is not yet time."

"What do you mean?"

"If you desire sleep so much, I will allow this. But on the morn we journey to Hesperia."

"Tomorrow we'll see about Hesperia."

"We are going to Hesperia," Chiun insisted.

"I said we'll see!" Remo flared, and stalked off into the night.

The Master of Sinanju watched him go, saying nothing, his face a stiff mask of papyrus. In the moonlight it had the grim aspect of a death mask.

REMO CHECKED into the Waikiki Sheraton and threw himself facedown on a queen-size bed the moment he stepped into his suite. It was against all of Chiun's teachings to sleep on a bed and not a reed mat, but Remo no longer cared. After all that Chiun had put him through, the old Korean could take a flying leap into the Void.

Sleep took Remo within seconds of his face hitting the down pillow.

HE FOUND HIMSELF in a room of gold walls, heaped with treasure. In the center a thick-bodied man sat on a throne of teak chased with silver and gold. He wore a flowing silk robe of the brilliant red hue believed in the Orient to ward off evil demons.

Remo recognized the man on the throne instantly. "Wang?"

"The Great Wang, if you please." And the Great Wang grinned like a cherub. "I see you've made it all the way to the Rite of Attainment. Good for you, Remo Williams. Good for you. I was beginning to wonder about you."

"Maybe you can tell me why I'm having all these dreams about past Masters."

"Chiun didn't tell you?"

"Chiun flat-out denied my dreams mean anything."

"That is so like him. Cloaking a simple ritual in mystery just to milk the moment."

"Simple ritual? Do you know what he's got me doing?"

Wang beamed. His perfect smile made his high forehead fall into doughy rolls of flesh. "Sure. Been through it myself. You chase around till you're ready to drop. When you do, past Masters visit you, look you over and, if they like what they see, dispense wisdom."

"The dreams are part of the Rite?" Remo demanded.

"It was so from the first Master who emerged from the Caves of Mist to those who came just before you."

"So that's who that was."

"Hey. Did you meet Sa Mangsang yet?"

"Yeah. And I hope I never do again. Was it a dream?"

"Is this a dream?"

Remo frowned. "It feels like a dream. I'm asleep. I think. But these dreams are making too much sense to be dreams."

"Have you fought the Minotaur yet?"

"Yeah. It was only Chiun in the dark wearing a bull mask."

"Too bad. In my day we had a real Minotaur. It made for an interesting experience."

"Minotaurs aren't real."

"They say that about dragons now. But I slew a few in my time."

"Hey, I thought Masters were supposed to have a visit from the Great Wang only once in their lifetime."

"They are. That was when you were awake. My appearance signified you had reached full Masterhood. Since you're fast asleep, this doesn't count."

"Oh," said Remo.

"And now you're on the threshold of taking over the House. You know, Chiun should have retired years ago."

"Really?"

"Absolutely. Instead, he's been hogging all the glory long after his time." Wang shook his round head. "Tsk tsk. Reckless. What if you both fall into the same trap and die? No more House."

"I never thought about it before."

Wang leaned forward conspiratorially. "Did you guess the riddle of the Sphinx?"

"No"

"No? How could you miss that? It was as plain as the nose on your face."

"That's what Chiun said."

"Look, I'll give you a hint." And laying a finger beside his nose like old Saint Nick, the Great Wang pushed his broad nose aside, flattening it. He made his ears stick out, as if pushed forward by a pharaonic headdress.

"You! That was you?"

"The very same," said the Great Wang, letting his nose and ears bounce back. "When a later pharaoh begged me to come help him out, I went back and collected. Made those untrustworthy welchers recarve the entire face to match mine. They were hopping mad when I spurned their gold, but a promise made to the House of Sinanju must be kept. If we let pharaohs go back on their word to us, soon every ragtag emir, caliph and pasha would take advantage."

"You're the Sphinx."

Wang leaned back on his throne. "The Great Sphinx. You keep forgetting my honorific. I worked very hard to earn it."

"Sorry."

"Don't tell Chiun I told you, either. Let him think you figured it out for yourself."

"Did Chiun figure it out for himself?"

"Sure. He's very sharp."

"So, do I have to fight you, too?"

Wang grinned broadly. "Do you think you'd win?"

"Well, you are the Great Wang."

"And you're the dead night tiger made whole by the Master of Sinanju. The avatar of the prophecy. Shiva incarnate himself."

"I don't believe that Shiva stuff."

"Hey, you're talking to the prophet who first prophesied that."

"Sorry."

"Well, you'll find out. You are allowed to ask me one question, by the way. Got anything interesting?"

"Yeah. When you first discovered the sun source, a ring of fire appeared in the sky and a voice spoke to you. What was it?"

The Great Wang shrugged good-naturedly.

"I've been trying to figure that one out these last two or three thousand years. The fire blinded me and the voice filled my brain. I think it was Sanshin."

"The Mountain Spirit. Don't tell me Chiun never told you about the Mountain Spirit?"

"Maybe he did. I don't pay much attention to the mystic stuff."

"Sanshin is the Mountain Spirit. A good spirit. If it wasn't Sanshin, then it could have been Hanunim, the Celestial Emperor, or maybe the man in the moon. I know it wasn't Yong-Wang, the Dragon King. He rules over water, and I wasn't anywhere near water. Maybe it's better not to know. The fire came, I understood my brain and my body better than any Master before me and the House was saved."

"I always wondered about that."

"If you ever find out," the Great Wang said, "look me up when you get to the Void and tell me."

"Mind telling me how long the Rite of Attainment goes on?"

"Sorry. You used up your one question. Next time."

"There's a next time?"

"No. Figure of speech. Listen, before I go, I have a question for you. How come you didn't ask me about your father?"

Remo started. "How would you know about my father?"

Wang wagged a remonstrating finger. "Uh-uh. That was a question. Ask Nonja. Maybe he'll tell you." And standing up, the Great Wang threw up his arms, making the folds of his red robe lift like wings. When they covered his face completely, the red silk dropped, empty, to drape the teak throne.

And in the empty air, the Great Wang laughed happily.

IN THE MORNING, Remo checked his suite. There was no sign of the Master of Sinanju. So he called Harold W. Smith at Folcroft, knowing that it would be afternoon there.

"Smitty, I need a favor."

"I have news about your past."

"Save it. I'm not interested."

"Do you mind telling me why this change of heart?"

"Yes. Now, about that favor."

"State this favor," Smith said coldly.

"An assignment. Fast."

"1 thought you were on strike."

"I'll strike later. I need an assignment yesterday."

"I have nothing for you."

"Make something up. I gotta get away from Chiun."

"Why?"

"He's dragging me to hell and gone and back again. It's called the Rite of Attainment and it's killing me. I gotta get away for a while. He's got me doing these things he calls athloi. "

"Athloi?"

"I don't know what it means, either, but so far I've run against the bulls of Pamplona, moved the Sphinx, fought the Hydra and the Minotaur-"

"Did you say Minotaur?"

"It was only Chiun in a costume."

"Remo," Smith said, "what you are describing reminds me of the Twelve Labors of Hercules."

"Yeah, that's what I said six or seven athloi ago."

"No, I mean literally. To atone for the slaying of his wife Megara and their three sons, done under the influence of madness visited on him by the goddess Hera, Hercules was instructed by the Oracle of Delphi to complete twelve athloi, or labors, after which he would become immortal."

"Wait a minute. Athloi is Roman, not Korean?"

"Actually the word is Greek."

"You get that off your computers?"

"No, from my classics studies. But I am calling up my data base. Here it is. Scholars disagree on the number and order of these labors, but generally they include besting the Nemean Lion, the Lernaean Hydra, the Erymanthian Boar-"

"You mean 'bear.'"

"It says 'boar.'"

"I tangled with a polar bear. Chiun tried to get me to wear the skin."

"Hercules wore the skin of the defeated Nemean Lion. Did you encounter a lion?"

"Not unless you count the Sphinx. He had me move it. What else?"

"There are defeating the Stymphalian Fowl, cleaning the Augean Stables-"

"I think I got them both in one shot on a Greek isle," Remo muttered.

"Besting the Cretan Bull, capturing the Horses of Diomedes, winning the Apples of the Hesperides, finding the Girdle of Hippolyta, saving the Oxen of Geryon, tricking Cerberus. Conquering Cacus the oxrustler, Antaeus the wrestler and the Arcadian Hind round out the list," finished Smith.

"What's a hind?"

"An animal with hooves of brass and antlers of gold."

Remo groaned. "Man, I feel like I've been wrestling dinosaurs and I hardly made a dent in that list. You gotta find me an assignment, Smitty. Anything."

"Remo, I may have something that will interest you."

"What's that?"

"Do you remember Sister Mary Margaret Morrow?"

"Yeah. What about her?"

"She is still alive, Remo."

In the hotel suite, Remo was quiet for a long time. When he spoke again, his voice was seared with shock.

