Last Rites

Remo looked out at the passing clouds. "I thought I had put it all behind me after I left the orphanage," he said quietly. "Until that time in Detroit when that hit man popped up using my name."

"A name which he pilfered from the gravestone where you are not buried."

"We know that now. But at first I thought he was my father. For a while there I liked the idea of having a father. Ever since then, I can't get the idea out of my mind."

Chiun said nothing.

"Mind telling me where we are going?" Remo asked suddenly.

"You are going to Hades."

Remo's brow clouded. "Hades is the Roman Hell, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Then why do our tickets say were going to Bangor, Maine?"

"Because that is where Emperor Smith assures me Cerberus dwells." And Chiun left his seat to inspect the galley.

"Cerberus?" Remo muttered. His mind went back to his childhood, and once again he could hear the voice of Sister Mary Margaret as if it were yesterday: Cerberus was the three-headed dog who guarded the gates to the underworld, who barred Hercules's path when he descended into the lower regions to complete one of his final labors.

Remo folded his arms defiantly. "Great. I'm getting near the end."

The seat-belt sign winked off, and the stewardess came up the aisle. Remo noticed that she was wearing no shoes. When she stopped at his seat and leaned down to whisper in his ears, he understood why.

"Go suck your own toes," he told her.

When the Master of Sinanju returned from his inspection of the galley facilities, Remo told him, "The stewardess invited me to suck her toes."

"Before Rome fell, its women insisted upon being on top."

"There's nothing wrong with being on top."

"If these unwholesome ideas take root, the House will have to look to Persia in the next century for its gold. Do you still possess the coins?"

"Sure."

"Let me see them."

Remo produced the coins, one from each pocket so they wouldn't jingle and give him away.

"What do they tell you, Remo?" asked Chiun.

"Spend it while the currency is still good?"

"You are hopeless."

Remo grinned. "But still on top."

Over a mountainous section of the country, Remo happened to look down and saw in life something he had seen many times in books and magazines.

"That looks like Meteor Crater," he said to Chiun. The Master of Sinanju looked out, sniffed and said, "I see a great hole surrounded by desolation."

Remo pulled from his wallet a square of paper that had been folded many times. It was sealed in plastic with Scotch tape. He undid the tape and unfolded the paper.

The black grease-pencil sketch featured a sad-eyed young woman with long dark hair, framing a handsome oval face. A police sketch artist had made it, based on Remo's description after his mother's spirit had appeared to him the first time months before. Ever since, Remo had carried it everywhere he went.

"She said my father sometimes lived among the stars and sometimes where the great star fell," Remo said softly.

"I see a hole in the ground. No star."

Remo hit the overhead stewardess-call button. Every stewardess on the plane was suddenly beside him, straightening hair and uniform skirts and moistening lipsticked mouths.

"What state are we over?" he asked the assembled stewardess crew.

"Suck my toes till they're wrinkled, and I'll tell you," offered one.

That particular stewardess was pushed to the rear and all but sat upon by the others.

"Arizona," the rest chorused helpfully.

"Thank you," said Remo, dismissing the flight crew. When they refused to dismiss, he carefully folded the drawing and replaced it in his wallet, taking his time and trying to look absorbed.

They were still there when he looked up. "Was that your mother?" one asked.

"How'd you know?" Remo asked, genuinely surprised.

"She has your eyes. Anyone could see that." Hearing that, the Master of Sinanju suddenly flew out of his seat like an angry hen and shooed the stewardesses to the back of the plane.

When he returned to his seat to receive the gratitude of his pupil, Remo had all but fallen asleep in his seat. The Master of Sinanju didn't wake him. But he did sit very close, with one ear cocked to catch any syllables Remo might speak in sleep.

RED POPPIES FILLED a valley where herons swooped. There was a clear, crystalline light that was everywhere but seemed to have no source. It was not sunlight. There was no sun in the vaulting blue sky.

Striding through the poppies, lifting his skirted legs in high, purposeful steps came a small-boned Korean. "Chiun?" Remo blurted.

But as the figure drew near, Remo saw that it was not Chiun. The man resembled Chiun. He was old, his face seamed and wrinkled and papery, his eyes the same clear, ageless hazel.

The figure walked up to Remo and stopped abruptly. No particle of warmth came over his face as he looked Remo up and down. "You are very tall."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"I have never seen a man so tall. Or so pale."

"That's how we grow where I come from. Tall and pale."

"Is the blood in your veins as red as mine?"

"Yep," Remo said warily.

"Your blood and my blood. They are the same blood?"

"Same color anyway."

"I cannot fight one of my own blood."

"Glad to hear it," Remo said dryly, not letting his guard down.

"I have something for you."

"Yeah?"

And reaching behind his back, the old Korean grabbed the jeweled hilt of a sword that Remo could have sworn was not there a moment before.

When it came into the clear light, Remo saw that it was the Sword of Sinanju.

"I give custody of this sword to you as a token of recognition that the blood in your veins is the same as the blood flowing through mine."

And the sword suddenly reversed in the old Korean's hands so the jeweled hilt was offered to Remo.

When Remo hesitated, the old Korean urged, "Take it."

"No," said Remo. "Why not?"

"I haven't earned it yet."

A warm light came into the old Korean's eyes. "That is an excellent answer. But I ask you to hold it for me because it is very heavy and I am very old."

"All right," said Remo, reaching out for the hilt. The moment he laid hands upon it, he knew he had made a mistake. Something coldly sharp pierced the pad of his thumb.

"Ah!" said Remo. "Damn it."

The other's voice turned cold and contemptuous. "You have disgraced the blood in your veins. For you do not know the lesson of Cho."

Remo looked at the blood coming from his thumb. There was a drop of it on the barb in the sword's hilt, which had sprung out the moment he applied pressure. "That had better not have been poisoned."

"It was not. But it might have been."

"You Cho?"

"No. I am Kojing."

And Master Kojing suddenly turned on his heel and stormed back into the field of red poppies.

"Kojing! Wait! Don't you have something to tell me?"

"Yes. Do not bleed over my poppies."

REMO WOKE up.

"Damn," he said.

"What is it?" asked Chiun. "I met Kojing."

"Yes?"

"He handed me the Sword of Sinanju hilt first, and I fell for it."

"I told you the lesson of Cho," Chiun hissed.

"A zillion years ago. I'm lucky to remember last Tuesday the way you're running my tail off."

Frowning, Remo looked out the window at the deeply ridged red mountains of Arizona and said to himself, "I wonder what Kojing was going to tell me?"

"Do not bleed all over the seat," sniffed Chiun.

"What did you say?"

And when he looked at his left hand, Remo saw blood coming out of his thumb. "You stuck me while I was sleeping," Remo accused.

"You have disgraced me before my great-great-great-grandfather."

"That how far back Kojing goes?"

"No, but I am in my end days and cannot spend an entire afternoon repeating the word great simply because there is no term in English to describe Kojing's relationship to me."

Remo checked the seatback pouch for something to wipe his hand and, finding nothing suitable, reluctantly hit the call button.

The first stewardess took one look at Remo's hand and offered to kiss it to make it better. Remo declined. The second bit her own hand and offered to become Remo's blood sister. Remo declined that honor, as well.

In the end he let them take turns sucking his thumb, but only after they swore they weren't Anne Rice fans.

Chapter 22

An unfortunate series of misunderstandings had forced underworld figure Vinnie "Three Dogs" Cerebrini to go underground.

Vinnie had been a soldier in the D'Ambrosia crime family, out of San Francisco. For his capo he had killed many times. No one questioned his loyalty. No one questioned his manhood. No one.

Until the Frank "the Fence" Feely hit.

Vinnie had gotten caught on camera coming out of an Alameda warehouse five minutes after 1:00 a.m. on the night a low-life welcher named Frank Feely died. That was unfortunate, because the established time of death according to the coronor's report was 1:05 in the morning of the twenty-fifth of February. The security camera recorded both date and time. Those were the breaks.

No problem there. The D'Ambrosia family had lawyers-"Three Dogs," Don Silvio D'Ambrosia had assured him after word went out that he was a wanted man, "you will surrender. And we will get you out this very day."

"But they got me dead-bang."

It was an unfortunate choice of words. But Vinnie didn't know then. No one knew it then.

"We have lawyers, Vincenzo. Turn yourself in. We will go your bail, and the trial will end in a very good acquittal," the capo had promised.

"But what about my dogs? Who will take care of them?"

Don Silvio had slapped him lightly on the cheek. It was an affectionate slap. After all, had not Vinnie Cerebrini killed over thirty men for him? "That is the job of your wife. You should have married a long time ago. Like I been tellin' you,"

"I'll get around to it. You know I've been busy. What with whacking this guy and clipping that one, I don't got time for broads like I should."

Another unfortunate remark, but that was life. "Bring them here. If they are your dogs, I am sure they are good dogs." And Don Silvio leaned across the kitchen table conspiratorially. "They do not piddle on the rug, do they?"