"MacCleary swore she was dead. Said she died when the orphanage burned down."

"MacCleary lied. Sister Mary Margaret is in a nursing home maintained by the Catholic Church."

"She would have to be as old as the hills by now," Remo breathed, looking out at Honolulu basking in the midday sun.

Smith cleared his throat. "I suppose you would like to visit her?"

"Try and stop me," Remo growled.

"She is dying. She can do us no harm if you are discreet."

"Why are you doing this?" Remo asked suspiciously.

"Call it a gesture of good faith. I am at a dead end in the search for your progenitors. Sister Mary Margaret may be able to put your mind at rest."

"If she knew anything, she would have told me long ago."

"Did she ever tell you she caught a glimpse of the man who left you on the orphanage doorstep?"

"Who told you that?"

"MacCleary. Back at the beginning. Since she failed to recognize the man, it didn't matter. It was a dead end."

"Tell me where she is."

"Oklahoma City. Our Lady of Perpetual Care Home for the Infirm. Ask for a Sister Novella. Tell her you are a friend of Conrad MacCleary."

Remo grunted. "A nursing home. No wonder I never heard different. She might as well have been in prison."

"You should waste no time, Remo. I am reliably informed she is at death's door."

"Don't sweat it. I can hardly wait to get back to the U.S.A. Chiun has some godforsaken place called Hesperia on my itinerary."

And Remo hung up.

Sneaking out of the hotel, he hailed a cab and got on the first standby flight to the U.S.A., figuring he could reach Oklahoma City from any spot in the country. But once Chiun caught up with him, all bets were off.

He wasn't followed. This made Remo suspicious. He wondered where the Master of Sinanju had disappeared to. It wasn't like the old reprobate to be so easily fooled.

But as he flew to San Francisco, Remo prowled the aisles several times, searching the faces of the other passengers. None of them were Chiun.

The first-class stewardess wondered if the seat next to Remo was empty.

"You're the flight attendant," Remo said. "You should know."

The stewardess took Remo's surly growl as an invitation. "Do you live in San Francisco?" she asked.

"No."

"Visiting? I could show you the town!"

"It's a stopover. I'm going on to Oklahoma City."

"I have a third cousin twice removed in Oklahoma City! I haven't seen her in years. Tell you what, I'll take the rest of the month off and we'll do Oklahoma City together."

Remo made his face sad. "Actually I'm going to a funeral."

"Wonderful! I love funerals. So does my cousin. Maybe we can find a date for her, too."

"Are you listening to anything I'm saying?" Remo asked. "I'm going to a funeral and I'd like to be alone with my thoughts."

The stewardess rested a soothing hand on Remo's own. "I understand perfectly. I'll just sit here and give you silent emotional support."

"Get lost," said Remo. Setting his seat back all the way and closing his eyes, he let himself sink into blackness.

A STURDY MAN with a bull neck and merciless black eyes rose up from a plane of darkness all but invisible against a deeper blackness.

"I am Nonja," he said, his voice the croaking of a bullfrog.

"You can call me Remo."

"I mastered the sun source at an early age, but all my life I lived in ignorance."

"The Great Wang said you know about my father."

"I had a son. His name was Kojing."

"I think I heard of him."

"I had to come to this Void before my ignorance was banished," Nonja intoned. "Know this, O white-skin."

"Master Kojing lived in the Choson Kingdom era," said Remo. "That much I remember because Persia and Egypt were no longer clients, and there wasn't much work for the House."

"Master Kojing had a secret. Do you know it?"

"If I did, I forgot it long ago."

"You must try to remember. It is very important."

"Sorry. I give up. Tell me about my father."

Nonja frowned deeply, his dour face falling into fleshy gullies. "Kojing will tell you this. For I must go."

"That's it? I don't have to fight you?"

"No, you do not have to fight me," said Nonja.

"Good," said Remo. "Not that I couldn't take you." And without warning, Nonja swept Remo off his feet with a sweeping kick to his ankles.

"Hey! What was that about?" asked Remo from the plane of darkness on which he sprawled.

"It was about never dropping your guard. Your Master should be ashamed of you."

"Hey, I just wrestled the Father of All Squid. I'm bushed."

"Be grateful then I did not strike a death blow, big foot."

"Wait! What about my father?"

Master Nonja crossed one ankle before the other. His legs scissored apart at the knees. Dropping into a lotus position before Remo's sprawled form, he dropped into the black plane of the Void and out of sight.

WHEN REMO WOKE up, the stewardess was still holding his hand lovingly. She smiled dreamily.

"You talked in your sleep."

"Did I make sense?" Remo asked.

"No. You were adorable. I could have listened all night."

"It's day."

"That was an invitation." And the stewardess favored Remo with a blatant wink.

Excusing himself, Remo went to the rest room and locked himself in until he heard the landing gear whining down from their wells and the passengers stir from their seats.

Slipping among the exiting passengers and walking low behind a lady who weighed more than a baby elephant, Remo managed to slip past the sentinel stewardess and off the plane unseen.

Changing planes, he found all flights to Oklahoma City full.

"I'll fly standby," Remo told the redheaded clerk. She gave him an inviting smile. "Every flight is absolutely, positively filled to capacity until tomorrow. At least."

"I'm in a rush."

The clerk leaned forward. Her lips were almost as red as her hair. "I'd be happy to put you up at my place until tomorrow," she purred. "I have a very comfy sofa bed. It sleeps two. Three if you're adventurous." She winked.

"I have to go out today."

"In that case," the clerk snapped, her face reddening, "you can walk for all I care." She slapped a Closed sign on the counter.

"Damn," muttered Remo. "Since when did Oklahoma City become so popular?"

Going to the gate, he tried to bribe his way onto the flight. One passenger expressed interest, but changed his mind when Remo found he had only thirty dollars and two ancient coins on him.

When a male steward happened by, Remo got an idea. Digging into his wallet, he pulled his Remo Black sky marshal's ID card. It was a little waterlogged around the edges, but still readable.

Accosting the flight attendant, Remo showed his ID and said, "The federal government needs your cooperation."

"Sure. What can I do?"

"We have intelligence out of the Middle East there will be an attempt to skyjack the Oklahoma City flight. It's booked solid, and I have to get on board without alerting the terrorists."

"How can I help?"

"I need your uniform."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm going to take your place. It's for the safety of the passengers and crew."

When the man hesitated, Remo told him. "If you're not on the flight, you're not likely to catch a stray round."

The flight attendant squared his shoulders bravely. "If it's for my country, I'll do it."

Five minutes later Remo emerged from the men's room and boarded the flight unchallenged.

It was a smooth flight. He only had to step on the toes of one smitten stewardess to discourage her. And he picked up two hundred dollars in tips and assorted phone numbers and propositions on crumpled napkins from female passengers.

He kept the money. The napkins he threw away.

Chapter 17

Everywhere he went, Sunny Joe Roam saw death. They lay sick in their hogans. They sprawled in the hot sun drinking again, drinking heavily to kill the pain and numb the mind to that fact that they were doomed. They were all doomed, Sunny Joe saw. Even himself, if he stayed. Death hung in the very air. Men shivered unnaturally in the 130-degree heat.

By the time he realized it was too late for them all, Sunny Joe had kicked out the virologist flown in from New York and turned away the Arizona State epidemiologist, saying, "This is Sun On Jo land. Sun On Jo laws apply here, not yours."

"I know that," said the state epidemiologist through his particle-filter mask. "But state law requires the reservation be quarantined. No one in and no one out." And he solemnly handed over a big red sign.

Sunny Joe had nailed it to the corral fence on the spot.

Walking his horse back after posting the sign, Sunny Joe met Tomi on the dusty road.

"We're all gonna die, aren't we, Sunny Joe?"

"You knew that from the time you were a pup, Tomi."

"No, I mean we're all gonna die soon. And together."

"Would you rather die alone?"

"I'd rather not die at all." Tomi spit into the dust. "Think it's the deer mice, like the paleface medicos say?"

"Does it matter?"

"I'd like to know what killed me, yeah."

"The specialist says it's the mice. The rains made 'em multiply. They carry the virus in their bodies and in their droppings and their urine. He says we make a mistake when we abandon the hogans of those who die. The mice get in and make it their home, and when the mourning period is over, we catch it when we clean out the mice. The more who die, the more will die if we stick to our ways, he said."

"White people been trying to get us to mend our ways as long as I can remember, Sunny Joe."

"Well, even if we all turned apple now, it'd be too damn late. There's no cure. Not for this kind of hantavirus."

"That what he called it?"

"Yeah. He said the healthy had only one hope. That was to clear out. Get as clear off the reservation as possible. Desert mice are too plentiful. No way to find and trap them all so they can't spread the Sun On Jo Disease."

"You should go, Sunny Joe."

"Can't. I'm the last Sunny Joe. The tribe depends on me. How could I turn my back on my people now?"