Vinnie made the sign of the cross and said, "On my mother's life, they are housebroke, Don Silvio."

"Then they are welcome in my house."

And so grateful was Vinnie "Three Dogs" that he leaned over and gave his don a very long kiss. Which was noticed.

So Vinnie Cerebrini had turned himself in, made bail and returned to his capo the next day. "The trial date's not till spring."

"Good. In the meantime, you gotta take these curs back."

"Sure. What-they been a problem for you?"

"They alla time sniffing my crotch."

"Yeah. They do that."

"What kinda queer dogs you got, Vinnie? They sniff crotches?"

"Some dogs do that. I'm sorry."

Don Silvio eyed Vinnie dubiously. "They sniff your crotch?"

Vinnie shrugged sheepishly. "All the time. Hey, what can I do? I love those dogs like brothers."

"Just get these fairy mutts outta my house. They give me the creeps. And I want you married by year's end. Capisce?"

Vinnie "Three Dogs" didn't think much of the conversation, but already the rumors were starting.

The trial went well, as promised. Evidence got suppressed, witnesses skipped town or found themselves inextricably caught up in various civic-improvement projects for which the D'Ambrosia family supplied the concrete.

"We got 'em on the run," his lawyer had confided at the end of week three.

"I just wish we could get that damn security tape quashed," Vinnie hissed back.

The lawyer shrugged. "Hey, it's circumstantial. Purely circumstantial. They can't convict on that alone."

And they hadn't. The tape was shown, and his lawyer knocked it down hard on cross-examination.

"I was taking a leak in that warehouse," Vince said solemnly from the stand. "It was dark. How was I to know the poor stiff was laying there with his mouth open?"

"But you do admit to urinating in the deceased's mouth?" the prosecuter asked when it was his turn to question the accused.

"Listen, if my piss-excuse me, Your Honor-was on that poor guy, I profoundly apologize to the family. I did not know. I swear on my mother's grave."

"But your fingerprints were found in his coat. How do you explain that?"

"Hadda wipe my hands on something. It was the only cloth in the entire joint."

In the end Vinnie pleaded no contest to the reduced charge of abusing a corpse. He was all smiles as he stepped out of the San Francisco courthouse while the press surged and jostled around.

That's when the linguini hit the propeller.

"Mr. Cerebrini, what do you have to say to these new allegations about your personal life?"

"There's ain't no such thing as the Mafia, honey. Don't you fall for that old bull."

"I was referring to the rumors of your homosexuality-"

"My which?"

"The victim was gay. Didn't you know that?"

"I didn't do nothin' to the guy," said Vinnie in an injured tone. "All I did was piss in his dead mouth. Is that a crime?"

Another reporter jumped in. "According to the security tape, you left the warehouse with your fly open."

"I told you I was taking a freaking leak. I forgot to zip up. Coulda happened to any poor mook."

"Is it true you are not-and never have been-married?"

"What are you-my godfather? I'll get around to it, okay?"

"Did you ever have relations with the dead man before he died?"

"I never knew the guy. I'm telling you. All I did was whack-I mean piss-on him. I got a weak bladder. It coulda happened to anybody. It just happened to happen to me."

And as the mob lawyer shoved him into the waiting Lincoln, Vinnie "Three Dogs" Cerebrini muttered, "What the fuck kinda rap they trying to hang on me now?"

In the car the phone rang. "Yeah?" barked Vinnie. "Three Dogs, I hear you are a free man."

"And I have you to thank, Don Silvio."

"Good. Now, Vinnnie. We been together a long time. You can tell me anything and everything. Am I right?"

"Yes, sir."

"These ugly rumors, V'mnie. There is no truth to this?"

"I swear before God, I am no fag."

"You married yet?"

"No," Vinnie said in a small voice.

"Engaged?"

"No."

"And you still got the queer dogs?"

"They are not queer! They happen to be African ridgebacks. They used to be used for running down escaped slaves. They are the biggest, meanest, most masculine dogs ever bred. Ask anyone."

"You like masculine dogs, huh, Vinnie?"

"I didn't mean it like that."

"You like to watch them walking around with their great big balls jigging between their furry butts, am I right?"

"I do not look at them that way."

"They lick your face?"

"Sometimes," Three Dogs admitted.

"You know what else they lick, Three Dogs? Their nethers. Their lower regions. You like tongues to lick you there, too?"

"Never. I swear. My dogs know better than to lick me there. They are moral and honorable dogs."

"Have 'em clipped."

"Shoot my own dogs?"

"No, I mean have their balls clipped. I don't want you looking at those dogs that way no more."

"I fix them dogs, they'll turn into girls."

"You don't fix them dogs, and I'll have you clipped. And I don't want no rumors around my family. I take pride in my family. We are family men. Fuck the dogs and find a wife. And another thing. I don't want you peeing on the guys you clip no more. It's unsanitary."

"It's just my way of sending them off. You know. It don't mean nothing."

"The papers are calling you an abuser of corpses. I do not want this word abuser to be connected with members of my family."

"It's all circumstantial. It don't mean nothing, Don Silvio."

"From now on you don't whip it out except in front of ceramic or lipstick. Capisce?"

"I understand," Vinnie said miserably.

When he got home, the dogs were all over him, sniffing and pawing his best suit.

"Cut that out, you three! You'll get me killed. Down, Numbnuts. Get offa me, Bonehead. You too, Fatface."

When they finally settled down, Vinnie tried to explain the facts of being mob dogs to them. "Now listen, you guys," said Vinnie, getting down on his knees on the floor. "We gotta talk about our futures together."

The dogs began licking his face.

"Don't do this to me! I'm trying to break the news to you gently,"

In the end he couldn't do it.

"You guys are men. Just like me. It's not right to lop off a man's balls even if he is a dog."

And so Vinnie "Three Dogs" Cerebrini made the most difficult decision of his life. He chose his dogs over his capo.

Unfortunately it wasn't that hard a choice. The rumors that he was gay were all over San Francisco. If he married triplets, he could never live them down.

Vinnie "Three Dogs" Cerebrini would have sued if he could. After all, it was slander what they were saying about him, the rat bastards. The trouble was you really couldn't sue La Cosa Nostra. Even if you were a soldier in La Cosa Nostra, suing your godfather was just not done.

The slander had gotten so out of control, Vinnie was forced to drop out of sight. Way out of sight.

Bangor, Maine, was as far out of sight of San Francisco as you could get without taking up residence in a cave. Vinnie had bought a tract of land and a mountain of old used tires. He dug the hole himself, and with his own hands and the sledgehammer he had once used to split open the skull of Salvatore "Sonny" Slobone pounded dirt into each tire until they weighed three hundred pounds each.

In the piny Maine woods he built himself the hideaway deluxe of all time. It was impregnable because it was completely underground. The buried sides and roof were made from stacks of earth-reinforced tires. Rifle bullets couldn't penetrate it. Hand grenades detonated harmlessly over it. Katushya rockets only turned the graded topsoil.

There Vinnie settled down with his dogs and his savings and figured the D'Ambrosia family would never find him here.

And for a solid year they hadn't. No one had.

Then one day in July the buried motion-sensor array picked up an intruder. Punching up his security cameras, Vinnie saw a man approaching on foot. He was lean and neat with his hair cut on the short side.

"Oh, man, what is this shit?" Vinnie moaned.

In his gray chinos and T-shirt, the guy looked like a poster boy for AIDS awareness.

"Those cocksucker fucking rumors musta spread like wildfire. Now I got the local fags sniffing around, looking for action."

Vinnie hit the loudspeaker system. "You! Get offa my property. You want people to talk?"

But the guy kept coming.

"I get it. I get it. He's bait. That's it. Don Silvio thinks I'll give him a tumble, and either the fruit whacks me or I contract AIDS offa him. Fuck! Gotta get rid of him."

He called out, "Numbnuts, Fatface, Bonehead-where are you stupid mutts?"

The dry padding of sandpapery paws came rushing out of the playroom, where the three ridgebacks had been sleeping contentedly.

Pushing their eager brown muzzles away from his crotch, Vinnie said, "See the guy on the screen? You gotta get rid of him for me. Got that? He's bad."

And Vinnie pulled down the drop stairs that led to the roof and the only exit from his underground tire fortress.

Not having seen daylight in weeks, the dogs poured out, their big, muscular, toast-colored bodies eager.

Vinnie sat back to watch the guy being torn limb from limb. There were no dogs more ferocious than the African ridgeback, for they had been bred to fight lions and hunt men.

REMO SAW THE DOGS coming for him and decided his search was over. They came out of a hole in an embankment. And knowing that dogs don't normally dwell underground, he figured he had the right patch of dirt.

Howling and yapping, the three dogs galloped toward him like small toast-brown horses.

Remo let the first one pass between his legs. The dog kept on going, snapping at legs that his eyes told him were still in front of him.

The second dog went for his throat, and Remo got him by his floppy ears. Spinning, he sent the canine flying tail first into an evergreen.

The third dog, seeing all this, skidded to a stop. The dark bristly ridge along his smooth back lifted like hackles. He growled.

Remo casually tossed him a dog treat. The dog sniffed it, gobbled it up and Remo tossed another.

By this time the other dogs had gotten themselves organized, and Remo began flinging treats in all directions. The dogs fell upon them with eager, sniffling muzzles.

While they were occupied, Remo opened the hatch in the ground and yelled down. "Vinnie Cerebrini?"

"You get outta my house!" an agitated voice shouted up.

"You Vinnie 'Three Dogs'?" Remo asked.

"I said, you get out my house, gaybo. I don't swing your way."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm here to kill you."

"Stay away from me," Vinnie said. "Don't touch me."

And Vinnie lifted a Mak-90 assault rifle.

"Look, you're a bad guy and that thing won't help you much," Remo told him. "Let's just get this over with, okay?"

"Listen, I'll blast you to hell before I let you lay hands on me."

Shrugging, Remo set himself as if about to drop in for a visit.

Vinnie "Three Dogs" Cerebrini opened fire. The Mak-90 emptied itself up at the hovering fruit. Trouble was the fruit had some really smooth moves. He sidestepped every shot. Must have studied ballet, Vinnie decided, yanking the clip out and inserting another.

He was about to bring the weapon up to bear when suddenly the roof started coming down. Dirt showered, then heavy tires started dropping like bombs. They hit, bounced and rolled crazily. Vinnie had to dance out of the way to keep from being run over by the very protection he had labored to create for himself.

Above, the fruit seemed to be stamping and stomping around in controlled, angry circles.

"Oh, man, look at him go. This flaming hornbag must not have gotten laid since Christmas."

So Vinnie began shooting wildly into his own roof. The trouble was, the very tires that had kept bullets out also absorbed those trying to go the other way. Try as he might, Vinnie could not whack the annoyed fruit. "You are a dead man," he shouted up during a lull.

"Not yet."

"After you are dead, I'm gonna piss into your dead mouth. I am going to abuse your corpse. I don't care what people say. How you like that?" raged Vinnie, peppering the ceiling above with hot lead. Cold dirt showered down in response.

More roof tires sagged and spilled earth. The air became a cloud of unbreathable dust.

Vinnie was on his fourth clip, surrounded by dirt and rubber with a big patch of New England sky overhead when he felt a hand on his shoulder. The hand felt like a claw bucket. Then the fingers dug in.

Vinnie looked up to see the deadest eyes in the world looking at him as if he was dead meat.

He screamed. And the other hand reached out for the Mak-90.

There was nothing he could do. Vinnie was helpless. As the man brought up the loaded Mak-90 to his head with casual ease to intimidate him into surrendering, Vinnie decided right then and there he would rather be dead than raped by some faggot from the Maine woods.

"I'll show him," Vinnie thought, and pulled the trigger.

REMO STEPPED BACK as the body of Vinnie "Three Dogs" Cerebrini fell facedown onto the dirt floor, wondering why it had been so easy.

As he left the grounds, tossing his last dog treats to the three yellow dogs, he decided the Mak 90 must have had a hair trigger to go off prematurely like that.

Cloudy dirt hung in the afternoon air. It billowed slowly out from the zone of destruction, following him down a path of sticky pine needles.

A quarter mile down the road, Remo came upon the Master of Sinanju atop the largest, ugliest moose Remo had ever seen in his life. The moose had antlers like spreading trees.

"Where'd you get that bag of hair?" Remo asked warily.

"Have a care how you address the awesome Arcadian Hind."

"A moose?"

"Hind," corrected Chiun, giving the moose's hindquarters a whack. Obligingly the moose launched itself at Remo, head down, antlers sweeping ahead like plows.

Remo dodged the first pass easily. The moose turned on its clumsy, ungainly legs and came at him again. This time Remo reached up and grabbed hold of a tree branch. When the antlers were almost into his belly, he snap-rolled up.

The moose clopped past noisily.

The Master of Sinanju piloted him back, coming to a stop under Remo's branch.

"You must come down and defeat him," Chiun insisted.

"I'm not fighting any freaking moose!"

"It is the Hind of Arcadia. You must defeat him as Hercules defeated him."

"If that's the Arcadian Hind, where are its golden horns and brass hooves?" Remo shouted back.

"This is a very old Hind. Sadly, its gold has faded."

"Well, I'm not coming down."

"You cannot stay up there forever," Chiun warned.

"You're right," said Remo, standing up on the tree branch. It bowed under his weight, and when it was at its most springy, Remo launched himself off and into the next tree.

The moose followed.

Jumping from tree to tree, Remo stayed ahead of the galloping moose.

When he reached the edge of the tree line, he doubled back. Doggedly the moose doubled back too. For a solid hour, Remo played the game. He started to tire, but only because he had been through so much in so short a time.

In the end the moose began to show the worst signs of fatigue and disorientation. Its clumsy legs went wobbly. It stumbled.

"You are abusing this magnificent beast," Chiun complained.

"I'm not the one riding him into the ground," Remo shot back.

The moose's long red tongue was hanging out now. Its sides pulsed like laboring bellows.

When the eyes were distinctly glassy, Remo dropped down from an oak and stood there with his tongue hanging out. He stuck his thumbs in his ears and wriggled his fingers like loose four-point antlers.

Chiun urged the moose into action.

The creature took three steps forward-and its legs gave out-completely. They splayed in all directions, and its belly hit the dirt. Chiun found himself standing up, straddling the moose.

"I'd color him defeated," Remo said. "Wouldn't you?"

Angrily Chiun stepped away from his panting steed. "You are a disgrace to your brethren," he spat at the prostrate moose.

"Some hind," Remo said.

"You cannot find good hinds in this land," Chiun complained, joining Remo. They began walking.

"Is this it?"

"How many athloi have you completed?"

Remo made a hasty count using his fingers. "Twelve. Time for you to live up to your end of the bargain."

"We must rest before we go on."

"I won't argue with that."

They found lodgings at a Bangor Holiday Inn, and Remo threw himself on the rug three seconds after he got the bellman to open the door to his room.

Sleep took him instantly.

REMO FOUND HIMSELF wandering through a stand of tall green sorghum that rustled in a sultry breeze. Somewhere to the west, a drum was beating. It sounded familiar. It wasn't the beating of the hourglass-shaped drums of Korea. Nor was it the tom-tom beating of Africa. It sounded, if anything, like the prelude to an Apache attack in an old Western shoot'em-up.

Remo followed the beating drum.

On the way he met a tall, handsome man with intensely black hair who wore a white cotton shirt and black leggings tied at the ankles. Remo had never before seen the man but he instantly recognized him. "You're Chiun."

The young Korean threw back his shoulders proudly and said, "I am Chiun the Elder. And you are the avatar of Shiva who wears the skin of a white tiger."

Remo let that go past without comment. He was in no mood to have an argument with Chiun's father.

"Master H'si T'ang, who completed Chiun's training after you died, told me you knew about my father," Remo said.

One black eyebrow shot up. "I know no such thing. He must have meant my son, young Chiun."

"Chiun denied it."

Chiun the Elder shrugged. It echoed Chiun's own gesture perfectly. It was weird to meet Chiun's father, who had died young, Remo thought. It was like meeting Chiun himself as a young man.

"Do you know where I can find Kojing, then?" Remo asked.

"No. But perhaps the drum beating from the next field is calling for you." Chiun pointed the way.

"Okay, thanks," said Remo, hurrying on. Gradually the sorghum grew less tall and wild. Remo was deep into a field of waving green plants before he realized the sweet sorghum scent had given way to the smell of fresh corn.

"I didn't know corn grew in Korea," Remo muttered.

As he walked along, he saw that the corn was planted in orderly rows. The drumming was very near now. It seemed to find his heartbeat and make it quicken with anticipation.

Remo cut west through the corn until he found the man in the yellow silk kimono seated between two corn rows with his legs wrapped around a drum. He was beating it with his bare hands.

"Kojing?" Remo asked, for he looked exactly like Master Kojing.

The man looked up, and said, "I am Kojong."

"I'm looking for Kojing."

"But you have found Kojong."

"Right. Right."

"Why do you seek my brother, Kojing?"

"He's supposed to know something important about me."

Kojong ceased his monotonous beating. "All of my brother ancestors know something important. That is why we are here. That is why you are here, brother of my blood."

Noticing an eagle feather sticking out of Kojong's thin white hair, Remo asked, "What are you doing?"

"I am calling up the corn."

"That's nice."

"I eat corn. I do not eat rice."

"Good for you," said Remo, looking around for Kojing.

"My people are corn eaters,"

"Uh-huh."

"My people are the people of the Sun."

Remo's head snapped around. "What did you say?"

"I say, my people are the people of the Sun. We do not fight. We are forbidden to kill. That is our way. Our way is different."

"Who are the people of the Sun?" Remo asked, anxious-voiced.