"But you're a big man in the white world. You got money, position, fame. We're just Indians. The world will spin just fine without us."

Sunny Joe spit into the dust, killing a tiny pinacate beetle.

"I'm just as Sun On Jo as you, Tomi. Don't you ever breathe different. I said I come home to save my people or to die with them. Now I'm doing it. One or the other, I'm doing it."

Sunny Joe stared off toward Red Ghost Butte. His rugged face was thoughtful.

"It's the end of the Sun On Jos, ain't it, Sunny Joe?" said Tomi.

Bill Roam nodded. "Hell, we been dying a damn long time. Not enough children been born, and too few of 'em female. When the last Sun On Jo squaw passed through the change of life, that was it. I thought I could bring some fresh blood in and keep us going a generation or two longer, but I was a fool. It was all pipe smoke. Without another Sunny Joe to take my place, there is no future."

"What about the prophesy?"

"Which prophesy is that?"

"The one that says Ko Jong Oh will send one of his spirit warriors to help out the tribe when it is most in need."

"Yeah. Forgot about that."

"Well?"

Sunny Joe blew out a long, sad breath. "I think if old Ko Jong Oh was going to do it, old Ko Jong Oh would have done it by now. Don't you, Tomi?"

"Yeah. Guess it was just happy firewater talk."

"Maybe."

Abruptly Sunny Joe put his booted foot into a stirrup and mounted his big chestnut horse. He forked it toward the west.

"Where you going?" Tomi called after him.

"To Red Ghost Butte."

"Nothing up there but the ancient ones."

"That's where Ko Jong Oh dwells. I'm going to talk to him. Maybe he's plumb forgot about his spirit warrior. Maybe it's not too late. Maybe he'll be along directly."

"Good luck, Sunny Joe."

"Hah, Sanshin! Ride!"

And the horse disappeared in a cloud of desert dust that hung in the hot still air like the red breath of death. As soon as he inhaled it, Tomi began coughing. The trouble was, he just couldn't quite stop.

Chapter 18

Remo kept glancing in the rearview mirror as he piloted the rental car from Will Rogers International Airport. He was not followed. He was sure of it-not that there was any way the Master of Sinanju could have followed him all the way from Honolulu.

But Remo wasn't taking any chances.

Our Lady of Perpetual Care Home for the Infirm was a rambling, nun-black Victorian building ten years in need of paint, with the sign hanging on rusty chains on the lawn. Remo walked up to the dark front door not knowing what to feel. Would Sister Mary remember him? Would she still be alive?

He rang the bell and waited, focusing on his breathing. His stomach tightened in a way it used to when he was a boy and the world was a frightening place.

The door opened and a middle-aged nun peered out.

"I'm looking for Sister Novella."

The nun regarded him owlishly. "And what is your business?"

"My name is Remo. Williams," he added. The taste of the last name he no longer used was strange on his tongue. "I grew up in the orphanage where Sister Mary Margaret taught a long time ago."

"I see. Well, in that case I am Sister Novella. Come in, Mr. Williams."

Remo stepped in, and the smell of the place hit him with a shock. It was a mixture of antiseptics, candle wax and must. It smelled a little like Folcroft's main patient-care wing but not as clean. The mustiness was winning.

He followed Sister Novella to a genteel sitting room with an old-fashioned tin ceiling. Her black habit swayed as she walked, her hands tucked absently into unseen pockets. Seen from behind, her head encased in a starched wimple, she might have been Sister Mary herself.

"How did you find us, Mr. Williams?" Sister Novella asked after they had taken seats.

Remo leaned forward in his chair. "I knew Conrad MacCleary."

"And how is he?"

"Dead."

"Oh, I am sorry to hear that. Of course, I didn't know him personally. Mr. MacCleary arranged for Sister Mary to join us. It was after the fire, you know. She wasn't young, and when the orphanage-oh, what was its name?"

"St. Theresa's."

"Yes. St. Theresa's. Thank you. When St. Theresa's burned, it seemed to take the heart out of the poor dear. She had no more appetite for teaching. So she came here. First she tended to the sick and, as time passed, she duly became one of them. Mr. MacCleary seemed to take a special interest in her and asked to be informed in the event of her passing."

"Sister Mary. Is she ... ?"

"Still with us? Yes. But she was given the last rites one week ago."

"I'd like to see her as soon as possible."

"I must warn you, Mr. Williams, she may not know you."

Remo's face seemed to fragment. His shoulders dropped.

"Oh, it's not that," Sister Novella said quickly. "Her hearing is very poor, and she suffers from low vision. Cataracts, you know. You must not expect too much from her."

"I understand."

"Come this way."

They walked down a corridor and into a floral-papered wing of the rambling old house that suddenly revealed the place for what it really was-a nursing home. Old women were visible through half-open doors, lying in beds or propped up in recliners, staring vacantly at televisions with eyes connected to brains that seemed not to quite comprehend the world around them.

Remo suddenly felt a lump rising in his throat. A wave of overpowering sadness flooded through his body. He took a deep breath, charging the mitochondria of his body with reviving oxygen, drawing upon reserves of strength he knew he'd need to come face-to-face with his past.

They came to a paneled door at the far end of a musty corridor. The predominant smell in the air was candle wax.

"Let me look in on her first," whispered Sister Novella. Remo nodded. The sister opened the door just enough to slip in, and it closed after her with a hesitant click.

Remo waited, flexing his thick wrists. His heart seemed to be beating high and hard in his hot, tight throat.

After only a moment the door reopened. "You may come in now."

Remo stepped into a darkened room. The shades were drawn snug. There was only one item of furniture in the room. An oaken bed worn at each pineapple-style post. It was covered with a fringed bedspread that had once been white but was now very yellow.

On the bed, stretched out like a mummy, lay Sister Mary Margaret. Remo thought he was prepared. But the shock of recognition was a kick in his stomach that made his heart jump and pound.

Remo had never seen Sister Mary's uncovered head. Never even knew the color of her hair. But even without her wimple, her hair like iron strands on the dingy pillow, Remo could trace the sweet lines of the womanly face that could be so tender and stern by turns. It was Sister Mary Margaret. But Remo had carried for years a memory of a woman with strength in her face and wisdom in her pale gray eyes.

That face was as twisted as a tree root now. Her head started on the pillow, struggling to see and hear with organs that had long ago failed.

"I have a visitor for you, Sister Mary," Sister Novella called in a rising voice.

The reply was a frail croak. "Eh?"

"I said, you have a visitor."

Weak eyes strained to see in the dim light. "Yes?"

"His name is-"

Remo interrupted, "Why don't I handle it from here? Could we be alone?"

Sister Novella hesitated. "Oh, I don't think I-"

"She practically raised me. There are things I need to say to her. Privately."

Sister Novella nodded. "I understand. I will be in the sitting room when you are done. Please do not tire her."

"I promise," Remo said.

When the door closed, Remo stood in the semidarkness for a long time. Sister Mary seemed to forget she had been spoken to. A chink of light fell upon one searching eye, and it was a like a fat pearl dipped in egg white, cloudy and thick.

Remo knelt at her bedside and took a waxy-smooth hand in his. It was cool to the touch. Her veins pulsed threadily.

"Sister Mary?"

Her voice was whisper thin. "Yes? Who is it?"

"I don't know if you remember me."

"Your voice..."

Remo took a deep breath. "My name is Remo. Remo Williams."

And Sister Mary Margaret started. A low sigh escaped her lips. "Yes. Yes. I recognize your voice," she said breathily. She tried to make out his features and, failing, let her head fall back. "Oh, I knew you would make it."

"Sister?"

"I could not be so wrong about you," she said, gazing at the peeling ceiling.

"I came to ask you about myself."

"What could I tell you that Saint Peter cannot?" Remo frowned. Was she delirious?

"I was left on the doorstep of St. Theresa's. Do you remember?"

A wan smile quirked her contorted face. "Yes, I found you. You weren't even crying. Left in a basket and you never cried once. I knew you were special then."

"They say you saw the man who left me there."

"Oh, that was so long ago."

"I know. I know. But try to remember. You saw a man. What did he look like?"

"He was very tall and quite lean. Thin, the way you turned out to be. Rugged. Not in a bad way, but in a strong way. When you began to become a man, I thought I saw some of his features in yours."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know his name. No one did. You were left for reasons no one knew, but they must have been very good reasons. Why cause you to fret and seek the face of your father in every man's face you passed in the street?"

"For a long time," Remo said thickly, "I did that anyway."

"We called you the Window Boy. Did you know that? Always waiting to be taken home. So brave and so sad. But it was not to be. You had to live your own life."

"You never found out who the man was?"

"No."

"Damn," Remo muttered under his breath.

"But I did see him again years later."

Remo paled. "Where?"

"I saw in him a movie theater," Sister Mary said breathily. "He had grown older but he was the same man. I was certain of it. He had your deep, serious eyes."

"What city was that?"

"I'm not sure I recall. Was it Oklahoma City? Yes, Oklahoma City."

"Did you speak to him?"

"No. How could I?"

Sister Mary Margaret lay in silence. Her breathing was steady, monotonous, fragile. Under the fringed blanket, her thin, flat chest rose and fell with each breath.

Remo squeezed Sister Mary's cool hand hopefully. "Do you-do you remember anything else? Anything that might help me?"

"Yes. I do."

Eagerly Remo leaned closer to catch every syllable. "Tell me."

"I remember the name of the movie," Sister Mary said in a dreamy voice.

"That's nice," Remo said, patting her hand,

"It was The Sea is an Only Child, It wasn't very good. It was in color. I much prefer films that are not in color. Don't you?"

"Sure, Sister Mary," said Remo, squeezing out the tears of disappointment starting from his eyes.

"I remember thinking as I watched the screen how sad it was the way it all turned out. I remember wondering if the man knew."

"Knew what?"

"Knew that you had died."

Remo felt an electric chill rip through his nervous system. When he spoke, his voice was thick with emotion. "You knew?"

"I was very sad for a long time. For a very long time I could not get what had happened out of my mind. I simply could not believe that I had been so wrong about you."

"You weren't. I was framed."

Her cool hand squeezed his. "I knew that. I always felt it. But now that you're here, I know it for certain. If you had truly gone bad, how could you be here with me?" She struggled for breath. "Here in Heaven." And Remo swallowed hard. A lump rose in his throat.

"I knew you had died in Christ," whispered Sister Mary Margaret.

Remo swallowed again, but the lump wouldn't go away.

"Lately I had not been able to get you out of my mind," she said, her voice disconnected from the body that lay so helpless and fragile. "Isn't that strange?"

"I've been thinking of you lately, too," Remo said thickly. "The things you taught me helped me more than I can tell you."

"That's good, Remo. That's fine." Her free hand, tangled with rosary beads, reached out for his. "Now run along and play. Sister Mary is feeling very tired today. We'll talk more tomorrow."

"Goodbye, Sister Mary. I'll never forget you."

"Goodbye, Remo."

Remo stood up. He gazed down at the woman who had all but raised him, so shrunken in the dim light. Her breath was slow and measured. Her heartbeat tentative. She had not long.

After a long while Remo turned to the door. A delicate rattle followed him. At first he barely noticed it. It trailed off into a sigh that made Remo's blood run absolutely cold when it penetrated his grief.

In the bed behind him, Sister Mary Margaret, at last at peace, surrendered herself to death.

"SOMETIMES IT HAPPENS this way," Sister Novella was saying. "She had clung and clung to life for so long. Seeing you must have been the scissors that cut the silver cord."

Remo said nothing. He felt cold inside. His eyes were hot yet dry. They sat in the sitting room of the nursing home, looking at the fading rug.

"You mustn't reproach yourself, Mr. Williams. In a way your coming was a mercy. What had she to live for?"

Remo said nothing. Sister Novella took another sip of tea.

"Did you two have a nice talk?" she asked after a moment.

"I'll never forget her," Remo whispered.

"Will you be staying for the funeral?"

"I can't. I don't think I could."

"You're welcome to come if you change your mind."

Woodenly Remo stood up. "Thanks. I have to go."

Sister Novella followed him to the door. "It was nice of you to stop by," she said as if they were discussing a passing rainstorm, not a human life blown out like a guttering candle.

At the door Sister Novella said, "She never got over the loss of St. Theresa's, you know."

"Yeah," Remo croaked.

"It was perfectly understandable, I suppose. The orphanage was her life's work. She was quite devoted to it. And after all, it was where she was raised."

Remo turned. "What?"

"Sister Mary was an orphan, too. You didn't know?"

"No," Remo said dully.

"Who better to understand the wants and fears of her charges than someone who had been through such a loss herself?"

"I guess you're right. Thanks for telling me that."

"You're quite welcome, Mr. Williams. Go with Christ."

Remo walked out into the Oklahoma sun with eyes that saw and ears that barely heard. He climbed into his rented car and drove around in circles well into the evening.

When he got tired, he pulled into a motel near an elevated highway in a ramshackle part of the city called Bricktown and lay in bed, replaying the scene in the nursing home over and over in his mind while freight whistles blew long and lonesome in the night.

Already it seemed so unreal he wondered if it had been a dream.

One thought kept coming back to haunt him: who was the rugged man who had left him at the orphanage so many years ago?

Chapter 19

There had been a hard rain, and the pattering drops had made little craters in the Sonoran Desert. The pipe-organ cacti were looking hardy. Cholla blossoms made amber-and-ruby splotches against the sand, which wasn't so much red as gold in the morning light.

Crying River lay quiet under the hot sun. Sunny Joe Roam sent his horse across its golden sand crust, which made brittle sounds like breaking potato chips under each hoof fall.

At the foot of Red Ghost Butte, he dismounted and unsaddled his horse, saying, "Don't know how long I'll be, Sanshin. You take your ease."

The big horse stood immobile.

Roam spanked its flank. "Go on now, you stubborn hay burner."

The horse remained where he was.

"Have it your own way, then." Roam gave him a pat on the muzzle and started up the butte.

The trail was all but invisible if one didn't know the way. Sunny Joe skirted a fuzzy clump of teddy bear cholla and picked his way up. It was no place to ride a horse. Only bighorn rams and fool Indians climbed Red Ghost Butte, Sunny Joe thought ruefully.

The trail snaked, vanishing and resuming.

"Getting too old for this," he said, taking a rest on a red sandstone outcropping.

Sunny Joe Roam reached the cave thirty minutes later, thinking that when he was young and full of vinegar, he used to run up the butte and not pant for air. He panted now. Maybe it was the damned dust.

The cave mouth was sheltered by a shield of woven reed covered with plucked brittle-bush and ocotillo. Sunny Joe reached into the shield and pulled it loose. Setting it to one side, he let the old musty damp smell wash over him. It was not a bad smell. It suggested caves and death and ancient mystery.

He entered. All light faded fifteen feet in. He stepped carefully into the zone of darkness, then began counting his steps, deviating neither left nor right. He had no wish to tread on the feet of his honored ancestors.

When he counted thirty-three paces-it had been forty-seven back when he was a short-legged boy-Sunny Joe stopped and dropped to the dirt floor. He stared into the darkness. The darkness seemed to stare back. But he knew there were no eyes in the darkness, only hollows.

"O Ko Jong Oh, I am come to remind you of your promise to the Sun On Jo people, whom you founded in the days before the white man and the Hopi and the Navajo. Hear me, ancestor spirit. I seek guidance." From the darkness came only silence.

"I seek your wisdom in the hour of our greatest need, O Ko Jong Oh."

In the darkness something stirred.

Sunny Joe Roam felt his heart leap with fear and joy at once.

"Guide me, Ko Jong Oh, for blinded by bitterness and white ways, I have strayed from the path of Sun On Jo and cannot find the path back to my own heart." The rustle persisted.

Something warm brushed Sunny Joe's left hand where it rested on the cave floor. Like the passing of a spirit, it slipped furtively past.

He turned. And into the zone of light the thin tail of a deer mouse skittered. A chill washed over Sunny Joe's tall, lanky form.

Turning back to the unresponsive blackness, he said quietly, "And if it is your wish that I die in the here and now, I will die without complaint, among my honored ancestors, whom I have sorely let down."

Chapter 20

All night freight trains rattled through Bricktown, their whistles blowing mournfully. But Remo Williams slept through it all.

He was back in the Void and he was not alone. Remo sensed a presence. But there was nothing but blackness all around him.

In his dream Remo called out, "Anyone here?"

No one answered. But the feeling was strong. Closing his eyes, Remo listened for the gulp and wheeze of heart and lungs, but there were no such sounds. Just a feeling of imminence and menace.

Opening his eyes, Remo saw thin orbs regarding him. They winked out like a black cat closing his eyes in a deep cave.

Remo blinked. Had the eyes been real? They were hazel, the eye color of Sinanju Masters going back who knew how long. Something about the eyes made Remo tense up.

Remo padded toward the patch of blackness where the disembodied eyes had floated. When he reached the spot where he judged they had been, he stopped. The darkness before him seemed palpable.

"Hello?" he said.

In response something struck him in the solar plexus.

Air escaped his lungs in a harsh, explosive gust, and Remo staggered back. A Sinanju blow. Nothing less could do that to him.

Out of the Void came a harsh laugh Remo knew well, because he could never forget it.

Nuihc!

Turning in place slowly, Remo wove a finger web around his personal defensive zone. He stepped left two paces, then right three. Backing up, still turning, he protected himself while scanning the dark for his opponent.

But Nuihc, the renegade Master of Sinanju who had been Chiun's pupil before Remo, craftily kept his distance.

"Come on, you rat bastard," Remo growled. "Come out and fight like a man."