"My people. Your people, as well, white eyes."

"That's what my mother told me. What do you know about my people?"

"Your mother has a message for you, white eyes. You must heed the wind."

Remo cocked an ear to the western wind. It sighed through the corn, making it sway and troubling its golden tassels.

And on the wind Remo heard his mother's worried voice call out, "You must hurry, my son. For he is dying."

"Where are you!" Remo cried out.

"Hurry!"

"Where is he?" Remo shouted. "Just tell me where to find him!" But the wind gave no answer.

But from the fertile soil, Kojong looked up and said, "Chiun knows. Ask Chiun."

"Chiun the Elder?"

"No," said Kojong, his hands returning to the ritual drumming, "Chiun the Younger."

All around him the wind-troubled corn began to waver and roil as if a great spoon was stirring the Void. And Remo woke up.

HE ENTERED the adjoining hotel room without bothering to knock or turn the doorknob. The door jumped out of his way the second he smacked it with his palm.

"I just had a talk with your father about my father," Remo said angrily.

"Is he well?" said Chiun from his place on the floor.

"He's dead."

"Yes, but is he well?"

"He told me he knew nothing about my father. Then I met Kojong."

"There is no Master by that name," Chiun said thinly.

"Well, I met him and he said to ask you about my father."

"What were his exact words?"

"He said to ask Chiun the Younger. That's you."

"But my father is younger than I, having died in his prime years."

"Don't hand me that bull."

"Sit."

"No, I want answers. My mother said my father was someone I knew. Just now her voice told me he's in danger. You know who he is, don't you?"

"If you will sit, I will tell you how to find your father, just as I promised I would."

Fists tensing, Remo scissored to the rug before the Master of Sinanju, his face a thundercloud. Chiun regarded him blandly.

"When your mother first appeared to you, it was not an accident. It was because you looked into the mirror of memory, as I have urged you for years."

"So?"

"Looking into your own reflection summoned up her face in your mind's eye before her spirit found you. You saw there the eyes of your own daughter, and deep from your earliest memories came similar eyes. Those of the woman who bore you. It will be the same with your father, if you only have the courage to examine your own features for his likeness, for all who came before have left their mark upon you."

"You're playing games. I want answers."

"I have been your father in many ways. What kind of father would I be if I hand you this important thing and deny you the boon of discovering it for yourself?"

"Take me to my father, damn it!"

Chiun narrowed his eyes. "Very well. If you insist." And the Master of Sinanju led Remo out to the streets of Bangor, Maine.

They walked up and down the streets aimlessly for nearly fifteen minutes, with Chiun striking his gong often until Remo was ready to explode.

Just before that happened, Chiun stopped before a vacant lot beside an old brick building. He took up a position and, spreading his arms wide, proclaimed, "Behold Remo, your long-lost father."

Remo looked. There was just Chiun. No one and nothing else.

"You're not my father."

Chiun dropped his arms in exasperation. "Oh, you are so blind. I do not mean me."

And turning, Chiun gestured to a billboard perched atop the brick building.

Remo looked up. It was a movie advertisement. The film was The Return of Muck Man.

Remo started to say something harsh, when his eyes locked with those of the leafy green face on the poster. He froze.

"I know those eyes," he said half to himself.

"They exist in the mirror of your memory, which you refuse to consult."

Striding forward, Remo walked up to the billboard and began reading the credits.

He went as pale as a ghost, and his rotating wrists suddenly grew still. Hands fisting up, he spun on the Master of Sinanju. "You knew! You knew all along. All these years you've known, haven't you?"

Chiun said nothing.

"Haven't you?" Remo raged.

"And if you had looked correctly into the mirror of memory, you would have known, as well," Chiun said evenly.

"Bull!"

The face of the Master of Sinanju flinched, and Remo brushed past him, cold and angry.

Silently Chiun padded after his pupil, who neither heard nor sensed his presence.

There would be no stopping him now. All was in the hands of the unforgiving gods.

Chapter 23

The flight from Phoenix to Yuma, Arizona, was brief. Less than an hour. Nothing but trackless desert lay below.

They were carried through the early evening air by a nineteen-passenger Beech 1900. There was no stewardess. Remo sat in the front and Chiun several rows behind. A thick silence hung between them. Remo passed the time looking at the drawing of his mother's face thoughtfully.

When Yuma with its lettuce groves appeared, Remo's mind went back to an assignment several years before. Posing as a stuntman, he had infiltrated the making of a war movie about an invasion of the US. financed by a Japanese industrialist. There were labor problems, and because the famous American film actor Bartholomew Bronzini was starring, Harold Smith had sent Remo to look into matters. It was all a front. The weapons were real, and the extras were a Japanese paramilitary unit. They had seized the entire town of Yuma, which lay like an island oasis in the Sonoran Desert.

Wholesale executions had been undertaken and televised to the rest of the country. The objective was simple. To hold Yuma until the helpless US. military was goaded into nuking one of its own cities. The man responsible had sought revenge for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It had almost worked. Remo had been nearly killed when he participated in a stunt involving volunteers from the Yuma Marine Corps air base. It had been a massive parachute drop. The Japanese had sabotaged the chutes. The Marines had all died, leaving Yuma undefended. Remo woke up in a hospital after it was all over, only to find that Chiun had saved the day without him. He couldn't remember anything that had happened to him after he'd bailed out over the desert.

A man Remo had worked with had died during the occupation, Chiun had said. Only now did Remo know different. Only now. Five years later.

At the tiny Yuma International Airport, Remo rented a four-wheel-drive Mazda Navajo and turned to the Master of Sinanju. "You don't have to come any farther."

"I must come. For I know the way, you do not." Remo said nothing. They drove out of the city and into the Sonoran Desert with its undulating dunes and saguaro cactus, where countless Hollywood movies, from Westerns to science-fiction extravaganzas, had been filmed.

Remo drove west. There was only one road west. The Japanese film had been shot west of the city, among the dunes. It was blisteringly hot. A red-tailed hawk hung in the sky, searching.

As they approached an unmarked access road, Chiun suddenly said, "Take this road."

Remo turned onto the road, and after fifteen more minutes of driving they reached a low corral-style fence. Braking, Remo got out.

The gate was closed. There was a red Quarantine sign hung on the fence. Remo noticed that the sign covered another.

Lifting the Quarantine sign, Remo saw the word Reservation burned into the wood. The name above was unreadable except that it began with an S.

Brushing sand dust off the burned letters, Remo was able to make out one word: Sun.

"'My people are the people of the Sun,'" Remo muttered. Turning to the Master of Sinanju, he asked, "Know anything about this?"

"I have been here," Chiun said thinly. "When you were thought dead."

Without a word, Remo threw open the gate and they drove in.

They passed three domed Indian huts before they were challenged. An Indian toting a pump shotgun stepped into their headlight beam and fired into the air. Remo braked and climbed out.

"Can't you read that damn sign, paleface?"

"I'm looking for Sunny Joe Roam."

The shotgun dropped level with Remo's chest, "You ain't answered my question, white eyes."

And Remo moved on the man. The pump gun came out of his clutch and disintegrated in Remo's hands. The Indian stood looking at the shards of his steel-and-walnut weapon with a slack-jawed expression. "Where's Sunny Joe Roam?" Remo said tightly. Woodenly the Indian pointed to the west.

"Yonder. Red Ghost Butte. He went up there two days back. He ain't been back since." The Indian suddenly fell into a fit of coughing. "We think he's dead."

"Dead?"

"The death hogap dust musta got him. He went up there to talk to the spirit of Ko Jong Oh."

"You don't mean Kojong?"

"Forget it. Indian talk." The Indian fell to coughing again. "Damn this plague. Steals all the breath from a man."

"Plague?" Chiun said from the shadows.

The Indian coughed again. "Yeah. They call it the Sun On Jo Disease."

"Sun On Jo?" said Remo. "Not Sinanju?"

"Yeah. I ain't never heard of any Sinanju tribe." Then the Indian got a clear look at the Master of Sinanju. "Hey, don't I know you, old fella?"

"I was here when the Japanese sought to rain death on this land," Chiun said gravely.

"Yeah. You came with Sunny Joe. You're a good guy. But I think you're too late. We're all dying of this damn death dust."

"What's the best way to get to Red Ghost Butte?" Remo asked quickly.

"That jeep of yours will take you as far as Crying River."

"Crying River. Not Laughing Brook?"

"How do you know about Laughing Brook?" the brave asked.

"Never mind," said Remo, jumping for the open car door. "Thanks."

Remo turned to the Master of Sinanju. "You stay here."

Chiun's wispy chin lifted in defiance. "I am coming with you."

"That's your decision."

"Yes, it is."

They got into the Navajo and left the Indian choking on the dust kicked up by their rear wheels.

The road gave out eventually. The Navajo climbed the sand, found traction for a while, then got bogged down. They abandoned it.

The sand crunched softly under their feet. It was the only sound in the night. Red Ghost Butte reared up before them like a grounded ship.

They came to a long depressed wash of sand that had formed a crust and passed over it without breaking the crust. Hoof prints of a horse showed as broken patches in the crust, so they were not surprised to find a horse loitering at the foot of Red Ghost Butte.

The Master of Sinanju went to the horse and, prying open his mouth, examined the inside.

"He has known neither water nor food for two days."

"Must be Sunny Joe's horse," said Remo, looking up. Moonlight washed the eastern face of Red Ghost Butte. Plainly visible on one side was a hole.

"Looks like a cave up there," Remo said.

The Master of Sinanju said nothing. His eyes sought the cave mouth and held it.

"Does it remind you of the cave of your vision?" he asked.

"Can't tell from down here." And Remo started up. Picking his way through brambles and brush, he ascended until he stood at the entrance to the cave. He seemed to take his time, but in reality he reached the ledge before the mouth cave very quickly.

There Remo hesitated. And in that moment he sensed a presence behind him.

Remo whirled. And there stood Chiun, his face stiff in the moonlight, his hands tucked into the joined sleeves of his kimono.

"What are you doing up here?" Remo asked harshly.

"I have come this far, but I will go no farther. This is your quest. You must see it to its end, no matter how bitter it is for both of us."

"You want me to go in here or not?"

"I offer no opinion," Chiun said, voice and eyes thin.

"Okay," Remo said thickly. And he stepped in.

The moonlight showed red sandstone for several yards. When he passed into the dark portion, he stopped, letting the visual purple in his eyes adjust to the blackness. His heart thumped, but he felt a strange calmness come over his mind.

As his eyes adjusted, Remo began to see low shapes on both sides of the cave and his mouth went dry.

THE MASTER OF SINANJI stood in the moonlight looking into the cave. He watched the back of his pupil recede beyond the wash of pure moonlight and in his heart bid a silent farewell to him. After this night nothing would ever be the same again, he knew.

Then out of the cave came Remo's excited voice. "Chiun, get in here!"

"I will not," Chiun called back.

"You gotta. I need your help."

"For me to enter that cave is to die. Your own mother told you this."

"That's not what she said, and if you don't come in here right now, I'm coming out there to drag you in!"

His face warping with a succession of conflicting emotions, Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, passed grimly into the forbidding cave.

He saw the first sack of bones to his right. It was a mummy. There was another on the opposite side, facing it. Two sad bundles of bones wrapped in faded Indian blankets. Farther along sat two more mummies. They reclined in niches carved out of the porous red sandstone.

At the end of the tunnel of sandstone, whose sides were repositories for the dead, Remo Williams knelt beside a living man, cradiing his head on his lap.

"It's Sunny Joe," Remo whispered, pain in his voice. "I think he's dying, Chiun."

But the eyes of the Master of Sinanju were not on his pupil or the dying man, but on the thing in the great arched niche beyond. The niche at the very end of the cave.

It was a mummy like the others. It wasn't dressed in Indian blankets, but in a silken robe whose cut and color and fineness marked it unmistakably as a kimono woven in the village of Sinanju long ago during the Silla period.

Looking up, Remo saw Chiun looking beyond him, transfixed.

"That's the mummy I saw in my vision. It looks just like you."

"It is Kojong," whispered Chiun. "It is the lost -Master."

"Never mind him. Help me."

Tearing his eyes from the mummy in faded yellow silk, Chiun knelt beside the dying man.

He was well over six feet tall with a strong, weathered face and deep-set brown eyes. Dust caked his face, and his lips were parchment dry and cracked.

Placing a palm to his mouth and nose, Chiun tested the breathing. Long fingers felt along the spine and throat.

"His ki is failing," Chiun said.

Remo looked stricken. "He can't die now. I just found him."

A low cough came from deep within the unconscious man.

Resting an ear against his chest, Chiun listened patiently until a second cough racked the body. Chiun lifted his head. "It is the mouse disease," he said gravely.

"What's that?"

"A malady carried by mice when they are abounding. It fills the lungs with death. If he can be revived, he might be saved." And Chiun began to manipulate the man's spine.

Sunny Joe Roam stirred. His eyes blinked open. "I know you," he said.

"I know you, too," Remo said.

"You're dead. Does that mean I'm dead now?"

"None of us are dead, brother," Chiun said softly. "If you have any strength in your body, draw upon it that you might be saved."

"Water. There's water in Sanshin's canteen."

"Sanshin?" Remo and Chiun said in one voice. "My horse. Appreciate a swig."

Remo ran down to get it, but when he came back to administer it, Sunny Joe took one tentative sip, then his head lolled to one side in Remo's supporting hand.

"No," Remo moaned.

"He is not dead," Chiun said, stern voiced. "But we must make haste."

Tears streaming from his eyes, Remo said, "You told me he was dead."

"And he that you were dead. But if you would have him live, you must do as I say."

"How do I know you won't let him die just to save your village?"

"Because you know just as I know that this man is of my village. I am pledged to preserve his life. As are you. If you are not a good son to him, then you at least will do this for Sinanju."

Chiun accepted the man's head in his lap. Remo stood up. "What do you need?"

"Viper wine has always been very efficacious against the mouse disease."

"Any viper do?"

Chiun nodded. "So long as it is poisonous."

Remo went out into the night and down into the desert, his heart a stone. Closing his eyes, he swept the desert with his entire sensitive body. It was night. Snakes would be in their holes.

Remo walked purposefully toward the first tiny heartbeat he heard.

It was a mouse. In his anger, he kicked sand toward it. A second mouse led him on a frantic chase through brambles before he saw it was a rodent.

Remo soon learned to tune out the warm-blooded mice and seek the slower heartbeats of cold-blooded creatures.

He found a red-and-black banded coral snake not long after.

When Remo stuck his hand into the burrow, the coral snake struck. Its fangs snapped on empty air, and Remo grabbed its entire head in his hand, dragging it out into the moonlight. With it coiled around his arms, he resumed his hunt.

A sidewinder undulating along the sand saw Remo approach and tried to slither away. Remo enveloped its head in his free hand and, bearing two twisting, squirming, writhing serpents, he ran back to Red Ghost Butte, scared and hopeful at the same time.

But in his heart there was a cold feeling that he had come this far only to watch his father die.

SUNNY JOE ROAM flickered in and out of consciousness as the Master of Sinanju examined the two snakes. Selecting the coral snake, he milked it by holding the head so the jaws gaped. He held the exposed fangs over a rude cup he had fashioned from sandstone, hooking them to the edge. The clear yellow venom dripped for nearly a minute-an agonizingly slow time for Remo.

Chiun added water and, taking some brambles between his hands, set them alight by the friction of his hands.

The venom was soon bubbling.

"Will it work?" Remo asked anxiously.

"We need ginseng root," Chiun said without emotion.

"Where are we going to get ginseng in a desert?" Remo said bitterly.

Chiun looked up. "You must prepare yourself for whatever may come."

"That's easy for you to say. He's not your father."

Sunny Joe's sun-squint eyes fluttered open. He saw Chiun. "Hey, chief. How's it going?"

"I am well, brother. And you?"

"My time's about up, I reckon."

"Do not say that."

Sunny Joe's eyes found Remo's. "I thought I'd dreamed I saw you. The old chief told me you'd bought it during that parachute drop."

"He told me the same about you," Remo said.

"What about it, chief?"

"I did what I must," Chiun said, not looking up from the boiling venom.

Remo swallowed three times before saying his next words, "I'm not who you think I am."

"No. Who are you?"

From his wallet, Remo took the folded drawing. Unfolding it, he held it before Sunny Joe's pain-wracked eyes.

"Do you recognize her?"

Sunny Joe's eyes seemed to pass over the drawing without recognition. Then they grew sharp. "Where'd you get that?"

"It's a police drawing."

"Of my mother."

And Remo held his breath as he waited for a response.

Sunny Joe Roam lay his head back and coughed explosively. "What did you say your name was?"

"Remo."

"That much I remember from before."

"The nuns who raised me said the name on the basket was Remo Williams."

Sunny Joe Roam said nothing. Remo held his breath, waiting for the man's next words. They didn't come. Instead, Chiun said, "It is ready."

Remo watched as Chiun lifted up Sunny Joe Roam's head. With a start Remo saw his eyes were shut.

"He lives yet," Chiun assured him.

Remo subsided. Chiun held the steaming venom before Sunny Joe's nose and the open mouth. Sunny Joe recoiled, coughing. Chiun brought the brew close again. "This is to prepare you," he said.

When the viper wine had cooled, Chiun poured it down Sunny Joe's throat, stimulating his swallowing reflex with a thumb massage of the Adam's apple.

Sunny Joe looked older than Remo remembered. His tall, lean-limbed body seemed to have wasted away in places.

When the cup was empty, Remo eased the head back onto the low hump of sandstone that served as a pillow. Sunny Joe's eyes were completely closed now.