A cold voice said, "You must defeat me, mongrel Master, if you are to return to the world of flesh."

"I never got a good crack at you when you were alive, so we're overdue," Remo said, stepping this way and that, wishing he had something visible to zero in on. Obviously Nuihc was wearing black, his face somehow blackened down to the eyelids. Only when he opened them again would Remo have him dead to rights.

As long as he kept his eyes shut, Nuihc was as blind as Remo. Yet he had struck a perfect blow with his eyes closed. How?

Remo listened. His feet made no sound in the endless black plane of the Void. Nuihc hadn't detected his footfalls. Soft as they were normally, here they were completely soundless.

I get it, Remo thought suddenly. He zeroed in on my voice.

Turning in place, Remo slowly eased himself into a crouching position. And waited.

Time passed. How much there was no way of knowing, no method of measuring. Remo made himself as still as a stone. It might not help here in the Void, but the old Sinanju tricks rarely failed.

All the while time dragged by, Remo watched for the cold slit eyes of Nuihc to open a crack.

The mocking voice broke the silence. "What is wrong, whelp of the West?"

Remo kept still and silent.

Nuihc said after a long time, "Can you not find me?"

Remo kept his silence.

"Have you given up, white?"

Remo said nothing. His head turned this way and that, his body coiled like a tense spring. The voice seemed to be changing position, as Nuihc would have to if he wished to foil Remo's ears.

"I will accept your surrender, if you will not fight me."

The Void seemed to reverberate in the silence that followed.

Just as Remo was about to give up, not three arm lengths to Remo's left two cold almond eyes winked open.

They snapped shut almost as soon as they fell on Remo. But it was enough. Lunging forward on the plane of blackness, Remo drove two fists ahead of him, one aimed for the head and the other for the belly. With his eyes shut, Nuihc was a sitting duck.

Unless he had stepped aside in the instant after he closed his eyes.

Doing so was an old Sinanju night-fighting trick. Nuihc would know that Remo knew it. He might hold his ground. Or he might think three steps ahead as opposed to Remo's two, and step aside, poised to strike when Remo walked into his trap.

There was no way to know.

Until his fists struck solidness, Remo didn't know what to expect.

"Ooof!"

Nuihc was driven back a unit of measure unknown on earth. Remo leaped after him and, spotting the stunned eyes lying on the black plane like dropped marbles, he brought the heel of his left foot square on the spot where Nuihc's larynx should be.

The croak of agony matched the sudden widening of Nuihc's stunned hazel eyes.

"Give?" Remo asked, setting his foot on Nuihc's unprotected chest.

"Urkkk."

"I asked you a question, dog meat," Remo snapped.

"I... am ... yours...." Nuihc gurgled painfully.

"Too bad," Remo growled. "I don't want you." And he began exerting pressure on the chest he could feel but not see. Cartilage crackled as ribs groaned. The hazel eyes went wide till the whites showed all around.

To his surprise, Nuihc sank into the blackness. His eyes, comically round in a mixture of agony and anger, were like startled gems slipping into a pool of viscous tar.

Left standing in the darkness, Remo looked around. He was alone in the emptiness of the Void. Nothing happened for a long time.

Then a sound like a freight train moaning assaulted the great Void.

REMO SNAPPED UPRIGHT with the screeching of steel wheels ripping through his skull. He flung himself out of bed, getting into his clothes on the way out the door.

Frightened faces were popping out of doors up and down the motel facade. And the shriek of steel wheels became an agony of howling metal and screaming voices. The voices were high, shrill, inarticulate. It seemed impossible they were human.

"Train wreck!" a man yelled.

Remo flashed around to the rear of the motel. Beyond was a rail line. And in the dark, noises were piling up. He got there just as the last car had screeched past in a shower of silvery sparks like molten metal. They splashed onto rails that twisted and warped on their ties, rusty spikes straining. They might have been trying to escape what was to come.

Then the roar became a long rumble, and the tracks let go. They sprang like rubber bands, snapping at their welds and sending rusty spikes and railroad ties flying.

Remo ducked a spike flying like shrapnel. It thudded into a brick wall and smoked like a meteorite. Running along the grading, Remo came upon the back end of the train. His first thought was for the passengers. But as he worked his way past the first teetering cars, he came to a jackknifed string of cattle cars. After a ghostly silence, a tortured whinnying came from the cars. And through the galvanized steel slats of the sides, he could see frightened black eyes. The smell of fresh dung filled the night air.

Remo climbed a car, found the lock and snapped it with the side of his hand. He rolled the door back, and inside, a muscular knot of horses writhed and kicked at one another. They began surging and leaping out in a torrent of clattering hoofs.

Remo got clear, letting them run where fear took them.

The next car was another cattle car. It lay on its side. The one ahead was piled up against a fir tree in some kind of sunken arboretum. There was blood coming out of one end. The pungent barnyard odor of dung mingled with it.

Remo moved on.

The middle cars were the worst. They had been literally rent asunder by the sudden compression of the crash.

All were cattle cars, Remo saw to his relief. There were no passengers. Human passengers, that is. He kept going. Sad, frightened eyes peered out at him from bent slats, neighing in their distress.

REMO FOUND THE ENGINE piled into a windbreak of red oaks.

It had come to a stop with its front end against two oaks. The headlight shone between them, cutting a funnel of light in the murk that was already busy with moths.

"Hey!" Remo called. "Anybody in there?"

There was no answer from the silent engine, so Remo found the engineer's ladder and climbed it.

He found the engineer at his controls with his neck like a raw tree stump. There was no sign of his head. It wasn't visible in the cabin. In fact, while the windshield had spiderwebbed, no loose glass littered the cabin.

How the engineer had lost his head was a mystery. The mystery was compounded as Remo walked the twisted tracks back and spotted the engineer's head squatting in the bough of a tree like some otherworldy beehive.

Remo left it where it hung. Someone would discover it soon enough. The horses were struggling from their strewn cars, and since there were no people to save, Remo decided he would do what he could to help the poor dumb brutes reach safety.

By that time others had come onto the scene.

A man in a blue police uniform was the first Remo met.

"My lord, what a mess. Look at all these poor critters." He drew his pistol. "Guess I'll have to shoot those that won't make it. Hate to do it, though."

"Why don't you give me a chance to pull the uninjured ones loose?" Remo asked.

"You got a crane in your back pocket?"

"Tell you what. Shoot the dying. Anything I haven't got loose is yours."

"Suit yourself," said the cop, and he walked back to where the beastly moans were most pitiful.

Remo moved to the nearest cattle car. It leaned drunkenly against a rows of scarred pine trees. He got to the door and wrenched it open.

The horses-there were mustangs mixed with black-and-white Appaloosas-were jammed up against the far side. Eyes wide, frightened and not at all friendly. Some kicked and screamed.

With one exception, their legs were whole. They could walk. All they needed was a ramp.

Looking around to make sure no one saw him, Remo attacked the sliding door. He broke the rails on which it slid and let it drop. It took only a little jockeying to make it a ramp.

Remo went among the horses and began spanking flanks. The horses responded. After they rattled off the ramp, they kept going, which suited Remo perfectly fine. He had a lot of horses to round up.

The one with raw bone sticking down from his severed leg managed to clump out, too. Its eyes were glassy. At the next car palominos were trying to squeeze out through a ragged hole at one end, oblivious to the hoofbreaking drop to the ground.

Remo got in front of a struggling horse. Confusion was mirrored in its sad eyes. It was stuck, one leg tangled in ripped galvanized slatwork. Other horses were pushing against it from behind and whinnying in fear.

Remo grabbed the side ladder and took hold of the twisted slats. He began yanking out pieces of metal and throwing them away. Once the hole was big enough, the first palomino jumped. He broke his front legs landing and fell over with a defeated moan. But the others landed in soft soil gouged by the derailment and they made it okay.

It took two hours, but Remo managed to save fully sixty horses from police guns.

The breaking of dawn found him watching mounted riders herding the horses into a circle where they would be loaded onto transport trucks once they had completely calmed down. Back at the wreck, they were field dressing the dead carcasses. The air reeked of bowels and blood.

"Nice work," the cop told him. "Don't know how you done it, but it was a right nice job of running horses."

"Thanks."

"Man who owns that herd's gonna want to reward you, I'd wager."

"Tell him it's on the house."

"That's your right, I reckon. Anyway, you done us a good turn."

"How's that?" Remo asked.

The cop grinned. "Why, we'd have plumb exhausted our bullet budget for the month if it weren't for you." Remo laughed. It stopped suddenly when he saw the Master of Sinanju standing off where the trees were thickest. "Excuse me," said Remo, starting off.

The visage of the Master of Sinanju was stern as Remo approached, thinking he might as well get this over with.

But when he stepped into the trees, Chiun's wrinkled face broke out into a beaming grin. "Very good, Remo. I am pleased to see you take the initiative."

"What are you talking about? And how the hell did you find me?"