"What do you think, Little Father?" Remo asked in a shrunken voice.

"I am not your father," Chiun said sternly. Then, after a moment and in a softer tone, he added, "We will know by dawn."

"Is there anything we can do?"

"If we had a dragon bone, we could make dragonbone soup."

A strange expression crossed Remo's face. "Yong gave me a dragon bone."

"What did you do with it?"

"I put it in my pocket. But it was only a dream." The strange expression on Remo's face got stranger as his hand came out of one pocket clutching a fragment of bone.

"Did you plant this on me?" Remo demanded of Chiun.

Ignoring him, the Master of Sinanju began to scrape the bone into meal in the sandstone cup.

"I don't know if he heard me," Remo said, voice cracking.

"He heard you."

"No. I don't think he heard me say my name. I don't think he knows who I am."

"He knows. All fathers know."

The last of the bone lay in the cup. Chiun climbed to his feet. Padding over to the mummy encased in yellow silk, he stood looking down upon it. "I bring greetings from the House of Sinanju, O ancestor."

Remo joined him. "That's Kojong, isn't it?"

"Let us be certain." And from his sleeve, the Master of Sinanju drew his tubular gong. He tapped it once. The high note filled the cave. And from the mummy came an answering note.

Chiun silenced his gong. But the mummy continued to ring.

Remo looked down. At its bony feet, covered in dust, a gong identical to Chiun's reposed.

"Yes," Chiun intoned, his voice filled with emotion. "This is Kojong the Lost."

"He looks a lot like you," Remo said softly.

"I have never told you the story of Kojing and Kojong, Remo."

"No. But Mah-Li told me. Years ago. Master Nonja had a wife who bore him identical twins. Because the eldest son was always selected to be trained in Sinanju, she knew one of the boys would have to be drowned in the bay. Otherwise, there could be a succession problem."

"In those days," said Chiun, his voice dropping into the low cadences he used when speaking of his village, "times were poor and the babies were sent home to the sea every few years. So the wife of Nonja, who bore him the twins, Kojing and Kojong, hid one of the babies from the sight of their father. Since Nonja was old and his eyes were failing, this was possible. As the boys grew, Kojing entered training. But the canny mother switched the boys every other day, and both received training.

"When at last Nonja died, two Masters stood ready to become Reigning Master. When they presented themselves to the village, none knew what to do. Should Kojing become Master. Or Kojong?

"In the end Kojong announced that he would seek another land where there would be no question of who was Reigning Master. He disappeared from the village, saying that should the House ever reach a time when there was no succeeding Master, the villagers should seek the sons of Kojong and pick of them the one most worthy."

Chiun's hazel eyes shifted from the dead face of Kojing, so much like his own, and seized Remo's. "You, Remo Williams."

"What?"

"I know this man's story. He is the last Sunny Joe. For he is a descendant of Kojong, whom he calls Ko Jong Oh. The eldest son of this tribe is called Sunny Joe after the name of the Great Spirit Magician Sun On Jo-He Who Breathes the Sun."

"My mother said my people were the people of the Sun. Those were her exact words."

"This man is your father, just as you are the descendant of Kojong."

"He-he say why he left me on the orphanage doorstep"

"No, I did not speak of you to him." "Then -then maybe I'll never know..."

"At dawn you will know or you will not. But in the meantime, there is something you must do."

"What's that?"

"Your last athloi. "

"I thought I was through. I did my twelve."

"No. There is still what the Greeks in their legends called cleaning Augean Stables. For the Greeks miscounted."

"It can wait."

"No. It cannot. This man is dying, as are the others of his tribe-your tribe, Remo Williams-from the mouse disease that is well-known in my land. You must comb the desert for mice and their droppings. Only by ridding the land of mice can this plague be arrested."

"I want to be with him. In case-in case he dies."

"I have promised you that I would take you to your father if you completed the Rite of Attainment. I have kept my part of the bargain. Now you must keep yours."

"I can't go now," Remo protested.

"You will if you are your father's son."

Remo looked to Sunny Joe Roam and back to the Master of Sinanju. Tears started in his eyes. "You can't make me do this."

Chiun indicated the unconscious man. "With his dying breath, he would ask you to save his people. Your people. You know this."

"Okay. But he'd better be alive when I get back."

"I make no promises," Chiun intoned.

"One more thing. If he comes to, ask him why he abandoned me."

"Are you certain you wish to know this?"

"Yeah. I gotta know."

Chiun nodded silently. He handed Remo the tubular gong of Kojong. "This will help you in your athloi." And taking the gong, Remo went out into the desert night, his eyes hot and wet.

REMO MOUNTED THE HORSE, Sanshin, lashing it into action. As he rode, he struck the gong. It rang angrily. Mice jumped out of their desert burrows. The gong's extended note seemed to send them fleeing.

Soon Remo was driving them before him. They were everywhere.

Stripping Sanshin of his saddlebags, Remo used them to catch the rodents. He tore across the desert with his thoughts racing ahead of him like uncatchable ghosts.

He couldn't bring himself to kill. They were only mice. So he carried them to the jeep and locked them inside. Soon they filled the back and front seats, sniffing and clawing at the windows, trying to escape.

When he had cleared the surrounding desert, he entered the deserted hogans he found here and there, driving the mice out with the gong and cleaning the interior with brittle-bush whisks.

In the deepest part of the night, Remo came across a solitary wind-scoured headstone.

It was a simple slab. It stood alone in the desert beside a eroded hump of red sandstone that lay at the end of the depressed crust of sand.

There was a name on the stone. No date, just a name. No stonecutter had carved the name. The letters were too irregular, but they had been carved deep and with great force.

The name was Dawn Starr Roam.

Remo knew instinctively it was the name of his mother.

On that spot, a thousand emotions both cold and hot running through his bones, he broke down and wept bitterly angry tears over what he had never known and only now truly missed.

NEAR DAWN, a light rain fell from the desert sky, and Remo opened his eyes to see Vega and Altair burning faintly on either side of the Milky Way.

He sat up. And in the sand beside him the gong suddenly rang. It was very faint. Nothing seemed to have struck it. Unless it was raindrops.

The faint sound faded. Then it came again. Nothing struck the bar of steel. Unless it was a ghost.

Remo stood up. And to the west he heard the sound of the gong's mate coming across the sands.

"Chiun. He's calling me."

Grabbing the gong, Remo pulled the mallet and struck it in response. Then he took off over the sand, toward Red Ghost Butte. The carrying gong note pierced the still air again, and the gong in Remo's hand answered.

The notes blended into a single sustained cry that didn't subside until Remo reached the cave mouth.

There stood the Master of Sinanju, his face a shell of sorrow and unconcealed pain.

"Don't tell me...." Remo said thickly.

"My sorrow..."

Remo squeezed his eyes tight as fists. "Nooooo."

". . . is only as great as your joy," Chiun continued aridly. "For you have gained a father, and I have lost my only son."

Remo's eyes popped. "He's alive!"

Chiun nodded. "He awaits you within."

Remo started in. "Well, c'mon"

"No. It is not for me to do this. I will remain here. For it is the seventh moon and it is my custom to bathe in the bitter tears of Kyon-u and Chik nyo, whose sufferings I understand only too well."

Chapter 24

Two days later three men rode into the Sonoran Desert on horseback.

Sunny Joe Roam took the lead. Remo rode on his right. Balanced on an Appaloosa pony, Chiun followed at a respectful distance, his face creased with pain like crumpled paper.

The sky was utterly cloudless, and in the clear desert air objects and people possessed an unnatural clarity, as if cut from glass. Overhead the sun beat down like hot jackhammers.

"I owe you two my life," Sunny Joe said after a while.

"Our blood is the same color," said Chiun. "More than that, I owe you some answers."

Remo said nothing. It was a subject no one had wanted to address in the two days that old Bill Roam had recuperated from the Sun On Jo Disease.

"For you to understand," Sunny Joe began, "you have to understand who I am. Long, long before the white man came, my ancestor Ko Jong Oh arrived in this desert. He came from the land that comes down to us as Sun On Jo. They say all us redskins are Asians originally. So I always figured he came across the Bering Strait from somewhere in China. Anyway, Ko Jong Oh settled down here among a tiny group of Indians and married one. We think they were head pounders."

"Head pounders?" Remo said.

"That's what we call the Navajo, on account of they used to bash in the skulls of their enemies. That's to differentiate them from the Hopi, whom we call cliff squatters.

"Now, Ko Jong Oh was a mighty warrior and magician, and he took this tribe under his wing. In gratitude, they took the name Sun On Jo. He taught the Sun On Jos the ways of peace. War and fighting and killing were forbidden. Only Ko Jong Oh and each eldest son descended from him were allowed to fight. And only then to protect the tribe. For it was handed down from the mouth of Ko Jong Oh that if any of his sons brought attention to himself, it would bring down the wrath of the Great Spirit Magician himself, Sun On Jo."

Sunny Joe looked back at Chiun.

"I told you this story that time a few years back, chief."

"And I have told you the legend of my village," Chiun returned coolly. "But you did not believe that our legends were one."

"I'm still on the skeptical side. But we'll get to that." Sunny Joe resumed his tale. "Every eldest male heir of Ko Jong Oh is taught the way of Sun On Jo. How to track game stealthily, to see farther than the hawk, to become one with the shadows. All the better to protect the tribe. When I was born, disease and poverty had claimed many of the tribespeople. It hit the women especially hard. When I came of age, the Sunny Joe before me, my father, took me up to Red Ghost Butte and before I was invested as his successor, he told me that the tribe was dying in spirit. Too many had left for the cities or were buried under the red sands. There were no women my age. And none had been born in a long time. My father thought it might have had something to do with the atomic fallout over in Utah and New Mexico."

Sunny Joe shrugged. "Doesn't matter now. But if the tribe was to go on, I had to go out into the greater world and find the land of Sun On Jo and beg of the Great Spirit Magician for one of his women to be my bride. Otherwise, the Sun On Jos would not survive the century."

Remo grunted.

"So I packed my bag and piled into my old Studebaker, and since west was the direction from which Ko Jong Oh had come, it made sense that I go west. Well, I didn't get very far until I ran out of money and had to look for work. So I fell into stunt work. It paid, didn't demand all of my time and, between shoots, I could travel. Let me tell you I traveled all over the globe. Sometimes with a production, other times on my own. I was searching for Sun On Jo, studying maps, talking to people. But China had gone Communist, and every way in was blocked.

"I was in Japan during the last days of the occupation when I ran into a Korean who told me of a place called Sinanju way up in North Korea, whose warriors were feared and respected throughout Asia. By that time old Marshal Kim Il-Sung was in charge up there, and as an American I couldn't get there for money, marbles or chalk."

"What year was this?" Remo asked.

"I'm getting to that. About that time the Korean War broke out. I watched it seesaw back and forth a while, and when MacArthur took Pyongyang, I saw my chance. I up and joined the Army. After basic, I shipped out for Korea. I asked for action and I got it. They handed me a BAR and put me right on the line. Chosin Reservoir. MiG Alley. I saw it all. It was a terrible war. But I guess all wars are terrible."

"I did a tour in Nam." said Remo. "Marines."

"If I had been around, I would have knocked that notion out of your skull on day one."

Remo said nothing. Sunny Joe went on.

"I was with General Walker's Eighth Army when we took up positions along the Chongchon River in October 1950. Our orders were to hold a bridgehead north of Sinanju. Mountains to the east. Mountains to the west. I never saw so many mountains outside of Arizona. Or such a bitter winter. We had the North Koreans licked, but there were rumors the Chinese were about to take a hand. While we were digging in, they attacked. Wiped out the entire Eight Cav at Unsan. We knew we were in for it then.

"Me, I just wanted to take a look around Sinanju, but I was stuck where I was. So I hunkered down as we pounded the enemy and they pounded us back, with Migs and Yaks and U.S. Sabre jets screaming over our heads and the winter closing in and the bigwigs chanting 'Home by Christmas.' They just never got around to saying which Christmas. Sound familiar, Remo?"

"Yeah. It does."

"Anyway, by early November my unit, the Nineteenth Infantry, were still trying to hold the bridgehead, when the Chinese swooped down on our battery position with their mortars and small-arms fire, blowing bugles to freeze the blood. We fought practically eyeball to eyeball, dead Chinese stacking up not thirty yards from our gun shields. Before long we were surrounded, Chinese knife men killed some of us in our sleeping bags. It was a grim night, I will tell you. I was sure I was going to die."

Sunny Joe hung his head at the memory.

"We withdrew under fire, abandoning the bridgehead. The tide was turning, just as it would all war long. Then on the night of November 6, the Chinese forces broke contact and went into full retreat. To this day, no one's ever been able to explain it. They just up and marched into the mountains, never to be heard from again. You won't read about the Battle of Sinanju in too many history books, but for my money it was the worst conflict of the war. They had us cold. But they bugged out."

Remo looked back to the Master of Sinanju.

"You were not near the village of Sinanju, brother of my ancestors," said Chiun. "But in Sinanju town, a lesser place. And on the night you describe, the Chinese ran because to do otherwise was to die."

"What do you know about that?" Sunny Joe asked. Chiun pulled himself up in the saddle proudly. "On that night I left my village called Sinanju at the edge of the West Korea Bay, and descended upon the Chinese, driving them back to the Yalu."

"You and what army?"

"I and no army. Just I."

"Is he kidding?" Roam asked Remo.

"No," said Remo.

"The noise of battle was keeping the women and children awake at night," Chiun explained. "Besides, I did not like the Chinese in my land. It had too many squatters already."

"What about the Americans?"

"They looted and raped no one, and so I suffered them to live."

Sunny Joe grinned crookedly. "Well, you saved my butt that night. If what you say is true."

"It is true," Chiun sniffed.

"Anyway, during our retreat I finally got to see Sinanju. It was a typical Korean town filled with frightened refugees. I talked to the locals. Nobody had ever heard of Ko Jong Oh. Or Sun On Jo, or any of it. It had to be the second-biggest disappointment of my entire life." Then, glancing at Remo, he amended, "No, make that third."

Remo looked away.

Sunny Joe continued. "Well, the war finally ended and I went home. Landed back in Hollywood. I didn't know what to do with myself. My father had passed on while I was at war, and as I saw it, I had failed to find the land of Sun On Jo. So I fell back into stunt work. TV was coming in, and there were Westerns galore. I doubled for the best of them. Worked my way up to stunt coordinator and eventually did some acting. I played black hats and white hats. Spoke my first line on a 'Rifleman' episode. It wasn't all glory, though. I took a lot of falls and broke a lot of bones.

"Around that time-guess it was a few years before, now that I think about it-I took me a wife. Figured if I made enough money I could return to the reservation with cash in my pockets enough to make up for my failure.

"Then my wife told me she was going to have a papoose. It was the proudest day of my life. I was hoping for a son. You know, a Sunny Joe to carry on after me."

Remo plucked a needle off a saguaro and rolled it between his fingers thoughtfully.

"Well, she did give me a son. A dark-eyed, dark-haired squalling little boy. I near to have burst. But the birth went bad and she sickened. Within a week she was no more."

Remo sucked in a hot breath. When Sunny Joe resumed talking, his voice was twisted. "It broke me up inside. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I couldn't think. I didn't know what to do. You see, I had made plans, but now they had come apart. I couldn't see starting over. I couldn't see raising a boy without a mother. Not in my line of work. Not with the travel and the hours. There was nothing for me back at the reservation.

"So one night I flew east, picked out a nice Catholic orphanage because my wife had been raised Catholic, laid the boy on the doorstep and walked away with my guts a great big ache and agony."

"That was me," said Remo, his voice dull.

"Now, when I got started, I did my stunt work under a stage name, William S. Rome. Turned 'Roam' to 'Rome,' after the city. Figured it sounded more Continental or something. Didn't want the reservation elders to know it was me. In the back of my head I thought I might go and claim that papoose as my own one fine day. So I gave him a name that no one else would have. I juggled 'Rome' to get 'Remo' and gave him my first name as his last, adding an S for 'Sunny Joe.'"

"What did you name the baby?" Remo said softly. "Truth is, my wife died before we could decide on a name. She wanted to name him after me. But I favored something he could call his own. Hell, if he's still alive, he'd be a grown man by now. He can call himself whatever he wants. He's earned that right."

"So did you not claim that child?" asked Chiun.

"Well, time passed, the work took me here and the work took me there. I got into movies and, when that dried up-and it always did-I went back into TV Black hats mostly. When detective shows replaced Westerns, I played hoods, and when science fiction took over from detective shows, I played Klingons and Cylons and what have you. Producers realized that with my height and thin frame I looked good in a rubber suit, so I played every kind of monster you could imagine. Pretty soon I was stuck as a central casting creature."

"Were you in The Sea Is an Only Child?"

"Yeah. You see that one?"

"No," said Remo, not elaborating.

Sunny Joe shrugged and went on. "One year I was in Italy making Spaghetti Westerns when I read about a Newark cop who had been electrocuted for some two-bit killing. The cop's name was Remo Williams. That told me I had waited too long to claim my only son."

"Didn't sound like you were ever going to," Remo said distantly.

"Maybe I never would have. I won't lie to you. Life had dealt me some pretty sorry hands. I wanted my son to start clean and not end up some Hollywood brat too spoiled for his own good, or worse, a half-breed reservation alcoholic with no culture to call his own."

"That's one way to look at it," Remo said stiffly.

For a long time no one said anything. There was only the soft crunch of hoofs in sand. Remo flung the saguaro needle away. It clipped the stinger off a scuttling scorpion.