"I found you here the same way you found yourself here. Emperor Smith."

"Oh."

"Did you find what you sought?"

"Sister Mary Margaret died last night, Little Father. I was there."

Chiun nodded gravely. "It was good that she did not die alone and forgotten but with one who truly cared for her."

Remo said nothing.

"Did she reveal to you any of the truths you sought?"

"No. But she did say she saw the guy who left me on the orphanage doorstep, but she didn't know him."

"Then you have not discovered your roots?"

"No. Sister Mary did tell me something strange, though."

Chiun cocked his head to one side curiously. "And what is that, Remo?"

"She saw him again. In a movie theatre."

"The strange thing is that it was here in Oklahoma City."

"That is strange?"

"Why would the guy who left me at a Newark orphanage where Sister Mary worked show up years later here, where she'd come to live?"

"I do not know."

Remo looked around. "I think I'll stick around here for a while."

"And if you do not know who this man is or what face he wears, how do you expect to recognize him, my son?"

"I don't know. But I will."

"I do not think so."

"How would you know?"

Chiun shrugged carelessly. "You would be surprised at the things I know and do not know."

"Right. Well, you can forget about the Rite of Attainment and going to Hesperia. Because I'm staying here till I figure this out."

"But you have already gone to Hesperia."

"What do you mean by that?" Remo asked suspiciously.

"To the Greeks, Hesperia was the western lands." Chiun lifted his arms to encompass his surroundings. "This is as far west as one can go from Greece and not go east. Thus, you have come on your own to Hesperia."

"Yeah, well, I'm doing no more labors."

"Labors?"

"Don't play coy with me. Smith told me what athloi means. The jig's up."

"But you have already accomplished your next labor."

Chiun gestured toward the derailed train and to the horses beyond. "You have succored the steeds of Diomedes successfully."

Remo planted his hands on his hips angrily. "You can't tell me you were going to drag me to Oklahoma City to round up horses?"

"Not here. I was considering Argentina. But this will do. Congratulations, Remo. You are the first Master of Sinanju to perform a labor without his Master's guidance."

"So?"

Chiun frowned. "So it is a good omen."

"Yeah, well, it's also the end of the Rite of Attainment. I want to sniff around here for a while."

"If that is your wish, I will not stop you."

"Seems I've heard that before."

"But if you would know a hidden thing, I would advise you to consult the Oracle of Delphi."

"Delphi? That's back in Greece."

"All Masters consult the oracle in the course of the Rite of Attainment."

"Not me. I've seen enough of Greece. I'm staying here."

Chiun bowed formally and, to Remo's surprise, said, "I will not stop you."

"I don't trust you when you're so agreeable."

"Would you rather I be disagreeable?"

"I dunno. By the way, I met Nuihc in the Void."

Chiun asked suddenly, "And defeated him?"

"Yeah."

"Very good."

"By the way, I figured out the riddle of the Sphinx. It was the Great Wang."

The Master of Sinanju eyes his pupil doubtfully. "Did you meet Wang, as well?" he asked thinly.

"What does that matter?" Remo said evasively.

"That tattletale! What else did he tell you?"

"He said these dreams are part of the rite. And that Nonja had information about my father. But when I met him, he told me to ask Kojing. Haven't met him yet."

"I see. . . ."

And from one voluminous sleeve, Chiun extracted an object of wood and steely metal.

"What's that?" Remo asked. "It is a gong."

"Doesn't look like a gong. Gongs are round."

"It is very special gong."

Remo looked closely. The object was a length of varnished teak about as long a human hand. Suspended over it by stiff wire loops was a round bar of steel. From one end of the teak base, Chiun drew a wooden mallet whose handle fit into a long groove under the floating bar.

As Remo watched, Chiun tapped the bar of steel sharply. It rang. Perfect C. The vibration made Remo's sensitive ears ache. The note hung in the air for a full minute. Just as it was about to die, Chiun struck the bar again. The perfect C filled the air.

"What the heck are you doing?" Remo demanded.

"Calling for your long-lost father."

"With a gong?"

"This esteemed gong has been in my family since the days of Master Kojing. Have I ever told you of Kojing, Remo?"

"The name rings a bell. But they all do. Every third Master might have been named after a gong. If it wasn't Wang, it was Ung or Hung or Ting and Tang or Kang. No wonder I can't ever keep them straight."

Chiun started off. He struck the gong again. Its extended shimmering note filled the air.

"Where are you going?" asked Remo.

"I told you. I am in search of your father."

"What makes you think he's going to respond to that thing?"

Chiun struck the gong again. "Who can fail to hear it?"

They walked the early-morning streets, Chiun leading, striking the gong whenever the shimmering note was about to die out. And Remo following, wearing a puzzled expression.

Everywhere they went, faces came to windows and doors opened.

They were stared at, honked at and questioned by the police several times, but nothing more interesting befell them.

By noon the Master of Sinanju returned the wood mallet to its groove and, with a firm thumb, silenced the gong-which by now had begun to drive Remo crazy.

"Your father does not answer. Therefore, he does not dwell here," he announced loftily.

"Says you."

"You have the word of the Reigning Master of Sinanju that he does not."

"And how would you know?"

"You must consult the Oracle of Delphi."

"Not a chance. I'm staying."

"You may call Smith if you prefer."

"Why would I do that?"

"Very well. Be stubborn."

Remo folded his arms. "From now on, 'stubborn' is my middle name."

"You look tired, my son."

"Thanks to you."

"Perhaps you would like to nap."

"Not till I've turned this town upside down."

"If this is your wish," said Chiun. "But I am tired. I may nap."

And the Master of Sinanju yawned sleepily.

Remo regarded him dubiously. In twenty years he had never known the Master of Sinanju to need a nap. Chiun yawned again.

Remo caught himself starting to yawn, too. He shut his mouth with a click of stubborn teeth.

Eyes narrowing, Chiun yawned so wide his head almost disappeared behind his mouth.

This time Remo couldn't help himself. He yawned, too. And yawned again.

Chiun said, "You see, you are sleepy, too."

"You're up to something, you old fake."

"Yes, I am up to assuring that my House and my line continue past this century. And you are not cooperating."

"Well, you have a hell of a way of doing it. In all the years I've worked with you, I've never been so kicked around as lately. And that includes that time you made me eat rancid kimchi for three solid months."

"It was not rancid. It was the best kimchi you ever tasted."

"It tasted like pickled socks. Just thinking about it, I can still taste the stuff."

"It was necessary. The beef poisons had to be purged from your fat body."

"I almost died."

"If you could not survive kimchi, you cannot survive being a Master in training."

"And what about the time you threw me out of an airplane after sabotaging my parachute?"

"If you cannot survive a minor fall, how could you survive doing the difficult work of the House?"

"And now this Rite of Attainment crap."

"If you cannot survive the rite, you can never be Reigning Master."

"I don't want to be Reigning Master. I never did. I never wanted any of this. I just wanted to lead a normal freaking life. Can't you freaking understand that? I wish the hell I had never met you."

Chiun opened his tiny mouth in shock. He seemed about to speak several times. Each time he checked himself.

"I'm sorry, but that's the way it is," Remo said in a subdued tone. "Now you know."

"I will make you a bargain, Remo Williams," Chiun said in a flinty tone. "Complete the rite, and I will help you find your lost father."

"What about the cave I saw in my vision?"

"It is tradition that when a Master achieves the rite, the Master who trained him retires and goes into seclusion. I will help you as long as the search involves no caves."

Remo hesitated.

"I am required by tradition to guide my pupil through the rite," Chiun added. "If it is your choice not to assume the title of Reigning Master, I cannot compel you to do otherwise."

"You couldn't anyway."

"It has never before happened that a pupil declined so sublime an honor, but if you insist upon being an ungrateful white, I will accept the shame and emptiness that follows."

"What's the catch?"

"There is none," Chiun said stiffly. "If at the end of the rite you prefer to go your own way and abandon the Master who lifted you up from whiteness and go off with the ingrate who abandoned you at birth, I will accept your selfish and inconsiderate decision."

"Done," said Remo.

"Then it is done," Chiun said, thin voiced.

"All right," Remo said grudgingly. "What's next?"

"You must capture the Girdle of the Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons."

"They don't have amazons anymore."

"We will consult the Oracle at Delphi for the location of the last surviving amazon, then."

"Greece is out. I'm not going back to Greece."

"Then we will consult Emperor Smith and his wise oracles."

HAROLD W SMITH was surfing the Internet when the call came in on the blue contact telephone.

"Smitty, Remo. Need your help."

"What is it?"

"Find us an amazon."

"What do you mean, an amazon?"

"Chiun caught up with me. Thanks to you. Says I gotta capture the girdle of the amazon queen. He says he'll accept any substitute your computers come up with."

Smith frowned with his entire body. "One moment, please."

Keying in the word amazon, Smith tapped the Search key on his keyboard. The search executed in a twinkling, and Smith read the words: Prime Time's Reigning Amazon: The Inside Story.