Sunny Joe noted this without a flicker of surprise coming to his eroded features. "Well, more time passed," he said, "and I got old. Never did make it big as an actor. Too many broken bones and noses. I saw the tunnel one time too many, and decided to retire among my people, whom I had been supporting. Well, you know what happened. The Japanese came to Yuma and hired me as stunt coordinator. Then all hell broke loose. After the occupation, I started getting offers. It was good work at first, then they revived old Muck Man from back in the seventies and I found myself sweating in rubber suits all over again. Only this time I was a star. Nobody knew my face, but I was a star. I was about ready to pack it in when the death-hogan dust kicked up. So I come back. You know the rest."

Sunny Joe plucked a needle off a saguaro and threw it ahead of him. The tailless scorpion caught it in the head and fell over dying. Remo and Chiun exchanged glances.

"Where'd you learn to ride a horse like that, Remo?" Sunny Joe asked all at once.

"Outer Mongolia."

Sunny Joe Roam grunted. "So what've you been doing with yourself all these years?"

"Government work. Hush-hush stuff."

"Say no more."

They rode a little farther along.

"You haven't asked me why I'm still alive if I was executed back in New Jersey," Remo said.

"I ain't convinced you're that Remo Williams." They came to the long wash of crusty sand. "Of course there's one way to find out."

"How's that?" asked Remo.

Sunny Joe pulled up his horse, and Remo and Chiun followed suit.

"There's an old prophesy of Ko Jong Oh. He said one day a man would come from Sun On Jo and he would be known not by his face or dress or language, but by his ability to do what only Sunny Joes could do."

"What's that?"

"To cross Crying River without making it cry."

"Where's Crying River?"

Sunny Joe pointed to the sandy wash. "That's it right there. In the spring it's Laughing Brook. But when the summer heat sets in, it dries right up. We get some rain, and the sand crusts up. You walk across it, and it sounds like potato chips. They didn't have potato chips back in the days of Ko Jong Oh. So they said the sounds were maidens crying."

Sunny Joe piloted this horse forward. Its hooves sank into the breaking crust, making faint crying noises. Forking his mount around, he faced Remo and Chiun across the dead river.

"A true Sunny Joe can walk across Crying River without making the sand cry. I can do it. How about you?"

Remo dismounted. Sunny Joe did the same. They looked at each other squarely and in unison they approached each other.

The sand beneath their feet made no sound. The crust refused to break.

When they at last stood facing one another, neither spoke for a long time.

Sunny Joe's eyes squinted up. "Son..."

Remo swallowed. They lifted their hands hesitatingly, as if measuring each other. Remo offered his hand. Sunny Joe started an embrace. They switched, got tangled up and laughed nervously. Several times they seemed an the verge of embracing in a bear hug.

In the end they stood apart and shook each other's hand firmly, fighting back deep wells of emotion neither man could express articulately, if at all.

When they had exhausted that, Sunny Joe Roam clapped Remo on the back and drew him away from the horses. "Come with me, son. I want to tell you about your mother...."

And standing on the other side of Crying River, the Master of Sinanju watched them walk into the desert together, the hairs of his wispy beard trembling, although there was no wind.

He noticed that Remo didn't look back....

Chapter 25

That night, under a thousand milky stars, Remo Williams was invested as the new Sunny Joe.

He stepped out of a hogan wearing buckskin and hawk feathers, muttering, "I feel like Tonto in this getup."

No one heard him.

Sunny Joe Roam led him before a roaring fire and said, "I present to you my long-lost son..."

"Remo Williams," Remo said.

"Remo Williams, who was sent to us by a vision, and who is the next Sunny Joe."

A sea of red sandstone faces regarded Remo, and he had a flash of deja vu. Their flat faces reminded him of the faces of the villagers of Sinanju, whose lives he was sworn to protect. Except Sinanju faces were the color of old ivory or faded lemons. These faces were distinctly red. But their eyes were identical down to the Mongoloid eye folds. And their lack of appreciation equal.

"Hey," a man in iron gray pigtails spoke up. "He's nothing but an apple."

Remo looked at Sunny Joe quizzically.

"An apple means an Indian who's half-white. You know, red on the outside and white on the inside. Pay no never mind. Been called apple a time or two myself."

"My son is no apple," Sunny Joe told the crowd.

"This is true," a new voice said.

Remo turned. It was the Master of Sinanju. He approached.

"He is a banana," said Chiun.

"Banana?"

"Yes. He is yellow on the outside and white on the inside."

"Don't you mean the other way around, chief?" asked Sunny Joe Roam.

"He is a banana before he is an apple. Do not forget I have taught him the ways of Sinanju. If you teach him the ways of the Sun On Jos for a thousand years, you will not erase his Koreanness."

Sunny Joe regarded Chiun squarely. "Do you have an objection to what we do here tonight, old chief?"

"It is not for me to object," replied Chiun.

Sunny Joe turned to Remo. "What about you, Remo?"

"Let's get it done," Remo said.

"So be it."

They sang the old songs and beat the drums, and as the moon rose cool and clear in a star-sprinkled sky, Remo Williams became the latest Sunny Joe and took the sacred oath to protect his people from all harm.

All this, Chiun watched with unreadable eyes. And when they brought out the corn and fry bread, he slipped away unnoticed.

WHEN ALL HAD DIED DOWN, Remo walked out into the desert, following a set of tracks not even the keenest eye of the Sun On Jo tribe could follow.

He found the Master of Sinanju at the foot of Red Ghost Butte.

Chiun turned. No flicker of emotion crossed his seamed face. "You have found your father, Remo Williams. Congratulations."

"Thanks."

Silence hung between them. Remo scuffed the red earth with his beaded moccasins. A hawk tail feather fell over his eyes. He plucked it out and began stroking the quill.

"And what do you think of your father whom you do not know?" asked Chiun.

"He's a good guy."

"Yes?"

"But he's a stranger. I don't really know him. If I spent the rest of my life here, I might just start to know him."

"Will you?"

"I told you I was through with CURE. I still feel that way."

"You have not answered my question, Remo Williams."

"I've been thinking a lot about what happened these last few days."

"And what do your thoughts tell you?"

"That whole Rite of Attainment, the snotty way you treated me. You were setting me up to find my father, weren't you?"

"Possibly."

"You knew one of the Masters would tell me the truth. And you dumped all over me so that when the time came I could choose my father if my heart told me it was the right thing to do."

"I do not admit this."

"You figured it would be easier for me if I hated your guts."

"Do you despise my guts?" asked Chiun.

"If I hadn't before this, why should I start now, Little Father?"

And Remo smiled.

Chiun's wise visage began to come apart. He forced it to tighten. "Quickly, what is the lesson of the coins?"

"Empires come and go, but gold is forever."

"Close enough. And your visits with the Masters who came before you?"

"Every Master has a different lesson, but the one that stands out is that the Void is what you make it. If you are unhappy in life, you will be unhappy in the Void."

"What else?"

Remo thought a moment. "I think the most important thing I learned is the lessons you are taught when you are young are the ones that get you through life." Chiun wrinkled up his face. "Who taught you that?"

"Sister Mary Margaret."

Abruptly Chiun lifted a bony finger. "Look to the sky, Remo. What stars do you see?"

Remo gazed upward. On either side of the Silvery River were two very bright stars.

"That's Kyon-u the Herder and Chik nyo the Weaver."

"Not Altair and Vega?"

"Kyon-u and Chik nyo," said Remo. "When Chik nyo becomes the pole star, the House will still be standing even when America has become the ancient Greece of that century."

Chiun's hazel eyes beamed with a radiant pride. "You are a true son of my village."

"Thanks, Little Father."

"And you are the true treasure of Sinanju."

Before Remo could say anything, Chiun lifted two balled fists and held them before Remo's chest. Remo blinked. "Lodestones?"

"You have met the challenge of every Master except me. This is your last chance to prove yourself to your ancestors."

They circled one another warily, eyes cold, bodies tense, fists upraised, yet hardly moving. No blow was landed. No countermeasure struck. An hour passed. Then two. The concentration on their faces was deep and fierce and intense.

At one point Chiun tried to break Remo's concentration. "You understand that you and I are of the same blood, do you not?"

"I can live with it." Remo frowned. "I didn't meet every Master, did I?"

"No. But the others may appear to you if they feel the need is there. For no Master is ever truly alone." Remo nodded. "There's one thing I still haven't figured out."

"What is that?"

"Why didn't you tell me about Sunny Joe years ago? Were you afraid of losing me?"

"Not as afraid as I was that Emperor Smith would order me to dispatch your father to keep secret the fact you still lived. For you know that is what he would demand of me should he learn you are no longer a fatherless man."

Remo said nothing. They fell into a tight silence once more.

Somewhere in the third hour the Master of Sinanju abruptly broke off and said, "Enough. You have shamed neither the Master who trained you nor the House you serve."

And stepping back, Chiun bowed deeply, a forty-five degree bow, and said, "I bow to you, Remo Williams, future Reigning Master of Sinanju."

And Remo bowed equally in return, and for the first time in his life, his heart was full to overflowing.