"I do have a reasonable facsimile," he reported.

"Good."

"But I imagine you'd prefer a second choice," Smith continued.

"No time. I have things to do and I'm in a hurry to get my labors behind me."

"Very well."

"One second, Smitty. Chiun wants to know where you got this name."

"I am currently logged on to Delphi." Remo's voice got strange. "Delphi?"

"Yes. It is an information service."

Remo grunted and said, "I'm handing the phone over to Chiun. He doesn't want me to know the amazon's name until it's time to grab her girdle."

And when the Master of Sinanju came on the line, Harold Smith whispered the name. Chiun said, "It is an excellent choice. Your oracles are exceedingly farseeing."

"It was entirely random."

"It is wonderfully random," proclaimed the Master of Sinanju, hanging up.

And with that, Harold Smith returned to trolling the net. There was no point in trying to intercede. Remo and Chiun would work things out between them. They always had. Why should this time be any different?

Chapter 21

Roxanne Roeg-Elephante was suffering. Oh, how she suffered. All her life, she had suffered.

She suffered through a childhood filled with unspeakable abuse, which, once her ratings began to sag, she told America about on talk shows ranging from "Copra Inisfree" to "Vicki Loch."

She suffered the affliction of multiple personalities, which America first heard about on "Nancy Jessica Rapunzel."

She endured a double life as a stand-up comedienne and back seat hooker, which a shocked world first learned about on "Rotunda."

She accused her own sister of attempting to lure her into a satanic cult on "Bil Tuckahoe."

Every time she went on TV to reveal another slice of her sordid and painful past, ratings on her hit TV sitcom "Roxanne" shot up. And America reembraced her.

What no one seemed to notice was that she only went on talk shows to reveal these intimate details during May and November. Both sweeps months.

But now Roxanne Roeg-Elephante was really, truly, pitifully suffering.

"Ooww!" she moaned, bellowing like a wounded cow as the six-inch needle penetrated her broad, naked backside. "That friggin' hurts."

"You asked for it, Roxanne," a cool professional voice said.

"I didn't ask for it to friggin' hurt, you quack!"

"I'm your doctor. I would appreciate a little respect for my profession."

"And I would appreciate a little respect for my problems."

"Just a minute. I need to recharge this needle."

"Make sure you dip it in alcohol. I don't wanna catch AIDS from one of my alters. I got enough problems trying to get myself knocked up."

As the doctor returned to his black bag, Roxanne grabbed a gold-inlaid hand mirror and lifted it to her face. She examined herself critically. The bags under her eyes were still gone. She didn't know whether to be pleased or annoyed. If the bags never came back, she got her money's worth. On the other hand, if just the tiniest puff showed, she could turn about and sue the bastard plastic surgeon who performed the operation. He had cost her a bundle, and although he'd done a good job, her latest husband had still run off with another woman.

"It's so unfair," she whined.

"What is?" the doctor asked.

"Life. Life is unfair."

"I know what you mean," the doctor said absently as he recharged the needle with perganonal, a powerful female hormone that invariably sent Roxanne's moods swinging like a five-hundred-pound gorilla on a chandelier.

"I so, so want to get preggers. Why can't I get preggers?"

"Because you had your tubes tied ten years ago," the doctor said flatly.

"Is that any frigging reason?"

"Normally, yes."

"Well, I got 'em untied, didn't I?"

"I counseled you the original operation might not be reversible."

"Well, I paid enough to have it done. Now look at me. I got track marks all over my butt just because in a weak moment I let some butcher root around in my guts."

"I'm ready with the second shot."

"Just work around the tattoo."

"Which one?"

"Any one. I don't want track marks on my tattoos. Vanity Fair's gonna photograph them for next month's cover."

"Good Lord," the doctor said.

"What's 'a matter?" asked Roxanne, giving her backside a meaty smack. "Don't you think I got a nice butt?"

"It's ... colorful," the doctor admitted, his eyes averting to her creased back. It was no more appetizing. All those pimples and inflamed sebaceous cysts.

Roxanne's mood suddenly darkened. "Says you. Now hurry and shoot me up. I can take it. I used to do heroin."

The needle went in slowly; the plunger discharged the syringe's contents while, lying on her stomach, Roxanne Roeg-Elephante gritted her capped teeth and said, "Life is so unfair. I just want to have children. I need to know true motherhood."

"How are your children from your first marriage, by the way?" the doctor asked.

"Grown-up and calling up for money all the time. The ones who still talk to me, that is. Forget them. They don't count on account I had them with a jerk and before I was famous. I want a baby. One that doesn't talk back."

Closing up his bag, the doctor said, "I'll leave my bill with your personal assistant."

"Go ahead. But if those hormones don't work, I'm suing your ass for mispractice."

"You have a nice day, too, Roxanne," the doctor said tightly, exiting the dressing room on the lot of Omniversal Studios in North Hollywood, California.

And lying on her stomach, Roxanne Roeg-Elephante laid her apple red cheek against the pillow, muttering, "Life is so fucking unfair. I'm practically a billionaire and I can't hardly get what I want."

"What do you want, Roxanne?" asked a strange voice coming from her mouth.

Picking up the mirror, Roxanne began talking to it. "I dunno. But I know I ain't got it yet. What do you want, alter?"

"Sex. Lots of it."

"Me, too. But Studley isn't here."

"Too bad," said the disembodied voice.

"I wonder if a person with multiple personalities can have sex with herself?" Roxanne wondered suddenly.

"I'm not having sex with you!"

"Why not, alter?"

"I'm no dyke."

"Speak for yourself. There ain't nothing I ain't tried-or will try-if I think it will make me happy or someone I hate miserable."

"Just keep your hands to yourself."

"Don't worry. I wouldn't touch you with rubber gloves and a toilet plunger. You hardly ever bathe, for Christ's sake."

REMO HESITATED when he heard the two voices on the other side of the trailer door marked with a big gold star and the name Roxanne.

He hadn't counted on Roxanne having company. The back lot of Omniversal Studios was busy with scurrying golf carts and people in jeans and carrying walkietalkies all hurrying to someplace they weren't. No one seemed to be standing still.

It had been surprisingly easy to gain access to the Omniversal lot. There was a guard at the gate entrance, but this was southern California. No one entered anywhere or anything on foot. They always drove.

Remo had simply walked onto the lot. Because he wasn't encased in a car, no one noticed him. It had been that simple.

Finding Roxanne was simple, too. The big, warehouselike soundstages were plastered with billboards proclaiming the TV shows being filmed within. Roxanne's billboard was five times larger than anyone else's. That was because it showed her entire body, which she was enormously proud of, having lost over one hundred pounds on a diet product she did commercials for. When a disgruntled ex-staffer had leaked the fact that Roxanne never used the product, the manufacturer had demanded his money back. When Roxanne had gone on "Entertainment Tonight" to complain that the product tasted like talcum powder mixed in sour milk, the sponsor hurriedly offered her six figures to just shut up and never mention the NutraSludge again.

Remo found Roxanne's trailer just as easily. It wasn't quite as large as the soundstage beside it. But it was certainly more ostentatious. It reminded him of a Hindu howdah without the elephant.

As a grip walked by, tapping his earphones as he slapped the nickel-cadmium-battery belt pack and complaining, "My radio just took a dump," Remo tried to look inconspicuous. That wasn't difficult, either. A famous director strolled by in torn jeans, making Remo look by contrast like the height of fashion.

It was starting to look like a piece of cake. Remo just hoped that Roxanne wore a girdle. Taking another look at the big billboard, he couldn't imagine how she could live without one. Even minus a hundred pounds, she was a whale.

The voices inside continued their argument.

"The reason I don't bathe is you don't bathe," a whiny female voice said.

"Well, I shower," retorted the twangy, corduroy voice that had grated on all of America's ears.

"You stick your fat head under the tap to get your greasy hair wet, stand up and call the water running down your back a shower. That's not a shower."

"Well, it's better than not bathing."

Finally Remo decided to just go for it. He knocked. "Come in," the twangy Roxanne voice called out.

"But I'm naked," the other voice squeaked.

"So am I and I don't give a fiery fart. Come on, drag your ass in here. I ain't got all day."

"Well, which is it?" Remo asked.

"Get in here!"

The other voice said nothing, so Remo figured it was reasonably safe to enter.

When he pushed in the door, he changed his mind. Roxanne Roeg-Elephante lay on a triple-wide bed, stark naked and regarding him with vaguely belligerent eyes. "Who the frig are you?"

Remo cocked a thumb over his shoulder. "You're wanted on the set," he told her.

"So damn what?"

"Well, they want to do the next scene."

"Tell them to sit on a cactus and rotate. I'll come when I'm good and ready." And she winked broadly at Remo. "Like always."

Not winking back, Remo asked, "Can I tell them how long you'll be?"

Roxanne looked him up and down critically. "Uh, I dunno. How long are you good for?"

"Good for what?"

"You know. In the sack."

"My contract has an unbreakable no-pachyderms clause," Remo said quickly.

Roxanne rolled onto her side, exposing a generous breast like a boiled ham with a pimple. She grinned like a fat shark. "I've just been shot full of raging hormones."

"Good for you."

She batted her eyes. "You know I'm rich."

"You're worth less than a billion. I charge two."

"I like rough sex."

"Why didn't you say so?" said Remo, closing the door behind him.

Roxanne scooted around to a sitting position. "Hah! My last husband was just like you. Not as skinny, though." She took her chewing gum out of her petulant mouth, tucking it behind her left ear. "What do you like? Body slamming? Restraints? What?"

"I'd like to squeeze your neck with both hands"

"Oh, goody. Let's do it."

And Remo, using one hand he promised himself he'd wash later, reached under the gumless ear, intending to squeeze the delicate nerve there that triggered instant unconsciousness.

He squeezed. Roxanne squeezed her eyes shut. Remo squeezed harder. Feeling around in the sweaty rolls of fat, he heard Roxanne's voice say, "This is the best sex I never had. So far. Hope it gets better."

"It does," Remo promised, trying to find the nerve. The trouble was, he couldn't find it or make it work. "Damn that Chiun."

"Who's Chiun?"

"You ever been a sumo?"

"No, but I wrestled one to a draw once. He was a wimp."

Remo stepped back. "Look, I have a confession to make."

Roxanne opened one disappointed eye. "What's that?"

"I'm a huge fan."

"Great. I get my best orgasms off people who think I'm my character."

"Maybe you can help me," Remo said.

"If you'll help me. I wanna have a baby."

"I don't do that kind of favor."

"No? So what do you want?"

"Your girdle."

"How'd you know I wear a freaking girdle?" Roxanne said, jerking to her feet. Every square inch of her body jounced and jiggled like Jell-O in a pink leaf sack. "Rumor."

"Well, I ain't giving up my girdle for anything less than sperm. And that's final."

"Damn," said Reano, looking around the trailer. A thought occured to him. "Where's your friend?"

"What friend?"

"The one you were talking to before I came in."

"Oh, her. That was no friend. Just that bitch alter of mine, Rachel."

"Alter?"

"Yeah, like alter ego? That's what my shrink says I should call my multiple personalities. I've got thirty-six. Hey, maybe you'd like to pork one of them. Now, take Rachael. She's twelve years younger and 140 pounds lighter than me. But she's not very big in the hygiene department. If you catch my drift."

"Do you have a timid alter?" Remo wondered.

"Timid?"

"You know, shy."

"Well, there's Mandy. She's very mousy."

"I'd like to meet Mandy. The mousy type attracts me."

Roxanne shrugged. "Well, if you get one of us pregnant, I guess we'll all be pregnant. But I gotta warn you. Mandy is a virgin. You be gentle with her, or I'll briss you with my teeth-if you catch my drift."

"I promise."

And Roxanne closed her eyes. Her round face turned placid. Then, like waves rippling across the ocean, her features began to waver and change. They grew slack. A little drool trickled from one corner of her red mouth. When her eyes opened, the voice coming out was tiny. "Hello, I'm Mandy."

"Quick," Remo said urgently. "Where's she keep her girdle?"

"Bottom drawer. But don't tell Rox I told you!"

"Promise," said Remo, going to the bottom drawer. He almost missed the girdle. It was made of black vinyl and went all the way up to the silver-tasseled breast cups. All it needed was a skull and crossbones painted on it and it could have adorned a pirate ship. "Thanks," said Remo, starting for the door. "Aren't you going to make love to me?"

"Next life."

"Rats," said Mandy in a pouty voice as Remo shut the door behind him.

THE MASTER OF SINANJU was waiting for Remo outside the main gate on Lankershim Boulevard. "Here," said Remo.

Wrinkling up his nose, Chiun took the girdle in two fingers. "It smells."

"It's the girdle of the amazon queen, Roxanne. Address any complaints to her."

"She fought desperately to retain it?"

"Tooth and nail."

"And you vanquished her?"

"She was begging for mercy when I left."

"You have done well," said Chiun, holding the girdle this way and that.

"What are you going to do with that?"

"The girdle of the amazons is supposed to confer great strength upon the wearer."

"I'm not wearing that."

"You have not the chest for it," sniffed Chiun, tossing the garment into the nearest trash receptacle. "Hey! Do you know what I went through to get that?"

"It does not matter. You have completed another labor. That is all that matters."

As they walked back to their hotel, the Master of Sinanju began to yawn broadly.

Remo caught himself yawning, too.

"You are sleepy?" Chiun inquired. "No. I'm yawning because you are."

"You look sleepy."

"Okay, I'm sleepy. But I'm not sleeping until we get the rite finished."

"You must sleep to conserve your strength for the ordeal ahead," Chiun stated.

"I've been sleeping more than I've been waking lately."

"Your body craves sleep. We will find a suitable hotel."

AT THE BEVERLY GARLAND hotel, Remo was looking out the window. The San Gabriel Mountains hovered in the near distance. He could see the top of the Omniversal Towers. There was a billboard there. He hadn't noticed it before.

It was another advertisement for The Return of Muck Man.

"Every time I see that Muck Man billboard I feel like it's staring at me," Remo said.

"I have told you, it is your father."

"Har-de-har-har-har," said Remo.

"He does have your eyes."

Remo looked closer. "They do look awfully familiar."

Bustling up, Chiun drew the curtains shut with sudden violence, darkening the room.

"It is time for your nap," he announced. "Hey! I was looking out that window!"

"You may waste your time after you have completed your labors," Chiun said, going to the door. "And do not let me catch you in a Western bed."

The door closed and Remo turned in.

ALMOST AT ONCE he found himself in a valley dotted with flowering plum trees. Swallows alighted and took off from their branches, swooping through the warm air.

Under one plum tree Remo saw a figure he recognized. He walked over to the bald old man seated in a lotus position. He was heavy of body with pale, unmoving eyes like stones in a face like crumpled, translucent parchment.

"Greetings, H'si T'ang pongsa," Remo said, using the Korean honorific for a blind man.

Master H'si T'ang looked up with unseeing eyes. They searched curiously while his flat nose sniffed the air. "Ah, Remo. Welcome."

"Can't you see me?"

"I was blind in life, why should it be different in the Void?"

"Well, I just figured a person's sight would be restored to him."

"Spoken like a true Christian." Master H'si T'ang stood up. "I am the Master who trained your Master. This means you are near the end of your Rite of Attainment. This is good, for it means the House will go on."

"Can you help me? I need to find Kojing. He was supposed to tell me something."

"You seek your father?"

"Yeah. How'd you know?"

"Ask Chiun."

Remo blinked. "Chiun?"

"Yes, Chiun will tell you the name of your father."

"Chiun?"

"Chiun," said Master H'si Tang, reaching up to pluck a ripe plum. Remo's eyes followed his frail hand as it groped. Fingers like bones coated in beeswax closed around the ripest one and plucked it.

When Remo's eyes went back to the face of H'si Tang, he was gone. So was the plum.

REMO BURST into the adjoining hotel room, where the Master of Sinanju sat on the narrow balcony watching the sun set.

"I met H'si Tang."

"How is the Venerable One?"

"Still blind."

"One does not need eyes in the Void."

"I asked him about my father, and he said to ask you."

Remo waited for the Master of Sinanju to answer. But there was only silence.

"Did you hear what I said?"

"What were H'si T'ang's exact words?" Chiun asked thinly.

"Ask Chiun."

"My father was named Chiun. Did you encounter him in the Void?"

Remo's voice fell. All the pent-up energy in his body seemed to dissipate. "Damn," he said.

"I have spoken to Emperor Smith," Chiun said. "His oracles have found another athloi for you. We will depart on the morrow."

"I'd like to get going now."

Coming to his feet, Chiun pivoted to face his pupil. "Then we will depart at once." And he breezed past Remo like a secretive wraith.

Remo followed him with his eyes but said nothing.

ON THE PLANE, Chiun was saying, "Perhaps your father is the illustrious Ted Williams."

"I wouldn't mind that, but I know it isn't."

"Andy Williams, then."

"Not a chance."

"Robin Williams."

"No way."

"Why not? He is fat. And you are showing signs of gaining weight."

"My mother said my name isn't Williams. And what makes you think my father is famous?"

"All who sire Masters of Sinanju are famous. Why should you be any different?"

"Look, let's change the subject, shall we?" Remo suggested.

"Tennessee Williams is another famous Williams."

"Tennessee Wiliams is dead."

"But his greatness lives on in you."

"Cut it out. I'm sick of you ragging on me all the time."

Chiun's voice suddenly grew serious. "Tell me, Remo, why is finding your father so important now? It was not like this when we first met so long ago."